Velvet

by Xavier Axelson

  “Stop speaking, you pig, you rotten deviant, hiding your lust behind a needle and thread. I should have dealt with you years ago.” He drew me closer to his cock so it was only inches from my face. “You think you can lie to me? This room reeks of semen. You and the musician, fucking while Duir is being anointed by holy men to rule as your King!” He stroked himself faster.

  I felt myself start to gasp for breath and tiny fragments of light cut across my vision as his thumb dug into my windpipe. My legs shook and kicked violently, my hands and arms flailed, clawed at his massive arms, but he held me tighter. Each of my reflexes met only with further pressure from his immense body. “You’re no man,” he seethed. “I’m going to make you the bitch you always should have been!” Spit dribbled from his mouth, and landed on his shaft as he worked his cock faster.

  His words penetrated my fear, and as it lessened, I stopped struggling. Where I had been afraid, I now knew something worse. I felt hot shame growing within my heart. The hot burn of tears filmed my eyes and erased the flickering, burning lights. I watched as his legs buckled, I heard his breath grow ragged. He shouted horrible things into the air but I couldn’t hear them. I’d gone deaf with shock. There was nothing in that moment but a frenzied chaos. The nightmare feeling of falling took over. All I had to do was fall with it, but where would I land?

  Was this what I deserved? Is this where my passions led me? Had I been careening to this moment since I first saw that man bathing at my home?

  Before my abused mind could cobble together any sensible replies, my eyes caught sight of the window. An owl had landed and peered into the room from the ledge. Its eyes sparkled like disks of gold in the dimness of the growing night shadow. There was silence, a fragment of time I would never forget. The bird blinked once and lifted soundlessly from its perch and as it did, I felt the burn of Cale’s seed fall across my face. His grip relaxed then tightened as another splash landed on my lips and streamed from my forehead, where it first met its mark.

  There is something beyond shame, a depth of degradation I never hoped or dreamed to know, but as his seed abused my face, I found something else in the horrible silence. It was the clear, furious dirge of revenge, and from beneath me I heard the velvet beckoning in a voice more horrible than Cale’s. Its voice consumed me and cradled me in its arms like a mother cradles a child lost but eventually found. As Cale’s thumb released my throat, so was I captured by something far more powerful and terrible: Hatred and the realization I had never been one of them.

  “You ever speak of this,” Cale muttered as he struggled into his breeches. “And I swear I will do you and your blind brother harm, although death would be a blessing to you both.”

  I stumbled forward and coughed raggedly until vomit rushed from my stomach and spilled across the stone floor. My head hung not with guilt or shame, but with the determined abhorrence I felt for the man before me. He would not see my face covered in his seed. He would not see my eyes burning with seething rage, or hear my voice choke over with the pain he inflicted upon me.

  “Get up, dog,” he leered. “You deserve to be hanged from the tallest tree or torn apart on the rack and fed your own manhood.”

  I was keenly aware that his eyes were upon me.

  “And to think, your hands sew the garment Duir will wear on the morrow. How sad that is.”

  I heard the door open and the sound of his boots as they moved away and faded. I even heard him laugh and shout at someone who passed.

  Alone, I felt Seton’s absence keenly. I wanted him near me, wanted his reassuring touch, to hear his voice chase Cale’s venom from between my ears. How could I let what felt so correct be tarnished by one such as Cale? I raised my head only to find I’d dragged myself up not by anyone else’s words or assistance. I felt the press of the walls, walls I once loved and enjoyed working within now had the presence of a cage. The smell of Cale wreaked havoc on my senses. Would I ever not know his horrible stench? I couldn’t think of a bath hot enough to wash this horror from my skin, ears, eyes and worse, my spirit.

  I stood shakily. My legs buckled, but I steadied myself and looked to where the velvet vest lay. It would take the entire night to undo the damage my sitting on the delicate material had caused. I would not sleep. I would not eat or drink until this stinking garment was complete and when it was, I would make something else, sumptuary laws be damned to hell. If Seton wished to know what it felt like to wear the finery of kings, why shouldn’t he? For what were Duir and his men but demons wrapped in privilege? The questions burned brilliant in my mind and pushed the fog of humiliation from my thoughts. If my spirit died in the moments of Cale’s abuse, it would be reborn and honor my new mother: Revenge. I wiped my sleeve across my face.

  “Be damned, all of you,” I growled. This voice so unlike my own sent the hairs on my neck on end. Everything was changed. My heart beat hard within my chest. I gathered my work and left the room, determined never to return.

  Chapter 12

  If the room felt different, the streets and the people elated by Duir’s earlier procession seemed like they belonged to another world. A mirror world, something I saw from a distance. I knew it and yet knew nothing of how it worked. The sounds of drunken laughter chilled me and rang like distant cathedral chimes, a pending tolling of an inevitable fate. Faces I passed wore masks of adulation for a king they watched grow from boy prince to what they believed would be a stately lord. Even the air had changed. I took short breaths, each catching in my lungs as if my body were afraid holding it too long might taint me further.

  Confusion, laughter, celebration, and panic were my companions now as I walked the streets. The noise and rapture were jarring, but protective. I felt safe from what had befallen me within the high and guarded walls of Duir’s house.

  “Home.” The word, now a mantra repeated over and over in my head until my feet found themselves before the gate. As I undid the latch and came close to the house, I found myself rooted before the door.

  “Has it changed?” I wondered aloud.

  I clutched my pack closer, secretly wishing the velvet inside would somehow empower me with the need for vengeance and rage I’d felt earlier. Now all I felt was weariness and the weight of the night upon me like a boulder.

  How long had I been away? It seemed ages.

  The clock is a cruel master…

  Horace’s words rang in my ears. “So it is, Horace, so it is,” I muttered, and then forced myself to move to the door and push it open. The kitchen was silent. There were the remains of a meal, and the savory smells of stew coming from the glowing hearth.

  Only this morning I left this place intact and now return torn asunder, I thought as I lay my pack on the table. I closed my eyes only to find Cale’s leering face spring up like some macabre toy of a devil’s spawn. Would I ever know peace in the blackness behind my eyes or had those fields been sewn with such horrors that only some ghastly mechanism could untangle their guilty roots?

  “Sylvain?” I croaked into the silence and was rewarded not with a reply but with the sound of people raucously yelling from the street outside.

  The kitchen offered nothing of my brother’s whereabouts. I sought the stairs and climbed two at a time until I found myself at his open door. Sylvain’s room was spacious and the brightest room in the house. Even now there were a few remaining streams of light coming from the room.

  “Sylvain?”

  As I entered, I heard rustling and a low growl. The sound was foreign, and stopped me in my tracks. It was not uncommon for Sylvain to harbor animals that had been abandoned by their mothers or those he found wounded in the woods or fields where he worked.

  I was about to say his name but halted when I entered the room to find him asleep on his bed, clothed, laying on his back, one hand over his head the other hanging off the side of the bed.

  The growling intensified. I went around to where the noise came from and found myself staring into the sharp, bright eyes of what I mistook as a cat
.

  “Hello,” I said, hoping my voice would soothe the small creature. I crouched and discovered it was not a cat but a small fox. Its ears were flattened and the growl didn’t lessen, but grew as I lowered myself on my knees. I could see my presence had disturbed it from a nest Sylvain must have set up for it out of old fabric scraps. “Did I wake you? I apologize most graciously, my little lord,” I cooed soothingly. “Saved from a hunt no doubt?” I offered my hand and was rewarded with a nip and more growling.

  “Do you know nothing of animals?” Sylvain’s voice was sleepy.

  I withdrew my hand and looked up to find him awake, a smile on his drowsy face.

  “Apparently not,” I replied. “I wish I had your gifts of knowing animals.”

  Sylvain rolled over onto his side so he could face me. “Offer your hand, but this time lower, and slower.”

  I did as I was told and received a nip, but this time it felt gentler, as if curiosity had replaced fear.

  “You see. It is not a gift, only the way you approach a beast. He is curious now and if foxes show love, it is through their need to explore their curiosity. Soon he will be crawling all over you like a puppy.” He yawned and stretched an arm over his head. “I apologize for not lighting the lamps. You must have been concerned coming into a dark house.”

  I laughed weakly. “I barely noticed, is it dark?”

  True to Sylvain’s prediction, the tiny fox ventured closer to me and was now sniffing curiously at my knees. I got a quick pat in on its tiny head before he spun on me and tried to nip my hand.

  I continued to watch the fox. “You were right, Sylvain. But must you always be so?”

  Sylvain lifted himself from the bed and soon the room was filled with the light of a lantern. He did this purely for my benefit.

  “I often wish I wasn’t, if you’d like to know the truth. But I think it is not the fox of which you speak. What is it? What has happened?”

  “Is he from a hunt?” I asked, unsure of how to answer Sylvain’s blunt question. I was hardly sure of what to reply as my mind worked furiously to piece together the hectic parts of the day. I was trapped somewhere between Seton’s kiss and Cale’s malicious act. It was a horrible place to land after the bliss I’d known with Seton.

  “It is the time of the fox, the hunt, and the King. If only they’d hunt the man over the animal, how much more fun it would be!” Sylvain replied with derision. “I found the fox by its mother, which lay dead in a snare. Surely Duir will continue the tradition of a hunt once he is crowned and I couldn’t let him have this one for a trophy.”

  “I know not of Duir’s intentions and care even less. His court is twisted like the killing snares. His men are his hounds. I’ve come to know their truths in one afternoon.” I spat the words with such venom that the small fox crouched under their sting. Seeing this, I made comforting sounds until it approached me.

  “What has happened, Virago? Tell me. Better come to the kitchen and let us eat and you can tell me by the fire for your words chill me.”

  “The vest is almost complete. I will not rest until it is done.” These words, I realized, had become a lamenting mantra.

  “Bother the vest, be it done and damned. You have thought of nothing else since the arrival of the velvet and has it done nothing but cause you harm. Have you not slept but an hour in the last days?” Sylvain came and gathered the fox from before me. “Come, let us eat.”

  I followed my brother from his room to the kitchen.

  “What of Therese and the sick? Have they grown worse?” I asked, and vacantly went about lighting lanterns until the room came alive in the flickering light.

  “I know not. I worked in the fields and woods alongside the old man who lives by the waterwheel behind the dairy. His flock had wandered wide and he worried they wouldn’t be found before nightfall. It took all the day and many miles of walking before the task was done. I ache with it, and sleep claimed me as soon as I sat upon the bed to remove my boots.”

  “Oh, aye.” I watched as the small fox followed behind Sylvain until it was rewarded with a plate of scraps.

  “I barely remembered to stoke the fire and put the stew to cook.” He stopped, turned from where the fox ate, and faced me. “But enough of my day. The weight of the air is like rocks. Tell me what distresses you.”

  I could only shake my head. I feared words might invoke the scene and I couldn’t face it. Not now, maybe later, tomorrow, or in a month’s time.

  “Virago.” My name was not as a question, but a demand cloaked with concern.

  Unable to face his kind concern I went to the fire and lowered my face to its heat. “When they locked you in the dungeons I wonder if even in those horrors you were somehow better off than within their warped company.”

  He came up behind me. “Virago.”

  “No, I will not speak. I must bathe, find my work and finish it. By hell or heaven this garment will be done by the morning. I will go to the castle, fit Duir and retreat to the audience where I belong, among the common folk of the street. It is my place of preference now.”

  “But at least fill your stomach before you bathe.”

  “Leave the stew to warm for me. I will eat later.” The only thing I felt in my stomach was emptiness. The only hunger I knew was for revenge. There was no food capable of sating this appetite.

  “I will help you. Don’t bother to protest. I will say nothing and neither shall you if you so wish it, but I will be by your side this night.”

  Tiredly, I agreed, though I wished for solitude to figure out the course to which Sylvain would follow me. How could he follow if I knew not where it led?

  I moved past him, but not before I lay a hand on his shoulder and gripped him tightly. We will leave here, I thought. There is nothing in Duir’s kingdom for me anymore, for Sylvain or for Seton. Would Seton come?

  “Yes,” I found myself answering aloud. Yes, he would come. I was certain of it. It was this hope I clung to as I made ready to bathe.

  * * * *

  A weary dreamscape of actions propelled not by conscious efforts, but of unconscious intentions made the night before the coronation a confused nightmare. Revenge rode me as if I were a horse but alongside this rider were its companions, shame, fear, and rage.

  My father taught me many things in the hours I spent at his shoulder, and in those hours there were tricks and techniques I employed now to refresh the crushed velvet. Sylvain worked silently by my side, the fox which he’d named Durant, after our grandfather, slept under the table at our feet.

  We talked hardly at all, though words hung between us like laundry strung out on a day of washing. It was nearing dawn when the vest was done and in its splendor, I felt nothing. The night had worked its dulling magic on my soul. I was emptied of all emotion save one.

  “Bring me your old cloak, Sylvain, bring me mine as well.” The words were cold and commanding; I had two more things to make before this night of silent question and cold revenge was done.

  “What are you going to do, Virago?” my brother asked, concern plain in his voice as he stood to leave the room.

  “My lover, Seton, has never known such finery, and why shouldn’t he?”

  I could see the shock spread across Sylvain’s face.

  “Your lover? But Seton is a man’s name.”

  “Bring me the cloaks, Sylvain. It matters not Seton’s sex, but yes, he is a man. When this coronation is done, I will ask him to leave here with me and you shall come with us, if you care to. I am done with this place.”

  Sylvain stood as one bewitched, his mouth working, struggling to find the words to make sense of what I’d told him.

  “The cloaks! Get them, as I will spill my own blood before I leave this place without them done! Go!”

  Sylvain left the room without saying more. I knew he was trying to grasp what I had said.

  The fox whined from below as my voice woke it from its slumber. I leaned down and this time the creature allowed me to stroke its
head. Its soft fur would not cling to the shoulders of the gentry. It would leave with us and live outside of a place where men incessantly hunted fox for sport. This thought cheered me slightly, but retreated as my eyes rested on the vest.

  When Sylvain returned with the cloaks and laid them before me, I tore my eyes from the vest.

  “Good, now I will work until the sun rises. You should go to your bed, Sylvain. I will finish this alone.”

  “I shouldn’t sleep if I left you, but lay awake in anxiety. No, I stay and I will help you until day breaks.”

  Before I could protest, he took up the stool next to me and cleared away the remains of the purple velvet.

  If the clock is a cruel master, the dawn is an even nastier mistress. The sun broke the grey of night like a beacon shatters the mist on the sea. Both my brother and I flinched upon its arrival. Though he couldn’t see it, he heard the crow of a nearby cock and I saw his shoulders droop under the strain of having sat up the entire night.

  “It is morning,” he said wearily and stood. “I shall go and make our meal.”

  I made no reply, but continued at my task. There were only a few more stitches left to be done on the cloak I would give to Seton.

  “The job is done and done well. Will you not sleep for an hour at least before you return to Duir?”

  I made no reply. My hands worked on the thread and needle for so long, I no longer felt attached to what I did, but an observer of some majestic chore. I could have been delirious and my hands, fingers, and arms knew the task they needed to do. It was part of my gift, this ability to work without thought and I was grateful for it.

  I heard Sylvain sigh tiredly before he left. His sigh ate at my heart. I’d burdened him with my secret, but only partially. I could never tell him of Cale’s brutality, I would die before he should know.

  The final stitch was made as a second cock, closer and more distinct, heralded the coronation day. I stood and went to the window. From here I could see the pond illuminated in the faint orange of the coming sun.

  I thought of Seton and how I longed to be near him. But had he made it through the night? I’d left the castle in haste, the shock of the event had overwhelmed me. Even now, it was held only by the frail hope of my escape from this place. But had he survived? Had Cale dare tell what he’d guessed was between Seton and I? If he had, it would have meant the dungeons for my lover and it would mean I was walking into a trap.