Gloaming

by Charlotte E. English

  ‘I-I must, ma’am,’ he offered. ‘And they would only die if they were not gathered up.’

  ‘They would give of themselves readily enough, were you to ask,’ she said with asperity, and held up one small, long-fingered hand, palm upwards, beneath a particularly fat rose that hovered near to her left ear. ‘Shall you please?’ she said sweetly, and the rose shook itself, like a dog shaking grass-seed from its coat. A rain of petals floated free and drifted into the cupped palm beneath, to its owner’s smug-smiling satisfaction. The trug did move, then, drifting towards the girl in the arbour. When it arrived at her feet, she bent down and let the petals fall into it. ‘You must not be rude,’ she said to Florian earnestly. ‘Should you like it if I took that pretty neckcloth, and without asking?’

  ‘P-pretty…?’ Florian owned no “pretty” neckcloths; his were all of plain cotton, all function and no grace whatsoever. Today’s was plain white, and in no state to be admired after the exertions of the day; it had been soaking up his perspiration all morning.

  But he could not help casting an involuntary glance at it as he spoke, though he knew very well what it must look like. And there he was brought up short, for his ordinary white neckcloth was nowhere in evidence. Around his neck he now wore a flimsy dream of a thing, all amber-bright, made, at least as far as it looked, from the substance of flower petals. Its edges curled into tight scrolls, its surface scattered with a pattern of delicate holes, like lace.

  ‘Th-this is not mine,’ said Florian, loathing the way his voice shook as he spoke. It was not merely the peculiarity of everything in this high tower-room that unsettled him, and the odd behaviour of his neckcloth, in changing itself into something else; it was rose-red herself. Her presence filled the room so thoroughly, Florian felt there was scarce room left even for air. He fought to breathe, and only just restrained himself in time from catching at the pretty neckcloth and tugging it looser, and quite ruining it in the process.

  ‘Well! Why would you be wearing it, if it is not yours?’ Rose-red’s brows snapped together. Was it Florian’s imagination, or did the neckcloth tighten about his perspiring neck in the same moment, cutting off the breath he was in the process of drawing?

  ‘A very reasonable question,’ he said weakly. How had he come to be wearing it? What had become of his old neckcloth? He could muster no other response, for he had no answers to give. He wanted to take the lovely thing off at once, and give it to her, for it was clearly the sort of thing better suited to a woman dressed like a flower and with moths in her hair. But she gave him a narrow-eyed look, as though she had anticipated his intention and disapproved heartily of the idea.

  Florian decided he was tired of feeling wrong-footed and uncertain, and mustered himself to go on the attack. ‘Forgive me, ma’am,’ he said — for however much he might wish to assert himself, it would never do to be impolite. ‘But who are you, and how did you come to be here?’

  ‘I do not know how I came here,’ she said, ignoring the first of Florian’s questions entirely. She said it in tones of great dissatisfaction tinged with petulance, and underneath all that there lingered a trace of distress. ‘What have you done to the Wind’s Own Tower? Where are the looms, and the great glass jars?’ She glared about herself as if greatly upset by everything that she saw — or perhaps, considering her words, by everything she was not seeing.

  ‘I do not know what you speak of,’ said Florian. ‘There has never been anything of that kind here, not for as long as I can remember. No one has ever spoken of anything like that, or — or used such a peculiar name! This is the south-west tower, if it is ever given a name at all, and no one ever comes here.’

  ‘You are here,’ she said silkily.

  ‘Only to collect the rose-petals, and I shall soon have done with that, and go away again.’

  ‘And why do you take them away?’

  ‘They are to be made into perfume-water.’ Florian spoke rather shortly, feeling tired of the endless questions when she had been so little inclined to answer his own.

  He need not have taken the trouble of trying to discourage her, for she asked only one last question: ‘Ah!’ said she. ‘Where do you take them, petal-gatherer?’

  ‘Down into the cellars, to the stillrooms there,’ he replied, and upon these brief words, she leapt out of her little arbour of leaves and ran lightly away down the spiralling stairs.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he called. ‘You have left something behind.’ But she did not hear him, or perhaps she did but did not choose to return. Florian picked up the abandoned object with care, and found it to be a tiny phial, oddly shaped and too lightweight for glass, and strung upon a short length of silvery chain. Within there swirled something like coiled mist, rose-tinted like the woman who had lost it.

  If he had seen her once he would, in all likelihood, see her again, thought Florian. He would go down to the cellars directly and see if she had gone to the stillrooms, and return the curious trinket at once.

  But when he arrived in the blissfully cool cellars and went from stillroom to stillroom — and then from storeroom to storeroom, and through every other chamber after that — he found no trace of rose-red. No one else had seen her, either, he soon found.

  No one, that is, except for Margot. The next time he saw her, she was deep in the greenery infesting the jade parlour (so called for the jade-coloured paintings of some strange, undersea scene that spanned its expansive ceiling). She was half-hidden among the roses, and growing weary now; she moved with the care and slowness of a woman with an aching back, and a rapidly diminishing enthusiasm for her tasks.

  ‘Margot,’ he softly called, unwilling to startle her again by a too-rapid approach.

  She turned at once, and came forward to meet him with an eager step. But as he opened his mouth to tell her that he had found the red-skirted woman, she forestalled him by saying, ‘What do you think, Florian? I have seen her! Spoken to her, even! Her name is Rozebaiel — the woman in red, I mean — and she…’ She stopped, and looked him over. ‘Where did you get that neckcloth?’ she said.

  ‘Rozebaiel,’ he replied. ‘Or so I assume, for it appeared around my neck while I was up in the south-west tower, and she was there. Though I do not know what has become of my old one.’ He showed her the mist-trinket, too, and received a glimpse in return of a similar acquisition of hers: a length of cloudy, gauzy ribbon all a-twinkle.

  ‘The moth-wing coat,’ said Florian.

  Margot’s eyes grew wide and round. ‘I had half-forgotten it, Florian, but you are right. It is of a piece with these things, is it not? I wonder where—’ she stopped again, and interrupted herself; Florian gathered that her mind was spinning so fast she could hardly keep up with herself. ‘The Chanteraines must know what to make of them, if anybody does. Are they not a little like the curiosities Pharamond sells at the emporium?’

  ‘They’re far stranger,’ said Florian. ‘But a little like.’

  Margot immediately gave her ribbon into his possession. ‘We left the coat at Oriane’s house, did we not? It must be got back, and taken to the emporium. I wonder we did not think of it before.’

  ‘I will go,’ Florian agreed, recognising his cue. He had much to tell Seigneur Chanteraine as it was, for was Rozebaiel’s appearance not precisely the kind of thing he had been sent to search for? She was certainly an anomaly, and full strange… He debated whether to tell Madame Brionnet about it first, but decided against; it was for his master to decide how far abroad to spread that tale. ‘I shall—’

  His next words went unheard, for they were drowned by the sound of the great clock striking its first chime. One.

  ‘Odd,’ said Margot. ‘What can have distracted Adelaide? She has not—’

  Two.

  ‘—begun the song.’

  Florian waited, expecting to hear the winemaker’s evensong beginning at any moment.

  Three.

  But the song did not come.

  And neither did the fourth chime.

 
; The Gloaming, however, did. Unfazed by this deviation from the daily rituals, it swept across Argantel in its usual fashion: a great swoop of blanketing night-shadow, muting the summer sun and cutting straight through its fierce heat. In the space of a few breaths, Margot became an indistinct silhouette to Florian’s eye, her figure only dimly outlined in the sudden gloom of the parlour.

  ‘What—’ said Margot, but she did not finish the sentence.

  ‘Is there a lamp hereabouts?’ said Florian, for he had fished out his battered copper pocket-watch; but no matter how fiercely he peered at its glass face, he could not make out the time.

  He heard Margot’s soft footsteps as she moved, slowly and carefully, to some other part of the room, and came back again. ‘I have got a lamp,’ she said, ‘and I hope you have got a striker.’

  He did, by fortune. The lamp was lit, and Margot’s face shone suddenly illuminated in its soft, clear light. ‘What says your watch?’ she whispered.

  ‘Three.’ Florian had checked it thrice over, unwilling to believe the story it told. The Gloaming came in at four; it had always done so, and must always do so, for its habits were as regular and predictable as the rising of the sun, or the phases of the moon; when had it ever varied before?

  ‘Three,’ echoed Margot. ‘Are you quite sure?’

  Mute, he held up the watch for her to see for herself. She stared at it.

  ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that you had better see Pharamond, and the sooner the better.’

  Florian could not disagree. ‘Will you come with me?’ was all that he said.

  Margot looked as though she wanted to object; her gaze travelled back to the unharvested rosehips, and the half-full trug she had left upon the floor. But the winemakers’ day ended when the Gloaming came in; such was always the case, for how they could work effectively when they could hardly see what they were doing? ‘I will,’ she decided, and picked up her trug. ‘Let us deliver these to Maewen,’ and she indicated his basket of petals, too, with a nod of her head, ‘And we will go.’

  2

  The house of Oriane seemed, somehow, darker and emptier than it had before, and it held an air of stillness, as though its owner had been gone for far longer than a day or two. Florian felt his skin shiver as he and Margot walked into the little kitchen, he holding high the lamp borrowed from the jade parlour at Landricourt. ‘Where was it that we found the coat?’ he asked Margot.

  Margot went straight to the rocking-chair by the hearth. The gauzy garment was still there, its delicate embroidery shining over-bright in the soft lamplight. Margot picked it up, handling it as though it might fall to pieces under the force of a single exhalation — and it looked as though it might. She laid it over one arm, carefully, carefully, and turned back to Florian.

  But he was not where she had left him, for he had wandered off to the table in the middle of the room. There in the centre of its simple blue table-cloth stood the glass bottle of pale, golden liquid from Chanteraine’s Emporium, and the tiny peacock-coloured book.

  ‘It is a shame Oriane never received those,’ said Margot frowningly, ‘Though I suppose she is not in need of the elixir, after all.’

  Florian did not reply, for his eye had been drawn more to the book than the bottle. He had not looked closely at it before, for his master was always putting some odd thing or another into his hands and dispatching both him and it upon this or that errand. He knew his duty: to deliver, not to pry. But a faint glimmer caught his attention. Though the book’s cover was plain — a rich blue silk, unadorned, and with no name or title printed upon it — it did have a length of violet ribbon slipped between its pages. Florian had taken it to be a page marker, and had not given it a second glance. But something glimmered there, the way the moth-wing coat glistered under lamplight.

  He picked it up. So tiny, the delicate thing, and lightweight, though it held many pages between its bindings. His master’s work, he thought, of a surety; Seigneur Chanteraine had bound books before, often with silken covers like this one.

  He opened it, carefully, at the page marked by the length of ribbon. Light glittered, a soft light like distant stars, and he realised it was not ribbon at all — not the satin kind, that might be bought by the yard at Valentin’s Haberdashers. It was finely woven, like the moth-wing coat, and embroidered in the same way.

  The marked page held no words, only a printed image. It was a painting of Landricourt: the ballroom, he might have said, for the shape and proportions of the room looked the same, and there was the familiar profusion of roses. But this ballroom was not ruined, so why were the roses there? And why were they red and purple and amber, not moon-white? Moreover, its decor was entirely different. The marble floor was no longer pale and serene; it was painted in a wash of colour, jade-green and sage and a soft sky-blue, and several other shades besides. The walls held their usual complement of murals, all vibrant with a freshness their living counterparts no longer displayed. But he did not recognise the images there, half-glimpsed beneath the rose bowers. They were of unfamiliar plants and trees he had never seen, either in life or in paintings, and equally peculiar creatures crouched among the grasses. He thought that there was some sort of glade depicted, lined with trees on one side, but he could not see enough of the mural to be sure; the artist had painted over much of it with roses.

  Margot had come up behind him, and stood staring at the print with the same awed silence as he himself. ‘Did Seigneur Chanteraine paint that?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I never saw him paint, but… he is full of talents.’

  ‘And mysteries.’

  ‘Always those, too, yes. I am quite sure that he made the book, but the painting?’ Florian shrugged, and carefully turned a page. The next print was also of Landricourt, the jade parlour this time, though this, too, was altered: its walls were painted with soft gold and ivory and pearly-white as well as jade, and a thick mossy carpet covered the floor (was it a carpet indeed, or was it that moss itself had somehow grown from wall to wall?). A low table, perhaps for tea, stood in the centre of the room, though its design was curious: it had five curved, twisting legs, and it appeared to be made from smoky glass. A chaise longue of pearly velvet stood behind it. Roses covered the ceiling and hung from the walls, though these, too, were not silver-pale; they were rich amber and gold and blood-red, like Rozebaiel’s skirts.

  Page after page he turned, and each held the same thing: paintings of every room in Landricourt, printed in vivid inks, and each decidedly altered from its present composition.

  ‘It is Landricourt as it was,’ said Margot. ‘Before it was ruined.’

  But Florian could not agree. ‘Landricourt never looked like this. Have the paintings on the walls all changed, with the passage of time? And though there isn’t much furniture left there, none of it looks like this.’

  Margot frowned. ‘But it is Landricourt. Do you not agree?’

  ‘Oh, I agree. But it is some artist’s impression of the place, very fanciful. I wonder why Mr. Chanteraine sent it to Oriane.’ He went back to the beginning of the book, and found a few more prints showing the grounds at the great house, well-kept instead of a rambling mess, and (perhaps oddly) almost devoid of the roses which colonised the building itself. But some of the plants which grew in these imagined gardens were the same as those of the imagined murals, and the flowers were quite bizarre: trumpets and bells and flutes of soft, curling petals, many the same silver-pale as the roses at the real Landricourt.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ he decided at last, and carefully closed the book. ‘My master found them somewhere, I dare say, and thinking them a pleasing oddity bound them up for Oriane.’

  ‘I can well imagine that she would like them,’ said Margot, and Florian detected a touch of envy in her voice. She obviously liked them very well indeed. The winemakers, he supposed, were far more familiar with Landricourt than he; probably they loved the old place as a second home.

  He gave her the book. ‘We had be
tter not leave these just lying here. Anything might happen to them.’

  ‘You mean, I suppose, that well-meaning souls might come in with many a good intention, and walk out again with moth-wing coats and books and elixirs stuffed into their pockets?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Florian gravely. ‘We cannot be too careful with Oriane’s things. My master would insist upon it.’ And he would, in point of fact, for all that Florian was jesting. These things were clearly important somehow, though Florian could not say why.

  Margot tucked the book into a pocket of her dress. ‘And the elixir, what of that?’

  Florian was, by this time, deeply interested in the elixir. Mr. Chanteraine had called it “restorative”, and perhaps that was all it was: a tonic to make her well again, supposing she had been ill. But he had never seen bottles like these in his master’s storerooms, or elixirs like that. He picked it up, took out the stopper, and inhaled.

  Immediately he passed it under Margot’s nose. ‘What do you smell?’

  ‘Rose,’ she said promptly. ‘Rosewater?’

  Florian thought of the heavy jars of rosewater he and Margot had so lately hauled down from Landricourt to the emporium. Was this what his master had done with all his stock, that he needed more?

  Florian took another sniff. ‘Rosewater,’ he agreed, ‘and wine, too, I think. Your wine.’ He was not often given rosehip wine to drink, but its sweet, autumnal aroma was impossible to mistake.

  ‘A restorative made from rosewater, and rosehip wine?’ Margot gazed at the bottle as though it might give up its secrets, if only she were to entreat it hard enough. ‘And why, then, is it gold? There must be some other things in there.’

  ‘One way to find out.’ Florian tipped up the bottle and took a sip.

  ‘Florian!’ Margot protested. ‘I cannot think it’s right for you to do that.’

  Florian ignored this, for how were they ever to find anything out otherwise? ‘It tastes of…’ he paused, and took a second sip. ‘Sunlight and oranges, with a trace of evening mist.’