Gloaming

by Charlotte E. English

  Nynevarre quickly took the bottle off him, and set it safely back down upon the bench, watching him closely. This Florian barely noticed, for all his senses were occupied with the business of experiencing the syrup. It tasted like — like honey and wine, like warm chocolate, like summer rain and fresh bread and the berry cakes his mother had used to make, when she was still alive. It tasted, in short, like everything and nothing; nothing in particular, but everything that Florian had ever loved in his life.

  Scents washed over him, the same: the syrup’s own, sweet aroma gave way to a jumble of peach-juice and jelly, of mead and milk, of bonfires in autumn and clear ice in winter and the scent of Margot’s hair. He felt intoxicated, drunk in a way he had not been in years — and at the same time not drunk, far from it. Sharper, in fact, than he ever remembered being before.

  ‘Too potent,’ said De Courcey, watching him narrowly. The man shook his head, and sighed, and bent back over his work with a dismissive declaration of: ‘Quite useless.’

  ‘I would not say so,’ Nynevarre disagreed. ‘Not useless at all.’

  ‘He is magic-drunk,’ said De Courcey. ‘In a moment he will be quite mad, and then he will be himself again, and with what to show for it?’

  Florian struggled to focus on the words, for they all fell over each other, and blurred, and in short did everything possible to hinder comprehension. He was sweating, and dizzy; he sat down rather suddenly upon the floor, and held his spinning head in his hands.

  He was seeing things. He saw a moonlit copse of ancient trees, a pool of clear water in the centre. He saw an enormous clock with too many faces, hands spinning at impossible speed. He saw a girl who looked like Sylvaine Chanteraine wearing the moth-wing coat, and he saw Pharamond Chanteraine in his workroom, binding up a book. He saw Oriane Travere standing before a mirror, and heard the sounds of clock hands ticking all around her. He saw his employer again, dishevelled and weary, sitting in an attitude of despair upon a bare stone floor. He saw a great many other things, whirling too quickly through his mind for him to grasp their import.

  At last the visions ebbed, leaving him shaking and shocked.

  ‘Don’t try to get up just yet, my dove,’ said Nynevarre, in a far kinder tone than she had addressed to him before. She looked upon him kindly, too, and fussed about him in a manner he found quite agreeable just then. ‘You’ll be weak for a little while, yet.’

  He did feel weak, like his limbs were turned to water. ‘W-what was that?’ he managed to say.

  ‘That,’ said De Courcey in frustration, ‘was far too potent. Nynevarre, I do not know what is to become of this mess. Believe me, there is not much I would not do to please you, were it within my power, but what am I to do here? There is no recipe which does not instantly send my poor subjects mad.’

  ‘You are doing fine work,’ said Nynevarre soothingly, and winked at Florian.

  De Courcey only made a sound of deep disgust.

  ‘Did you see anything of note?’ said Nynevarre, to Florian this time.

  How could he determine whether anything he had seen was of note? He tried to describe his visions to Nynevarre, but he could not make enough sense of them, and the memories were fading from his mind even as he spoke. He achieved a few disjointed references to arbours and coats and his master, none of which, he could easily perceive, made any sense to Nynevarre. Her face lost its kindly, hopeful expression, and sagged into dismay.

  ‘He is rather mad,’ she conceded.

  De Courcey sighed. ‘It will wear off soon.’

  Some small part of Florian’s mind was still lucid, and crystallised in that part was one, clear thought: that this was not quite the first time he had experienced something like this. There had been another time, not long before: when he had found the goldish elixir that Pharamond Chanteraine had sent to Oriane, and stolen a sip.

  His lips moved, and after going uselessly through three or four incomprehensible sentences he managed to say: ‘Do you happen to know a man called Chanteraine?’

  ‘No,’ said De Courcey shortly. ‘Save that you have mentioned him before.’

  But Nynevarre’s eyes widened, and she clutched suddenly at Florian’s arm, so hard as to bruise his skin. ‘Chanteraine?’ she breathed. ‘Pharamond?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Florian, satisfied.

  ‘Chanteraine!’ she repeated, and now she seemed angry. ‘Tell me where you encountered a man of that name! And tell me, at once, where he may be found!’

  ‘Who is he to you, ma’am, if I may ask?’

  Her lips tightened. ‘My disgraceful truant of a brother.’

  Florian nodded, and tucked that information away. Then, watching De Courcey closely, he added: ‘And Margot De Courcey? Do you know that name?’

  Ghislain De Courcey stiffened, turned, and stared at Florian. And now Florian had cause to be a little ashamed of his sensational tactics, for the stern, cool, sometimes grim man betrayed a terrible pain, and an equally terrible hope. ‘M-margot?’ he said. ‘My Margot? You — you know her?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Florian, more gently. ‘Please. I know I am an interloper here, but I am a most unwilling one. As are you, sir, I think? Perhaps, we may be able to help each other.’ He added, thinking again of his visions, ‘And unless I miss my guess, it may be necessary to help my employer, too.’

  Ghislain De Courcey looked at Nynevarre, who still appeared incensed. He looked uncharacteristically uncertain, but she growled something incomprehensible, sighed, and said: ‘It is high time that somebody unravelled this sorry tangle, to be sure.’

  De Courcey looked tired. ‘Twenty-five years and more have I been stranded here — or is it thirty? I cannot now remember — and I have failed in every attempt. Consider that, young man, and contrive to look less cocksure.’

  Florian’s optimism was not at all dimmed by this unpromising speech. ‘But,’ he offered, ‘things have changed. You now have me,’ upon which words he bowed, and as Nynevarre rolled her eyes and Ghislain De Courcey looked grimmer than ever, he held up a hand to forestall argument. ‘We have Oriane, who I am convinced is still somewhere about the place. And we have this.’ He took the book from his coat pocket again, and held it up, displaying one of the pages within.

  It was the page showing a painting of a workroom, eerily similar to the one in which they were standing.

  Now he had their attention. ‘Where,’ Nynevarre breathed, ‘did you get that?’

  Part Five: Margot

  1

  Under the glittering Gloaming, Margot De Courcey walked barefoot from Landricourt into the town of Argantel, singing songs she never remembered hearing before. They were strange, nonsensical songs, but then it was a strange, nonsensical time; not only was the Gloaming early, it was somehow more… well, just more.

  A day had passed since its first early arrival, and again it had swept over them before its time. Today, only two chimes of the great clock had sounded before the light was swallowed up, and the blue shroud of twilight had covered everything.

  Was it supposed to glitter like that? Margot formed the thought in an abstracted way, her mouth still busy forming the words of her melodic oddities as she walked, a basket of flowers and herbs dangling from her arm.

  And the mirrors sang, ‘Hey-ho, trally-do,

  We know the names of the clouds and the snow,

  And where it is that the North Wind goes

  When the chiming stops and it no longer blows.

  And what of the rose that evening brings?

  We know the songs that its mirror-heart sings,

  We know the stars and the mists and the sky,

  We know when magic goes streaming by.

  Margot stopped singing, entranced by the vision before her, for she was halfway down the vale and all about her was shadow and shine. It was as though the stars had jaunted down for an evening’s entertainment below, and had settled everywhere, anointing each leaf, every flower and blade of grass, with a pale twinkle. The shadows were so deep
she could fancy she could fall into them, and never come out again, but the thought did not make her afraid. A current of some kind swept her ever onwards, flowing from Landricourt over the bright grasses and into the town. When she paused and looked back, a thin line showed where she had been: a thin line of darkness, where the stars had gone out.

  Thirty-seven years and thirty-seven songs, Margot began again, a different melody leaping to her lips.

  Thirty-seven dreams and thirty-seven wrongs,

  Thirty-seven faces and thirty-seven lies,

  Thirty-seven hours and thirty-seven skies.

  She stopped again, for here was someone coming towards her through the mist and the stars, a shadow of a figure she did not recognise, not even when it was almost upon her. But when the woman spoke, she recognised the voice of Sylvaine Chanteraine.

  ‘Who is there?’ came the voice.

  Margot identified herself, remembering only at the last instant to speak her name, and not to sing it.

  ‘Margot! What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I do not know. I was picking herbs…’ Margot ran out of words, for the rest escaped her. What was she doing?

  ‘Have you seen Florian?’ said Sylvie, in a tone of unusual urgency.

  ‘Not since yesterday.’

  Sylvaine gave a sigh. ‘I had hoped… you’ve come from Landricourt? You’re certain he is not there?’

  ‘Certain,’ said Margot, and hummed a few bars of another song.

  Sylvaine stepped closer, and peered intently at Margot. Her hair looked outlandishly bright purple in the weird light of the Gloaming, and her face shone too pale. She looked like some wild, magical creature, and Margot wanted to step back again. ‘Are you drunk?’ said Sylvaine abruptly.

  ‘Why, no,’ said Margot serenely. ‘I never touch drink.’

  Sylvaine looked her over, rather rudely. ‘You have come from Landricourt,’ she said again, and this time it was not a question.

  ‘I have. Singing all the while.’ Having announced which, she proceeded to take up her song again, but was quickly silenced when Sylvaine raised a hand and said sharply: ‘Please stop.’

  Some small, distant part of Margot remembered that she was not much disposed to wander about singing, as a general rule, and that the evensong of the winemakers was, for her, an exception rather than the rule; this part welcomed Sylvaine’s prohibition against further song with relief. But the other compulsion was stronger. Did it come from the Gloaming, too? Was it the stars that brought it, or the flow beneath her feet that carried her across Argantel? She did not know, but it had hold of her; she began to sing again.

  Roses are red, and roses are gold,

  Roses are stranger than ever was told,

  Roses are amber and roses are wine,

  They come with the morning and swell on the vine,

  But come they in darkness and dress all in white,

  Like starlight and moonshine crept in with the night,

  Then silver they’ll go, and—

  Sylvaine had, through much of this verse, been making ever more urgent gestures for Margot to be quiet, and had tried talking over the top of her to no avail. Now she extinguished Margot’s song by the simple expedient of clapping a hand over her mouth, which treatment Margot bore in silent astonishment.

  ‘Will you be quiet!’ hissed Sylvaine.

  Margot, her mouth covered, said nothing.

  Tentatively, Sylvaine took her hand away. They both waited some time to see whether the verbal flow would resume, Margot quite as interested in the possibility as Sylvaine.

  She remained quiet; her songs seemed to be gone.

  ‘Finally,’ sighed Sylvaine, and fixed her attention upon the ground beneath her feet. Margot had kept largely to the road on her way through the vale, for it bore the rippling current admirably, and swept her on with it. There was a thrumming beneath Margot’s feet which she felt full well considering her lack of shoes. But Sylvaine, shod though she was, appeared to have no difficulty discerning it. ‘It is going to be a strange night,’ she predicted, and looked hard at Margot. ‘It is already, I perceive. Shall I frighten you, if I say that nothing will be as it was, come the morning?’

  ‘Was it so very marvellous, as it was?’ said Margot.

  ‘Oh, marvels! We shall have those aplenty.’ Sylvaine said the words disgustedly, and cast an equally unimpressed look at the low juniper bushes that lined the roadsides, each glimmering gently under a mantle of starry motes. ‘You had better come with me,’ she said. She looked, apparently for the first time, at the basket slung over Margot’s arm. ‘What are they?’

  ‘I found them on my way,’ was the only answer Margot could give. She had scarcely noticed herself picking them, and had carried them off with her without much thinking about the matter. They were jonquil and cherry-bird and wych-elm leaves; blackthorn berries and yellow gentian; pale pasque flowers and lavender and sprigs of linden-branch and who knew what else. Margot had no explanation for them.

  ‘Very well, bring them along.’ Sylvaine took up a station to Margot’s left and, grasping her elbow in a firm grip, began a march back in the direction of the town of Argantel, propelling Margot along with her. ‘There is too much magic abroad tonight,’ she said as she walked, heedless of whether or not Margot was hard-pressed to keep up. ‘It has got into your head for certain. Perhaps into your blood, too, and if it has not yet then it will if I leave you out here.’ She sighed and said next, ‘There are too many rivers and pools around Landricourt,’ as though such a statement followed in any logical fashion whatsoever from what she had said before.

  Margot could make no sense of it, but she was not much moved to try. Nothing had made sense since the Gloaming came in, and she found the state more refreshing than frustrating. It no longer mattered to her whether anything made sense or not, and how liberating that was! She wanted to sing again, but mindful of Sylvaine’s probable displeasure she managed to suppress the impulse.

  Sylvaine was not fooled. ‘Please, don’t sing,’ she begged. ‘It encourages it, you see. You ought to see, given what you are. Why do you think the winemakers sing, when the Gloaming comes in?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Margot truthfully. No one ever questioned the evensong, any more than they questioned the winemaking or, indeed, the Gloaming; it was simply how things were done, in Argantel.

  ‘Not that it has ever worked,’ continued Sylvaine, without pausing to elaborate. ‘Not with the roses being what they are. But now! Everything will be changed, and who only knows what will come of it.’

  ‘They are red,’ offered Margot.

  ‘I daresay they are.’

  ‘And amber, and gold.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Very lovely, and very dangerous, too. There was not that much to object to, the way we were before! It was not precisely right, I acknowledge, but it was not wrong either! Meddling fools.’ And here Sylvaine fell silent a while, absorbed, apparently, in her own unsatisfactory reflections.

  ‘Rozebaiel is there,’ Margot said after a while, moved to offer some new nugget of information into the silence.

  ‘At Landricourt?’ said Sylvaine.

  ‘I saw her three times, today. Once in the wine-cellar, once in the ballroom, and once in the tower. She, too, was singing.’

  ‘She does that.’ Sylvaine did not sound impressed.

  ‘You know her, then?’

  ‘I know of her. We have not met.’ She paused a while, and then added in a grim tone, ‘Yet.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t imagine you do,’ said Sylvaine bluntly. ‘But you don’t need to. There has been a fine mess made, you see, by some of those who went before, and since they have not cleaned up after themselves then it falls instead to some of us who came after.’

  ‘I dislike mess.’

  ‘So do I, but we are to have a great deal more of it tonight.’

  Margot looked again at the glittering junipers, and thought privately that if this was Sylvaine�
�s notion of mess then she did not find it so very terrible.

  They were bound for the emporium, Margot soon guessed, for Sylvaine led her through the town’s west gates — not yet closed against the encroaching night, for the hour was by no means so advanced as it felt — and along the wide Waldewiese. Sylvaine steered Margot unerringly towards the emporium, and at speed. They entered through the back way, straight into the storeroom, and Sylvaine slammed and bolted the door against the weird light of the Gloaming, shutting it out completely.

  They stood in near darkness for a short while, and then a light flared: Sylvaine had lit a lamp. She turned up its glow until the room was brightly illuminated, then nodded towards the narrow stairwell that led up into the rooms above the shop. ‘We’re going up.’

  Up? Though a regular customer of the emporium — she did not know who was not — Margot had rarely been in the storeroom before. She had never at all been invited to explore the rest of the building, and she was not loath to do so now. She made for the stairs — but paused along the way, for her eye had fallen upon the box in which she and Florian had hidden their cache of odd treasures. Had it moved? She could almost have said that it had jumped up, and done its best to catch her eye.

  ‘A moment,’ she said, and pointed to the box. ‘In there are some things of Rozebaiel’s.’

  Sylvaine looked sharply at the box. ‘How came they to be there? And how came you to know of it?’

  ‘I put them there. And Florian did as well.’ Margot thought for a moment. ‘It was yesterday,’ she elaborated. ‘Or perhaps the day before.’

  ‘Aye, time begins to be difficult to follow,’ said Sylvaine grimly, and opened the box. She extracted the lovely ribbon without much looking at it, but the moth-wing coat was another matter entirely. When she drew the pile of airy gauze forth, her mouth dropped open and, for some moments, she did not seem able to speak. At length she recovered herself. ‘This is not Rozebaiel’s,’ she said in a voice that slightly shook.