I was taken aback by her greeting, but couldn’t help feeling pleased. “It has been seven years,” I said. “It would be strange indeed if I had not changed. But in most respects, I think I am much the same as I was.”
I didn’t speak my own thoughts, that Lina was changed almost out of recognition. I had been used to thinking of her as strong and robust, the most physically fearless of my childhood friends; and yet here stood before me a slender, pale woman, who seemed almost overwhelmingly fragile. I felt that if I touched her she would bruise, as if she were a lily grown in a glasshouse. It did her beauty no harm; the translucency of her skin made her appear almost luminous. The other strange alteration was that her eyes were no longer the vivid violet I remembered, but rather a dark blue or deep slate grey. It appeared to me that at some stage in the past few years she must have been very ill, and was now in a long convalescence.
She studied me a little more, and then laughed sadly and looked away. “You were always steadfast,” she said. “In truth, the major changes are in me. I am grown up now and have put away vanity and illusion. I hope you find me a better friend than I have been, Anna.”
This confused me a little; the palace had, after all, strictly taught me to observe my place. “I hope,” I said, a little primly, “that I will be a better servant than you remember.”
“I could have sought a servant anywhere, Anna,” said Lina. “It is as a friend I asked for you. I do not complain of my life – it could be much worse – but I confess it’s been lonely these last few years. And who now knows me as well as you do?”
I mumbled something non-committal and I briefly saw a flash of Lina’s old impatience, before she turned the subject and said that she would show me the buttery and linen press and other such places that would be in my care.
As she conducted me through the house, we relaxed a little into our old intimacy. As ever when she wanted to charm, Lina was hard to resist, and she was so bound up with my childhood memories that I quickly felt at home. I knew she wasn’t lying about her loneliness: I could smell it in her skin. She was absurdly sensitive; although she didn’t say so, I could see that my initial withdrawal had hurt her. The more we talked, the more I felt pity for her; sometimes there was almost a feverish edge to her conversation. She was, for example, almost childishly eager to solicit my approval, in a way she would never have cared to before I left, and I particularly noticed that she avoided any mention of Damek. I saw too that she tired quickly, and there were other small signs of damaged health that disturbed me.
My trunk arrived during our tour, so she showed me my chamber and left me to unpack my possessions. It gave me, at last, a little space to myself in which I could think about what I had witnessed that morning. I felt uneasy; I chiefly found myself wondering about Lina’s future husband, and my future master. If he were harsh and stern, in the way of most northern men, I feared that she would not long survive marriage. And I then recognized, with a painful adult perception, what I had always known as a child: that for all her faults, I loved Lina as I would have loved a sister.
XXI
It took us a few days to settle into a relationship in which we both felt comfortable, one that at once observed distinction and acknowledged intimacy. It is too easy for a mistress to assume that a servant is at the beck and call of her emotional needs as much as her material requirements; and my sense of dignity demands that such friendship emerge from my own heart, rather than the command of another. But these are trivial niceties which might not interest you, perhaps; I have noticed that not many people concern themselves with the self-respect of those who work for them.
I was pleased, all the same, to be Lina’s housekeeper, since it gave me high standing in the village. I was still very young, and I could not but be flattered by my appointment to the position. While the Kadar family had been based in the Red House, the manse had been the working base of the estates, but Masko’s low esteem among the villagers had shifted the locus of royal authority to the manse. I’m sure Lina was quite indifferent to this, if she even noticed it. I saw the change in attitude at once, and assumed that her quiet life prompted both curiosity and sympathy; it was also clear that she had become a focus for resentment against Masko’s insolence and mismanagement. There was now much nostalgia for the “old days” and the “old master”, from those who had been first to slander the Lord Kadar and his scandalous daughter, and the fact that she was supposed a witch seemed quite forgot.
She told me herself that she wasn’t a witch. “It was always a mistake,” she said. “And so unfair. The terrible things that people said about me… But honestly, Anna, I never felt a single twinge of magic in me, whatever everybody else thought.”
I looked at her altered eyes, and bit my lip, and said nothing. I had never doubted that Lina was a witch. I remembered how her powers had flung me against the kitchen wall when we were squabbling as children, and I wondered if she had truly forgotten, or whether in her desire to be like the rest of us she dismissed it as a childish fancy.
She caught my glance, and smiled ruefully. “I knew when I cursed Masko,” she said. “Remember that? I never meant anything more in my life. I was sure that he would drop dead at my feet! But it had not the smallest effect. I might as well have saved my breath.”
Again, I wondered and doubted. I had yet to see Masko, but I had already heard from my mother that he was much plagued with boils and that he suffered from sleeplessness and continual nightmares, which accounted for at least some of his drinking. Whatever Lina believed, my first thought had been that this was a result of her curse: he had certainly not been so afflicted when he arrived in Elbasa. But perhaps she had since lost her powers; and as she was soon to be married, and clearly wished to live a quiet and respectable life, I judged it best to stay silent. Then, because she perceived my scepticism, Lina told me that she had, two years before, consulted the Wizard Ezra, because he could tell her once and for all whether she possessed the powers of a witch.
“He said I am no witch,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, surely you would believe him?”
I stared at her, amazed. Lina had changed indeed if she would go to the Wizard Ezra, her bitterest enemy, on such a humbling mission; and yet, alone and untutored in the ways of magic as she was, where else could she have sought advice?
“Did he welcome you in, then?” I asked. “He would not have permitted you over his threshold when I was last here.”
“Yes, he let me in. A lot has changed since last you were here. It was strange, Anna, and I was very much afraid: I have always been frightened of him, even if I wouldn’t admit it. For a time I thought wizardry was all fraud, but it isn’t.”
I thought of wizards I had seen at the palace, who could make a man choke although they stood ten paces away and as easily release him, or call lightning down into their fingers and use it to blast a beast or a building, or set a voice in your mind that no one else could hear until it drove you mad. Once in the court, I saw a man punished for some transgression against the Lore. The king’s wizard turned him into mist before our eyes. One moment he was a man, standing naked in chains before the king; the next the chains clattered empty to the floor and he was an insubstantial column of smoke that yet held the shape of a man. I remember that he screamed with horror, but his voice was a whisper of a scream, barely audible even in the complete silence of the court. The wizard smiled and passed his hand through his victim’s body, and then leant forward and blew softly, so that the screaming head wisped into nothing, leaving his trunk wavering in the air until it, too, dissipated into nothing.
No, it was not fraud. Even the king feared the wizards. I wondered that Lina could have thought so, and then I remembered that she had been forbidden to attend when Ezra burned poor Oti to ashes. That memory still made me shudder, but perhaps Lina had not believed us. It would have been like her, to think herself superior.
I listened to her with a lively curiosity. Lina said that Ezra’s mute had opened the do
or before she knocked, and Ezra was inside, sitting cross-legged on a woven rug laid on the dirt floor. He looked up, unsurprised, and beckoned her indoors, indicating that she should sit on the rug with him. Between them was a large, shallow clay bowl, filled to the brim with water.
“He didn’t look in the least surprised to see me,” she said. “And I saw why. He blew on the water, and it showed the path outside the house, and I saw on the water’s surface an image of myself walking up the path to his door, as I had just done. I was as afraid then as I’ve ever been in my life. ‘I know why you’re here,’ he said. ‘And you have done right. Now, at last, I can help you.’ I asked him how, and he told me to close my eyes. He placed his fingers on my eyelids, and they felt cold, Anna, as cold as ice, and it hurt me, but I dared not move a muscle.
“I don’t know how to tell you what happened next: a whirlwind was inside me, inside my head, and all of me hurt and shuddered as if I were in the most dreadful fever. But it passed quickly, and then he lifted his fingers off my eyelids and said I could open my eyes. ‘You were right to think you are not a witch,’ he said then. ‘I have touched you to find the magic within you, and there is none. We were mistaken. I will tell the clan Usofertera and the king. You are free to go.’ I stood up, but I could barely stand, and he instructed his mute to guide me home; and when I came back here, I slept for more than a day. But oh, I was so relieved, Anna. I am no different from anyone else. It was always a mistake.”
I listened to this story with more than a modicum of mistrust; and later questions, which I put in such a way that she would not guess my motive in asking them, confirmed that her ill-health and delicacy had begun around the time she had visited the Wizard Ezra. Yet I couldn’t question her desire to be freed of witchery, which all her life had been nothing but a curse and a burden.
XXII
Soon most of my time was spent in preparations for Lina’s wedding, which was set for Midsummer Day. Masko offered neither money nor produce towards the festivities. He was annoyed by the betrothal, since it was not of his making: Lina had consistently refused the suitors he had sent her way. He boasted loudly in the local tavern that she should not have a penny towards her wedding, and sealed his oath by spitting on the floor. Lina was therefore coming dishonoured and without family to her bridal day. Feeling in the village ran high against Masko, since our pride was hurt: he made us all look mean-handed.
The task of organizing the wedding fell, by default, on my shoulders. At first I was distracted with worry; it seemed that I had no choice but to make a shameful begging mission to the Alcahil family, to ask for their assistance in ensuring that the wedding guests were fed and watered. Most unexpectedly, and almost at the last minute, the king came to Lina’s rescue. I had written to the palace on Lina’s behalf, asking for the royal blessing upon the coming nuptials. Strictly speaking, as Tibor Alcahil was a commoner and Lina a woman who would not carry on the Kadar name, royal consent was not necessary. No one else had thought to write, but given Lina’s uncertain position, I thought it an important courtesy.
The king’s response was swift: a messenger arrived post-haste, bringing with him a gift of fifty gold coins, and a document which awarded Lina the manse and its adjoining fields as a wedding present and dowry. Masko did not take the news well. In his fury, he went so far as to accuse the royal messenger of fraud, which sparked much indignation; but once it was proved that the royal seal was no forgery, he dared make no further protest. The gesture was a clear indication from the king that his favour was wearing thin.
I was much more glad of this news than Lina, who received it with indifference, and not only because I was saved an embarrassing interview with the Alcahil family. The king’s ill-favour is a heavy cross to bear in the Plateau. As much as a rebuke to Masko, the dowry showed the world that the king had changed his attitude towards the Kadars; it was an act of patronage beyond duty, and thus doubly welcome.
I still ponder whether it was Lord Kadar’s marriage to Lina’s mother that had sparked such royal enmity, or whether that decision deepened some earlier quarrel. I suppose I will never know. It seemed to me, as I reflected on Lina’s change of fortune, that this recent leniency must be connected to the Wizard Ezra’s pronouncement that she was not, after all, a witch, and I marvelled at the irony that it was he, of all people, who had been the means of her deliverance.
I was very curious to see her betrothed, but it was some time before I had the chance. He made a formal visit to the manse with his mother, ostensibly to talk over details of the dowry, but in reality to admire his beloved, and so I was introduced. I was agreeably surprised: I found before me a slender, rather shy youth, who regarded himself as peculiarly blessed in having won Lina’s hand. He had the dark hair and handsome features of the north, and like his mother he had large, sensitive hazel eyes, which reflected his feelings as clearly as if he said them out loud. I liked Mrs Alcahil from the first: she was a sensible farmwife, who concealed the qualms she clearly felt about her son’s marriage under a quiet, practical demeanour.
The Alcahil family had no noble relations, but in Lina’s case this was an advantage rather than otherwise, since her witch blood made connection with the royal house impossible. They were, nevertheless, well respected: as the principal landowners of a neighbouring village that had been untouched by the vendetta between Elbasa and Skip, they boasted a comfortable wealth. Lina’s marriage was, as the village women agreed, a much more advantageous match than might have been imagined for a girl so smirched by the scandal of her birth, and with not a coin to her name. However, it was also acknowledged that Lina was the most beautiful girl that had ever been seen in Elbasa, and this, in Tibor Alcahil’s eyes, outweighed all her disadvantages. Perhaps Lina’s charms also weighed with her future father-in-law, for he made no objection to the match. It seemed that Lina’s new-found meekness had erased all the scandal associated with her being a witch. No one spoke of it now.
I was relieved to see that Tibor treated Lina with gentleness and respect, and that she genuinely liked him. It was not a passionate match, but I thought that no bad thing. Most marriages in the north between families of wealth or influence are made as alliances between clans, or for one or the other’s advantage, and the feelings of the bride or groom are seldom consulted. Even so, they probably have as much of a chance of happiness together as any others, and perhaps more than those who marry in the heat of ardour. I realize this might shock you, since in the south it is fashionable to think differently about love, but in my view, you much underrate friendship as a basis for a marriage. Any woman who finds friendship in a man can think herself fortunate. It runs as deep as passion – nay, deeper – and is a solid ground on which to build a life.
It seemed to me that Lina now had a chance at a life of material and spiritual comfort that had seemed impossible only a few years before and, more importantly, she was no longer an outcast. I rejoiced at this change, and turned with a ready will to the arrangements for the wedding.
XXIII
Lina and Tibor’s nuptials were the noteworthy event of that summer, and the celebrations – with the help of the king’s largesse – continued for three days, in an orgy of feasting, drinking, dancing and speeches. The villagers, who felt a collective anxiety that Elbasa be shown to its best advantage, were satisfied our honour was upheld, and the Alcahil guests were as generous in their courtesies as the House of Kadar was in its hospitality. Catering for nigh on a hundred people over three days, not to mention dealing with the musicians, dance masters, ecclesiasts, wizards and nobles (in particular, ensuring that each was seated in proper precedence so none was offended) was no easy task. To my relief, Masko decided to leave Elbasa for the ceremony, so that I did not have to deal with the problem of where to seat him. I felt all the pride of a difficult task mastered against the odds, and after the final guest departed, I toasted myself with the last of the ratafia cordial and tumbled into bed as exhausted as I have ever been in my life.
M
y deepest worry had been Lina herself. She was puzzlingly uninterested in the wedding preparations. If I came to her with one problem or another, she would languidly wave a hand and tell me to deal with it as I thought fit. As the day drew closer, she became withdrawn and ill-tempered: she was clearly anxious, but would not confide in me the source of her unease. She even spoke about cancelling the wedding, and with such low spirits that even my best efforts could not cheer her. She grew thin, which she could ill afford, and bore the signs of sleepless nights. I took advantage of our intimacy to enquire what bothered her, in the hope that confession would ease her spirit, but she refused to answer. At the time I thought it the natural fears of a maiden facing the mystery of marriage. Later, after I read her diary, I understood that she was panicking that her wedding night would reveal that she was not a woman of virtue, as her virginity had been robbed by Masko. Naturally, she could tell no one of her fears; and in the event, fortunately, they proved groundless.
I wondered more than once how she would bear up through the three days of festivities. She did so, and better than I had expected; but she displayed a curious passivity that eschewed both enthusiasm and reluctance. She dutifully appeared at the head of the table with her groom when she was required, and led the dances as tradition demanded; but when her presence wasn’t necessary she retired and let others celebrate. Indeed, she looked so delicate in her beauty that no one questioned her need for rest. Tibor treated her as if she were made of glass: when she was at the feasts he fussed about her with a dazed expression, as if he couldn’t quite believe this fey, fragile creature was now his own.
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