A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  “Well,” she says, a little self-consciously, “I could see your . . . you know. And it was wet.”

  I nudge her shoulder with my own. “Are you embarrassed to say the word pussy?”

  “No!” she protests. But then she glances over at me and amends, “Maybe a little.”

  “Yes, Delphine, my pussy was wet. Yes, I enjoyed the spanking very much.”

  She thinks about this. “But you also cried. And screamed.”

  We are to my bedroom door now, and I stop and look at her for real. She doesn’t look as puzzled as she sounds—she looks thoughtful.

  And she looks very, very interested in my reply.

  “There are as many different reasons to enjoy kink as there are people who enjoy it,” I say. “But for me there’s something fundamentally beautiful about pain and pleasure mixing together, because that’s real life, right? Being alive means the harsh is mixed in with the good, and every time I get to choose the harsh for myself, it loses its sting. Every time I taste the bitter and survive, I’m all the stronger to enjoy the sweet.”

  “What about the parts that aren’t about the pain? The parts that are about—” and I can’t tell in the dark hallway, but I think she blushes “—about doing what someone says?”

  Mmm. Those are my favorite parts. “It’s like being loved,” I say. “Like loving.”

  “But Rebecca doesn’t love you,” Delphine says sharply. “She hardly knows you.”

  “I didn’t say she loved me. I said it’s like being loved, it's like—”

  I break off, not wanting her to misunderstand. After four years of BDSM, you’d think I’d be better at explaining why I do it in the first place.

  I start again. “Maybe it is love in a way. You don’t have to know a person’s favorite movie to show them that they’re human and beautiful and sacred. You don’t have to know their middle name to prove to them that they’re worth cherishing and spoiling, even if it’s only for an hour. Or for thirty-five swats and a kiss. And taking the time to prove to someone that they’re worthwhile and enough . . . isn’t that love? Isn’t that what love is for?”

  I say this, and I try not to think about what it means that Auden and I shared the bitter and the sweet together. I try not to think about the kiss I’ll never get to repeat with Saint, because showing him love right now means not making love.

  Delphine tilts her head, her mouth pulled to the side. “You make getting spanked sound like going to church.”

  “It is when I do it,” I say.

  She looks down the hallway, I assume at the door she shares with Auden, and when she turns back to me, all her curiosity is gone, replaced by something tired and sad.

  “Thank you for explaining it to me,” she says. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Delphine.”

  It doesn’t take me long to get ready for bed, and it’s not nearly long enough for my mind to settle around everything that happened tonight. The spanking and the kisses—Auden’s and Rebecca’s and St. Sebastian’s—and the reason why the people in Thorncombe look at me like they’ve been waiting for me to get here.

  Some kind of chosen bride for the lord of the manor . . .

  Lord of the manor . . . “the lord of Thornchapel,” as those old books so grandiosely put it. I think of the illustration in the book with the women and the lanterns, and the man at the altar with the torc around his neck. I think about my mother holding the same torc, trying to give it to Ralph Guest.

  It stirs, was what that strange note said. It quickens.

  Or as Auden translated it—it revives. It reawakens. As if from sleep, as if from death. I fall asleep thinking of that one word.

  Convivificat.

  Chapter 14

  The nights go like this: I fall asleep in a fit of keening loneliness and tumble straight into the same vivid, grasping dreams of the thorn chapel. I wake up, ready to scream or ready to come or both, never able to remember much about why the dream made me that way. Only that there were thorns and hands on my body and Auden silhouetted in shadow in front of a door I’ve only ever seen in my mind.

  The days go like this: I catalog, I scan, I scan some more, and then I find Saint or Becket to help me pass the time. When they’re in from London, Auden and Rebecca are busy with the ongoing construction and destruction of the house and grounds, and I use my lunch hour to take restless, dream-filled naps in my room, so aside from the occasional glimpse of Auden’s shoulders bent over his office desk when I walk past, we don’t see each other until the evening hours.

  On Sunday mornings, we go to Mass at Becket’s church—all of us except for Rebecca, who stays at the house and works instead. Once, we saw St. Sebastian scowling and pouting in the very back pew, but only once. Becket tells me Saint usually only comes to the church at night, alone, to continue his ongoing argument with God, and hardly ever comes to Mass. I save a spot next to me in our pew anyway.

  Just in case.

  While I catalog, Delphine wanders into the library at intervals to chatter or just to sit on one of the tables while she works on her phone, and gradually I begin to see the amount of time it takes for her to keep up her job as an influencer. There’s not only her content to produce and plan out, but emails and phone calls and an unceasing rain of comments and DMs that she answers to boost engagement.

  When we do talk, it’s usually more questions about kink or speculating about Thornchapel’s old rituals.

  Becket joins us often. Saint stays away when the others are in.

  None of us talk about the kissing, there’s no more chosen bride talk from St. Sebastian, and if Auden and I have trouble making eye contact or being alone together in the same room, no one seems to notice, which is for the best. No more kisses for me, unless they come from Rebecca, but she seems preoccupied after the game, working at every spare moment, even when we’re all curled up with drinks by the fire, so I don’t ask her for a repeat session.

  “Auden’s asked her to build a new maze,” Becket explains to me one day after they’ve gone back to London. “And I think it’s not coming easily.”

  “I wish they’d leave it alone,” I sigh, looking out the large windows at the south end of the hall. I can only just make out the leading edge of the maze before it recedes into the mist.

  Becket makes a noise of agreement. “Me too.”

  But we both know that Auden’s drive to reshape Thornchapel is driven by forces deeper than our shared nostalgia, and he’s determined beyond measure to carve it up beyond recognition, as if by carving it up, he can excise his childhood from the landscape. The very fact that we all have memories of the maze would be more proof to him that it needs to be peeled off the face of the earth.

  “I don’t know what it would take to convince him to keep it,” I say. “You’d think he’d direct more of this animosity toward the house itself, because surely that’s where he remembers his father the most?”

  Becket follows my stare to the mist-veiled maze, and we just stare at it for a few minutes. “He just has to see how it matters,” Becket says finally. “He has to understand it. Thornchapel, I mean.”

  I look at Becket now, questioning. “You think he doesn’t understand his own house?”

  “No,” the priest says, returning my look with a sad smile. “I don’t think he does.”

  “You have to stop doing that,” I scold St. Sebastian as he sets another armload of books down on the long table. “You need to relax.”

  Saint gives me a very small, very reluctant tip of his lips—which I’ve learned is the closest thing to a real smile I can coax out of him. “I actually like doing this,” he says, sitting down and opening up the first book. With a piece of paper and a pencil, he starts scratching down some of the easy-to-find information I’ll need to build the title’s metadata entry. “There’s something satisfying about it. Also it feels weird to sit here and watch you work.”

  “Sorry,” I say, my attention back on the computer I use as a cataloging workstation. �
�I’m trying to do at least a shelf a day. There are so many books.”

  The sheer number never ceases to astound me—in fact, I think I’m even more in awe than when I first arrived, because now I fully appreciate just how many there are and how long it will take to put this place in order. No wonder poor Estamond Guest gave up on her ledgers.

  Saint makes a soft noise that could almost be a laugh, and I jerk my head up, hoping to catch a smile. No such luck, but I am treated to the vague tilt of amusement to his eyes as his long fingers flip through the pages of the book he’s making notes on. It’s a younger book—at least, compared with most of the books in here—with a tattered paper jacket showing a clumsy illustration of a clapper bridge and a river.

  “What’s so funny?” I can’t help but ask. I want to know everything he’s thinking all the time; it’s like some weird supply-and-demand thing where he keeps himself locked so tight that anything from him feels like a gift of gold. And even though these last two weeks between us have been strained and chaste, we can’t seem to stop seeking each other out. I can’t seem to stop wanting to kiss him. Or right now, wanting to straddle him and lick his neck.

  “Our friend Estamond,” Saint says, his eyes sparkling as he pushes the book toward me. “She was quite the scandal back in the day.”

  I reach for the book and tug it toward me. It’s a motorist’s guide to Dartmoor, published sometime in the fifties, and there’s an entire chapter about Thornchapel, which back then was open to visitors one day a week. I start reading at the top of the page.

  Visitors will find the grounds enchanting, especially the maze to the south of the house. Originally constructed in Tudor times, it’s said that it was built atop the ruins of a medieval labyrinth, but this seems mostly to be local legend, as the housekeeper said there’s no family record of that being true. In any case, the maze was given new life under the dashing and vivacious Estamond Guest. Born Estamond Kernstow to an ancient and worthy family here in the moors, she was only nineteen when she caught the eye of the much older Randolph Guest. By all accounts, however, it was a happy marriage, and Randolph indulged his young wife by letting her host extravagant house parties with some of the best and brightest of the day. Poets, painters, thinkers, and novelists all came to spend quiet days and cheerful nights on Thornchapel’s inspiring grounds.

  Estamond’s bohemian taste in company, however, led to unpleasant rumors about her character. These rumors only grew after she commissioned a full repair of the overgrown Tudor maze—and commissioned new statuary for the middle. The centerpiece in question was a depiction of Adonis and Aphrodite in an unmistakably amorous embrace, leading to speculation about Estamond’s personal morals.

  Despite the gossip, however, Estamond carried on with her parties and changes to the house, and over the course of their short but happy marriage, she bore Randolph four children. She died after delivering their fifth. Visitors today can not only see her legacy in the maze and the walled garden to the southeast, but in her great personal collection of paintings still on display inside the house.

  I look at Saint. “Quite the scandal,” I repeat faintly.

  “Is something wrong?” he asks, looking closely at me. Very closely. “You seem . . . upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” I say quickly. “I’m intrigued, actually, because if Estamond commissioned that statue, then surely she’s the one who built the tunnel we found as children, right? A hidden way out to the thorn chapel—it seems like exactly the kind of thing she’d like.”

  Saint keeps examining me. “Okay.”

  I shut the book and slide it back to him, and then I turn back to my monitor and the entry I was working on before he interrupted. There’s no point in telling him what really unsettled me, what was like seeing a ghost curl up from the page. There’s no need, because it’s simply a coincidence, and he would agree with me that it’s just a coincidence, and then it would have been a waste of breath for both of us.

  It doesn’t matter that Kernstow was my mother’s maiden name. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never come across it anywhere else, ever in my entire life. It doesn’t mean anything.

  Unless it meant something to her. Unless she has a connection to Thornchapel I never knew about, not by interest or archaeology or friendship, but by blood.

  Unless coming to Thornchapel for my mother was coming home.

  Over the next few days, a warm wind buffets in from somewhere, the sun burns off the mist, and I can pretend I remember what spring feels like. I wake up one day feeling less sleepy than normal, less haunted by dreams, and I decide to take a short walk before I go to the library to work. It’s been the first day really nice enough to do so, and I want to see the maze and Estamond’s walled garden. If I’m honest, I’d really like to visit the chapel ruins too, but there's not enough time between work and the early sunsets here.

  This weekend, I promise myself. I’ve been here almost three weeks, and I still haven’t gone to see it. And I’m not entirely sure why—it’s certainly been prohibitively cold and nasty, but I’ve spent twelve years dreaming about the place, surely I'm not deterred by some rain?

  Mind made up that I’ll go on Saturday, I get dressed for my walk. I check my phone after pulling on a jacket and my bright blue rain boots, but my dad still hasn’t responded to a text I sent him asking about the name Kernstow and if my mother had any family here.

  I sent the text two days ago.

  Frustrated, I go into the south wing—already grating with the noise of construction at this early hour, and then find the door that leads to a large paved terrace looking out over the grounds. The trees and hills thwart the earliest light here, so there’s a kind of sleepy murk clinging to the estate still. It’s as romantic as it is disquieting, as if Thornchapel is reluctant to give up the night and its secrets.

  To my left is the herb garden, nestled fairly close to the kitchen, and Estamond’s walled garden, which, as I recall, is home to some more eye-raising statuary—a boozy Dionysus, for one, and Leda with a swan nuzzling her breasts—their naughtiness snuck between the usual veiled women and small fountains. All of the statues are surrounded by crowds of lavender, lamb’s ear, and lady’s mantle, and hollyhocks of crimson, pink, and cream. And all of that is surrounded by high stone walls, interrupted only by a single wooden door.

  In front of me are shallow stone steps leading down to a long, green lawn. The grass stretches down to a valley cradling the narrow River Thorne, and then it stretches back up again to an arresting sweep of hills. Elsewhere, the trees press in close to the house, as if wanting to protect it and keep it safe, but here, right here, I can glimpse heather and granite crags and the frowning bleakness that crouches in wait outside of the lush Thorne valley.

  Again, I feel that curl of fascination, that hunger to gobble up all the desolation around me and pronounce it delicious. To tramp through wet grass and squint into the wind and feel so very, very alive in all the slumbering wastes around me. To find the tiny flecks of life in the midst of all the winter—tiny snowdrops and buttery celandine and sprays of blackthorn blossoms, new and fragile against the chilly air.

  I've always been a summer girl. The girl who spends hours and hours at the pool, the girl who loves heat and thunderstorms and gardens, and trees so heavy with leaves that they whisper in even the barest breath of wind. But here . . . here I think I could be a winter girl too, I think I could learn to love the cold and the wet and the quiet.

  I think of Saint’s winter eyes and sigh.

  Though it’s warm enough that my sweater and jacket suffice, the air smells cold, and I remember Becket saying last night that we’d have snow this weekend. Determined to get my vitamin D while I can, I stride across the terrace and down the stairs to the crushed gravel path that leads to the maze.

  I’m not alone when I get there.

  I find Rebecca in a white trench and designer rain boots—as stylish as they are functional—with her iPad dangling from gloved fingertips. She’s stari
ng at the maze like it owes her money.

  “Good morning,” I say, tromping over. “Isn’t it . . . a little early to be working?”

  “I needed to see it in the dark,” Rebecca says, not even bothering to look over at me. She’s still glaring at the maze. “And in the first light.”

  “Oh,” I say, glancing over at her and then trying to see the maze as she’s seeing it—as a problem to be solved. But I can’t. It just looks mysterious and inviting and perfect to me. “Has it helped? To see it in the dark and in the sunrise?”

  “No,” Rebecca says flatly. “Nothing’s helped.”

  I sneak a look back over at her, wondering what I can do. Normally, Rebecca is all cool equanimity and analytical composure, and she takes everything in stride—with the possible exception of Delphine. Nothing ever seems to disrupt her confidence . . . apart from this snarl of hedge and gravel.

  “I was going to walk through it,” I say. “Do you want to walk with me? And even if it doesn’t help, you’ll have at least spent some time with your best friend Poe.”

  She sighs—but it’s not a Delphine Sigh, it’s a smiling sigh, which I think means I’ve won.

  “Okay, Markham,” she says, waving me forward. “You’re right. Let’s go for a walk.”

  The maze is still shrouded with gloom and shadows when we walk through the entrance. A marble Demeter and Persephone flank the entry arch cut into the hedge, their outstretched hands reaching for one another, their expressions joyful and their bodies frozen in the act of flying into a desperate, happy embrace.

  “Estamond really liked her mythology,” I say as we start walking.

  “I know,” Rebecca says. “And she certainly didn’t mind the raunchier myths either. For a Victorian.”

  We turn our first corner, immediately turn again. It’s dark enough in here that I’m almost tempted to use the flashlight on my phone.