A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Heloise’s ears rang, and the resounding echoes were so jarring in her head that her eyes seemed to pulse with the throb of them. But she got up and brushed off the fallen sticks and leaves that covered her like a blanket. Several trees had broken and dropped large branches around her, leaving a terrible mess on the path. It looked as though a small hurricane had blown through. She was fortunate none of those limbs had landed on her head.

  The sylph was gone. Heloise would have liked to tell herself that it had never existed to begin with, but she wasn’t so foolish as to try. Instead she straightened her garments and went in search of her peeling knife and gathering basket. Her basket had been blown well across the path, caught in the branches of the fir tree in its ditch. Only for a moment did Heloise hesitate to slide down and collect it. But the sylph was gone, and so was the shadow she’d heard singing; she needn’t be afraid.

  But they would be back.

  Mirror.

  Heloise froze, her hand tightening its hold on the peeling knife. But no, that voice . . . that thought had come from inside her own head. It wasn’t the sylph. And it wasn’t the shadow. It was an internal voice, speaking her own language.

  Mirror.

  “Forget the mirror,” she growled.

  All her peelings of oak bark had been tossed far astray; she found only a few of the largest curls. Well, she had a task to complete and no one to interfere. Why should she go running home, bellowing about invisible beasties? Or for that matter, why should she rush to peer into her mother’s dim little glass? No point in that, no point at all.

  Hiking up her skirts, she continued down the path to the next oak tree, dropped her basket among its roots, and clambered up into the lower limbs. Perhaps she wasn’t as careful this time about checking for old scars. Perhaps she wasn’t as gentle with her knife. But she did her job as she was supposed to.

  Hoofbeats sounded in the forest once again. Heloise, perched in the oak, turned and saw a blue hat and cloak appear through the sylvan shadows. Master Benedict had found his horse.

  He rode at a brisk trot right under her tree, never once looking up, and continued to the place where she and he had spoken; there he dismounted. Heloise, up in her tree, watched him silently.

  “Little girl?” he called. His voice was anxious and his eyes were very wide as he surveyed the damage to the forest all around. “Little girl, are you here? Dragons blast it! Dragons blast and eat it! I should never have left her.”

  Oh. Heloise smiled a small, rather silly smile. So he’d come back to rescue her. A little late, to be sure, but still . . .

  She almost called out to him. But when he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted for all the world to hear, “Little girl?” she decided not to. Heroic rescue notwithstanding, she didn’t think he deserved an answer to that.

  With another curse or two, Master Benedict climbed back on his horse and rode away. Heloise watched him go. Then she returned to her peeling. In the distance, she could still hear Master Benedict’s voice calling out the occasional, “Little girl!”

  And behind that, the sylph’s scream echoed in her brain. Only now, several minutes afterwards, did it begin to take shape in her mind, forming words she could understand:

  “Night! Night! The Song of Night!”

  She would have to think about that. Later. For now, the south-end dye house still awaited her delivery.

  There could be no smellier place in all the world than the south-end dye house. Except—said a tiny, reasonable part of Heloise’s mind currently uninfluenced by the assault upon her nostrils—possibly the east-end, west-end, and north-end dye houses. They, in their various fetid corners of the estate, each as far removed from the central manor house as possible, were probably just as smelly. But Heloise had never traveled far enough across the sprawling acres of Canneberges to verify it. Besides, her pride rather liked the distinction of her dye house being the smelliest.

  The big dyebath sat inside the stone-walled house itself, and from the appalling stench wafting through the door and window openings, Heloise guessed the dyers had an impressive batch in the works. Outside the dye house, many little fires burned, tended by a host of sweaty dyer-boys. Some scooped shovelfuls of wood ash; some boiled great caldrons of stale urine. A few prepped other fires beneath caldrons near piles of oak bark ready to be boiled down for the tannins. To these Heloise must add her offerings.

  “Hullo, Heloise!” one dyer-boy called cheerily. His eye held a hopeful gleam, and she knew exactly what his next question would be. “How’s Evette? Is she with you today?”

  “Mmmhmmmph,” Heloise said, which was the best greeting she could muster while trying not to breathe. She dumped her basket of oak-bark curls onto the waiting pile. “Mmmph,” she said with a quick bob and a hint of a smile.

  But the dyer-boy wasn’t paying attention. He looked over Heloise’s head, an expression of pure joy lighting his sweat-streaked face. “Hullo, Evette!”

  “Hullo, Edgard.”

  Hearing her sister’s sweet voice, Heloise whirled about. Great Lumé’s light, what was she doing here? With everything else already on her mind, the last thing Heloise wanted to deal with was Evette’s kindhearted pretense that their scuffle of that morning never happened.

  Had she really thrown pottage into her sister’s eye?

  No wonder Master Benedict called her a little girl . . .

  Heloise felt her face heat up, and she couldn’t meet her sister’s smile. But Evette went on smiling anyway, drawing up alongside Heloise and chatting to the dyer-boy just as though he didn’t stink worse than all the pig-keepers in all the kingdom rolled into one. He bore the beatific look of a man receiving angelic blessings from above. It was almost enough to transform him from the plain, smelly, red-faced young lump that he was. But not quite.

  Heloise tried to sidle away.

  “Oh, dearest,” said Evette, deftly linking arms with her. Heloise hated when Evette called her “dearest,” partly because Evette always said it with such genuine affection. “I have only to deliver these new skeins for Meme. She gave me permission to ask the dye master if they have finished skeins to carry up to the Great House. Wouldn’t you like to come with me? For your birthday? I know Meme wouldn’t mind.”

  Heloise’s face burned brighter at these words. Sure, Meme wouldn’t mind. Meme wouldn’t care.

  “I should head back,” Heloise muttered, extricating her arm from Evette’s. She ignored the hurt look in her sister’s eye. “The boys at home . . . you know . . . they’ll break something. Or each other.”

  “Grandmem’s come calling, and she’s watching Clotaire and Clovis,” Evette persisted. “Do come, Heloise. I know you love to see the Great House.”

  This, Heloise could not deny. An opportunity to see Centrecœur, the massive center of all Canneberges estate (some of the wings of which were more than six centuries old) was not to be sneered at. It was a rare chance that saw Heloise on the road to Centrecœur, and she hated to pass it up now.

  She didn’t answer, but Evette, knowing her sister well, took her sullen lack of protest for acquiescence. “It was lovely to see you, Edgard,” she said, curtsying prettily to the dyer-boy and no doubt sending him into raptures without end. “My best to your mother.”

  “Oh, Evette?” the dyer-boy called before they’d progressed even two steps toward the dye house. Heloise groaned. She could guess what was coming now as well. It was remarkable how predictable everything about Evette had recently become. “Evette,” said the dyer-boy, “are you going to Le Sacre Night?”

  What a stupid question. Everyone went to Le Sacre Night. That was the whole point of Le Sacre. Heloise rolled her eyes and huffed.

  But Evette turned her sweetest smile on the poor, gasping lad. “Of course I am. With my family.”

  “Would—would you let me escort you this year?” the dyer-boy asked.

  Heloise sensed the pricking of ears around the dye-yard. All the other boys of certain age looked up from their vari
ous tasks. If looks could kill, that yard would be full of murderers. But poor stinky Edgard didn’t seem to notice. His heart, his life, his fate, hung upon Evette’s next words.

  “I’m sorry,” said Evette, still smiling. “I’m going with my family. But thank you for asking. That was most kind.”

  He could not have answered, so Evette did not make him. She dipped another curtsy and, once more taking Heloise by the elbow, led her away to the dye house. Heloise cast a glance back over her shoulder, and even she felt a dart of pity for the crushed Edgard returning to his fire-tending.

  “Poor Edgard,” Evette murmured. “I wish he wouldn’t ask. I feel wretched turning him down.”

  “Well, why do you talk to him at all then?” Heloise hissed, not wanting to be overheard by the other boys in the yard. “You only get his hopes up. You should try snubbing him sometime. For his own good.”

  Evette cast her sister a sideways glance. On anyone else, her expression would have seemed irritated or possibly superior; on Evette it was simply concerned. “Edgard is a polite, respectful young man. I couldn’t be anything less than polite and respectful to him. Besides, Fleur Millerman has her heart set on his asking her, and I know Edgar will get around to it once he thinks about it properly.”

  Evette would never see, of course. Heloise sighed, watching as Evette called into the dye house and delivered Meme’s newly spun flax thread. Evette would never see that Fleur, for all her virtues, had one glaring fault against her as far as the boys of Canneberges were concerned: She wasn’t Evette.

  It wasn’t that Evette was the prettiest girl on the estate. Heloise could think this without malice, even as the two of them gathered reams of red-dyed thread to be delivered to the Great House. Evette wasn’t particularly pretty at all, certainly no prettier than Heloise, not even as pretty as Fleur Millerman or Agnes Shearman or even Edwidge Flaxman (no relation—there were lots of Flaxmans in Canneberges).

  But Evette was by far the kindest. The sturdiest. The warmest, the most sincere, the most . . . the most . . . Heloise stopped. Mental listings of her sister’s virtues could go on forever.

  No, there was no doubt about it. Beauty was not the chief asset sought after by the young men of Canneberges. They all wanted something more. They all wanted Evette.

  Heloise glowered over these thoughts for several silent minutes as she and her sister tramped up the long road, away from the stinky dye-yard and on toward Centrecœur. But the day had turned into a fine one, and though the sun was high, the air was still cool and fresh. It lifted Heloise’s spirits, enough even to make her forget for a time that she’d talked to a wind only a few hours ago and listened to a shadow sing. Those strange events seemed too bizarre to have been real. Real was happening right now, walking this road beside her sister. She could even forget that she’d thrown pottage at Evette that morning. Mostly.

  “You know,” said Heloise after a while, “you’ll have to accept one of them.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Evette, turning a puzzled glance upon her sister. “Accept one of what?”

  “One of your doting swains,” Heloise said. “You’ll have to accept one of them. For Le Sacre. Someone has to escort you now. You’re eighteen.”

  “Oh.” Evette shifted the heavy basket from one arm to the other. “Well. I told Edgard I was going with my family.”

  “Yes, but you don’t mean that!” Heloise shook her head, her wild curls bouncing. “No girl goes with her family on the night she sings and dances. You’re eighteen. It would be so childish!”

  “And this coming from you?”

  This was the closest to sarcasm Heloise could recall hearing from Evette, ever. It stopped her in her tracks. Evette, however, did not stop, and Heloise was obliged to trot in order to catch up, her shock so great that she could think of nothing to say.

  They continued in silence to the top of a certain hill. From this prospect they commanded a fine view of much of Canneberges, including the great stone structure of Centrecœur in the near distance.

  It was a grand house indeed. So ancient and yet so modern at the same time. There were rooms in the house that, according to legend, were part of the original castle built by the original masters of this land. But it had been added onto and improved so often over the years that little of the old structure existed. All that remained of the castle battlements was a single tower, which rose up proudly above the rest of the house and, indeed, above all Canneberges.

  Heloise caught her breath as she always did when Centrecœur came in view. Sunlight reflected off of little glass-paned windows. Real glass! There couldn’t be more than a dozen houses in all the kingdom that boasted real glass windows! Surely not even the palace of the king himself could be so grand.

  A wind caught at Heloise’s hair and whipped through her skirts. She shuddered and couldn’t help listening for a laughing voice. But there was nothing. It was a normal sort of wind, she supposed.

  “Come along,” said Evette, and they continued down the hill.

  After a few moments, Evette spoke again. “I have something for you. For your birthday.”

  This was a surprise indeed. Heloise couldn’t recall the last time she’d received a gift. She was fairly certain it hadn’t happened since her fifth birthday. Since that one, no one bothered to celebrate. Indeed, rarely did anyone so much as acknowledge the day.

  “Since you’re fourteen now, I thought you might like something special,” said Evette. She paused, hefted her basket onto one hip to free her opposite hand, and dug down into her apron’s deep pocket. She pulled out a folded square of linen cloth and handed it to Heloise.

  Heloise set down her own basket so that she might accept the gift. She spied at once the little red flowers embroidered around the hemmed edges of the linen: cranberry flowers, Evette’s trademark. Most of the sewing done at the Flaxman cottage was of the mending, repairing nature, but Evette found time as she could to try more delicate stitchery. There was hardly a garment to be had in the Flaxman household that wasn’t decorated with red cranberry flowers and berries and trailing vines all stitched in leftover dyed thread considered not fine enough to send up to the Great House.

  Heloise unfolded the linen and discovered that she held a white day-cap. It was the sort of cap worn by young women of the estate, covering their hair. She would have to pin up her braids in order to wear it.

  Briefly Heloise wondered if she should feel affronted. Pressured even. But despite herself, she felt only a sudden warm glow of gratitude. “Thank—thank you,” she managed, stumbling over the words. “It’s very pretty.”

  “Try it on,” Evette suggested.

  But Heloise shook her head. Her hair was too untidy, mostly escaped from the braids as it was. “I’ll wear it for Le Sacre,” she said. “I promise.”

  Satisfied, Evette continued down the path. Heloise slipped the cap into her own apron pocket, hefted her basket and followed after.

  It really was a shame Evette would soon have to marry. Farm wives never found time for such dainty handwork. Evette would have to give it up entirely when it came time to have babies and manage a household of her own.

  Besides, if she married a boy like Edgar, she’d never be able to keep pretty things like that clean.

  I see her coming from my window. I see her and her sister approaching the Great House. So sweet are they, so innocent! So unaware of that to which they even now draw near. They will learn soon enough, more’s the pity!

  But not yet. Let not their gentle oblivion be spoiled too quickly. Le Sacre Night is nigh.

  Would that I had the wings to fly from this high tower. Would that I had the legs to run, the arms to reach out and enfold them both, to protect them.

  But I have none of these things. Not anymore. I have only my voice. And so I cry out to her, to the cursebreaker.

  When she is far from me, she cannot hear me well. She draws nearer now. Perhaps I may say a little more. Perhaps she will understand.

  SIX

 
“Mistress LeBlanc says you may come in,” said the housemaid once she deigned to answer Evette’s knock at the back scullery door. “But she says you”—with a significant nod at Heloise—“must stay out.”

  “Oh, come now, Alphonsine,” Evette protested gently, “you know Heloise! You and I watched her together along with your own sisters not long ago. You know she will be no trouble. Or, well . . .”

  Evette’s honesty would one day be the death of her. Heloise glared at the housemaid, who had only a year ago been nothing more than a miller’s daughter and no better than any Flaxman girl. But a certain amount of luck and cunning (not to mention a significant bounty of golden hair that caught the bailiff’s eye), had landed her employment in the Great House. And Lights Above forbid she should remember the peasant girls who had been her playmates!

  “Mistress Leblanc’s orders,” said Alphonsine, narrowing her eyes at Heloise. “You stay out.”

  Evette turned to Heloise, her face wrinkled with worry. To be permitted into Centrecœur at all, even just into the scullery, was a thrill unmatched in the experience of any farmer’s daughter. Mistress Leblanc, the housekeeper of Centrecœur, did not readily let the “unwashed urchins” of the estate into her spotless domain. But Evette, known as a neat, clean sort of girl, was sometimes allowed to pass through the scullery and around to the weaver room where she might deliver the new skeins in person.

  She hated to leave Heloise behind. There was nothing to be done, however. Heloise, if known at all, was certainly not known as clean, neat, or anything of that sort.

  “Don’t worry,” Heloise said with a dismissive shrug, though inside she really wanted to give that snobby Alphonsine Millerman’s nose a twist. “I’ll be fine out here. Go on in as you like.”

  Evette looked for a moment as though she might protest. Not keen on an argument just then (particularly not one in which Evette was sure to come across as even more self-sacrificial than usual), Heloise dumped her basket in the housemaid’s arms, turned on heel, and strode off through the kitchen garden. Before she’d gone more than a few paces, she heard the door shut behind her sister.