A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Only then did Heloise heave a sigh. Not that she’d expected to be allowed inside the Great House. Still, sometimes she couldn’t help almost wishing she was a bit more like Evette.

  The kitchen gardens of Centrecœur were not particularly interesting. Big, certainly, and newly tilled in preparation for the coming spring planting. But not interesting. Once the castle moat had cut through here just under her feet, but it had long since been filled in on this side, though a sort of muddy trench rimmed three other sides of the house (just deep enough to be unpleasant to wade through, but not deep enough to keep out any but the most timorous marauders). This side of the house also boasted the stables, which made things convenient both for the stable boys mucking out stalls and for the gardeners seeking to better the soil.

  In another few months, the garden would be thick with thriving green things fit for the tables of lords and ladies. Just now, however, at the end of winter, there wasn’t much to see.

  Look in the mirror.

  Heloise, wandering lonely through the nearly empty beds, stopped in her tracks. There was her own voice again, deep inside her head. But she hadn’t . . . Well, after all, why would she start thinking about mirrors just now?

  Look in the mirror.

  “There isn’t any mirror. Not out here,” Heloise muttered, staring down at her own dirty toes as if they were the most fascinating things she’d ever seen.

  Look in the mirror.

  There might be a mirror in the Great House. As rich as the Cœur family was, there were probably rooms full of mirrors! Heloise looked over her shoulder, back at the house. Of course, she wouldn’t dare sneak inside. If Mistress Leblanc happened upon her, she’d be flayed alive for sure. But still . . .

  Heloise stepped carefully out of the garden (neatly avoiding various pungent offerings from the stables) and approached the imposing side of the house. This eastern wing had been built in more warlike days as a defensive structure, and there were few windows to be had. One small slit offered the only opening, and Heloise knew even before she put her face up to it that she would never fit her shoulders through to slip inside. Nevertheless, she stood on tiptoe and peered into the gloom.

  Her eyes took a moment to adjust. Once they did, she found herself gazing upon a bundle of leaves. Another glance, and she saw that it was a bundle of, of all things, nightshade. A whole, enormous bundle of dried nightshade. She could still see the dried purple blossoms, like so many withered corpses.

  A rumbling hum alerted her, and Heloise ducked just as a tall, somber figure in a strange hat passed by inside the window. The humming went on, and Heloise thought that, were the voice even remotely melodic, it might have been humming a tune. Curious, she peered through the window again.

  The somber figure in the pointed hat could have been a magician straight out of one of the old stories. But Heloise knew that couldn’t be true. She watched as he wafted around the room, tall, almost skeletal, his face a solemn mask incongruous with the tune in his throat. He selected certain leaves from various dried bunches of herbs hung about the dark chamber and, even as Heloise watched, ground them to powder and mixed them in a dark tincture.

  Then he reached for the very bunch of withered greens hanging just before Heloise’s face, tore out a handful of crackly leaves, and added them to his mix.

  He must be a doctor. The doctor who, so rumor had it, the marquis had sent to Canneberges just a few months ago. It must be he, for who but a doctor—trained in his own weird arts—would dare to handle nightshade?

  “I say, is that you, little girl?”

  A startled thrill ran up Heloise’s spine, and she whirled about, nearly falling over in her haste. There before her, atop his tall horse, wearing the blue cape and the cap with damaged peacock plumes, was Master Benedict. He stared down at her, almost as startled as she was. “It is you!” he exclaimed and swung down from his horse to approach her. “You’re the girl from the wood, and—”

  “Hush!” Heloise whispered, indicating the window behind her with a toss of her head. Master Benedict’s eyes darted to the window, confused for a moment, then suddenly filling with recognition. A shudder passed through him, as though he’d just thought of something nasty, with too many legs, crawling down his arm. He beckoned Heloise to step away from the window after him.

  He was, after all, the lord’s son. What else could she do? Casting a last uneasy glance behind her, Heloise did as she was bidden and approached Master Benedict and his horse. He started toward the stables, leading the horse on a loose rein. Since he seemed to expect Heloise to follow him, she fell into pace at his side.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” she said, defensive suddenly. Then, remembering that he was a marquis’s son and she was a flax-farmer’s daughter, she added an awkward walking-curtsy and murmured, “Master Benedict. You see, my mother’s a spinner, and we brought up some skeins—”

  “No, no, I mean—” Master Benedict cast a nervous glance about as though afraid of being overheard. But out here in the empty kitchen gardens, still a good many paces from the stable, there was no one about. “I mean, what about that . . . that thing? That voice we encountered? I rode back as soon as I caught my horse and I tried to find you and I saw the damage and I thought . . .”

  His voice trailed off. Heloise, wondering if he was embarrassed again, gave him a sideways glance, expecting his face to be ripe with blushes. Instead, she saw that it had gone strangely pale. Master Benedict stood suddenly quite still, holding the reins of his horse’s bridle, but limply. A single tug, and the horse would easily get free.

  “Master Benedict?” Heloise said. “I, um. I’m quite all right, as you see. Not to worry at all. I don’t think it was dangerous, whatever it was, and . . . and . . . Master Benedict?”

  His eyes closed. He swayed where he stood. Though he was quite tall, Heloise had the sudden impression that she could knock him over with a single flick of her finger.

  But the next moment he shook his head quickly, and his eyes opened and focused on her face. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he said. The color slowly returned to his cheeks, and he took a few breaths, blinking slowly. Heloise saw his grip tighten on his horse’s reins. “Perhaps,” he continued, “it’s better not to speak of it. You’re alive; I’m alive. No harm done.”

  Look in the mirror.

  The thought appeared in her head with such suddenness, Heloise couldn’t stop herself. Her mouth opened, and she was asking the question before she quite realized that she intended to. “Master Benedict, do you have a mirror?”

  Benedict frowned and turned his head to the side, like a bird studying an interesting beetle. “A mirror? Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Heloise!”

  Benedict, Heloise, and the horse all turned their heads at the sound of that startled voice. All three saw Evette, the empty skein baskets in her arms, approaching with all haste across the empty garden. She, thinking her sister was bothering one of the busy grooms, called in her gentle but firm way, “Heloise dearest, do come away and let the poor man—Oh!”

  Heloise saw Evette’s eyes fix upon Master Benedict’s cap. She too knew all about the fabled peacock feathers. Her gaze flicked from Benedict to Heloise and back again. “Oh! Good sir!” She dropped a quick curtsy, then, thinking better of it, dropped another, deeper one just to be safe.

  It was possibly the first time in her life Heloise had seen her sister at a complete loss. She smiled wickedly and addressed herself to the marquis’s son. “Master Benedict, meet Evette, my sister. Evette, meet the Honorable Master Benedict de Cœur.”

  Somewhere, sometime in the long history of the worlds, there was probably a moment in which someone had done something more brazen. But one would never have known it by the look on Evette’s face.

  Master Benedict, flushing royally, tipped his cap. “I’m sorry,” he said, though neither he nor anyone else knew what he apologized for. “W
ell, good day. Good day, Miss Evette. Good day, erh, little girl.”

  With that, he tugged on his horse’s reins and led it away to the stables, casting only one final nervous glance back.

  “Heloise!” Evette exclaimed, dashing to her sister’s side and dropping one of the empty skein baskets so that she could clutch Heloise’s arm. “That was the marquis’s son! Talking to you!”

  “Oh yes,” said Heloise, as though it really wasn’t worth mentioning, though inside she was nearly drowning with pride. “He broke a feather in his cap. Did you notice? What a fool he looks, riding around like that with a broken feather.”

  “Oh, Heloise,” said Evette, “I do hope you didn’t say that to him!”

  Heloise only smiled.

  In my youth I never felt the pressure of time. I never understood what it was that mortals suffered, constrained as they are by moments, by years.

  But now I feel it. As I watch her walk away, across the fields, almost beyond the reach of my voice, I feel the crush of Time all around. And I wonder . . .

  Is it worth it?

  Is he worth it?

  It is a question I have asked myself since the beginning of this endless ending. I can only pray the answer in my heart proves true.

  I will continue to call to her. There is nothing else I can do until Le Sacre Night.

  SEVEN

  Grandmem sat in the doorway of the Flaxman cottage, watching Rufus the Red strut about the chicken yard and listening to the clamor of her two young grandsons, who were attempting to make themselves taller by hanging each other upside-down by turns from the loft. Grandmem supposed there were more profitable ways they could spend their time, but she was too tired from her walk to come up with any.

  Her daughter-in-law, Cerf’s wife, was locked away in the spinning shed as though she hadn’t a care or concern in the world besides the endless spinning of flax. But that was Berthe for you. She’d never been quite so strong in heart, limb, or mind as she needed to be. And since that day nine winters ago, well . . .

  But Grandmem, other than a brief, growling judgment muttered between thin lips, had no time to concern herself with Berthe and her troubles; no more than she had time to bother with Clovis and Clotaire and their elongation attempts. She kept her eyes fixed on the path, watching for any sign of her youngest granddaughter.

  Because today was the day. How well she remembered it! Today was the day, and Grandmem had to speak to Heloise. She must find out if it had come upon her yet.

  “Good day, Mistress Flaxman,” said a smelly young man who suddenly seemed to be standing in her sunlight, twisting a handful of limp wildflowers in his hands. “I—I hope you’re well?”

  Grandmem scowled up at the lad. If he wasn’t Galehot Pigman’s grandson, he wasn’t anybody, she decided. Her scowl deepened. She’d never liked Galehot Pigman. He’d spent most of one summer, ages ago now, calling on her with wilted posies and struggling to comprehend the meaning of simple words. Like “no,” for instance. Or “go away.”

  “Um,” said the young Pigman, “is Evette around?”

  Grandmem, lacking a carrot to gum, sucked on her one tooth instead. She eyed the young man until she could see she’d made him twice as nervous. Then she said, “Probably not.”

  There was a crash inside then a shout. A moment’s silence. Then one of her grandsons whispered, “Do you think she heard that?” answered by his brother’s hasty, “Shhhhhhhh!”

  Grandmem leaned back against the doorpost, slowly stretching her stiff legs out before her. “You can wait inside if you like.”

  The young Pigman stared into the huddled silence beyond the cottage doorway. “I’ll just, um . . .” And he scuttled away to wait by the cottage gate instead. Grandmem watched him go, her old eyes narrowed. For a Pigman, she decided, he was almost articulate. Too bad for him. He didn’t know what was coming.

  He never would know.

  Grandmem listened to the clatter of something being scraped into a pile inside, followed by further sounds of some destructive sin being hidden. She watched Gy Pigman kick his heels as he sat on the gate, and saw when he was eventually joined, first by a second Pigman (Pigmen were easy to spot or, as it were, smell a mile away) and then by a dyer-boy (which were even easier to distinguish). Tensions swiftly heated among them as each tried to hide his own clutch of wildflowers from the other two. Grandmem half wondered if she’d have a nice little brawl to entertain her while she waited.

  But before things reached an interesting crisis, Evette’s neat white cap appeared on the horizon and, bobbing along beside it, the robin’s-nest tangle of Heloise’s curly head. The two came down the path, empty baskets swinging from their elbows, chatting the way sisters do, always just on the verge of either giggles or a spat.

  Sisters. Never was such a bother as a sister. Never was such a bother or a love . . .

  Both girls spotted the waiting youths at the same moment. Though she was too far away to hear it, Grandmem could see the irritable sigh as it left Heloise’s body, slumping her shoulders. Evette, however, only smiled sweetly and curtsied to the lads. From that distance Grandmem couldn’t tell if her smile was especially sweet for any one of them. She doubted it.

  As Evette remained by the gate to visit, Heloise shouldered her way through the gathering and stomped across the cottage yard. Lights Above, what an ungainly thing she was! But then—and Grandmem smiled ruefully at the thought—had she herself been any different?

  “Hullo, Grandmem,” Heloise said, scarcely looking at her old grandmother even as she spoke the greeting. She peered over Grandmem’s head into the cottage and saw Clovis and Clotaire sitting quietly in the pool of light coming through the back door and twisting rough flax into twine, as demure as two smut-faced angels. She wondered what they’d broken. They were only ever this quiet after working some destruction.

  “Heloise,” said Grandmem, reaching up and catching the girl by her wrist. “Heloise, sit with me a moment, will you?”

  Heloise huffed another sigh. Her grandmother was a strange old lady and not the best conversationalist in the world. But she was her grandmother, and her grip was remarkably strong. So Heloise took a seat on the doorstep, setting her basket off to one side. From here they had a fine view of the three ardent suitors striving to impress Evette.

  Heloise put her chin in her hand. “The swains are sighing,” she muttered into her palm. “They all want to escort her to Le Sacre.”

  “Aye,” said Grandmem. “They do that.” She turned one eye upon the girl beside her, the other eye squinting against the sun. “But they’ll forget her soon enough.”

  “Pffffph,” said Heloise, a less than genteel sound.

  “Mark me,” Grandmem insisted. “They will. They’ll forget all about her, as will everyone else. Just like they forgot about Cateline.”

  A chill swallowed up Heloise’s grouchiness. She suddenly felt that the ragged person beside her was too close. She tried to slide away, but there wasn’t much room on the doorstep, and her grandmother still had a hold on her wrist.

  “They sighed for Cateline like that,” Grandmem went on. “They came to woo her by the dozens, or so it seemed to me. I was jealous. Yes, I was. As jealous as you are now.”

  “I’m not jealous,” Heloise growled.

  “You are.”

  “I don’t want stinky Pigmen bringing me handfuls of weeds!”

  “Never said you did.” And there was that one-eyed stare again. The one that was just a mite too keen for Heloise’s comfort. The one that said, We’re too much alike, girl, for you to hide anything from me. I know your secrets inside and out. I know them better than you do.

  Heloise squirmed. It wasn’t a nice thought, the thought that she and her crazy old grandmother were anything alike. Because . . .

  Well, because Grandmem was crazy. Everblooming crazy, as the saying went.

  “Cateline was much like your sister,” Grandmem went on, still staring at Heloise, “save that she had a special smile fo
r one young lad, Marcel Millerman by name. Sometimes I almost thought he might remember her, even though the rest forgot. I thought he might remember that smile. I’d watch Marcel now and then as the years went by. He’d get a look about him that made me wonder. But I never did ask him. I was afraid it might break his heart, which was already so full of unremembered sorrow.”

  “Grandmem,” Heloise said, “I need to get to work. I have to fetch the water, and Gutrund needs—”

  “There’ll be no one else to remember your sister,” Grandmem continued as though Heloise hadn’t spoken a word. “They’ll all forget her. Just as they forgot Cateline. You’ll be alone with your memory.”

  Once more that dark chill rippled through her, strong enough that Heloise forgot her sulk, forgot her strange experiences of that morning, forgot even her mother sitting in the spinning shed, spinning away the day as though it could not end soon enough. She felt the tightness of her grandmother’s fingers on her wrist, the intensity of that one old eye fixed upon her face.

  But Grandmem was crazy. She always had been. Heloise’s father had explained this to Heloise years ago, very carefully. Grandmem was crazy because she always talked about her sister, Cateline.

  And Grandmem had never had a sister.

  “It has to be you,” Grandmem said, leaning in so that her carroty breath blasted in Heloise’s face. “When the other one died, I knew then. I told myself, ‘It’s settled now. It’ll be young Heloise.’ But I always thought it would be you, even when she was alive. You were the stronger of the two. But that doesn’t always mean—”

  Suddenly Heloise found herself indeed much stronger than she’d been only a moment before. She stood up, wrenching herself free of her grandmother’s fingers. She held herself together, very still, very controlled; it was marvelous to her just how controlled she was. If only they knew, they’d be so impressed. Everyone. Everyone would admire all this fine control with which she kept herself from slapping that old woman’s ugly face.