A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  She watched as, quite suddenly, he remembered her.

  “Miss Evette!”

  “Hullo, Briant,” said Evette in her sweetest, most patient voice. “It’s nice to see you. Strange doings about these days, yes?”

  “What—what are you—? Where did you—?”

  Evette stepped into the chamber alongside Heloise and looped her arm through her sister’s. Heloise could have laughed and shouted with joy at the familiar gestures. Instead she fixed a glare all the more furious upon the captain, who was searching for his lance. Catching that glare, the captain froze, uncertain what to do under these extraordinary circumstances. Doctor Dupont, now wrapped up like a sausage in his own robes, screamed all manner of curses, but no one paid him any attention.

  “My sister has something to say,” Evette declared. Her voice was so reasonable that it was impossible to ignore or even to think about contradicting. She gave Heloise a nudge. “Tell them, dearest. Tell the good captain what you know.”

  There was Evette for you. Always in charge. Always in control both of herself and of the situation. It was enough to make Heloise want to scream . . . and to weep with relief at the same time.

  Instead of doing either, she addressed herself to the captain, saying, “Doctor Dupont is a thief.”

  “What?” said the captain, casting an uneasy look the doctor’s way. Dupont was now several feet off the ground and gyrating slowly as he hurled curses to the four corners of the room.

  “He’s a thief!” Heloise repeated. “Master Benedict and I, we saw him steal from the marquis.”

  “Steal what?” There was perhaps a note of hope in the captain’s voice as he asked this question. He knew what to do with thieves and their like. Invisible winds, no. Bizarre doctors and their practices, no. But thieves, absolutely. Canneberges had a strict and ancient policy when it came to thieves.

  Heloise slipped free of her sister’s arm and hurried to Benedict’s bedside. Her eyes widened in redoubled fury at the sight of him bound there, and she plucked hopelessly at one of the knots. “Oh, Master Benedict!” she gasped.

  He blinked blearily up at her. “You’re alive . . .” The words were almost articulate.

  “Master Benedict.” The captain rose and approached the bed from the other side, casting wary glances at the cursing doctor all the while. “Sir, does this . . . this peasant girl speak the truth? Has the doctor stolen from your father?”

  Benedict nodded. Or tried to anyway. He wasn’t altogether certain his head was doing what he wanted it too. “Yes,” he said in a thick voice. “Yes, it’s true. South—South—Southlands wine. Check the apomo—apophol—apithle—”

  “The what?”

  “The apothecary,” Heloise translated. “We saw the doctor take a bottle of wine from the dining hall. He might have it in the apothecary.”

  “Briant!” barked the captain.

  The young guard, who had been earnestly speaking to Evette, startled in his skin. “Captain?”

  “Go to the apothecary at once and look for a bottle of Monseigneur’s fine Southlands vintage collection.”

  Briant saluted then rushed from the room in what could only be described as a long-limbed scuttle. Doctor Dupont hurled abuse after him and, when that proved useless, hurled even more abuse at the captain. But the captain had reached his limit where Dupont was concerned, and he turned a deaf ear both to the good doctor and to the sylph’s continued laughter (which he didn’t want to believe was real in any case). He folded his arms and glared at nothing, waiting like a statue for his man to report back.

  Heloise, meanwhile, fetched one of the fallen lances. “Help me!” she ordered the other guard, and he didn’t think to disobey her, ragged urchin though she was. With the guard’s help, Heloise used the lance’s blade to cut partway through the first of Benedict’s restraints. The rest unraveled when she pulled on it; that done, she moved on to the next one. Benedict gasped in pain and relief as blood rushed back into his hand.

  “He gave you more nightshade, didn’t he?” Heloise growled. When Benedict nodded, she paused in her labors to free him, her brow furrowed in a scowl of thought. Then she kicked the legs of Hugo, who was still halfway under the bed. He scooted out and stared wide-eyed at her, convinced he gazed upon the face of a real live witch.

  “You,” Heloise barked. “Do you know what false unicorn looks like?”

  “Aye,” Hugo gasped. “It’s an herb what will—”

  “There’s a bunch of it growing round the moat. Fetch some at once!”

  The manservant got to his feet, looking as though he might protest. After all, he was part of the Centrecœur household, and, witch or not, this girl was nothing more than a peasant. But then he glanced at Benedict’s sick and sallow face, and Heloise saw understanding gleam in his eye. He offered a quick nod of acquiescence and darted from the room just as Briant returned.

  The young guard carried two wine bottles, one in each hand. Strange things floated in dark brews inside them. At first glance Heloise thought one bottle might contain . . . eyeballs. But that couldn’t possibly be. So she shook her head and turned to the captain, gesturing with one arm. “See? Didn’t I tell you?”

  “They’re definitely from the Southlands,” young Briant said. “I helped Mistress Leblanc store them myself when the shipment arrived.”

  “And when was that?” the captain asked. After all, it was possible these were discarded empties which the doctor had collected for personal use.

  But Briant, guessing his captain’s thoughts, smiled grimly. “Two months ago, captain. And his lordship ain’t been home in a six-month.”

  All eyes turned upon Doctor Dupont. He was silent now, his face as thin as a fireside ghoul’s and twice as pale. The sylph held him fast and continued to giggle, though it didn’t understand a word of what took place around it.

  “Well, good doctor,” said the captain. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  Dupont swallowed almost as impressively as Briant himself. In a cold, clear voice that could not quite disguise a tremor, he said, “Monseigneur gave me authority to—”

  “Monsieur the Marquis,” said the captain, “would give no man authority to steal from his prized Southlands collection.” He took a mottled glass bottle from Briant’s hand, turned it over (making the things inside bob weirdly), and checked the carefully painted date on the bottom. He snorted. “Certainly not last year’s vintage!” He handed the bottle back to Briant and approached Dupont, who still floated several inches above the floor. “It seems to me, good doctor,” the captain said, his brow dark but his eye gleaming, “that you have two options before you. We have a certain method of dealing with thieves here in Canneberges. Do you know what it is?”

  He did. Heloise could see the shadow of the gibbet chain flash in Dupont’s hollow eyes. Everyone knew how thieves were treated in Canneberges.

  “But I am a merciful man,” the captain proceeded, “and you were sent by the marquis to tend his son, which you have done most faithfully.”

  Benedict, who was now restrained by only one ankle, snorted at this.

  “So I put it to you, good doctor,” the captain said. “You may leave this room, leave this house, leave this estate at once, stopping to gather nothing, wearing only the clothes on your back. Or you may continue to enjoy our hospitality, albeit under guard in your own chambers, until I’ve had time to write to Monseigneur and . . . learn his will in this matter.”

  This time Heloise could almost hear the gibbet chain creak. She shuddered. She had no liking for Doctor Dupont, but no one deserved such a fate as that!

  The doctor apparently thought so as well. He stared at the captain for several moments. Then at last he blinked and said, “I will go.”

  “Put him down now, sylph,” Heloise commanded.

  “Yes, mortal girl!” the sylph replied, causing every man in that room, Benedict included, to utter a small yelp. Then it obediently dropped Doctor Dupont so that he landed first on his feet an
d then on his knees.

  The good doctor was up like an archer’s bolt, and in a flurry of dark robes, leaving his cap behind on the floor, he fled the room, nearly crashing into the returning Hugo as he did so. Hugo ducked out of the way just in time, clutching bunches false unicorn in both fists. Baffled, he watched the doctor run on past then entered the room. “Um. I’ve got this?” he said uncertainly.

  “Give it to me!” Heloise cried, and plucked the stalks of horn-shaped green flowers from the guard’s hands. She returned to Benedict’s bedside and hopped up onto the mattress beside him.

  “Heloise!” Evette exclaimed, very much herself and very much scandalized at her sister’s behavior. It was wonderful! It was perfectly wonderful! Soon everything would return to normal: Evette would always do the right thing, and Heloise would always do the wrong thing, and life would be what it was supposed to be! But Heloise had no time for her sister’s proprieties just then.

  She mashed one of the green flowers between her hands, rolling it into a moist, bruised pellet. “Open your mouth,” she told Benedict. He obeyed without question, and she popped the pellet on his tongue. “Chew,” she commanded. Then she added, “This is going to make you really sick. Do you have something you might—”

  It was too late. With a groan, Benedict rolled over onto his side, hung his head and half his body over the edge of the bed, and emptied all the contents of his stomach onto the floor. The captain, with a cry of “Dragon’s raging teeth!” leapt back only just in time.

  “Sorry!” Benedict gasped because he was Benedict. He felt Heloise patting the back of his head even as he shuddered and was sick again.

  “There, there,” she said. “That’ll get all the nightshade out of you. How do you feel now?”

  Benedict couldn’t answer for some moments. He simply hung there, breathing. Then he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sat up. A faint color flushed his cheeks. “Actually,” he said, “I must say, I feel a little . . . better!”

  FORTY-ONE

  “Evette!” whispered Grandmem.

  She sat on her doorstep in the glow of the setting sun to soak in all possible warmth from its rays before the cold night fell. Her hand clutching the shawl around her shoulders relaxed its grip, and she tilted her head to one side as though trying to shake a thought into place. Where did she know that name from? Evette . . . Evette . . .

  Then she said out loud, “My granddaughter.”

  It came over her in a rush so enormous, she might have drowned in it. Her granddaughter! Evette! The one she had forgotten! Only she wasn’t forgotten anymore, she was present in the confines of that old, tired memory, clear as a bell!

  “She’s done it,” Grandmem said. For a moment she thought her heart would break, and she could not have said whether it broke with joy or with sorrow. The emotions she felt were too great to be understood, and her body was tired, unable to feel as much as it had back when she was young. It was all she could do to sit there on her doorstep and hold herself together rather than fall into a million tiny pieces.

  Then she stood. This took much effort, much groaning, but she could not sit a moment longer. She got herself up and started down the path at the swiftest hobble she could manage. Evette. She remembered Evette. Which meant the curse must be lifted! Which meant . . . which meant . . .

  Someone approached along the path that wound between the dark waters of the cranberry bogs. It wasn’t the graceful form of Evette or the galumphing figure of Heloise. It was an old woman very like herself, older even. She hobbled along with no stick for support, and she wore the rags of what might once have been a Canneberges-red garment, now faded to gray.

  Grandmem didn’t know that form. She didn’t know that wrinkled, withered face. But then she hardly knew her own face and form these days. Since when did age overtake her so completely?

  “Cateline?” she called out in a thin quaver.

  “Cerise?” the old woman called back.

  A blurring moment or series of moments—a sudden surge of energy in the limbs and a pounding of bare feet on turf—then the two were in each other’s arms. Weak, wrinkled, thin old arms made suddenly strong as they held each other close.

  “Cateline! Cateline, I tried!” Grandmem wept. “I tried so hard!” She was again a young girl struggling with a burden far too great for her limited strength. And her older sister was just that—her older sister. Wiser, stronger, always the comforter.

  “I know you tried, Cerise,” she said. “I saw you in the forest and I knew. You are brave, and you endured so long! I did not know if you would still be here when I returned. Yet here you are! My brave, brave sister!”

  They said no more but simply stood together as the sun set, weeping for sorrow at the loss of their youth, weeping for joy at the life of their love. They would have stood this way for hours more, perhaps, but were interrupted just as dusk fell by a voice speaking from behind them.

  “Excuse me.”

  It was a man’s voice. An old man’s voice, rough with long years of sorrow, tainted by decades of bitterness, tinged with a sudden, painful hope. Grandmem and her sister turned. In the twilit gloom they saw a bent little figure with a thick growth of beard on his face and a wide-brimmed hat that he twirled in his hands.

  “Excuse me,” he said, addressing himself to Cateline. “It came over me suddenly a few hours ago, and I wondered if I’d find you here. I knew your sister had moved this way, and I thought perhaps . . . I don’t know if you remember me?”

  Grandmem heard her sister draw a sharp breath. When Cateline could speak again, her voice was soft and gentle and might almost have belonged to a maid of eighteen. “Indeed, Marcel Millerman. I do remember you. I have thought of you every day.”

  “And I,” said the old miller, his whole heart and nearly forgotten youth catching in his constricting throat, “remember you.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Heloise and Evette spoke very little on the long walk home from Centrecœur. Only after they parted ways from Cateline—casting glances over their shoulders as the old woman tottered up the path to Grandmem’s shack—did Heloise dare to ask, “What was it like? Where they kept you? Where they made you sew that tapestry?”

  Evette smiled gently but shook her head. Her cap was gone, her hair as loose as a child’s and unbraided. Her skirt and underskirt were torn in long rends, some of which went all the way up to her knee. Wherever she had been, it had been nothing like the pocket world where Alala was kept. “I’ll not speak of it now,” she said softly, turning her smile upon Heloise, though Heloise could see what a thin mask it was. “I’ll tell all . . . later.”

  Heloise doubted this. The look in Evette’s eye conveyed secrets never to be spoken. Perhaps it would be best not to speak of the Faerie world, to let such memories fade and even be forgotten. This wasn’t too much to hope for, was it? Forgetfulness?

  But, Heloise realized, she didn’t want to forget even a single terrifying moment. She also knew, even as the thought came to her, that she never would. Evette might someday slip back into her normal ways and walk of life. Heloise, however . . .

  It didn’t bear thinking on. Not just now, not when all had been so newly restored. So she took her sister’s hand and, in unspoken delight, they made their way home.

  When they reached the gate and stepped into the Flaxman cottage yard, they were met by Meme in the front doorway. She frowned, shading her eyes against the setting sun. “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  Though she had tried hard not to, knowing the pain such imaginings could cause, Heloise had envisioned any number of triumphal returns should her quest succeed. She had imagined her entire family pouring into the cottage yard from all corners of the estate. She had pictured her brothers hoisting her up onto their shoulders as everyone cheered. Her mother would enfold Evette in her arms, weeping . . . and then put out an arm for Heloise as well, press her close, and whisper into her hair, “Thank you! Oh, thank you, dear child!”

  She wouldn’t sa
y “I forgive you,” because she would no longer think there was anything to forgive. All would be made new. There would be explanations and questions and laughter and tears . . .

  It had been a lovely vision. It was nothing like reality.

  “Where have you been?” Meme demanded, addressing Heloise rather than Evette. “Did you think you could run away and I’d forget what you did? A whole bushel of flax left in the dirt to ruin! It’s a coward you are, child, to run like that. Why did you not come to me at once if the bushels were too heavy? I would have sent Clovis to help. And to disappear three days? To leave me half-mad with worry?”

  She didn’t look half-mad or particularly worried, truth be told. She looked faintly confused. Her scolding held a tone of business-like necessity as she spoke to Heloise, but she kept glancing Evette’s way as though trying to remember something just on the edge of memory.

  With a shake of her head, Meme ushered both girls inside and switched her scolding of Heloise to exclamations over the state of Evette’s torn gown. Papa, Claude, and Clement returned from the flax fields. Clovis and Clotaire sat by the hearth and weaved flax twine. Baby Clive cooed in his wicker-woven crib. Evette changed into an older gown, took her place by the hearth, and set to work mending the rents in her garments.

  Heloise took a seat on the floor rushes near to her sister’s knees. In a stolen moment during which everyone else was distracted with their various businesses, Heloise tapped Evette’s arm to draw her eye. “Will you tell them?” she asked in a whisper.

  Evette smiled. Then she shook her head. “Not yet,” she replied. But Heloise heard instead, “Not ever.”

  Then it was night.

  Heloise lay in her straw pile, wrapped up in her woolen blanket, and listened to the rats scurry about in the thatch overhead. Big rats, most likely, making nests, fighting wars, birthing young ratlings. They lived in a side world of ratdom parallel to the world of humans, sometimes interlinking, never truly blending.