Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  When the scene ended, she returned to her seat. Marjorie smiled briefly up at her, and suddenly Tabitha felt terrible. How could she do such a thing to her best friend? Alain obviously liked Marjorie very much. How could Tabitha even think about stealing his kisses? He had confided in Tabitha because he trusted that she could help him, and she would be a terrible friend, a terrible person, if she used that trust to trick Alain into kissing her.

  She could not do it. She would not do it.

  It was only a few more scenes before the play ended, but it felt like an eternity. Marjorie leaned toward Tabitha during the applause and said, sounding a little more like her old self, “That was not very good.”

  “No,” Tabitha agreed, not looking at her. She was sure Marjorie would be able to see her guilt. That everyone would be able to tell what she had been thinking about doing. As she and the other ladies circulated among the lords and the players to give their respects before retiring, she kept her words short and her eyes averted, as if weary.

  She noticed Beatris doing the same. Beatris even looked a little sick, and Pamela stayed close beside her, deflecting everyone who came near. Marjorie’s father was leaving Betaul early tomorrow, and Tabitha saw him giving Marjorie a long farewell embrace. Lord Maisenblere had managed to corner Jenevive, and his face was very serious as he loomed over her and lectured her while she scowled at the floor.

  Tabitha avoided Alain. When she bid her father good night, she did not bother to smile. She was finished with this evening. She felt too guilty to even pretend to enjoy herself anymore.

  “I hate him,” Jenevive snarled as soon as they were all back inside Tabitha’s sitting room with the door closed behind them. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!”

  “Your cousin?” Mistress Sabine said sympathetically, patting Jenevive’s shoulder. “He was quite overbearing tonight.”

  “Quite,” Jenevive grated, but when she handed the light brown veil back to Tabitha, she managed to speak civilly. “Thank you for letting me borrow this.”

  “It was nothing,” Tabitha said as she took the veil. Here, safe, she felt steadier. No one knew she had talked to Alain, and no one knew she wanted to kiss him. She had not betrayed Marjorie. The evening had been a trial, but it was over.

  Normally after a special occasion, after Mistress Sabine had put the candles out and left for her own chamber, Tabitha would come out to the sitting room, the others would join her by the banked fire, and they would talk about how much fun it had been. This time, though, the others were not chattering and giggling when Tabitha emerged wearing her woolen robe. Jenevive was sitting with Marjorie on her cot, and she was pulling the cork from a bottle of wine. “Where did you get that?” Tabitha demanded.

  “The cellar,” Jenevive said without a trace of shame, and then drank straight from the bottle.

  Tabitha stared at her in shock. “What are you, a dockside whore?” Beatris stepped past her to silently take the bottle from Jenevive, but instead of corking it, she took a long drink. “What’s wrong with you two?” Tabitha exclaimed.

  Beatris sat down on the carpet near the hearth and shook her dark head wearily. She extended the bottle back toward Jenevive, but now Marjorie took it and drank from it too. They all looked as wretched as kitchen servants. Tabitha sat down on the settee against the wall and let her disapproval show, but that did not stop Pamela from also gulping back a big swallow of wine. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why do you need a drink?” Tabitha all but shouted at her. “What happened to you down there that you want to forget?”

  “Nothing,” Pamela admitted softly as she gave the bottle to Jenevive. “I just get upset when everyone else is upset.”

  “Right, you don’t have your own thoughts, so why should you have your own feelings?”

  “Why are you such a bitch?” Beatris closed her eyes to say through clenched teeth.

  “Better that than—”

  “A dockside whore?” Jenevive hissed, holding the bottle by the neck. “What’s the difference? He paraded me around like a horse! He kept whispering at me with his horrible breath. ‘Look at that one, his lands border good fishing lakes! Talk to him, he holds shares in a dozen quarries, marble and granite! Which one do you like, little Jenevive?’” She let Marjorie take the bottle, which she had been waving around during her tirade. “I told him I won’t marry any of them.”

  “Do you realize how lucky you are that he is actually giving you a choice?” Tabitha asked. “If you don’t pick one, he will pick one for you!”

  “I don’t care.” Jenevive did not even look at Tabitha. “I hate him.”

  Marjorie drank from the bottle again, then flinched at Tabitha’s glare. She gave the bottle back to Jenevive. “Jenevive,” she said, her voice almost too quiet to hear, “what would you do, if you could?”

  Jenevive drank and frowned, her face flushed with wine and rage. “What do you mean?”

  “If you did not have to get married and did not have to join a cloister. If you had your own money and could do anything you wanted.”

  Jenevive hesitated. She shook her head, muttered something, and drank from the bottle again.

  “Tell us,” Beatris said, almost as quietly.

  “I would … I would go to places and draw them.” She made an aimless gesture. “I would have my own ship and I would sail all over the world. I would go to the islands and the south and the west, to draw and paint the scenery and the animals.”

  Beatris nodded. “That sounds nice,” she said.

  “It does,” Marjorie agreed softly.

  “So what?” Jenevive shrugged. “I can’t do anything like that. Ever.”

  “Maybe your husband would take you,” Pamela said, but broke off when Jenevive made a noise of disgust and drank again.

  “Someone take that bottle away from her,” Tabitha ordered, but no one did.

  Pamela switched the angle of her legs and leaned against Marjorie’s cot, looking up at her. “Marjorie,” she said softly, “it seems like you don’t want to get married either.”

  Marjorie paused. “Not really,” she murmured.

  “Will you forgive me for teasing you so much about Alain?”

  Marjorie nodded, and Tabitha tried to see the expression on her face, but it was too dim.

  “Do ... do you like him?” Pamela asked tentatively after a moment.

  Marjorie did not answer right away. Tabitha realized she was holding her breath, and she silently let it out before anyone could notice. “I don’t know,” Marjorie finally admitted, and to Tabitha, that was as good as a yes.

  She likes him. He likes her. She has a chance at true love. Envy fought with friendship in her heart.

  “If she comes, you will know how she feels.”

  She had said that to Alain. But Marjorie would not come, and when she did not, Alain would think it meant she did not like him. And he would never try to speak to her again. Could Tabitha let that happen?

  When she went back to her own bedchamber, she lay in her bed and stared up at the canopy. The light from all of her candles made shifting patterns of gold and silver. She did not even try to sleep. She imagined Alain waiting for her, for Marjorie. As the night wore on, he would slowly come to the conclusion that she was not coming.

  It would break his heart. His heart might be breaking right now, this moment. Tabitha did not know what time it was, since she had lost track of the bells, and the nearest clock was in Mistress Sabine’s room. Was Alain already waiting for her? She tried to remember everything they had said to each other. If only she could take her words back! They had seemed so daring at the time, but now she knew that they could only give him pain. She did not want that at all. She wanted to comfort him. She wanted to kiss him.

  No. It would be stealing.

  Should she tell Marjorie? Not everything, of course, just what she and Alain had actually said to each other. She could tell Marjorie to meet him. But Marjorie would never, ever do it, not even if Tabitha went with her, not even if
Tabitha told her how much Alain liked her.

  Sweat prickled at the middle of her back, strangely cold. She had to go and meet him herself. She had to tell Alain that Marjorie liked him but was too nervous to meet him tonight. Tomorrow, when Marjorie acted like she had never even known about it, Alain would think she was being discreet, and he was enough of a gentleman to not bring it up himself.

  But is he? If he is waiting for her right now, is he really a gentleman? Did she want a gentleman’s kisses or a scoundrel’s?

  I want Alain’s kisses.

  What if she met him, kissed him, and escaped before he figured out that she was not Marjorie? She would have her first kiss, and Alain would be assured that Marjorie liked him. Everyone would have what they wanted. As for tomorrow, again, when Marjorie acted like nothing had happened, Alain would think she was being discreet.

  Tabitha took a deep breath. She had to wait for all her friends to fall asleep, deeply asleep. All of them had had some of Jenevive’s wine, even Pamela, so it would not take a long time.

  She waited a long time anyway before she slid out of bed, pushed her feet into her slippers, and crept to her wardrobe. The chambermaids had put all her clothes back inside, with no regard for all the organizing Tabitha had done. The candles on her bedside table gave little light into the wardrobe, but she found her fur robe by touch. But when she put it on over her sleeveless nightgown, the fur was bulky and really did not smell nice. Who would kiss a girl who looked and smelled like a grizzly cub? She took it off and let it drop on the floor beside the dowdy woolen robe she had been wearing.

  Marjorie had that sky-blue summer robe that her father had given her for her birthday. Tabitha had always wanted to try it on, since the silk was so soft and floaty, and the white embroidered trim was so stylish. Marjorie never wore the matching nightgown, but she did wear the robe sometimes, and it would have her scent on it. It would be in the wardrobe that her friends shared in the sitting room.

  Tabitha went to her door. She pressed her ear against it, but heard nothing. Suddenly she remembered Nan’s voice: “God can see you even when I can’t, young lady.”

  It made her cringe against the door. This was wrong. It was wrong to sneak out of her bedchamber to meet Alain, doubly wrong to trick Alain into kissing her, and triply wrong to betray Marjorie. There was no part of this that was right.

  Except if she did not, Alain and Marjorie would never be together.

  She would meet him, but she would not kiss him. She would talk to him instead. She would tell him what Marjorie was too scared to say. It would be the little push they both needed. She wanted them both to be happy.

  Tabitha heard a faint snore. She listened for a while and kept hearing the snores. Then she heard two snores overlap. She heard no one’s cot creaking, so no one was tossing and turning. She opened the door, just enough to slide herself through.

  How could they sleep with the room this dark? The only light came from red coals in the fireplace and a single candle by Beatris and Pamela’s washbasin. Tabitha crossed the floor to the big bulky shadow that was the wardrobe near Jenevive’s bed. She found its door hanging open when her outstretched hand brushed against it. She reached inside, and it took far too long a time for her hands to find the silky robe. She drew it on silently, then tied it with the ribbons at her neck and waist. Around her the other girls slept.

  It was hard to reach the room’s door in the near-total darkness. She knew the direction, but she hated not being able to actually see it. When she opened it, it creaked, and her heart pounded. The privy closet. I am going to make water. I took this robe because I forgot mine and did not want to go back for it. I know it’s a summer robe. I am only going to the privy closet so I will not be cold for long. That was what she would say.

  But no one sat up, no one stopped snoring, and the door did not creak when she closed it. She lifted the hood of the robe over her head. It would not be strange to see someone with a hood up indoors, because it was winter and it was cold. It was cold. Ahead, a candle glowed in its sconce at the top of the stairs. Her slippers were well-padded against the hard chill of the stone floor as she crossed to the staircase, and she gripped the banister tightly as she started to creep down. The kitchen. I am just going for a snack.

  Tabitha flinched and froze. Something was down there, in the pitch blackness at the bottom. Something was there. Something had moved.

  No. No, no, no. Nothing moved. Nan’s ghost stories were just stories. Nan had told her those stories to keep her from getting up in the middle of the night when she was little.

  I have never seen a ghost. There are none. Nan was gone. Tabitha could get up in the middle of the night now and not let anything stop her. Especially not the dark.

  Around the corner she was relieved to see a candle, glowing in its sconce next to the double doors to the blue receiving room. During the day the doors stood open, but at night they were closed and latched from this side. The maids slept in the chamber just to the right, but Tabitha knew the trick to unlatch and open the left-hand door without a sound. Down one step and into the big, cold room, another lit candle showed the curtained alcove of one of the windows. Tabitha bumped against several chairs and the harpsichord on her way through, since the lazy servants had not put the furniture to rights after the players were done.

  Something pale flashed in front of her. Tabitha froze again, her heart pounding, and realized it was just the sleeve of her robe. Marjorie’s robe.

  Would it be dark all the way to the attic?

  She needed to go back. She should not be doing this. It was wrong. It was dark.

  No. Angrily, she pushed down her fear. It would not do to meet Alain this way. She had to be calm and composed when she told him why Marjorie had not come. There were no ghosts. She was not afraid of the dark, she just hated not being able to see.

  The door out to the gallery was shut, but Tabitha knew how to keep this latch silent as well. The gallery was even colder, but there was light at the other end, a torch that always blazed brightly at the top of the staircase that led down to the kitchen. The kitchen, she repeated to herself in relief as she hurried forward. The kitchen. I am going to the kitchen. I want a snack.

  She reached the edge of the pool of torchlight. Its far edge lay just short of the archway to the castle foyer, where another torch was lit. In that light stood the guard dog.

  It was looking at her silently and attentively, as the dogs always did when she and her friends sneaked down to the kitchen. It would not bark if she turned now and headed down the stairs. But Beatris had once gone to try to get a book from the library in the middle of the night, and the dog had barked that time, waking the guardsman.

  Her steps slowed as her heart raced. The dog was big and dark, like all of them, and its ears were pricked as it stared at her.

  Tabitha suddenly felt annoyed. This was her home. All the dogs knew her scent, and they knew they were supposed to protect her. If she would not let the dark stop her, she certainly would not let a dog stop her. Her eyes narrowed and her steps firmed, and she passed the staircase to the kitchen and continued toward the foyer.

  The dog watched her for another moment, but then it sat down, its ears no longer pricked. It was unconcerned. Tabitha walked past it, the soles of her slippers rasping on the stone floor. The door to the library was to the left. Tabitha reached for the handle, then nearly screamed when a snore from behind her shattered the night’s silence. She clapped a hand over her own mouth as she whirled around. The dog stood up again. The guardsman was propped against the wall of one of the foyer’s alcoves, asleep with his arm crooked around his spear.

  He is asleep. He is asleep. She repeated the words in her head, trying to stop shaking. She realized that she had assumed the guardsman would be asleep, since the guardsmen had always been asleep when she and her friends sneaked down to the kitchen. But what if he had not been? She had not looked to make sure. She had only thought about getting past the dog without making it bark, be
cause barking would wake the guardsman, who might not have been asleep.

  Tabitha let out her breath in a silent stream. Nothing is wrong. I am getting a book. Just a book. She waited until the dog decided all was well and sat down again, and then she took hold of the door handle and gently pulled. It was not locked. She realized that she had not thought about whether it would be. It was unlocked during the day, but what if the castellan usually locked it at night?

  Obviously he does not. The most valuable books were in her father’s study anyway. She opened the door, just enough to slide herself through, and pulled it shut behind her.

  It was slightly warmer in here than it had been out in the gallery and the foyer, but the darkness around her was complete. No candle would ever be left burning in the library, and every window in every room would be tightly shuttered against the winter night. Tabitha stood with her back to the door and slowly let out her breath again.

  Alain was upstairs. She had to talk to him. But she could not see.

  I am in these rooms almost every day. Mistress Evonne taught them in the reading room. Surely Tabitha knew the chambers of the library as well as she knew her own chambers. The door that led up to the attic was at the back of the innermost room. She just had to move very slowly, following the line of the large table, and then following the lines of the bookshelves.

  She closed her eyes. It made it feel more like a game, like she could see if she wanted to. She stepped forward, her left arm slowly waving in circles to catch anything jutting out, her right hand touching the edge of the table by the door.

  Her slippers made no noise. She did not touch anything she did not expect. She made her slow, silent way through the books, smelling their dust, smelling her own sweat, until she placed her hands on the door to the attic.