by Tanith Lee
“Why do you let animals run in your park?” demanded Lisel.
“Because,” said Anna, “the land is theirs by right.”
The dwarf began to strike a polonaise from the piano. Anna clapped her hands, and the music ended. Anna beckoned, and Beautiful slid off the stool like a precocious child caught stickying the keys. He came to Anna, and she played with his hair. His face remained unreadable, yet his pellucid eyes swam dreamily to Lisel’s face. She felt embarrassed by the scene, and at his glance was angered to find herself blushing.
“There was a time,” said Anna, “when I did not rule this house. When a man ruled here.”
“Grandpère,” said Lisel, looking resolutely at the fire.
“Grandpère, yes. Grandpère.” Her voice held the most awful scorn. “Grandpère believed it was a man’s pleasure to beat his wife. You’re young, but you should know, should be told. Every night, if I was not already sick from a beating, and sometimes when I was, I would hear his heavy drunken feet come stumbling to my door. At first I locked it, but I learned not to. What stood in his way he could always break. He was a strong man. A great legend of strength. I carry scars on my shoulders to this hour. One day I may show you.”
Lisel gazed at Anna, caught between fascination and revulsion. “Why do I tell you?” Anna smiled. She had twisted Beautiful’s gorgeous hair into a painful knot. Clearly it hurt him, but he made no sound, staring blindly at the ceiling. “I tell you, Lisel, because very soon your father will suggest to you that it is time you were wed. And however handsome or gracious the young man may seem to you that you choose, or that is chosen for you, however noble or marvelous or even docile he may seem, you have no way of being certain he will not turn out to be like your beloved grandpère. Do you know, he brought me peaches on our wedding night, all the way from the hothouses of the city. Then he showed me the whip he had been hiding under the fruit. You see what it is to be a woman, Lisel. Is that what you want? The irrevocable marriage vow that binds you forever to a monster? And even if he is a good man, which is a rare beast indeed, you may die an agonizing death in childbed, just as your mother did.”
Lisel swallowed. A number of things went through her head now. A vague acknowledgement that, though she envisaged admiration, she had never wished to marry and therefore never considered it, and a starker awareness that she was being told improper things. She desired to learn more and dreaded to learn it. As she was struggling to find a rejoinder, Anna seemed to notice her own grip on the hair of the dwarf.
“Ah,” she said, “forgive me. I did not mean to hurt you.”
The words had an oddly sinister ring to them. Lisel suddenly guessed their origin, the brutish man rising from his act of depravity, of necessity still merely sketched by Lisel’s innocence, whispering, gloatingly muttering: Forgive me. I did not mean to hurt.
“Beautiful,” said Anna, “is the only man of any worth I’ve ever met. And my servants, of course, but I don’t count them as men. Drink your liqueur.”
“Yes, Grandmère,” said Lisel, as she sipped, and slightly choked.
“Tomorrow,” said Anna, “we must serve you something better. A vintage indigenous to the château, made from a flower which grows here in the spring. For now,” again she rose on her raven’s wings; a hundred gems caught the light and went out, “for now, we keep early hours here, in the country.”
“But, Grandmère,” said Lisel, astounded, “it’s scarcely sunset.”
“In my house,” said Anna, gently, “you will do as you are told, m’mselle.”
And for once, Lisel did as she was told.
—
At first, of course, Lisel did not entertain a dream of sleep. She was used to staying awake till the early hours of the morning, rising at noon. She entered her bedroom, cast one scathing glance at the bed, and settled herself to read in a chair beside the bedroom fire. Luckily she had found a lurid novel amid the choice of books. By skimming over all passages of meditation, description or philosophy, confining her attention to those portions which contained duels, rapes, black magic and the firing squad, she had soon made great inroads on the work. Occasionally, she would pause, and add another piece of wood to the fire. At such times she knew a medley of doubts concerning her grandmother. That the Matriarch could leave such a novel lying about openly where Lisel could get at it outraged the girl’s propriety.
Eventually, two or three hours after the sun had gone and the windows blackened entirely behind the drapes, Lisel did fall asleep. The excitements of the journey and her medley of reactions to Madame Anna had worn her out.
She woke, as she had in the carriage, with a start of alarm. Her reason was the same one. Out in the winter forest of night sounded the awesome choir of the wolves. Their voices rose and fell, swelling, diminishing, resurging, like great icy waves of wind or water, breaking on the silence of the château.
Partly nude, a lovely maiden had been bound to a stake and the first torch applied, but Lisel no longer cared very much for her fate. Setting the book aside, she rose from the chair. The flames were low on the candles and the fire almost out. There was no clock, but it had the feel of midnight Lisel went to the window and opened the drapes. Stepping through and pulling them fast closed again behind her, she gazed out into the glowing darkness of snow and night.
The wolf cries went on and on, thrilling her with a horrible disquiet, so she wondered how even mad Anna could ever have grown accustomed to them? Was this what had driven grandfather to brutishness and beatings? And, colder thought, the mysterious violent death he was supposed to have suffered—what more violent than to be torn apart by long pointed teeth under the pine trees?
Lisel quartered the night scene with her eyes, looking for shapes to fit the noises, and, as before, hoping not to find them.
There was decidedly something about wolves. Something beyond their reputation and the stories of the half-eaten bodies of little children with which nurses regularly scared their charges. Something to do with actual appearance, movement: the lean shadow manifesting from between the trunks of trees—the stuff of nightmare. And their howlings—! Yet, as it went on and on, Lisel became aware of a bizarre exhilaration, an almost pleasure in the awful sounds which made the hair lift on her scalp and gooseflesh creep along her arms—the same sort of sensation as biting into a slice of lemon—
And then she saw it, a great pale wolf. It loped by directly beneath the window, and suddenly, to Lisel’s horror, it raised its long head, and two fireworks flashed, which were its eyes meeting with hers. A primordial fear, worse even than in the carriage, turned Lisel’s bones to liquid. She sank on her knees, and as she knelt there foolishly, as if in prayer, her chin on the sill, she beheld the wolf moving away across the park, seeming to dissolve into the gloom.
Gradually, then, the voices of the other wolves began to dull, eventually falling quiet.
Lisel got up, came back into the room, threw more wood on the fire and crouched there. It seemed odd to her that the wolf had run away from the château, but she was not sure why. Presumably it had ventured near in hopes of food, then, disappointed, withdrawn. That it had come from the spot directly by the hall’s doors did not, could not, mean anything in particular. Then Lisel realized what had been so strange. She had seen the wolf in a faint radiance of light—but from where? The moon was almost full, but obscured behind the house. The drapes had been drawn across behind her, the light could not have fallen down from her own window. She was turning back unhappily to the window to investigate when she heard the unmistakable soft thud of a large door being carefully shut below her, in the château.
The wolf had been in the house. Anna’s guest.
Lisel was petrified for a few moments, then a sort of fury came to her rescue. How dared the old woman be so mad as all this and expect her civilized granddaughter to endure it? Brought to the wilds, told improper tales, left improper literature to read, made unwilling party to the entertainment of savage beasts. Perhaps as a result of the
reading matter, Lisel saw her only course abruptly, and it was escape. (She had already assumed Anna would not allow her grandchild to depart until whatever lunatic game the old beldame was playing was completed.) But if escape, then how? Though there were carriage, horses, even coachman, all were Anna’s. Lisel did not have to ponder long, however. Her father’s cynicism on the lower classes had convinced her that anyone had his price. She would bribe the coachman—her gold bracelets and her ruby eardrops—both previous gifts of Anna’s, in fact. She could assure the man of her father’s protection and further valuables when they reached the city. A vile thought came to her at that, that her father might, after all, prove unsympathetic. Was she being stupid? Should she turn a blind eye to Anna’s wolfish foibles? If Anna should disinherit her, as surely she would on Lisel’s flight—
Assailed by doubts, Lisel paced the room. Soon she had added to them. The coachman might snatch her bribe and still refuse to help her. Or worse, drive her into the forest and violate her. Or—
The night slowed and flowed into the black valleys of early morning. The moon crested the château and sank into the forest. Lisel sat on the edge of the canopied bed, pleating and repleating the folds of the scarlet cloak between her fingers. Her face was pale, her blonde hair untidy and her eyes enlarged. She looked every bit as crazy as her grandmother.
Her decision was sudden, made with an awareness that she had wasted much time. She flung the cloak round herself and started up. She hurried to the bedroom door and softly, softly, opened it a tiny crack.
All was black in the house, neither lamp nor candle visible anywhere. The sight, or rather lack of it, caused Lisel’s heart to sink. At the same instant, it indicated that the whole house was abed. Lisel’s plan was a simple one. A passage led away from the great hall to the kitchens and servants’ quarters and ultimately to a courtyard containing coachhouse and stables. Here the grooms and the coachman would sleep, and here too another gateway opened on the park. These details she had either seen for herself as the carriage was driven off on her arrival or deduced from the apparent structure of the château. Unsure of the hour, yet she felt dawn was approaching. If she could but reach the servants’ quarters, she should be able to locate the courtyard. If the coachman proved a villain, she would have to use her wits. Threaten him or cajole him. Knowing very little of physical communion, it seemed better to Lisel in those moments, to lie down with a hairy peasant than to remain the Matriarch’s captive. It was that time of night when humans are often prey to ominous or extravagant ideas of all sorts. She took up one of the low-burning candles. Closing the bedroom door behind her, Lisel stole forward into the black nothingness of unfamiliarity.
Even with the feeble light, she could barely see ten inches before her, and felt cautiously about with her free hand, dreading to collide with ornament or furniture and thereby rouse her enemies. The stray gleams, shot back at her from a mirror or a picture frame, misled rather than aided her. At first her total concentration was taken up with her safe progress and her quest to find the head of the double stair. Presently, however, as she pressed on without mishap, secondary considerations began to steal in on her.
If it was difficult to proceed, how much more difficult it might be should she desire to retreat. Hopefully, there would be nothing to retreat from. But the ambience of the château, inspired by night and the limited candle, was growing more sinister by the second. Arches opened on drapes of black from which anything might spring. All about, the shadow furled, and she was one small target moving in it, lit as if on a stage.
She turned the passage and perceived the curve of the stair ahead and the dim hall below. The great stained window provided a grey illumination which elsewhere was absent. The stars bled on the snow outside and pierced the white panes. Or could it be the initial tinge of dawn?
Lisel paused, confronting once again the silliness of her simple plan of escape. Instinctively, she turned to look the way she had come, and the swiftness of the motion, or some complementary draught, quenched her candle. She stood marooned by this cliché, the phosphorescently discernible space before her, pitch-dark behind, and chose the path into the half-light as preferable.
She went down the stair delicately, as if descending into a ballroom. When she was some twenty steps from the bottom, something moved in the thick drapes beside the outer doors. Lisel froze, feeling a shock like an electric volt passing through her vitals. In another second she knew from the uncanny littleness of the shape that it was Anna’s dwarf who scuttled there. But before she divined what it was at, one leaf of the door began to swing heavily inwards.
Lisel felt no second shock of fear. She felt instead as if her soul drifted upward from her flesh.
Through the open door soaked the pale ghost-light that heralded sunrise, and with that, a scattering of fresh white snow. Lastly through the door, its long feet crushing both light and snow, glided the wolf she had seen beneath her window. It did not look real, it seemed to waver and to shine, yet, for any who had ever heard the name of wolf, or a single story of them, or the song of their voices, here stood that word, that story, that voice, personified.
The wolf raised its supernatural head and once more it looked at the young girl.
The moment held no reason, no pity, and certainly no longer any hope of escape.
As the wolf began to pad noiselessly toward Lisel up the stair, she fled by the only route now possible to her. Into unconsciousness.
3
She came to herself to find the face of a prince from a romance poised over hers. He was handsome enough to have kissed her awake, except that she knew immediately it was the dwarf.
“Get away from me!” she shrieked, and he moved aside.
She was in the bedchamber, lying on the canopied bed. She was not dead, she had not been eaten or had her throat torn out.
As if in response to her thoughts, the dwarf said musically to her: “You have had a nightmare, m’mselle.” But she could tell from a faint expression somewhere between his eyes, that he did not truly expect her to believe such a feeble equivocation.
“There was a wolf,” said Lisel, pulling herself into a sitting position, noting that she was still gowned and wearing the scarlet cloak. “A wolf which you let into the house.”
“I?” The dwarf elegantly raised an eyebrow.
“You, you frog. Where is my grandmother? I demand to see her at once.”
“The Lady Anna is resting. She sleeps late in the mornings.”
“Wake her.”
“Your pardon, m’mselle, but I take my orders from Madame.” The dwarf bowed. “If you are recovered and hungry, a maid will bring petit déjeuner at once to your room, and hot water for bathing, when you are ready.”
Lisel frowned. Her ordeal past, her anger paramount, she was still very hungry. An absurd notion came to her—had it all been a dream? No, she would not so doubt herself. Even though the wolf had not harmed her, it had been real. A household pet, then? She had heard of deranged monarchs who kept lions or tigers like cats. Why not a wolf kept like a dog?
“Bring me my breakfast,” she snapped, and the dwarf bowed himself goldenly out.
All avenues of escape seemed closed, yet by day (for it was day, the tawny gloaming of winter) the phenomena of the darkness seemed far removed. Most of their terror had gone with them. With instinctive immature good sense, Lisel acknowledged that no hurt had come to her, that she was indeed being cherished.
She wished she had thought to reprimand the dwarf for his mention of intimate hot water and his presence in her bedroom. Recollections of unseemly novelettes led her to a swift examination of her apparel—unscathed. She rose and stood morosely by the fire, waiting for her breakfast, tapping her ‘ foot.
—
By the hour of noon, Lisel’s impatience had reached its zenith with the sun. Of the two, only the sun’s zenith was insignificant.
Lisel left the bedroom, flounced along the corridor and came to the stairhead. Eerie memories of the
previous night had trouble in remaining with her. Everything seemed to have become rather absurd, but this served only to increase her annoyance. Lisel went down the stair boldly. The fire was lit in the enormous hearth and blazing cheerfully. Lisel prowled about, gazing at the dubious stained glass, which she now saw did not portray a hunting scene at all, but some pagan subject of men metamorphosing into wolves.
At length a maid appeared. Lisel marched up to her.
“Kindly inform my grandmother that I am awaiting her in the hall.”
The maid seemed struggling to repress a laugh, but she bobbed a curtsey and darted off. She did not come back, and neither did grandmother.
When a man entered bearing logs for the fire, Lisel said to him, “Put those down and take me at once to the coachman.”
The man nodded and gestured her to follow him without a word of acquiescence or disagreement. Lisel, as she let herself be led through the back corridors and by the hub-bub of the huge stone kitchen, was struck by the incongruousness of her actions. No longer afraid, she felt foolish. She was carrying out her “plan” of the night before from sheer pique, nor did she have any greater hope of success. It was more as if some deeply hidden part of herself prompted her to flight, in spite of all resolutions, rationality and desire. But it was rather like trying to walk on a numbed foot. She could manage to do it, but without feeling.
The coachhouse and stables bulked gloomily about the courtyard, where the snow had renewed itself in dazzling white drifts. The coachman stood in his black furs beside an iron brazier. One of the blond horses was being shod in an old-fashioned manner, the coachman overseeing the exercise. Seeking to ingratiate herself, Lisel spoke to the coachman in a silky voice.
“I remarked yesterday, how well you controlled the horses when the wolves came after the carriage.”
The coachman did not answer, but hearing her voice, the horse sidled a little, rolling its eye at her.
“Suppose,” said Lisel to the coachman, “I were to ask you if you would take me back to the city. What would you say?”