The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  “You annoy me,” said Silky.

  “I’m sorry, my Lady,” said the Bard. “I’ve been said to have that effect.” And then he gave a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Silky.

  “Oh,” said the Bard, “I have a feeling that all those fools out there will pay in the end.” He nodded his head. “Lady Angel. Lady Silky.”

  And then he was gone.

  The light began to fade, and strange shadows began to fill the room. The skin under Silky’s eyes looked bruised from tiredness.

  “It’s time for you to sleep, Silky,” I said. “They’re doing a lot in the arbitration room tonight, and we need to be fresh and ready to engage in some undoing.”

  “Why did you give that bard the gold?” asked Silky.

  “I’m not sure.”

  But then I thought for a moment, and it was almost as if I could reach out and touch the dark shapes that were future things. And there, hard to make out in the deep gloom, I finally saw the Bard. His eyes were full of more than wisdom, and he was waiting for me.

  Chapter Three

  Closed Books

  Silky slept in my bed that night. I knew she would feel safer there.

  I sat on the long-­chair, dazed, still dressed in my finery, and I held her hand as she soon fell asleep. I looked at her closely. She was curled like a puppy, her fair hair fanned out against the pillow. I knew she believed that I would let no harm come to her, and that thought was terrifying to me. I didn’t know what I could do to keep Kalo from crushing her spirit. The last thing she said before sleep took her was “What are you going to do, Angel?”

  And I said, “I don’t know.”

  I thought about trying to eavesdrop outside the library, where the arbitration was taking place, but the huge oak doors and walls were thick—­and I had a terrible fear of being caught. It might occur to my father—­or more probably to Kalo—­to lock me in my room. My father had done that in the past on one pretext or another. Mostly if he found out I was seeing a lot of Trey—­but he always made sure I was fed. I wasn’t so sure that Kalo wouldn’t just forget about Silky and me completely for a ­couple of days while he solidified arrangements for the ‘Lidan alliance. Or, if he remembered me, that it would be to torment me as he dismantled the world I had created in his long absence.

  I had a network of servants on whom I could depend—­and who could depend on me. He would never stand for that. And he would find intolerable the degree of independence I had achieved as my father had continued his retreat into mourning.

  He would soon find out I even had a horse, Jasmine, and rode wherever I chose on our lands and in the village. Kalo would sell Jasmine. Or give her away. Or even kill her, if he felt he had to assert his authority. As if I needed any point to be made in order to know who was the new master of the house.

  The hour was so late it was almost morning, but I was wide awake; I was in no way ready to join Silky in my bed.

  It was true I couldn’t hope to gain anything from trying to listen at the door of the library, but if I knew anything, it was that Kalo and Father would make sure the Arbitrator would have plenty of food and drink—­and that meant servants. Servants coming and going. And, while they were in the room, servants hearing and seeing.

  I took off the lace veil that had been pinned into my braids and left it on the long-­chair. I tried not to wake Silky, but I needn’t have worried; she slept soundly. The veil was a liability—­likely to catch on things and make noise. My mother’s beautiful dress—­now dishonored, now never to be worn in a ceremonial wedding—­was another liability. The ivory train of thick silk would only thump and drag behind me as I went up the stairs. But there was no time to change. For one thing, I was partially sewn into the dress, and getting out of it would take me well over an hour. It had taken far more than that for Silky, with my help, to get the dress on and adjusted in the first place.

  So I hiked up the back of the dress and tied the train to the lowest button in the back.

  Still, the delicate dress was not made for sneaking through the house. I would be an ivory ghost in a fitted low bodice of pearls and swan feathers with a cloud of silk and lace below. I was likely to frighten any of our older servants. In my mother’s dress, even unveiled, I might easily be taken for her spirit.

  I hurried to the stairs, and I saw no one. Most of the servants, all but the most trusted—­who would be waiting on Kalo, Father and the Arbitrator—­would be in the servants’ hall and kitchen. There was, after all, a lot to gossip about, and the feast and flowers had to be cleared away and everything cleaned and washed. Most Great Houses used dishes several times before washing them, but Father would not eat off a dirty dish. ­People thought he was peculiar.

  I crept up toward the library, but I heard nothing and saw nobody. The house, always kept dim and quiet because of Father’s mourning, seemed to swallow me up in its darkness. The huge mahogany staircase and banister dwarfed me, and the enormous carved ancestor-­lions at the top of the stairs looked stern, as if they knew what I was thinking.

  If they did, I wonder if they would have tried to stop me.

  Because I was thinking that I would do everything in my power to thwart Kalo. In anything he wished to do. Certainly I wasn’t going to let him marry me off to a man I’d never met—­a man I’d never even heard of. What if this nameless ‘Lidan groom beat me? What if he kept me mewed up and friendless? What if he smelled? And there was no getting around the implications of marrying a ‘Lidan. He would brand me, as if I belonged to him.

  Surrounded by gloom, I could feel the ivory dress glow with a preternatural light.

  Still no servants. Now I was next to the library.

  Without warning, the solid grim door was flung open, but it was no servant sent on a hasty errand to bring food or fire or one of the land-­law books from Father’s study.

  It was Leth.

  He was moving so fast that he almost knocked me over in his haste. Then he stopped and stared, as if he’d never seen me before. As if—­I could no longer remember how many hours earlier—­we hadn’t stood side by side. I stared back at him. He was pale, and his cool blue eyes were opened wide, but he didn’t seem to see me, although I could see a tiny ivory bride reflected back in those eyes.

  The vacant look left him, and he stared at me as if in horror.

  “Angel,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. Not now. Not in this place.” His voice was hoarse and low, as if he’d been talking for hours. I lifted my hand to him and, since there was no chaperone present to tut-­tut over the gesture, I expected him to take it. But he didn’t touch me. He took a step backward, and I dropped my hand.

  Perhaps he thought my breach of etiquette inappropriate for such a time. He said my name again.

  “Angel.”

  He had left the door to the library open a crack, and I could hear voices rising inside.

  “What is it, Leth?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s over,” he muttered. “The only thing left is—­they’re talking about The Book of Forbidden Wisdom.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” I whispered. “Nothing. The mother-­daughter chain was broken.”

  He looked at me closely, and suddenly his voice was clear.

  “Are you sure?”

  And that’s when I realized with a certainty that, for the Nessons, it had been about The Book all along. Oh, the Nessons loved my timber, my meadows, my mines, but more than that they loved the prospect of the power and land that was supposed to come with The Book. They thought I held the secret. And they had believed that, somehow, Leth would get it out of me.

  I looked at my almost-­groom and, for a second, I shivered.

  Now, through the door, I recognized Kalo’s voice as he laid down the law to somebody. From the measured response, I guessed it was Leth’s father, who had an even
temper—­unlike his avaricious wife.

  Leth continued to stare at me. I pulled my dress up and put the bulk of it over my arm. Then, without waiting for Leth to reach out to me, I took his arm and almost pushed him to the stairs. A chaperone would have been appalled—­what passed for high spirits in a man was lewdness in a woman, and I had done much more than casually brush against him. I had practically been in his arms when we collided outside the library door, and there were never any excuses.

  We were almost at the bottom and out the side door when a servant holding a tray of food saw us. She stopped and stared. She was new to our house, and I didn’t know if I could trust her.

  “Lady Angel,” she said abruptly. “Do you need me to get the Lady Silky?”

  This was as close as a servant could come to overtly challenging me, but the situation—­no chaperone—­must have seemed outlandish to her. She probably thought she was helping to maintain my reputation by offering to get Silky. Being so physically close to Leth was odd for me, too. But I wasn’t in the mood to appease the servant.

  “There’s no need to rouse my sister,” I said.

  The door gave out onto the orchard, and in a moment we were out and under the trees. As I closed the door behind us, I saw the servant still standing at the foot of the stairs and staring after us. If her allegiance were to my father and not to me, then Leth and I had time counted in minutes.

  But the moment I felt the grass under my bare feet and saw the vague shapes of the gnarled apple trees looming in the darkness, I felt better. There were stars and fireflies. I had forgotten how late in the summer it was. The apples hadn’t been harvested yet, but some had fallen and been left to rot, and their sweet-­sour scent filled the night.

  I found I didn’t want to ask what kind of bargain, in terms of penalties and forfeits, Kalo and the Nessons were working out. I didn’t care.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said. That’s when Leth stopped me and turned me so that we were facing each other. I had always liked Leth’s face; occasionally it was bluff and blank, but an acute intelligence sometimes filled his light eyes, particularly when he looked at me. Now the intelligence was there, but I found I didn’t like the look he was giving me at all.

  “No,” he said. “It’s not going to be all right. I thought it was. But it’s not.”

  “The land merger was almost complete,” I said. “In two minutes, we would have been married. Two minutes. Do we have to worry so much about two minutes? There are others who can complete the marriage portion of the ceremony, even if we lose the land.”

  “Your father has agreed with your brother to retract your dowry.”

  It was as I had feared. Unless the Nessons were generous, Leth and I faced hard times. Then I looked more closely at his face, and I knew I was in trouble.

  “So,” I said. “No dowry.”

  “I’ll marry no one else,” he said.

  “But you won’t marry me.”

  The door to the house opened, and light streamed out, gilding the trees. I saw Kalo on the threshold. He staggered for a moment, and I wondered if he were drunk.

  “You’re compromising my sister,” said Kalo, and his words were slurred. So yes—­drunk. “If word gets out you two were alone, I won’t pay any of the penalty.”

  “If word gets out,” countered Leth, “she won’t be any good for a ‘Lidan marriage.”

  I stared at him. I doubted what I had heard.

  “Leth,” I said, “you have a little land. Enough to live on. I have some money.”

  Kalo laughed at me from the doorway. “Without his parents’ consent, he doesn’t have enough to plant a rock garden on,” he said. “We’ve established that. Cut your losses, Leth, unless her charms have made you change your mind. Unless you want to say she is herself a dower.”

  Now Leth seemed in some kind of stupor.

  “I’m sorry, Angel,” he said, staring at my feet. “We would have made a good match, but this way we have no means to live. My parents wouldn’t pledge us anything. I did ask. They’ve taken the penalty and rejected the union. You wouldn’t do badly to make a fine ‘Lidan marriage, even if it did mean leaving Arcadia. This almost-­wedding taints you, Angel. You know it does.”

  “You’ve given this some thought.”

  “Forgive me, Angel.”

  “No.”

  He didn’t seem to hear that, though. He pressed on. “You’ve always been practical. You could save us if you had the key to The Book of Forbidden Wisdom. We could forget Kalo and your father.”

  “But I don’t have it, Leth.”

  His eyes glittered. “The House of St. Clare had the key, and the House of St. Clare was your mother’s House, before she married into the House of Montrose.”

  “I know all that, obviously. Just as you know my mother died before she could tell me anything.”

  “You would have told me,” he said. “After we were married. I would have seen to that.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Maybe we are a bad match, Angel.” I had never seen this expression on his face before. This was not sorrow; it was anger.

  “Is the forbidden wisdom all your family wants?” I said.

  “I don’t care about wisdom,” said Leth, “but The Book carries the titles to all the lost lands. We would be rich beyond what either of us can imagine. I want you, Angel. And my family wants only what it would be easy for you to give. So very easy.”

  “I think you’ve been talking to your father.”

  “My father is wise.”

  “And you’ve been talking to your mother.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  My Leth was gone. Subsumed into his ambitious House. I realized that I didn’t know him at all. And I remembered some of the things Trey had said about Leth before the contract had been drawn up—­words that had brought down silence on our old friendship. He had once called Leth weak, and I had stormed at him.

  Perhaps Trey had been right, though. And perhaps—­and this chilled me as I looked at the man before me—­perhaps Leth had thought he could beat the secret of The Book from me after the marriage.

  Kalo still stood in the doorway, watching us. Then he addressed Leth.

  “Your parents are waiting,” he said. “And we need the final signatures.”

  Leth turned from me and walked toward Kalo.

  “Leth,” I said.

  “My Lady Angel?”

  “Not yours. Not ever, now. Good-­bye, Leth.” Perhaps the finality in my voice goaded him.

  “You would have told me, Angel,” he said. “Maybe not on the first night. But you would have told me.”

  I flinched. The nights were absolutely not to be spoken of. Leth turned away from me and walked to the door. When he reached Kalo, Kalo put an arm around him.

  “She’s worth nothing,” said Kalo.

  The deep shadow shapes of the future played so close to me then that I could breathe the air of tomorrow. The scent of rotting apples was overpowering, and then it was replaced by the scent of moonflowers and roses.

  I was in a quiet country, and my dead mother whispered in my ear.

  Chapter Four

  The Rescue

  I don’t know what woke me up. I barely knew how I’d made it back to my bed. The moon had risen; it was full, and the pale silver light streamed into my room. Silky was next to me, asleep, her fair hair glowing strangely in the moonlight. She looked soft and fragile.

  For a moment, I thought it was my wedding day. Leth. The ceremony. But my wedding day had come and gone, and yet my life was still not sealed in the Marriage Book and the Land Book. It was like a children’s riddle. What did that mean I was? Neither married nor lone. Not uncontracted maiden and yet, after what should have been the sealing tie, still in my original state. What was I?

  I was nothing.

&
nbsp; I was brought to myself by a small tap.

  Now I was wide awake. Flowers filled the room, and I breathed in the heady scent of blush roses and wild roses, hyacinth and purple bells. And yet the odor was slightly off—­a little sour, a little rancid. They were flowers that had, in one day, passed beyond their peak moment of bloom and were now overblown. Like me, I thought. Like me. And I saw my wedding bouquet on the floor by the bed, wilted now, and some of the petals crushed, because I had thrown it to the ground in petulance and anger and self-­pity.

  Tap.

  I couldn’t locate the sound. I saw the wedding dress, which I had torn in order to get it off, crumpled at the foot of the bed, the train stained with the grass of the orchard. In the bright moonlight, I could see Silky’s bouquet in a glass of water by the window. Perhaps she had hoped the ceremony would go on tomorrow. Perhaps she couldn’t bear watching the flowers wilt and fade.

  Tap.

  The noise was coming from the window. I didn’t light a candle; I didn’t need one in the moonlight. I opened the window and leaned out the casement, just in time for a pebble to fly out of the darkness and graze my cheek.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry. But we’ve got to go.” The voice was low and urgent. Luckily my room was at the back of the house and no one was likely to hear. I tried to imagine that I was hearing Leth’s abashed words, but I knew that Leth was neither abashed nor the type to throw pebbles at windows.

  “Trey?”

  “Of course. Who were you expecting?”

  It was beyond belief, and I felt some of my fear ebb away.

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone,” I said.

  “Did you really think,” said Trey, “that just because we’re not speaking I’d leave you to Kalo? Or, for that matter, to the ‘Lidans? The word is out about the new match. Kalo. ‘Lidans. Even Leth’s better than those options.”

  “You know a lot.”

  “Everyone knows a lot. The servants know even more than everyone else, and they’re spreading the word. And tomorrow Kalo will have you locked down so tight, your life really will be sealed.”