Ash listened keenly, hearing only the dusty silence of the house as it was now without Old Merta. When Derrick sighed loudly, she shot him a warning look before he could say anything too rash and came to kneel next to Vanita so she could speak into her ear in soothing tones.
“Vee, you have had the worst day of your life. You’re injured and tired. You need rest. Can we go upstairs and I will put you in bed?”
“Ash you’re not listening I –”
“There we go, good girl, lean on me and I’ll support you.”
As Ash hoisted Vanita up from the table, the resounding crash of breaking glass came from somewhere else in the house.
“What was that?” Ash whispered.
Her sister’s voice was small but calmer now, more resigned.
“I tried to tell you. It’s the men who want to kill us.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Shoe Must Fit
The noise came again.
Ash and Derrick looked at each other.
They had made so many fortifications. They had created new bolts made of the new iron for the front doors, lookouts for the front gate, had placed heavy wooden beams across the windows – everything to block those left living in the open fields’ cottages and rocky plains beyond them from storming up the drive. They had made so many fortifications – to the front of the house.
“Vanita, you stay here, do you hear me?”
“Don’t go trying to find your mother, we will do that. I promise. Stay low and keep quiet.”
“Ash I –”
“Do it!” Without waiting for an answer, Ash scrambled for her crossbow and ran from the room.
Derrick was already ahead of her, running along the hallway that connected the servants’ quarters to the solar and sitting room they still used. Ash cursed herself for not locking the drawing room doors while she had been there, but how was she to know? Already she could hear raised commoners’ voices and thumping sounds coming from the drawing room or, even worse, closer. She willed herself to be faster.
It was like a dream to see the rough men running down prim hall, arms raised and shouting. They were the same ones as those Ash and Derrick had shot at – or seemed to be. Their dirtiness and starving anger made them all look the same. When they saw the comparative splendour of Ash and Derrick, the roaring got louder and they ran straight at them.
Ash fired off a few shots and Derrick did the same. All of them missed and the ragtag mob did not stop or slow their running. Derrick darted to the side just as the men were getting close and pulled down a rickety armoire with Ash knew not what strength. It was big enough to crash down most of the hall’s width and that at least slowed them a bit, giving Ash and Derrick both time to land a few arrows properly, felling two of the ragged mob falling with horrid gargling noises. Ash pulled out her knife and kept shooting, trying to fire around the form of Derrick standing protectively in front of her. Three down now, four. The mob was standing now, roughly ten of them left and growling menacingly, but not retreating.
With a deep breath, Ash willed herself to aim. She readied her crossbow and fired it at one of the ornamental vases at the far end of the hall, purposefully glancing it so that it did not shatter but fell with a dull crash to the floor. Instinctively, the men looked to see what was making noise behind them and Ash and Derrick ran.
As he headed straight, she pulled him right, into the parlour. “We can’t lead them to the kitchen, they already know it too well and Vee and Tansy are there.”
They stood, breathing hard, in the familiar space and shut and locked the doors.
“Why are there locks on these? The drawing room and others don’t have any.”
“Parlour games.”
“I don’t want to know, then.”
The door thudded inwards as the scrawny men threw their collective weight against it. Without talking they both moved for the hacked-up, lidless remains of the pianoforte and pushed it against the bucking door. It would hold the mob another second. The room was sparse otherwise, but at least there was room to fight in: one table, two sitting chairs, the fireplace.
Ash drew and checked her knife and crossbow in each hand unnecessarily and looked to her side to Derrick, who was looking at her too.
“Ash, if we get through this, I want you to know something –”
The door gave a crack and gave in. Two muddy, bloodied men poured through, followed by more in twos or threes. Thank goodness for the pianoforte, which made them have to clamber over it two at a time, making terrible plinking noises as hands and feet and knees clambered over its unprotected keys.
Derrick made short work of the first one, then two, still standing protectively in front of Ash, but the combined weight and anger of those outside pushed the door and the pianoforte with it, inward enough to let the remainder of their scrawny mob slither in around the sides of the doorway and pile into the room. Some were women, Ash could see now, although they were just as shapeless and screaming as the men. Ash vaguely recognised the torn-off, gilded limbs of some of Stepmother’s salon furniture, which was solid oak. What had these people done, what had they said to themselves and for how long, as they had walked up to this house, walked all the long way around through former hunting grounds, for the sake of some food? Screaming, the one woman fell on her. Ash decided to hit her over the head rather, but the woman clawing at Derrick got less mercy, receiving an arrow in her chest instead.
A dull thump as one chair leg hit her from behind and Ash found her face in the fireplace as a man stood over her, then another one. As the one came down to paw at her, she laid hold of the fire poker and gave it to him full in the face, swiping the sharper back end at the second man’s shins and then felling him with the spike tip in the knee. She got up with both knife and poker raised, ready to fight.
But by then another man had claimed her fallen crossbow and was pointing it, albeit badly, at Derrick. Bitterly, she threw her weapons down and he smiled a toothless smile, then shouted orders to someone not quite inside the room. With sinking dread, she heard someone undoing the bolts on the front doors and opening them wide. Then one of the rabble clawed at the room’s drapes, opened them and showed Derrick and Ash a sight to make them weep.
At least ten more angry peasants coming up the main drive, murderous looks in their eyes.
“You will take us to the pumpkin, or you will die.”
“We will die anyway, without that pumpkin.”
The man reached forward and slapped Ash and in turn got slapped by Derrick, who got the butt of Ash’s crossbow in his stomach from the man. Ash made sure he was done before she slapped the scrawny man back.
This time, though, he did not retaliate, but called harshly to someone outside the room again. When a muffled reply Ash couldn’t quite understand came back, the man smiled toothlessly again. He yelled “here” to the unseen person and two minutes later a tall, muscled man and a grim-looking wench came in holding the struggling forms of Vanita and Tansy.
“You will take us to the pumpkin, or they die.”
Tansy suddenly launched herself like a cat at him, clawing and screeching, trying to put herself between Vanita and the burly man. The wench caught her easily as the muscled man held Vanita away from Tansy’s reach.
His accomplice sighed dramatically, the scrawny man, the opened his mouth wide to see the gaping red, toothless leer on his face. He walked over to the still-squirming form of Tansy. Her dark curls were splayed all over her pointed, plain face, her cheeks flushed with struggling. Ash could not remember the last time she had ever looked at Tansy and seen her so clearly: the set, determined little mouth, the docile eyes and kind features.
Pragmatically, almost casually, the scrawny man slit her throat.
“Tansy, no!”
Ash and Vanita both screamed as one person, Ash launching herself forward, skinny man be damned. Tansy’s brown eyes were widened in surprise and she was fading before their eyes, her life’s blood pumping out her neck to the floo
r. Without being asked, Derrick covered Ash as she held her friend, silly sweet Tansy who had only ever wanted to get married in a pretty dress and live as the servant she was dying as. She did not speak, although her mouth worked once or twice, and did not fight the dark blood pouring out of her. She stopped stirring, became motionless. Ash held her as she went.
“You will take us to the pumpkin, or she dies,” the scrawny man said calmly.
Ash did not even look at him as she stood and drove her fist into his face.
“Oh I wouldn’t do that again,” growled the tall man over his accomplice’s splutterings, holding Vanita. He was strong enough to lift her off the ground and made a show of almost closing his meaty fist around her slender, scarred throat.
“Cinderella?” said a quiet voice from the doorway.
***
Vanita’s mother was dressed again, although her face was still haggard, as she strolled into the room as though there were no bloodthirsty marauders there. Everyone was silent, motionless, watching her.
“You shall go to the ball,” she intoned to a splintered chair in the corner.
What was this now? Ash did not have the energy to face another problem she thought to herself, as she watched her stepmother saunter passed. She tried to ignore the way the woman’s frayed skirts brushed against the fresh corpse of Tansy, lying in her dark red blood still, and how her eyes did not seem to see the man with Vanita by the throat.
“Mother?” squeaked Vanita.
“Well well, the prince is coming here for his bride,” Stepmother all but whispered in response, speaking in a voice so low that it was a struggle to hear. But her movements were doll-like and jerky as she came into the light.
“Stepmother?” But what was left of Vanita’s mother kept walking around the room with an odd, wind-up grace, stiff-backed and formal as though she were at court. At some point, she abruptly stopped and addressed a spot in the room where no one stood.
“So, he will not marry Cinderella?”
Ash and Derrick looked at each other in alarm. Cinderella, who had died years ago at a ripe old age… Ash knew they were all thinking the same thing: this is worse than we thought. Meanwhile, the rabble seemed to be enjoying this and were laughing jeeringly. Even the man who had held Vanita had set her down so he could lean on the fireplace and guffaw.
“No, well, if the Prince won’t marry Cinderella then he will marry one of my daughters… Yes… I must get my daughters ready. What time will the prince arrive?”
Ash glanced at Derrick. It was a good question. He shrugged. “If the missive was sent just after dawn as we thought then, with hard riding straight from the palace and no stops… Well, it could be any minute now.”
“Excellent.” Stepmother’s jade green eyes gleamed. She began walking around the room again in circles. “Excellent, everything is going to be alright. Everything is going well,” she said again and again in a measured, sunny voice, talking to no one in particular.
A sharp gasp of pain brought her attention back to the room. Stepmother had pulled on Vanita’s arm, still not seeming the slightest bit aware of the burly, laughing man just next to her.
“Mother!”
“Lovely, lovely,” said Stepmother in a singsong way, completely blind to the angry red scars, the bandages and the look on Vanita’s face. “All we need to do is get you fitting into that shoe.”
“What shoe?” asked Ash, although she wasn’t sure if Stepmother knew she were here.
“The Cinderella shoe,” said Derrick wearily, adding, unnecessarily, “she’s gone mad.”
“We will do something, we will think of something,” she singsonged to herself, wafting about the kitchen and into the pantry. As soon as she was out of sight Ash, Derrick and Vanita all turned on each other.
“What happened to her?”
“Last night… she clearly went mad from the fright. What are we going to do with her?”
“Tie her up? Use her as a weathervane?”
“Derrick!”
“Seriously though, there is not much we can do. With no doctors, no herbs alive anymore, we just have to watch out for her. There is nothing else.”
They were so focussed on one another that they did not see her, wafting slightly to the right. They did not see her expression They did not see the shiny thing in her hand.
“Everything is going well,” she trilled.
Ash looked up just in time to see her stepmother raise a knife she had somehow sneaked into her skirts as she stood above her daughter. Vanita screamed.
“The shoe must fit! The feet must be smaller!” she trilled.
“Hold her,” said the mob leader, amused. “We ain’t got nothing for making that one take us to the pumpkin if she kills our hostage.”
The burly man at the fireplace lazily took a still-raving stepmother by the arm. Somehow, the knife had vanished in all the commotion. Vanita was crying, huddled in on herself and anger burned fresh and hot in her chest. Forgetting the men for one moment, Ash came over and slapped her stepmother across the face.
“See what you have done to your daughter. And this house. This is your fault, all this.”
She turned to the man who seemed to be commanding the mob. “Alright, we’ll take you to the pumpkin, but we will all go together. I will not leave them in here with the likes of you.”
As the man stared hard at her and Ash stared hard back, the ten or so more of the mob came pouring in, shouting, through the entrance doors. While by the sounds of it most of them were sacking the house, others spilled into the parlour to watch the scene. One of them was a man in half-burnt priest’s robes cut off ragged at the knee, ranting in a booming rhetoric voice and seemingly oblivious to the undignified way his malnourished legs were showing.
“And I will give thee,” he was yelling. “I will give beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, a garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness…”
All the world went quiet, as Ash finally remembered where that phrase ‘ashes into beauty’ came from. She still had a murderous mob at her throat and she was still heart-poundingly scared, but in that moment, she breathed slow. In that moment she knew, beyond all reason, that everything would be alright.
As she breathed out, her eyes met Stepmother’s, whose gibbering had abruptly stopped. She gave the smallest of nods to Ash, before driving the hidden knife straight into the neck of the tall man next to Vanita.
“Witch!” the wench screamed, throwing herself forward and aiming to hit Stepmother with a chair leg, but she got the end of Ash’s knife instead. The leader holding her crossbow received one arrow from Derrick. Ash threw her knife high in the air without having to speak, aiming Derrick’s crossbow arm at the man holding Vanita. While he was watching her, Stepmother caught the knife gracefully and brandished it at his throat.
“Touch either of my daughters and you’re dead.”
He struck her savagely, knocking her savagely to the side, but the mob had already come to his defence. Screaming and clawing like cats, they descended on the family like one giant, crazed being and Ash shoved her dazed mother and sister out into the hall without thinking.
Just in time. Already hands and teeth and fists were falling on Ash and Derrick everywhere. Derrick threw over the table to stall them for a moment, they both threw chairs as well, but it barely did anything. Ash dived in front of her family and fought and fought, but even with arrows and aimless stabbing, she was losing. The hands were closing in on her face, her mouth, her hair, when a woman’s voice somewhere in the room screamed.
“Look!”
Several hands paused in front of Ash and she hacked at them, driving them back. But they were going back anyway, stumbling for some reason towards the parlour window.
There, on the same main drive that the marauders had come up, was a magnificent, charging horse.
“Make way in the name of the king! A voice and horn proclaimed. Make way for the king’s armies!”
Ash was looking out the parlo
ur window too now. There was Rize, for some reason behind his cousin on the same horse. They were galloping up the main drive. Ash absurdly wanted to giggle at the sight of it, tasting blood in her mouth as she smiled.
“Make way for the king’s armies!”
The marauder stared at each other from around the room, not moving. Ash could almost hear their brains clicking. For who believed in kings anymore? Who believed in armies?
What was there left to believe in?
Ash looked at her sister and mother, who had a hand against her bleeding temple. She looked again at Rize and his cousin, staring sternly through the parlour window at the mob, as if at naughty children. They were still a few yards off from the front door – though they didn’t know it was barred and bolted.
Ash was still looking at them as their faces darkened, a shadow throwing them and their horse into a pool of grey. She was still watching, uncomprehending, as the shadow deepened and enlarged over them as if in slow motion, before overshadowing the house.
Ash did not have time to think of anything else before the ceiling exploded.
The bird senses an ending, even as it launches off the ground and takes to the air.
It’s mind and rudimentary consciousness are unaware that even now this feeling of anticipation, of a closed circuit, is thrumming through it. Only its hollow bones know as it flies through the air.
It has been a good day. Instead of getting eaten by one of its own, which it seemed it would, it has eaten instead the stringy, mean meat of the crow that would have murdered it if their roles had been reversed. The terrifying toying that the two-leggers seemed to have been doing to that one could have been it, but instead the bird had watched from a distance and the crow had died painfully instead.
Now the bird’s belly is full, two times in one week and the sun is not too hot as it beat down on the bird’s dark feathers.
In the distance below is a two leggers’ nest, a fine one, lying nestled in the ground. Within its hollow bones the bird thrums with recognition, although its brain identifies that it has never been there before.
Ash Rising Page 17