Under the Pendulum Sun

by Jeannette Ng

  Mr Benjamin nodded rapidly. “Then you know. She will hunt, so she needs some fae to hunt. It needs to be one of us. And I thought, it can be Benjamin.”

  “You couldn’t be serious,” I said. “But Mab–”

  “Don’t say her name,” he snapped, pausing in his sniffing. He was agitated, but the usual undercurrent of fear was absent. He did not shrink back at the mention of her name.

  “I mean, the Pale Queen,” I said, correcting myself. “The Pale Queen can’t possibly hunt us. Or one of us. At least not. It’s a hunt, you go after animals and… This can’t be right.”

  “No animals for hunting here. No foxes, no deer. Just us. Us fae.” He gave a half shrug, his bony shoulders sharp under his clothes. “The Pale Queen desires what she desires. She does what she does. And we fae make better game, she says.”

  “But the Pale Queen can’t–”

  “Not about her. Hunt will happen. I mean to say is.” He cleared his throat, shuffling on his feet. His voice strained as though about to break, but there was a steely steadiness under it. “I-I’ve been nothing but questions. Since baptism. I knew but I did not know. I saw but I did not see. And all was doubt.” He swallowed. “But I have no doubt now. I am sure. Surer than sure. It is what I need to do.”

  “But, Mr Benjamin, we can’t possibly allow…”

  “Please, Miss Helstone. Allow me the martyr’s crown.” His gnarled brown hands shook, clutching his straw hat. “I have seen it. I have read the book. Christ has spoken, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

  “Well, yes, but–” What he had told me barely sank in. I was still reeling in shock from the very idea of Mab hunting and killing Mr Benjamin.

  “He turned to man who died at his side. Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. Come with me to chapel. You read to me before I die and we sing together?”

  I swallowed, uncertain as to what to say. The gnome’s resolution was obvious even as he vigorously rubbed his face with my handkerchief, staining it grey.

  “Allow me this,” he said. “It is written. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on his behalf. I remember this. I have seen it myself. I have seen the purchase of God’s gaze upon us for a far greater price.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  “But no path can do this. No other path.” His voice was somewhere between his usual accent and that Oxford Voice he liked so much to assume. “Allow me the martyr’s crown. With it you can buy Arcadia. Open the gates. Walk the paths. There will be more paths, more paths than walking. And the Reverend can ride into Sundry, into Anchor, into Pivot. Allow me this. So I can allow him that.”

  I remained silent for a moment, studying his expression. His large, wide eyes were never more expressive and they were hard as flint. I remembered the fear in his face when he first spoke of the Pale Queen and how none of that was upon him now.

  He was entirely resolved upon this sacrifice.

  And finally, I said: “It is not for me to allow, Mr Benjamin. Your life is not mine nor my brother’s to spend. But I will go with you to the chapel.”

  His hand was soft as turned soil after the rain. His large hand enveloped mine as I took it and I heard him murmur under his breath, “Price is paid, fair is fair.”

  Chapter 25

  The Hounds at the Hunt

  Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

  But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

  Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

  And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

  They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

  Matthew 22:15-22

  We walked in silence. The castle was teeming with the Pale Queen’s guests and members of her retinue, so conversation would have been likely inconvenient. I was still floundering at the very idea and I could not bring myself to be as resigned as Benjamin was to his fate. My mind was still grasping at ways to save him, to prevent the Queen from her plan.

  And still it gnawed at me, the sight of all the fae as mundane animals at the ball. Were all their strange appearances but deception? Were they all simple beasts under all that illusion and if so did they also have the souls and nature of beasts?

  Yet were not beasts named by Adam and placed under his dominion?

  Does the hand that held mine now belong to a creature with a soul like mine or was he an unthinking beast? Was the humanity I saw in Benjamin’s eyes an illusion? And if he had a soul, how would it be measured? Would it be weighed alongside mine, or were they exempt from Eve’s Edenic sins? Surely they did not and could not bear her crimes?

  Noticing me staring at him, Mr Benjamin smiled bravely at me and squeezed tight my hand. It was like finding pebbles under sun-warmed dirt.

  Would I see him again in paradise?

  We pushed open the doors of the chapel, which was empty of my brother.

  But for a solitary, guttering candle on the altar, the chapel was without illumination. The frost on the windows was thick and blocked them dark, and without them this place was stark and sombre. I never thought I would long for ostentation and ornament, but in this moment there was an ugliness to the chapel I found unbearable.

  There was a dim halo of light around the candle, casting long, faint shadows across the chapel. These phantoms were of little comfort. The cold and empty pews stared at us as we walked down the nave.

  I found a taper and lit it from the guttering candle. From there I spread the flame to each branch of the standing candelabras until the chapel was ablaze with light.

  Benjamin was kneeling, and I knelt with him.

  I had neither his calm nor his courage.

  “Would you read to me?”

  I nodded and opened my Bible. I thumbed through the columned pages uncertain what I should choose. For all the wear upon my well-read Bible, for all the times I had turned to it for strength, I had not thought I would need to read to a creature condemned.

  “It has been decreed, I will die. So it remains: what will you buy?” he sang to himself.

  “Benjamin…” I said, my voice trembling. I had first stepped foot upon Arcadian soil but two months ago and I had not thought it would lead to this. I had read reports of missionaries in other lands and I knew of their dangers, their martyrdom, and yet that knowledge gave me no insight. Was this how they felt when they bravely faced their doom? Did they also feel this helpless, watching their own fall to plague and sword?

  “If Christ can ransom the world, perhaps I can buy back my own kind,” he said. “I’ve been to the Markets. Everything has a price.”

  “It is a very high price.”

  “It is that way in stories, and I will be one. Fae are nothing but stories, after all.” He smiled as though at his own joke. “Tell me the story I will be part of. The story of our sin and our salvation.”

  I was shaking, quite visibly I feared, but Mr Benjamin said nothing. I wanted to ask him then what sin lurked in the past of the fae, or if they did indeed share the transgressions of Eve.

  One passage was as good as any other, so I read: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time…”

  My voice filled the chapel. For all that it seemed to bring the gnome comfort, it only made me feel more alone.

  The many questions that Mr Benjamin had plagued me with through my time here did not fall away. I felt as though they should, that in the face of life and death, in the face of his martyrdom, these questions should no longer matter. I felt as though his conviction should renew my own faith and that for all the petty, pedantic questions of theology, I should know what is truly true.


  And yet I could not. The mysteries and questions only further hounded my mind, their weight almost unbearable in the cold light of the chapel. I could not make sense of what was and was not sin. The ransom paid by the blood of Christ was for the sin of Eve, after all.

  I could read so clearly upon the face of Mr Benjamin the fervour with which he believed. He no longer saw himself as stony ground. He had been tested and he had not been found wanting.

  But I?

  I read with all the passion I had. The words washed over me to the point of meaninglessness. They gave my companion succour as I saw his eyes again tear up and, thumbing my now grubby handkerchief, he thanked me.

  Together, we followed the footsteps of Christ from his entering of Jerusalem to the moment of his execution. The name of this castle, Gethsemane, took on new meaning.

  The windows darkened, and I knew twilight was drawing near. Laon needed to be here, to speak to his single parishioner before Mr Benjamin’s death at the hands of the Queen they both so obeyed.

  Coming to the end of a chapter, I said, “I should go look for my brother.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr Benjamin, without taking his eyes off the altar.

  “You are staying here?”

  “As long as I can,” he said. “The hunt will begin soon.”

  Leaving Mr Benjamin to pray, I went to find Laon.

  Gethsemane was bustling with activity. The preparation for the Pale Queen’s hunt was well underway. Sand-skinned men with unblinking eyes of glass were dressed in hunting pinks, herding the packs of hounds.

  Saddled steeds – for they were not all horses – pawed impatiently in the courtyard and their hooves clattered like hail against glass windows. Scaly beasts hissed at me, long tongues whipping back and forth. Wings beat against each of their handlers, feathers and fire and scale thumping alike. Manes were tossed and from sulphurous nostrils were breathed out plumes of glittering black dust.

  I tried my brother’s rooms, which were empty, and his bed was untouched. I remembered the sight of Laon’s sheets on Mab’s bed and I thought of that dream I had banished with the willow and the brook and the whispers. I thought of the faded green ribbons that I had once worn in my hair tangled up in their embrace and that knot in my chest ached.

  The ballroom and the long gallery were both still a mess from the night before, all fallen leaves and heaps of melting snow, feathers and fur, a tracery of burn marks across the ceiling.

  “Miss Helstone!” came a remarkably human voice. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  It was Mr Coppelius Warner, the watchmaker from the ball. He wore a bright red riding jacket with black lapels and he held a black whip in his hand.

  “Do you not look forward to the chase, Miss Helstone?” he said with great exuberance. His eyes dropped to regard my worn travelling dress, his gaze as uncomfortable as the crawl of ants. “Though I am rather surprised the Queen has not granted you more appropriate garb. You were ravishing at the Masquerade.”

  I bit back the remark that the Queen’s gifts were not to be trusted and smiled. “I should go, Mr Warner.”

  “But I will see you at the hunt?”

  “Of course.”

  When I refused his handshake, he gave a deep, flamboyant bow that he undoubtedly intended to be flirtatious.

  It was only as I walked off that I thought to ask him. Half turning, I said, “Have you seen my brother?”

  “Yes, I do believe I saw him in the stables.”

  The stables reeked of sulphur.

  My eyes stung as I peered inside. It was wreathed in fumes. Embers smouldered with wisps of grey smoke. Fetid, sulphurous heaps were pushed against the walls.

  It was largely abandoned, the fae beasts having all been saddled and led to the courtyard. The shutters were mostly shut, casting the long stall-lined corridor in shadow. Many of the stalls were barred, like cages, striping what little light there was.

  Opening my mouth, I tasted sulphur and salt and smoke.

  “Laon?” I ventured.

  I heard a sound from deeper within, past the many stalls. Black, glittering coal was piled in the corners and sodden hay was strewn about the floor. I picked my way through carefully.

  “I’m locking up Diogenes,” came my brother’s voice from the darkness. I heard a whimper from one of the stalls and a frantic scratching. “There’s no reason it needs to join in with this madness.”

  “Laon–”

  “And you,” he said. “You need to leave. Last night… last night cannot happen again.”

  “I’m not here about that,” I said, coldly. “I’m here about Benjamin.”

  “What?” I could hear the confusion in his voice. He paused in his saddling of the red horse before him. It tossed its flame-like mane.

  “The Pale Queen is going to kill our first convert,” I said. I tried to speak with Mr Benjamin’s steely resolve, but I could not. “She will hunt him like a beast and he will be a martyr to the great work.”

  “W-what are you saying?” He tightened the girth of the saddle, trying not to meet my eye.

  “She’s going to kill Benjamin. That is what all your plans have come to.”

  He laughed, an acrid sound that pained me to hear. It was hollow and bitter. His steed whinnied. “What do you want me to do about it?” He hurled the words with reverberating force, his spittle visible in the streaming sunlight. “Do you expect me to ride in and save him? Do you really think I have that power?”

  Perhaps it was simply Mr Benjamin’s resolve and how he saw it all as an inevitability, but my time in the chapel with him had cemented the same sense of inevitability in me. My mind no longer fumbled for ways to save him, no longer assembled half-baked plans that began and ended with mindless fleeing.

  And much like how I could not outrun my shame at the ball, we could not outrun the will of Mab.

  “No,” I said, quite quietly. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

  Laon buried his face in his hand and then raked back his beautiful hair. I saw now it was not callousness that had caused him to hide here but a profound helplessness. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “There are people who say Arcadia pays a tithe to hell. We still don’t know how true that is.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing, Laon. We failed him. I didn’t think we could, but we did and…” I said. My eyes were streaming, from sulphur, from anger. “There must be more we can do. Can we not ask her for a boon or a wish or a favour? Is that not how fae work?”

  “I don’t think–”

  “Laon, we must. Benjamin, he said something. He said fae are stories. Perhaps we can trick them somehow…”

  “Cathy…”

  “But Benjamin has made his choice. He wants this. He deems the redemption of all Arcadia to be worth his life. He calls it a price he must pay to ransom their souls. How can I tell him otherwise? How can I deny him the martyrdom he wants?”

  “You are angry at me.”

  “Yes!”

  “I can’t fight the Pale Queen.”

  “I am not angry about that. I am angry that you were not there to pray with him, to sing with him, to hear his last words. He prays now, alone, because you were not there.”

  “Cathy!”

  “You should go to him.” I shook my head, trying to clear my clouded thoughts. Memories and dreams tumbled together, and my righteous anger was not enough to keep it all at bay. The sight of my own helpless brother disarmed me. I reached out a comforting hand to him, laying it on his shoulder. “He needs you.”

  He leaned into my touch and I could see his demeanour soften before he pulled away. “I will, but last night…” He did not meet my eyes. “We can’t continue this way. I can’t… You need to go.”

  “Laon, please. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “No, but it does… Last night.” He swallowed. He was shaking, his gaze turned from me. “I know other things se
em more important and I know I said two weeks, but I cannot. Not after last night. I do not – I cannot – trust myself around you.”

  “Laon, please, I’m not so angry at you,” I said. “And you can’t do this alone. You need me here.”

  “You don’t understand, Cathy…”

  “If not me, then someone, a wife, Miss Davenport.” My voice was hollow even to my own ears; I did not want him to marry. To utter the words twisted the knotted pain in my chest, the knot I did not want to give a name to. I remembered feeling it every time he flirted with another woman, every time the ladies at church would flutter by and giggle at the prospect of an attachment. I had carried it within myself for so long, heavy as a stone. For the first time, I felt the true weight of it, across my shoulders and tight around my chest. I felt a spinning sense of unbalance even as that weight and pain anchored me. “It doesn’t matter. You need someone and it should be me. You should not be alone here.”

  “I want you here. More than anything.”

  “Then why are you sending me away?” I threw back at him.

  “Because you can’t stay here.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “You are why I left England. It was an exile. Self-imposed, perhaps, but very real. I needed to. I thought if I was here, then it wouldn’t matter. I thought I could outrun my own sin. If only I could run fast enough, far enough.” Crumpled over, I had never seen my proud, beautiful brother look as defeated. That weariness he had about his shoulders seemed all the more acute. He slammed his fist against the wooden stable door; it rattled against its hinges. “It was stupid. I could not run far enough.”

  “Laon…” I stood over him, that knot in my heart aching beyond words.

  “And you came,” he said, an edge of dark laughter to his voice. It did not bubble over into laughter, but he shook his head, dark curls falling into his eyes. “You stupid, brave woman. You came for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… I mean…” he hesitated. Our eyes met, and my brother regarded me with a wild, shadowed look. The ferocity and passion that had always been simmering beneath his facade had been brought to the fore. And it was not simply savagery, nor hunger, nor wit.