I could, as Windeyer taunts, marry: there are several suitors, all rich and corpulent and well-connected. They would keep me in a sugar-spun web of boredom, leave me to learn to embroider and raise round, haughty children, the boys replicas of their father, and the girls tiny versions of a caged mother slowly going mad.
‘Sirens’ bones,’ he said to me and might well have been a siren himself (he carries their blood, though diluted by years and generations). ‘Remember mine? Think of what pure Sirens’ bones will fetch.’
When my father ordered Windeyer clipped, he had the great black wings nailed to the main mast of the North Star. They stayed there until at last the feathers and flesh fell away and left glorious bright bones that clattered to the deck and proceeded to sing. Father had them bundled up and sold as soon as we made port. With the proceeds he bought another ship.
‘Why would the Sirens give up their bones to us, Windeyer?’ I asked.
‘We only need one set—we don’t even need a full set. We don’t need to ask. The bones will be lying about.’
‘How do you know?
‘They build wooden towers for their dead. They leave the bodies to rot. The towers fall and the bones litter the island. I read it in Murcianus.’
‘No one is allowed on the island.’
‘Pilgrims are. Navigators are. My kind are welcome.’ His eyes darkened and I couldn’t quite divine if he was bitter or pleased.
And I agreed, at last, even though I knew he had told me truth with a lie rolled up tightly inside.
***
The Sirens are not simply eaters of flesh. They guard the gates to flight and to death. They are the deal makers of the gods. They grant wishes and collect the price of them, for both men and Navigators.
Sirens’ bones. Iridescent. They are sold powdered to improve longevity. Musicians seek them as beguiling flutes. A house built with Sirens’ bones in the foundations will remain firm and strong long after other buildings have crumbled, and the family living therein will have unbridled prosperity. A woman wearing jewellery made of this substance will have any man she desires and will keep his attentions so long as she keeps the trinket. Shaped into weapons, they are the surest, most deadly means of dispatching an enemy. A ship with a compass of Siren bone will surely return safely to its harbour.
There was nothing and no one more magnificent than Windeyer, with his long black hair and his great black wings, striding through the streets when we docked. He was treated as my father’s son. Other captains warned Balthazar that he was inviting disaster by refusing to clip the boy, but he scoffed.
Then there came a woman, Gwenllian. No more than a port-whore, no better than Windeyer’s mother had been; but lovely and with a silken tongue and heated kisses. A woman so lovely that she caught the eye of a great lord and he took her away. She stoked a fire in Windeyer and brought all his wildness to the surface. He was not trying to flee. He was merely trying to find her.
I told.
I didn’t know what my father would do. I didn’t know what a man would do to someone he loved. I didn’t know how his rage would kindle, how in his fear of betrayal he would do something unthinkable. That he would take from Windeyer the most precious thing he had.
I was a child still, though cusping thirteen. I did not want Windeyer to leave, and so I told my father where he might find him. Even though I did not know what would happen, I told. I wanted him to stay and I told.
And some days he has said, ‘You did not know.’
But the simple fact is that I told.
And in telling, I took the very thing that made his life wonderful. Guilt and love are my constant companions. So even when I knew he lied, I pretended I did not know.
In the darkness of the small cabin, I lie half in sleep, half awake. I feel his hand against the small of my back, sad and familiar. His tongue licking at the sweat on my skin, his lips salty and firm on mine; I rise to meet him, take him inside me.
I believed him because I wanted to; because there was longing and love and remorse and that most destructive thing of all: hope. Hope of forgiveness, hope of redemption, hope that we might be saved.
‘I loved you,’ he says. I’m surprised to find I still have tears left. He laps them from my face as if they are something worth stealing.
***
Above the island fly bright creatures too large to be birds. Their wings flash in the sun. Windeyer stands beside me, taut as a bowline. In the distance, I can spy the towers, built along the cliff tops, near the very edge.
‘See that path? We go that way.’
The towers are made of something that shimmers. Not wood. Bone, I realise. Sirens’ bones.
‘Come on,’ he says and makes his way to unhitch the rowboat.
***
They are all tall, long limbed. All women. They are only black or white, there are no other variations in their colouring of hair, eyes, skin. They are naked and they shine; their only feathers are on their wings, which are, without exception, so beautiful I could cry.
We have reached the tops of the cliffs and wandered through crowds of these things. We tread on sacred ground. These towers do not fall. The winds sing through them, howl around the bone frames and make a song that is terrible and sad and lonely. There are no bones gathered at the base. There is nothing to harvest and these creatures will not let us take anything from here. And Windeyer knew this. And I knew it too.
We stand like pilgrims, like beggars.
They recognise him—like calls to like. The Sirens can scent their own blood in his. Not so mine. One, the tallest of them, stands near the very edge of the cliff and we approach her. I can hear the crash of the sea below.
‘Your wish?’ she asks, flashing Windeyer the whitest of teeth from her ebony face.
‘I want my wings back,’ he says and his longing stabs at me. She grins, nods.
‘Your sacrifice?’ she replies. Her lips and tongue tangle around the word. She points a long slim finger at me, tipped with a diamond talon. ‘What is this one to you?’
He struggles, I’ll give him that. He struggles to say nothing; to say something.
I smile and save him the trouble. I can give him back the one thing that was taken from him. When he has that once more I will no longer have him; but I have held him for too long.
No last words between us.
I take a pace forward, then another, and another until the ground beneath me is uncertain, nothing but scree between me and air. I turn around, hold out my arms and take the final step. The wind rushes past; the smell of the sea is stronger and stronger as I fall.
Above me comes the dark cruciform of Windeyer, launching himself into the sky and blotting out the sun. At first there is simply the shape of a man, his arms spread wide, then there is the sound of tearing, of stretching, of great wings unfurling and beating against the air.
Soon, the water will be hard beneath me.
THE ANGEL WOOD
WE WAKE only when a sudden stop almost jerks us from the seat. Now, with the plague-ridden city just a memory, the air is so fresh it creeps up our nostrils and makes us sneeze at its strangeness.
Jeremy-Charles lies quiet in my arms while Milly and Tildy snuggle, one either side of me. Outside, Mother's voice is tense as she says she carries only victims. A man answers that she lies—who would bother to transport the dying so far from Breakwater? I bid my siblings be silent, and peek through the gap between the door frame and the curtains that cover the windows.
Two men sit astride fairly fine horses—surely stolen—their faces wrapped in scarves, and pistols casually aimed at my mother. I don’t think they've realised that she is a woman, tall as she is, dressed in Father's clothes, her voice deep. Her red mane is caught up under a hat.
One of them ambles his mount toward the carriage. I slide one of the guns from under my cloak and hold it in both hands, trying to steady it. When the door opens, the highwayman’s eyes widen in the moment before I fire and his face turns to red. A second
shot, then a third, rings out and I fall from the conveyance. Behind me, the children scream.
The other man lies on the ground, victim to the weapon Mother carries. The third shot seems to have gone astray.
My siblings continue to howl until Mother yells at them to be quiet. As she has never raised her voice to any of us before, the shock has the desired effect.
‘Tie their horses to the back of the carriage, Henrietta. Hurry up about it.’
I do as bid with shaking hands. As I move to climb back in, my stomach heaves. The grass is soft when I fall and vomit as if my innards are trying to leave my body. Mother’s palms are cool on my forehead as she holds my hair back and strokes my face.
‘Is Henri sick, Mama?’ Tildy’s voice trembles. Mother shakes her head, blue eyes warm and pitying.
‘No, Henri is not ill. She’s just upset. Stay in the carriage, Tildy.’ She helps me up, lowering her voice. ‘First things are always hardest, Henri. It will be easier next time.’
She bundles me in and shuts the door, hard. We rock under her weight as she climbs back into place. The horses start forward and I return to sleep, curled around Jeremy-Charles, my sisters watching me cautiously from the opposite seat. My dreams are disturbed, patterned with shades of crimson.
***
The house in the Angel Wood seems to stretch forever back into the trees.
It had been an abandoned castle when my mother’s family first came here, but succeeding generations added to it without much thought for aesthetics. It is now a hybrid thing, with a tower of black stone, a white and brown E-shaped house sitting around it, and a variety of outbuildings that really belonged nowhere else. The outer walls are now tumbledown. The ancient green forest, Mother said, simply kept encroaching—whenever it was cleared away, it grew back as if nothing had happened, as if human will and action counted for naught.
Like puppies shut away for too long, we children tumble out into the late afternoon. My feet touch the earth and the ground seems to hum in welcome, a tremor passing through me. My blood dances in response, washing away the red of my dreams and any lingering distress. I belong here—I don’t know how I know this, but it comes to me with an undeniable certainty. This is my home and I will be welcome.
Jeremy-Charles takes faltering steps when I set him on his feet and the twins run almost to the entrance of the house. Mother swings down wearily from the driver’s seat, pulling hat from head, hair hanging stiff with a paste of sweat and road dust.
The door opens and what appears to be the oldest woman in the world strides out. She does not seem a witch, does not look malicious, merely more aged than anyone I have ever seen. Her skin is tanned and her hair such a white that it shines like mother-of-pearl. She is quite tall, not at all stooped, and she gives Mother a weary look.
‘Are you home, then? With all these?’ She jerks her chin toward us, her eyes catching the sun and flashing amber. I wonder who she is to speak to my mother so; none of our servants would ever have even considered a word out of place. ‘Where’s their father?’
I notice that she does not say your husband. Mother stoops to collect Jeremy-Charles, gasping as she straightens; I fear she is very tired. She faces the old woman, somewhat subdued.
‘Dead of the plague.’
‘And you thought to bring the contagion here?’ But she does not seem in the least bit fearful. I think she is afraid of nothing.
‘We are none of us sick, Agnes. I would not have come otherwise, but I needed to get the children away. Where are my uncles?’ She looks beyond her adversary, as if expecting further welcomers.
‘Fenelon, George, and James are all dead. Old age, you see, and we’ve no young blood to continue on. We are much reduced, Susannah.’ She looks at us for a long moment, sighs and steps aside. ‘Come along. There’s plenty of room for you all.’
I am surprised by the amount of light inside; there are many windows, an expensive luxury at odds with the apparent shabbiness. Through the glass I can see the Wood; things flit from trunk to trunk in the shadows. Birds? Squirrels? I wonder if the house in the Angel Wood was like this when my mother left or if it suffered for her leaving.
‘Do your offspring have names, Susannah?’
‘This is Henrietta—Henri. These are Millicent and Mathilda. The boy is Jeremy-Charles.’
‘How old are you, Henri?’ She addresses me directly.
‘Sixteen, madam.’ She is probably not a servant—or if she is, she is one of that strange breed who have no care for place or manners, and are forgiven by some grace.
‘I’ll see to the horses,’ Susannah says—so much more Susannah than Mother now.
‘I will see to the children,’ Agnes answers, as if we, too, are animals to be fed and watered.
I take my brother from Susannah and she slips from the room. Jeremy-Charles insists on going to the old woman’s arms and I let him rather than risk screams. We tramp along to a large kitchen where a hot stew waits, and soft cheese and slabs of bread are put out for us. We eat in silence until my curiosity gets the better of me.
‘Who are you?’
‘Agnes Woodville. I’m your grandmother.’ She pours milk for the girls and they happily slurp it as if they’ve been ill-bred. ‘Your mother hasn’t told you about me?’
I shake my head. ‘I did not know she had any family until Father died and she said we would come here. She has never mentioned you before.’
‘No, I don’t suppose she would.’ Jeremy-Charles snuggles close to her as she feeds him bits of cheese. ‘She ran away from us. Married your father instead of staying here to do her duty. She—’
‘Enough, Mother. Enough poison in my daughter’s ear.’ My mother stands in the doorway, pale and shaking.
‘When is truth poison, Susannah?’ Agnes asks. ‘If you stay they will know soon enough.’
‘For now, leave them be.’ Mother strokes my hair, red like hers. ‘Eat up, then we’ll find some bedrooms.’
Susannah sways, weary, and strangely bloodless. When she falls, her cloak opens to show a bright red stain on her white shirt.
***
I help carry Susannah upstairs. She lies, pale as her pillows, while Agnes washes the wound. When my grandmother remembers I am still there, she sends me out. I am to choose rooms for us, any that do not seem too full of dust, and put the children to bed. We will speak later.
There is an old nursery, with a huge bed and a cradle intricately carved and dark with age. Tildy and Milly think their new bed is a boat for sailing on the seas of sleep. I do not contradict them and bundle Jeremy-Charles into the crib where, presumably, generations of my mother’s family dreamt their earliest dreams.
Across the hall I choose a bedchamber with a four-poster hung about with green drapes and curtains. I am irrationally pleased to have this to myself. In the city, I shared with the twins and, much though I love my sisters, I am thoroughly sick of them stealing my ribbons, playing with my dresses, and leaving my books in a mess. The sturdy lock on the door brings a smile to my face as I turn the key, even though at this point I have no treasures to hide.
***
‘We were not always like this, Henri.’ Agnes leans back in her chair and sips at the mulled wine. Although it is spring, the air still has enough of a chill to warrant a fire in the evening. We sit in one of the parlours. Another day has passed with Susannah sleeping, her breath shallow and her brow fevered. The children once more are abed after a day of exploring the house like persistent mice, finding all the crannies of their new home.
I am tired and a little drunk from the heated beverage I have been allowed—Agnes does not watch as a parent might. There is a strange familiarity between us, two women who have never met but are joined by blood. I do not find myself disbelieving her, or distrusting her as I would a stranger.
‘How did you get so poor?’ I ask, rudely but without spite—there is none of the wealth of my own first sixteen years evident here. There are no servants. The only horses in the stable
are those we brought with us. The chickens in the yard are so thin they look like feather dusters; the cows bags of bones wrapped in leather, empty dugs hanging sadly from their bellies. The poverty seems to go beyond a mere lack of money; it’s a lack of vital force. It is hard to believe my mother came from this place.
‘We—this family—have been here over five hundred years. This land, this forest have been here even longer. We became part of it, Henri, because we learned how to best serve the Wood. In return we prospered; we were one of the richest families around almost beyond memory. But we had to fulfil our part of the bargain.’ She pauses to take another drink, sighs.
‘And we did not? For some reason, we did not.’
‘It was your mother’s duty, your mother’s burden, one that has been carried by the oldest daughter for these many, many years. An obligation that has ensured the health and wealth of the Woodvilles for time on time.’ Her voice chips on sadness, fractures, then strengthens. ‘Your mother chose otherwise. She left with your father and there was no one to take her place. No new blood to replace the old.’
I stare into the fire, watching the yellow and orange flames battle, writhing one over the other. I want to sleep, to be away from this conversation and the blame it lays at Susannah’s door. But I also want to know.
‘Why did she run?’ I ask.
Agnes shrugs. ‘She was my only daughter. I spoilt her, assuming she would go willingly.’ She raises an arthritic hand to her thick white hair and I am surprised by this sign of human weakness. ‘In giving way to her all her life, I did not teach her to be dutiful.’
‘And what burden, Grandmother? What burden did she refuse?’ My voice falters even as I ask and she is free to pretend she has not heard. Agnes rises and touches my hair, as if comparing it to hers.
Sourdough and Other Stories Page 7