Sourdough and Other Stories

by Angela Slatter

  ‘Listen out for Magdalene? I’m going for a walk.’

  ‘Bring her in here?’

  ‘Only if she wakes.’

  ‘Cost you half a gold coin.’ She grins wickedly.

  ‘I’d say I’m in credit.’

  I hear her low laughter as I close the door. My boots I carry downstairs lest I disturb the others. Grammy Sykes is sitting by the fire, asleep, Fenric at her feet. Fra has gone to bed, leaving her to doze. He used to wake her up but sometimes she has fearful dreams and one night she almost took his right eye out, thinking he was one of the things that hunted her in sleep.

  ‘Cold to be going outside, Theodora,’ she rasps, surprising me and Fenric, who growls grumpily, rolls over, farts, and goes back to sleep.

  ‘Got the wanders, Grammy, itchy feet, bed doesn’t feel right.’ I sit next to her, basking in the warmth of the fire, trying to store up its heat as I put on my boots. ‘Livilla is listening for Magdalene.’

  ‘Watch yourself on the streets. Not just children that go missing.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. We’re not in the worst parts, Grammy, I can handle myself.’ I lift the knife from the pocket of my jacket, its curved silver length gleaming.

  She nods. ‘Beware all the same. There’s a little girl needs you to come back.’

  I kiss the salt and pepper hair peeking out from under her white cap. ‘I promise.’

  The cold steals the breath from my lungs, the winter nights far worse than the days, when we get sunshine to take off the chill. I walk up the middle of the street, trusting that I will see or hear anyone moving in the shadows. I make my way quickly along the cobbles, accompanied by the sound of my own footsteps, the occasional feline yowl, the barking of a stray dog, the rumbling anger of households in turmoil. I feel the houses reaching up, towering over me. I can see under entryways through to the courtyards at the heart of each block, all with a well or a fountain, some with dark gardens and sculptures, some as bare as a newborn.

  Soon the cathedral is in front of me, crouching like one of the gargoyles that embroider its roof. The doors are open, and lights burn inside although it is well after midnight. The Archbishop likes his house of worship to be open at all hours; and he trusts that the wolf-hounds will discourage any vandalism. I hold my hand out to the closest one. A shiver passes through me as it pushes its wet, ghostly nose against my palm, and whimpers for a pat I cannot give. I call it sweet and handsome and it settles back to its post. I walk through the great double doors.

  Up the aisle, then to the left of the enormous altar, into the small Chapel of the Thirteenth Apostle hidden by a rich tapestry depicting the growth of Saint Radagund’s very fine beard. Behind the elaborately carved prie-dieu my fingers find the catches carved into its underside and pull. Stone scrapes across stone and a hole appears in the floor at my feet, flagstones whirling aside like a child’s puzzle. I take a torch from the wall. The steps are familiar under my boots; the skeletons sleeping in the wall niches feel like old friends.

  This passage leads into the palace, into the rooms I once called my own, before my sister took my place. Specifically, into the fountain room, my fountain room. A misleading name, really, as it’s actually a bathroom, a marvel of white and blue marble, gold and silver tiles, and crystal and nacre inlays. The roof is made of a continuous sheet of rock crystal, so it seems open to the sky; it’s especially beautiful at night. My boots make a lonely noise as the steps begin to rise, and so I go on tiptoe. I open the hidden door and step out from behind a screen of gold, engraved with a fairytale pattern: Hansie and Greta and their adventure in the cottage made of sugar.

  My footsteps sound hollow in this place where once I used to tread so confidently. There are fountains to decorate each corner, cushioned couches and benches, a small wooden hut for steaming oneself, hot and cold plunge baths, and a big swimming pool right in the centre of the room; I stop at its shallow end. The water is dark in spite of the moonlight, almost dirty, thick as blood or treacle. I can see ripples, though, sluggishly coming toward me. I suck in a sharp breath and retreat, back to the shelter of the screen, peering out through the tiny pinpricks in the metal.

  It heaves from the depths and shambles up the pool steps to stand in the milky-white moonlight. I can see it clearly: tall but hunched and twisted, straggly black hair, hooked nose, wrinkled skin, long fingers and teeth razor-sharp, empty dugs half-way down its chest and a great shaggy pubic thatch at the junction of its thighs.

  A troll-wife come out of the forest and into the city.

  It sniffs the air, treads toward my hiding place with deliberate paces. I don’t want to take my eyes from it, but feel my bladder threaten to fail me. At last I look away and slam myself through the doorway; the panel clicks shut behind me with barely a whisper.

  I rest my forehead against the cool stone, try to steady my trembling legs. On the other side I can hear cold, hungry breathing, sense uncertainty; sometimes they have trouble knowing how fresh a scent is but they have been known to follow an old one for days, to finally track a meal down, some unwary traveller who thought himself safely home.

  There’s a low growl that becomes a laugh: knowing and ugly. I turn tail and run.

  ***

  ‘Mama, you’re hurting me!’ I’ve clung to my daughter so tightly that I’ve woken her. Morning light trickles in, grey and grim.

  ‘Sorry, my love.’ I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, at the intricacies of the thatch-work that keeps us dry and safe from the weather but nothing more sinister. Magdalene falls back into a doze.

  Downstairs, Faideau still snores in his corner; Fra must have given up trying to wake him and send him home. I pour out a measure of mulberry brandy and wave it in front of his nose, a treat. The smell wakes him as surely as frizzling bacon wakes Fenric and makes him dance on his hind legs.

  ‘Breakfast?’ I offer.

  Red-eyed, he takes the pewter mug and tosses back its contents without a pause. I wince on his behalf but he seems to neither need, nor notice, my sympathy. He lets loose an eye-watering belch and I try to wave the fumes away, but the stench is stubborn.

  ‘I swear your breath comes straight from Satan’s arse, Faideau.’

  ‘Language, your Majesty.’ He waggles a finger.

  ‘You’ll hear worse soon if you don’t drop that.’ I tap the back of his hand to get his attention. A map is tattooed there. ‘Faideau, you said yesterday that children were going missing.’

  He nods, sombre, if not sober, as a judge. ‘Six months or a peck more. From all the squares—but mostly from the poorer ones—families as don’t have much food and too many small mouths lining up for it. Sometimes they mind and report to Prycke’s Peelers, sometimes they don’t.’

  ‘Any children from around here?’

  ‘Not yet. Mind the inn’s childer, Theodora.’

  I tip another generous slug of brandy into his mug and am rewarded with a smile. ‘Keep an ear to the ground, Faideau?’

  He nods, asks: ‘Do you know anything, Theodora? Only you look afraid this morn and you never looked afraid the whole time I knowed you.’

  ‘I . . . I think there . . . no, Faideau.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t know anything.’ I turn toward the kitchen to begin the day’s breakfast, look back to him. ‘Faideau? Are you really a poet?’

  His index finger rises and taps at the side of his nose. ‘Poets are folk what can’t write full sentences,’ he says.

  ***

  ‘After this, madam, just one more payment,’ says the stocky man, handing me a scrappy receipt. ‘The house is in good repair, and the estate around it. You can hire labour from the village.’

  ‘No need for that,’ I tell him, tucking the scrap into the deep pocket of my skirt. In return I give him a pouch heavy with gold coins, the third such in the past few months.

  ‘Thank you, madam.’ He hesitates. ‘I must say I had no idea your particular line of work was so lucrative.’

  ‘It’s amazing how much men wi
ll pay.’ True, but also true is the fact that I have gradually sold off the gems and jewels I had sewed into the stomach of Magdalene’s favourite toy fox when I sensed trouble brewing in the Palace. And of course I have other means of funding our escape.

  ‘One more payment, madam,’ he repeats. ‘May I ask when . . . ?’

  ‘Soonest, Mr Spittleshanks, soonest.’ I stand, take a look around his study as I always do. ‘Your business is doing well, sir. I see another volume of Murcianus’ treatise on folk tales.’

  He beams that I’ve noticed. Even a fallen princess is a princess. ‘Perhaps madam would like to borrow something to pass the time?’

  I laugh. ‘What a kind offer, but I have plenty to occupy my time, Mr Spittleshanks.’ He reddens and I add, not unkindly: ‘Perhaps soon, sir, when my life . . . changes.’

  We part on good terms. I go to his house for our transactions, entering by the back garden—I prefer no one to know my affairs, there might be questions—and we deal only about the house I am buying. None of my usual ‘commerce’ gets done with him. If I thought it would decrease the cost of the house I would have no compunction, but Mr Spittleshanks is a canny businessman, with a plump, comfortable wife. I suspect he fears anything more—energetic—with me might stop his heart and he would certainly not think bed-sports worth a discount on a property.

  I pass through the market at Busynothings Alley and buy the fruit and vegetables Grammy asked for, and a loaf of fancy bread shaped like a fine shoe to amuse Kitty and the girls. Some brittle sugar candy for the children takes care of the last of the pennies in my pockets, but there is always more can be earned so it bothers me not. The sunlight makes me feel happy, safe; I can almost forget last night.

  I don’t go through the front door into the main bar, but pass under the archway into the courtyard where Fra’s two superannuated black horses stand with their heads over the half-doors of their stalls, hoping for a pat. I pull two carrots from the string bag and offer them up to eager teeth and tongues. I note that there are already fresh carrot and apple fragments on the cobbles. ‘Greedy.’

  In through the back door to the kitchen, where Rilka is waiting impatiently.

  ‘About time, Theodora.’

  I poke out my tongue, dump the groceries on the large scarred table. I put the candy there, too, and point. ‘That’s for the children.’

  She makes a rude noise. I pick up the bucket and go back out to the courtyard to draw water from the well in the centre. The bucket drops down faster than it should and there is a scrape and a splash. I draw it back up, and look into the water to make sure it looks clean enough. Distracted, I examine my reflection. Still beautiful, strangely unmarked by my recent trials, only the eyes are cold now, pain frozen and held there.

  Another face appears beside mine in the liquid mirror. I push away from the well, the pail falls and its contents splash all over my visitor’s fine shoes.

  My sister does not look pleased.

  Did she ever move so silently when we were small?

  ‘You’ve ruined my shoes, Theodora.’

  ‘They were probably mine in the first place, Polly,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve long since finished with your cast-offs.’ She reconsiders. ‘Well, except your husband. I’ll keep him a while longer.’

  ‘You’re welcome to him, sister.’ I circle away from her, uncertain why I am so unsettled, our recent history notwithstanding. Beyond the archway I can see the coach that brought her here, and two liveried footmen as well as the driver. I never used a coach in the city, I walked or rode my own horse. I smile in spite of myself; of course Polly would choose all the trappings, she thinks they make her legitimate.

  Around her neck is the diamond necklace Stellan gave me on our wedding night. Strictly speaking, it’s part of the crown jewels so it was never really mine, but it still sickens me to see it on her. Its entire length is set with diamonds and the central stone is a ruby the size of a bantam’s egg. I tear my eyes from it. I have not truly seen her since the day she ruined my life. Prosperity agrees with her. Her face is plump, pink; she looks well-fed.

  She takes a step to follow me.

  ‘No. You will not enter here,’ I tell her. ‘This space is mine.’

  She shrugs as if it is no matter. ‘I came to ask a favour of you, Theodora, and you are being so rude to me.’

  ‘Ask and be gone and consider yourself lucky when you leave.’

  She pouts. ‘The Archbishop.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘The Archbishop is an especial friend of yours.’

  I shrug.

  She stamps her foot, small and damp, and water squelches. ‘He will not grant your husband a divorce.’

  I laugh and laugh. I laugh until tears run from my eyes and my jaw aches. Her face, pale as her white silk dress, turns an angry red.

  ‘And so you can’t marry him!’ I say. ‘Ah, sister, you are just as much a whore as I.’

  ‘If you ask the Archbishop he will consent,’ she almost shouts, remembers to be ladylike and lowers her voice—I’m sure my husband has yet to see one of her rages. ‘If you ask it of him, then I will be able to marry.’

  ‘Oh, you idiot. You still think you can get your way as you did when we were children. Throw a tantrum and wait for everyone to give in.’ I breathe deeply. ‘Polly, there’s no one here to make me give in to you now. No mother or father begging for a quiet existence. Let what you’ve already taken from me be enough.’

  ‘I want to marry! I must marry! If I marry—’ she stops herself, reeling the secret back into her mouth.

  ‘What, Polly?’ I scoff, unable to fathom this need of hers. ‘You’ll live happily ever after?’

  Her blue eyes, paler than mine, narrow. ‘Do you like your daughter? Do you love little . . . Magdalene, is it?’

  As if summoned by her name, my daughter appears at the open kitchen door. She stops when she sees the snowy vision that is my sister, her little face uncertain.

  I stand so close to Polly that she can feel the heat of my breath on her face and the spittle that flies from my mouth. ‘If you so much as say my daughter’s name again, I will kill you, sister, have no doubt of that.’

  ‘You’ve made your choice then,’ she says flatly.

  ***

  The clients have gone but the inn’s residents are awake late this night, children included, so we sit by the hearth downstairs, drinking warm goats’ milk made sharper by Fra’s home-made whisky. The children have straight milk and some crumbly butter biscuits. We are a strange little family, but a family nonetheless.

  Kitty is singing: a soft, sweet song about a disappeared lover and his forever-faithful woman when the fire wavers and almost dies. The room goes cold and a frost creeps across the mirror behind the bar. We are silent, listening hard.

  There’s a snuffling at the front door. The handle rattles but it has already been locked. Fra throws the sturdy bar down across it. The wooden shutters on the windows have been long-since pulled-to to keep the heat in. Whatever is outside grunts angrily, shakes the door again. Fenric growls but does not move; he is afraid, his fur in such sharp peaks that he looks like a large hedgehog.

  ‘The back door!’ hisses Kitty and Rilka bolts through to the kitchen. We hear a thump as the bar slides into place there. The upper windows are out of reach.

  We all cower by the fireplace, clutching our children and each other. It’s quiet. I creep to the front door and put my eye to the small hole Fra drilled there so we can see who comes a-calling. A yellow eye stares back at me. I scream, scaring the thing as much as it scares me. It stumbles back and I can see all of it, and know it’s the troll-wife come to sniff me out. It turns and shambles back up the street, away from the inn. It was hoping for surprise, to find me alone in my bed, asleep and vulnerable, not safely locked up with friends. It won’t risk confrontation with a crowd.

  ‘It’s gone,’ I say, voice shaking. Magdalene climbs into my arms and I sit by the fire; it takes me a long time to ge
t warm.

  Grammy asks: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Troll-wife,’ I answer. ‘I saw it last night. It’s got my scent.’

  Grammy is quiet for a while. ‘Are you sure that’s all?’

  ‘What do you mean? What more can there be?’

  Fra hands me another cup of warm milk, but I can’t taste the milk for all the whisky he’s put in. Grammy begins to rock in her chair. Fenric sits close, careful his tail does not get caught under the rockers, but close enough that Grammy can bury her hand deep in his thick, syrup-coloured fur and soothe him.

  ‘I mean, Theodora, that everyone knows your story. A woodcutter father who took a runaway princess to wife. The girl who freed a lost prince from a wolf-trap and captured his heart so he brought her here on his gleaming white charger.’

  ‘It was black, actually,’ I say.

  ‘A happy princess, wife and mother you were until your sister arrived. We know your story, Theodora, but,’ she pauses, rocks hard, ‘what’s your sister’s story?’

  ‘That thing isn’t my sister,’ I protest. ‘She’s mean and spoilt, but . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She stayed behind in the forest with our father when I left, to take care of him. I said they should come with me, but they both refused. My mother has been dead for . . .’ Something comes to me, drifting up from the depths of memory. ‘When we were small—I was three, she just a few months old—our mother was washing clothes by the stream. I was playing with a doll and Polly was sleeping in her basket. Mama turned away for just a moment and Polly was gone, basket and all. She stayed gone for the better part of a day, all the while mama held on to me and screamed and shouted.