‘We found her, though, further downstream, in a place we’d already looked. One minute she was gone, then back, no different.’
Grammy speaks slowly, pulling old knowledge out of a deep well. ‘Trolls will take human babies and leave their own offspring in place, re-shaping their children’s flesh and putting a binding spell on to hold it for sixteen, seventeen years, or until the troll-child is about to come to adulthood.
‘Some troll-parents will come looking for the child. Sometimes not, and the troll-child has to find its own malicious way.’
‘What happens to the human babies?’ asks Kitty, holding her little girl close.
Grammy purses her lips. ‘Some are kept as slaves under the earth. Most times they’re eaten as tender treats. When it’s grown the troll-child learns to change back to troll flesh. Some choose to stay like that, retreat to the forests and mountains and caves and live out their long, miserable lives. Others choose to stay with humans, but some things they just can’t hide—even in human form, stepping on hallowed ground makes them sick as sick can be. And they don’t lose . . . their appetites.’
‘All the missing childer,’ moans Faideau from his corner. We jump, having forgotten he was there.
I shake my head. ‘No, Grammy, no. She’s mean but not . . . not my sister,’ I finish lamely.
***
The treasury is situated, contrarily, in one of the worst parts of the city. I like the irony, though, of the Treasurer and his attendant parasites, bankers and moneylenders, daily making their way through a sea of honest thieves and pickpockets.
It is a newer building but that doesn’t mean it’s without hidden ways. I take the secret tunnel from deep in Bingle the wine merchant’s cellar. When I was princess, the Treasurer Pinchpen entrusted me with the city’s finances—at least in word if not in deed—it was more for the sake of form, to honour the history of the thing, the princess’s purview has always been holding the city’s purse strings. Pinchpen didn’t show me the passages, I found them for myself, pushed by boredom into exploring on the days when all I had to do was wait for the clerks to count taxes, balance books, and the like, so I could stamp the seal into the hot wax gobbet on the records.
The passage comes out somewhat inconveniently behind a bookshelf in an antechamber, not directly inside the vault. In the dark, when I generally undertake these trips, it’s not a problem.
Today, in the light of the afternoon, it is a problem because my husband stands at the tall French window that looks out onto the grubby street. I catch my breath and he turns.
‘Theodora,’ he says, the sunlight hits his blonde hair and his tanned face gleams as if coated with gold dust. But he looks unwell. There’s something grey under his skin, dark shadows beneath the green eyes.
‘Hello, Stellan.’ Nothing for it but to brazen it out.
‘You’re here. I haven’t seen you in so long.’
I give him a look that says quite plainly he’s an idiot and he has the good grace to seem ashamed. I don’t want to prolong this but still I say, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘End of the month book balancing. I have to do it now you’re . . .’
I am thankful, for once, for his self-centredness, which means he doesn’t think to ask me what I’m doing there. ‘I must go,’ I say and turn on my heel, away from my goal, cursing silently. It will have to wait, until darkness falls and I must risk the streets.
‘I sent Prycke to speak with you,’ he said. I’m willing to bet Prycke didn’t tell him the details of our negotiations. ‘Was I wrong, Theodora? Was I wrong to listen to her?’
I stop. ‘If you need to ask, Stellan, then you know the answer.’
He grabs my arm, forces me to face him. Between his pearly white teeth he hisses: ‘Theodora, there’s something in the palace.’
I cannot shake him off. ‘I know. I know.’
He drops my arm. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I laugh. ‘And how would I have done that? Since you banned me from my former home? Should I ask my loving sister to take a message to you? For her to whisper it in your ear at night as you lie together? Is she sweet and tender and loving?’ I lower my voice. ‘Don’t you wonder that there are nights when she does not come to you? Does she go to the cathedral with you, Stellan, every Sunday?’
His mouth moves but nothing comes out. His eyes are filmy with tears. How could I have loved him? How could I have thought him brave, charming, strong? I should have left him in the wolf-trap.
‘How is Magdalene?’ he whispers.
I step away. ‘Don’t you speak her name. You have no daughter and you have no wife. You have a city that’s losing its children, a palace that’s haunted and a foul creature in your bed.’ I don’t hate him anymore, there’s just a kind of sad, hollow pity. ‘I wish you joy of them, Stellan.’
***
‘Hold her tight, watch her close.’ My words circle around in my mind like confused birds, the words I spoke to Bitsy when I entrusted Magdalene to her earlier.
In the stables, Bitsy lies, torn from groin to sternum, innards spilling out onto the fresh straw. The black horses stand as far away as they can, both trembling. The air in the dim, enclosed space is rich, fœtid, choking.
There is no sign of Magdalene.
I told Bitsy to look after my daughter, and I condemned her to this, because Bitsy would never have let Magdalene go without a fight.
Kitty is frozen next to me, staring at our dead friend.
‘Who came?’ I ask, unable to breathe.
She doesn’t seem to understand. I grab her shoulders, shake her violently, unfairly. ‘Who came?’
‘Your sister!’ Two voices, Kitty and Rilka together, Rilka at the entrance to the stables, her shadow long, making Bitsy’s corpse almost invisible. ‘Your sister came.’
‘I saw the carriage,’ says Rilka, ‘but she didn’t come in.’
‘Must have gone around the back,’ gulps Kitty, tears starting. She falls away from my hands, sinks to her knees beside Bitsy.
‘Where’s Magdalene?’ I ask, and they both turn pale, even Rilka under her cedar skin. I moan, hold my head, feel sick, but I don’t indulge for long. I can’t.
I run, pushing through waves of people who seem to have materialised just to slow me down. My breath sounds loud to my ears and I’m sure everyone can hear the thud of my heart, matching time with the clacking of my boots on the cobbles. The knife in the pocket of my skirt thuds rhythmically against my thigh. The spire of the cathedral comes into view, looming over other rooftops. I round the corner and cross the square, lungs aching, take the steps to the portico two at a time, ignore the shimmering shapes of the bored wolf-hounds pacing there.
Up the aisle, past silent, wide-eyed parishioners. Into the chapel, anxiously waiting for the stones to shift aside, not fast enough, not fast enough. Along the tunnel through cold, damp air, the flame of the hastily-grabbed torch flickering, guttering with my speed, but staying stubbornly lit.
I don’t know, I don’t know where they are, but this is the place I will start, the place where I first saw the troll-wife, the only place I can think of.
The panel to the fountain room slips aside. Heedlessly, I throw down the torch and without caution step from behind the screen.
Magdalene sits on one of the benches, nervously swinging her little feet, face pinched and pale, bright curls damp and darkened with sweat. One of her shoes is missing and there is a tear where one of the sleeves meets the rest of her dress. She sees me, face lighting up. ‘Mama!’
‘Oh, my heart.’ The distance to her seems so long. I kneel down, hold her tight, blink away the burning tears. I pick her up, and discover why she did not come to me when first she saw me. A rope runs from her left ankle to the leg of the bench, which is embedded in the floor.
‘Oh, how sweet! What tender motherly love! How delightful a reunion.’ Polly’s tone is poison. She steps out from behind the little steam hut and stalks towards us. Her dress is pale pink, s
ilky, her tooled leather shoes a matching hue. Around her neck is the diamond necklace, the master stone lying snugly just below the hollow of her throat.
‘Polly,’ is all I can manage.
‘No, no, don’t thank me.’ She gleams at me. ‘Really.’
‘That was hardly the thing on my mind.’ I push Magdalene behind me. She clutches at my skirts, tiny terrified hands pinching at me.
‘I have tried so hard, Theodora. That is what you don’t understand.’ She sighs. ‘What I am—what I was born—I have tried to escape, to change. If I try hard, ever so hard—if I live as a human, then perhaps I can become a human. Live a normal life, keep my human skin tight around me. Marry a human. Then maybe, just maybe it will rub off on me.’
Here is the heart of my sister’s desire: humanity. I push my daughter further behind me. ‘I’m taking my child, Polly, we’re leaving the city.’
‘Oh no, not good enough. I’ve been thinking, sister dear, divorce really isn’t good enough at all. You’ll still be in his thoughts; he’ll always wonder if he was right about you or not. He’ll think about his little girl and how she’s growing up without him.’ She smiles and it brings a cold rush of air into the fountain room. ‘Missing is better. Dead is best.’
She begins to change, to elongate, to increase in bulk; her skin loses its sheen and firmness, darkening and corrugating; her bright hair dims, becomes thin and black, writhes like snakes; her eyes grow wider, turn yellow and bloodshot; her teeth, no longer uniform pearls, grow sharp and brown; hands lengthen and nails turn into talons. When her slender dress begins to split, I am released from my horrified fascination and pull the knife from my pocket to slice through Magdalene’s bond.
‘Run,’ I tell her, pointing to the gold screen and give her a push. I turn back to Polly, who is now half a human taller than me and looking at her new hands, flexing them, listening to the sound of her over-sized knuckles crack. She laughs and lunges.
I sidestep and jam the knife into her stomach. She roars and stumbles. The silver handle protrudes from her belly, black blood wells where the hilt meets her flesh. I am backing away. She looks at me, and quite deliberately pulls the knife out, slowly. The blade is gone, eaten away by the substance of her troll blood. I lose my nerve then and flee, gathering up Magdalene at the mouth of the tunnel, hitting at the lever to shut the door and running blindly down the steps into the darkness. I hear a grunt behind me and risk a glance. Polly has jammed her hand into the gap between the panel and the doorframe and thrust the panel back. I keep running as my sister’s shape fills the doorway and blocks out the light.
I am thankful, in some tiny, screaming part of my brain, that my feet know this passage, have the memory of it embedded in their soles. I do not stumble.
Magdalene clutches tightly to my chest like a limpet.
I move through the tunnel, imagining hot breath and long, reaching fingers at my back. Soon, I see gentle light slowly seeping down to illuminate my path. I swear I fly out through the opening, I swear I grow wings in that moment, until I trip, my foot catching at the top step just as something tugs at the hem of my dress from the darkness below.
I keep hold of my daughter, twisting in mid-air as I fall so as not to crush her beneath me. I slide along the smooth flagstones and watch as the troll-wife leaps from the hole, the remnants of Polly’s pink gown hanging in tatters on the grotesque form, the diamond necklace tight around the troll-wife’s much bigger neck, almost embedded in the flesh. She is all hunger, no caution, seeing only me.
She takes three thundering steps towards us before she falters, stumbles a little, senses something is wrong. Her eyes goggle around and she howls when she realises we are in the Cathedral. She tries to throw herself forward to get at me. She should have gone back down to the tunnel while she still could. Her fearsome noise is drowned out by the growls of the Archbishop’s hounds.
They’ve become solid, substantial, heavy in the presence of the troll-wife. And they are hungry. All six wolf-hounds leap and knock her to the ground.
I hide Magdalene’s eyes.
It takes them a long time to eat Polly. She is alive right up until the end as they shred her flesh, gnaw on her bones, tunnel through her rib cage to get at her large, meaty heart, and slurp on her steaming, stinking innards.
In the end there is only lank black hair, and sad pink strips of silk on the floor of the cathedral. The wolf-hounds lick up the blood and, sated, begin to assume their usual ephemeral outlines. One coughs, seeming to choke, but as his form softens, becomes smoky, the object drops through his insubstantial throat and jingles on the flags at my feet.
The diamond necklace. I pocket it as a ruckus begins at the front of the cathedral.
The Archbishop will be pleased to see how well his hounds earn their keep. I do not think my husband will recognise his mistress.
***
Night has fallen and Stellan is waiting outside Spittleshanks’ house as we exit. Magdalene hides behind my skirts. She remembers her father, she simply does not like him. I refuse to leave her behind ever again. I hope we will soon be able to sleep the night through. Untroubled slumber is the balm I long for; for nights when Magdalene does not wake and whimper, and when I do not clutch at her in my sleep, terrified of finding her flesh changing in my hands. And I pray for nights when I do not dream of my sister, my real sister, dead or worse, toiling under-earth, never seeing the light of day.
‘Will you come back to the Palace now?’ My husband is crying. ‘Come home, be with me. We will be a family once more.’
In the carriage under the street lamp my other little family waits: Grammy and Fra and Rilka and Kitty and Livilla and all their children and Bitsy’s doll, so we never forget, are wrapped up in warm coats and scarves. The windows of the inn are now dark. Faideau will not come: he says he is afraid of trees; I have left him a stack of gold coins to keep him in food and drink.
Within my grasp is my past, my former life. It slips and slides under my fingertips like treacherous silk. And here once again is my husband, who is beautiful still for all his flaws. Memories of before conjure rich flavours: Stellan before, our love and lust before; luxury and leisure, never knowing want or hardship. If I just stretch out my hand it can yet be mine. But there is a sour aftertaste; there is what happened, and what was done. There was loss and betrayal and it can never be erased.
I shake my head. ‘No. Better we take our chances among the whores and thieves. They’re more honest, more loyal.’ The deed parchment and the remaining half of the diamond necklace sit solid in my coat pocket.
I take my daughter’s hand and turn away, setting our feet on the wet cobblestones, shining like a path to a better place, to the dark coach that awaits to take us far, far away.
LAVENDER AND LYCHGATES
MY MOTHER’S hair catches the last rays of the afternoon sun and burns. My own is darker, like my father’s, but in some lights you can see echoes of Emmeline’s bright fire buried deep.
She leans over the grave, brushing leaves, dirt and other wind-blown detritus away from the grey granite slab. A rosebush has been trained over the stone cross, and its white blooms are still tightly curled, with just the edges of the petals beginning to unfurl. Thomas Austen has rested here for fifteen years. Today would have been my brother’s birthday
To our right is one wall of the cathedral, its length interrupted by impressive stained-glass windows that filter light and drop colours onto the worshippers within. My father, Grandma Tildy and my twin brothers, Henry and Jacoby, are among them, listening to the intoning of the mass. I can hear the service and the hymns as a kind of murmur through the thick stones. Emmeline has refused to set foot in there since Thomas’s untimely demise. I used to attend, too, but only until I was three or so, when I made plain my preference for my mother’s company over one of the hard-cushioned pews. Peregrine gave up arguing about it long ago, so here I sit, a thirteen-year-old heathen.
I’ve been perched on the edge of Micah Bartleby�
��s tomb, weaving a wreath. I braid in lengths of lavender to add colour. I put the finished item beside my mother and tap her on the shoulder to draw her attention.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ she says, voice musical. Her face is smooth and her skin pale; only the flame-shaped streak of white at her widow’s peak shows that she’s older than you might think. Her figure remains trim and she still catches my father’s eye. ‘Don’t go too far, Rosie.’
She says this every time even though she knows the graveyard is my playground. When I was smaller, Emmeline would not let me wander on my own. She knew—knows—that things waited in the shadows, bright-eyed and hungry-souled. Now I am older she worries less for I’m aware of the dangers. Besides, the dark residents here want only to steal little children—they are easier to carry away, sweeter to the taste. She believes I am safe. I drop a kiss on the top of her head, feel how warm the sun has made her hair. She smells of strawberries.
I take my usual route, starting at Hepsibah Ballantyne, ages dead and her weeping angel tilted so far that it looks drunk and about to fall over. Under my carefully laced boots crunch the pieces of quartz making up the paths, so white it looks like a twisted spine. Beneath are miles and miles of catacombs, spreading out far beyond the aboveground boundaries of the graveyard. This city is built upon bones.
The cemetery devours three sides of Lodellan Cathedral, only the front entrance is free, its portico facing as it does the major city square. High stone walls run around the perimeter of the churchyard, various randomly located gates offer ingress and egress. The main entrance is a wooden lychgate, which acts as the threshold to the home of those-who-went-before.
No rolling acres of peaceful grass for our dead, but instead a labyrinth, a riotous mix of flora and stone, life and death. There are trees, mainly yew, some oak, lots of thick bushes and shrubs making this place a hide-and-seek haven. It’s quite hard, in parts, to see more than a few feet in front of you. You never know if the path will run out or lead over a patch of ground that looks deceptively firm, but is in fact as soft and friable as a snowdrift. You may find yourself knee-deep in crumbling dirt, your ankles caught in an ancient ribcage or, worse, twenty feet down with no one to haul you back into the air and light.
Sourdough and Other Stories Page 19