Sourdough and Other Stories

by Angela Slatter

  There’s the sound of a door opening somewhere in the house. At first I think it my father and grandmother, but realise it’s too soon and the tenor was surreptitious, sneaky. I go out to the corridor and peer over the railings into the entry hall.

  The front door is wide open.

  I thought it too soon for Peregrine and Tildy to return; now I know it is too late.

  I take the curved staircase at a dangerous pace, careful not to fall. In the drying shallow puddle on the stoop I can see the outline of two smallish feet as if imprinted there by the moonlight. At the end of our street, seemingly so far away, I see a flash of white and know it for my mother. I slam the door behind me and run into the road, my shoes slapping against the cold wet cobbles. Sometimes I almost slip, slide along, then regain my balance.

  Always just in front of me, always just at the end of the next street is the flickering flag, leading me on. I cannot believe she moves so fast.

  At last I gain our destination—I should have known it all along. The graveyard is lit in part by the lambent light from the portico of the Cathedral. The Archbishop’s wolf-hounds strain as if against leashes; they cannot leave the bounds of their building. Then there are the corpse candles dancing around the graves, I follow the grim path to where more of them helpfully serve to illuminate my mother’s grisly task.

  Emmeline kneels in the muddy mess of the bone pit. She is scooping up great hunks of mud with her cupped hands, gathering it to her as if it is an injured child she can put back together. When she has enough, when it clumps together like clay—do I see it move in the moonlight? Shuddering with breath?—then she begins to mould it as she once fashioned loaves of bread. When she finds a bone, she sets it aside—will she find a use for it later?

  The boy watches her, sitting cross-legged on a grave so old that the elements have removed any trace of the name of its occupant. His expression is fond and unhealthy all at the same time. I step as quietly as I can, but the quartz is no friend to me this eve. I know these ways, these paths, but then, I suppose, so does he. This is as much his playground as it ever was mine—more.

  ‘Hello, Rosie.’ He doesn’t even bother to look at me as I creep along. I give up all pretence and stand next to him, watching as the captive sleeper sculpts the graveyard mud. I take steps towards her, but he holds up his thin hand—I notice for the first time its port-wine birth mark, a match for the one my father bears. On his finger, loose and worn wispy by age, is my silver ring. ‘Uh-uh. It’s not safe for anyone to wake her but me now. Besides, my mummy’s got work to do.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Building a body. Of course it will be just a shell to start with, but once it’s tempered with your blood, sister-dear, it will be a vessel fit for me.’ He smiles. ‘And when I settle my soul inside, I will walk out under the lychgate, Rosamund, and I will have everything you stole.’

  ‘I didn’t steal anything from you.’ I want to turn and run, but I will not leave Emmeline behind.

  ‘Oh, yes you did, my life and my place here. You stole my mother.’

  ‘She’s our mother, Thomas.’

  ‘Mine!’ When he yells his face elongates, the rims of his eyes seem to dry out and crack, his mouth opens to ridiculous size and his tongue, red and sharp, is split like a serpent’s. The moment passes and he’s a handsome youth once more, rather like my father in looks. Our father.

  He calms and continues. ‘I should have been first, but you sat in my place. You took her.’ He sighs lovingly, his eyes moist upon my mother. ‘But she remembers me. That’s what kept me here, you know. Her memory is true. She really just wanted me, never you. Just me.’

  I am silent and he continues, ‘I must thank you, though, that taste of blood and flesh you gave me for my birthday was just the thing I needed. Of course it’s the very least you can offer, little thief.’

  ‘Have you spent all these years thinking that?’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘Emmeline?’ I ask, my heart breaking. Surely not my mother. Surely not my Emmeline.

  ‘No, her.’ He jerks his chin towards a tree and next to it sits the fox, now unnaturally large as if it may change its size at will. As the moon shifts and clouds obscure part of the silver disk, there seems to be a woman in the animal’s place, with neat dark hair and sharp features, watching spitefully as my beautiful mother drudges in filth. The moon’s face clears and once more there is merely a fox. ‘She has been my friend all these years.’

  ‘What’s her name, Thomas?’

  ‘Sylvia.’

  ‘Do you know who she was? What lies has she told you?’

  ‘The dead don’t tell each other lies,’ he sniffs, but it’s unconvincing and I feel I can go on.

  ‘She was Father’s wife. She’s the one who killed you.’

  There’s a sharp bark from the fox. I can’t tell if it’s a protest or a laugh.

  ‘You’re lying. You’ll say anything to stop me living.’

  ‘Thomas, if you wake Emmeline and ask her, she’ll tell you. You trust her, don’t you? You trust your mother.’

  ‘If I wake her she won’t finish.’

  ‘Yes, she will, if I’m lying! She’ll want to show you—she’ll want you back, you’re her firstborn.’ Oh please, oh please, oh please let it be a lie! I need to know as much as he does, how true our mother’s heart is.

  He’s reluctant. I wonder that the fox-bride doesn’t take on her human body, yell at me, stop my dissident tongue, but perhaps she can’t. Perhaps this is her punishment, that she can only flicker between one form and another, never able to hold onto a woman’s shape try though she might; never able to speak with more than the bark of a fox and in a tongue only the dead can understand.

  ‘Wake Emmeline, Thomas. Wake her. If I lie, then what’s to lose? If I lie then why should your friend object to me being found out?’ Above the fox I can see something stirring the leaves of the tree, ever-so-subtly, ever-so-quietly that not even Sylvia notices.

  Thomas doesn’t see either. He shifts his attention to our mother and calls out softly. ‘Mother? Oh, Mother-mine, wake up.’

  Emmeline blinks and shakes her head. She takes in her hands and the black marks on her nightgown and the dark stains of clay and mud streaking up her forearms. Thomas stands over her and helps her up. None of the muck on her rubs off on him, as if his substance will not allow anything to stick.

  Emmeline looks at me, her eyes confused, her expression pleading. Oh, please explain, my Rosamund. How to do so? How to say it without angering this frightful spirit?

  ‘Emmeline.’ I’m wary of calling her Mother in front of so jealous a brother. ‘Emmeline, this is Thomas, your first-born. He has a question for you. He has been waiting for so long to come back to us—to you.’

  Her eyes flash and I hope I see understanding there. Emmeline and her talented hands, Emmeline and her strong will; Emmeline who did what she did all those years ago. My mother is clever and quick.

  ‘Mother, how did I die? How was I lost to you?’

  She flicks a look at me and I give a barely perceptible nod. I have known this story as long as I can remember, heard it at Tildy’s knee before Emmeline could stop her. Heard it so I might know who my mother was and how special she was, what she could and would do to protect her family.

  ‘Your father’s first wife cursed me.’

  Thomas howls as if stuck with a knife and the fox barks sharp enough to hurt my ears. She makes to disappear into the shadows, but a dark lumpen shape drops from the boughs above and scoops her up, holding tight as tight can be so she can neither nip nor struggle. The hands are gnarled but very strong and they wrap around the animal’s throat with an astonishing speed and begin to squeeze. One moment it is a fox, the next a young woman with a thin neck, the next a fox again; one barks, the other cries out; in the end both are silent. A limp red carcass dangles in my strange friend’s grip.

  Now there is Thomas to deal with.

  He looks so stricken
and already he seems . . . thinner. I think I can see through him to the faint outlines of gravestones. He has been held here by belief and memory, and now his foundation has been shaken to its core, shown to be false.

  I feel sorry for my brother.

  He shakes where he stands. The mud at his feet seems to suck up at him. ‘Mother,’ he whimpers. ‘Don’t you want me back?’

  ‘I never really had you, lovely boy. I miss you, Thomas, I truly do.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather me, though? Me, not her? I was the one you were supposed to have.’

  ‘But I do not love Rosamund less. She did not take anything from you, she did not replace you. You must understand, Thomas, that I would not have you instead of her. You were taken from me so long ago. I grieve every day, but I know I cannot have you back.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he screams. The mud is now most certainly sucking at his lower limbs, but he does not seem to notice. Emmeline smiles and nods.

  ‘Yes, I do, my darling boy. I love you but I will not exchange my rosa mundi for you. And I will not forgive you if you harm your sister.’ She reaches out to put a gentle hand on his chest. Her palm meets something not quite solid, sinking further into his flesh than it should.

  ‘Mother,’ he weeps. ‘Don’t you love me?’

  ‘Ah, so much, so much. Yes. And I will miss you forever.’

  He sinks to his knees, suddenly weak. Emmeline kneels beside him and cradles him against her. I can see through him, now, to the ground beneath. She strokes his face, but her fingers begin to dip beneath the skin as he loses solidity, loses his form.

  Thomas wanted nothing more than to be loved, to have his chance with our family. He had only a child’s selfish desire for something with no idea that there are some things we cannot have. This night, I understand my brother. One day I may weep for him and one day I may forgive him. Until then I give him what I can. I sit next to him and hold his rapidly fading hand. He looks at me with moon-washed eyes; I’m not sure he can see me anymore.

  Robbed of his power, of Emmeline’s yearning memory, he becomes shadow and recollection, nothing more. In a few more beats of the night, he is gone and there are only Emmeline and I and our strange ally.

  We rise and move towards the creature, who is hunched and wizened. It’s dressed in rags that were once proper clothes. The fox’s corpse is rotting now, quite rapidly and the not-quite-human-not-quite-troll throws the body as far away as it can.

  I notice that Emmeline’s green eyes more or less match those of the weird human-ish thing. It—she, it is obviously a she—gives a shy smile and a curiously graceful curtsey. My silver ring, which fell into the mud when my brother’s hand dissolved, is cold in my palm. I hold it out to her. She looks pleased and slips it onto one enlarged knuckle and pushes with determination until it pops over and dangles around the thin digit. With a nod of thanks, she turns to the yew tree once again and climbs swiftly, her large feet and hands finding holds not obvious to the eye.

  ‘Who is she?’ I ask.

  Emmeline shakes her head. ‘My father had varied tastes, Rosie. I think the hair and eyes tell a story.’

  She holds me close and there is no place nicer or kinder than in my mother’s arms. I think of Thomas, deprived of this, a cold lad his whole life. I hope the last memory of our mother holding him sustains him in his final sleep. I hope he will not be forever alone in the dark.

  UNDER THE MOUNTAIN

  THE SIGHT of the inn picks at the stitches of my memory. The splintered shingle, emblazoned with a faded golden lily, swings in the breeze. I stare at it for a while, trying to catch at the recollection, mentally trying to scratch an itch I can’t quite locate. I push the aged door and it swings to easily. The place seems deserted, but in a corner, wedged in the angle of a padded bench beneath a hissing gaslight, is a man, pieces of parchment gathered in front of him. His hair was black and he was handsome, once. Now the hair is shot with iron-grey and he’s crumpled, body, face, and (I suspect) soul. His bearing speaks of loss.

  ‘Faideau?’ I ask.

  He blinks, and I realise I am nothing more than a silhouette against the light. I close the door so he may see me clearly: tall and strong, long blonde locks, high cheekbones, ice-blue eyes. No sign of the unwellness, of the ache in my bones that does not come from hard riding. I find the shadowy space a relief.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ He is not drunk, but he is aggressive. His eyes are dark.

  I did not need to come here. I had no requirement to speak to anyone but those who would have sold me fresh provisions and stabled my horse for the night. I know where I’m going, having studied Theodora’s books and the notes she left behind. I did not need to visit this place. I don’t really know why I came.

  I do not remember him, but this is the man Theodora mentioned with a sad amusement, a pang for what might have been. This was the one who did not take advantage of her favours after her fall from grace. When she changed from princess to whore and embraced her new calling as much to embarrass my father as to soothe her own pain, this was the one man she did not hold in utter contempt. Thus, she told me later, she did not sleep with him.

  ‘I’m Magdalene.’ I see him all uncomprehending. ‘Theodora’s daughter.’

  ‘Theodora.’ In his voice is such love and ache for my mother that I am embarrassed for him, to see his heart so naked. ‘How is she?’

  How to say, to tell anyone how she was? How her night terrors had been getting worse. How thirteen years of them had made her gaunt and thin, drawn shadows under her eyes and washed their pale blue to the grey of a sickly sky. How long streaks of silver-white had threaded through her hair. How Theodora, whose beauty once made kings and clergy weak, had begun to fade.

  ‘Gone. She’s gone,’ I say and he misunderstands and I think the heart will flop out of his chest. ‘No, no! She is alive, but she is gone. She—left me.’

  ‘You? Left you?’ And I know he is thinking back to that night when Theodora ran through the streets of Lodellan and saved me from the thing posing as her sister. And he asks himself what I have asked myself: how could Theodora leave me?

  ‘She slipped away in the night, left me a letter. Went to search for Polly, her true sister. She said even if all she finds are the bones, it will help.’

  He slumps even further down as if the mention of Polly adds weight to him. When he raises his eyes to meet mine I see secrets there, pushing their way to the surface. But I don’t want them.

  ‘Do you remember? Any of it? The time when childer went missing?’ he asks, peering at me. I take a seat opposite as he continues, ‘You don’t look like her, you know. Not at all.’

  I shake my head. ‘I do not remember.’

  But sometimes I dream of a pretty blonde woman. She grows and changes. Her voice remains honeyed even as she turns into something that will eat me; something that is all appetite. I fear my mother had similar dreams, for she would wake clutching at me, feeling to make sure my flesh was my own. That it did not shift and change into something other. He wipes a hand across his face and I see the map tattooed there. Curiosity shimmers.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A reminder,’ he sighs and looks at the marks on the back of his hand as if they are foreign to him. ‘How are the others? Grammy, Kitty?’

  ‘Kitty and Livilla and their children left a few years ago.’ I do not tell him why. I do not tell him how they feared for their offspring in the face of my tempers; how their last words to Theodora were bitter. ‘Fra died last spring. Grammy and Fenric are there, old but well enough. Rilka we see sometimes—she comes and goes according to her own counsel.’

  He looks sad to know these things. ‘Have you gone to see your father?’

  ‘No, why would I?’

  ‘Why would you come here?’

  I hesitate. ‘I don’t know. I had to stop somewhere.’ I cannot tell him about our fights, Theodora’s and mine; about the rage, about my guilt, about my last words to her, but I think he may gues
s. ‘I just stopped here for one night, for supplies. I remembered the inn, or at least I seemed to.’

  ‘You should stay then. Plenty of beds.’ He grins without humour. ‘Take your pick.’

  ***

  The blue room has a view out over the Lilyhead fountain, but I don’t look down. Instead I stare straight ahead and concentrate on the sculptured lineaments of the palace. I have no memory of living there; I recall my father following us when we left that funny little man’s house on the night we fled Lodellan. I remember his blonde hair, and his lovely green eyes shining with tears in the lamplight. I remember how disgusted Theodora’s expression was when she gazed upon him. The sun is setting, all red-gold and raw, burning the sky as it plummets. Below I can hear the clank of pots in the kitchen like a call to arms.

  Faideau has a disreputable apron tied around him, the lacy frills hang torn and frayed. I see no sign of the drunkard of whom Theodora spoke so sadly and fondly. His hands are steady on the knife and his movements, though slow, are assured. He sees me in the doorway and smiles. I wonder what Theodora would have said had she seen him like this.

  ‘Did you find everything you need?’

  I nod. ‘Thank you.’ Wondering how much small talk there can be between we two.

  ‘Why did your mother leave you?’ he asks without preamble.

  I lie. I lie because I don’t want to think about it. ‘I don’t know.’

  He doesn’t believe me, begins to tell me his story, perhaps in the hope that one confidence will draw out another. ‘When I was a boy—’

  ‘I do not have time for this!’

  ‘You have plenty, missy, you’re not going anywhere in the night.’ He will reel out this tale at his own pace and I have no choice but to listen.

  I’m old enough to know that secrets don’t spill quickly, they bleed, they seep.

  ‘When I was a boy, I was adopted by a very bad man. I was brought up by brigands but left to my own devices an awful lot. Often I’d sneak away to another part of the woods and watch a family who made their home there. Mother, father and a daughter, they were happy and loving. I’d watch all three, unseen. I was very careful never to let my foster-father or any of his men know. That family was my secret—I kept it to keep them safe.