The Lily Brand

by Sandra Schwab

  She did not look back when the boy took the reins and the cart started to bumble down the muddy path. Soon afterwards it began to drizzle, the wetness clinging to Lillian’s coat in a million little droplets, moistening her face and hands. A gray curtain closed off the world.

  Beside her, tiny shivers raced through the man’s injured body and made his chains click in a grotesque parody of a tune. But Lillian raised her face to the sky and gloried in the rain that dampened her hair. Her brown curls sprang to a wild life of their own, slipping out of her hairpins, escaping her carefully arranged ivory combs.

  The wetness that soaked the earth would render their tracks invisible within a very short time. And the drizzle itself would cloak them for the rest of their journey. In weather like this, nobody looked twice at a farmer’s cart.

  The boy swore and muttered, but the ponies seemed heedless of the rain. They trotted on, and the sodden ground swallowed the sounds of their hooves.

  Once, Lillian looked back, yet by then the château had disappeared as if it had never been. Nevertheless, she could still feel the dark menace that emanated from it, a bleakness that seemed to have seeped into the land itself. This was cursed soil, where every rose would blacken and all grass would wither.

  Lillian closed her eyes, swaying with the motion of the cart. She would not let herself think of Camille’s anger upon learning of her escape. By the time they would notice her absence, the oncoming night and the weather would have made it impossible for anyone to follow her straight away. And by tomorrow morning, she would be gone.

  If not…

  It did not bear thinking about.

  Lillian opened her eyes and found the man staring at her, his own eyes very blue. Quickly, she turned her head away. She did not want him here. Why hadn’t she left him in the garden, chained to the tree? But then… but then, she had pressed the brand into his skin…

  Her responsibility.

  She watched the indistinct shapes and shades of the gray landscape slide by, all color washed out. Perhaps they had lost their track, had entered the Otherworld long ago. Perhaps they were now forced to travel on and on, forever caught in the small cart.

  Lillian shook herself.

  Shadows loomed ahead, dark and menacing. As she looked, a forest grew out of the shadows. Untouched trees reached high, and below, bushes formed a seemingly impregnable wall. A forest, perfect for hiding, far away from the prison and the mines alike. It was as good a place as anywhere.

  “Stop,” Lillian said to the boy When he just grunted for an answer, she gripped a handful of his jerkin. “Stop. I want to let him go.”

  The boy reined the ponies in and turned in his seat. “Go on with it.” He spat. “And hurry.” The wetness had slicked his hair to his head, formed nonexistent grooves in his face so that he looked older, a man instead of a boy.

  “Go,” Lillian told the prisoner, whose chains rattled against the wooden cart. She climbed off the vehicle after him, watched as he nearly stumbled and fell. Perhaps his bad leg was hurting. She should have left him in the garden.

  Lillian slipped the necklace with the key over her head, and then she opened the ring around his neck. The metal was cool and slippery with wetness. Impossible to tell whether it was from the rain or from his sweat.

  Behind her, she heard a distinct clicking sound.

  When she turned around, the boy was holding a pistol, ready to shoot. At the glance she threw him, he just shrugged. “No need to take risks, is there? Better to get rid of that one soon.”

  So she ordered the man to turn around for her to open the shackles that bound his wrists. The flesh beneath, she saw, was scraped raw.

  It did not matter anymore.

  Quickly, she scrambled back up the cart, suddenly glad for the boy’s pistol. She reminded herself that, yes, a caged animal, turned free, might well turn against anyone who was near.

  She watched the man spread his hands, free at last, and turn around, his eyes a smoldering blue. Then the cart rumbled on, gathering speed, and his eyes disappeared behind the curtain of the rain. He would not be able to follow them, Lillian knew, not with his limp. He would not make it out of the forest, perhaps. He would surely not make it beyond the forest. Not fast enough. Not without money.

  Her responsibility.

  All that was in the purse, she had to use to pay the smugglers. It was all she had.

  Her responsibility.

  Lillian touched her muslin-covered throat, where under the layer of cloth another necklace dangled, pure gold. Without thinking, she reached inside and unfastened it.

  For a brief, precious moment she held the locket clutched in her hand; then she threw it, hoping he would see it in the waning light. “Here!”

  He hopped and bent—he had caught it, she saw.

  The rain was running down her face, while she looked back on the solitary figure in the middle of the muddy road. She looked and looked until the rain swallowed him completely.

  Shivering, Lillian drew her coat tighter around her body. “How far is it?” she asked the boy.

  “Not far.”

  ~*~

  By the time they reached the small group of cottages huddled against the hill, night had fallen and Lillian had lost all sense of time. The boy urged the ponies on to one of the houses, whose inviting yellow lights formed a merry counterpart to the flickering light of the lantern he had lit when the darkness had come upon them. Over the sounds of the rain, Lillian could now hear the song of the sea. The wind smelled of salt and fish and rotting seaweed. The taste of it filled her mouth, strange and foreign.

  The cart came to a squelching halt in front of one of the cottages. The light of the lantern danced over a faded red door; somewhere a dog started barking. At that, the door opened, throwing more light into the darkness outside. It cast the man on the threshold in shadow, a hulk of blackness and gleaming edges. “There you are,” he said, his voice gruff, his French even rougher than the boy’s. “What took you so long?”

  The boy sprang from the box seat. “Roads were bad.” Another, much smaller figure appeared in the door and hovered behind the man, like a bird looking for a way out of its cage. Lillian recognized the bent shape of Nanette, and, with a sigh of relief, she jumped to the ground. Her light boots disappeared in the mud up to well over her ankles. But she did not notice.

  “Oh, mon petit chou-chou!” The birdlike figure pushed past the man, who surprisingly stepped aside without a word. Straightening, the form became a petite old woman, her white hair floating around her head like a cloud of white wool. Hands outstretched, she gathered Lillian into her arms. Parchment-like skin touched Lillian’s icy-cold cheeks, and bony hands ran over her sodden coat, shaping shoulders and arms and waist as if to reassure themselves that everything was still there.

  For a moment, Lillian allowed herself to close her eyes and to lay her head on the fragile shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent of crushed lavender blossoms that rose from the old woman’s clothes. For a while, she allowed her own shoulders to sag before she finally straightened. Yet when she went to step back, the old woman’s hands came up to frame her face. The thumbs brushed over her cheekbones, warming her skin.

  “How have you been?”

  Lillian tried a smile. “I’m fine. Truly.”

  The man, who until now had held a respectful silence, interrupted them. “The time’s almost here.”

  “Yes, of course.” Nanette turned to smile at him. “We will be ready quite soon. Come in, chou-chou, you are all wet and dripping. You need some warm clothes before we go.”

  In the house it smelled of fish and smoke. A fire lit the room, revealed a smoke-darkened ceiling, a table with a bench and some chairs. At a spinning wheel sat a woman, an apron over her coarse dress. Beside her on the floor sat a grubby child in a short frock, chubby legs and feet bare. Eyes as round as marbles, it gnawed thoughtfully on its fist.

  Another child, a girl of ten, maybe, led Lillian up a ladder to a low room under the roof.
At the far end stood a candle waiting for them, chasing the shadows away and revealing enough of the surroundings that Lillian saw they were in the sleeping quarters of the family. Here she shed her silk and cotton and donned rough wool instead: underskirts, a plain dress, thick socks, and, finally a heavy dark coat with a cape which would ward off the wind and the spray of the sea.

  When they returned downstairs, Nanette had put on a huge oilskin coat, looking like a child playing at dress-up. A new shaft of fear darted through Lillian as she became aware once again how very vulnerable they were: Should the smugglers decide to forgo their bargain, to take their gold and jewels and dump them on high seas, she and Nanette would be helpless to stop them.

  Lillian bit her lip.

  Better the sea than Camille’s wrath.

  Better the sea than living under Camille’s roof for another day, another night.

  Catching sight of Lillian’s worried face, Nanette stepped up to her and tutted under her breath. With deft fingers the old woman made to close the top button of Lillian’s borrowed oilskin coat, as if Lillian were still a little girl. When Nanette’s knuckles brushed over the naked skin at the base of Lillian’s throat, she halted. Frowning, she looked up. “Your locket, chou-chou, your mother’s locket—where is it?”

  Lillian felt the cold of the night squeeze through the chinks in the wall, through the slits under the closed shutters, through the small cracks in the door. It filled the room until coldness whirled all around her and soaked her body in ice. She smiled the tight little smile she had come to perform so well, and said, “I had to hide it and leave it in my room.” She remembered the light glinting on its golden surface as it had sailed through the rain. “She will never find it.”

  The man coughed. “We need to go.” He led them down to the beach, where the wet sand crunched under all of their boots. The song of the sea increased in a threatening crescendo until it had became a roar, filling Lillian’s ears. The cold water was calling out to her.

  She remembered the feeling of the locket in her hand, warm on one side where it had rested against her skin, cold on the other. The miniatures of her mother and father inside had been holding the memory of her parents alive when it would have slipped away and faded into nothingness.

  Lillian forced her back to remain straight, even though the wind was chilling her cheeks and trying to wedge under the borrowed coat. Any sign of weakness might be deadly—it was a lesson she had learned well in the years under her stepmother’s roof.

  Ahead, flickering lights danced on the seashore—more lanterns just like theirs. Figures separated from the shadows, took on human forms: the crew of the ship that would bring them over the Channel.

  The men who might cut their throats.

  Half hidden by the rain, the waves rocked a black shell of a boat too small to seem trustworthy. Surely too small to be able to cross the sea.

  Wordlessly, the big man picked up Nanette and carried her through the water to the boat, while another man approached Lillian. Her world lurched as he heaved her up into his arms and followed the others. The smell of stale sweat and rancid fish filled her nose and burnt at the back of her throat, and yet it was more appealing than the odor of crushed rose petals or of Camille’s scented body oil.

  In order to be out of the men’s way, the two women huddled between some barrels, dark bulky shapes in the night, their oilskin coats all that protected them from the wind and the rain. A lonely mast rose up as if to touch the cloudy sky, with the bulk of the sail waiting to be hoisted.

  The men worked in silence, and soon, cloth rustled and wood creaked; the sail billowed with wind in the ghostly gray and pulled the vessel out to the sea. Salty spray joined the steady rain, while the wind rocked the ship from side to side and the waves rolled under them. Their course seemed awkward, changing now and then, but perhaps it was just the sea, bucking like a horse that wants to throw its rider. In the wet darkness of the small vessel, Lillian forgot all about her earlier fears. She no longer worried about a slit throat, but about a cold grave in the endless black water.

  Better than another night under Camille’s roof.

  After a while, Lillian lost all feeling of time, and the memories of Château du Marais faded into insignificance. It seemed to her as if her journey stretched to cover past and present, reaching for an eternity of miserable, rolling night. Perhaps they had long slipped through the web of time and now were doomed to sail onward forever after.

  Lillian let the icy dampness numb her body and mind, and moved with the motions of the ship as she had moved with the motions of Camille’s carriage. The wetness soaked even her oilskin coat, and the rain and the spray dampened her coarse woolen clothes, chilling the skin beneath.

  After what seemed like ages or perhaps no time at all, one of the men struck a tinder and lit a lantern. The flame threw a flickering light over the people in the boat, creating nightmarish beings from black hollows and moving shadows and the unfamiliar shapes of fishermen’s coats.

  Nanette patted Lillian’s arm. “Soon,” she whispered, while in the distance an answering light flared, almost invisible in the endless rain.

  Once more, wood creaked as the sails filled with wind and carried them forward. The darkness looming ahead slowly took on form and revealed the bulky shape of a coastline. The single light ahead rose higher the nearer they came and then was joined by a chain of moving lights, twinkling in and out of existence in the steady downpour.

  Again the little vessel changed its course, sailing parallel to the coast, before the men let the wind fill the sails to the full for the last time. With a crunch they came to a halt, and the sails were hurriedly brought in. “We’re there,” said the big man unnecessarily. The light of his lantern flickered over his face, gleamed on his wet skin. Lillian no longer smelled the fish.

  He jumped into the water and reached for Nanette to carry her the last steps to the shore. Another man, large and wet as well, held out his arms for Lillian. She could not tell whether it was the same who had carried her before. But then, it did not matter. She reached the land high in his arms, the land she had left over a decade before, the land of her father and mother, who would never see it again.

  She heard the water gurgling around the man’s feet, the rhythmic song of the sea, of the waves lapping at the land. The wet sand sparkled in the dim light of the lanterns, which now joined them on the beach. Shadows shifted and became men or horses and sometimes a cart to be filled with barrels from the boat.

  When Lillian’s feet touched the ground, the land shifted as if she were still on the boat, rocked by the waves. She wondered what Nanette had done with her purse, whether she had already given it to the smugglers or whether it would be divided between the men who had brought them over the sea and the men who would receive them. She saw the big man talking to one of the latter; tall and slim, as if his daily labor was neither hard nor of his hands.

  Lillian felt exhaustion creeping upwards from her feet, trickling through veins and muscles, leaving numbness behind. She felt the cold wind biting her salt-crusted cheeks, cracking her lips until the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. She remembered the sight of blood on smooth skin, muscles rippling underneath but unable to escape the sting of the whip.

  “Are you all right, chou-chou?” Lillian almost did not notice the touch of Nanette’s hand on her arm, her flesh unfeeling. She let the coldness of the rain and the night seep into her body until all lingering feelings were dead, all memories forgotten.

  “Yes,” she said. “Where will they take us?”

  “Through the heath up north.” In the big oilskins, the old woman looked frail and lost, and Lillian’s heart gave a strange lurch. “They are friends of Jean’s. They have promised to help.”

  “But are they trustworthy? Is he trustworthy?” Lillian swayed a little in the soft wind as she thought about being at these men’s mercy.

  “I saved his wife from the fever,” Nanette answered softly. “We will come to no harm.�
��

  Everything needs balance. One to do the healing in a place where another does all the wounding. And sometimes the healing could be used as coin, could be used to win people’s trust.

  An alien word, this trust.

  Lillian drew her oilskin coat tighter around herself as if to wrap her body in its cool wetness, numbing her limbs.

  Then the two men came forward, and the one whom Nanette had called Jean said, “You’ll go with Mr. Collins here and warm yourselves up for a bit. Later, they’ll bring you away.” He reached out, and his large fingers closed around one of Nanette’s withered hands. “I thank you for what you did for us. May the Lord keep you safe.”

  Lillian thought she saw Nanette smile, but with the steady rain and the dim light of the lanterns she could not be sure. The old woman bowed her head. “Good-bye, Jean. And God bless you.”

  The man, Mr. Collins, led them up the beach while the sand crunched under their feet, and before long they saw the twinkling lights of a village just awakening to a new morn. They followed him past small cottages that hovered near the ground like great, black beasts; past the disgruntled bark of a dog, the early cry of a newborn babe, until they walked in the shadow of the village church, whose bell tower rose crookedly above them. The man beckoned them to another small house that nestled close to the crumbling wall of the churchyard. Beside the well-trodden front steps stood a pot with flowers whose scent, despite the night and the rain, wafted up to tickle Lillian’s nose and summon the memory of summers long bygone, when small girls and fat puppies had played in flower gardens kissed by the sun.

  Lillian shook her head to chase away these unbidden thoughts. One last time, she gathered the cold night around herself before entering the warmth and the light of the house, where the smell of newly baked bread lingered in the hallway, underlaid by the fragrance of fresh tea.

  At the other end of the corridor, a door opened and emitted a middle-aged woman with cheeks like red apples. She wore a gray, woolly scarf over a high-collared nightgown, and from underneath her white nightcap a few tendrils of faded blond hair tumbled onto her forehead, whirled around her earlobes. “There you are, there you are,” she said. The fragrances of bread and tea were stronger now, seemed to surround the woman like a cloud.