The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1)

by Prue Batten

  ‘Indeed?’ Liam sat straighter, the saddle creaking. ‘What?’

  ‘Quite odd really. A horseshoe.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘Well I’m not quite sure. To mortals, horseshoes are tied with good fortune and marriage.’

  ‘Ah well, to be sure. We shall be married and live a long life.’ Bitterness rose in Liam’s gullet and he despised himself for the frailty. Change the subject, that’s what I must do. ‘Did you ever seek my brother?’ He wanted to get far from Ana and banes for the moment, it required a commitment in which he suddenly had no desire to indulge.

  ‘In fact, yes. Every year for five years I spent time in the Pymm Archipelago for that’s where he was mislaid. I thought to find signs but there were none. Not a solitary thing.’

  ‘Do you think he died?’

  ‘There are only two possibilities. Certainly one is that he died. I never spent time with the babe to be able to determine his bane. If I had, I would perhaps have had clues as to where and what to look for. At least I could have reported something definitive back to your father. The other possibility is he may have been found by a carlin... a mortal wise woman whose skills and abilities border on Other. Only one such as she would have known how to hide a Faeran babe from Faeran eyes. But there was no sign. Plenty of orphaned children as there were hard times in the islands but none were Other.’ He turned back and looked at Liam, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders. ‘So there you are. Now what say you to a race, to blow away gloom? To home! HYAR!’

  He closed his heels hard on his horse and sat down firmly in his saddle. The horse flew into a gallop, sending clods of soil and tussock in its wake and Liam needed no second bidding. Faeran are renowned for indulging to excess when there is amusement to be had and besides he wanted so much to shake the uncharacteristic foreboding with which Jasper had filled him. He clapped the reins either side of Florien’s neck shouting, and the grey animal sprang after their fast disappearing companions.

  The duelling horses racketed through the Ymp Trees and skidded abreast to a gravel-scattering stop outside the house. The noise of the snorting, the shouts and laughter and the shod hooves crunching over gravel as they plunged about brought Ana flying around the side of the house. When she saw Liam she stopped and smiled. Jasper scrutinized the couple carefully as Liam grinned back but there was nothing overt that one could construe as love, or even fascination. But there was something of Fate in all of it and the one thing Jasper knew was that one could never change Fate, Destiny; call it what one will. He jumped off his horse. ‘Well Ana, muirnin, you look much better. Perhaps you can return with Liam to your friends. What do you think?’

  ‘And so here I am.’ Ana relayed an expeditious account of her trials and tribulations with the occasional help from Liam, although the two carefully left out reference to the morning’s dalliance. But Adelina knew immediately that Ana had given herself to Liam. She held herself a different way, as if she had discovered seduction on her journey - a glance with a heavy lid, a licking of the lips, a toss of the hair. This time she was no ingénue.

  Adelina sat back as Ana laughed with Kholi. She held a goblet of wine in her hand and tapped it thoughtfully against her lips. Liam sat down beside her and his very presence acted like salt on a wound. ‘She was fortunate beyond doubt,’ she said. ‘She could be living the murky life of a Limnae now. And all thanks to you.’ She began swirling the wine in her goblet, trying to dredge up her long lost equanimity.

  ‘Yes, Adelina, she is alive and well and here. Surely now you will trust me. I truly have nothing but her best interests at heart.’

  At this she turned and looked at him. ‘Yes, but why?’

  He shook his head, laconic, dry. ‘Ah, Adelina. Sometimes I think you are brave as well as unbelievably stupid. Do you forget that it is totally within my power to bewitch you or Kholi and turn your lives upside down.’ He spoke to the air, not looking at her once, and she could feel the insidiousness of the threat, as sure as if he held a poniard to her side. He continued, bending to flick a white thread from his dark breeches. ‘But by all means have your digs and jibes. I allow them to pass before me, free of restraint. Because of this.’ His voice hardened even more. ‘I want Ana. Whether it is to love her, lust after her, dominate her, mould her...’ he dragged out the word ‘mould’, his hand cupped, fingers closing as if on a ball of soft clay. ‘It is my choice, not yours. So I care nothing for your approval or otherwise. All you need to know is that I will have her.’ He closed his fist with a snap. ‘Besides, look at those two.’ Kholi and Ana chatted amicably, the Raji’s arm around her shoulder. He said something and she laughed, the embodiment of spontaneous happiness. ‘Do you think with your perpetual carping you will convince them I am anything other than what I appear to be?’ He raised an eyebrow, clinking his goblet against her own, the tink-tink sounding like the clash of swords in Adelina’s overactive imagination. As he moved away, his voice returned to her. ‘Your move, I think.’

  Adelina was speechless, her cheeks flushing but Ana called to her. ‘It seems you’ve had your own excitements. Silks and satins and Faeran markets and what about Severine? She sounds dire.’

  Adelina composed her face with speed, not wishing Liam or the others to see her distrait. ‘Oh she’s dire indeed. I’ve hated her since I was an infant. For some perverse reason, both our sets of parents flung us together as often as not. We are of an age you see. And neither of us had siblings, the difference being that my parents were quite young whilst Severine’s were ancient, truly.’ She took a sip of her wine, remembering the jabs, jibes and joys of childhood. ‘And because she was this wondrous gift from Lady Aine so late in their lives, they spoiled her, loading her with gifts and compliments till her ego was the height of Mount Goti. What made it worse was that she really was quite a pretty child, itself amazing as her parents were nothing out of the ordinary. And I was so plain, a typical redhead, and she let me know it. She called me spiteful names behind our parents’ backs and encouraged some of the others to bully me. You know how insidious children can be. After that, my hate for her knew no bounds and my red temper would pitch itself at her, scratching and screaming if I should let it. I sabotaged her life; pinching, pulling, stealing, destroying - anything and everything to get my own back on her.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Then I heard the word ‘changeling’ and I decided she was one. She just didn’t fit in our Travellers’ world, the way she gave herself airs. I began to call her a changeling and the other children took up the chant and I hoped we could make her life wretched, but it was water off a duck’s back. Inadvertently I gave her the tool by which she would re-shape the rest of her miserable, and let me say dangerous life. When she found out that changelings were exchanged Faeran children she began to see herself differently. Never mind that a changeling was usually a sickly babe; in her mind it was of no account. Hell’s teeth! If she had given herself airs before, it was nothing to the way she behaved as we reached our more mature years.' She took a sip of the comforting liquor and continued.

  'I blossomed a little as we grew up. My hair quietened down, I lost my childish fat and I began to draw the male eye, a thing Severine loathed. All her life she had been the one who attracted the attention in the camp and now she had a contender. She pitched herself against me in everything; relationships, trading, embroidery; which I might add I trumped her on every time. What some saw as amusing competition, I knew was actually war. In her private moments, she constantly read about the Others and tried to emulate them and their ways, her belief in the changeling theory having rooted itself like an ugly weed. Her parents were devastated because as long as she believed such illusory stuff, she was denying her parentage but they were too feeble to gainsay her. And then something terrible happened.’

  Her audience was still, even Liam who leaned against the wall in the shadows, sipping a goblet of red Raji wine.

  ‘We had stopped in a glade we knew of, to collect fungi, truffles. It was something of a traditio
n when we passed through that part of Eirie. All of us, even Severine, set out and filled baskets of the stuff and then went about preparing our food and eating it, each family enjoying their own repast. But something stirred in my gut that night as I remembered a few years ago my dog, my little terrier and my shadow, had been poisoned at this very same time, the truffle feast. And next morning the memory was even more vivid as there was an unseelie shriek from Severine’s family van and when we ran to investigate, she stepped back to show us her parents, their faces set in some agonizing rictus of death.’

  She passed her glass to Kholi to refill. ‘You can say what you like but she murdered her parents. I had seen her spend time with a herb-gathering crone and I shall bet my life she asked for details of botanical poisons. We all had an idea of what was poisonous or not but her unfortunate parents had more than a bellyful of sickly toadstools. They died in silent and most fearful pain.’ Adelina emptied her glass and rolled it in her hands. ‘She made a thing of grief as we buried them, but a day later the Count arrived.’

  'Di Accia!' Kholi broke in.

  'Indeed. He was hugely wealthy, anyone could see that. Severine sold herself to him, everyone knew she seduced him on the first night because the next day she wore an opal with diamonds around her neck and left with him immediately, no sign of grievous loss or pain on that face, just an arrogant, cold smugness.’

  Adelina finished with a sigh, not relaying that Severine had glanced back as she left that day and bestowed such a look on the Traveller. Cross my path, it said and you will pay. Be warned. ‘So you see, she is dire... no, let us be truly honest here.’ Her body resonated with unequivocal disgust. ‘She is a murderer, as evil as the most unseelie Other.’

  Buckerfield’s large attic with its massive worktable became Adelina’s studio, the room warmed by a quaint circular stove decorated with roses and birds, and she was content to work for hours with snow drifting down outside and the measured tick of an old mantel clock filling the interior space. Ana took to joining her and she was set to work sorting threads, beads and fabrics because Adelina needed to know exactly what she possessed to begin this major piece, to have everything ordered and neat.

  Butterflies darted against the walls of her stomach as she laid out the fabric ready to cut, as if something momentous might happen. So much so she wondered if the result might be cataclysmic. Would she ruin the fabric? Aine, it worried her. Her hands shook as she took up the scissors and the blades squeaked as her fingers forced them apart. The fabric split with each cut; snip, snip snip, like ice cracking on a hoary pond.

  Before long she had the pieces sectioned and stood staring mindfully - how to proceed? And then she thought that if she tacked it together, she would have a succinct idea of how the embroidery design should be and how each ‘scene’ could be linked to the next. ‘Ana, come here. You shall be my dressmaker’s dummy for a moment. Twist your hair up and shed that bulky top. I want to fit this and your shape is a common enough one.’

  ‘You do have a way with words, Adelina.’

  ‘I mean you are of an average height and breadth. Now hold still.’

  She began to drape and place and pin and the robe took shape over Ana’s body. With her mouth full of pins she articulated garbled instructions. ‘Turn this way, that, mmm. Mind the pins. Shift your arm that way, this.’ Under her fingers the cool silk responded, moulding and falling until she deemed it perfect. She stepped back.

  Ana stood like a queen. She, the fabric and the design were made for each other and as Adelina studied her, it seemed she had become Other in her loveliness and quite simply the robe could be worn by no one else. Adelina knew that a masterpiece was about to be created and just for once, the awful blackness of her intuition faded away and left her with the creamy sheen of the gown. The collar lay up Ana’s neck, defining a swan-like arch. The shoulder fell away to cling to her full breasts, showing the rise and fall of the cleavage until the fabric flared in front and behind, cascading to the floor in an expanse of frothing cream, exaggerated by godets. 'Oh,' Adelina held her fingers to her lips. 'Turn and walk to the end of the room and then come back.'

  Ana grabbed a piece of the silk in her fingers and twitched the folds around behind her as she turned, an unquestionably regal gesture as if she was born to the wearing of such a garment. She walked the length of the attic and stopped just as the door opened and two curious heads poked around. Turning in the same manner and seemingly oblivious to her audience, she walked back, the robe rustling, her head held higher, her shoulders straighter.

  Liam pushed the door wider. His eyes darkened and his face stilled as he watched and Adelina could only think of iniquity and her heartbeat thundered like ceremonial drums. Ana’s faraway gaze sharpened as she realised he was in the room and she met him glance for glance with libidinousness in her eyes.

  Liam spoke into the explosive silence. 'Adelina, I will pay you whatever you want. Please make the robe for Ana. I want her to wear it when we marry.'

  ***

  I can’t begin to tell you how horrified I felt as Liam uttered those words. As you read on, you will see for yourself. Life just seemed to have pulled away from my control and I hated the feeling...

  But we have travelled a long way around the bottom right hem band and followed bees and ladybirds into the first godet, haven’t we? The godets themselves have provided almost their own page of detail, thick with stumpwork as they are. And we are about to follow the hem further around to the back where I have inserted another godet to increase that regal sweep. This time, I’m sure you will find the object of our search easily.

  There is a lion, tawny and gold, not unlike my own colouring. He is worked in padded long and short stitch. Underneath the rich bullion stitch of his mane is a tawny journal which will expand to a thick read. You will notice our tawny king lies under a spray of mauve foxgloves and on a grassy mound made of green chenille thread. Entirely inappropriate of course, he should be lying under some vast Raji umbrella tree on brownish native grass. But I believe in poetic licence and I think the mauve is a perfect foil for his coat and the green chenille mound a nice place under which to hide another book.

  I wonder if you have realized yet, that the designs I created on this robe were my attempt at controlling something, something I contrived, something that I could make or break at my own whim despite my gaoler, maybe even because of my gaoler. Being imprisoned, one loses control of one’s life completely. Embroidery and the writing of the journals gave it back.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Kholi grabbed Liam in a celebratory grasp and proceeded to shout his excitement in loud Raji dialect. He clasped Ana to his chest and hugged her, kissing the top of her head as her eyes sparkled at the joy Kholi radiated. Liam watched almost paternally. Adelina felt there was a sense of complete ownership in his eyes and under her breath she muttered ‘I knew it, I knew he’d take her.’

  ‘What did you say, Adelina? Are you not happy for us?’ Liam fixed her to the spot so that she felt like a fish caught on the hook and about to be impaled by the fisherman’s knife. She busied herself with removing the pins from her mouth, transferring them to a tin and then placing the lid on, a prevaricating measure, time to think, to say something that might give her a strategic edge.

  ‘Adelina?’

  ‘Well,’ she began slowly. ‘It seems to me, when any man wants to marry a woman, he is beholden to ask her family formally for her hand. And as Ana has foregone her blood relatives and as she named me her highway kin... do you remember, Ana... then I have not had such a question put to me. So I can’t say how I feel just yet.’

  ‘Adelina…’ Ana’s impatience crackled in the air.

  ‘No, Ana, I would feel less than responsible if this were not carried out with proper protocol. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Kholi?’ Ana turned to the merchant whose brow had creased.

  ‘Ah, my princess.’ Prevarication again, this time from her lover and Adelina was glad. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but
you are our family as Adelina rightly says and we would be reprehensible if we did not do this properly. If this were my sister Lalita, I would expect the same. You understand?’

  Liam meanwhile had looked at the embroiderer, closed his eyes and shaken his head imperceptibly. Not a bad move - oh, she knew what he was thinking, but he walked over to her as she sat at the worktable. His plea when it came could be perceived as emotive and poignant or, Adelina thought, as underhanded game play that nullified her move immediately.

  ‘Adelina, if I ask with my heart and my soul, swearing on my life that I will care for her, may I have Ana’s hand in marriage?’

  ‘Huh, it is pointless you swearing on your life, Liam. You are Other, you are immortal.’

  ‘Adelina,’ Ana hit the table with her bare palm.

  ‘Ah, but you see, you are wrong. I am Other, yes. But while we were with Jasper, I obtained a potion. This...’ he pulled a small stoppered vial out of his pocket, ‘is the juice of the buckthorn. You know of the buckthorn?’

  ‘Yes. The story of Gilgamesh.’ Reluctantly Adelina nodded. Oh yes, she knew the story of the buckthorn. How from that one tree, if one pricked oneself with the thorns, one could assume immortality. And how if one drank the juice of the fleshy leaves, one could reverse the process. No one knew where the shrub survived and Aine knows many mortals had tried to find it.

  ‘Indeed. And there is only one shrub in the whole of Eirie, hidden in Faeran.’

  ‘And so?’ Adelina busied herself at the table.

  ‘I asked Jasper for this,’ he held up the vial somewhat triumphantly. Inside, viscous liquid clung to the glass sides. ‘I have been taking it each day for the last few days; the juice of the buckthorn leaves. One more dose,' he drew the stopper and drank it down, 'and my immortality is gone.'

  Ana and Kholi both gasped and stepped forward but he signaled them to be quiet. ‘So you see, no more immortality. Faeran yes, immortal no. I ask you again. May I have Ana's hand in marriage?'