The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1)

by Prue Batten

  To fill in time she laid out her stumpwork pieces to determine how much work she had yet to do. Already she had a supply of wired leaves, berries filled with Pymm knots and silk stitched butterfly wings. As she lifted the last of the beechwood hoops filled with calico and to which she had applied various botanical elements, she came across a small wooden circle with a little Raji man embroidered on silk in its circumference. She held it up to the light to admire it.

  He stood, legs akimbo with red and yellow silk pantaloons and a red tunic belted widely by a bronze cummerbund. His face was beautifully shaped and embroidered on the finest sun-tinted organza, right down to the indigo tattoos on the cheekbones. Atop the head sat a red fez, with a swinging navy silk tassel. Adelina ran her finger down the four or so inches of his length to the tiny brown leather shoes with their quaint, up-turned toes. She touched his hands. One waited, fingers curled.

  Her mind drifted to the road where Ana had embroidered Aladdin. She remembered the night Kholi had told the story and how they had sat glued to his every gem-like word. Some days later, Ana completed her stitching and shyly displayed it.

  ‘Ana! You truly have a great skill. I am so proud of you. Kholi, Liam, look at this.’

  ‘He needs one thing, my little dove... a lamp.’ Kholi had said. ‘A bright gold one.’

  ‘Indeed he does,’ Adelina observed. ‘And we shall find one and if we polish it maybe we will have wishes as well.’

  Adelina re-wrapped the tiny Aladdin and felt her teeth chewing the inside of her lip. Ana was a bridge between us all, she thought. The woman had single-handedly reconfigured the geography of their lives. Oh dear girl, how your own life re-configured as well. She wiped her eyes with her fingers. Hating the solitude, she squirmed on her knees on the floor, circulation stemmed, numbness pervading. Somewhere out of a sudden swirling blackness, she coughed, a sawing pain cutting into her throat. Continuing to cough as if she would turn herself inside out, her heart banging, she reached for a mug of water. ‘Oh by Aine,’ she gasped. ‘I wallow in my own pain too much’

  Eventually she could swallow more easily and the sensation of wire stuck in her throat gentled but a feeling of unease disturbed her as she stood in the door of the van. The sun was high in the sky and she cocked her head to listen for any sign of the approaching men. Nothing. Just birds and the contented snort of Ajax as he grazed at his tether. Mogu lay on the ground, her legs folded neatly underneath, eyes closed, chewing her cud like a house-cow. Ajax whinnied and Adelina looked up. ‘Liam? Kholi?’ She jumped off the step to the ground, catching her skirt on a splinter as she landed and she turned away from the clearing to unfasten the garment and make sure it wasn’t torn, nor the feather ripped off. Satisfied, she stood for a moment, wondering why evident relief had not filled her veins, why she experienced a cold shudder and why the hair on her arms stood up and her neck prickled underneath her hair. Someone’s behind me. Someone’s there!

  She began to turn but her arms were grabbed firmly and a large, sweaty and blood-covered hand covered her mouth so that she smelt the odour of gore. She was turned round roughly and a figure dressed in dark green strode into her vision.

  ‘Adelina. It is good to see you again.’ Severine smiled, a smirk filled with an arrogance Adelina remembered well. She tried to answer but speech was impossible. ‘Now, now,’ laughed Severine. “Don’t speak. Luther is going to muffle you and I am going to make you a drink. I thought to give you a lesson in etiquette, because you seemed so ignorant of it the other day. Or perhaps we could call it payment for the unexpected turn at the Faeran silk stall.’

  Adelina thought back to that flay-filled moment at the market and her heart sank. It had only been a matter of time; she knew Severine would make her pay. Luther’s grip was oxen-strong and she watched as Severine busied herself at the fire. Luther had tied the muffle so tight over her mouth that her lips and cheeks numbed and a sharp pain throbbed where he had caught her hair in the knot at the back of her skull. He had bound her hands; wrapped round and round in a thin skein of silk and she pulled hard against the bonds.

  Severine saw her and commented. ‘It’s no use, Adelina. It’s Faeran silk. And we all know how exceptional such silk is, don’t we?’ The woman filled a mug and brought it over. Unstoppering a phial, she dripped in some thick black drops that left a resinous tang in the air although Adelina knew it was something far more dangerous. Her eyes sought Severine’s and she tried to speak.

  ‘Now, now, it’s rude to talk with your mouth full and it is even ruder to refuse something offered in hospitality. Just drink this and you will be fine. I think it’s time you had a nice long rest.’ Luther grabbed her hair and jerked her head back, ripping the muffle off, tears stinging her eyes as Severine pinioned her chin with the sharp talons of her free hand. Forcing the drink to Adelina’s mouth, she nodded at Luther and he prodded her throat with a dagger. She gasped and as her mouth opened in shock, Severine poured the drink down. Coughing, spluttering, she toppled to her knees with Luther still holding her by the hair. A roaring sound filled her ears as if she lay on the seashore and listened to waves being blown in over damp sand. Her protagonists’ faces liquefied; blurring and fading as a rush of something bitter filled her mouth. She sank to the ground.

  Severine stood looking at the tawny figure as it lay crumpled. ‘There was enough poppy to keep her drugged for a day and a night. Keep her that way, Luther. Take her in the van. Hobble the camel and leave it.’ She mounted her horse, springing with an agility that belied the thin, delicate body. ‘I will be in Veniche for a few days and shall make my way to the coast as soon as I am able. You know what to do. Keep her drugged and clean and safe. I need her skill to finish my plan. How I am longing to see her face when the realization that she must work for me finally sinks in.’ Clapping her heels to the horse, it sprang away at a gallop.

  Luther watched until the horse had disappeared out of sight and then picked up the Traveller, throwing her roughly over his shoulder. He tied her to the bed, careful to protect the hands his mistress thought so valuable, staring at the voluptuous form which was totally at his mercy for the next few days. Behir, it was so tempting. He rubbed his groin crudely and backed out to step to the ground. Presently Ajax had been harnessed, kicking and biting, and the van began to sway and creak as it rolled along the road, Luther’s whip plying sharp cracks in the air. Adelina’s head rolled sideways on the pillow but she didn’t waken. Nor did she hear the bellows of the hobbled camel or the cries as Ajax neighed back.

  Mogu’s throaty cries filled the forest. Anxious birds dipped and dived between branches and twittered restlessly, the tenor of the fettered camel creating trepidation.

  She tried to shuffle forward but the rope hobbles from fore to hind leg threatened to tip her over and with her great height and bulk, she instinctively feared injury. So she was reduced to bellows, gut-wrenching cries that could be heard over the top of the Luned’s canopy.

  Jasper urged his horse faster when he heard the roar, his horse stumbling as the sound wound between the oaks, ashes and elms. He pounded into the clearing and pulled to a sliding halt, dust surrounding he and the animal and as it cleared he saw Mogu. He leaped from the saddle and walked toward the beast, holding out his hand and soothing it with a gabble of soft words. She curled her lips and spat, trying to shuffle away but Jasper continued to advance, softly softly, until he was nose to nose with the beast. Gently he touched the cambered face, whispering, until the camel groaned back. The groans became bereft bleats and finally Mogu dropped her head and rubbed it against Jasper’s arm. He stepped to her leg and slashed the rope with a sharp blade.

  ‘Have they gone, my friend? Have they left you? I doubt they have gone willingly.’ He worked at the front knot, undid it and pulled it away, throwing it on the glowing embers of the campfire. ‘For Kholi Khatoun would never leave his faithful Mogu.’ He pulled the other knot free and threw that with disgust after the rest. ‘Mogu, my friend, will you follow me while I look fo
r them, find out where they have been taken? There is time surely to save them all.’ But as he spoke the most suffocating despair settled upon him and he clicked his horse to follow, dragging at the reins. Mogu watched. Jasper called over his shoulder. ‘Come, my girl, come with me. Help me find them.’

  Mogu snaked her head from side to side, a mournful bleat shuddering out. Then she took a tentative step and another, to follow the gentle man who had released her. They trekked along the rill about half a mile, until the sun began to slide down on the late side of the sky and birds flew up with alarm from the thickets. There were signs Jasper recognised; a cracked branch, a scatter of leaves on the ground, half a step in the mud on the side of the rill. Someone had passed this way.

  Luminescence flickered through the leafy boughs of beech trees and a tiny breeze rattled the green discs together as Jasper entered the tiny clearing. Wavelets danced across the rill as the breeze skipped to the other bank, a tranquil scene of eldritch beauty. But Jasper’s skin crawled as if ants marched across it. The mellow patterns of gold on the ground held no suggestion of sunny comfort for the old man and he, an Other who had seen life and death, wanted to cry. The tears filled his eyes as he saw the desecration before him. His horse pulled back, snorting fiercely. But Mogu walked on, up to her master’s body and nosed it gently, breathing soft breath all over it until she dropped her nose onto the blood-stained chest of her master.

  Kholi Khatoun lay on his back, eyes wide, mouth snarling. His neck was slashed wide and his life-blood had drained in a massive pool all around and then soaked into the hungry mosses. Jasper turned away.

  Liam lay on his face on the other side of the clearing and as Jasper turned him over, seeing the eyes screwed tight in some terrible reaction to pain, he knew the twisted body was merely a husk. That his death had been by soul-stealing. There was a crackling dryness about him, as if his essence, his life force had been sucked out through a straw. It was something peculiarly Other, this cruel dragging at the spirit. Jasper could barely stand, shaking with the self-loathing and disappointment of someone who has been unfailingly wrong about something of the greatest import, something that could have saved someone’s life. It was never Ana who was Liam’s bane.

  ‘Never!’ He shouted, choking on the words. ‘NEVER!’

  Another mortal woman, a woman with a skein of dark hair falling down her back had willingly, knowingly, killed Liam of the Faeran. He touched Liam’s forehead and heard a name sussurating on the breeze dancing back and forth over the rill. Severine, Severine, it whispered. Weakness overcame him as he viewed the bloody violations and he sank to the ground, head ringing, ears roaring. With frantic determination, he whispered charms and incantations, pushing the frailty back, back until he could breathe deeper and focus on the insubstantial message that floated before him like a delicate river mist.

  A vision wafted, stronger and weaker colours undulating. Jasper sighed tiredly, feeling a regrettable punishment approaching, but one he deserved. The prophecy ebbed and flowed like strands of hair streaming behind as a swimmer floats in a river. An indelible and bald message. Immediately and with a sick despair, Jasper knew his role for the foreseeable future was as an onlooker and it chafed him because his pain cut so deep.

  Jasper plunged his face into the basin of his hands.

  Not to seek, not to find.

  Only to wait.

  And then... to judge.

  ‘Not me,’ he said tiredly. ‘Not me, Liam. I cannot gainsay a prophecy.’ He took the rigid hands of the young man in his own aged ones. ‘But your soul shall be returned to you in Faeran and you can receive the farewell you deserve.’ He glanced across at Kholi and shuddered. ‘And I swear, you and Kholi shall be avenged.’

  Bending over Kholi, he smoothed his hand over the bloody scorings at the neck and over the wide staring eyes and the open mouth. Kholi’s body became soft, clean and peaceful as Jasper asked Mogu to kneel down. Gently and with respect and the greatest sadness, he placed Kholi on the camel’s back. ‘My dear friend, I must tie you on. Please forgive me... I would take you to Faeran, to the Ymp Trees where... where you can rest in peace. Your dear Mogu will live with me.’ He waffled on, as kind as if Kholi was alive and merely injured. Mogu bent her neck and sniffed the dangling, inanimate toes. The look of anguish in the huge eyes was almost more than Jasper could bear. He clicked his tongue and she swayed to her feet, Kholi secure on her back.

  He led his horse to Liam’s body and heaved the stiff, young man over the saddle, again tying him on. A tear ran down his cheeks and he scrabbled his hand angrily through his close-cropped white hair.

  ‘Liam, I was wrong, so terribly wrong. I have never been wrong and now you are dead because of an old man’s frailties.’ He ran fingers down Liam’s dry cheek. ‘I am sorry, so sorry.’

  A single bird trilled into the peace as the cavalcade headed across the forest to the Barrow Hills and the gateway to Faeran. Jasper led the way, his horse walking quietly behind. Mogu trudged patiently in their wake, conscious of her precious cargo, awash with loss as she searched the horizon for the broad bay back of Ajax and the swaying, creaking van carrying Adelina.

  There was nothing. She trudged on.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Waves sucking shingle filled the sea air with a rhythmic, hypnotising sound. Breaking softly, stroking the shore, pulling playfully at the crushed shells and then running back to the sea, like a child teasing another. Creeping up behind, tugging at hair and then running away again, giggling. It was a playful sea that stroked the shore of Mevagavinney. In, out, out in. Occasionally a whole shell would be caught in the watery pull and dragged out to sea. But then the next wave would grab it and toss it back again. Adelina reclined on a window seat high above the small beach, watching the waves. Her head rested against the window frame and she closed her eyes and listened. In, out. Out, in. Luther had stopped the poppy more than a week ago and her body had taken time to stop its desperate desire for more. She found the waves helped - soothing, relaxing. But she used her own intrinsic strength to conquer the cravings as well. In any case, the need to outwit Severine was far stronger than the need for such drugs. To a point she felt the poppy had helped her, taken the edge off the frantic fear, anger... madness. Opium was an insidious thing, a dark friend that it was best to cast aside.

  Her window sat high up a sheer wall. The stone facade fell away to a tiny cove only a small distance from the breakwater that protected Mevagavinney from the cold waves of the southern Ocean. Icy blasts from Oighear Dubh, the Land of Black Ice, had been known to knock waves up as far as Adelina’s window. Severine owned the tiny fishing hamlet; the fishing smacks, the trading vessels, the smugglers’ dinghies, the men. Her harbour sheltered them behind the protective bulwark of the stone sea wall. Isolated from the rest of Eirie by a forbidding landscape at its back and an inhibiting sea from the front, it was Severine’s own world. Her laws, her subjects. Veniche was her public face and Mevagavinney was her private one. Her secret.

  The closest village was Polcarrow... a half day by sea with a following breeze. A little further away lay Frynche on the southern tip of Maria Island, two days in good conditions. But few ventured to Mevagavinney, it had a reputation of all that festered and rotted.

  Adelina sighed. Always someone whose hands had been busy, she was bored. Luther brooded when he entered with her daily needs, eyes flat and empty as a corpse. She asked him where Severine was but he chose not to answer. In truth, his presence stirred a fear in her and for once she thanked Aine for Severine’s power over he and so many others.

  In the beginning, she was content to lie on her bed and watch the shifting patterns of light on the walls. Or to observe the excellent tapestries. She thought it was a series of Travellers’ tales. Of Oenghus and the Swan Maid, Tristan and Isolda, Lancelot and Guinevere. She read them like books and then took to examining each and every stitch and thread, changes in colour and tone. And thought how unsatisfying it must be to create things in anyt
hing less than a third dimension.

  Time passed merely as light travelling in an arc across her walls.

  She found some paper in a writing desk and a piece of charcoal and began to draw designs, one after another. Looking for more paper she made a discovery that changed her life. Far in the back of the little desk, behind a box of broken pieces of charcoal, lay a goosequill pen and ink powder and a pile of tissue thin paper. She began to write; firstly a page that she hid under the mattress, and then another page. Always at night when she was left alone without interruption. She had begun the third page when she heard voices outside the studded door of her room and quickly thrust her scribblings under the bed, grabbing charcoal and one of her designs and flinging herself onto the window seat, under the light of a flaring wall sconce.

  The door flew back and Severine swept in. ‘Now that is what I like to see, Adelina at work. How diligent. Good, good.’ She reached and grabbed the pile from the window seat. ‘Actually quite exceptional. Now I see why they want your work in the Museo.’

  She moved around the room slowly, as though searching for anything she felt should not be there. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘My freedom.’ Adelina made no effort to show any respect.

  ‘Always straight to the point.’ Severine frowned. ‘So let me be equally frank. No. Not for a long while. I shall ask you again. What do you need?’

  ‘For what?’