The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  No, indubitably there was no pride in accomplishment for Isabella in the House of Koi.

  It was Fate that dropped a shred of bark in her lap from the elm, Fate that at that moment she had longed to see the colour of her mother’s hair. Fate that the Master had been so impressed in the colour of the cloth that he sought to raise his fortunes at the Trevallyn Stitching Fair rather than just gift the bolt to the Imperial House.

  But how would they explain away any increased wealth, she wondered?

  And then, with painful and overbright clarity, she realised she was the safety net. If she was gifted to the Imperial House, the wealth of the House of Koi would go unheeded. Her ability to conceive a boy child for the imperial heir was tantamount. Baldly, her loins would save them.

  Over my dead body.

  It was a litany that had played for weeks now and thus had began Isabella’s escape plan.

  She stepped out of the tub and dried herself rapidly, slicking back her curiously coloured hair. Black as pitch it was, but where it slid down her back there were curious highlights as if it had been rinsed in henna, the dye clinging to a hair here, a hair there, an intimation of warmth where there should be none. Such was her mother’s glorious legacy. She pulled it into a bunch and then pleated it, one roll on top of another. Slipping a warm indigo robe over the thick white cotton under-robe, she tied it with a frayed blue sash, pulling on stockings and tucking her feet into wooden pattens to push through the last of the snowdrifts in the garden.

  Paper lanterns hung from the bare cherry blossoms and cast a comforting glow across the compound despite the washed out grey daylight. The elm was hung with its own lanterns and with brass prayer-bells that chimed in the tiny welkin wind which played haunting melodies on the back of Isabella’s neck. She looked around quickly.

  Amber eyes blinked, there was a scurrying sound and then they disappeared over the top of the wall and were gone. She shivered and made the sign of the horns.

  Too small to be the Barguest, too fast, and this place too exotic.

  *

  ‘Isabella, I thought you’d drowned. I’ve heated your soup five times.’

  Lucia dragged her inside and chafed her to sit by the fire, thrusting a white bowl into her hands. A curl of steam carried the most delicate fragrance to Isabella’s nose – of eschallots and garlic, star anise, Han spices and shredded chicken. Lu passed her some of the tiny bread rolls, white and squashy, as if they had just been pulled from the stove. She tore at the bread, soaking up the delicious stock with the fragments, holding her bowl out for more.

  ‘Here. I saved you some of Madame Koi’s honey pastries. You need the sweetness. Have them with some green tea.’

  Lu placed a tiny tray down and the two shared crumbs in the quiet corner away from the bustle as kitchen staff chopped and plucked, steamed and fried.

  ‘Not so tired, now? What do they want you to do next?’

  ‘Madame Koi wants me to dye some white silk red for the Lantern Festival so I must ask the Master’s permission to go outside the gate and look for a wasp’s nest. Not just the First House gate either, but further into wilder forest.’

  Lucia’s breath sucked in as if she had seen a ghost. ‘Outside? He’ll never agree. Aine girl, please don’t ask.’

  ‘But there are no more nests in this compound.’ Belle looked beyond the kitchens to the gardens and to the Koi gate that beckoned like a seducer. ‘The best are always in the wild and it’s such a good time to search – the trees are bare, the wasps are gone in the cold.’

  And, Lucia, south by southeast is somewhere beyond that gate…

  Chapter Four

  Nicholas

  His stepfather returned three weeks after Nicholas’s angry confrontation with Cassiope and immediately called him, reaching out a hand to Nicholas’s shoulder to squeeze, a tired gesture born of grief. Then he poured wine, solicitous as he passed a goblet to Adelina who was Nicholas’s foster mother. She forced a small smile.

  ‘Between us we have been everywhere,’ he said as he passed goblets to Gallivant and Nicholas and it’s long past the anniversary of Isabella’s disappearance. And by the fates, what have we really achieved?’

  Adelina shifted her gaze to the window and stared at nothing. She might as well have lost her own voice so little did she speak these days. Nicholas studied her, understanding her loss and why she had developed streaks of white in the faded red-gold of her hair. She had dragged it back to a severe bun at her nape. Once she had been a voluptuous madonna and now she was thin and drawn and hugged her clothes tight about her. He noticed she had left her luscious Travellers' skirts and silk shirts behind and had dressed in black Raji jodhpurs and loose handknits such as journeymen and fisherfolk wore. Her face was shadowed with sadness and apathy. He could do nothing for her but feel responsibility and regret.

  His stepfather’s deep voice broke across the angst.

  ‘I’ve returned from Veniche via the Marshlands and even there the word is the same. No one has seen the black men or the boats.’ Phelim tossed back his wine. ‘They have heard of the disappearances and mortal families literally tie their children to their sides. All about hangs a fear that young women are at risk.’

  ‘Sink me, Phelim,’ Gallivant paced, always on the move, his fair hair drifting in the breeze of perpetual motion, his coat tails twisting and turning. Despite his lack of height, the impression of movement always gave the Hob an air of secret power, as if he lived by an eldritch force that should be respected. A lion in sheep’s clothing sometimes, Ebba had said and laughed, because Gallivant had a nose for impeccable fashion.

  ‘This can’t go on for much longer, this shadow threat,’ he said. ‘Nor the loss of our girl. There has to be a clue somewhere, there has to be. These marauders, they are enigmatic, they are clever, but they will make mistakes. I swear there will be one such mistake soon and then we will be on their tail so fast they will spin.’

  ‘I wish you were right, Gallivant. But I believe only Fate will help us now.’

  Phelim toyed with the goblet, rolling it in his palms. The prophetic words disappeared from the air as Adelina threw her goblet down, smashing it on the paved floor. To Nicholas, the shards represented every part of Adelina’s broken heart and he wanted to stop her, stop the poison as it spewed forth.

  ‘Fate. FATE. Is it Fate that gave me my daughter for eighteen years so I could love her and live for her and then see her snatched into some place we can’t find? Is Fate that cruel? What have I done in my life that means I or my daughter must be punished so? Wasn’t it enough that her father was taken? Was that Fate as well? Damn Fate I tell you.’

  She glared at the three men, her eyes crystal bright with hectic splashes firing her cheeks, her hands twisting together. Her hair fell in wisps about her face and she stood like a cornered wildcat.

  ‘There are two worlds from which one can never return, two that none of you EVER mention – Paradise and Hell. Aren’t there? AREN’T THERE? ANSWER ME. Isabella is dead. If she weren’t, we would know. Nicholas, you were like twins, twins know these things and you have felt nothing but a vacuum of non-existence. Haven't you? HAVEN'T YOU?’

  She screamed in Nico’s face as Phelim took her in his arms, she struggling, scratching, yelling and Gallivant saying, ‘Stitcher, Stitchlady, we shall get through this…’

  I would answer you, damn it, if I could. I’d scream and yell just like you for all the good it would do, BUT I CAN’T. And I hate every tongue-choking moment of it.

  ‘ADELINA.’ Phelim had to shout above her cries, to shake her and jerk her from her hysteria. ‘Stop it. Nico can’t answer you. None of us can. But Gallivant is right. Mistakes occur. It takes just one of those who imprison Isabella to drop their guard and the clue will find us. I believe this.’ He smoothed her back as he spoke, as if she were a babe in arms, rubbing his hands in a circular movement so that her breath slowed. ‘I have spoken to an Other who gave me some wise words.’

  He sat Adelina ba
ck in her chair by the window where she could hear the doves and the gentle bleating of the Squire’s ewes. Her little terrier crawled out from under a settee where it had laid with reproachful eyes whilst the screaming poured forth. She jumped on Adelina’s lap and a hand began to stroke, once, twice, finally pursuing a rhythmic pattern.

  ‘I have spoken to someone who knows us well but whom we have not seen for many years. Her words were welcome.’

  Phelim poured himself and the others another wine, pushing the broken glass into a heap with his toe.

  ‘Well sink me, Phelim, don’t keep us waiting. Who is this oracle?’

  Gallivant drank off his wine like water and continued to stride back and forth across the room, looking for a little hearth brush and shovel to sweep up the cullet.

  ‘Maeve Swan Maid,’ Phelim said simply and all heard Adelina’s breath suck in.

  ‘Maeve,’ her voice cracked.

  ‘The swan-maid? And she was wise? I bet she was downright vicious as well.’

  Gallivant threw himself on a chair with force, the woven cane stretching with a groan. Nicholas remembered where he had heard the name before. She was the Other who with stiletto, had brazenly despatched the murderer of Isabella’s father in the middle of a Venichese ballroom. He glanced across at Adelina whose eyes had grown wide as she whispered the swan-maid’s name.

  ‘Maeve the Vanquisher. I shall never forget.’

  Phelim jumped in to forestall the memories. ‘She sends her regret at our sadness.’ He began to tell them the story. ‘I met her on the edge of the Marshlands. There was something of déjà vu about it all…’

  *

  He had stopped his horse after days of riding around the coastline from Veniche. The moist shadow of the Marshlands with its massive dogwoods hung with marsh-moss and lichen had given way to the more open spaces of the canal-soaked fens. He unbuckled the saddle and pulled off the horse’s bridle, tethering the mount to a log by a halter and long rope, then striking a tinder to spark a small fire. He toasted some stale bread that he ate with cheese and finished with some figs he had found. He was tired beyond belief, ground down by a year of fruitless searching, of begging Other and mortal alike for help and information. As he sat, a huge sigh escaped and for just a minute he wished the Moonlady, wise counsellor from so long ago would guide him.

  ‘Aine, Mother…’ he began.

  ‘Better thou leave Aine to Her own devices, half-time mortal.’

  Phelim’s life rushed before his eyes as he heard her. ‘Thou art Færan, even if thou art ignorant of Færan ways. Rest easy half-time mortal, there shall be many Others there as well.’ Those fateful words from time past had never been far away in his consciousness. A chilling time, a heartbreaking time, but it had given him his beloved Adelina. He turned and saw the woman was exactly the same as long ago; stark with black and white beauty – straight jet hair, pale skin, obsidian eyes and blood-red lips. Her gown clung to her most perfect form as if it were painted. She glided forward.

  ‘A long time, Phelim.’

  He sat with his hands hanging between his knees, looking up at her, memories as vivid as the carmine of her lips.

  ‘Indeed, Maeve Swan Maid. And you are well?’

  ‘Always well.’ She lowered herself to sit beside him, her cloak of feathers sliding across his knees as she folded her legs. ‘But Phelim of the Færan still suffers. Just as he did so long ago. Swan Maid thinks thy Goddess Aine wants thee to suffer forever.’

  Phelim thought he discerned a faint note of sympathy in Maeve’s words.

  ‘I wonder the same sometimes, Maeve. And yet the Moonlady would say it is merely Fate bending us in the direction it thinks we should go.’

  ‘Huh, the Moonlady.’ She dismissed the celestial spirit with a shrug of her slim shoulders. ‘Thou art philosophical about loss of thy stepdaughter, Phelim. Maeve wagers your stitcher wife isn’t like thee.’

  ‘No. She’s not. Why should she be otherwise? What has she ever done to warrant so much sadness in one short life? As to me – being philosophical is hardly true, I ache with the bitterness of our loss but must keep a clear head to keep searching.’

  ‘To little avail it would seem. Thy energies have been misdirected. Maeve suspects abduction of daughter may not be Adelina’s Fate, but something-else altogether.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Phelim’s heart began to beat faster. For weeks he had threads of ideas and enigmas, solutions and convolutions all tangled in his mind and suddenly a new thread edged forward. Fear rose, as if the mass could grow and grow and suffocate them all.

  ‘Phelim feels fright. So long has he lived like mortal men that he is almost one. Half-time mortal is no more, fulltime is more like. Tuh!’ Maeve gave a tiny grunt, her nose tipping up. ‘If Phelim had thought like Færan, been like Færan, maybe truth might have revealed itself.’

  ‘What do you say?’ His voice lifted and an edge sharpened itself on the air, his fingers grabbing Maeve’s slim arm. She laughed in response, a cynical sharp hoot reminiscent of a swan call.

  Her pliant fingers plucked at his hand and pushed it away.

  ‘In essence thou art a good man, Phelim, too good to be Færan perhaps, so Maeve will forgive thy outburst.’

  ‘Maeve, it has been a year. Isabella has been gone a year. My wife fades before my eyes with grief, my stepson has lost his voice. That he cannot speak and that Isabella is missing, it’s more than a coincidence. I surmised the two were linked long ago. Help me, Swan Maid. Help Adelina. She never did anything to hurt you. If you know anything that can find my stepdaughter and help my stepson, don’t play some sick game with me. Just tell me.’

  Maeve shook her head, her almond shaped eyes closing to slits.

  ‘Ah Phelim, thou stretches Swan Maid’s patience with thy manner but she feels sorrow for thee, nevertheless. Thou mentioned Moonlady. Let Maeve tell thee, Moonlady will not appear for thee again in thy lifetime, Phelim. It is another’s turn now to have benefit of her wisdom.’

  Phelim sighed, a sound thick with anger.

  ‘Maeve, you toy with me.’

  ‘Thou must hold thy temper a minute more, Færan.’ Maeve stood, her blackness bold against the bleached grasses and sedge of the fens. She began to pull her cloak up to her shoulders and Phelim wanted to rip it off and tear feathers out. ‘In all thy peregrinations, hast thou ever given thought to thy stepson? That he is Other, that he himself may be reason for voice loss, that coincidence of stepdaughter’s abduction may be a fateful coincidence, attached to what hangs over life of thy stepson?’

  The cloak had almost reached her shoulders and the glamour was beginning, stirring the air, so that a welkin wind tickled Phelim’s neck.

  ‘Tell me Maeve,’ Phelim begged, his mind filled with the image of the broken home to which he returned, where tranquillity had been unknown for months.

  ‘Phelim of the Færan should go to lake, to Ymp Trees. Go to Jasper’s, the answer may be waiting.’

  The cloak was ruffled into place, a curious shuffle, more bird-like than mortal. As the beautiful maid took a step toward the water of the fens she transformed to a swan again, whereupon she opened her feathered wings and with a cry that was almost an order, ‘go’, she launched herself into the sky.

  ‘What does she mean, Isabella’s kidnapping is attached to what hangs over Nicholas’s life?’ Adelina jumped up and began to pace restlessly. ‘Did she say? Or was she as downright ambiguous and arrogant as ever?’

  Her hands curled tightly around her thin body like the cord of a whiplash and Nicholas could hardly bear the sight. He began writing on a piece of paper as Phelim answered her.

  ‘I don’t know, Adelina. I don’t know what she means. That’s probably why we have to go to Jasper’s. She was endeavouring to help, muirnin, she wasn’t arrogant. Cool perhaps, but that is Maeve and even so, I think she sensed that we are so locked in our grief that we can’t see wood for trees.’

  ‘Jasper’s gone, Phelim. Dead.
’ Adelina’s voice was hoarse, grating with tiredness. ‘Of what use is an empty house?’

  ‘Somewhere secure to stay whilst we seek out whatever it is Maeve mentioned.’

  ‘Do you think she meant you should talk with…’ Gallivant broke in as he tipped the smashed shards of glass into a bucket but his words halted as Nico grabbed his arm and held out a note. He read it and looked up. ‘Sink me, Nico.’

  Nicholas hit his chest with a thump and then signed to his mouth, nodding his head furiously at the Hob.

  ‘He wants me to read this.’ Gallivant waved the note in the air and began. ‘Went to cove to try and remember. Ceasg there. Cassiope. There when Isabella taken.’

  ‘Nico,’ Adelina cried out.

  ‘Let me continue, Adelina.’ Gallivant looked up from under his brows and cleared his throat. ‘Saw them grab her but said they disappeared into dark. Gone.’

  Adelina swung back to the window groaning in despair.

  ‘Turned me over in water and held me till tide went down. Wanted something in payment. Said no and she said,‘ Gallivant considered Nico with piercing eyes, before looking at both Adelina and Phelim as he spoke. ‘Said she would curse me if I wasn’t already cursed.’

  A collective intake of breath accompanied this revelation and Nico wrote again in the ensuing quiet – the charcoal scratch-scratched on the paper as it lay on the aged and worn surface of the oak table and an air of animal frustration hung about the man who wanted to talk but couldn’t. He passed the note to his stepmother and she took it, her eyes troubled and hurt.