The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  The old grandmother humphed and frowned at the Hob. She flung the last of her wine back into her mouth as Katinka grabbed Adelina’s hand and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Of course, come now. But not him.’

  She nodded at Phelim, and Nico and Gallivant exchanged more glances.

  ‘But he must, Katinka. He’s my husband and he shared the joy of Kholi’s and my child, we share her loss and the accompanying grief together and I would have him hear exactly what you see for me in the future. It is as it must be. If you won’t countenance him then I’ll go from here, Katinka,’ a sliver of steel slipped into Adelina’s voice, ‘and never call you my friend again.’

  Katinka closed her eyes to slits and looked at her old friend almost as one would examine an insect specimen and then she laughed, a rich sound from the pert woman as she lit another cheroot.

  ‘Ha, it’s the russet hair. It’s the same every time. You haven’t changed, my sweet.’ She gave Adelina a hug and nodded to Phelim. ‘Come then, let’s get it done.’

  They left without a backward glance and Gallivant stood and stretched, giving the grandmother a stern stare.

  ‘Nico, it’s obvious we aren’t wanted here so I think I’ll return to the livery stables. Shall you stay or come?’

  Nico eyed the old woman with an insolence he had perfected of late and shook his head at the Hob. Gallivant nodded and patted Nico’s back as he left.

  ‘You’re rude,’ the grandmother said, her voice husky but strong.

  And you’re not? Spare me the lecture.

  How he would have loved to answer her back.

  ‘I’ll tell you this for free, Mr. High and Mighty. You don’t belong here, but seeing as you wait for your stepmother, why don’t you let me look at your palms.’ Her button bright eyes surveyed him like a hawk surveys a rabbit. ‘Or are you scared?’

  He stood up by way of an answer and followed the crone as she threaded through the vans. Her stride was steady and strong and there was little about her apart from her wrinkled face and white hair that set the stigma of age upon her. She hitched her skirt up in folds in one hand and lifted a leg to step up onto the van’s stoop and Nicholas went to help.

  ‘Leave me, boy, I’m not an ancient yet.’

  She pushed the door of the van open and the sun streamed into a cleverly furnished interior. A divan was hung around with white star-patterned muslin and snowy cushions piled high on the bed, embroidered with stylised Traveller figures and with stars and moons. A beige coloured cat moved off the pillows and arched its sleepy back, to yawn and fold into an elegant sitting position, lifting one paw to lick as if it were made of gossamer.

  Nicholas eased his height under the lintel as the woman beckoned him to enter, her elderly voice devoid of the tremor of age.

  ‘My name is Viviane and I am a cousin of Adelina’s mother so I suppose by some strange quirk of fate, by a default in history, I am a step-relation of yours too. Odd really, we Travellers don’t take kindly to the Færan.’

  Nicholas would have liked to reply that he didn’t take kindly to the Færan either, nor did he particularly like opinion without manners. But he had to be content with the thought rather than the action even though it rubbed him like a piece of grit in a cut.

  ‘Don’t be so po-faced. I merely state it as I see it. So, you are cursed. But this of course you know.’ She sat in one of the chairs at a table under the window and her fingers waved at the other chair. ‘Sit, sit boy. Bring that tray as you do.’

  Nicholas picked up a tray liberally sprinkled with folk motifs and on which a carafe of fragrant rose coloured wine sat with two cut glasses. All the while he wondered what it was about the old woman that had seduced him to spend a minute with her. What could she tell him? She was only a mortal after all.

  ‘I know you’ve already had the wine by the fire. But this is better, it’s so smooth it could almost be eldritch.’ She passed him a glass and toasted him with her own. ‘Now to business.’

  Nicholas looked at her. Age marked her as a matriarch and he wondered if that was why he had followed her, because in some oblique way she reminded him of Ebba, the way she called a spade a spade. He missed that influence in his life so much.

  The woman’s white hair had been looped twice onto her head in a gentle braid and her earrings dangled, the light catching the peridots and pearls as they swung gently. Her hands lay on the table, one over the other and it was that, if nothing else, that betrayed her artistic heritage – long fingers, albeit knobbled and grainy, the kind of fingers that could manipulate fabric and thread with excellence. He jumped as the cool hands reached for his own to turn the palms over so she could see the lines.

  ‘Do you wonder why you are cursed?’

  Nicholas snorted, snatching his hands away to toss the rest of his wine back.

  Of course he did. Was the woman mad? Wasn’t it why he was going to the Ymp Tree orchard?

  She took his hands back and opened them out, smoothing the tension that had bunched them.

  ‘It is all because of your family, Nicholas. Your Færan family.’

  He pulled on his hands to attract her attention, to make her look at him.

  ‘But you know this too, don’t you?’ She responded to his animated expression. ‘Let me look. There is a frisson you know, even from one who is only half Færan. I feel it fizzing as I touch you. You see? Even with half the blood, the eldritch still manifests. Think on that, young man. Think how much of what you are can affect your life.’

  This too I know. This is what I hate.

  One of her fingers traced down the centre of his palm.

  ‘This is your heart-line, it indicates your length of life. And it’s long but…’ she bent her head and twisted Nicholas’s palm in the light, running fingers as soft as a butterfly wing-beat across the lines of his hand. ‘It fades halfway. It doesn’t stop, it just fades and I can’t read it. It indicates to me that you will have a long life, but one that is beyond my skill to identify. A strange thing…I don’t…’ she didn’t finish, as though she were perturbed.

  Nicholas grunted and went to stand, feeling in his pocket for coin – that which one traditionally passed over for a fortune told.

  ‘Don’t go just yet,’ a tiny hint of empathy floated in her voice. ‘I can tell you something else. There’s something that hangs all about, Nicholas. I wish I knew what it is and I could tell you. It’s foreign and strange. The only thing I see with any real clarity is that you won’t be alone in your journey. There is someone who knew your father who might help.’

  Nicholas sucked in a small breath as if about to speak and then shook his head in frustration.

  ‘Here,’ she passed him some flimsy paper and a piece of writing charcoal that lay in a box with other such writing equipment. ‘Write for me.’

  He grabbed for the stuff and wrote with haste.

  Who knew my father? Man or woman?

  ‘Man.’

  Where is he?

  ‘There is water, but not Pymm. Could it be Veniche?’

  When?

  ‘I don’t know. Soon, I think. Stop.’

  Viviane spoke sharply, slapping the paper away. He bent and picked it up, looking at her all the while. He wrote and slid the paper over the table and she took it reluctantly.

  How do you know this?

  Her sigh filled the enclosed space. Her boldness, her power, the intimation of a Traveller matriarch had all but disappeared and her answer came with the tiredness and resignation of age.

  ‘I told you Nicholas. Intuition. There is something that hangs all about you and it would be better for us all if you took it far from here.’

  Then tell me. Find sister?

  She slumped in her chair.

  ‘That’s not for me to say. I honestly don’t know. But I’ll tell you this, my boy. Whatever has happened to your family and to mine, it has to stop and you are the only one who can stop it. Do you see?’

  A spade is a spade, he thought, as sh
e rose unsteadily. As he stood, she pushed against his chest with surprising strength and he could see concern in her eyes. Perhaps, right at the back where there was a flicker of light in the faded hazel, even a flicker of fear.

  You know my father’s name?

  He scrawled rapidly, beginning to feel as if there might be something in the air, something that together they could catch and reel in.

  ‘Travellers know much, Nicholas. It’s what sets them apart and takes them closer to the Others than any other mortal and it is not something that is relished. Go now, please. Take your sadness and your Otherness and leave. It sullies my van.’

  She pushed him out the door and he stumbled to the ground.

  On instinct he turned back but she was gone, the door to her van closed on the world. Another avenue blocked, he thought and then wondered what little store Gallivant would have set by what Viviane had said.

  And what had she uttered really? She had imparted nothing of Isabella, the thing he really wanted to know. So Gallivant was right…a bit of augury.

  Except… ‘You won’t be alone in your journey. Someone who knew your father might help.’

  Nicholas’s father had lived such a short life. Ebba and Jasper said he had lived far away in some dark corner of the Raj before he had left and met Nicholas’s mother. Would it then perhaps be someone from his father’s youth? Were they Other, this someone who knew his father, or just some mundane mortal? But Viviane’s last words were what disturbed him most. ‘It sullies my van.’ What did she think anything Other did to him?

  Ah, she has no idea.

  Not to be able to articulate it, to be able to scream or to roar – it forever kept him on the edge, a volcano about to erupt, the counted space between lightning and thunder, the silence before the earth splits asunder.

  He bent and scooped up a rock to send it spinning into the undergrowth of sedge as he stalked past. A howl like the Caointeach filled the air as a small terrier bolted from the undergrowth, one leg held high in pain. Those who had seen him throw the rock turned disgusted glances toward him and self-loathing rippled across his skin, a chill that clung like old sweat.

  *

  His path had led him away from the vans of the Travellers and past the stalls of the food vendors who were even busier as the afternoon shadows lengthened. The Stitching Fair was an opportunity for communal gatherings, for entertainment with colour and music. Excitement rippled around the aisles, children beginning to bubble as the hour for the Mummers’ plays and magick shows drew closer. The evening’s end offered fireworks that had been conveyed on the backs of the camel trains from the Raj, down the precarious Celestine Stairway. The atmosphere was keen and vivid and filled with likely companionship.

  And Nicholas had never felt more alone in his life.

  Hours of his life had been spent discoursing on the nature of Færan. Not just with Phelim but with Gallivant and with old Jasper who had been such a wise man.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing sometimes, for those like your father and his brothers who sought life outside of the Other world. They shrank from the bounty of Færan, from its immortality and from the excellence of its members.’

  ‘Phelim believes they are all wasters,’ said Nicholas. ‘Bored to the point of cruelty and with no moral code, restlessly seeking the better and the best and to hell in a handbasket with any mortal or Other that gets in their way.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s right. Leastways, I’m right at the doorway here in the Ymp Tree Orchard and can help any who might be hurt in some way.’

  ‘Why are you different then, Jasper? Why aren’t you as filled with ennui as the rest?’

  ‘Not all Others are like that, Nico. One of the advantages of a long life is the time to fulfil dreams and that is what I do; in between reading banes, healing frailties, even the reparation of stricken mortals to their own lives. I endeavour to fulfil my dream, which I suppose is mundane in its own way. Did you know I am growing the consummate medicinal garden and creating an encyclopaedia about my plants?’

  ‘But what makes that any different to a mortal, to someone like Ebba?’

  ‘Simply that I have forever to carry out my dreams. She doesn’t.’

  ‘But she is not unhappy with that. If you ask her, I know she is fulfilled with what she does. Because she knows the length of her life will motivate her to greater and perhaps better achievement.’

  ‘Oh Nico, without doubt you are right and if there is one thing that can affect an Other’s life, particularly Færan who are the most immortal of all, it is that they really do believe they have time for the serious stuff later, and that in the meantime they must seek abandonment and delight. What they stupidly forget is that a bane can lurk around any corner, as for a mortal, so that their light can be snuffed in an instant.’

  Nicholas had pursued many a philosophical discussion in a similar vein, but the thing that had made its mark most upon him was the issue of age. Phelim would reach a middle age from which he would progress so slowly it would seem the world had stopped. Adelina on the other hand would age as any mortal woman and in time she would leave Phelim for that final journey.

  ‘Ah Nico, I don’t know how I shall survive,’ his stepfather said one day. ‘She is quite simply my life. Without that which makes your life, there is no life. That is why being Other is painful beyond belief. I shall be condemned to a forever loneliness.’

  Nico had looked at Phelim and seen mortal despair colour the man’s emotions and he realised how removed from being an Other his stepfather really was.

  ‘What about me, Phelim? I’m a half-breed, how shall immortality affect me?’

  ‘Ask Jasper, Nicholas. I confess I made an effort to leave Færan behind and know as little as I can bear to remember. It disturbs you I can see, so you must ask him next time you visit.’

  But Jasper had met his bane before Nicholas had his chance.

  In the old man’s beloved walled garden, a weed had begun to grow. Sticky Willy had never been seen in the garden before and had made an insurgence through the white frilled clematis. Jasper pulled at it and it stuck to his hands, leaving red welts as the poison sank into his skin to spread rapidly through his body. Eventually as he slept, his breath ragged, his heart stopped beating, and Margriet, his housekeeper, had opened the window for his soul to fly.

  In quick succession, Nico had lost a grandfather figure in Jasper and then a grandmother figure with Ebba’s death – wise counsellors who could have empathised with his distrait and helped him in his current dilemmas.

  *

  The echo of sound changed and Nicholas looked up to see a tavern close by the riverbank, a pontoon attached to its walls so that some of the drinkers sat at trestles in the outdoors over water. The sign squeaked on rusty hinges and he could just read the faded name – The Bullrush and Burdock.

  The smell of hop and barley underlay an aroma of roast meat and fresh bread and Nicholas realised he was hungry, that whilst he had plenty to drink as the day progressed, he had given no thought to food which was probably why his attention had begun to dip and weave. He struck out for the rowdy confines, vaguely hoping that whatever hung about his shoulder would leave him alone for the moment.

  At least until his belly was full.

  He gave the door a shove, thinking it stuck because of age and bowed wood. Within the fermented confines there were shouts and he fell into the room as the door flew back.

  A thorny silence grew up around him, its prickles digging in.

  ‘’Ere yer bastard. Yer knocked me over. What…’ a huge fat finger poked him in the chest, ‘do yer think I’m gonna do about that?’

  Nicholas looked at the livid face, the curled lip and the slit eyes and reeled as a blow caught him on the chin, crashing him against the lintel, his ears assailed by a bloodlusty crowd longing for a fight.

  Chapter Seven

  Isabella

  The horses climbed steadily out of the shaded lanes that ran alongside the uppermost parks and gardens
. Open terraces snaked across the contours of the land within Isabella’s vision and all were coated with a fast melting rime that the night had laid down. More indigo robes bent to dig, cut, and weed and she was surprised at how many slaves existed in this odd world.

  She hadn’t realised she spoke aloud until her companion answered.

  ‘Indeed. Many slaves, and all female.’

  ‘Why?’

  She had often wondered as she worked with women in the Koi compound. The only man was the Master, never a male gardener, cook nor scribe. Not expecting loquaciousness from her escort, she was pleased when he answered.

  ‘Many hundreds of years ago a curse was placed on the Han by celestial spirits, that no Han woman should ever give birth to a female. In order for the country not to die out, the Emperor of the time decreed that females of childbearing age should be abducted from outside the Han. All slaves had to be young, dark-haired and dark-eyed, in order that the physical attributes of the Han could be continued as closely as possible. The slaves also had to be proficient in some sort of skill. They are bred to Han men and any male child is sent to a school where they are reared in varying skills. They are then adopted by upper families and thus the Houses are carried on.’

  ‘But that’s barbaric, inhuman.’

  Her fingers tightened on the leather of his tunic as she glanced up at the back of his head, his shining black hair split into a double roll and anchored at his nape with a sharp skewer.

  ‘Nevertheless it is law. You will be bred yourself very soon.’

  Isabella quailed.

  ‘But Master Koi has not adopted a male. The house is childless.’

  ‘He has adopted a child but the child is in training and will not enter the Koi House until he is of age.’

  ‘As I said,’ Isabella muttered. ‘Barbaric.’

  Her escort made no comment and she glanced about her, remembering landmarks. They had reached the stone bastion that marked Han, the wall creeping away left and right from where they stood in front of the Gate. The massive palisade loomed grey and forbidding above her and along its edge she could see archers holding cross-bows.