by Kate Morton
She had been there for fifteen minutes or so when the door to the room opened. A thin beam of light passed through a tiny hole in the centre of a timber knot at the back of the desk. Rose held her breath and pressed her eye against the hole, dreading the sight of Mamma and Dr Matthews coming for her.
But it wasn’t Mamma or the doctor holding the door open, it was Father, dressed in his long black travelling cloak.
Rose’s throat constricted. Without ever having been properly told, she knew that the threshold to Father’s darkroom was one she should not cross.
Father stood for a moment, silhouetted black against the bright outside. Then in he came, peeling off his coat and discarding it on an armchair just as Thomas appeared, mortification paling his cheeks.
‘Your Lordship,’ Thomas said, catching his breath, ‘we weren’t expecting you until next—’
‘My plans were changed.’
‘Cook is preparing luncheon, my Lord,’ said Thomas, lighting the gas lamps on the wall. ‘I’ll lay for two and tell Lady Mountrachet that you’ve returned.’
‘No.’
The suddenness with which this command was issued caused Rose’s breath to catch.
Thomas turned abruptly towards Father and the match between his gloved fingers extinguished, victim of the sudden chill.
‘No,’ said Father again. ‘The journey was long, Thomas. I need to rest.’
‘A tray, sir?’
‘And a decanter of sherry.’
Thomas nodded, then disappeared through the door, footsteps fading down the hall.
Rose could hear a thumping. She pressed her ear against the desk, wondering whether something in the drawer, some mysterious item belonging to Father, was ticking. Then she realised it was her own heart, pounding a warning against her chest. Jumping for its life.
But there was no escape. Not while Father sat in his armchair, blocking the door.
And so Rose, too, continued to sit, knees pulled tight against the traitorous heart which threatened to give her away.
It was the only time she could remember being alone with Father. She noticed how his presence filled the room so that a space, previously benign, now seemed charged with emotions and feelings Rose didn’t understand.
Dull footsteps on the rug, then a heavy masculine exhalation that made the hairs on her arms stand on end.
‘Where are you?’ Father said softly, then again from between clenched teeth. ‘Where are you?’
Rose caught her breath and kept it prisoner behind tight lips. Was he speaking to her? Had her all-knowing father somehow divined that she was hidden where she should not be?
A sigh from Father—sorrow? love? weariness?—and then ‘poupee’. So softly, so quietly, a broken word from a broken man. Rose had been learning French from Miss Tranton, and she knew what poupee meant—little baby doll. ‘Poupee,’ Father said again. ‘Where are you, my Georgiana?’
Rose released her breath. Relieved that he had not discerned her presence, aggrieved that such soft tones did not describe her name.
And, as she pressed her cheek against the desk, Rose promised herself that one day someone would speak her name that way . . .
‘Put your hand down!’ Mr Sargent was exasperated now. ‘If you continue to move it, I’ll paint you with three and that’s how you’ll be remembered evermore.’
Eliza heaved a sigh, knotted her hands behind her back.
Rose’s eyes were glazed from holding the one position and she blinked a few times. Father had left the room now, but his presence lingered, the same unhappy feeling that always trailed after him.
Rose let her gaze rest once more on her scrapbook. The fabric was such a pretty shade of pink, one she knew would suit her dark hair well.
Throughout her years of sickness, there was only one thing Rose had ever wanted and that was to grow up. To escape the bounds of childhood and live, as Milly Theale had put it so perfectly in Rose’s favourite book, however briefly and brokenly. She longed to fall in love, to marry, to have children. To leave Blackhurst and begin a life all her own. Away from this house, away from this sofa that Mamma insisted she recline upon even when she felt quite well. ‘Rose’s sofa,’ Mamma called it. ‘Put a new throw rug on Rose’s sofa. Something that will pick up the paleness of her skin, make her hair look shinier.’
And the day of her escape was drawing near, Rose knew it. At long last Mamma had agreed that Rose was well enough to meet a suitor. Over the past few months, Mamma had arranged luncheons with a procession of eligible young (and not so young!) men. They’d all been fools—Eliza had entertained Rose for hours after each visit with her re-enactments and impersonations—but it was good practice. For the perfect gentleman was out there somewhere, waiting for her. He would be nothing like Father, he would be an artist, with an artist’s sense of beauty and possibility, who didn’t care two whits about bricks and bugs. Who was open and easy to read, whose passions and dreams brought light to his eyes. And he would love her, and only her.
Beside her, Eliza huffed impatiently. ‘Really, Mr Sargent,’ she said. ‘I should paint myself faster.’
Her husband would be like Eliza, Rose realised, a smile pulling at her placid expression. The gentleman she sought was the male incarnation of her cousin.
And finally their captor set them free. Tennyson was right, to rust unburnished was inconceivably dull. Eliza hurried out of the ridiculous dress Aunt Adeline had insisted upon for the portrait. It was one of Rose’s from a season ago—lace that itched, satin that clung, and a shade of red that made Eliza feel like strawberry pulp. Such a pointless waste of time, losing a morning to a grumpy old man intent on capturing their images so that they too could be hung, lonely and static, upon some chilly wall.
Eliza hopped down on hands and knees and peered beneath her bed. Lifted the corner of the floorboard she’d loosened long ago. She reached her hand inside and pulled out the story ‘The Changeling’. Ran her hand across the black and white cover, felt the ripples of her own penmanship beneath her fingertips.
It was Davies who had suggested she put her tales to paper. She’d been helping him plant new roses when a grey and white bird with a striped tail had flown to a low bough nearby.
‘Cuckoo,’ said Davies. ‘Winters in Africa but returns here in the spring.’
‘I wish I were a bird,’ said Eliza. ‘Then I should simply run towards the cliff top and glide over the edge. All the way to Africa, or India. Or Australia.’
‘Australia?’
It was the destination that currently held her imagination in its grip. Mary’s eldest brother, Patrick, had emigrated recently with his young family to a place called Maryborough, where his Aunt Eleanor had settled some years before. Despite this family connection, Mary liked to think the name had also swayed his choice, and could often be probed for details of the exotic land, floating in a far-off ocean on the other side of the globe. Eliza had found Australia on the schoolroom map, a strange, giant continent in the Southern Ocean with two ears, one pointed, one broken.
‘I know a fellow went to Australia,’ said Davies, pausing a minute in his planting. ‘Got himself a farm of a thousand acres and couldn’t get a thing to grow.’
Eliza bit her lip and tasted excitement. This extremism was in line with her own impression of the place. ‘They’ve got a giant sort of rabbit there, Mary says. Kangaroos, they call them. Feet as long as a grown man’s leg!’
‘I don’t know what you’d do with yourself in a place like that, Miss Eliza. Nor Africa nor India neither.’
Eliza knew exactly what she’d do. ‘I’m going to collect stories. Ancient stories that no one here has heard before. I’ll be just like the Brothers Grimm I was telling you about.’
Davies frowned. ‘Why you’d want to be like your pair of grim old German fellows is beyond me. You should be writing down your own stories, not those belonging to others.’
And so she had. She’d begun by writing a story for Rose, a birthday gift, a fairy story
about a princess who was turned by magic into a bird. It was the first story she’d ever trapped on paper, and to see her thoughts and ideas turned concrete was curious. It made her skin seem unusually sensitive, strangely exposed and vulnerable. Breezes were cooler, the sun warmer. She couldn’t decide whether the sensation was one she liked or loathed.
But Rose had always loved Eliza’s stories and Eliza had no greater gift to give, thus was it the perfect choice. For in the years since Eliza had been plucked from her lonely London life and transplanted to the grand and mysterious Blackhurst, Rose had become a soul mate. She’d laughed and longed with Eliza, and gradually come to fill the space where Sammy once had lodged, the dark empty hole belonging to all single twins. In return, there was nothing Eliza would not do or give or write for Rose.
THE CHANGELING
by Eliza Makepeace
In the olden time, when magic lived and breathed, there was a Queen who longed for a child. She was a sad Queen, for the King was oft away, leaving her with little to do but dwell upon her own loneliness, and wonder I how it was that her husband, whom she loved so well, could bear to be parted from her so long and so often.
It happened that many years before, the King had stolen the throne from its rightful ruler, the Fairy Queen, and the beautiful, peaceful land of Fairy had overnight become a desolate place in which magic no longer flourished and laughter was banished. So wrathful was the King that he determined to capture the Fairy Queen and force her back to the kingdom. A golden cage was prepared specially that he might imprison the Fairy Queen and impel her to make magic for his pleasure.
One winter’s day, while the King was away, the Queen sat by an open window, gazing out across the snow-laden ground. She was weeping as she sat, for the desolation of the winter months had a habit of reminding the Queen of her own loneliness. As she took in the barren winter landscape, she thought of her own barren womb, empty, as ever, despite her longing. ‘Oh, how I wish for a child!’ she cried. ‘A beautiful daughter with a heart of truth and eyes that never fill with tears. Then need I never be lonely again.’
Winter passed, and the world around began to wake. The birds returned to the kingdom and set about readying their nests, deer could be seen once more grazing where the fields met the woods, and buds burst forth upon the branches of the kingdom’s trees. As the new season’s skylarks took to the air, the Queen’s skirt began to tighten around her middle, and by and by she realised she was with child. The King had not been back to the castle and thus the Queen knew that a mischievous fairy, far from home and hidden in the winter garden, must have heard her weeping and granted her wish by magic.
The Queen grew and grew and winter came once more, and on Christmas Eve, as a deep snow fell across the land, the Queen began to pain. All night she laboured, and on the last chime of midnight her daughter was born, and the Queen was able to look at last upon her baby’s face. To think that this beautiful child, with pale unblemished skin, dark hair, and red lips in the shape of a rosebud, was all hers! ‘Rosalind,’ the Queen said. ‘I shall name her Rosalind.’
The Queen was instantly smitten and refused to let the Princess Rosalind out of her sight. Loneliness had made the Queen bitter, bitterness had made her selfish, and selfishness had made her suspicious. At every turn the Queen worried that someone was waiting to steal the child from her. She is mine, thought the Queen, my salvation, thus must I keep her for myself.
On the morning of the Princess Rosalind’s christening, the wisest women in all the land were invited to bring their blessings. All day the Queen watched as wishes for grace and prudence and wit rained upon the child. Finally, when night began its creep into the kingdom, the Queen bid the wise women farewell. Her back was turned but briefly, yet when she looked again upon her child, she saw that one guest remained. A traveller in a long cloak stood by the crib, staring down at the infant.
‘It is late, wise woman,’ said the Queen. ‘The princess has been blessed and must now be allowed her sleep.’
The traveller pushed back her cloak and the Queen gasped, for the face was not that of a wise maiden, but a wizened crone with a toothless smile.
‘I come with a message from the Fairy Queen,’ said the crone. ‘The girl is one of ours, thus must she come with me.’
‘No,’ cried the Queen, rushing to the crib-side. ‘She is my daughter, my precious baby girl.’
‘Yours?’ said the crone. ‘This glorious child?’ And she began to laugh, a cruel cackle that made the Queen draw back in horror. ‘She was yours only as long as we let you keep her. In your heart you have always known she was born of fairy dust and now must you give her up.’
The Queen wept then, for the crone’s pronouncement was all that she had feared. ‘I cannot give her up,’ she said. ‘Have mercy, crone, and let me keep her longer.’
Now it so happened that the crone liked to cause mischief and, at the Queen’s words, a slow smile spread across her face. ‘I offer you a choice,’ she said. ‘Relinquish the child now and her life will be long and happy, spent at the Fairy Queen’s knee.’
‘Or?’ said the Queen.
‘Or you may keep her here until the morning of her eighteenth birthday, when her true destiny will come for her and she will leave you forever. Think carefully, for to keep her longer is to love her deeper.’
‘I don’t need to think upon it,’ said the Queen. ‘I choose the second.’
The crone smiled so that the dark gaps in her mouth showed. ‘She is yours then, but only until the morning of her eighteenth year.’
At that moment the baby Princess began to cry for the first time ever. The Queen turned to scoop the child into her arms, and when she looked back the crone was gone.
The Princess grew to be a beautiful little girl, full of joy and light. She bewitched the ocean with her singing and brought smiles to the faces of all throughout the land. All, that is, except the Queen, who was too plagued by fear to enjoy her child. When her daughter sang the Queen did not hear, when her daughter danced the Queen did not see, when her daughter reached out the Queen did not feel, for she was too busy calculating the time left before the child was to be taken from her.
As the years passed, the Queen grew ever more afraid of the cold, dark event that lurked around the corner. Her mouth forgot how to smile, and the lines about her forehead learned how to hold their creases. Then, one night, she had a dream in which the crone appeared. ‘Your daughter is almost ten,’ said the crone. ‘Do not forget that her destiny will find her on her eighteenth birthday.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said the Queen. ‘I cannot let her go, I will not let her go.’
‘You gave your word,’ said the crone, ‘thus must it be honoured.’
The next morning, after making sure the Princess was safely under guard, the Queen put on her riding habit and sent for her horse. Although magic had been banished from the castle there was one place where spells and sorcery might still be found. In a black cave on the edge of the enchanted sea lived a fairy who was neither good nor bad. She had been punished by the Fairy Queen for using magic unwisely and had thus remained hidden while the rest of the magic folk had fled the land. And although the Queen knew it was dangerous to seek the fairy’s help, she had no other hope.
The Queen rode for three days and three nights and when she finally arrived at the cave the fairy was waiting for her. ‘Come,’ she said, ‘and tell me what it is you seek.’
The Queen told of the crone and her promise to return on the Princess’s eighteenth birthday, and the fairy listened. Then, when the Queen was finished, the fairy said, ‘I cannot undo the crone’s curse, but I may help you still.’
‘I order you to do so,’ said the Queen.
‘I must warn you, my Queen, that when you hear what I propose, you may not thank me for my help.’ And the fairy leaned over and whispered in the Queen’s ear.
The Queen did not hesitate, for surely anything was better than losing her child to the crone. ‘It must be done.
’
So the fairy handed the Queen a potion and instructed her to give the Princess three drops on each of three nights. ‘All will then be as I promised,’ she said. ‘The crone will trouble you no more, for only the Princess’s true destiny will find her.’
The Queen hastened home, her mind easy for the first time since her daughter’s christening, and for the next three nights she placed three drops of the potion into her daughter’s milk glass. On the third night, when the princess drank of her glass she began to choke and, as she fell from her chair, she was changed from a princess into a beautiful bird, just as the fairy had foretold. The bird fluttered about the room and the Queen called for her servant to fetch the golden cage from the King’s quarters. The bird was shut inside, the golden door was closed, and the Queen breathed a sigh of relief. For the King had been clever and his cage, once closed, could not be reopened.
‘There now, my pretty,’ said the Queen. ‘You are safe and none shall ever take you from me.’ And then the Queen hung the cage from a hook in the highest turret of the castle.
With the princess trapped in the cage, all light went out of the kingdom, and the subjects of Fairyland were sunk into an eternal winter in which crops and fertile lands failed. All that kept the people from despair was the princess bird’s songs—sad and beautiful—which drifted from the turret window and spilled across the barren land.
Time passed, as time must, and royal princes made brave by greed came from far and wide to release the trapped Princess. For it was said that in the arid kingdom of Fairyland there was a golden cage so precious it made their own fortunes seem humble, and a caged bird whose songs were so beautiful that gold pieces had been known to fall from the sky when she sang. But all who tried to open the cage dropped dead as soon as they touched it. The Queen, who sat day and night in her rocking chair, guarding the cage so that none might steal her prize, laughed when she saw the princes slain, for fear and suspicion had finally conspired to drive her mad.