The Chocolatier's Wife

by Cindy Lynn Speer

  He smiled his kind smile, and nodded. “Did he ever take a drink with him?”

  Madame Gervaise smiled. “Coffee, of course. Straight and bitter, like they had it at sea when they could.”

  Tasmin had never tasted coffee, and she wondered if the flavor of the brew could have covered the taste of some poison. She knew the effects of coffee, knew what you could mix with it to turn it deadly, but she’d never actually drank it. She put that aside to ask William later.

  “Did you have any new servants? Or any visitors? Someone who saw him just before he died?”

  “Are you asking, my dear William, if there was any way someone could have poisoned my husband’s coffee? Or pushed him over the side?”

  He looked a bit sheepish. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “Part of the ritual was that I made the coffee for him, every day. From a preparation of your own mother’s. She certainly had nothing against him, and I could hardly live without him. My life has not been improved by his death, in the least.”

  “Of course not,” William said. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t think of it.” She chewed her lower lip. “He was quite alone at the time, so I don’t know how he came to fall. All I know is that I miss him.”

  “I am so sorry.” The words were the first Tasmin had said for ages, and they were heartfelt. She knew she would not have truly missed William if he had died at sea. Regretted him, yes, but it would not have changed her life. She would not have known to feel lonely for his voice, and now, knowing him, she could not imagine how she could go on should something happen to take him from her. The very idea surprised her.

  William looked down at his hands for a moment. They all sat there, each feeling the weight of Madame Gervaise’s loss in their own way. When a respectable time had passed, he asked, “Did you ever meet Admiral Lavoussier before your husband’s death?”

  She shook her head. “But I will tell you the truth of him, if you promise not to tell where you got it from. He came to the Bishop with some sad tale. I never knew more than the gist of it, that Lavoussier had, when he lost the Pandora, lost his chances at some promotion. He begged the Bishop to intercede with the governor on his behalf, and with the Admiralty, as the Bishop had done for you, to get this post. It is said the Bishop took pity on him. He was, after all, a man of God, and a powerful one.”

  “Everyone who knew him respected him,” William said.

  After that, he skillfully changed the subject, and they spoke of other matters, his plans for the shop, the Magister’s Ball. Tasmin was happy when they finally left, and were able to talk about what they had learned.

  As she rode with William, she commented sadly, “So it was pity that killed the Bishop.”

  “Yes. I believe that it was partly pity that moved him to request that the governor assign Lavoussier here. But also, he liked to cultivate people whom he thought could be—for lack of a better word—useful. People who owed him loyalty and who would, therefore, always owe him their allegiance.”

  “Like a young merchant captain who was willing to risk the lives of all on his ship for the promise of a real prize?”

  They were entering the town proper again. He smiled slightly. “Perhaps. Look over there, at the people gathered. I wonder what is amiss?”

  “Pray God not another murder.”

  William leaned over and grabbed a Pentcoate’s lad by the arm. “What passes?”

  “Franny Harker, sir! She’s escaped!”

  He let the boy go, and they looked at each other. “We must get back to the shop. Then we can speak.”

  As they made their way to the stables and down the street to the shop, Tasmin strained to hear details. There were none, really; it seemed that Franny’s escape was the locked room mystery of the century. One moment she was there, the next she was not.

  Cecelia was awaiting them at the shop, looking out of sorts. “Lavoussier was by. He refused to speak, he just walked through the shop and left. I watched him close. He took nothing, and I am certain he left nothing, either. Then this one,”—she pointed to Bonny, who was sitting red faced and scared in the shadows—“came in. She wanted to leave, but I wouldn’t let her. I told her that if she wanted your help, we would all have a little talk about the pearls a maid told me she found in this Mistress Almsley’s dressing table.”

  William looked at Bonny, who flushed, and then looked at Cecelia again, dismissing his sister-in-law. “You did well. Where is Ayers?”

  Tasmin saw his jaw was tight, but she realized that if Bonny had, indeed, had anything to do with Tasmin’s dress being destroyed, she felt too overwhelmed to care.

  “One of his step-sons was in a fight in the school yard. He went home to see if he could sort things with the other lad’s father.” Cecelia glared at Bonny again, ready to do battle. “Confess all, you slattern!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tasmin said, “not right at this moment. Of course I care, and I’m quite dismayed that anyone would attack my dress out of spite, but we have larger worries.”

  “It wasn’t spite!” Bonny said. “I would never do such a thing out of spite.”

  William rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Then what good reason would you have to destroy your future sister-in-law’s wedding dress?”

  Bonny was silent, and Cecelia said, mocking, “Doubtless your lover asked you to.”

  Her eyes flickered, and Tasmin tilted her head, her own eyes narrowing.

  “Why would he command that, I wonder?”

  “He said that it was a thing of power. That you could use it to bind William to you so deeply that he would do whatever you asked. I found out later that he wanted to shake things up between you both, more than anything else. He was trying to make trouble, because, well, he has this saying, I can’t quite remember how it goes.”

  “In trouble comes opportunity.” William said it softly. “He said it to me, the first time I met him, while he was taking his pick of my sailors for his ship.”

  “I am so sorry, I should never have listened to him, but please!” Bonny stood and came over to William, wringing her hands. “I cannot believe that she has escaped! Oh, William, I am in such, such trouble as you cannot understand! With her gone, I may be next to see the inside of the jail.”

  William shook his head. “I do not know why I should help you, sister, save for Andrew’s sake.” He then disappeared into the back.

  When he returned, he had some coins in his hand. He pressed them into Cecelia’s palm and closed her fingers over them. “Two weeks wages for yourself and for Ayers, if you will deliver them on the way home. Things could get ugly, now that this has passed, and I want to know that you are both secure for the moment.”

  Cecelia shook her head. “You will need me. Who will watch Tasmin?”

  He smiled. “I will still expect you to watch over her at night, but for now, I wish you and Ayers to stay away from the shop. It will be a target. Anyone found here may get hurt, or be taken to prison. We know our enemy, and we know that he will act. I promise to call you.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.” The coins disappeared. She hugged Tasmin. “I will see you tonight. Call upon me the second you need me.”

  Bonny started crying again, which set Tasmin’s teeth on edge. William locked the door.

  “William! How can you be so calm! I am about to lose everything!”

  “As you should,” Tasmin said hotly. “You poisoned the Bishop, or at least delivered the poisons to him.”

  “I didn’t; Franny did.”

  “Sister,” William said, placing a hand on her shoulder, “you and I both know father paid her for her testimony. Besides, you yourself as much as admitted it.”

  “As much as. That’s the key.” Her hands sought William’s. He flinched but did not pull away. “I didn’t actually, you see.” She looked at Tasmin, pleadingly. “I only said that bec
ause I wanted Eric to know, if or when you confronted him, that I was loyal.”

  “Then how did you get the jacket?”

  “Eric gave it to me, asked me to hide it. That’s all, I swear. I know Franny did it. She’s small, like Tasmin, while I’m a bit taller. Anyway, Mrs. Hobbs knows me from the market and town.”

  Tasmin had assumed the other woman couldn’t have known Bonny because they would have been parts of different social circles, but William seemed to be digesting this, nodding to himself that it was likely.

  “I think ‘tis time I started thinking more like a mage and less like a woman,” Tasmin said softly. She went upstairs, to the cupboard where she kept her supplies. Ever since the incident with the dress she had been afraid to leave anything of value in her room, especially her herbal supplies. She got out her kit, took it downstairs, and placed it on the table. She opened the latch and pushed back the hinged lid, removing the plain, white glazed bowl and her athame, and then pulled on the small brass handles on the front, which opened like double doors. The bottom housed her mortar and pestle, which she took out, then took one of the narrow boxes next to it, its end marked R. She searched through the shelves above, sliding out a couple until she found the vials she wanted. She dipped the bowl into the water bucket and set it in the middle of the table.

  “No, I won’t do this,” Bonny said, getting up. The spell was familiar to everyone in the land, the one spell that non-mages could recognize.

  William took her arm and tugged her back towards the table. “Bonny, you need to know.”

  “Eric is my true husband. Your spell will trick me.”

  At the very bottom, beneath the shelves hidden by their double door, were two drawers. One held more roots and herbs carefully wrapped separately; the bottom held various kinds of stones. She placed four of them, one for every element, around the bowl. She sang the ritual then, crushing and adding rosemary, drops of rose essence, a touch of sage, and a little salt. She picked up the bowl and whispered across the surface, turned it three times clockwise, then set it down. She took Bonny’s hand and stabbed the ring finger quickly. Three drops of blood swirled into nothing with the motion of the bowl’s water. They waited for the water to still, watching.

  A man was standing on the edge of a roof. He was looking down, down to the sharp edges of rock that lined the bank below.

  “God, no.” William whispered, as the frail, thin man with his thinning hair and his stooping shoulders shuffled closer and closer to the edge.

  At long last, Andrew Almsley—the real Andrew of the House of Almsley— ripped his ring from his finger and threw it, as hard as he could, towards the ocean, and then stepped back, crumbling to his knees as he sobbed.

  Bonny stared at the bowl, her jaw slack. William took it as further evidence that his sister had a heart of ice and let her go, stepping back away from her with disgust. “I will go to him. And as far as I’m concerned, you can go to hell, milady. You will not find help here.” He grabbed his hat off the counter. “Tasmin, I shall see you at home when I can.”

  Bonny jumped a little when she heard the door slam against the frame, then looked at Tasmin, obviously at a complete loss.

  “There now,” Tasmin said, stroking her arm awkwardly. William was too protective of his younger brother to see that Bonny was just beginning to understand that she had probably destroyed her life.

  “I feel as if ... I feel as if ... ” her face remained expressionless, her lips almost matching the cream of her complexion. Tasmin took the bowl and threw the contents into the sink, washing it with care. No sense staring at Andrew, poor Andrew, any longer.

  “There’s a chair behind you,” she said as she cleaned her athame. “Sit on it.”

  “I can’t think. I cannot think.” Bonny did as she was told, mechanically. “I feel? I ... ”

  “Robbed?” Tasmin suggested, drying her instruments carefully. Then, in a softer voice, “Raped?”

  “At first I just wanted revenge. Andrew had ... he betrayed me with that penny ... penny ... ”

  “Slut? Tart? Whore?”

  “You have a vocabulary and a half,” Bonny snapped.

  “I used to teach young girls.” She shrugged. The only thing that was important was to keep Bonny talking.

  “He got children on her. On her. We were so happy, once; I loved him, but once I realized that he had shared his body, his love, his children with another, I could not bear looking at him. And he’s angry with me?” She started to get worked up now, her hands gripping the edge of the table. “And William’s angry with me? How could they possibly understand what women feel? All our worth is between our thighs for them. Once we stop giving them the one and cannot give them the other we are nothing to them, nothing, spell or no spell.”

  “It is possible that Andrew didn’t wish it, that he merely did it to please his father.”

  “’Tis obvious you’ve not let William under your skirts, despite what mamma thinks. Then you would know that he had to wish it, at least a little bit.” Her voice was turning ugly now, and Tasmin blushed deeply. Part of it was anger. She would usually leave, when someone started saying terrible things, but now was the time to strike.

  “So you went to him for revenge? With Eric?” She avoided saying his last name. She didn’t want to remind Bonny that he was William’s, and therefore Tasmin’s enemy.

  “He courted me. I was never courted; I played with both the boys when we were little, and as we grew up we—at least Andrew and I—stayed close. I missed him when he was away, and then even when he came back so very changed I still loved him and thought him my best friend.

  “One day he said, ‘‘’tis about time we got married’ and I said, ‘All right, then,’ and the next month we were having our joining ceremony. He never had to win me.”

  She thrust herself away from the table. “Eric showed me that to have won me, to have had to win me, would have made me more valuable in Andrew’s eyes. He brought me presents, and he wooed me with gentle touches and longing looks, until finally he broke down and told me that he was my true intended. I am not quite a fool; I knew his story was hard to prove and not really easy to believe unless you wanted to. And I did, dearly. Because he said he loved me. Because he was handsome, and strong, and fierce in bed. Because he wasn’t the man who preferred plain little Franny Harker over me.”

  But he was, a voice whispered in her head, a voice that was not hers.

  “That’s not one of my sprites,” she muttered.

  In fact, it had not been a sprite’s voice at all.

  “There’s someone else here,” she said, as her air sprites went up in arms.

  A Skellitt sprite landed on the table, blue and sickly green.

  “I wondered who your master was after William told me about you.” She knew that a Skellitt could not survive without a master to feed from.

  That rendered it less important to her than its master, for the second the link was cut between them, the sprite would perish.

  The shop door opened and closed, and, like the flicker of flame, a woman appeared. She was holding a topaz in her hand.

  “You beast,” Bonny said. “Undergrown sow.” She looked ready to murder, and Tasmin stepped forward, prepared to stop her.

  “Not hard to assume who you are,” Tasmin said.

  Franny Harker was radiating power, but Tasmin could not tell if it was real power, or a veneer meant to puff her up, make her look bigger and more frightening than she really was. Tasmin heard the sprites screaming as they fought and saw that the Skellitt was pinned to the floor by invisible hands, but Franny did not seem to care.

  “You should leave.” Tasmin was considering her options. She was not good at throwing spells, her magic needed time.

  Franny sniffed the air. “You’ve just conducted the mating spell. The feel of it lingers. Clever girl, so you do know the truth. I thi
nk you should do it again. It will be ever so much faster, since traces of the last are still in the ether.”

  “Why?” Tasmin asked. “Has no one told you where your true intended waits?”

  She smiled sweetly. “I’ve been married for ages, and happily. But you are the one I am thinking of, my dear. It’s an ever so convenient and direct way of seeing into one’s future.”

  She wanted to deny the woman, but at the same time she was terrified that something terrible was happening to William. She filled the bowl again, and followed the ritual with shaking hands.

  The spell was not elegantly done. She slashed her finger terribly, dripping blood everywhere. But the pink water settled, and she saw William sitting on the roof next to Andrew, talking to him, his hand on the back of his brother’s neck, rubbing gently.

  A shadow fell across them, and William looked up, annoyed. His eyes dropped to the barrel of a pistol that Tasmin could just see at the edge of the vision. He stood, took a step forward. His lips moved, but there was no sound; even still, she could tell he was taunting the other man, daring him.

  Franny rested her chin on her hand as she stared into the water. “My timing is, as ever, exceptional.” She tapped the table. “If you give me the Heart of Ithalia, William and his little brother get to go free. If you don’t, they both die and Eric Lavoussier disappears without a trace.”

  “I would if I could, but I have no idea of what you speak.” Tasmin looked at Bonny. The woman’s eyes were casting around for something to use as a weapon. She wished she could lock the wench in a closet and handle this by herself.

  “Is this true?” Franny asked her sprite, who still struggled on the floor.

  The body seemed to change color to red. “Lies oomans,” it said.

  “See? You can’t afford to waste my time like this.”