Jacopo recalls Grandmamma Theodora’s tales: of how she learnt the secret byways of the palace and cathedral through boredom and accident. Fated to stand around waiting while the treasurer tallied all the coin that might be counted as Theodora’s in her role as Princess of Lodellan, she wandered and explored once a week while the money-rat concerned himself with other things until she was required to affix her seal to his ledgers. As he lost himself in the various coffers and caskets of gold and silver, crates and sacks of goods in kind, she meandered, and in doing so she found secret passages and false walls, hidden doors and staircases that went deep, deep, deep, joining the palace with the great cathedral and a variety of other buildings of varying degrees of salubriousness, mansions and public houses, dens of iniquity and shops frequented by the rich and richer. She’d wondered every time she saw the piles of coin—small avalanches that threatened to cover the feet and ankles of the treasurer’s minions—how many children went hungry, how many families slept cold, how many farms and businesses failed all so Lodellan’s prince and his treasurer and his archbishop might hoard all this like bipedal dragons. So that the few might be assured of yet one more ermine cloak, one more purple silk robe, one more golden-tassled cushion for the comfort of tender buttocks. Jacopo remembers how she told him she’d ensured the leftovers from the royal table always went to the orphanages, and to inns whose charitable staff gave the foodstuffs to the beggars who gathered at their back doors at night.
Four silver-grey shadows wait for him at the top of the steps. They are faded and he wonders how long it will be before they disappear entirely, remaining only as a disembodied bark, a sly nip, a cold shiver. Boldly, he moves forward, stops, opens his palms so they can sniff at him to their hearts’ content. They are puzzled; he wonders if they catch a whiff of his grandmother, long dead, embedded in his being. More likely they think him a strangeling, something like themselves, although not reanimated; just different. With confused whimpers, they fall back, let him through, watching him pass over the threshold, their fine large heads tilted to the side, pale eyes questioning, teeth very white. If they notice how Jacopo shudders when he steps inside they give no sign.
There are things buried beneath, he can feel it; unhappy, exhausted things, used long beyond their intended years. The bones are cursed, and more: they are caught in place by their function, to act as a surety for the foundations; not even a pale shade can shuffle through the stones. He senses them, although they were never mentioned by Grandmamma Theodora in her tales, tales she told him so many times they’ve become like his own memories. However, he supposes this place has stood for a long time, longer than Theodora lived near it. She could have learned only so many secrets, for not all are spoken, not all leave a trace.
His footsteps echo on the flagstones as he approaches the monumental altar coated in so much gold that he is sure it could feed the entire city for a year or more. To his left is the tapestry hiding the entrance to the Chapel of the Thirteenth Apostle; he passes through, notes the arras is becoming threadbare, Saint Radagund’s very fine beard looks thinned and in places he can see where the gleam from the lanterns glinting on the golden altar in the nave pierces it. There is the prie-dieu; looking closely he can see it’s carved with a mix of sea monsters, wolves, and trees. Running his fingers along its underside—and gathering splinters as he does so—Jacopo locates the catch and pulls.
There are aching moments when nothing happens. When he wonders how best to proceed . . . but then comes a reluctant scrape and scratch of stone on stone and the flags before him whirl aside like a child’s puzzle. At his feet there is a square of black, a mouth without teeth but no less daunting for that. How long since anyone walked this path?
Jacopo’s glow increases as he enters the darkness, throwing out a light to show his way into the catacombs. He tries to ignore the feeling that the earth is closing over him, that the things beneath are stirred by his presence just as the dust is by his well-worn boots. The sense of the unhappily departed grows stronger; Jacopo feels juddering as a rhythm up and down his spine, a throbbing where the back of his skull meets the nape of his neck. He shakes his head, lets the motion become a shudder, and his radiance wavers.
For all the things Theodora had imparted, drilled into him, for whatever reason, all those years ago, she’d not mentioned the buzzing. The angry vibration that began moments after he kindled his own luminescence, as if this sign of his difference caused offence in some unearthly quarter. At first it is simply a noise like a cluster of midges are pursuing him. He picks up the pace, conscious that his footfalls signal nervousness. He cannot help but feel that behind him something shifts and shuffles, its form summoned into being by sheer malicious will, but it is only when he feels a stab between his shoulder blades—not deep, but painful—that he can force himself to turn and face his demon.
Not far from him, drawing ever closer as the boy’s glow diminishes from fear, is a man—or the remains of one at least. An old man in the rags of a white cassock trimmed with purple and gold; the brownish stains might once have been bright blood. A ragged cloak retains some evidence of a cobalt hue. The head is skeletal, the skin a thin canvas stretched tight over the frame of the skull, bare of all but a few clumps of yellowed hair. At the end of knife-thin fingers are nails long and sharp, almost waving at him.
For a dreadful moment, his terror is so great that his light goes out entirely, his flesh loses its gift, and he’s plunged into darkness as surely as a drowning man goes through the ice in an unseasonal thaw. He stumbles over his own feet, goes down on his hands and knees, feels the scrape of his palms on rough earth. There is no sound, though, anything but his heartbeat’s staccato: where is it? The spectre?
Theodora never mentioned such a thing! At the thought of his grandmother, the light in him stutters, flickers back into being. In its weak flare, the old man—dreadfully closer—flinches, hisses, scuttles away. Jacopo concentrates on memories of Theodora, reading him books, telling him stories, holding him tight, tucking him into bed, and the glimmer around him becomes stronger. His pulse calms when he sees the phantasm cringing. Jacopo climbs to his feet, his confidence bolstered. He’s incandescent, the tunnel far ahead of him is illumined, and he notes that the ground begins to slope upwards, the coffin niches are filled with nothing more than skeletons and dust and cobwebs. He doesn’t turn his back on the haunt, though, is careful as he walks with a strange sideways gait, that takes him forward but allows him to keep an eye on the strange wispy thing behind.
At the top of the stone steps, Jacopo locates the hidden door, which proves more stubborn than the entrance to the catacombs, and requires a shoulder to make it budge even after the lever is pulled. The panel pops out unwillingly and Jacopo steps into the magnificent fountain room, dimly lit by sconces, that always featured in Theodora’s stories of the troll-wife. He almost slams the panel behind him, but the creature did not follow him up the stairs, had given up any serious pursuit when it realised he could not be intimidated; that he had good memories to serve him well. Yet his heart still hammers inside his chest, there is a cold sweat slicking his skin, and he clenches his hands into fists to stop the shaking. He’ll not go back this way.
Jacopo lets his brilliance go low, until he is blinking to readjust to the dim chamber. The golden privacy screen Theodora always mentioned, of Hansie and Greta and the sugar cottage, is missing and he’s disappointed; he’d waited so long to see it. The tiles are still of gold and silver with crystal and nacre inlays though, and the tubs, basins, fountains, and benches carved from white and blue marble remain. Jacopo sees the moon through the ceiling, a sheet of rock crystal. There is the tiny steam hut, the smaller pools—and the larger one. There is movement in its waters.
A woman rises from the night-dark liquid. Her hair, though damp, flashes fire. She is short, stocky, her hips broad, her breasts heavy, legs muscular. Jacopo is surprised; Grandmamma always said the Lodellan royal family were tall without exception, and slender, platinum
blond. But this woman is . . . not regal. She walks with a determined, plain gait, there is no elegance in her stride. Her face is pretty enough but her expression’s dissatisfied. Discontented. Sour. He wonders who she is, but in the end decides it doesn’t matter. The palace has changed since Theodora’s day, there are new rooms, new wings. She is what he needs at this moment.
He hitches his most charming smile to his lips, takes quiet steps—not silent ones for he does not wish to frighten her—and collects the deep red bath sheet that is lying on the bench closest to the pool. He holds it to cover his attire, so she will not realise immediately that he is not a servant. He need not worry, she sees him but pays no attention, takes his presence for granted, assumes he is here to tell her something, bring her something, do something for her. She walks into the towel, and this close he can see her eyes are topaz-hued, large. He wraps the thick fabric around her, holds tight for she is not much smaller than he and he suspects she has a peasant’s strength. When it becomes clear to her that she’s been swaddled, she looks askance at him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I just need you for a little while.”
And before she can struggle, he fixes his lips to hers and draws the very breath from her and with it all the knowledge she carries. Jacopo feels the transformation coming quickly, and he lays the woman on the bench before he falls.
Memories and emotions rush into him, pressing down on who he is, compacting everything that makes Jacopo, Jacopo. Sedimentary layers of feelings, years of yearning, hurt, thoughts of Amandine that ache, ecstasy and exaltation run like mercury through his mind—and his body is changing too. His cock shrivels and pulls up inside him, his hips broaden, his legs shorten, his chest is heavy with tits so big he doesn’t know how the woman—Ilse, her name is Ilse, he picks that from the rising swarm of new information—manages to balance. A single drop of milk leaks from a nipple and Jacopo is dizzy with the thought she is nursing, knows it’s the second child, not the first, that she’s a breeder for the weak-blooded royalty of this great city.
When the changes are in place, when his own mind reasserts its dominance over the stray recollections, the new knowledge, then he stands. He finds her clothing, a dress of lilac and gold, crumpled on the floor not far away, next to a pair of bejewelled jiffies in soft leather. He puffs out a breath and undresses, folding his own garb neatly. He looks down at Ilse, surveys the fountain room, lights upon the steam hut; she must be hidden in case someone comes in looking, and he cannot have her form for too long, not beyond two hours or, disconnected from her own essence, she will perish.
The air in the hut is cool. The fire has not been lit, the rocks are cold; Ilse will be safe here, she will not be scalded or scorched, nor suffocated by steam. There is a mirror running along one wall and Jacopo pauses. He carefully examines his face, which is hers without a doubt. No one will suspect a thing. He takes a moment, picks through her scrambled memories, finds a thread and pulls it. Follows it. It will lead him to the place where Ilse’s malcontent begins and resides.
Isambard sits cross-legged on the rug, an unaccustomed position he’s not adopted since childhood. There’s a grinding in his hips that he tries to relieve by rocking from side to side, a protesting tightness in his knee joints, and where his thin ankles touch the floor, pain radiates. He stretches both legs straight out, the heels of his buckled shoes hit the stone of the hearth and make a noise too loud in his empty home, one that startles him even though he knows its source.
Mr Farringdale looks around, embarrassed as if he might be watched, then giggles at his own absurdity. Perhaps there is still too much alcohol in him? He’d have thought it all frightened out in that initial rush of terror when the youth appeared, when he spoke of things he should not have known.
Isambard considers rising, searching through the drawers of his desk or bedside table to find one of the weapons he keeps for just such an eventuality: dealing with a thief. It’s not really a threat he’s faced much in Lodellan, not since the fall of the Parsifals, which ironically enough was when malfeasance went on the rise. Anyone inclined to criminal activity became quickly acquainted with Bethany Lawrence, and equally quickly came to realise she was not to be trifled with. Mr Farringdale, as her representative now she’s relocated to Breakwater, is virtually untouchable—or thought himself so.
Now he wonders if he dare flee, take the egg with him, run back to Madame Arkady’s House of Curiosities, beg her protection. But then . . . what might happen to the precious thing he’s been promised? Its opening depends upon the boy’s touch—or did he lie? Is there some magic in his skin? Or might any touch do? Dare Isambard risk it?
The suite of rooms, hung in shades of green, is decorated like a bower. Seats and tables are shaped like flowers, couches and chaises like velvet hillocks, scattered with cushions made to mimic floral spreads. The carpets are thick and deep as spring grass, the curtains are ephemeral things, veils of petals falling in a shimmery cataract of cleverly sewn fabric. There is a fountain, delicate and tall, shaped like a calla lily in shining mother-of-pearl.
In the very last chamber he finds the bed. It is round, wide, and above it is suspended a canopy shaped like a bluebell, but in a diaphanous olive. Its coverlet is the same colour, an overlapping series of tulip-shaped pieces, so they look almost like dragon scales. Bedside tables of rosewood sit to the left and right, their mirrored backs shaped like foxgloves. There is a slatted door leading into a dressing closet. One wall of the bedroom is taken up by a cabinet, a conglomeration of drawers and glass doors. Through the vitreous front, Jacopo sees the glitter of all manner of jewellery.
Chokers and pendants drape around busts of ebony. Bracelets and bangles dangle on hands of the same material. Rings drip from the branches of miniature trees made especially for this purpose. If this is what’s on show, the youth wonders at what might be hidden in the drawers. Everything gleams by lamplight in the quarters of the Princess Royal.
And the thing he has come for is staring him in the face. It has pride of place in the centre of the magnificent repository; there would be no joy in hiding it away. That is the amethyst she described, there can be no other like it. Multifaceted, it drinks in all possible illumination, holding the rays in its depths so it seems to pulse and dance with both darkness and a lightness. The band of alternating emeralds and diamonds around it are perfect in the white-gold setting shaped like an opening lily, and the elegant interlocking spirals of the chain are starkly beautiful.
It is his for the taking. There is neither lock nor latch on its door, and in a trice Jacopo has his fingers on the strikingly cold necklace, feels the hardness of the gems, the nip of the precious metal. He retreats from the cabinet, the treasure hung over two fingers, dangling in the air, throwing watery colours around the bedroom. But, in his reluctance to crumple it like paper or fabric, he waits too long to hide it. And he knows it in the moment before a voice spears from behind him.
“Whore,” someone hisses. He forgets for a moment who he is: not simply Jacopo with his charm and cunning, but now Ilse-Jacopo, with all the baggage of Ilse’s loves and hates and hurts. He tilts his head forward, lets his shoulders slump in an attitude of distress; considers his options. They are few; all are brazen. He turns, settling his new features differently, consciously refusing the pull of the malcontent expression on Ilse’s face when first he saw her, the one that has become her habit. He smooths out the disappointment, the dissatisfaction, the disaffection. He washes away the reproach—not guilt, no, but the blame she daily apportions to her husband and his sister, her lover, for the choices they gave her. As if she had no say in yea or nay, as if she had not grasped at what they offered—a choice of beds, property, glittering rewards when she produced the longed-for heir, the unassailable position of mother of the next Prince of Lodellan, and more rewards with each and every child she bore—with both greedy hands. All the things she had had, still had.
Instead Jacopo drops a veil of grief over his visage, softens his e
yes, shows all the affliction and longing that are buried deep within her, all that she has hidden in her stiff-necked pride. He lets tears collect and bank precariously. His lips part, just a little, and his chin quivers with the force of his—her—pain. Her heart shows in his face; she is naked before her lover for the first time in long, long months.
And Jacopo sees the effect it has on the Princess Royal. Armandine is so struck, so pierced, it is as if she is staggering under a blow. Her own porcelain veneer of disdain cracks as surely as a teacup dropped on a marble floor. She reaches a hand to Ilse-Jacopo and follows through with a step, uncertain, then another and another, until the tall ethereal princess has her sturdy inamorata in her arms, in an embrace that is unbreakable. Jacopo has no choice, he gives himself up to this, to these sensations, to this love, this reunion. If he makes excuses, tries to flee, he will be caught. He does all the clever things to her that the gypsy girls taught him, all the clever things he hopes to do to Tove one day. He takes part, terribly conscious of the minutes ticking by, relieved, at last when Armandine falls away, exhausted, and begins to snore.
Swiftly Jacopo dresses once more, pocketing the necklace that had been discarded on the combined skirts of their fallen robes. He leaves the slippers behind, knowing his own bare feet will be quieter, and sneaks along the corridors, unerringly finding his way to the fountain room. He puts on his own clothes, drops the gown, then opens the door to the steam hut where Ilse sleeps deathly still.
A Feast of Sorrows, Stories Page 29