And when the healing was done, she left. His body, whole, let him feel the ache of the Mother’s passing, as he had done only one other time in his life. It hurt.
She knew, of course. She could feel his pulse, unnaturally quick, at her fingers. But she, too, was weary. She had asked no questions about the injuries when she had first arrived, as Stephen had not been in any condition to answer them. Now that he was, she felt too weak to ask.
“Stephen,” she said quietly, as she rose from his bedside. “If you feel the need to ask any questions, I will still be in the Maubreche estate on the morrow. Summon me, if you will.”
He did not open his eyes; did not move or nod, or in any way acknowledge her offer. Trembling, he saw the shadow of her passing against his eyelids. She paused once; he heard the rustle of her robes. The lamps in the room were doused, and Stephen lay back against his pillows in the darkness.
He had not allowed them to take away the horn. He reached for it now, as it sat completely vulnerable upon the table beside his bed. As his eyes adjusted to the moonlight filtering in through the uncurtained window, he stared at his new burden.
He could still see the eyes of the girl in the moment that the horn had passed into his hands. And he did not understand what he saw there; a flicker of desperation, fear—something else. It had not lasted; her dark eyes had darted away, horn forgotten, to seek Gilliam.
The horn was smooth and curiously unadorned. It was simple bone or antler, but from what beast, upon close inspection, he couldn’t say. Around the horn’s lip, burned there as if by a brand, were two interlocked circles; they were perfectly round, unbroken.
Three times he had lifted this very horn, and three times—in dreams—he had sounded it. He pressed its mouth to his lips; both were cold. He could not draw breath to wind it.
Evayne, he thought. But this was no dream; she did not appear in the doorway to answer his questions or offer her unfathomable pity.
• • •
In the morning, he woke to a knock at the door. The sun was high; higher than it should have been. He began to scramble out from under the covers when the room spun back into focus. Maubreche. Not Elseth.
“Hello?” He expected breakfast, or lunch, judging the hour; neither came. Cynthia opened the door quietly and entered the room.
Speechless, he pulled the covers up to the tip of his chin.
“I see that your arm is better.” She smiled, hesitant, her hands behind her back. Gone was the unfamiliar young Lady who had danced in fine silks and velvets; gone was the proud and beautiful solitary heir to the Maubreche estates. She wore a simple brown dress, and her hair, no longer combed and jeweled, rested at her back in single braid.
“It’s—it’s much better.” He swallowed and sank farther back. “I—if you—”
“I brought you a book,” she said, too quickly. She started to step forward, stopped, and pulled the volume from behind her back. Advancing upon him, she held it as if it were a shield.
He held out his hand; she placed the book in it. Neither of them so much as glanced at the title. Their fingers touched, and Cynthia pulled back. The book tumbled to the floor.
She blushed, bent, picked it up, and shoved it firmly into his hands. “I’ll speak with you later,” she said, and turning, fled.
• • •
On the third day of his recovery at the Maubreche estate, Stephen accepted Lady Cynthia’s rather formally worded invitation to a tour of the grounds. He did so because he was curious; he wanted to see, in daylight, what night had shadowed. But he also wanted to see Cynthia, unwise though he thought it might be.
She met him in his rooms after breakfast had been served, and waited at the doors while one of the Maubreche valets helped him dress. Then, in near silence, she led him along the corridors and down the stairs of the wing. Only when doors opened into sunlight did she seem to relax.
Wind swept the strands of hair not caught in braids up along the sides of her cheeks; it ruffled the pale brown of her stiff, heavy skirts. She closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and then accepted the arm that Stephen offered almost hesitantly.
“Is there anything that you’d like to see?” she asked. Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.
Several answers came to mind, but when he finally spoke, all he could say was: “The labyrinth.”
She seemed to be expecting that, or perhaps that was what she had intended to show him. She nodded and began to lead him toward it.
Even from the house, the neatly kept sweep of tall, green wall dominated the perfect landscape of the Maubreche gardens. In their foreground, there was a tall stone slab, cut deeply across the middle, as if by a sword. Water trickled from the edge of the gash.
“What is it?” Stephen questioned quietly.
She didn’t answer; instead, she approached the fountain to let the monument speak for itself. It seemed to be marble, shot through with hints of smoky gray and green. Etched into the grained pattern of the marble were names; Stephen recognized very few of them. But he knew them for Maubreche ancestors. Cynthia bowed very quietly to both the monument and the names it housed; after a moment, Stephen did likewise.
“Corason built the maze,” she said, pointing to the very first name on the list. “Let me show you his work.”
Stephen looked at the hedges as they approached. On first sight, they were not so different from any other shrubbery that he had seen—they were carefully tended, carefully pruned.
“The outside face,” Cynthia said, as if she could hear his thoughts. She led him slowly around the circle of greenery. They came, at length, to a gap between the circumference. It was too narrow for them to walk through abreast, and Cynthia relinquished her hold on Stephen’s arm to precede him.
“Where is the damage?”
“Damage? Ah. Around the other side.” The momentary darkening of her features told him, clearly, what the hedge meant to her. “It was . . . not so bad as we first feared. Later, if you’d like, we can inspect it, but I want you to see what the labyrinth looks like when it’s whole.”
Stephen barely heard her answer. For as he stepped clear of the labyrinth’s one entrance, he saw what the outside face hid. The walls of the maze were alive. Captured in green, as if the shrubs were stone, all manner of creatures stood. There, to his left, an elderly woman sitting upon a rock; to his right, an elderly man bent over some task that the leaves swallowed.
“These are the pride of the master gardener. He tends them every day he can. Every year the maze changes, very slowly and very subtly. I used to come out with him and try to guess what was different, when I was younger. I asked him once why he didn’t sculpt—real stone, I mean. He laughed and walked off. It was two days before he decided to answer the question.”
There, in the wall just ahead, one figure caught Stephen’s attention. He almost missed it, it was so slight, but perhaps the light caught the figure at just the right moment, or perhaps Cynthia guided him toward it. He saw the face and hands of a young child, peering out of the greenery. Green eyes, branched limbs, wavering in the wind the way a child shivers in surprise or fear.
“These walls—that child . . .” He felt acutely aware of his lack of words, although words had never been his weakness.
“I know.” She walked toward the leafy child. “He was so much younger the first time I thought I saw him. So much more hesitant. Just his nose, and his chin, and a couple of fingers. He only came up to here—” She motioned toward her waist. “He’s coming out a bit, sort of escaping whatever life he has on the other side of that wall.”
“I wonder what he’s looking at.”
“So do I.”
“Cynthia?”
She nodded, reaching out at the same time to touch the small hand of the boy.
“You said the master gardener answered your question.”
“Eventually.
” Her lips were curved in the same delicate smile as those of the green child.
“What did he say?”
“He said ‘Look in my garden, child. Come back and tell me what you see.’” Her smile didn’t change, but her eyes did, although Stephen could never afterward describe the difference. “I went out and spent the day wandering in the maze. I spent some time sleeping under the arms of the God, and some time talking to the rabbits—they were like the boy, but they’re gone now—and when I came back, I’d almost forgotten the question. But he hadn’t. He asked me what I’d seen there, and I told him.”
“And?”
“He told me that it would change. He said stone is lifeless, cold, hard—you have to fight it and once you’ve finished, it’s still stone. But life—he said life was the best material because it changed, and grew, and surprised one.”
They were silent a moment, thinking on it. “I’d like to meet this gardener of yours someday,” Stephen said finally.
“Perhaps we will see him today.” By the forced lightness of her tone, he knew that she didn’t mean it; he did not know why. “Come; let’s go to the heart of the labyrinth.” She released her tentative hold upon the green child. As she did, Stephen felt a sudden, sharp loss. He let it pass silently as she moved away; in a few seconds, he joined her.
As he did, Stephen’s full attention returned to the hedges; he barely stopped to offer Cynthia his arm. If she begrudged him this rare breach of etiquette, none of her disapproval showed on her face; indeed, she was slow to place her hand upon his arm.
These bushes, they were like any other. There was no way they should have been so much of a presence. But try as he did to tell himself that, he still felt that they were more than alive—they were life, in expression, in intent, and in the odd quirkiness of their design. Every so often he would point out something that caught his eyes—the carved representation of birds nesting, of a sly fox darting for cover, of a group of men gathered around it with a clumsy sort of grace. There were people sitting under carved boughs; they were green but he could feel flesh, breath, and a slow, stately movement about them that more than wind through their tiny, delicate leaves could explain.
“This master gardener,” Stephen said softly—for no loud words, he was sure, could be uttered in this maze, “he’s maker-born, isn’t he?”
She did not answer. “Here,” she murmured softly. “You must look at this one. It will be gone very soon, unlike the others.”
Stephen followed her obediently, and as he turned a corner, he came face-to-face with a stag leaping out of the hedge. Only half its body could be seen, and that half well above the ground, its front legs straining for height and speed. Its head was held high and crowned with strong, branching antlers. Its face was determined, noble, and touched by a sadness that almost overpowered his silent watchers.
Not until he was forced to exhale did Stephen realize that he’d been holding his breath. He pulled back, without a word, and they continued on, allowing the proud animal to continue undisturbed and untouched.
But to Stephen the stag crystallized what he felt in the hedges, and why. They were like forest, like hunting grounds in an inexplicable way; teeming with hidden and silent life, undisturbed by common human interaction. They were more than that, though. He knew, with a profound sense of loss, that were the animals in the hedges real, were he to encounter them at the side of his Hunter, he could no more allow them to be hunted than he could hunt in a ballroom. For the first time in his life, hunting felt almost profane. It disquieted him deeply.
Cynthia, not born and bred to the actual, physical hunt, could not know all of what he felt, but she sensed his silent mortification. “Here, Stephen,” she said, as if to distract him. “Now we come upon the only thing that interests most of our visitors. The tapestries.”
He shook his head; the stag slowly receded. The walls to either side were teeming with scenes from life, in different reliefs; they had none of the quirky reality that the other hedges had—they indeed seemed to be, as Cynthia had named them, tapestries. In green.
Acts of war were carved there, war and the heroism it often evoked; acts of sacrifice, love, pain. Figures melded in and out of one another, giving the whole a feel of continuity. Of Maubreche’s lineage.
“These are the exploits of the Maubreche line,” she said, although it wasn’t necessary. “That”—she pointed almost reverently—“is Harald of Maubreche.” She shivered, and Stephen came to stand at her side, wondering what in the young man’s countenance could cause her reaction. The figure could not have been older than Cynthia. He stood on the edge of a cliff, looking outward insensibly upon his audience. His face was an open expression of grief, shock, and loss, but beneath that was a determination seldom seen in any his age. Stephen did not know the history of the family, but he knew that somehow, somewhere, this young boy had given up more than his life to protect something he loved. It radiated outward from him.
Cynthia bowed low and pressed her fingers against her lips. Then she stood and moved on. The scenes changed. Some of them featured women, some men, and some children. In one or two, the pride of the Maubreche hunting packs long past came to bristling life. But none of those had the resonance, and the sense of bitter, inevitable loss, that Harald did. Stephen was afraid to ask the story.
They walked together in silence until at last the tapestries ended. To Stephen’s surprise, the hedge that preceded them into the heart of the maze seemed wild and untended. He turned to glance at Cynthia, and she smiled, as if she expected his reaction.
“These wait for the future deeds of the Maubreche family. We know that one of our line will be greater than any who have come before—and this whole wall will be his. Or hers. I hope I live to see that day.” She swallowed, and, for a moment, her eyes were stripped of pride and assurance. She hoped for that day, but Stephen saw fear there, also.
And he wondered, as she did, whether that greatness would exact more of a price than Harald had paid—whatever that price had been.
“Come,” Cynthia said, shaking herself. The moment—and the vulnerability—passed. She was again the adult heir to the Maubreche demesne. “We’re almost upon the center. I want you to see the God in daylight.”
Stephen stopped walking, and Cynthia noted this because her hand was upon his arm. “Stephen?”
He did not want to see the God in daylight. He realized, suddenly, that he did not want to see the God at all, even if it was a statue, a representation, no more. He opened his mouth, but he found that he could not tell her why; the horn at his side, hidden in the folds of his jacket, weighed heavily upon him.
But heavy or no, he walked with it, at Cynthia’s side. The last of the wild hedge fell away, and in the center, as Cynthia had promised, the God stood in daylight.
But in daylight, the God was different; without darkness, some of its frightening mystery had been stripped away, concealed by the sun. There was a fountain that bubbled at his back, and although this maze was a testament to life, the fountain and the statue were both of stone.
There are some things, Stephen thought, that do not change with time. He stared up, following the lines of the statue’s stone robes, until he could clearly make out the details of the God’s face. There, his eyes stopped. For what he saw in this unchanging representation, he had also seen in the Maubreche living tapestries. In Harald’s face. Sorrow, deep and profound, as well as determination and a measure of peace, were evident in the solemn line of jaw and forehead.
Without thinking, he dropped to one knee and bowed his head—just as he would have done in the presence of the Master of the Game.
“He doesn’t look so horrible, does he?” Cynthia asked softly. “It’s hard to imagine that he hurts us so badly each and every year.” She walked past Stephen’s bowed form, and came to rest both hands upon the pale stone, as if seeking warmth.
“Why did you ask fo
r sanctuary here?”
She looked back, met Stephen’s raised eyes. “Because here, there is no Hunt.” She looked away. “And because here, in this hollow, we have promised to keep the Hunter’s word in return for his peace.”
“His peace?”
“It’s an old custom, Stephen. A family custom. I don’t understand it well, myself; I won’t until my father dies.”
It didn’t make any sense. “But if your father’s dead, how can he tell you anything?”
She did not choose to answer, and although he was curious, he lost the desire to push her. Instead, he stared at the pale profile of her face. Her eyes were closed.
“Cynthia?”
“Yes?” She did not open her eyes.
He hesitated, and then rose, treading carefully across the grass to stand before her. “Why are we here?”
“Ever?” she returned softly. “Or now?”
“Now.”
She swallowed, and to Stephen’s surprise, her cheeks reddened. She opened her eyes, searching his; they stood very close. Words started, half-audible; words stopped. They were both afraid, and the fear was an old one, a common one.
“You know I’m going to have to marry soon,” she said at last, uncomfortable and uncertain.
It was Stephen’s turn to look away. “Yes. Do you—do you know who?”
She shrugged, an elegant rustle of cloth against skin. “One of three. It doesn’t matter.”
He wanted to tell her that it mattered to him, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Awkward in silence, he matched her shrug.
“I would—I would have married you, if we had held different positions.”
He had always thought it was what he wanted to hear, until he heard it in truth. But hearing the pain behind the words, hearing the farewell, he took no pleasure in them. “Cynthia—”
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 33