Andrew’s flush is obliging.
Emma laughs sleepily, her voice slurring. “Men are so easily embarrassed…”
“It is nothing,” Roan says, though even she can hear the strain in her voice. It will be fine. It will be. “I can care for an invalid…”
Emma stirs. “…no invalid,” she slurs, “saucy bitch…”
Andrew laughs, despite himself. “Some mouth on this one,” he says. “Shocking.”
“She’s a good one,” Roan says, grinning. “Hot as fire, and just as comforting. We understand each other.”
Roan glances at Emma, ready to conspire with her in a joke, but she is already sleeping, the purple shadows beneath her eyes sharp against the sallow whiteness of her cheek. She looks almost gray.
The house turns everything gray.
And she snores like a little cat.
“A glass dagger to the thigh,” Andrew says quietly, wonderingly, “and still alive…”
Roan smiles fondly. “It will take more than that to kill my little vixen friend.”
Andrew hovers uncertainly for a moment.
“She will be well,” Roan says, thinking to reassure him. “I am capable,” she adds, to reassure herself.
The light is changeable, the candles reacting to the near-constant breezes that silk their way through the house, more real than ghosts. Dr. Maudley is unusually quiet, and apparently agitated enough to have Andrew sit and eat with the group.
Roan glances at Rapley for a moment, noting how he too seems to have little appetite.
Jenny and another young servant girl bring in supper on the silver trays as usual; the same gray meat.
“The meat,” Roan says, addressing Jenny as she puts the tray down. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure, miss. Mrs. Goode handles all the meat. I could inquire for miss?”
Roan brushes it off. “No need. I was curious.”
The servant girl hovers by the door, waiting, and when Roan nods for Jenny to leave, she skitters away like a frightened kitten.
Roan eats in silence—she has no particular need for conversation.
Emma twitches in her seat, and Roan glances up. Her friend scratches her neck, moving food around her plate but not eating. She hasn’t even cut Seamus’s food for him, something she usually delights in, nor has she bantered with Cage, another of her enjoyments in this bleak house. Her leg, propped up on a spare seat, is red and swollen around the edges of her bandages. Seamus himself seems off in his own world, but that at least is not uncommon, and even the miserly Cage sits immobile and eats little.
Emma twitches again, her head snapping to the right. She leans away from nothing, her face growing pale.
“Are you all right?” Cage asks.
Emma blinks and looks at him. “Fine and dandy,” she mutters, glancing back down at her plate.
Cage frowns and continues to eat, and Rapley ignores them all, though he seems to be ignoring Roan in particular. Every time she moves, his nostrils flare.
And so the rest of the meal passes in a strange quiet that is full of agitation. When everyone has eaten, Maudley announces the meal complete, and Emma tries to get to her feet right away.
Cage rises suddenly. “Allow me.”
He manages to both support Emma and push Seamus along at the same time and the three leave the room. “He has manners?” Roan mutters to herself once he is out of earshot.
“Who would have believed,” Rapley says in his low, quiet voice, and then he too leaves the table.
Roan watches him go, attuned to his movements in some unknown way. At the door, he glances back at her, sees her watching, and walks faster.
Now Roan and Maudley alone remain.
“Dr. Maudley,” Roan begins. “You… you said you knew my mother. That you knew her well.”
He nods solemnly, curling his mustache in a way that Roan notes is a particular one of his ticks.
“Did you court her?”
His eyes finally rise from the tablecloth. “Ah, so we come to it. Is that what you have been waiting to ask me, Roanita?”
Roan does not answer. Instead, she waits.
“Your father loved your mother,” he says in the wistful way of remembrance. “And I think she loved him. In any case, she did not love me.”
“I am sorry. If you loved her, I am sorry.”
He smiles. “It was impossible not to love her. She was light and joy incarnate.”
Roan’s smile falters. That is not at all how she remembers the woman who birthed her.
“Tell me about her.”
Maudley folds his hands in his lap. “Well. She loved blue. It was her favorite color.”
Roan almost smiles. “And so the Blue Room was assigned to me for that reason?”
“Of course. Sadly, you detest the color.”
Roan’s smile grows, but it is sad. “I am not my mother.”
Maudley looks up at her again, for the second time during this conversation. “Indeed, you are not. You are your own woman.”
“Not yet. Not quite.”
His quizzical expression invites her to go on.
“Not until I turn twenty-one.” She rises from her seat. “Good night, Doctor. I trust you will have a restful evening.”
He does not watch her as she goes; instead his gaze remains fixed on the table. “Good night,” he murmurs. “Good night.”
Later that night, Roan hears low, angry voices from her window. She glances at Emma, but the girl is sleeping soundly, put under by one of Dr. Maudley’s strong draughts.
She snuffs her flame and climbs onto the window seat, peering down. There in the courtyard, Rapley and Cage stand arguing in hushed voices. She cannot make out what they are saying, only that Cage is gesticulating urgently and Rapley is facing away, toward the mountain, arms crossed.
She puts her ear against the glass, but still cannot make out the words being spoken.
As she watches, Rapley turns and gestures with his arm. It is a sharp gesture of finality, and the words cease. Then he turns and walks into the gray mountains and the night mists envelope him within minutes.
Cage stares after him and then turns back to the house. As he is passing beneath her window, he looks up, spotting her as she watches the scene. His lips curl into a sneer and he storms inside.
Too many secrets, she thinks. They all have too many secrets.
Virgin land.
So hath John named it. But I like it not. To me it is but a barren wasteland, of dull gray rocks, of hideous plants that grow close to the ground, and of endless mists upon the folly.
Nebula has accompanied us, and thank the Lord. What would I have done for companionship here, and in canvas tents with burlap carpets no less, without her? John is much determined to build his water mill, though I admit I cannot fathom how the scheme was hatched.
“Men must make a mark upon the world,” he said unto me. “It is not for a woman to understand.”
I let it be, since I have it not in my mind to question the ambition of men. I will take care and zeal that Nebula be with me, and I am therefore not a woman alone, even if Nebula be of uncivilized descent.
For God hath said:
Behold howe I haue not laboured for myself onely, but for all them that seeke wisdom and knowledge.
Here I am, then. In a virgin land, which my husband will make fruitful, and soon will claim as his own, and which I must, now, call my home.
FROM THE DIARY OF
HERMIONE SMITH,
1583
Chapter 14
LOVE SPOON
“Tell me about this place,” Roan says, wiping mud from her cheeks with the hem of her cloak. “Tell me all.”
Rapley stops whittling the small piece of wood in his hands to look at her. The day is far less drab than most, and both have sought fresh air in the courtyard.
“You sought me out for tales?”
“If you like, yes.”
He places his horn-handle knife in the dirt, blade first.
At his insistence, they are no more than three paces from the courtyard, yet still they sit on slate, and Roan suppresses her shudder and ignores the growl of the mountain’s belly.
“Dr. Maudley has no doubt added to the house since it was first built,” she muses, staring up at the Gothic towers. Beneath, the stones are of much older fare, and simpler. Byzantine.
Rapley nods. “Yes. Instead of rebuilding it, he simply put his stamp on the exterior. That’s all that matters to him.”
Roan catches his eye. “He is your father,” she says gently.
He gives a mirthless chuckle. “Not he. I am simply a prize. Free source of labor. Company now and then.”
“How can you say so? He seems pained by your rejection.”
Again the joyless smile. Almost a grimace. “He is a fine actor.” He takes up the blade again and the wood suffers his administrations. “I have been with him for some years. I know that beneath his facade is no real depth.”
“A man cannot be faulted for a simple nature.”
“Yet he can be faulted—despised, even—for a false one.”
Roan considers his words, watching as he shaves strip after strip from the piece in his hands. The design is intricate, with knots and bends and odd shapes.
“What is it?”
“A trinket, no more.”
Roan nods and falls into silence again. Many long minutes pass before Rapley speaks again.
“It is a llwy gariad. They bring good things.” He hands it to her. “Keep it nearby.”
She runs her fingers over the fine work, marveling at how smooth it feels beneath her touch.
“I have never accepted a present before. That is,” she adds, “I have never received one before.” She swallows. “What is the customary response?”
He reads her for a moment, perhaps attempting to see if she is teasing. “You simply take it. And, if you like, you may say, ‘thank you.’ But I would accept the simple action of your keeping it close.”
She holds it to herself, smiling. “Then I shall take it.”
Getting to her feet, she wanders toward the house, staring down all the while at the little carven spoon in her hands. At the threshold, she turns back to find him watching her.
“Thank you.”
Roan hangs the spoon beside the little mirror above her bed, wondering at the curious change in Rapley. He had not insulted her, and she had not felt her hackles rise. It was almost, though not quite, an honest conversation.
Though she does not share his low opinion of Dr. Maudley, she cannot ignore it. After all, he has known Maudley longer. And she cannot ignore the lies he told about her parents.
Yet, to hate with such aggression… Perhaps Rapley is simply a contrary sort of person, as she herself had been called once by her father.
Reason restored, she descends to the Green Parlor for breakfast. Emma is already seated, leg elevated, chatting with Seamus in their secret Irish way.
“Good morning,” Emma says. She seems bright today. “You were up before dawn again,” she notes. “What do you get up to in the early hours?”
Roan sits down and pours tea. “Perhaps I take to my prayer.”
Emma’s eyebrows rise in a manner similar to Seamus’s when he is overly excited.
“A good habit,” Seamus says, the guileless boy.
Oh! How she wants to kiss his cheek!
Emma laughs. “So said.”
All at once, Jenny hurries through the doors, balancing two trays precariously upon her arms. Roan stands to help her, but both trays make it to the table with little damage and only one casualty: a scone topples from a small pile and rolls beneath the table.
“Oh dear!” Jenny cries, holding her hands to her mouth.
Emma is equine-quick, leaning out of her chair with a grimace. She retrieves the scone and places it on her plate, clutching her thigh. “No harm done. What?” she adds, when Jenny stares at her openmouthed. “I’ll not let it go to the floor, of all things!”
Roan laughs. “Well said. Nor would I.”
Jenny glances between the two, her mouth still open.
“I thought I might well and surely have a scolding,” she breathes.
“Oh, fie!” Emma spits. “A scolding from that old crone, Mrs. Goode?”
Jenny’s smile falters. “Oh, you did not hear yet? Mrs. Goode is unwell and has taken to her bed in the loft. Which leaves all to me.”
“Good riddance,” Emma mutters, and Seamus rebukes her.
Roan, however, cannot help her grin. Mrs. Goode is a nasty, grumpy old crone. Best they have some peace from her for a while.
“Since our good Mrs. Goode”—Roan pauses for effect—“is out of commission, come and sit with us, Jenny. Tell us some boisterous, inappropriate tales to liven our little party.”
“Oh, yes!” Emma declares, tapping the seat beside her. “Do, do, do!” Seamus nods, eager for new sport and a friendly face. Telling from his blotchy blush, he quite likes the idea of the young, mousy girl joining the fray.
“Oh, and Jenny—can you tell me the meaning of llwy gariad?”
Jenny grins. “Have you a suitor, miss?”
Roan recoils. “No. Why?”
“Only… a llwy gariad is a love spoon. A token of affection and friendship. A token of love.” The girl pauses, unsure.
“I read the phrase,” Roan says, helping herself to a scone. “Thank you.”
Jenny curtsies and departs, leaving Roan to shakily put jam and cream upon her pastry.
Chapter 15
HORNED GOD
The mountain is so still and so silent that even the air appears sharp as crystal. Roan can make out every hair of heather, every tiny purple leaf, every fine crack and chip in the slate. The slate… it towers over her, sharp skyward angles that seem to have burst through millennia ago.
The mountain is teething. The mountain has teethed.
She has a purpose. Knows where she is going. At least, her body seems to.
She has no shoes and is barely clothed, her shift and nothing more keeps the cold of the glassy day away.
Yet she is on fire.
She is sweating.
A line of moisture trickles down between her breasts, tickling.
She is so very… alive.
It is a long climb, up and up—ever upward—but she reaches the place soon enough.
It is a horrid, pitch-black mouth in the mountainside, edged in slate—formed of slate. A yawning caliginous depth, magnetic, alluring.
The cave pulses with sentience.
Roan smiles, turns her back on it, now facing a stone circle of the same jagged slate, those long, chipped, sharp teeth, which rise toward a moody gray sky. The clouds, like everything else, do not move.
Roan licks her lips, opens her mouth, and speaks forbidden, Curséd words. Words that angels fear, and God turns away.
She speaks the Corrupt.
She speaks the Blasphemous.
She speaks the Devil’s Tongue.
And as she speaks, the earth shivers, shakes, and rumbles beneath her bare feet. The mountain wakes, stretching its jaws, yawning, growling. It is a child, hungry after centuries of long slumber.
“Rise up!” she cries, her voice fire and thunder. “Devour this unclean world!”
And the mountain obeys.
Rocks and moss and earth fall away into a giant, stygian hole; the slate crunches down as the mountain begins to devour itself.
And as the earth collapses beneath her feet, she lifts into a blackened sky, a flame above the world. And in the roiling darkness below, she watches Emma scream, writhing in intolerable pain, and sees Andrew stripped of his skin, and Seamus unfurling like a raw red thread, and Maudley too, disappearing as if into a vat of acid, eaten away from the outside in—
and Rapley… looking at her, still looking as his body is ripped in two—
And she laughs
and she screams
and the world is
no more.
Roan is on her haunches on the floor of her bedroom, her mouth contorted into an inhuman grimace, her hands working furiously at the wood. She has scratched away splinters, can feel them under her fingernails like fire pokers, can feel the sharp, sticky blood. In her sleeping-draught slumber, Emma does not stir.
It was a dream… just a dream. Yet she has never had a dream in which the Corrupt Language was spoken. Father trained her too well for that, down in the cellar of their London home.
She falls backward into a ball.
“Lord, oh God, come to my aid, keep the darkness away. Dominus! Dominus Deus!” On and on she mutters and prays and tries not to think of the splinters under her nails like chips of stone… of slate… of teeth… of a demonic, devouring earth.
“I will not believe it,” she whispers. “I will not believe it!”
And yet all she can see is Seamus, Emma, Andrew, Maudley, Rapley—all of them, writhing in pain. Unraveling, burning, dissolving—ripped in two.
“Sordes. Scortum. Parabellum. Demon. Maledictus. Amisit. DIABOLUS!”
She mutters, growls, hisses. She cannot stop herself, no matter how she tries to regain control. She is trapped in a cage as her fingers scrape across the floor, pulling up wood, more splinters that lodge under her nails like fire and ice and daggers. She is bleeding, and she growls, teeth bared.
“Malum! Advenerunt! Daemonium habes falsum. Mendax! Pythonissam! Pythonissam! Pythonissam!” She takes a breath. “Auguratricis!”
Her Latin is not perfect, but she has heard the last two words before. Witch. Sorceress.
You are a witch, Roan. A sorceress. You wield power no woman ought. You should be burned alive—but I am entrusted with your care.
Her father’s voice is so close in her memory that she can almost smell him.
“Father…”
should be burned alive…
…entrusted with your care.
Those words. What did he mean? Entrusted. By whom? By Mother? By his duty—his responsibility as a father? Or something else entirely?
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