“Have you looked at the schedule I had sent to your room?” Dimity inquired as Anise sat down.
Anise popped a few grapes into her mouth. “I haven’t time for such frivolities,”
“There are some who would say that hunting and fishing are frivolities when there’s a kingdom to run,” Dimity responded in her usual faintly disapproving tone.
“Don’t be stuffy, Dim,” Anise dismissed her younger sister. She selected a red apple from the fruit platter and sank her white teeth into almost savagely. Dimity wrinkled her nose and Anise grinned through a mouthful of apple. One of the servants set down a platter of sausages and Anise immediately helped herself to the largest one.
A resentful silence had settled over the dining table by the time Daphne and Lorna arrived, with the Royal Prophet on their heels. He was the only member of court who was permitted to breakfast with the royal family. The prophet was a difficult man to read. Daphne had never really trusted him, and not just because he was her grandmother’s hastily recruited replacement for Cicely. Tryphena had needed someone to turn to for prophecy after her middle granddaughter’s fall from grace, and neither Felunhala nor Melisande’s talents lay in that direction. The prophet had been a low-ranking courtier when his talent was discovered and he found himself ushered into the Queen’s inner sanctum. He had changed greatly in the intervening years, and now was widely considered to be one of the Queen’s closest confidants, second only to Dimity.
Daphne wondered sometimes whether the man’s gifted had not been greatly exaggerated and largely fabricated. He was said to see the future, but somehow Daphne suspected that it was by virtue of telling the Queen what she wanted to hear, and not the future, that he had stayed in her favor this long. Every morning he visited the Queen’s chambers with a scroll of prophecy in his hand, and every morning he was ushered past a long line of citizens waiting for an audience with Her Majesty.
At Daphne’s side, Lorna took one look at the sour expressions on either side of the table, and began to spoon food into her mouth as quickly as possible. Rare was the family meal that didn’t end with everyone eager to escape. Daphne ate more slowly, knowing that they had no hope of leaving the table until they were excused by Dimity, and hoping that her sister would tire of this forced interaction soon and let them all go their separate ways.
The Prophet ate in silence. He rarely said anything at breakfast; he just appeared at the designated time and filled himself to bursting with their food. Eudora was the one who liked to talk, and it wasn’t long before she set her spoon down and leaned forward to whisper sensationally, “what do you think of this beast that is said to live in the dungeons?”
Daphne nearly choked on her scone, and Lorna put down her spoon, suddenly looking quite ill. None of their older sisters noticed, but the Prophet gazed from one girl to the other curiously.
“Nonsense,” Dimity announced, “commoner folklore, and hardly conversation worthy of us.”
“I think it’s thrilling,” Anise said, her eyes dark. “What a hunt that could be, if grandmother would let me investigate the matter.”
“If we investigated every peasant myth we’d never have time to run the kingdom.” Dimity argued, and was ignored.
“Surely you wouldn’t be the one to hunt it yourself, Anise?” Eudora was a committed gossip who loved nothing more than a good story. Her favorites were those her sisters provided for her.
“Surely I would. It’s a beast. Or a man. Or both.” Anise couldn’t keep the anticipation out of her voice. “I have never killed a man before.”
Eudora nodded understandingly. “It must be very shocking to think about.”
Anise shrugged. “Not particularly. I suppose it’s all the same really. The mechanics of it, I mean.”
“I see.” Eudora looked faintly disturbed, which was not an uncommon reaction to Anise. Daphne could just imagine what Eudora would tell her cohort of scandalmongers. Lorna sighed loudly, and Anise turned to gaze at the two youngest sisters present with a faintly pitying expression.
“Would you like to go now?” They nodded emphatically. “You’re dismissed.”
“But they haven’t finished eating yet.” Dimity protested.
“I don’t care. I say they can go if they want. And remember,” Anise leaned forward and locked eyes with her sister as she shoved a particularly large piece of meat in her mouth. “I outrank you.”
In under a minute, Lorna and Daphne had fled the breakfast room.
***
“So Queen Domitia, her daughter Lavinia and her daughter Cornelia all died the same year?” Spencer repeated, squinting as he strained to connect information that was partial at best. “And the youngest daughter Pomponia was the only survivor?”
Daphne referred to her notes, though it was unnecessary. She had been studying the women for so many hours that she had memorized their biographies. “Correct.”
“It was a bad year for Wulfyddia,” Lorna put in. “Fires, floods, famines, war. Disease. No one was very happy in 7765.”
“Especially not the Lucretius family.” Spencer observed. “So we have three royal deaths.”
“Most of the ruling family was gone in just eight months.” Daphne continued, “King Severens, Domitia’s husband, had already been dead for three years. He was killed in battle. So I think his death is unrelated. There were only two other members of the royal family who were alive in 7765. One was Pomponia; she was just a baby. There was also a duke, brother to the late king. He also survived 7765, and was Pomponia’s guardian until she was old enough to take the throne. When she came of age, he relinquished power without incident— that’s highly unusual,” Daphne added, perhaps thinking of how her grandmother had clung to the throne in the decades since her son came of age. “So, ignoring the King, who died before, and the duke and the baby who survived, we have three women who died in 7765.”
“The Queen and the first two in line after her.” Spencer observed. “And we have three unusual burials, too?”
“Right,” Lorna answered. “Lavinia had an open air vigil and was buried even though they said she died of a fever. Domitia was buried in the lake after a death from natural causes, and Cornelia…” she shrugged. “There’s no record of where Cornelia was buried. We can check the crypt but I don’t know if she’s down there. The books don’t say much about her life or her death.”
“Is it just me,” Spencer asked, “or is it beginning to sound like these aren’t just unusual burials? They sound like suspicious deaths to me.” Lorna nodded slowly, in thoughtful agreement, and Daphne stared down at her notes once more. Spencer continued, “we have Lavinia, supposedly dead of a fever but… now we think that probably wasn’t the case. We have Cornelia, who died and was buried the same year, but without any records to say why or where, and then there’s Domitia, dead of natural causes… at thirty-six.”
“They didn’t live as long then,” Daphne put in.
“Yes, but… thirty-six? And why of all places would they bury her in the lake?”
“It is said that she asked to be laid to rest there.” Daphne answered.
“Do we believe that?”
There was a moment of silence. Each of them stared down at their books, and after a moment Spencer realized that there was something self-conscious about the silence, almost as though they were all waiting for one of them to point out the inevitable.
“You said that the only reason they’d lie about Lavinia’s death was to cover up some kind of scandal,” Spencer said finally, slowly. “What kind of scandal?”
Daphne must have followed his line of reasoning. “Anything that would have unsettled the public and made the line of succession look shaky. Anything that might have made the crown appear endangered.”
“So?”
“So, an illegitimate child. Suicide. Murder.”
“Is this what we think, then?” Lorna asked, glancing from Spencer to her sister. “We think that the ghost is one of our ancestors, and she was assassinated.”
“It still doesn’t explain what she has to do with the book.” Spencer said, “or why the Fool wanted it.”
“Well, I think Lavinia is a dead end,” Daphne said with frustration. “I’ve read everything I can about her. It seems like she lived a quiet life.”
“What do we know about Cornelia?” Spencer asked. “Besides that she was mad.”
“Cornelia is a mystery,” Lorna said. “I could hardly find anything about her besides the dates of her birth and death. What little I did find had nothing to do with how she died.”
“What was it about?” Spencer asked.
“Her art.”
Daphne frowned. “What do you mean?”
“That old story about Lucretius artists,” Lorna answered. “They say she had the gift.”
Whatever the sisters were talking about, Spencer found himself entirely lost. “What gift? What are you talking about?”
“I’ll show you,” Lorna said. “One of her paintings hangs in the portrait gallery. Come.”
***
Spencer had never visited the royal portrait gallery before. In fact, he suspected that it was closed to commoners under most circumstances. There was something that felt private, almost sacred about the gallery. Even though it was quite a large hall, the way the walls were crowded with portraits made it feel much smaller and more intimate, as though it were a gathering of acquaintances.
The painting Lorna led them to was quite different from the others, for it was not merely a portrait, but rather an entire scene. The backdrop was a small hamlet somewhere in the countryside. The artist had filled the scene with a number of small, grimy peasants, all of whom stared in shock and awe at the woman who stood amongst them in robes of royal purple.
“This is Domitia,” Lorna said, indicating the woman.
“She was a good queen,” Daphne said quietly. “Not very well known. Not famous, but she ruled during a hard time, and people seemed to like her.”
Spencer had certainly never heard of her, which meant she had likely been at least a halfway decent ruler. To be famous, a queen had to either be an excellent ruler, like Domitia’s daughter Pomponia, or a bad one. Over the centuries, many royals had earned the latter distinction, but few had achieved the former.
“This is depicting a well-known moment from her early days as queen. She visited a town that had been laid low by famine and found a young girl there who lost both her parents to starvation. She took the child in and word of her good deed spread for miles. In her day she was known as Domitia the tenderhearted.”
The artist had certainly done a marvelous job of depicting her that way. Domitia’s face was the very image of maternal compassion. With one hand she reached out to the child before her, and with the other she was releasing a dove, in a gesture reminiscent of her daughter’s portrait.
“Was that something they did a lot?” Spencer asked. “Releasing doves?”
Daphne shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
The detail of the portrait was striking, from the delicately shaded wings of the dove to the piercing green eyes of the emaciated child who extended sticklike arms to the queen.
There were two more girls in the picture, standing behind Domitia in regal robes, with their eyes cast dutifully downwards.
“Lavinia,” Daphne said, a single finger hovering over the figure of the older girl. “Cornelia.” She pointed to the younger. The younger sister didn’t feature particularly prominently in the painting, it fact most of her face was obscured by the fall of her hair. What little Spencer could see of her face looked unremarkable.
“And this is her painting?” Spencer asked.
“So they say.”
Spencer took a step back and stared at it, at the easy flow of the lines and the richness of the color. “It’s quite good for a mad woman. What’s the story you read about her?”
“She’s said to have had a magic gift, to have some talent for witchery that gave her power over those she painted. The Lucretius gift.”
Daphne sighed. “The Lucretius gift is just a story.”
“I’ve never heard it,” Spencer said.
“It’s a myth. There’s an old storybook tale about the first Lucretius, some sort of bard who could capture the will of any who listened to his song. It is said that’s how he took the throne, by bewitching all who heard him.”
Spencer had never heard that version of the story before. “I thought he took the throne in a great battle.”
“Yes,” Daphne blinked. “That’s probably what they’re supposed to teach them in school out in the provinces. The truth is that we don’t really know how he took power. The records are ambiguous at best. Anyway, the whole thing is just a story, but that’s how the legend of Lucretius magic got started. Over the centuries there have been a few royals in particular who have been rumored to have had the gift. I have my doubts. Apart from the first Lucretius, it doesn’t appear to have gone well for them. They usually ended up dead or exiled.”
“You don’t believe it then?”
“Well, I certainly don’t think Cornelia was one. She’s said to have been mad.”
“But what if she was?” Spencer asked. “The book is full of paintings and it’s certainly enchanted. What if Cornelia is the one who’s responsible for its creation?”
“And Lavinia is haunting her sister’s book?”
“If it is Lavinia.” Lorna amended.
“Think about it. A bewitched book full of paintings and a girl with a gift for painting and magic?”
Daphne studied the painting before them thoughtfully, turning over his words in her mind. “I think we should go see Cicely.”
***
The sisters led Spencer deeper into the castle than he had ever gone before. Daphne appeared quite determined, but Lorna trailed behind, lacking confidence in their mission. “You know she won’t tell us anything. She won’t talk to a soul. Not since she got Justine locked in the tower.”
“I’m going to ask her anyway,” Daphne said definitively.
She stopped at a door with a big brass knocker and before knocking turned to warn Spencer, “let us do the talking.”
In the wake of her knock, Spencer heard a faint chime. Daphne pushed the door open and led them into a small round room, entirely dominated by a spiral staircase. “Cicely?” She shouted. “It’s Lorna and I. We’re coming up.”
Spencer listened for a response, but Daphne and Lorna didn’t seem to expect one. They pushed past him and started up the spiral staircase. The sound of chimes grew louder as they climbed higher, and sometimes Spencer thought that he could almost hear a voice beneath it, sometimes over it, not words, but just a dreamy humming, sweet and maybe a little sad, just like the song of the chimes. “Do all of your sisters live in towers?” He asked, panting, as they finally reached the top of the stairs and Daphne pushed the door to the top room of the tower open.
The room that the open door revealed all but rendered him speechless. It was perfectly round and perched at the top of a tower, much like he pictured Justine’s room at the summit of the Haligorn. It took Spencer a moment to find the furniture. It was all but impossible to see, because of the carpets hanging from every rafter in the room, swaying in the strong, freezing wind that swept in from the windows. There were windows everywhere, all around the room, hardly a foot went by without another one, and they were all thrown open. This was why there had been the persistent sound of chimes as they climbed the stairs; there were wind chimes in almost every window, many of them crystals, casting dazzling beams on the floor, the ceiling, and the carpets.
But they weren’t carpets, Spencer realized as he took another step into the room. They were tapestries, which was why they were hanging. They hung from every available wall space, either above or below the many windows; they were folded on the backs of chairs and on two small desks. There was a bed in the corner, which he had missed at first, and the quilt was embroidered as richly as any of the tapestries. As Spencer put his foot dow
n he felt something soft under it, and when he looked down there were rich folds of material under him, all embroidered. It was a lovely room, though if it were Spencer’s he would have boarded up the windows tightly against the cold.
He looked up just in time to dodge a swaying tapestry that nearly hit him in the face. He jerked his head backwards, then reached out to steady the tapestry and stared in concentration at the great detail sewn on it. It was an extraordinary depiction of Castle Wulfyddia at night, so beautiful he wondered if it had been copied from a painting. It was impossibly intricate, so vivid that it didn’t seem possible it could just be a tapestry and not a window into another world, another version of the castle in which he stood. There was a single light on in the castle, high in one tower, and if Spencer ducked his head and squinted he could make out a little face sewn against the cloth, peering out of the tower, lips parted in a scream, long hair streaming.
“Sisters,” Spencer flinched at the interruption of his study of the tapestry, glancing over his shoulder to see who had spoken. Then he nearly dropped the end of the tapestry, because before him was a woman who was strikingly familiar. Her auburn hair was long and straight, and her blue eyes were wide and clear.
Where had he seen her before? Then, slowly, he glanced from her face, to the tiny face embroidered on the tapestry, and back. Hardly daring to believe his eyes, he gently released the tapestry. Cicely had done a tiny self-portrait with needle and thread. Mad or not she was truly remarkable.
Even as he watched Cicely was spinning. She had set herself up by one of the few windows that weren’t almost completely obscured by tapestries, and there she sat with her wheel, needles, thread and a pile of half completed tapestries. “My lady,” he bowed, unsure what to say to this princess. After what he’d seen of the others he had no idea what to expect from her.
She glanced at him only once, as though not even curious about him, as though they’d met before. “Hello Spencer,” she said by way of greeting, and he assumed that Daphne and Lorna must have told her about him.
Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) Page 14