The feathers are still too damp, I thought desperately. They won’t burn.
I’d have to take the skin outside and bury it so Leah would never find it again. It hardly mattered where I buried it as long as it was deep enough.
I found an old skirt that Doggett and I had rejected earlier. I was about to wrap it around the swanskin and carry the whole bundle downstairs when my feverish gaze was caught by Dog’s sewing basket sitting on Leah’s bedside table.
I threw back the lid, and from among the neatly ordered spools of silk arranged inside, the gleaming scissors Dog had used earlier winked at me.
Sharp enough to cut material, sharp enough to cut through skin and feathers. I’d destroy the swanskin utterly with those long, sharp blades before I buried the pieces.
I crouched down on the floor and began to cut. The skin was oddly resistant, thicker than it looked; it was like cutting through great wads of gray vellum. Gripping the handles fiercely, almost blind with the horror of it, I closed the scissors hard together with both hands and the skin split at last.
Feathers rose around me; pieces of skin crackled emptily to the floor. I might have been skinning a goose for Aunt Jennet but for the quantity of feathers. The room was full of them: on the bed, the table, the chest top, drifting around the base of the wardrobe, everywhere. They were up my nostrils, in my mouth.
I couldn’t breathe. There was no air left in the room, only feathers, floating. I fell back against the bed; the scissors dropped from my hand. My mouth was clotted, crammed, with them; I was choking. I tasted the dankness of the mere.
Then the door opened.
“Aggie?”
I looked up. The feathers had settled, covering the floor like snowflakes. I hadn’t choked to death after all. My mouth was empty; I could breathe, and I’d destroyed the swanskin completely.
But it wasn’t Dog at the door, as I’d expected.
It was Leah.
She looked at the feathers everywhere, and the blood drained from her cheeks. I could almost see her veins shrinking with shock. She stood there, a parchment girl.
She croaked out, “What have you done?”
I staggered to my feet, and the scissors rattled across the floor. We both stared at them.
“You’ve — cut — the swanskin,” she said incredulously. “You’ve cut it up?”
I nodded, speechless.
She looked dazed. She put out her hand and held on to the door frame, as if she felt ill. When I made a move to support her, she shrank back. Her eyes were dull.
“You’ve cut away my life.”
She said nothing more but knelt down on the floor and began gathering the feathers to her, cradling the bits against her chest, trying to fit the jagged strips of skin together like a jigsaw.
It was impossible. Tears began to roll down her face as she scrabbled about, and she made no effort to wipe them away. “My swanskin,” she moaned to herself, over and over again, “my swanskin.”
Watching her, I felt a terrible guilt begin to freeze my bones.
At last she looked up. “Why did you do it, why?”
“I did it f-for you,” I stammered.
She shook her head blankly. “This? For me?”
For an age I watched her creep over the floor trying to gather the feathers to her, while the huge tears dripped silently from her eyes.
“Leah,” I said, and my voice broke. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”
At that moment I longed more than anything to have the swanskin back with all its power rather than see Leah like this, like a creature wounded half to death.
She looked at me, her face marked with her weeping, red channels inflaming the paper-white skin. I could see what an effort it was for her to hold her voice steady.
“Go from me. Never come to the tower again. I don’t want to see you there.” She turned her head away and whispered, “I thought you were my sister!”
My eyes filled. “I am, I am!”
She didn’t look at me. “You can’t be — to do this!”
“I only wanted to protect you.”
I took a step closer, held out my arms helplessly. My throat was tight with tears. “Leah …”
She said nothing.
I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. I crouched down sobbing and began to gather feathers blindly, trying to make amends. But as soon as she saw what I was doing, she lurched to her feet and her face twisted.
“Leave them! Didn’t you hear what I said? Go!”
I stumbled over to the door and stopped. I longed to throw myself at her, to kneel at her feet and beg for her friendship back. But it would do no good. Our days of happiness together were gone, destroyed. I had done it. I’d cut our friendship into pieces. A huge sob filled my chest so I could hardly speak.
“Forgive me, Leah. Oh, please forgive me.”
She was crawling round the floor again in the hopeless mess of feathers, keening to herself. Head bent, she ignored me.
I couldn’t bear to watch any longer. I closed the door behind me and, with my hands against my face, wept into my fingers as if I’d never stop.
XVIII
Night
At the end of the morning I didn’t go to luncheon. I woke Doggett, who was snoring on her bed, and told her that I was sick as well and that she must stir herself and go with Leah on her walk that afternoon. I did feel sick, sick to my heart.
From her pillows Doggett stared sleepily at my red eyes. I must have looked ill indeed, for she didn’t question me, but at last nodded and heaved herself up. Only as I was retreating through her door did she say with melancholy satisfaction, “You destroyed the swanskin, didn’t you? You shouldn’t have done that.”
A spark of indignation stirred in me. “I did what you were too frightened to do!”
“It’s cursin’ you already! Oh, Aggie, what a dreadful thing!”
“Codswallop!” I said. “It’s not birds that damn us, but our own deeds.”
But back in my own room my spirit died. I lay on my bed, and tears began to slip down my face again. I thought of Leah’s surprise and pleasure when I’d returned from Aunt Jennet, and I wept for what I’d lost.
At last there were no tears left in me, just a dreariness at the very center of my being. I was empty, but had no appetite. I climbed off my bed and dragged myself like an invalid across to the looking glass. As I wearily brushed my hair, a stranger with raw eyes and pale cheeks stared back at me. Even my hair seemed dulled.
What was I to do with myself this long afternoon, and all the afternoons to come? Outside the sun still shone, the birds still sang. I looked with surprise at my window. There was a blackbird somewhere outside. I could hear his melody even in my room, the most beautiful of all birdsong. He sang of spring, new beginnings, hope: things that had no meaning for me. But I put on my chip hat and my wool shawl. I needed to escape the house and its heartache.
I let my feet walk, with no clear thought in my head as to where I was going. Sometime later I found myself standing by the edge of the mere, at the beginning of the path that Leah had first taken me along months before.
I hesitated, then began to squeeze along it, crushing soft new nettles under my boots. The reeds were brilliant green and the lake mirrored the blue sky. A rising fish ringed the glittering surface near me, shaking the water lilies that rose like white hands through the water.
The female swan, the pen, was sitting on her nest in a reed bed not far from the bank. I stopped at once, but she didn’t move. She looked so serene, sitting on the vast, untidy mound of twigs and vegetation. Occasionally she would pull a blade of grass closer to tuck it round her. Her dark eye gazed down without expression. Her neck curved over her body so that it looked like a question mark.
I knew the question she asked me.
Were you right to destroy the swanskin?
“I did it for Leah,” I whispered. “She’s not of your kind, nor her mother’s. She’s like me, not you — she said we were sisters. Why should
the Almighty punish her for something she never did?” For a long time I stood waiting, as if the swan could somehow answer me, but her dark eyes didn’t flicker. At last I turned and moved stiffly away.
Although we kept up the pretence of being mistress and companion, Leah didn’t speak to me. It was worse than the old days at Murkmere, for at least her taunts had been preferable to the total silence that now existed between us. She was silent at mealtimes, silent on our walks, silent in the evenings when we continued grimly to play cards after supper. Although she always won, her face remained shut and she did not look at me. We never played Commotion. She had withdrawn into herself and it was as if she no longer knew or cared about me.
When she was at her lessons in the watchtower I hid myself away in my chamber, and read and reread the last book she had given me. At night I would lie awake, listening to the barking of the guard dogs as they roamed the grounds outside, and tears would fill my tired eyes.
Around me the servants swept and aired and dusted. The house was full of sunlight and excited whisperings about the ball. No one noticed I had fallen from favor, and if the Master suspected it, he did not refer to it at supper. But sometimes he would ask me how my reading was coming along. What book was I reading now? He’d look disappointed when I confessed it was still the same one.
Of course, Doggett knew of Leah’s coldness toward me, but she avoided me, as if talking to me would infect her too. Scuff suspected something was amiss. When I’d retired to my chamber she’d bring me hot possets as if I were convalescent, and hover about me anxiously until I drank.
“You’re so pale, Aggie,” she said. “You look as if you come from the Capital!”
I smiled sadly, in spite of myself. “Is everyone pale in the Capital, Scuff?”
I don’t think anyone else ever gave Scuff the chance to talk. The words rushed out of her. “There’s no fresh air in the Capital. Too many people breathin’, that’s why. Even the black statues look as if they breathe. Them statues, they’re everywhere, giant-sized: the Protector and his friends, lookin’ down on us, makin’ sure we’re behavin’. And if you breathe too deep you might breathe in the Miasma.”
“What’s that, Scuff?”
“It carries the plague, the Miasma does. It’s like an invisible wind of death.”
I shivered. “That’s what I feel in this house now.”
Then at last it was time for my next visit from Jethro, and how I longed to see his friendly face.
As I slipped down the drive like a shadow in my cloak and hood, I noticed that the holes had been filled in, the weeds cleared away. So Silas had had a word with the keepers. Of course, I thought bitterly. It would reflect on his own job as steward if the Lord Protector thought the estate badly tended when he came.
The rooks called in the dark trees near the gates as they made ready for the night. Once I would have been fearful about being alone, but now I didn’t care. I was only aware of the ache in my heart.
Then I saw Jethro’s stocky silhouette behind the bars of the gate. He was waiting for me: solid, dependable Jethro. I wanted to run to him and throw my arms round him, and weep and weep.
He held my hand through the bars, and looked at me. “You’re tired, Aggie. Have they been working you too hard?”
His tenderness undid me, and I’d intended to be so non-chalant. “Oh, Jethro,” I gulped. “It’s dreadful here, you can’t believe.”
“I’m sure I can,” he said, and clenched his jaw. “Is it Silas Seed? If that rogue —“
“No, no,” I said hastily. “Indeed, he’s not spoken to me this whole season past.” I took a deep breath and clutched his hand tighter. “I’ve brought it on myself, Jethro. My mistress won’t speak to me now because of what I’ve done.”
“What did you do, Aggie?”
“I can’t tell you! Oh, Jethro, you must believe me! I did it for her own good, to save her!”
“I’m sure you did,” he said gently.
“But now she hates me for it, Jethro.” I looked down, my mouth trembling. I did so want to appear a grown woman before him and not give in to tears.
“Maybe she doesn’t understand why you did it.”
“I can’t tell her. And now she’ll never forgive me.”
“But you haven’t lost your position?”
I shook my head. He pressed my hand encouragingly and let it go. “Then matters aren’t so very bad, are they? You’ve still your job and your wages.”
I couldn’t explain to him how bereft I felt; the right words wouldn’t come. I stared at him helplessly, the tears drying on my cheeks. Then I noticed something odd.
“You’re not wearing your amulet!”
He looked awkward. “Aye, I’ve done away with it, thrown it in the marshes.”
I gasped. “You never did such a thing!”
He paused, then said steadily, “It seems to me that men won’t have true freedom till we banish our fears.”
I wanted to think about what he had said. “Oh, Jethro,” I said hesitantly, pressing myself against the cold bars so I could see his expression better. “I’d so like to talk to you properly.”
To my astonishment he looked as if he were blushing in the half-dark. Suddenly he said, “Can’t you escape this place soon, ask the Master for permission to leave your position? If his ward’s displeased with you …”
I pressed my hands together. “You don’t understand. Now it’s harder for me to leave than ever. I must make sure Leah is safe.”
“Safe? What’s to threaten her, locked up behind these bars? You’ve done your duty by her, as much as is called for, surely?” There was a note of exasperation in his voice.
“It’s not … duty. I can’t explain.”
“So you’ll stay on in this benighted place?”
I nodded.
“Then you must care for her very much.”
I looked at him helplessly. He was staring at me, frowning, perplexed. “You will come again, Jethro, won’t you? I couldn’t do without your visits.”
He caught my hand again through the bars and brought it to his lips. I felt them press roughly against my palm for a second. Then he dropped my hand and abruptly strode away into the dusk. Startled from my grief, I gazed after him.
I’d been so full of my own misery I hadn’t even asked Jethro about Aunt Jennet. Suddenly I saw clearly how she’d perceive me: moping because my mistress was displeased with me. She’d tell me to pull myself together, get on with my duties. And I would. Tomorrow I’d help the maids with the cleaning of the Hall.
In the afternoon, when Leah’s lessons were over, I noticed her in the doorway, watching as we polished the sideboard in the Great Hall. “Good,” she said, and there was the glint of approval in her eye. But whether the remark was intended for the two housemaids or for me, I didn’t know. Every day, it seemed, she would come and watch wherever I was for a little while, but still she said nothing to me.
One night I was deeply asleep when my shoulder was shaken roughly and Doggett’s voice hissed, “Aggie, wake up! Aggie!”
I woke with a start, my heart beating wildly, for though I recognized her voice, the candle she was holding sent strange shadows leaping over her face and the lank braids of her hair, over her long white nightgown and shawl. Beyond her ghostly figure the chamber was dark as pitch, and cold. The wind was in the eaves and drafts scurried round my warm bed.
“What is it, Dog? Are you ill?”
The candleholder trembled in her fingers. “It’s the mistress. I was comin’ back from the privy …” She shook her head. “Come and see for yourself.”
Instantly I was awake. I thrust my feet into slippers and wrapped a coverlet around my shoulders. Then, full of dread, I padded after her clown the dark passage.
Cold air rippled around us, blowing our gowns against our ankles. When we reached Leah’s door it was creaking to and fro, opening a little on its latch, then closing. There was candlelight in her chamber. When the door opened, the oak floorb
oards of the passage glowed for a brief moment.
We stood in the shadows and whispered to each other.
“She can’t sleep,” I said in Dog’s ear, irritable at being woken up for this. “You should go in and ask her if she wants for anything.”
“If you pass her chamber as I did,” Dog hissed back, “you’ll see what I saw.”
Grumbling silently, clutching the coverlet about my cold shoulders, I walked past the door as it closed, then turned. Dog nodded urgently back at me.
Then the door opened a little on the latch.
From where I was standing I could see Leah through the gap. She was crouched with her back to me in a wavering circle of yellow light. She must have kept the feathers and the scraps of skin after my destruction. They were in a pile beside her, the feathers rising and drifting in the draft. Her head was bent, and there was something in her right hand.
I couldn’t make out what she was doing until she brought her hand up and the candlelight glinted on silver.
A threaded needle.
She forced the needle into the skin, then out again. It was difficult, impossible. I’d cut the swanskin into countless pieces. She could never repair it.
For a long moment I stood watching her, rent with pity. Then her door banged shut, making both Dog and me jump.
I beckoned Dog back to my chamber. We were trembling, with cold or fear or perhaps both. I sat on my bed and Dog sat too while the candles shook in our hands. I had to think how to reassure Dog that all was well with our mistress when plainly it was not.
“She’s brought those bird feathers out again!” she whispered. “I thought you’d got rid of them.”
“I destroyed the skin. It’s a dead thing, Dog, nothing to be afraid of.”
“She must have put all the pieces back in her chest. What’s she doin’? It’s the middle of the night!”
“I believe she’s asleep,” I said firmly, for Dog’s voice was rising. “She doesn’t know she’s out of bed.”
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