Love by the Morning Star

by Laura L. Sullivan

  No one would buy that, Anna thought, on the verge of panic. Not if it was on sale.

  But she had not counted on Hannah’s lively imagination, her sense of the absurd, and her operatic acceptance of strange plot contrivances. She was also from a culture deeply steeped in ritual. To secretly serve a king bitter herbs with yew made as much sense as dipping parsley in salt-water. She never mocked other people’s beliefs.

  “Then I will make his salad alone, and sneak it on the board for Corcoran to serve. Sally need never know.” Hannah looked pleased to be involved in the royal plot.

  I could tell her, Anna thought. I could confess all. I could tell her what every English child knows, that yews are deadly poisonous. Children would dare one another to eat the sweet red berries, which alone among the tree’s parts were innocuous, and in fact delicious. But the seed within was deadly—just one could kill. Schoolyard lore had it that the seeds would pass whole through the body, but if they didn’t, one was fatal. All other parts were almost as toxic. Don’t make your dog play fetch with a yew stick. Don’t toss clippings in the sheep meadow.

  Don’t feed your sovereign yew leaves in his salad.

  It won’t be my fault, Anna told herself resolutely. That man told Hannah—she’s the one who will do it. No one will punish me, not the NAFF, not the hangman. I will marry Teddy and be able to forget the whole thing. It won’t matter to me who rules, who goes to war, who is jailed or enslaved or oppressed. The world will muddle on one way or another. As long as I marry Teddy, I won’t have to be a part of it.

  But she looked at Hannah’s face, so lively, so amused at the idea of the innocent conspiracy, and felt as if someone had just spit on her—debased. Anything to achieve my proper place in life had always been her motto.

  Anything . . . but that?

  THE KING CAME WITH A small party two weeks later, at the end of April, to stay one night. In the afternoon, Hannah wandered through the lettuce beds, plucking and tasting. Umbel, the head gardener, who guarded his produce like his children, stopped her with a gruff command, then softened when he saw who it was. He’d had many a pleasant chat with the little German maid about Wurzelpetersilie, the root parsley popular in Germany, and the beauties of mashed celeriac.

  “I am making a bitter salad,” she said, omitting whom it was for. “Romaine, frisee, sorrel . . . what else?”

  “Escarole, maybe,” he said, pulling on his beard. “Herbs would round out the flavor. A bit of rue, a bit of yarrow. Not too much, mind, just a pinch. They can do a mischief if you have too much. Hmm . . . you need color. Marigolds, mayhap?”

  “You can eat them?”

  “Aye. Take a few of those at the edge of yon bed. Lemony, a little sour to counter the bitter. What will you use for the dressing? Vinegar, oil, and a bit of sweet? I have some clover honey I save special for my cough. It would do nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, following him to his cottage, her basket swinging over her arm. “And I need yew leaves, too. I’m told they will go nicely.”

  “Yew? Who’s been feeding you that daft story? Yew’s a death-herb. Why do you think they grow it in all the churchyards? Rue and yarrow are poison if you have too much, but tonic if you have a little. They freshen up the blood. But yew? You’ll kill someone if you feed him yew.”

  Hannah frowned and gulped. She was so sure the man had said yew. He’d made her repeat it to be certain.

  “Though I have heard,” Umbel went on, “of using yew as a decoration. Some ladies find them real stylish. Why, the Bowles had a yew centerpiece in the table setting they featured in Country Life. Yes, miss, real fashionable. I’ll make you up a cluster if you like, tied with a red bow.”

  That must have been it, Hannah thought. What a disaster it would have been if she’d killed the king! She laughed at the absurdity of it, and at the funny way life has of skirting disaster. How often have we come near to death or tragedy without knowing it? she wondered. The world seemed to run on accidents.

  “I can do it,” Hannah insisted. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “Nay, miss, I’d rather do it myself. A few stray leaves in the feed and we have a lake full of dead ducks. Best not to risk a mistake. I’ll bring them up to the kitchen in a bit. Keep them well away from the food, now.”

  THE KING TASTED HIS SALAD, with its contrasting flavors and jaunty marigold petals like droplets of sunshine, and pronounced it delicious. He went so far as to call out Sally to offer her his compliments . . . and was impressed at her humble, diffident manner, pretending she had nothing whatsoever to do with creating that interesting salad. It was not good form to steal another man’s cook—wars had been fought over less, before the Magna Carta—but he might put out the word that there was a place for her elsewhere, if Starkers ever began to pall.

  Anna and Hannah Get Engaged

  Dear Anna,

  I will pay a flying visit to Starkers on the seventeenth of May, arriving early in the morning and departing again, alas, the next morning. And they say that the British aristocracy idles its life away in unrelenting leisure! For reasons of which you are perhaps aware, I would love to spend months and months lolling at home, amusing myself and those around me. But for other reasons, of which you are equally aware, I cannot. I must trade my innocent schoolboy life for . . . But I preempt the censors.

  Yours,

  Teddy

  P.S. You remember Hardy, the gardener the Duke of Kent took a fancy to? I’ll be picking him up when I stop at Windsor. I’m sure there are many among the below stairs female population who will be delighted to have him back, if only for one night. He will visit his old friends before resuming his training. He has some very interesting ideas about eating weeds.

  One day! Only one day! Anna clasped the letter to her breast and determined to make the most of it.

  For the week between the receipt of the letter and the seventeenth of May, Anna engaged in a flurry of beautification, slapping cream on her face and lanolin on her elbows, looking into the mirror at every conceivable angle to pluck unsightly hairs. She pumiced her feet and anointed her hair with beer to make it shine. (That last she’d learned about serendipitously when her father, who became emotional in drink, once flung a full pitcher of ale at her head.)

  The night of the sixteenth, she called Hannah into her room.

  “Hannah, I need to look absolutely splendid tomorrow. I need to look better than I ever have before. I need to dazzle!”

  “Whatever for?” Hannah asked.

  Anna could control herself no longer. It had to happen tomorrow night, and then he would tell his parents and they’d print the notice in the papers and the whole world would know! Right now, she had to share it with someone.

  “Look,” she said, thrusting the letter into Hannah’s hands. “Do you see? He’s coming tomorrow. Oh, I’m so happy—so very happy! He’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.” She watched Hannah’s expression eagerly as she read the missive. It wasn’t much of a love note, Anna had to admit—he’d written infrequently and his letters got progressively more formal, addressed to dear Anna, not my dearest Anna, and signed yours, not your very own, which made considerable difference. But still, enough for her to gloat over.

  “We are so madly in love,” she went on as Hannah read. “He’s as good as proposed.”

  “And you’ve accepted?” Hannah asked carefully. It was hard enough to believe that posh Anna stooped to consort with the under-gardener, but to marry him?

  “Well, I’ll just say that we understand each other, and leave it at that. He’s said such things already that it only has to be formalized this time when he comes. I just wish he didn’t have to leave so soon.”

  Hannah, reading through the letter a second time, saw nothing more than a perfunctory letter one writes to family or some obligatory social contact. There was nothing romantic in it to clue Hannah in. She assumed Anna was excited about Teddy’s postscript.

  Feeling a rush of sisterly camaraderie, Hannah
said softly, “I think I might be in the same boat as you.”

  “Really?” Anna asked, her joy in Teddy’s letter deflating a little as she felt again that surprisingly sharp stab of jealousy at the thought of Hardy admiring anyone but her. Poverty usually made people so ugly in her eyes. Why hadn’t it done so with Hardy? “I’m so . . . happy for you.”

  “You won’t tell, though, will you? I’d rather keep it a secret until it is official, and I think he would too.”

  Anna understood completely.

  TWO GIRLS, ONE THOUGHT: Wait for night.

  They were used to nothing happening during the daytime. Full light was for formality. Hannah’s work kept her out of the upper crust for most of the day, and though she hoped to run into Teddy while she tended Anna, she never did. She was tempted—oh, how she was tempted—to seek him out, to creep into his room or beard him publicly, his note with its imperious command in her hand, and say loud and clear, Yes, I will marry you. But her pride, which had kept her in her place of degradation, rebelled. He will come to me, she insisted. If he loves me he will come to me. She would go so far as to wait in the yew, nothing more.

  Neither did Anna get any satisfaction by daylight. She too was sorely tempted to sneak into Teddy’s room in a robe and nothing underneath for a reprise of that glorious night. But ladies did not behave that way, however much they yearned to, and she had to remember that she was a lady. Well, a lady by proxy, by will and ambition.

  It is for him to come to me, she thought. If he loves me, he will. And if he cannot manage to get me alone today, I will find him by night in the greenhouse.

  Their paths crossed, of course. He arrived at breakfast and sat down to nibble toast and tell about his graduation. Then, after he freshened up, he and Anna and his stepsisters played billiards, then lunched together. Her hopes rose when he suggested a walk, but he spoke too loudly and all of the little nieces and nephews heard and clamored to tag along. Proposals among the nursery set simply aren’t possible.

  Night could not come quickly enough.

  ANOTHER BLOODY NEW MOON, Anna thought as she sneaked out of Starkers. Though there was something romantic about it, touch and sound alone.

  But we are both so beautiful, she thought. We should be able to look at each other.

  Now, where was that greenhouse? It should be easy to find—an entire building—but there was no glint of moonlight on the glass, and none of the low-burning fires that had kept the interior warm on winter nights. She could scarcely see her hand in front of her face . . .

  Then, without warning, there was a hand in front of her face. It clapped hard over her mouth as she tried to scream. Another hand circled her neck and tightened, and a voice said into her ear, casting spittle, “Come quiet-like or I’ll slit that pretty throat.”

  She smelled tobacco—not the comfort of a pipe or the wealthy associations of a fine cigar, but that rank old tobacco smell of fingers stained by chain smoking. Muscular bulk pressed against her back, and stubble grated against her cheek. Her first thought was ravishment. Her second, that Teddy must never know. Her third, that if she resisted, her beauty might be spoiled, but if she acquiesced, she might escape with nothing but her dignity crushed and broken.

  She allowed herself to be dragged deep into the semidomestic woods that lay beyond the Starkers gardens.

  “I’m going to let you go now. Make a sound and I’ll break your nose. That don’t look so pretty on a gal. Savvy?”

  Anna nodded, and the clutching hands released her. She turned to find the same burly man who had told Hannah to prepare the salad of bitter herbs.

  He looked her up and down and let out a low whistle. “Now that’s what I mean by a looker. I got a little suspicious when I talked to that other bird. They said the one I was to contact was a real stunner. So I went back and asked, and they gave me a better description. Big, blond, tits out to here. Weren’t my fault. They’re the ones just told me to ask for the new kitchen maid. Whoo, you sure don’t look like a kitchen maid.”

  “As it happened I took another position,” Anna said weakly. “With the family.”

  “You’re supposed to be in the kitchen. How can you poison someone if you aren’t handling his food?” He slapped his forehead. “And the NAFF says I have to work my way up—they’re the ones who’ve bungled the business. Did that other skivvy do what I told her to? That would be a lark.”

  “She tried, but someone told her yew was poisonous and—”

  “Someone being you?” he said, and in an instant had her by the throat again and up against a tree, breathing his tobacco breath into her face. “You were there? You heard?”

  “I . . . I was hiding. I heard.”

  He knocked her head against the tree. It didn’t hurt, much, but made her see how very easily it could.

  “And you let it get mucked up? Thought you were supposed to be a clever girl. Your da says you are. What do you think I’ll do to you if you don’t cooperate, eh?” He pressed himself closer. “Whatever you’re imagining, it’s only the beginning. This is the real thing, doll. You do as you’re told or you die, and it won’t be quick, and it won’t be fun. Not for you, anyway.” He gave her a leer. “Maybe for me.”

  “B-but no one said I’d be asked to commit murder,” she stammered.

  “Not asked,” he corrected. “Told.”

  “I can’t kill anyone, especially the king! Are you all mad? It’s treason. You’ll be hanged.”

  “Desperate times, my dove. There’s a war going on.”

  A war? She hadn’t read the papers lately, but surely someone would have said something.

  “A class war and a race war and a war to keep the bloody Jews and reds from taking over the world. Killing a king is nothing. A man stands in your way, you kill him, king or beggar.”

  “Then you kill him,” Anna said miserably.

  “Look at me. You think the likes of me can get anywhere near a king? He goes from fortress to fortress, with guards all around him. You have to plant someone in the fortress. That’s you.”

  “Get someone else. I can’t do it!”

  “There is no one else. The NAFF is counting on you.”

  “But the king came and left. I won’t have another chance.”

  He gave her alabaster throat a squeeze. She could feel her pulse on either side beating madly against his hand. He’ll kill me, she thought. He really will, if I don’t do what he says.

  “You get the king back to Starkers, and you kill him. Plain and simple. If you don’t, I’ll cut off that pretty face bit by bit, and then afterward I’ll . . .” He whispered something in her ear, something so inhumanly filthy that if she’d had the means she would have killed herself right then, just to escape the merest possibility of that ever coming to pass.

  When he finished whispering he let her go, and she sank to her knees in the grass and nettles.

  “Well?” he asked.

  All she could do was nod, once, in utter submission.

  “I’ll be watching,” he said, and stalked off into the night.

  For a moment she froze, trembling, unable to move, although she was afraid he’d come back with more threats, or worse. Finally her body seemed to unlock, and with a low shuddering wail she staggered back toward Starkers.

  Safety . . . where can I find safety? She could not do any of the things she knew—scream for the police, ask some man to defend her. The obvious thing to do was to run to the first person she could find, babble out her terror, admit to the plan, and beg for mercy and protection. That would save the king, but would it save her? She believed that man’s threats. Was the law a match for him? He would come after her, she was sure. And if not him, then someone else in the NAFF. The organization that had once been her salvation, raising her father and thus raising her, was now her enemy. They would hunt her down if she betrayed them. Her father himself would kill her with his own hands if she betrayed them.

  And what of Teddy? After they were securely wed she might be able to co
nfess her real name and position, but would he forgive her before? Afterward—well, she might be in love, but she was pragmatic, too, and there is no such thing as an aristocratic union dissolved without a big payoff. She desperately wanted Teddy and the title, but a great deal of alimony would suffice. He could cast her off, but only after they were married.

  She could tell no one. She was in this all too deeply—in her deception with the Liripips, and her mission for the NAFF. She would have to at least bring the king to Starkers. She would have to . . .

  “But I can’t!” she wept. “I just can’t.” She ran and fell and ran again, bruising her knees and cutting her hands. She felt the gravel path beneath her, and at least knew where she was. She’d been running blind, but now she realized the greenhouse must be just ahead.

  There was only one way to be safe. Ladies—real, titled ladies—are not murdered by tobacco-scented thugs. The chatelaine of Starkers does not have her face cut off.

  “Where are you?” she cried into the night. “My love . . .”

  She ran headlong into strong, comforting arms and was pulled against a broad chest. For a moment she fought, but there was no tobacco smell, and a voice said, “Is it you, sweetheart?”

  She was weeping so loudly, she could hardly hear him. She knew those arms. She couldn’t wait for him to ask her.

  “Marry me,” she begged, falling to her battered knees and clutching at his legs desperately. “Please, oh please marry me. I’ll die if you don’t.”

  She heard him chuckle, low and loving.

  “Since you put it that way,” he said, and drew her into the pitch-black greenhouse, where he lay her down among the nasturtiums and made her almost forget her fear.

  She ran away from him before they could talk about their future together. She did not want to give herself the chance to confess—or him the chance for regret. They had agreed to be married. If she had her way, no words would follow until they both said I do. She curled into a tiny ball in her bed and did not let herself think of anything at all, only chanted the name Lady Anna, over and over.