by April White
“Himself said as ye’d be hungry when ye woke.” She indicated the food she’d brought. “Yer skin and bones, lass.”
I grabbed an orange from the tray and started peeling it. Sanda took it from me and in about three seconds had completely removed the skin with a little knife she whipped out from somewhere in her skirt. She handed me slices like I was a little kid, and I honestly didn’t mind being fed like that by her.
I watched Sanda while she worked. I could see she had been pretty once, and she still had bright blue eyes, and long, thick hair she wore in a braided bun at the back of her neck.
“I met your grandfather.”
She looked up from the orange and regarded me steadily.
“At least I think he was. His name was Gosford, and he had a boat called the ‘Sanda.’”
After a long moment, she finally spoke. “He said he’d met a traveler. Said she gave him aught fer the bairn I was.”
I shook my head. “He paid me for work I did on his nets, and I told him to keep the money to buy you something with.” Sanda’s eyes were shining very brightly as she looked at me, and I smiled. “He was very proud of his baby granddaughter.”
She looked down at her hands, still holding the last slice of the orange. She gave me the piece, then carefully wiped her little knife on her skirts and folded it closed.
For the first time I could see the handle was inlaid with little bits of shell. It was quite beautiful for something so useful. When she looked up at me there were tears in the rims of her eyes. “Me grandda bought me this knife wi’ yer penny. Said a lass as pretty as I’d be had need of something wicked to keep the lads mannerly.”
She smiled at the memories as she turned the pretty knife over and over in her hands. “I’ve much more wicked tools to work wi’ now. She’ll be useful to ye, and me grandda’ll smile to know she’s wi’ ye.” Sanda handed me the lovely little knife and clasped my hand with the knife between us. “Thank ye fer that memory. And fer the penny she cost him.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I couldn’t accept such a precious gift, but closed it again. I realized that the gift of the knife meant more to her than the knife itself, and I’d be dishonoring her not to accept it. I studied the knife in my hand. “It’s beautiful.”
Sanda’s dreaminess was gone, replaced by the no-nonsense voice I’d come to expect. “Tis deadly sharp and opens like this.” She showed me a hidden catch which sent the blade springing open. It was the size of a paring knife, and flat, so it would fit easily in my pocket. I closed the blade carefully.
“I’ll take good care of it.”
“And she’ll take care of ye.” She bustled around the bedroom. “Now, herself is in London ‘til past dark. Ye have a wee bit o’time fer wandering. The old ‘un said he’d wait for ye in the garden when ye’re ready to go.”
“You mean Archer when you say the ‘old one’ right?”
She looked at me strangely. “None else here is older than me.”
Wow. Okay. “And you know he’s a…” All of a sudden I couldn’t say it out loud.
Sanda shrugged. “Makes as much difference as any of ye lot. Good and bad is all that matters. Good and bad.”
An excellent point and one to remember the next time I got squeamish about what he needed to eat to survive. She turned just before she left the room.
“It’s a deep love he bears for ye. Mind you’re careful with it.”
She left me alone with that cryptic thought and a bowl full of lamb-and-potato shepherd’s pie. I tucked in with relish while I thought about Sanda’s parting shot. ‘Be careful’ because it’s dangerous how much he loved me, or ‘be careful’ not to take Archer and his love for granted? Probably both.
I took a deep breath and swung my legs out of bed again to get dressed. I’d forgotten to ask Sanda whose room I was in, so I did a little snooping. The bookshelves were a good place to start, and from the titles on the shelves (dusted, of course) I got the feeling no one had added to the collection in about a hundred years. Everything was classic, from Shakespeare to Emily Dickenson. I’d read some of the books on those shelves, but most of them had intimidated me with difficult language and hidden meanings about politics, sex and religion.
So whoever’s room this was had been well-read.
I opened a big wooden wardrobe. There were no clothes hanging in it at all, just empty hangers. The dresser was empty too. When I tried to close the bottom drawer it got hung up on something, so I took it out to reset on the track. There was a packet of papers attached to the underside of the drawer. Someone’s secret stash.
They were letters. Addressed to “My Love,” and signed “Your Love.” Nothing so easy as an actual name, of course. The paper looked old and yellowed, and the ink had the kind of perfect indigo blue that only comes from fountain pens. The handwriting was sort of masculine, in that practiced way Europeans have of writing, and based on the words, I guessed the letters were from a guy to a girl.
There was a lot of talk about her eyes, her lips, and the way she looked when she laughed. People in my world barely seemed to speak anymore, much less actually take the time to express something longer than a text in writing.
I had the sense he was being deliberately vague about where they met and how often they saw each other, like he expected someone would find the letters and not approve. And then this paragraph jumped off the page at me:
‘Love like ours defies pointless rules and outdated laws. We don’t have to run away to be together, we can stand side by side and convince our families there is only right in our union. They will have to listen to us because we are their heirs, and they’ve been grooming us to lead after them. You will be mine, Claire, as I am yours. For all time.”
It was signed like all the others, ‘Your Love,’ but I knew it was written by my father, to my mother, Claire. I stared around the room in wonder. My mother’s room. Cleared out of any personal possessions after she left, yet the packet of letters remained hidden for me to find almost a hundred and fifty years later.
Sanda had said I had until dark to snoop around the house and I wanted to take advantage of that. I made my way down the hall in the direction I thought would take me back to the main staircase. When I passed the Epping Wood cottage painting outside Emily’s bedroom I knew I was on the right track.
The house was silent. Whatever Sanda was doing was far enough away that she could claim plausible deniability if I got caught. Smart. I’d do the same. I headed straight for the Keep. I knew Millicent had kept the key to the oldest part of the Manor house on her, but maybe there was a spare key hidden somewhere. It was worth a shot.
The hallway leading to the Keep was noticeably colder than the rest of the house, and I pulled Archer’s leather jacket around me. There was so much he and I hadn’t talked about, like what happened to him after I left, with Bishop Cleary and the Monger and Weres. Or the week that I’d spent in the past with Ringo and…him. And how I’d betrayed him with lies, and more lies, even putting his whole future with the bishop in danger.
Although the more I learned about that bishop, the more squarely he landed in the ‘evil mastermind’ category. Even beating out Slick and his band of bullies, and the vile Ms. Rothchild from St. Brigid’s. Will Shaw had tipped over onto my ‘good guy’ list, despite his violent past. I had liked Will when we’d talked, and I was beginning to believe I might somehow be responsible for his fate. Especially if my mom had actually been coming to speak up for him at his hearing. Guilt was quickly becoming my very least favorite emotion and the avoidance of it kept me very busy.
The door to the Keep, as expected, was locked. I felt up around the lintel but didn’t really expect to find a key there. Millicent was not the over-confident type.
But then I looked low, for no particular reason except that Sanda was tiny, and if she had been inclined to help me out it wouldn’t be with a high hiding spot. And there it was, shoved under the threshold in a crevice just the right size for an old-fashione
d iron key.
I turned the key in the lock and the heavy wooden door opened smoothly. The darkness inside the room was absolute and only the dim glow from the hallway let me find my way to the table with the gas lamp and lighter. With enough light to finally see I inhaled the room and its contents as if it was a place I could take into myself.
It was strange that this room was warded since the Clocker tower at St. Brigid’s hadn’t been, but maybe because it was a stronghold for my Family’s records the wards gave it vault-like protection.
I wanted to go straight to the photo album to find more pictures of my mother, but I found myself drawn directly to the painting of the Immortals. Jera still looked like she was gazing straight at me, and now, knowing what I knew about their history, I could see so much more on their faces.
Goran was looking at Jera with pure love in his eyes, while Aeron looked at Goran with something closer to hatred. And still, there was that sense of wrongness about the painting that I couldn’t shake. The missing person between Goran and Aeron, who had never been painted there, but instead, had deliberately not been painted.
I suddenly wondered who had made the magnificent painting. I searched the corners for a signature and found nothing. Knowing I was playing with fire but not caring, I lifted the heavy artwork off the wall and searched the back of the canvas. Still nothing.
There’s one last place an artist is likely to hide a signature, and I couldn’t imagine a piece like this one going unsigned. So I carefully pushed the canvas out of the elaborate gilt frame and searched the edges. There, in the bottom left corner was a signature.
Doran. My long-lost cousin and spiral-maker. Either he had an amazing imagination, or he had been around for a very long time. I had no idea how old the painting was but I could tell, from the canvas and the style of framing, that it was probably as old as Elian Manor. I carefully replaced the painting on the wall and sat back to think.
There were big things at play among the Families; things I hadn’t really given too much thought to because they didn’t seem to be my problem. But maybe I was wrong.
Why were Bishop Wilder’s Family genealogies important enough to make in the first place, and then steal from Bishop Cleary’s care? Why was Slick after me, and did he know Tom Landers was a mixed blood? And for that matter, who was my father, and why were he and my mother not allowed to be together?
And then there was Doran, this sort of mysterious, omnipresent, peripheral member of my family who casually dropped by for lessons and kept leaving clues for me to find. Where the heck was he in all of this?
I had no idea what time it was, but figured dark wasn’t too far away. I didn’t want to be caught in the Keep by Millicent, so I blew out the lantern and re-locked the big door, and then headed down the hall toward the main entrance to the Manor. I wanted to retrieve my mother’s drawings from Emily’s room before I slipped out to the garden to meet Archer.
Emily’s room was at the junction to the east wing and I found my way there easily. My mother’s painting was becoming like an old friend each time I passed and I thought it might be nice to hunt that cottage down sometime.
After the austerity of my mother’s room, her sister’s seemed very girlish and young. I wondered if Emily had just switched rooms when she outgrew this one. In a house the size of Elian Manor it was totally possible.
I retrieved the key to the locked cabinet from Emily’s headboard, then carefully pulled the drawings out from under the stack of Emily’s journals. I had just replaced the key when a creak at the door startled me. I spun around and came face to face with Millicent.
And boy, was she mad.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in my grandmother’s room!?”
I picked up the file folder of drawings from the bed and stood to face Millicent with as neutral a voice I could muster. “Hello Millicent.” I was proud of myself for my steadiness when part of me wanted to rage at her, and the other part wanted to run.
“How dare you come into my house and behave as if you’ve done nothing wrong. Between acting like a vagrant and God-knows-what kind of relationship you’re having with a Vampire I’m frankly shocked to see you! I thought you’d have crawled back to the hole your mother saw fit to raise you in.
Calm passivity was not going to win this one.
“You know, Millicent, I’m sorry my mother left you with the shitty job of running this Family. It has clearly made you a bitter, hateful old woman who would rather drive away the little family she has left than admit she could be wrong. And Lady, you’ve been wrong about me from the moment you laid eyes on me!”
Her glare narrowed to pinpoint sharpness, like she was trying to burn me with laser-eyes. “I knew you for the abomination your parents created and you haven’t disappointed me yet.”
I stared at her in shock. “How am I an abomination?!” I was furious and my bearing must have made that very clear because she took a step backward. So I went in for the kill. “How is it not you that’s the abomination? The Traveler who can’t travel? Or is it that you won’t? You’re too cowardly to try something you’re born to do. You’re the Elian who might as well be ungifted for all the skill – or the will – you have. I can travel through time, Millicent. What can you do?”
I pushed past her and strode out of the room. The look of shock on her face was about the most satisfying thing I’ve ever seen, but I wanted to get out of there, so I ran. Down the main staircase, then down the back hall to the kitchen. Just as I stepped out the kitchen door, Sanda appeared at my right elbow in that impossible, invisible way she has.
“Where are ye going then, lass?”
Good question. I wasn’t entirely sure. “Back to find my mother.”
She touched my arm to stop me, and then gave me a fierce hug. “Keep yer friends close, lass. Ye’ve made good ones.”
Funny, I didn’t think of myself as the friend-making type, but I realized that was an old story. And a boring one. “Thank you for everything.”
“Ye’ll be back. Ye can thank me when it’s all done.”
I guess after my fight with Millicent I didn’t think I’d ever be welcome back at Elian Manor, so to hear Sanda say I’d return was oddly comforting. I gave her a quick smile and slipped out into the darkness to the garden, where I hoped Archer was well-hidden and waiting for me.
Unlike the kitchen garden at St. Brigid’s, which was lovingly tended by Mrs. Taylor, this garden was wild and overgrown in a way I knew my mother would have loved. You’d never think, from her total Englishness, that my mother could love anything unkempt or wild.
Paths meandered around aimlessly, brambles twisted together; combining roses and raspberries in a riotous pile, and herbs, edibles and weeds seemed to thrive in each other’s company. I couldn’t believe Millicent could allow such disorderliness on the manor grounds and the garden instantly became my favorite place at Elian.
“You still look tired.” Archer’s voice was low and gentle, and I felt all the tension seep out of me with the sound. I turned to find the source, and I spotted him on a low garden wall in front of a large tree. I sat next to him and he pulled me against his shoulder comfortably. “I saw Millicent come home.”
“Did she see you?”
Archer shook his head. He wrapped his arm around me and I snuggled into him for warmth. I was in a weird state of complete denial; as if I could pretend my life wasn’t fractured in about a million different ways. Somehow only dealing with what was right in front of me was keeping me safe from the insanity.
“She thinks I’m an abomination.”
He went rigid and all my comfortable coziness was gone. He turned me to face him. “How dare she!”
I smiled. “I already told her what she could do with that idea, but thanks. Feels good to know not everyone thinks I’m a freak.”
He held my chin in his hand and looked into my eyes. “You are not a freak. You are extraordinary and beautiful and you completely captivate me.” The seriousne
ss of his tone made the breath catch in my throat.
I tried for humor. “Then maybe you’re the freak?”
“Undoubtedly.” Said with a totally straight face.
Impulsively, I kissed him on the nose. “Thanks.”
He looked surprised. “For what?”
“For being here with me.”
I could feel him watching me for a long moment before he spoke. “You’re welcome. But we should really consider getting out of here before Lady Elian realizes I’m here and sets the dogs on me.”
“She has dogs?”
“Her gardeners do.”
He got to his feet and held out a hand to me. I looked around us at the overgrown garden as we left. “Why do you think she let this garden grow wild?”
“I know why.”
I stared at him. “You do?”
He nodded. “I’ve been watching your family for a hundred and twenty-five years. This garden was her Grandmother Emily’s favorite. She used to come out here and sit for hours, maybe clipping back a rose or dividing some rosemary, but mostly just sitting, long after dark, which was how I saw her. And when Millicent was a child and Emily an old woman, she would tell her granddaughter stories about her sister and how much they loved that garden when they were little girls. How the wildness inspired the games they played and the stories her sister told her of fairies and wood nymphs and creatures of the forest. And Emily wove such wonderful tales of sister magic that Millicent kept the garden exactly as her grandmother had in hopes that one day Emily’s sister would come back and be the sister that Millicent always wished for.”
I stared at Archer. “Oh my God.” He was still holding my hand and I suddenly felt like if he let go, I would too. “This was my mom’s garden.”
Archer nodded. “I gathered that from the way Emily spoke.”
A whole other side of Millicent and her feelings about my mother just opened up for me and it was going to take a lot of processing to deal with. I felt so sorry for the lonely little girl Millicent had been, even as I hated the bitter old woman she’d become.