The drama Auden seems very, very aware of.
It’s Delphine who answers. “Never mind that right now, because first, we are going to do something next weekend and it’s going to be such a delight.” She launches into a fairly accurate recounting of what we know about the ritual, and then immediately starts talking about how we’d recreate it. “I mean, torches are a bit primitive, but wouldn’t lanterns be pretty? And Auden can be the lord of the manor, and I can be the bride, and we’ll have Abby make the cakes—”
“There’s nothing that says the bride and the lord have to be a woman and a man,” Becket points out.
“I think etymology says,” Rebecca remarks dryly.
“Okay, okay, but I mean for us. Because it would be ours, right, our own thing? Our own ritual, our own celebration? There’s no reason we can’t reclaim it and make things less . . .” Becket temples his fingers and stares at us gravely, as if he’s at his pulpit giving a homily “ . . . gender essentialist.”
“My good priest, you aren’t actually considering this madness, are you?” Auden says, finally breaking his gaze away from my shoulder to stare at Becket with pained incredulity.
“Why not?” I ask, a little indignant on Becket’s behalf, at the same time Becket himself replies, “Well, why not?”
Auden sits up, setting his whisky on the table with a glassy plink. “Firstly, it can’t be very Catholic to trounce around in the dark with lanterns while a young maiden promises to keep the livestock safe and then eats a cake.”
“St. Brigid is a Catholic saint,” Becket interjects, but Auden keeps going.
“Secondly, the practicalities are almost insurmountable. Who would play which role and would someone feel left out if they’re just some sort of lantern-holding extra? How are we going to explain whatever the fuck these cakes are to Abby? How are we going to get out to the chapel without anyone breaking an ankle and then stay warm enough to light a fire, have some odd little marriage rite—and we have no idea what this rite consists of, by the way, except that it involves thorns—eat some cakes and then walk back uninjured and not hypothermic?”
“Oh, don’t be such a bore,” Delphine groans. “If they did it back in the—” she waves a hand at the book “—in the whatever times, then we can do it now! We have coats, Auden,” she adds, as if this is a closing argument.
Auden ignores her. “Thirdly, why? Why the fuck would we waste a night in the cold making idiots of ourselves? We don’t believe that wells or livestock or fires need to be blessed anymore, so what’s the point in pretending that we do?”
“What’s the point of any ritual, then?” Becket points out. “Rituals aren’t for wells and livestock, Auden. They’re for the people performing them.”
“Well, then? What do those people get out of it? Because they’re not getting magical protection, and they’re not getting the attention of gods who don’t exist. And I’ll make this question more than academic—I’ll make it individual to the six of us.”
Behind me, I hear St. Sebastian catch his breath.
Auden said six of us. Not five.
Auden continues, “What do we specifically get out of tramping through the frozen grass to light a fire and eat cake? We’re doing that tonight and all we had to do was walk to my fucking library.”
Becket temples his fingers again, staring serenely at his friend. “I think you’re answering your own question. We would tramp through the cold grass precisely because it’s not normal, because it’s not what we do in our daily lives. That’s how we demarcate the sacred from the profane—it’s how we communicate to ourselves that this day or thing is special, that it matters.”
Auden gets to his feet in agitation, giving all of us an imploring, frustrated look. “But why does it have to matter? What is this day to us that we need to make it special?”
“It could be Thornchapel coming back to life,” Rebecca says. We all look over to where she’s standing by the fireplace, her gaze turned toward the snow and one foot idly rubbing at Sir James Frazer’s fur. She looks back to us. “Right? Isn’t that what this festival is about? Marking the coming end of winter? Celebrating the earth reawakening?”
The word reawakening cuts through my thoughts like a knife.
Convivificat.
Oh God. I drop my eyes back to the book, not seeing the words, not even really looking at them. I’m seeing instead my mother’s sharp, aggressive handwriting.
It quickens.
There’s no way my mother could have meant this, there’s no way she could have meant this particular date, this particular festival—there’s no way that note can mean anything at all close to what I’m thinking.
But I also know it doesn’t matter, because I still have to do this, I still have to . . . try? To hope? Hope that there might be meaning here, something more than coincidence, and that it will bring me closer to learning why she left?
Everything is possible. Maybe even this. And initially I’d wanted to do this because it sounded romantic and mysterious and it was hard not to get swept up in Delphine’s enthusiasm, but now—
I think of the torc my mother held in that picture. The same torc from the drawing.
It quickens.
Auden is looking a little betrayed by Rebecca’s words; clearly, he considered her an ally in fighting off our enthusiasm. “Quartey, you can’t believe in this blessing nonsense like the others.”
She fixes him with a steady look. “I believe in the grounds. The earth and the trees and the water—that’s my job, to believe in them, to make them into shapes that inspire people, to mold their potential into something memorable and powerful. Something like this acknowledges the work we’re doing. It would be a way for us to signify that we are bringing Thornchapel back to life. A new version of itself that we all shaped together by choice.” She pauses before she adds for emphasis, “That we shaped and not Ralph.”
Auden’s mouth tightens at the mention of his father.
“Is it so odd to want to mark all that?” she asks. “It’s not even my home or my family’s legacy, and I still want to mark it because it’s my work. And because I care about this place, even if you don’t.”
Auden ducks his head, mouth still grimly set, and then he looks up at me. “You seem enamored with this idea,” he says, and it’s not unkind the way he says it, but more like my being enamored is bothering him. Like it’s a weakness for him. “Why, Proserpina? Because you like old things? Mysterious things, like the books in this library?”
I don’t want to share my thoughts about my mother’s note and what it might mean about this ritual, but I don’t want to lie either. Auden deserves honesty, I think, and so I find another truth to tell, even if that other truth is equally incredulous. But what about any of this doesn’t beggar belief? It’s all incredulous, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.
“I’ve dreamed about it,” I say. “About us in the chapel together. There were thorns and there was touching and fire, and there was a door behind the altar that doesn’t exist. And it’s not just one dream one time—I feel like I can’t stop dreaming about it, like it’s waiting for me every time I fall asleep, and it’s always with me. Like a memory, except it’s never actually happened.”
“So you want to make it a memory?” Auden asks, searching my face. “You want to make this dream real?”
St. Sebastian’s thumb—which I’d forgotten almost all about, what with the convivificat and Auden’s protests—tightens against my shoulder. I wish I knew why, but then again, I wish I knew why he was touching me in the first place.
“Yes,” I say. “Rebecca cares about the land and Becket cares about the ritual. Delphine cares about us and wants to give us something special to brighten up the last days of winter.” I don’t mention St. Sebastian because I don’t know that he cares at all about recreating an Imbolc ritual from an old book. But I feel his touch loosen ever so slightly as I speak, as if he’s noticed my omission and is stung by it.
I go on making my point
. “We all have reasons to want this, but I think you have the biggest reason of us all, and that’s why you’re fighting this so hard right now.”
A dimple dots the smooth line of his cheek as he gives me a rueful smile. “Oh really?”
I refuse to be deterred by how cute he is. “You keep denying your place here,” I tell him bluntly. “This is your home, this is your place in the world, and instead of giving it the best of yourself, instead of looking after it, you’re doing everything you can to pretend you don’t care. You refuse to let it have you, and that refusal is robbing you of something. I don’t know what exactly it’s robbing you of, but I do know that you’re only ever going to be a shadow of who you could be if you keep refusing to face what you’ve inherited.”
The dimple disappears. “What I’ve inherited,” he echoes flatly.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s cowardly.”
If he weren’t already on his feet, he would have shot up in protest. “Cowardly?” he exclaims. “Cowardly? I’m here, am I not? I’m not abandoning this heap of stones, I’m not tearing it to the ground, and I’m not even selling it off! I’m putting in bigger showers and bi-fold doors, I hardly think that’s some kind of abject dereliction of duty—”
“You’re upset right now because you know I’m right!” I’m also on my feet, my shoulder feeling uncomfortably cool after losing the warmth of St. Sebastian’s hand. “It’s not about the actual work you’re doing to the house—it’s why you’re doing the work. You’re tearing the house apart out of disgust and bitterness and because you’re holding Thornchapel responsible for the people who lived in its walls, and you know that’s not fair! You know you owe this place a chance! You owe it the best parts of you, even if it’s only for one night.”
When I stop, the room is quiet. Auden is turned half away from us, facing the books, the hollows of his cheeks and throat pooled in shadow. Everyone else is staring at me, as if they still can’t believe I called Auden cowardly.
“This place, it infects people,” he says into the darkness. “I can feel it infecting me. And if I let it—”
He breaks off, but I think I know what he was going to say.
If I let it, I will become my father.
The silence pervades the room, and I know I should say something kind, something conciliatory, especially after calling him a coward in front of everyone else, but I can’t. I’m too choked off with my own anger. Here he is, the pretty lordling of a pretty castle, with all his family and history spread out around him, and he can’t be bothered to take any part in it, can’t be bothered to step up. While I’m here chasing ghosts and maybes for even the tiniest whisper of my own legacy.
Doesn’t he know how lucky he is? To call such a place a home?
To know the grass that grows over his parents’ graves?
Auden takes a single heave of a breath and then turns to us, shoving a hand through his hair. “Fine,” he says. “Fine. You all win.”
Delphine squeals and pops off the sofa to kiss him on the cheek. “How wonderful, darling!” she says. “I mean, I would have done it without you anyway, but this will be much more fun. You’ll see!”
He endures the kiss gracefully, but his eyes are glittering and dangerous as Delphine bounces back to the sofa and starts making plans for us. And rather than join the chatter about weather reports and whether or not we should wear robes or something more practical, he wanders over to the window to watch the snow.
“Do you think the people from Thorncombe still go up to the chapel after they’re done with the well?” Rebecca asks, and I hear Saint answer as he gets up from where he’s kneeling behind the sofa and comes to sit on the arm.
“They don’t. I’ve done the festival a few times with my mom, and it begins at the well and then ends at The Thorn and Crown with beer.” There’s a shy quality to Saint’s words, as if he’s nervous and happy and uncertain about being included in all this. It pulls at me, both with sadness and with pleasure, because I’m happy he’s a part of this, but I’m also pained that it was ever a question to begin with.
“It looks like the clergyman mentions a single title repeatedly,” Saint says, reaching for the book as I take a drink in hand and stare at Auden’s back across the library. “The Consecration of the May Queen. It was old even in Reverend Dartham’s time. Maybe if we can find it, we can figure out a little more about the ritual in the chapel itself?”
“And the book is here?” Becket asks.
“Presumably, unless it’s been removed,” Saint says. “Poe, do you know where it might be?”
I’m chewing my lip, watching Auden while dreams and memories of dreams threaten to push through into real life. “No,” I murmur distractedly. “Maybe Estamond’s ledgers? She has shelf numbers marked on there, so if she’d cataloged the book, we might be able to find it.”
There’s a general flapping of excitement about this, and within a few minutes, Rebecca and Becket are poring over one ledger while Delphine and Saint take the other. And while they’re searching for the paper needle in a paper haystack, I make a choice.
I steel myself with a long swallow of scotch, and then walk across the library to go apologize to Auden.
Chapter 16
He’s facing the snow when I get to the window, the fingers of one hand splayed against the glass while his other hand fists and unfists in slow, methodical pulses. This deep into the night-gloom of the library, he’s only the barest highlights of himself—eyelashes caught with shadows like drops of water, the wide mouth, the patrician nose and elegant tumbles of light brown hair. He’d dressed simply today—or as simply as he ever does—in dark red trousers and a white button-down, and the collar of his shirt is open enough for me to trace the strong lines of his throat and the mesmerizing crescent of his collarbone. I still feel that primal urge to go to my knees and beg him to pull my hair, but I ignore it. I refuse to kneel to a coward.
I may apologize, but I won’t kneel.
“You were right,” he says without looking at me, before I can even speak. “You were right about what you said.”
I think about this a moment. “I came to say I’m sorry, and I think I still should. I shouldn’t have said those things in front of everyone else. I know what happened between you and your father was painful.”
His eyes are still on the snow. “Painful,” he says. “Yes.”
“And I shouldn’t have shamed you for how you’re handling his death.” Guilt tightens my throat as I realize that I did fuck up pretty badly back there. “You’re grieving and you are grieving a man who was cruel to you, and I . . . I should have known better.”
“Yes,” Auden says, finally turning to face me. “You should have.” He sighs and scrubs at his hair. “But you also weren’t wrong. It’s easier to draw up wiring schedules and review wood samples than it is to think of Thornchapel as my own.”
He looks at me for a moment, then extends a hand. It’s cool from the glass, and I feel that coolness everywhere as I give him my hand in return.
“I want to show you something,” he says, pulling me away from the window. “In the south tower.”
I follow him, but I do tug my hand free, feeling strange about holding hands with him and not wanting Delphine to get the wrong idea as we go past the group by the fire. I needn’t have worried though; they’re so absorbed with the ledgers that they don’t notice us leaving the library at all.
Snow buffets the windows of the corridor leading back to the hall, gusting against the newly repaired windowpane and piling atop the sills. We take another corridor to the south wing, passing more windows looking onto a paved courtyard with a single bench and empty fountain, and then into the locus of the renovation mayhem, stepping over wood planks and spools of wire and random piles of tarp and scrap. We go up the stairs to the first floor, where the renovated bedrooms are mostly finished and awaiting final coats of paint, and then up another floor to the former servants’ quarters, where Auden’s studio will be.
And then the last flight takes us up into the tower, which is a squarish facsimile of a medieval tower, but with the telltale faux-Gothic trappings of an enthusiastic Victorian builder. There are windows overlooking every direction—the forest to the north, east, and west, the majestic stretch of lawn and river valley to the south, the snow-hummocked maze and walled garden to the southwest and southeast respectively. The middles of the windows are inset with stained-glass roses and thorns twining in curlicues from windowpane to windowpane, and the tops of the windows are capped with stone quatrefoils.
“It’s very fanciful,” I say politely.
Auden laughs a little. “It is. The view is amazing, but I don’t think anyone could ever accuse my Victorian ancestors of restraint.”
I step over to the north-facing windows, peering out against the snow. The lights on the front of the house illuminate the flakes from underneath, showing exactly how thick and fast they’re falling. I can’t even make out the orange glow of Thorncombe less than a mile off.
“Anyway, I didn’t bring you up here to make you look at the Gothic architecture,” Auden says. “I wanted to show you this.”
When I turn back, he’s kneeling in front of a trunk that’s been shoved against the wall—in fact, there’s rather a lot of stuff that’s been shoved against the wall here, like this tower room has been more like an attic than an observatory. There’s more than the one trunk, and a few battered cardboard boxes, and even a tricycle for a very small child. A small child in the 1950s, one would guess, given the amount of dust clinging to it.
Auden stands up, holding a framed painting in one hand while he turns on his phone flashlight with the other. The painting is only a foot square—nothing like the massive ones still hanging in the Long Gallery—and the frame is almost simple, just some polished, beveled wood. Nothing ornately gilt or carved. But what’s most remarkable about the painting is the image itself, of the young woman it depicts.
She stands alone in the middle of the chapel ruins, holding a lantern aloft while a white gown billows around her bare feet. Her long, dark hair is unbound and tangling over itself in the wind as she looks back over her shoulder to the painter. She’s nearly as pale as her gown, her cheekbones high and wide, her full mouth parted ever so slightly, as if she’s startled. Her eyes have been painted so green that they nearly glow from the canvas, like a cat’s.
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