“But why?” blurted Jenna. “Why did you leave?”
Marie thought, and a worrisome expression returned. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think my parents just wanted a new life.”
“Exactly,” said Percy. ‘Why else does anyone move from one place to another?”
But some of the girls continued to stare somewhat.
“You’re not spies, are you?” Lizabette said. “But then, if you were, you wouldn’t admit it, would you?”
Marie opened her mouth and looked like she wanted nothing more than to disappear on the spot. “Oh, no, no!” she hurried to say. “No, please, of course not spies! My father carves wood for furniture! We live in Fioren and my parents sell the chests and boxes! Oh, no, no!”
“I think we’ve scared Marie enough,” Sybil spoke up loudly. “The poor girl is in the Realm now, and she’s going to be walking with us, so enough nonsense!”
“Spy my arse!” Niosta added, and winked at Marie, then at her own sister Catrine. And they both stuck their tongues out at Lizabette when she was not looking.
Marie exhaled in relief, and mostly avoided eye contact with anyone, but she now resolutely trudged along with the cart.
They moved for a few minutes in blessed silence, with only the creaking cart and the crunching snow.
Jenna began to hum:
“Cobweb Bride, Cobweb Bride,
Come and lie by my side. . . .”
and again,
“Cobweb Bride, Cobweb Bride,
Come and lie by my side.
. . .”
Lizabette wrinkled her forehead and said, “Will you not do that please, child? I have the beginnings of a headache and it’s hardly past dawn. Not good to be having one this early.”
“Oh, sorry!” said Jenna, and went marginally quiet. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold air, but you could tell she was just bursting with energy, as her steps came with a bounce. So, instead of humming she started running in zigzags in front of Betsy, with her arms stretched out to the sides like wings.
“Look at her, the big goose,” said Regata, walking next to Flor. But she was grinning as she said it.
The forest drew closer, and soon the first tall sparse trees began showing up on both sides of the road. All sound seemed to disappear, except for the occasional crunch of snow underfoot and the clumps falling from branches, and the fast sudden beating of bird’s wings.
The cart rolled slowly, and had to veer off to the side a bit several times in order to allow faster vehicles to pass. Because, there had been occasional carriages and curricles along this empty stretch, and you could hear them coming from miles away in the forest silence. There had been one in particular, a curricle traveling at breakneck speed, crammed with three passengers. In the blink of an eye that they could tell, they were two fine ladies and a lord, with one lady in the driver’s seat. They were all wearing fancy winter hats with plumes, and it was a wonder the hats did not come flying off.
“Did you see that? Fancy aristocrats!” Sybil said matter-of-factly—her thick reddish brows rising in amusement—as she leaned to stare in their wake, from her seat in the cart next to Lizabette.
“Indeed, and those tri-color plumes are the height of fashion at the Silver Court this season!” replied Lizabette, patting her own somewhat stylish hat.
“Do noble aristos really go to be Cobweb Brides?” Emilie folded her shawl closer around her reddened snub nose.
“I think,” Percy said, “it doesn’t matter if you are noble or a nobody, when it comes to being a Cobweb Bride.”
Jenna immediately picked up the humming.
“Cobweb Bride, Cobweb Bride,
Come and lie by my side. . . .”
Suddenly, Gloria, the quietest person Percy knew, began to recite in a loud melodious voice:
“Cobweb Bride, Cobweb Bride,
Come and lie by my side.
Here, the cool touch of stone
And the feel of my throne
Will not make you recoil.
Here the worm-ridden soil
Covers ancient white bones.”
Everyone stared at her, including Marie, and even Jenna went absolutely quiet and nearly ran into Betsy, as they listened. Gloria continued to recite, as though she had memorized the words a long time ago and they were merely coming out now, like easy breaths:
“Time suppresses the groans
Of your own mortal kind;
Soothing dark fills the mind.
Here with me you will reign,
If true love you don’t feign
With a smile on your face.
Dressed in pale spider lace
You will come unto me,
Make your choice clear and free.
With the breath from my chest,
Lips of stone on your breast,
You will know Death’s cold kiss.
. . .
Do not find me remiss.
First your heartbeat grows still;
Dissolution of will.
Then you sink with me, deep,
Into dark, final sleep.
No regrets must there be,
Promise me.”
The words ended. There was absolute silence, except for the creaking of the cart.
“Goodness!” said Lizabette. “What . . . was that?”
“Did you just make that up, just now?” Emilie said.
Gloria nodded.
“That was actually somewhat poetic
. . .” Lizabette said. “I wasn’t even aware you could read, much less compose.”
“How did you do that?” Jenna exclaimed. “How, how? Gloria, how did you do that?”
Gloria shrugged, then said quietly, “I am not sure . . . I make up rhymes in my head. Sometimes.”
“Rhymes! Sometimes!” Jenna squealed in exuberance. “That rhymes! Just now, you did it again!”
“Headache?” Lizabette reminded, holding on to her forehead.
But Jenna was not to be denied this time. “How does it go, Gloria, the whole thing, please? ‘Cobweb Bride, Cobweb Bride
. . .’” She began to sing in her ringing but somewhat flat tone, just slightly off key, just enough to be endearingly annoying.
Percy bit her lip in suppressed laughter.
T
ired, cold, and in pain from his compounded injuries, Beltain stood at attention in the icy-cold chamber of his father, the room with the broken window and the snow drifts piled on the windowpane among the shards of broken glass. Together with the cold, milky dawn light seeped inside, illuminating the bulky shape of Hoarfrost.
The Duke sat in the chair with his back to his son, before a single flickering candle lowered inside a tall glass to keep it from being extinguished by the gusts of wind that freely travelled the room. He was reading something—a roll of parchment, thought Beltain—that looked as if it had been delivered by a messenger, for Beltain could see the red silk ties and the crumbling remnants of a broken seal littering the mahogany surface of the large table.
The seal seemed familiar, but he was not quite sure, not from the distance at which he stood. Besides, he was in that state of exhaustion where he almost ceased caring. His vision was swimming from lack of sleep, and his newly damaged shoulder was in agony. It seemed that all of his recent injuries were hardly healing, and now, this. Damn that knight who bear-wrestled him. . . .
“My Lord
. . .” Beltain began. “Father, I’ve delivered another group of prisoners. Among them are Imperial knights and two ladies—”
“Quiet!” Hoarfrost’s bark-like exhalation of breath interrupted the younger man. He continued to pore over the writing, and Beltain was about to offer to read it for him when his father turned around, crumpling the sheet in his beefy hands and then held the parchment over the candle.
The thin material caught on fire soon enough and Hoarfrost tossed the flaming ball into the cold, unlit hearth of the fireplace nearby where it was consumed and fell apart in tiny reddish sparks. His fingers had seemed to hold the flames momentarily also, but the dead flesh could not have known it, the burning pain. . . . The dead man slowly and methodically extinguished his fingertips by rubbing them against the icy front of his surcoat tunic.
“Now then,” said Hoarfrost, turning to his son like a creaking tree-trunk and actively shaping his mouth into a rictus that was intended as a smile. “How was your night of hunting, boy?”
“Well enough, father,” replied Beltain. “There were many women—poor girls mostly, bedraggled creatures—that we’ve caught all over the forest and the vicinity. And, as I mentioned, I’ve detained an interesting group of noble prisoners, including Imperial knights and two gentlewomen.”
“Imperial knights, eh?” said Hoarfrost.
“Yes, sir . . .” Beltain found it uncanny to stare too long at the motionless eyeballs, frozen in their sockets.
“Where are they, these Imperial visitors?”
“Here, in the Keep, my Lord. They have been given food and a space to rest, some spare quarters—”
“You are far too charitable to your prisoners, boy!”
“I—was not sure what you intended to do with them.”
Hoarfrost sat back in the chair with a creak. “True enough, I have not decided yet. It might be easiest to kill them and have them join my ranks here in Chidair.”
Beltain felt cold rising inside him.
“Kill
. . . the women?” he said softly. “How will that help you . . . or your ranks?”
“It will certainly get them out of the way and out of the Cobweb Bride running. Plus, with the dead, less mouths to feed in town. More resources for the Keep. Plenty of solid reasons I should have them killed. They can do the laundry and they wouldn’t even need to stop for sleep.”
And Duke Ian Chidair laughed with the rhythmic sound of bellows.
Beltain felt a sudden spasm of dizziness in his head, while the room seemed to shift momentarily. He grasped his hands before him until the fingers lost all feeling and took a staggering side-step in order to remain standing.
Hoarfrost noticed his condition. “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “Shaking, boy? You are almost as white as I am.”
“It’s been a long day and even longer night
. . .” Beltain continued to grasp his hands before him. “And, I’ve not yet recovered from my previous wounds. . . . Earlier, one of the Imperial knights mauled me rather badly. I—would appreciate a bit of . . . sleep, my lord.”
“I see, whelp,” Hoarfrost said. “Maybe I should have you killed after all, so you won’t ever have to worry about these mortal concerns again, eh? I could grant you the deathly stroke myself, what do you say, boy? Clean and fast. No? Well then, take an hour and lie down for a nap, then a bite to eat. Then, back out you go, we have more Cobweb Brides to catch. And—you’ll see—things are just beginning to get exciting.
. . .”
Speaking thus, Hoarfrost glanced behind him at the once-again cold hearth of the fireplace.
“May I . . . take my leave?” Beltain said softly, feeling the muscle strength in his legs dissolving. Another minute of this and he knew he would not be able to keep himself from collapsing.
“Yes, get your sorry carcass out of here, before I make you a carcass indeed,” Hoarfrost replied. “I’ll be taking my personal patrol out into the woods and expect to see you back out there shortly. Dismissed!”
Harsh wheezing barks of laughter followed Beltain as he headed out the door. And then, silence, and the whistle of the ice-wind through the broken window. The cold seemed to come with him as he walked to his own quarters in the Keep. Cold, permanently lodged in his mind.
T
he threesome that comprised the League of Folly had travelled all night. Though no one would admit such a frivolous sentiment, this was an improvement over having to attend another excruciating midnight ball and pretend to eat entirely raw
living
flesh at the buffet. Lady Amaryllis Roulle, wearing a smart burgundy-red riding habit—even though she was not going to be riding any beasts, merely controlling them via harness while perched on a high seat—drove the Curricle and the two fabulous black thoroughbreds like a madwoman, while Lord Nathan Woult and the Lady Ignacia Chitain held on to their seats for dear life.
They flew past towns and villages, took a brief stop to dine at Letheburg around midnight (waking up an understandably crabby innkeeper and his staff to serve them something either raw or like tasteless sawdust, then pack a picnic basket of the same for a later “snack” on the go), then back on the road they went. It was crisp and clear indeed, without snowfall or the least bit of inclement winter weather. And except for the wind chill in their faces, luck was with them as far north as Tussecan, after which, smack dab in the middle of the road, it ran out.