Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (31 page)

“So be it,” said Lars.

Lars shook the dice vigorously in his hands. When he threw them to the carpet, they immediately fell and did not roll. He tried again, and again.

“Threes thrice. Silas, I think this does not bode well for you,” Lars said, picking up the dice.

“Wait!” insisted Silas. “How many times was that?”

“You mean the threes? Two threes, three times in a row. What are the odds of such a thing, eh?”

The room was very still. The spectral music had stopped and the house drew in its breath and held it. Even the floating motes of dust appeared to pause upon the air. The three were not accident but omen. Silas remembered that the ladies of the Sewing Circle said they might see him in Arvale. They had helped in the past. They were more than ghosts, and he knew that they were not always bound to a place—for, once, hadn’t one of them wandered with him upon the marshes? Strange as they were, the three had been helpful to him in their way. Many of his journeys about town, or beyond town, had required a visit with them. They stood watch over many thresholds. Now he was Janus. Maybe it made them all colleagues? And wasn’t he setting out on a new path? Despite how nervous they made him, he realized he wanted to see them.

The air of the library grew warm and portentous.

Silas had made little progress with the books of pedigree and heraldry. No name had yet stood out. Maybe the little dice were showing him the way. Maybe the three were close and this is how they might signal to him. He looked to the fire, burning low on the hearth, and was sure he could discern a blue, preternatural hue in the three small flames dancing above the embers.

But where would they be in the vast expanse of Arvale? Silas had seen many tapestries in the house, here and there among the rooms and halls. None had ever stood out to him as worthy of their particular talents.

A thought occurred to him and he turned to Lars.

“Cousin, is there a place in the house where needlework is done, or was once done?”

“Indeed, there is a place that might have served in that way. The light is very good there. It is always empty though. Several times, it seemed that I might have just missed someone, because a piece of needlework was left there, unfinished. Needles still pierced the tapestry as though its maker had just a moment before fled the room. I go there sometimes for a bit of quiet. It’s a very pleasant place, with the sun coming in through the rippled glass. It makes interesting designs on the floor.”

“Can you take me there?”

“I shall try.”

Lars threw the dice one last time. “Lucky seven! I win again.”

“Lars,” said Silas suspiciously, “I think the dice are rigged.”

“Cousin Silas,” said Lars with a face of purest innocence, “the game is always rigged. Or how else might a simple man find his fortune in this wretched world?”

They passed through gallery after gallery filled with the most extraordinary carvings Silas had ever seen: wildmen carrying staves of oak, satyrs dancing upon cloven feet, columns crowned in acanthus. Such excess implied that this part of the house could only have been made in the early seventeenth century. The next rooms and corridors showed still more masonry and were clearly much older, their surfaces worn smooth with the passage of time. Silas suspected they were moving closer to the outer walls of the house; the light was getting better and the stonework was more delicate with high arched windows. Lars suddenly laughed softly in relief.

“Here we are, Silas!” he said. “This is the solar.”

The two young men came through a stone archway and into a high, bright gallery with windows lining the left-hand wall. In front of the windows, a wooden frame held an enormous tapestry that stretched from one end of the long gallery to the other. The tapestry’s length was divided by the shadows cast by the portions of the outer walls between the windows. As he walked farther down its length, Silas could see that those shadows divided the tapestry’s myriad subjects. Various ages of the mansion were depicted. At the far end of the gallery, there was a cave stitched in dun- and lichen-colored threads, thick and homespun with strands of . . . was it sinew? As the tapestry wove toward the far end, the images of the house grew larger and more elaborate, as if the house itself was moving, stitch by stitch, through time.

“Lars, I am sure of it. We are not alone here.” An idea struck him. If the tapestry showed successive representations of the house as it progressed, there should be a panel of the house, now, as it was standing at this moment. Silas ran down the gallery. He stopped at a place far down the room where a warm, wide beam of light fell through the window onto the tapestry. He studied it closely.

“Lars! Come here!”

His boots slapped the wooden floors and echoed as he ran. Lars leaned over and looked where Silas was pointing. They gazed at a small portion of the embroidery depicting the house cut in half like an anatomical drawing. There, in a long gallery stitched in hastily worked brown and golden flax, stood two figures.

“That’s you and me, just there,” Silas said.

“You’re mad . . . ,” said Lars in a whisper as he looked closer, trying to identify something of himself in the tiny sewn figure.

Silas looked farther down. He couldn’t make out anything specific as the stitching moved away from him into the future. He wondered if he could follow his own story along. Silas stood up, and very nonchalantly began walking the rest of the tapestry’s length.
Maybe just a little farther,
he thought.
Just another panel or two, to see if there might be a hint of how I might find out something more about our furious ghost. . . .

“Oh, Silas!” chided a familiar voice right in front of him. “You know the rules. No peeking ahead!” It was the first of the three.

“And what have we here?” said the third. She looked closely at Lars and then down at the needlework. “This is a rather old thread, though I see now it was never bound off properly.”

“I think it’s lovely that Silas has found a friend,” said the second very sincerely.

“Indeed!” said the first, leaning in so only Silas could hear. “Lovely Long Lost Lawrence Umber. How strange that handsome Lars should enter your story here and now.”

Lars blushed in awkward embarrassment and looked down at the floor.

The third began to laugh.

“I wonder if it isn’t because he and Silas have shared so much in common?” said the second with a sharp ironic tone.

“Enough,” said the first, cutting in. “There is more there to see, if Silas would share with us his recent news.”

“Reverend Ladies . . . ,” Silas began, and, very carefully, with much attention to detail, outlined the recent events relating to the ghost released from the catacombs.

“Yes,” said the first, “I can see by your looks you’ve had a hard time of this business. Shame can be an awful burden, especially for the young.”

“And this is not the first time you’ve helped a troubled little maidy into the world, is it? What a gallant you are,” added the third.

“Well,” continued the first, “who can say why she has sat so quietly down below in the catty-combs and why she rose up in wrath? In some ways, she has been fortunate to only have been imprisoned, for some first-born children come to more devilish ends. But my sister is not wrong. What a knack you have for attracting women with issues, Silas. Truly. I wonder, might it have been your arrival that has annoyed her for some reason? Or perhaps the sounds of revelry from the upper halls? Music and good company are hateful to those not invited to the feast. Makes even the kindest soul go all Grendle-ish.

“It may be only partly to do with you. Perhaps her blood has been simmering all this time and has only just, with her release, rolled over into a boil. That seems unlikely, though. Most things fade in the lands of the dead, but not loss and not wrath. Those can remain a very long time, as you know. The forgotten condition of her life, the darkness and dampness of her prison-tomb, the taking away of her name—for that was stolen from her—see here?” the first of the three said, pointing to where the ghost was stitched in flame silk, but with gray binding cord about her chest. “We cannot discern even a hint of the face; that means something very special has been lost. A way. A name. A child. Hope. Yes. All her losses have left her little grace. Even should you find her name, she may not heed you. Even with your new title and lovely commanding stage voice.”

“And see here, Silas,” the second of the three said, pointing at the woven door of the underground cell. “These letters. Can you read them?”

“
D
and
M
. I saw them down there. I thought at first they might be initials of her name, but then—”

“Oh, no,” said the first with steely certainty in her voice. “This we know very well, for it is part of a terrible rite going back to Roman times. We know about that. We do indeed. That is very old, very awful magic, Silas. Whoever hated her, hated her very much. All die. But all may be remembered and so live. Except when
those
words are invoked. Crueler than death are
those
words.”

Silas looked at the thickly stitched letters again on the tapestry and he said, wanting to sound knowledgeable, “Yes.
Damnatio Memoriae
 . . .”

As he spoke, the three, for the first time since he’d known them, looked frightened and stepped back from him.

“Do not speak those words in our presence! Do not even whisper them.”

“I’m sorry,” said Silas. “I didn’t know.”

“
Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat
, Silas Umber!”

He looked back at them blankly.

The second of the three stared at him sternly, and said, “Those who do not know, must learn—”

“Or be silent!” spat the third.

The three took another step away from Silas and composed themselves.

“Silas Umber, you have come upon us very late here at Arvale. We have been waiting so long for you, and would have delighted in coming upon you sooner so we might have advised you to take greater care when traveling beneath the earth. But, there it is. We shall return to Lichport and await you, for the last act promises to be very fine and will require some preparation,” said the third of the three.

“Oh, dear, yes,” added the first. “You should not tarry too long in this place either, for look here.” She pointed at a gray figure, sewn down horizontally against a blurry scene in rough wool yarn, newly begun on the tapestry. “Your mother . . . has looked better.”

Silas quickly leaned over, trying to make sense of the stitches. “What is going on?” he demanded. “What’s happened to her?”

“Nothing,” said the first.

“Yet,” said the third.

“Only,” continued the second, “she may be in for a bit of trouble. Hard to say. It’s still too soon. But don’t worry, Silas. If something befalls her, she may come to—”

“Enough!” snapped the first of the three. “There is no point speculating. There are many threads yet to be sewn down. They may not hold, and then who can say what will be? Let us be gone.” But the first looked at Silas, who was now intensely worried, and her face softened in pity. She whispered with the other two and then spoke to Silas again.

“One more thing we will tell you, for since we are all met here at this time, it must be because you have great need of us. Look here at the tapestry, Silas. You require a respite from all this oppressive architecture. Fresh air! An attitude of recline. Seek the house of summer, if you wish to settle these family accounts and get home quickly. The folks who dwell in that place know something about this nameless ghost of yours, I warrant you. They have been here a
very
long time. Longer than even we can reckon. Look here!”

And the three showed him on the tapestry a spot where, a little away from Arvale’s walls, there was a small summer house past the garden. Figures in white and green thread were stitched down and studded with little resplendent jewels. Beyond them, thin white silk trees grew from the top of a round, green hill.

“Yes, this is a family matter, Silas. Go and meet your cousins. They may know something of the beginnings of this, for they are often at their leisure and have seen much of the comings and goings upon this estate. They are not bound to the house, and so enjoy a . . . wider perspective.”