He fetched a pen and paper and sat down next to Margaret. She shoved the breakfast things away to make room for him.
“What staircase?” she repeated. “What doors?”
“Oh, tush!” said Skander. He sat down with the enormous, ragged ledger. “Only he slammed his door and broke the frame, he tore your door off its hinges, broke several marble treads with his heels, and I am not yet sure what he did to my door. It looked like this.”
He took one of Dammerung’s papers, while Dammerung protested, balled it up in both hands, and tossed it across the room.
“Like that.”
“Then that is probably what he did.”
“That is in my mind also.”
Dammerung unscrewed the cap of his pen and fished out a fresh sheet of paper. “You will remember, I was in something of a state. I felt your dragon’s spell when you left, and it may warm you to know it is one of the few I
don’t
know, but I knew—I
guessed
—where you had gone, and I knew the amount of time it would take me to get here. I was not fully rational. Who—what? No. I am writing to Mark Roy.”
He cleared his head and began to make his letters. Margaret was made to sit quietly while the two men talked over domestic matters and the dissolving of the armies. She wrote addresses for a few letters as Dammerung passed them off on her—she put her left hand on each folded, sealed sheet so that she could watch the sunlight in the jewels—but she tired soon of that. She laid her head down on her arm and listened to their talk until she found she had faded quite out for a little while and Dammerung was lifting her up. He walked across the room with her and laid her down on something cool and soft and spread something warm overtop of her. He said something about being close by, and that was all she needed. She fell asleep directly after that.
“Hullo, sleepyhead,” his voice was saying seemingly a few minutes later. “It’s time for you to get ready. I’ve given you a good hour. Will that do?”
Margaret blundered sleepily out of an avalanche of pillows. Squinting at the window, she saw the light appeared late. “But it’s almost evening…”
“Of course. We’re going to go the way you came.”
She scrubbed the sleep from her eyes. Dammerung had already changed: he had put on a clean white shirt and dark trousers, and he was wearing a dark doublet cut as close to a suit coat as one could get in Plenilune. He would look out of the ordinary, but he would not look bizarre.
But then, he always looked out of the ordinary.
Margaret climbed out of bed, brushed out her rumpled clothing, and went back to her own room to find a suitable gown. Dammerung trailed her like a puppy.
“It’s a shame I don’t have my chinaberry dress,” she remarked, thrusting her head into the closet. “Or my sky dress. Even the red one would have looked well, though perhaps too bold for England. White linens will do. It is summer.”
She changed and stepped back out for inspection. With a careless air Dammerung turned her about, then, bending her head down, thrust a scarlet rose into her hair.
“There we go, that will do. And now we’ll go.”
She glanced toward the door. “Now?”
“Now. Before anyone interrupts.”
He took her hands in his and nodded to her. For a moment, captivated by his eyes, she lost the words…but then they came back to her. It grew easier every time.
The room rolled up on itself like a scroll. Margaret’s candid-coloured skirts flew in the wind. Then the world had snapped back on itself and they were standing on the slope of a hillside that was furry with red fern and turf and tottergrass, a blue evening sky above them, a wood below them thick with foliage and roosting birds which had been empty and silent when Margaret had seen it last.
“And now thou art finished with thy labours,” said a familiar voice.
“The labour goes on,” Dammerung said; “but I think we are out of the woods at last.”
Margaret turned to see the old withered apple-leaf woman standing in the entryway of the mountain. That woman, she thought, was everywhere!
“Hast come to tell me the good news,” the woman asked, “or to beg a boon of me?”
“To beg a boon.” Dammerung’s melting smile slashed across his face. “Dost think, perhaps, that I have earned it?”
The woman tucked her head down and the sunlight around her shimmered white.
Whatever my lord has need of, he has but to ask his servant.
The wind shrieked again and pulled at the woman’s body. It distended into the mountain in a streak of white, paling, translucent, and finally vanished altogether. From within the voice came back to them:
Come here and meet me in my hall.
Once again, but not alone, Margaret went down to the Great Blind Dragon’s black-marble lair. She was glad for Dammerung’s company: knowing who lay coiled within, she was not sure she could have gone down again. Ignorance, desperation, had made her very bold.
The creature waited for them as she had first seen it, suspended in the air, coil on coil of its white, shining body wrapped in an endless ring above the floor. Its one good eye watched them as they stepped out of the passageway into its light.
Once again the sight of it took her breath away.
Some time I have woven dreams of ye, Lord and Lady of Plenilune: dark dreams full of disaster. I think we have all had such dreams of late.
“But we have all come to waking together,” said Dammerung.
The Dragon’s jaws moved from its teeth to form an enormous smile.
’Tis good, O Lord, to hear thy voice among the living and to see thy light again.
“It was some time coming, old friend. But even now I’m afraid we can’t stay. We are on an errand—and you can’t come.”
It lifted its head.
The Cruciform World?
Dammerung nodded.
To Margaret it actually looked wistful.
Hast my malformed eye to that world. I shall not be able to see ye.
“That is as it should be. I have need of you to guard the doorposts of Plenilune while I am gone—’twill not be long. My dear old friend, it is not the Nether World! I have been and come from there! You need not look so mournful.”
The dragon raised its head and looked into the distance far above it, up to where its light faded and the marble dark closed in. It was very quiet for a very long time, then Dammerung prompted gently,
“A soldier knows his post, old friend.”
A sigh ran round the edges of the chamber.
A soldier knows his post.
“You’ll see it one day.” Dammerung took a firmer hold of Margaret’s hand. “Come! your master has need of you. Blow us into the Cruciform World. Blow us down the universe. And stand by to recall us into Plenilune.”
The dragon roused itself. The chamber shook as it unloosed its folded body; the mountain quaked to its roots.
With a ready will, my lord.
The jaw came open, throat fathomless in light. The great horns gouged the air and seemed to tear it open. Margaret felt the entryway behind her crumple in on itself and be thrown away, like the piece of paper Skander had thrown, and felt the leagues of starwoven space come roaring up behind her.
Herald the mighty! A Lord and his Lady have come—
In a blink Margaret found herself on a familiar tract of lawn between the rose garden’s brick wall and the glass wall of the hothouse in the back garden of her family’s home. She was looking up at the east wing—a disused part of the house—and a few feet from her, at her back, was the door through the garden wall that let out on the road. She could hear the rattle of a cart going by.
“We seem to have come in at the back of it,” mused Dammerung. “I suppose I must be on my best behaviour and be a front door sort of person today.”
Margaret put her arm in his and they began walking along the path toward the side of the house. “I don’t know that it is of any consequence what you chose to do or not do. I don’t think they will like you. They never liked
me
.”
“You like me.”
“I like you.”
“Then that is all that matters. It is rather cold underfoot…”
At the front door Dammerung deliberated. Margaret did not remember the doors seeming so small, or so shabby. They had always seemed grim and imposing to her. They seemed pitiful now. “Ought I to knock?” he wondered. “Where
do
we fit in society? It is in my mind that knocking would be most polite, rather than barging in and saying, ‘Hullo, Mother, I’m home—and look what a stallion I’ve got!’ “
“I can think of many things more polite than that.”
Dammerung knocked dutifully and they stood, awkwardly, on the doorstep, catching each other’s eye while they waited and looking away again. Margaret could not help wondering if one of her relatives would come around the opposite corner of the house just then and catch them. Dammerung began whistling a few bars of Huw Daggerman’s tune.
“Oh, for the love of charity,” she breathed as footsteps came back to her from within the house.
Dammerung muttered, “At least it isn’t
raining
…”
The door latch clicked and a maid’s face peeped out. With some shuffling of memories, Margaret placed her as Amy.
“Good afternoon,” said Dammerung, nodding magnanimously. “Is the master of the house at home?”
“Oh!” cried Amy, catching sight of Margaret. “Oh, miss! Oh, didnae hear? The missus sent letters.”
“I did not get any letters.” Margaret lifted her skirts over the threshold and moved in past Amy. In her mind’s eye the landscape panned out: her relatives in Naples would receive her mother’s letters addressed to her; puzzled, they would write back that she had never come to them. Her mother would be frantic and outraged. The whole story—which might have been comfortably ignored under the ruse of her mother’s original plans—would come to light and there would be a lot of impossible explaining to do.
“It’s the master, miss.” Amy looked for a coat or hat or stick to take from Dammerung. Having none, he smiled beatifically at her. In consternation she backed away, spotted his shoeless feet, and uttered a small, demure whimper.
“What
about
the master?” demanded Margaret, although she felt she already knew.
“Good Lord!” a voice echoed down the hallway. Her mother came toward them at a thunderous clip. Margaret had forgot what a sizable woman she was. “Here’s a time to be showing up—just in time to be late for the funeral! I suppose all the trains were tied up. You could not even send a letter?”
So. Father is dead. How strange that Brand’s death should have hurt me more.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she lied gamely. “I didn’t get any letters. What happened?”
Her mother hit the air aside with one hand. “I don’t know. Fit of apoplexy. Stroke. Brain haemorrhage. Barker found him at his desk on Tuesday simply gone. We hadn’t any warning. Lord! how I hate this house. We’ll have to sell it, of course. It’s a crying shame James Firethorne had to go and die. We might have moved in with him. He was a sentimental soul. Had a lot of faults, but he would have stood up for us.”
Margaret’s cheeks burned with shame as her mother rattled on like a train—a train that, never in the whole of time, had been late or tied up or run down. “Mother,” she said, forcing a smile around each letter as the word came belabouredly out of her mouth, “may I introduce you to Dammerung?”
The woman stopped long enough to get a look at the young war-lord standing tall and barefoot in her foyer. There was a little late sun coming in through the door window which made his eyes very pale and cast his shadow from him across Mrs. Coventry’s face. His dogteeth were showing and there was a sly, not altogether pleasant smile slinking across his face.
“Madam. Margaret has spoken to me of you.”
“I should suppose she has! What do you mean, ‘Margaret’? Here—” With a little viper-like jerk she caught Margaret’s left hand and turned it up, revealing the ring. She looked at it critically, then dropped it again. “No wedding ring as yet. It’ll be ‘Miss Coventry’ until then, young man, if you please.”
“I don’t,” said Dammerung ominously.
Mrs. Coventry looked so astonished she could have eaten her own hat. Margaret felt a most horrendous laugh beginning to form in her throat. It was all she could do to hold it back.
“Margaret has led me to believe,” the young man went on, “that you have no sons. Is that correct?”
“I don’t see what business that is of yours!”
“Only, as your son-in-law, married to your eldest daughter—she is, I gather, your eldest—I am
de facto
sole executor of your late husband’s estate.” He turned to Margaret. “That is how things are done here?”
She swallowed the laugh with some effort. “I don’t know. I never studied law. But it would seem so.”
“Do you know if your husband was in the black?”
Margaret watched her mother’s innate disposition to dislike everyone war with her dawning realization that this impertinent young man might be a way out of her hole. “So far as I know,” she said sullenly.
Dammerung turned and looked up the staircase vault. “It’s a goodly house. It needs more open windows, but so long as it is not a drain on the revenue I don’t see why you should give it up. I’ll have a look over your husband’s books just to see where you stand and where you may need help. Is his room upstairs?”
“Yes, but—well!” Mrs. Coventry added as Dammerung began climbing the stairs, making himself at home.
“Margaret,” he called back down, “if there is anything you need to take, best pack it up. Oh—hullo! You must be Barker…”
“Well!”
If only she would be reduced to that one word for the next five minutes, I might have a little peace
. Skirting past her, Margaret, too, began climbing the stair.
Her mother sprang to life. “Just you wait, young missy! Who is this fellow? Where are you going off to? I hope it’s to buy wedding clothes!”
A tread went off underfoot like a shotgun. She had forgot about that. “We’re going back to his estate, Mother. We left his cousin in charge—”