The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) (19 page)

Chapter Twenty Eight

The wind hurtled around corners and up and down alleys, cruelly pulling at buttoned up coats and rushing under fur trimmed hats. Every now and then a flurry of snow would draw its white veil over everything and one would be forced to take shelter in a doorway for visibility was impossible. The two young lovers had been bowled down to the mews by the mountain wind, running furiously as the blast blew under their heels. Returning was a different story, as bent double and shielding their faces with free hands, they twined hands together. As they rattled around a corner, a flurry of snow obscured their view and they bumped into a woman coming down from the steps above. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Ana grabbed her fur hat and smiled as the woman’s hand clasped a nearby handrail.

Anger and impatience sharpened the woman’s expression as the snow flurry cleared but she brushed herself down after taking a steadying step and looking the couple over. ‘It’s Liam and Ana, isn’t it?’ she said with obvious care.

Ana nodded observing the woman’s smooth skin and beauty. She was evidently moneyed, for how else would she be able to afford such thick and lustrous furs, or such fine black kid which covered the hand extended Ana’s way?

‘I am Severine, Countess di Accia. I am a friend of Adelina’s from many years ago,’ the woman said, her voice slightly high-pitched but clear and well spoken.

Ana shook the proffered hand after glancing at Liam’s shuttered face. As the woman’s fingers closed over her own she felt an ache surge up her arm, bone deep and deathly. Severine turned to Liam to shake his hand but as she turned, she stilled. Becalmed in mid-action, devoid of expression; like a waxworks figure, lifeless and yet not. ‘What did you do,’ Ana’s heart thumped. ‘I saw you, what did you do?’ Her agitated whispering was less a question, more a show of panic as she checked to see who might be watching. Inevitably with the chill wind, the streets were deserted.

‘She’s mesmered, it’s nothing, calm down. Ana, did you feel anything as you shook her hand?’

‘By Aine, yes. My arm, it aches unbelievably.’ she rubbed up and down the appendage, her gloved fingers trying to erase the pain. He nodded grimly, and Ana could almost feel the despair.

‘I can hardly stand near her,’ he said. ‘This woman is evil.’ He circled her, holding out a hand from which he had stripped a glove. ‘See, watch my hand shake.’ And indeed, as he held his hand beside Severine, it began to tremble and the fingers crushed into his palm like the petals of a flower closing when the sun slides below the horizon. ‘She is dark. She has done something utterly terrible.’

‘Why should I feel it though? I’m not Other.’ Ana stared at the glassy eyes, unable to believe they registered nothing. She was tempted to pinch the arm held out, just to see... but no, the woman discomforted her. She turned her attention to Liam as he answered her query.

‘Some of my Otherness has rubbed off on you. Is it not the way with lovers Ana, that they feel each other’s joy and pain?’ He prowled around Severine, taking in the slate eyes with lashes that were lined with tiny snowflakes. Strands of fur on her hat and coat trembled with the weight of the minute crystals. His face paled and his eyes filled with a pain that cut Ana to the quick.

‘What’, she grabbed his hand. ‘What ails you?’

‘She has killed. She has killed a Faeran.’ His voice was low, a growl like a dog threatening to bite.

‘Are you sure? How do you know?’ Ana stepped back from the space in front of Severine, the fear of the Barguest and its portents forgotten. A murderer whose hand she had shaken and who claimed to be a friend of Adelina’s? It didn’t make sense.

‘Because the monstrosity of what she has done has penetrated her so deeply she reeks of it. And I know, Ana. I know what she’s done. She’s stolen a Faeran soul!’

Ana saw something in his eyes that frightened her even more than the Barguest had done. He had said
We feel each other’s pain,
or words to that effect.
Does he mean I feel his rage as well? Because that is what I see and feel now... thunderous rage; deep, dirty, surging to crash beyond the point of restraint.
She bit her lips, wrapping her arms around herself. ‘How do you know? Liam, let her go and let’s get away. Please. She frightens me.’

But he ranted on, ignoring her. ‘And I know why.’ He turned, brushing Ana away like a speck of snow, oblivious to her anxiety. ‘Remember Adelina mentioned she had heard
Severine was seeking immortality? This...’ It was as if he would plunge
a knife through the woman’s heart there and then if he had one. ‘This aberration of a mortal has taken a step on that reckless path. She has taken a Faeran soul... only one, I can sense only one. She has murdered one of us on her journey to immortality and damnation.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ana’s voice trembled with cold and fear as the man in front of her railed with fury.

‘Immortality can be gained by a mortal with possession of two Faeran souls.’

‘But how?’

‘The tales of old tell of a ring - an ancient gold ring. If one spies a Faeran through the aperture, the soul can be sucked through the circle into one’s hands leaving the body a dried up husk. It’s an old occult secret. We thought it was long gone, one of such foul secrets hidden or destroyed ages ago.’ He continued to prowl around. ‘Ana, take off her gloves.’

‘Liam …’

‘Please.’

The woman stood as if she were some sculpted piece in a museum and Ana reached reluctantly for the hand. As she peeled the glove away, both her arms ached to the bone. As the glove fell away, she stepped back.

But Severine’s hand was bare.

‘Now the other.’

Anguished, Ana took the other hand in her own. The black kid glove slid off and Severine’s fingers were fanned out. Long and artistic like all Travellers’ hands, she betrayed the creative heritage of her ancestors. The nails were beautifully shaped - pale pink, oval and with perfect white crescents at the nail bed. And there, glowing in the flickering light of a street lamp
was a plain but dented gold ring on her middle finger.

Liam stepped forward and tried to run his hand over the ornament. But
he pulled back quickly, hand flying to his mouth, an expletive escaping.

‘What, what?
’ whispered Ana.

He turned his hand over. In his palm was a burn, an arc, half a ring perfectly mirrored black and red in the skin. ‘I can’t touch the ring, I can’t. No Faeran can. It is the ultimate bane.’ His tone echoed with hopeless frustration. ‘She can murder any one of us whenever she wants.’ He stepped back, the reality of the horror filling his eyes.

‘Unmesmer her, Liam. Now! Let’s get away.’

Liam moved his hand
. Severine’s eyes brightened with life... a cold sparkle, reminiscent of ice on the high passes of the Goti Range. She looked at her bare fingers, then surprised at the ground where lay the gloves hastily dropped by Ana. She
bent to retrieve them.
‘Such a pleasure to meet you both. You are indeed as beautiful as people say. I do wish you well.’ She pulled the gloves on, sliding them over her freezing fingers.  But as Ana and Liam nodded their heads at her and began to walk away, she called them back.
‘Ana, if you have a moment I do have something I wish to ask you. A business deal, shall we say.’ Her voice was like a descant to the moaning wind scraping at windows and doors.

Ana waited, superficially polite, deeply afraid of this cold as ice woman.

‘I would buy your wedding robe. I tried to buy the fabric at the market but Adelina was more successful, quicker in her dealings than I. I had my heart set on commissioning her to make such a robe for me, you see. And it is the fabric I covet, Other as it is.’

Liam’s breath sucked in as Ana’s fingers clenched his arm through his
quilted sleeve, trying to prevent an outburst. ‘Countess di Accia...’

‘Come now, Liam. My friends call me Severine.’

‘As I said... Countess di Accia,’ his voice resonated with undisguised hate. ‘My betrothed’s robe is not, nor shall it ever be for sale. Now if you will excuse us we are deathly cold and wish to return to our home. Good evening to you.’ He spat this last and turned his body away from Severine, dismissing her and pulling Ana after him, chivvying her into the wind away from the accursed woman.

Severine watched them go, fury shaking her shoulders. She marked Liam’s well-formed body as he disappeared around a corner and in her mind’s eye, recalled his face as he spoke to her. She traced the image of that unusually striking visage with a mental finger; the high planes, the eyebrows, the fiercely strong jaw. The lines of his race were imprinted in her brain and she knew as she ticked off one characteristic after another, that Liam was Faeran. She smiled, a slow drawing up of the cupid’s bow lips. ‘Well well now, there’s a thing.’ She turned and walked down the alley, the wind pushing and pulling at her. ‘The robe
and
a Faeran soul.’

She gave a small chuckle and then laughed out loud. But no one heard her. She laughed like a banshee and the wind sounded the same, it was all of a piece.

***

Time again to move on. I have said before that my narrative is a purging of the emotions I have filled to the brim inside me and I shall continue this expunging until every trace of angst has been expressed across every page. So if you want to continue with me, follow the bees again.

You will come across one of my favourite pieces... see how I have inserted it in the godet at the back of the robe? It gives it weight and makes it flare even more. It is a creation of two Pymm thistles bending their mauve heads in some unseen wind. They are partnered with a dandelion plant, the white thistledown heads leaning and casting their seeds to the wind. They remind me of so much in their unusual partnership. Maybe Liam and Ana. Perhaps Kholi and myself. Even Maeve and Jasper. Perhaps even more folk… who knows?

Under the prickly thistle leaves, you will find two little books. These are my next offerings to you, my friend.

C
hapter Twenty Nine

The robe hung on its hanger, swaying in the warm air that filled the attic, the little floral stove merrily burning its logs underneath the timber mantel. Adelina had moved the garment and hung it from a nail jammed into a central rafter so she could examine it from all angles.
She was alone. Ana talked downstairs with Buckerfield, which may help
drag her out of the strange mood she appeared to be in last evening, she thought. Ana and Liam had rushed in the door with the wind behind their backs and some sort of discord had blown in with them. Liam’s face was as dark as the mountain clouds and Ana was withdrawn.

Had they fought? Adelina didn’t think so, although secretly she wished they had. Liam said they had seen some idiot belaboring a mule, trying to push it up the Stairway into the teeth of the blizzard. That would be upsetting, an answer for sure. But Ana had still been quiet this morning. A bad night she said, fretting about the mule. It was certainly Ana’s way.
Ana… how you have turned our lives upside down.
Sometimes, Adelina wondered if she should have just ignored Ana that day at the fair. If she hadn’t given her the music box, if she hadn’t engaged in conversation. If… if wishes were horses.

Adelina blamed Ana and Liam for the rocky night she had just experienced. She could not, would not let Kholi go. If ever a kindred spirit had arrived in her life it was Kholi Khatoun and no amount of pride and posturing was worth the loss... if he should be so offended by her and leave. So she had tried valiantly to explain a Traveller’s view of Liam the night before, asking him to forgive and forget. Please, she had said. I love you, Kholi, and I must not lose you.

Ana had talked with Buckerfield but he was too busy to chat for too long; lists to made, providores to be visited. He left in a flurry, Ana retreating to sit in the nook, staring out the window. People
toiled up and down the Stair because the carlin had placed her staff in the ground pronouncing a few days of blizzard free weather and journeymen had decided to make a break for the top of. Equally, those who had been imprisoned by snow in the various Inns of Happiness were now arriving in the town, claiming the Stair was passable higher up the crags. A parade of nations rattled past Ana’s window; Rajis, Venichese noblemen, Pymm merchants. Shaggy pack animals loaded with goods negotiated the wide way to the mews where if they chose to stay like Ana and her friends, they would leave their animals and return up the walkways to the hospitality of the town.

But they passed unseen before her eyes, lost as she was in the confrontation with Severine. To the woman, she barely offered a thought. But Liam's mood was a revelation. Stupendous rage had been evident in his manner and the foundation of her trust in him had developed an infinitesimal crack. Trust had been implicit in her love for him. Trust that he would protect and love, that he was undeniably perfect in every facet. It made her realise she had been sweeping along on a tide of infatuation, blissfully unaware of any other side to him.

How stupid, how infantile and naïve.
She pounded the table with her fist and Violet, who had been asleep at her feet curled in a sunbeam, shot out spitting.

Ana’s awakening to the vagaries of Liam’s nature had been harsh and sudden. Rage had rarely been a part of her life. Pa had been a happy fellow, sailing with the tide and accepting circumstance. When things were awry and frustration abounded, he would quote his favourite saying.
'Don’t bend the river, Ana love. Let it flow round the obstacles.  You'll see, all will be well.'
He had found that by such easy and amenable actions the tide often turned his way. He had a pleasant sense of humour, a belief in his fellow man and was known for his kindness and charity. Of course this was not to say he didn’t have his moments. But he dealt with it by throwing down the implement he was using, by stalking around and swearing... for a minute. Then he would laugh at himself and begin again. Even after her father's death, she had never observed rage within her home. The atmosphere altered to be sure, but it was a general withdrawal of one from the other. Her mother isolated herself, busy with nothing but the farm and the running of the household. Anything deeper and more profound seemed beyond her. And Peter? There were moments where he was almost approachable, where she had almost felt she could sit at the end of his bed at night and talk about her pain. But then he would walk away from her, lost in his own thoughts and she would sink back into her carapace of grief.

But rage?

No, rage was what she had seen in Bellingham’s face as he pulled and pummelled her. He personified the emotion and it was rage at her indifference to him that prompted his attack on her. Ana couldn’t bear to think Liam, the man she was to marry, was tarred with that same battered brush.

Liam left Kholi at the mews grooming Ajax and Mogu and whispering sweet nothings in their ears. He walked in dark lanes and alleys, blending himself with shadow, casting himself invisible, all the time knowing that
Severine had merely to raise her ring to her eye in a crowd and he would
be revealed like a black deer in snow. He climbed upward to the inn, his breath coming in sharp spurts, the thin air slicing and cleaving. Thoughts crowded from the corners of his mind. In the darkest corner murder paced, heavy with intent. Liam could never allow such an act as Severine’s to go un-avenged, nor the ring not removed and destroyed.
Rough justice, summary justice!
He wanted to kidnap her, hear
the Barguest portending her doom; call the Cwn Annwn, the whole pack of them, so they could hunt her to exhaustion and death. Or maybe leave her where the Baoban Sith could devour her alive. A murderer deserved nothing less.

But Jasper’s words so recently uttered came from the corner of reason.
‘No Faeran would willingly cause a mortal’s death.’
He recalled Jasper on the Barrow Hills, his whip tapping the ground rhythmically as he sat with his black coat pooled around him like a shadow. His words were akin to a father’s lecture. It followed that he remembered the rantings of his own father - always the same. Ridicule and disgust accompanied by beatings until he began to defend himself. He looked back on that constant emasculation and thought that pain came in many forms. Did it matter that he himself was Other and was intent on rough justice? Wouldn’t his peers do the same thing if they knew a mortal had the means to destroy any Faeran they met? One soul here, one soul there.
Have you not heard of a massacre, Jasper?

But an unfamiliar warmth welled, brightening the shadowy thoughts and he looked up as the sensation tugged and pulled at his soul. There in the window of the inn sat Ana, to all intents and purposes framed in Jasper’s dream mirror. She gazed into space and he was reminded of the first time he had seen her at ‘Rotherwood’. A beautiful and bothered girl who with her lack of artifice and her naïve spirit had attracted his attention and won his heart.

My heart…

Again the clapper of a great bell chimed in his chest. In that instant he knew the game was over; that he hadn’t won. He watched the woman who so charmed him, her hand supporting her chin, a troubled frown creasing her brow.
Would Ana care if Severine killed me?
Perhaps she would. The only person in his whole empty life who would, he thought, as the resonance of the now familiar bell echoed.
And what would she think of my plans for death and revenge?
He stared at her as she sat lost in contemplation. Everything about her glistened and he wondered yet again how a mortal should appear so. It was alchemy, an enchantment, glamour that had him gasping with its audacity and breadth.
What would you think of me Ana, if you knew of my subterfuge, of such vengeful plans?

Far off he could imagine Jasper and Adelina shaking thei
r heads. Their voices underlining each other’s thoughts. ‘
She would shrink from you as if you were Belial himself.’
He grunted in frustration as he thought of the battle of wits he had waged with Adelina. Had she not lost the game as well? Had not
both
she and he been beaten by Jasper’s infernal Fates?
Adelina.
He hurried across the street to the back of the inn, loaded his arms with wood and began to climb to the attic. He needed to talk.

Adelina pulled open the door and Liam felt her eyes on him as he emptied his arms and stacked the wood by the stove. Brushing himself down and washing his hands, he walked to the hanging garment and examined it. ‘It’s perfect. You have done it just as I thought you would.’ He tried not to look at her because something about her manner as he’d walked in reminded him of a duelist and he wished to soften the atmosphere.
No more games, no more goading.

‘I was sorely tempted to try it on.’ Peremptory and offhand, she hardly invited his company.

‘But you didn’t, did you?’
Civilized talk, Adelina, smooth your hackles.

‘
No. It is Ana’s wedding gown. It belongs to none but her.’ Adelina began to wind a skein of green silk onto a carved wooden thread holder.

‘I admire your honesty, Adelina. Maybe other women would have tried it on and hidden the fact.’

She snorted. ‘You should know me by now.’

‘Indeed I should. May I sit?’

Adelina gestured to a chair and put the threadholder down and something began to change in the air.

‘Honesty Adelina, is a rare commodity in Others as well as mortals. And so while we speak of honesty, let me say I think we need to speak. Clear the air that seems as rank as a bog-mist. For too long we have bickered with each other and I think the time has come to stop.’

She sat back in her chair, her hands dropping to her lap. ‘Really. And what has brought on this sudden urge to seek peace. I confess I am surprised. After all, it is you that created the conflict, not I.’

He picked up the threadholder and ran it through his fingers.
Not strictly true. You never gave me a chance. However…
‘Maybe, maybe not, perhaps we were both to blame. But it matters little. Suffice to say I had a revelation. For Ana’s sake I need to do this.’

He looked so intent, so desperate, that Adelina almost reached out to touch him, to forgive him the games and the barbs. But she still needed answers before she could move forward on her own path... She still wondered if this ‘talking’ was one more of his strategies, another to blast their lives apart from the comfortable existence in the craggy little town.
But I shall listen to you, Liam. Because of Ana and because of a man I love and who would leave me if I did not.
‘You talk about honesty. Then I shall be honest with you,’ she barely paused for breath. ‘You would have been a dullard not to know how much I have been wary of you but having said that, you have surprised me. The lengths to which you have gone to prove your devotion to Ana have been quite awe-inspiring.
My
knowledge of Others has revealed far less loyalty and dedication.’ She felt a warmth in her cheeks at the baldness of such a statement but carried on. ‘It is why I have been circumspect. I wondered why you would want to marry her. You could have anyone.’

Liam smiled and the softness of that expression began to undermine the defences Adelina had built. ‘I could,’ he agreed, ‘but it is her I want. Haven’t you ever seen something you wanted so badly you would almost make a pact with Beezlebub to get it?’

Adelina didn’t answer immediately, just moved the threads on the table, an image of Kholi in her mind.
Of course, but I will not tell
you
that.
She cleared her throat, knowing this next comment could fracture the tentative peace that existed. ‘Then it must be that you love her. It would be the very least I could hope for. And if you love her I am thinking that may be why you did what you did in Trevallyn.’
Aine help us, am I right?
She watched ice etch itself over his face.

‘And what do you think I did?’ he asked.

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the creaking of the door as Violet pushed her way in and padded over to the fire, the door swinging half shut behind her.

‘Ah,’ Adelina paused as Kholi’s request to her grew large in her mind. She had said she would drop the witch-hunt last night. It was implicit in her urge that he forgive her.
Forgive me, Kholi.

‘You were saying?’ Liam stood and walked to the dormer windows where he gazed at the cantilevered rooftops climbing up the slopes.

Adelina demurred. How could she break her promise to Kholi? It had mattered enough for her to beg him to excuse her outspoken ‘rhetoric’ as he had called it. Besides she did not, under any single circumstance, want to lose him. He was everything and all to her – the air she breathed, the glue that held her together. One such as he came to one’s own side once in a lifetime.

But there was just this
one
question and here was the means to an answer dangling in front of her like a carrot in front of a mule. She took a huge breath as if gasping for air. ‘Jonty Bellingham. You were in Orford when he attacked Ana. Did you hear about it there? Truth now, Liam.’

He stayed with his back to her and she admired his broad shoulders swooping in a breathless V-shape to his waist and hips. ‘Yes.’ The response was barely audible.