The Swan Maiden (17 page)

Chapter Twenty

Just after sunset, Doucette opened the door to Na Claro's knock. The old woman's face was creased in anxious lines. “Lady Sarpine bids you wait on her.”

“I will,” Doucette replied.

The reckoning had come.

Despite her brave words, Doucette's steps slowed as the old woman led her down the stairs to the comtesse's sewing room.

She tried to draw courage from the feathers that caressed the nape of her neck. She had been born a swan maiden; she had become a sorceress. Jaume loved her. If he had completed the second task without her help, her parents would realize that the shepherd, too, was a person of consequence.

No matter how angry the situation made her, Lady Sarpine respected power. Doucette must show her mother that she had grown too strong in her magic to be forced into marrying against her will. Or, for that matter, to be shut in her room like a child.

Outside the chamber, Doucette settled her shoulders and straightened her skirts.

Na Claro tapped on the door.

“Enter,” said a voice inside.

Na Claro waited for Doucette to step into the room before closing the door and leaving Doucette alone with the comtesse.

“So, Daughter,” Lady Sarpine said without inflection.

“Good evening, Mother.” Doucette curtsied deeply. Rising, she sneezed at the cloying smell of jasmine, her mother's preferred scent, mixed with the humbler odors of beeswax and wool. A partly strung tapestry frame leaned against the far wall. Otherwise, the room had been cleared of its usual clutter of shuttles, yarn, and chattering women.

A large fire burned on the hearth, and with the shutters closed against the rain, the chamber was stifling.

Was her mother ill?

She seemed composed enough, sitting in a grand carved chair by the fire and hemming a silken sash. Her eyes narrowed slightly at Doucette's swan skin, but she made no other sign of displeasure.

“I haven't asked about your visit to Luzerna,” the comtesse said.

The mild remark took Doucette by surprise. She hesitated, pushing down the dread that had been building since her return from Tante Mahalt's. Had she expected her mother would breathe flame? Take a sword and smite her?

Perhaps she had assumed a punishment that existed only in her own mind. If her mother had determined to be gracious, Doucette could do no less. She licked dry lips. “What would you like to know?”

“How fares my sister-in-law?”

“Tante Mahalt is well.”

Lady Sarpine poked her needle through the silk. “She instructed you in her sorcerous tricks?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Show me, sweetling.” The comtesse tucked the needle into the fabric and folded her hands in her lap. “I'd like to see what was so irresistible that you abandoned your rightful place and stole away like a thief to find it.”

The knot in Doucette's stomach pulled a little tighter at the request. But her mother's voice didn't sound as angry as Doucette had feared.

Had Jaume failed? Were his trials over? Useless to wonder. Doucette had wanted a chance to prove herself. Here it was, fallen into her lap. She must put her attention on this test and succeed as she had not at Tante Mahalt's.

“As you wish, Mother.” She shook the wand from her sleeve and tapped one of the logs piled by the fire.

Be thou footstool,

rest for the weary.

An oakwood base,

to shine like my mother's hair,

finished in velvet,

purple,

as her noble due.

The log quivered, as if alive, then formed itself into a footstool to match the comtesse's chair.

“A pretty thing,” Lady Sarpine admitted grudgingly. One foot prodded the amethyst-colored cushion. “The power's in that stick?”

The truth was more complicated, but Doucette didn't think her mother wanted a lecture about magical principles. She nodded.

“May I try it?”

Although the request made Doucette uneasy, she couldn't think of a reason to refuse. The de Brochet family's magic ran to weak Divination at best. Her mother had no swan skin, no Transformational magic of her own, to turn Doucette into stone. At most, Lady Sarpine might focus her formidable will to alter the log-stool's spell. She couldn't cast a new one.

Doucette gave her mother the wand.

Lady Sarpine held it between her fingertips and inspected it closely. Then she rapped the tip against the footstool. “Return to log,” she commanded.

Nothing happened.

Doucette smothered a gulp of relief.

“Hm.” The comtesse sounded disappointed. She toyed with the wand. “And you wore your swan skin? Flew?”

This was going far better than Doucette had dared to dream. “Yes, Mother.”

“Show me.”

“Very well.” Doucette shrugged the swan skin from her back. In the firelight, the gray-tipped white feathers shimmered with the promise of sky and water, flight and safe rest.

She peeled her dress and shift from her body and stepped out of her shoes and hose. Calming herself with a deep breath, Doucette drew the swan skin over her shoulders.

Magic sparked.

The swan skin Transformed her. Webbed feet slapped the stone floor for balance; broad wings arched, fanning the fire so that sparks shot into the air. Swan-Doucette craned her neck to make sure none had landed on her plumage, then folded the gray-tipped feathers neatly and eyed her mother.

“No! Turn back!” The comtesse shrank against her chair with the first emotion she had displayed during their interview. “Doucette! It's unnatural, monstrous—I can't bear it, child. Turn back!” she said in a shrill voice.

Doucette pumped her neck up and down in wordless assent. She pressed her beak down her body and opened the swan skin.

The world spun, her form changed. The tide of magic sizzled through her blood and receded again, leaving her gasping on the floor.

In the instant when Doucette lay helpless, her mother struck. With a grunt of disgust, Lady Sarpine seized the discarded coat and tossed it on the fire.

“No!” Doucette threw herself at the flames. Not her swan skin! Her magic, her birthright. Her freedom.

“It's done!” Her mother yanked her away but not before the flames had engulfed Doucette's hands to the wrist. She writhed in her mother's grip, screaming with pain and choking on the stench of burned feathers.

How could disaster strike so horribly fast?

Her expression wild, Lady Sarpine pushed Doucette to the floor. “I told Pascau we should have burned it the day you were born, but he swore you'd never wear the cursed thing. Going to Mahalt's behind my back—did you mean to break your mother's heart?” She jabbed the smoking swan skin with the wand before feeding it, too, to the greedy flames.

“No!” Doucette wailed again. She lifted her blistered hands in entreaty.

The fire defied her. It soared to the height of a man, roared like a lion, and hissed like a serpent. Flames flared green and blue and crimson as they raced over the swan skin and wand.

Doucette cried in impotent fury, feeling the heat rage both without and within her body as the fire devoured her coat of feathers. Like her hair and skin, blood and bone, the precious thing was part of her. More—it held the key to her magic.

She couldn't fight the flames' blazing, insatiable appetite, and it was too late to run. Cackling over its prize, the fire took what it wanted.

Like a trail of spilled lamp oil sputters across the floor from its source, magic flared and died inside her. Despite the pain, Doucette would have shielded those last pitiful flutters with her two scorched hands to taste—for just a little longer—the sorcery she would never more command.

An instant later, enchantment had withered to dry flakes of ash. Like the former glory of her swan skin, now a blackened wreck on the coals, her magic was gone.

“You tricked me!” Doucette screamed.

“I saved you, my sweet.”

“You had no right!”

The comtesse reared back in her chair, as if Doucette had slapped her. “No right to protect my child?”

“To destroy what I loved!” Doucette sobbed, but Lady Sarpine seemed willfully blind and deaf to the anguish she had caused.

Realization broke over Doucette in a cold wave, drowning her in sorrow. Never again, she mourned, would magic pour over her skin. Gone forever, the rush of wind under her wings, the brief fellowship she had enjoyed with Azelais and Cecilia, the pride at mastering Transformation and Animation, Tante Mahalt's encouragement. The losses struck like poisoned shafts, curling her body over her knees in defeat. She wept, and knew the pain would break her. Such a grievous loss could not be endured.

And yet, Doucette's traitor heart continued to beat. Her lungs forced out the tortured breaths. Her burned hands throbbed and her body shivered, reminding her that she crouched naked on a stone floor.

Stepping carefully around her prostrate daughter, Lady Sarpine unlatched the shutters to let out the smoke. She returned to the fire and prodded it with a poker until no traces remained of the wand or coat of feathers. “You will not defy me again,” she said. “Dabbling in sorcery. I won't have it.”

Doucette raised her head. Without her magic, what was left? A bag of bones held together by skin and memory. She could hardly speak through her tears and horror. “But—”

Her mother interrupted. “Your father insisted that Azelais and Cecilia become sorceresses. Why shouldn't I guide one of you, at least, to a virtuous life? My last, my dearest girl!” Her mouth twisted. The look in her blue eyes, of anger and yearning mingled, made Doucette drop her own face to the floor while the torrent of explanations poured over her head.

“We had such plans for you!” The comtesse paced to the window and gazed out at the sheets of falling rain. “With Azelais and Cecilia away in Luzerna, even your modest looks might have caught the prince's attention. You're a prize, sweetling, a noble-woman with the knowledge to run a castle and the dowry to furnish it. But, no, you flew away.

“Flew away!” Lady Sarpine repeated with loathing. “We put the visit off a year, and soon his Highness will be snowbound at the winter court with those other girls and their scheming mamas. And then you encouraged that peasant's attentions! I couldn't believe it, at first.” Her voice turned cold. “Mahalt's influence, no doubt. A wicked, wicked woman. But I didn't raise you to be a wanton sorceress. We'll risk no further taint from that filthy magic.”

“Filthy? No!” Doucette protested. “You could have seen for yourself how beautiful it is—
was
—” she choked on the truth, hating it, “to fly as a swan, an owl, or a falcon. Cecilia or Azelais would have Transformed you. I would have, myself, if you had trusted one of us enough to ask.”

“Lady of the Seas! The corruption spreads faster than even I thought possible,” Lady Sarpine said. “Be grateful one of us understands the danger to your soul.”

Doucette wasn't fooled by her mother's attempt to cover ambition with a cloak of piety. “Did you tell Father you were going to ruin my swan skin?”

Her mother avoided her eyes. “Pascau will not gainsay me.”

Doucette's head dropped to the floor again. It didn't matter. The foul deed was done. Whatever he thought of it, her father couldn't undo it. No one could.

“Truly, it's for the best.” Lady Sarpine's voice softened. She could afford to be gentle, once she had achieved her aim. “Those burns will fester if not treated straightaway. Ask in the kitchen. Na Patris will have an ointment.” She stooped and touched the top of Doucette's head. “Don't be so downcast, my treasure. With that awful peasant gone, we'll make you a good match yet.”

Her mother's intended reassurance had the opposite effect. “Gone?” Doucette gasped. She felt as though she had been kicked in the ribs. “Jaume failed?”

“He'll fail tomorrow,” Lady Sarpine snapped, “wishing he had never insulted one of my daughters with his rude attentions. The fool thought to steal our treasure? He'll die pursuing it, alone in the dark, in the cavern's depths. Your father has assured me the wretch won't escape the spirit's wrath.”

The comtesse's vengeful tone turned peevish. “Do stop sulking in this vulgar fashion, Doucette. Have your hands seen to and eat in the kitchen if you're not fit for company. Someday, when you're a queen, you'll thank me.” In a flurry of swishing skirts, Lady Sarpine took her leave.

Alone, Doucette wept against the cold stone floor.

Her tears seemed inexhaustible, as if their source went deep as the caverns below the castle, past Lavena's domain and into the profound reaches of the earth. The hot flood scalded her eyes, an angry counterpoint to the pain that throbbed in her hands, the misery that stabbed at her.

Before Doucette had discovered her swan skin, envy of Azelais and Cecilia's freedom had gnawed a hollow place inside her. The joy of flight, of Transformation, had filled that emptiness with hope and turned useless wishes to purposeful action. Doucette knew she didn't share her sisters' beauty, their grace or confidence, but she'd hoped that with practice she could match their skill. A sorceress could make a new place in the world. Her own place.

That dream lay in ashes.

How could her mother be so cruel? And not only to her daughter. With every breath, Doucette smelled the charred, stinking remains of her swan skin and realized that she had managed to poison Jaume's future as well.

Her dear shepherd had proved the most unlikely of champions: a man whose affection did not depend on Doucette's wealth, her position, or her power. He had cared for Doucette when she was the comte's unmagical—and unattainable—daughter. Out of kindness and honor, he had even refused to take advantage of a swan maiden's vulnerability.

How had Doucette repaid his devotion? By agreeing to marry him. And in so doing, she had exposed him to her parents' retribution. They might not have minded a swan maiden's dalliance with a commoner, as long as she kept it discreet. But marriage meant a permanent connection between two families. Doucette should have known that the comtesse, at least, would never accept an alliance with shepherds.