The Swan Maiden (20 page)

Doucette stroked the Transformed silk bolster, then stared at the backs of her hands. The bandages had disappeared. Doucette turned her hands over. Fresh new skin wrapped her palms where the burned patches had been. She extended her fingers, then let her hands fall on the coverlet.

How strange. Magic roared within her, refreshing her mind and her senses, but it left her body as helpless as an infant. Doucette braced herself against the headboard and struggled to sit up.

Remade.

She could almost hear Lavena clucking. “What did you expect from new bones, muscles, blood, and all? Young people these days! No patience. If I had a lovely new body, I'd give it some time. I would, indeed.”

In the end, Doucette was content to sit and follow the spirit's imagined advice. She watched bars of sunlight slant ever more steeply across the walls until hunger forced her out of bed. She could smell the food on the table by the window: a heel of crusty bread and roasted onion salad. Humble fare, but a treat to her heightened senses. The roasted onion tasted delicious mixed with fruity olive oil and tart vinegar. Na Patris had outdone herself, Doucette thought, mopping up the last bit of savory juice with her bread.

After eating, Doucette felt well enough to wash her face. She put on a clean shift and combed her hair, resting between strokes. The effort of moving sapped what little strength she had, though her mind raced, defying her body's weakness.

What had happened to Jaume while she slept the day away?

Her newly keen ears heard the rapid
tap-tap
of feet climbing the stairs long before the bedchamber door burst open and Azelais and Cecilia dashed in, swan skins fluttering.

“Hurry,” Cecilia said. “Father wants you.”

Azelais's eyebrows were drawn over her brow in a single line. “You're a disgrace to our name.”

“Be quiet, Azelais,” Cecilia snapped. “Can't you think of anyone but yourself?”

Doucette's pulse drummed in her throat. Her sisters' expressions told her that Jaume had succeeded with the golden bird. If he had been set a different task and failed, Cecilia wouldn't look so concerned, or Azelais so angry. Doucette's fingers lost their grip on the comb, which clattered onto the table. She eyed it and hoped this weakness would pass. “Hand me that pink gown, would you, Cecilia?”

“No time.” Cecilia drew her wand from her sleeve. “Everybody's waiting. Father's arranged a final test. If your shepherd wants you so badly, he'll have to choose you.”

“What?” Doucette braced her hands flat on the table. “Another test? Unfair!”

“Fair?” Azelais scoffed. “Someone helped him with the first three. Are you afraid that the man can't manage the simplest one on his own?”

“No,” Doucette said. “But—”

Cecilia interrupted her. “By your leave, Sister?”

Doucette's hair tumbled over her shoulders as she shook her head, but Cecilia was looking at Azelais.

Azelais shrugged. “Oh, very well.”

Cecilia murmured a few words and tapped Azelais with her wand.

Doucette sucked in a breath as the spell took hold. Their oldest sister's face and form wavered, as if seen under water, and then became a mirror image of Cecilia's.

From the tips of their leather shoes to their azure gowns, fair hair, blue eyes, and complacent expressions, the two young women were identical. The second one spoke in Azelais's voice. “You vain thing, Cecilia. However can you breathe with your gown laced so tightly?”

“You next.” Cecilia's wand tapped Doucette's shoulder.

The spell sizzled over her skin, but a swift current of Doucette's own magic swept out to repel it. With a loud crackling noise and a shower of sparks, the two spells clashed.

Her sisters jumped back in alarm. A little dizzy herself, Doucette swayed until she could sit upright.

The true Cecilia stared accusingly at an unchanged Doucette and then at her wand. “What happened?”

“You bungled it, Sister. Lost your focus,” the other Cecilia said in Azelais's voice. “There's a reason I'm Tante's heir. Strength of mind, remember?”

“No!” The wand tapped Doucette's shoulder again. As before, the spell failed spectacularly.

One Cecilia looked stupefied, the other impatient.

“I told you we should do it my way.” Muttering, Cecilia-Azelais took the wand and tapped first her own shoulder, then the real Cecilia's.

Doucette tasted the magic in the air as a cloud of white smoke enveloped her sisters. When it dissipated, Doucette recoiled. Both of her sisters now looked like her! Each one wore her features, her plain shift, bare feet, and trailing hair.

“Not bad, I think.”

Hearing Azelais's voice issue from her own face made Doucette feel queasy.

“But look at the hair, Azelais,” Doucette-Cecilia said. “Ours isn't nearly as pretty. Really, I don't know how you won that circlet you're so proud of. Heir or no, clarity of vision was ever
your
weakness.”

“Mm.” Doucette-Azelais tapped her lips just like Tante Mahalt. Gray eyes studied Doucette's head with a disconcerting coolness. “I grant you're right this time, Cecilia.” Doucette-Azelais stroked her own head with the wand until her hair gleamed with light and then did the same for Doucette-Cecilia. “What did you do, Sister? It's so shiny, like pearl.”

“I combed it,” Doucette said blandly, but she was thinking of Tante Mahalt's iridescent hair. Was this, too, an effect of the Rassemblement? Or just Lavena's little joke?

Doucette-Cecilia pouted. “You could give us decent gowns.”

Doucette-Azelais sighed with exasperation and raised her wand again.

Before the wand could descend, Doucette stood up, letting the hem of her shift fall over her bare feet. “You said to hurry. We'll go as we are.” Their father's game seemed clear enough, but more than one could play it. She walked to the open door and started down the stairs, hoping neither of her sisters would notice how unsteady her steps were.

“I am not facing the court dressed in a shift!” Cecilia's voice rose shrill behind her. “Barefoot, my hair unbound like a child's!”

“Don't worry. They'll think we're her,” Doucette-Azelais said.

“Fine,” Doucette-Cecilia said. “Then stop dawdling, Doucette. Here, Azelais. You take her other arm.”

Doucette's sisters hurried her down the stairs between them, and on through the castle's empty corridors. She was glad of their unwitting support. Without it, she feared her legs might buckle and drop her to the floor.

They stopped before the closed doors of the feast hall. Doucette-Azelais patted her hair, as if she missed the circlet that normally rested there.

“Hide the wand!” Doucette-Cecilia whispered.

Doucette-Azelais glanced down the empty corridor before tucking the wand behind a wall hanging. She beat her fist against one of the doors and returned to Doucette's side.

To Doucette's sensitive ears, the silence had a distinctly menacing quality.

Chapter Twenty-three

The doors swung wide. Inside, courtiers, servants, and townsfolk greeted the trio of barely dressed Doucettes with a collective exhalation of astonishment.

The young women walked through the open doors and straight through the crowded feast hall to the high table.

Doucette's heart leaped to see Jaume standing to one side of the dais, his hat in his hand.

Tucked in the crook of his other arm, a golden bird glowed in the candlelight. About the size of a dove, it had a raptor's beak and crest, though the long, graceful neck curled over a swan's plumage. Doucette thought magic must have made it, for no mortal goldsmith could have worked in such perfect detail. The eyes, two black crystals, glittered.

In contrast to the wonderful bird and the courtiers' habitual finery, the shepherd's stained, ripped clothes bore silent witness to his three days of labor. Despite its tired lines, however, Jaume's handsome face showed no signs of the weakness that had afflicted Doucette since her immersion in Lavena's Cauldron. His eyes narrowed at the sight of three identical girls advancing toward him, but he gave no sign of dismay.

Doucette's heart beat fast. He would know her, wouldn't he? Jaume had seen her as no one else had, down to her very bones. After all they had endured together, she surely had nothing to fear. Pride strengthened her trembling legs and carried her to stand with her sisters before the dais.

Lord Pascau stood, his manner affable. Seated beside him, Lady Sarpine wore no expression whatsoever; she might have turned herself to stone. The castle folk visibly simmered with expectation.

“Jaume of Vent'roux,” the comte said, “you have completed your three appointed tasks: clearing the hillside, digging the pond, and finding Beloc's greatest treasure. In so doing, you have won my youngest daughter's hand, and I give it freely.”

A low, surprised sound rose from the crowd.

The comte chuckled. “Provided, of course, that you choose the right one.”

Jaume bowed. While those assembled held their breath, he regarded first one Doucette, then another. Finally, he walked toward the three identical girls.

Doucette moved her changed foot forward until four toes peeped out from under the hem of her shift. Stopping directly in front of her, Jaume glanced down and smiled as if the sight confirmed what he already knew. “The middle lady, and none other, is Doucette,” he said.

Azelais and Cecilia dropped Doucette's arms and stepped away, distancing themselves from their sister and her chosen suitor.

“Yes.” Joyfully, Doucette held out her hands to Jaume. He gave her the golden bird, then grasped her wrists, which dipped under the thing's unexpected weight.

Afterward, Doucette wondered whether she had been the tinder or the spark. Had the magic that suffused her flowed out on its own into the golden bird, or had the enchanted thing called it forth?

Whatever the cause, she could feel magic stirring. It passed from her body into feathers that warmed in her hands. Suddenly, the bird shimmered with light. As its glow grew more brilliant, the watching crowd murmured in wonder. Radiance fountained out of the golden bird, washed over Doucette's and Jaume's arms, then pooled around their feet.

Her sisters cried out and shaded their eyes, but neither Doucette nor Jaume could look away.

Between them, the bird awoke into life.

The dazzling feathers shifted. Claws pricked Doucette's fingers. She laughed in surprise and delight as the bird turned its head and brushed her palm with its raptor beak. Bright eyes stared at her, infusing her with their strength.

Onlookers gasped as the Aigleron chirped. It fluttered its wings once, twice, and launched itself from Doucette and Jaume's linked hands. Golden wings cast light, rather than shadow, as the enchanted bird circled over the upturned faces. When it opened its beak again, it trilled notes of a piercing, unearthly sweetness. The Aigleron's legendary song filled the feast hall, and then the bird soared through the open doors and away. It would return to its nest in its own time, by its own way.

Doucette held Jaume and saw her own amazement reflected in his eyes.

The comte groped for his chair and sat down hard next to his wife.

After a long, awed hush, the townsfolk cheered as if to lift the roof from its beams. Servants surged around Doucette and Jaume, offering her their shy best wishes and slapping him heartily on the back.

“My mother's mother saw the Aigleron—never thought it'd fly in my day,” the goldsmith said, beaming. “Thank you, little lady.”

“Lovely, that was.” Na Claro's wrinkled face streamed with tears, but she, too, smiled. “A blessing on your marriage.”

Courtiers offered more restrained congratulations. Other eyes besides Doucette's had noticed the stern set of the comte's lips and the comtesse's alabaster face.

Elusive as spring snowflakes, Doucette-Azelais and Doucette-Cecilia melted from the feast hall. When they returned, clad in their own gowns and wearing their own faces, they joined their parents, sitting in unrelieved silence at the high table.

Meanwhile, the castle servants bustled through the crowd, working their own kind of magic. Trestle tables unfolded and were draped in festive cloths. Benches popped up like mushrooms after a rain, their seats dotted with bright cushions.

“This way, little lady, Jaume.” A beaming Na Patris escorted them to a table garlanded with wheat stalks and late roses, meadow saffron and purple mallow. The baker bobbed a curtsy to Doucette. “We're so glad, Lady Doucette, that our sweetness has found a husband who will treasure her.”

Doucette's eyes filled at the affection in the baker's voice, so lacking in her own parents' reaction.

“No crying, mind!” Na Patris dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “We've a few touches to finish the meal, but first, some gifts for the pair of you.”

The wool mistress Na Soufio came up to Doucette. “The weaver's guild offers a gown, which I'll thank you to put on this instant, little lady! Fancy, the bride wearing a shift to her betrothal feast!”

Before Doucette could speak, a bevy of women whisked her from Jaume's side. They bundled her into a wool gown of forest green, with matching hose and a pair of sturdy walking shoes, and crowned her head with a wreath of braided wheat.

As Na Claro slid a stocking over Doucette's changed foot, the old servant drew in a startled breath. She made no comment about the missing toe, however, for which Doucette silently thanked her. When Doucette returned to the table, breathless and smiling, she saw that Jaume, too, had been freshly outfitted in a gold tunic and brown leggings, a wide leather belt, and new boots.

Om Toumas greeted them. “As you see, other folk have been hard at work while some lazed under an oak tree in the park, playing the pipes,” he said.

“Did you, Jaume?” Doucette asked. “I slept for ages.”