The music was stopped by the tolling of the bell.
A sound not belonging to the dead of night.
A signal to take flight.
Owens never told a soul, not even his wife in later life, but he could have sworn the girl scrambled out of the blackness on all fours. The cave’s interior was dark. Animal bones crunched underfoot. He blinked away the caul of sunshine and shadows from his eyes.
There was a disembodied snuffling. Owens watched, rifle ready, as sound took shape. He had the impression of a pointed face.
He’d survived mutinies and dysentery. He didn’t want to die, ravaged by some beast, so far from home. As the shadow became clearer, he saw it was small. Some sort of dog, perhaps. He lowered his rifle. The shape now walked on hind legs. He must have been mistaken.
She tried to scamper past. Poor mite. There was no doubt it was the captain’s child. A sight to break the heart. Dirty with a mass of matted hair. Crusted blood beneath her fingernails. Too old to be naked as the day she’d come upon the earth. Too young to be so unhinged by grief.
Owens crossed himself.
Early morning, late in autumn. The meet gathered. Strutted in their black and scarlet. Drank Madeira from crystal glasses. The horses stamped and pranced, unhappy in Lily’s company. Steam poured from their nostrils, as though her inclusion made them fume. Lord Lacey had found for Lily the most docile mare, fit for novices and children.
“I’ll be a liability,” Lily protested.
“You’ll come. You’ll be my luck.”
The dappled pony clattered about the yard, spooked by Lily’s approach. When she finally managed to mount the animal, it skittered under her as though she wore a set of spurs. Lily’s rivals smirked. Thin, ravenous things in glossy skirts, bound together by their loathing of her.
The whipper in brought the hounds, a seething mass of white and tan. They liked Lily even less.
“Pity anything so hunted.”
Lily hadn’t meant to speak aloud. She was shocked they’d heard above the din. If they were waiting for her error, here it was. The ladies, huntswomen to their fingertips, scoffed at this display. The men, politely outraged, turned away. Lily’s true affinities had been betrayed.
Lord Lacey’s laugh showed he didn’t give a hoot.
“Better hunter than hunted.”
Lily’s aunt watched from the manor steps with eyes like shiny beads. They reflected all she wanted from the world. Everything she felt she was entitled to that she’d been denied. Her thwarted avarice festered inside.
Lily could still feel the brush raking her scalp. Her aunt complained. A tiresome task. The russet mass would not be tamed.
“You will accept him.”
“He’s not asked.”
“He will and you’ll say yes. Accept him or I’ll put you out.”
Her aunt had managed to pull her hair into some semblance of a coil. She drove the pins to fix it, drawing blood. A demonstration of her resolve.
Lily was no equestrian. Whenever she approached a horse, it shied away. No matter. Riding wasn’t a luxury she could afford. She walked instead, her pace more like a trot. Her aunt bemoaned this orphaned niece from distant lands. She didn’t like her wayward shock of hair. Surely from the girl’s mother’s side. No such color belonged among the Hastings stock.
The aunt’s redbrick terrace was at Botheringstile. Built for economy and function. A spinster’s existence reflected in the polished aspidistra and glazed tiles. She’d been resigned to a middle-class and single life.
The girl disrupted everything. She traipsed dirt in on her boots. She shed the leaves caught up in her hair. The house couldn’t contain her.
“You’ve been seen. Running on the common. Really, Lily, it’s too much.”
Lily, behaving like an urchin, not a young lady with slender limbs and neck.
“Are you listening? Keep off there. And for heaven’s sake, stay away from Grissleymire. The tenant’s mad. Gypsies loiter in the grounds. Dirty fellows. They steal children.”
“Really?” Lily’s ears pricked up. Her teacup was at the saucer’s edge, threatening to spill. Then, “I’m not a child.”
“Your interest is inappropriate and morbid. You shouldn’t be wandering so far. You’re not to go out alone again. Now, we must discuss your future.”
The conversation was a dismal failure. Lily, freedom curtailed, became obstinate and obtuse. Cornered, she took on a shifty look that her aunt disliked. She berated Lily for chances squandered and ambition lacked. It soon became a tirade against Lily’s father and a lament in his foolish choice of wife.
“You’ll join Lord Lacey for the hunt. There’s an end to it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“As you said, you’re not a child. We can’t do as we want. We do as we must.”
“Why?”
“You suppose that you’ll live off me forever? I took you in. I’d hoped for some sensitivity in return.”
“You talk as if I were some stranger, not your own family.”
“How dare you!”
The fire spat as they sat in silence.
“I’m sorry, Aunt.”
“We’ll never mention it again. We’ll forget it.”
She set her mouth into a line that meant, on the contrary, it wouldn’t be forgotten for some time. Once Lily had been excused, her aunt chastised the maid instead, until the girl wept over some imaginary stains upon the nets.
By “Lily’s future,” her aunt had meant her suitor. Lily often saw him riding in the distance as she roamed her days away. She asked who he was, and it seemed Lord Lacey of Marshcombe had been inquiring about her, too, and learned her family was of a minor pedigree and her father was an army man who’d left his sister and daughter impoverished.
They received an invitation to a ball at Marshcombe Hall. Lily’s aunt fussed, dressing her in an unfashionable gown cut for a child. Lacking family jewels, Lily’s hair would have to be her only embellishment.
Lord Lacey’s mistresses encircled her, wearing banal diamonds and silks the colors of the night. Reflected alongside them in the mirror, Lily could see she was handsome in a feral way but nothing like the classical beauties of the day. She was relieved. A man like him would have no use for freshness. Lacey could inspect her at close quarters and once rejected, she’d be free to go on as before.
Lily didn’t try to ensnare him. She didn’t smile or flutter her eyelashes. As he bent to kiss her hand, she could feel the fluttering of her heart, the beat at the base of her throat, as if it were desperate to escape. She couldn’t help but notice he was staring at the telltale pulse at her neck, licking his lips, as if fear was what attracted him the most.
Lord Lacey’s thighs tensed across his hunter’s back as he wheeled about Lily.
“Try and keep up.” His unconcealed pleasure at her discomfort made her bristle. Nor did she like the way he ordered her about. “Pike will stay close but should he lose you, don’t stray. If you see smoke, turn back. That’s the gypsy campfires on Grissleymire.”
The word made Lily shiver.
“The tenant, Victor Mallory, is deranged. A circus performer or something equally vulgar. He refuses to let us hunt there. He’s let loose all kinds of dangerous animals on the land.”
A woman trotted alongside of them, eager to join in.
“His bear,” she said, “has ravished a village girl.”
Lily wasn’t listening. Victor Mallory. The name was a stone dropped down a well into the past. It landed on her father’s lips. She knew this man.
Victor Mallory. Seek him out if you’re ever in need. He’s one of us.
Her father’s dying lips.
Lily was unprepared for the anarchy of the hunt. The howling, scrambling of the pack. The tally-ho. The hue and cry. The thunder of the ride. Hooves churned the earth, great clods thrown into the air. Pike goaded her mare with his crop. He didn’t want to miss the fun.
She caught the flash of red upon the hill and wished it Godspeed, but it wasn’t to be. They chased the vixen to exhaustion. Lily didn’t see the kill. Unfortunately, with Pike’s help, she arrived in time to see the trophies taken. The mask, the pads, the glorious brush. Lily appalled them with her squeamishness. This fox, this monarch of the field and copse, had been a stunner. Now she was tossed and torn apart at the frothy jaws of mere dogs.
Lily flinched when Lord Lacey came close. She swayed and swooned, only to be caught. Faces filled her vision as it narrowed to the long corridor of a faint. Her eyelids fluttered as she clung to consciousness. Lord Lacey knelt beside her, gripping her foot. She felt his hand slide up to caress her calf.
“She’s turned her ankle,” he announced. Lily tried to protest but he hushed her, adding, “She may have hit her head. Pike and I will take her to Mother Biddie’s cottage where she can rest a while.”
Lily didn’t like Pike’s sly smile.
“You,” Lacey beckoned a groom, “ride back and tell her aunt not to be alarmed. I’ll ride back later with news and arrange a carriage when she’s well enough to travel.”
The rest rode away. None of the women saw fit to stay, even to act as chaperone for another lady in distress. She wouldn’t be a lady for much longer. They mistook her for a toy, not a contender for the role of Lady Lacey. They could not help but smirk. Let him have his way. They were only happy to leave Lily to her fate.
Lily awoke in Pike’s arms. She struggled against his grip, the pain of his digging fingertips. She didn’t want a voyeur to her humiliation. She didn’t want Pike to enjoy her shame.
Lacey lifted her veil as though she were a bride. He daubed her face with the fox’s brush. Cold and clotted brush across her cheeks. The bedsprings creaked as she tried to jerk away. She heard Mother Biddie lock the door.
“Your first time,” he turned her head to admire his work, “I’ve bloodied you.”
Lily bared her teeth. An involuntary response. It earned her a slap, which excited Lacey even more. Now other blood sports were on his mind. He’d hunted her to the edge of ecstasy. Her creeping skirt was creased between her thighs. It ignited his more violent desires. He would spoil her if it was the only way to possess her. She wasn’t so defiant now. A wild thing cowed.
Lily knew she’d need guile. She was resourceful.
She’d run away after her father died. She was still a child. His regiment searched for a full eight weeks. She’d been hiding in a cave. A scrawny thing that screamed and bit, who struggled and raved. As if she’d forgotten how to behave. Lily denied this time when she’d been wild with sorrow. This merciful amnesia didn’t obliterate the trauma that followed. She could never forget the terrors of the cabin. The tipping of the sea. Homesickness replaced seasickness. Her aunt’s embraces were devoid of any comfort. The odors of England were baffling. She longed for the fragrances of India and her father’s hair pomade.
“Wait.” Her mind seized on Victor Mallory. She must have cleverness and courage.
Lacey paused in pawing her.
“I can give you something better.”
“What’s better than this?”
“Riches.”
“I am rich.”
“Women.”
Her audacity made Lacey gasp. That he’d misjudged her delighted him. It appealed to his corruption. This new-Lily was delicious.
“I don’t lack for those either. I plan on having you. Now and whenever I want once you’re my wife.”
It was worse than she had feared. She thought that afterwards she’d be free.
“Hunting.” There. She had struck him. That she knew him so well already made him tremble. “The best day’s hunting you’ve ever had.”
Now Lord Lacey had a different sort of quarry. If he caught Lily, he could have her on the spot, if he wanted. Then there’d be a wedding without delay. He agreed to give her a head start by sending for fresh horses and a different type of dog.
“You have twenty-four hours to find me. After that, you relinquish your claim. You’ll make no proposal. I go free.”
Lily suggested the terms with an encouraging smile, as if truly game. It’ll be much better this way. All he had to do was catch her. She responded to his query about her virginity with quiet dignity.
Lacey tore off her drawers.
“For the dogs,” he explained.
She was just a girl on foot but her endless roaming had kept her fit and given her the geography for miles around. She thanked her stars for her stout boots.
She took care when she set her pace. The ground was uneven. Too fast and she’d be at risk of flagging or falling, too slow and they’d soon catch her up. She didn’t strike out randomly. She had a destination. A source of possible salvation. Grissleymire and Victor Mallory.
The bog was the safest route. If she showed respect it would let her pass. She’d learnt its tricks and treachery, the secrets of its sucking love. Its foulness might help to mask her smell. If she was fortunate, it might even claim Lacey, Pike, and all their hounds.
Lily was a sight. Mud on her skirt, blood-smeared face, her veil torn remnants of lace. The bodice that had been laced to make her waist narrow now only served to make her breaths come fast and shallow.
It was in this state that she reached Grissleymire. She limped along in dappled shade. A bird flew down the tree-darkened lane. Darting and swooping, it showed her the way. The estate was overgrown. Ivy smothered shut the gates. She would have to find another way.
The wind had swept up the fallen leaves. Lily paused as they stirred and a snout, followed by a pair of eyes and pointed ears emerged from its hiding place within the pile. The fox shook off this crackling autumn robe. A male of the species, in his prime. Sleek coat. A brawler. Torn lip. A wound that had long since healed. He sniffed the fox blood on her and then flowed away.
Lily climbed over a broken wall. The hall was before her, once elegant, now in decay. There was a lion on what was once the lawn. He came out of the long grass to inspect her with amber eyes. Prowling back and forth, tail twitching, lip licking. Tawny skin taut. Immense paws. Testicles and teeth.
Lily backed towards the hall’s doors. Her hand found the knocker. The bronze was cool in her clammy palm. She rapped slowly so as not to startle her stalker.
The door fell open. Lily fell in.
The servant was not the sort of man she’d ever encountered in service. That he was hare lipped made her pause. His livery was old and in disarray, buttons missing and ragged braid. There was an oak leaf, stained yellow by the season, caught in his hair. Lily was accustomed to servants who stood to attention. This one didn’t show her a jot of deference or respect. He didn’t even help her from the floor. That he was too busy saluting the lion annoyed her even more.
“What do you want?”
“To see your master.”
An inauspicious start. A well-trained servant would have taken a bloodied, muddied lady in his stride.
“It’s imperative that I see him.”
The haughty tilt of her head had no effect.
“Please. It’s important. I’ve come all the way from,” she was about to say Marshcombe but thought better of it, “Botheringstile.”
“So far?” he mocked.
He was handsome. Or, at least, Lily found him so. His auburn hair much darker than her own. Lively eyes. A smile that danced around his damaged mouth.
“What’s it about?”
Brazen, too.
“That’s for his ears alone.”
He didn’t show her to the parlor but left her standing in the hall. A grandfather clock was several hours astray in its estimation of the time. The stained glass, stained rugs and stained flags all needed a good scrub. The medieval tapestries were fantastical. A lion in armor skewering a man. A ring of wolves dancing around a fire and the coronation of a fox. This whimsical court was well beyond repair. Shabby relics of glories past.
The servant returned.
The library. Books languished on the shelves, pages crumbling between moldy covers. A dying fire smoldered in the grate. Lily went to the long windows. A spider’s web spanned an entire pane. It was a striking creature, plump body marked in paler shades. It picked at its web’s threads as a harpist plucks her strings. The flies quivered as they listened to her tune.
Lily gasped. Figures were reflected in the glass. Gods filled the library’s alcoves. Mallory was an idolater. His deities had trunks and tusks and fangs. They demanded the fiercest of devotions.
“Do you like them?”
“You startled me.”
Mallory had crept close despite his size, sniffing at her hair. Satisfied, he hobbled to the fire and sank into a chair.
“What’s your name?”
“Lily Hastings.”
“Are we acquainted?”
Lily had been prepared to be outrageous in her lies but now she saw he would spot a ruse.
“I come here in desperation. I come here to throw myself upon your mercy.” She flung herself at his feet and grasped his folded hands. The ebbing firelight caught her hair and set it alight. Burnished copper winked amid the red. It made the white flash of her throat seem more exposed.
“Sir, I implore you.”
Victor smirked.
“You mock me,” Lily cried, “you are cruel.”
“Hush now. What books you girls must read nowadays! Such lurid melodrama. It might work on the page and younger men but I’m neither.”
“You’re not so old.” Her wet eyes and sudden smile were a charming combination.
“Such a lovely little trickster.”
Victor was immune to womanly wiles. She would have to try a different way.
“You’re a magician.”
“A long time ago. I learnt my craft in Africa and China. I’ve performed for prime ministers and kings.”
He’d sunk into his reminisces. A vacant stare. Lily wondered if she was in error but his face was unmistakable despite the burden of age.
“The things I’ve seen. I’ve walked on the roof of the world and been where the canopy’s so dense that it’s perpetual night.”
“You’re The Theologist,” she prompted.
“The Theologist of Transformation,” he sounded surprised by his own stage name.
“I need your help to make me disappear.”
“I don’t do tricks upon request.”
“I’ve nowhere else to go. No benefactor sympathetic to my cause. I have a suitor . . . ”
“I should imagine you have many.”
“He’s a beast.”
“We’re all beasts, my dear.”
“Not just a beast. A brute.”
“Refuse him then.”
“I can’t. I rely on my aunt’s charity. She’ll turn me out.”
Victor picked up the bowl beside him. He raked his fingers through the jumble of gems. A discarded fortune, their luster dulled by dust. He pulled out a tiara and threw it on her lap. It was encrusted with diamonds and grime.
“Have that. The means to leave. Not enough? Have more.”
A rain of jewels. They lay where they fell, scattered on the floor.
“It’s not just the money,” Lily was unsure why she was dithering, “it’s something else.”
Now her tears were real.
“Don’t waste my time!” Victor roared.
Lily thrust her fists against her eyes. She was undone, lacking in the words. Now, when she had to explain to someone else, she realized that she didn’t understand herself.
“I saw you when I was a child. In India. After my mother died. My father said you’d help if I was ever in need.”
“Who was your father?”
“Captain Harry Hastings.”
“I don’t know him.”
“I saw you. At the palace. I sat on your knee during the performance. Afterwards my father was angry at me for being so bold.”
Victor’s face froze.
“So angry that he frightened me.”
“You don’t remember why?” Victor asked.
Lily shook her head.
“Later he said he was sorry that he’d lost his temper. I’d stopped speaking when my mother died. Everyone thought I’d lost my wits. He said it was because of you that I recovered them.”
“Where’s your father now?”
“He died. A hunting accident.”
“Who was hunting him?”
“I’m sorry?” Lily thought that she’d misheard.
The Theologist stared at her.
“No, I am,” he sounded weary, “unhappy is the one who doesn’t know themselves.”
“I came for magic,” Lily blurted out, hardly sure what she was asking for. Unsure if Lacey was far behind.
“There’s none left. It’s all spent. Now leave me be.”
“Please.”
“Robert, make her go away. Give her a room if she needs a place to stay.”
Robert, the hare-lipped servant, grasped her elbow and pulled her to her feet. She wondered how long he’d been standing there.
“He’s tired. He needs to sleep.”
She turned back but Victor’s chin was on his chest, eyelids moving as if already in a dream.
“Run, dear,” Victor muttered from his sudden slumber. “Run.”
The walls were lined with portraits, eyes flat and blank. They held no regard for Lily. She was just another girl. At the stair’s turn there was a line of brass urns, each brimming with gold coins. They lay there, uncoveted. The smell of the house was stronger here. Pungent, like a lair.
There was a rocking horse on the minstrel’s gallery. Someone had thought to groom it. The tail combed out and the wood polished until it shone, yet it had been attacked. Something had clawed at its wooden flanks. Three parallel lines bit deep.
I’m among lunatics, she thought.
Lily followed Robert to the upper floors. Here were Victor’s strange family, with all its inbreeding, its bastards, whelps and wards. Fathered at Grissleymire or found on travels abroad. They turned to see Lily trying to catch a glimpse. One man kicked the door shut with his heel. Through a gap she saw a man writing in a ledger, the boy at his feet batting a ball of yarn between his palms. In the next room a woman loosened her dress to suckle her young, one at each breast. Straw matted the floor. The room was rank with urine, milk, and regurgitated meat.
“Who’s this?” she barked at them. Her accent was Russian. “Put her out. She stinks of lies. Tell Victor I said so.”
“Tell him yourself, Vivien.”
Lily followed Robert to the end of the corridor. He shoved the door open and leant against the frame. Lily squeezed past him. He was unwashed. Musky and provocative.
“You can bed down here.”
“I need a fire. A bath.”
The room was filthy. Full of dander and dirt. The furniture and the mirror were coated with the stuff.
“The jug’s there. You’ll get water from the kitchen pump. Logs are by the back door.”
Stood so close, his smell was stronger. It made her nose twitch. It made her itch.
“Of course, there’s other ways of keeping warm,” he said, straight faced, “if you should want me, I’ll be just along the hall.”
Not the proper place for a servant at all.
Lily stepped from her clothes, layer by layer. Just garments, not the essence of herself. She used them to make a nest beneath the bed. This was how her father used to find her. In a den of her own design.
Lily hadn’t planned to sleep so long. She only meant to ease her aching legs. When she woke the sky had already darkened. A fire laid and lit. Hot water steamed from the ewer and the mirror had been polished. A plain twill dress was laid out on the bed, a shawl folded at its head.
She cleaned off the sweat and mud. The blood. Then went back along the corridor and down the stairs. From the higher windows she could see the maze, its geometry wracked and ruined. When she turned a corner she saw Robert was outside. She went to him.
“Thank you for the fire and the water. You’re not a footman at all, are you?”
“No.”
Robert had changed too. His shirt was darned but clean. They walked together in the equality of these new clothes.
“I’m Lily.”
They turned onto the avenue of oaks, once the fine approach to Grissleymire from the road. One of the giants had been felled in a lightning storm. Its charred corpse blocked their way. Something sluggish and sinuous slithered along the broken boughs.
“One of Victor’s,” Robert explained. “It was part of his performance.”
The dappled python was lost in the English undergrowth.
“Like the lion?”
Robert looked at her from the corner of his eye.
“He wasn’t in the show. Victor just wanted him to have a home.”
“My aunt says hunters and poachers are run off Grissleymire.”
“We don’t want strangers here. And killing for food is one thing but sport is quite another.”
Lily imagined a democracy of carnivores. The otters floated downstream. The badger lay quiet in his set. The fox and the lion went unmolested.
“So it’s safe here?”
“Safer. For now. For a certain sort.”
“What sort?”
“The hunted. The cursed. The damned.”
Hunted. Cursed. Where was Lacey now? Lily wished him to the very bottom of the bog. She’d already decided that she’d never be his wife. She’d rather take her own life.
Past the diseased limes and through the kissing gate, rusted on its broken hinge. They reached the devastated water gardens. The fountains, unrefreshed with spilling water, stagnated. There was only one pond that remained clean being fed by an overflowing stream. Robert knelt and trailed his fingers along the surface to draw the monstrous carp lurking in its depths. Ghostly creatures, flecked in blues and golds. They nibbled at his fingertips and then drifted into darkness, unsatisfied.
“What do you dream about?”
“My dreams?”
“Yes,” he coaxed.
“I dream of running.”
“Yes,” as if he understood, “but what’s your most vivid dream?”
“I can’t say.”
“You have to.” She writhed in his sudden grip. “This is why you’re here, isn’t it? You want to know about your dreams. You want to know what they mean.”
“No!” Lily tried to twist away. His smell was maddening. It enraged her in the most disturbing way.
“Tell me. Or do I have to tell you? You dream you’re dead . . . ”
“I dream I’m dead . . . ” Lily repeated. “No, I dream I’m playing dead. I’m lying on the ground. My eyes are shut. My tongue hangs out. Crows caw at me. I wait for them to come too close. I let them peck at me. I wait until one is far too close.”
“Then, snap! You have them!”
Feigning death. A foxy trick to lure scavengers. Lily would gorge on those who would devour her.
“And you steal from the coop,” Robert prompted.
It was too much. The poultry yard raids and eggs for burying carried in her jaws. Both she and Robert were scatter hoarders who hid their treasures in the ground.
“You’ve come too late for Victor’s help. He’s dying.”
So many years wasted, when he’d been here all along. Indignation rose like bile in her throat, her cry stalled by the sadness on Robert’s face.
“I’m sorry.”
“Victor found me at a circus.”
“You were an acrobat?” She tried to make him smile. “A clown?”
Robert shook his head.
“My father sold me when I was a boy. My face wasn’t always so.”
Not hare lipped then but scarred. In his eyes, Lily saw the whip, the chain, incarceration in a cage.
“Victor bought and freed me. He taught me what it meant to be myself.”
Lily touched his lip where it had been too damaged to reunite. A vulnerable flaw that she found seductive and of which Robert was ashamed. She put her mouth to it. To kiss it better. As if to fuse their flesh together and make it whole. She’d bargained for her virtue only hours ago. Now she wanted to throw it away. Once gone, Lord Lacey could hardly take it from her.
She shed her dress, the shift, the torn stockings made of silk. Robert undressed for her in turn. They stood before each other as their natures intended. Not nude but naked. Revealed as they were, not as others saw them.
They leapt at one another. Moonlight struck their backs. It made them dance with joy. A pair of foxes, rolling in the grass. The chill of the coming winter did not sting. They had pelts to keep them warm.
“Lily, stop!”
Harry Hastings was too late. His daughter had slipped away and run onstage. For months she’d been a silent, fading shade, refusing all but the most babyish of foods. She’d pined away, day by day. By night she refused to sleep anywhere but under his bed.
Being fast, she’d got away from him, burrowing under the velvet covers of the cage. Being so small, she slid between the bars.
The women, even the royal ones, let out a scream. The men were on their feet with swords and pistols drawn. They’d come to see The Theologist perform a miracle, not the slaughter of a child. Hastings barged past the stagehands who tried to pull him back. He snatched a heavy swathe of velvet and pulled the curtain to the floor.
Victor Mallory had been perched upon the stool as they secured the cage. The Raja himself had checked the locks. Now, the Theologist wasn’t there. It was his famous bear. The animal didn’t rear up and bare his teeth as it normally did to impress the crowds. It was perched upon the stool, a fox cub curled up on its knee. Bear and fox gazed at each other in awe.
Afterwards, Lily rolled away from Robert. She surprised herself. There was no surge of shame, just relief. It had been urgent. Essential, even. She’d been unburdened. The reality of dreaming set her free. To kill, to feast, to copulate, to bathe in moonlight if she choose.
“Your dreams are your own,” he stroked her back, “Victor can’t give them to you.”
“Nor can you,” she turned to face him. “This doesn’t mean I’m yours. Or any man’s. I am my own.”
“Of course you are.” Then more softly, “None of us here at Grissleymire hold with ownership.”
It was the gentlest of reproaches.
He pulled their clothes over them. It was colder in their human skins. Lily could smell smoke. Music carried on the breeze. The strains of a jig played on a distant fiddle.
“Gypsies. Is it them that keep hunters off the land?”
“Warn them off. No more. They wouldn’t break the law for us.”
“They don’t work for Victor?”
Robert considered this.
“No, but Grissleymire’s a haven for them too. They’ll help if we need to leave here in a hurry.”
She sat up, shawl clutched to her breasts. “Leave?”
“Our sort doesn’t die peacefully in our beds. Someone will come for us eventually. Someone will always want our skins.”
The music was stopped by the tolling of the bell. A sound not belonging to the dead of night. A signal to take flight.
Grissleymire had once had its own chapel, but now all that remained was the tower and the bell. Someone had raised the alarm. The Romany camped around the grounds answered the call, having empathy for the displaced. Sympathy for the damned. They came with carriages and carts. Blinkers and nosebags filled with lavender quieted the horses.
Lily and Robert came upon an evacuation. Parents had shaken children from their beds. Those that roamed at night returned on all fours. Chests and carpetbags spilled clothes and pots and pans. The man with the ledger was at the door, ordering the chaos, doling out diamonds and gold. Everyone would have a share.
“What happened?” Robert asked.
“In there.” He didn’t pause in counting coins.
There’d been carnage. Lacey’s mastiffs lay where they’d been struck down. They’d been picked up and shaken by a snarling snout. Their throats ripped out.
“Arthur! Arthur!” Robert called. He’d seized Lily’s hand so as not to lose her in the crowd.
Arthur was a sad-faced man with amber eyes and a cloud of golden hair. He clapped Robert on the arm.
“Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Two men came with dogs. They wanted the girl.”
“You did that?” Robert meant the hounds spread across the hall.
“Yes,” Arthur looked ashamed.
“You’d better get going.”
“Will I see you again, my friend?”
“Of course.”
Lily turned away, unable to bear the final goodbyes in their eyes.
Vivien came jostling down the stairs, a cub under each arm. She spat at Lily and gnashed her teeth, angry to have to take her babies on the road so young.
“I believe this is yours.”
Vivien unknotted her apron and the head within rolled across the floor. She could spot ruffians like Pike at a mile. He’d received a savaging for her lifetime of ill use. Woe the man who threatened her brood. Lily noted that in Pike’s last moments, he’d had the grace to be surprised.
“Victor’s in the library with the other one. He says he’s staying here.” Then to Lily, “This is your fault.”
Victor and Lacey were alone. Lacey lay upon the floor. Lily could tell him from his clothes. His face lay separated, torn off by a single swipe from Victor’s paw. Lily stepped over him.
Blood-stained Victor didn’t get up.
“Victor. It’s me. Lily.” She knelt beside him.
“We were gods once.” He was looking at statues in the niches, the papyrus of the jackal headed man.
“Victor, we must leave,” Robert pleaded. “More men will come.”
Victor put a hand on Lily’s head. The weight of it was immense. A single strike would send her reeling across the room. Instead, there was only a gentle pat.
“They always come, eventually.”
“It’s my fault,” Lily confessed, “they followed me.”
She waited for the killing blow.
“I dare say I’ve done much worse in my time. You really don’t remember that day at the palace?”
“Yes, I do now. Papa was so angry. He said I was showing off.”
“He was frightened for you.”
“He made me promise never to do it again. I thought I hadn’t. Then, when he died, the dreams started. What I thought were dreams.”
“It’s time for you to go.”
“Not without you,” Robert said. “Come with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Victor tutted.
“You’ve gone soft. You shouldn’t make such offers. You’ve forgotten how to survive. She knows,” he pointed at Lily, “you should learn from her.”
Nature had deemed that Victor had outlived his usefulness but he’d not outlived Robert’s love. The fierceness of his feeling for another was what moved Lily the most. Robert clung to Victor, who pried him off. Lily dragged him from the room. He raised his head and howled. It took all her strength to calm his down.
“Come away, he’s tired. He needs to sleep, my love.”
Late morning, early in winter. The meet gathered, strutted in their scarlet. Drank Madeira from crystal glasses. The horses stamped and pranced, steam streamed from their nostrils. The hounds were brought. A seething mass.
They did not smell the vixen or her mate. They’d rolled in juniper bushes to mask their scent. They watched the hunt move off from their vantage point upon the outhouse roof. No one was left to see them slide off and run along the wall. Streaks of brown and white and red, then gone.