The final hymn is being sung off-key and I suspect the choir-master will not be pleased. I smile, imagining his scowl as he tries to locate the culprit amongst those angel-faces. Imagination is all I have at this distance, there’s very little to see from the arse-end of the Cathedral.
Pillars, posts, baptismal fonts, and other members of the faithful all ruin the landscape. My kind are tolerated in church, but only just. This is not the view I used to have; once, I sat in the pews up front, those with little gates on the side to let everyone know how special we were.
Once, I was on show.
I still am, I suppose, but now it’s looks of pity, occasionally of contempt. Always curiosity. I’d have thought that after six months it would have died down, but apparently not. I hold my head high, meeting cold stares with one even frostier until they turn away. But I tolerate this, continue coming back once a week for my daughter’s sake. Just because I’ve lost faith doesn’t mean Magdalene should be denied the possibilities of its comfort; besides she loves the theatre of it as only a child can. When she is older she can decide for herself whether there is something genuine to be had.
The archbishop lifts the chalice, makes his final flamboyant gestures, bows his head, and bids those within range of his voice to go in peace. This much I know from memory. Those in the front rows rise and I think I see the flash of Stellan’s golden hair and a hook twists in my gut; but I could be mistaken. No sign of the other one though. The flock rises with the rhythm of a wave. One advantage of our lowly seating is its proximity to the door. We, the inhabitants of the inn, are out in the sunlight before the exulted few have managed to move two yards.
Magdalene’s hand creeps up to twine fingers with mine, her grip tight and clammy. In the shade of the portico at the top of the steps sit the archbishop’s six hounds. Grey and silver in the shadows, insubstantial until someone with ill intent crosses the threshold, then they become suddenly-solid, voracious and vicious. No one wants a resurrected wolf hunting them down. I have explained, over and over, to my little girl that they will do her no harm, but there is a core of fear in her that not even her mother can touch.
From across the square comes the sound of a carriage and four. It is the white ceremonial one I rode in on my wedding day. The sheer curtains are drawn but I think I see pale blond hair as the occupant peeks out. Polly, who has yet to attend a church service in all her time in this city. My sister makes no pretence of religious zeal.
Behind us the wolf-hounds growl and Magdalene wails, climbing up my skirts like a terrified monkey. She holds me so tightly I can barely breathe. Grammy Sykes pats her back and talks in a low voice to the wolf-hounds. They react to her tone, settle back to sit in the shadows, the exiting crowd giving them a wide berth. I look at them, wondering who among the press of bodies set the beasts off. Grammy pokes me to move along and we head for home.
The inn is old, so old that if you cut into the walls you might find age rings like those in the great trees of the forest beyond the city walls. The wood panels have been darkened by years, hearth smoke, sweat, tears, and alcohol vapour. If you licked them (as the children sometimes do), you’d taste hops as well as varnish.
The bar itself, where Fra Benedict serves the drinks, is pitted with the marks of drinking vessels slammed down too hard, the irresistible will of dripping liquid, and the musings and graffiti carved by the bored, the drunk, and the lonely when the barman is distracted. The glassware gleams, though, as do the metal fixtures and the bottles behind the bar are kept clean (although it’s not as if they stay undisturbed long enough for dust to settle). There are booths with seats covered in balding velvet, and the hiss-hum of the gas lamps (lit low for daytime) is a constant comfort.
Things are quiet at the moment, Sunday afternoon, most of our clients still pretending their piety after Mass this morning. There’s only Faideau in a corner booth, his breeches slung low and his shirt stained with wine. He’s a poet, he says; drinks like one at any rate. He snores loudly. Fra Benedict will go through his pockets soon for the money he owes, then roust him to move on, to spend at least a few hours out in the sunshine.
In one corner is the crèche, where we whores and wenches leave our children (those of us who have them) under the tender, watchful eyes of Grammy Sykes and her half-wolf, half-something-or-other, Fenric. The small space is scattered with books and toys, which miraculously stay within a reasonable radius. Two little boys, and three girls, one of them Magdalene, three years old and still clad in her red Sunday robe. My little girl, the only reminder that I was once loved.
In the kitchen I can hear Bitsy dropping pans. A few seconds later Rilka chases her out, swearing mildly, which is about as angry as anyone can get with Bitsy, who now stands in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. Fra Benedict makes his particular peculiar noise to catch her attention, jerks his head for her to come and sit at the bar. He is mute, his tongue having been torn out many years ago in some monastery brawl. Bitsy hoists herself onto one of the high stools and sips at the weak ale and blackberry shandy he pours for her.
Bitsy is a little older than me: her face bears the blankness of youth and her long straight hair is a white blond. She used to be a doll-maker. Not all of them go the same way; she made a special kind of doll, putting tiny pieces of her soul into them. Beautiful dolls, they were (I saw some in a museum, once), but each one left her emptier.
Now she’s touched, little more than a doll herself, with just enough wit to sometimes take drinks to tables, wash dishes, and lie still when a client with no need for a real response climbs aboard and lets her giggle beneath him. Fra Benedict is kind to her; I think they are distant cousins.
Rilka’s dark head pops out of the kitchen. “Finished with them peas yet, Theodora?”
I shake my head. “Soon, Rilka.”
She disappears with a profanity. Rilka was a nun, in her better days.
Now she’s just like us. Some men pay extra for her to lose her spectacular temper and hurt them. Her special gentlemen callers, she says with a laugh. Tall and muscular, cedar-skinned Rilka doubles as cook.
Kitty thinks Rilka killed someone, tells how she talks in her sleep.
Kitty mends our dresses, sitting in the corner, working on one of those I brought with me, taken apart and made over to fit others. I had no further need of finery. Kitty pulls hard on her final stitch, makes a knot then cuts the thread with her teeth, etching more deeply the tailor’s notch in her left front tooth. Her hair is brassy-bright, a touch of red, a touch of gold; it’s beautiful and distracts clients from the scars on her face: two running parallel across the bridge of her nose before dropping down her left cheek like deep gutters, relics of an unkind husband. Her eyes are blue and sad.
She holds the dress up for me to see: the green and gold brocade is now short enough to show off Livilla’s fine legs, and tight enough around the waist to push her breasts up so they will spill from the top of the bodice. I nod approval just as we hear one of Livilla’s loud sighs floating down from an upstairs room. A few seconds later there is a satisfied, bellowing grunt from her client. She has earned her fee for the day.
Fra Benedict and Grammy Sykes, his common-law wife, don’t make us take all comers. Most of the men are regulars who know Fra and Grammy keep a fair house with clean, cared-for girls. Sometimes there are women, too, anxious for something soft and gentle as a welcome relief from their husbands’ violent prongings. We need only bed one client each day, any after that are up to our discretion. The fee here is high enough and the need for us to work as bar wenches outweighs the pull of the money to be made in excessive bed-sports. One of the advantages of Fra and Grammy’s lax policy is that men are anxious to have what might be refused them, so we always have clientele, banging on the doors, hoping to pay for our favours.
Grammy Sykes was a whore once herself; she remembers what it was like, the constant line of hard, demanding cocks. I think she prides herself on being kinder to us than anyone ever was to her. Livilla whispers that Grammy was a great beauty in her day, although there is scant evidence of it now.
Grammy and Fra will both tell you how many of their girls have gone on to better places, indeed, so many of their old girls are now the wives of rich and influential men that upper-class dinner parties sometimes resemble a whores’ reunion; can’t throw a silken shoe without hitting some woman who used to earn her living horizontally. The comfort of a prosperous future is for the other girls. They don’t tell me this story.
I finish shelling the peas then turn to polishing the silverware Grammy keeps for the private parlour. I hear the front door open behind me, see the sunlight flare in momentarily before the door closes and the cool dimness is restored. I don’t turn around until Fra nods to indicate that the customer is waiting for me.
Prycke was, still is, the Prime Minister. He wanders the capital with minimal guards as if he is still as unimportant now as he was when he was born in the lower slum areas, out near the abattoirs in the furthest, poorest quarters of the city. He’s not overly tall, has a stern sallow face, but his eyes are kind. Clad in dark colours, you might not realise how fine the fabrics of his breeches and frock coat are unless you look carefully. The buckles on his shoes catch the light of the gas-lamps and it seems he has stars on his feet.
“Have you a moment, mistress?”
I nod, feeling the precarious pile of dark curls on my head sway; one long tendril breaks free and snakes down my neck. He watches it fall. “My time costs nowadays, sirrah.”
He is taken aback, reaches into a pocket and draws forth two gold coins. I raise one finely plucked brow but say nothing. I remain silent until he has extracted seven gold coins, then tell him to pay Fra Benedict.
Prycke follows me upstairs. I choose the room with blue velvet curtains hanging around the four-poster bed and a view of the city, an expanse of roofs and, if you look straight down, the Lilyhead fountain and children playing in its greenish waters. I tug at the loose stays of my dress with one hand and at the single clip in my hair with the other; the russet velvet falls to the floor and torrents of hair tumble down to my waist, obscuring the jut of my breasts. I sweep the tresses back so he gets his money’s worth.
He gulps, removes his shoes first (so sensible! So practical! So strategic!), then his coat, and unbuttons his breeches, letting them drop. His legs are pale, hairy, strong. The tip of his cock peeps from under the hem of his shirt, shy, not quite ready. He didn’t expect this encounter, I’m sure, at least not this kind of encounter.
I lie on the bed, splayed like an open flower, and wait for him.
When we are finished, he avoids my eyes. He slips, calls me Majesty. I laugh long and hard at that.
“Would you come back, Ma—madam? If you could?”
“Even if I wanted to, I would not, could not. Another sits in my place.” I fix him with a stare, blue and cold.
“Your step-sister, madam, she never sets foot in . . . ”
“My sister, Prycke, neither step nor half. Only full-blood can hate so well.”
“Your husband sent me.”
“My husband heard me called ‘whore’ and believed it. My husband heard his daughter called ‘bastard’ and believed that, too.” I hiss the words at him, spittle gathering at the corners of my mouth and curse that I still feel anything. “Five years together and I gave him no cause to doubt me, but the moment my sister swears to him that I had taken lovers he believed her.”
“Madam, I was not in the city when it happened. I would have counselled him otherwise,” he stammers. He feels badly for me. But he did nothing for me.
“For all the good it would have done. My husband brands me whore and takes my sister to his bed. So, I embrace my new title, Prycke. I am whore to whoever pays for me.” I sit up, step into my gown, lacing it tightly for I have earned my keep for today and tomorrow.
He dresses quickly, a handy skill. “Madam, your sister has a strangeness about her. She is peculiar . . . she does not attend . . . ”
I raise my hand. “No more, Prycke. No more.” He reaches for the doorhandle. “Prycke?”
He turns back, face hopeful.
“Tell the archbishop I will see him on Tuesday, at our usual time.”
“Illustrious company we’re keeping,” snipes red-haired Livilla, but it’s a half-hearted dig. She’s feeling generous after her early earnings.
Fra Benedict gives me a grin and flips me a gold coin. I more than double-charged Prycke and the spare is mine.
“My thanks, Fra.” I smile at Livilla, then take pity on her and snap the coin down the middle, along the little groove meant for such making of smaller change. Livilla, for all her ill liver, has stood me well in the last six months; this is a small price, to share with her.
“Pippet, moppet, dolly-doll-doll!” Bitsy sings from the crèche, where Magdalene has crawled onto her lap.
“Watch yer childer,” slurs Faideau. “Watch ’em after dark.”
“Shut up, you sot,” Livilla throws in his direction.
“Childer going missing, mark me.” Faideau subsides back to his stupor.
“Man at his finest,” sneers Rilka. “What a wonderful husband he’ll make.”
Livilla shrieks with laughter.
“When I remarry,” says Kitty dreamily, “I want that fancy bread they make. Queer shapes and all.”
“The girl, Emmeline’s her name, don’t do that no more and she’s the one you want. She moved in with some rich fella, the one whose wife choked on their wedding bread.” Rilka sniggers. “Sure that’s what you want?”
I had Emmeline’s breads at my wedding, but I don’t tell them that.
Kitty tosses her curls. “I want what rich folk have. Her mother still makes the fancy bread; not so good, but still it’s the best can be had.”
Grammy finishes the argument. “Stop yer yammers. Time to get ready, my girls, clients be here soon, almost five of the after.”
We troop upstairs to tidy ourselves. Those who’ve already earned their horizontal fee taking a little less care than those who have not.
Livilla and I will wench this eve; one of Rilka’s beaters is expected, Kitty and Bitsy have no appointments and so will take whoever they like.
Restless, I leave my bed and sit at the attic window.
Through the frost-dimmed glass I can see square after square after square, all the way up to the giant square that is the epicentre of this city. All the way up to the Cathedral with its vaunting spire and gothic towers, flying buttresses—as if all possible styles were thrown together with no thought for taste. Right next to the Cathedral lies the Palace, my once and former home.
A small palace but respectable nonetheless, perfectly appropriate for the size and wealth of our city, with sufficient halls and ballrooms and bedchambers and kitchens and wine cellars to ensure we were not embarrassed by the standard of our Palace. Gilt and glass and crystal in all the right places, the chandeliers kept shiny and bright, the wood panelling polished to a warm, rich finish, the brocades and tapestries thick and elaborate. Just the right number of winding staircases, deserted towers, and hidden passageways.
Above it all flies the full-faced moon, soft and cold.
I look at Magdalene, curled into our bed like a kitten. This is the child I did not want. She was the change in my life that was utterly undesired. Stellan, though, he wanted her, wanted an heir, proof of his potency. I spent my pregnancy in a stew of discontent, resentful of being subject to the rhythms of another organism, of a heart beating not quite in time with mine. It was Stellan who would rub my swollen belly, caress the hot distended skin and whisper to what grew within.
He made plans for her, told her about the little city that was her inheritance. He created a future for her then forgot it just as quickly.
In truth, for me it did not happen with speed, the change of heart. I resented her as much in the first few weeks of her life as ever; I shudder to think on the bitter milk she drank from me. I do not believe there was a single moment when it changed: I simply found myself going willingly to her one day, craving the serenity of the times when she fed and I simply sat, we two in our tranquil little bubble. And Stellan stood outside where he was prey to others, although I did not know it at the time.
Bitsy and Livilla and Livilla’s sons sleep in the room on one side of us, Rilka and Kitty and their respective daughters in the room on the other; they will hear her if she wakes. I drop a kiss on her sleep-damp forehead then slip a long black woollen dress over the top of my night-gown and pull on a heavy coat, belting it tightly around my waist.
Under Bitsy’s door I can see a splash of light—we have candlelight up here, only gas on the floors below. I tap lightly and go in. Bitsy is in bed, wrapped around a large doll with red hair. Livilla sits in a rocking chair, half-moon glasses balanced on her nose while she reads a scandal-sheet.
“Listen out for Magdalene? I’m going for a walk.”
“Bring her in here?”
“Only if she wakes.”
“Cost you half a gold coin.” She grins wickedly.
“I’d say I’m in credit.”
I hear her low laughter as I close the door. My boots I carry downstairs lest I disturb the others. Grammy Sykes is sitting by the fire, asleep, Fenric at her feet. Fra has gone to bed, leaving her to doze. He used to wake her up but sometimes she has fearful dreams and one night she almost took his right eye out, thinking he was one of the things that hunted her in sleep.
“Cold to be going outside, Theodora,” she rasps, surprising me and Fenric, who growls grumpily, rolls over, farts, and goes back to sleep.
“Got the wanders, Grammy, itchy feet, bed doesn’t feel right.” I sit next to her, basking in the warmth of the fire, trying to store up its heat as I put on my boots. “Livilla is listening for Magdalene.”
“Watch yourself on the streets. Not just children that go missing.”
“I’ll be careful. We’re not in the worst parts, Grammy, I can handle myself.” I lift the knife from the pocket of my jacket, its curved silver length gleaming.
She nods. “Beware all the same. There’s a little girl needs you to come back.”
I kiss the salt and pepper hair peeking out from under her white cap. “I promise.”
The cold steals the breath from my lungs, the winter nights far worse than the days, when we get sunshine to take off the chill. I walk up the middle of the street, trusting that I will see or hear anyone moving in the shadows. I make my way quickly along the cobbles, accompanied by the sound of my own footsteps, the occasional feline yowl, the barking of a stray dog, the rumbling anger of households in turmoil. I feel the houses reaching up, towering over me. I can see under entryways through to the courtyards at the heart of each block, all with a well or a fountain, some with dark gardens and sculptures, some as bare as a newborn.
Soon the Cathedral is in front of me, crouching like one of the gargoyles that embroider its roof. The doors are open, and lights burn inside although it is well after midnight. The archbishop likes his house of worship to be open at all hours; and he trusts that the wolf-hounds will discourage any vandalism. I hold my hand out to the closest one. A shiver passes through me as it pushes its wet, ghostly nose against my palm, and whimpers for a pat I cannot give. I call it sweet and handsome and it settles back to its post. I walk through the great double doors.
Up the aisle, then to the left of the enormous altar, into the small Chapel of the Thirteenth Apostle hidden by a rich tapestry depicting the growth of Saint Radagund’s very fine beard. Behind the elaborately carved prie-dieu my fingers find the catches carved into its underside and pull. Stone scrapes across stone and a hole appears in the floor at my feet, flagstones whirling aside like a child’s puzzle. I take a torch from the wall. The steps are familiar under my boots; the skeletons sleeping in the wall niches feel like old friends.
This passage leads into the Palace, into the rooms I once called my own, before my sister took my place. Specifically, into the fountain room, my fountain room. A misleading name, really, as it’s actually a bathroom, a marvel of white and blue marble, gold and silver tiles, and crystal and nacre inlays. The roof is made of a continuous sheet of rock crystal, so it seems open to the sky; it’s especially beautiful at night.
My boots make a lonely noise as the steps begin to rise, and so I go on tiptoe. I open the hidden door and step out from behind a screen of gold, engraved with a fairytale pattern: Hansie and Greta and their adventure in the cottage made of sugar.
My footsteps sound hollow in this place where once I used to tread so confidently. There are fountains to decorate each corner, cushioned couches and benches, a small wooden hut for steaming oneself, hot and cold plunge baths, and a big swimming pool right in the centre of the room; I stop at its shallow end. The water is dark in spite of the moonlight, almost dirty, thick as blood or treacle. I can see ripples, though, sluggishly coming toward me. I suck in a sharp breath and retreat, back to the shelter of the screen, peering out through the tiny pinpricks in the metal.
It heaves from the depths and shambles up the pool steps to stand in the milky-white moonlight. I can see it clearly: tall but hunched and twisted, straggly black hair, hooked nose, wrinkled skin, long fingers and teeth razor-sharp, empty dugs half-way down its chest, and a great shaggy pubic thatch at the junction of its thighs.
A troll-wife come out of the forest and into the city.
It sniffs the air, treads toward my hiding place with deliberate paces. I don’t want to take my eyes from it, but feel my bladder threaten to fail me. At last I look away and slam myself through the doorway; the panel clicks shut behind me with barely a whisper.
I rest my forehead against the cool stone, try to steady my trembling legs. On the other side I can hear cold, hungry breathing, sense uncertainty; sometimes they have trouble knowing how fresh a scent is but they have been known to follow an old one for days, to finally track a meal down, some unwary traveller who thought himself safely home.
There’s a low growl that becomes a laugh: knowing and ugly. I turn tail and run.
“Mama, you’re hurting me!” I’ve clung to my daughter so tightly that I’ve woken her. Morning light trickles in, grey and grim.
“Sorry, my love.” I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, at the intricacies of the thatch-work that keeps us dry and safe from the weather but nothing more sinister. Magdalene falls back into a doze.
Downstairs, Faideau still snores in his corner; Fra must have given up trying to wake him and send him home. I pour out a measure of mulberry brandy and wave it in front of his nose, a treat. The smell wakes him as surely as frizzling bacon wakes Fenric and makes him dance on his hind legs.
“Breakfast?” I offer.
Red-eyed, he takes the pewter mug and tosses back its contents without a pause. I wince on his behalf but he seems to neither need, nor notice, my sympathy. He lets loose an eye-watering belch and I try to wave the fumes away, but the stench is stubborn.
“I swear your breath comes straight from Satan’s arse, Faideau.”
“Language, Your Majesty,” he waggles a finger.
“You’ll hear worse soon if you don’t drop that.” I tap the back of his hand to get his attention. A map is tattooed there. “Faideau, you said yesterday that children were going missing.”
He nods, sombre, if not sober, as a judge. “Six months or a peck more. From all the squares—but mostly from the poorer ones—families as don’t have much food and too many small mouths lining up for it. Sometimes they mind and report to Prycke’s Peelers, sometimes they don’t.”
“Any children from around here?”
“Not yet. Mind the inn’s childer, Theodora.”
I tip another generous slug of brandy into his mug and am rewarded with a smile. “Keep an ear to the ground, Faideau?”
He nods, asks: “Do you know anything, Theodora? Only you look afraid this morn and you never looked afraid the whole time I knowed you.”
“I . . . I think there . . . no, Faideau.” I shake my head. “I don’t know anything.” I turn toward the kitchen to begin the day’s breakfast, look back to him. “Faideau? Are you really a poet?”
His index finger rises and taps at the side of his nose. “Poets are folk what can’t write full sentences,” he says.
“After this, madam, just one more payment,” says the stocky man, handing me a scrappy receipt. “The house is in good repair, and the estate around it. You can hire labour from the village.”
“No need for that,” I tell him, tucking the scrap into the deep pocket of my skirt. In return I give him a pouch heavy with gold coins, the third such in the past few months.
“Thank you, madam.” He hesitates. “I must say I had no idea your particular line of work was so lucrative.”
“It’s amazing how much men will pay.” True, but also true is the fact that I have gradually sold off the gems and jewels I had sewed into the stomach of Magdalene’s favourite toy fox when I sensed trouble brewing in the Palace. And of course I have other means of funding our escape.
“One more payment, madam,” he repeats. “May I ask when . . . ?”
“Soonest, Mr Spittleshanks, soonest.” I stand, take a look around his study as I always do. “Your business is doing well, sir. I see another volume of Murcianus’s treatise on folk tales.”
He beams that I’ve noticed. Even a fallen princess is a princess.
“Perhaps madam would like to borrow something to pass the time?”
I laugh. “What a kind offer, but I have plenty to occupy my time, Mr Spittleshanks.” He reddens and I add, not unkindly: “Perhaps soon, sir, when my life . . . changes.”
We part on good terms. I go to his house for our transactions, entering by the back garden—I prefer no one to know my affairs, there might be questions—and we deal only about the house I am buying. None of my usual “commerce” gets done with him. If I thought it would decrease the cost of the house I would have no compunction, but Mr Spittleshanks is a canny businessman, with a plump, comfortable wife. I suspect he fears anything more—energetic—with me might stop his heart and he would certainly not think bed-sports worth a discount on a property.
I pass through the market at Busynothings Alley and buy the fruit and vegetables Grammy asked for, and a loaf of fancy bread shaped like a fine shoe to amuse Kitty and the girls. Some brittle sugar candy for the children takes care of the last of the pennies in my pockets, but there is always more can be earned so it bothers me not. The sunlight makes me feel happy, safe; I can almost forget last night.
I don’t go through the front door into the main bar, but pass under the archway into the courtyard where Fra’s two superannuated black horses stand with their heads over the half-doors of their stalls, hoping for a pat. I pull two carrots from the string bag and offer them up to eager teeth and tongues. I note that there are already fresh carrot and apple fragments on the cobbles. “Greedy.”
In through the back door to the kitchen, where Rilka is waiting impatiently.
“About time, Theodora.”
I poke out my tongue, dump the groceries on the large scarred table. I put the candy there, too, and point. “That’s for the children.”
She makes a rude noise. I pick up the bucket and go back out to the courtyard to draw water from the well in the centre. The bucket drops down faster than it should and there is a scrape and a splash. I draw it back up, and look into the water to make sure it looks clean enough.
Distracted, I examine my reflection. Still beautiful, strangely unmarked by my recent trials, only the eyes are cold now, pain frozen and held there.
Another face appears beside mine in the liquid mirror. I push away from the well, the pail falls and its contents splashes all over my visitor’s fine shoes.
My sister does not look pleased.
Did she ever move so silently when we were small?
“You’ve ruined my shoes, Theodora.”
“They were probably mine in the first place, Polly,” I say.
“I’ve long since finished with your cast-offs.” She reconsiders. “Well, except your husband. I’ll keep him a while longer.”
“You’re welcome to him, sister.” I circle away from her, uncertain why I am so unsettled, our recent history notwithstanding. Beyond the archway I can see the coach that brought her here, and two liveried footmen as well as the driver. I never used a coach in the city, I walked or rode my own horse. I smile in spite of myself; of course Polly would choose all the trappings, she thinks they make her legitimate.
Around her neck is the diamond necklace Stellan gave me on our wedding night. Strictly speaking, it’s part of the crown jewels so it was never really mine, but it still sickens me to see it on her. Its entire length is set with diamonds and the central stone is a ruby the size of a bantam’s egg. I tear my eyes from it. I have not truly seen her since the day she ruined my life. Prosperity agrees with her. Her face is plump, pink; she looks well-fed.
She takes a step to follow me.
“No. You will not enter here,” I tell her. “This space is mine.”
She shrugs as if it is no matter. “I came to ask a favour of you, Theodora, and you are being so rude to me.”
“Ask and be gone and consider yourself lucky when you leave.”
She pouts. “The archbishop.”
I say nothing.
“The archbishop is an especial friend of yours.”
I shrug.
She stamps her foot, small and damp, and water squelches. “He will not grant your husband a divorce.”
I laugh and laugh. I laugh until tears run from my eyes and my jaw aches. Her face, pale as her white silk dress, turns an angry red.
“And so you can’t marry him!” I say. “Ah, sister, you are just as much a whore as I.”
“If you ask the archbishop he will consent,” she almost shouts, remembers to be ladylike and lowers her voice—I’m sure my husband has yet to see one of her rages. “If you ask it of him, then I will be able to marry.”
“Oh, you idiot. You still think you can get your way as you did when we were children. Throw a tantrum and wait for everyone to give in.” I breathe deeply. “Polly, there’s no one here to make me give in to you now. No mother or father begging for a quiet existence. Let what you’ve already taken from me be enough.”
“I want to marry! I must marry! If I marry—” she stops herself, reeling the secret back into her mouth.
“What, Polly?” I scoff, unable to fathom this need of hers. “You’ll live happily ever after?”
Her blue eyes, paler than mine, narrow. “Do you like your daughter? Do you love little . . . Magdalene, is it?”
As if summoned by her name, my daughter appears at the open kitchen door. She stops when she sees the snowy vision that is my sister, her little face uncertain.
I stand so close to Polly that she can feel the heat of my breath on her face and the spittle that flies from my mouth. “If you so much as say my daughter’s name again, I will kill you, sister, have no doubt of that.”
“You’ve made your choice then,” she says flatly.
The clients have gone but the inn’s residents are awake late this night, children included, so we sit by the hearth downstairs, drinking warm goats’ milk made sharper by Fra’s home-made whisky. The children have straight milk and some crumbly butter biscuits. We are a strange little family, but a family nonetheless.
Kitty is singing: a soft, sweet song about a disappeared lover and his forever-faithful woman when the fire wavers and almost dies. The room goes cold and a frost creeps across the mirror behind the bar. We are silent, listening hard.
There’s a snuffling at the front door. The handle rattles but it has already been locked. Fra throws the sturdy bar down across it. The wooden shutters on the windows have been long-since pulled-to to keep the heat in. Whatever is outside grunts angrily, shakes the door again. Fenric growls but does not move; he is afraid, his fur in such sharp peaks that he looks like a large hedgehog.
“The back door!” hisses Kitty and Rilka bolts through to the kitchen.
We hear a thump as the bar slides into place there. The upper windows are out of reach.
We all cower by the fireplace, clutching our children and each other. It’s quiet. I creep to the front door and put my eye to the small hole Fra drilled there so we can see who comes a-calling. A yellow eye stares back at me. I scream, scaring the thing as much as it scares me. It stumbles back and I can see all of it, and know it’s the troll-wife come to sniff me out. It turns and shambles back up the street, away from the inn. It was hoping for surprise, to find me alone in my bed, asleep and vulnerable, not safely locked up with friends. It won’t risk confrontation with a crowd.
“It’s gone,” I say, voice shaking. Magdalene climbs into my arms and I sit by the fire; it takes me a long time to get warm.
Grammy asks: “What is it?”
“Troll-wife,” I answer. “I saw it last night. It’s got my scent.”
Grammy is quiet for a while. “Are you sure that’s all?”
“What do you mean? What more can there be?”
Fra hands me another cup of warm milk, but I can’t taste the milk for all the whisky he’s put in. Grammy begins to rock in her chair.
Fenric sits close, careful his tail does not get caught under the rockers, but close enough that Grammy can bury her hand deep in his thick, syrup-coloured fur and soothe him.
“I mean, Theodora, that everyone knows your story. A woodcutter father who took a runaway princess to wife. The girl who freed a lost prince from a wolf-trap and captured his heart so he brought her here on his gleaming white charger.”
“It was black, actually,” I say.
“A happy princess, wife, and mother you were until your sister arrived. We know your story, Theodora, but,” she pauses, rocks hard, “what’s your sister’s story?”
“That thing isn’t my sister,” I protest. “She’s mean and spoilt, but . . . ”
“Yes?”
“She stayed behind in the forest with our father when I left, to take care of him. I said they should come with me, but they both refused. My mother has been dead for . . . ” Something comes to me, drifting up from the depths of memory. “When we were small—I was three, she just a few months old—our mother was washing clothes by the stream. I was playing with a doll and Polly was sleeping in her basket. Mama turned away for just a moment and Polly was gone, basket and all. She stayed gone for the better part of a day, all the while mama held on to me and screamed and shouted.
“We found her, though, further downstream, in a place we’d already looked. One minute she was gone, then back, no different.”
Grammy speaks slowly, pulling old knowledge out of a deep well.
“Trolls will take human babies and leave their own offspring in place, re-shaping their children’s flesh and putting a binding spell on to hold it for sixteen, seventeen years, or until the troll-child is about to come to adulthood.
“Some troll-parents will come looking for the child. Sometimes not, and the troll-child has to find its own malicious way.”
“What happens to the human babies?” asks Kitty, holding her little girl close.
Grammy purses her lips. “Some are kept as slaves under the earth. Most times they’re eaten as tender treats. When it’s grown the troll-child learns to change back to troll flesh. Some choose to stay like that, retreat to the forests and mountains and caves and live out their long, miserable lives. Others choose to stay with humans, but some things they just can’t hide—even in human form, stepping on hallowed ground makes them sick as sick can be. And they don’t lose . . . their appetites.”
“All the missing childer,” moans Faideau from his corner. We jump, having forgotten he was there.
I shake my head. “No, Grammy, no. She’s mean but not . . . not my sister,” I finish lamely.
The Treasury is situated, contrarily, in one of the worst parts of the city. I like the irony, though, of the treasurer and his attendant parasites, bankers and moneylenders, daily making their way through a sea of honest thieves and pickpockets.
It is a newer building but that doesn’t mean it’s without hidden ways. I take the secret tunnel from deep in Bingle the wine merchant’s cellar. When I was princess, Treasurer Pinchpen entrusted me with the city’s finances—at least in word if not in deed—it was more for the sake of form, to honour the history of the thing, the princess’s purview has always been holding the city’s purse strings. Pinchpen didn’t show me the passages, I found them for myself, pushed by boredom into exploring on the days when all I had to do was wait for the clerks to count taxes, balance books, and the like, so I could stamp the seal into the hot wax gobbet on the records.
The passage comes out somewhat inconveniently behind a book-shelf in an antechamber, not directly inside the vault. In the dark, when I generally undertake these trips, it’s not a problem.
Today, in the light of the afternoon, it is a problem because my husband stands at the tall French window that looks out onto the grubby street. I catch my breath and he turns.
“Theodora,” he says, the sunlight hits his blond hair and his tanned face gleams as if coated with gold dust. But he looks unwell. There’s something grey under his skin, dark shadows beneath the green eyes.
“Hello, Stellan.” Nothing for it but to brazen it out.
“You’re here. I haven’t seen you in so long.”
I give him a look that says quite plainly he’s an idiot and he has the good grace to seem ashamed. I don’t want to prolong this but still I say, “What are you doing here?”
“End of the month book balancing. I have to do it now you’re . . . ”
I am thankful, for once, for his self-centredness, which means he doesn’t think to ask me what I’m doing there. “I must go,” I say and turn on my heel, away from my goal, cursing silently. It will have to wait, until darkness falls and I must risk the streets.
“I sent Prycke to speak with you,” he said. I’m willing to bet Prycke didn’t tell him the details of our negotiations. “Was I wrong, Theodora? Was I wrong to listen to her?”
I stop. “If you need to ask, Stellan, then you know the answer.”
He grabs my arm, forces me to face him. Between his pearly white teeth he hisses: “Theodora, there’s something in the Palace.”
I cannot shake him off. “I know. I know.”
He drops my arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I laugh. “And how would I have done that? Since you banned me from my former home? Should I ask my loving sister to take a message to you? For her to whisper it in your ear at night as you lie together? Is she sweet and tender and loving?” I lower my voice. “Don’t you wonder that there are nights when she does not come to you? Does she go to the Cathedral with you, Stellan, every Sunday?”
His mouth moves but nothing comes out. His eyes are filmy with tears. How could I have loved him? How could I have thought him brave, charming, strong? I should have left him in the wolf-trap.
“How is Magdalene?” he whispers.
I step away. “Don’t you speak her name. You have no daughter and you have no wife. You have a city that’s losing its children, a palace that’s haunted, and a foul creature in your bed.” I don’t hate him anymore, there’s just a kind of sad, hollow pity. “I wish you joy of them, Stellan.”
“Hold her tight, watch her close.” My words circle around in my mind like confused birds, the words I spoke to Bitsy when I entrusted Magdalene to her earlier.
In the stables, Bitsy lies, torn from groin to sternum, innards spilling out onto the fresh straw. The black horses stand as far away as they can, both trembling. The air in the dim, enclosed space is rich, fœtid, choking.
There is no sign of Magdalene.
I told Bitsy to look after my daughter, and I condemned her to this, because Bitsy would never have let Magdalene go without a fight.
Kitty is frozen next to me, staring at our dead friend.
“Who came?” I ask, unable to breathe.
She doesn’t seem to understand. I grab her shoulders, shake her violently, unfairly. “Who came?”
“Your sister!” Two voices, Kitty and Rilka together, Rilka at the entrance to the stables, her shadow long, making Bitsy’s corpse almost invisible. “Your sister came.”
“I saw the carriage,” says Rilka, “but she didn’t come in.”
“Must have gone around the back,” gulps Kitty, tears starting. She falls away from my hands, sinks to her knees beside Bitsy.
“Where’s Magdalene?” I ask, and they both turn pale, even Rilka under her cedar skin. I moan, hold my head, feel sick, but I don’t indulge for long. I can’t.
I run, pushing through waves of people who seem to have materialised just to slow me down. My breath sounds loud to my ears and I’m sure everyone can hear the thud of my heart, matching time with the clacking of my boots on the cobbles. The knife in the pocket of my skirt thuds rhythmically against my thigh. The spire of the Cathedral comes into view, looming over other rooftops. I round the corner and cross the square, lungs aching, take the steps to the portico two at a time, ignore the shimmering shapes of the bored wolf-hounds pacing there.
Up the aisle, past silent, wide-eyed parishioners. Into the chapel, anxiously waiting for the stones to shift aside, not fast enough, not fast enough. Along the tunnel through cold, damp air, the flame of the hastily-grabbed torch flickering, guttering with my speed, but staying stubbornly lit.
I don’t know, I don’t know where they are, but this is the place I will start, the place where I first saw the troll-wife, the only place I can think of.
The panel to the fountain room slips aside. Heedlessly, I throw down the torch and without caution step from behind the screen.
Magdalene sits on one of the benches, nervously swinging her little feet, face pinched and pale, bright curls damp and darkened with sweat. One of her shoes is missing and there is a tear where one of the sleeves meets the rest of her dress. She sees me, face lighting up.
“Mama!”
“Oh, my heart.” The distance to her seems so long. I kneel down, hold her tight, blink away the burning tears. I pick her up, and discover why she did not come to me when first she saw me. A rope runs from her left ankle to the leg of the bench, which is embedded in the floor.
“Oh, how sweet! What tender motherly love! How delightful a reunion.” Polly’s tone is poison. She steps out from behind the little steam hut and stalks towards us. Her dress is pale pink, silky, her tooled leather shoes a matching hue. Around her neck is the diamond necklace, the master stone lying snugly just below the hollow of her throat.
“Polly,” is all I can manage.
“No, no, don’t thank me.” She gleams at me. “Really.”
“That was hardly the thing on my mind.” I push Magdalene behind me. She clutches at my skirts, tiny terrified hands pinching at me.
“I have tried so hard, Theodora. That is what you don’t understand.” She sighs. “What I am—what I was born—I have tried to escape, to change. If I try hard, ever so hard—if I live as a human, then perhaps I can become a human. Live a normal life, keep my human skin tight around me. Marry a human. Then maybe, just maybe it will rub off on me.”
Here is the heart of my sister’s desire: humanity. I push my daughter further behind me. “I’m taking my child, Polly, we’re leaving the city.”
“Oh no, not good enough. I’ve been thinking, sister dear, divorce really isn’t good enough at all. You’ll still be in his thoughts; he’ll always wonder if he was right about you or not. He’ll think about his little girl and how she’s growing up without him.” She smiles and it brings a cold rush of air into the fountain room. “Missing is better. Dead is best.”
She begins to change, to elongate, to increase in bulk; her skin loses its sheen and firmness, darkening and corrugating; her bright hair dims, becomes thin and black, writhes like snakes; her eyes grow wider, turn yellow and bloodshot; her teeth, no longer uniform pearls, grow sharp and brown; hands lengthen and nails turn into talons.
When her slender dress begins to split, I am released from my horrified fascination and pull the knife from my pocket to slice through Magdalene’s bond.
“Run,” I tell her, pointing to the gold screen and give her a push. I turn back to Polly, who is now half a human taller than me and looking at her new hands, flexing them, listening to the sound of her over-sized knuckles crack. She laughs and lunges.
I sidestep and jam the knife into her stomach. She roars and stumbles. The silver handle protrudes from her belly, black blood wells where the hilt meets her flesh. I am backing away. She looks at me, and quite deliberately pulls the knife out, slowly. The blade is gone, eaten away by the substance of her troll blood. I lose my nerve then and flee, gathering up Magdalene at the mouth of the tunnel, hitting at the lever to shut the door and running blindly down the steps into the darkness.
I hear a grunt behind me and risk a glance. Polly has jammed her hand into the gap between the panel and the doorframe and thrust the panel back. I keep running as my sister’s shape fills the doorway and blocks out the light.
I am thankful, in some tiny, screaming part of my brain, that my feet know this passage, have the memory of it embedded in their soles.
I do not stumble.
Magdalene clutches tightly to my chest like a limpet.
I move through the tunnel, imagining hot breath and long, reaching fingers at my back. Soon, I see gentle light slowly seeping down to light my path. I swear I fly out through the opening, I swear I grow wings in that moment, until I trip, my foot catching at the top step just as something tugs at the hem of my dress from the darkness below.
I keep hold of my daughter, twisting in mid-air as I fall so as not to crush her beneath me. I slide along the smooth flagstones and watch as the troll-wife leaps from the hole, the remnants of Polly’s pink gown hanging in tatters on the grotesque form, the diamond necklace tight around the troll-wife’s much bigger neck, almost embedded in the flesh. She is all hunger, no caution, seeing only me.
She takes three thundering steps towards us before she falters, stumbles a little, senses something is wrong. Her eyes goggle around and she howls when she realises we are in the Cathedral. She tries to throw herself forward to get at me. She should have gone back down to the tunnel while she still could. Her fearsome noise is drowned out by the growls of the archbishop’s hounds.
They’ve become solid, substantial, heavy in the presence of the troll-wife. And they are hungry. All six wolf-hounds leap and knock her to the ground.
I hide Magdalene’s eyes.
It takes them a long time to eat Polly. She is alive right up until the end as they shred her flesh, gnaw on her bones, tunnel through her rib cage to get at her large, meaty heart, and slurp on her steaming, stinking innards.
In the end there is only lank black hair, and sad pink strips of silk on the floor of the Cathedral. The wolf-hounds lick up the blood and, sated, begin to assume their usual ephemeral outlines. One coughs, seeming to choke, but as his form softens, becomes smoky, the object drops through his insubstantial throat and jingles on the flags at my feet.
The diamond necklace. I pocket it as a ruckus begins at the front of the Cathedral.
The archbishop will be pleased to see how well his hounds earn their keep. I do not think my husband will recognise his mistress.
Night has fallen and Stellan is waiting outside Spittleshanks’ house as we exit. Magdalene hides behind my skirts. She remembers her father, she simply does not like him. I refuse to leave her behind ever again. I hope we will soon be able to sleep the night through. Untroubled slumber is the balm I long for; for nights when Magdalene does not wake and whimper, and when I do not clutch at her in my sleep, terrified of finding her flesh changing in my hands. And I pray for nights when I do not dream of my sister, my real sister, dead or worse, toiling under-earth, never seeing the light of day.
“Will you come back to the Palace now?” My husband is crying. “Come home, be with me. We will be a family once more.”
In the carriage under the street lamp my other little family waits: Grammy and Fra and Rilka and Kitty and Livilla and all their children and Bitsy’s doll, so we never forget, are wrapped up in warm coats and scarves. The windows of the inn are now dark. Faideau will not come: he says he is afraid of trees; I have left him a stack of gold coins to keep him in food and drink.
Within my grasp is my past, my former life. It slips and slides under my fingertips like treacherous silk. And here once again is my husband, who is beautiful still for all his flaws. Memories of before conjure rich flavours: Stellan before, our love and lust before; luxury and leisure, never knowing want or hardship. If I just stretch out my hand it can yet be mine. But there is a sour aftertaste; there is what happened, and what was done. There was loss and betrayal and it can never be erased.
I shake my head. “No. Better we take our chances among the whores and thieves. They’re more honest, more loyal.” The deed parchment and the remaining half of the diamond necklace sit solid in my coat pocket.
I take my daughter’s hand and turn away, setting our feet on the wet cobblestones, shining like a path to a better place, to the dark coach that awaits to take us far, far away.