ANGELA SLATTER IS THE author of two short story collections, Sourdough and Other Stories from Tartarus Press (UK), and the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales from Ticonderoga Publications (Australia), both published in 2010.
Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again, Tartarus Press’ Strange Tales II and III, and Twelfth Planet Press’ 2012, along with journals such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Shimmer. Her work has had several “Honourable Mentions” in the Datlow, Link and Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and in Datlow’s more recent Best Horror of the Year anthologies.
She has been short-listed five times for Australia’s Aurealis Award in the Best Fantasy Short Story category, and twice in the Best Collection category. She is also a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006.
Forthcoming is another collection of short stories, Midnight and Moonshine, a collaboration with friend and writing-partnerin-crime, Lisa L. Hannett, which will be published by Ticonderoga.
“‘Lavender and Lychgates’ is the second last story in Sourdough and Other Stories,” recalls Slatter. “I had ideas I wanted to continue to explore – consequences of actions in an earlier story in the collection – and I had a picture in my head of a young girl in a graveyard.
“Many years ago, a friend had told me a garbled tale of lilacs and lychgates, the details of which I cannot remember. I managed to garble it even more, and I couldn’t get the words ‘lavender and lychgates’ out of my head, nor the image of shadows swirling in the apex of a lychgate roof above the heads of people passing out underneath. I also wondered what happens when you hang onto a memory too tightly.”
MY MOTHER’S HAIR CATCHES the last rays of the afternoon sun and burns. My own is darker, like my father’s, but in some lights you can see echoes of Emmeline’s bright fire buried deep.
She leans over the grave, brushing leaves, dirt and other windblown detritus away from the grey granite slab. A rosebush has been trained over the stone cross, and its white blooms are still tightly curled, with just the edges of the petals beginning to unfurl. Thomas Austen has rested here for fifteen years. Today would have been my brother’s birthday.
To our right is one wall of the Cathedral, its length interrupted by impressive stained-glass windows that filter light and drop colours onto the worshippers within. My father, Grandma Tildy and my twin brothers, Henry and Jacoby, are among them, listening to the intoning of the mass. I can hear the service and the hymns as a kind of murmur through the thick stones. Emmeline has refused to set foot in there since Thomas’s untimely demise. I used to attend, too, but only until I was three or so, when I made plain my preference for my mother’s company over one of the hard-cushioned pews. Peregrine gave up arguing about it long ago, so I’ve been perched on the edge of Micah Bartleby’s tomb, weaving a wreath. I braid in lengths of lavender to add colour. I put the finished item beside my mother and tap her on the shoulder to draw her attention.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” she says, voice musical. Her face is smooth and her skin pale; only the flame-shaped streak of white at her widow’s peak shows that she’s older than you might think. Her figure remains trim and she still catches my father’s eye. “Don’t go too far, Rosie.”
She says this every time even though she knows the graveyard is my playground. When I was smaller, Emmeline would not let me wander on my own. She knew – knows – that things waited in the shadows, bright-eyed and hungry-souled. Now I am older she worries less for I’m aware of the dangers. Besides, the dark residents here want only to steal little children – they are easier to carry away, sweeter to the taste. She believes I am safe. I drop a kiss on the top of her head, feel how warm the sun has made her hair. She smells of strawberries.
I take my usual route, starting at Hepsibah Ballantyne, ages dead and her weeping angel tilted so far that it looks drunk and about to fall over. Under my carefully laced boots crunch the pieces of quartz making up the paths, so white it looks like a twisted spine. Beneath are miles and miles of catacombs, spreading out far beyond the aboveground boundaries of the graveyard. This city is built upon bones.
The cemetery devours three sides of Lodellan Cathedral, only the front entrance is free, its portico facing as it does the major city square. High stone walls run around the perimeter of the churchyard, various randomly located gates offer ingress and egress. The main entrance is a wooden lychgate, which acts as the threshold to the home of those-who-went-before.
No rolling acres of peaceful grass for our dead, but instead a labyrinth, a riotous mix of flora and stone, life and death. There are trees, mainly yew, some oak, lots of thick bushes and shrubs making this place a hide-and-seek haven. It’s quite hard, in parts, to see more than a few feet in front of you. You never know if the path will run out or lead over a patch of ground that looks deceptively firm, but is in fact as soft and friable as a snowdrift. You may find yourself knee-deep in crumbling dirt, your ankles caught in an ancient ribcage or, worse, twenty feet down with no one to haul you back into the air and light.
I am safe from these dangers at least, for I recognise the signs, the way the unreliable earth seems to breathe, just barely.
You might think perhaps that becoming dust would level all citizens, make social competitions null and void, but no. Even here folk vie for status. Inside the Cathedral, in the walls and under the floor, is where our royalty rests – the finest location to wait out the living until the last trumpet sounds. Where my mother sits is the territory of the merchant classes, those able to afford a better kind of headstone and a fully weighted slab to cover the spots where the dearly departed repose.
Further on, the poorer folk have simple graves with tiny white wooden crosses that wind and rain and time will decimate. Occasionally there is nothing more than a large rock to mark that someone lies beneath. In some places sets of small copper bells are hung from overhanging branches – their tinkling plaint seems to sing “remember me, remember me”.
Over by the northern wall, in the eastern corner, there are the pits into which the destitute and lost are piled and no one can recognise one body from another. These three excavations are used like fields: two lie fallow while one is planted for a period of two years. Lodellan does not want her dead restless, so over the unused depressions lavender is grown, a sea of purple amongst the varying greens, browns and greys. These plants are meant to cleanse spirits and keep the evil eye at bay, but rumour suggests they are woefully inadequate to the task.
In the western corner are the tombs proper, made from marble rather than granite, these great mausoleums rise over the important (but not royal) dead. Prime ministers and other essential political figures; beloved mistresses sorely missed by rich men; those self-same rich men in neighbouring sepulchres, mouldering beside their ill-contented wives, bones mingling in a way they never had whilst they breathed; parvenus whose wealth opened doors that would otherwise have remained firmly shut; and families of fine and old name, whose resting places reflected their status in life.
My father’s family has one of the largest and most elaborate of these, but he is banned from resting there – as are we. Even after all the scandal with his first wife and the kerfuffle when he set up sinful house with my mother, Peregrine had his own money. His parents saw no point, therefore, in depriving him of an inheritance and left him their considerable fortunes when they died. What they did refuse him was the right to be buried with them. They seemed to think this would upset him most, which caused Peregrine to comment on more than one occasion that it was proof they really had no idea at all.
Once upon a time I liked to play with my dolls in the covered porch that fronts the Austen mausoleum, imagining these grandparents I’d never met. But now I’m older, I don’t trouble with dolls anymore, nor do I concern myself with grands who didn’t care enough to see me when they lived. I feel myself poised for I know not what; that I stand on a brink. Grandma Tildy tells me this is natural for my age. So I simply wait, impatiently. I walk up the mould-streaked white marble steps and sit, staring into the tangled green of the cemetery.
Across the way a veil of jasmine hangs from a low yew branch, and something else besides. Something shining and shivering in the breeze: a necklace. I leave my spot and move closer to examine it without touching. There’s little finesse in its making, the blue stones with which it is set are roughly cut and older than old. The whole thing looks pretty, but raw. I know not to take it. Corpse-wights set traps for the unwary. There are things here the wise do not touch. Should you find something, a toy, a stray gift that seems lost, do not pick it up thinking to return it for chances are its owner is already contemplating you from the shadows. There are fetishes, too, made of twigs and flowers, which catch the eye, but nettles folded within will bite. Even the lovely copper bells may be a trick, for many’s the time no one will admit to hanging them.
There’s a rustle in the boughs above me and I see a face, wrinkled and sallow, with yellowed buck teeth, the brightest green eyes and hair that is, in the very few parts that are not white, as fiery as Emmeline’s. The creature seems a “not-quite” – part human, part something else. Troll? My heart stops for a few beats as I stare up at the funny little visage; its gnarled hands hold the leaves back so it may peer at me clearly. Then it tries a smile, a shy strangely lovely expression, which I cannot help but return. I do not think this being is associated with the shiny temptation on the branch below it.
“Rosie! Rosamund!” My mother’s shout reaches me. I back away and race through the bone orchard, my feet sure.
Emmeline is standing, stretching her arms up to the sky. In her hand is her sun bonnet, which she wears less than she should, its ribbons fluttering. She smiles to see me. “Afternoon service will be finished soon.”
I’m almost there when my foot catches on a tree root I could swear was not in existence a moment before and I fall towards my brother’s grave. My hands hit the rough-polished granite and while one stays put, merely jarring the wrist, the right one skids across the surface, catching on the letters of his name. I feel the skin peel from my palm and let out a squeal of shock and pain. A slew of hide and a scarlet stain mar the stone. The ring my mother gave me, silver vines and flowers all entwined, is embedded into the flesh of my finger and I think I feel it grind against bone. I knock my knees against the sharp edge of the slab, too, ensuring impressive bruises in spite of the padding of my petticoats and skirt.
I may be almost an adult, but for all that I wail like a child while Emmeline fusses about with her lacy handkerchief.
“Oh, oh, oh, my girl! Come along home, we’ll get those seen too. Your grandma will have something we can put on that.” She helps me up and dabs at the seeping blood while I howl. My abused flesh stings and burns as we pass out under the lychgate. Shadows crowd above us in the angles of its ornate roof.
As we hobble away, I remember that I forgot to whisper good wishes to my brother.
My father has streaks of grey at his temples and furrows on his forehead. He says it’s because he is given to thinking deeply. Peregrine looks tired and gives me a weary smile as I kiss his cheek and go to my place at the table. The breakfast room is painted a warm lemon and the curtains are pulled back so as to catch all the natural light.
There is a sideboard loaded with food, but no sign of servants. Cook and her girl set out our meals, but neither Emmeline nor Tildy could get used to being waited upon. “No point pretending we’re better than we are,” they said. I think Peregrine, only child of aged and proper parents, loves the chaos of this household. When he was growing up, he told me once, everything had a place, including him. Heaven forbid he should stick a toe out of line. “Your mother,” he said, “rescued me from the tyranny of order.”
“Bad sleep?” I ask, refilling his cup and pouring tea for myself.
“Emmeline was restless, so neither of us slept well. Or rather, she slept but didn’t rest.” He stifles a yawn. “She kept kneading the covers and the mattress as if she would change their shape. I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t me.”
I, too, feel tired. Last night Tildy painstakingly cleaned the wounds and smeared them with a salve that reeked of lavender, before applying bandages. The three drops of Valerian she put in my milk ensured I slept without pain, but my slumber was fraught with dreams of mud and dirt closing over me, sucking the moisture from my skin and turning me into a cold dry husk. “She’s still abed?”
“Preparing the boys,” he grins. My parents take turns-about rousting Henry and Jacoby. It’s not that they are hard to wake, it’s that getting two nine-year-olds washed and dressed in the morning is a challenge. No one parent should have to deal with that every day. My younger brothers are wild but not bad, and Grandma Tildy (a twin herself) says they will calm down in a year or two. It should be noted, however, that she no longer takes the morning shift.
“And you didn’t think to take her turn after she’s had such an awful night?” I ask primly. My father throws up his hands in defence.
“It just so happens that I did offer, and it just so happens that your mother refused, Miss Bossy Boots,” he grins and butters a piece of toast, then continues, “And shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
It’s a Monday and that means the pain of four hours at Miss Peach’s Academy for Accomplished Young Ladies. When I got too old for governesses, Peregrine insisted I be equipped with an education suitable for a young woman of Lodellan’s Quality. He said there was no need for me to become the wife of a rich man and even if I chose not to join society, I should at least know how to behave. Forewarned and forearmed, if you will.
Grandma agreed with the sentiment in principle, but she said I should have a trade, just in case life took me in a different direction. After all, today’s heiress is just as easily tomorrow’s guttersnipe – Emmeline’s path upward might very well be a slippery slope downward for me. Peregrine replied there was enough time for me to learn a trade after a few years of becoming accomplished.
Tildy got that look she sometimes gets and took me to the bakery anyway. It’s run now by Kezia and Sissy, the ’prentices she took on when Emmeline stopped baking. My Uncles, George and Artor, married them, so when Grandma finally admitted her hands no longer had the strength for the work, the business stayed in the family. Tildy concedes with gloomy pride that everything seems to be running smoothly without her.
She tried to teach me how to make the fancy bread for which she and her daughter had been famous. Alas, even though I was most willing, I showed very quickly that I had no talent at all. I think Tildy was more disappointed than she let on, but she shrugged it off.
When Emmeline, who’d been apathetic at best about Peregrine’s plan, heard about my first attempt at a trade, she was not happy with her mother. My fate at Miss Peach’s was sealed.
The door to the breakfast room is flung open and the twins fly in, clean and dressed, but no less frenetic for it. They aim themselves at the platter of bacon, from which I have already taken more rashers than is considered proper for a delicate young lady. Emmeline follows them, dark circles under her eyes, a tired smile on her lips. She stands in front of the sideboard, contemplating the breakfast options with something like confusion. Peregrine, rising, steers her to sit down while I put a mix of munchables onto a plate for her. She gives us a look that says I’m quite capable of doing this for myself, you know, but eats what she’s been given and asks, “How is your hand, Rosie?”
I display the offending limb: apart from a few pale scars there is no trace of yesterday’s injury. Tildy, at a loose end when her baking days ended, started brewing things instead – not beer, although she’s a dab hand at wheat beer. She took lessons from an old friend who used to do her best business after the real doctors had paid their expensive visits to patients. My grandma takes a particular pride in the things she can now do with herbs and mixtures, ointments and potions.
Emmeline nods. “Your grandmother will be pleased with herself.”
With the twins safely delivered to the hands of their schoolmaster (private tutors do not last too long with them), I continue towards Miss Peach’s. A few streets away, I can hear the noise from the market at Busynothings Alley, siren-song subtle but strong. Any absence from school will be reported (as I know from bitter experience), so it’s hardly worth the trouble. Lateness, however, although frowned upon, isn’t generally met with anything more than a tut-tut from the principal’s pursed lips.
I hesitate at the corner of Gisborne Street and Whortleberry Lane and contemplate my options.
Today is needlework. Tuesday is charity day, when we all troop down to the kitchen and make meals for the less fortunate (but I have a theory that all those dinners end up on Miss Peach’s very own table). Wednesday is painting. Thursday is healthy outdoor activities: walking to a park and sitting under trees to protect our complexions. Friday is deportment. The older girls have extra classes to learn beauty and styling techniques, how to manage households and how to best have and raise children. Apparently, accomplished young ladies don’t need to know anything else. Trifles such as literature, science, history, maths and geography are taught to me by Peregrine, or I pick them up by my own reading in our impressive library at home.
I think of needlework and how many times I am likely to prick my fingers, how much blood I am likely to spill on the fine sampler fabric. I am early, and I also know that while forty-five minutes is counted as “absent”, thirty minutes is merely “late”. My decision is thus almost made for me.
Whortleberry Lane is where books are born.
There are three tiny printeries, which never seem to lack for business. Two specialist paper-makers inhabit long, thin shops and will create a paper for whatever purpose you require: invitations, thank you cards, sympathy cards, sketch sheets, even the special black-edged paper for the desks of those in mourning. Three bookbinders have premises in the Lane and they will cover your books, fix old and ill ones or make you your very own journals and diaries for writing, stamping your initials on the cover in gold or silver flake. An ink-maker has strange, ill-ventilated little rooms in which it can be hard to breathe. And then there are the bookstores proper where you might find all manner of ordinary and extraordinary tomes.
My favourite of these is run by the pretty Misses Arbuthnot, two sisters who will find you any book you care to ask for, or may suggest something you just might like – should you be in the mood for a suggestion. The place, although very neat, has crooked staircases and leaning bookshelves and the smell of old knowledge embedded in the walls. Some days Tildy asks me to request the Misses Arbuthnot to find her a particular book. Invariably I will bring it home wrapped in brown paper with string tied tightly about to keep the busybodies out. She’s a good library in her rooms, does Grandma.
Today, the younger Miss Arbuthnot (the one with the blonde curls) is minding the store. She gives a smile when she sees me slip in, but otherwise goes on with her inventory. The newly arrived books are in small wooden crates, some with the lids already jemmied off, presumably with the small lady-like crowbar lying on the counter. As I go past, I can see some of them have their spines marked with a fine golden “M”. The younger Miss A subtly moves her body to obscure my view and the message is clear: too young for these ones.
I take the first flight of stairs, then the second, then the third and am puffing, just a little, by the time I reach what should by rights be an attic. There were customers on the lower floors, but this one is empty, the aisles between the shelves all deserted as far as I can see as I scamper up one, down the next to check. This level exists in a kind of clever déshabillé, seemingly disorganised unless you know the system. These are the books about books. They are arranged in what might be called Birth, Life, Death – the making of, caring for and disposal of books too injured to go on.
This is my favourite place.
Carabhille’s Birth of the Book waits just where I left it. I hide it away on a lower shelf, out of its ostensible order so no one else might buy it before me. Moneyed family or no, I still have to earn my pocket money and nothing by Carabhille is cheap. It will be another good month before I can make an offer. This one has a tooled leather cover in blood-red, the lettering on its spine and front is silvered. Open it and you find a hand-illuminated manuscript in brilliant colours with gold leaf highlights; no woodcuts, no moveable type. The frontispiece depicts a great tree from which hangs strange fruit: more books, each one tiny and beautifully detailed. The edges of the pages are rough – hand-cut by their first owner, whoever that may have been. The book smells old. It’s weighty and I feel as if I’m holding knowledge.
“How’s your hand?”A voice asks. It’s a pleasant enough voice, not quite broken, but I still shout in fright. I turn around and see a tall, handsome-looking lad, dark-haired, pale-skinned, green-eyed.
“What?” Strictly speaking, I know it should be “Pardon?” but he’s taken me by surprise.
“Your hand. I saw you leave the churchyard yesterday with your hand all bloody. I wondered if you were all right?”
I’d not seen him, nor anyone else, but then I suppose I was not at my most attentive.
“Oh,” I say. “Fine.” I show him. He looks impressed and gives a low whistle.
“Someone’s clever.”
“My grandma.”
“Not your mother?”
“No, not yet. Maybe one day she’ll ask Tildy to teach her.”
“What’s she do now, your mama?”
“Paints.”
“Houses?”
“Portraits. Pictures of rich people and their unattractive children,” I say and poke out my tongue like a brat. My manners, thus far, have not been up to scratch, so why change tack now?
“Naughty,” he says. Before I can reply there’s a scuttling at his feet. A fox comes out of the shadows of the shelving and weaves about his boots. He seems to think there’s nothing unusual about this. It spits out a bark and gives me a long measuring look. I crouch down and offer my hand, hoping it will let me stroke its pretty red fur. It moves toward me as if it will, but then tries to nip my outstretched fingers and runs away, back into the shadows.
“Not very friendly.”
“Picky things, foxes.”
I look up and find the boy is gone. I wander between the shelves, searching for him but he’s nowhere in evidence. I put the Carabhille back in its hiding place and make my way down the stairs, a little shaken. I check each of the floors to see if he made it down before me, but there’s no sign. He must still be hiding upstairs, in some spot I don’t know – although I cannot imagine where that might be.
Outside the sun is very bright and blinds me for a moment so I don’t see who grabs me by the arm and gives me a bit of a shake. When my eyes adjust I find my father, his handsome face dark with an anger he so seldom experiences he doesn’t seem to know how to wear it. Luckily I bit back those swear words I’m not supposed to know.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I was just . . . I was only . . . I was late, not absent.” In truth, I’m too perplexed to be afraid of Peregrine’s temper, and I also know he never can maintain a rage for very long. Sure enough, I’m rewarded by the clearing of his expression the same way a strong wind blows away storm clouds. “And anyway, what are you doing here?”
“Collecting a book for your grandmother about the uses and tasteful arrangement of lilacs.” He pulls a face. “How much do you hate that school?”
“It bores me rigid, Papa, you know that.” I lean my head against his shoulder. He smells like aftershave and wool. “The instruction is mindless and I fear my brain will atrophy if I’m left there much longer.”
He snorts. Peregrine is especially bad at being authoritarian. “Then, my Rose, what do you want to do?”
“Well,” I say slowly as if I haven’t been thinking about it. “I do believe Grandma was right when she said I should learn a trade.”
“It won’t be baking, my heart.”
“Yes, I think we all know that even if it weren’t for Mother’s objections, I have absolutely no talent in that direction anyway.” I sigh unconvincingly. “But what I would like to try, Father dear, is bookbinding.”
“Bookbinding?” He looks startled as if this would never have occurred to him in a hundred years – and truly it would not. It’s only been in my head for a couple of months.
“I’m sure someone will take me on – if not as a proper ’prentice, then at least someone will teach me, surely?”
“There’s a Mistress Kidston who is a bookbinder of great repute – she’s in the one at the end of the Lane,” he says, considering. “She’s repaired books for me before, made my diaries and ledgers. I think she would be appropriate.”
I love that my father knows this. He wouldn’t have me ’prenticed to some smelly old man. I also love that my father doesn’t insist on me becoming a lady too fine to tie my own laces or pour my own milk. I love that he’s given up on my young ladies’ education as a bad joke.
“This, of course, is on the condition that you promise to attend better to your ’prentice studies than you have thus far to your young ladies’ studies. And you will confess to your mother what you’ve done. And what agreement you’ve forced me into.” He rolls his eyes upward like a saint being martyred.
“Cowardly cat,” I scorn, but hug him hard. “We have an accord, sir.”
“I suppose there’s no point in sending you off to – what is it today?”
“Needlework.”
“Oh, messy. Now, come on home. May as well get into trouble sooner rather than later.”
In a week, I will start my ’prenticeship. Emmeline met my announcement with an amicable and rather relieved “Thank Heaven”. Grandma grumbled but accepted it. Henry and Jacoby looked at me with a new respect, for a while at least. Now it’s time to gather all the accoutrements for my new trade.
Peregrine has ordered all the tools from a man Mistress Kidston recommended. Had it been up to my father, each and every instrument would have been hand-made and carved with my initials, but I think he sensed the pain of embarrassment this would cause me. I must admit my excitement as the craftsman listed all the things I would need: the nippers, the frottoir, the paring and lifting and skife knives, the polishing irons and the ever-so-elegant spokeshave, but to turn up on my first day like a princess with her own engraved tools was a little too much.
Tildy has taken it upon herself to organise the uniform part of my requirements. Miss Lucy’s tiny modiste’s is set below street level, but bright in spite of it. The full fronted glass of the shop draws in light, and the artfully-made gas lamps are all alight and cast a golden glow over the white and green rooms.
“I’d prefer overalls, you know,” I grumble, flapping at the outfit being pinned on me. It’s calico, a practical fabric and hardwearing and perfectly suited to a ’prentice. What’s not practical are the skirts, which are almost as voluminous as those of a party dress; the pockets are good, though, and deep.
Lucy Pye, tiny silver spikes held precariously in her mouth and stuck in the silken cushion on her wrist, puffs up at me, mumbling about little misses.
“I know,” sighs Grandma. “But it’s enough you’re being allowed to be a ’prentice instead of going to that fancy school, isn’t it?”
I grudgingly admit it is.
“Can’t expect to dress like a boy too, my Rose. Now go and change. We’ll pick these up in two days, Miss Pye.”
I go behind the curtains into the cramped dressing room and strip off the frock, careful to avoid the pins. I can hear the whine of the seamstress as she talks at Tildy.
“No point, if you ask me, in your young miss to be ’prenticing. What’s she need that for? Got money and a fancy home; no doubt her father’ll find her a husband to look after her. Why does she need a trade?”
“That’s enough out of you, Lucy Pye, keep your fingers to stitching and your lips from flapping and making a breeze,” says Tildy mildly. “My granddaughter won’t depend on chance in her life – she’s smart enough to know the only person she can rely on to look after her is herself. That makes her smarter than most people I know. I never relied on anyone, nor did you so don’t go looking down on my Rosamund for not being a lazy brainless girl with nothing in her head but sequins and beads.”
“Might have been nice,” snipes Lucy, “to have the choice, though. Do you really think I’d have spent all these years sewing if there’d been some useful man around to take care of me?”
“Take care of yourself. Can’t ever be sure when a man’s going to die or change.” I hear the clink of coins on the glass top of the counter. “Be thankful you’ve only yourself to rely on.”
I struggle back into my own frock and do up the buttons on the front of the bodice, cursing every one of them. I tidy my hair and step out. Grandma Tildy stands and nods to a chastened seamstress. “We’ll see you Friday, Miss Pye.”
We walk out the white door that looks like a wedding cake, then take the steps leading to the street. You can tell it’s a good neighbourhood because crevices like this don’t smell like cats’ pee.
“Honestly, Lucy Pye and her opinions everyone’s got to hear!” Tildy clicks her tongue in annoyance. “Now, a few years back there was a seamstress who sewed like an angel, you’ve never seen such dresses for all that she worked in the Golden Lily. Gentle as a doe and never said a mean word about anyone. She’s one I miss.”
“What happened to her?”
“Moved away,” says Tildy shortly, and I recognise the tone she gets when she realises she’s started telling a story she doesn’t want to give you the end of. I’m about to start pricking at her to ease out more information when a tall shape appears a few paces ahead of us in the gathering afternoon. I see him only briefly; he gives a sharp-toothed smile and then slides into an alleyway. I think I see a flash of dark red at his heels.
I turn to Tildy, whose hand convulses on my arm. Her face is stricken-white.
“Who is that, Rosie? That boy?”
“I don’t know, Grandma. I met him a few days ago at the bookshop.”
I can feel her shaking and worry that she will fall. “Come away, Rosamund, we must get home.”
“Tildy, are you all right? Do you need to sit down?” There’s a tea shop not far down the street.
She shakes her head. “No, love. We just need to get home.”
Tildy insists we cross the road even though it takes us out of our way – but it also keeps us away from the mouth of the alley, which is black, toothless. “Rosie, promise me you’ll stay away from him if you see him again.”
“Why? I barely know him, Grandma.” I protest, not about the ban on him, but the idea she seems to have about my connection with the nameless boy.
“Let’s just get home, Rosie.”
I heard from some of the girls at Miss Peach’s how their grandparents went soft in the head, but with my fierce grandmother it seems unlikely. Still she’s frail and afraid and I’ve never seen her like that before. It frightens me.
She spends much of our walk looking back over her shoulder as if we might be followed.
Emmeline has gone to bed early, troubled by a headache.
After dinner, I leave Tildy and Peregrine to talk and take the boys upstairs.
When they are washed, sleepy and in their pyjamas (the ones with the feet in them), I agree to read them a story. They always choose the one about the Robber Bridegroom because, they say, the clever girl wins. So I give them the tale and only when they are drifting off do they let slip a disturbing fact.
“Met your boyfriend today, Rosie-rose,” singsongs Henry as I pull the covers up to his chin.
“Boyfriend!” chimes Jacoby, who holds tight around my neck before I tuck him in too.
“I’ve not got a boyfriend, as you both know.” I kiss two warm, shiny foreheads.
“He said he knew you,” mumbles Henry. “He was waiting outside the gates of our school and talked to us.”
“What’d he look like?” I ask the drowsing children. Jacoby mutters that he is tall and dark-haired, which tells me very little, but makes me cold. There’s no further news to be had from the twins, both are asleep and even if I had the heart to wake them I doubt I’d get much more information.
I look in on my mother. Her nightgown has ridden up as she’s tossed and turned in distressed sleep, her hair is damp and sweat beads her brow. Beneath her lids, her eyes dart here and there, searching for something. Her hands clutch and clench. I wipe her forehead and cover her with the sheet lest she take a chill.
Peregrine and Tildy are talking still, and I can hear their voices raised. This is unusual in and of itself.
I creep down the stairs, careful to avoid the ones I know will protest my weight.
“I know what I saw, Peregrine. I saw him look at Rosamund and I saw him true.” Tildy’s voice is hard with urgency. “He’s a cold lad.”
“Oh, Tildy. Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t believe in any of that nonsense.” But Peregrine’s tone is more bravado than truth and Grandma hits back at him with undiluted scorn.
“You don’t believe! How can you say that? You of all people, when you know what Emmeline did! You know what’s possible.”
What Emmeline did. Why my mother no longer bakes. Her power and its consequences, her revenge and how awful it was. What Emmeline did.
I don’t pay attention to his reply for there is a shifting of the air behind me and my mother walks past me. Her eyes are still closed and she moves toward the other stairs that lead down to the kitchen.
I stick my head in the door of the dining room and beckon my arguing relatives.
They follow and by the time we get to the stone-vaulted basement kitchen Emmeline is a whirl of white nightgown and red and white hair. Her eyes are closed, but she moves with graceful assurance around the room and finds everything she needs. Emmeline begins to make the bread mixture she’s not dipped her hands into since before I was born. On my mother’s face is an expression which plainly says that she does this against her will. She mouths “no, no, no” but her hands keep mixing, mixing, then she dumps the dough out onto the tabletop and begins to knead it angrily. I am frozen, unsure of what to do; Peregrine and Tildy watch with a kind of fascinated horror that pins them to the spot.
Emmeline makes no recognisable shape. I think her mind resists even in sleep, and whatever has pulled her from her bed has failed. When at last she stands, unmoving, her head low and her tears dripping into the leftover flour on the bench, then I put my arms around her. She doesn’t start or cry out. I talk to her in a low voice and Peregrine and Tildy do the same. We walk her out of the kitchen, up the stairs and back into her own bed. We do not wash Emmeline’s hands for fear the touch of water might wake her, so we gently try to pick off the remains of any dough, and hope she will not remember this night’s venture.
The day is miserable, grey and dull. It has been raining constantly, monstrous great drops of moisture hit the windows with a savage sound and pour down the panes like small violent rivers.
Emmeline retreated to her bed again soon after breakfast. We none of us have spoken about her nightly excursion and she senses something is wrong and it makes her short with us, as if she knows we are not telling her something important. That we are treating her as if she’s a child. She pleads weariness and a headache and no one doubts it. Tildy gives her a tincture of Valerian. In return, I do not tell my father what the boys said last night about the slender young man. I do not wish to worry him, although I’m certain Tildy would be happy to crow a victory over that piece of information.
The twins have been bickering since early this morning and by the afternoon it has worn thin. Peregrine has, uncharacteristically, lost his temper and sent them to their room. This caused no end of uncomprehending distress and many tears. My father maintained his rage long enough for the boys to disappear up the stairs, pathetic sobs wafting down behind them as they slowly closed their door as if waiting for the reprieve that did not come.
I give my father a severe look and he has difficulty meeting my eyes. The trouble with being so easy-going is that people start acting as though you’ve no right to a bad mood. It is unfair but unavoidable.
“Oh, all right!” he huffs and makes his way up the curved staircase, his boots thudding with displeasure on every step. The boys will think themselves in line for a hiding now. I smother a grin, and Tildy stomps out of the front parlour. Her temper is no better than anyone else’s in the house at the moment.
“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” she demands. Idle hands and all that. I sigh.
I try to look saintly and put-upon. “Saturday, Grandma, and even the worst of the wicked get a day off.”
“You little . . .” she trails off so I never hear what she thinks of me. Her eyes dart past my shoulder and out one of the front windows. I turn and follow her gaze.
Through the decoratively etched glass panes on either side of the front door I can see the youth, impervious to rain or so it seems. I fling open the door and make to go out, but Tildy grabs my arm and pulls me back. She charges past me and I can feel her fear like a cold breath coming off her skin. She’s terrified but she will protect me no matter what.
“Who are you?” she yells. “What do you want?”
I see his mouth curl up at one corner, part contempt, part fondness, as if he knows her better than she might ever think; as if he won’t do her harm because he’s terribly, irrationally, mysteriously fond of her.
But then she slips on the soaked stone steps and falls like a sack of potatoes down our long front stairs. The expression on the boy’s face is one of distress in the moment when he’s still there. I look to my grandmother, flick my eyes back up and he’s gone yet again.
The rain is cold and hard against my skin as I kneel down beside my grandmother.
“Tildy! Tildy, are you all right?” I’m too scared to move her. Did she hit her head? Did I hear bones crack? Is there blood anywhere? Will she be all right?
At first there is a silence, a lack of response that makes my heart contract to the size of a pin. And then the sound of salvation, the most beautiful noise in the world: Tildy cursing up a blue storm.
Peregrine has heard the commotion. He looks impressed at the range of his mother-in-law’s profanity. Indeed, there are things I’d like to write down – one never knows when one will need a decent curse.
“Can you get up, Tildy?” My father speaks to her as if she is better beloved than his own mother – which she is.
“Everything aches and it will be worse tomorrow.” She moans, lying still. I try to feel for any broken bones. She tolerates it for a moment, then brushes my hands away. “Enough, child.”
“I’ll send for the doctor,” says my father, and puts his hands under one of Tildy’s arms, and gestures for me to do the same.
“Never mind that. I’ll go and see my friend – she’ll have something will dull the pain better than any of those sawbones will come up with.”
“She’s on the other side of town.”
“A walk will do me good.” She’s being stubborn. She doesn’t want to go out alone, doesn’t want to encounter the cold lad again.
“Take her in the carriage, Papa. It won’t take you more than an hour. I’ll keep an eye on things.”
There is no more debate when Tildy gives in and admits that although nothing’s broken, she is not in a state to walk the streets and she will need some kind of treatment to ease her aches.
They climb into the carriage, Peregrine’s driver at the reins, just as the afternoon bruises into night.
I ask cook to throw together a light supper. I go upstairs to check on the twins and find them both asleep, curled beneath their beds as if they hid there after Peregrine’s tirade. Dark, damp curls are infested with dust-bunnies.
I open the door to my own room and immediately something feels wrong. The carpet underfoot squelches, saturated as if someone dripping wet paused there. On the cream coverlet of my bed I can see paw prints, large but fine, in a mud that may be almost as red as their owner’s fur. The prints trek across the wide expanse of the mattress, then show a leap onto the small stool with its covering of cream and gold brocade, then a slight skid across the glossy painted surface of the duchess.
I go through my trinkets, the shiny things in the small cut-crystal bowls, all the bits of jewellery I’ve been given over the years by my parents and Tildy. The only piece missing is the ring twisted out of true by my fall and still stained by my blood. Given mother to daughter and then again, as I expected to do to my own daughter in turn.
There’s the sound of a door opening somewhere in the house. At first I think it my father and grandmother, but realise it’s too soon and the tenor was surreptitious, sneaky. I go out to the corridor and peer over the railings into the entry hall.
The front door is wide open.
I thought it too soon for Peregrine and Tildy to return; now I know it is too late.
I take the curved staircase at a dangerous pace, careful not to fall. In the drying shallow puddle on the stoop I can see the outline of two smallish feet as if imprinted there by the moonlight. At the end of our street, seemingly so far away, I see a flash of white and know it for my mother. I slam the door behind me and run into the road, my shoes slapping against the cold wet cobbles. Sometimes I almost slip, slide along, then regain my balance.
Always just in front of me, always just at the end of the next street is the flickering flag, leading me on. I cannot believe she moves so fast.
At last I gain our destination – I should have known it all along. The graveyard is lit in part by the lambent light from the portico of the Cathedral. The Archbishop’s wolf-hounds strain as if against leashes; they cannot leave the bounds of their building. Then there are the corpse candles dancing around the graves, I follow the grim path to where more of them helpfully serve to illuminate my mother’s grisly task.
Emmeline kneels in the muddy mess of the bone pit. She is scooping up great hunks of mud with her cupped hands, gathering it to her as if it is an injured child she can put back together. When she has enough, when it clumps together like clay – do I see it move in the moonlight? Shuddering with breath? – then she begins to mould it as she once fashioned loaves of bread. When she finds a bone, she sets it aside – will she find a use for it later?
The boy watches her, sitting cross-legged on a grave so old that the elements have removed any trace of the name of its occupant. His expression is fond and unhealthy all at the same time. I step as quietly as I can but the quartz is no friend to me this eve. I know these ways, these paths, but then, I suppose, so does he. This is as much his playground as it ever was mine – more.
“Hello, Rosie.” He doesn’t even bother to look at me as I creep along. I give up all pretence and stand next to him, watching as the captive sleeper sculpts the graveyard mud. I take steps towards her, but he holds up his thin hand – I notice for the first time its port-wine birth mark, a match for the one my father bears. On his finger, loose and worn wispy by age, is my silver ring. “Uh-uh. It’s not safe for anyone to wake her but me now. Besides, my mummy’s got work to do.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Building a body. Of course it will be just a shell to start with, but once it’s tempered with your blood, sister-dear, it will be a vessel fit for me.” He smiles. “And when I settle my soul inside, I will walk out under the lychgate, Rosamund, and I will have everything you stole.”
“I didn’t steal anything from you.” I want to turn and run, but I will not leave Emmeline behind.
“Oh, yes you did, my life and my place here. You stole my mother.”
“She’s our mother, Thomas.”
“Mine!” When he yells his face elongates, the rims of his eyes seem to dry out and crack, his mouth opens to ridiculous size and his tongue, red and sharp, is split like a serpent’s. The moment passes and he’s a handsome youth once more, rather like my father in looks. Our father.
He calms and continues. “I should have been first, but you sat in my place. You took her.” He sighs lovingly, his eyes moist upon my mother. “But she remembers me. That’s what kept me here, you know. Her memory is true. She really just wanted me, never you. Just me.”
I am silent and he continues, “I must thank you, though, that taste of blood and flesh you gave me for my birthday was just the thing I needed. Of course it’s the very least you can offer, little thief.”
“Have you spent all these years thinking that?”
“She told me.”
“Emmeline?” I ask, my heart breaking. Surely not my mother. Surely not my Emmeline.
“No, her.” He jerks his chin towards a tree and next to it sits the fox, now unnaturally large as if it may change its size at will. As the moon shifts and clouds obscure part of the silver disk, there seems to be a woman in the animal’s place, with neat dark hair and sharp features, watching spitefully as my beautiful mother drudges in filth. The moon’s face clears and once more there is merely a fox. “She has been my friend all these years.”
“What’s her name, Thomas?”
“Sylvia.”
“Do you know who she was? What lies has she told you?”
“The dead don’t tell each other lies,” he sniffs, but it’s unconvincing and I feel I can go on.
“She was Father’s wife. She’s the one who killed you.”
There’s a sharp bark from the fox. I can’t tell if it’s a protest or a laugh.
“You’re lying. You’ll say anything to stop me living.”
“Thomas, if you wake Emmeline and ask her, she’ll tell you. You trust her, don’t you? You trust your mother.”
“If I wake her she won’t finish.”
“Yes, she will, if I’m lying! She’ll want to show you – she’ll want you back, you’re her first-born.” Oh please, oh please, oh please let it be a lie! I need to know as much as he does, how true our mother’s heart is.
He’s reluctant. I wonder that the fox-bride doesn’t take on her human body, yell at me, stop my dissident tongue, but perhaps she can’t. Perhaps this is her punishment, that she can only flicker between one form and another, never able to hold onto a woman’s shape, try though she might; never able to speak with more than the bark of a fox and in a tongue only the dead can understand.
“Wake Emmeline, Thomas. Wake her. If I lie, then what’s to lose? If I lie then why should your friend object to me being found out?” Above the fox I can see something stirring the leaves of the tree, ever-so-subtly, ever-so-quietly that not even Sylvia notices.
Thomas doesn’t see either. He shifts his attention to our mother and calls out softly. “Mother? Oh, Mother-mine, wake up.”
Emmeline blinks and shakes her head. She takes in her hands and the black marks on her nightgown and the dark stains of clay and mud streaking up her forearms. Thomas stands over her and helps her up. None of the muck on her rubs off on him, as if his substance will not allow anything to stick.
Emmeline looks at me, her eyes confused, her expression pleading. Oh, please explain, my Rosamund. How to do so? How to say it without angering this frightful spirit?
“Emmeline.” I’m wary of calling her Mother in front of so jealous a brother. “Emmeline, this is Thomas, your first-born. He has a question for you. He has been waiting for so long to come back to us – to you.”
Her eyes flash and I hope I see understanding there. Emmeline and her talented hands, Emmeline and her strong will; Emmeline who did what she did all those years ago. My mother is clever and quick.
“Mother, how did I die? How was I lost to you?”
She flicks a look at me and I give a barely perceptible nod. I have known this story as long as I can remember, heard it at Tildy’s knee before Emmeline could stop her. Heard it so I might know who my mother was and how special she was, what she could and would do to protect her family.
“Your father’s first wife cursed me.”
Thomas howls as if stuck with a knife and the fox barks sharp enough to hurt my ears. She makes to disappear into the shadows but a dark lumpen shape drops from the boughs above and scoops her up, holding tight as tight can be so she can neither nip nor struggle. The hands are gnarled but very strong and they wrap around the animal’s throat with an astonishing speed and begin to squeeze. One moment it is a fox, the next a young woman with a thin neck, the next a fox again; one barks, the other cries out; in the end both are silent. A limp red carcass dangles in my strange friend’s grip.
Now there is Thomas to deal with.
He looks so stricken and already he seems . . . thinner. I think I can see through him to the faint outlines of gravestones. He has been held here by belief and memory, and now his foundation has been shaken to its core, shown to be false.
I feel sorry for my brother.
He shakes where he stands. The mud at his feet seems to suck up at him. “Mother,” he whimpers. “Don’t you want me back?”
“I never really had you, lovely boy. I miss you, Thomas, I truly do.”
“Wouldn’t you rather me, though? Me, not her? I was the one you were supposed to have.”
“But I do not love Rosamund less. She did not take anything from you, she did not replace you. You must understand, Thomas, that I would not have you instead of her. You were taken from me so long ago. I grieve every day, but I know I cannot have you back.”
“You don’t mean that,” he screams. The mud is now most certainly sucking at his lower limbs but he does not seem to notice. Emmeline smiles and nods.
“Yes, I do, my darling boy. I love you but I will not exchange my rosa mundi for you. And I will not forgive you if you harm your sister.” She reaches out to put a gentle hand on his chest. Her palm meets something not quite solid, sinking further into his flesh than it should.
“Mother,” he whimpers and he weeps. “Don’t you love me?”
“Ah, so much, so much. Yes. And I will miss you forever.”
He sinks to his knees, suddenly weak. Emmeline kneels beside him and cradles him against her. I can see through him, now, to the ground beneath. She strokes his face but her fingers begin to dip beneath the skin as he loses solidity, loses his form.
Thomas wanted nothing more than to be loved, to have his chance with our family. He had only a child’s selfish desire for something with no idea that there are some things we cannot have. This night, I understand my brother. One day I may weep for him and one day I may forgive him. Until then I give him what I can. I sit next to him and hold his rapidly fading hand. He looks at me with moon-washed eyes; I’m not sure he can see me anymore.
Robbed of his power, of Emmeline’s yearning memory, he becomes shadow and recollection, nothing more. In a few more beats of the night, he is gone and there are only Emmeline and I and our strange ally.
We rise and move towards the creature, who is hunched and wizened. It’s dressed in rags that were once proper clothes. The fox’s corpse is rotting now, quite rapidly, and the not-quitehuman-not-quite-troll throws the body as far away as it can.
I notice that Emmeline’s green eyes more or less match those of the weird human-ish thing. It – she, it is obviously a she – gives a shy smile and a curiously graceful curtsey. My silver ring, which fell into the mud when my brother’s hand dissolved, is cold in my palm. I hold it out to her. She looks pleased and slips it onto one enlarged knuckle and pushes with determination until it pops over and dangles around the thin digit. With a nod of thanks, she turns to the yew tree once again and climbs swiftly, her large feet and hands finding holds not obvious to the eye.
“Who is she?” I ask.
Emmeline shakes her head. “My father had varied tastes, Rosie. I think the hair and eyes tell a story.”
She holds me close and there is no place nicer or kinder than in my mother’s arms. I think of Thomas, deprived of this, a cold lad his whole life. I hope the last memory of our mother holding him sustains him in his final sleep. I hope he will not be forever alone in the dark.