Ash & Bramble (9 page)

The trackers are snuffling at my skirt. One of them nuzzles at my boot. “Stop that, you,” I tell him. The dog-man glances up at me, gives a low whine, then puts his nose to the ground again.

The Godmother studies me from atop her horse. She is holding the reins in one gloved hand. Her riding dress is made of ice-blue velvet with fur at the collar and cuffs, all of it beautifully stitched, of course, though its hem is mud-stained and ragged. “Where is your friend, the Shoemaker?” she asks. Her voice is rough. The skin of her face is finely wrinkled, and her silver-blue eyes are smudged with the shadows of lost sleep.

Though I know I look far worse, exhausted and filthy as I am, stained with blood, wearing a tattered, wet dress, I feel a flash of triumph, knowing that her hunt for us has not been easy. “Who?” I ask.

The Godmother huffs an impatient sigh and climbs stiffly down from her horse. After brushing at a stain on her skirt, she wades through the trackers, kicking at one of them
when he snuffles too close to her foot. The dog-man yelps and cringes away.

She is taller than I am. Graceful and beautiful. Dazzling, like a cruel, cold sun across a field of snow. She looks me up and down, then gives an annoyed sniff. Abruptly she turns away, gesturing to her Huntsmen. They nudge their horses, coming closer. One of them, I notice, has a whip jammed into his belt.

“You.” She points at one of the others, a burly man with dark brown skin, an enormous mustache, and an ax strapped to his saddle. “Take two of the dogs and go after the boy. Bring him to me alive.”

“Yes, Mistress,” the Huntsman says, bowing from the back of his horse. “Jip, Jes,” he calls two of the dog-men. “Get on with you.” He kicks his horse and it trots upstream, trailed by two of the weary trackers.

I follow them with my eyes. I hope Shoe is running. I hope he can stay ahead of them.

The Godmother starts taking off an ice-blue leather glove, one dainty finger at a time. “He will be caught, you know, and then he'll have to be punished. I don't suppose he'll be of any use to me after that.”

I am too tired, now, to be frightened of her. “You won't catch him,” I say.

“Don't be silly,” she says. “Of course I will, even if the forest interferes.” And she shrugs as if she's already bored with the conversation. Her eyes narrow, and she studies me.
“What did you think you were doing?”

“Escaping,” I admit. “Finding out where I came from.”

She looks faintly amused. “Those things are lost to you.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head, refusing to believe her.

“So certain,” she chides. “I do wonder what prompted you to think that you were anything but a Seamstress.” Behind her, the two Huntsmen watch from horseback. The three remaining trackers have flopped to the ground, where they lie still, panting. “You must have something,” the Godmother says softly, leaning closer. “Some magical thing that helped you escape my fortress. Am I correct?”

The thimble. I swallow down a gasp. The thimble that is in the pocket of Shoe's coat. “I have nothing,” I say truthfully.

“Mm. At any rate, here we are,” the Godmother says. She holds the empty glove in her other palm, and flexes her bare hand.

No, it's not bare, I realize. On the tip of her finger she is wearing a silver thimble.

A thimble
.

She steps closer, and taps the thimble against her front teeth, as if thinking. “Given who you are, I should have known I'd have more difficulty controlling you. I suppose I thought you were too young to resist. I shall simply have to be more careful this time. We'll start again from Nothing.”

Nothing. What I fear most. “No,” I say, and my voice shivers, betraying me. I stare up into her silver-blue eyes. “I'll remember.” I will remember who I am. I will remember Shoe.

“No, you won't,” the Godmother says calmly.

Raising her hand, she brushes aside a lock of my hair. Her touch is almost gentle, but I can feel the cold radiating from her marble-white fingers. My heart is pounding so hard it is shaking my body. “Don't be so afraid.” The Godmother rests her thimble against my forehead. “I am only giving you what every girl wants.” The chill of the thimble's touch spreads into me. “And then you will cause me no more trouble.”

Suddenly I know with a horrified certainty that Shoe was right. There are worse things than the post. Worse things than being stabbed to death by thorns. I try to jerk away, but it is too late. Cold radiates from the touch of the Godmother's thimble. Darkness swirls around me.
Shoe
, I think, as I fall.

And then I am Nothing.

I
WAKE UP IN THE CINDERS.

It is the sound of a distant clock that wakes me, striking the hour. Morning.

I am curled on my side, practically in the hearth itself. One hand, flung out, rests against the cold grate; a bandage enwraps my wrist.

There is the clank and rattle of a coal scuttle being set down. “Lady Penelope,” a housemaid says, shaking my shoulder.

I blink. “What?” I croak.

“Lady Penelope, wake up.” The housemaid, dressed in a dark-blue uniform with a starched white apron over it, crouches on the carpet next to me. She shakes my shoulder again. “The clock has struck the hour. You can't be here now.”

Creaking in every joint, I sit up and put my hand to my head, which aches like fury. Blinking, I take in the room. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves; the room is filled with an overstuffed, doily-covered velvet sofa, spindly tables holding vases billowing with dried flowers, and a desk of polished mahogany. A book lies beside me on the hearth. Oh. The library. The memory of it comes back to me. I must have fallen asleep while reading again.

“It's just gone eight, my lady, which means breakfast, and if you're late again your stepmother will be angry,” the maid says. With her hands, she brushes ineffectually at my dress.

I look down at myself. I'm wearing a black silk dress, black lace at the cuffs and collar, with three petticoats under it and black button-up shoes that pinch my toes. All of it slightly shabby and covered with a thin, gray layer of ash.

A flurry at the door, and a big woman bustles into the room. My stepmother, I realize after a blank moment. She has a broad, red face made pale with powder, and a wealth of chestnut hair shot with gray, covered by a lace cap. She is the kind of woman people call
handsome
. She wears a fashionable blue-and-white striped silk morning dress with three flounces at the hem, a narrow waist achievable only through ruthless corseting, and a wide hoop skirt that sways as she sails across the carpet toward me. “Oh, Penelope,” she says, her voice shrill with exasperation. “I might have known you'd be in here.” She makes shooing motions at the maid. “Go on, girl; you heard the clock strike. Go on with your duties.”
The maid heaves up the coal scuttle and hurries out. My stepmother stares down at me. “Get up at once,” she orders.

Picking up the book I used as a pillow, I climb to my feet. I feel strangely weary down to my bones, and ravagingly hungry. Did I remember to eat dinner last night? “Have I been ill?” I ask. I feel as if I've been asleep for a long time, like an enchanted princess in a bramble-wrapped tower.

“No, you have not, you silly girl.” My stepmother huffs out a sigh of vexation. “Oh, for pity's sake, look at you.”

Adrift, I stare blankly back at her.

“Come here,” Stepmama says, and when I move too slowly, she reaches out and grabs my arm and drags me to the desk. After rummaging in a drawer, Stepmama pulls out a hand mirror and holds it up. “Just look at yourself.”

Squinting, I peer at my reflection in the mirror. A stranger looks back at me. Her face is too thin. Her chin-length dark hair is tangled. Her gray eyes are shadowed. I turn my head, and so does the girl in the mirror. It is me. Maybe I
have
been ill; I certainly look it.

“Do you see? Wretched. Smudged with cinders. Up all night reading, I expect.” Stepmama turns toward the door, a ship under full sail coming about. “You are a very foolish girl. So much like your father.”

I catch my breath as unexpected sorrow sweeps through me, a stabbing realization that I've lost something precious and I'll never find it again. Find
him
again. It must be . . . is it . . . grief for my father?

“Come along to breakfast, Penelope,” my stepmother orders. “Hurry now; the clock has already struck eight. And then you must go up to your room and change.” She sweeps out of the library.

I close my eyes for a moment. Taking a deep breath, I try to remember my father's face, but I can't. The sadness is there, though, aching and deep and surprisingly immediate.

“Come to breakfast
now
,” Stepmama shrills from the hallway.

I clench my teeth and will myself not to cry. I am alone, and no amount of grieving is going to change that. I straighten my spine and head for the library door.

The fashion is for blue, and so stepping into the breakfast room is like being closed into a blue box. The ceiling and walls are painted the color of robins' eggs; the carpet is sky blue and matches the velvet curtains at the tall windows. Even the pictures on the walls feature blue scenes—seascapes and sweeping skies and landscapes brimming with bluebells. I blink. This room is like the library—like everything here. Only half familiar, as if it's been described to me, but I've never actually seen it for myself. It makes me feel shaky, as if the floor isn't quite solid under my feet.

My stepsisters—also oddly sharp around the edges, as if I'm seeing them for the first time too—are already at the table. They are both excruciatingly elegant and polite, and somehow I know that even though they never show it, they despise me.

That's all right. Apparently I don't like them very much either.

The sisters are dressed in blue—of course—chestnut-haired Precious in royal-blue silk with an embroidered slate-colored overskirt, blonde Dulcet in a woolen riding dress in palest cerulean to match her eyes. Though they are both naturally slender, they are corseted within an inch of their lives.

Precious butters a morsel of toast. “Good morning, sister,” she says, and takes a dainty bite. “You're covered in cinders.”

Dulcet holds an eggshell-thin teacup to her lips. “She looks a bit watery, too, don't you think, Precious?”

Precious raises a perfect eyebrow. “I believe she does, Dulcie.”

Stepmama has taken toast at the sideboard and seated herself at the table, where she rings the silver bell at her place. “More tea,” she tells the maid who appears. Then she turns her gimlet gaze onto me. “Really, Penelope. It's been almost a year. You don't see me weeping into my teacup, do you? Six months is the allotted time for mourning. It is time to stop all this silly crying.”

I grit my teeth. I am
not
actually crying. Instead of pointing this out, I give my stepmama and stepsisters a stiff smile and go to the sideboard, where the food is laid out in chafing dishes warmed by paraffin candles. The smell of breakfast wafts from them, and suddenly, despite everything, I am still ravenous—as if I haven't eaten for days—and I fill my plate
with eggs and grilled mushrooms and five pieces of crisp bacon, adding two pieces of toast. I am barely seated when I begin eating. “Pass the jam, would you, Dulcie?” I ask through a mouthful of toast.

My stepsister raises an eyebrow and passes a jar with an ornate label on it.

Raspberry. “Ta,” I say, and add a spoonful of jam to my next bite of toast. Mm, and the bacon is delightfully crisp.

At the head of the table, my stepmama stares. “Penelope, you're eating like a dock worker. It's hardly attractive.”

Thanks to the food, I am feeling more like myself. “I have absolutely no interest in being attractive,” I say, and pour out a cup of tea.

“Yes you do,” Stepmama insists. “You're seventeen years old, and that means old enough to marry. You need to be thinking about attracting a husband, and believe you me,
no
man wants to see his wife eating like a pig at the trough when he comes down to the breakfast table.”

I take a gulp of tea and ignore my stepmother, who gives an exasperated sigh. “Hopeless!” she says.

“Mama is right,” Dulcet says primly, forking up a tiny bite of egg, inspecting it, and then setting it down.

“She also needs to put off her mourning clothes,” Precious adds.

“Oh yes, very much so,” Stepmama agrees. “Penelope, we were all dreadfully sorry when our dear duke died, but you look like—”

“Like a crow with shabby feathers,” Precious finishes for her.

“Yes, exactly so,” Stepmama says. “Well put, my dear. And so, Penelope, after breakfast you will find that all of your mourning clothes have been taken from your room and put properly away in the attic.”

I freeze, and the bite of bacon and egg I am about to eat suddenly doesn't smell quite so delicious. The grief and loss that I feel are too immediate; I'm not ready to put off my mourning clothes.

“She's getting watery again,” Dulcet notes.

I am
not
going to cry. “You had no right to do that,” I protest.

Stepmama places a hand on her wide bosom. “I have every right!” Her voice grows shriller. “This is my house, after all, and you are living in it on my sufferance!” She goes on, listing the ways in which I am an ungrateful, unnatural child, so difficult compared to her own daughters, such an expense, a burden, a trial, and so on.

I close my ears and grimly eat more toast.

It isn't actually Stepmama's house. It is mine, or it should be, except that I am only seventeen and my father died unexpectedly and without leaving a will, and Stepmama is very rich—and so my place in the world is a little uncertain, except that I am Lady Penelope because I am the daughter of a duke.

It must be one of the reasons my stepsisters hate me. They
have more money than they know what to do with, and I have no money at all, but they're not Lady Precious and Lady Dulcet; they're just ordinary Misses.

“It's settled then,” Stepmama says with a self-satisfied nod.

I look up, my toast forgotten. What is settled?

“I shall write to Lady Faye at once,” Stepmama goes on. She sees my blank look. “About setting you up with a husband, of course,” she adds.

“The last thing I want is a husband,” I say. And I don't need this Lady Faye friend of my stepmother's telling me I need one, either.

“Don't be silly,” Stepmama corrects. “Every girl wants a husband. Just leave it to me, and to Lady Faye. She is an expert matchmaker. We'll have you out of this house and settled with a fine man in a trice.”

“I'm perfectly settled as I am,” I say. I don't feel too much alarm. Stepmama can't actually
force
me to marry somebody I don't want to.

“Oh!” Stepmama makes shooing motions with her hands. “You're impossibly contradictory. Leave the table at once, Penelope. Go to your room until you can behave properly.”

I get up and, snatching two muffins from a plate on the sideboard, leave my stepmama and stepsisters to tell one another all about what a horrible girl I am.

I
N MY ROOM,
the maid is standing before the wardrobe folding a pair of black stockings and setting them in a trunk. After
a blank moment her name slots into place: Anna. I shake my head. My memory is behaving so strangely; it's like a worn cloth, full of holes and unraveling threads. Seeing me, Anna bobs a curtsy. “I'm sorry, Lady Penelope, indeed I am, for I knew you wouldn't like it none, but your stepmother ordered it, and—”

“It's all right,” I say, and Anna heaves a sigh of relief and keeps packing.

I lean against the wall and nibble at a muffin and feel twitchy, as if there's something else I'm supposed to be doing, but I can't remember what it is. It's like an itch in the middle of your back, that feeling. An itch you can't scratch.

My room is large and full of light, but shabby, too. Even though he was a duke, my father didn't have much money, but when he married wealthy Stepmama I refused to let her redecorate my room—I don't like blue—though she offered more than once to pay for it. I still don't regret saying no, because Stepmama would only add it to her list of the many things that her ungrateful stepdaughter owes her.

A bed takes up some of the space, with a chipped wardrobe beside it and, under the window, a small writing desk covered with books and papers and a pot of ink. I must be a scholar, though I don't recognize the handwriting on the pages. Opening the top drawer of the desk, I find an embroidery hoop and an impossible knot of silk threads. Only one edge of the cloth is filled with an awkward jumble of stitches. I have calluses on each of my fingertips, but clearly I am no
seamstress. I wonder how I got them.

I try to think back to what happened yesterday. A kind of blank nothingness waits for me there, and I flinch from it. For a moment I feel as if I am falling. A sudden pain lances into my forehead, and I lean against my bedroom wall and close my eyes. The wall is solid behind me. With my fingers I can feel the nubbled silk of my dress. My too-small shoes pinch my toes. An ordinary day, I tell myself. Yesterday was ordinary. I don't need to think about it.

At a scraping sound, I open my eyes. The maid Anna is dragging the packed trunk out of the room.

I take a deep, steadying breath. “Anna.”

She straightens. “Yes, Lady Penelope?”

“Do you remember my father?” I ask. “The duke?”

She frowns, and for a moment she looks flustered. “I—” Then she looks primly down. “I remember just what I ought to,” she says, her voice wooden.

A strange answer.

“Will that be all?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, and I can't help adding a sharp retort. “If you're done taking all my dresses away, that is.”

With a flush, she bobs a hasty curtsy and leaves the room.

Sighing, I rub my forehead. The ache lingers, as if someone is pushing against it with freezing-cold fingers. I catch sight of the ash-smudged bandage on my wrist. I don't remember hurting myself. I turn my hand over and unwrap the bandage. It reveals a mostly healed gash on the inside of
my wrist. It doesn't hurt, so I find an old stocking in my wardrobe and wrap it up again. As I try to remember how I got the gash, my head aches even more. I know what will comfort me, and I reach into the pocket of my dress for my thimble.