Fruit of the Golden Vine (24 page)

“No. It’s not.” Father shifted a paperweight between his hands as he spoke. “Adelina, you are a woman of twenty-three. Most women at your age are already married.”

Adelina’s heart lost its timing. “It’s true then. You’re going to marry me to that monster.”

Father grimaced, while Mother’s face remained stern. “I suppose that Silvana told you,” Father said. “Damn busybody of a woman.” He sighed and tossed the paperweight to the desk. “You are not to be ‘married to him,’ as you put it. We have given him permission to court you. And after he has made certain ritual gestures of appreciation, we will give him permission to marry you.”

“No.” Adelina’s vision blurred. “You can’t do that. Mother, do you really want a daughter of yours to be married to a pig like Orfeo?”

“I had little choice in this matter.” Mother spoke in a monotone. “Your father says that Orfeo is a decent man beneath his exterior, and he has pointed out the strategic advantages of the marriage. His economic and social standing is beyond reproach, even if his moral reputation is more questionable. But the same could be said for your father.”

Sebastian winced. “Don’t start, Delfina.”

“You can’t do this to me!” Adelina let herself scream, finding her only pleasure in the dismay and shock on her parents’ faces. “You gave Irena the opportunity to choose!”

“Think of the benefits. You’ll stay close to home. You’ll be near Felise.”

“Father, he will rape me!”

Mother gasped. “Adelina! God preserve you, girl, he’ll treat you as a husband treats his wife, that’s all…”

“And it’ll be rape, Mother, because I don’t want to be treated that way. You idiots, you don’t know me at all. I don’t want a man to touch me. I need a woman’s embrace.”

Mother held the desk as if to steady herself. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t I? I’m not a virgin, Mother, and yet I’ve never lain with a man. Use your remarkable gift for logic to determine how it’s so.”

“You are unchaste? From a woman? From that masculine hussy?”

“She’s not masculine, damn you. She’s a woman and so am I. For God’s sake, so are you. How can you be so obtuse? We are not unwomaned by claiming from men what rightfully belongs to us as well!”

Father cleared his throat. “Adelina, you are provoking your mother.”

“It’s about time somebody did. Maybe if I provoke her enough, she’ll realize her daughter is being used as barter for a parcel of land.”

“Be quiet.” Mother seemed calm but for the heat in her eyes. “If you are truly so depraved as you claim, then you are not even worthy of being traded for cattle.”

Adelina exhaled a sharp, wounded breath. “What we did was not depravity. It was beauty.”

“You will be courted, and Orfeo will be your preferred suitor,” Father said. “This admission of yours only makes that all the more certain.”

“I won’t.” Adelina stumbled back a step. Were these cold-hearted creatures really her parents? It couldn’t be. Changelings were real after all, and last night her changeling parents had grown into goblins. “I’ll go into a convent instead. Mother, you said I could.”

“A convent?” Mother’s composure finally cracked, and her tone became shrill. “Do you really think I would allow you to befoul a house of God with your presence? Do you really think I would let you sow seeds of unnatural lust among the women who worship there?”

“You’re a foolish zealot. Your God isn’t real, don’t you realize that? A man invented your God to keep you obedient! If there were anything divine, it would be a Goddess, it would be love, it would be the coupling between two women—”

“You blasphemous devil.” Mother closed her eyes. “You will always be my daughter, and I will always share the burden for your abhorrent failings. I will never say that I do not love you. But in this moment, I struggle to comprehend that you share my blood. Our decision is final. We have no need of you.”

“Delfina,” said Father plaintively. “Must you be so hard on the girl? She’s only experiencing an infatuation, it’s harmless…”

“She is no longer a virgin, Sebastian! A guest under our roof, a woman no less, had knowledge of our daughter. By rights you should track this foreign harlot down and have her arrested.” Mother’s face twitched as she reached new heights of hysteria. “And God help us, her brother is still courting my Irena!”

“Rafael deserves no blame for his sister’s actions. Would you really want to punish Irena for her goodness by taking away her favored suitor? My verdict is that the matter is at an end.”

“Yes, it’s at an end.” Adelina’s anger subsided into chill resignation. “I have no need of either of you. You are strangers to me. I was not born of you. I was born of the heavens.”

She turned and fled the room. Her panicked feet carried her to her bedroom, where Irena sat gazing out the window. “Ada?”

Too breathless to respond, Adelina slammed the door and locked it. She inhaled a lungful of air. “They’re going to marry to me Orfeo,” she said, the words jumbling together.

“What? But you’re not yet twenty-five.”

“Mother knows now. Everybody knows. And it’s like I told you. They hate me. Only you still love me, Ira. You’re the only one I have in the world.” Adelina shut her eyes to hide her tears. “I need you to do me one last favor.”

“Last favor? Ada, why last?”

“Cut my hair.” Adelina tossed her tangled mane free from her shoulders. “Cut it close, just as Silvana wears hers.”

“Your hair? But it’s so beautiful, you’ve been growing it your whole life…”

“Which means that like my life, it is worthless and corrupted. Cut it, Irena.”

Irena bit her lower lip. “Mother will be enraged.”

“She can’t possibly be any more enraged than she is now.” Adelina dragged a stool to Irena’s bedside and took a silver pair of scissors from the table beneath the window. “Cut it.”

“Very well.” Irena gathered a bunch of Adelina’s hair into her palm. “About this morning…”

“You’re not to talk about this morning.”

The scissors snipped, and several black strands fell to the floor. “You can’t stop me from doing so. Adelina, little sister, dear heart—your Silvana loves you. The suffering in her eyes when you struck her, God help me, I’ll never forget the sight of it.”

“She doesn’t love me. If she loved me, she wouldn’t have lied.”

“It’s because she loved you that she told you the truth. How can someone so clever as you be so idiotic?”

A quick series of snips passed by Adelina’s ear. “You weren’t there when she took me beneath the trees. She told me the last thing she wanted was for either of us to be hurt. After the lie, she kissed me, and then we did more than kiss.”

“So I gathered from your tantrum.” Irena sighed. “The day after your confession, I awoke with reservations about your future. But when she came to us in the garden and I saw the way you smiled at her, every last doubt left me. You should be with her. I know in my heart that God would want it to be so.”

“There is no God.”

“Then be with her because I want it to be so.”

“Her love is false. Her words are deceptions. You just can’t see through them like I can.”

“You’re so angry, Ada. So angry you’ll even scourge yourself for the chance to inflict some pain.” Irena set aside the scissors. “It’s done.”

Adelina hurried to the mirror. A startled breath escaped her lips. Her newly cropped hair, robbed by the blade of its exquisite curl, now exposed her slender neck and rounded ears. It was difficult to recognize herself in that vulnerable, frightened reflection. “I don’t know whether I look beautiful or disastrous.”

“You look different.” Irena stared at the mountain of black strands on the floor. “Your long hair suited you so well. Now you seem…fragile.”

“But I don’t understand.” Adelina ran her hands over her trim scalp. “Silvana didn’t look fragile at all.”

“Her features are sterner than yours, and she carries herself with assurance. And you are fragile right now, and afraid.”

“Don’t presume to know what I am.” Adelina began to loosen the laces of her dress.

“Why are you undressing?”

“I want to appear like a woman, not some laced puppet.” Adelina undid the countless hooks and buttons of the dress before throwing aside the garment. She opened her wardrobe and retrieved her short pants and tunic. “I want people to see me as I really am rather than as a ridiculous walking shroud.”

“Do you think less of me, then, for wearing a dress?”

“No.” Adelina pulled on her pants and slipped the tunic over her shoulders. “I like how I look in a dress too. But if I’m to ever be free, I have to start somewhere.” She approached the full-length mirror and stood with her hands on her hips. “I look like I’m off to corrupt somebody’s daughter.”

“You’re tomboyish beyond words.” Irena wrung her hands in her lap. “I think I know what you’re planning, but I’m not sure I can stomach hearing it.”

Adelina looked at Irena, whose eyes were glistening, and her throat tightened. Yet she willed herself to continue. “I’m leaving. I’ll take my jewelry to pawn, and I’ll flee this place. I’ll find a life somewhere else.”

“No, you’ll be mugged or worse.” Irena wiped her eyes. “Don’t do this to us.”

“If you do marry that man, I wish you well. And if you don’t, I praise you for clever reasoning.” Adelina sat beside Irena and kissed her on the forehead. “When you have children, raise them more wisely than our parents did us.”

“I will.” Irena took Adelina’s hand and kissed its knuckles. “I’ve prepared myself to lose you ever since Father told me I was to begin receiving suitors. But I never thought it would be like this.”

Adelina squeezed Irena’s fingers. “I’m sorry I’ve teased you.”

“And I’m sorry I’ve frustrated you.”

“Will you tell Lise that I love her?”

Irena smiled, though her lips trembled. “Yes, I shall.” A tear wet her cheek. “Are you going to walk to town?”

“Yes. I’ll leave by the window and climb down that big tree. I don’t want to risk running into Mother or Father downstairs. Will you keep the door locked and tell them that I’m sleeping?”

“If I must.” Irena looked away. “I wish you’d forgive her.”

“I wish you wouldn’t mention her.” Adelina released Irena’s hands and stood. “Try not to worry about me.” She retrieved a satchel from beneath her bed and swept her jewelry into it. “I’m going now. No doubt they’re busy complaining over my behavior, but sooner or later they’ll come looking for me.”

“Go with my love, Adelina.”

“If you do care for that man…” Adelina swallowed as her throat squeezed tighter still. “If you do love Rafael, I wish you both the very best.” She unclasped the window and opened the shutters. After a last glance at Irena, who gazed back with solemn eyes, Adelina clambered onto the sill and crawled onto the branch.

It took little effort to wriggle along the limb’s length and into the crooked intersection of the tree’s uppermost branches. Silver leaves stroked her face, and the old boughs enclosed her as if she were entering a lover’s caress.

My nature was prophesied to be that of the earth and forest.

Adelina closed her eyes and kissed the mottled bark. It felt, even in that dark moment, as if something kissed her back.

Adelina sat by the window, her fingers pressed to the glass, and watched the morning activity in the street below. Mingled townsfolk traversed the cobblestones, many of them drab and uninteresting, though a few offered moments of excitement and color: troubadours in dyed pantaloons, groups of women trailing silk, guardsmen in glittering chainmail, merchants leading wagons and, sometimes, adventurers wearing feathered hats, swords in their belts and capes on their shoulders. These last travelers always recalled the woman Adelina had now spent a fortnight trying to forget.

Adelina had always known Father to be the wealthiest man in town, but she hadn’t realized what that truly meant until her first day of freedom, when she’d pawned a ring he’d given to her as a chance gift. The pawnbroker had given her enough money to pay her board and food for two months—all from a single ring, while other people slept on the street, their bodies shivering in alleys. It had been Adelina’s first true lesson in privilege, and it had taught her something about humility as well.

She had chosen to stay at a cheap, ramshackle inn built some distance from the town’s lively center. Though she could have afforded a room at the town’s best inn, it happened to belong to the man they’d tried to force her to marry. In fact, so many of the town’s establishments were run by friends of Father’s that she’d expected to be caught within days, even hours; yet it seemed nobody was looking for a young woman with short hair, and when one morning she passed a sketch of herself nailed to a post in the town square, she was relieved to see little resemblance.

Her stomach muttered. Time for breakfast.

She slipped on her sandals and crossed the creaking floorboards. The stairs to the ground floor were noisier still, and the second to last wobbled as she placed her foot on it. The innkeeper had assured her that nobody had ever tripped on the stairs and died, but that seemed not to rule out the possibility that somebody had only been hideously injured.

The dining room was empty, sunlit and fragrant. A stick of incense smoldered in one corner to drive away the heavy odor of dust and alcohol. Adelina took her customary seat by the window and rang the bell. The kitchen door opened, and Agnete, the innkeeper’s wife, peered into the room.

“Marielle! I was just thinking that nobody wanted breakfast today, and here you are.” Agnete was in her thirties, perhaps—on the subject of her age, she refused to give a direct answer—and her high cheeks, sharp jaw and the perpetual gleam in her eyes gifted her a handsome presence.

“Hello, Agnete. I’d like eggs this morning, if you have any.”

“Always, Marielle. The day we run out of eggs is the day the Devil calls this world his own.” Agnete ducked back into the kitchen, and Adelina returned her attention to the street.

Not until she’d wandered into the inn, late on the afternoon of her escape, had the need for an alias dawned on Adelina. Pressured by the innkeeper’s impatient stare, Adelina’s frantic mind had pushed Marielle, Felise’s middle name, to her lips. She now wished it could have been otherwise, for each time she heard the name, she suffered a pang of regret for abandoning her little sister.