Kissed by Starlight (25 page)

Compared with where he was expected to sleep, even the worst room in the house was a chamber of light and beauty. At least there were no immediately visible cobwebs, which was more than one could say for the shed. Well, that was easy enough to remedy. A few moments’ thought and the webs would be silk curtains, the single lamp a crystal lustre, and the warped chair and lumpy mattress fit for the King of the Wilder World.

Instead, upon reaching his rat-eaten door, Blaic sighed and pulled out an old twig broom from a pile consisting of a broken basketwork chair, a few cracked flowerpots, and a ladder with crazy rungs. Standing well back from his foe, Blaic began to slap at the cobwebs, muttering apologies to the spiders as they leapt, startled, from their corners. Their mummified prey drifted helplessly to the floor, and Blaic swept them out over the cracked sill.

He whistled as he worked, not the haunting tune of the deep woods but “Anacreon in Heaven,” a stirring tune too martial to be left to a mere drinking song. He very carefully did not look toward the clump of trees, visible from his doorstep. If he went down there, what would he find? A cold ring of ashes? A slight smell of rare perfume? A mocking laugh, dying with its echo? Blaic didn’t think he could bear another such disappointment.

The rules of this game were clear. To reach his home again, he had to betray Felicia. The other requirements were standard spell riddles, requiring a slanted and squinted look to become clear, as when a woman had literally wept over him. But this requirement of the king, sent all but mad with anger and grief, was the hardest of the four because it was plainest.

Before he’d known her, it had seemed the simplest. Mortal women were easily betrayed. A broken promise, or a second glance at another woman, could be construed as a betrayal; he’d seen it happen a hundred times in the dim past. But he had not thought, then, what it must be like to look in a woman’s eyes and know beyond all doubt that the pain he saw there was of his own, deliberate making.

He closed the door on the beckoning shapes that seemed to form themselves in the shadows of the large trees. He lay on the freshly turned but still lumpy mattress, his hands over his ears. He closed his eyes and imagined himself beside the clear reflecting waters of Homashyl, the Depthless Mere of the King.

Beneath that motionless surface, the Sleepers lay. Immortals who had found the shackles of eternity too heavy had sloughed them off to lie, growing ever wiser in sleep, beneath the water. Their dreams sent them on an endless voyage, drifting in and out of the dreams of others, mortal and immortal alike. On clouded days, when the sun’s dazzle was veiled and therefore not blinding the eyes of the watcher, the faces of the Sleepers could be glimpsed, cool, pale, cut off from both worlds, their passions quenched by the water. One had to lean far out over the water to glimpse them, floating at peace for all time.

The one time Blaic had tried to see them, he’d all but overbalanced. Only Anat, Sira’s nurse-companion, had possessed the wits to grab him by his shirt and pull him back. “It’s death to touch the water,” Anat had warned. Then she confined Sira to her chamber for three days as a punishment for laughing at the sacred spot where Sira’s own mother slept.

Maybe his thinking of the Sleepers had attracted their attention. For his dream that night seemed to have their touch.

He sat entirely alone at a long table, the wood reflecting the lights of the candles in its highly polished surface. Far, far away, a feast was laid out, too far away for him to reach it. He knew himself to be starving but felt somehow that it would be impolite to rise from his seat and bring the food to himself. But impolite to whom? He sat alone.

Then he saw that he wasn’t alone. A woman, her long white-blond hair caught in an elaborate eightfold braid that fell to her waist, turned her head and looked at him. There were lines on her face, carved deep, lines of sorrow and joy. Her bright eyes regarded him steadily, the way a bird watches to see what harm is coming to it.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Sira’s mother, the queen. The king, my husband, could never forgive the mortals for what they had done to me, but I have slept for the long, slow centuries and I forgive them.”

“You are wise, Lady.”

She smiled at that. “Wise? What is wisdom?”

The words of the Law escaped him. It troubled him deeply, for he’d known the catechism of the People since his birth. Now he could only stare at the food so far away. He hardly paid attention to the last Queen of the Wilder World, though he should have been all deference.

She said softly, “If you hunger, then eat.”

When he looked again, he saw Sira helping a child fill a plate. He stood up then and reached out a long arm toward her. He could see his hand, flying away, impossibly far, to touch her on the shoulder. But her hair was a deep, rich chestnut, her eyes a different shape, her skin possessed of an entirely mortal glow.

“Felicia?”

He woke with her name on his lips. It was dawn.

Chapter Fourteen

Two weeks after Miss Dravoget’s wedding to the village butcher, Felicia sat in her study, attempting to reconcile the account books. The windows had been unsealed after being painted shut, it seemed, for centuries. A divine smell, like wildflower honey, blew in on the breeze from the opened windows. A particularly playful breeze kept stirring her pages, like a naughty child who wants her mother to leave housework for the manifold pleasures of playing with her.

Felicia only sighed, and put a broad copper farthing on the corner that flapped the most. She wished for the dozenth time that she’d thought to search Miss Dravoget’s baggage before the former directress had gone. Mary had made the suggestion, claiming that she could riffle bags and boxes so that the owner never knew they’d been touched. Felicia, her upbringing winning over her suspicions, had forbade it. Yet the more she worked the sums, the more convinced she became that hundreds of pounds must have left the building in some of Miss Dravoget’s hand luggage.

There was a column showing the paying-in of subscriptions, considerably more per annum than the children had said. There was a column showing expenditures, the total never approaching the first sum.

“A good thing Lady Day isn’t more than a week off,” she said, raising her head as Mary brought a tea tray into the room. She rubbed her tired eyes. “The money from those that pay quarterly will come in most useful. Until then, I don’t know how we’ll pay any of these bills.”

“No use a-writin’ to her ladyship again, is there?”

“She hasn’t answered any of my letters yet. I can’t imagine she’ll change her mind.”

“What about that Mr. Ashton? Ooh, it galls me to zay zo much as his name.”

“I sent off a letter to him yesterday, by Blaic’s hand. He brought back no reply.”

Having been keep waiting for nearly two hours by an impertinent clerk, only to finally hear that “Mr. Ashton is taking the matter under advisement,” would have tried any man’s patience. To a power who was well-accustomed to “arranging” matters to his own satisfaction, this had been a form of flagrant torture. Yet Felicia had extracted a promise that he would not try to influence Mr. Ashton.

Blaic had said sharply, “The sooner you outgrow your notion that everyone you meet is sweet and good, the better for us all! Men like Ashton never allow their better selves to be on visiting terms. You’d have better fortune breaking into his office and robbing the deed boxes!”

That had been the first time he’d spoken directly to her since the violent argument they’d had three days after their arrival, though the children were always full of what he’d been doing. The wild grass had been mowed flat with great sweeps of a sickle. The brick paths were repointed where the bricks had been pushed up or broken by the pressure of the ground. He had set up something like a cold frame around the far side of the building and was starting early vegetables. Felicia hadn’t had the chance to tell him that those vegetables might make the difference between feeding the children and their going hungry this summer.

The money Lady Stavely had given her as an advance on her salary was gone. However, there was food in the pantry. Boxes of old clothes in the dusty attic, discovered by Felicia during the great housecleaning she’d initiated the day after her arrival, had been dragged out, their contents aired. Several enormous skirts, as well as the cloaks that had gone over them, had been cut apart and resewn as blankets so that now every child in every room had his or her own. They might be damask, velvet, or embroidered taffeta, fit for presentation at court, but they were warm.

She raised her head to look out the window as a particularly piercing shriek split the air. A child, possibly a boy, was fleeing across the lawn, laughing as he ran. Felicia, her eyes dazzled by the sunlight and weary from long hours of sewing and math, sighed and rubbed her forehead by way of a change.

“You’m ought to drink this up, then take a walk. ‘Tis as lovely a day as I ever did zee,” Mary said.

“I do have a bit of a head. Miss Dravoget’s handwriting is abominable. Remind me to review the children’s.”

“Doubt any o’ ‘em can write, any more ‘n I can.”

“Can’t you? I thought...the cookery books?”

“Oh, them! I can spell my way through ‘em, but a real book...” The maid looked down enviously at the heavy Bible on the edge of the desk, apparently the only book the school owned; Felicia certainly hadn’t seen any others. Sighing, she pulled out a list of necessities and added “suitable books” to the bottom of it. Another expenditure.

She sipped the tea Mary poured out as though it were the elixir of life. “Delicious.”

“You’d best enjoy it. ‘Tis the last of what we brung with us.”

“And no hope of any more until Lady Day.” She sipped again, then shook her head. “Nor any even then. There are so many more pressing matters that must come first.”

Mary pursed her lips. “First thing is to make friends again with that man. I don’t zay I trust him any more than first I did, but he’s a wonderful hard worker.”

“You only say that because he repaired the well.”

“An’ why not? Zaved me haulin’ water, did it not?”

Mary had taken on the air as well as the incurable liberties of an old family retainer. Felicia knew she should draw a line between what was permissible and what was impertinence. Not only was this a difficulty through being so much younger than Mary, but also Felicia felt warmed by the woman’s concern. At the moment, it was the only kindly attention she received.

It was plain, from the silence of Hamdry Manor, that Felicia had been cut off as completely as Lady Stavely promised. What caused the ache behind her heart and the watering of her eyes, so that the numerals or the stitches swam in a flood, was that Clarice had not written either. Had she forgotten? Or was she being prevented?

Called to from the corridor outside the study, Mary put down the Bible and left the room. Alone, Felicia admitted that it was neither Clarice’s silence nor the burdens of her new position that made her heart feel so dry and empty; it was the memory of a foolish quarrel that she could not wish away.

It had all started over something as trivial and sordid as a dirty dish. It had been late, eleven o’clock at night. A storm had broken over the house and the smaller children had been frightened. No longer sleeping in a room with their elders, who had used to comfort them in lieu of adults, the four-year-olds had been thrown into a near-panic. Mariah, the oldest by six months, had derided Lucius and Penelope for being babies, yet she too had flinched when the lightning lashed the sky.

Felicia had gathered them close about her, rocking and singing until they’d calmed down. Lucius had fallen asleep on her arm and she did not dare move it, while Penelope curled up on her lap. Mariah, showing an unexpected tendency to suck her thumb when there was no other child to see, had taken firm hold of the edge of Felicia’s shawl. Felicia was effectively trapped until Mary had come to her rescue.

By the time they’d tucked the children in and peeked in on all the others, the hour had grown late. Felicia dismissed Mary to her bed, refusing to hear another word about tasks she’d left undone. Mary arose every morning at five to begin her day’s work. Yawning, Mary agreed to go off,      provided Felicia refused to emerge from her bed until after 8 in the morning.

While reaching for another dirty dish, Felicia felt a cold, wet draft move her skirt. She turned with a smile to see Blaic standing on the threshold, the storm behind him, his clothes as dry as if he’d walked in from a hot summer’s afternoon.

“It’s absurd,” he said, his brows pulled down.

“What is?”

“You are working like a slave. Why won’t you let me help you?”

“You do help. You’ve transformed that jungle out there into a place where the children can play. I think they look healthier already. Their appetites have certainly improved.”

“That’s not what I meant, as you know perfectly well.”

She never would understand how he could do the things he did, all without so much as a wave of his hand or a deeply pained frown of concentration distorting his handsome face. Surely so splendid a result should have required great dramatic sweeps of his arms and a lengthy incantation at the very least.

Felicia turned from the sink, now a bubbling stream, and saw gleaming cockatoos and magnificent parrots perched upon the limbs of exotic trees. Vast, gilt-edged scarlet flowers with cinnamon centers opened before her with a scent like all the mystery of the tropics. In the depths of the greenery, a large leopard, his spots like black roses, blinked shining green eyes at her. A warm breeze, such a one as was never felt in England, tugged at her hair and played over her exposed arms.

Looking down at herself, she saw she wore the garb of an Indian princess, with tight trouserlike underpinnings of red silk; for the rest, she was swathed in layers of crinkling silver tissue embroidered with gold. Glittering bangles lay over her wrists, each one seemingly carved from a single huge gemstone. She saw diamond, sapphire, ruby, and garnet twinkling over her henna-decorated hands, while her feet were bare and adorned with strings of pearl and chalcedony. Her hair poured over her shoulders and when she touched a cold drop on her forehead, she guessed that he’d hung another diamond there, probably of more value than all the Royal Regalia.