Plenilune (38 page)

But then the shock was swept away and Margaret was smiling sincerely, caught by the undiluted beauty of the two young people before her. It felt viciously good, too, to not be the only strange one in the world.

“Julius. Julianna. I am so glad you could come.” She found herself dipping politely, withdrawing just a fraction so that her greeting might not frighten the shy things.

The boy’s pale face coloured and, stiffly, he bowed, looking at Centurion as he did so. The girl folded her hands upon her breast and, like Margaret, plunged in a froth of fiery silk toward the floor, her curtsy graceful and deliberate as someone flinging down a torch. Jewels yelled in the light from her throat and ears—but no jewel was as poignant as her uplifted, piercing eyes.

Rupert and Margaret took the ends of the table. Livy placed Centurion on Margaret’s right with Julianna across from him directly on Margaret’s left, her brother beside her to Rupert’s right. Julianna’s hand flickered beside her, as if searching for Margaret’s, but, catching her older brother’s eye, she put it back down in her lap.

She thought we were going to say grace
, Margaret thought with a wince.
If only we were!
We need it.

“I heard the weather was clear for you coming over the Sound,” began Rupert as they plunged into the goose.

Centurion looked up. “Remarkably pleasant, to tell the truth. It was very cold in the hills but we had clear skies nearly all the way. I thought the clouds might turn to something, but they never did. It has been a mild winter thus far.”

“They do not get very stormy around here until after the New Year.”

Centurion quietly peeled meat away from bone, but Margaret saw the half-laughing, half-hopeless look on the lord’s face. He, too, would be bracing for the wretched change in the weather that was to come at the turn of the year…

Rupert’s knife flashed, sending a scale of light over his cheek. “Our weather moves from east to west; if it did not break on you as you were coming over, it probably broke behind you and moved on. Incidentally, you should have fair skies for your journey tomorrow.”

“How long is the ride down?”

Rupert thought a moment.
How polite he is being!
Margaret realized with a pang of worry. She wondered how long it would last. “If you take the Branhoch and don’t turn off at Shirling, but keep going south through the junction at Crown, it will take you three days. If you mention my name at the Blue Royal, you will get a better room and a better price. They are none so bad a way-house as some.”

Centurion quenched a look of surprise. With a tell-tale sweep over Julius and Julianna he said, “Thank you. I am…heartily grateful.”

Rupert set his mouth in a hard, thin line, and for awhile it was up to Margaret to make conversation.

She turned slowly to Julianna. “I saw you have a dappled grey horse. Is that yours?”

The girl raised her head and looked steadily, wide-eyed, into Margaret’s face. The dark lips were parted in surprise—and Margaret was seeing, again, the horned creature in the woods, and saw Julianna weighing whether to be spooked or at ease with her voice. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Centurion looking across the table at his sister’s face, breath bated, willing her with an almost physical power to calm herself.

The jet-black lashes flickered over the eyes. The tension eased. “Yes, that is Bridget. She is my mare. Splendour of God is Julius’ horse.”

Margaret smiled in spite of herself. “I can think of no better mount to bear you than the splendour of God.”

Rupert drew in an audible breath; the sound of it seemed to jab at Margaret under the breastbone. Grey flickered on the edge of her vision.

“Mine,” Margaret went on through the tightness in her lungs, “is Hanging Tree. It is not as pretty a name as yours, but my mare looks so much like yours, I could not help marking your mare when you came.” She floundered for another question, if only for the sake of hearing that sweet, lyrical voice again. “Did you raise her yourself?”

“No.” The brows twitched. “Centurion—he breeds the horses. Chanticleer Down is his horse. My family has raised Down horses for generations. They are the most famous family of horses in the Honours.”

Margaret looked to Centurion. “You must be very proud.”

“Horses are very important to us,” Centurion explained. “They are a symbol of wealth and power, a kind of magic, and often very keen friends. And,” the falcon-coloured eyes laughed, “in a pinch they can get you from place to place.”

Laughing back into those friendly eyes, Margaret was surprised by the thought—

Could I ask
him
about the dragon?

Julianna spread her hands in a sudden fit of confusion, for her napkin had slid off her silken lap onto the carpet. Spurred into motion, Livy brought a fresh one and held it mutely out to her. Julianna took it, but Margaret saw the shiver of the jewel in her ear as she trembled in the presence of the huge dark manservant. Seeming to catch her distress, Julius reached out, just beneath the edge of the table—Margaret could see his shoulder move—and touched Julianna. The simple gesture seemed to settle and reassure her, the roosting softness in the boy’s eyes seemed to transfer instantly into Julianna’s face as though by some half-magical link between them.

No wonder people thought them unlucky!

“There is chess and rummy in the withdrawing room,” said Rupert when supper was finished. He added to Livy, “We will take coffee and dessert there.”

“And sure we ought not stay up late,” said Centurion, rising and twisting back his shoulders, stretching contentedly, “but I will play you in a game of chess.”

They descended on the withdrawing room with its roaring fire and windows curtained by night. Rupert and Centurion, each a little wary of the other and each deftly not showing it, sat down on either side of the chess-board. Rupert had the red, Centurion had the white: Centurion opened. Left to entertain the White Ones, Margaret drew up a few chairs to the coffee table and began shuffling the deck of cards.

“Have you played rummy before?” she asked, assuming that they had and hearing, not her own voice, but the fox’s mockingly in her head.

Julius, in a low, rich voice, said, “No, madam.”

She came back with a start. “Oh. Well, I will teach it to you.”

She felt she taught it badly, especially since neither twin said a word as she explained, but when they began to play she realized they had taken in every word she had said—and, what was more, they played expertly. She could not tell if they got any pleasure out of the game, for their faces were concentrated. They ate their dessert and drank their coffee almost mechanically, which disturbed her.

She lost every time they played and as the soft, triumphant word “Checkmate,” was spoken in Rupert’s baritone, she leaned back on her sofa and smiled pathetically. “Through no skill of mine you have both played tremendously. Of course, I have always been a bad player,” she added ruefully.

Julianna seemed to latch onto her brother’s face with her eyes. “It is but mathematics,” said Julius patiently. “You have only to acquaint yourself with the number of cards in the deck and the placement of them. Then it is a simple matter of probability and logic.”

Margaret put her chin in her hand, head shaking so that her earrings swung. “If I were half so well educated as you I might know what you mean. You must be very excited to be going to the University.”

They both smiled and looked down at their laps. How curious—they were perhaps only four years younger than she and yet their shyness, despite their obvious intelligence, was tangible. To Margaret, it seemed only to add to their unique charm. She found herself regretting that they would be going away in the morning. She caught Centurion’s eye across the room and smiled at him. A little perplexed, he smiled back.

They finished their coffee and rose—Rupert pinched out a light by the chess-table. “It is five past ten,” he said.

“Yes, we should turn in.” Centurion bowed to Margaret again. “My compliments. It has been a most enjoyable evening.”

“I will take Julius and Julianna to their rooms,” Margaret said, hoping, since Centurion’s chamber lay only a few rooms beyond hers, that it would ease Rupert’s temper to have her diverted to another part of the house until Centurion was well ensconced in his chambers.

The lord of Darkling took a sounding of his siblings’ emotions. Neither appeared unduly distressed by this news. Julianna even moved a little closer to Margaret’s side, drawing her twin brother after her.

“Shoo!” Centurion turned over his anxiety to her. “That seems fine. Good-night, you two. I’ll see you in the morning. Good-night, Lady Margaret, Rupert.”

Rupert strode toward the door. “Good-night, Centurion. Good-night, Margaret.”

His last words to her drew Centurion up short with surprise. Completely unguarded, the young man flung a look at her over his shoulder, frowning, and with a hot rush of shame Margaret realized that he had assumed, and had politely ignored, that she and Rupert shared a bed. Their eyes met: Margaret felt hers go glassy and cold. Centurion, realizing his mistake and how plainly it had showed on his face, swung away and left without a word, swallowed up by the thick shadows that were gathering about the house.

Her heart was beating loudly in her ears. She felt someone touch her arm and found Julianna looking at her with her deep, impersonal, purple eyes. There was some uncanny shape about the mouth that made Margaret wonder if the girl understood. She heard herself saying something about how early a start they would have in the morning and that she had better get them to their rooms, and then she was walking through the dark with the White Ones behind her. It was almost eerie how silent they were—it would have been eerie but for the thunder of blood in her ears that seemed loud enough to drown out Curoi, had he been barking at that hour. It was not until she reached the narrow hall and stood between their doors that her heart began to quiet.

“I will see you in the morning before you leave,” she told the two creatures shining out of the mothy darkness. “I hope you rest well.”

But the White Ones, who had been so shy before, seemed to suddenly waken to the loneliness of the north wing and the creaking drowsiness of the old wood underfoot. Julius made a curious little gesture with both hands, spinning his palms counter clockwise over each other, and the gesture seemed meant for Julianna. She reached toward Margaret as if to stay her.

“Wait,” she said imperiously.

Wait? Speechless, bewildered, Margaret stood rooted to the darkness and the ancient floorboards, feeling the hugeness of the dark creep up at her back with only the whiteness of Julius before her to light the way as Julianna, on silent feet, slipped into her room and disappeared. She fully expected the old apple-leaf woman to re-emerge with the girl, when Julianna, with no more noise than a sunbeam shaking loose in a glade of pine, slipped back into the hallway with a book pressed between her hands.

Without meeting Margaret’s eye the girl said, “It was in our minds that you should have this. We do not know why. We were meant to use it for our studies at the University. We will miss it, we are sure. They will ask and we will have to think of something…But Julius and I agreed: when we saw you, it
sounded
like you.”

Margaret looked at the unassuming little book. What was it with these people and their books? “It
sounded
like me?” she parroted.

Julianna held it out. Margaret’s fingers responded, brushing it, but she could not quite take it. “Yes, madam. The sound it makes—the sound you make—the notes went together to us. It is part of your pattern. Please take it,” she added almost desperately.

Margaret took the book, then, but she took Julianna’s hand as well, hard in the grip of her long fingers. “I will take it, but I will not let you go until you tell me what you mean. Too often people have slipped by me, leaving me without answers. Not this time.”

She expected Julianna to spook and bolt, and for a moment the girl looked abashed by the powerful fingers locking over her wrist. Julius, linked to his sister, also started, drawing in a swift breath of surprise or pain. But Margaret held the beautiful things and would not let them go, no matter how frightened they looked, no matter how beautiful. Finally Julius moved toward his sister, his hands going out gingerly, steadily, toward the captured hand.

“Everything makes a sound,” he said patiently, as if he were speaking to a wild animal. “And all sound makes a pattern. Did God not speak, and did not his voice make the form of things? The sound of your soul and the sound of the soul of this book make a pattern together.” His fingertips touched the back of her hand, cold, pressing, begging her to let Julianna go. “So we know that you are meant to go together.”

“You can see that?” Margaret whispered. She was not sure if she believed him or not.

Black-spangled, flushed with lilac-colour, Julius’ eyes turned to her. The fingers worked around hers. “No, but we can feel it. We can’t often hear it, but we can often feel it. Madam—” His voice grew audibly pained, and Margaret suddenly let fly her fingers, letting go of the brittle wrist.

Margaret took a step back, feeling the wings of the darkness fold about her shoulders. Concerned, shy, pale-lit things, the twins watched her from the doorways of their bedrooms.

“My world is flat,” she said at last. “My world is flat like a pan overtop of hell. We don’t believe such things.”

“You are only blind,” said Julianna, as if that was a comfort. “Those who have eyes to see can see.”

Where had she heard those words before…? “But I am not blind. I keep waiting for the rim of your world, but it keeps curving on toward the sunrise and I do not know if I can take the roundness of it. You live in an awful world,” she said huskily. “How can you bear the spice of it?”

“It runs in our veins,” said Julius simply. Then he added, “Yours will empty into ours.”

She stared at him, almost beyond wanting to understand, yet that tenacious germ of human spirit drove her inexorably on, on toward the blinding sunrise. “I think yours must empty into mine, young sir, but either way I will die.”