The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (21 page)

Chapter Thirty Seven

‘Now a city... slips beneath us... Castle rooftops battered by the tide’s foamy tentacles.’
Another of Ebba’s poems echoed in Phelim’s mind as he edged Adelina across the terracotta roof tiles. She stepped over a row of decorative marble crockets cut and honed to the sharpness of knives. At their edge the threesome looked out over Veniche - row upon twisting and curved row of canal, flat rooves, rippled and decorative rooflets, coned chimneystacks, erect campaniles and arched cupolas and in the distance the expanse of the laguna wrapping itself around the city like a dark blanket.

‘It’s no good here, too wide to traverse.’ Phelim turned away, pushing Adelina ahead, in
the circle of his arms. ‘Further along the canal, it might narrow.’

All they could see as they looked down was an abyss of black shadow, the water indistinct apart from the fractious lapping against the palazzo walls, the whole
uninviting

They had reached the end of the palazzo’s extremes, placing each foot carefully on the tiles and skirting around conical chimneys that were cold and cheerless to the touch. Pigeons poked heads out from under wings and gave them baleful looks, a few clacking their wings and making a nervous burble at the back of their throats. But the threesome continued their careful way, their speed geared to Adelina’s condition.

She hadn’t uttered a word, just followed like a trusting child. Phelim’s heart had shifted at the terrible bruises on the bare legs before he had clothed her. In the night gloom, he couldn’t see the wounded sadness in Adelina’s eyes but he knew without doubt that it was there.

‘Here, look -
steps! Must be for the tilers and chimney sweeps,’ the hob whispered just loud enough for them to hear. He led the way, Adelina following at a much slower pace. Suddenly there was a terrific yowl and a thud and the companions froze.

‘Gallivant?’ Phelim whispered into the night.

‘Bloody cat,’ his angry reply hissed back. Adelina’s face softened as she stepped down the ladder. She wasn’t yet ready for mirth but the hob had cracked something, if not his bones. Phelim noticed and allowed himself a breath of relief.

He helped her onto more iron steps stretching down from Severine’s roof to her neighbour’s, his hand guiding her as if it should never let go. Clambering down, her toe slipped off the wet rail and she banged onto the tiles below. Again hearts
leaped and they all stood still expecting an armed Luther to appear on the edge of the roof. But silence prevailed.
Nothing.
Phelim rubbed Adelina’s arm. ‘Alright? Can you make it to the next edge?’

Adelina’s need to escape was paramount and she hugged the roof, feeling her way along slippery as ice, moss-covered tiles. She reached one of the odd, cone-shaped chimneys and as she went to step round, another cat shot out as if Huon and the Hunt were behind. Her feet slid as she stepped back with a gasp and she fell hard on her hip to begin the inexorable slide toward the edge and the grim water of the canal below. The tiles tore at her jacket and against her skin as the downward slide pushed the fabric up against her ribs. She bit down on her cries, on her fear and her breath held tight in her throat as she scrabbled with bleeding fingers for anything that would stop her descent.

Her feet struck a barricade and she slid to a halt, enough to enable her to sit up, rub elbows and pull her clothes back over an exposed and bruised back.

‘Let me help.’ Phelim appeared at her side. Gallivant, unaware of her predicament, had disappeared further around the chimney. She nodded. As she looked to her toes she saw there was no barricade, nothing but air, and yet her feet touched something large and unyielding.

‘Thank you’ she whispered and looked up at him. She gave a hint of a smile, a tip to a corner of the mouth, and then dropped her gaze.

Phelim said nothing as he helped her to her feet and gently pushed her to continue. She trod on, putting one foot in front of the other, the need to protect her child driving her across the roofline. They breached the end of this next roof and stood by box guttering.

The canal had narrowed and was hung below with laundry-lines weighted with dripping loads. They had reached the end of Severine’s immediate domicile and would only describe a square back to their point of departure if they followed any more of the roofline they occupied.

‘We haven’t any option, we have to jump over to that next block. We shall be well away from the palazzo then and can follow the alleys more safely to get to our inn.’ Phelim guaged the jump, knowing he was asking the impossible.

‘You expect Adelina to jump from here to there in her condition?’ The hob stood legs akimbo, hands on hips.

Adelina
’s head hung and her hands shielded her belly. Phelim knew she hadn’t the strength to make the leap but could see no other means of escape. Their luck began to teeter on the edge of the guttering.

‘I can do it.’ She spoke
into the dripping silence. ‘It’s alright, I can do it.’

‘Adelina!’ Galli
vant swung around but she shook her head at him.

The hob walked over to Phelim and in a surly undertone, gave h
im a whispered blast. ‘Friend Faeran, you’d best do something pretty good because that is a huge gap to leap over. It’s impossible for any mortal. I tell you man, if she is hurt I shall curse you until you are dead!’ He stepped back over the tiles to the edge of the roof to look down at the houses that were almost lost in the mist and gloom.

‘You first Gallivant, then you can be there for Adelina.’

Phelim watched as the hob stood at the guttering. He raised himself onto his toes and like a diver, launched himself up and out. Being Other, the distance was as elastic as he wanted it to be and he floated like a piece of mask-plumage to the lower level opposite.

Phelim took Adelina’s hand and felt a gentle tingle through his body, not a
frisson
, something more emotive and far-reaching. ‘Are you ready? I swear it will be safe.’ Again he heard Ebba’s voice as she recounted the poems of his childhood.
‘Longlegged boys leapt from rooftop to rooftop. The dark between their legs widening as they spread.’
He smiled to himself, realizing that on every strife-strewn step of the way, Ebba had been with him and would continue to be.

Taking a step back he launched them into the air and they descended down, down to land as gently as a pair of pigeon feathers on the roof next to Gallivant. The hob took Adelina’s hand and led her to sit on a pile of stacked roof-tiles to rest her weary legs and then turned to Phelim to mutter tersely. ‘I should think so too!’

‘Better than dragging her from the depths of the canal,’ Phelim responded with a flash of white teeth in the gloom.

‘Like I said, I should think so. How much further?’ Gallivant chafed to get Adelina safe - every now and then a tiny thought at what had befallen her crept into his mind and floodwalls would begin to tumble so that he must forcibly drag his mind back to the job at hand.
My life has never been so hard.
He sighed. But would he go back, would he change it? He looked at the embroiderer sitting fatigued.
No, never!
Adelina had taught him to grow.
Fancy that, a mortal teaching me something.
He had to return the favour - he would love her and care for her as long as she needed him, it’s what one did.

He cleared his throat as Phelim replied.
‘Not far. Look, here’s an iron stair down the wall and a pontoon. And,’ he chuckled, ‘a gondola. How fortuitous.’

How Fae
ran, thought the hob.

They scrambled themselves and the woman
down the stair and piled into the craft, Adelina subsiding like pricked balloon. Gallivant whispered to Phelim. ‘She’s almost at her end, we need to hurry.’

But the half-time mortal didn’t need to be told as the black sky began to lighten in the east. He poled the craft down the canal and round the bend to another mooring where they all jumped out and hurried down alleys and over bridges until they saw the welcoming glassed doors of the
Esperia
. Adelina stopped and grasped the doorframe with fingers that were white. With a small sigh she began to fold, her legs crumpling.

‘Adelina. No.
’ Gallivant jumped to her side but before he could do anything, Phelim had scooped her up and pulled her to his chest as they broached the entrance. He leaped up the staircase, the hob clipping behind, to enter the room and lie Adelina on the bed.

The hob
jumped from one side to the other. ‘Will she be better, will she lose the baby?’

‘Gallivant, be quiet.
’ Phelim growled wishing Ebba were here.
Please Aine, let Ebba’s thoughts guide me to help this woman.
He laid his hand inches above her shorn curls and moved it in a smooth sweep over the length of her body. Whilst he had nothing of his stepmother’s skill, surely he could he help, even a little? He moved his hand back again and an unknown Faeran charm, whispered so as none could hear, came from his lips and dropped down upon the woman who had been so brutalised. She lay comatose but with evenly spaced breaths and her face had softened, showing no stress and strain. He could only hope she slept.

‘We need to rest.
’ He poured a goblet overflowing with wine and threw it back, hoping it would settle his mind. Offering the hob one, he continued, ‘Gallivant, use the bed and I shall use the chaise.’ He lay down in his clothes, closing his eyes, ignoring the hob who wanted to disembowel all that had happened. He wanted peace. He wanted to digest the day in his own way and think about its effect on his own sensibilities.

He thought about Veniche where his duty would end. Since he had entered the precinct, it seemed bereft of Others
and yet this place with a Gate. Where was the support the swan-maid had said would be waiting? He rolled over, hearing the hob snoring from one bed and gentle breathing from the other. The chamois bag rolled with him and rested against his ribs.

Aine, how could he not have registered it? The bag was comfortably warm. And now he thought on it, it had been warm since they had released Adelina from her attic prison.
Is Adelina as important to them as their return to the world of Faeran?
He glanced at her divine face as she slept. He felt himself drawn to her, to her courage, her spirit. Washed out light glanced off the rounded planes of her cheeks and her lips were slightly open. Her pregnant breasts rose and fell as she sighed.
Is it wrong to feel drawn to a woman who had been through such trauma, practically a widow and with child?

He held the chamois bag gently in his broad hands and the warmth seeped into his fingers, comforting him and he slept as the third and final Day of the Dark emerged from its wet, night time shroud.

Chapter Thirty Eight

Severine had kept herself occupied the previous day and evening. One of the bonuses of being a woman of fiscal power in a city like Veniche was that she was sought out frequently and with obsequious respect. She revelled in the position she held. She wandered the palazzo on a cloud on that second day, dreaming of her future, conscious of her own importance. Adelina frequently crossed her mind and she would think,
Where are you, bitch? I have so much to tell you and I so want to put you in your place.

She wanted the woman to beg for her life, to kneel before her, to grab her hem like a supplicant, to cry. She laughed, that high pitched call that sounded like some hideous bird from the Goti high plains, the kind that sat on crags and swooped in to feed on carrion. Maybe a better punishment for the red headed whore would be a prison with a mirror so she could see h
erself aging and becoming mad; to suffer loneliness, to live with grievous memories and pain.

Her major domo
entered the salon and coughed. ‘Madame, your bath is drawn and the maids have laid out your gown, the Libreria are sending a gondola at seven o’clock.’

‘Thank you, Hobarto. Tell Luther to come to the salon.’ She sat drinking her habitual wine and waited until Luther entered. She noticed
a ruddy taint to his face, except for that loathsome scar which gleamed white as bone. But when he spoke his voice was as cool and controlled as ever. Was it drink or other habits that induced the florid hue? Ah, she didn’t want to know. ‘Luther, I am going to a dinner this evening at the Libreria. They have just taken possession of some remarkable Raji illuminated scripts. I want to see them and if they are something I should like to have then I shall talk to you further. They are sending a gondola and I don’t need you until tomorrow so you may have the evening for yourself.’

He inclined his ovoid head in what passed for deference.

‘One thing. The Traveller?’ She tapped nails against her glass goblet. ‘Has there been any sign yet?’

‘No Madame, I’m sorry, nothing. But I don’t think you should worry. She’ll be at the Gate tomorrow or somewhere close by
, there’s no doubt. We shall snap her up.’ He lifted his fist and closed his fingers tight into a clenched bunch. ‘And then you will have all that you want.’ Severine’s delusions blossomed under Luther’s fertile words. ‘Madame, there will be none who can touch you. You will have all that you desire.’

‘I know,’ she whispered but then her eyes opened wide as she snapped out of her fantasy. ‘The robe, Luther, I need the robe
far more than I need Adelina.’

‘But we know, Madame, don’t we, that one is dependent on the oth
er. Leave it to me. Prepare for this evening’s engagement and I shall enjoy my night off because we have a big day tomorrow.’

He gentled her and led her
to the door. She glanced at his reddened and glazed eyes and then walked up the sweeping stair to bathe and dress and once more show Venichese society why it was that she was so admired.

Luther watched her float away and then walked back into the salon, poured an overlarge measure of wine and seated himself on a padded couch that cushioned his tense body. Adrenalin flooded his muscles and nerves, washing any likely calm away. What he had done to Adelina today hadn’t quelled the desire, it had made it stronger and more rabid than ever and he knew the only way to control himself was to do two things - find another woman who could satisfy his lust and follow it with a stupendous drinking bout. If he did not then he was as like to kill Adelina the next time, even before Madame had seen her - a sure way to destroy his plans for the future, because Severine had promised him so much.

He sat quaffing wine, waiting for his muscles and nerve-endings to ease enough for him to seek a whorehouse somewhere. Some time later, he heard Madame leave. He placed the cut-glass goblet on the tray beside the empty bottle and walked on steady legs to the hall, slipped on a black
coat and closed the studded doors behind him.

With obsession or addiction, one’s contentment depends on frequent sorties to experience one’s desire. Severine imbibed that night and drifted home to sit in front of a mirror and gaze at herself, imagining the pleasure of looking the same at ninety three as at thirty three. She allowed the maid to brush her hair after hanging up the loathsome midnight gown she had been required to wear for the Dark.

Nevertheless, she mused, it had been a pleasant evening. All the better for seeing the manuscripts which were magnificent with their calligraphy and lavish illumination. Such colours: cobalt ground from azurite, vermilion ground from cinabar and the most regal one – ultra
marine ground from lapis lazuli and all with copious accents of gold leaf. She craved the manuscripts for her own collection and would speak to Luther about arranging it. She smiled at herself and her maid noticed, commenting on her mistress’s evident happiness.

‘My life will change tomorrow night,’ Severine murmured, ‘change beyond imagining. I want you to dress my hair magnificently for the Bal
l. I want people to remember me. Have my gown and shoes been delivered?’

‘Yes, madame.’

‘And my mask?’

‘It is in your dressing room. Madame if I may say, the emerald green
silk will become you and your mask with its peacock feathers is a perfect accompaniment. I brushed and steamed the black velvet damask coat so all is in readiness.’

Severine dismissed the maid and found as she shut the door that her fingers shook with anticipation. Damnation, she hoped she had drunk enough a
t dinner to sooth her for sleep. She hurried to her bedside cabinet and retrieved a tiny beaten silver box, spilling a small glass vial into her hands. It contained the strongest sedative her apothecary could devise - the same drug she had used on Adelina repeatedly at Mevagavinney. She sized up the powerful medic and tipped a couple of drops under her tongue before lying under her bedding to wait for sleep.

Luther had whored his way through a number of women and left them worse physically for the encounter, if richer. Then he had gone from one of the laguna taverns to another until his legs began to buckle and his words slurred. He paid a gondolier to pole him to the palazzo and pour him onto the landing and then he dragged himself to his room. Like Severine, he reached for drugs to render him unconscious until the next day. It was safer this way.

Neither of them heard the hob as he fell off the iron ladder onto the adjoining roof as two companions spirited the unfortunate Adelina away.

***

My saviours thought I was asleep on that little bed at Phelim’s tavern but I wasn’t, not immediately. The drapes were slightly ajar and as grey dawn light fingered its way into the room, I heard the sounds of dreams as my friends slept around me but I lay awake, thinking.

I lay on my side staring at the one called Phelim who slept on the chaise. As I marked as much as I could see of his high cheekbones and strongly etched eyebrows and mouth,
I knew I stared at Liam’s longlost brother. It seems part of me knew this from the first moment I saw him at Ferry Crossing despite Gallivant’s best efforts to deny it. Phelim was broader than Liam and more contained, much less Faeran, but even so there was still that
frisson
. Anyway, I thought, what did it really matter? Liam was dead and I had so much more to deal with.

I knew the third Day of the Dark was approaching and with it my moment. What would I do? My hands wrapped my belly, cocooning it. It seems that my hands were attached to my belly perpetually and why not? This was my child I communed with and I wondered what it would want me to do. Avenge the deat
h of its father, avenge those Faeran who may have loved it or would it want me to turn the other cheek? Yes, no, do it, don’t do it. I couldn’t make up a mind that swung from numbness to confusion like a pendulum.

Once again I had escaped from the clutches of Severine and Luther. With the assistance again of Others. My unbor
n babe and I had the eldritch of the world to thank for our safety. I could only imagine how hard it will be to break my promise to them. They saved my life twice, the life of my babe once. That is worth more than a promise, isn’t it?

I’m trying my hardest not to think of what Luther did. That I feel violated and unclean are feelings I must quash because there is so much more that is important - my baby, its future, my future.

Y
ou can seenow that the story begins to run rapidly to some form of conclusion. And to reach that, you must return this latest book to its place of concealment and move away from the tricorn hat of our groom to the petit point underskirt of the bride.

The skirt is white with a tracery of tiny scarlet climbing roses and I have welted the hem in silk. If you carefully unpick it from the silk of the stumpwork robe, you will find a white book opened flat - this is because I didn’t want it to be obvious or spoil the line of the underskirt.

So there are now only two such journals left, one concealed and one very obvious. Read on then dear friend, and we shall see what they all contain...