29. A Path of Stars
29
A Path of Stars
Luce had never before climbed to the top of the cathedral’s tower. The stairs had taunted her so often, over the years. Now, they were all that stood between saving the city, and watching it fall.
She had run from the ramparts to Saint-Vincent’s, and pain was already her loyal companion as she slid inside the darkened church, silent but for a handful of pious souls. Despite the oily blackness of the night, the scent of gun smoke and terror on the air, they were deep in prayer, heads bowed as the windows above rippled with hell-light from the burning fleet. No one looked up as Luce limped across the nave and into the tower. No one stopped her as she began to climb.
Every step was a new devastation. An exquisite, bone-slicing pain that caused her to bite her lip and cling to the rounded wall. Every stone beneath her fingertips mocked her cruelly. Every turn urged her to go back, go back. Worry for Samuel at the gates, for her family on the walls, drove her on. Yes, the storm-stone and the guns at Fort Royale and along the city walls would deter the English soldiers, but for how long? And how many redcoats would it take to scale the walls and open the gates for their countrymen to stream inside? A dozen?
Less?
At last, at last, she reached the top of the tower and the rain-slicked coldness of the night. All around her, Saint-Malo’s rooftops glinted with silver and gold, storm and fire.
Was she too late? Had the soldiers broken through? She tottered along the landing, leaning heavily on the stone railing surrounding the bell tower, and peered out to the east. The Sillon looked just as it had when she left the walls, a chaos of smoke and cannon fire, masses of crimson-clad soldiers working frantically. To the south, an armada of hell-ships dominated the harbour, reddish waves reflecting the flames. She flinched as a burning ship imploded, its mast crashing into its own blazing hull, groaning like a wounded leviathan. All the while, countless ships’ guns were firing, expelling their ammunition into the inferno.
‘Christ,’ she whispered, forcing herself to look away. To focus on the storm clouds ruminating over the city, the rain silvering gently on her face.
Her prickle was overwhelming now; never before had she beheld so much storm-stone. It was above her, in the spire; around her, in the tower; below her, in the church itself and the surrounding houses. The fortress and its walls, the ramparts, bastions and towers. All ripe with stolen power.
Too much has been taken. Something must be given back.
‘Shine forth,’ Luce whispered. Setting her palms on the stone railing before her, she drew a breath from the depths of her very soul. Power crackled through her in an eager rush, as though it wanted to be freed from the stone. It soaked into her hands, her arms, her body. She leaned into the wind, urging it to rise once more.
Heed me now.
There was no hesitation, no question, this time. The wind responded to her song at once, whipping itself against the tower, the sea, her hair. The water far below heaved and gasped.
Breath and water. Intention and will.
Sing to us.
Luce caught up her hair. Pressed and crumpled the tangled lengths in her fist. Below, the water mirrored each knot and snarl, seething against the quays and walls.
And still the magic surged into her from the stone, until there was no telling where the storm-stone ended and Luce began—
‘Lucinde.’
She turned her head, distracted, and saw Jean-Baptiste framed by the murky sky. He looked exhausted, his clothes wet and dirty, his fingernails, clutching a musket, black with powder.
‘Don’t do this,’ he said softly. ‘Please, mon trésor.’
Rage of a different kind settled over Luce. She drew her hands from the stone, from her hair. Around her, the rising storm skipped a beat, waiting for her to resume her song. Be patient, she told it silently. There are things to be said.
‘When I was a child,’ she began, turning to face him fully, ‘and you were finished with your work, I would go to your study. The sun would be sinking over the western fields, the light like honey. It was always my favorite time of day.’
The memory stood in harsh contrast to the glowering sky, the malignant clouds.
‘“Mon trésor,” you would say,’ she continued. ‘“Come, come! Tell me of your day. Any adventures?” I would clamber onto your lap and I would tell you all that I had done, and seen: the house and the kitchens, the orchards and the attics, the stables and the gardens; all that made up my small world.’
‘It was always my favorite time of day, too.’ Jean-Baptiste glanced worriedly at the burning harbour, the roiling sea, the churning sky, as though he wondered how, and when, Luce’s world had grown so very large and powerful.
‘As I grew,’ Luce said, ‘I dared to go farther. One day, I walked out the open gates and through the woods to the cove. The next, I went even farther. And again, and again, until I glimpsed the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel in the dim blue distance, and realised that the coast, and the sea, was much larger than I had believed them to be.’
‘Everything I did, I did to protect you,’ Jean-Baptiste insisted. ‘You cannot blame me for trying to keep you safe!’
‘You frowned when I told you what I had done,’ Luce said, ignoring him. ‘“But that is too far, mon petit oiseau,” you said. “What if something had happened to you? What would I do without my treasure?”’
She laughed brokenly. A cold wind, racked with bitterness, swirled about the bell tower.
‘The gates were always locked, after that. Not that it mattered; I did not dare to leave the malouinière’s walls for a long time. The look on your face—the fear and worry—squeezed my heart. I loved you above all others.’ Her voice cracked at the betrayal, at the memory of love and safety, lost.
Jean-Baptiste raised a hand as though he would interrupt her, explain himself. Luce lifted a hand of her own, and the storm clouds rumbled, silencing him.
‘But love did not stop me regretting my promise to you.’ Luce forced herself to go on, to push through the shattering of her heart. ‘The taller I grew, the smaller the house and kitchen, the orchards and attics became, until I had no choice but to break it. By then, of course, you had learned how to distract me. Books and tutors. Music and maps. Dreams of horizons you would never allow me to reach.’
He moved toward her. ‘Perhaps, one day, we might have sailed together, mon trésor—’
‘ Don’t call me that! ’
The wind kicked up, whipping his peppery hair, shoving him roughly against the stone railing. He caught himself, turned to her, white with fear.
‘How many lies would you have told me? What reasons, what excuses would you have found to keep me within your walls? Would you have blamed Maman? Would you have blamed my feet ?’
He sighed heavily. ‘I am so sorry, mon trésor.’
‘For what? For locking me away? For destroying my feet? For pretending you wanted me to go to the ball? You gave me that blue gown, and then you threw it into the sea!’
The wind was rising of its own accord now. Below, in the harbour, the Manche sucked threateningly at the city walls.
‘Or perhaps you are sorry for giving the Luci —the fucking Veronique —to Morgan de Chatelaine. How convenient that must have been for you. “There will be other ships, mon trésor,”’ she mimicked. ‘“We have years and years ahead of us to build, to plan...” You never had any intention of letting me go. You needed me, needed my faeness to maintain your storm-stone.’
The wind howled greedily around the cathedral spire, eager to have its way. Jean-Baptiste looked at the roiling clouds fearfully.
‘No, Lucinde.’ He made to step closer, caught himself. ‘I loved you.’
‘You loved what I brought you,’ Luce said. ‘Good weather. Good fortune. The sea’s blessing. “Give your papa a kiss, mon trésor.”’ The words snarled out of her, dark with malice. Above, the storm murmured its approval. Rain splattered.
‘Of course I loved those things,’ he said. ‘But I loved you more!’
‘Love, is it? Is that why you killed my mother and gave parts of her to your friends?’
A webbed hand floating in a tiny sea of fear and fascination.
Jean-Baptiste’s face was the colour of ice. ‘I—I have always regretted that,’ he said. ‘I was young, and foolish.’
‘You took everything from me. Every promise you made, every word you said was a lie. The sea-silk would have stayed hidden forever if I had not found it. You would have kept me with you, trapped, for the rest of my life.’
‘No!’
‘ Yes! ’
Boom.
Down in the harbour, another burning mast fell, the ship beneath it erupting into flames.
‘That looked like the Fleur de Mer, ’ Luce said coldly. ‘I rather hope it was.’
Jean-Baptiste approached her again, palms raised. ‘What you are saying is true, Lucinde. I did do all those things. But I have suffered every day for it. Every time I look at you. Do you think I don’t know what I took from you? Do you think I don’t know that I’m a monster?’ He shrugged, helpless. ‘But... I do love you, mon—Lucinde. More than anything. I swear it on my blood. My bones. My very soul.’
Despite everything, Luce hesitated. The man before her was a monster. He had murdered her mother. Kept Luce from the sea. Benefited from her presence, year after year. Told her a thousand little lies. But she knew—bones, blood, soul—that he had spoken a thousand little truths, too. He believed, truly believed, that he loved her.
She thought of what Mother Aggie had said of her great-grandmother, the seamaid who had given up the sea for a fisherman. Like Luce, her very presence in his life had been a blessing. I like to think my great-grandfather loved her enough that he would have let her go, had she wished it. But I cannot say. Not for certain. He was a man, and, like any man, he would have been loath to let something so precious go.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Luce told Jean-Baptiste. ‘You never loved me. Not truly.’
He stared at her, aghast. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Because if you had, you would have set me free.’
There were tears on his face. Sorrow and regret, mingling with the remnants of the rain. The storm howled its pleasure.
‘In any case, it no longer matters,’ Luce said. ‘I loved you once, Jean-Baptiste Léon. Above all others. But no more.’
He brushed at his cheeks, as old and broken as Luce had ever seen him. Then anger glimmered, mutinous as the clouds swirling over the cathedral.
‘Hate me, then,’ he said. ‘I deserve it. But whatever you are doing here, to the weather, and the stone—don’t. You will doom the city. It will— we will—never recover. Our protection, our strength, will be gone.’
Luce smiled bitterly. Of course. It did not matter to him that the Duke of Marlborough’s men were at this very moment crossing the Sillon with ladders to scale the walls. That there was only so long Saint-Malo and Fort Royale’s guns could keep them from breaking through. That the lives of his wife and daughters, of everyone in the city, were in danger. Why would it? Wasn’t the entire family, the entire household, all of Bretagne—indeed, the entire world — arranged for his arrogance and pleasure?
‘It was never your strength,’ she said. ‘You stole it, as you steal everything.’
‘But—surely you don’t mean to help the English? To leave the city vulnerable?’
‘Everything I do, I do to save Saint-Malo and its people,’ Luce told him. ‘The enemy shall not take the city this night; I will see to it. But you should know that Saint-Malo will burn. Not tonight. Maybe not in a hundred years. But it will burn. Fire will rain upon it from the sea and the sky. And there will be no storm-stone, no Fae, left to protect it. Everything you have done, everything you have built, will be ashes.’
Jean-Baptiste’s eyes widened as he looked upon the truth of her— the wildness of the creature he had tried so hard to keep contained. Beauty and violence. Terror and rage. And something else, too. A glimmer of light on dark water.
‘Too much has been taken,’ Luce said above the monstrous cry of the wind. The sea-knife shone in her hand. ‘Something must be given back.’ Before Jean-Baptiste could stop her, she plunged the blade into the stone of the bell tower.
A peal of thunder cracked over Saint-Malo, louder than any cannon, any burning ship.
Magic rippled over the surface of the world.
Lightning razed the sky.
Weather more terrible had never been seen in Saint-Malo. The rain fell with such force, and the storm was so violent—the noise of the thunder and the sea, the burning vessels in the harbour, the waves ablaze with immense red flames—that the English soldiers were forced to return to their ships, their siege ladders washed away, their hopes of conquest with them. When the cathedral bells heaved into life, pealing the city’s victory, Luce released her hold on the weather and limped down the tower steps, barely glancing at the old lion slumped, alone and mourning, before the altar. She stepped out of the church into the dawn, and Samuel’s arms.
The groac’h, as promised, had waited for them at Fort Royale. The storm was in its death-throes, the last of the waves lashing against the fort on its rocky little island, whipping across the Manche, but the witch-boat, like the Dove, remained unmolested. They sailed north together, watching the coast of Bretagne growing ever more distant, and Luce’s mother and sisters with it. Luce thought of Charlotte, and whether her sister had found the letter Luce had slipped into her pocket during the confusion on the ramparts.
One day, you will tell me everything.
Luce had written it in haste, on paper stained with salt: the tale of a child brutally stolen from her parents. Of a seamaid raised among earthly sisters. Of a shipwreck, and tears in the sea, and a pair of sea-glass slippers. Of a lion, a wolf, and a smuggler. And Charlotte, who was never the favorite, would be first to read the letter. First to know the truth. That Luce loved her, as she loved Gratienne and Veronique. And that perhaps, one day, she would see them all again.
The tattered clouds soon cleared. The Manche, a great mirror, shone every shade of gold and mauve. Luce leaned over the Dove ’s side, traced her fingers through the spray.
‘North,’ Samuel said, at the tiller.
She smiled at him over her shoulder. ‘And after that, the stars.’
He was bone-pale, his eyed smudged with sleeplessness, but he managed a grin.
‘It’s been quite the night.’ Luce straightened wearily, grasping the mast for balance. ‘You—we—should rest.’
‘Rest?’ He smiled faintly. ‘We’re sailing to England, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Believe me, I noticed.’ She drew the Dove ’s store of blankets out from beneath a bench, arranged them on the boards.
‘Luce?’ Samuel was somewhere between confusion and concern. ‘You cannot lie down in the middle of the Manche. I may need you.’
‘I can,’ she told him, yawning. ‘And so can you.’
‘But—’
‘She’s a seamaid,’ Margot called between the boats. ‘And you are in safe hands. Sleep, storm diver.’
Luce was cocooned in the blankets, drifting on the edge of wakefulness when she felt Samuel lay himself reluctantly beside her.
‘If anything happens to my boat...’
‘Sleep, storm diver,’ she murmured, with a smile. He scooped her against him, his grumbles subsiding as he, too, drifted into slumber.
Moments later, it seemed, the Dove ’s keel was scraping rhythmically against a smooth, pebbly shore. Luce lurched into wakefulness, pushed the blankets away. Samuel was gone, the Dove ’s anchor line stretched tight. High above, a gentle evening sky.
‘Samuel?’ She peered over the side and beheld a familiar cove. Ringed by gentle white cliffs, the pebbled beach was a perfect semicircle, the water a clear blue-green even in the fading light. Nearby, drawn up on the beach like the Dove, was Margot’s witch-boat.
Dorset, then. They had sailed, without incident, throughout the day. Grinning, Luce clambered from the boat. Samuel and the groac’h were farther along the shore, and she crunched toward them, the pebbles small and deliciously smooth against her bare feet. She paused to pick up a handful: grey and caramel-brown, white and burnt-cream. So different to the sands of Saint-Malo. At the sight of those pebbles in her palm, the beautiful cove and the golden air, tears sprang to her eyes.
She had done it.
She was free.
There was no containing the delight; it was pure, wild, joyous. She tossed the stones into the evening-coloured water, careless as a child, and watched them ripple and sink.
Samuel and Margot’s heads snapped toward her.
They had been talking, Luce realised, taking them in properly for the first time. Samuel was sitting on the beach, head low, knees bent, bent arms resting wearily upon them. Margot was standing over him, hands open at her sides. As though she were trying her very best to explain something to him, and he was trying his very best not to listen.
‘Is everything well?’ Luce hurried toward them. Perhaps there was a problem with the boat? Or Samuel’s family? ‘Samuel? Is everything—’
‘Everything’s fine, Luce.’ Samuel glanced up at her, then quickly away.
Luce froze. Were there tears in his eyes?
Margot, too, seemed troubled. She was watching Samuel worriedly. When it was clear he would not meet her eye, however, she gave a heavy sigh and walked back to the boats, patting Luce’s arm as she passed. There was something strange about the gesture, something almost... apologetic. Luce watched her go, unease anchoring itself deep in her belly.
‘What is it, Samuel? What’s wrong?’
He got to his feet as though the effort cost him dearly.
‘I have just been speaking with Margot,’ he said.
A scraping in the shallows. Luce turned to see the witch-boat leaving the shore, its sails slowly filling with an enchanted breeze. Even at this distance, Luce could see that the tide-woman was watching them closely.
She swallowed, nervous. ‘Samuel?’
‘I cannot go with you, Luce.’
The shock of it was the winter sea in her face, the heavy surge of a sudden wave before she’d taken breath.
‘What?’ She stared up at him, at the sorrow in his eyes, and felt the weight of oceans. ‘What are you saying?’ Flailing, floundering, desperate for air. ‘Do you—do you not want to come with me?’
‘Of course I do.’ He reached for her hands. That lone swallow, sorrowful in the dying light.
‘Then why—’
‘Because Margot just told me it is impossible.’
He was so calm. Anger clawed at sorrow, taking its place. ‘But why would she do that? Why would she ask us to go with her, only to change her mind?’
‘She never asked me,’ Samuel said. ‘I was there that night, it was true. But she was speaking to you, Luce. Not me. Never to me.’
‘No.’ Luce shook her head, unwilling to believe it. ‘No.’ Margot liked Samuel. Had healed him after the Lucinde. She trusted him.
‘You remember what she said to you, don’t you? “There are still places of beauty and wonder left in the world. Places that men in their death-ships have not despoiled. A fair breeze and a path of stars is all that is required to find them.”’
‘Men in their death-ships,’ Luce echoed, stricken.
‘Men in their death-ships.’
Beyond the pale, curving arms of the cove, the sun was hastening into the west, staining the water.
‘But—the Dove is a fishing boat,’ Luce said. ‘Not a ship. And you don’t mean anyone harm.’
‘That’s what I said to Margot. She agreed, and yet it makes no difference. I’m not like you, Luce. I’m not Fae.’
Sorrow took Luce unto itself, binding her tight. She sank onto the pebbles, legs useless, limbs heavy, heart broken.
‘Then I cannot go either,’ she said. ‘I cannot go without you.’
‘Yes, you can.’ He was on his knees beside her, gathering her close. ‘You can. And you will.’
‘No—’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’ A hundred memories flooded Luce’s mind. Samuel hauling her on board the Dove ; passing her a blanket for her aching feet; waiting for her so often in the dawn. Teaching her to read the wind and water. Listening to her every word, nursing her through her hurts, making her laugh. A light in the darkness, endlessly patient. She thought of how his brothers had teased him for spending so much time in Saint-Malo. He had forsaken his home, his family, to be close to Luce. When she had turned into a seamaid right in front of him, he had not turned from her, he had not reviled or feared her. He had wrapped her in his overcoat, held her, promised her that they would find answers. Together.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, rocking her. ‘It’s all right.’
She thought of the smuggler’s cave, the way her body had clung to his, curving itself about him. How he had caught her hard against him when it was over, held her so tight she was sure he would never let her go.
‘I can’t leave you,’ she whispered through her tears.
‘Yes, you can. You must, Luce.’ He grasped her chin, tilted her face up to his. ‘Your father—your real father—is out there somewhere. Perhaps other family, too. You need to find them. And that...’ He gestured to the witch-boat, the shining water beyond. ‘ That is everything you wanted. You must take it, Luce. You must. If you stay here with me, we might be happy for a time. But part of you would always wonder what might have been. And one day, perhaps sooner than you think, you’d resent me for making you give it up.’
‘No, I wouldn’t—’
‘Yes, you would. You remember what Mother Aggie told us about the sea-wife, don’t you?’
A sea-wife is caught always between two shores—one in the sun, one in the deep—and the desire for both is ever present.
‘Aggie said she liked to think her great-grandfather loved his wife enough to let her return to the sea, had she wished it.’ Tears spilled down Samuel’s cheeks. ‘I love you enough, Luce.’
Delight it is. And perhaps my doom, as well.
The Manche was whispering of sorrow and sea-wives. It slid along the shore, lapped at Luce’s bare toes. Knowing, as Luce knew, what must be done.
Be brave.
Be free.
‘I’ll wait for you.’ Samuel kissed her, soft. Wiped away his tears. ‘Go, Luce.’
She listened to his fading footsteps. Told herself, again and again, that she would rise and follow him. And yet, when she did at last rise, it was to shrug out of her stolen coat and shirt, her breeches. The water was calm, flecked with the first of the stars.
One, two, three steps and she was shin deep. Four, five, six and the cold glimmer of scales dragged at her thighs. Water surged around her, melding with her tears. She opened her arms and scooped them back, gliding toward the horizon, where a little black boat was cutting a path to the stars.
Behind her, on the empty sand, a trail of footprints ending at the water’s edge. A puddle of clothing, dark with salt and time. And sea foam, as delicate as lace on a blue, blue gown.