7
“I’ve come to be your housekeeper.” What an addlepated thing to say. As if I wanted to spend the rest of my born days scrubbing that strange black tile and washing those filthy dishes!
But it had popped into my head as soon as I had realized that he did not recognize me. I had expected ... well, even if he had not recognized me, I had expected him to at least recognize what he had done to me. Surely there was some sign on me, some invisible magic signature, that showed he had harvested up my heart, even just a portion of it?
I felt oddly insulted and unsure of what to do next. He hadn’t swallowed me up or drained me dry upon my arrival, as I had half expected, but he hadn’t given his piece of my heart back to me in a paper bag either.
I could tell by the ache in my chest that it had not been restored (as I had half hoped it would be as soon as I turned up, as if it would have flown to my breast like a homing pigeon coming in to roost), and that he probably still had it somewhere on his person, or in his house.
Had he taken so many hearts that he had lost count? Did he forget their previous owners as soon as he grabbed them? And why, then, was I the only one who had felt compelled to drag myself all the way to his doorstep and had felt I would surely die if I did not?
Of course, I hadn’t asked him about it yet, which was the most logical course. I had to work up enough courage for that, and perhaps being his housekeeper would give me the time to do so.
“These blasted corridors,” I said to the cat as we traipsed our way through the shining black. I knew he couldn’t understand me, but I had no one else to talk to. “Ridiculous. How long does it take him to get to the commode?”
As if it had heard me, which I suppose it had, the corridor made a noise very like a sneeze and folded itself up smaller, as you would fold a bedsheet. From standing in the middle of nowhere, I was suddenly at another door, with the door to the throne room barely five steps behind me. It left me breathless.
“Thank you,” I said to the empty air when I had composed myself. I opened the door, not without caution.
“Well, Master Cat. What have we here?”
The kitchen, it turned out, or what passed for one. The cat ambled in, looking back to make sure I was following, and sprung up onto a long table made, of course, of that same polished black. You could barely tell what was table and what was cat, but for the yellow eyes blinking.
How could the sorcerer stand to live in all this dark? It set his pretty eyes and cheekbones off nicely, to be sure, but there was more to life than pretty eyes and cheekbones, and besides, there was no one else here to see them but the cat.
There were more dirty plates in here, of course, so far gone that there would have been flies buzzing about them, if something as prosaic as a fly could have made its way into this place. As it was, the kitchen had a sweet stink and no windows to open.
As far as I could tell, there were no windows in the whole giant House. The darkly glittering chandeliers provided all the light.
“I’ll need water,” I said to the cat. “There must be water, somewhere, to clean the plates. And soap. And wood for the fireplace, so I can warm it up. I need a wash myself, bugger the plates. How does he arrange his meals usually?”
I turned a slow circle on the spot. I couldn’t see anything—no cupboards, no baskets of food. Nothing. Just the table and the plates. Did he make his own meals, then? With magic? The thought of eating magical food made my stomach churn.
The black cat squeaked.
“I wish you could talk,” I said.
“All right then,” he replied.
I looked over my shoulder, as if the voice could have come from anywhere besides the cat. Eventually I was forced to admit that he was the only possible source and turned unwillingly back to him.
“You can talk, after all?”
“Not usually,” he said. “But you wished for it.”
The words came out in strange shapes through his cat throat and cat jaws, giving him an odd, foreign-sounding accent. He had trouble with his “b” s and “w”s.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“That’s how things work around here, for the most part,” he said.
“Oh.” Well, at least I seemed to have one ally in the place. “What do you go by?”
He looked confused.
“What should I call you?” I clarified.
“I’ve always rather fancied Cornelius.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Well, Cornelius. You wish for things, and they appear?” It sounded far too much like a fairy story. The idea that a place could be organized in such a ridiculously fanciful, mealy mouthed way made me itch with irritation.
“Not really,” explained Cornelius. “It only works if you have a real need of things. You can’t just ask for anything. And it decides what you do and don’t need, so no asking for velvet gowns or anything like that. Believe me—I’ve thought about salmon for months, and no luck.”
“I’d look a fright in a velvet gown,” I said. The cat nodded in agreement, which didn’t bother me overmuch. At least the creature was honest, or seemed so.
“You say ‘it’ decides,” I went on. “The House?”
“The House, Him. It’s all the same thing, more or less. The place grew up around Him.” I could hear the capital “H”s of House and Him, even through the little triangular cat mouth.
“All the same?”
“You’ll see, if you stay,” he said. “But as to water and a fire,” his voice was becoming more confident, the sound more fluid, as he spoke, “that shouldn’t be a problem.”
I cleared my throat. “I need water,” I said to the House. “And a fire in the fireplace. And ...” Well, there was nothing, nothing in the whole place. “Soap,” I continued, “and rags, and tubs, one for bathing and one for the dishes. And food.”
“Steady on,” said Cornelius.
“Bread, for certain, and meat, and fresh things. Vegetables. Fruit. And I don’t know where you keep the plates and cups and such.”
I had that same strange feeling of the place sneezing around me and rearranging itself. It was a disorienting sensation, like missing a step on the stairs—things didn’t appear, exactly, but had suddenly always been there, and I had just failed to notice them, somehow.
A fire bloomed like red lilies in the grate. Two tubs of hot water stood simmering before it, towels and linens draped over their sides and two long bars of green soap laid between them.
There were bread baskets and sacks of green vegetables, all full—I hadn’t seen such healthy produce in a while, with the terrible harvest we’d had—and an expensive-looking black crystal bowl full of fruit.
A door swung open to show a cold room where meat hung from silver hooks. The table was covered with dishes and cups of all sizes, as well as a kettle, and a teapot wrapped in an embroidered cozy (black). I lifted the cozy and the lid of the teapot. It was full of tea, steaming and fragrant.
“That’s a nice touch,” said the cat.
“It is at that.” I ran my hands over the dishware. Fine china, so thin you could see through it if you held it to the light, with a spindly pattern of black and silver at the edges that reminded me faintly of crows sitting on tree branches. There were saucepans too, great heavy things.
“No stove, though,” I said, and then heard a clank and turned to see a stove installed on the wall behind me, made out of the same black stuff as everything else.
“I think the House likes you,” said Cornelius. “It’s not usually this helpful.”
“How does it normally work?”
He did something with his shoulders that would have been a shrug if he had been hinged properly for one.
“I have food and water when I need it,” he said. “And the odd mouse.”
“Mice? In this place?”
“I think the House makes them for me. They taste peculiar. Have a funny texture, not like the real ones. But it’s a change, having something to chase.” He stopped to wash a paw. “I think it’s worried I’ll get bored. Maybe it’s worried you will, too.”
I looked around at all the new things. “I suppose I could have wished for the dishes to have cleaned themselves.”
“I don’t think that would have worked,” Cornelius said. “More of a want than a need, if you see what I mean.”
Well. I rolled up the sleeves of my dress, which, frankly, would have to be made into rags soon enough anyway, and piled up the dirty plates. I scraped the leavings into the fire, where they crackled and shriveled, and then dumped the dirty dishes into one of the tubs of water to scrub them with soap and a linen rag that was made of nicer stuff than any dress I’d ever owned.
It was satisfying, having my arms up to the elbows in hot, soapy water, and made me feel a thousand times better and more at home.
Cornelius watched for a while, then curled up on the hearth rug—had there been a rug there a moment before?—and appeared to fall asleep.
He opened one yellow eye when I had finished, however, and watched me pour the dirty water down the sink that had politely introduced itself to one corner while I wasn’t looking.
“You close those eyes,” I said. “I’m going to take a bath.”
The cat snorted. “You think I care?”
“You may not, but it’ll make me more comfortable.”
“Fine.” He yawned, rolling out a carpet of tongue, and flipped himself over to toast his other side.
The hot water was glorious. It seemed such a long time since I had felt anything good, anything at all, besides the terrible pull of the spell, and I had forgotten what it was like. I lay in that water until my skin was wrinkled and soft as a baby’s bum.
I dried myself on the fine cloth that passed for a towel and groped for my old bodice and skirt, but I found them exchanged for something altogether sturdier and handsomer, of better cloth, and with fine silver fastenings.
My boots had been repaired, I saw, and cleaned, and there were new underthings draped on a rack in front of the fire so that they warmed my skin when I pulled them on.
I had never known such luxury. My old clothes were folded in a length of fabric beneath the new ones, I found to my relief. I didn’t want to lose them entirely.
When I had dressed, I smoothed my hands over the skirt, and felt it firm and soft beneath my fingers, the nap of the cloth springing back like new grass. I had never been so comfortable. I thought about what Cornelius had said about not wishing for velvet gowns. I suppose something—or someone—thought I really did need them.
I leaned over the edge of the bathtub to see my reflection in the water. The new clothes fit like the best tailor in the city had stitched them directly onto my body. The movement of the water blurred my face a little, and I almost didn’t recognize myself. I had a brief moment of vanity before I remembered I wasn’t a fancy lady, but a solidly built butcher’s daughter who had no business preening in front of her reflection.
“Is he doing this?” I asked, trying to tamp down the unreasonable flush of warmth and affection in my belly at the thought of the sorcerer caring for me.
The cat snorted. “No. At least, not in the way you mean.”
“How, then?”
“It’s complicated,” said Cornelius. “I’m still just a cat, whatever you and the House have done to me, and I don’t fully understand it myself.”
“Try to explain.”
“Well, him and the House are the same thing, but aren’t, if you follow me, as far as I can tell. We’re pretty good at seeing things that people don’t see, we cats, and I can see both all tangled up together. Like the House just grew up around him. They have the same scent, so to speak. So his magic might be the root of everything the House does, but it doesn’t mean the House consults him about all of its doings.”
“That is complicated,” I agreed.
“Told you.”
“Well, do you think I’ll be able to untangle it all somehow? Make sense of it?”
“Frankly, no,” said the cat.
“And does he have a name, this sorcerer?”
“He does,” Cornelius said, “but I can’t recall it right now. I don’t hear it that often, you see.”
“I see. And how does he normally arrange things for himself? Food and such, when there’s no one else here?”
“It arranges itself for him, I think. He’s in that big room most of the time, and sometimes he isn’t here at all, and it all seems to shake down well enough, no matter where he is.”
“Does he sleep here? Does he have a bedchamber?” I hated my blush.
“If he does, I haven’t seen it. I’ve never even seen him sleep.”
“And where do you sleep?”
“There’s usually somewhere. There are a few places I go back to, and they seem to have stayed hollowed out for me in the right shape, but the House doesn’t mind me trying somewhere new if I’m in the mood.”
“And the commode?” I asked, uncomfortably aware that I was going to need one before long.
Cornelius blinked.
“The loo. The toilet. Where you do your business.”
“Oh, I have a spot. It seems to clean itself up. It’s always clean when I go back there, at least.”
“That’s very accommodating. And for humans? Where does he go?”
“I don’t know,” said the cat. “I’ve never seen him use one. Maybe he doesn’t have to. But I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m sure one’ll show up when you need it.”
There were no needs more pressing than that particular need, certainly, if that was the way the House arranged itself.
I busied myself in the kitchen, trying to ignore the black stuff all around me—it still made me feel unsettled to be surrounded by solid magic, instead of wood or good, ordinary bricks—and settled to the tasks I knew: peeling potatoes, chopping up vegetables, and setting two pork chops in the oven to cook while I boiled water on the stovetop. Cornelius watched me.
“Don’t suppose you could throw a third in?” he asked. “I don’t get cooked meat, usually.”
There seemed no harm, since the magic store would probably replenish itself, and so I found a smallish one with a good amount of gristle and added it to the pan. Cornelius blinked at me slowly, which I knew was a good sign in cat language.
“It’s just you and him?” I asked. “No other animals? No servants?”
“He doesn’t need servants,” said the cat before remembering himself. “Didn’t, I mean. Seems to have taken a fancy to having one now.”
“Your speech is getting much better,” I remarked.
“Thank you. It does seem to be coming easier, now that you mention it.”
I sat myself down at the long table, waiting for the water to come to a boil. “Any idea what he gets up to all day? We know about them a little, back home, the sorceresses, but we never saw a male one until he came along.”
“He’s either here or he isn’t,” said Cornelius.
“Well, that much is obvious.”
“When he’s here, he sits in the throne room picking at his nails or playing games—juggling, tossing a ball, things like that. He’ll pet me, sometimes, if he’s in the mood, and I’ll purr for him. He seems to like that.”
“What else?”
“He gets visitors. Mostly ladies.”
The jealousy that gripped me was all the more terrible for being unnatural, a constructed thing that I knew was the result of the spell and not any real feeling. I let it pass through me like the runs and, like the runs, it left me weak afterward. Cornelius watched me sidelong.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“They come and talk with him. He won’t let me in the room when they do. I don’t know why. It’s not like I would say anything. Maybe they don’t want fur on their nice dresses.”
So, Cornelius wasn’t likely to have overheard any useful conversations—such as where the hearts were kept. Still, he spent all his days wandering the House and seemed to know his way around at least some of its mysteries. “How would you ever find a secret room in a place like this?”
The cat performed that strange movement of his shoulders again that passed for a cat shrug. “I suppose you would find it if you needed it.”
Well, I certainly needed it, didn’t I? That was the whole reason I had come here, after all—to get my heart back. Or whatever it was he had taken, if the heart turned out to be a mettyfor, as the man in the village pub had said.
True to Cornelius’s promise, the House produced a bedchamber when I required it that night—decorated all in that black stuff, but with sheets and pillows, and a mattress so high and thick that I had to clamber up onto it like a child onto their mother’s lap. It had provided a commode, too, to my relief.
I was ready to collapse into sleep then and there, as soon as I saw the bed, but a washbasin announced itself in one corner of the room and stood there pointedly, and I supposed the place wanted me to use it.
So, the House was finicky: that made the filth of its master’s throne room all the more odd. I took off my new fancy clothes, folding them as carefully as I was able, and found a clean (black) nightgown in the wardrobe that stood in one corner. Finally, I was able to climb into the bed.
I waited with the covers drawn up to my chin for a little while, wondering (and hoping, if I was being honest) if the sorcerer would come press his attentions on me, but the door did not open. I had delivered his dinner to him that evening, and he hadn’t even looked up. Clearly my face and form were little of interest to him.
My brief flutter of pride from earlier, at making it to the city and the sorcerer, turned to a chill of apprehension. What had I let myself in for? Before I could think about it too much, slumber pulled me under, and I slept dreamlessly for the first time in weeks.
I do remember a small, chirruping noise, a thump, and a weight on the bed when Cornelius jumped onto my feet. He kneaded my legs pretty violently, and I grumbled into my pillow.
“Sorry,” he said, and retracted his claws. “Better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Cornelius started to purr, a low, soothing rumble. I found that I liked it. I had never seen the point of cats before, really, other than for catching mice, but the warm weight and the peaceful sound were pleasant, and they helped me fall asleep again.