Chapter 7
The apothecary had raised his brow at the amount of mandrake Cybil requested, but the brow had lowered precipitously once her coins hit the counter.
As he packaged the root, Cybil stared at the shelves behind him—they were covered in misted glass jars of pickled herbs and bone-coloured powders.
The lowest shelf had a cage with a hedgehog in it, poking its tiny blackcurrant nose through the bars.
Cybil stooped to observe the creature: it sniffed curiously at her fingers, then gave her a brief nip that stung like a nettle.
Cybil smiled at its fury, its wild, dark gaze.
It was pleasant to encounter something that was not frightened of her.
The apothecary was broad and tall; his forearms were thickened with hours at the mortar and pestle.
There was a sharpness behind his eyes, a cold intelligence that reminded Cybil of her father.
As he handed her the package, he told her, ‘Careful with that, now. That witchfinder’s been poking around these parts. ’
Cybil bristled. ‘What are you implying?’
‘Only that folk see shadows where there are none, mistress. They look at shops like mine and think of spells instead of medicine. Last week, Master Martingale—that is the witchfinder—asked me for a list of all the women in Ipswich who had bought henbane from me.’
‘And you gave it to him?’
The apothecary spread his hands in surrender. ‘What was I to do? Put myself to the noose instead?’
Cybil swallowed the bile in her throat and put the package in her pocket. There would be no use in argument; she could not truly say she would have done different. ‘How much for the hedgehog?’
He glanced at the cage. ‘That depends. You want the whole thing, or just the quills?’
‘The whole thing,’ she said, in smothered horror. ‘Living, preferably—unless, for some reason, keeping a pet will alert the witchfinder, too?’
Outside, the sun had been obscured by clouds dark and discoloured as a bruise. The change from the morning’s sunshine was so sudden and so stark, it felt portentous; Cybil pulled her cloak tighter around herself as she approached Peter, the hedgehog’s little cage swinging from her hand.
He blinked at her. ‘What is that?’
‘Hm? Oh, it is a hedgehog.’
‘… Is it for eating?’
‘Her name is Aurelia,’ Cybil told him haughtily, ‘and no, she is not for eating. I must return to the Hall. My horse is stabled outside the gates. My thanks, for… for your company.’
‘You wish to leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘I shall accompany you, then.’ He offered her an arm, and she took it hesitantly—there was a new intensity to his expression that she found somewhat unsettling. ‘This way.’
She allowed him to lead her away from the market square, winding through the back alleys to avoid the worst of the crowd.
‘Surely it is lonely,’ Peter said, as they walked. ‘Up there in the Hall, all alone. Is it not?’
‘I have my mother,’ Cybil replied, but that felt like a lie.
‘Still. You have much responsibility, as lady of the manor. Is it not difficult?’
She took a delicate step over a puddle glazed with grease. ‘Not particularly.’
‘Your father,’ Peter said, striding thoughtlessly through the puddle. ‘Surely you miss him?’
Cybil heard Christopher’s voice once more, muffled by his office door: I will do what must be done.
‘Not overmuch,’ she said.
‘You are angry with him,’ Peter observed, and his voice was… deeper and yet also softer; it had a strange resonance that felt almost comforting.
Cybil leaned a little closer to him, gripping his arm more tightly. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Usually, Cybil would have declined to reply at all, let alone reply honestly; but there was something curiously compelling about Peter in that moment, the way his fingers had come to rest lightly on her own, the half-lidded, inviting look he was giving her from the corners of his eyes.
Cybil had never felt desire for any man—this was, perchance, the first time she had even come close to doing so. That realisation disarmed her utterly.
I want to talk to him, she thought. To unburden myself, if only this once.
She said, words hushed as if speaking a secret: ‘He hated me. He hated me because I am—wrong.’
Peter stopped and turned to look at her. They were by the gate now; the light was so dimmed from the clouds that torches had been lit, and the flickering light made Peter look different: more angular, more ethereal. ‘Wrong?’
‘I…’ Her throat closed up, and she swallowed, suddenly hesitant. A raindrop fell on her cheek. She swiped it away. ‘Sometimes, I look at the shadows,’ she said, ‘and it is as if they are looking back at me.’
Peter cocked his head.
‘What if they are?’ he asked.
Cybil was trembling. She opened her mouth to respond—to deflect, as she always had; to deny, as she always had—but something stopped her from speaking.
In the brief moment of silence her hesitancy created, the rain whispered its disapproval against the thatched roofs of Ipswich.
Cybil became distinctly aware of the emptiness of the woods outside the gate, and the vastness of the country surrounding them, and the solitude of the Hall’s grand rooms awaiting her: the untrodden carpets, the unoccupied chairs.
That place was a dollhouse. She had spent her life inside playing make-believe, hoping that someone would reach their hand within and pull her out.
Cybil turned and crouched at the edge of the gate, where the grass had grown long.
She opened the door of the hedgehog’s cage, and it was gone in a streak of brown and black.
Cybil never could have kept such a creature as a pet, regardless of a passing fancy: her curse would have led it, no doubt, to some cruel end.
Still, she allowed herself a moment of sorrow for her loss before she turned back to Peter.
‘I have made you sad,’ he said, frowning slightly.
‘I am not sad,’ she replied. ‘Or—I am. But I think I am angry, also.’
‘Why?’
‘I grow angry when I feel sorrow,’ she said. ‘I grow angry with myself, because I feel as if I do not deserve sadness. Is that lunacy, do you think?’
He approached her until they were face-to-face, her skirts brushing his boots. He raised a trembling hand and pressed it against her cheek. His thumb caught the corner of her mouth; it was cold and damp from the rain. Cybil was so startled by this that she did not react, but stared at him blankly.
‘You deserve all of it,’ he said. ‘Sorrow and fury. The beginning and end of all things.’
His palm against her face was like ice, and his eyes were dark and wide. Cybil opened her mouth to reply—then she paused. His eyes had been blue before, had they not? And had his accent not been broader, his smile more innocent?
There were a dozen explanations that would have made more sense, a thousand ways that Cybil could have rationalised it to herself; but once she recognised the resemblance, it felt impossible to ignore. It was as if his was a face that had fractured, and now all she could see was the crack.
‘Richter?’ she said.
Peter froze. His hand dropped away. The affected openness of his expression loosened, his features becoming crueller and colder.
‘It is you,’ Cybil said, horrified, and in response, Peter’s jaw unhinged.
Shadows began to pour out of his mouth and pool on the ground; the darkness bled from his eyes, blue irises swivelling wildly in their sockets.
Cybil was too scared even to scream; she scrambled backwards, stumbling over an uneven paving, and scrabbled to standing just as Peter’s mouth shut again.
His eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell to the ground, unconscious.
Meanwhile, the darkness at Cybil’s feet began to pool and swirl, coalescing into something tangible.
She could hear a sound muddied by rain, but there all the same—the shouting of people from the way they had just come, all of Ipswich witness to the shadows that were reaching for her.
Cybil turned and fled.
The forest, once familiar, was made another world entirely by the rain: gnarled trunks shimmering sideways in the haze of water; the earth pulling at Charmeuse’s hoofs as if to consume her and Cybil both.
Cybil hadn’t seen Richter since she had run to retrieve her horse, since she had galloped down the path home, swallowing her screams—but she swore she could hear footsteps behind her, could hear the crowing of a bird above her.
And yet, each time she glanced over her shoulder, there was no one there.
It was some sort of dream, Cybil told herself, a nightmare—but it did not help.
It did not loosen the terror that had closed its fist around her heart, did not slow her pace or her breathing.
She raced through the forest like a stag with hounds nipping at its heels, until the Hall rose above her, cruel and familiar, the rain beating against its leaden roof.
Cybil dismounted. It was almost dark now, and the downpour had soaked her entirely. Her hair stuck to her face, and water sprung from her eyelashes when she blinked. She could still feel the imprint of Peter’s—Richter’s—hand on her cheek. Her stomach churned.
She dropped Charmeuse at the stables, from which the most direct route into the main building was through the orchard.
Cybil stumbled her way over roots and decomposing leaves, gripping her wet skirts.
Many of the trees still bore fruit, the last of the autumn’s apples, but more still carpeted the ground in various stages of decay.
In her haste, Cybil stepped on one, and it burst beneath her boot.
She slipped, arms flailing—and someone caught her.
It was Richter, smiling down at her. This time, Cybil did scream, trying to bat her away. Richter disappeared. In the space of a blink, she was gone; disoriented, Cybil veered around—trying to find her—and then she heard a voice at her ear, saying, ‘Good evening.’