Chapter 11 #2
Esther’s shoulders slumped as the pain faded.
She had this, at least. Her power had made her isolated, but perhaps, someday, it would bear the key to her freedom.
She simply had to find the correct ritual, the correct set of spells, and it wouldn’t matter anymore that the other women in the Ton found her off-putting, or that her dreams were full of fire; it wouldn’t matter that sometimes—in the most silent moments of dark between sleeping and waking, when the mind is half present, half dreaming—she heard someone saying a name that was her own, but not her own.
An oracle’s name, just as Esther was, and one that seemed as familiar to her as Esther did.
The crow on the windowsill cawed. Esther felt the sparrow’s heartbeat for a moment longer, then lifted her finger. Thank you, she told the shadows.
The organ fluttered, shuddered, and was still.
Esther’s father died when she was twenty-two.
It had happened while he was sleeping. No one knew why. ‘His spirit left him,’ the doctor said, as if spirits were prone to spontaneous flight; but either way—he was gone.
Esther felt grief, but very little of it. He had been an absent father, not cruel, but not kind; sometimes it seemed he almost had an aversion to her, that he avoided her gaze and her conversation. She had never grown to love him.
At the funeral, as they laid their father to rest, there was much commentary on the tragedy of the Harding bloodline.
They were a scandalous family, after all—seventeen-year-old Isaac was illegitimate; Esther had been out in the marriage market for several Seasons but had yet to make a match; and this was the third Harding death in as many years.
The first had been her uncle, of distemper; the second her cousin’s poor little wife, Lily, upon the childbed—and now Reginald had followed them.
Left without a guardian, Esther and Isaac had nowhere to go but to their cousin’s household.
The three of them were the only Hardings left in London, the other branches of the family huddled away in country estates, resolutely pretending their scandalous town relatives didn’t exist.
Esther met the curious stares of the funeralgoers with open defiance, while Isaac simply ignored them.
No doubt they were ill-matched, the two of them, standing beside the casket in their mourners’ clothes: Esther pale and flame-haired, face impassive, swaddled in her black pelisse, while her brother—brown-skinned, brunet, expressive to a fault—grimaced and winced at the belaboured droning of the vicar.
Their eyes caught; Isaac’s lips twitched.
Esther did not quite allow herself a smile.
Afterwards, walking out of the church, with the stares of dozens beating on their backs, he said, ‘A bloody relief it’s over.’
Esther wasn’t certain whether he was speaking of the funeral or their father’s life. She had considered, many times, that she might have been Reginald’s killer; but that was his fault, she supposed. Their uncle had tried to warn him several times about her curse, and he’d never listened.
‘We could go see a play,’ Isaac continued, hopefully. ‘We have time to catch the matinee.’
‘We ought to return home and pack our things,’ she said.
‘Come, Esther, it’s our last day of freedom. Surely we ought to do something fun.’
‘We are supposed to be grieving,’ she snapped, and then tried to ignore the way his expression shuttered.
They approached their carriage. The lamppost beside it, bent slightly sideways from some historic storm, had a crow sitting at its top. Esther gave the bird a secret smile. It cawed and took flight, its shadow passing over them like a mourning veil.
‘Cousin Esther,’ Thomas Harding said. ‘And little Isaac—how you’ve grown. Welcome. Watch the steps, they are Italian marble.’
Thomas’s townhouse was larger than theirs had been, much larger.
As they’d finished packing their things the previous day, Esther hadn’t shed tears, although part of her had wanted to; she’d been leaving the only home she’d ever known.
She’d chosen the sage-green carpet in the tearoom, the India-wood furnishings.
She had painted the walls of her bedroom the silver-grey of a storm cloud, had carved ritual circles on the inside of her closet.
Now it was all lost to her, buried alongside her father.
Despite being younger than Esther, Thomas was now head of the Harding family—as his father was dead, also, and he was the eldest son.
As Isaac and Esther were ushered inside, it became clear his townhouse was much like him: pale and tall and overdressed.
Thomas had poured the family wealth over the place like sudsy water from a wash bucket: each lamp and curtain had a gold tassel, each wall a pastel-toned painting, each chair leg a curlicued accent.
The air smelt of dried roses and damp, the small windows emitting only the barest hint of light.
They stopped in the parlour to admire an enormous oil portrait of a dour-faced man with a high ruff, glaring at his viewers as if to admonish them for daring to raise their eyes. There was something in his face Esther felt she recognised.
‘Christopher Harding,’ Thomas said, proudly. ‘My father made it his mission to recover all the family artefacts that had survived the fire at Harding Hall; this was the only portrait saved. You have heard of him, I presume? Christopher, I mean.’
Isaac replied, ‘Oh, yes, assuredly, assuredly,’ in his driest tone.
‘An alchemist and a scholar, of the greatest degree,’ Thomas told them, as if Isaac hadn’t replied. ‘One of our most venerable ancestors. This way—I simply must show you the music room.’
Esther knew very little about Thomas. There had been talk of them marrying, when they were younger, but nothing had come of it, as he had married Lily instead.
Now it had been years since they’d carried on a conversation.
Thomas bore little resemblance to either Isaac or Esther; the three of them shared only a surname and a pair of arrestingly large, leaf-shaped eyes, a trait that was considered either beautiful or unsettling depending upon the disposition of the viewer.
Otherwise, Thomas was unfortunately woeful in appearance.
He had an excessive amount of hair that was both too light and too dark to suit his sallow complexion, eyes that were either grey or blue, and a bone-thin, hawkish face that could have been used to chisel stone.
It was not a handsome face, or a welcoming one.
Esther supposed she would become accustomed to it.
They continued their tour. The townhouse was so cramped and silent, it felt closer to a coffin than a home.
The dining room was painted the colour of Madeira wine, a grotesque Hogarth of ruddy-faced drunkards watching over the empty table; the hallway beside it had a still life of a dead lobster, its vibrant shell the same shade as Esther’s hair.
The music room smelt of mothballs, and it was so dark within that Thomas was obliged to light the sconces.
The pianoforte was beautiful, a deep mahogany nearly the shade of blood.
Thomas explained at great length about its ivory keys and imported casing, but it was difficult for Esther to pay attention.
The room felt so stuffy that his words sounded muffled, like cotton wool was being pushed into her ears.
Isaac was given a good room on the second floor, well positioned, albeit a little small.
It had apparently once been furnished for a child; now an adult-size bed was shoved awkwardly in the corner, incongruous with the beribboned curtains and a tiny chest of drawers.
Isaac didn’t bother to protest, but he closed the door in their faces with a dramatic sigh.
Esther inferred the room had been intended for the baby Thomas and his wife had been expecting. Lily and the baby had passed a few months ago.
‘Forgive Isaac,’ Esther said, as they descended the steps to the first floor. She so rarely apologised that it felt somehow cruel to do so, as if this false courtesy was ruder than if she hadn’t said anything at all. ‘He is… young, still.’
Thomas nodded curtly. He was staring at her, considering, his jaw tense. He had one protruding vein high on his forehead, pulsing a faint blue against his sallow skin. It seemed as if he intended to say something; but then he did not, and they moved on.
They came past a door with roses painted in oils along the frame. The art was subtle, the work of a talented hand. Esther said, ‘What is that?’
Thomas gave the door a brief glance. His lips tightened. ‘That was Lily’s room,’ he said, and then he continued to walk.
That made sense—the flowers recalled what little Esther had known of his wife before she had died: a quiet, delicate girl who had grown flowers in her garden and spoken hardly a word.
Esther chased after Thomas and made some attempt at solidarity.
‘I know it must be… odd, to have us here, after all that has happened.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘Lily always liked you. She would have—she would have insisted you stay with us.’
‘I…’ Esther cleared her throat, looked down at the floor. She sought desperately for another topic of conversation. ‘The Cheswicks are hosting a fete tomorrow. Will you be attending?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Thomas said. ‘I did receive an invitation, but I can’t come.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘Well—’ He cleared his throat, clearly disarmed by her direct manner. Esther quickly cast her eyes back down to the floor. ‘I have a meeting here with my lawyer. I am finalising the sale of your father’s townhouse.’
Esther knew that Thomas had hardly left his own home since Lily’s death; it had been the subject of much Ton gossip, the reclusive Harding driven half mad with grief. She felt foolish for asking. ‘I understand.’
‘The money shall be yours, as his will stipulates,’ Thomas said. ‘I shall put it toward your dowry.’
‘Thank you.’
They stopped in front of a door. ‘This shall be your room,’ he told her, with some pride. Then his voice became hushed, as if he were imparting a secret. ‘Esther…’
‘Yes?’
‘We are family. The Harding bloodline: that is all that matters.’ He reached forward then, and placed his own hands over hers; his fingers pressed against the fabric of her gloves in a proprietary, searching sort of way.
Esther gently extracted her hands. Something about the way he’d touched her had made the hair on her arms stand on end.
She told herself that was an instinct borne of the curse.
She couldn’t let herself grow too close to Thomas, couldn’t allow him any sort of intimacy, or else she would lead him to disaster.
At least this offer of friendship, as futile as it was, showed he had offered his guardianship in good faith. ‘Thank you.’
‘I sincerely hope you will be happy here.’
Her throat tightened. ‘As do I,’ she said, and suddenly she was utterly overwhelmed. ‘Excuse me, I must rest before supper.’
She entered the bedroom and shut the door in his face before he could reply.
Her room was lime green: lime-green wallpaper, lime-green furnishings, lime-green sheets and curtains.
It made her feel queasy. The servants had laid out her cases, and she went to open one, removing one of her books—the first volume of Machiavelli’s The Art of War.
It was familiar to her, comforting. She sat on the bed to read.
On the opening page, an ex libris had been pasted in, with the three-headed hawk of their family crest.
‘Past, present, future,’ Esther murmured, and then she turned the page.
Something moved on the wall opposite her.
She knew she shouldn’t look, that granting it attention would only encourage it—darkness was childlike, in that way, poking and whining at her to elicit a reaction.
Still, Esther glanced upwards. Two shadows were engaged in a curious play upon the wall.
One had taken the form of an odd sort of beast—feminine and humanoid in shape, but with the feet and wings of a bird.
The other was a smaller woman in a wide-skirted gown.
These silhouettes performed a fluid dance about each other, spinning up and down the walls, until the bird-woman suddenly widened her wings, grew a long beak, and swallowed her partner whole.
Esther felt her heart speed up with anxiety, but she was accustomed enough to the shadows that—although she feared them—she didn’t flee.
Since she had first understood her curse, and first understood her father’s refusal to either acknowledge or aid her, she had learnt to make use of the dark; to bear the pain of her powers, albeit in small doses, so that she could make her miniature miracles.
She tolerated its presence as best she could, and she told herself that one day, she would be rid of it entirely.
The shadow-figure paused. The bird-woman unhinged her jaw, and the woman in the gown crawled out of it, miraculously whole.
She raised her hands to her throat as if in pain.
In response, Esther felt her own throat close, a strange, burning ache growing at the skin there, as if it was bruised—she gasped, and then gasped more, horrified at how the air caught in her throat, as if she were suffocating.
‘Go away,’ she pleaded to the shadows on the wall, her voice hoarse, panicked. ‘Shoo now. Please. I do not know what—what is happening, but it hurts. It hurts.’
The darkness hesitated—and then, chagrined, faded away.
The pain disappeared. Esther took a deep breath, relieved at the ease of it, and she put Machiavelli aside. She closed her eyes. All is well, she told herself. You are well. The shadows can’t touch you. Not unless you allow them to.
Once she had calmed, she opened her eyes again. Staring up at her ceiling, she found—curiously—that she had a melody stuck in her head.
‘For I am still thy lover true,’ she murmured, half singing, half whispering. ‘Come once again and love me
.’