Chapter 7 Grace #2
Right. He will intend everything, and other people will take his intentions and turn it into a new world for us all to live in.
I suppress the surge of anger and untie the twine, folding the paper back with neatness, as if the act of it can make me safe.
Inside is a book, the leather dark and worn, and it smells of a whole world that exists outside my stark prison walls.
The title is pressed into the spine, gold thinning to suggestion.
Poems. Not the kind young men quote when they want to appear literate; the kind old men carry like a talisman against cynicism.
Something in my chest shifts; small, relieved, and definitely suspicious.
“My mother liked poetry,” I say, unable to look him the eyes right now because it feels like I might just cry, and I won’t do that. I won’t. “But I am monitored. They will say I can hide things in the pages.”
I go to hand it back ,and he places his hand very precisely to not touch me but to ensure I cannot do so.
“You will be surprised by what can be hidden in the plainest pages.”
That makes me frown. What exactly is this scheming man trying to say here? I open to the front and see something I know is his handwriting ‘To Grace. In rooms built of other people’s fear, words can make their own oxygen. Read as if someone has tried to stop you. A.’
My name looks very young there. It is the first time in weeks it’s been used without the weight of its usefulness.
“You assume a lot of me,” I say, and by that I mean he assumes my gratitude, my friendship too.
“I assume you are what you look like when you think no one is watching you...” He glances at the camera.
Oh God, does he watch me then? Does he dial in on odd occasions like so many Lords, and watch as their little captive mulls about in the confined space she’s trapped inside?
“…which is to say, ferocious.”
That word seems to spark the fire in my heart, in my soul. I love it and I hate him for knowing exactly how those syllables will make me feel, for manipulating me in such an easy fucking way. God, I’m a fool.
“Ferocious,” I repeat, and put the book to the side with more care than I want him to see.
He leans back. The chair is too modern to creak, but I wonder if the wood understands the metaphorical weight of the man it is supporting. Thrones have carried less. Tombs have honoured less.
“Tell me what shapes the day for you. Humour me.” He says.
“Morning prayers, then beatings, then duels at dawn.” I shrug out my response as the traitorous beginnings of a smile creep across my face.
He smiles for the humour and waits for the reality. He is good at waiting. I’m certain he knows exactly how to make everyone spill themselves open to fill his carefully crafted silences.
“I wake when the lights tell me to wake,” I say.
“I drink water that pretends to be clean when we all know it is laced with a sedative to keep me calm. I eat calories that pretend to be a lovingly made meal. I walk around the room until I can put my body back where my brain thinks it is. And I count the sounds Mrs Vale makes when she thinks I am sleeping.”
“Do you sleep?” he asks. His voice loses its public roundness; it becomes narrow, like a passage.
“I acquire unconsciousness,” I say. “Sometimes there are hours when the walls of my cell are obedient, and stay far enough away that it doesn’t feel like they’ll crush me with their weight.”
“And Gideon Harrow?” He says his name as if it is an object we should examine on a table.
“Gone.” The word dissolves; it leaves residue like a paracetamol that hasn’t properly broken down. “I do not blame him for being what he is. I blame the world for creating the situation in the first place.”
I am too proud to mourn him the way I would mourn a dog. I mourn the idea that I cannot afford to despise the men I depend on.
He is looking at my left hand again. I curl it in, hiding the offending finger.
“Do you want me to tell you it is for the best?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “I want you to tell me what you want with me. Comfort doesn’t help me, so why are you giving it to me? Why are you here, wasting your precious time with the condemned?”
He looks amused and a little delighted by my audacity.
I have always been a good girl to him, a polite child that was smart enough to quietly disappear when the adults talked.
Maybe my newfound personality is a surprise.
Afterall, they stripped away all the colour in my life.
They stripped away my parents, my friends, everything that clicked together and created a world for me to live in.
Is he curious that instead of folding up, I’ve instead transformed, like paper into origami?
“I am using it as a tool,” he says, leaning forward like a conspirator, dropping his voice enough that it lures me into believing he doesn’t want to be overheard.
“I am a man who prefers to be effective. A little comfort, well applied, can alter the shape of a day. Sometimes that is all one needs to move the world.”
“To move me where?”
“Into a place where the air is not poison,” he says simply. “You are surrounded by people whose job is to administer doses of annihilation. It is not good policy to allow a mind like yours to be smothered. It makes messes that are difficult to fix later.”
“You are very concerned with messes.”
“I am very concerned with you,” he says in such a tone I think my heart stops.
Why? Why does he care?
He’s the one who put me here. Does he see me as some surrogate daughter? Does he see me as some replacement for my mother and because he could not save her, now he’s set his sights on somehow emancipating me?
“My mother chose my father,” I say sharply.
“Yes,” he says meeting my gaze with something unreadable in his eyes. “She chose your father and made a logical choice at the time. He was brave where it mattered. He was foolish too. He…” He stops, as if the memory is a taste in his mouth he has learned not to make a face at.
“She told me once that your hands were always cold, just like your heart.” I say. It is a lie. She did not say those exact words, but I want to see what he will do when I poke the monster. I have to see where the boundaries are.
His grin is involuntary and young. His teeth are expensive and not overdone. He looks at his hands like they are answering an accusation. “They still are, and you should not believe everything people tell you about me.”
He gets up with such precision, striding towards the door and some sort of alarm goes off in my head.
I’m playing games. Games I don’t understand, and Antonio Macrae, he is the master of everything. He doesn’t just know the rules, he doesn’t just own the board; he made it, crafted it with his own bleeding hands.
“I don’t,” I say quickly after him. And then, “Neither should you.”
He pauses, his hand about to touch where the door will open as if by magic just for him.
“Will you let me bring you a plant?” he asks, turning to look at me. “Something alive and stubborn?”
The thought of a plant in this whiteness is obscene and lovely. A leaf would be a blasphemy here. I picture a pot of rosemary, something you brush in passing to release scent. The idea makes my throat ache.
“They will not allow it.” I reply.
“I will ask,” he says, the way a monarch “asks”, a word with a weight attached so heavy it becomes a command. “And if they refuse, I will see what I can do.”
The way he speaks feels like it is nothing, a thing of no consequence, and that puts my hackles up because he was the one who suggested this, not me. Now, he’s acting like I’ve asked for the world and he will see if he can oblige.
He’s twisted this. Twisted me.
“I do not ask favours,” I say, and mean it. “Especially not those that will be tallied and delivered like a bill.”
My father warned me about men who dealt in debts like silk, soft now, strangling later. Antonio Macrae is the very epitome of that.
“You mistake me,” he says softly. “I am not interested in adding to my ledger.”
“Then what…”
“I’ll speak to them. No promises, Grace. I’ll see what I can do.” He says, cutting across me as he taps lightly on the door to signal this entire conversation is done.
There it is, the silk. No promises. See what he can do. As though he hasn’t already done it all.