Chapter 6 – The Feast of the Departed #5
She didn’t. Ophele was sure she didn’t. But Lady Hurrell was just as sure that she did, and so hurt, so disappointed, great tears welled in her eyes as she slapped Ophele again and again.
They were all so sure, Ophele even began to doubt herself, even as she denied it ever more frantically.
Had she done it? Surely Lady Hurrell wouldn’t say so unless she had done something bad, would she?
In the end they were weeping together, Ophele’s eyes swollen shut with tears as she sobbed hysterically.
“Ophele, you must tell the truth. It will all be better if you tell the truth,” Lady Hurrell pleaded. “You know where it is, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes,” Ophele sobbed.
“Where?”
But she didn’t know. Or maybe she did know and had forgotten.
Maybe she had taken the brooch and was such a liar, she had even lied to herself.
Lady Hurrell’s voice went remorselessly on, reminding Ophele of everything her mother had done and asking how she could be such a bad, ungrateful girl, to steal a brooch when she already would never be able to pay House Hurrell back.
In the end, Ophele was a liar. She lied wildly, frantically, spilling forth whatever words she needed to say to make it stop.
It was a relief to just give up. She sent the maids to the attic, to the cellar, to the library, lying again and again about where she had hidden the brooch.
And when it was perfectly clear to everyone that she was lying, Lady Hurrell ordered her taken back to her room, without the pouch of sacred incense.
“Your mother would not want to see you, after such a day,” Lady Hurrell sighed. Ophele had cried herself sick. “Ophele. Your mother was a liar, too. The stars cursed her with a bastard for her lies. They cursed her to sicken and die.”
The bed shifted as Lady Hurrell sat beside her, brushing her hair back from her hot face.
“I should hate for that to happen to you,” she murmured. “You stay here tonight and think about what you have done. Perhaps next year you will see your mother.”
That was not the last Feast of the Departed that Ophele spent in her bedroom, looking up at the stars through her window and calling to her mother.
And when the brooch was found some weeks later, she never questioned that she had been the one to hide it under Lady Hurrell’s dressing table.
She must have done it and then forgotten.
And when she came to Lady Hurrell and admitted it, the lady had been so kind, picking her up into her lap and embracing her.
“There, you see?” she whispered, her soft cheek pressed against Ophele’s thin one. “Isn’t it better when you tell the truth?”
“Yes,” Ophele said, almost inaudible. “I’m sorry. I’m s-sorry I…lied.”
“I know you can’t help it, child,” the lady said tenderly. “You’re a bastard. Bastards lie.”
* * *
She was a liar.
And sooner or later, Remin was going to find out.
With every step toward the cottage, Ophele’s heart sank further into her shoes.
How had she not realized that this would happen?
Of course, he would expect to meet their families together; that was what normal people did on the Feast of the Departed.
She had been so busy preparing for the feast and the feeding of the fields, it had seemed like a different holiday altogether.
And this one would not end with Ophele alone by the fire, with only a single pinch of incense to summon a wisp of her mother, a breath of regret and longing.
His family would be there. His whole House that her mother had helped to murder, and her mother would be standing there beside them.
Would they know it? Would they sense each other?
Would they understand who Ophele was? The daughter of the Emperor that had ordered their executions, married to their last remaining son!
Oh, she could imagine those ghostly faces in the smoke, those furious, accusing eyes, their righteous rage at what had been done to them.
Would Remin hate her for it?
He had said over and over that he did not hold her responsible for anything her father had done.
Unconsciously, her hand tightened on his arm at the thought, and she only distantly heard his deep voice, telling her about his mother and father and grandparents.
And another thrill of fear struck her, because even if she was not to blame for her parents’ crimes, she was deceiving him.
She was not what he thought she was. Even if Remin did not know enough of women to tell the difference, his mother and grandmothers, great ladies of ancient Houses, must certainly know the truth at a glance.
Her throat clicked as she swallowed dryly.
Until now, it hadn’t seemed so bad, hiding it from Remin; there was still time to learn, time to turn the lies into truth.
But dressed in her fine red silk gown and going to face real noblewomen, she felt like a sparrow clutching a pair of peacock feathers.
They would see right through her. And in her mind, they had the look of Lady Hurrell, and that voice sounded in her head, wondering how Remin, the son of an ancient and noble house, had come to marry such a wretch.
“Wife?” Remin tugged her gently; she would have kept walking straight down Eugene Street and out the bridge gate without noticing. She started.
“Oh, sorry,” she said faintly.
She was trying not to think of Granholme.
Trying not to remember the night when she had fallen asleep in his arms and awakened to find he hated her.
But she would never forget that look on his face, filled with enough hate and fury to stop her heart.
Even Lady Hurrell had never looked at her like that.
Oh, stars, what would she do if that happened again?
Just thinking of it made her feel as if the dark waters of the Brede had closed over her head, cold and deep and airless.
The cottage was dark when they went inside, and as Remin bent to build a fire, Ophele busied herself with moving the small table out of the way and pushing their chairs before the hearth.
There was a pouch full of sacred blue-white incense on the table, more incense than she had ever seen in her life. Enough to last all the way to sunrise.
Together, they closed the shutters and took their seats, and Ophele’s throat tightened as she looked up at him.
If only her mother hadn’t done what she had done.
If only Ophele herself was not a bastard, a base and crooked thing that under ordinary circumstances would never have laid eyes on a man like Remin in her whole life.
He was so handsome in his doublet and silver chain, and the look in his black eyes made her chest hurt, warm and soft as he turned back to her.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded, her tongue rooted in place as he poured a measure of incense into the copper brazier.
“Who will you ask to come?” He took her hand, his fingers twining in hers.
“M-my mother,” she managed. “And my grandparents. My mother had a brother,” she added nervously as she watched the first tendrils of smoke curl up from the brazier. “Consotin. But I think he’s dead.”
“I had a big family,” Remin replied, an unwitting slice at her heart.
“My father had four brothers and two sisters, and my mother had two brothers and three sisters. I don’t know how many cousins I had.
But I remember my grandparents. I visited House Roye the winter I was six.
Grandmother Roye had the baker make cookies every day. ”
He was excited. It didn’t show in his stern face or his voice, but she could feel it in the grip of his hand.
If only things were different. She might have met his Grandmother Roye.
She might have gone to his house as a beloved bride, maybe even betrothed when they were children, and been as much a part of that large, lovely family as he had been.
Now the smoke was rolling thickly from the brazier, curling up and flowing onto the floor like clouds sweeping down a mountainside.
It was strongly scented, a sharp, crisp smell that stung the nostrils and seemed to bubble into her blood as she inhaled it, making her feel as if she were breathing very cold, thin air.
“Go ahead,” Remin murmured beside her. And though she had been longing for years to commune with her mother just once, now the last thing Ophele wanted to do was summon her. But she had no choice.
“Mother,” she whispered, conjuring the memory of her mother to her mind.
Her mother had been blonde, slender and graceful, but so many years had passed that Ophele no longer remembered her face.
“Rache Pavot. Dorame Pavot. Michinot Pavot. Mother, grandmother, grandfather, please come to me. I am Ophele Agnephus. I am your daughter. I am your granddaughter. I am your blood…”
She breathed the incense deep, feeling it tingle oddly in her lungs.
She had never had so much before, and it made her feel light-headed as she repeated their names, trying to inhabit the words, calling out her own identity to the faraway stars.
Ophele Agnephus, the baseborn daughter of Rache Pavot and Bastin Agnephus.
A child of stardust, the living disgrace to the Emperor’s sacred lineage.
It seemed to her that there was a weight coalescing in that drifting white smoke, a listening presence.
She had never met her grandparents, but she felt loving strangers reach out to her, a call of blood to blood.
And then the sense of her mother’s spirit, so strong it was nearly tangible. Tears sprang into her eyes.
“Mother,” she whispered, her throat choked with longing, and in the smoke there was a breath of Rache Pavot, the sensation of embracing arms. Her lips trembled. “They’re here.”