4. Pray, Good Missus, A Soul Cake
PRAY, GOOD MISSUS, A SOUL CAKE
Beatrix was dressed in black with adornments of sparkling gold, silk scarves painted with thin veins like wings tied at her shoulders and flowed down to fasten at each wrist, and two small twigs were woven into her hair for antennae.
Most of the partygoers were trying to disguise themselves as the spirits and demons that walked among them, but Bea wanted to stand out this time.
She was there for one person, and she needed him to recognize her.
The chill in the air was not why she shook so badly she could hardly stand.
There were people on all sides of her, dancing around the great bonfire in the village center, many wearing face paint or masks of cloth or paper.
Some took turns dunking their heads in barrels of water to catch an apple between their teeth; hopeful girls cast hazelnuts into the fire to see if it would burn when they uttered the name of the one they admired; sweethearts snuck off together into the cabbage field to do who knows what—though they returned telling their families that they found a perfect cabbage by moonlight that would bless their union.
All around were turnips carved into marvelously hideous faces, glowing with bits of tallow candle, giving the impression of shrunken floating heads sailing about the dance floor.
Bea searched each face for the only person she wanted to see, but how she would find him while everyone wore a disguise… And she had never seen his face to begin with, she couldn’t say.
“Bea? Little Bea Ashwood, is that you?”
Her feet nearly left the stone beneath as she whipped around to face the young man who called out to her. He seemed far too young to be her worldly, condescending friend.
“Jack?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to see past the burlap sack with the painted face he wore.
“Thomas,” he said, pulling the sack off his head to reveal a mess of blond hair and upturned nose. It was the grown version of a face she had often seen laughing at her when she was young. “Thomas Adams, you must remember me. I used to chase you ‘round the fountain.”
Bea scowled.
“I’m afraid you’ve rather a lot of competition for such a memory, Mr. Adams. That was by no means an original idea of yours.”
Thomas laughed, taking a step closer and reaching out to clasp a few of her fingers that Bea could not pull away in time.
“Well we could try it again now that we’re older and see if you like it when I catch you,” he said.
Bea was about to let her free hand fly across his face when something brushed her back.
Something that felt very large.
“Mr. Adams,” said a voice from behind her so low she felt it in her hip bones. The accent was strange, curving around some words and coming to a flourish at the point of others. It made Bea shiver with fear and delight. “It is clear you’ve had too much to drink. Everyone can see it.”
The next moment, Thomas yelped and looked down at the front of his trousers where an enormous wet patch appeared. With a screech, he jammed the mask over his face again before tearing away from the lights and the crowd.
Bea’s heart beat like a war drum living in her throat. The noise seemed to dull around her and the crowd felt as if they were behind glass. She dared not turn around.
“Jack O’ the Tree?” she whispered over her shoulder.
Sahar chuckled low, itching to reach out to her while knowing he had better keep to the shadows as much as possible.
“That is not my true name, you know,” he said. “But I do find it amusing the way you English assign your own monikers to whatever you feel you discovered.”
Bea scoffed and turned around, trying to catch sight of him, but all she saw was a dark cloak pulling back into the shadows between buildings. The bonfire was so bright that everything outside its orbit was blackness.
“Why do you always scold me for guessing while you continue to show me nothing of yourself?” she asked, her indignance helping to overcome her fear. “I’m here. I came back. Tell me, sir, where are you? Who are you?”
There was a pause as Sahar watched her from the shadows. This felt like where he was supposed to be—hidden in the dark, watching her be bright and glittering and stubborn. And beautiful. When had that happened? To look at her was painful.
“I am here, Little Bea, as I have always been,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “And I am your friend, as I have always been.”
Bea was startled by his height. She had never seen a man so tall—fully two heads above her or possibly more. He was so broad at the arms and shoulders that the image of him hefting her into the air with one hand came to her mind unbidden, flustering her even more than she already was.
His mask was a half skull made from paper, showing the bottom half of his face beneath, which he must have painted dark purple, though it seemed to shimmer when it caught the firelight.
His lips, Bea had never taken half a second to imagine what they must look like before, were all she could see of him.
They were perfectly shaped and plush in a way that embarrassed her. She could not say why.
“Take off your mask,” she said.
“Not tonight.” His teeth flashed so white she thought he had swallowed the moon.
“Tell me your true name.”
“Not tonight.”
Bea felt tears gathering and fought the urge to stamp at the ground as if she were still the child he once knew.
“Take me away with you.”
Sahar hissed softly as if she was causing him pain that he rather enjoyed. He reached for her hand, holding her fingers with the soft leather gloves he wore; he had dressed for the night with every intention of hiding himself away, even from the touch of her hand.
“Oh, my Little Bea,” he said. “Not tonight.”
Beatrix cried out in frustration, yanking her hand away.
“Then why did you ask me to come to you?! You toy with my patience all my life and offer me nothing! Be gone and leave me alone!”
She spun around toward the bonfire where a cider or four might improve her spirits.
“It pains me that I can do neither of those things!” Sahar said in a low growl as he pursued her, weaving through a crowd that paid him no mind. “I need to see you because—will you stop a moment, you foolish little girl?!”
He grabbed her hand again. She turned around, glaring up into his mask that gave her nothing back, only the mockery of a grin on a long dead skull.
“I am a foolish little girl, Jack, and I hope I always will be!” she hissed. “I hope I never learn better or fit in or stop believing in things like you even when things like you behave like… like monsters!”
“Now see here.” He gripped her hands, his gloves creaking as they held tightly to her. “You must understand that I cannot simply take you away with me. Just as I cannot see or write you whenever I like. There are rules I must follow.”
He swallowed hard, loosening his grip to press her hands between his instead.
He needed a moment to think, to piece together this new strange and entirely unwelcome feeling that had been assaulting him since her return.
In another breath, he would name it. In another breath, he would offer her everything.
Beatrix sighed. “And there are rules I must follow.”
Sahar watched her a moment, unsure why that sentence made the same sound as his rib cage cracking inside him.
“You mean to go through with your marriage to this…this… man.”
Beatrix fixed him with a wry smile.
“Is that the foulest insult you can imagine?”
“In fact, it is.”
“Are you not a man?”
“I am significantly finer and I am also not the subject of discussion, Beatrix,” he said, looping his arm through hers to guide her back toward the darkness between buildings. “Tell me why you mean to marry him. I know you too well to suppose he has won your heart.”
“What, that old thing?” She laughed sadly, looking down at their feet.
“It has always been for sale, cheap to the right buyer. No, Mr. Claybourn does not have my heart, though I’m sure in time he will at least attempt to find it.
Put simply, my parents will face ruin if I don’t marry well.
My older sisters’ husbands can help but it will not be enough if I remain in the home. ”
Sahar watched her face with the barest glow from the bonfire tickling its edges; a face he had never before found so lovely. There was beauty that made him ache from every inch, and sadness that made him desperate to protect her.
“At three and twenty, I am nearly too old to be considered a good match for any man with all his own hair,” she continued. “It was a choice between Mr. Claybourn and being packed off to a convent.”
Sahar shuddered. What a thought.
“But will you be happy?” he asked, trying to gentle his growling voice, to show some care instead of his usual malignant mischief.
Bea avoided looking at his face—one he still hid from her, always giving her nothing while she showed him everything, and shrugged.
“He is a kind man. His friends in town spoke well of him. He doesn’t have the outward appearance of a rake or scoundrel or villain.”
“Much to your dismay, I am sure,” Sahar muttered.
Bea clucked her tongue, looking back toward the bonfire. Her face was burning in the cool autumn air.
Sahar relished this little squirm of embarrassment for only a moment before panic bit its way into his bones again.
What good did it do to know her as well as he did if this was the last he would ever see of her?
She would go off with some stranger that he could not protect her from.
This was her own choice. If she wished it from him, if she said the words… but she hadn’t.
“Please, Jack, let us end as friends,” she said, squeezing his arm. “If I’m to lose your society in two days’ time, let’s at least have a dance and a drink to Hallowe’en. Can’t we?”
Sahar smiled, flashing his bright teeth while in the darkness. That, he could certainly do, and she need not even have asked.
He pulled her by her hands back toward the bonfire in the center of town where drums and fiddles and flutes played over the merry pops and crackles of the flame, and couples twirled around each other, giddy and tipsy.
He clutched Beatrix by her waist and pulled her close, spinning them in a tight circle with their other hands stretched above them before changing directions.
What a strange sensation it was to hold her like this.
Under his glove, through her stiff bodice, he could still feel the softness of her, the extra curve to her waist and her hips that sent such confusing hunger tearing through him.
Were she another woman, he’d already have his face beneath her dress, wrenching out every strangled scream she had to give him.
And oh, that thought hit him like a whole cask of wine.
For the first time, possibly ever, Sahar fought to control himself.
As violently as his cock raged against him, his heart was quick to best it each time he saw Beatrix in the firelight, laughing breathlessly, hair swirling about her face, stumbling and snorting with laughter when he caught her.
“I would never have suspected you could dance!” she called over the music as another lively tune started. By then she had lost track of how many they’d played.
“Madam, you wound me to suggest I could be anything less than admirable at any task,” Sahar said, twisting her under his arm before yanking her back in close.
“Truly? Any task at all?” she asked with a hint of a challenge.
Sahar could not help himself. He dipped her low and spoke right beside her ear, a rumble that made all the revels around them become hushed.
“Truly. Any. Perhaps most of all those I dare not speak of to you.”
There, Bea’s laughter stopped. Something hit her deep inside, like an arrow between her hips.
It was alarming and painful and intriguing.
She wanted to feel it again as much as she wanted to run far away from it.
This time, she did dare a look at her friend’s face, searching those dark painted eyes that gave her nothing.
“For example?” she whispered.
Sahar cursed himself and tried to cover it by straightening to spin her again.
“Nothing, Little Bea, ignore my foolishness,” he said.
“Jack!” She hissed and grabbed his arms to hold him still, letting other couples weave around them.
“You cannot know what it is like to have everyone speak in circles around you. Everyone is hinting at something that will happen when I’m married, and no one will tell me.
To listen to half of them, I might think I’ll be murdered on my honeymoon! ”
Sahar turned his face away, unable to look into those wide brown eyes and give her answers while his own instincts were screaming at him to show her.
“Nothing of the kind will happen to you. Now, don’t ask me questions,” he said, trying again to take up her hand, but she slipped it out of his glove.
“All my life, it is only you who would talk to me. Only you who spoke on any subject worth hearing. Now I am…” She paused. “I’m frightened. I’m leaving home and I’m leaving you and I don’t know what is waiting for me. I’m frightened, Jack. Will you not talk to me now?”
Bea’s voice wobbled and her eyes grew glassy in the shine from the fire.
Sahar watched in horror, feeling cracks and crumbles inside that he was desperate to patch up before it was too late.
At the sight of a tear dropping down her soft cheek which she quickly reached up to slap away, he couldn’t stop himself from clasping her around the shoulders and pulling her in tightly to his chest, cursing under his breath in his long-dead native tongue.
“I will talk to you, girl. Of course I will talk to you,” he hissed, leading her away from the dancing where to have a bit of quiet.
If she married this fool and Sahar could do nothing else for her, he at least owed her one last real conversation as a friend. If he could keep his own shameful desires from getting in the way.