Chapter Twenty-Five
I step through the tapestry with my heart thumping and Lachlan’s words ringing in my ears. Without magic, you are nothing . . .
Fates damn him! And Fates damn me for a fool to be taken in by him. And for coming back to this house, slinking in like a traitor behind city walls, waiting for the enemy to come knocking so she can open the gates.
Well. I won’t be his puppet. I will succeed, but I will do it my way.
The afternoon has ripened, Conrad no doubt having ridden off hours ago on his usual patrol of the estate.
He likely believes that I am on my way to Blackswire now to wait for the London coach.
I can hear Sylvie running up and down the halls of Ravensgate, yelling about the Nile and Marc Antony, engaged in one of her grand dramas.
I don’t have a minute to waste, not a heartbeat to squander.
The spell to open the stone circle must be in this house somewhere.
A spell that complicated would need to be written down; it would be too risky to leave the only copy in Conrad’s head.
Maybe he cannot tell it to me, but perhaps his vows to Morgaine never stipulated he couldn’t write it down for his own use.
I take half an hour to change my dress and wash my face, then pull the snarls out of my hair, courtesy of Lachlan’s rough grip.
I sit at my dressing table and brush it over and over as if I might comb out the memory of his touch.
When I am done, my eyes burn with tears.
I let my head fall forward into my hands, my fingertips slowly tracing over my tender scalp.
But that makes me think of Conrad’s soft if untrusting explorations, and with a strangled cry, I wrench my hands away.
I must keep moving.
Composing a wholly false expression of cheer, I step out of my room and go looking for lunch; after my conversation with Lachlan, I have no appetite, but I need to keep my strength up now more than ever. It will take all my cunning and magic to return to Elfhame without Conrad’s help.
Mrs. MacDougal finds me in the kitchen minutes later, an apple between my teeth and a scone in my pocket. I give her a little wave and try to slip out, but she catches my arm in the doorway.
“You were gone all night,” she says in a low tone.
I freeze, blinking at her over my apple. Then I slowly take it out, my teeth marks two white crescents in its crimson skin.
“Yes,” I reply. “I went to Elfhame and danced with the faeries.”
She hisses and pulls me into the kitchen. “Watch your mouth, girl! Sylvie’s about!”
“I understand now. You want to protect them. Well, so do I.”
We match gazes for a moment, her surprise evident. “He is a good lad, our Connie.”
“And I swear to you, if I can help him, I will.”
“He told me you’d be leaving us today. Mr. MacDougal has prepared the cart to take you to town, but when we knocked on your door, you did not answer.”
“I was asleep. And I . . . cannot go just yet.”
Her mouth is a sour line, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening with her frown. “What is your aim, Miss Pryor? Do you think to win Mr. North’s hand by hanging about?”
“I—no! That is not my intention, not in the least.” My skin flushes; I feel the phantom warmth of his palm in mine as the faerie queen bound our wrists together.
I curl my fingers into a fist. “But . . . what if there were a way to end all this? To set him and Sylvie and all of you free? I am a Weaver. I know a great many spells—”
“You’re a meddler,” she spits, “just like Vera.”
“Who—”
“Conrad’s mother. She tried to flee Ravensgate with him when he was a boy. She was killed by the fae a league from here, and only by riding hard and fast did Liam find the babe in a ditch and save his life. Some curses cannot be broken.”
“Conrad doesn’t deserve this.”
“Nay, none of them did. But his only hope is to go the way of his father. Liam accepted his lot and was happier for it. He was forever in Elfhame, gallivanting with immortals. Even took a faerie lover for a time, until . . .” She presses her lips together.
“Until he was also killed,” I say. “And how long before something similar befalls Conrad?”
“If you’ve been to Elfhame, and if you’ve spoken to Connie about all of it, then you know this house has seen few stories with happy endings. The best we can do is to help him last as long as he can.”
“That’s not good enough.”
She gives me a strange look, as if she pities me as much as she loathes me.
“Well, you won’t be breaking any curses today, lass.” She gestures at the hall window, where a soft rain has begun to fall, misting the moors. I spot the cart, which Mr. MacDougal is now pulling back to the stable, out of the damp.
For once, I am glad to see the rain. I’d half worried Mrs. MacDougal would force me into the cart and back to London. But now I have a little time, and I intend to use it.
“Hm.” I study the shuttered windows, the canvases over the paintings and furniture, as a plan begins to flicker in my mind.
The air is stale, the frames of the paintings rimed with dust. In some places the grime is a finger’s-width thick.
It’s as if we’ve been shut up in a tomb, in one of the great pyramids, wives of a pharaoh doomed to wander in darkness until we die at his side.
“Very well, then. While I am stranded here, may I at least be of some use to you?”
Her brow furrows with suspicion.
“Don’t look so askance, Mrs. MacDougal. There are some foes which can be beaten with the commonest of weapons.
Where do you keep your brooms and cloths?
And where is our Cleopatra? Let me keep us both out of your way for a few hours.
Honestly, what harm can I do with a broom?
I’ll even leave you my threadkit, if you like. ”
And who knows? Perhaps in dusting off some old credenza, I’ll find a folded bit of paper with the portal spell of Elfhame scribbled upon it. The chance is certainly worth a day of scrubbing and sweeping.
The housekeeper presses her lips together, as if this task were even more impossible than outwitting the queen of the fae, but she shows me to the cleaning cupboard and lets me raid it as I please. She tracks down Sylvie for me in the meantime.
“We’re going to clean the house?” Sylvie asks, her eyes wide.
I brace myself for an argument, but before I manage a word, she adds, “This is the best day ever! I’ll be just like Cinderella, slaving away before my evil, jealous stepmother!”
Mrs. MacDougal sputters and waves her hands. “Off with the pair of you, then! And Fates bless, don’t break anything!”
In minutes, I’ve armed myself and Sylvie with brooms and dustcloths, and she giggles when I tie back her hair and cover it with a handkerchief. Next we tie on aprons. We have buckets of water, lye soap, and an absurdly ornate tea cart to push it all on.
“Will we get in trouble?” she asks. “Connie doesn’t like things being moved around.”
“Connie isn’t here,” I say. “And besides, a little fresh air and sunlight can cheer even the grumpiest of brothers.”
We scurry up one hall and down the next, tearing down curtains and canvases.
I can hardly blame the housekeeper. The place is simply too vast for any one person to keep up with.
Whenever I find a window that isn’t jammed shut, I open it and let in cool breezes which chase us down the corridors and clear out the musty smell, while rain spatters the sills.
Everywhere we go, Captain lopes along, then throws himself onto the carpets to watch us with a perplexed expression.
“Wouldn’t this be easier with magic?” Sylvie asks, leaning on her broom handle.
“It would.” Thinking back to my first conversation with Conrad, I smile. “But sometimes the body needs honest hard work.”
Though that work is taxing, it’s something to do. It alleviates my feeling of helpless panic, which had threatened to leave me flattened on the floor for the next week. But no matter how hard I scrub, I cannot wash away Lachlan’s poisonous touch or his silken whispers in my ear.
In a cherrywood chest, I find a partially unraveled shawl folded up.
It looks as though a mouse has been nibbling at the hems, drawing away threads for its nest. When I unfold it, I find tucked inside an untitled oil portrait of a woman in bright Romani clothing, barefoot on a hillside; by her olive skin and black hair alone I know her to be Conrad’s mother.
If there were any doubt, he has her amber eyes.
I am struck by the vividness of her gaze, glimpsing the bright and joyful spirit she must have been.
It saddens me to think of her struck down by faeries, for simply wanting to be free of them.
“Good on you,” I whisper to the portrait. “At least you tried to fight back.”
Something about Vera North’s face makes me think she would hate her portrait being shut up in a chest. I polish the frame and respectfully set it on a shelf, where her tiger eyes can gaze out the window. Around her shoulders is what appears to be the very same shawl in which I found the portrait.
I run my fingers through the mess of tangled threads, then quietly tuck the shawl into my cleaning basket for later, more careful inspection. That done, I turn back to polishing picture frames with Sylvie.
We unveil portraits of Sylvie’s long-dead relations, and she puzzles out their names and we work out how, exactly, they fit onto her family tree.
The North clan was once quite vast, spread around Blackswire in several large houses, but I’m guessing only Ravensgate is still in the family.
Many of the Norths, I note, died quite young.
It saddens me to think how lively and full this house must have once been.
In one hung frame, hidden behind a canvas sheet, we find an almost life-size image of Liam North, Sylvie’s father.
“Oh,” she breathes, clasping her hands on her chest and staring up at the stern figure. “Da.”
“Do you remember him?” I ask gently.