1. Chapter 1 #2
Shrieky little things, It said with a bite of distaste as I passed out the remnants of breakfast. A mob of children bobbed around me outside the ivy-choked walls of Lord Fletcher’s manor. Is there a reason they’re always so sticky?
I’m sure they do it just to bother you. I smiled at the girl before me.
“Will you be at church later, Des?” she asked. I caught a flash of pink tongue through the gap in her teeth.
“I have to work.” I closed her fingers around the last biscuit from my basket. “But I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The children tore off into the fog once I was breadless, their tattered little shoes pounding every which way through the streets.
I can’t even remember the last time I’d set foot in a church.
You’re not missing much, It said, coiling around the thought like smoke.
I know.
I supposed that had come out with more bite than I had intended, because It laughed. Your God might smite you if you’re not careful. If It had a face, I felt sure it would be smiling.
He’s not my God.
Take a look at this cesspool you live in. It subtly directed my eyes toward the churned mud of the lane, the dismal gray cottages lining it, the fogs hovering over it all like toxic gas. You live beside Hell and you don’t believe in Him?
I believe in Him, I said as It turned my gaze toward the wood, the smile I’d worn for the children wilting on my lips. You know that. I just don’t like all his teachings.
I help with the manor’s laundry every Wednesday and Sunday as an excuse to avoid church.
I hadn’t been able to work in the stables since I was fourteen.
The horses reared and roared whenever I got too close.
So, laundry then. Laundry or cleaning or dusting and occasionally even stealing down to the ill-stocked armory to while away a few hours.
There was always something that needed doing.
“Ow.” I snatched my hands back from the sudsy, scalding bucket.
Well, be careful, It said, bored. It was often bored.
Even after a minute or two, the steam wafting off the bucket showed no signs of thinning.
Eventually I knocked on the head steward’s chamber.
When nobody called out, I shouldered inside, collected some clean rags and a bottle of oil, and made to head out, but something caught my eye.
A face I hadn’t seen in a while. Not a perfect rendering—there weren’t many portrait painters in Monde’s End—but close enough.
Noelle Hawthorne. The last death in the village, four months earlier.
Her eyes stared out at me from atop a pile of parchment.
Lord Fletcher started keeping a log of the deaths after his daughter was found, white and waxen, by the wood that morning a few years ago.
She’d been one of the first but not the last.
Always girls, I mused, mostly to myself but also to It. The past few years, it’s only ever been girls found dead. That’s odd, isn’t it? They’re saying it’s bound to be an incubus, but Noelle was always so careful. I can’t imagine she forgot to seal her ears.
Hmm. The grunt seemed heavy with meaning, but I could plumb nothing from it.
Broken neck, I read silently from beneath Noelle’s face. Miss—is that a q?
G. Good Lord. Missing.
It taught me how to read nearly five years ago, when through my eyes it saw the pages of one of Lord Fletcher’s books overwhelm me, the letters an indecipherable jumble.
Well, It said, businesslike in a way I had never heard before. This isn’t going to work for me.
What do you care? I’d retorted, boiling both with anger and humiliation. Livvy didn’t read, either. Few in Monde’s End could. We had no surfeit of books lying around. Lord Fletcher had been forced to burn the bulk to heat his manor the previous winter.
I refuse to be stuck with an illiterate. What’s left of my mind will be lost. And then, slightly accusatory: You don’t think like you’re uneducated. You dream in French, sometimes.
I’d been born to a modest English merchant and a poor Frenchwoman, though my father had died before my mother had me.
Their courtship had been quick; he’d intended to bring her home to London.
My mother had taken a job in a manor in France when I was two.
The lady of that home had been elderly, sweet.
She had read to me, told me stories, taught me English.
She had been planning to teach me how to read before she died when I was four, and that had been the end of my “education.”
Why can’t you just read the words for me?
Well, it’s very dull in here, you see, It snapped. And it isn’t like I don’t have the time.
I don’t get a whole lot of practice, I told It now, squinting at the rest of the text. Missing over…night before being found at dawn near the ed—edge of the wood.
See that you don’t follow her into the grave. It’ll be dark soon.
Not for a couple hours. I gave Noelle a last look before shutting the chamber door behind me.
Livvy’s parents took me in after my mother died seven years ago.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay that kindness, but I try.
What little money I make goes to the household.
I help with the children, the chores. I bring home supper on Wednesdays and Sundays once I’m finished with work to save Margaret the hassle of cooking after church services.
But that night there were no leftovers in the kitchens, which meant a visit to the baker before hurrying home.
Oh, the baker, It said. Lovely.
Stop. You’re a horrible grump.
A grump? Its inhuman voice pulled up into something near amusement. I’d rather be a grump than a vile little man like John Dale.
I swung out the shabby gates of the manor. How is he vile?
I don’t like his eyes.
Well, as long as you’ve got a good reason, I said, stepping out into the darkening street.
All around me, doors were swinging shut, locks turning.
I could read the sky well enough to know we had about twenty minutes of daylight left.
I dashed across the road, the damp mud sucking at the soles of my boots, breathless as the baker appeared in the threshold in his flour-dusted apron, about to extinguish the lamp above the doorway.
“Cutting it close tonight.” He stepped back to allow me entry, his smile as warm as the bakery.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be quick.” I felt as though I would melt in the heat of the shop beneath my cloak. “I’ll take anything you’ve got. The kitchens were empty tonight.”
“Meat pies are all that’s left.”
I fought a wince. Those were the most expensive item he had on offer. A single pie cost nearly a day’s wages. There were six of us in the Warren home. I could ask to pay him later in the week, I supposed, or work in the bakery early in the morning to pay off the cost—
No, It said. Go home.
It was right. We had bolts of cloth to buy the next time we made it to the market in Darensdale, the town five miles away. Livvy’s little siblings outgrew their clothing so quickly.
“I’m sorry.” I backed away toward the door. “I don’t have enough this time.”
John wiped his hands off on his apron, leaving snail-like trails of batter across it. “We can work something out. Take them. They’ll just rot in the end.” He groped the bulge of his stomach in a way that made It recoil. “That, or find their way into my stomach.”
I think he was closing what little distance remained between us. And then the fogs drifting off the wood were suddenly in my head, clouding everything out, lulling me into a transient semi-doze.
When I came back to myself, my wrist felt wrenched, as if a bruise were blooming just beneath the surface. And John Dale was dead upon the floor.