Wulfyddia (The Tattersall Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

Mrs.
Tattersall was determined that her son would receive the best education
possible, but since he was from the countryside and not of castle blood,
whatever schools the elite children of the castle attended were off limits to
him. Mrs. Tattersall, whose father had been a schoolteacher and an educated
man, assigned him books to read and did her best to review his work when she
had the time.

While
she sat with Justine, Mrs. Tattersall kept herself busy stitching, and since
there were only so many clothes that the two Tattersalls could wear, Mrs.
Tattersall often took on extra sewing. They had no way of knowing how long Mrs.
Tattersall would retain her job at the Haligorn, and so the extra money brought
them peace of mind. Every few mornings Mrs. Tattersall gave Spencer a basket of
newly mended clothing, and he delivered them back to their owners all over the
castle.

Since
his mother spent much of her day at the top of the Haligorn with Justine, she
had little time to clean their living quarters, so much of the day-to-day
cleaning fell to Spencer. Mrs. Tattersall had become obsessively tidy since her
husband’s death from an infected wound turned morbid. More than once in the
dark days after his father’s death, Spencer had woken in the dead of night from
a deep sleep to hear his mother scrubbing their floor and crying.

Though
his father had died just a year and half previously, Spencer rarely thought
about him. He could feel the memories clawing their way to the surface of his
mind every once in a while, but he pushed them away as often as he could. In
the past eighteen months it had become an automatic reflex. After those first,
horrible months, he had begun to master the art of stifling thoughts of his
father before he could really
think
about what had happened. There was
no sense thinking about it. It wasn’t something that could be undone, or fixed,
or even made sense out of. He had even managed to block his father out his
dreams, at least the ones he remembered, though sometimes he woke with tears on
his cheeks and no memory of why he had cried.

Spencer
stretched uneasily, and his glance went to the kitchen doorway and the dark hall
beyond. Despite his earlier words to his mother, he found himself suddenly
lonely for her company. Though he felt guilty about keeping his association
with the princesses from his mother, her presence was comforting.

When
Mrs. Tattersall came downstairs a few minutes later, it was to find that
Spencer was already boiling water for stew, and had put down a dish of milk for
the cat. She paused for a moment in the doorway and surveyed her son, taking in
his pale face and the shadows under his eyes. The sight of him tugged at her
heart, for she could tell that something was bothering him. It frightened her,
to see him so wan and troubled, and she could only hope that it was some
ordinary teenage affliction— romantic angst, for instance— and not a more serious
ailment. She was not the type of woman to push for an answer, however, and so
she resolved to wait for her son to come to her, unaware that at the exact same
time, her son was resolving to keep her in the dark at all costs. 

After
dinner they sat by the hearth in companionable silence for many hours, Spencer
with a book and his mother with her knitting. The cat came in as the blue dusk
transitioned to black night, and she sat across from Spencer’s mother, watching
the flash of her knitting needles with fascination. Eventually the sound of the
cat’s purring filled the little room, and Spencer stayed up later than usual,
reluctant to retreat from the warm chair to his cold bed.

The
night fell clear and silent. Melisande was allowed the luxury of retiring to
her bed to sleep, but her dreams were not soothing. One minute she frolicked in
her parents’ orchard, dancing between trees with fruit-laden boughs and sunshine-dappled
leaves. The next minute, the trees were felled at her feet, and her parents’
cottage was engulfed in flames as a blood-soaked moon rose. She could hear her
mother and father calling out to her as her skirt caught fire, the flames
crackling and jumping as the fire leapt from her hem to her hands, singing her
skin and sending her screaming to the creek.

She
threw herself beneath the water, and then suddenly she was back in the lake,
with that horrible apparition. This time the woman was waiting for her, and she
howled a cry of triumph into the water, bubbles trailing from her mouth as she
paddled for Melisande. The witch’s apprentice struggled to wake, struggled to
pull herself from the water, but she could not quite extricate herself from the
clutches of the nightmare.

Melisande
tossed this way and that, reaching up with a moan to scratch at her face with
sharp fingernails, and as she thrashed, she was circled by a multitude of
gleaming scales. The Salamanders, born of flame and her own fury, were drawn by
the force of her dreams, and one by one they had crawled from the darkness,
scurrying down corridors and slithering down walls, to creep into her chamber.
One lay over her head, scaly nostrils flaring at the heady scent of her hair.
Another lay at her pillow, forked tail resting possessively over her throat,
while a third was at her wrist, nose at her pulse, jealously lapping at her
skin. They hovered close to her, feeling the warmth of the same anger that had
called them into being, feeding on the power and the hatred and the stifled
fury. It nursed them, nourished them and kept their flickering life forces
strong. And still Melisande tossed and turned, fighting to reach the surface,
fighting to stay afloat.

***

“Who are
you?” The whisper reverberated in her dreams.

Who

Who

Who

It was
not the only voice Cicely heard, but it was the most insistent. When she woke
struggling to place it, her tapestries were glowing with the white light of the
full moon. There were a thousand voices in the castle, a thousand open mouths.
The prisoners in the dungeons twitched and shuddered in their sleep, murmuring
beseeching words that melted, unheard, into the night. On the other side of the
wet, cold stone, the moat lapped at the black rock of Castle Wulfyddia, as if
promising to swallow the building whole one day. The moat was darkly vibrant
this night, as was often the case on a full moon. The ghosts of the drowned
swam deep in that water, singing a lament that rose to the surface of the green
glowing water in putrid bubbles, bringing restlessness to the sleep of the moatkeeper.
Their voices were compelling, their stories gripping, and Cicely could have
lost herself in them, but they were not the ones who had asked who. Tonight,
she had only one aim, and that was to follow the conversation that had slipped
into her dreams. 

She knew
the voice but could not place it. Seeking it, she visited Melisande’s
nightmares; the Queen’s bloodstained dreams, and the tormented sleep of the
Castle Hangman, who saw faces from his work all night every night. All of them
slept. Their minds were busy and troubled, but their voices were silent. The
one she sought was awake, thinking and speaking clearly.

The lost
souls of the moat were not the only ones who had answered the white cry of the
full moon. There was another who had risen, and he stalked the abandoned
dungeon with a hunger that Cicely could feel in her own gut. He was hidden
away, isolated and unseen. But Cicely could see him, and from her own bed, with
her quilt wrapped tight around her and her eyes closed in concentration, she
visited one of the castle’s darkest secrets. But he was not speaking either,
only hungering, and thirsting and longing, so she left him aching and her
attention went elsewhere. Her ears and eyes sought other sounds and other
sights.

She
found her sister awash in moonlight at the mouth of the footbridge, standing
barefoot over the Chasm. Justine wore only her white nightdress, as though the
bite of the cold wind didn’t bother her. Despite the deathly expanse beneath
her, Justine didn’t look afraid as she stepped out onto the footbridge, one
hand outstretched as though she reached for someone. Her eyes were dark with
fascination. “Who are you?” She asked, extending her hand still farther, offering
it to someone. It was only then that Cicely saw her sister’s companion, a woman
shrouded in white.

So
Justine had found her— the spirit, the one who had evaded Cicely for so long.
There the phantom stood, in a dress as pale as Justine’s, but lit by her own
glow rather than the gleam of the moon. Cicely could see the figure, but the
face… the face eluded her. She could distinguish no features, so that it was
both faceless and voiceless. Whatever message it bore, it did not seek to
deliver it to Cicely, and no matter how hard Cicely tried she could not discern
a single thought, only that same scent of sweet rot and that lingering air of
sadness.

“Speak
to me.” Cicely implored, her words little more than a breath on the wind. The
spirit heard her, and Cicely could taste that old frustration as the being
began to fade.

“What?
No.” Justine murmured. “Don’t go. Why are you leaving?” Then Justine stiffened,
as if she sensed the eyes that were on her, and she tilted her head back.
“Sister.” The word was almost a snarl. Justine glared upwards, her gaze seeming
to bore into Cicely. Her brows drew low over eyes that were surprisingly
hateful. “Go away. Leave me
alone
.”

Cicely
reeled backwards, at once back in her tower with the tapestries creaking around
her, and her sister’s hatred still burning in her veins, paired with the shock
that Justine had felt her gaze. Justine was the first ever to have sensed
Cicely’s eyes. Cicely could not stifle the feeling that it was all slipping
from her hands, from the faceless spirit to her own wounded sister.

***

Deep in
the dungeons, where three had unwisely ventured, the beast stalked the shadows.
He scented the intruders on their air, tasted them in the blood they had
foolishly spilled. Then the spirit materialized at his side, a peaceful,
soothing presence, melancholy but sweet, and she reached out for him. She could
not touch him, for he was corporeal and she was not, but they were two outcasts
together, banished to the shadows, and her presence was all that stilled the
rage, all that kept him from prowling free at night, killing at will. And
though they could not touch, her hands hovered over him, seeming to stroke him,
just a hairsbreadth away from his skin, so that he could feel the hum of her
essence, and she comforted him, bringing peace to the darkness.

“You’re sure I won’t get in trouble for
this?” Spencer surveyed the court gathering with a knot slowly growing in his
stomach. He did not belong here, and he was unsure why he kept allowing the
sisters to drag him about the castle on their various excursions.

“Of course not.” Daphne said dismissively.

“You’re with us,” Lorna told him. “Don’t
worry. Oh look, here comes Grandmamma.”

Any hope of Spencer not worrying evaporated
with her last observation, and he watched anxiously as three rows of soldiers
four across marched into the royal hall. They were followed by a handful of old
men wearing elaborate suits in brilliant colors.

“That’s the Royal Guard, and those are the
Royal Advisors,” Daphne whispered. She had been standing moments before, but
now that she was confronted with her grandmother’s court, she sat down in a
high-backed chair and kept her head down. The elderly Royal Advisors were followed
by a group of women in outrageous outfits. They were dressed in elaborate
gowns, had piled their powdered and curled hair on top of their heads, and wore
the strangest shoes Spencer had ever seen, absurdly high shoes, practically
stilts really, which made them walk like newborn colts. Their faces were so
powdered and painted that it was difficult to tell the old ones from the young
ones, especially with the big black spots they’d all painted on their cheeks.

“Those are the Ladies of Court,” Lorna said
dreamily, sounding star-struck.

Daphne clicked her tongue. “I think they look
ridiculous,” she said.

The women were pursued by a group of very strange
looking men. The men were wearing the same sort of high shoes, but much bigger,
and their faces were also powdered. Rather than piling their hair on top of
their heads, they seemed to specialize in finding creative ways to grow it on
their faces. Between them they sported some truly unique moustaches and beards.
Spencer stroked his own chin and wondered if there would ever come a day when
he would be able to grow such outrageous hair… not that he’d want to.

“They’re not all natural,” Daphne whispered.

“What?” Spencer whispered back.

“Those are the Lords of the Court, and they
don’t actually grow those. They like to change them a lot, so they just paste
them on in the mornings and rip them off in the evenings.”

Spencer thought that was the most revolting
thing he’d ever heard. “But why do the courtiers dress like that?” he asked Daphne.
“You don’t dress like that.”

“We don’t have anything to prove,” Daphne
said. “They’re at Court trying to gain favor and posts, and titles and land. We
own everything and always will. Why bother painting our faces?”

She did have a succinct way of putting
things, Spencer thought. Lorna’s sudden intake of breath startled him and he
turned to see what the younger sister was staring at. The men of the Court were
followed after a few paces by a man who danced along comically. He wore a
colorful suit, and on his head was a bizarre hat adorned with bells. He had a
tambourine in one hand and wore a puppet on the other hand.

“The Fool,” Lorna whispered, and there was a
faint catch in her voice.

“Shall I call him over here, Lorna?” Daphne
whispered teasingly. But then, when her little sister went white, she shook her
head. “You know I’m only teasing. She hates the Fool,” Daphne whispered to Spencer,
“she thinks he’s scary.”

Spencer could understand why. As they watched
the Fool stopped to do some backflips, and then purposely botched the last one
so that he fell humorously in front of everyone. The Ladies of the Court all
giggled, waving their fans frenetically, and the men mocked him, even though it
was obvious that the fall had been staged to amuse them. The advisors looked
back to jeer, then raised their large noses high in the air and turned away.

There was something a little grotesque about
the spectacle, as the Fool continued thrashing about, performing some other
stunt that made all the powdered people roar with laughter again. He was one of
the few who weren’t laughing, and Spencer thought the man’s eyes looked almost
dead. Spencer wasn’t surprised. It had to be a dreadful job, making a fool of
yourself over and over again for a group of stuck up royals.

As Spencer watched, a heavily pregnant woman
in a lavender colored gown waddled through the sea of Ladies, which parted for
her obligingly. Spencer noticed that she alone among the women was wearing
sensible flat shoes, and that she alone was not laughing. In fact, she looked
both uncomfortable and painfully bored. She looked so very bored that Spencer
guessed who she was.

“That’s your mother?” He asked Lorna.

“How did you know?” Daphne asked.

Spencer glanced back at the woman, who was
rubbing the back of her neck and frowning. “She looks like someone with nothing
to prove,” he told Daphne.

“That’s our father,” Lorna pointed out a man
in a crown, with thick black hair and a bushy black beard. He was standing with
a tall young woman who had hair that was a light auburn, several shades softer
than Daphne’s. She wore a crown on her brow and carried herself with her back
ramrod straight, so Spencer suspected that she was a princess, but her garb
seemed… unconventional, for a princess. She wore a great cloak of thick, shaggy
fur, and beneath that she wore a simple tunic, leggings and boots. Spencer saw
several of the Ladies of the Court raising their brows at her, but when she
turned they sniveled and simpered and flagged their little fans, so she was
almost certainly royalty.

“That’s our sister Anise,” Daphne said.

“The one who’s second in line?” Spencer
couldn’t help the way his voice squeaked. Following Tryphena’s death, her son
Delwyn would take the throne. After Delwyn, his eldest daughter Anise was next
in line. Spencer had been raised not to judge people by their appearances, but
he couldn’t help but be a little concerned at the thought of the Kingdom being
ruled by someone who was dressed like one of the Cave People of Elleshmere.
“What is she wearing?”

Daphne sighed. “She loves that cape. She made
it from the pelt of the first bear she killed.”

“She kills
bears
?” His voice squeaked once
more. Then again, he thought, better bears than people. Her grandmother seemed
to prefer people and that was downright terrifying.

“She kills everything,” Daphne said. “She’s
been hunting practically since the day she was born. It’s the only thing that
interests her. Well, that and fishing, but she only likes fishing for exciting
things like Electric Eel and Man-eating Trout.”

Spencer blinked, trying to reconcile the
image of the slim young woman of auburn hair and pale, narrow lips with the
person Daphne was telling him about. The bear cloak did make it easier, though,
and as he watched Anise said something to her father, and Prince Delwyn gave a
hearty laugh and slapped her hard on the back. “She’s his favorite,” Daphne
said, and to her credit she sounded only a little jealous. “She’s his heir and
the best hunter and the best at sports and he says she
never
whines.”

“Well, that is an appealing quality.” Spencer
had to admit. He was still appraising the future Queen of Wulfyddia when a
small old woman stepped out from behind Anise. It was the Queen. Spencer knew
it immediately, though he had never seen her in person before. She had the dark
eyes of her granddaughters and her profile was identical to those that adorned
the coins in his pocket. His first thought was that she wasn’t nearly as
terrifying as he would have expected, but as he watched she surveyed the
assembled guests with such a cold stare that he could imagine how she had
earned her reputation for heartlessness.

 “Who is she?” Spencer asked, gesturing to a
young woman who was walking with the Queen, linked arm in arm with her. He
hadn’t noticed her at first, he’d been so upset by the appearance of the Queen,
but now he was somewhat baffled by her. She looked rather calm for someone who
was walking arm in arm with the devil.

“That’s Dimity,” Lorna told him. “She’s our
grandmother’s favorite.”

“By favorite,” Daphne said, “she means that Dimity
is the only one of us that our grandmother doesn’t want to behead. Dimity does
everything for our grandmother. She helps her with everything… she knows all of
her secrets.” But somehow Spencer doubted that anyone knew all of the Queen’s
secrets.

With an
expression of utmost disdain, Dimity watched the Fool cavorting about, the curl
of her lip echoing her grandmother’s scowl. Even if he hadn’t know she was the
favorite, Spencer would have guessed from the way Dimity seemed to mimic her
grandmother’s expressions, in that odd way that close family members sometimes
come to after a number of years. Several women stood attentively near the Queen,
and Daphne began to single them out one by one. “That’s Felunhala. She’s the
court witch. We’ll take you to visit Melisande tomorrow. She’s Felunhala’s
apprentice. She’s awfully interesting.” Spencer wasn’t sure when the princesses
had decided that he was their new pet, but he wasn’t particularly pleased with
his new role. Then again, a visit to the apartments of the court witch did
sound intriguing. He craned his neck to try to catch a better glimpse of the
woman, but her back was turned.

Lorna
directed his attention the other way, to a short, richly robed young woman.
“That’s our sister Eudora. She’s a terrible gossip.” Indeed, Eudora seemed to
be deep in conversation with a few Ladies of the Court, and even as they
watched she leaned in close to whisper something into the ear of one of the
ladies.

“There’s
the court prophet,” Daphne pointed out a tall man in an absurd hat. “Grandmamma
has relied on his prophecy since Cicely stopped talking.”

Spencer
was unfamiliar with that particular chapter of royal history, so Lorna and
Daphne filled him in on the series of events that had led to Justine’s imprisonment,
as the spectacle spun on around them.

***

When Melisande
first saw him she thought he was a ghost. She turned to reach for a book and he
was standing there, looming in the doorway, bone-white in the face with livid
shadows under his eyes. Then, while her gaze was still on his lips, searching
for some sign that he drew breath, and was not some specter visiting from
beyond the grave, he spoke.

“I am
Doctor Archibald Rathbone of Arkestra. I am searching for the Castle Witch.”

He was
human, then, alive though his appearance pointed to the contrary. He was from
her home province, too.

“These
are her chambers.” Melisande’s voice was strangely raspy, and she realized that
she hadn’t spoken in hours as she ceaselessly toiled over the lake spell. It
was startling how hopeless she was when it came to water, given her talents
with flame. “Felunhala is at Court, attending the Queen. I am her apprentice.
How may I help you?”

His
eyelids fluttered rapidly, as though the question had taken him by surprise.
“Well, you see,” he began, stepping into the rooms and closing the door behind
him. “It’s about the beast, you see. Well, it began with him. I’ve since come
to realize, that, well, the whole place is entirely overrun,” he gestured
expansively, though whether he referred to the castle or the country or the
continent Melisande couldn’t be sure. “But that’s beside the point. It’s about
the beast, you see.”

It took
Melisande a moment to find her voice again in the face of his odd behavior.
“What kind of beast?” She asked finally.

His eyes
flicked erratically to her face, and then back to his feet. “That’s what I’m
here about, you see. I want to know what it’s called. And also…” he licked his
lips. “How to kill it.”

“You
want to kill it?” He didn’t strike Melisande as much of a slayer. Then again,
it could be hard to tell. Anise, granddaughter of the Queen, did not look like
much of a hunter, and yet the whole castle knew of her prowess.

“What
does it look like?” She asked. A muscle twitched in Rathbone’s jaw and his face
froze in a cringe. “Is it large? Or small?”

He bared
his teeth in a sort of half smile. “Large.”

“You’ve
seen this beast?”

“Oh,
yes. We passed an entire evening together, in fact.”

“Where?”

“The
dungeon.”

“The
dungeon?” Melisande certainly would not have guessed that this man had ever
seen the inside of the Queen’s prison. Even more startling was the fact that he
had apparently made it out unscathed.

Or…
perhaps not unscathed after all, she realized as she watched him pace the floor
in front of her.
Oh
. Suddenly the man’s frantic manner and fevered
expression made a great deal more sense. Pitying him, Melisande decided to do
him this one favor. “Did it look like a ghost? There are many spirits in the
castle.”

“No, no,
no.” Rathbone muttered. “Not a ghost, it was, um,” he rubbed his hands together
anxiously.

“Corporeal?”
Melisande suggested.

“Ah,
yes.”

“And
does it look like a man?”

“No! It
is a beast. An animal. But it has fingers. Claws instead of nails…” Rathbone’s
voice trailed off weakly.

“I see.”
Melisande walked to the shelf where Felunhala kept the bestiaries, which ranged
from ancient, crumbling manuscripts to the reliable Herdemom’s Guide, which was
updated every five years. Her finger hovered over the spines for a moment, and
then she selected her favorite, the one she had used to research the
Salamanders.

“What is
that?” Rathbone ceased his pacing to watch her.

“A
bestiary. An encyclopedia of creatures.”

“May I…
borrow it?” He smiled hesitantly, and Melisande found herself smiling back. He
was not so bad looking a young man, she observed. His black hair was a little
long, his blue-green eyes a little wild, and he was disheveled, uncontrolled,
but there was something startling about the brilliance of his crazed smile. He
stalked to and fro, soiling their furs, a mess Melisande would undoubtedly be
punished for, and yet she could not bring herself to be angry at him, or to
snap at him to stop. She liked the rawness of his manner. It was almost
soothing to know that he was too crazed to hide anything, to put on a false
face and tell pretty lies. And they were countrymen, for both Melisande and
Rathbone had come to the castle from the wild and untamed provinces. It wasn’t
surprising that he was having trouble settling in here. The Castle had a way of
mangling the unprepared spirit, and there was no way for simple country folk to
prepare themselves for the world that waited within the high walls of Castle
Wulfyddia.