Roses (8 page)

Keeping an eye on her, Owaine went back to raking straw and he began to sing one of her favorite Hilland songs:

Hills of Magic,
Lakes of Gold,
Keep your truths and secrets untold.

His lilting voice echoed around the wooden stable, soothing the horses and enchanting the air. Beauty found her nerves calming and she began to hum along:

When the realm,
Was fresh and young,
Spells and myths were born and sung.

In the hills,
Where they belong,
The wind will sing them seasons long.

She found her brush moving to the beat of the words, and as the song petered to an end she switched to a currycomb and began working on Comrade’s tail. By this time, the stallion was standing with his nose resting on the ground and his eyes closed, completely relaxed.

“I’m taking the horses to town to buy feed. Should yur like to come?”

Beauty thought of the slime and the lice and the beggars and shook her head. She had been happy to retreat to the safety of Rose Herm’s ornamented grounds and she did not wish to leave them again. She had not forgotten what lay out there.

Sensing her tension, Comrade snorted.

“I should a' thought yur might be getting bored.”

Owaine watched her closely. He was vaguely aware of what had happened the day Ma Dane burst into the mansion, dragging Beauty behind her. The kitchens had been rife with gossip that evening as one maid complained of how she had been instructed to bathe and look after the silver thing. She spoke of how it had snapped at her fingers and spoken in tongue, at which point Owaine shouted at them all not to tell such lies. As he had stomped out, he had heard
them all furiously whisper behind him. It had not gone unnoticed that he spent a lot of time with the silver being.

“Are yur happy?” he pressed.

The child looked confused.

“I should like to learn to ride,” she said after a pause.

He laughed. “Yur so good around them horses that I forgets yur can’t ride. I’ll teach yur, but yur’ll need to ask the Ma.”

Beauty nodded. She suspected that if she chose the right time, Ma Dane would not object. It was always better to ask her questions after dinner, when Ma Dane was feeling her most placid.

“Yur get taught books by that teacher that comes in for Master Eli?”

Beauty shook her head.

“Well, maybe I teaches yur to ride and yur can be a stable hand like me?”

She blinked at him. She had never considered her future.

“I do not know what will become of me,” she whispered.

Owaine said nothing for he did not know what would become of her, either.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

The Incident with Eli

A
s the seasons passed, Beauty grew restless. She became tired of Ma Dane’s flitting attitudes, which could have her seated on the veranda with the Herm-se-Hollis family in the morning, but banished to her room for dinner. She was tired of Pa Hamish ignoring her from across the table and sick of entering the drawing room on visitor’s whims.

The servants barely said a word to her, serving her at the table with pursed lips and passing her in the corridors with their eyes fixed on the carpets. Her own dress-maid treated her like a dumb animal, and she could pass days speaking to no one but Owaine. Beauty was increasingly tempted to be troublesome. In the same way that she had fought Nan to bring life to her dismal existence, she began to rebel against Rose Herm.

She moved around her hairbrushes to confuse her dress-maid and left boots by the door that would trip Pa Hamish up as he hurried to his gentlemen’s club. She tested Ma Dane’s temper as frequently as possible: purposely clanging silverware as she ate, wearing her hair
free instead of pinning it up, and—worst of all—staring straight back at the visitors who called her down to the drawing room.

“She looks . . . she looks fierce today,” said Peony one morning when the Coo-se-Nutoes ladies came for syrupy tea.

“Yes, different,” agreed Bow.

They glanced warily at the violet eyes that bore into them. Once Beauty had looked meekly at the floor as they surveyed her; now she locked them with a bright, challenging stare.

“Ha, not at all!” cried Ma Dane. “She is just a little . . . stubborn, like any child.”

Beauty paid highly for her impertinence later.

“How dare you act so!” Ma Dane boomed at dinner. A glass flew through the air and narrowly missed Beauty’s head.

Beauty drew herself up and took a deep breath. “I will not be looked at anymore.”

“Get out! Get out!”

Ma Dane was still screeching long after Beauty had left the room. As her temper finally began to cool, Ma Dane growled, “Just like Asha,” clenching her fingers into fists under the table.

Beauty spent the rest of that evening and the next day cooped up in her room, but she was not called down to the drawing room again.

Beauty despised her lowly status at Rose Herm, but there was one person who she would rather see even less of. Eli watched her constantly with undisguised fascination. He had been forbidden to play with her, which made her all the more intriguing to him. So he lurked and lingered whenever she was about.

In the house she found him following her from room to room, never speaking and always appearing to be looking the other way
at some painting or ornament. In the gardens Beauty would be splashing in a fountain, only to feel a presence suddenly near and turn to see him whittling a stick or catching a frog. Where Eli was concerned, she would have preferred to be ignored.

“Mayhap yur could play with Master Eli?”

It was a clammy summer’s afternoon and Beauty was sitting astride Comrade, her thin, silver legs squeezing his ebony sides. For three seasons, Owaine had diligently been teaching her to ride and today Eli had disturbed their solitary lesson, wandering onto their practice lawn to swipe the air with his saber.

“I am not allowed to play with him.”

“Seems he don’t care.”

“I care. I wish he would leave me be.”

They both looked at the boy who was surprisingly fine despite his parentage. Even at thirty-five seasons he had strong, square shoulders and a broad chest. He was as tall as his father, without Pa Hamish’s awkwardness, and his brown eyes held the same intensity as Ma Dane’s, but they were larger and softer.

“He bother yur often?”

“If he is not at lessons or with friends then he is somehow near me.”

“Beauty, he wants to be yur friend.”

Owaine had finally adopted her name, but she knew that from his lips it was not an intended insult.

“I do not think so,” she said, and they did not mention it again.

When Ma Dane caught her son near her ward it was always Beauty’s fault.

“How many times have I told you?” she would hiss, dragging Beauty from the room and pushing her down the corridor.

Beauty would find another quiet lounge in the mansion and settle down, but a few hours later Eli would be near again.

“What do you want?” she had cried once.

But Eli carried on counting the tassels on the curtain and did not reply.

In fact, he did not speak directly to her until one warm winter’s night when she awoke to the sound of a scream.

Her room was at the end of the guest quarters, far from the family apartments and the servants’ rooms, but still she had heard the scream. It seemed to vibrate through the darkness, jostling her body so that splashes of color burst across her vision. She slid from the bed and stumbled to the door, her head foggy and her skin sticky with sweat. Staggering into the corridor, she blinked in the harsh light of the oil lamps that were kept burning all night.

Another scream sounded, this one ending in a low groan of pain.

She ran along the corridors, following the sound and knocking into walls as she passed, her vision still lilting before her eyes. To her surprise, there was no one else about.

She came to Ma Dane’s suite, which she had not ventured into since her younger years, when she would escape the nursery and prowl the corridors. Surprising herself, she lurched into the lounge without stopping, running farther into the bedchamber. There she saw Ma Dane’s inflated mahogany bed and Eli lying upon it in a hot sweat with sheets twisted wildly about his limbs.

“There is a war!” he cried. “There is a war!”

Ma Dane ran in from an adjoining room, a jug of water in her hands. Out of her huge jeweled gowns she looked vulnerable and tired. She almost fell when she caught sight of Beauty.

“What are you—”

“I heard screams.”

Eli sat up in bed, his eyes the filmy blankness of a dreamer.

“I cannot do it! I will not fight!” he gasped.

Ma Dane ran to his side and splattered his head with the water.

“Get away from here!” she hissed over her shoulder at Beauty.

Eli’s body bowed and quaked. Suddenly, he cried out loudly and snapped to life, looking about the room with terrified eyes. He saw Beauty and whispered, “You cannot say no.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“You cannot say no, for there is no choice,” he replied. “You will come with me.”

“I said get away from here!” Ma Dane spat.

Beauty scurried from the room, but lurked in the shadows by the door.

“Mother, was that Beauty?” Eli whimpered.

“She is gone now, my sweet.”

“I saw her again. I saw death and fire and—”

“Do as I have always taught you.”

Beauty peeked around the doorframe to see Eli squeeze his eyes shut, clench his jaw, and clutch at the bed sheets.

“It hurts!”

“You must do it, Eli. I had to.”

The next morning, as she sat beneath a zouba tree in the gardens, Beauty saw four small figures marching toward her. Eli was leading the group, and behind him trailed Pernet Shap-se-George and her twin brothers, Nez and Gilly. As Beauty scrambled to her feet, she wondered what they were doing so far from the house. Eli usually played on the veranda by the back windows where Ma Dane could watch him.

“There she is!” he cried.

Nez and Gilly ran over to her, then stopped short.

“We’ve seen it before! Why have you brought us all this way?”

“I wanted to see it again,” snapped Pernet. “I heard Mother say that it spoke last time she came and I never heard it speak before.”

Pernet straightened out her frilled skirts, patting their fine beading and woven ribbons. Beauty looked down at her own plain brown smock.

“She does not always speak,” warned Eli, sidling closer to Beauty than he had ever dared to venture before. “Most of the time she just talks to the smelly horseman.”

“Make it speak now,” said Pernet, tossing her dark hair.

“I command you to speak.”

Beauty clenched her teeth.

“This is boring! Can we play a game?”

“I want her to speak!” snapped Pernet.

Eli glanced at his divided audience.

“We can play a game with Beauty.”

“A speaking game?”

“Exactly.”

“Magic Cleansing!” squealed Nez and Gilly. “We have to play Magic Cleansing.”

Beauty picked up her picture book and turned to leave.

“What’s that?” said Pernet, snatching it from her hands. “This is for babies! It’s a nursery book. There are no words!” She flipped to an illustration of a troll.