The Gates of Sleep (19 page)

But no miracle came, and the horses continued to carry her away—away—

She continued to wave, for as long as she could see her
aunt and uncle standing stiff and still in the middle of the road, until the
road took a turning and they vanished from view.

Then her strength left her. She collapsed back into the
corner of her seat and sobbed, sobbed until her throat was sore and her eyes
blurred, sobbed until her eyes were dry, and her cheeks raw with burning tears.

Through it all, two of the three detestable lawyers sat
across from her, the third next to her, with folded arms, and stony faces. If
they felt anything, it certainly didn’t show.
They
were the
waxworks, with their cold faces and hearts of straw.

They might claim that they were lawyers—but they were
more and less than that. As much as that policemen, they had been sent to make
sure she didn’t escape, to make sure she was delivered into captivity, a
prisoner of her parents’ lack of foresight and the implacable will of a
woman who was a complete stranger.

And so she wept, as darkness fell, and the carriage rolled
on, and her captors, her jailers, watched her with the cold eyes of serpents in
the night.

THE carriage rolled on through the night, long past even
the most fashionable of supper-hours; evidently the Unholy Trinity were taking
no chances on Marina making a bolt for freedom. The carriage rattled over roads
not improved by the snow, swaying when it hit ruts, which would have thrown her
against her unwelcome seat-mate if Marina hadn’t wedged herself into
place. She continued to huddle in her corner, as far as possible from them,
back to them, her face turned into the corner where the seat met the side of
the carriage, aching legs jammed against the floorboards to hold herself there.
By the time darkness fell, she was no longer weeping and sobbing hysterically,
but only because she was too exhausted for further emoting. Instead, she stared
dull-eyed at the few inches of window curtain in front of her nose while slow,
hot tears continued to burn down her raw cheeks. After sunset, she could no longer
see even the curtains. The lawyers didn’t bother trying to talk to her;
leaning forward to put their heads together, they whispered among themselves in
disapproving tones, but said nothing aloud. Apparently it was enough for them
that they had her in keeping.

They can’t keep me from writing, can they? They
can’t stop me from sending letters
—

Well, actually, they could, or rather, her Aunt Arachne
could just by refusing to allow her pocket money for postage. It was very clear
from the Trinity’s attitude that they had been completely appalled by the
household that they had found her in. Evidently Margherita, Thomas, and
Sebastian were considered disreputable at best, and immoral at worst.

The Trinity would not have come as they had and acted as
they had done if her new guardian had any intention of allowing her contact
with the old ones, that much was blindingly clear from the way she had been
handled—or, rather, manhandled. Whatever they had expected when they
arrived, her situation had evidently fed right into their prejudices and
preconceptions. They had expected to find a loose, disreputable, eccentric
household
quite
beyond the pale of polite society, and that was
exactly what they’d seen. Which probably contributed to the speed with
which they bundled her out of there… their narrow little minds must have
been near to splitting, and they must have been frantic to get her away.

And if Aunt Arachne ever finds out I was posing for
Uncle Sebastian, she’ll use that as a further weapon against my family.

Given how quickly she’d been hustled away, she could
well picture the absolute opposition to any attempt on
her part
to
return. She could see no way that she could win back home—not until she
was of age and could do what she wanted.

Horrible little respectable
minds!

Three years—it seemed an eternity. She stared into
the blackness in front of her nose and tried to think. What to do? Was there,
in fact, anything that she could do?

No
.
And imprisoning me is going to be “for
my own good.” How can you possibly argue with that? Worse, everyone,
absolutely everyone, would agree with them! Taking me away from “corrupting
and decadent influences,” because everyone knows what artists are like.

More tears flowed down her face, and her throat and chest
were so tight she had trouble breathing.

It took her a moment to realize that the carriage was
slowing; moment later, it came to a stop. A hand tapped her elbow peremptorily.

“Miss Roeswood, we have paused for a moment at a
post-tavern,” a cold voice said distantly, its tone one of complete
indifference. “Have you any—ah—urgent requirements? Do you
need food or drink?”

She shook her head, refusing to turn to look at him.

“Then each of us will take it in turn to remain to
keep you company while the others refresh themselves,” the lawyer said,
and settled back into his seat next to her, springs creaking, while the other
two clambered out of the coach. Since she was wedged into the corner furthest
from the door, and facing away from it, all that she saw was the reflection of
a little lamplight on the curtains as the door opened. There was a little, a
very little, sound of voices from the tavern itself, then the door shut again.
She might have been alone, but for the breathing of her unwelcome companion.

She wondered what they would have done if she had needed to
use a water closet.
Probably escorted me to the door and locked me inside,
she thought bitterly.

Her guard was shortly replaced by one of the other two, who
had brought food and drink with him by the smell of it. She wasn’t interested
in anything like eating; in fact, the strong aromas of onion and cold, greasy
beef from his side of the carriage made her feel ill and faint. He ate and
drank with much champing of jaws and without offering her any, which (even
though she had refused to move and had indicated she had no needs) was hardly
gentlemanly.

Her stomach turned over, and she put one hand to her throat
to loosen the collar of her cape. Her head ached; her eyes were sore, her
cheeks and nose felt as if the skin on them was burned or raw. She shut her
eyes and tried to shut her ears to the sound of stolid jaws chewing away at a
Ploughman’s lunch and a knife cutting bits off the onion and turnip that
were part of it.

They were not going to stop for long, it seemed. The second
lawyer returned to the carriage as well in a few moments, and then, hard on his
heels the third joined his compatriots. Once he was inside, the third banged on
the roof of the conveyance by way of telling the unseen coachman to move on,
and the carriage lurched back into motion again. They really weren’t
wasting any time in getting her away.

She rested her burning forehead on the side of the carriage
and pulled her warm cloak tighter around her shoulders, not against the chill
of the night, but against the emotional chill within the walls of the carriage.
Were they going to travel all night?

Evidently, they were.

The next stop, a few hours later, brought the same inquiry,
which she answered with the same headshake. It also brought a change of horses,
as if this carriage was a mail coach. No expense was being spared, it seemed,
to make sure she was brought directly into the control of her new guardian.

I hope she’s paying these horrible men next to
nothing.
From the type of food they’d brought into the carriage—the
cheapest sort of provender, a Ploughman’s lunch of bread, pickle, onion,
a raw turnip, and a bit of greasy beef or strong cheese—it seemed that
might be the case.

I hope it turns to live eels in their stomachs. I hope
the carriage makes them sick.
She wondered, at that moment, if there was
something she could do magically to make them ill, or at least uncomfortable.
But she hadn’t been taught anything like that—probably because
Elizabeth wouldn’t approve of doing something that unkind even to
automatons like these three.

Her spirits sank even further, if that was possible, when
she realized that she couldn’t even use magic to communicate with her
former guardians. She hadn’t been taught the direct means. There were
indirect means, messages sent via Elemental creatures, but hers weren’t
theirs.
The Undines, in particular, wouldn’t approach Uncle
Sebastian—theirs was the antagonist Element.

But—what about Elizabeth?

Surely she could send to Elizabeth for help, with the
Undines as intermediaries—

But not until spring. Not until the water thawed again. The
Sylphs might move in winter, but not the Water Elementals, or at least, not the
ones she knew. And she couldn’t count on the Sylphs—in fact, she
hadn’t even seen any since that odd nightmare. She could call them, but
they wouldn’t necessarily come.

Hope died again, and she stopped even trying to think. She
simply stared at the darkness, endured the pain of her aching head, and braced
herself against the pitching and swaying of the carriage.

Eventually, snoring from the opposite side told her that
somehow at least two of her captors had managed to fall asleep. She hoped,
viciously, that the coach would hit a particularly nasty pothole and send them
all to the floor, or knock their heads together.

But in keeping with the rest of the day, nothing of the
sort happened.

Hours later, they changed horses again. By this time she
was in a complete fog of grief and fatigue, and couldn’t have put a
coherent thought together no matter how hard she tried. And she didn’t
try very hard. In all that time she hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept, but
this time when the rude tap on her shoulder came, she asked for something to
drink.

One of them handed her a flask, and she drank the contents
without thinking. It tasted like cold tea, heavily creamed and
sugared—but it wasn’t very long before she realized that there had
been something else in that flask besides tea. Her muscles went slack; foggy as
her mind had been, it went almost blank, and she felt herself slipping over
sideways in her seat to be caught by one of the repellent lawyers.

Horribly, whatever it was didn’t put her to sleep, or
not entirely. It just made her lose all conscious control over her body. She
could still hear, and if she’d been able to get her eyes open, she’d
have been able to see. But sensation was at one remove, and as she went limp
and was picked up and laid out on the carriage seat, she heard the Unholy
Trinity talking openly, but as if they were in the far distance. And although
she could hear the words, she couldn’t make sense of them.

She heard the crowing of roosters in farmyards that they
passed, and knew that it must be near dawn. And shortly after that, the
carriage made a right-angle turn, and the sound of the wheels changed.

Then it stopped.

The lawyers got out.

She fought to open her eyes, to no avail.

Someone else entered the carriage, and picked her up as if
she weighed nothing. She heard the sound of gravel under heavy boots, then the
same boots walking on stone. It felt as if the person carrying her was going up
a set of stairs, but though she tried once again to regain control of her body,
or at least open her eyes, her head lolled against his
shoulder—definitely a he—and she could do nothing.

A door opened in front of them, and closed behind them. “She
drank it all?” asked a cool, female voice.

“Yes, mum,” replied a male voice, equally
dispassionate. One of the Trinity. Not the person who was carrying her, who
remained silent.

“Good. Come, James, follow me.”

The sound of light footsteps preceding them. Another set of
stairs, a landing, more stairs. Another door.

She might not even be able to open her eyes, but there was
nothing wrong with her nose. And by the scent of a fire with fircones in it, of
beeswax candles and lavender, she was in a bedchamber now. “This is the
young Miss Roeswood, Mary Anne,” said the female voice. “She’s
ill with grief, and she’s drunk medicine that will make her sleep.
Undress her and put her to bed.”

The man carrying her stooped—her head lolled
back—and laid her on a soft, but very large bed, with a muffled grunt.

The light footsteps and the heavy went away; the door
opened and closed again. Someone began taking off her clothing, as if she was
an over-large doll, and redressed her in a nightgown. The same
someone—who must have been very strong—rolled her to one side,
pulled the covers back, rolled her back in place, and covered her over.

Then, more footsteps receding. The door opening and closing
again. Silence.

The state she drifted into then was not exactly sleep, and
not precisely waking. She seemed to drift in a fog in which she could see and
hear nothing, and nothing she did affected it. There were others in this
fog—she could hear them in the distance, but she could never find them,
and when she called out to them, her voice was swallowed up by the endless
mist.

It was, to be truthful, a horrible experience. Not at all
restful. A deadly fatigue weighed her down, a malaise invaded her spirit, and
despair filled her heart.

Finally, true sleep came, bringing oblivion, and with it,
relief from her aching heart, at least for a time.

She woke with a start, the very feel of the bed telling her
that yesterday’s nightmare had been no thing of dreams, but of reality,
even before she opened her eyes. And when she did open them, it was to find
that she was staring up into the ochre velvet canopy of a huge, curtained bed.
She sat up.

The room in which she found herself was as large as any
four of the bedrooms in Blackbird Cottage put together. It had been furnished
in the French style of a King Louis—she couldn’t think of which
one—all ornate baroque curlicues and spindly-legged chairs. The paper on
the wall was watered silk in yellow, the cushions and coverlet more of the
ochre velvet. There was a fireplace with a yellow marble mantle and hearth
directly across from the foot of the bed, and a woman with brown hair tucked
under a lace cap, a thin-faced creature in a crisp black-and-white maid’s
uniform and a cool manner, sitting in a chair beside it, reading. When Marina
sat up, she put her book down, and stood up.