Three Dark Crowns (19 page)

“Luke, that's brilliant,” she says. “I do need you to make the most beautiful dress that anyone has ever seen. I just need you to make it to fit Jules.”

Jules and Joseph sit beside Dogwood Pond on a wide, dead log while Camden paws at melting ice chunks to lick the water off her pads. Now that it is thawing, the pond is not as pretty as it was in hard winter. It is muddy and soggy and smells of decomposing plants. But it is still their place, the same place they have been sneaking away to since they were children.

“I don't think Arsinoe will ever find a dress,” Joseph says. He throws a waterlogged stick into the open water near the pond's center. “Or if she does, I don't think Cait will be able to get her to wear it.”

“I don't think it will matter,” says Jules, “if she has no gift to show at the Quickening. The other day, I asked her what she
was going to perform, and she said she was planning on gutting a fish. Making fillets.”

Joseph chuckles. “That's our Arsinoe,” he says.

“She is insufferable, sometimes.”

Joseph holds Jules's hand and kisses it. It does not need to be bandaged anymore. The cuts from Arsinoe's spell have nearly healed. But she keeps it covered, anyway, as Arsinoe keeps her own arm and hand hidden when she is in town.

“Madrigal should be strung up for getting her involved in this,” Joseph says.

“Yes, she should,” Jules agrees. “Though I mind it less, since it brought you home. And less, too, since it has given Arsinoe hope. Let it keep her safe until her real gift comes.”

“Isn't that what you and the cat are supposed to be for?”

So everyone says. Jules and Camden have been guardians to the queen for a long time. And they will continue to be until it is over, one way or another.

“Still, she does not have much time. She had best think of something, and it had best be grand. Beltane is only a few weeks away.”

Joseph looks down.

She and Joseph have planned to be together, the first night of the festival. They have come very close already, in his bedroom or pressed into the mattress in the belly of the mainland boat, but Jules wanted to wait. She is a Beltane Begot, and somehow, she has always thought that her first time with Joseph would be at Beltane.

“I know you don't like to think about it,” Joseph says. “But do you ever wonder what will happen if Arsinoe loses? What your life will be like?”

Jules plucks dead reeds beside the log and twists them. He did not say “killed.” But that is what it means. And part of Jules has secretly thought that if Arsinoe died, she would find a way to die right along with her. That she would be there, fighting.

“I have not thought about it often,” she says. “But I have. It doesn't seem like we should go on after that. But we will. I suppose I'll take over the house. The fields and the orchard. Goddess knows Madrigal isn't going to do it.”

“She might. You don't know. And that would leave you free to think about other things.”

“What other things?”

“There's a whole other world out there, Jules.”

“You mean the mainland,” she says.

“It's not so bad. There are parts of it that are astounding.”

“Do you . . . want to go back there?”

“No,” Joseph says, and takes her hand. “I would never. Unless you wanted to. I'm just saying that . . . if our world ends here, we could start over again, out there.” He lowers his head. “I don't know why I'm talking about this. Why I'm thinking about it.”

“Joseph,” she says, and kisses his ear, “what is the matter?”

“I don't want to lie to you, Jules. But I don't want to hurt you, either.”

He stands abruptly and walks to the edge of the pond.

“Something did happen the night that Mirabella saved me.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets and stares out at the water. “I was almost drowned. Freezing cold. Delirious.” He stops and then curses under his breath. “Ah, Jules! I don't want to sound as though I'm making excuses!”

“Excuses for what?” Jules asks quietly.

He turns to face her. “I was delirious at first,” he says. “Maybe even when it started. But then I wasn't. And she was there, and I was there, and we . . .”

“You what?”

“I didn't mean for it to happen, Jules.”

Perhaps not. But it had.

“Jules? God, Jules, please say something.”

“What would you have me say?” she asks. It is difficult to think. Her body is numb, made of the same wood she sits on. A warm weight presses into her lap. Camden's heavy head. A growl that is aimed at Joseph rumbles in her throat.

“Call me some horrible name,” Joseph says. “Tell me what a fool I am. Tell me . . . tell me you hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” she says. “But if you do not leave now, my cat will tear your throat out.”

“C
ome away from that window, Mira,” Luca says. “And try this on.”

Mirabella gazes a few more seconds down at the cliffs of the Blackway, where she and Bree often held footraces as girls. Bree grew out of it, but Mirabella never had. Her love of the wind and the open spaces brought her to the edge of those cliffs often. Or at least it did, before every door was locked.

“What for?” Mirabella asks. “It is not much, and it can be tightened. It will fit.”

Luca sets the garments down. They are the clothes Mirabella will wear the night of the Quickening Ceremony. Two gathered black bands of fabric that will be soaked and resoaked in a boil of herbs and extracts to keep them from burning off her body.

For the Quickening Ceremony, she will perform a fire dance.

“What will the music be?” Mirabella asks. “Strings? Flutes?”

“Drums,” Luca replies. “A long line of great skin drums. To roll out a rhythm for you like a heartbeat.”

Mirabella nods.

“It will be beautiful,” Luca goes on. She lights a lamp with a long tapered candle, and leaves the top open. “The nighttime ceremony and the fire glowing orange. Every eye on the island will be on you.”

“Yes,” Mirabella says.

“Mira,” Luca says, and sighs. “What is wrong with you?”

The High Priestess's tone is sympathetic. But it is also frustrated, as if she cannot understand why Mirabella should be unhappy. As if Mirabella should be glad to be home and captured, grateful that she was not whipped in the square.

But though Luca knows what happened on the road, how she met her sister and held out her hand, she does not know everything. She does not know that Mirabella also met a boy and that the meeting broke her heart. And she does not know that for just one moment, there was a flicker of trust in Arsinoe's eyes.

“Where is Elizabeth?” Mirabella asks. “You promised you would not send her away.”

“And I have not,” says Luca. “Not forever. She will be back from her punishment soon.”

“I want to see her as soon as she returns.”

“Of course, Mira. And she will want to see you. She was most worried.”

Mirabella purses her lips. Yes, Bree and Elizabeth were most worried. And they were loyal. They did not give her up, even after a dozen welts were put upon their backs. She should have known that would happen. Just as she should have known that the temple would condemn Elizabeth as a conspirator the moment Mirabella was found wearing her white cloak. Mirabella said she had stolen it when Elizabeth was not looking. No one believed her.

She should have found a way to keep them safe. It will be hard to face Elizabeth when she returns. As it will be hard to face Arsinoe at Beltane, unable to explain how it had all been a mistake. Mirabella grimaces. Thinking of what lies ahead makes her chest tighten. Her only comfort is to relive her nights with Joseph, and even those are sullied by his love for another girl.

“He ran to her,” she whispers, hardly realizing she is speaking aloud. “Like he had not seen her in a hundred years.”

“What?” Luca asks. “Mirabella, what did you say?”

“Nothing.” She holds her hand out toward the warmth of the lamp's flame. One flicker of her finger and the fire jumps from the wick and onto the back of her hand. Luca observes, pleased as it inches up Mirabella's wrist and around her arm like a curious worm. This is how it will start. Slow and warm. The drums will fill her ears. The fire will reach for her, and she will embrace it, let it have the run of her body as she spins with her arms flung out. She will wrap herself in it like chains and let it burn. Perhaps it will burn her love for her sisters right out of her heart.

Days later, Mirabella is walking through the woods near Westwood House when she hears a woodpecker rapping on a tree. She looks up. It is a small black-and-white tufted. Perhaps it is Pepper. She thinks it is him, though to her, one woodpecker tends to look much like the next.

“Keep to the path, Queen Mirabella.”

One of her priestess escort nudges her back to the center. As if she would try to run, surrounded as she is. There are six of them now, and all young and fit. When the wind moves their cloaks, it reveals the silver glint of their mean, serrated knives. Had the priestesses always carried those? Mirabella does not think so. Certainly not so many and not so often. Now, it seems that every initiated priestess wears them.

“How things have changed,” she says.

“They have, indeed,” the priestess says. “And whose fault would that be?”

Ahead, the gabled roof of Westwood House rises through the trees, dotted with lightning rods like so many hairs. She cannot wait to get inside. There, she will be free at least to walk the halls. Perhaps she will take tea in to Sara, as a peace offering. Sara worried so severely when she ran away. There is so much white now, in her twisted bun. And when Mirabella was returned, she held her so tightly.

“Mira!”

Bree dashes up to them on the path, brown braids swinging. Her eyes are red as though she has been crying.

“Bree? What is the matter?”

Bree shoulders past the priestesses and takes hold of Mirabella's hands.

“Nothing,” she says. But she cannot mask it. Her expression crumples.

“Bree, what is it?”

“It is Elizabeth,” she says, and rounds on the priestesses with her teeth bared. “I ought to set your robes on fire!” she shouts. “I ought to murder you in your sleep!”

“Bree!”

Mirabella tugs her friend tight to her side.

“We told you she did not have anything to do with it!” Bree sobs. “We told you that the cloak was stolen!”

“What did you do?” Mirabella asks the priestesses. But they seem to be as alarmed as she is.

Mirabella and Bree start to run, pushing through the escort.

“Do not run, Queen Mirabella!”

Several try to grab her arms, but the effort is halfhearted, and she wrenches loose. They know where she is going. She and Bree race the rest of the way up the path, out of the trees, and around the side of the house.

Elizabeth is there in the drive. She stands with her back to them beside the stagnant stone fountain. The priestesses who accompanied her lower their eyes when Mirabella approaches.

Mirabella breathes a sigh of relief. Elizabeth is home. She seems stiff, but she is alive.

“Elizabeth?” Mirabella steps closer.

The young priestess half turns.

“I am all right,” she says. “It is not so bad.”

“What is not so bad?” Mirabella asks, and Elizabeth allows the sleeves of her robes to fall away.

They have cut off her left hand.

The stump is wrapped in rough white bandages, and blood has soaked through and dried brown.

Mirabella stumbles to her friend and drops to her knees, clutching Elizabeth's skirt. “No,” she moans.

“They held me down,” Elizabeth says. “But that was for the best. They used their knives to saw through, you see, and it took more time than with an ax. So it was better that they held me. It felt good to be able to fight and struggle.”

“No!” Mirabella shouts, and feels Bree's hand on her back. Elizabeth touches the top of her head.

“Do not cry, Mira,” she says. “It was not your fault.”

But it was. Of course it was.

“S
he will forgive him soon,” Madrigal says, speaking of Jules and Joseph. “As angry, and as hurt, as she is, she misses him more. And I believe him when he says he loves her. I don't think he has smiled once since she sent him away.”

“How do you know?” Arsinoe asks, and Madrigal shrugs.

“Because I have been down to the docks,” she says. “I have seen him working. All frowns. Not even your Billy can make him laugh.”

Arsinoe's lips curl despite herself when Madrigal calls Billy that. Hers. It is a lie, but it is a funny one. And it is true what Madrigal says. Jules will forgive Joseph soon. And so will Arsinoe. It has not been easy for her either, to think of him with Mirabella. In some way, it has felt as though he betrayed her too.

“It does not suit him.” Madrigal sighs. “Sandrins are not meant to be so serious. So sad. They were made to laugh and
have not a care in the world.”

“He deserves his misery,” Arsinoe says. “Every cruel word she gives, and some from me besides. Who will take care of Jules if I fail and do not survive? I was counting on him to look after her.”

“I will look after her,” Madrigal says, but she does not meet Arsinoe's eyes when she says it. Madrigal has never been good at looking after people. And Jules would never allow her to.

“I suppose our Jules is perfectly equipped to take care of herself,” Arsinoe says, her anger cooling. “And perhaps she will never have to try. I still may become queen.”

“You may, indeed,” Madrigal says. She takes up her small silver knife and passes it through the fire. “But the time for waiting is over. Now we will make something happen.”

Madrigal picks up a jar filled with dark liquid. It is mostly Arsinoe's blood, both fresh and from the soaked cords she collected before. The cords have been rewetted with water from the cove. She walks to the trunk of the bent-over tree.

“What are you doing?” Arsinoe asks.

Madrigal does not reply. She splashes the jar onto the side of the hill, across the exposed slabs of sacred stone, across the trunk of the twisted tree and the roots that web through the rocks and bind it there. When she whispers something to the bark, the tree seems to breathe. To Arsinoe's astonishment, coffee-colored buds pop out along the tree's branches like gooseflesh.

“I didn't know it bloomed,” she says.

“It does not, or at least not often. But tonight it must. Give me your hand.”

Arsinoe walks to the tree and holds out her hand, expecting pain. What she does not expect is for Madrigal to yank her palm against the trunk and drive her knife all the way through it.

“Ah! Madrigal!” Arsinoe screams. The pain streaks up her arm and into her chest. She cannot move. She is trapped, pinioned, as Madrigal begins to chant.

Arsinoe does not know the words, or perhaps it is only that they are spoken too quickly. It is hard to hear anything over the pain of the knife in her hand. Madrigal walks back to the fire, and Arsinoe drops to one knee, trying to fight the urge to tear her hand free. The blade is buried deep into the wood. She pulls on the handle gently, and then harder, but it will not come out.

“Madrigal,” she says through her teeth. “Madrigal!”

Madrigal lights a torch.

“No!” Arsinoe shouts. “Leave me alone!”

Madrigal's face is determined in a way that Arsinoe has never seen before. She does not know if Madrigal means to fuse her hand to the tree, but she does not want to find out. She takes a breath, preparing to pull loose, even though it will mean cutting between the bones of her middle fingers.

Quick as lightning, Madrigal reaches forward and yanks the knife out of the trunk. Arsinoe scrambles back, hugging her hand to her chest as Madrigal sets the tree alight. It ignites in bright yellow flames, and reeks of burning blood.

Arsinoe falls over, and the world goes dark.

That night, in a bed she has no recollection of returning to, Arsinoe dreams of a bear. A great brown bear, with long, curved claws and pink-and-purple gums. She dreams of it roaring before a scalded, bent-over tree.

It is barely dawn when Arsinoe shakes Jules gently awake, evoking growls from both the girl and the cougar who shares her pillow.

“Arsinoe?” Jules asks. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“I'm better than all right.”

Jules squints at her in the pale blue light. “Then why are you waking me so early?”

“For something grand,” Arsinoe says, and grins. “Now, get up and get dressed. I want to fetch Joseph and Billy, too.”

It does not take long for Jules to get dressed and washed, and to gather her unruly waves with a thick piece of ribbon at the nape of her neck. They are out of the house and on the road into town long before anyone else begins to stir. Even Grandma Cait.

Jules did not object when Arsinoe wanted to bring Joseph. But when they reach his house, she will not go up to knock.

Arsinoe finds that she does not want to either. Eager as she is to reach the bent-over tree, she feels guilty, and oddly shy, disturbing the Sandrins so early. But just as she is about to gather pebbles to shoot at Joseph's window, Matthew comes through the door.

He startles when he sees them. Then he smiles. “What are you two about, at this hour?”

“Nothing,” Arsinoe says. “We're looking for Joseph. Is he awake?”

“Only just,” says Matthew. “I'll get him moving for you.”

“And the mainlander too,” Arsinoe calls after him as he goes back inside.

“When they come out,” Jules says, leaning against her mountain cat, “will you tell me what we are doing here?”

“Perhaps it is a surprise,” Arsinoe says. She paces around Jules. Arsinoe's blood is up, and not even the loosely wrapped hole in her hand causes her any pain. But she is still hesitant to say what she has seen. She is afraid Jules will tell her it was only a dream. And she is afraid that Jules would be right.

It seems like forever passes before the boys come out, looking confused and bedraggled. Joseph brightens when he sees Jules. Billy smoothes his hair when he sees Arsinoe, and Arsinoe coughs to cover her smile. Billy has not seen her since he returned from meeting Katharine, and even though she would not admit it, she was worried that he would return devoted to the poisoners.

“This is a welcome sight,” Billy says. “Did you miss me so much that you had to see me the moment I arrived back in Wolf Spring?”

“I thought you had been back for days,” Arsinoe lies. “And I am not here for you, but for Joseph.”

“I heard you call for me. ‘The mainlander too.' I'm not deaf.”

Arsinoe says nothing. She is too busy watching Joseph stare at Jules, and Jules stare at her cougar.

“Arsinoe, are you listening to me? I said, where are we going?”

“North,” she says distractedly. “Into the woods.”

“Then we'll pass by the Lion's Head. I'll buy us some food.”

“I don't really want to stop.”

“But stop you will,” says Billy, “if you want my company. You are dragging us out before breakfast.”

They drag the Lion's Head's kitchen boy out before his breakfast as well, and it takes longer than usual for fried eggs and rashers of bacon doused in beans. Arsinoe is antsy all through the meal, though she does manage to eat her entire plate and part of Jules's besides.

Afterward, she leads them on a curving path through the alleys and streets of Wolf Spring, taking the most direct route to the tree. She bends her arm to elevate her wounded hand. It has begun to throb.

Perhaps that is a good omen. Or perhaps she should have brought Madrigal. It may have been only a dream, after all, and she is leading them through the melting snow for nothing.

When they are a good distance into the trees, Jules recognizes the direction they are heading in and stops.

“Tell me, Arsinoe,” she says. “Tell me now.”

“What?” Joseph asks her. “What's wrong? Where is she taking us?”

“It's more low magic,” Jules replies. She looks at Arsinoe's freshly wounded hand. “Isn't it?”

“I still don't understand what's so different about low magic,” Billy says, and looks at Jules. “And what you do with that cougar.”

“It is different,” Joseph says. “Jules's gift belongs to her. Low magic is for anyone. You, me . . . even back home we could do it. But it's dangerous. And it's not for queens.”

“Wait,” Billy says. “You're saying that back home, you could have . . .” He makes a twirling motion with his wrist that Arsinoe does not like. Joseph nods, and after a moment, Billy shrugs. “That's not possible,” he says. “And I can't imagine you doing spells. You're like my own brother.”

“What does that matter?” Arsinoe asks.

“It doesn't,” Billy says quickly. “I don't know. . . I—I know I have met Luke, and Ellis, and so many other men, but . . . spells? I suppose I thought that spells were still only for girls.”

“Why would they be only for girls?” Arsinoe asks, but she cannot really blame him for not knowing.

“Never mind that, now,” Jules says. “Arsinoe. Answer the question. Why are you bringing us to that place?”

“Because I saw my familiar,” Arsinoe says.

Jules and Joseph straighten. Even Camden pricks her black-tipped ears. Arsinoe holds up her hand and unrolls the bandages to reveal the angry, red-crusted wound that runs all the way through the center of her palm.

“We used my blood. I was bound to the tree, and we woke
my gift. Madrigal . . . Somehow, she must have known that in that sacred space, we would be heard, if only my blood would soak into the roots.”

It sounds like madness. But she was there. She felt something pass through her and into the trunk. Into the stones and into the island. There, beneath the bent-over tree, as in so many other places, the island is more than just a place. There, it breathes and it listens.

“What did you see?” Jules asks. “And where?”

“In my dream last night. A bear. A great brown bear.”

Jules makes a soft, astonished sound. To have a great brown as a familiar would make Arsinoe the strongest naturalist queen the island has ever seen. Stronger than Bernadine and her wolf. Perhaps stronger even than Mirabella and her lightning. Jules does not want to believe in Arsinoe's use of low magic, but even she cannot help hoping.

“Are you certain?” Jules presses.

“I am not certain about anything,” Arsinoe says. “But that is what I saw. What I dreamed.”

“Can it be true?” Joseph asks.

Arsinoe clenches her injured fist, and the tenuous scabs give way to leak more blood, as though that might make it so.

“The temple might rethink their backing of Mirabella,” Joseph says.

“Would that bother you?” Jules asks. She turns to Arsinoe. “Perhaps he should not be here. Perhaps he should not come.”

“I only meant that nobody cares whether the new queen is
an elemental or a naturalist,” Joseph says softly. “As long as she is not a poisoner.”

Jules frowns. She does not move, even though Arsinoe paces loops in the direction of the tree.

“It can't hurt, can it?” Billy asks. He takes a few steps after Arsinoe. “To go look?”

Arsinoe claps him on the shoulder. “Right you are, Junior! Let's go!”

She moves quickly through the trees, picking her way across lingering snow and patches of melting ice. She does not look back. Even though she cannot hear Jules's and Camden's silent feet, she knows they are there. Whether she approves or not, Jules would never let her go alone.

As they near the tree, the image of the bear hangs behind Arsinoe's eyelids. Even in the dream it was enormous. It blotted out everything else. In her mind, it is only shining brown fur and a roar. White fangs and curved black claws long enough to disembowel a running deer.

“It will be a tame bear, won't it?” Billy asks.

“As tame as Camden is tame,” Joseph says.

“Not tame at all, then,” Jules says. “But not a danger to friends.”

“That cat is tamer than half of my mother's spaniels,” says Billy. “But I can't imagine a bear behaving the same.”

They round the curve of the hill to the sunken patch of land before the bent-over tree and the ancient surfaces of the sacred stones.

The tree is intact. The night before, it had seemed to explode in yellow fire, but the only mark it bears is a charred patch stretching from the trunk to the lowest branches. Its limbs are free of the buds that Arsinoe remembers Madrigal blooming, and every drop and spatter of blood is gone, as if it never was. Or as if it had been drunk.

“What happened here?” Jules asks through a grimace. She steps gingerly around the dormant coals and floats her hand over the blackened part of the trunk. Then she wipes her fingers against her jacket, even though she never touched it.

“I think . . . ,” says Billy. “I think that even I feel something. A vibration, almost.”