The Sweetest Dark

Chapter Seventeen

We drank, of course, at the orphanage.

We were crafty about it, or at least tried to be, and nearly universally tight-lipped regarding the specific whens and wheres and whos. Rules ensnared every aspect of our lives, Blisshaven’s rules and our own, which were tacit and far more savage. From the time we were old enough to understand what gin was, we procured it and drank it. Anyone suspected of being a snitch tended to end up in the infirmary, usually missing teeth.

We had no money. We were given no allowance, not even a ha’penny for a peppermint stick or a cup of lemonade during our precious few outings into the city. So those who landed the gin were usually the quick-fingered older boys. The ones on the verge of something larger than themselves, with cracking voices and cunning gazes, who knew that the future rushing toward them was going to be even more desolate than their lives in the dorms. Who bonded into packs for dominance, who skulked about like hungry dogs let loose in the halls.

Who could slink away from our minders without getting caught. Who could distract a shopkeeper or pubmaster—and then run.

But even though they got their gin for free, they were still dogs. The gin wasn’t free to any of the rest of us.

As I said, we had no money. So it won’t astonish you to learn that although I’d never tasted fine wine before—or even mediocre wine or whisky or champagne—I had tasted the raw, crude distillation of juniper berries in alcohol, quite a bit.

Jesse’s kiss, staggering as it was, was not my first.

I had learned the same lessons as most of the other girls in Blisshaven. Bargain for limits on time and body parts. Don’t let them use their tongues. Avoid Billy Patrick at all costs—grinning, vicious Billy Patrick—because no amount of gin he ever offered would be worth the bruises he left.

And never drink so much that you regretted your morning. The teachers were particularly short-tempered before noon. They weren’t likely to go soft on anyone lethargic, even if you said you were feeling off.

I had measured out my sips, my kisses, savoring the one while pretending I was someone else for the other, and in all my years there, I never went to bed intoxicated.

It was disheartening to discover myself so quickly affected by Jesse’s sweet red wine, but at least I knew the cure. I couldn’t risk the Sunday tea—especially after I’d glimpsed Armand in there, his blue eyes like flames—so I retreated to my room and slept.

By breakfast the next morning, aside from a dull ache in my forehead and a fuzzy coating on my tongue, I was more or less hale again.

Drákon.

I whispered it to my mirror-self before dressing, watching her face, her eyes, round black pupils, purple-gray irises shrunk into gleaming rings.

“Drákon,” I said aloud, and the girl in the mirror slowly smiled.

Even now I don’t think any lingering consequences of the wine were responsible for what happened that Monday. I think it was just something that was bound to be: Jesse’s all-knowing stars casting their own directions for the unruly path of my life.

...

“All right, then, ladies. Let’s be off,” commanded Professor Tilbury.

Tilbury was our history professor, potbellied and aged and with a voice that reached dangerously close to a squeak whenever he tried to raise it. He stood before us with his back to the large slate that had been fixed to the wall of our classroom. A single word, Iverson, had been chalked across the slate, with a long, uncharacteristic flourish of a tail completing the n.

We sat two by two in assigned rows, because the history classroom was crammed up short against the southern edge of the castle, which meant it was very narrow and unexpectedly lofty.

My chair was next to Lillian’s in the far back. From our shared desk, Professor Tilbury looked like a white-bearded gnome against the slate.

He surveyed the lot of us; no one had moved. “To your feet, young ladies! Today is a most special day indeed. Today we will enjoy a walking tour of the history of our own fortress.”

Beatrice and Stella, directly ahead of me, exchanged eye rolls.

“Sir,” said Mittie from the very front, in her most piteous tone, “isn’t it cold out for a walk? We haven’t even our shawls.”

It had dawned another overcast day, with a brisk spring wind blowing spray in fitful spurts across the channel, rattling the windowpanes. Still, pug-faced Mittie was far from any danger of freezing. She just liked to whine.

Professor Tilbury must have heard every whine before.

“The majority of our tour will be within the castle walls, Miss Bashier. If you didn’t need your shawl for this chamber, you will not need it for the rest of them. However, if you truly feel a shawl is indispensable to your attire, you may fetch it now. The rest of us shall await you here. Naturally, any amount of time taken from the scheduled class period by your absence shall be made up by all of you at its conclusion.”

The hour after history was luncheon. Even Mittie wasn’t stupid enough to push matters that far.

I arose from my chair, glad to be doing something besides sitting and scratching down notes, anyway. One by one, the other girls did the same.

Confident that he had made his point, Professor Tilbury offered us what, for him, passed as a smile. He had blocky yellow teeth.

“Excellent. Let us begin at the beginning. Do any of you know what this room used to be?”

None of us did.

“Iverson’s original keep was constructed by the conquering sons of Normandy. It was ruled by barons who commanded the wealth of the ports and all the fertile lands nearby.” Someone tittered at the word fertile; Tilbury forged on. “Therefore, this fortress, even from its inception, was home to a powerful, prosperous lord and his family. It also would have been home to all his knights and servants and their families, as well. A castle this size might have had several hundred people living inside it, and that is before we even begin to consider the livestock.”

“How primitive,” sniffed Caroline.

“Primitive, mayhap, but necessary. So imagine you are that powerful lord who controls this castle, if you will. Where do you go for your privacy? Where do you retreat with your family to escape the everlasting noises and smells and demands of the general populace?”

A word came to me, a word from the past. It bobbed up from the blank ocean of my memory, untethered.

“The solar,” I said.

Professor Tilbury angled his head to find me standing in the back. “Yes, Miss Jones. Very good. The solar. Solar as in solaris, a place of the sun. Note our tall southerly windows, the near-constant light. Castles such as Iverson typically included a construct like this for the exclusive use of the ruling family, built above the ground floor so that the baron might observe the workings of his people below.”

“It’s terribly small for a family,” doubted Stella, looking around.

“Correct, Miss Campbell. The solar of Iverson is no longer in its original configuration. It was partitioned off, probably sometime in the late seventeenth century. The remaining portion of it,” he gestured toward the wall with the slate, “was converted into private quarters for the dukes and duchesses of Idylling.”

We all pricked up our ears at that. The conjugal room of all those dukes, just beyond our slate? Only a layer of stones—and perhaps a secret tunnel—between us and a marital bed?

Malinda and Caroline jostled each other, snickering. Pale Lillian had blotches of pink spreading up her throat.

“If you please, sir,” said Sophia sweetly, covering the snickers, “who stays there now?”

Likely Mrs. Westcliffe. She might not be a duchess or even a baroness, but there was no question about her rule.

Yet the professor surprised me.

“No one,” he answered, curt. “No one has occupied those quarters in years. They are locked off.”

“Why?” asked Mittie.

“It is the wish of the current duke. And that is all I know on the subject, so kindly don’t request that we venture into them. We will not. However, there are many, many other fascinating facts about Iverson to explore. Come along.”

He led us out of the room, talking all the while. I hung at the back of the crowd, as usual. I’d found I liked skulking behind the rest of the girls. It gave me the opportunity to disguise myself in their shadows. To the teachers I appeared proximate enough to be part of their group. The truth could be glimpsed only in the shifting, untouched space that stretched from the hems of their skirts to mine, never closing.

Good enough.

Everyone has a favorite something, and on that day I discovered that Professor Tilbury’s was castles. The eight of us trailed behind him in our sluggish, uneven line, but he was so enraptured with his subject he never noticed our dragging feet; he practically danced a wee gnome dance ahead of us.

We learned about great halls and granaries, moats and bowers. A buttery was not, as might be assumed, a place where butter was produced. But the kitchen hearth might, as would be assumed, be large enough to roast a pair of oxen for the great lord’s pleasure, should the need arise.

Oxen. We snaked only briefly through the kitchens, disrupting the hectic rhythm of the workers there, to their silent, tucked-chin displeasure. I saw Gladys arranging forks and white doilies on trays. Almeda was fussing over a cabinet of linens, snowy starched piles folded and stacked one atop another, towers of white.

A stink of blood and fried onions hung hot in the air. One entire counter was heaped with oozy plucked chickens; a sweaty brown-haired girl of about twelve was the plucker. Sticky bits of feathers dotted her apron and arms.

Everyone stopped what they were doing as we passed, dropping into half bows or curtsies, which my classmates regally ignored.

Only Gladys lifted her eyes to mine when I walked by. Her mouth hardened, taking on a scornful slant. I could tell exactly what she was thinking: Just you wait, governess.

It shamed me for some reason. I don’t know why. My world was a hidden blossom of gold and Jesse and the promise of searing magic, but through no fault of her own, stick-skinny Gladys would likely only ever be what she was right this minute. A servant.

I dropped my gaze from hers. For the rest of the tour of the kitchens, I kept it fixed to the floor, stepping over errant feathers.

Frankly, even before Tilbury’s outing I’d experienced rather enough of Iverson’s unspoken motto of We few versus the masses. The jolt of coming from Blisshaven to this cool and sparkling place had been shock enough for me.

I heard sighs of relief from both sides of the Great Class Divide when our tour snaked out the kitchen doors again.

Upward we climbed. Flying buttresses. Lacy Gothic wings of marble arching over us, fantastical and airy enough for an angel’s delight. I began to sense that peering at the minutia of Iverson was like peering at a slice of petrified tree. Every ring from the past had been crystallized in situ, held frozen in place for all time. Had there ever been any real changes, they were unseen, fissures invisible to my naked, untrained eye.

Anything new was simply rough bark on its way to transforming into stone.

It would petrify. Give it time.

We ended our tour at the tip-top of the keep, emerging from a winding, enclosed set of stairs to the relative brightness of a section of the roof.

It was flat and scalloped with stones along the edge, designed for protection. For archers to run along and duck behind.

“Note the relatively small size of the merlons,” Tilbury enthused over the gusting wind. “Imagine fitting oneself against this sole slab of limestone between taking shots, knowing that it is all that stands between you and a very messy death. There are pockmarks still discernible on Iverson’s outer walls, even after all these centuries.”

Mittie had hugged her arms around herself and was giving off fake shivers.

“I think it’s perfectly dreadful,” she complained to no one in particular. “We shouldn’t have to see such things. We’re ladies, not beastly knights or soldiers.”

“Ladies of the castle were not immune from the fight,” countered Tilbury, as the wind lashed his hair into wild white spikes. “Should the men fall, or should they have been on a quest elsewhere when the attack commenced, the womenfolk would defend the fortress.”

“I should’ve never,” gasped Mittie. “How very plebeian!”

Sophia snorted. “Then you’d have been slaughtered. Or worse. Isn’t that so, Professor?”

“Indeed.” Tilbury squinted at the pair of them, then at the rest of us. He blinked a few times, apparently just now grasping where the conversation was headed. “But let us reflect more on the bravery of such souls rather than the outcomes. It happens that, despite numerous attempts, Iverson was never completely overrun, not once. So the gentlewomen who dwelled here surely led lives of uncommon fulfillment… .”

I stopped listening. I walked away from the others to the edge nearest me and let my hand slide lightly along the border of a hiding-stone, feeling for pocks. The rock was cold and chipped, whether from invaders’ arrows or time, I could not tell.

The channel opened before me in a wide, flat spread of navy chopped with froth and melting into forever. Even beneath the clouds, it was beautiful. More than beautiful.

It was … touchable. The high wind as well, now a tangible thing, thick as pudding. It filled my mouth and nose and ears, rushed into my senses. I leaned forward into it, testing its resistance.

I was certain, certain, I could raise my arms—a goddess of sea and sky, celebrating her reign—and allow the wind to lift me. And I’d be safe. I would not fall.

After all, I’d done it before, hadn’t I? I’d forgotten about it—forgotten on purpose, let the grimy haze of my London life smear away the memory. Or perhaps it had been only a dream … but surely I’d stood like this before, tilted out over an abyss. If it had been a dream, it seemed so real.

I’d climbed out the window at Blisshaven. I could still feel the slick cold glass against my fingertips, hear the squeak of the frame as I’d hefted it open.

Smoggy air on my face. The empty dark. My body feeling lighter and lighter, lighter than air.

I had tipped into that emptiness below, and then—

“Eleanore.”

I opened my eyes, just now realizing I’d closed them. Sophia had her hand on my sleeve.

“Watch it,” she said, quiet. “You’re about to make a hash of yourself.”

I looked down. I had climbed atop the low barrier between two merlons and was balanced at the rim of the stone. The tips of my shoes poked out over a dizzying drop, black leather against faraway boulders and a viscous, surging sea.

No smog. No darkness. The violence of the surf below me was clear as crystal.

I came back to myself in a sickening rush. My stomach lurched. My knees buckled. My fingers clutched at the stones.

I moved my left foot, then my right, slinking down again to the safety of the roof. Sophia released my arm.

Bloody hell. I’d nearly done it, I’d nearly stepped clean over that edge—I’d wanted to—

“Tedious lecture,” Sophia murmured while gazing at Tilbury, who was still rhapsodizing to his captive audience about the joys of medieval life. “But hardly worth ending it all, I would think.”

“Hardly,” I murmured in return, when I was convinced my voice would not break.

A frown creased her perfect brow; her eyes skimmed my frame. “You know, for a moment there, it almost looked like you were … smoldering.”

That caught me short. “I beg your pardon?”

“Like you were smoking. Your hair—your neck and hair– blurring into smoke.” Sophia shook her head once, hard. “Never mind.”

“I—”

“It’s all this wretched wind and salt, no doubt. I cannot wait to graduate from this pile of rocks, I swear.”

She walked back to the cluster of the other girls. They parted and reabsorbed her into their midst without seeming even to notice.

...

It wasn’t until we were leaving that I saw it. The lesson was concluded, and Mittie’s shivering had finally started to look real. Tilbury opened the access door and there was a short, ladylike tussle to see who would get through first, but I waited. I wasn’t sure how my knees felt about creeping down those corkscrew stairs just yet.

The clouds had thinned sheer overhead, transforming the sun into a hard silver disk. It lent a peculiar light to the limestone, blurring some crannies but heightening others, and when I gave a final glance back to the merlon I had first touched with my hand, I detected a faint tracing there that I hadn’t noticed before.

It was a single word carved along the side, where it was not readily visible. The lettering was scripted, even graceful, although stone meant to withstand the ravages of a catapult must have been damned difficult to incise.

Just as I had perceived the flicker of thoughts behind Gladys’s eyes, somehow, inexplicably, I understood that this word had been meant to serve as a final admonition, engraved as deep as desperation could manage into unyielding stone.

The word was: Don’t.

...

What if, that moment in the grotto when I asked Jesse if I was crazy, he had answered yes?

What if all this persistent strangeness about me, all the dreams and songs and the wicked voice, was not the product of mysterious magic but merely my own mundane insanity?

No such things as dragons. No such things as boys made out of stars or girls going to smoke.

I would do anything to avoid being imprisoned again. I would absolutely lie or cheat or steal.

Perhaps I would even kill.

I would kill myself. I knew that. In a soundless and static corner of my soul, I knew that.

If it meant I’d go to hell—well, it happens that there are many levels of hell, and I’d already visited a few of them.

Jumping off a castle roof would be no worse a fate.

...

I waited until twilight before attempting to find him again.

Unlike the last time I’d ventured outdoors for Jesse, I did not run through this descending eve but walked most decorously from the main doors of the castle instead. Bundled in my shawl and uniform, I might have been partaking in any one of Mrs. Westcliffe’s permitted after-supper al fresco activities, like:

Strolling to the edge of the rose garden to admire the sunset.

Strolling to the edge of the orchard to admire the sunset.

Strolling to the edge of the bridge to admire the sunset.

At England’s foremost educational opportunity for young women, strolling to the brink of things was allowed. Leaving the green—plunging beyond brinks—was not.

As the sunset tonight consisted of a watery gray cloak of clouds, it was not especially worth admiring. I was the only student even pretending to want to slog along the grounds.

Still, I tucked my shawl closer to my chest and glanced around very carefully before easing into the woods. I even scanned the castle windows, searching for telltale faces, but the panes all shone empty. If anyone did see me go, they didn’t care enough to raise a fuss.

Twilight is the best time for Fay trickery, or so I’d read. Not yet all dark, the last brief luminance of the sky fighting its inevitable death. Shadows that seemed to reach out and snatch at you; rustlings behind trees too near for comfort. Wisplights blinking off and on in the distance. Birds skipping from crown to crown of the blackened trees, calling, Farewell! Farewell! in full-throated, mournful cries… .

Gooseflesh pricked my skin, and it had nothing to do with the cold. But I was not going to be afraid of these woods, not for any reason. These were the woods that led to Jesse, so I would not be afraid.

From far away, the false thunder of airships and bombs began, a short shuddering of the air that rippled through me, but feebly, like the echo of an echo.

I walked a little faster.

In the end, it didn’t matter. By the time I found Jesse’s cottage, twilight had faded into ordinary night, and Jesse wasn’t there.

I knocked anyway, in case I was wrong. Maybe he was muting his music, like before.

The door swung open on silent hinges. No lock. No candles lit inside.

With my hand on the jamb, I took a half step forward into his home, breathing in the scent of him, subtle cinnamon overlaid now with pinewood and soap and coffee—and something else. Something that smelled very much like grass, sweetly pungent but fading rapidly.

My fingers found the bump of the cat’s-eye knot. I traced three long circles around it before turning about and leaving.

My path back to the castle looped toward the stable. I looked askance at its plain stone sides in the distance, the light leaking through the planks of the doors to lay stripes across the dirt. It appeared dollhouse small next to Iverson’s walls but in reality was likely large enough to keep horses for an entire manor.

No Jesse-music emanating from there, either, but the sweet grass smell of before billowed up and over me in waves.

Hay. Of course.

From across the yard I heard the slow, restless snufflings of very large penned animals, and the softer footsteps of someone who was likely more human-shaped.

The top level of the barn had windows of glass set back beneath the rafters, like those of a home. A figure moved behind one of them, thickset and hunched, a cap atop white hair. Mr. Hastings. He saw me and paused, then curled a hand at me from behind the glass.

Enter.

The wind puffed and the fringe of my shawl began a flutter; it seemed that as the air swept by me, the animal snufflings grew more agitated.

The gnarled hand beckoned again, more impatient.

For the second time that day, I thought, Bloody hell.