A Branch of Silver, a Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
The unmade bed shifted. The covers whirled like the shrouds of so many ghosts disturbed in their graves. A tousled, sleepy head emerged, blinking with bleary terror, staring down at Heloise, who stared back in equal terror, unable to move even to arrange her awkwardly bent limbs.
She gazed up into the hollow-eyed face of Master Benedict de Cœur.
“Who are you?” he cried. Another series of blinks, and his vision cleared. “Iubdan’s blazing black beard! You’re that little girl from—”
“Oh, hush!” Heloise gasped, pulling herself upright and yanking her skirts down over her muddy knees. “Hush your mouth! They’ll kill me if they find me!”
The threat of death was by no means an exaggeration, as Heloise well knew. She stood there in the pool of light falling through the window and stared at the red-headed young lord. But it was not Benedict she saw.
Only once, a year ago, had she and one of her older brothers, on a dare, ventured to the borders of Oakwood and peered out to the crossroads that marked the southernmost boundaries of Canneberges. At first Heloise had been so taken with the idea of looking out at a world beyond the mastery of the Marquis de Canneberges that she hadn’t noticed the gibbet.
Then it creaked.
It turned.
And Heloise had run screaming deep into Oakwood, never once looking back until she was safely home and buried in the straw up in her loft. She wasn’t afraid. Certainly not. When her brother Clement teased her later and called her a wet hen, she had defended her courage with complete sincerity. No, she wasn’t afraid!
But she had been sick to the point of complete collapse, which was close enough to fear.
The thing inside . . . She was pretty sure it (He? She?) had still been alive.
Later on she’d overheard some of the dyer-boys talking about the wretch who had been caught trying to break into Centrecœur. There was only one penalty for a man caught thieving on Canneberges, be he egg-thief, chicken-thief, or something worse still. So, The Wretch (as Heloise always afterwards thought of what she’d seen in the gibbet) was caged and left to die at the crossroads as a warning to all traveling to and from Canneberges.
A warning which Heloise had never thought to ignore, never thought to want to ignore. Yet here she stood, hearing her own scolding voice echo off the four walls and the rafters overhead. And there sat Master Benedict, his hair standing straight up from his head, his mouth hanging open.
The gibbet’s chain groaned in Heloise’s brain.
“Well.” Heloise forced herself to swallow, forced her heart to remain in her chest. “Well, that’s better.”
“I—I’m terribly sorry,” Benedict said in a much softer voice. Then he frowned, as though just realizing what he’d said. “I mean—” Suddenly he blushed a frightful hue, so bright it was almost purple. His eyes darted to the end of his bed, and Heloise, following his gaze, saw his trousers lying there beside his coat. Benedict clamped down on the blankets on either side of his body. “What in Lumé’s name do you think you’re doing, climbing in through my window?” he growled, all apologies forgotten in roaring embarrassment.
Heloise stepped forward hastily, her hands upraised, not quite pleading but close to it. “I didn’t know anyone was here,” she said. “I didn’t see anybody when I looked in.”
“Because I was under my dragon-eaten blankets. Because I was dragon-eaten sleeping.”
“Well sure, but it’s morning now and no one should be sleeping, so I—”
“I was up all night long watching your stupid peasant dance! I can sleep the day away if I like!”
Heloise stared. She knew, rationally, that she shouldn’t say any of the five things that sprang immediately to mind. Not that this morning had proven a day for rationality as of yet. Still, she didn’t want to have her tongue cut out before they hung her up at the crossroads.
Thus, in the most even, mature voice possible, she said only, “Le Sacre is not a peasant dance. It is Le Sacre. It’s the most important night of all the year. And you are a . . . a . . .” No! No, bite it back. Heloise clamped her jaw shut and let the next several words disappear in a growl.
Benedict, uncomfortable under the force of that furious stare, framed as it was by all that wild mess of hair, glanced again at his trousers draped over the foot of the bed. He wondered if he could reach them without the girl noticing. “Why are you here?” he demanded. “Specifically, why did you climb through my window?”
Heloise unclamped her jaw just enough to let out a few words. “It was the only open window,” she said, as though this were explanation enough and any simpleton could have realized it with half an effort. “I thought about knocking at the scullery, but that snooty Alphonsine would probably set the dogs on me and—”
“I’ll set the dogs on you myself if you don’t get out this instant,” Benedict said without much conviction. He was too busy trying to slide a surreptitious hand across the counterpane.
“Don’t you dare.” Heloise drew herself up to her full, if not very impressive, height. “I didn’t come to steal anything. I just need—”
“Hold on!” Benedict, who was bent over trying to reach the end of his bed, sat up suddenly. “You’re the girl who caused the disturbance last night. You’re the one who dove into the middle of the dance!”
At this, Heloise felt her cheeks burst into a blush radiant enough to rival the young lord’s own. Her scowl melted away in the heat, taking with it much of her resolve. “It’s not my fault,” she muttered. Then, on impulse, she stepped over to Benedict’s bed, picked up his trousers, and tossed them to him. “Here. You want these.”
“Um.” Benedict caught his trousers and clutched them awkwardly to his stomach. “Thank you.”
She gave him something that might have been almost a smile under other circumstances. “I really wouldn’t have startled you like this if I could have found another way in,” she said. “But I had to get in. They stole my sister, you see. And everyone forgot her.”
“Who stole what sister?”
Heloise glared again. A variety of possible words leapt to her tongue, words she wouldn’t have thought twice about saying to her brothers. Wanting to slip out, they pressed on the back of her teeth, eager to be spoken. But one couldn’t spout just anything at the marquis’s only son.
So she swallowed back any and all curses and derogatory names and said only, “Put your trousers on, why don’t you. There are ladies present.”
It was the wrong thing—she knew as soon as she’d said it. Benedict, his trousers still clutched in both hands, drew himself up in bed and spoke in indignant surprise: “See here, little girl, I don’t—”
Luckily for all concerned, a knock sounded at his door just then, and a deep, throaty voice rumbled from without, “Master Benedict?”
“Oh!” Heloise gasped and dove to the floor.
“No, wait!” Benedict hissed, leaning over the edge of the bed in time to see her muddy feet disappear underneath. “No, get out!”
He gulped the words down, however, as the door opened and Doctor Dupont entered. Benedict straightened up quickly, a weak smile upon his very red face. “Ah! Um. Good morning, doctor. Um. How are you this morning?”
It was a completely brainless thing to say considering they’d seen each another not half an hour before. Doctor Dupont did not seem to notice. He moved sedately into the chamber, his fingers steepled before his breast while his eyes scanned each corner, crevice, and shadow with a shrewdness that made Benedict’s skin crawl. Only when he at last reached his patient’s bedside did he speak, giving no response to Benedict’s question.
“You have gone to bed as I ordered,” he said. “Hmmmmmm.”
This was stated almost like an indictment. What did the good doctor want? Disobedience?
“Um, yes,” said Benedict. He never could maintain creditable powers of speech in Dupont’s disturbing presence. “I’m a bit tired, you know. Last night. All that.”
“Tired, yes. You said that befor
The way the doctor spoke would make any man think he’d got the plague and even now lay in his death throes. Benedict shivered again but did not protest when the good doctor took his arm, raised it above his head, and began prodding it with his long, cold fingertips.
“Your chamber is too warm,” the doctor said, despite the fact that Benedict could feel his lips turning blue with the draft coming through the window. “Heat will only aggravate the fever, which has never fully left your body. Heat will urge it back to greater life, greater strength than ever. And it will consume you. Yes. Consume.”
He dropped Benedict’s arm and grabbed his head, turning it so that he could stare into his ear. “No,” he said at last. “I cannot see it.”
“Cannot see . . . what?” Benedict asked, not at all certain he wanted to know the answer.
“The devil,” said Doctor Dupont. “Once it has re-grown—as it will, for they always do—I shall be able to see the fire of it deep inside your head. I will then extract it.”
There was a certain fervor in the way he spoke the word extract. Benedict rather hoped the fever would return and kill him before things reached such an interesting crisis.
“Have you taken your draught?” Doctor Dupont asked. Without waiting for an answer, he opened the drawer of Benedict’s nightstand and withdrew a vial of yellowish-brown liquid. As he held it up to the light, Benedict could almost see his throat vibrate with a long “Hmmmmm.”
“I’ve been sort of saving it up,” Benedict offered lamely. “You know, for those bad days.”
“Master Benedict,” said the doctor, gazing at him through the vial, which made his face look longer and sallower than ever, “as far as you are concerned, every day is a bad day. Every day could be your last. You must take your medicine. It is the best to be had: ground coriander seed, tannins of nightshade, crushed blossom of Heart’s Blood, and rainwater gathered on a midsummer night. All shriven according to the Old Order.” He looked smug. “I know, for I made it myself.”
He poured a measure into a small cup and put it in Benedict’s hands. “Drink.”
“Um. Well, I’m quite tired at the moment, so maybe I’ll just take it—”
“Drink, young master.”
There was nothing for it. Benedict braced himself and tossed the brew to the back of his throat. Dropping the cup, he grabbed his trousers and stuffed them into his face, barely holding back the choking cough that wanted to send Doctor Dupont’s remedy spewing across his counterpane. His ears flamed hotter than ever, and his eyes watered. But by the strength of his old ancestor, Rufus the Red, he got the stuff down and kept it there.
“Uuuuugh.” He dropped his trousers back into his lap.
“Feeling better?” asked Doctor Dupont, ever the optimist.
“Yes, doctor,” Benedict lied, and shuddered.
“Good. Very good.” Replacing both vial and cup, the doctor patted his patient on the back and glided to the door. “Sleep now, Master Benedict,” he called over his shoulder. “Sleep, sleep while you may. Sleep while the fever is low, before the consuming fire returns . . .”
With this intonation he vanished through the doorway like a demon, having answered a secret summons, returning to its own strange realm. The door shut behind him.
Still shuddering, Benedict sagged back into his pillows and smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. As if it were possible to rid himself of that foul taste! His limbs shivered and his stomach roiled, and he scarcely had the energy to react when Heloise slid around under his bed and at last emerged from down at the foot. Her hair was in her face, and she pushed it back with both hands.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
“What do you think?” he growled.
She stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “What are you sick of?”
Benedict almost answered, “Doctor Dupont.” It was right on the tip of his tongue. But that would not be a good example to this uncouth urchin child, so he swallowed the words back with almost as much difficulty as he had swallowed his medicine, saying instead, “Nothing.” With masterful effort, he pulled himself upright. Even with Dupont’s poisons churning around in his gut, he wasn’t about to let this peasant girl see him at such a disadvantage. “I’m fine, actually. Doctor Dupont gets bored now and then, and my father sent him to Canneberges to keep him out of trouble. He’s only got me to experiment on, you see.”
“Meme told me nightshade will kill you if you eat it,” Heloise said, frowning uncertainly.
“Is your meme a nationally renowned doctor trained under the king’s own physician in the court of Bellevu?”
“No—”
“Well, there you have it then.” Benedict shook himself one last time. “Now will you kindly turn your back so that I may clothe myself as befits a gentleman?”
Heloise obliged. She listened to the sounds of the Canneberges heir getting dressed, and she wondered if it was possible to die of mortification, or at least of the extreme effort it took not to show mortification. But what time had she to be mortified? What did her own feelings matter just now? She must focus.
Find the mirror, child!
Yes, well, that’s what she was trying to do, wasn’t it? She’d got into Centrecœur, and Master Benedict didn’t seem ready to call the guards and see her gibbeted. “I’m making progress,” she whispered.
“All right, little girl,” said Benedict, and how she would have liked to smack him for it. “I am fit to be seen. Will you kindly face me and explain exactly what brings you creeping through my window like a common thief?”
The word thief burned in her head. Heloise turned around slowly, twisting her face into what she hoped would be an intimidating glare. Benedict braced himself as though he wanted to take a step back, and this gave her courage.
“I am no thief,” Heloise said. “I’ve come to borrow a mirror. That’s all.”
Benedict studied her. “A mirror? What in Lumé’s name would you need a mirror for?”
“To admire my pretty face, obviously,” she snapped. If Evette had heard her, she would have melted with shame on the spot. This thought gave Heloise both a small smile and a sharp pang. She mastered her tongue and said, “Forgive me, Master Benedict,” adding a curtsy for good measure. “I cannot well explain my actions. Not so’s you’d understand. I hardly understand myself.”
“Try,” said Benedict, which was, he thought, remarkably gracious of him. After all, the girl deserved to be tossed out the window on her ear. He folded his arms. “I’m listening.”
So Heloise launched into an explanation which, were it not for her poor diction, would have impressed even the school of bards and songsters, so expansive was the imagination and passion with which she spoke. A tale of a lost sister and sinister doings at last night’s Le Sacre . . . a man of less education and understanding might well have believed her.
She obviously believed herself.
“I remember,” Benedict interrupted at one point. “You were shouting that name last night, weren’t you? Evette. And she’s your lost sister?”
“Yes,” Heloise said. “But I’m the only one who remembers her. You saw her yourself last night, dancing.”
“There were several peasant girls dancing,” said Benedict.
“You met her four days ago. Around the back, in the kitchen garden,” Heloise persisted. “She was with me when you stopped by on your horse. I introduced you to her. You spoke her name, even.”
He scratched his ear, which wasn’t the most lordly gesture. “I remember seeing you,” he said. “I don’t remember your sister.”
This was actually a bit gratifying. Heloise felt a jolt of guilt at the thought. Had she ever met another young man who remembered her and not Evette? None that she could recall.
Foolish girl. What are you doing? Find the mirror!
Heloise scowled, more at herself than anything, but fixed that scowling gaze upon Master Benedict. “See here, I know you remember the . . . the
He did. It was all over his face: the memory of that wind and that laugh and those moments of surprise and near-terror they had shared in the shadows of the Oakwood. Benedict’s regular flush faded into pallor.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I remember the wind. It stole my whole collection of Corrilondian declensions. I’d worked for months on that list! Corrilondian is a difficult enough language to learn without having one’s efforts blown out the window.”
Heloise, who had no idea what a declension was and only the vaguest notion that the nation of Corrilond existed, blinked several times. “Yes. Well. It stole your de—your decl—your declat—”
“Declensions,” Benedict finished for her. “And my hat. I remember that well enough. It broke the plume, and my man was in a temper about it for days. Still is, last I checked. And I remember that it . . . it laughed.”
He scratched his other ear now, which Heloise took to mean he was thinking rather hard. “All right,” he said at last. “All right, I’ll admit there’s something strange going on. I’ve sensed it these last few days. And just because I don’t remember meeting your sister doesn’t mean you never had one, I’ll grant you that as well. But what do you need a mirror for?”
“Because,” said Heloise, “the mirror holds the image. Long after the body and the spirit are gone, the mirror holds the image.” She was only saying what her grandmother had said to her, and she didn’t think it made any more sense coming from her own mouth than it had from Grandmem’s. But it was all she knew. It was all she had to go on. That and the insistent voice, which was slowly driving her mad, she was sure. “I think a mirror might show me where they—where this Family of Night—have taken her. Maybe then I can get her back.”
Benedict studied the girl wearing her too-short dress and peering up at him from under that tangled mop of curls. He wasn’t altogether certain he liked what he saw. But he was sure that, in her mind at least, she was telling the truth.