Scarlet in the Snow (36 page)

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Read on for the first chapter

Once upon a time, I would have walked in through the beautiful carved doors of the Angel Patisserie and Tea Salon. Once, and not so long ago either, my feet would have glided across the soft carpet in smart shoes, my long skirts swishing behind my mother’s as we headed to our favourite table looking out across St Hilda’s Square at the bustling morning crowds. Once, we would have sat on the plush velvet chairs while the waiter brought us plates of cream puffs, chocolate hazelnut tart or cream-layered honey sponge served on delicate china plates edged with gilt. We’d have eaten our cakes and sipped fragrant tea from fine cups as the owner of the Angel, Monsieur Thomas, resplendent in a blue silk waistcoat and white tail coat, would have made sure to stop by our table and wish us good day. He’d have told Mama how fine she was looking, and me how much of a young lady I was becoming. Mama and I would giggle about it
afterwards because, although Monsieur Thomas always said the same thing, it was always in such a hushed tone as if he was telling us a secret instead of a rather tedious politeness.

That was then. If I tried to go in through the front door of the Angel now, Monsieur Thomas would have me thrown out. And no wonder for my feet, now clad in old shoes that let in the rain, are not fit to tread on the soft carpets. My skirts, patched and old, no longer swish but flop limply around me. And the taste of those cakes is nothing more than a sweet, distant memory. These days I have to go around the back of the Angel and wait in the dingy little courtyard no proper customer ever sees. I am handed the box of cakes my stepmother and stepsisters have ordered, and am warned that if I so much as think of opening it I will have the police set on me. I am told to ‘Begone!’ by people who once would have bowed to me as the daughter of Sir Claus dez Mestmor, a rich and important nobleman from one of the oldest families in Ashberg. They all know I have become a servant in my own father’s house and that has made all the difference. I used to think people were nice to me because they liked me. Now I know better.

But not everyone is like that. Even at the Angel, where faces are hard as overcooked pastry and tongues bitter as wormwood. There’s Maria, the scullery maid, who has never stopped being nice to me even though it would cost her her job if anyone were to find out. When she can, Maria slips me bits and pieces she’s kept from the kitchens, and always with a kind word or two which is almost as
comforting. This day, she had a surprise for me. As I stood in the courtyard waiting for a box of cakes, trying to avoid the drips from the clearing rain, she crept out and handed me a little parcel done up in brown paper and string. ‘Happy birthday, Selena,’ she whispered, giving me a quick smile before scuttling back in just as Rudi, a waiter who never misses an opportunity to laugh at me, came out. He’s got his eye on my stepsister Babette, and thinks that will get in her good books, though if he thinks Babette will even look once, let alone twice, at a waiter, no matter how fine his waistcoat, he’s in for a great disappointment. To her and Odette, waiters may as well not exist, or at least no more than as some kind of useful machine.

That morning, as usual, I put up with his heavy attempts at wit at my expense to avoid a quarrel I could not afford to have. Not if I am to keep the promise I made to my dear mother two years ago on her deathbed, whose loss I still feel like an arrow to the heart. I promised her that I would not abandon my father, no matter what was to happen. Papa is not a man who can cope with illness, and my poor mother had been sick for a year or more. She had lost the good looks that had made him forget her humble origins and fall in love with her. I think she knew he could not stay alone for long, and so it proved – for within a few months he had married Grizelda, a rich widow from the imperial capital, Faustina. She had brought her daughters, Babette and Odette, home to Ashberg and had set about removing all reminders of my mother, throwing out her pictures and books, of which I could save but a few. And so my ordeal began.

Of course, there are moments when rage and sorrow boil within me like scalding pitch. When I think of my weak and indifferent father who seems to have almost forgotten my existence altogether. When I remember the day my stepmother summoned me to triumphantly announce the annulment of my parents’ marriage and, in turn, my social demotion in the eyes of the law to a mere ‘natural daughter’ of my father, dependent entirely on his goodwill. When my mother’s portrait was burned and her books thrown out, except for the few I managed to hide. When my stepsisters taunt me with a cruel nickname, Ashes, and delight in tormenting me with tales of the parties they’ve been to, the young men who shower them with compliments, the fine dresses they’ve ordered from the best seamstresses in the city, and the exciting trips they’ll go on while I have to stay in my kitchen.

In those moments the promise I made to Mama seems like a cross that’s much too hard to bear. But, always, I master myself; I cannot break my promise to her for fear of losing my honour. They have taken everything else – I will not let them take my word as well. Alone in my room at night I take out one of Mama’s books and, though I’ve read each many times over the years, cover to cover, I take comfort in it. I remember Mama’s voice as she read to me, her smile as she read to herself, and it brings her close to me once again. I whisper to the empty room as though she were there. I whisper how I feel – how I really feel – deep inside. It helps me to be patient, to try and hold fast to the hope that my mother would never have bound me to such a promise if she did not think that one day things would get better for me.

Maria’s kindness touched me. Sixteen. I turned sixteen today. I didn’t expect anyone to remember. My father’s away, like he is nearly all the time these days, and his new family would rather think I had sprung from an amoeba. Anyway, who ever heard of a servant having a birthday? Squelching home through the wet streets, carefully holding the box of cakes, I thought of the pleasure I’d have in opening her little parcel later that night. It would mark the day that someone other than myself had remembered. Sixteen – the coming of age, when you are no longer a girl but a woman. I remember Mama saying how this important birthday was marked in her own forest village, far away. How on your sixteenth birthday you’d be given a dish of honey and cream, a crown of roses and a hazel twig. It seemed a strange combination to me and I always asked why,
why
. But she would only smile and say that on my sixteenth birthday, she would tell me.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts and bittersweet memories that I didn’t notice the carriage heading down the street behind me. It was only as it was almost upon me that I suddenly heard the rumbling of wheels and the coachman’s shout, and tried to jump aside. Instead, I tripped and fell sprawling in the gutter, the cakes flying out of my hands as the carriage squeezed past me with just inches to spare. As I looked after it, breathless from the fright, I saw it was completely closed with black blinds drawn down across the windows. And my heart skipped a beat as I recognised the crest on the side of the door to be the sinister snake and two wands of the Mancers.

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