Scarlet in the Snow (9 page)

I did not dare to look at him. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Forgive me.’

‘There is nothing to forgive. Whose flesh would not crawl at the sight of me? I am a monster, hollowed out by darkness. But not yet fallen so low as to allow this – this sacrifice of an innocent. I would rather live and die the hideous monster that I am.’ His voice broke a little. For the first time I looked at the
abartyen
and saw not a grotesquely nightmarish alien thing to be feared or pitied, but a ruined human being valiantly trying to cling to the last shreds of honour.

Impulsively, I said, ‘Oh, sir, you are no monster but a fellow mortal unjustly condemned to a cruel fate, and it is my dearest wish to help you. I cannot in truth do as Luel asks. I cannot be your lover, your wife but . . .’ Trembling, I took a step towards him, then another. He did not move a muscle and stood there staring at me with his tiger eyes. They didn’t seem quite as glowingly yellow any more but shadowed deep down with a darker, softer shade. I held out my hand. ‘But that does not mean I cannot be your friend.’

He gave a low groan. ‘No, it is too late.’

‘I will not believe that,’ I said, trying to speak lightly. ‘Sir, is it the custom in your country for a gentleman to leave a lady’s hand dangling as if she were a cheeky beggar asking for alms?’

I saw him blink – the first time I had seen such a homely human tic disturb those alien eyes. ‘Why, I . . .’ He broke off and then resumed a little more strongly, ‘You must excuse me, my lady, but my manners are . . . somewhat rusty.’ Taking my hand shyly and delicately in his, so that I felt neither coarse hair nor ragged claw, but only a very gentle touch, like the soft pad of a cat, he held it for just an instant before dropping it again.

‘We are agreed, then,’ I said, my heart thumping so hard against my ribs that I was sure he must hear it. ‘We are to be friends.’

‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘But if ever . . . if ever you cannot bear the sight of me, you must say so. Send me away. I will understand.’

A lump formed in my throat. ‘Now why would I do that? Unless, of course, you start taking after Captain Peskov.’

The anguish on his face was replaced by bewilderment, exactly as I had hoped. ‘Who is Captain Peskov?’ he asked faintly.

‘I will tell you all about him, if you want,’ I said briskly. ‘Now, if you do not mind, my feet are rather cold from standing about in this snow. Shall we go inside?’

‘Oh. Yes,’ he said, sounding rather dazed. But just before he turned to follow me, I saw him bend down furtively, pick up the petal that I had dropped, and put it away in an inner pocket of his coat. I acted as if I had not seen, though an odd little tremor rippled through me as I led the way towards the glass doors, gossiping about Captain Peskov as though I had not a care in the world.

Luel met us in the corridor. She looked at us both with shining eyes. ‘It’s cold out there. Perhaps you would like some hot tea and fresh cakes sent to your sitting-room, my lord?’

‘Ah, um,’ he replied. His voice sounded a little choked, as if this ordinary request wasn’t something he was used to dealing with. Luel shot me a questioning look.

‘I think that’s an excellent idea,’ I said heartily. ‘And you’ll join us too, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ she said, and smiled. ‘They will be my favourite cream cakes. I wouldn’t miss them for the world.’ Her eyes locked on mine, and I understood the meaning behind her words. This was a moment for great celebration, for everything has changed. Oh no,
perhaps she assumed that it meant I’d agreed to marry him? I must disillusion her of that, and fast, because she might broach the subject in front of her lord and that would be too cruel. I was no longer afraid of the
abartyen
; my offer of friendship had been genuine, if nervous, and I felt instinctively that we could indeed become friends. But there was no chance I could ever feel
that
way about him. Not for anything in the world could I imagine myself as his lover or his bride, as Luel hoped. And yet not for anything in the world did I want to hurt him, one who had already suffered so much.

To my relief she said nothing about it. We sat around the fire and drank fragrant steaming tea from a tall china samovar and ate little cream cakes that were piled on a gilded cake stand. At least, Luel and I did, she many more than I, for the bird-like little
feya
had the prodigious appetite of a blacksmith. But her lord hardly touched a thing, leaving his first cake untouched except for one bite. Yet he seemed, if not cheerful, at least not morose and brooding as before. And he listened as Luel asked me questions about my family, then after a while he shyly asked questions of his own. I answered in the most interesting and natural way I could, trying hard to bring the ordinary human world of my home into this enchanted exile. It wasn’t just for his sake but for mine too.

Under all my bright chatter and my new determination, a nagging worry kept intruding. I was no longer a prisoner here. But I might as well be. If the spell was not broken, and Luel’s lord not returned to his own shape and his own life, then was I not, too, condemned to this place,
unable to leave it because of what his enemy might do to me? Remembering the little Luel had told me, I knew enough to understand that the warnings I’d been given were not idle. There was a great evil prowling somewhere out there beyond the frail edifice of magical safety Luel had built, an evil thirsting still for the blood of its victim; an evil as ruthless as it was powerful, and one I had no hope of defeating or deceiving if a
feya
such as Luel could only just hold it at bay.

But I said nothing of this, of course. There was no point in souring the tentative sweetness of those hours, the beginnings of an unlikely friendship forged in such an unexpected way. For the longer we sat together, the closer I felt to them. And the more I became uncomfortable at the fact I had no name for him in my mind. ‘Sir, I understand why I cannot know your true name, but is there none I might know you by? “Sir” is simply not good enough.’

He shot Luel a glance.

She shook her head. ‘There is no name we can safely give that truly belongs to him.’

‘Then will it be all right if I invent my own?’ I asked, daringly.

They both stared at me. Then Luel said slowly, ‘Do you have any objections, my lord?’

He shook his shaggy head. ‘As long as you do not call me after Peskov,’ he said, and his lips curled back. To my astonishment – and Luel’s – I realised that he had made a joke. A small, weak joke, to be sure, but a joke nonetheless.

I smiled. ‘Set your mind at ease; I would not give that name to a frog croaking in the swamp! I was thinking of Ivan, because it is a name both so common in our country that it must make it difficult to track, and yet also the name of many legendary heroes who triumph over great odds.’

‘Ivan! Why not? It is a good name,’ he said, with a lilt in his voice I’d never heard before. ‘Do you not think so, Luel?’

‘I think it is excellent,’ the old woman replied, and there was genuine admiration in her eyes as she glanced at me. ‘I think it is most excellent, my lord,’ she added, ‘and it fits you like a glove.’

‘I only wish that gloves would fit me so well,’ said Ivan, with a wry glance at one hairy clawed hand. That was his second joke, all the more remarkable because it addressed the very source of his pain. From that moment he became Ivan, and the invented name made his besieged humanity more real to me than anything else could have done.

Later, much later, Ivan fell gently asleep in front of the fire, and Luel motioned to me to tiptoe out. In the corridor, with the door closed behind us, she turned to me and said, with real emotion, ‘My dear, dear child, ask of me whatever you will and I will give it to you if it is in my power to do so.’

‘Luel,’ I said uncomfortably, ‘I must tell you that I did not agree to – to . . . what you’d asked of me.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘He told me. He was glad. He was unhappy with me, that I had even asked you.’ She paused.
‘Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there
is
another way. And perhaps you have found it.’

‘Do you think so?’ I said, with incredulous hope.

‘I don’t know yet. But in just a few hours you have done what I could not do in all these years. You have pushed back the darkness for more than a few minutes. His eyes – did you notice? There is more colour in them now.’

‘Yes,’ I said, then impulsively added, ‘and that makes me happy, Luel.’ It was true. In that instant, I was purely, brightly happy.

She put a hand on my arm. ‘Ah, my dear, dear Natasha. I bless the storm that brought you to our door. And I want so much to give you something in return for what you have done. Is there anything – aside from what you know I cannot give you – that you might want?’

‘Might I be allowed to use the mirror sometimes? I know I cannot go home, but if I could speak to my family – if I could see my home – then it would not be so hard for me.’ I hadn’t planned it, the words had just come out of my mouth, and as soon as they did, I knew it was truly the only thing I wanted.

She smiled. ‘Of course,’ she said softly. ‘Tomorrow I will teach you how to use the mirror, and you will be able to consult it as often as you wish.’ Her tone changed. ‘But beware! On no account must you try to see anything beyond the walls of your home, or speak to anyone other than your family. And you must not tell them the truth but keep to that story you invented or we will all be in great danger. Do you promise?’

‘Of course,’ I cried joyfully. ‘Oh, Luel, thank you! Thank you!’ I reached over and planted a kiss on her cool cheek, making her grumble that I was as noisy and boisterous as an untrained puppy, but looking just a little pleased all the same.

Dinner that night had a festive feel, and it wasn’t only because of the delicious food. By unspoken agreement Luel and I kept the talk bright and light, and Ivan listened peacefully with an expression which told me that for the moment, the darkness had rolled back like a bitter sea from the shores of his troubled mind. Once again he hardly touched his meal. I had begun to suspect, with a wrench of pity, that his clawed hands were too clumsy to allow him to politely wield a knife and fork and so he did not want to eat in front of me. But I pretended not to notice and so did Luel, and the time passed pleasantly, much more pleasantly than I would have dared to imagine even a few hours ago. Not even the blank pictures disturbed me as much as they had before.

I went up to bed in a very different frame of mind from the previous night. Back in my room, I stood at the window, looking out over the quiet moonlit lawns and
thinking that even if my predicament was not at an end, at least now I was no longer afraid for my life. Tomorrow I could speak to my mother with a lighter heart.

I was just about to close the curtains when I saw it. A solitary black shape in the night sky, just beyond the hedge. The crow.

No. I refused to give in to fear. This man – this evil sorcerer – had no way of getting through. Luel had said the defences had not been breached. Her magic was much too strong, I told myself stoutly as I undressed and got ready for bed. But though I got into bed and tried to sleep, I couldn’t. I tossed and turned till I finally gave up. I lit the lamp and took the notebook out from the desk. Now, I thought, I’ll be able to write what happened. But first I read back what I had written that morning, about the girl in my dream, and when I took up the pen and started to write, it was something quite different to what I’d originally intended that came rushing onto the page.

In a warm and pleasant country, where bright flowers bloom much of the year, and skies are blue as Our Lady’s robe, lived a young girl called Rosette
, I wrote.
She was a little dressmaker, from a modest family; pretty as the flower she was named after, bright as a mountain stream, and good as new-baked bread. Despite her modest birth, suitors queued for her hand, but she refused them all till she met Robert. A handsome, gentle young man, he fell as deeply in love with Rosette as she with him, and the pair were eager to get married as soon as they could
.

Robert was of rich and noble birth but had not yet reached his majority when he fell in love with Rosette, so
under the law he was obliged to ask his guardian for his consent to the marriage. His guardian was his uncle, one of the King’s chief councillors, and a proud and arrogant man known as the Master of Crows because he always dressed in black, as did his closest retainers. He professed to love Robert but, in truth, in the depths of his stony heart he hated his nephew and wished only for his unhappiness. What was more, he had been steadily spending Robert’s fortune over the years, and if his nephew married and set up home with his bride, Robert would be independent and then the true state of affairs would be revealed. So when Robert came to him and asked for his consent, he harshly refused it, saying the girl was not fit to marry into their family and that Robert should forget all about her.