Swan Sister (6 page)

Anna looked at Mother too, then glanced toward Bluebeard. She shuddered and looked away.

“Mr. Thanos?” I said.

“My dear.”

“I would be honored to accept your offer of marriage.”

In the first month of our marriage I was happier than I had ever been before. Bluebeard was kind to me and let Mother and Anna visit and eat with us every day. He let me open the cabinet in the living room and take out each precious thing, delicately painted snuff bottles from
China, tiny metal, glass, and gemstone gods from distant countries with more arms and faces than humans had, cunning ivory carvings of mice and frogs and birds.

In every room of the house I found more beautiful treasures to admire. One cabinet was full of porcelain-headed dolls with human hair wigs and their velvet, lace-adorned outfits; each doll had its own wardrobe and accessories: tiny shoes that buttoned with hooks, tiny hats decorated with tinier ribbon flowers and the tips of feathers. I wondered if the wife with the dog had played with them.

I wondered what had become of her.

I hugged one of the dolls to me, stroked my hand over her blue velvet skirt. I touched her face. It was cold.

The library was full of leather-covered books with gilt-edged pages and marbled end papers. In some of them I found pressed flowers, the colors ghosts of what they had been when alive. I wondered if the herb-searching wife had left the flowers.

I did not ask those questions.

I found closets full of fancy clothes, the materials sturdier or more delicate or more beautiful than any I had seen before. The colors were rich, the fabrics sumptuous. Some clothes fit me. Some bore faint wisps of perfume from other owners. Bluebeard said I could have any of them altered to suit me. It suited me to have the warmest and the softest altered to fit Anna and Mother.

Bluebeard said that anything I found in the house was mine, one thing at a time. It became a game between us
for me to search the house over and choose my favorite thing that day. The next day I would choose another, or the next hour. The house was full of marvelous treasures.

Even in the night, after we blew the lanterns out, he was kind, warm, and gentle.

I received a letter from my brothers. They said they were taking unpaid leave, as there was a lull in the battle. I readied guest rooms for them, imagining their pleasure.

Then my husband said he must travel to attend to his business. “Here are the keys to everything in the house,” he said, handing me a great ring with a forest of keys on it.

“Everything?”

“Every door, every lock, every secret.”

I held the ring. It was heavy with the power of opening.

“Even the dark door in the cellar?” I asked.

He took the key ring back, separated out the keys until he held a small golden one, its bow shaped like a heart. “This is the key to that door. You may open every door in my house but that one, Sara. I forbid you to open that door. If you do, you will know unending sorrow.”

“What is in that room?” I whispered.

He looked away. His beard bristled. “It is the source of my strength, a chamber of my heart. It is the one thing I can never share with you.”

I felt a small fire in my chest, a flare of hurt. I had married him to take care of my family, but wouldn’t our marriage be better if I learned to love him? How could I love him if I could not know him?

He handed me the key ring and kissed my forehead. “I will probably be gone six weeks,” he said. “Invite whomever you wish to the house, and enjoy our treasures. Order whatever you like from my warehouses; tell the cook to fix whatever you favor.”

So my husband left me. Anna and Mother moved into the house with me, and we had friends from the village come for dinner. We invited musicians to perform and our neighbors to dance and play cards. The chef made wonderful confections.

I could not get the thought of that dark door out of my mind.

My husband was good to me. Could I not obey this one request of his?

But what could be in that room? What gave him his strength? What was so dear to his heart he had to hide it from everyone but himself? What was it he felt he could never share?

For four days I resisted. I made myself stay away from the cellar. There were so many other things to look at and play with. I took the gold key off the key ring and left it in the drawer beside my bed.

But every night before I fell asleep I thought of the dark door. My sleep was broken by my waking to wonder and fret.

One afternoon while Mother napped and Anna embroidered, I put the gold key in my pocket, took a candle with me, and went down to the cellar to stand before the forbidden door.

I rubbed my fingers over the key, with its heart shaped bow.

What could it hurt?

He need never know.

I would only open the door a crack, take a quick look, close it.

I could learn what it was my husband truly cherished.

I put the key into the lock.

It made such a little noise as I turned it.

I touched the door-knob.

Then I turned the key back to lock the door. Was I not happy? Did I not have everything I needed? He had asked for only this one thing. I should respect his wishes.

I took the key from the lock, dropped it into my pocket, and walked away.

I was almost to the stairs when I turned back.

What could be in that room?

What was the secret of my husband’s heart?

I opened the lock, stood with my hand on the door-knob for a long moment. I listened to the house. A board creaked above me.

I swallowed and turned the knob.

I held the candle up as the door creaked slowly open.

It was dark inside, but a smell drifted from the room, warm and sweet, slightly chemical, strangely glittery in my nose. It brushed my throat with the impulse to retch. Hair prickled on the back of my neck.

I opened the door wider.

The floor was dark and gleaming. Against the
windowless walls of the room I saw long pale things.

I blinked. I put my hand over my mouth.

Could they truly be—women?

The bodies of women, their heads on the floor beside their pale forms, faces with their shuttered eyes turned toward me.

The tumbled gold curls of she who had chased her little dog into my yard. The high, troubled forehead of the one who had searched for a mushroom. And others, so many others.

My scream caught in my throat. I fumbled with the door, jerked at the knob. The key slipped from the lock and fell to the dark floor.

The floor was awash with blood.

I stooped and fished the key from the blood, my fingers horribly warm and wet and red, the worst questions rising in my mind: How could they be so fresh when some must be so long dead? How was the blood still wet?

There was a scent of magic, like flower dust, in this death-troubled air.

He had said this was a chamber of his heart and the source of his strength. What contract had my husband signed, and with whom?

I wiped the key on my skirt, pulled the door closed, and locked it.

My hem was wet with blood, and blood spotted my skirt. My fingertips were red with it. My throat ached with strangled screams. I gathered my skirt and fled up the servants’ stairs to my dressing room, where I
washed my hands and tried to wash my garments.

But this was no earthly blood. Its spots did not fade. I took my ruined clothes through into my bedroom, stoked the fire high, and burned what I could not clean.

I washed the little gold key. I scrubbed it with soap, and later with sand. As soon as I got the blood off one side, spots appeared on the other.

My heart was sick. I could see my future. My husband would return, and the key would betray me. He would kill me as he had all the others.

How could I live in a house that was also a tomb?

Had every other wife gone to look into that room?

I went down to my sister. “We must leave.”

“Why?” She threaded her needle with green.

“I have disobeyed my husband. He will kill me.”

She stared at me. Then she rose.

“You go upstairs and wake Mother,” I said. “I have to pack.”

Anna nodded.

I had thrown away wealth and comfort by turning a small gold key. I had found a secret I could not live with, a horror that would haunt me. We could not stay here. We would have to escape, start over somewhere else.

I took the apron with the most pockets and went downstairs to collect as many small valuable things as I could find so we could sell them and make a new start. Anna would not take things, nor would Mother. I would provide.

I had just wrapped a jade dragon in a handkerchief
when shivers traveled over my back. I turned and found my husband in the doorway of the living room.

“My business went much swifter than I thought,” he said, and smiled at me. “It is already concluded, to my advantage!”

“Welcome home,” I said.

“What are you doing?”

“Polishing the treasures.” I unwrapped the jade dragon and set it back on the shelf.

“Did you enjoy yourself while I was gone?”

“Oh, yes, Husband.” I thought of the silent women in the basement, the river of their still-warm blood.

“Where are my keys?”

I pulled the key ring from my belt. He smiled as I handed it back to him, then sorted among the keys. “But one is missing,” he said.

“Oh? Perhaps I left it by my bed.”

“Go and get it.”

In the front hallway I paused at the foot of the stairs. Should I run now? But then I would have to leave Anna and Mother.

I ran upstairs. Anna was leading Mother down the hall. “He is home. Go down the back way,” I said, “and flee as quickly as you can.”

Anna’s face pinched. “Come with us,” she whispered.

My heart raced. I had filled some of my pockets. Surely it was better to live than go down and join the other wives in the cellar.

But Bluebeard had horses and carriages. He was huge and strong. How could we outrun him?

I stripped off my apron and handed it to my sister. “Take what’s in the pockets,” I whispered. “Run as fast as you can. Send help if you can, but make sure you escape above all.”

“Sara.” Anna gripped my arm.

“Sara,” Mother murmured, her face turning as she searched for me with dim eyes.

“I must delay him! Go. Take care of Mother.” I kissed each of them and pushed them toward the back stairs.

Anna hurried Mother down the hall, glanced back at me. I gestured for her to go, and finally she did.

“Wife?” Bluebeard called up the stairs.

I went to my room and got the gold key. Then I went down and gave the key to my husband.

“Why is there blood on the key?” he asked.

Cold crept into my fingers and face. I trembled. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

“You don’t know? I know very well. You have gone into the forbidden room.” His eyes narrowed. He stared at me, then said, “Oh, Sara, I hoped you would be different. I always hope they will be different, but with you, I thought we had a real chance. Were we not happy together?”

Tears fell from my eyes. I had been happy.

I had been blind.

Even now I could smell the taint of the dark-doored room below us. I could never be happy here again.

Bluebeard unsheathed his cutlass. “Prepare to join my other wives.”

Sobs broke from me. “No. Please. Please don’t kill me. I only wanted to know you.”

“No one may know me and live. You must die.”

I hugged myself. “At least give me a little time to say my prayers,” I whispered.

“Very well. I will grant you ten minutes, but no more.”

I raced upstairs. What if I ran down the back stairs and out the back door? Ran, and never stopped? Had Anna and Mother gotten far enough away? No! I should delay my husband if I could, give them time to escape.

My feet carried me past my chamber door, toward the back stairs. I knew the land. I knew places in the Wastes where no one else had ever been, sanctuaries I could find where others would founder. I reached the head of the stairs and looked down into my husband’s face.

He stared up at me, wordless. With dragging feet I went back to my room, then crossed to the window and looked out. But there was no escape from the window except to fall two stories to the ground.

I knelt beside my bed and prayed. I glanced to the bedside table and saw the latest letter from my brothers.

My brothers!

“Are you ready yet?” Bluebeard called. “Come down now or I shall come up to you.”

I rose. “Just a little while longer!” I called through the door. Then I ran to the window. I peered toward the road.

All was still.

“Wife, are you ready? Come down or I will come up!”

“Only a moment longer!” Was that a plume of dust on the road in the distance?

“Come down now!”

“I’m coming.” I clutched the curtain and stared toward the road, willing my brothers to come.

Yes. It was a plume of dust. Something was cantering toward me.

“Wife. You’ve taken long enough!”

I heard his footsteps on the stairs. I went out to meet him. He took my arm and jerked me down the stairs, then pushed me to kneel on the cold gray stone floor in the front hall.

“A moment longer,” I whispered.

“Make yourself right with God, and then be ready to join my other wives,” he said.

I clasped my hands, closed my eyes, prayed that my brothers would arrive in time.

“Good-bye, Sara,” said my husband. He raised his sword.

Then thundering knocks came on the door. “Open up!” The door burst open and my brothers rushed into the room.

“Who are you?” roared my husband.

“Sara! What are you doing on the ground?” Michael asked. “What is this man—Hey, fellow! Put up that sword!”

My brothers drew their swords and chased my husband away from me. Somewhere in the back of the house the chase ended. I heard my husband cry out, a bellow of
anger that changed to a cry of pain, and then the last sound of a dying creature.

I hugged myself, and then I cried, for the poor sad ladies in the basement, for the life of poverty I had left without a backward look, for the pleasant life I had thought I had with my husband, for the life I would lead now that I knew nothing was safe.