The Bride of the Immortal (5 page)

Adrijan could feel that he was about to be overwhelmed by his swelling anger, anger about the fact that he had not been careful enough and therefore easily betrayed. He knew that the emotion was trying to take control over him and that he could not allow it.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then after a few moments of meditating, almost like a different person, he turned off the water in stoic calm, got out of the shower and stepped back into the ante room. Ignoring the fact that he was still dripping wet he slowly emptied the cup of tea that had been prepared for him. His mind was elsewhere, planning, scheming, weighing option against option. If someone had had the chance to see him in his current state – without a doubt – would have thought him a madman. After he had taken everything into consideration and had made a decision, he put down the now empty cup, made use of the towel and put on the fresh set of clerical clothing Ms Sophie had laid out for him.

Adrijan stepped out of the ante room and hearing noise coming from downstairs he leant over the staircase railing to look out for Ms Sophie.

“The tea was delicious as always, Ms Sophie, thank you,” he said with his firm voice and added in a way she couldn’t fail to hear that he would be in his study, working on his next sermon and that he didn’t want to be disturbed.

With a loud sigh the charwoman aligned the priest’s shoes as she heard him close the door to his study. They were once again perfectly clean now, lacking any trace of mud. She would go upstairs next to clean the bathroom and put away the things he had left there before warming the already prepared food for lunch.

What a curious time to ask for tea! She disapprovingly shook her head. What a peculiar young man he was!

Ms Sophie got up from the floor, supporting her back with one of her hands. Even though her employer’s loud, angry voice sounded through his study’s walls the heavy rain and rolling of thunder kept Ms Sophie from making out more than a few words. To her the content was clear though – there were sinners and they deserved punishment, the kind of punishment that made them wish they hadn’t committed the crime, the kind that would burn the lecture into their very souls.

Father Adrijan might not have been the first choice as her employer but at least he was able to convey God’s righteous wrath unlike many priests of his age.

What a delightfully fearsome sermon he was preparing!

Mairin was cowering on the bed, her legs drawn to the body, her arms wrapped around them. She was rocking herself back and forth, unable to decide whether she was the victim of a bad joke or starting to lose her mind. While being aware that she was wasting precious time, minutes that should be used to find a solution to her problem, she was unable to do anything about it. At first she had considered sharing what she had found out but lacking an ally in this hateful prison she had given up on the thought almost immediately. After all she had been through, it was easy to imagine them gang up against her instead of helping her get to the alleged safety by the immortal’s side. There was more than one person in Sunflower Garden who wished her evil, maybe a few who couldn’t care less about her but most likely not anybody who wished her well. Without having anybody to turn to she herself was the only chance she had and in her current condition that was close to nothing.

“Nothing” wasn’t good enough.

Mairin let go of her legs and pulled a handkerchief out of her left sleeve. Occasionally wearing dresses without pockets Mairin had learnt that that was a lady’s way to stay prepared. After unfolding it Mairin gently put the treasure she had still been holding in her hand on the piece of cloth. She then took its four edges and tied them together to a knot before putting the handkerchief back into its hiding place. If everything else failed, she wanted at least the trinket to stay in her possession.

Mairin forced herself to get up from her bed and slowly walked over to the small dressing table where she had put an old clock Mrs Enderby had passed on to her. It was standing next to the mirror, and several scratches and the lack of varnish in some places bore witness that even a master and measurer of time couldn’t escape its clutches. Until this moment Mairin hadn’t been aware of the streaming rain but now the constant pattering of the raindrops against the walls and windows of the boarding school seemed to tell about her intricate situation, reminding her like the clock dial that she had to hurry if she wanted to have a say in the outcome of tonight’s events.

There had to be something else she could do, except abandoning herself to despair.

Of the few choices she had, none seemed to be better than the other. She neither dared to ask for help, nor to run away. There were no allies, neither within Sunflower Garden nor outside the boarding school and seeking shelter with her sister, whom she hadn’t seen for ten years, was out of the question. Besides, it was her duty to stay so her family would continue receiving financial support through the immortal.

Mairin was aware that she had led a somewhat sheltered life over the past years, but even so she could imagine what was going to happen to her if she stayed. Books had been her only friends and with the amount of time she had had on her hands she had read more than Mrs Enderby or any of her tutors were aware of – forbidden books included. Mairin smirked mirthlessly. Who would have thought that that kind of reading material was going to prove vital one day?

Desperately hoping for a flash of inspiration, Mairin examined her small kingdom. An opaque curtain divided the room into two areas, one containing a huge closet right next to the door and a table with two chairs that were used for her lectures while the other part of her room was the sleeping area which was just big enough to hold her bed and the small dressing table. Under normal circumstances the two big windows provided enough light for both sides, even with the heavy curtain drawn in between. Mairin’s eyes wandered from one furnishing to the next. For a moment she considered the option of barricading herself in, by moving everything that was firm and massive in front of the door, but even though she liked the idea, she couldn’t help but dismiss it when she remembered that there might not be enough time to execute her plan after being locked in. There also wasn’t much point in hiding, since the room was hardly big enough to keep her attacker from finding her in less than approximately thirty seconds.

“Hopeless… it’s utterly hopeless,” Mairin mumbled.

Weary of trying to find a solution that obviously didn’t exist she sank into one of the two chairs that were facing the door and felt so dispirited that she put her head back and left her arms hanging. When, like that, her glance fell on the cupboard, an idea was finally born. With one quick movement Mairin jumped on her feet and hurried over to the door to open it. She was agitated. For the first time in hours she finally felt that there was possibly a chance to avert the menace. Like a madwoman she left and entered her room repeatedly, checking every angle that was visible from when she set foot in her room. It was like she had expected: With its unusual height of almost three meters and for her plan perfectly positioned behind the opened door the cupboard could prove to be the ideal hiding place. The only thing left to do was to find a way to buy herself time until Father Adrijan was picking her up in the morning and Mairin already had a faint idea on how to accomplish that. If she could neither run away nor stay hidden, she thought that the only option was to attempt both.

Her plan was no touch of genius, but there was at least a chance that it would succeed. Mairin tried to calm herself, closed the door from the inside and drew the large curtain that divided her room. Even though she didn’t expect anyone else today, since there were no lectures and Father Adrijan the only visitor in years, she wanted to make sure that nobody would stumble in on her preparations.

First she completed packing the small suitcase she had left behind earlier and moved the stool from her dressing table to the cupboard to store her belongings on top of the wardrobe. Later she would use it to climb up the closet the far side of the door where she hoped the footstool would remain unnoticed. Mairin wasn’t sure if she was overreacting by not choosing one of the higher chairs instead, but she didn’t want to rely too much on the darkness of the night to aid her, as she couldn’t be certain that the attacker didn’t know her room and came without a candle.

When that was done she piled up the remaining clothes on the bed and hid them under her blanket, trying to create the illusion of her sleeping peacefully. Even after countless shifting, pushing and pulling of clothes, blanket and pillow Mairin was hardly satisfied with the outcome but another look at the nearby clock told her that it would have to do. There was still much to be done and the most difficult part of her plan yet to accomplish.

As other women of her age she unfortunately wasn’t in the possession of a rope – even less a rope long enough to reach from the window of her room on the second floor to at least somewhere near the ground. In the search for a substitute Mairin soon found herself on the corridor again, this time sneaking to a small storage closet on the second floor. Progressing with her plan had almost put her into a good mood until she noticed that the door to the closet was locked. Mairin cursed, ignoring that it wasn’t very lady-like, and went downstairs to the first floor to check the storage closet there. Compared to the corridor her room was in, this one was more frequently visited by the girls and staff of Sunflower Garden, which made the small room a lot more difficult to access. Every time someone unexpectedly turned up at the staircase or on the opposite side of the hallway, she found herself acting as if she were looking for an accidentally dropped item on the floor or gazing out of one of the two windows as if it were her only purpose in life. Eventually though she had the opportunity to try her luck with the door and much to her surprise found out that it wasn’t locked.

For once fortune had smiled upon her and Mairin was sincerely hoping that it wasn’t for the last time today. She was still deciding if finding out about the planned assault counted as luck as well but she was glad enough about it not to complain.

As it was fairly dark in the storage closet with the only source of light coming from a small window on a rainy afternoon on an autumn day, it took a while until Mairin was able to locate the piled up sheets. They were placed on one of the shelves right next to multiple blankets that were used for sitting in the garden on cool evenings or riding in the open carriages.

Without delay Mairin carefully started carrying linen sheets to her room, always only taking a few at a time, until she had just as many as she thought necessary. Not a moment passed without her being afraid of being discovered and her plan brought to an end. Despite the risk and her growing fatigue she sneaked back once more to retrieve three woollen blankets that she thought essential to counter the autumnal cold that was going to accompany the stay on the cupboard.

Back in her room after finishing the tedious process she granted herself a short break. Getting closer to the end of her preparations and not having to go back to the frequented first floor made her feel as if at least a little weight was lifted from her shoulders.

Once more she took a deep breath and wiped the sweat off her forehead before she started to tie the sheets together to a long makeshift rope. Mairin was well aware that she wasn’t a sailor and didn’t know a lot about knots but she hoped her work was good enough to convince a man in the dark that they had been efficient to help her escape.

After she was done she affixed the end of the rope of sheets to two bed posts and pulled the rest over to the window. It had turned out a lot heavier than expected and she was nervously thinking about how difficult it would be to lift it up and throw it outside in the short time. She would have to do it bit by bit until gravity was on her side and finished her work. For now though she had to be patient and wait as it was yet too early should her faked escape be discovered.

The last step of her preparations concerned the blankets. One of them she was going to use to make lying on top of the cupboard bearable while the purpose of the remaining two was to keep her from freezing in her own room. Nevertheless, to prepare her hiding place she had to get up on the cupboard first, which was difficult to accomplish, even with the footstool shortening the climb. More than once her foot slipped and she felt like her body would be covered by bruises before she could achieve her goal.