The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (15 page)

Chapter Twenty Five

The girl had led Phelim unwittingly through the Marshes towards Ferry Crossing on the edge of the laguna. As he walked through the woods, he thought back to one of Ebba’s acidic comments on the Faeran.

‘To be frank,’ she said as her knotted fingers slipped over Grimalkin’s white fur. ‘I think the Faeran are extremely content at being what they are - self-indulgent, arrogant, utterly oblivious to the damage their games cause. They are never involved in serious business. Life is ever the pursuit of one light moment after another at the expense of anything that lies in their way.’

Then Ebba, what am I doing if not serious business?
But he examined the rest of her comment. Never one to be less than courteous, gentle and empathetic, he found Other reputations sticking to his hide like wet clay to a farmer’s boot. Contrary, perturbed at being Other when he wished to be what he had always been, that part of him that had been coaxed and groomed by his mortal stepmother fought to be free of the Faeran slur. The memory of the girl’s expression as she faced him earlier had filled him with distaste and despair. He hadn’t asked to be Faeran and he wondered if the Faeran woman and her bag of souls had never entered his life, whether Ebba would ever have told him the truth. He could hear her loved voice so clearly in his mind and he recalled the only thing she had ever said of Veniche, his destination.

‘Aine Phelim, it’s wet and smells of mould and damp and is like to bring on an ague. Pretty if you like the light on the water and the gracious buildings but I’m for the open spaces of woods, sea and sky, where I watch a linnet fly free and not cooped in a gilded cage. For me, Veniche is
just that - a big gilded cage. Mind you, they do make wondrous glass. I always regret never buying a paperweight when I was there. Those little objects look as though the Faeran have scooped up a field of wild flowers and shrunk them to minikin size to place them under glass. I have always been partial.’

But in the Marshes it was far less gilded. People ebbed and flowed around him in rivulets as wide as the walkways. He relished the sights and sounds, the colour, the wide palette of green as the Marshers hurried about their dusk business. He thought it was like looking across a coppice of leaf and bud in springtime.

Except for that flaming autumn shade...

His eyes grasped at the colour, the tint of a new-minted groat, gelt that most rarely see. And thus Marshers turned also and looked curiously at the woman as she pushed against the flow, a thin, odd young fellow guiding her.

Phelim’s eyes rested on the downcast face and as he observed the tawny hair and softly tinted skin, he was struck by a gentle pain under his ribs where the chamois bag rested, warming like a heart that has found true love.

Around him, as the unusual pair approached, the sound of cheer and gossip hummed. The odd mild call echoed but everybody seemed equable and polite so that when a harsh, wild shout split the ambience apart, the woman and her friend were galvanized as if by a bolt of lightning.

‘
Bicce! Bicce!
I’ll get you!’ At the far end of a walkway, a bald-headed ruffian screamed and the woman’s head flew up, her companion dragging a dark hood over her hair and then pulling her along until they were level with Phelim.

He stepped aside, the woman’s superb hazel eyes meeting his and he saw how they overflowed with fear and how tears made them sparkle. The fellow pushing her hissed, ‘Come
on,
Threadlady. Down here, quickly.’ And as he dashed past, the
frisson
that is Other vibrated between he and Phelim.

The agitated atmosphere sparked as people called and jostled like birds disturbed, the Marshers disliking the aggressive shouts from further along the walkway. But the thug continued to yell, battering his way through the crowd and Phelim watched as the hunted couple dashed down a dark walkway under the shade of large overhanging eaves.

The ruffian had cold grey eyes Phelim observed, with nothing but death and misery in their far reaches and the fellow’s mouth snarled as he shoved aside men, women and children.

The chamois bag become colder during the fracas, chilling until it burned Phelim’s ribs with frostbite, and all that was Faeran in him once again flooded effortlessly to his fingertips and he cast himself invisible, waving a hand at the walkway down which the lady and the hob had disappeared so that it shape-changed into the vertical boards of a blunt-ended building. His leg came out as Luther rushed by and the fellow tripped, crashing to the walkway, his chin striking the ground.

Gallivant glanced back.

That fellow, the one with the
frisson,
he was Other to be sure. Faeran? He hadn’t got a good look, hustling Adelina as he had been. Now he saw Luther trip and fall over something, his chin crashing heavily into the timber of the walkway. And there was something about the way people walked past their own hiding place as if it didn’t exist, that made him wonder at their good fortune.

‘Gallivant,’ Adelina shivered, her face pale as a shroud, ‘how did he get here? I didn’t think he’d find me so soon. Aine help me.’

‘Hush Lady, hush. We are honestly as safe as if we are on the other side of the world. But we must be careful to cover your hair, it’s like a beacon. Oh, look Adelina, sink me, look at that.’

Luther moaned. People bent to help him stand but he brushed away their concern and holding a linen square to his profusely bleeding chin, he shouted. ‘Where are they, did you see them? The woman with red hair and the man. They went down that way!’ He pointed at the bare wall in front of him. People shook their heads and their mutterings provoked him further. ‘You must have seen them! They were so obvious. Are you wretched idiots blind? So help me.’ He spun around in a vortex of rage.

A brave man, taller and broader than Luther and whiskered with importance, took Luther firmly by the arm. ‘Sir, you have hurt yourself and given your head a resounding wallop. There was no red-haired woman and you see, this building has no entry from this walkway.’ The man bent and sniffed at Luther. ‘I think you perhaps had a little too much wine earlier and perhaps you imagine things. Either way, you must get that chin tended because it is split open like a watermelon. Come now.’ Luther jerked his arm but the man held fast, and turning a last, angry and baffled look at the wall and seeing blood dripping at his feet, he finally allowed himself to be led away.

The House of the Pee-Wit hung over the water, the patron welcoming Phelim pleasantly and giving him a room overlooking the gold-tinged water of the laguna. Much later, bathed and fed and with a promise his clothes would be clean by morning, he took his tired body and his over-filled head to the pillow. Outside he could here the small slap of wavelets against the piers of this town above the water, and in the distance, the sound of frogs and crickets and the odd nightbird. Occasionally there was an unseelie shriek and he would perform the mortal horn sign against malign enchantments and catch himself ruefully.

He drifted in that delicate state between dozing and sleep, content for a few hours to let introspection and examination disappear. Faeran or not, exhaustion claimed him and he surrendered himself quite readily to sleep when it came, glad to forget for a moment of the chameleon changes of his life and the results such changes may incur.

***

As Gallivant was I know not where, in the room I shared with the hob at the House of the Thrush I was making a fulsome discovery. There was a full-length mirror and after a bath, I had stood surveying the body that had been immured in prison for three months, suffering the agonies of grief and depression and all the nausea and loss of appetite and bodily changes that such conditions entail.

One would assume I would be thin and drawn. Except I was not. My thickened waist and heavily veined breasts told me one thing alone. I was with child. I smoothed my hand over the gently swelling belly, stroking the infant of the Raj who lay safe and cocooned in the dark. I guessed I had conceived that fateful morning when Kholi and I had made love quietly and frantically, with Liam drugged and asleep in the pavilion in the throes of his own awful grief.

On that same morning, Kholi Khatoun, the love of my life and father of my child, had then dressed and gone hunting the Fates and Death.

Chapter Twenty Six

Excitement filled Ferry Crossing, as tangible as a breeze across the skin. Today was the day of the Festival of Water Dressing, a symbolic appeasement to the spirits of the water because everyone knew that water was the mainstream of life and fertility. The Festival took place at midday and all the unattached maids of the town were to execute the Dressing at the wharves, appropriately garbed in white gowns embroidered all over with floral patterns.

Drifting along the boardwalks like so many veela, the young, nubile girls carried baskets of botanica of every conceivable sort, and pieces of glittering quartz and river shells - all for the Dressing. Awaiting them was a large square of sand lying on a stretched canvas on which the floral and woodland offerings would be laid to make a picture of colour and texture. The whole would then be lowered onto the waters of the laguna, to float away to the spirits’ homes ensuring a bountiful year to come for all the Marshers.

Phelim walked to the bottom of the stairs in the House of the Pee-Wit, turning as the mistress of the house called out. ‘Master Phelim, you would do well to hasten to the wharves and secure a spot for yourself to watch the festival. It is a charming event and very mystical for us. We need the Others’ beneficence for another good year.’

Phelim thanked her and wondered what she would think if she were aware an Other stood right now in her house. He expected no great joy and substantial hysteria and thus found it politic to move out to the walkways and thread his way with the crowd to the site of the festival.

The waters of the laguna were still and boats
sat calmly on the moorings, their reflections a mirror image until mischievous breezes set up ripples. Oystercatchers, plovers, gulls and gannets swirled overhead and behind the seaward hubbub one could hear the ever-present frog chorus from the Marshes. Maids in virginal white passed by with their cornucopia of flowers, seeds and mosses and their families and friends greeted each other and chatted as the wharves settled for the business of the festival. It was almost midday.

People pushed politely in order to get a good position by the rails - amongst them Gallivant and Adelina, her copper hair hidden in a floral headscarf tied Traveller fashion, her burgeoning body clothed in
a pair of Raji jodhpurs, knitted tunic and a Marshers’ green coat. The clothes were by her bed when she woke, Gallivant presumably up to more mischief as he strove to care for his charge. He stood by her side watching the crowds, and moved sideways for a tall, striking man to squeeze in and he smiled so Gallivant smiled back, the chance to speak lost in the press of people.

Adelina’s attention was fixed on the interloper. Her heart hammered and she went to speak but a whi
stle on the water shattered the mellifluous Marsh sounds and all heads turned. A handsome varnished galliot pulled away from one of the wharves.

Oars were seen to rake the water and a chant broke out over the top of
what had been gentl wharf noise, the prow of the boat swinging as oars feathered to turn the craft north. Then, with a series of shrill whistles that scarified Adelina’s spine, oars struck the water in unison and pulled, propelling Severine and a murderous Luther towards Veniche.

Adelina’s hand had grasped the hob’s sleeve as she recognised the passengers. Her nails dug into the fabric of his coat and had he been able to hear above the whistles and the hum of the crowd, he would have heard her speaking to no one in particular. ‘As Aine is my witness, Severine, I hate you.’ She couldn’t help the sob which racked out as with her other hand she shielded her belly. ‘I hate you and you will pay. Somehow, somehow, you will pay.’

Phelim, standing close, had seen the angst on her face and heard her cursing but before he could speak to her, she and her partner, the skinny hob in the vast riding coat with the capacious pockets, had withdrawn into the milling crowds and Phelim’s attention was drawn to the lower deck of the wharf where a soft lute had begun to play now the galliot had disappeared into the northerly distance.

Adelina hurried against the flowing current of the crowd. She wanted peace and some time to calm herself. The stranger had started it. He had a look of Liam she was sure, only he was a little taller and broader and his hair was darker. She had almost spoken to him, although what she had wanted to say was ridiculous.
Are you Liam’s family? Mad!
But the whistles had started in the galliot and there had been no chance because then she had seen Severine and Luther and her heart dropped through her boots, the idea that she could forget about revenge disappearing in an instant. All her fears and anxieties had rushed headlong and here she was, tearing backwards and forwards along boardwalks with the hob trying to keep pace and asking what was wrong.

She rounded a corner and could run no further. A square lay in front of her, if one made of water could be called such - a liquid space surrounded on all sides by ranks of tiered seating on walkways and in the middle a floating pontoon anchored at each corner. Above the water a system of high wires and swings were strung and an acrobatic troupe practiced for the evening’s festivities. She sank onto one of the lowest seats. High above her, two performers swung rhythmically back and forth and with a distant ‘hop-la’, one somersaulted into the other’s waiting grip. On the pontoon, troupe members mim
ed fear and then joy as the manoeuvre was completed without incident.

Gallivant hurried up panting. ‘Sink me Adelina, what’s amiss? You took off as though your pants were on fire.’ He sat and fanned his face in a dramatic way, expecting some response from her. When silence ensued, except for the ‘hop-la’ on high, he noticed the drooping expression and the watery eyes. Oh Aine, he thought, here we go again. The thing is, he raged, she has every reason for the tears and the thwart emotions. Not just because of all she has been through but because...

‘You think you have grief under control and that life is more balanced,’ she spoke unevenly as she lifted the fraught face to watch the trapezes swinging back and forth. ‘But suddenly something happens - you see something or hear something. Aine,
maybe even smell something and the world you have built shatters again. Like a pane of glass or a mirror. Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.’ She made a movement with her fine long fingers, drifting her hands down to imitate the glass falling. ‘And you know if you are ever going to survive, you have to pick up every shard and join it back together and begin again. And it hurts, oh how it hurts. Because every shard is a memory and every memory a pain. And all you really want to do is tip it all in a bucket, like so much cullet, and forget about it.’

Gallivant sat next to her, neither taking her hand nor speaking emotive
ly. ‘I saw her and I saw Luther,’ he said. ‘At least we know for sure they will be in Veniche and can be on our guard.’

Adelina lifted her hand to her stomach under the coat and rubbed and then reached for the hob’s hand and placed it on the subtle mound. ‘Do you feel it, Gallivant?’

He kept his fingers still and beneath them he felt a tremor, a fluttering like butterfly wings. He sat very quietly until the soft agitation ceased and then he lifted his hands and slipped them into the caverns that were his pockets. ‘At last you have realised, Madame Needlewoman.’

‘You knew?’

‘Adelina!’ He couldn’t help being dismissive. ‘Of course I knew; the nausea, the loss of appetite for anything other than a dry toast and then later the bloom on your skin. Aine, woman, you glow like the Tan Ellyl.’

‘I thought I wasn’t well because of shock, because I was depressed. That I grieved. That the trauma of everything had upended my regular rhythms.’ She shrugged her shoulders, explaining away her ignorance.

‘There is no doubt it did. You still grieve. Patently. The symptoms of both are similar. Curious isn’t it? That such a wondrous event can present with the same awful feelings as the most shattering loss. But all that aside Threadlady, you are with child. And I for one am glad.’ He bussed her cheek with warm lips but she was serious as she sat back and tipped her head to the performers again.

‘It is a life, Gallivant. Kholi’s
child.’ Her expression chilled, filled with none of the joy he hoped for. ‘And she,
SHE,
killed the child’s father and I want her to pay. An eye for an eye. And yet I am a Traveller and should be compassionate because it is what we are.’

Quiet wrapped itself around the couple as the troupe disembarked from the wires and pontoon and presently the only sound was the ubiquitous frog chorus and the slapping of water against the piers of the walkways. ‘She needs some old fashioned Raji treatment.’ The hob’s voice funneled up from the standing collar of his coat where he had dropped his chin to rest on his chest.

‘What do you mean?’

‘During the upheavals of centuries ago - aeons before you were born, Adelina - the Raj was an unusual place. As filled with art and culture as it is now but with inordinate brutality. They would bastinado, ganch, flay. And I ask you... she has murdered not just once but three times at least of which we know. Huh, milady. You may think I am utterly evil
in my thoughts but nothing, nothing at all, is too nasty for her. Or Luther.’

‘Don’t
, Gallivant. Not in front of my child. I can’t bear it. And I can’t bear that I must become a murderer as well.’ She gave an enormous sigh as the hands once again began to rub circles over the mound. ‘I must go to Veniche and it seems I have a number of things to do, doesn’t it?’ She began counting her fingers. ‘Finish the robe and take it to the Museo for I want it to be seen and my story to be found. Secondly I want to know Lhiannon is alive, that Severine hasn’t murdered her, that I haven’t in some way pre-disposed that brave girl to an untimely end. And three?’ She sat for a moment tapping the third finger she held up with the index finger of the other hand. ‘Aine forgive me, it is revenge.’

***

Three little books finished with so much said and so much still to say.

I feel myself in the throes of something momentous. I suppose it could be the birth of my child, after all is that not the ultimate achievement for most women? But in this instance, while I can hardly wait to hold Kholi’s child in my arms, I feel that is not the momentous thing I mean. There is something else, as if the whole of my world might shift, and it scares me. Travellers have strong intuition sometimes and something tells me there is a change coming.

But perhaps we should read on.

Continue to the second last design on the robe. Here you will find the deep indigo purple of the Bittersweet flower. It is of course known colloquially by another name, ‘Deadly Nightshade’, because its toxin is quite fatal and in its time has been used to counter malfeasant Others in their actions. I tell you, as I embroidered the deep violet petals, I would have liked to make a deadly infusion of the flowers and feed it to Severine in some of the wine to which she is notoriously attached.

But I wander in my angst… Under the two flowers you will find two more books and underneath the delicate viridian butterfly another. The embroidery itself is a simple exercise in overcasting, satin stitch, and blanket stitch; nothing special but the effect is there; a flower the colour of a night sky when unseelie spirits fly from barrows and
sidh
.

Read on.