The Last Stitch (The Chronicles of Eirie: 2) (23 page)

Chapter Forty One

Gallivant and Phelim had spent that morning
searching for the Ca’ Specchio in line with Phelim’s intuition. Gallivant trotted ahead on frenetic legs, frequently walking backwards to deliver part of the conversation and then running into people and having to turn back to apologise. Phelim grinned as another fountain of apologies poured down with the rain over the heads of the unfortunate public who had toes trodden on or shopping dislodged. Finally he reached forward and grabbed the hob by the arm.

‘Gallivant, slow down. I have long legs and you are covering the ground faster than myself. Nothing is to be gained by rushing.’ He
began to wave his hand in front of his body.

‘Don’t you mesmer me.
I promise I’ll heed your words. It’s just when I’m agitated I become fast and frantic. It’s always been a problem.’

Phelim removed his hand and thrust it in his pocket. ‘Truth to tell I think we shall find the Ca’ Specchio in no time, for here is the Fondamenta Minotto.’

Before them ran a broad walk on the edge of the Rio del Malcanton. The canal was bridged at either end with handsome enclosed structures. Gallivant stood mercifully still as he looked around. ‘Sink me but what an elegant place. I think if the rain ever stopped here and the sun shone, that it could be a city filled with light. The water would reflect so much, wouldn’t it?

‘Indeed and there is the place we want. How could one miss it?’ Phelim could see what Ebba had meant when she said it was supposed to be the most elegant palace in Veniche. The Ca’ Specchio sat in the
middle of the fondamenta in its freshly painted apricot glory - a colour only softened and enhanced by the drizzle blurring the lines of the rest of Veniche.

The hob’s breath sucked in. ‘Do you realise the Palazzo di Accia is around that bend? There we were dashing all around and it was closer tha
n we could have imagined. Damn it, but I don’t like that madwoman being so close.’

‘She’ll be even closer this evening, Gallivant, so we must get used to it. Shall we go over?’

They hailed a gondola and asked to be taken to the entrance landing of the Specchio. The craft threaded through the channel markers and moored at the landing and the two companions mingled with all those artisans and merchants who came and went. But there were Others too, unseen by mortals, drifting in and out of the glassed doors that opened onto the landing. Phelim studied the magnificent people go
ing about their business dressed in black, drawing no attention to themselves, except for the occasional small prank - drops of mortar on heads, a bag of nails tipped on the floor and such, but over all a dreaminess wound like a lacy fog - a mesmer designed to put all in a gentle mood. Even the hob seemed overcome. He walked into the entrance hall with a smile on the visage that had for so long been pleated and tucked.

The chequerboard floor tiles gleamed. Two perfectly symmetrical stairwells curved around the walls to meet on the first floor landing. At either end of the stair, unlit black iron flambeaus stood sentinel. On the ground floor and positioned against the wall, equidistant from each staircase, a massive oak table stood supporting an urn of gargantuan size in which a florist was attempting to arrange flowers. She stood on a ladder and manhandled large branches of white magnolia and dogwood and vast long stemmed lilies. Broken petals and chips of stem and bark lay around the ladder legs and the smell of Raji lilies began to fill the hall. Staff ran up and down the stairs, carting buckets of coal, logs, trugs of ivory candles.

The walls of the entrance were bare, the paintwork ivory. Nothing but the flambeaus, the floral arrangement and the wrought balustrading decorated the space. It was as though it waited for the bedecked guests of Carnivale. Phelim and Gallivant stepped around the frantic servitors and artisans to go up the stair but two largely built men blocked their path. ‘No one up the stair who ‘asn’t got a pass.’ A wooden staff barred the way.

‘Me
smer him,’ Gallivant whispered.

‘’Ere, what d’you say?’ The other man went
to pull at the hob’s shoulder.

Phelim backed off, pushing the hob before him, the bag of souls resting
with gentle warmth against the blisters and weals at his ribs so that for a moment he wondered what it was they reacted to. Pulling Gallivant, he turned his back on the guards and began walking away with the hob chiding him roundly for not being more Faeran. But he forbore to retaliate.

Had he looked back to the landing at the top of the stair, he would have seen a tall, elderly man leaning on the rail watching them with interest. Jasper slapped his palms on the wrought iron and with a swish of his black riding coat turned and entered the ballroom invisibly behind a trail of maids with mops and rags.

‘We could have found the portal, Phelim. Honestly!’ They searched the landing for their gondolier. ‘At least if we knew the layout it would help Adelina more. Everything helps, you know.’

‘You care for her, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’ He looked at Phelim with bruised eyes and sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to, you know. I was just going to mind her as Lhiannon and Jasper had asked but the woman has this way about her. It’s not just her beauty nor her artistry even. She has lost everything and born it as well as she can and Aine she has suffered. On top of that, somehow the silly wench made a promise to Others that she would avenge the loss of Liam and Elriade, a promise which by its very nature becomes sacred. Phelim, it weighs so heavily upon her; she truly struggles with the dilemma. And then there is this most recent travesty.’ Gallivant had once again begun his ‘fast’ mode, and Phelim could not, indeed would not interrupt. ‘She shows no obvious reaction,’ the hob said and was silent for a miniscule moment. ‘Well no, I suppose her anger earlier was reaction, wasn’t it? I wish I could spirit her away from all this. To think she must take Severine’s life, for its what they all want, isn’t it? It’ll be the last straw. Oh, how I wish I had another lamp! That’s how we escaped from Mevagavinney, you know - Aladdin’s lamp. It started as whimsy. She had sewn Aladdin onto the robe and I felt he needed a tiny lamp and we had a gold charm and I wondered what if the charm was a real lamp and I had this feeling and of course I was right. Now I would like to rub a lamp and wish her far away from Veniche and all her troubles.’ He took a breath at last and was quiet.

‘Gallivant,
’ Phelim said with due respect. ‘They are monumental troubles, as you say. But perhaps it is Fate that she must do this, go through with the whole thing. All of us have a path we must tread and sometimes, no matter the cost, we cannot divert. It may be the same for Adelina.’ And myself, he thought, for things changed with Ebba's revelation and then again when I saw Adelina.
How they changed.
‘All we can do is support her and support each other. What will be will be. In the meantime, I think we need to buy ball-gowns and suitable men’s attire.’

‘Yes,’ Gallivant sighed again,
as if the world were full of such sighs. ‘We must shop. Shall we try that alley near the inn?’ Phelim let the hob lead, it suited him to let the fellow rabbit a little longer, for he himself had his own thoughts, his own grief, his own desires and it did not serve to dwell on them.

***

What a maladjusted bunch we were. Every one of us in this tale has had baggage that could have reached the heights of Mt. Goti. But I suppose that is the truth of life. Our experiences and how we cope with them, good or bad, creates that mountain. Myself? I had almost reached the apogee of my endeavours. If I allowed myself to wallow in amongst the satchels and bags of my past experiences, I would never be able to drag myself out to decide what I must do and do it.

I
meant what I said to Gallivant; I needed to do this on my own. That is not to say I didn’t appreciate what my friends had done. How could I not? But now I needed to go on alone and that was an end to it. When Adelina the embroiderer sets her mind to something, no matter how hurt and despoiled she may be, she will do it.

So my friend, time for the penultimate journal. On with the treasure hunt - it is an easy little thing to find once you have replaced the previous book under the petit-point. Go to the ivory coloured fan in the bride’s hands... a perishingly ghastly thing to embroider in whipped spider-web stitch. I truly wasn’t in the mood I can tell you but needs must and it was a mammoth diversion from the anxieties that threatened to tip me over the edge. Underneath the fan is a thin ivory pamphlet stitched with a simple binding.

Only small…

Chapter Forty Two

Severine sat facing her mirror. The maid had finished her hair and it slid in a smooth ebony sweep up her neck and around her crown, laced beautifully with fine gold wire studded with tiny emeralds. She ran her hands down the alabaster neck, noting the smoothness, the absence of age, and began her toilette, applying maquillage with great skill - enhancing, concealing, like an artist at work. Her grey eyes glistened with an excitement she could not hide, nor did she want to. She knew that such anticipation honed her beauty, taking it to even more remarkable heights. As she opened the ivory containers, she ran over the events of her ascendency.
Gertus, ah... Best to forget. The four cantrips and the ring. The silk seller and Liam... Pop and I had two souls.

She clasped her hands over her middle as her stomach cramped, resulting in a dash to the
garde-robe. Afterward, she had a moment of intense exhilaration but then another rush of anxiety. Never in her life had she been so nervous.
Why
? It doesn’t make sense because it is all going to be so easy.

Tonight I shall wear the robe to bed and in a heartbeat I shall be immortal, so why should I be afraid?
The glacial face stared back at her from the looking glass.
I will be remembered tonight. Never ever forgotten. What people see tonight will go down in history. Immemorial, immortal.

The maid returned to the chamber carrying the emerald gown and Severine slipped into it whilst the maid buttoned the thirty buttons down the centre back. The lithe silk garment fell in pleats from underneath her breasts, from a décolletage that almost defied etiquette and her arms were covered tightly
by the silk, finishing in dagger-sharp points over the top of her hands. The maid passed her a sash of peacock blue silk and she tied an enormous bow beneath her breasts.

‘Oh
!’ The girl’s eyes opened wide. It was enough, that tiny gasp. Knowing she surpassed perfection, Severine dismissed the maid. She wanted to admire herself for a little, to stand in front of the mirror and smile and simper and catch herself glancing over her shoulder.

She screwed emerald drops into her ears and picked up her mask, a
colombina festa fantasia;
gilded and decorated with peacock plumage, both green and white, but with that startling turquoise eye in the tip of each feather. Everything about her was startling unforgettable.

Her stomach fluttered aga
in and she groaned a little, making a dash for the wine decanter, her gown rustling and whispering. In a common, un-ladylike swig, she threw back a full glass and waited, hands pressing down on the top of the table. Another.
Yes, it helps.
Her limbs loosened as the wine unleashed euphoria. ‘Be calm, Severine
,
’ she muttered, ‘face your magnificent destiny.’ She refused to countenance a faint voice far far away - ‘
You’ll find out
.’

Luther had never been as filled with berserk anger in his life. He wondered how to tell Madame the woman had slipped through his fingers. Others
must
be helping Adelina. He had never had to deal with Others until meeting Madame with her insane desires and he hated the woman for the trouble she caused him as he bent to her desires. He hated Adelina with a passion as well, for the pain she induced. He despised the female race! If he should find Adelina tonight, he would kill her as soon as he had the location of the robe. Oh he’d kill her alright, no second chances. He didn’t want the bitch now, she had too much to answer for.

He pulled on the tai
lored frock coat he had bought, figured silk that clung to his broad muscle. He looked in the mirror and was struck by the elegance of his attire. At least that had been worth Madame’s lunatic endeavours. He preened, for a moment entirely unaware that a sow’s ear was always a sow’s ear and never a silk purse. As he turned to admire the drape of the tails over his back, he thought he noticed a figure in the mirror - misty, indistinct, a faint apparition.

He spun around as the candelabra caught the sheen of dark hair. But there was nothing.

He coughed, breath caught in his throat, his heartbeat racketing in his chest, and sat on the bed to slip into the patent leather dancing slippers. Hearing a noise and turning his head, he caught a waft of perfume, Other in its fragrance. And a tinkle of a laugh that set tremours tripping down his backbone.

He flashed a nervous glance to all t
he dark corners of the room...
Nothing.

Then a distant voice calling,
‘You’ll find out!’
  and ending in a gurgling shriek.

He jumped to his feet and flung hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut.
Enough!
This is just tension, he thought. He hurried to the decanter and upended it into his mouth, swallow after swallow, and then went to his desk to finger those things that gave him the most comfort.

His
wicked arsenal stretched across the polished surface, glistening in the lamplight. They could mame, kill in a stroke.
But,
his insecurities said, they were useless against Others who would stand invisibly behind him and mesmer before he could even strike, despatching him like a speck of detested dust. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his upper lip and caught sight of his face in the mirror. For the first time in his sordid life he glimpsed anxiety in his eyes as he realised he had no weapon to protect against the Others, or with which he could attack.

But Madame does! The ring!

So now he, the assassin Luther, must hide behind the skirts of a woman.

Behir, he hated her! He hated all women! For so long he’d enjoyed taking what he wanted from them. He had thought it was concupiscence but now he realised it was cruel misogeny, a desire to dominate and have them fear him because in fear there was power
and in such power the creation of enjoyable lust.

He would not hide behind Severine. She too had emasculated him but he had been too caught up in the lust for gems, possessions and status to s
ee it. By her whimsical quest for immortality, she had rendered him impotent against the worst enemies in the world of Eirie and she would pay. She and Adelina would both learn that one didn’t cross Luther. What was Madame’s would be his - a simple matter of brutal conveyancing.

Glancing in the mirror again, he delighted t
o see fear had vanished in as swift a manner as the lights of the Teine Sidhe. He snatched up his
diavolo
mask, admiring the bold red against the ebony of his coat and the pristine white of a diamond studded cravat and stockings.

So cau
ght up in his perceived superiority was he that he didn’t hear the voice once again whispering
‘You’ll find out!’

At the Pensione Esperia, the companions had dressed for the Carnivale Ball and the hob had dashed downstairs to call for a gondola. Between Adelina and Phelim there hung a heavy silence, each individual racked with thoughts on the possible progression of the evening.

Phelim looked across at Adelina as she struggled with the heavy black silk gown, trying to drape the back of it. He moved close to her, smelling her fragrance and longing to be intimate, to touch her man to woman; to slide his fingers down the skin of her neck, onto her shoulders. Instead he calmly fixed the folds of the gown where they were twisted and eased the high-cut collar at her back where her curls flicked the top edge. As his fingers felt the hair graze his skin, he experienced a shudder of desire so strong, he could barely understand it.

‘You know,’ he said
, shaking his head a little to settle his composure. ‘You and I both have a duty to accomplish tonight. Yes, I am aware there is something you must do.’ He didn’t enlarge. To reveal the hob had informed him would be to betray a confidence and might make it necessary for a revelation of Phelim’s own task. ‘I will help if I can, Adelina.’ He turned her round so that she looked up at him with her wide hazel eyes. He saw an element of anxiety and confusion and he ran his finger down her cheek. ‘Don’t worry,’ he spoke softly. ‘All will be well.’ He kissed her cheek, surprised as she leaned towards the light pressure of his lips.

But then she drew back, running her hands down the front of her silk gown. ‘The design reminds me of the stumpwork gown,’ she noted as she glanced over to the shrouded shape hanging behind the door. ‘It’s a pity we all have to wear black.’

Gallivant, who had returned
to tell them the gondola had been called and who had watched the exchange between Adelina and Phelim with interest, responded. ‘Black is what everything is till midnight but once the Days of the Dark are over, you may be surprised at what might happen’. He smoothed the wrinkles from his white stockings and breeches and tapped his feet in their velvet dancing pumps. Anything could happen, he whispered to himself as he fingered the edge of his coat. Patterned with cut velvet flowers in shades of ebony, he liked the way it clung to shoulders that seemed to have broadened. Running his hands over a freshly shaved chin, he felt there was a harder angularity to his face as if youth had finally been chased away. The Stitcher’s doing, he surmised.
The trials of being a carer.

Adelina watched Phelim out of the corner of her eye and wondered at the similarity and otherwise between he and Liam, feeling his lips again on her cheek, remembering his brother’s clasp in the van hours before he died. With the thought, her stomach flipped upside-down and she sat with a thump. Fortunately the others were busy gathering together the masks and tying them on, so were unaware of her distress and she had time to smooth her belly and feel her child beneath the full drape of the silk folds. When Gallivant approached her with the
colombina,
she smiled at his own choice of mask. ‘Pinocchio, Gallivant?’

‘Sink me,
well what do you expect? I have danced to your tune, Threadlady, since I met you
and
I still do. The very instruction to allow you room to complete your task on your own is evidence enough. You still pull my strings.’ He gave a jerky puppet-like bow as he handed over her mask.

As he tied it on for her underneath the upswept tawny curls, she spoke in a whisper.
‘You are still my friend, Gallivant and I will love you all my life for what you have done for me. But tonight you must just be patient, I beg you.’

He finished tying the ribbons, saying nothing, just bowed again over fingers that were tremulously cold and curled them in his hand and kissed them.

Gallivant and Adelina slipped down the stairs ahead of Phelim and he watched them go. He prayed to Aine to watch over them as something told h
im things were about to change. Even the weather had begun to alter - damp and eerie seafog had replaced the rain, floating amongst the cupolas.
Yes, things are about to change.

***

I felt as if a nest of worms were inside me. They wriggled and writhed and I had never felt as stretched with nerves as this night. Phelim’s words, even his touch, had made things worse although I knew he meant to ease me. Even as a prisoner at Mevagavinney and wracked with grief and hate, I had never felt like this. And do you know, I had still not decided what I should do. My mind vacillated from one extreme to another - to do or not to do until I felt torn apart by my indecision.

Now, beloved companion of the book, I would ask you to replace the pamphlet and take up a pair of tweezers. You will see that we have reached that book of which I spoke earlier - the only one on the whole robe that is not concealed, hanging as it is from the bride’s wrist.

If you are still with me, it means that you have not defied my warnings and have left it well alone. I spoke the truth, you see. It has a charm placed upon it, more like a curse in fact, that if you touch the book or the pages with your bare fingers then you will, quite simply, die.

You will shrivel and curl and blacken as if you had been placed upon the fire. Why, you ask? Read on, holding the book with tweezers, turning the pages likewise and you’ll find out.