The Porcelain Dove (59 page)

Though that sounded like the end of the matter, it wasn't. They argued it back and forth as I'd often heard them argue before, over the application of a spell or the use of learning Latin. Linotte was impassioned, Pompey reasonable and sympathetic and unyielding as stone. Faintly I understood 'twas my fate they were arguing—my fate against the Wizard of Norroway's. If I wasn't to go on as I was, trapped in the beggar-wizard's curse upon the blood of Maindur, Linotte must
betray her new master's trust and her own love for him. Or she must betray her father, her mother, her brothers, Jean, me.

"Let them suffer," she cried at last. "Let them die. They'll die in the end anyway. And what about the suffering they've caused, like Jorre, with their willful self-love? My mother cannot see past her laudanum and her tambour frame. And my father—my father sees only his birds."

"'Tis not for you to condemn them to death," said Pompey.

"'Tis not for you to condemn the Wizard of Norroway," said Linotte, and stood up from her rock. "Whatever I do, I'll have innocent blood on my hands: either Berthe and Jean or the Wizard must die. Yet Berthe and Jean chose to stay by my parents, knowing what they were and how they were cursed. Leaving the Wizard his cloak seems to me the lesser evil."

Something in this speech had surprised Pompey—what, I could tell no more than I could tell how I knew he was surprised. A crow has no brows to raise, after all, no lips to "O." Perhaps 'twas some lifting of his neck feathers made me think he was startled and, I thought, a little relieved.

"You must trust me, child," he said gently. "Take the Wizard's cloak. If your weird permitted you to ask him for it, I'm sure he'd give it freely."

This speech enraged Linotte past all sense. "Trust thee?" she screamed. "Trickster, shape-changer, savage, why should I trust thee?" Like a child in a rage, she plucked the black feather out of her bosom and flung it off the cliff. "I'll never call thee again, carrion-eater, bird of ill-omen. I need not thy help to be what my blood and destiny make me. I am the youngest child of the house of Jorre Maindur. Murder should come easily to me." And on that word, she spun away inland, running as though she sought to outrun fate.

The feather lifted and flirted out over the fjord before an updraft sidled it back to earth at the Crow's feet. He examined it birdlike, one eye then the other, pecked it up like a grain of corn, and tucked it under his wing. A most unbirdlike sigh, a hop, a beat of his wings, and he was gone. And we were in the Wizard of Norroway's stone hut, waiting with him for Linotte.

He knew she was coming, no doubt of that, and seemed oddly undismayed, though a little abstracted, if the way he was fiddling with his cloak-pin were anything to judge by. I hadn't really noticed the pin before—a flimsy-looking thing, brown and twiggy. After a space,
he rose and walked to the hearth, where he stooped over the fire, presenting his back to the Maid as she stormed in, red-cheeked and breathless. The hut was not large. Two steps took her near enough to rip the cloak from the Wizard's shoulders and fling it across the room.

I can't say I was astonished when the Wizard turned from the fire and sat placidly at the table, no more put out by the loss of his cloak than he'd be by the loss of his sandal. Linotte gawked at him, then erupted into a spate of tears that flooded over her cheeks and chin like a mountain stream at thaw. The Wizard let her weep for a while, and then he said, "Hush, child. These tears do not become the Sorcerer Maid who overcame the Wizard of Norroway and took his magic cloak from him. You'd better take the brooch as well."

Linotte lifted her swollen eyes to him. "No," she said thickly, and blew her nose on her sleeve. "No. I won't take it. He asked for the cloak. That's all I have to give him."

"It won't do him any good without the brooch. You must give him both."

"No. He won't know the difference. And even if he does, he can't send me back to get it. Keep the brooch, Master. Live another thousand years."

The Wizard of Norroway smiled at her, then slipped up the pin of the brooch of rushes and removed it from the shoulder of his long robe of white fur. He raised the hand of the Sorcerer Maid from her lap, laid the brooch in her palm, and closed her fingers over it. When his hand left hers, he withered away into dust.

Grim-eyed, the Maid marked her cheeks and brow with the Wizard's dust, rose, gathered up the cloak, shook it out, and pinned the brooch at its neck. Without a backward glance, she stepped out the Wizard of Norroway's front door straight into the beggar-wizard's tower.

"So, apprentice," said the beggar-wizard. "Hast brought me the Cloak of the Wizard of Norroway, as I asked thee?"

"As you see, Master."

"Thou wert long enough about it. Yet 'tis no matter. Thou art here now, and twice welcome for thy absence."

This was a new tune, and no mistake. The Maid eyed the old man narrowly, as did I. He'd thrown a kind of glamour over himself so that his four hundred years sat more lightly upon him than they had, and fixed his lips into a rictus that did duty as a smile. He wore Le
Destin's scarlet velvet suit—upon which now flourished a costly fungus of gold embroidery—and a long, black, curling wig. On one beringed hand, as stiff and out of place there as the smile on his lips, perched a gleaming white bird.

"So that's the Porcelain Dove," said the Maid, and reached out her hand to it. Beside me, monsieur growled low in his throat; from the corner of my eye, I saw his fingers twitch and scrabble upon his thighs. It seemed to me that the beggar-wizard glanced out towards us and that his smile broadened. Or perhaps he only rejoiced to see Linotte so eager—who knows? His joy was a cruel joy in either case, the cat's joy in lifting a single claw from the wing of her prey.

"First give me the Cloak," said the beggar-wizard; and with a bitter tenderness, she laid it across his knees and watched hot-eyed as he fingered it.

"I hope it brings me more joy than thy first gift, ma mie. The Horse of the North Wind will suffer nor saddle nor bridle—no, not so much as a hand laid upon him. He's been the death of two good grooms."

The Maid cast down her eyes. "The cloak will not harm you," she said.

"Nevertheless. Now for the third task, that pays for all." The beggar-wizard laid the cloak aside and, taking up his staff, rose from the high carved chair he'd been sitting in. As he stood, he grew more upright, more lordly, until he seemed a king among wizards: crowned with black cloud, a scepter of thorn in his left hand, and in his right, a living, feathered orb. Blood and night robed him, and his words crashed and rattled like rocks in a landslide.

"Hear thy fate, O Child of Maindur. Life for life is my right, and life for life shall I have. Thy third task is to give me a daughter of my getting, to love and rear and teach in the place of my lost Colette. Thou wilt therefore wed with me, and be my wife at bed and at board until that thou dost conceive and bear forth a girl-child alive."

As though the words had been rocks indeed, they beat upon the Maid until she huddled to the floor with her hands to her ears. She had not wept when the Wizard of Norroway fell to dust; she did not weep now. Like her father at the sack of Beauxprés, she only gazed upon her tormentor as though the very intensity of her look might silence him.

The beggar-wizard returned her gaze, a smile upon his bearded lips. "Well, girl?"

Linotte lowered her hands to her lap and shut her eyes. "A year and a day," she said. " 'Tis my right."

"Thou wert more than two years in Norroway, and in the house of Boreas less than one. Thyself hast set aside the binding of time. Never think to take it up again, now it chances to serve thy turn."

The Maid nodded. "Three days to decide."

"No."

She opened her eyes and glared at him. "Three days to prepare, then. No bride should go to her marriage without time in which to bid her maidenhead farewell and make her a gown to be wed in."

"You consent?" Triumph and suspicion warred in the wizard's voice.

"I do." Very clipped, and the breath bated at the end of the phrase, awaiting his response.

He grinned like a skull. "Thou shalt have thy three days, ma mie, alone, as thou hast asked, providing thou keep to the island and seek not to venture abroad. In earnest of which promise, do thou kiss me."

Stiffly the Maid gained her feet and stepped towards him. On his fist, the Porcelain Dove cucuroo'd in its pearly throat. She halted and considered it, her dark eyes unfathomable.

"Yes—'tis fair, my Dove. But not so fair as my dead child. Come. Thy kiss."

Another step brought her to him. She lifted her face and, firm and unshrinking, laid her lips to his. Then she turned and went from him, down through the tower and out to the stable where the Horse of the North Wind, looking sadly neglected, greeted her with soft whickers of joy.

The three days of the beggar-wizard's grace the Maid passed in the stable, grooming the matted hair from the Horse's coat, cleaning his stall, sitting on an upturned bucket with the wand of the Fairy Friandise in her hand and, at her feet, the Horse's bridle and the silver walnut she'd brought with her from the cabinet des Fées. Once she waved the wand, whispering words over it she'd learned of the Wizard of Norroway. It gained her a sticky handful of marzipan pigs and the usual cloud of purple dust. The dust eddied about the Horse, who snuffled at it, then shook his ears and neighed gustily. The Maid stared at him and the purple sparkles so incongruously bespangling his mane, and helplessly began to laugh, her laughter as painful as weeping. She fed the marzipan pigs to the Horse, cast her arms around his neck
and stood with her head tucked under his jaw while the purple glitter faded slowly into the air.

Well. I could make nothing of that, nor of the calm with which, next morning, Linotte cracked open the silver walnut and found—to no one's surprise—a gown as bright as the stars.

I confess I'd always wondered what such a gown would look like, how it would be fashioned, and above all, how she'd manage to put it on without a maid to lace it up for her and drape the skirts. So 'twas with a professional interest that I watched her strip off her boy's clothes, shake out the gown, and cast it over her head. Alas, the gown was so bright that I couldn't look directly at it, but must squint with slitted eyes at the quicksilver folds rippling down Linotte's body to clothe her in a seamless glory of light. Prosaically, she combed out her short black hair with her fingers, and before leaving the stable, waved the wand of the Fairy Friandise, ate a marzipan pig, and pulled the dust around her like a sparkling mantle.

All that came before and after the wedding, I remember well. The wedding itself I don't care to remember. 'Twas like no nuptial Mass I've ever heard sung, that I will say, the groom himself conducting the rite in accordance with rubrics as strange as they were foul. In comparison to the ceremony, the eerie witnesses seemed like old friends. There they were: Jorre's victims, the children of madame's bedchamber, the creeping infants, the staggering babes, the little maids and lads of five or six years' growth. I could hardly bear to look at them for wondering if they'd been disturbed by my pawing through their bones and which of them, living, had owned the skull I'd shattered to dust. Yet look on them I must, for they impressed themselves upon my senses even with my eyes shut: rank upon rank of childish faces, still and unreadable as servants' faces, waiting.

At last the rite drew to an end. The wizard, plunging his hand into a brazier filled with aromatic coals, drew forth a ring that glowed red. This ring he thrust onto the forefinger of the Maid's left hand. I saw her pale lips move—a spell of warding, I suppose, for she neither winced nor withdrew her hand from the burning gleed. Then the watching children sighed and faded from sight, and the beggar-wizard, smiling, took his bride by the hand and led her up to bed.

Helplessly I watched as they mounted the winding stair, their steps illuminated by the gown as bright as the stars. When they came to the top, the gown's light fell upon a small, round chamber, empty
save for a wooden bed of ancient and rustic design. The wizard turned to the Maid and touched her above the heart, and the gown as bright as the stars flowed away from his hand like water to gather in a gleaming puddle at her feet. Her hands moved to cover her breasts and her sex. He laughed; they fell away again to hang passive at her sides.

A flick of his hand, and his own garments fell from him—all save the rusty black cloak he wore hung over his shoulders, fastened at his throat by the brooch of rushes. He let fall, too, the glamour he'd cast upon his person. I don't know how a man four hundred years old might be expected to look, few such having been recorded since the days of Abraham and Methuselah. This man was seamed of skin, sunken of belly and chest, shrunk of shank, gray and lax from head to horny foot, save for his manhood that rose in dark and angry salutation to his wife.

Taking her hand, he led her to the bed, laid her down upon it, knelt between her legs. He stroked her impassive face, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, his hands moving like insects across her white skin. And all the while he stroked and caressed his wife, when he mounted and as he rode her, his eyes were fixed, not on her, but on monsieur, and he smiled at him an old man's gap-toothed smile.

Beside me, I felt monsieur stir, heard his harsh breath in his throat like a death-rattle that had no end. I thought—I prayed—that I'd go blind, go mad, die with the horror of the wizard's revenge. Linotte's hand crept up her husband's haunch. He glanced down at her, startled, and she moaned and heaved her hips and locked her shapely legs around his withered buttocks. For the first time, he bent his head to kiss her. The black cloak covered them, its rusty darkness making whiter by contrast the arm Linotte twined about her husband's neck. Finally he gave a great thrust and cried out; shuddered and gurgled deep in his throat, then collapsed upon his wife in the lassitude of passion spent.

How many nights to get a child, I thought. Will he force us to watch them all, and the birthing, too? And: how many years have we sat here?