Wasp (34 page)

The door swings inwards. The turnkey stands framed in the lantern light from the passage. He steps aside and the Abbess walks into the cell. Moth scrabbles to the end of the bed, her bare feet slithering on the sacking.

‘I think you two have talked enough,’ the Abbess says.

Wasp grinds through the rest of the day with a dozen different thoughts shouting for space in her head. The Abbess had sent her back from the jail in a hired chair. Running upstairs, she’d found the bedchamber door locked. Rattling the doorknob achieved nothing. Eventually she went in search of Eloise, finding her in the maids’ parlour with her feet propped up in front of the hearth and a coffee cup on the table beside her.

‘No mistake,
chérie,
’ Eloise explained. ‘The time has come for you to fly the nest. Here, let me show you to your new palace. You will enjoy having a place to yourself,
oui?
’

Wasp followed the maid along the passage until she stopped outside Moth’s bedchamber.

‘I don’t want this,’ Wasp protested.

‘Well, you’ve got it,’ Eloise said, leaving Wasp standing at the door.

Fresh linen covered the bed, a fire was already crackling in the hearth and a clutch of fresh flowers had been placed next to a ewer brimming with water. Towels were piled beside the basin and a clean day gown hung in the wardrobe. Wasp tugged open the top of the dresser. Brushes, scent bottles, a pot of rouge and some powder. She slammed the drawer closed and sat on the edge of the bed. Could dark horrors really live behind these cream-plastered walls? Or were they rattling about, like the chains that bound her, inside Moth’s own head?

Afternoon fades into dusk. Wasp tries to catch up on a few society magazines but finds it impossible to settle. Finally a weary-looking Eloise waddles into Wasp’s new bedchamber and sets a tray of tea and buttered scones on the fireside table.

‘Any news?’ Wasp asks.

The maid tucks a few loose strands of hair back under her mob cap. ‘Moth is home and with the Fixer. She keeps trying to send a message to the Abbess but no one will listen to her.’

‘Will she be branded again?’

‘Truly,
enfant,
I do not know.’

After Eloise leaves, Wasp sits on the fireside chair and stares at the pots of butter and blood-red jam. Her belly squirms at the thought of eating anything. The tea tastes sour and she spits it into the fire. Finally she slips out of her day gown, pulls on a fresh shift and blows out the candle. This room and its furnishings are nearly identical to the bedchamber she’d shared with Hummingbird, yet everything feels different. The sheets are stiff, the mattress hollowed in all the wrong places. She tries tossing her pillows every which way but still can’t get comfortable. In the grate, the fire crackles and dies. Shadows soften and are swallowed by the dark.

I miss Hummingbird,
she thinks.
I miss her soft hair brushing my cheek. I miss her cold feet shivering the backs of my knees, and her tickly little snore.

Finally, alone in that barren room with the moon cycling in the sky outside like a pitted shilling, Wasp finds a door into sleep.

She wakes with a splitting headache and grit-encrusted eyes. She turns over to speak to Hummingbird then remembers with a clarity every bit as painful as the hammers thumping away at the front of her skull. Pulling herself to a sitting position, she rubs both eyes and tries to adjust to the sunlight streaming through the open curtains. A new fire crackles in the grate and last night’s uneaten supper has been taken away.

‘Eloise, with such quiet feet you would make a good cutpurse,’ Wasp mutters. A splash of cold water and a fresh day gown puts her in the right mood to face the day. The day brings an Assignment.

Wasp stares at the name. Initially thinking it must be Richard, that he’d kept good on his word in the carriage that day, she’d slipped away from breakfast at the earliest opportunity and taken the scroll upstairs. But it isn’t her bold admirer. It’s Mother Joan. And the Assignment is for that afternoon.

Instead of Leonardo or Kingfisher a hire carriage arrives with a starched driver on the bench. His glance bites as she climbs inside.

Fine,
she thinks.
I’ll wager I eat at a better table than you.

Mother Joan waits in her usual chair, a yappy white dog perched on her lap. The same old nonsense spills out of her mouth. ‘Dear Polly’ this and ‘Darling Polly’ that. Wasp’s headache bangs inside her skull. She forces herself to drink the insipid tea and eat the cakes Constance brings in. Carriage wheels clatter outside and set the dog barking. It tries to leap out of Mother Joan’s lap while she burbles soothing words. Wasp regards those sagging, powdered cheeks and thinks of Moth sitting white-faced and chained in a stinking jail cell. Mother Joan’s mouth more and more resembles a ragged hole. Cake crumbs have lodged between her teeth. Her voice seems to gain in pitch until it becomes a ceaseless whine. Wasp feels as if needles are being shoved into her ears. She chokes on a lump of lemon cake and bends over, coughing.

‘There, there, dear.’ Mother Joan plucks a blue kerchief from the fireside table. ‘Take a sip of water then dab your eyes with this. Look, it’s your favourite colour.’

Wasp tears open her bodice in a shower of fastenings. ‘These aren’t my clothes and I am not your daughter. Neither am I your sister, cousin or grandchild. I have no place here and I don’t belong with you. Blue is not my favourite colour, I hate this tea and your cakes turn my stomach.’

Off goes the dog again.
Yap-yap-yap.
Mother Joan shrinks into her chair. ‘You are upsetting Belle.’

‘As for that beast, I’d like to wring its flea-bitten neck for the way it makes me scratch. It stinks like a privy, and eyes everything I eat as if it didn’t already have enough to stuff its fat belly with. Why d’you make me come here? Why do this to yourself? For pity’s sake let the past die.’

There. That’s it. Wasp falls back against the sofa, torn material flapping around her exposed breasts. To add to her indignity, the borrowed dress rips at the thigh.

Now I’ve done it. I’ll get thrown out. No carriage to take me back. I’ll have to walk. The Abbess will hear of it and I’ll fetch a brand. Maybe on the back of the hand like Moth. Maybe somewhere worse. I might lose my Emblem. I’ll have a scar on my cheek like Eloise and spend the rest of my life cleaning out fireplaces.

‘Does my game really upset you so?’

Mother Joan’s voice is evenly toned, as if she’s simply asking the time of day or the state of the weather. Wasp buries her face in her hands. ‘It’s wrong. Polly should be allowed to rest in peace. You can’t cling to someone by dressing a stranger up in a badly fitting gown.’ She strokes her brow. ‘I feel my head will burst.’

Mother Joan regards her with a hint of a smile on her lips. ‘I’ll wager your pride hurts more.’

Wasp takes the offered kerchief and blows hard, thinking of how the Fixer wouldn’t approve of such an unladylike gesture. Mother Joan indicates the chair on the other side of the hearth. ‘Come and sit over here. It’s time we had a real talk. No games. No masks.’

What else have I to lose?
Wasp does as she is bidden. Cushions sink beneath her weight.

‘I take it you’ve had your fill of tea,’ Mother Joan continues. ‘Is there anything else you would prefer? Water? Lemonade? Perhaps a nip of Madeira? It’s wonderful for settling the nerves. I speak from experience, believe me.’

Wasp shakes her head.

‘Give me a moment to put Belle somewhere quieter. I’ll also need to settle Constance. She’ll be concerned.’

‘I’m sorry. ’

‘Don’t be. As a little girl I was never very good at playing Charades.’ She rises from her chair in a rustle of petticoats and carries the dog, whimpering now, out of the room. Wasp closes both eyes and massages her temples. The headache softens from a roar to a dull
thump-thump
like an extra heartbeat inside her skull. A moment later her hostess is back, a cup in her hands.

‘This is a herbal draught,’ she explains. ‘Cook makes them. She’s no apothecary but her family is gifted when it comes to natural remedies. I always keep some nearby. It will help settle you.’

Wasp takes the cup and sips the contents. Warm spices swill around her tongue. She mumbles her thanks.

‘Now,’ Mother Joan continues, ‘Constance has laid out your own garments in the withdrawing room. Once you have changed, come back here and we shall talk. This is one conversation, I think, that is long overdue.’

Something Right, Something Wrong

‘Get that thing out of my House.’

‘She cannot go back. She will be beaten. Perhaps worse.’

‘Then throw it in the river.’

‘Abbess, this is Mawusi, daughter of our village healer.’

‘Not my concern. Or yours. Everyone in this House has left their past behind. I put the roof over your head, food in your belly and those clothes on your back. You are mine.
Mine.
’

Kingfisher cannot pretend to know the Abbess beyond the patchwork shell she presents. This woman is a hunter who’s fought most of her life. Beyond the glamour of the House her trophies and disasters are things she keeps to herself. But milk turned sour can still look white, and something has spoiled inside her head. That much he
can
tell, because he’s been taught by a man in whose hands dwelt miracles.

Tribes along the river called him the bone sniffer. Many came to see him, all bringing gifts. Not worthless trinkets, but fruit, livestock or salt. Items important to the village’s prosperity. Outsiders considered his skills godlike, though he made no claim to divinity. ‘My magic lies here, in my eyes, nose, fingertips. If someone is ill his body will tell you. A man smiles. His mouth says “I am happy”. But what claim do his eyes make, the set of his jaw, the stiffness of his shoulders? Are his hands relaxed and open, or curled into fists? Does he stand easy, or ready to pounce? Warriors ask these things all the time, yet no one thinks them mystics.’

Kingfisher looks down at the girl standing beside him. Her presence is neither fate nor coincidence, but due to one of those moments that can send a life down a completely different course, for good or ill.

The Abbess waves her arms. She’s not wearing her porcelain teeth and their absence pulls her mouth into a puckered ‘O’. ‘I sent you out for money, good money that’s mine by right, and you return with this baggage. The House of Masques is not a refuge for any heathen you have a notion to liberate. Throw it out, or you can join it in the gutter. Make your choice.’

Kingfisher returns the girl to the Mirror Room and the back door.

‘What will you do?’ she says in the song of their homeland. ‘Am I to be betrayed again? That woman is full of bad spirit. She wants you to kill me. It was on her face. Will you shame yourself a second time?’

‘I won’t put your blood on my hands.’

‘It is there already. It was there when those slavers put their chains on me. Take the chains away and perhaps then the blood will go.’

‘It seems I am still in chains myself.’

The Other Side of the Page

‘When Polly died,’ Mother Joan says, ‘when I saw her stretched out on her bed, her head caved in like a crushed egg, I came downstairs and spent an hour walking around looking at everything. There was the half-dish of tea, now gone cold, lying where she’d left it that morning. Her sampler was on its place beside the fire. Crumbs littered the dining-room table where she’d sat and had breakfast; ham and soft bread dripping with butter — she always loved it. My tears were a long way off. You could have pricked me with an embroidery needle and I wouldn’t have noticed. I sat where she’d sat, on the chair, imagining it still warm. I refused to let Constance touch anything. One by one I picked the crumbs off the table, winkled them out until there was a pile in front of me. I couldn’t brush them away. They were proof that Polly had lived, had smiled at me that morning, her hands stroking my hair.’

Mother Joan rubs the corner of her eye. ‘I took her clothes out of the dresser and spent the afternoon running my fingers over the material. A couple of her bodices had hair around the shoulders — thick auburn strands, not thin and fair like her father’s. But then Polly never wore a powdered wig, never hid her hair from the sun. She was always so healthy.