Scarlet in the Snow Read online

  ‘Yes. You may do so, but I must read it before you send it. It seems harsh, I know,’ she went on gently, ‘but it cannot be any other way. And I promise that no harm shall befall you while you are here. In fact, you will be treated like an honoured guest.’

  I swallowed. ‘How – how long must I be here?’

  ‘That, I cannot tell you. Yet.’

  I wanted to yell and scream at her that she had no right – they had no right – to keep me here, but I knew it would do no good. So instead I said, ‘At least . . . What I told Mama about – about being paid; my family . . . things have been tough, and –’

  ‘Of course. It shall be arranged,’ said Luel calmly. ‘Your family will be well provided for, I promise that. And in return, I ask only this: that you promise not to try to escape.’

  I looked at her. ‘I promise,’ I lied. It was the duty of a prisoner to escape, I thought; and a gilded cage was still a cage, no matter how anyone might dress it up.

  Luel shrouded the mirror again, and we went out of the room and back up the stairs. She locked the door firmly behind us, pocketed the key, then led me into the hall and up the great staircase to a room on the first floor that she said was to be mine. Looking out over a long sweep of snow-covered lawn that stretched right to the other side of the hedge at the back of the house, it was light and airy but just as warm as the other rooms in the house. Pale gold velvet curtains framed the windows, and the floor was of gleaming parquet, covered with a large, soft rug. There was a four-poster bed made up with fine linen, big pillows and a satin-edged coverlet of cream brocade, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, a dressing table, desk and chair, a small bookshelf lined with fat volumes bound in plain dark leather, and a comfortable armchair upholstered in the same gold velvet as the curtains. Best of all, though, there were no empty picture-frames.

  Luel said, ‘Well?’

  She was actually asking my opinion! Well, I must be making progress. I said, ‘It’s a nice room.’

  The old woman nodded. ‘You will be happy here.’

  I did not know what to say to this patent absurdity, for how could she possibly imagine such a thing? Instead, I said, ‘I have no change of clothes with me.’

  ‘That is no problem.’ She opened the wardrobe door. Despite myself, I could not help but gasp in wonder at the sight of the rows of dresses upon their hangers, a flurry of lace and tulle and velvet and silk and fine wool, in a variety of colours which would flatter my colouring exactly. We were a long way here from my old velvet, or even the pretty sprigged print frock I’d worn for Captain Peskov’s visit. These were dresses fit for a fine lady. ‘And you will find they fit perfectly,’ Luel said quietly.

  Now why wasn’t I surprised about that?

  There were shoes, too, of all sorts; evening shoes in satin and silver, day shoes in fine kid, slippers in leather so soft they felt like gloves, and sturdy walking boots. Then Luel opened the drawers to reveal fine underwear and stockings and handkerchiefs and nightgowns and shawls and more – the kinds of things Anya and Liza would have given their little fingers to own again. Meanwhile, in the desk were writing paper and envelopes and elegant pens, as well as stamps and a small pot of glue. Best of all, there was a beautiful notebook bound in pale leather, with heavy cream paper of a quality that made me long to write on it.

  All these things must have been tailor-made for me. Or someone very like me. Someone knew I would come stumbling out of that storm. Not the abartyen, I thought, but Luel. Though the abartyen was frightening – a brute force – it was clearly Luel who held power in this place, despite her calling him ‘my lord’. But what did she want from me? I couldn’t help a little shiver at the thought.

  ‘You will no doubt want to refresh yourself,’ she said, as if she were an ordinary host addressing an ordinary guest. ‘There is a bathroom just for you behind that door,’ and she pointed to a door in the corner of the room, ‘with everything you may need. Then you will please come down to join us for dinner. I believe you already know where.’

  She had been the one watching me, I thought, when I’d been sitting in the dining-room earlier. I wanted to say I wasn’t hungry and would skip dinner, but I knew the ‘please’ hadn’t made a request out of what she’d said. And besides, I was hungry. Perhaps it was a reaction to fear, but my stomach felt hollow and empty. I could have devoured a horse right then and there. Trouble was, I had a queasy feeling I’d have to sit there and watch the abartyen do just that.

  But I was wrong. Not only did he not eat a horse, the abartyen did not eat anything at all. In fact, he did not make an appearance at the dinner table and so it was just Luel and I, sitting across from each other. Despite my relief at the abartyen’s absence and the excellent meal, it was not a cheery occasion. Luel seemed deep in her own thoughts, and I was hardly in a state to make light conversation. The small pleasure I’d felt upon looking at myself in the mirror – an ordinary mirror, I’d checked! – after bathing and dressing in a simple, perfectly fitting dark red cashmere dress with a snow-white lace collar, had quite evaporated, and the delicious food might as well have been bread and water for all the delight I took in it.

  It was towards the very end of the meal that Luel broke her silence. ‘You are afraid, I know, but there is nothing for you to be afraid of, Natasha.’

  It was the first time she’d used my name, and it made me start. ‘Oh,’ I replied weakly. What else could I say?

  ‘My lord is not what he seems,’ she said. ‘You spoke of injustice, earlier. A great injustice was done to him – a great evil – and he, well, he found himself as he is now.’

  I stared at her. ‘Do you mean . . .?’

  ‘He is not what and how he is by nature,’ Luel said quietly. ‘Please try to remember that.’

  ‘But what – what happened? Why? Who? How? –’

  ‘Too many questions for tonight,’ she said, waving her hand. ‘There will be time for you to learn, to try to understand. To repay him.’

  I forgot about my resolve not to be combative and burst out, ‘Whatever happened to the abart– to your lord, however bad and tragic it was, it wasn’t my fault. So why should I suffer for it?’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said calmly. ‘I told you already: joy for joy is your payment.’

  ‘But I don’t understand how I can possibly –’

  ‘Look in your heart. You have known sorrow, but you have never known real loneliness. Real despair. Think of that. Think of why. And then you will see your way clear to an understanding what it is you must do.’

  ‘But why can’t you tell me? Why can’t you at least give me a clue?’ I pleaded, beside myself.

  ‘Because it must come from you,’ Luel said, without turning a hair. ‘Or it will be worth nothing. It will not help my lord. It will not repay your debt.’ She got up from the table. ‘And now, child, it is time to retire. You must be exhausted.’

  ‘Just a little,’ I muttered ironically, half to myself.

  ‘Tomorrow my lord will meet you after lunch, in the sitting-room. You will speak with him.’

  My heart started pounding, all irony forgotten. ‘Will you be there?’ I whispered.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Perhaps not.’

  I don’t know if it was her careless tone that goaded me. ‘Why do you have these things on your walls?’ I said harshly, waving a hand at the blank picture-frames.

  To my surprise her expression changed, so that for the first time I saw something like real emotion in her face. ‘It is part of the injustice,’ she said.

  The sadness in her eyes and voice touched me, despite myself. ‘They are terrible things to look at,’ I said gently.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and she looked at me. ‘They are.’

  ‘Will you not tell me . . .’ I began, but she had already left the room, leaving me there at the table, gazing at the blank spaces where pictures ought to be, trying to make sense of all I’d heard that night. The abartyen wasn’t what he was by nature, she’d said: therefor
e, it meant he was not a shapeshifter by nature, not a born and bred one. I had read that people could be forced by evil sorcery into an abartyen shape. But it was very, very rare and extremely difficult to perform. Luel clearly could not break the spell or surely she would have done so. And I had the impression those empty picture-frames were also something over which she had no control.

  That was a scary thought. For given the fact she had no reflection, Luel was not human, but a feya, like Old Bony. And her magic was powerful, for a place like this is not maintained by minor enchantment. But whoever it was who had cursed her lord in this terrible way must be even more powerful, if Luel could not break the spell herself. I didn’t want to think of what that might mean, but the feeling that the danger I was in was even greater than I’d imagined hung heavy in my belly, as if I’d swallowed a stone.

  I thought I’d never get to sleep that night but the bed was so warm and comfortable, and the room so quiet and peaceful, that I drifted off to sleep without even being aware of it. And sometime during the night I fell into a strange dream – strange due to the fact of it being so uneventful. In the dream, I was looking into a sunny walled garden where climbing white and pink roses rambled on the walls. The air was full of their scent and that of the more exotic blooms of mimosa and jasmine. Not a Ruvenyan garden, then, but rather from some southern country where such flowers grew. I could smell the flowers, which is unusual in a dream, and I could see the bees buzzing around them, and I could hear birds singing. There was a little white wrought-iron table and chair in the garden, and a young woman sat there with her back to me. She wore a pretty, lacy summer hat, her black hair in long, loose ringlets down her back, and her dress was a flurry of pale pink ribbons and snow-white tulle of the same delicate shades as the roses. She was waving at someone I couldn’t see, and it was such a vivid picture I felt as though I could hear the tinkle of her laughter, though I could not hear anything she said. For a while, I was there, just suspended in the little scene; then it flickered out and I opened my eyes to the darkness of my room. In the dream, I had quite forgotten about what had happened to me, but now everything came flooding back and my mind kept going round and round like a mouse in a maze, trying to find a way out.

  The mirror, I thought wildly, I must learn how it works; it’s the key to my escape. But to do that I had to get Luel to take me down to the cellar again; I had to listen carefully to what she said and watch what she did and then later I would find a way to get the key from her. Later – later – that meant staying here for who knew how long, and meanwhile, tomorrow, I had to meet the abartyen. Cursed or not, natural shapeshifter or not, he wasn’t fully human any more. And no matter what Luel said, I was afraid of him.

  The words she’d spoken to me at dinner, about what I must do, made even less sense now and I was trembling, shaking with the thought that if I didn’t get it right, I would suffer for it. She’d said I’d not be harmed, but could I trust anything she said? Clearly, all that mattered to her was the abartyen. She was bound to him by some tie I hadn’t yet fathomed, and I was merely a pawn in a plan whose outline I couldn’t yet glimpse. I had no magical powers, no special distinction, no great beauty or extreme cleverness. I was an ordinary girl with a small talent in storytelling, that was all. And how could that help me now?

  And then I remembered something my mother had told me. As a very small child, when I was scared or tired or out of sorts, I could only be calmed by having a story told to me, over and over again. Now I reached back into my memory and told myself my own story, the story of the three sisters. Three sisters sat spinning at the old tower window, watching for their mother to come home. And as I told myself the story, I could feel my pulse slowing, my limbs stop shaking and the panic leaving me until gradually I became calmer. I must have fallen asleep, for when I woke next bright sunlight was flooding the room.

  I got up and padded to the window in my bare feet. The curtains had been drawn and there was a tray of hot tea and appetising little pastries on the dressing table. Outside, the sun was shining brightly though snow still lay on the ground. It was very quiet; there were no bird calls, which wasn’t surprising, as they hardly stir in the wintertime. In the distance, beyond the lawns, I could see the hedge towering high into the sky, and a figure patrolling its edge, up and down, up and down, like a tiger in a cage. The abartyen.

  I quickly drew away from the window, in case he should look up and see me. In an ordinary place, at that distance, of course he could never have seen me. But this place was far from ordinary and I felt as if anything could happen here – anything at all.

  I had some tea and pastries, and after washing and dressing in a plain green dress, I prowled around my room, trying to work out something – anything – from my surroundings. Nothing told me much though, apart from the books on the shelf. By now I was used to the idea that things had been arranged in this room specially for me, so it was with some surprise that I discovered the books were not the kind I liked to read. There was no fiction, no poetry, no plays, only a six-volume encyclopedia and a battered Ruvenyan–Faustinian dictionary. If I was desperately bored, I thought, I could read the encyclopedia, but when I flipped through it, I discovered it was full of endless reams of dull information on obscure subjects. Even the biographical entries were boring; I didn’t recognise a single name and the style was so long-winded that my heart sank and my eyes glazed over just looking at it. Only the dictionary held a marginal interest for me, because at least it was about words. I wondered whether the accent of my unlikely hosts was Faustinian. They didn’t sound like my old tutor but they could have come from a different part of that powerful empire to our west, with its many different principalities and dukedoms.

  And then, with a prickle of excitement, I remembered that magic was banned in the Faustine Empire, except for that under the control of an official order called the Mancers. That was why our old neighbour Dr ter Zhaber had fled to Ruvenya when he was young. Could the abartyen and Luel be Faustinian refugees too? Was that the ‘terrible injustice’ Luel had mentioned?

  Driven by a sense that I might at last be on the verge of shedding some light on the mystery – a mystery I knew I had to solve if I was ever to get out of here – I leafed feverishly through all the books again, in the hopes of finding a clue.

  My efforts were in vain. I put the books back on the shelf and sat at the desk to compose a letter to Mama. But the lying words I needed to soothe her wouldn’t come, and my spirit of invention seemed to have failed me. Then I had an idea. I decided to write down the facts first – the truth of what had happened to me – and not what I had to tell Mama. So I took out the notebook, opened it to the first page and began to write. But though I tried to start recounting my experiences, I couldn’t find the right words. I started something, crossed it out, started again, to no avail.

  This was a new experience for me. I’d always been able to write fluently, easily, ‘too easily’ as another of our tutors said to me once, but then, she also thought that imagination was a character flaw that must be eradicated. Thank goodness she didn’t last long. My father heard her say that if we were her daughters, she’d make sure all frivolous pastimes were banned. ‘You are not their mother, thank God,’ he’d told her tartly, ‘and if you don’t approve of our family, there’s always the door.’ Which she took, in high dudgeon, while my sisters and I happily watched from the stairs.

  And that’s how I found myself writing, my pen loosened at last. About those funny old childhood memories, Liza and Anya and I united in our glee and Papa, standing there with his colour high and his moustache bristling as he told that killjoy exactly what needed to be said. When Mama came back from her outing, we told her what had happened, and she had looked at him with such love and gladness!

  Tears sprang to my eyes. How she must miss him, even more than my sisters and I did, though to be sure that was hard enough. But to lose the man you love when you are still deeply in love must be so much worse. And for some reason, as I w
rote those words down, the dream I’d had the night before came back to my mind, the sunlit garden, and the girl in her summer clothes, laughing merrily with someone who was just outside my line of sight, but who I was sure now must be her beloved. And a strange feeling crept over me, a feeling that something bad had happened to that girl and her lover.

  I put my pen down and stared at what I had just written. It was almost, I thought uneasily, as though they were somebody else’s words. As though some spirit had been whispering them into my ear . . . No, stop that, Natasha, I scolded myself. You have enough to worry about without being spooked by your own runaway imagination!

  I didn’t feel like writing any more. Shoving the notebook back into the desk drawer and out of my sight, I got up and went to the window again. The abartyen was no longer to be seen, and the lawns were deserted. The sky, bright blue now with a hard frosty gleam, was empty of cloud. I watched as a tiny speck of black on the far horizon drew closer to resolve itself into a single circling crow, its melancholy cawing audible even from where I stood. It was the first outside sound I’d heard since I came here, I realised suddenly. Normally, a crow’s call would not figure high on my list of favourite sounds, but today, cut off from everyone I loved and everything I understood, it rang in my ears like the most silvery of bells, and I reached for the handle of the window to open it, wanting to hear the sound more clearly.

  ‘Step away from there at once.’ Luel’s voice made me jump. She must have a footfall as silent as a cat’s, I thought, as I spun around and glared at her defiantly.

  ‘Why should I?’ I muttered.

  ‘Just do as you’re told and don’t argue.’ She tugged the curtains across, but not before I’d seen her swift glance out of the window, and the anxiety that leaped into her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, not expecting an answer.