Page 10 of As Many Souls as Stars
The darkness shuddered in disappointment. Miriam felt a moment of loss, of grief, that was so alien, so powerful, that she nearly forgot her own shape; she plunged halfway into the floor as a pool of shadows, before recalling the necessity of limbs with a feeling approaching shock.
Cybil considered her father for a moment in silence. She glanced briefly at the bottle on the desk; lifted it; sniffed it tentatively. ‘Henbane. But—your neck… Did you fall against the desk?’
Reaching forward to shake the body again—assuring herself that he was dead—she bowed her head as she stepped away.
She said, in a whisper, ‘You should have left me in the woods when you had the chance.’
Miriam shifted a little closer. Cybil paused, cocking her head, and turned to the corner where Miriam stood.
Miriam herself was in her shadow form: immaterial, invisible, threaded through the darkness. Still, the woman had clearly sensed her presence. She stepped closer to the shadows, eyes narrowing in concentration. Another step. Miriam could see her pulse thrumming beneath the delicate skin of her collarbone.
‘Is someone there?’ she said.
Miriam wanted to touch her. Cybil’s soul may have been trapped, still, but it remained bright—as she approached, it became almost painful to look at. Miriam’s eyes prickled, a searing ache building in her temples. She wanted it. She wanted her. If Cybil had come near enough, Miriam would have put her mouth against that lovely neck and bitten down, such was the desire that overcame her: she would consume every part of her, flesh and skin and bone and soul together. Miriam would lay her down against the floor of this study and plunge her hand into her chest, find the heart beneath her ribs. She wanted to hold it in her fist, feel it pump. She wanted to press her bloody fingers to her parted lips and paint them red as roses.
Cybil took another step forward, so that she stood at the edge of the shadows. She was so close that Miriam could hear her stutteredbreaths, could smell the heady incense scent of her perfume and see the flush of her cheeks. Another step—that was all Miriam required—and Cybil would be entirely enveloped in Miriam’s embrace.
Miriam could not help herself; she reached out towards Cybil. With her, the shadows extended, and one of the candles snuffed itself out.
Cybil’s eyes widened. She stumbled backwards.
‘Wait,’ Miriam said, forgetting she was still a shadow. The word emerged as a whisper, almost as quiet as the shifting of the air.
Cybil did not wait. Gasping, she took her skirts in her hands, and she fled the room. The door slammed shut behind her. Miriam let out a hiss of frustration; every candle went out, and the henbane bottle on the desk burst into shards of glass.
The shadows swirled slowly in the newfound darkness. Miriam perceived, in their mulish movements, an element of disappointment—an element of recrimination—and she clawed at them, furious, until they were still.
4
They buried her father on the thirtieth of September. An overdose of henbane, an unfortunate fall. That is what Cybil told people—that is what, at first, she told herself. But she knew, as she watched the first cloud of dirt hit the coffin, that her father had died because she had killed him. She had stood before his study and imagined his death, and in doing so she had murdered him, her curse had murdered him; as it had murdered her brother in the womb, and that servant with the jam, and that boy who had come courting. Because Cybil was a First Daughter, and all she could do was destroy.
When Cybil had told her mother, Bess’s only response had been to turn away, silent, go into her room, and shut the door. She did not come to the funeral, and so Cybil alone wore the white mourner’s hood. Mayhap Bess Harding fully understood that her husband was dead; mayhap she did not. When Cybil brought her mother meals, Bess would not speak. Once, she laid a palm on Cybil’s cheek, as if in quiet apology. Somehow that was worse than not being acknowledged at all.
There was a heraldic tapestry in the corridor by the great hall, depicting the family’s three-headed hawk; since her father’s death, Cybil had slowly been unpicking it, thread by thread, with a helpless sort of obsession—she could not walk past it without pausing to unravel a corner. After that moment, after feeling her mother’s hand on her cheek, Cybil had tugged at the threads so long and so viciously that her fingers bled. Were they to grieve this man, who had lovedCybil enough to spare her, who had hated her enough to regret that mercy? Who had made his wife a hollow shell and called it kindness?
Afterwards, Cybil rinsed the blood away and returned to work, ignoring the press of her wounds against the quill. There was much to be done: the Hall was now Cybil’s, and under her father’s tenure the building had fallen into much disrepair. There were glaziers and weavers to pay, servants to hire, gardens to tend. There was Christopher’s study, the tome-lined shelves, the tinctures and rituals.
There was her mother, sipping her mandrake each morning.
In the days after her father’s death, Cybil had often recalled his last conversation with Gilbert. Her uncle had not come to the funeral; mayhap he feared meeting his brother’s fate. But when he had been at the Hall, he had asked why Christopher had never sent Cybil to Court. Now, for the first time—as though waking from a dream—Cybil had begun to wonder this herself. If she brought ruin to those she loved, then to Cybil it made sense that she ought to leave her mother and the Hall behind, so they could be safe from the curse. She could break free of this place, with its seething shadows and its empty corridors; she could pretend, if only for a little while, that she was the woman she wanted to be, a wealthy heiress with land and power. She could prove—or perchance pretend—to all of England that she was not mad.
But whenever she imagined this escape, she would then see—more vividly, for it was a memory, not a fantasy—her mother shaking beneath her sheets, and that hand upon her cheek, cold and trembling. For the moment, Cybil could not leave Bess behind, not while she was so swallowed by her grief, while she was insensate with her tinctures and regrets. If Cybil could do right by her, right by the Hall—if she could bring the House of Harding back into repute, wean her mother off her medicine and make her well again—thenshe might be permitted to leave. She would be able to carve a new life for herself, somewhere new, and know that Bess was safe. Until that day, she would read her father’s books, and study his rituals, in the hope of finding something that he had missed.
Hope. Sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night, and she fancied she could see it in the darkness—a glimmer of movement, apair of eyes watching her. She would reach out for it, desperate, seeking. And sometimes, rarely, it was almost as if it reached back.
The village near Harding Hall was still given to old superstitions and rituals, the most persistent of which was the Hallowtide Dance: a gathering around the old grass mounds that stood between the estate and the village itself. The Harding family had always made an appearance—many of the villagers were their tenants, after all—and this year would be the first time Cybil would go without a chaperone. She had buried her father, and her mother, of course, was refusing to come. Cybil would have preferred to abscond, too; there would be too many eyes there, too many suspicious gazes. But she was mistress of the Hall now. Her presence was required.
It was only a short ride, and Cybil left as the sun was setting. The mounds were to the east. They quickly rose into view once she emerged from the forest, jutting awkwardly upwards on the horizon, like buboes on a plague patient. Cybil knew from her reading that the mounds were actually graves, centuries-old bones resting within their bowels: several of the barrows had already been dug into, gutted of whatever Saxon treasure their trespassers could find. In Henry’s time, robbers had dug too deep into one of the mounds, and it had collapsed entirely, burying the thieves alongside their victims. But tradition still considered the mounds faerie work, grass altars erected by inhuman hands. On All Hallows’ Eve, a great bonfire was burnt atop the biggest grave. The people of the village danced in a circle around its base, trading stories of hungry spirits. Cybil thought it was ridiculous, but they all seemed to enjoy it well enough.
The dance was an occasion attended by peasant and alderman alike, and Cybil was hardly the only one present with jewels on her fingers. Still, when she dismounted her horse, it was clear she was overdressed. She had declined to wear her mourning hood: she had no need of such displays, and she felt it would merely remind others of the Hardings’ misfortune. Instead, she had pinned chips of amber to her hair, and she was wearing a gold gown and a high ruff, pearls stitched into the collar like a collection of polished teeth. Her face was powdered skull-white, her lips bloody with rouge. She looked like amoth with its wings wrapped around itself, or a spool of precious thread. People watched her with as much hostility as fascination; Cybil’s family had always had a fearsome reputation, considering her father’s occultism. They were never going to adore their landlords, of course, and Cybil could hardly resent them for that—but they had little respect for them, either, and that was due to Christopher’s callous mismanagement of the estate, which had led to rising rents and little investment in the land. The village’s dislike of Cybil’s family had never felt quite so clear as it did now, with the cursed daughter the only Harding present. Despite their higher place on the Great Chain of Being, those below the Hardings had no compunction about craning their necks to sneer at her.
Cybil went to hitch her mount, then returned to the bonfire. She hovered around the edges of the dancers, uncertain what to do. Her father had always handled the conversation, the last few times she had been present.
After a few moments, she was greeted by John Pike and his wife, Nancy, some of the wealthiest people in the village. On occasion, they had come to the Hall as petitioners, although they had always left empty-handed. Cybil recognised them only by the badge on John Pike’s hat: the sheep of the local weaver’s guild.
Nancy Pike said, frowning, ‘Where is your mother, Lady Cybil? Your servants?’
‘My mother is indisposed,’ Cybil replied, ‘and I had no need for servants.’
