Page 85 of As Many Souls as Stars
It seemed pointless to lie. ‘Of course I am.’
Miriam put her elbow on the table, extending her palm to the sky. In her empty hand, the shadows swirled, then a shape materialised: an oyster knife, chillingly familiar in its silver gleam.
‘Then end it now instead.’ Miriam extended her arm, offering the knife to her. ‘Wouldn’t that be the solution? End it again, before I take your soul, and find another life to live. Perhaps the next one will bring you the meaning you crave.’
Rosamund stared mutely at the knife. The ship rocked gently beneath her feet. In the next room, the pianist trilled the highest notes; there was a muffled round of applause.
After a few moments, Miriam closed her hand around the blade. She dropped her arm, expressionless, even as black blood began to drip from her palm and onto the tablecloth.
‘But you won’t,’ Miriam said. ‘You will never end it yourself. Why would you? We both know it won’t make a difference. You could have as many souls as stars, my love, and all those lives would be as unhappy as the first.’
Rosamund forced herself to give Miriam a bland smile.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I am surrendering to you. Did you forget that, Miriam? Our war is over. You don’t need to convince me anymore.’
Miriam scowled. She poked the oyster knife into her cake, leaving it there, handle pointing to the ceiling. ‘It doesn’t feel like a surrender.’
‘What does it feel like, then?’
‘Like a tragedy on a stage,’ Miriam said. ‘You and I, wearing our masks again, playing pretend.’
Rosamund felt it, then, more keenly than she had in years: the weight of the mask, somehow heavier for the imminence of its fall. She watched Miriam’s eyes fall to her lips, her neck, the glint of the fork in her palm. TheMonumentalrocked and groaned with the anger of the sea beneath it, the piano silent in the other room. And around them the darkness, their constant companion, was quiet and still—as if the night itself was holding its breath.
22
When Rosamund returned to her cabin, there were two men in the bed. She sighed, left her husband and his lover to their sleep, and went to run the bath.
She shed her clothes, plunged into the water, and stretched out with one foot hooked over the brassy metal of the tap. It was hot enough her skin flushed pink, clouds of lavender-scented steam wafting towards the tiled ceiling. She picked up her book—an Oxford World’s Classics edition of Isaac Harding’sThe Nouveau Odysseus, well thumbed and well loved—but she couldn’t concentrate. She tossed it onto the counter, then reached with a languid left hand towards the shadows cast by the edge of the bath.
The pain was an old friend now; Rosamund had carved off so many pieces of her soul it felt instinctive, like picking at a hangnail. She sometimes wondered if each piece lost did something to her—made her colder, made her sharper, made her less attached to life itself—but she couldn’t tell. Whether that was the darkness’s fault, or the trauma of her past lives, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.
In response to her offering, the shadows surged upwards, eager and pliable, draping over her fingers like silk. Rosamund recalled a trick from the grimoire: she concentrated, made her request, and the shadows formed a tiny ship, rocking gently between her fingers as if moving on waves. She played with it a little while, smiling. Then she twitched her thumb too violently. The shadow-ship jolted,and—simultaneously—the entirety of theMonumentallurched, sending water slopping out of the bath.
‘Whoops,’ she murmured.
Chagrined, Rosamund re-formed the shadows into a different shape: a crow, wings half risen in flight. It cocked its featureless head at her.
She remembered the last time she’d seen that crow, the night Miriam had come into the townhouse—the shadows holding her down, Miriam’s hand between her legs.I will make you mine.
Rosamund felt a pang of arousal, followed by anger. She hadn’t expected to still find Miriam as attractive as she did, had thought that resentment would burn away whatever affection remained. But, if anything, that resentment had stoked the flames, had made Rosamund want to rip her apart and taste her and fuck her anddestroythem both—
The ship lurched again.
Rosamund breathed deeply, closing her eyes, allowing the shadows to dissipate. She couldn’t let her anger rule her. She had a plan, and she intended to follow it through. What Miriam had told her at dinner—it didn’t matter. It was Rosamund who had control now.
‘Greensleeves, farewell, adieu,’ she sang, reaching for the loofah. ‘To God I pray to prosper thee, for I am still thy lover true…’
The loofah burst into flame in her hands. She let the ashes slip through her fingers.
‘So come once again and love me.’
Miriam was suspicious—of course she was.
It was all too easy, too simple. Cybil and Esther had been puzzles, challenges, prizes to be won; Rosamund was none of those things. She had offered herself up on a platter, dismissed their history with a sigh and a smile. It was nauseating, undignified, cruel. It was everything that Miriam had wanted and everything she despised.
She watched Rosamund and her husband at breakfast the next day, concealed by shadows in a dark corner of the restaurant. Walter Jennings was sawing through a beefsteak and a pair of sunshine-coloured eggs, the arms of his suit straining against his impressivebiceps, gold wedding band sparkling in the light coming through the portholes. Rosamund looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, but she still glowed within the confines of her cherry-toned dress. Its V-neck was cut so deep that you could see the base of her ribcage, the swell of her breasts as she breathed. Miriam decided she liked this era, liked the way Harding wore it, short-haired and scarlet-mouthed. She wanted to bite into her like a peach.
Walter said something; Rosamund laughed softly, covering her mouth with her hand. She had such lovely wrists, so slender—it would be devastatingly easy for Miriam to snap them. Even Walter, with his tree-trunk limbs, would be no match for her strength.
