Metro Winds (31 page)

I had not thought of the Princess Chamber since the night I had slept here, but on its threshold I remembered the almost suffocating intensity of the scent given off by the roses, which had flowed from the room to which my hostess had shown me. And that other smell, which I had fallen asleep trying to name, and now knew very well. It was the scent of magic, of course, and the room was thick with it.

‘Tradition,' my hostess had told me, gesturing lightly, dismissively, to the petals that lay on the floor, the absurdity of the bed.

I set the candelabrum on a small table pushed against the whitewashed stone wall beside the door, and drew aside the long damask curtains that concealed the door to the small balcony. It seemed but moments since I had first drawn those curtains to discover the exquisite little balcony behind it, and imagined how lovely it would be to go out onto it in the morning and look down on a sunlit garden. I had no way of knowing that it overlooked a mist garden, where sunlight never fell.

A movement in the chamber behind me recalled me to the present and I turned to see Cloud-Marie looking at me with the soft, sucking, bog-brown eyes of a cow. I pointed to the fireplace and she nodded and lurched over to tend to it. There was no need to sweep or dust. All that needed doing, according to the tome my mother-in-law had given me, was to lay down a carpet of petals, heat bathwater, remove the ashes of the old fire, and lay and light a new one, then renew the bed.

‘The last and final task is the renewing of the bed . . .'

I had assumed this to mean the bed was to be made up afresh, but it was as perfectly made as a bed with dozens of mattresses piled one upon the other could be. I went over and took the rich fabric of the coverlet between thumb and forefinger, hauled it back and recoiled to find the sheets and the top mattress badly mouse-chewed. The reek of damp and mouse musk made me gag and I wondered why the cover had not been affected when the sheet and mattresses had got into such a state.

Cloud-Marie helped me drag all of the mattresses down and spread those that were intact about the room to air, then she cleaned the hearth and lit a fire that was soon crackling merrily, warming the chamber. Later, I would have her bring lavender and cedar balls and camphor to put between the mattresses. Now we dragged those mattresses that were entirely ruined into the hallway to be disposed of, and those that could be repaired we dragged to my sitting room. The rest we must pile up anew. I did not know how repairs could be managed but even as I pondered it, Cloud-Marie led me to a linen closet where there were silk sheets aplenty that could be sewed together as covers, and great bales of fresh cotton and wool wadding as well as goose down. I was surprised to see them, for even though I had bought them myself long ago at the market in my own world, after I had used them in a frenzy of making new bedding for my chamber and Yssa's, they had vanished. I touched them softly, thinking that Yssa must have put them here. For a moment, my eyes blurred with tears, and I wondered what had become of her, but Cloud-Marie touched my arm and I pulled myself together. Soon we were both sitting back in my tower room, bent over the new mattress cases, our stabbing needles hard at work.

The next day, our eyes red-rimmed and burning with strain and lack of sleep, we carried the new mattress covers back to the chamber and half stuffed them with pure goose down so they would flatten the better. The number of mattresses was the vital thing, according to the books, not their thickness, and I remembered all too clearly my own astonished reaction to an elegant bed made atop a fantastic pile of mattresses that would have me lying closer to the ceiling than the floor.

I had wanted to laugh at the sight of that awkward bed resting amid a sea of white petals, yet the formidable seriousness of the mistress of the mansion precluded it. Besides, I was so overwrought by all I had endured in the past days that I feared I might not be able to stop laughing if I began. What I longed for more than anything was simply to be able to lie down and sleep. I felt sure that I would wake with some sensible understanding of the surreal madness of the previous days. Perhaps even the bed would seem less outlandish in the daylight, after sleep.

I realised my hostess was waiting for me to speak and pulled my wits together to thank her. She nodded and gestured to the bathing room, then withdrew, bidding me sleep well. Her servant closed the door behind them, leaving me alone.

I thought of dragging down a single mattress to sleep on, but the mattresses were set inside the four posts of the bed in such a way that it would require two people to manoeuvre one out. I would have to sleep in the bed or brave the icy stone flags with no more than a blanket under me. I elected for the former; after all, given the things I had endured, it seemed almost decadent to complain about the height of a bed. I entered the gleaming bathing room but was too weary to bathe. Instead, I washed quickly and not very thoroughly and donned the thin nightgown I had been given. Back in the main chamber, I decided I must gather myself before climbing up onto the bed, and I padded about the room exploring, discovering a little balcony overlooking a garden swathed in shadow and mist. There was a chill wind, and before long, I retreated inside to warm myself by the fire.

Drowsy with food and wine and fatigue, my mind drifted to the handsome, dark-haired man in the lane with his canal-green eyes. He had assured me that if I turned back and went this way and that, I would come in a few minutes to the main tourist path along the Grand Canal, but that this was the route for unadventurous tourists, not true travellers, such as I seemed to him. Flattered and intrigued, I had asked if there was some other way. He answered archly that if I took his lane it would bring me to a door in a wall beyond which lay a garden. I could cut through this to another gate that would bring me to a private yard. The lady who owned it did not object to locals passing though to the path alongside the Great Canal. It was a slightly longer route but very beautiful.

Tantalised, I had reluctantly reminded him I was not local.

‘If you like, I will give you something to legitimise your trespass,' he had offered, taking from his pocket what looked like a bone armlet. It was only when he gave it me that I realised from its lightness it was made of thin, sun-bleached wood.

‘What is it?' I had asked.

‘It is the property of the lady. If you would take it to her for me, I would be most grateful. You can tell her Ranulf sends you to her with his regards.'

His words were cryptic and a little suggestive and I had wondered if he was not the lover of the lady who owned the armlet and the garden, and meant to use me as a go-between.

‘What if I forget to deliver it?' I had asked, to give myself time to think.

‘I do not think you would forget to do something you have said you would do,' he told me, suddenly serious, and he reached out to cup my cheek for a moment in his palm.

‘Very well, I will take it, if you are sure,' I had agreed, keeping my voice cool to belie my fast-beating heart. In response, he put the circlet into my hand and used his hands to fold mine about it, bidding me wear it for safety. It was too big to be a bracelet, but I had tried awkwardly to do as he suggested until he reached out to take it from my fingers and slip it gently over my wrist and up my arm as far as it would go above the elbow.

I pressed the place where he had touched my wrist and thought of the way my skin had tingled at his touch, and the look of yearning in his eyes when he released me. It was impossible to think of him as a man playing a nasty trick on a gullible tourist. But when I produced the armlet just an hour past to my hostess, repeating Ranulf's words, determined to deserve his faith in me despite all that had transpired, she had taken the thing from me and seemed to weigh it upon her palm, her expression haughty and at the same time distracted. Certainly it was not the look a woman gave when a precious object had been returned to her. She had eventually thanked me, and invited me in out of the storm-racked night, proposing that I stay as her guest, but there was no warmth in her eyes or words and I had the distinct feeling she thought me a tiresome fool. Yet she had sat with me while I ate and warmed myself by the fire, though she herself ate nothing and said little. In truth she had seemed relieved when I said that I was tired and asked if I might retire.

It was only when she rose, leaving the wooden armlet carelessly on the table, that I noticed there were three exactly like it, threaded with flowers to form a low and intricate flower arrangement. There was a notch in the last, where a fourth ring ought to have fitted, and I realised with mortification that I had returned a bit of a table ornament with ludicrous ceremony. It did not help that I suspected the jape had been played more upon the lady than on me, for I had been the dupe who had enabled it. No wonder she had looked at me with such reserve. What a gullible bumpkin I must seem to her.

My face had burned with shame as I followed her along the hall to the bedchamber, yet now, standing by the fire, I wearily considered the possibility that I might not be the first gulled into performing a fool's errand, given the cool response of the lady of the house. And in the end, what was an unpleasant jest when compared with all that I had endured in the days after meeting him? I frowned, feeling almost dizzy with fatigue as I wondered if days could really have passed as I remembered. Was it not more likely that I had fallen asleep just inside the walled garden, after I had taken shelter from the sudden downpour, that I had dreamed days full of strangeness before waking, fevered and confused, to make my way to the oddly named Endgate?

Surely I had imagined the impossible vastness of the garden, the wolves.

For a moment I was tempted to seek out my hostess to ask what day it was, except that I could not bear to face her again so soon. Besides, I was so exhausted that if I did not lie down, I would simply topple into the flames.

I staggered to the bed and clambered awkwardly up the mattresses, panting and cursing under my breath and wondering what sort of lunatic tradition required a great stack of mattresses and a floor covered in white rose petals. The smell of the roses and some elusive but heady scent under them was very strong and made me feel half intoxicated. I was perspiring freely by the time I reached the top and I thought I ought to have asked someone to take my temperature, but I could not climb back down now.

I drew back the covers and crawled between the cool fragrant sheets with a long sigh at the marvellous softness of them and the pillows, and closed my eyes gratefully. On the inside of my eyelids, I saw again the handsome angular face of Ranulf, the curving lips, the gold-flecked eyes and the wild dark mop of hair. Even the graceful small movements of his hands were clear in my memory, as was the cool silky feel of his fingers against my cheek.

‘Fool,' I muttered.

I drifted into a dream in which I vividly relived my encounter with him in the passage. In the dream he suggested the lane would bring me to the thing I wanted most in all the world.