Page 72 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She chewed hard on her thumbnail, knowing she couldn’t fuck this up. They had to get upstairs, but . . .

‘I think you’re right, Moth. It’s too busy here.’ She didn’t know how long Dian could hold their magic for. She didn’t dare ask, but scaring fifty footmen half to death if they lost their grip on it would not be ideal. She beckoned for them to follow her back the way they’d come. It was the right choice, for soon they found a set of darkened stairs, blissfully free of people. Frida hurried up, the others hot on her heels. At the top they found a heavy white panelled door. Frida cast Dian a wordless question, and when Dian nodded, she carefully cracked it open. The room on the other side was small, and blissfully empty. She tugged Dian inside with relief. As the door swung shut behind them, it sealed out the raging inferno below, the heat from the ovens, the tornado of voices, the knots of stench and sweat, the bustle of unending activity.

For the moment, there was just quiet.

Apart from a dark side table, presumably for servants to set down heavy trays, the room was bare. The floor was oiled wood and a gas lamp hummed inside a frosted glass globe mounted on the wall, its light a brighter, steadier thing than the amber of the candles. They had gas lighting? Frida stared at it. If they had gas lighting, why did they need dragonfly lamps? She had to shove away the implications of this before she was able to move. Quickly, she indicated for Dian to follow her through the next doorway. She just wanted to find somewhere safe to wait until dinner was over now. Whatever thrill she might have felt at seeing Forge House in its heyday was a guttering candle in the hollow cave of her chest.

Moving as if in a dream she led them down a long corridor, listening to the faint sound of string instruments wafting towards them. Dian’s hand was damp in hers. At fourteen, she’d been overawed by the gold beading on the panelled walls, the thick Persian carpets, the monumental oil paintings – things utterly unfamiliar for a girl who’d grown up on a council estate. Now though, fresh out of the heat and noise of downstairs, and distorted by Dian’s wild magic, she stroked her free hand over the golden panels and felt sick. She loved Sir Joshua, not because he was twelve times removed from Henry VIII, but for what he’d given the world. Now, the starkness of the opulence made her ill.

‘I don’t like this at all,’ Moth said, muffled from within the webs.

Dian let out a relieved gasp to finally voice it, ‘Oh, it’s truly awful!’

Frida almost laughed, licking her dry lips. It was awful. It should have been easier to breath up here, but there was a cloying flowery perfume in the air, an attempt to cover the stench drifting through the floorboards perhaps. Golden framed pictures blurred into one, a parade of nymphs and centaurs, stiff-necked generals, soft-limbed ladies, children in bonnets, fluffy wide-eyed puppies. She was almost pleased to see the trail of mud she’d tracked across the carpet, until she realised a servant might be sacked for it, and she set about frantically rubbing the remaining dirt from her boots. Her eyes snagged on Dian’s bare feet, mottled with all the shades of hawthorn bark, looking even more out of place than she did. What were they doing here?!

Dian’s hand tightened on hers. Across their left cheek, there was a patch of silvery brown, like a birth mark in the shape of a thornapple, and it caught the light, making her falter. She wondered ridiculously what it would feel like to run her thumb across it. Then, from the end of the corridor, the sound of music grew louder, the soft lilting notes of a piano.

‘Let’s leave,’ she hissed. ‘Let’s go back.’

There were no windows here, and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. But as she and Dian gazed at each other, her words hanging between them, the memory of the terracotta dragon in the gardens loomed before her. She couldn’t hear the keening from here, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. And in the swirling dark of Dian’s eyes, she saw the shape of the horn, the swollen lung, the fire-singed phoenix feather. The unicorn, the dragonflies who were Dian’s friends, caught in the jars.

Moth’s many eyes gleamed at Dian’s neck.

‘No,’ Frida choked, sagging. They couldn’t leave, of course they couldn’t.

Dian made a low noise in the back of their throat, a sort of half desperate laugh, half curse, and half something else entirely. ‘No,’ they affirmed helplessly.

So they continued, down another corridor, their entwined hands so slippery Frida was scared she’d lose her grip. Thankfully it was quieter on this side of the house. There were servants though, here and there, and every time they passed one, walking with their head down to stoke a fire, or check on the lamps, Frida thought she’d have a coronary. But somehow, Dian kept them safe. Without Dian, Frida wasn’t sure what she would have done. She could still hear the piano music floating down the corridors and the faint sound of laughter, the tinkle of glassware, but it was distant, rising in and out like a tide.

Finally, they stood outside a large, opulent room, which Frida remembered in her bones, and she felt everything inside her go silent.

Chapter Forty-One

Frida remembered the embroidered chairs, the drawing table along the western wall. The marble fireplace, now crackling with a warm fire despite the summer heat. The shelves of leather books. The pianoforte. Even down to the easel propped in one corner.

She’d dreamed of this room.

‘The sisters’ drawing room,’ she said softly, under her breath.

Dian jerked their head towards her.

But she was already moving in a daze, forcing Dian to follow her. The curtains on the tall windows hadn’t been closed yet. The servant’s wing below them, they were on the ground floor here, and through the windows she could just make out the sheen of the serpentine lake, the water glimmering in the stark moonlight. Were the kelpies swimming in that lake, at this very moment?

‘Look,’ Dian said hoarsely, lifting their conjoined hands to point.

She thought for a moment they were gesturing towards the lake, towards perhaps the sudden splash of a kelpie’s tail. But no. Dian had turned towards the left-hand wall. Frida dragged her eyes away from the windows and followed their gaze, landing on a ginormous floor to ceiling tapestry. She cocked her head, frowning. She didn’t remember seeing this last time she’d been here. It was an opulent work of art, and she wondered if the sisters had made it themselves. Across the entire wall, embroidered kelpies rose out of cerulean waters. They had coppery manes made of seaweed and hooves of snowy white spindrift. But as she looked, and the details became clearer, bile began to rise. Each of the exquisitely detailed water horses were not free, as they should have been. They had harnesses around their necks, and bits in their seafoam mouths. Frida didn’t realise her free hand was over her mouth as she let out a gasp. The largest kelpie, a roan stallion at the centre of the design, had a spear protruding from his speckled side, dripping rusty blood in a pool on the embroidered waves.

How could the sisters, who she knew so intimately and brightly in her imagination, and who’d loved kelpies so much, have looked at a tapestry like this every day?

‘It’s horrible,’ Moth tinkled, in revolted fascination.

Frida agreed. It was horrible. She’d been planning to wait in here, hoping that this was where one or more of the sisters might come when dinner was over. That’s what women did, right, whilst the men played cards and drank port in the smoking room. But at the sight of that tapestry, suddenly it felt as if her head was ringing, and the idea of waiting in this beloved room made her knees quake. Barely waiting for Dian, she fled, tugging them out of the room and back down the corridor. The raindrops tumbled around them as they went left, right. Left again, another right. The sound of the piano rose and fell. Somewhere, she heard Moth and Dian speaking in lowered voices, whispering in concern, but she couldn’t hear what they said through the ringing in her ears.

Finally, she came to another doorway, this one closed, a great towering wall of dark ebony looming before her. She could barely hear for the pounding in her chest. Dian reached out and touched the wood with one finger, before drawing back.

‘What is this room?’

She let out a shaky breath. ‘It’s Sir Joshua’s study.’