Rosamund Hodge: Gilded Ashes

“Well, you are a lucky girl, then, to swear off love so gladly. Just be sure Aphrodite doesn’t punish you as she did Hippolytus.”

That startles a real laugh out of me. “I don’t think even the gods could make my stepmother fall in love with me.”

“So you’ve a stepmother,” he says thoughtfully, “and you’re well educated. Likely wellborn, too. There aren’t even many nobles who know the story of Hippolytus—let alone servants, who usually only want stories about the hedge-gods.”

I wouldn’t know about Hippolytus either, except that one winter Thea got the idea that she should educate me, and she trailed after me reading plays aloud until Stepmother locked her in her room.

“Actually,” I say, “most servants here in Sardis won’t have anything to do with the hedge-gods. Too rustic and uncouth.” My voice falls into the cadences of our old cook’s voice. “That sort of rubbish is only for weak-willed jennies who wish they were back on the farm with dirt beneath their fingernails.”

“Really? My late mother would have been delighted; she was always trying to organize new programs of improvement for the servants.”

“So said our old cook. Mind you, she wasn’t above throwing midsummer cakes on the fire, though she tried to hide it.” I smile, remembering the way she scolded me when I asked her what she was doing. None of your business, little Miss Nosy.

The memory stabs me straight between the ribs. A week after that scolding, something happened that left her hands shaking, that made her hide beneath her apron at every loud noise. For the next month she burned soups and dropped pots; then Stepmother dismissed her.

I don’t think it was my fault. I laughed at the scolding, and she smiled at me a moment after. If she’d actually met a demon, she’d have died or gone insane. But I can’t be sure. I can never, ever be sure, and that’s when I realized it was better not to make friends with the servants. After her, none of them stayed more than a month, anyway. They always realized the house was haunted and fled.

“You’re like a chameleon, do you know that?” Lord Anax is staring at me now with his eyebrows drawn together thoughtfully, his mouth crooked up in a faint smile. “One moment you have vowels that could put my mother to shame, the next you’re talking like the scullery maid. You dress in rags and you know thousand-year-old plays.”

I am the most perfect chameleon he’s ever known, and he can’t know me . He can marry Koré if he wants. He can even marry Lydia. I’ll smile and pour out wine to the gods in thanks. But he can’t get to know me any better or Mother will notice him and he’ll be trapped in my fate and I would rather die.

I’d rather die, I think, and realize that I mean it.

“I’m also a messenger,” I say. My body feels cold and stiff. “Here’s your letter for today.” I hold it out.

“Maia—”

“Good day, my lord.” I throw the letter at him and flee.

I try not to think it as I sweep the floors, scrub the pots, cook the meals. I try, but everywhere I turn, the thought drums along with my heartbeat: I’d rather die. I’d rather die. I’d rather die.

I can’t love him. I don’t. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I’ve seen tear apart my family, writhing through their hearts like worms through rotten apples.

What sense does that make? Lord Anax demanded when telling me about the girl he didn’t love but would die for. The girl who he was wise and kind enough to leave. Perhaps, I finally admit to myself, perhaps for him there’s a way to love that’s sane and happy, that isn’t cruel. The gods know he deserves it.

For me, there has always only been this desperate, heart’s-blood determination not to destroy.

“I think he’ll marry Koré, Mother,” I whisper into the steam rising from the stewpot. Her touch shivers against my neck. “He’ll be so happy.”

He’ll take Koré away to his gilded palace, let her hold Alcibiades, and smile at her words. She’ll run her fingers through his hair and speak the truth to him until he’s comforted, until he forgets both Lydia and the strange little serving girl who delivered letters, until he’s happy. I’ll stay in the dusty, dim house of demons and broken shutters, and I’ll know that he is safe. I can’t ask more than that, want more than that. I won’t.

The next two days, I bring him letters. We don’t talk of Koré, or Lydia, or who I am. He tells me about his studies, his plans for when he is duke, and I tell him exactly what I think. I stare at the lace on his cuffs, the tendons in his hands, and try to memorize him for the day when I’m alone.

I don’t love him. But I take a treacherous delight in him.

O n the tenth day, Koré doesn’t give me a letter. She doesn’t come down for breakfast; when I slip into her room, she’s asleep beneath a tangle of blankets. I lay my hand against her forehead, but I don’t feel any fever. Clearly her all-night letter writing has finally caught up with her; I only hope that she’s started sleeping again in time, and I won’t have to spend a week nursing her.

I still go to the palace.

Even without a letter, I can talk to him , I tell myself as I walk briskly through the marketplace. Perhaps today he will promise to marry her.

I should worry about going to see him with no letter, no excuse, nothing to persuade him but my own wits. But all I feel is a curious, floating happiness. It rained during the night; the sun sparkles on the damp cobblestones. The air is cool and sweet, and I suck in greedy breaths as I wind between the vendors’ booths. For no other reasons than the mud between the puddles, the screaming children, and the strings of garlic hanging between the skinned rabbits in the nearest booth, I think that the marketplace is the most beautiful spot in the whole world.

For one delirious, sun-drenched moment, I do not even slightly remember Mother.

A hand closes on my arm. I wrench free and turn back to tell the merchant that I don’t want to buy anything—

An old woman stands behind me. No, not old—her hair is still jet-black, and the lines on her face are scars, not wrinkles.

“Little dove,” she says, her voice hoarse and breathy. “Little, my little dove.”

The rest of the world is suddenly far away, behind a haze. I can’t look at anything but this woman: her stained and wrinkled dress, the bandages tied over her fingers to keep her from gouging her skin open, her wide and staring eyes, pupils swelled impossibly huge.

“My little dove,” says my old nurse.

I was only eight when Mother took ill. Father tried to shield me; he told me again and again that she was just a little tired, and he wouldn’t let me see her until it was clear that she was dying. By then I barely recognized the skeletal creature with sunken eyes. But she clasped my hands and whispered, “Darling, my dearest, I will always be with you. I have found a way. Even after I die, I will always be with you.”

She told me how. She wasn’t ashamed, not when her only daughter’s happiness was at stake. She had called upon the Gentle Lord, the prince of demons, and she had made a bargain with him.

Everybody knows that the Gentle Lord’s bargains inevitably twist and turn to ill. The price is always higher than it seems. But Mother had made sure that she would pay all the price herself. Her wish was that her daughter would always be protected; her price was that she would be the one to accomplish it. Her ghost would be bound to the apple tree behind our house, and she would have the power and the duty to answer all my tears.