Abigail Gibbs - Autumn Rose

He spotted me before they did and it was he who broke the silence.

‘Fallon,’ he corrected in advance, anticipating what would have been my next words. I did not respond, but curtsied; grateful he had not used my own title.

Insulted at being cut off mid-sentence, Gwen huffed and turned back to him, trying to engage him once more in conversation. If he heard her he did not acknowledge her efforts, his eyes transfixed in a steadfast gaze at me, as though I was a problem to be unravelled and solved.

‘Your sword. You carry it always?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘May I see it?’ He held out his hand expectantly, but I did not fulfil his request, feeling my hand tighten around the grip of its own accord. The puzzled look returned, before his expression cleared and he reached down to his own belt, offering his sword in return for my own. I did not hesitate this time and he took it, weighing it in his hands.

‘Light, very light. Too wide for a rapier, yet too long for a small sword.’ In my hands I did the same with his sword, though I refrained from speaking my thoughts aloud. Too heavy and stout for my liking. Rapier, though sharpened entirely along both edges, much like my own. ‘Swept hilt, very intricate. The grip is engraved with your coat of arms. Your grandmother’s sword, I presume?

A familiar fire started to flicker into life along my breastbone. I swallowed. ‘Yes.’

‘I thought it must be. It was transferred to you on the day of her funeral, wasn’t it? I remember it being blessed atop her coffin.’

I didn’t pause to consider the stupidity of what I was doing as I found myself raising his sword to rest under the curvature of his jaw, my breathing shaky; my hand steady. His look turned to complete confusion, as though he could not work out what he had said to offend, before it returned to one of calm assuredness.

‘I suggest you lower that.’

I did not move. His voice was soft, yet the authority clear as he spoke again. ‘Remember who I am, Duchess. Lower it.’

I know you know.

‘That’s an order!’

Behind him I could see the breeze stirring the uppermost petals of the blossom tree, snatching them from the branches to the ground, to be trampled beneath the feet of the students aware that the bell had rung.

Beyond that tree there was a sea of black; rough, weathered stone slotted in at odd angles between them. Amongst those dark pillars, motionless, was a girl, caught in the transition between child and adult, wrapped in a black shift and veil, concealing the tears that would not fall. Behind her was the family tomb that would not shelter her grandmother’s corpse, because she was afforded the honour of being laid to rest in the Athenean cathedral. Instead, the oak coffin stood atop the plinth in front of the tomb’s entrance, draped in Death’s Touch and a royal blue velvet cloth bearing the Al-Summers ’ coat of arms; the late duchess’ sword and dagger there too, alongside some of the prettier tokens left by mourners during her lying in state.

‘Is there a death? The light of day at eventide shall fade away; from out the sod’s eternal gloom the flowers, in their season, bloom; bud, bloom and fade, and soon the spot whereon they flourished knows them not; blighted by chill, autumnal frost; “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”’

The blessing called and the mourners swayed in the light breeze, the faintest trace of water in the wind, as the clouds angered at the slow service, so endless for those whom it hurt the most.

‘Come, Autumn, you must sprinkle the earth now. Step up, that’s it, so they may see you.’

With trembling knees and a lip clenched between her teeth, the girl stepped forward, taking a handful of dirt from a silver bowl and letting it drift onto the roses, and then repeating the gesture twice more as the master of ceremonies called.

‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Earthern carn earthern, ashen carn ashen, peltarn carn peltarn!’

With those words, the pallbearers came forward as the girl gave a final deep curtsey, the late duchess’ son and five of the elder Sagean princes lifting the coffin high into the air and beginning the slow procession through the fallen fields to the cathedral, just visible beyond the treetops. As it passed, the onlookers, hundreds in total, bowed, King Ll’iriad Athenea joining them in a show of unity that only a state funeral could bring.

Behind her veil, the young duchess let a tear slide down her scarred cheek.

‘Autumn?’

The sound of my name snapped me from my trance. My eyes refocused, finding the glinting tip of the sword pressed to the crimson scars of his upper jaw.

‘Autumn, don’t force me to hurt you.’

He didn’t need to worry, as my rigid arm was already slackening; he took the opportunity to raise his left arm and tentatively, like I was a wild animal that might pounce at any moment, to press his fingertips to the blade and push it away from his neck. I didn’t resist.

‘Autumn, I didn’t mean to offend—’

I cut him off as I forced his lowered sword into his hands and took back my own, sliding it into its sheath. I tried to mumble something resembling an apology, but the words would not come and instead, I fled, humiliated and desperate to work out why I had let my emotions get the better of me.

She didn’t say a word to me throughout tutorial. It was as though she was making every attempt to blot my very existence from her mind. Why?

When the A level English class started she stuck her hand out for the sheets that had arrived on the desk, just as I did the same. When our hands brushed, I thought for a moment that a flint of fire from my fingertips had caught her knuckles and that I had burnt her – there was a spark of a very different sort travelling the length of my arm – because she nursed her hand to the deep V of her blouse like I had hurt her. Yet there was no expression of pain in her face – not the physical kind, anyway. Instead, her lips parted into an O, her eyes widening.

She turned away quickly, and I thought she breathed, ‘Idiot.’

I recoiled in shock but didn’t say anything. I just couldn’t reconcile the image of the emerging woman with that of the twelve-year-old girl who, even then, had managed to stun the court with her looks and stage-managed character.

Where is the granddaughter of the old duchess who would never even speak against a superior, let alone press a sword to their throat?

‘In pairs, I want you to analyze the soliloquy I have assigned to your table. Off you go,’ Mr Sylaeia said.

I turned my attention away from her and to the sheet.

‘To be, or not to be, that is the question …’

I groaned as I read through Hamlet’s dramatic contemplation of the pros and cons of suicide, before my gaze returned to her. Her gaze flicked towards me.

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Why do you keep looking at me?’

Fates above, is it illegal to look at her now?!

I thought fast and scanned the sheet. ‘Disease imagery.’ My pen hovered above the paper. ‘There.’

‘I don’t need help,’ she insisted, despite her blank-looking page.

My eyebrows lowered a fraction. ‘He said analyze in pairs.’

She bowed her head and hid behind a curtain of hair and began scribbling across the page.

So she’s not going to share, then? Fine.

I adopted the same tactic.

She said very little once we had finished with the soliloquies, only answering questions when she was picked on. As the bell sounded, she repeated her ritual of slowly, even sluggishly, packing her bag, as though very tired – or in the hope I would leave before her. But I did not leave (I did not fancy throwing myself to the hordes), hovering beside the door as Mr. Sylaeia called her over to his desk. She dragged her feet, hand clutched so tightly around the strap of her bag that her knuckles whitened. She seemed to know what was coming.