‘Some help.’
She frowned. ‘To do what?’
He gestured angrily. ‘My garden is dying and you just lie here all day, every day. Help me carry the water.’
Xanthe laughed and raised herself onto her elbows. ‘You want me to help? What on earth for? Get a boy from the town, or one of the farms. You surely can’t expect me to lug carriers of water about.’
‘You know I don’t want strangers here.’
Xanthe shrugged. ‘You are a fool. Keep your dark lady secret, by all means, but there’s no reason why some local boys shouldn’t attend to the rest of the place.’ She smiled. ‘Samuel, I am not a big, strong man and that’s what you need for this. See sense.’
‘What about Hesta? Get her to help me.’
Xanthe shook her head mildly. ‘No, the garden is not Hesta’s province. She has too much to do about the house.’
‘I noticed!’ Hesta’s hours had increased over the weeks, as had her wages - at Xanthe’s insistence. It was as if the women were somehow building a new house around him that no longer belonged to him.
‘Are you complaining that I have turned your ruin of a house into a home?’ Xanthe said, her voice cool.
‘No, no...’ Samuel wanted to abandon the conversation. He backed away from his wife until the hedges hid her from view. Pausing beyond them, he heard her sigh, then imagined she just settled herself back to drowsing, dismissing him from her mind.
Disgruntled, Samuel sought the sanctuary of Night’s Damozel’s bower. He couldn’t help unburdening himself of sour thoughts about his wife. ‘Sometimes, the mere sight of her makes me angry,’ he confessed. ‘Yet she is exquisite - submissive and calm. What she said about hiring boys from the village was right, of course, and yet...’ He shook his head. ‘There is something wrong. Something.’ The queen of his garden listened patiently. She alone seemed unaffected by the heat. Around her, her maidens lay swooning on the soil.
Later, when he returned to the house, Xanthe was there with her serpent smile and cool, welcoming hands. ‘Samuel, we must not argue about petty things. Of course, I shall ask Hesta to give you an hour of her time every day. I’m sure she won’t mind.’ She bathed his brow and kissed his finger-tips. She was his wife, his beauty. He felt ashamed.
Now, every day, Hesta, apparently without grudge, tramped back and forth from the kitchen to the gardens with water. She was a strong, steady worker, but even her help was not enough to slake the thirst of the parched soil.
‘The garden is dying,’ Samuel told Xanthe in anguish. ‘I am helpless.’
‘There is more to life than gardens,’ Xanthe said. ‘And anyway, what is lost can be regained. Your precious Damozel won’t wither. I know you make sure of that.’
Samuel did not like her tone. She often seemed to make innuendoes about his relationship with the Damozel, but not enough for Samuel to challenge her outright. He wondered whether in some way, Xanthe actually enjoyed watching him panic as his ladies succumbed to the drought. Perhaps she was jealous.
Every day, Samuel examined the rat-traps he kept in corners of the house to augment the poison trays. For the past few weeks, he’d been surprised to find all the traps empty, although on one occasion he’d thought he detected a smear of blood, some hairs. It was strange there were no kills. Had the vermin become wise to his precautions, or was the continuing hot weather responsible?
He mentioned it to Xanthe, who replied, ‘Are you complaining? I’d have thought you’d be glad to see the back of them.’
Again, that sharp tone, an implied criticism. ‘But they are not gone completely,’ Samuel said, ‘I hear them walking beneath the floor-boards at night. Don’t you?’
Xanthe shrugged. ‘I hear many strange things. This is an old house. What do you expect?’
Anger burned through him. He wanted to strike her. Relations between them were becoming more frequently tinged with what Samuel perceived as sniping comments, yet at the same time, he found his desire for Xanthe increased. His lovemaking became urgent and unsophisticated although Xanthe remained unruffled by his lust Samuel always felt drained and exhausted afterwards, usually falling into a deep sleep within minutes, while he suspected that Xanthe remained awake for hours. More often than not, he would wake in the morning with a pounding headache, as drained and groggy as if he had hardly slept. The heat was oppressive; he felt feel weak and sickly.
As the weeks of summer rolled on, it seemed that Xanthe’s initial interest in renovating the family pile had been short-lived. Hesta, no longer confined to scrubbing away the past in the house, was now Xanthe’s constant hand-maiden, sitting beside her in the herb garden, shelling peas for dinner, or skinning rabbits. Xanthe’s sole occupation was to lie in the sun, and when she entered the house at night, she seemed to burn with her own light. She and Hesta murmured together. Samuel could hear their soft tones in every corner of the garden, and occasionally a husky laugh. Hesta brought gifts for Xanthe from the farm, some of which were distinctly strange: a dish of goat’s milk, what appeared to be a withered umbilical cord, some dried poppy heads, a dead bird. Samuel supposed this was some traditional thing that once his mother must have enjoyed with the local women. One day, in the kitchen, he said, ‘She seems to think you are a cat.’ He gestured at the milk Hesta had left out in a dish on the table.
‘No,’ said Xanthe emphatically, ‘she does not. The milk is for my hands and arms.’ She began to rub it into her dry skin.
‘But the other things...’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
Xanthe examined him blandly. ‘Alkanet root, poppy seeds, feathers? They are ingredients for a herbal concoction. I have trouble with my skin.’
Samuel shook his head. Xanthe increasingly unnerved him. She was attentive in their shared bed, but during the day seemed distant and indifferent. Also, Samuel noticed that she rarely seemed to drink. It was unnatural. As he watched her dipping her pointed fingers in the milk, he had to suppress a shudder. It was more than being unnerved; he felt a wave of revulsion.
Xanthe looked at him, alert, as if his mind was her garden in which to walk. She smiled at him, perhaps with a hint of cynicism. He felt dizzy; the heat was getting to him. There was so much to do, yet he had little energy. Xanthe had come into his domain and had made it hers. She had brought searing equatorial heat with her, and both he and his garden were withering in it. She will be the death of me, he thought.
That evening, Samuel wearily carried water to the Night’s Damozel’s bower. Her blooms reared into the darkness, releasing a drizzle of shimmering pollen. He held out his hands to it, let it run over the backs of his hands. Xanthe left dust wherever she lay. In the mornings, their bed was full of it, a pollen of her own, faintly soapy against his fingers. Groaning, he threw himself into the lap of the Damozel’s leaves. ‘Help me,’ he said. ‘I am invaded!’
The Damozel could not speak.She only gave him visions. As the pollen settled over him, seeped down into his lungs and melted through the pores of his skin, he saw Xanthe stealing through the house at noon, when all was still and drenched in heat. He saw her stoop over the rat traps and take the soft corpses from them. He saw her eat. In his stupor, his stomach roiled. She had what she wanted: this house, these gardens. She would turn them into a barren desert where her unnatural hunger for heat could be indulged.She was a witch who influenced the weather, killing all that he held dear. Hesta was her creature now; bewitched and pliant. What a fool he had been.
The blooms above him looked like fairy faces. He fancied he could almost see thin lips mouthing silent words. ‘Listen, my beloved, listen...’
Later, Samuel crept in from the garden, and went to the room where his wife lay slumbering. He stared at her for a few moments, noticing the faintly luminous sparkle on her skin, which might be an effect of the oils she used. He dreaded the powdery touch of her flesh against his own, yet when he slid beneath the covers beside her still form, he could do nothing but take her in his arms, inhale her strong, musky scent. She
had that power over him. He resented it. Do not think. Act now or it will be too late. Carefully, he rolled her onto her back. She made a small sound, but did not wake. Her lips were slightly parted.
Samuel dribbled a shining stream of motes down into Xanthe’s mouth. The Damozel’s pollen could be rubbed into the skin, inhaled or ingested, the latter being the most effective method. The gate of dreams or the portal of death: only long acquaintance with the lady made that distinction. A dust glistened faintly at the corners of Xanthe’s lips; Samuel covered them with his own, her body with his.
The funeral cortege milled around the front of the house. There was Sythia, imported from her summer home of Mewt, holding a scrap of black lace to her eyes. She was surrounded by others of her tribe, profligates, counts and divas, debutantes, artists and concubines. The majority of them had been summering at Sythia’s estate, and once the news of the death had arrived by swift courier, the group had flocked to accept the invitation to the funeral. They were a mass of tall, nodding feathers and rustling costumes of black silk. Jetty horses stamped and snorted before the hearse, tossing their girlish manes, their hooves polished to a sheen. The day should have been overcast and grey, the trees weeping tears of rain. Clouds should have occluded the sun. The brightness and heat of late summer seemed an affront to the occasion, and several ladies were already feeling weak in their tight stays.
Sythia spotted a tall figure emerging from the shadows of the hall and swept up the worn front steps. ‘Oh, but I shall ride with you in the foremost carriage. What a distressing time, for you, dear heart. How terrible. How cruel.’
Xanthe paused to pull on a skin-tight pair of black gloves. She inclined her head coolly. ‘I shall be grateful for your company, Sythia.’ Together, the women descended the steps, and the mourners drew apart to give them passage.
On the boat over, one of Sythia’s friends had divulged an alarming revelation. Although information concerning Xanthe was scant in Mewt, the informant had discovered that Samuel’s death occasioned the fourth time Xanthe had been widowed. ‘It seems, my dear,’ the confidant had said dryly, ‘that the lady has a distressing propensity for losing husbands.’
‘Sad coincidences,’ Sythia said coldly, for she admired Xanthe greatly.
‘Perhaps so,’ the companion said, ‘but this is certainly the shortest marriage of her history. The other three husbands at least survived the wedding for several years.’
‘You should not say such things,’ Sythia retorted. ‘That is how ugly rumours start.’
Her friend raised an eyebrow. ‘But I heard this from the second cousin of her last husband, who was Cossic. What do you think the talk of the coast is at present? There were rumours already. Some have said that Samuel had the spectre of death at his shoulder even as he spoke his marriage vows.’
‘I won’t countenance this nonsense,’ Sythia said. ‘Xanthe is a lovely woman. She comes from a rich family, and lacks for nothing.’
Now, as she climbed into the sombre carriage, with Xanthe so self-possessed beside her, suspicions flitted across Sythia’s mind. The widow seemed very little marked by grief. Her eyes were clear, her face set in its usual enigmatic expression. ‘It was very thoughtful of you to wait so long for the interment, my dear,’ Sythia said. ‘This heat...’
Xanthe flicked her a glance. ‘Poor Samuel has no family. It was the least I could do to gather his friends for this occasion.’
‘But three weeks...’
‘The coffin is sealed,’ Xanthe said. ‘And we have stored him in the cellars, which are cool.’
Sythia shuddered. The frank details seemed indelicate. ‘Of course, we came as soon as we could.’
Xanthe patted Sythia’s hand. ‘I know. Please don’t trouble yourself.’
Sythia paused for a moment, then said, ‘The contents of your message were scant. How exactly did Samuel die?’
Xanthe closed her eyes for a moment, the first signal Sythia had seen that the widow suffered any twinge of emotion. ‘This may be distressing for you to hear,’ she said, ‘but the truth is, Samuel has long been addicted to intoxicants extracted from certain exotic plants he grew at the estate. I’m afraid he poisoned himself unwittingly.’ She seemed to sense her companion’s troubled thoughts and fixed her with a guileless stare. ‘The family doctor from the town has identified the plant responsible, and we made upsetting discoveries in my husband’s study - equipment to distil the essence of the plant, and so on.’
‘Oh,’ said Sythia inadequately.
Xanthe sighed. ‘I have little luck where husbands are concerned, it seems.’
‘You poor creature,’ Sythia murmured, but still her heart beat fast.
At the graveside, while the mourners sweated uncomfortably in their ornate costumes, Xanthe stood cool and tall, staring down into the gaping earth. She seemed at least melancholy.
‘What will you do now?’ Sythia asked her as they returned to the house. ‘Come home to Mewt?’
‘No,’ Xanthe answered. ‘I shall remain here for a while at least.’
‘Alone?’
Xanthe smiled. ‘Yes. Alone.’
In the humid evening, Hesta reverently sponged Xanthe’s skin with milk. The moon was rising behind the trees and the gardens lay in silence. There were no rats out there, nor in the house; no small creatures at all. All the guests had gone.
Xanthe rose from her bath and Hesta wrapped her in a towel. ‘I will never marry outside my own kind again,’ Xanthe said.
Hesta made a small, comforting sound. ‘It was not your fault, my lady.’
Xanthe shook her head. ‘This time... this time, it seemed so right. He accepted me as what I am, did not question my behaviour.’ Her voice was low and uninflected, her gaze steady. She glanced down at Hesta. ‘But what I am has followed me from Mewt. It was waiting here, but twisted.’ She sighed and touched her belly. ‘It is time now for me to settle this matter.’
Hesta dropped a small curtsey. ‘I will await you, ma’am, in the kitchens.’
Xanthe smiled. ‘I will not be long.’ She clad herself in a long sheath of fabric, the colour of the moon, opalescent and oily. She glided through the house and out through the long back windows, down across the yellow lawns, past the sundial, the mermaid fountain, deeper, deeper into the garden to the court of the queen. In the outer courts the ladies of venom lay desiccated in their beds, petals strewn around them like papery jewels. Xanthe paid them no attention.
The queen, Night’s Damozel, still reigned in her bower, despite the fact that Xanthe had denied her water for three weeks. Her leaves had withered and the tall stalks of her flowers were wrinkled like the skin of a crone. The purple flowers were splayed open, like dying tulips, revealing black and golden hearts. Xanthe crept through the yews on silent, naked feet and stood before her.
‘Greetings,’ she said. ‘We have commerce to conduct, you and I.’
A single, damaged petal fell from one of the flowers, and the stillness of the night was absolute. Xanthe began to circle the central bower. ‘Your lover is dead, and your minions have either perished or retreated into a death-like sleep. How much longer will you stand, dark lady? I admire the way you cling to life, even though half your roots are now nothing more than lifeless twigs.’
Night’s Damozel seemed to shudder in the moonlight and another petal fell.
‘Come forth,’ Xanthe hissed, her eyes like slits, her elegant hands clenched into fists at her sides. Her narrow body swayed before the Damozel, and her will pulsed out of her like steam.
Again the plant convulsed.
‘Do you hear me?’ Xanthe said. ‘I order you to come forth. If you savour life, then obey me. If not, I shall trample your crippled body into the earth. I am not afraid of you, dark Damozel, for my poisons are greater than yours.’
The image of the plant seemed to ripple, and a stream of vapour exuded from the earth. It coiled at ground level, and then puffed upwards, resolving at last into an indistinct, female figure.
‘But you must show me more,’ Xanthe said. ‘I do not believe this wisp, this ghost!’
The emanation gradually became more solid, until it was clear that a strange woman stood upon the withered leaves of the Damozel. Her skin was pale with purple shadows. Her heart-shaped face was alien, horrifying, yet peculiarly alluring. She had barely a nose to speak of and her eyes were feathered slits.
Xanthe shook her head. ‘He never had the power to conjure you, did he,’ she murmured, ‘but then he knew so little of what he had.’
The Damozel fell to hands and knees upon the soil, her pale downy hair falling over her face. She looked starved, nearly dead.
‘You know I could have come before,’ Xanthe said, ‘and perhaps you were waiting for me. If I had succumbed, would Samuel still be alive?’She put her head on one side to study the spirit of the flower. ‘I could destroy you now,’ she said. ‘and should. Poor Samuel. He sought to kill me with your pollen, and woke in me the instinct to survive. What could I do but strike? I had no choice, for my nature overcame me. Didn’t you think of that? I found him dead upon me. You are a jealous mistress, lady, but I know your measure.’
The spirit of the Damozel lifted her head. Her eyes wept an indigo steam.
Xanthe extended one slim foot until it nearly touched the Damozel’s fragile, splayed fingers. ‘I have loved and lost too many times, but in Samuel found peace. In his innocence and inexperience, he lacked the brutal qualities of men who awake the beast within me. Noxious flower, you have destroyed my haven, for now I am alone again!’
The Damozel’s fingers flexed in the dry soil.
Xanthe folded her arms. ‘In my land, you are known by a different name, Ophidia. You are the serpent flower. They say in Mewt that the serpents who doze among your leaves give you the gift of their poison. It is said that this is how you able to concoct your seductive venoms.’ Xanthe laughed coldly. ‘We know better, don’t we?’