I had only a few more questions. “You gave me some of that herb you got—the stuff you hid in your bottom drawer,” I said. “Didn’t you?” Adele nodded. “What did you put it in? When did you give it to me?”
“In your potatoes the night before. I mixed it in your gravy.”
“Did you know how terrible it would make me feel?”
A small smile for that. “Yes. I’m sorry. But I knew that if you weren’t really, really sick—”
“You’re a strange sister,” I said.
“I’m sorry if you hate me,” she said. “I had to do something.”
I scooted forward a little on the bench so I could lay my cheek on Adele’s shoulder. I was so tired. My stomach seemed fine now, but my head still hurt. My chest felt bruised and my arms and legs felt weighted, but those symptoms, I thought, were not left over from the drug my sister had administered. Those were the lingering aftereffects of heartache and betrayal, and it would take more than a day or two before they finally disappeared. “I couldn’t hate you,” I said. “It just seems very odd to be poisoned for love, when a few well-chosen words would do.”
“Words can carry their own poison,” she said. “The truth can be toxic.”
“But secrets can be deadly.”
I heard the smile in her voice. “Well, you at least were not meant to keep secrets,” she said. “Promise me this will be the last time you try.”
“All right, but I will expose you sometime if I think it will be good for you,” I said drowsily. “I won’t keep your secrets, either.”
She laughed. “What makes you think I would try to have any secrets from you?”
I yawned and sat up, shaking my head. It did no good; I still could not think clearly. “Because you have secrets from everybody.”
“But I don’t let them hurt anyone,” she replied.
I looked at her in the dark. “So far.”
CHAPTER NINE
Autumn was fiery and golden; winter was a fierce and unrelenting white. Karro held another Wintermoon dinner party so lavish it required the services of half the townspeople. The inn was overflowing with guests from Wodenderry and smaller towns, and Adele and I could not keep ourselves from gawking at their gorgeous, expensive clothes and their calculated, affected gestures. The prince had been invited to attend the event, and had accepted the invitation, but two days before Wintermoon his mother sent a curt message that he had broken his leg in a careless sporting accident. He would be unable to travel for at least six weeks.
The news amused and delighted Roelynn, who had been quite glum at the prospect of finally meeting young Darian. Her father and the queen had just renewed their shipping contracts, and Karro had spent another week in Wodenderry currying the royal favor. While an official betrothal had never been formalized, it was clear that the queen was seriously considering the idea. In Karro’s mind, there was obviously no doubt that the marriage was all but sealed, and he told anyone who had not already heard the news that one day his daughter would be queen. For her part, Roelynn still maintained that she would never marry to suit her father’s notions of politics—but she said such things only when she was alone with Adele and me.
Which was why she was so pleased at the prince’s most recent round of misfortune. “He’s not coming, he’s not coming!” she sang, dancing around the chatterleaf tree. It was too cold to sit outside and talk, and so I told her, but neither Roelynn nor Adele seemed to mind the bitter chill.
“He must have broken his leg on purpose so he wouldn’t have to come here,” Adele said. She and I were standing more sedately just under the bare, shivering branches. I had my arms crossed over my chest in the hopes of generating some body heat, but Adele just lounged there with her coat unbuttoned and her thumbs hooked over the edges of her pockets. “I don’t think you’re ever going to meet him, if he has anything to say about it.”
Roelynn stopped dancing and clapped her gloved hands together. “Yes! That’s what I think, too! He doesn’t want to marry me either! A merchant’s daughter from Merendon—he must surely think his mother can make a better match for him than that! Or perhaps he’s fallen in love with someone wholly ineligible—a seamstress or a kitchen maid—and he is going to all these desperate shifts to avoid being married off to anyone. I don’t know, maybe he’s had boat races and broken bones every couple of weeks for the past ten years as the queen has attempted to introduce him to a whole array of fashionable and boring young women.”
I didn’t see much point in romanticizing rude behavior. “I think he just sounds selfish and careless,” I said. “You’re better off not marrying someone like that, even if he is the prince.”
“I don’t want to marry the prince,” Roelynn said dreamily. “I’d rather marry Steffan.”
Adele and I looked at each other. I was frowning; Adele was laughing. “Steffan?” my sister repeated. “I don’t believe we know about him.”
Steffan, as we learned, was the younger son of a successful wool weaver in Movington. This made him more respectable than many of the men Roelynn had fallen in love with to date, but he was still hardly likely to be on Karro’s short list of approved prospects for his daughter. What added to his unsuitability was that he was uninterested in his father’s business and wanted to make a name for himself as a poet. Roelynn proceeded to recite for us one of the sonnets Steffan had written expressly for her. Adele stopped me with a quick, meaningful look before I could voice my opinion of his talent.
“Very nice,” Adele said. “Will he be at the Wintermoon dinner party?”
Indeed he would, as would so many other people of consequence (except Prince Darian). The Dream-Maker had already arrived in town and was staying at the Leaf & Berry. Even though we could have sold the room five times over for three times the price, my parents had held it for Melinda, and I was very glad. It was hardly Wintermoon without her.
The days leading up to the holiday were exceedingly busy, as our Wodenderry guests were quite demanding, but we enjoyed being involved in all the bustle. As always, despite the preceding chaos, Wintermoon itself was a coldly serene day followed by a still, watchful night of contemplation and renewal. Adele and I fed the fire while our parents followed their tradition of sleeping until nearly midnight. Silently we made our own wishes as we poked new logs into the flames. I prayed for steadiness and clearer insight and the perspicacity that would prevent me from ever being fooled by a man again. It was impossible to guess what Adele might wish for.
As had become another tradition in our household, Micah and Roelynn accompanied the Dream-Maker back to our bonfire once the formal dinner was over. “It’s too cold out here,” Melinda complained. “I’m going in to put some boots on and then I’ll come back out with your parents.”
“How was the party?” I asked the other two once she had gone inside.
“Quite nice,” Roelynn said. This meant she had had a chance to talk with Steffan half the night and had received a fair number of compliments from many of the other highborn guests. The years when her current flirt was not invited to the dinner were the years she stigmatized it as a dull, interminable affair. “I was a little sorry to leave, actually.”
“Don’t bother to stay just to please us,” I said tartly.
She laughed. “Silly. It’s not Wintermoon unless I burn the wreath with you.”
“Did you enjoy the dinner?” Adele asked Micah, always trying to draw him into the conversation when years of casual acquaintance should have told her he never had much to say.
“It’s an important event for my father,” he replied. “I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I do what I can to make it successful.”
Roelynn rolled her eyes. “He had to dance with all the old dowagers and the silly young debutantes,” she said. “But you didn’t mind the pretty girls, did you?”
He smiled slightly and looked at Adele. “Silly is the right word,” he said. “I find I don’t have much to say to them.”
“Well, really, you don?
??t have much to say to anyone,” I said, trying to sound encouraging. Adele gave me a look of reproach. Roelynn laughed.
Micah, unexpectedly, looked amused. “Someday, Eleda,” he said, “you may find I am more interesting than you always thought.”
I tried to look as though I found this possible. Roelynn said, “Oh, good, there are Melinda and your parents. What a beautiful wreath you have this year! It’s enormous!”
My father smiled broadly and dropped the wreath to the ground to rest against his knee. “Does everyone have their special wishes ready to tie to the wreath?” he inquired. “It’s time for burning.”
All of us pulled something out of our purses or pockets, even Melinda, and Adele handed around bits of ribbon. I had hunted through the woods all last week until I found a dried-up bush of carraphile. It bore a leaf often harvested for use in herbal teas, and I thought it might be expected to confer equanimity. I’d crushed the leaves and gathered them in a little gingham bag, and now I tied the bag to the wreath. I didn’t bother to specify what I was wishing for, and neither did any of the others. But I could tell that Roelynn’s contribution was a lacy sachet filled with dried petals—probably pulled from roses bestowed by the romantic Steffan—and that Melinda’s was sewn into a bag of velvet. A request for a soft life, perhaps, or an easy year. Whatever items Adele and Micah attached to the wreath were remarkably similar in size and shape, and they tied these pieces to the wreath with matching red bows. As always, Mother and Father added strands of dried fruit tied with gold braid. A well-provisioned home blessed with material riches.
When everyone was done, Micah and Father lifted the wreath and tossed it into the fire. “Mercy!” Mother exclaimed as the flames shot up almost as high as the roof, and then died down in a shower of drifting sparks. Someone’s little packet had held a mix of spices, because the baking scents of cinnamon and nutmeg were very strong. Domestic scents. Possibly Roelynn had wished for marriage when she tied Steffan’s roses to the wreath.
“Very lovely,” Melinda pronounced. “Happy Wintermoon to you all. May every dream you wished for come true.”
In the coming months it seemed that at least one or two residents of Merendon saw their deepest desires realized. The Widow Norville, now Mrs. Haskins, reconciled with her long-estranged son and had a chance to meet her granddaughter. Karro sent a laden ship into a foreign port and traded for the most fabulous goods ever seen in our kingdom; he made a fresh fortune selling these in cities from Wodenderry to the coast. He even allowed Micah to set sail on some of those trading ships, which Roelynn said was her brother’s wish come true. Eileen Dawson spent the spring with her grandmother in Lowford and came back talking shyly of a handsome, smiling young man with kind manners and excellent family connections.
I recovered from my melancholy and again began to think the world a pretty good place.
Roelynn broke off relations with Steffan when she discovered he was an abysmal horseman and had no interest in improving, but since she immediately took up with a coach-man who traveled the Merendon-Wodenderry road, she didn’t stay unhappy for long.
It was hard to know what exactly all these individuals had wished for when they stood around their Wintermoon bonfires, but some of them, at least, had to be glad of the way their fortunes turned. Mrs. Haskins and Eileen Dawson certainly credited Melinda with making their dreams come true.
But certain wishes no one thinks to make. The small ones, the ordinary ones, the ones that say, “Let life continue on this way forever, with no misfortune, no despair. Turn tragedy aside and let me remain, if not ecstatic, then content.”
I didn’t wish that, at any rate. I would have been willing to bet that neither Roelynn nor her father had put such dreams into words. So we were all horrified when news came back from the harbor one spring afternoon: One of Karro’s ships had gone down a hundred miles off a foreign coast and all hands on board were believed lost.
Roelynn’s brother Micah had been aboard the ship.
There was no way to comfort Roelynn. I was not good at comforting anyone, anyway, because I could never see the value of offering false words of hope or reassurance. But in those first awful days following the news of Micah’s disappearance, I wished fervently that I had learned how to shape the conventional phrases of consolation and encouragement. There, there. You’ll be fine. Or, Everything will seem better in the morning. Or, All things happen for a good reason.
I could not imagine that any of these things were true. And so I could not say them. I could only run up to Roelynn, when she appeared weeping at our back door, and throw my arms around her, and push back her dark disheveled hair, and tell her how very, very sorry I was.
I had never been particularly fond of Micah, it was true, but Roelynn was, and I could not imagine anything worse than losing a sibling. Anything. I hugged her, and let her cry, and shuddered at the strange, terrible events a life could hold.
As might be expected, Adele was much better at this sort of thing than I was. She spent much of her time away from the inn, at Karro’s house, sitting silently beside the grieving Roelynn. Or at least I assumed that they sat there in silence—Adele never bothered to say. When Roelynn came to the inn, looking for solace, more often than not she and Adele would end up outside together, curled on the ornamental bench, their arms around each other’s shoulders, their faces solemn with pain. Not for the first time, I marveled at my sister’s gift for wordless empathy. I was so much more likely to try to do something to make the situation better. Nothing could improve this particular circumstance, but I found myself bustling just the same. I stitched a black silk shawl for Roelynn and embroidered it with Micah’s initials; she wore it every day during the month after we heard the news. I worked in the kitchen to make the special dishes that I knew were Roelynn’s favorites, and I carried them to the kitchen door of the great mansion, hoping to tempt her into eating. Karro must have employed three cooks and any number of scullery maids, so it wasn’t as if they needed my contributions to the dinner table, but I felt better just for making the effort. And Roelynn appreciated it, I knew, for she always made a point of personally returning the serving dishes and thanking me profusely for my gifts.
How Karro took the news of his son’s disappearance I could only guess, for I never saw him. But new ships that he had commissioned to be built sat unfinished in the harbor; merchants who came to town to renew contracts with him waited for days at the Leaf & Berry and were never admitted into his presence. Roelynn said that he would sit by himself for hours in his private office, and whether he drank or whether he wept or whether he merely stared out the window and mourned, she had no idea.
It occurred to me that, now that she was Karro’s only heir, Roelynn would be an even richer catch in the marriage market, and the queen might lose whatever final disinclination she might have shown toward the match with her son. I felt guilty for even having the thought, and I did not make this observation aloud.
It was probably three weeks after we had gotten the dreadful message that I began to notice something was wrong with Adele.
It had always been hard to tell when Adele was sick, unless she had a rash or a hacking cough, because she never bothered to mention it when she didn’t feel well and her behavior did not change at all. She was so often reserved or withdrawn that you could not tell when her silence was the result of a fevered lethargy or merely her current mood. When we were children, every time I fell ill, my mother just assumed Adele would do so as well, and dosed her with whatever drugs had been prescribed for me. Now and then, even when I was healthy, my mother would pause and lay her hand across Adele’s forehead to check for heat. Once we learned she had sprained her ankle only when we noticed her very slight limp and the way she leaned against the wall with her heel slightly raised.
I’ve never understood people who won’t speak up when they’re in trouble. I always want whatever sympathy and aid is available, the minute I start to feel miserable. I am not interested in bearing wretchedness
alone. But I think concealment is such a habit with Adele that she sometimes is not even aware she is practicing it.
At first, this time, I could not imagine what Adele might be hiding. At first, I was not even sure I was reading the symptoms right. But then I started watching her more closely at dinner. She put small portions on her plate and pretended to eat, but mostly she just moved food around and then covered the whole mess with a napkin when the meal was over. Or she ran errands right at lunchtime and came back claiming to have eaten with Roelynn or to have purchased a pie from a street vendor. She began to wear her hair in a new style so that when my mother said, “Your face looks thinner,” she could reply, “It’s the way I’ve got my hair pulled back.” She wore her long-sleeved dresses and her high-necked blouses even in the warmth of early spring.
It was another week before I became certain that Adele was trying to starve herself to death.
The longer I watched her, the more I became convinced that she was barely eating enough to keep a child alive. Her cheekbones had acquired a gaunt prominence, and when she put on her nightclothes and hurriedly slipped into bed, I could tell that her arms and her legs had grown painfully thin. In such a short time. I woke once in the middle of the night to hear her slipping soundlessly from the room, so I rose and followed her with equal stealth. I saw her duck out the back door and vomit in the garden, clutching her stomach as if she was in so much pain that she expected her body to tear itself in half.
I cannot describe the terror that took hold of me that night as I peered out a small round kitchen window and watched my sister try to throw her life away.
The minute she turned for the door, I ran back upstairs and flung myself in bed. I pretended to be sleeping as she crept back into the room and arranged herself on her own mattress. I lay awake the rest of the night trying to decide what to do.
In the morning, Adele was the first one up, dressed, and downstairs. I supposed she had given up sleeping as well as eating. As soon as she left, I scrambled up and began searching her possessions. Neither of us had that many places where we could hide things—and I rarely bothered to hide things, anyway—so I didn’t have that many places to look. Her armoire. Her dresser. A few small boxes cached under her bed. The pockets of her various gowns and jackets. I figured that surely I would find something, anything, that would give me a clue as to what had made my sister so sad.