28
“WELL, IT’S ABOUT bloody time you put in an appearance,” I said, marching up to the throne where Aesinor had settled, her flashing green tail coiled around its legs, her red leathery wings fanned out behind her. “While you’ve been gone your she-devils have been trussing up my friends like Christmas turkeys while we came to help—”
Aesinor opened her mouth and spit out a stream of fire. I only avoided getting it square in my face by crossing my wings in front of me. Marlin and Raven leapt to either side of me, their wings flexed to spring at her while I heard Mr. Bellows comment, “A fire-breathing Melusine! Fascinating!”
“I do not need your help, Darkling.” She spat out the words in smoky gusts. “Or the help of your male companions—Darkling or human. Males of both species have done nothing but betray me.”
“How have the Darklings betrayed you?” Marlin demanded.
“They were pledged to defend me when Godfrey stormed the castle, but they never appeared. They let me fight alone until all was lost and my handmaids took their own lives.”
The Wieven swayed and moaned behind the throne.
“Do we know anything about a treaty with a Melusine at Bouillon?” Marlin whispered to Raven.
“No, only that we were driven out of the Forest of Arden by giants.”
“A lie to excuse you breaking your treaty with me. I owe you nothing. And as for this . . . man . . .” She glared at Mr. Bellows. “I owe him only the same watery grave his kind consigned my handmaids to.”
She spat fire at Mr. Bellows and I stepped in front of him, shielding him with my wings. “Mr. Bellows is a good man,” I said. “He’s always been kind to me and my friends. And even though he was in love with Miss Sharp he didn’t begrudge her happiness when she fell in love with Lillian Corey, did you, Mr. Bellows?”
Mr. Bellows blushed and stammered his reply. “I-I only want her to be happy.”
“See! He’s no Godfrey. I’m sorry your husband was so awful to you. He shouldn’t have cared what you did with your free time or what you looked like in your bath. He sounds like a very shallow person. My friends are not like that. They’ve accepted me even with my”—I flexed my wings—“differences. But there is a terrible man on his way to seize the castle and open the vessel. His name is Judicus van Drood and he’s a shadow master. He wants the whole world to be as dark as his soul.”
“Let him come!” Aesinor roared, beating her wings. “My Wieven and I will eat him alive!”
“And what if he’s too strong for you? This isn’t a hapless traveler out for a stroll—”
“I was on an official expedition,” Mr. Bellows objected.
“—or two Darklings not expecting an attack—”
“She did take us by surprise,” Marlin murmured.
“—but a shadow master with an army. He has been planning this for a long time. If he breaches your walls—”
“What then? Will he kill me? Let him. I am tired of living. As for my handmaids, they are already dead. What more can he do to them?”
“But he’ll get to the vessel!” Mr. Bellows cried. “And release the rest of the tenebrae. The world will be overrun by darkness.”
“He’s right,” I said. “I’ve seen the future where the third vessel has been broken. It is a dark and ruined place with no hope.”
“Perhaps that would be better,” Aesinor replied, curling her tail around her throne. “I built this castle to protect the vessel from your kind—ah, you’ve heard the story that the peasants tell, that I built it as a wedding present for Godfrey. That is true, but it is not the whole story. I sought an alliance with Godfrey because I saw how powerful and violent you humans were becoming. I built the castle around the hill where the vessel was buried.”
She gestured toward a well that stood in the middle of the courtyard. “It lies deep below us, sealed by solid rock. But after Godfrey’s perfidy I saw that the shadows were everywhere—they even tempted Godfrey to spy on me in my bath and made him turn on me. But I was the fool to believe a human could be anything but a base betrayer.”
She beat her wings so angrily that she rose from her throne, her tail lashing like an angry cat’s, her eyes blazing fire as she spit down at us. “Over the centuries I have watched the humans who live in this valley and beyond nurse foolish hopes of love and peace and happiness only to have those hopes dashed as cruelly as my handmaids’ bodies were dashed on the river rocks. Your countries are girding for war as we speak—and for what? You say it’s your Shadow Master who is bringing this war, but is it really the darkness that rallies men to war, or foolish dreams of glory and valor in battle? These men march off to war because they want to be heroes in their sweethearts’ eyes. And the women wave them good-bye and toss flowers to them. They pray that their men will come back to them. Wouldn’t it be better if they knew they would not be coming back—at least not as the men they once loved? Wouldn’t it be better if they gave up hope and love?”
The Wieven moaned in answer. She didn’t wait for us to respond. “It’s hope that breaks our hearts. The world would be better off without it. Let your Shadow Master come. I will greet him with open arms and show him the way to the vessel.” She spread her arms to demonstrate and swooped over the well, her words reverberating in the long, hollow shaft.
“If you meant that, then why haven’t you broken the vessel yourself?” I asked. “Why have you remained here protecting it?”
Aesinor bristled at my question, puffing up with rage. Marlin and Raven edged closer to me. “It is mine,” she hissed. “It is the one purpose that remained to me.”
“That hasn’t been your only purpose,” I said, stepping closer to the throne. Raven and Marlin moved with me, but I waved them back. “The women of the village pray to you as Saint Eleanor.”
“That is their foolish business.” She ruffled her wings again, but this time it struck me as less with anger and more with pride.
“But you said you heard their prayers,” I pointed out. “Why do you listen to them if you don’t care?”
“To relieve the boredom,” she replied.
“So you never answer them? It seems funny that all those women would keep praying to you if you never answered them.”
She hesitated. The Wieven were pulsing behind the throne like airborne jellyfish, humming. “As I said, humans are stupid. You should hear the stories my handmaids bring me—wives beaten by their husbands, scullery maids abused by their masters, mothers who can’t feed their babies because their worthless husbands spend their wages on drink.”
“Did never a woman do wrong?” Marlin muttered. “Or ever a man do right?”
“They also come to pray for their sons and husbands and brothers,” I said. “I’ve seen the shrine.”
Aesinor’s wings beat the air three times before she answered. “I hear . . . occasionally of a male specimen who is not entirely reprehensible. And for the sake of the woman who speaks for him I sometimes, for my own amusement, intervene.”
The Wieven suddenly burst into song. “She brings the rain to nourish the earth and eases the pain in childbirth. She lights the path for the girl who is lost and leads home the soldier to his mother’s arms. All hail, Eleanor the Good!”
We were all silent for a moment after this extraordinary outburst. Even the Wieven deflated as though embarrassed. It was Mr. Bellows who broke the silence. “You love them,” he said simply. “You love the people of this village.”
“And what if I do?” Aesinor demanded.
“Do you know what will happen to them if we don’t stop van Drood?” I asked.
I stepped forward and laid my hand on Aesinor’s arm. Her skin was burning hot but I held on just the same. I was hoping that just as a Darkling could read the thoughts of the dying so we could transfer our thoughts to the living. I closed my eyes and let myself remember the future I had seen at Blythewood??
?the ruined castle, the lists of the dead, the blasted woods, the fearsome zeppelins ruling the skies. I felt Aesinor shudder and knew she was seeing it, too—and more. We weren’t just remembering what I had seen, we were in the future, ranging over the world van Drood and his shadow army had made. We saw the forests burnt to the ground, trees blasted by gunfire, the cities destroyed, the mounds of the dead piled high like logs, the hollow eyes of the survivors as they marched to the orders of the shadows. We saw the factories van Drood would build on the blasted ruins—vast, airless tombs in which human slaves toiled without a glimpse of hope or love. It was a world of no light, no beauty.
“Aesinor,” I said aloud, “this is what the world looks like without the foolishness of hope. Is this what you want?”
I opened my eyes and looked into hers. They were wide and shining, the eyes of the saint, not the monster.
“No,” she said. “It is not.” And then, including my companions and her handmaids in her gaze, “I suppose we might as well all be fools together.”
We made plans late into the night. Aesinor agreed to let us set up camp in the castle and begin to fortify it against van Drood’s attack.
“Since he hasn’t attacked already, we can assume he’s planning to gather a stronger force first,” Mr. Bellows said.
“Manon said he’s gone to Liège,” I said.
“I’ll fly there tonight,” Raven said, “and see what he’s up to there. Then I’ll fly on to Vienna to tell Gus and the Jagers that we’re making a stand here.”
“And I’ll fly back to Paris to let Miss Sharp and Miss Corey know to send recruits,” Marlin said.
“Tell them to wire Daisy in London,” I added. “See if she and the Hawthorn boys can get here before the borders close.”
“And send Omar here,” Mr. Bellows suggested. “He’ll know best how to fight an army possessed by the shadows.”
“And Kid will have an idea of how to con the German army,” Marlin said with a grin.
It was the first time anyone had smiled all night. It seemed a good note to end on. “I’d better get back and check on Helen,” I said.
Raven flew with me to the outer drawbridge. “That was amazing the way you talked to Aesinor,” he said as we landed on the bridge. “You don’t, er, feel like that toward men, do you?”
I laughed at the worried look on his face. “No,” I said, “it seems to me that there are some very good men in this world—human and Darkling.” I moved closer and laid my hand on his chest. “Like you.” He bent his head to kiss me.
“But,” I said when he lifted his head, “when I worked at the Triangle, and then at the Henry Street Settlement, I saw some terrible things—girls who came to work with black eyes and bruises on their arms, women who had more babies than they could feed because their husbands wouldn’t leave them alone, girls who turned to prostitution because no one would give them a decent job. . . .”
Raven laid his hand on my arm and I realized that I was close to tears. “You know I would never treat you like that,” he said hoarsely.
“Yes,” I told him, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand how Aesinor felt when she was betrayed by Godfrey. I’m just glad we were able to convince her to stand with us—”
The trill of a lark interrupted me and I noticed that the sky was lightening in the east—and realized how little time I had left with Raven. “I wish you weren’t flying east,” I told him, laying my head down on his chest. “There could be fighting already . . . guns, bombs . . .”
“I’ll be careful. You be careful, too. I hate leaving you with van Drood.”
“Maybe he’ll stay away in Liège,” I said.
“Maybe he’ll step in front of one of the Germans’ big guns,” Raven said, “and solve all our problems.”
“Just make sure you don’t step in front of one of those guns,” I said, shivering at the thought.
“I won’t. I have too much to live for.” Then he kissed me and launched himself into the sky so fiercely that he shook feathers loose. I watched him until he was only a speck in the eastern sky and then I turned and walked down the steps.
I stopped at the shrine to Saint Eleanor at the bottom of the stairs. There were more candles burning and more tokens crowding the niche, photographs of sweethearts, husbands, brothers, and fathers. The women of Bouillon had stolen out in the night to pray for the men this war would take away. I wished I had a photograph of Raven.
Instead I plucked one of his loose feathers from my hair and laid it on the shrine. “Keep him safe,” I said. “Keep them all safe.”
As I walked back to the Hotel de Bouillon the bells of the village began to ring. I hoped it was a sign that someone was listening to our prayers.
29
IN THE NEXT few weeks, while the Germans besieged Liège, we marshaled our forces and fortified the Castle of Bouillon to withstand van Drood’s attack. Mr. Bellows set up headquarters in the great hall of the castle complete with maps flown in from a Belgian boys’ school by Gus, plans of the castle provided by Aesinor, a wireless set carried from Paris by Miss Corey and Miss Sharp, and a war table with tin soldiers and toy tanks provided by Daisy, who said they were a gift from Bottom.
I was surprised to see Daisy arrive without the three Hawthorn boys. “They wanted to join the British Expeditionary Force,” she told us, handing out tins of biscuits and tea she’d brought with her from England. “And march with their pals from Hawthorn. The BEF will be here soon.”
Mr. Bellows set Daisy in charge of restoring the bells in the tower—they needed new ropes and ringers to pull them—and “provisioning” the castle for a long siege. At night I flew her around the countryside to collect supplies. Gus and Dolores flew reconnaissance missions east to report on the progress of the Siege of Liège.
“The Belgian forts are holding strong,” Dolores reported, “but we’re worried about the German siege guns. We’ve seen them in the factory at Essen and they’re enormous.”
“They’re so big,” Gus informed us, “that the Germans can hardly move them.”
“That might be to our advantage,” Mr. Bellows said, studying the map. “If we could keep the Germans from getting the guns to Liège—say by blowing up a railway tunnel . . .”
And so our first sabotage missions began. Kid Marvel turned out to be adept at planning missions, and Omar could mesmerize any German soldiers we encountered. Along with scores of brave Belgian citizens, we cut telephone and telegraph wires to hinder the Germans’ communications and we blew up bridges and railway tunnels to slow their advance. And yet they kept on . . .
“Like South American predator ants,” Mr. Bellows remarked one evening. “Nothing seems to stop them.”
“It’s because van Drood is with them,” Omar said. “I have seen the German troops, and they are shadow-ridden.”
Although it was worrying to know that van Drood was with the troops, I couldn’t help but be glad that he was staying away from Bouillon. I didn’t want him anywhere near Helen—even though I wasn’t sure Helen would have known if he were there or not. Since the first night she had remained in a delirious limbo. Manon watched her when I was away, sitting by her bedside with a bit of lace she was working on, chatting amiably about her upbringing at the convent, where she had learned to make beautiful, intricate lace, and her ambitions to become a lingère at one of the big salons de couture, while Helen tossed restlessly.
Although I spent most of the night at the castle I tried to sleep a few hours toward dawn at the Hotel de Bouillon in the hope that Helen would communicate with me again in that shadowy dream space. But even though I dreamed of the ruined Blythewood, Helen wasn’t very communicative there. She wandered the halls of the ruined school as if she were looking for something—or someone—muttering inconsequential nonsense.
“This is where Nathan carved our initials,” she said, pointing to a fire-black
ened wall. Or “He’s playing hide-and-seek but I know all his hiding places. I’m just pretending that I can’t find him.” Then she would drift off into the fog, which seemed to grow thicker with each dream, crying, “Olly olly oxen free!”
“I’m afraid she’s getting more and more lost,” I admitted to Daisy one night while we were making up beds in the tower. “She seems to be living in her memories.”
“Who can blame her?” Daisy replied. “The past is looking more and more like a better place to be.”
I was surprised to hear Daisy sounding so pessimistic. “Have you heard from Mr. Appleby?” I asked.
She sighed. “He’s upset I’m over here with the war breaking out. In the last letter I got before I left London he said if I didn’t come back he was going to sail to England and join the BEF.”
“Can an American join the British army?” I asked.
Daisy shrugged. “I don’t know. But I imagine that before long they’ll take whatever they can get.”
Taking her own statement to heart, Daisy disappeared into the forest one night and came back with a battalion of lumignon and a cadre of tiny wizened gnomes called lutins. The river was full of undines, she said, who were also willing to fight. She was right that we’d need all the help we could get. By the middle of August the last fort in Liège had fallen, opening the rest of Belgium up to the German army. The mood in Bouillon changed. I’d thought the town was deserted before, but many of the residents had been hiding behind their shuttered windows and high garden walls. Now they appeared on the streets whispering together in tight, frightened clusters.