Wrought Gothic

This is Wrought, the manor house on the twisted river. Swallow and Lightning approach amazed, as a storm begins to flicker in the fingers of the bare forest. The doors are open, enter into a marble hall filled with vases, paintings deep-framed in gold, delicate tables and tall vases line the walls.

‘Give me that!’

Tern hands him a glass which he drains, drops, and staggers out of the beautiful room. We catch up with him, leaning on a corner of the walls, raising his long hands to us, unevenly.

‘This is Wrought. Explore her attics, her corridors, her gardens! Run through this vast house. This huge and perfect house of mine!’ And we chased him, in a chaos of black embroidery and wind swirled silk, through miles of floor-boarded attics and secret passages, stone-floored cellars and panelled rooms. Tern ran, bare-footed in her long white dress like a phantom. Lightning ran like lightning, one hand on his sword hilt, brass scale armour reflecting the storm. Swallow ran panting, slipping on the polished floors, cursing and wild-eyed as unfamiliar treasures loomed in shadows she passed quickly.

Jant led them spinning, in a long black coat, and red, skin paler than bone; dropping wine and whatever stuff it was mixed with from a crystal carafe, and laughed insanely at the storm clouds running in over a hunters moon. Three cats postured in the hallway where trees in the vast gardens threw moving shadows on whitened walls.

‘This is Wrought, my loves, inherited as stands, and even the dust is mine!’

‘Our house,’ corrected Tern calmly.

‘Tern’s place,’ her husband conceded lightly. He ran to a Swallow’s guitar, picked it up and ran his long fingers over the frets.

‘But we’ve come a long way, and maybe you should rest now?’ Tern addressed them. Swallow was fighting with Comet for possession of the instrument.

‘Lightning can have the Agate Room.’

‘And Swallow the Wicker Bedroom.’ He twisted her arm and she yelled.

‘Jant and I will go to my rooms. Jant, stop that!’

‘Thank you for the meal, Tern Wrought.’

‘Our pleasure. And tomorrow, we have a hunt arranged, although by the looks of things Comet won’t be joining us. I shall meet you in breakfast, early.’

‘Goodnight, my lady.’ Lightning received a nod in reply, and followed Swallow up the wide sweep of stairs. Jant drained his carafe of wine, threw his arms around Tern, and whirled her round. ‘My love, this place of yours is so beautiful!’

‘I envy your energy.’

‘Let’s light the fire and tell “remember-when” stories.’

She laughed back at him. ‘I give you ten minutes at the most before you collapse.’

‘I can take it,’ he spread his hands in a feverish expression.

Tern shook her head, her long dark hair bound in a silver latticework of ribbons. ‘Well, even if you can, I can’t. Come to bed now.’

‘We can go to the ballroom and dance without music, the way we did back in ‘25. Come on.’ He took her hands and swept her round in a surprisingly expert waltz, which Tern found herself obeying until she regained her self control.

‘I’m tired!’

‘Drink some of this…’ He proffered the last few drops in the slender decanter. His wife sniffed at the neck of the bottle while he ran hands like ice sculptures over her brocade shoulders and kissed at her neck.

‘What is it, anyway?’

‘Dance juice.’ He tried to unlace her bodice from behind.

‘You are incorrigible.’ Tern pulled away and began to climb the stairs. Her high-heeled footsteps echoed in the hall.

Jant ran up the stairs and paused halfway, leaning on the curved banister. ‘And if it snows – do you think it’ll snow? – We can take out the sledges with the horses and drive up Bitterdale.’

‘You child,’ laughed Tern, and kissed his hand as he dragged her upstairs. Wide reflections of storm fell across the polished floors.

Jant woke up early, shivering. The pale winter dawn was just beginning and kitten light, frosted from a cloudless sky, delicately began to explore the room. Tern was curled up like a squirrel on the other side of the black velvet curtained four poster. He didn’t disturb her, but when he tired of watching her dark chocolate hair, he slid out of bed, gasping at the coldness of the room, discarded the patterned silk gown which seemed to exude cold, and chose something wisely Scree, in fur-trimmed white, instead. He shuffled his wings and tried to smooth them, examined his eyes in the dressing table mirror. Now, Shira, if you didn’t have eyes like that you could pass for Awian. On a dark night. From a distance.

The furniture in this white walled room was thick and heavy, the tall mirror of the dressing table made it seem twice as large. Black candlesticks and the draped bed dominated one corner, a dated but carefully maintained suit of armour stood to attention in the other. Jant levelled a tremulous finger at it. ‘No point in haunting me.’

The deep ebony wardrobe was an immense uninhabited cavern in the far wall. It was lined with velvet and smelt strongly of camphor. Jant looked at the few clothes he had brought with him and decided that if he hung them up, he would probably lose them in its uncharted depths.

Tern murmured something in her sleep and rolled over, one elegant hand brushing the covers. Jant watched her in the mirror dwelling on how beautiful she was, how self-assured. The gentle lines of her face, the manicured fingernails of aristocratic hands, were eternal. He considered how lucky he was that she found him, with his pale fox-face and sickle wings, equally wonderful. He decided not to dwell on the reason. It is safer to remain vain.

He rummaged through a shapeless leather bag as silently as possible, arranging things on the gargantuan dressing table. Sapling pillars, spiralled with carving, supported its arched mirror. Its drawers were deep enough to inter a number of corpses without anybody noticing. For want of something better, Jant looped a leather boot lace round his arm, paused in stubborn guilt, and took a fix; watching Tern in the mirror the while. He did not want her to wake up: he did not want her to know. After all, he had been drinking it all last night… He presumed so, anyway: he could not remember much of last night.

‘That’s what I call dependence,’ he muttered unhappily, as he replaced the needle and tidied up, feeling ersatz heat loosen the muscles in his back. He spread his wings for the mirror’s benefit, and sighed. ‘She’s going to find out sooner or later, anyway.’ Better later, he thought, and swept down to breakfast.

*

Lightning woke up, in a light blue lace agate version of Tern’s bedroom. He was not accustomed to being in a manor house like Wrought without being surrounded by many people. At Micawater, for example, there were handfuls of servants like flies hovering to accommodate one’s every whim. In Wrought, even though it was splendid, you had to serve yourself. It was damp and completely deserted. Visitors wake separately in huge resounding rooms and lose themselves on the way to breakfast.

Lightning knew that Tern’s wealth was completely locked up in this manorship. He was of the view that the manor was not worth running; the rare profits it yields were distributed immediately back to the people’s subsistence. The Castle waives Wrought’s taxes because it sends weapons to the fyrd instead. The weapon smiths are exempt from fyrd service and occasionally they make masterpiece swords worth a fortune, but Lightning knew how poor Wrought still was. The fields were not fertile, the river was empty, and the shuttered windows of Tern’s manor house did not smile. Possibly her father, Francolin, knew the secret of running these dismal coalfields and salt marshes, but Lightning was sure that anyone would be fighting a losing battle… As Francolin did.

Lightning lay in the crisp-sheeted bed, lips pursed in thought. That was the difference between Micawater and the coast manorships. A degree of size, a degree of affluence, and more than a few degrees of temperature. This place is freezing. They don’t even have hypocaust floors, and the shutters were rattling all night. Well, he concluded, I must be tactful. Tern’s identity is wrapped up in this manorship. Without it, she’d be nothing. The least I can do is give them good trade terms, but I don’t know if they export anything other than sheep.

Lightning took far longer to dress than had Jant, since this was Awia, and he was a lord governor, and he wanted people to know that. Besides, the country was stark with frost outside, and he had hunting in mind.

Hot water? It’s not very likely, is it? He fastened a red scarf with gold trimming at his shoulder with a mascle brooch, and stood before the bead-rimmed mirror setting a spiked golden circlet in his hair.

‘For the sake of Swallow,’ he announced. He was certain that his stoic persistence would eventually be successful. He locked the panelled bedroom door carefully and pocketed the key. Then he tried to retrace last night’s steps through the convoluted corridors.

*

When Jant arrived at the smaller and hopefully more informal of the two dining halls, he was feeling incredibly cheerful. Impressively, Swallow and Lightning were already there, surrounded by breakfast in quantities they couldn’t possibly eat.

‘Good morning!’ he said, commandeering a coffee pot and an earthenware cup. ‘I didn’t expect to see you two about so early…’

Swallow answered dully: ‘Too cold to sleep.’ She was beginning to feel a hangover, and she had been completely unable to keep her short hair from sticking up at the front. She was not in a very good mood, and whatever it was that Lightning needed from her that morning, Lightning was not going to get.

Lightning looked up from across the long table. ‘I’m surprised to see you here this morning, as well.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Because you were so high last night.’

‘Yes. Well, we need some escapes to lend excitement to our boring, tawdry and endless existences. And there was a storm, remember? As for cat, I need a lot. I had to take some this morning, too.’

‘You mean…?’

‘Yes. I probably do. Please don’t talk about it. Tern doesn’t know and I don’t want her to know. She can make my life misery. All right?’ And the confidence in his voice made Swallow nod involuntarily.

He waved aside offers of all the various foods that counted as breakfast in Awia, attempting not to be too disgusted at their greasy variety. He drank the coffee, poured himself another, averting his eyes from Swallow’s appetite. ‘So… Riding, hunting or hawking?’

‘Falconry!’ Exclaimed Swallow. The Archer shrugged. Jant grinned at him.

‘Well, I’ll have to see what I can do. Please feel free to explore the gardens this morning… There is a walk around the lake which should be beautiful in this frost. You can also take a look at some of the better paintings in the Long Parlour. Anything you want, I can find for you here. Then we’ll meet later, and ride up to Bitterdale. Archer, Awndyn, until then.’

Jant finished a third coffee, then slipped out towards the stables, pulling on his fingerless gloves and raising the hood of his coat. Swallow smiled, wrinkling her nose which was only slightly less freckly in winter.

‘I’d like to see Jant once when he’s not high on cat,’ Lightning sighed. He was bored already, had known there would be nothing to do here, but had come because of Swallow. He was not practiced at being a guest, whereas she was never anything else.

She scratched at a spot of fat on the sleeve of her fur trimmed coat, then turned her attention back to the bacon. ‘I didn’t even know he was taking it again.’

‘Huh. Twice a day. Tern will be livid.’

‘He seems quite happy,’ Swallow said complacently, winding strips of bacon around her long two-pronged fork. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s dying.’

‘That’s the point. He told me he was trying to lower the amount, but it hurts. Oh. Well, Swallow; I’ve better things to discuss at breakfast than him. You, for example…’

Swallow put down her fork, raised a wide eyebrow. ‘Lightning, I don’t want any. Try next door.’ She went to reclaim the cooling coffee pot from Jant’s end of the table, and skilfully replied to his silence. ‘If you’re going to make as big a disaster of this visit as you did at the Castle, I shall leave now.’

‘Of course not,’ he tried to hide anger in sham disappointment. ‘I value your friendship. Greatly – it makes my life worth living – and you are invited to Micawater next week, if you want to go.’

She turned wide childish eyes to his in excitement.

*

With the patience of immortals, they suffered those short days of winter, when it is either dawn or dusk, and nothing in between. Lightning had been riding in the forest alone all day. He felt sick with love for Swallow; he really needed her.

‘You know the way you feel on Midsummer Day’s morning?’

‘Yes?’ said Jant.

‘Well, Swallow feels like that all the time.’

‘What, hungover?’

‘No, you idiot. Excited. Suspense-filled. Full of love of life. That’s why she’s so… vivacious. She loves life.’ Lightning had clarified. Jant made a sound like a shrug, or it may have been the sound made by an expert on hearing an amateur’s opinion; tilted his woodman’s hat angularly over his eyes and went back to drinking.