Of Midnight Born (18 page)

“Tell me no more,” she said. “It aches to hear of such places, and to know that I will never see any of them, nor the creatures who live there.”

“Ah, Serena, do not look at it that way. I will likely see none of those places, either.”

“But you know it is possible. If you wished, you could leave this mountain tomorrow and board a ship for any of those lands. It is different when even the possibility is not there. It hurts.”

“The hurt is in your mind, Serena. It need not be. Come, look up at the stars,” he said, putting out his hand for her to take. After a moment’s hesitation she did so, her fingers warm and firm against his palm. He pulled her to his side, close but not touching. “Look, up there, at Cassiopeia,” he said, pointing. “Are not the stars beautiful?”

“Yes,” she agreed.

He ran his eyes over her pale profile, lovelier even than the stars. Her irises were as black as in his dreams, and he imagined for a moment that the heavens above were reflected therein, shimmers of far-off worlds dancing in her eyes.

“I have no hope of ever visiting those stars, and no hope
of going even so far as the moon. The lowly clouds themselves are beyond my limit, except when they sink below the castle. That does not stop me from wanting to learn of them, or finding wonder in their presence, though. My world is larger simply by knowing they are there. There is not time enough in a man’s life to explore all the universe, but there is space enough in his mind to hold it.”

“My mind holds my own experiences, my own past and present, no larger world than that,” she said. “How can America or Africa become part of it, when I have never seen the ostriches or the savages?”

“They already have become a part of your world. You have imagined how the bird looks; you have seen for an instant the wild men hunting. It’s part of your universe now. You do not need to be trapped by this mountain, Serena, no matter that you cannot leave.”

“But who will tell me of the world beyond it?”

For a moment he saw himself as her teacher, opening the modern world to her medieval eyes, and sharing the vastness of man’s learning. It was a heady thought, and quickly became an overwhelming one. There was so much to share, so much she did not know. She had a quick mind and a fierce determination, and deserved better than having him in his vanity think he could teach her all she could know.

“Books.”

She took her hand from him. “I cannot read. You know that.”

“Children can learn how to read and write. So can you. You have intelligence that should not be squandered in illiteracy.”

“But who will teach me?” she asked softly.

There was only one answer to give. “I will.”

She turned her eyes to him, and for a brief instant he thought he saw the blackness shift, turning a lighter color, a
gray-blue, and then they were dark again. “Thank you,” she said on a whisper, and leaned forward and pressed her lips softly against his cheek.

He was too startled to move, the warm pressure sending shafts of tingling warmth through his body and wrapping his heart in a tender embrace. When she pulled away, it took him several seconds to recall where he was and of what they had been speaking.

“You may not be thanking me after your first lesson,” he said, trying for a wry tone, trying as well to shake off the feeling of closeness between them as they stood alone in the nighttime garden. “I may be an impatient taskmaster.”

The smile she gave him was plainly disbelieving, giving him pause to wonder what manner of impressions she had formed of him.

“When do we start?”

He cast his eyes up at the clear night sky. He should take advantage of the weather. With the advent of autumn, he could expect fewer and fewer nights such as this one. “Late tomorrow afternoon, a few hours before dusk.”

She gave a shiver.

“Are you cold?” he asked. He had never considered that she might be capable of such a thing.

“No. I am happy,” she said. “So very happy. Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Excuse me?” he asked, lost, but then remembered what he had said when he first came out here. It would be awkward and, apparently, unnecessary to inform her of his intentions to keep his hands off her. He wanted to do nothing to bring dark thoughts to the light shining now from her face. “I had wondered at your absence, is all,” he said in a half-truth. “I’ve grown accustomed to your company.”

She seemed as willing as he to avoid mention of the last time they had been together. “I will not leave you again,” she said.

Her words sent a touch of anxiety through him, at the same time that he enjoyed their sound. There was a part of him rational enough to wonder what the hell he was getting himself in for…and why he seemed to care nothing for the insanity of his actions.

He was going to teach a ghost to read, and he knew already he would take every opportunity to lean over her shoulder and smell the hay-sweet scent of her hair, to brush against her, to lay his hand over hers and direct her use of a pen.

He
was
mad.

“Alex, it is three-thirty, the same time it was when last you looked,” Beth said, feeling a bit put out by his inattention to her and Sophie. It made one feel very much like an unwelcome burden. He was usually so attentive: she had even thought, in passing, that he might have something of a care for her. She loved Rhys, of course, and would never think of betraying him, but Alex’s fondness for her had been flattering, and gave her an easy confidence in his presence. “One would think you had a pressing engagement, the way you keep checking the clock every half minute.”

“Truly, Alex, it is most rude,” Sophie said, setting her flowered teacup into its saucer with a tiny clink. “One would think you were not desirous of our company, although I cannot imagine whose company you
do
desire. You have not had a single visitor since I came here myself.”

“I do apologize,” Alex said. “I am waiting for nightfall, is all. I hope to have a clear night for stargazing.”

Sophie made a delicate snorting sound of dismissal. “I do not see how any person could find such interest in a bunch of dots in the sky, whether they streak prettily or no.”

“Sophie, you must admit it is a romantic notion,” Beth said. “Lovers and poets become obsessed by the stars as well, so one can only conclude that astronomers must have something in common with them.”

“I assure you, I shall not be writing poetry anytime soon,” Alex said.

“Pish,” Beth said. “I’m certain you already have some stashed away under your star charts and tables.”

Sophie daintily picked up a triangle of cucumber-and-salmon sandwich, and nibbled on the edge. “I think it is high time my brother stopped looking at stars and found himself a wife,” she said, sitting straight-backed and superior, aping the attitude of her eldest sister. “It will settle him down,” she said to Beth, as if Alex were not sitting right there.

“He does not need settling,” Beth said.

“Hear! hear!” Alex agreed, raising his teacup to her.

“I will say, though, that he needs a female in his life,” she added.

Beth caught the mock frown Alex gave her, and raised an eyebrow in reply, giving her curls a slight toss. She might miss his flattery, but she was not so shallow a friend that she did not want the best for him.

“He won’t likely find one up here,” Sophie said. “Unless you want to count the ghost. I still do not forgive you for making me go to bed, Alex, while the rest of you sat around discussing it all that night. I do not see why I had to wait until morning, like a child. I am not a child. I am about to be a married woman.”

“So you are,” Alex agreed. “Yet surely you agree that you are not one yet.”

Sophie made a moue, her face turning a bit ducklike in the process. Beth hoped her friend would not engage in the practice too often, once married to Blandamour. When his infatuation faded, he might not think it so charming, and one must ever remain charming to one’s husband.

“To return to the subject,” Beth said, interrupting the bickering, “Alex is settled and responsible enough as it is. His wild hairs only add to his appeal to the fairer sex, as he well knows.” She caught him rolling his eyes. “All that stargazing is of little use, however, if he does not have a female audience to appreciate his romanticism. Mooning about looking poetic is rather pointless if there is no one to see you and give a sigh.”

She was stretching the truth of her own feelings: she was uneasy about Alex’s nights in the tower. Although it had started as a bit of a joke, he was getting a reputation as an eccentric in the county, and becoming the topic of much speculative gossip. A wife to share his bed and see to his well-being might keep him tethered closely enough to earth that neither ghosts nor stars could pull him away.

She had no real concerns that he was losing his mind. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that much went on here that he did not tell, and that the ghost Serena was a part of it. No friend would sit idly by while a man spent his nights in contact with the spirit of a dead woman, and she did consider herself a friend.

She was intrigued by the idea of Serena, but uneasy about it as well. What could one know of the mind of a ghost? Were her intentions evil? She was finding that ghost stories were exciting and romantic only as long as they stayed stories, and on the outer edges of experience. She did not like to think that Serena might possibly be the cause of Alex’s glances at the clock.

“I shouldn’t much like a sighing female hanging about,” Alex said. “They cost too much in smelling salts.”

“Then what type would you prefer?” she asked, smiling, aware and a little embarrassed that she was hoping he would describe someone like her.

“Well,” he said, setting his cup on the table and leaning forward. “First, she must be tall, with a strong body. Frances was as lovely as a porcelain doll, but I felt equally likely to break her.”

Beth felt a remembered twinge of sadness. Frances had indeed proved too frail to overcome her fever. It made a certain sense then that Alex would want a woman healthy as a horse. “A woman can be of smaller stature without being fragile,” she reminded him, thinking of how Rhys was surprised in bed by the strength of her thighs, and her ability,
when she wished, to overpower him. Admittedly, he let her do so, but still…

“Ah, but with a tall woman one does not need to cramp one’s neck with bending down to kiss her. She can look you straight in the eye.”

“That does not sound very feminine,” Sophie said, “a woman being as tall as a man.”

“She would have strength of will, as well,” he went on, ignoring his sister’s comment. “She would say what she thought, and go after what she wanted. She would let nothing defeat her, and yet would retain a tender heart beneath the steel.”

“It sounds as if you want one of those horrid Greek goddesses, who trounce upon mere mortals as they pursue their desires,” Beth said. “And you know what happens when a man displeases a goddess. He ends up turned into a tree or a rabbit, or comes to some equally unpleasant end.”

“You must admit it would be glorious while it lasted,” he said with a smile.

Sophie sniffed disapprovingly. “It’s not terribly realistic of you, though, Alex, to be casting your sights on ancient goddesses. They simply do not frequent the assembly rooms of Bath.”

Beth laughed. “No, how very true.” And how ironic to have Sophie lecturing Alex on the nature of reality.

“I do not understand why it matters in which order the letters go,” Serena complained.

“This is the way it is done. Everyone knows them in this order.”

“That does not mean I have to,” she said.

He sighed in mild exasperation, a sound that encouraged rather than chastised her. “It’s the alphabet, Serena. It goes in alphabetical order. Later on, when you learn to use the dictionary, you will need to know the letters in this order.”

“What is a dictionary?”

“A book for finding the meanings of words you do not know.”

“How would I know which word to look for, if I did not know it?”

“Are you being deliberately difficult?”

She blinked innocently at him.

“You are a wicked woman. Your brothers must have had a terrible time with you.”

“I gave as good as I got, is all I will say,” she pronounced primly, and turned her eyes back to the sheets of paper on Woding’s desk in his tower study. “Show me which ones make my name. I will learn those first, and they will be my landmarks. I cannot make sense of all of these at once.”

He bent down next to her and wrote out her Christian name beneath the rows of letters. “That is how I imagine Serena is spelled,” he said. “I do not know for certain.”

“And Clerenbold?”

“Learn this first, and then we will tackle Clerenbold. It uses some of the same letters.” He spelled out loud the letters of her name for her, and had her repeat them until she could do it by heart. He gave the letters their sounds, showing her how they went together to form the one word: Serena.

“These ‘e’s, they do not sound the same,” she protested.

“No. The same letter can have different sounds, depending upon the word.”

“I do not like that.”

“Neither do schoolchildren.”

She made a noise to show what she thought of that comment. She stared at her name on the paper, then formed the sounds, her lips moving as she went through the letters. “It’s quite a lovely name, isn’t it?” she said.

“If you do say so yourself.”

She leaned away from the desk, and pointed at the paper. “Write yours there, beneath mine.”

He bent forward again and picked up his pen, then stopped. “Which would you prefer, my Christian or my surname?”

“Christian.”

He bent to his task, and muttered to her under his breath, “I do not see why, when you insist upon calling me by the other, without even the courtesy of a ‘Mr.’”

“Nor have I heard you call me ‘Lady Serena,’ Woding.”

“Your pardon, madame.”

“Mademoiselle, if you please.”

“Do you speak French, then?”

“Doesn’t everyone know a little of it? Thomas loved to practice swearing in that language. He imagined using it to curse the French in their own language while he ran them through with his sword.”

“Mm. I am not sure I regret not having had the chance to meet him,” he said, beginning to write out his name.

“He would not have liked you, at least not at first,” she said.

“Why is that?” he asked, looking up from his careful penmanship.

She gestured to the room at large, the telescope, the orrery. “He would not have understood all this. He did not like what he did not understand.”

“He is not alone in that.”

“No. ’Tis a great fault of human nature.”

He stared at her, then said, “You surprise me. Up until yesterday I would have thought you were of the same opinion as Thomas.”

“I have no fondness for ignorance. It weakens one. Thomas and my brothers understood that concept in relation to warfare, but to nothing else. I, however, felt that I learned that lesson a hundred times over. It was my ignorance on a dozen scores that was partly to blame for what happened to me.”

“That cannot be an easy admission to make.”

“Rest assured, I blame le Gayne for most of it,” she said, and bared her teeth in a false smile.

She did blame le Gayne, but since Woding had first started conversing with her, she had felt flickers of her own guilt flaring up whenever she thought about what had happened, what she had done. Ignorance had not been enough to bring her and Thomas to their end. Le Gayne had not been enough. Something had had to bring the two together, and a very dark part of her, hidden away beneath the rest, was beginning to say that she herself had been the key to the disaster that had followed.

That could be why le Gayne’s shadow had appeared. It could be a reason for it to come back. Madame Zousa’s medallion seemed to be working so far, though, keeping her safe. She had seen flickers of darkness suggestive of that evil spirit, but so far had been in no danger that she knew of.

“Spell your name for me,” she said, and listened while he did so, trying to distract herself from her own dark thoughts. As Woding explained the letters of his name and pointed them out in the alphabet, the vast collection of squiggles began to take on a sort of sense. She still could not recall most of the letters, but they were now looking less like spilled worms and more like something with meaning.

She saw him glance out the window, and followed his gaze. It was full dark.

“We’ll stop here,” he said, “and resume tomorrow.”

She didn’t want to stop, not now when her brain was beginning to put the first hint of order to it all. “Can we not continue up there?” she asked.

“I cannot have the lamp uncovered.”

“Woding,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you think I will have trouble seeing without a lamp?”

He flushed, caught out in his foolish error of thought.

“You’re right, of course. I warn you, though, I shall be looking at the skies. You will have to spend your time reciting the letters of the alphabet.”

“S, E, R—”

“In their proper order.”

“Were you always like this, Woding, or did you only become so exciting in your old age?”

“Sarcasm does not become you.”

“I was not being sarcastic. Spirits do not stoop to such modes of expression.”

He grunted and held his arm out, directing her to precede him to the steep steps to the roof. She obeyed, rising from her chair, and once at the steps lifted her skirts to climb them. He started to follow, but she pointed back at his desk. “You’ll have to carry the paper for me.”

He did as she bade, but said, “I thought you could carry some things. I thought you carried that medallion that Madame Zousa gave you.”

“I did, but it is much easier for you than for me. I find it…quite fatiguing.” She did not want to tell him of her connection to the cherry tree: whatever trust she had in him, it was not yet that strong. To tell someone of the tree was to give him the power to end her existence.

She stopped when she was far enough up the steps that the trapdoor would have pressed against her head. It would be indelicate to continue, showing a headless body to him as she went through the closed door.

He came up beside her, the two of them standing close on the steps, and raised his arms to push open the trap. His nearness made her dizzy with the possibility of his touch, and with his arms raised she was tempted to wrap her own around his chest and press her face into his neck.

The trapdoor fell open with a loud thud, and the moment passed. She climbed out onto the roof, her lips curving in a
smile as the world spread out beneath her and the night breeze blew through her body. Perhaps she could understand a little of what drew Woding to this tower.

She looked up into the deep eternity of the heavens, and in a flashing leap of thought, understood some of what Woding had tried to explain to her about what he felt when gazing at them. “It’s an oblivion within awareness that you find here, isn’t it?” she asked, hearing him come up behind her.

“What was that?”

She tilted her head back, the world falling away around her, her eyes seeing nothing but sky, and felt her soul lift up into the infinite midnight blue of the heavens. “It is like walking in the pitch-black across an open field, your eyes wide, your senses awake to every sound. You know there are things out there, yet you feel you are the only creature on earth, the only solid object in the night. It is as if the world has disappeared.” She brought her gaze back down and turned to look at him. “That is what you feel when you look into the night sky. Am I right?”