Page 6 of As Many Souls as Stars
Bess did not reply. Instead, she turned, head held high, and left the room. Cybil watched her go without protest; it would be futileto press her any further. It was already the longest conversation they had shared in years.
Once she was certain her mother had reached her rooms, Cybil left the dining hall and ascended the main steps. She had climbed this staircase so many times; she had seen a man die here. She knew with great familiarity the echo of her steps upon the marble, the smooth chill of the oak balustrades beneath her hands. The walls of the upstairs corridors were painted blue to resemble the sky, an illusion broken by numerous portraits and tapestries that floated in mismatched scatterings of faces, frames, and fabrics. These portraits, shrouded in the gloom, regarded Cybil with detachment and dismissal, their pale skin and gold eyes mockeries of her own.
A servant had lit the lamps, casting formless patterns of shadow and light across the floor. There was a suit of armour on display at the top of the steps, worn by an ancestor at Bosworth, its helmet plumed with green feathers, its breastplate showing the three-headed hawk in gold. As Cybil reached it, the suit’s shadow shuddered, then moved: pointing right, towards Christopher’s study.
Cybil took an instinctive step back. ‘That way?’
The shadow pointed again, more insistent.
She was wary, but she did as she was bid.
Instead of returning to her chambers, she stopped outside her father’s study. The door was closed—it was always closed—but she could hear voices within. The wood of the door was carved with angel markings, the strange, spiralled letters her father used in his rituals. Cybil ignored these, pressing her ear against the door to listen.
‘… had listened,’ Gilbert was saying.
‘It was not an option. I lifted the curse.’
‘Youtrulybelieve that? Christopher, you must see sense. Every time there has been a First Daughter, the house has seen terrible consequences. The last time—’
‘That was centuries ago.’
‘We nearly went extinct. The pestilence took all but the very woman who had caused their deaths.’
‘All England suffered then.’
‘And who is to say she did not cause their suffering, too? Our father told us the stories, how shadows followed her and suffering came in their wake.’ Gilbert sighed, loudly enough Cybil could hear it through the door. ‘I reminded you when she was born what was necessary, and you had not the strength to do it. No—you had not thehumility. You were so convinced you could resolve it in another manner.’
‘I did what I could.’
‘You know your measures did not work. If all is well, then why is Cybil not at Court? Why is she not betrothed? It is known that Christopher Harding has a daughter—who, I remind you, is heir to this estate—’
‘The queen’s law prioritises children over siblings, Gilbert. You know that as well as I. If she has no children, your son will inherit—’
‘God’steeth, Christopher,’ Gilbert spat. ‘That is not the issue. You have kept her here her entire life. Of course there are suspicions. People say she must be mad, or diseased. And we both know why she cannot be seen. Now is the time to admit—to yourself, to me, to her—that you did not save her. That you did not saveus.’
There was a long moment of silence. Cybil heard her own heartbeat, loud and insistent as a war drum.
‘You think I know not my own folly?’ Christopher said. He sounded defeated. ‘After all these years? You think I do not look at her, every day, and know that I failed? She is ashade, a shell. She has been since she was a child. The shadows follow her, and her magic manifests only in cruelty. I will always remember… when she was six, she fell into a bramble patch, and her legs were covered in scratches. But still, she did not cry. She just stared at the wounds as the blood dripped onto the ground. And where that blood pooled at her feet, days later, I found a sprig of deadly nightshade—grown from the soil as if it had been there for months.’
Gilbert muttered an oath.
Cybil’s father continued. ‘I tried to fix her, to transmute her into something purer, but it did not work. I accept, now, that it has not worked. I accept that God has forsaken our family, and we are cursed as you say. And so, I must turn to other solutions.’
‘Other solutions?’
‘Yes.’
Gilbert’s horror was hushed, the words only barely audible. ‘You cannot mean…’
‘I am using a greater quantity of henbane, and more repetitions of the incantations; it is certain to work.’
‘When?’ Gilbert asked.
Cybil had never heard such determination in her father’s voice. ‘Next week. The equinox.’
‘I will have returned to Court by then.’
‘I know.’
