“Poor thing,” says Billy. “But he’s filthy, Arsinoe; my mother will have a fit if you bring him in here.”
“No, see?” she says, and runs her hand over the little dog’s back. “Under all the scum, he’s got a pretty brown-and-white coat. I thought we’d clean him up and put a ribbon on him. Give him to your mother and Jane as a peace offering.” She steps farther into the foyer as Billy rubs his forehead and chuckles. Distracted as he is by the dog, he does not notice the haunted look in Arsinoe’s eyes. Nor does he note how hard she is shivering, far too hard for someone who has just come in from a warm summer rain.
“Let us take him into the washroom, then,” Mirabella says. “Quietly.”
Once they are in the washroom, Mirabella sends Billy to heat water for a bath and to fetch extra lamps. When he is gone, she pulls a blanket down from a shelf and wraps her sister in it.
“Now,” she says. “What is really the matter?”
“Nothing. I saw this dog get chased, and I wanted to save it. It’s how I was raised.”
“Yes, yes.” Mirabella smiles softly. “Poisoner by birth, naturalist at heart. But there is more to this. Why did you stay gone for so long?”
“I fell asleep,” Arsinoe answers, eyebrows down so Mirabella knows she is not telling her everything. But it will have to wait. Billy is returning with the hot water and lamps. So they set the dog in the washbasin, and Mirabella reaches for soap.
“It is a good thing Mrs. Chatworth and Jane are already in bed,” Mirabella says. “They would be beside themselves if they knew you had taken off your dress in public.”
“It wasn’t in public. It was in the graveyard, behind a tree. And besides, I had all these clothes on underneath!”
They finish bathing the dog, who really is quite a lovely fellow underneath all the muck, and towel him dry before Arsinoe carries him up to their bedroom. Billy does not leave her side until they are in the doorway and then leans in to kiss her cheek.
“Don’t worry me so much,” he whispers.
“Then don’t worry so easily,” Arsinoe whispers back.
“Good night, Billy,” Mirabella says, and closes the door. She goes to Arsinoe’s dresser for dry clothes while Arsinoe gets the dog settled into bed.
“Here. Get out of that shirt and into something dry.”
“I’m all right.”
“I am the oldest.” Mirabella holds the nightshirt out. “Do as I say.”
“Or what? We’re not on the island anymore; you’re all out of lightning bolts.” But Arsinoe unbuttons the shirt and takes it off, then pulls the quilt off her bed to wrap herself in. “This place is going to make us soft. Everything so precious and fancy. Look at this wall covering.” She taps her finger against the pattern of raised green velvet. “It seems like a tapestry, but if you pick at it, it’s paper! It peels!”
“Arsinoe, stop that. Mrs. Chatworth will cut your hands off. Besides, according to you, I was always soft. Raised in Rolanth on a fat bed of priestesses.” She looks at her sister’s still-shivering shoulders. “Now tell me what really happened today.”
“Nothing. I fell asleep and I rescued a dog. How was tea with Christine and the governor’s girls? Did you manage to put her off Billy?”
Arsinoe blinks innocently and gathers the dog into her arms. Something had happened. Mirabella would know it by the electricity in the air even if it were not written all over Arsinoe’s frightened face. But she also knows by the set of her sister’s jaw that she will get no more answers tonight.
CENTRA
When Arsinoe falls asleep, she dreams the same dream she had when she was sleeping beside Joseph’s grave. Which is odd, as she cannot remember ever having had the same dream twice. In it, she is again on a ship, not a ship like she is accustomed to, but an old ship, with one mast, the kind that merchants used to use and went out of fashion at least a century ago. And again, she is not herself but someone else: a girl dressed as a boy.
Also, she is up very high in the rigging, staring out at fast-moving waves that make her stomach lurch.
“David! Get down from that rigging!”
Yes, yes, let’s get down from this rigging, Arsinoe thinks, her own legs weak though the legs of her dream body navigate the ropes and nets without any trouble.
“Richard. You never let me have any fun.”
The girl whose body Arsinoe shares—whose name is actually Daphne, not David—lands on the deck and tugs her tunic down over her leggings. Old-fashioned clothes. Nothing like anything Arsinoe has ever worn, and not terribly comfortable either.
“You shouldn’t be here to begin with,” Richard says. “You know women are bad luck on a ship.”
“Keep your voice down,” Daphne says, with a glance toward the other sailors. “And it’s not as if you would have the nerve to steal the ship without me.”
“Borrowed. Only borrowed.”
The wind flags in the sail as the ship turns back toward the port. Daphne, and by extension, Arsinoe in Daphne’s body, looks to the stern where a boy has given up the wheel. He is Henry Redville—Lord Henry Redville from the country of Centra—and he makes his way to her and Richard and throws his arms around them.
“How are my two favorite wards?” Henry asks.
“She is not a ward,” says Richard. “She is a foundling. A foundling, scooped from the sea, the lone survivor of one wreck and sure to be the cursed cause of another with her penchant for sailing in disguise.”
“You know, Richard,” says Daphne, “when you were small, your nurses said you were sickly and wont to die.”
Arsinoe feels her own ribs squeezed as Henry hugs them together as though to reconcile them by force. And it works. Richard and Daphne laugh.
“I suppose she is not a curse,” says Richard. “How could she be, when she is already a sea monster stuffed into a baby’s skin.”
“And never forget it. Now stop calling me ‘she.’ I am still David, in tunic and hose. No more ‘she’ until we’re back in the castle.”
The dream moves forward, past the place where she last woke. Yet the strangeness does not abate completely; Arsinoe is still disoriented, and in awe, staring up at the white cliffs overlooking the bay, in a mainland country she has never been to, and in a time she does not know. But it is only a dream, and in any case, she cannot seem to will herself awake.
Daphne, along with Henry (they seem to have left Richard at the port) enter the castle via a hidden passageway through the cliffs, their way guided by lanterns until they reach the end, and Daphne steps behind a hanging curtain to change into her girl’s clothes. Off comes the tunic and scratchy hose, and on goes a high-waisted red dress.
Blegh. I change my mind. This dress is even less comfortable than the tunic.
But even worse than that is the long, black wig.
“Daphne. Your wig is askew.” Henry holds out the lantern and tugs the wig on properly. Then he tops it with a terrible veiled headdress. Trapped inside Daphne, Arsinoe grimaces.
As Daphne fumbles with the wig again, Arsinoe tries to look around. She cannot, of course, which is frustrating. But she is asleep and this is only a dream, so she is not bothered too much.
“I’m sorry, Daph,” says Henry. “Women’s wardrobes are truly a mystery to me.”
“The girls in the tavern tell a different story,” she grumbles, and prods him in the ribs.
I believe I would like to hear that story. This boy Henry is nearly as handsome as Joseph. Tall and lean, with straight, thick, brown hair the color of an oiled walnut shell. A pity he had not been the one changing clothes behind the sheet.
In the dream, Daphne and Henry step out of the passageway. In the corner of her vision, Arsinoe sees that they came from a door hidden behind a tapestry of hunting dogs. Daphne smooths the waist of her dark red gown, and Henry adjusts the fall of her white veil. He pulls his hands away quickly at the sound of a voice.
“My lord, your lady mother wishes to see you. To see you both.”
“All right. Where is she?”
“Waiting in her privy chamber, my lord.”