Arsinoe smiles at Mirabella gratefully. “Poor Christine doesn’t stand a chance.”
Arsinoe takes off through the city, skirting the row houses by way of alleys and side streets. She is relieved to not face another strained meeting with Christine, who looks at her as if she is some kind of a bug when she bothers to acknowledge her at all, but the farther away she gets, the more her relief is replaced by resentment. In the gray sack of a dress, with no friends or family save Billy and Mirabella, no fortune or prospects of her own, she is no match for Christine Hollen. She would be if things were different. If she were still herself in her black trousers and vest, a fierce black and red-slashed mask over the scars on her face. If she were still a queen.
Her legs hasten as she makes her way through the streets, heading for Joseph, ignoring the stares from people she passes by. Stares she attracts merely by running, by being a girl out on her own without the benefit of an escort or a parasol.
She should not have gone off alone. She should have stayed and choked down her tea. It is only when she is alone that the doubt creeps in, that feeling that she does not belong here and never will.
When they first arrived, both she and Mirabella had tried to charm Mrs. Chatworth. Arsinoe especially, had been prepared to like her or even love her. She was Billy’s mother, after all. She had raised a boy who would stand by his friends. So when they met, she expected to find someone like Cait Milone: with a stern face and a stout heart, and strong arms for holding her children. Or even someone like Ellis: never serious but always ready with advice. Instead, Billy’s mother was worse even than his father in some ways. She lacked substance, and her facial expressions vacillated between irritated and horrified.
By the time she reaches the cemetery gates, Arsinoe’s legs burn from exertion, but her frustration has not been spent. She slows to a walk, respectful of those at rest, yet cannot help kicking feebly at pebbles on the path.
“Parasols,” she mutters. “Frilly dresses and silly games. That is all there is for a girl to do here. Drink tea and twirl a parasol until she gets married.” And to be married on the mainland means to obey. If there is one word in the world sure to get Arsinoe’s hackles up, it is that one.
Thank the Goddess, Billy does not want that. Her Billy, who only wants her to be what she is and for her and Mirabella to be happy. Which she is, most days. It is only when she is alone that she remembers that she is not one of them. Not even Mirabella will be accepted as one of them, and Mirabella follows all their rules.
Arsinoe pauses and takes a breath. The cemetery where Joseph is buried is set out on the edges of the city and surrounded by stone walls. It is quiet and sunlit, marked by gentle hills and groves of trees, and overlooks the deep blue water of the bay. It is a place Jules would have liked. Arsinoe likes it, too, for it is always nearly empty.
She follows the path through the northern entrance and past the loose bricks near the Richmond Family markers, then cuts through the grass toward the grove of elm trees. Their shade just reaches Joseph, where he rests near the top of the hill. Before she gets there, she slips into the shadow of the largest tree and strips off her gray sack of a dress. Then she shakes out her rough-cut hair and smooths her shirt—an old one that Billy grew out of—before she clears her throat and says:
“Hallo, Joseph.”
Hallo, Arsinoe, says the Joseph in her mind, and for a moment, her eyes blur. His grave marker is simple. Unadorned. No ornate carvings of ivy. No marble sculptures. It is not a fancy mausoleum with stained glass windows and its own private gate. It is a patch of grass and a dark, rounded stone. She blinks hard and runs her fingers along the inscription.
Here lies
Joseph Sandrin
Beloved of Jules
Brother to Billy
A friend to queens and cougars
It is what she told them to write. It does not matter that no one on the mainland will understand what it means, that in years to come, visitors to the cemetery might puzzle over it and think it a joke. The engraving took some time, and when they buried him, the grave had to go unmarked except for a white piece of wood. When the stone was ready, they returned and mourned all over again.
On the island, he would have been burned on a pyre and his ashes spread in Sealhead Cove. They would have stood together on the deck of the Whistler while the people of Wolf Spring threw petals and grain from the docks. Instead, he is here, under the dirt and far from home. But Arsinoe is glad of that now. At least buried, there is a place that she can come and talk to him.
“We went to the races today. We didn’t win.” She lowers herself to the ground and balls up her gray dress for something to lie upon. “And then I had to run away when Christine Hollen was at our door. Not that I wouldn’t have come to see you anyway. Christine Hollen. The governor’s daughter. Did you know her?” Arsinoe turns her head.
“I’m sure you knew her. She probably fancied you to begin with, didn’t she? Probably fainted dead away at the sight of you; it doesn’t take much. But you weren’t from here, and you weren’t staying. And Billy’s rich and”—she clears her throat—“not bad to look at.”
In her mind, she hears Joseph’s laughter. And then a low rumble of thunder as clouds begin to roll from over the sea.
“It’s going to rain. I wonder if that means Mirabella’s upset about something. She swears that her gift has all but left her, but I’ve seen her close her eyes, and then felt the coolness of a breeze. And then there’s the fact that her melancholy days always seem to wind up overcast.” She snorts. “A gift like hers is too strong to be stifled. Even by the mainland.”
She looks up at the sky. She has nothing but time now. Time to wait for Billy to make a life for them, and the thought of his needing to do that sends her stomach into knots. Who is she here? Not Queen Arsinoe, raised as a naturalist and discovered to be a poisoner. Now she is nothing. A rogue queen with no crown.
She turns toward Joseph’s marker. “Christine is much prettier than me.”
Lots of girls are much prettier than you, Joseph replies in her mind. But none of them are you.
Arsinoe smiles. So he would say if he were here. If he could put an arm about her shoulders and squeeze. If he were not in a box, in the ground.
“I miss you, Joseph,” she says, her head resting on the ball of her dress. “I miss you so much.” And then she falls asleep.
Who knows how long later, Arsinoe wakes with a start. Her arms fly out to her sides, certain for a moment that she will find not ground at all but the water of a bay.
“What a strange dream.” She was a girl, dressed as a boy, on a boat. It had been vivid, as vivid as being there, but as she lies still and tries to remember, it comes apart, driven back by the fading orange light and a soreness in her back from sleeping on the grass. She pushes up onto her elbow with a groan and looks toward Joseph’s grave marker.
There is a woman in a long black dress standing behind it.
She scrambles up onto her knee and rubs her eyes, thinking she is still dreaming. But the vision does not waver. The woman in black is darker than a shadow. Arsinoe cannot see her face or the details of her clothing. Only her shape, and her long black hair.
“Who are you?”
The figure raises her skeletal arm and stretches one long finger to point.
Arsinoe turns and looks over the hilltop, toward the harbor. Nothing there but ships in the evening. At least, nothing in that direction that any mainlander would know about.
“No,” Arsinoe says, and the woman’s sharp finger extends farther.
“No!” She squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them, the woman is gone. If indeed she was ever really there.
THE VOLROY