“I once knew a lady,” he said, “who could dance the Entwine nearly as well as your sister.”
Delphinium, lifting Ivy to her feet, perked up. Of all of them, she read the most romantic stories and drew the fluffiest of ball gowns on her stationery, and Azalea knew she wouldn’t leave until she had turned Mr. Keeper’s heart inside out, begging for details of romance.
“Were you in love?” she said. “Oh, do tell us about it. We only hear ghastly things about that time, with the revolution and everything. I want to hear something romantic.”
“Delphinium,” said Azalea.
Mr. Keeper held up his hand, silencing her.
“It is all right,” he said. He turned to Delphinium, his cloak brushing the marble. “I will tell you about the lady I loved.”
The girls settled together on the entrance steps, not even breathing, for fear it would rustle the rosebushes about them and mask Mr. Keeper’s words. Mr. Keeper stood unmoving on the dance floor.
“Once upon a time,” he said. His voice dripped in silk strands. “There was a High King, who wanted more than anything to kill the Captain General who incited a rebellion against him. It consumed him. The desire to kill the Captain General filled him to his core, and he spent every breath, every step, thinking of ways to murder the Captain General.
“But he was old, and time passed, as it always does.”
Mr. Keeper paused. Bramble cast a slightly bemused glance at Azalea, her eyebrow arched.
“So,” Mr. Keeper continued, “he took an oath. He filled a wine flute to the brim with blood. And he swore, on that blood, to kill the Wentworth General, and that he would not die until he did.
“And then, he drank it.
“The end.”
There was a very ugly, naked silence after that. The girls’ mouths gaped in perfect Os.
“Sorry?” said Delphinium. “I missed the part about the lady?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Keeper. “The blood. It was hers.”
The girls pushed one another through the fireplace wall, stumbling over skirts and tripping over untied slippers in a frenzy. They swarmed to the lamps on the table and by the door, turning up the oil as high as it could go.
“For the last time,” said Azalea as the girls flocked about the lamps, the younger ones gripping Azalea’s skirts, “it’s not true! Settle down!”
“Aaaah! Oh, ha ha, Ivy, it’s just you, ha ha ha.” Delphinium shakily sat on the edge of her bed, her hands fumbling with her slippers as she pulled them off.
“It really sounded true!” Hollyhock squeaked. “It really did!”
Azalea hesitated.
Unlike the rest of them, she had heard this story before. Only in snippets, sometimes in hushed tones when the maids walked by, or reading in Tutor’s Eathesbury Historian when he had dozed off. No one ever spoke it aloud.
Those hundreds of years ago, the High King had captured Harold the First’s daughter, in the gardens. Back then the gardens had been made of thornbushes that grasped at persons’ hands and necks of their own accord, pulling them into their prickly branches. He took her into the palace, and several days later, a box appeared at Harold the First’s manor. Among the tissue papers lay a hand. It belonged to her.
The story then echoed Keeper’s, with the High King drinking her blood, swearing to kill her father. Her body was found later, in pieces in the thorny garden. Azalea shuddered. She hated thinking of the next part of the story.
At night, the palace windows lit with a weird, bright yellow light, Harold the First’s daughter could be seen wandering the halls, feeling her way about with both of her hands. The High King had somehow kept her soul. And she felt about with both hands—because…because…Azalea couldn’t bring herself to think of it in a complete sentence, but it involved a needle, a thread, and the soul’s eyelids.
Azalea nearly dropped the lamp she held, her hands shook so. She managed a smile, set it on the round table, and began to help the younger girls undress.
“It’s only partly true,” she said firmly. “Yes, he drank blood, but it didn’t do anything. You know the picture of Harold the First, in the gallery? He died of old age. He killed the High King. The blood oath didn’t work. Drinking blood can’t do anything more than if you’ve pricked your finger and sucked on it. It’s all tosh.”
“He made it sound so vivid,” said Flora, huddled with Goldenrod under their bedcovers. They hadn’t bothered to undress.
“The High King did a lot of awful things,” said Eve as Azalea pulled the twins gently from their bed and helped them into their nightgowns. “He trapped people in mirrors. They died there.”
“That’s—not—as bad as—capturing souls, I should—should think,” said Clover, stammering more than usual.
“What a great load of rot,” said Bramble. She threw her slipper at the wall. It hit the wainscot next to the door and fell into the basket. “And what a rot of Keeper, telling a story like that. Didn’t he realize it would scare the tonsils out of the younger ones?”