Arcadia (26 page)

‘What do you mean?’

‘She just said a light,’ Jay replied helplessly.

‘A light? In the woods?’

‘That wasn’t there.’

‘Are you – or is she – playing some sort of elaborate joke?’

‘Believe me, I would not dare at the moment.’

‘A credible answer.’

‘As for her – I don’t know. I don’t think so. She seemed very worried, and annoyed. You should ask her. She was very willing to answer the few questions I put to her. I just didn’t understand the answers.’

‘I will certainly do so. Meanwhile she must be treated with the utmost care.’

‘Why?’ A question. Henary raised an eyebrow.

‘Because, young man, she may well be the key to knowledge of immense importance. We must not frighten her and must not lose her. Your job – and the reason your punishment is to be postponed temporarily – is to make sure my wishes in this matter are respected. You know her already. Did she like you?’

Jay blushed.

‘Perhaps she did. Perhaps she trusts you. You must live up to that trust. Watch over her carefully.’

‘If she has to be protected and kept from others, why display her at a festival?’

‘The festival, not a festival. The grand ceremony to confirm the rule of the domain holder. The etiquette is complicated and precise. Believe me, I would keep her locked away if I could, safe from prying eyes. If that is understood, you may go and prepare yourself, and I will go and meet your fairy.’

*

‘Ah! Henary,’ Catherine said, turning as the door opened. ‘How was that?’

‘Most enjoyable,’ Henary said with a smile.

‘Good. Now, you two know each other already, so there is no need to go through that. Henary has asked to speak with you alone for a while. I trust that is acceptable?’

‘Um … yes. Why not?’ Rosie said. ‘As long as you haven’t been mean to Jay. If you have, I won’t say a word to you.’

Henary appeared to find this answer highly pleasing. He rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. ‘We are the very best of friends,’ he assured her. ‘All his limbs and bodily organs are exactly where they should be, and I have packed him off for a long bath.’

‘That’s all right, then. What do you want to know?’ she asked. Catherine nodded to them both and slipped quietly out of the room.

‘Well,’ Henary replied, as he gestured for her to sit, waited until she had done so, then sat himself, ‘I would like you to answer a question. How do you speak so well?’

Rosie did her best. ‘Mummy tried sending me to elocution lessons, because she thinks ladies should speak properly, and of course we have to recite poetry at school, you know. I never win, but I do well enough.’

‘So you are a scholar?’

‘A what? Oh, a scholar, I suppose you mean.’ She was perplexed by the way he pronounced the word for a moment. ‘Oh! No. Everyone knows I’m not clever enough for that. Are you a
foreigner? I suppose that explains why you talk so oddly.’

‘I’ve always been told my enunciation of the values of the speech is perfect,’ he said stiffly. ‘Skoo-LAIR. Short, then long, emphasis on the second syllable.’

‘It isn’t said like that,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s SKOL-ur. Short o, emphasis on the first. Hard ch.’ She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you French?’

The conversation was not going as Henary intended. He walked to a large box in the corner and brought out a manuscript, which he lovingly removed from its protective casing. ‘Would you come over here, please?’ Rosie obediently did as he asked. ‘Now tell me, can you read this?’

She reached out to take it, but Henary grabbed her hand. ‘Careful!’

He was so obviously and genuinely alarmed that Rosie instantly apologised, although she could not see what she was really meant to be apologising for. She craned her neck and peered over his arm.

‘What is it?’

‘A fragment from a document I have been working on for many years.’

‘I’ll give it a whirl. “In the autumn of his life,”’ she read swiftly, ‘“Esilio gathered all his followers, and spoke. ‘My friends, my journey is at an end. You must continue without me, knowing that for you, also, an end is near. This place belongs to all men, all women equal. I will see you no more, until we meet again at the end of time.’ The old man lay down his head and died. He was an hundred and twenty, yet his eye was not dim, nor his force abated.” Well,’ Rosie said, looking up at the reverent face of Henary, ‘that’s a bit odd. All women equal? His eye not dim? It should be “all women equally” and “eye not dimmed”. It must have been written down in a real hurry.’

She noticed to her very great surprise that Henary was looking at her with disbelief. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Do you know what that is?’

‘Not the faintest idea. Sounds a bit like the Bible. You know, Moses and the Promised Land. We get that at Sunday School. It’s the same idea, surely? Old man, leading his flock to a new land and dying just as he gets there.’

‘Yet you read it and find fault.’

‘It’s not hard. The handwriting’s terrible though.’

Henary smiled bravely. ‘We must talk some more,’ he said. ‘Alas, it is now time for you to prepare for the evening.’ There was a slight tremor in his voice.

*

The next few hours were, in Rosie’s opinion, the most wonderful of her life. Lady Catherine returned and led her into a room – a whole series of rooms, in fact – which were full of all sorts of delightful things. Baths, thick cloths, bottles of strange substances; it was warm and comfortable there, with a thick pall of steam from hot water coming from one of the rooms, heavy smells of perfume coming from others.

‘Here I will leave you again,’ she said. ‘You will be in good hands.’

‘What are they going to do to me?’ Rosie asked in alarm.

‘Prepare you for the festivity. We cannot have an honoured guest looking like … well, you are not dressed quite properly. You will be washed, and prepared, and dressed.’

‘You make me sound like a chicken,’ Rosie said. ‘You’re not a witch, are you? I mean, like
Hansel and Gretel
?

‘Like who?’

‘You know. The story. The boy and a girl who get captured by a witch, and she fattens them up to eat them, then they push her in the oven and escape.’

‘Why do you want a witch? Are you ill? I could summon one from the village if there is something which ails you.’

‘Oh, no,’ Rosie said quickly. ‘No. Not in the slightest. Forget I said it.’

‘Very well.’ She clapped her hands and two women appeared, one scarcely older than Rosie and one about the same age as her mother. They went through the ritual of greeting once more.

‘We will meet again at dusk. Until then you must relax and cleanse your mind and body of all wearisome things.’

She left, and they began.

In the back of Rosie’s mind was still the thought that this might be an elaborate trap – although it seemed a lot of trouble to go to. It might be they were preparing her to become a human sacrifice – she had read about that. Or that they planned to eat her. Or something equally horrible and unpleasant.

But they were so nice and once it was clear they had no intention of listening to her protests – I’ve been doing my own bath since I was six, thank you very much – Rosie accepted that she had no choice but to give in.

Conversation was not very good – Rosie tried to ask them questions, but they just blushed and giggled when she did – so communication was limited to requests and instructions, delivered in a strange accent, very much as though they were speaking a foreign language which they knew only poorly. ‘If you would have the goodness to stand while we remove …?’

They did this, and were much less perturbed by Rosie standing there with nothing on than she was; then they bathed her, and led her to a table where she received her first massage, which she enjoyed greatly once she got used to it, although at the beginning she was still thinking actively about cannibalism. By the end – pummelled as she was – she was so relaxed she didn’t care. Let them eat her! She didn’t mind.

Then another long soapy bath, after which she was dried and anointed again with oil from head to toe. Next they wrapped her in thick towels and began on her feet, which elicited a tutting of disapproval. These they scraped and rubbed, then painted her toenails a bright red and slipped rings over her toes. One gold and two silver on each foot. Her hands were treated similarly.

Finally, they applied themselves to her head. Her hair was
brushed like it had never been brushed before, with sweet-smelling liquids massaged into her scalp so it tingled. They cut it – how on earth would she explain that when she got home? If she ever did – and bound it up in a complicated arrangement which somehow stayed in place when they had finished. It never did when she tried it in her bedroom.

Rosie was almost asleep from the surfeit of sensations by this time, so she made no objection when they began on her face. This was again rubbed and massaged, her eyebrows plucked, her teeth violently cleaned, before they began on the make-up. Her mother had never allowed even the slightest hint of paint – though other girls her age were experimenting – so she would have become excited had she not been so relaxed. Lips, cheeks, eyelashes, eyebrows, nose, ears were all given full attention until Rosie could no longer even grasp what they were doing to her. Later she realised that they had not only cut her hair, they had dyed it as well. Oh, am I going to be in trouble, she thought. Finally they brought an extraordinary wig, long and golden, quite unlike her own hair, and carefully put it on her head, tucking her hair out of the way. It was surprisingly comfortable.

Then they were finished and – tentatively, nervously – held up a mirror for her to see herself.

Rosie gasped in utter astonishment. In the glass there stared back at her, wide-eyed with wonder, the face of an undeniably, amazingly, fabulously, magnificently beautiful young woman, the like of which she had never seen in a mirror before. ‘Lordy!’ she said reverently. ‘Just look at that!’

The servants smiled nervously, realised it was approval and then grinned broadly.

*

When she was finally ready, Rosie was taken to Lady Catherine’s private suite in the house, shown through the door and left alone with her.

She was so bewildered by this stage she had stopped thinking altogether. Nothing made sense. She could, of course, have behaved normally – stamped her feet, burst into tears and demanded to be taken home – but she suspected that would achieve nothing. This was all too elaborate to be some joke. Too solid to be a dream. Too strange to be anything other than real. She was dressed, manicured and coiffed more elaborately than any debutante or film star, being treated like some form of royalty and had no choice but to play her role. That might, at least, allow her to find out what all this was about. Meanwhile, she might as well enjoy herself. Worrying wasn’t going to make any difference.

Her idea of courtly behaviour came mainly from the novels of Jean Plaidy and the lesser Hollywood epics she saw on a Saturday morning at the Odeon. Not much, but in all of these silence and slow movement seemed to be the foundation of grace. The first was not her strong suit, but she had, often enough, practised being presented at court in the privacy of her little bedroom. She could do what was necessary.

To her vague disappointment, it wasn’t required, at least not yet. In her rooms Lady Catherine was relieved of her duties as Lady of the domain. There – and there alone – she could be herself. It was where she received Henary, for example, when she wanted a proper argument with him. Where she received those she trusted and liked, when she did not need the protection of her position. By Rosie’s standards she was still formal, but certainly less scary or strange.

‘Sit, Rosalind, please do.’

Lady Catherine was also transformed for the Festivity. She wore what Rosie guessed was a cloth-of-gold robe and had rings on every finger, one of gold, one of silver on each and all with stones in them. Her fair hair – which Rosie now realised was a wig as well – had been brushed with gold paint, so that it sparkled in the light. Around her were belts, several of them, across her chest, stomach and hips. The effect was very peculiar but, Rosie conceded, very attractive also. ‘You look very nice,’ she said.
Lady Catherine smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You also look quite different.’

‘Don’t I just! Who would have thought! If Mummy could see me at the moment, she’d have a heart attack, I think.’

‘I do hope not. Is your mother ill?’

‘Oh, no. Fit as a flea, but she’s not one for dressing up, if you see what I mean. Especially me. She thinks I’m too young.’

‘Too young? You must be – what, fifteen?’

‘And a quarter.’

‘You are not married?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Betrothed, then?’

Rosie laughed. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon. It’s just a saying. No. I am not. People don’t get married until they are in their twenties at least. Normally, I mean.’ She decided not to go into the example of Amy, who had had to leave school suddenly last year.

‘You come from a long way away, don’t you?’ came the suddenly serious question.

Rosie nodded. ‘I think I must.’

‘Do you know anything of Anterwold?’

Rosie looked at her, open-mouthed. ‘Did you say Anterwold?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Anterwold?’

‘Yes. That is what this land is called. Did you not know that?’

‘Oh. No,’ the girl replied, properly flustered for the first time. ‘I know nothing. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I don’t know how I’m going to get home. I’m going to be in real trouble when I do. I mean, not perpetual slavery. But a lot of detentions. Anterwold? Are you serious?’

‘Hush, my dear, don’t worry. We wish to help you. It may be you will be able to help us as well. We shall see. I must tell you that at the moment there is nothing we can do. We don’t know how you got here either. But Henary …’

‘Yes. Him. He seems terribly nice.’

‘He is the wisest and most learned man in the land. If anyone
can help you, he can. You must trust him, for he means only well. Can you do so?’

‘I will ask Jay.’