Forest of Whispers (25 page)

“You knew her? You never told me.” Laurentz shifts his gaze from the painting to me, and I know he’s marking the similarities in his mind.

“She was a friend of your mother’s,” he nods toward Laurentz. “Her name was Liese.”

As soon as he says her name a prickly feeling crawls up my back. In an instant I’m back in the bishop’s courthouse, a strange voice speaking through me. Even after all the times my mother has whispered to me, that one moment when she spoke
through
me has felt like a dream. Now I know I hadn’t imagined it.

His voice is reflective and gravely as he continues, “No one knew she was expecting a child.”

“Do you know who my father is, then?”

The Electorate looks at me. He is composed, yet there is a strange sense of confusion that I feel from him. “Your mother was the Lady of Pyrmont.”

“That would make her the rightful heir,” Laurentz interrupts.

“Yes, but why place you in hiding? Why deny you your heritage, your parents? The Electorate and his wife had no other children.”

“Or simply because your mother practiced that which he didn’t approve of,” Laurentz says reflectively, but he suddenly peers at me from the corner of his eye. I’m not offended, though. I know what I am.

Laurentz leans across the desk for another look inside the frame.

“Perhaps my father was ashamed,” I say beneath my breath. “Perhaps he would have never wanted me, anyway.”

All I’ve known about my mother has been in secret. Little stories told to me, whispers here and there. In this tiny frame, though, she appears spirited and captivating, her skin glowing with a faint blush, hair dark and cascading with waves and curls collecting about her shoulders. Her eyes shine with a light that belongs to someone other than the voice I hear in my head.

I slide the portrait back across the table. The menacing voice I so often hear couldn’t possibly belong to the beautiful woman in the frame. That woman is much too kind-looking—full of life, not vengeance. I remember the harshness to her words inside my head—her pleas, her urgency. I am not sure why she hid me long ago in the forest. I’d like to think she kept me a secret so that I might live, even if it was to do her bidding, and I briefly wonder if those remaining in the village since the day she burned are the only ones who fear her wrath. I wonder if perhaps there is someone else. And then I realize the importance of the glass. My heart begins to beat faster. To anyone who fears her, she
is
still alive.

And I do. I fear her with all my heart.

Chapter 37
Laurentz

M
y father steps outside into the hall and closes the doors behind him, leaving Rune and me alone in the library. I imagine he is eager to be away from what has just been said. The past often feels like a heavy lingering cloud that will suffocate us if we stand beneath it for too long, bringing back memories that a man like my father would sooner forget.

“I don’t understand,” Rune says. “Why would she give me away? Why would I spend sixteen years living in a forest everyone fears, when I could have had grown up knowing I had a place to belong to?”

She doesn’t wait for my response, but keeps thinking out loud. “I never would have known what it feels like to be hungry. I never would have had to hide my face away from the others in the village, enduring their whispers, the way they pointed their fingers. I never,” she pauses, swallowing the deep sob collecting in her throat. “I never would have had to lose Matilde.”

I bend on my knee in front of her and take her hand in mine. “I have no answer for you other than the very fact that you wouldn’t be who you are today without Matilde’s influence. That girl who has me so charmed—the one I am willing to risk everything for in order to make sure she is safe. Would you have been the same person growing up elsewhere?”

“I would have known my family.”

“No, you’d be alone. They are all gone, except for you.”

Her sigh is heavy. “Matilde is gone. What’s the difference?”

“I never would have met you. There’s no hedge surrounding Pyrmont for me to pull you out of.”

This earns a small smile from Rune, and I finally feel it’s time to tell her I too have lost someone close to me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This room reminds me of my brother.

“My brother used to read to me when I was little, after our mother died,” I say softly.

She leans her head to the side and waits for me to tell her more, and before I know it, I’m telling her about Friedrich and how I miss him, how I wish the past could be revisited and altered all at once, and how the only thing altered now is me—first because of the deaths of my brother and mother, and second, because of her.

“When did he die?” Rune’s hand touches my arm. It is warm, and I let it stay there. As soon as she asks, I’m surprised how easy it is to tell her.

“Years ago, when I was eight.” I breathe. “I wanted my father to think I was ready to join his Guard. I was only a boy, but you couldn’t tell me that. I was strong, and willful, and capable in my own eyes. My mother was gone. It was a house full of men. Well, not Cook. But she wasn’t my mother. Friedrich told me I couldn’t balance the crossbow, but I wanted to prove him wrong. I wanted to prove my father wrong.”

I haven’t spoken of that day in so long. All I’ve wanted was to forget, and even when I thought everyone else had, something would happen to upset my father, and I would know he had not forgotten, and never would.

“It was an accident,” she tells me.

“No.
I
was the accident. If it weren’t for me, Friedrich would still be alive.”

“If it weren’t for me, Matilde would still be alive,” she says. “She died for a careless mistake I alone was responsible for. And I watched it happen. I watched them dunk her in the stream over and over again.” There’s silence, and then she says, “I did that. I killed Matilde.”

I know what it feels like to carry a heavy stone in my heart, like she does. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close, and she lets me. Her body is thin and frail beneath my touch, but she’s warm, she’s alive. She’s Rune—the girl who continues to heal me, inside and out, whether she knows it or not.

Chapter 38
Rune

S
omehow, between the moment he told me I was an heir of Pyrmont and the moment he left us alone in the library, Laurentz’s father made the decision to trust me, not to fear me so completely, and to let me try to put a stop to the terrible illness threatening to claim his wife. The halls of Eltz are hushed as Laurentz and his father lead me to her chamber, like the castle itself knows it is about to be placed under a spell, that unfamiliar forces will be tapped into, and that perhaps a miracle will happen.

My heart beats faster than my footsteps, and two voices register as we walk—my mother’s that follows me, and the other that pulls me forward. They are almost alike, overlapping, pleading, and by the time we come to a stop I am facing the ornate chamber door I had been led to earlier on my own, after my bath. With trembling hands, I push it open. A body lies still upon the bed, already so close to death there may not be enough time.

I knew you would come
, she seems to say though unmoving lips, and I peer over my shoulder at Laurentz, positive that they too have heard her, only they haven’t. With every pained breath her body screams her name so that I will know it’s hers.
Angeline
. I peel away the sheets that cling to her with dried sweat, feeling inside me how her body trembles at the cool air touching her sallow skin.

Laurentz and his father move to stand at the foot of the bed, giving me room but watching closely. They think I have a power to fix what has been done. They believe I can perform magick so her dying body will have another chance at life. Part of me wonders if they watch so intently to see if I really am capable, if I truly am a witch—which makes me notice someone else. My mother’s presence is terrifyingly close. I stumble a bit, suddenly unsure where to begin, or if I should even begin at all.

I ignore the dread that seeps into me and continue to survey my task. I turn from the bed to grab the ends of the brocade draperies, yanking them until the glass pane of the window is exposed and the moonlight pours into the room. I need to see her. My hand runs lightly across her forehead, feeling the fever beneath the skin. The heat is deep, near her bones. It pulses and pushes against my palm until my hand aches and fills me. A peculiar feeling spreads inside me, and I feel sick. My body feels shaky, as if it has lost control of itself, but I stand firm and tell myself I am only nervous.

The remedy that comes to me is what I’ve seen only Matilde do. It isn’t magick. It’s common sense. It’s using the precise amount and selection of herbs, and knowing that they will do what we ask because we give it time.

“I’ll need much more than this,” I say, holding up a half-empty pitcher of day-old water.

The Electorate steps forward and I see the gleam of desperation on his face. Every line around his eyes comes from crying over this woman. Every whisker in his chin is grayed over the idea of what the next day will bring. His eyes show how he has foreseen her death for months. He is relying on me to stop his misery, as well as hers.

I rattle off the list of herbs and concoctions that suddenly spring to my memory. I want to smile, in spite of the task that lies ahead, because Matilde would be proud of this moment. I’ve paid attention. I remember. Despite the dark feeling as my witch mother watches over me, I am doing this on my own. “I’ll need Wormwood and a handful of Meadowsweet,” I begin. “See if the kitchen has fresh Sage, Camphor, and a bit of Elecampane Root.” The list grows, and it takes several trips between the two of them to bring it all back to me. I work diligently to add the ingredients to the mortar and pestle, grinding them all together to create a poultice. I ask Elsie, who has quietly shown up at the door, to fill a cooking pot with muddled Juniper berries and a touch of vinegar, warming it somewhere accessible so that she might bring it in to the room as we need it.

I lay my hands across Angeline’s chest, feeling the shallow beat of her heart buried beneath the pain. I feel the poison searing into me. I don’t know how, but I do, and my hands fly from her chest to the folds of my dress, where I hide them as if they’ve been burned.

I lift the bedclothes with a careful hand, hearing the illness call to me. What I find yanks a gasp from my throat—the tips of her toes have begun to blacken. With absolute care, I take her fingers into my hands and inspect closely. Sure enough, there is a darkness spreading beneath her nails, as if she is slowly beginning to rot inward from the furthest extremities. Laurentz comes to my side, his eyes wide.

“She was not like this yesterday.” He places a hand over his mouth. “Is it Plague?”

“No, I think not. There are no buboes.” I try to reassure him. While I am certainly no expert, I know that he and his father would have fallen ill by now if it were the Black Death, as would the rest of the household. Not to mention their frail patient would have been dead long ago. “It’s something else. Something rather clever, for it leaves no trace of itself.”

I cover particular areas of Angeline’s body with the herbs—the tender skin beneath her arms, the space between her earlobes and jaw, all the while whispering softly to her, and then to Elsie for more when the bowl runs dry.

“Sacred Mother, help your daughter. Take away the poison that fills her veins. Heal the darkness that marks her skin.” There is a whispering beneath my words that is not mine, but I ignore it, only paying attention to my voice.

“Matilde, help me,” I whisper back. “Fire against fire, light against death…”

I feel the energy that belongs to my mother surge with me rather than against me. All at once, my hands burn and I yank them away, seeing the red marks they have left on Angeline’s body. All is silent around me. Laurentz. The Electorate. The servants who have congregated in the room and spill out into the hall to watch. All stare and pray. They wait for the magick to work. My hands burn so tremendously that it takes all I can to hold in the screams. Instead, I curl up on the floor at the foot of the bed and press my face into the sheets.

Footsteps rush to me. I know it’s Laurentz. He helps me to my feet as an audible gasp fills the room. We both turn to see his father standing over the bed, his hand to his mouth. He slumps to the bed, weeping, as his wife slowly opens her eyes and looks up at him, smiling.

Chapter 39
Laurentz

R
une won’t stop looking at me, pleading with me with those dark eyes of hers to tell her what’s wrong. This is what I wanted; this is what my father wanted. Like a dream, my stepmother has conquered death and opened her eyes, after all these weeks of waiting.

And Rune did this, just as we asked her to.

Then why can’t I look at her? Why can’t I thank her and bring back that moment when we stood together in the library, just the two of us?

I know the answer, and it’s killing me, because I didn’t expect to feel this way. I saw her heal my arm in the forest, but somehow, this is so much more, and my mind cannot grasp what I have just witnessed.

My father doesn’t notice how I slink past everyone who is in awe of Rune—past Angeline, who now sits up in bed fully awake and alive, overwhelmed by the smiling faces that fawn over her. He’s too immersed in getting back what he almost lost.

I, on the other hand, have lost everything in this one moment.

Rune leans against the corner of the bed, wordless, weak. She struggles to see me past the people who stand between us. I shake my head. I don’t want her to follow. I know she doesn’t understand.

All I know is that she is a witch. She is a full-blooded, second-generation spellcaster, and this room feels too small. This castle feels too uncomfortable. My own skin feels alien and the thoughts coursing through my head threaten to burst and corrode everything I felt earlier.

Was the library all part of her magick, too? Did she cast a spell over me and force me to tell her about Friedrich? That was my own doing, wasn’t it? Now, I’m not so sure.