The Spinner and the Slipper (17 page)

The wind laughed so loudly that Heloise didn’t hear the sound of approaching hooves. So when young Master Benedict de Cœur rounded a turn in the path, his horse shied, and he shouted, and Heloise’s story almost came to a swift and crushing end.

But just at the last, the horse was able to pivot, and Heloise herself, despite the force of the wind, fell down the slope and landed in the fir tree’s branches. Benedict, less fortunate in his landing site, sprawled on the path and stared up at bare twigs whirling against the sky as his vision spun. His horse galloped on down the path and disappeared into the trees.

“Iubdan’s beard,” Benedict cursed. Then he coughed, propped himself up on one elbow, and turned to scowl at the wild-haired maid in the ditch. “Iubdan’s crown and beard, girl, what do you think you’re doing?” he snarled.

And then he blushed.

FOUR

The family of Cœur, longtime masters of Canneberges and other great estates across the kingdom, were red-bearded, red-blooded, red-tempered men. As red as the cranberries in the bogs; as red as the dyes with which the dyers stained their reams of fine flax thread. Their great ancestor Rufus the Red (for whom the Flaxman family’s rooster was named) was a man of such bloody history that all painted depictions of him were done entirely in shades of crimson and scarlet, and the only carvings were rendered in redwood.

Such was Benedict’s heritage. But he doubted very much that Rufus the Red (his ancestor, not the rooster) had suffered under such a curse of blushes as he battled every day.

For Benedict’s red blood, much to his chagrin, was severely checked by the delicate, refined blue blood of his mother’s family, the Bellamys: a quiet, thoughtful assortment of aristocrats whose hereditary taste inclined far more toward poetry, introspection, and good-breeding than ruthlessness.

Thus Benedict, though he boasted a temper as potent as any among the descendants of the famous Rufus, also boasted a quick-rising shame that countered all expressions of fury with immediate expressions of abject apology. Thus in his father’s eyes he was a wet puppy; in his mother’s, a hot-headed hound. He could never win.

“I mean to say,” he said, still propped on his elbow and watching the peasant girl disentangle herself from the branches of a fir tree, “I do apologize. I shouldn’t have sworn at you like that.”

“You’re dragon-eaten right!” Heloise snapped, her head emerging from the ditch. Her braids had mostly come undone, and wild curls stood up around her head, giving her the appearance of some strange forest spirit of wicked intent rising up out of the soil itself. Her eyes flashed with what Benedict took to be rage but was more surprise than anything.

His blush deepened. He had never heard a girl use such a curse. Cursing by the Dragon was something only the most daring of the older boys at university ever tried, and then only behind the headmaster’s back.

But peasant girls weren’t like
normal
girls. They were uneducated so possessed no breadth of understanding. One couldn’t expect too much from them, now could one?

Still blushing but assuming an expression of noble condescension and forbearance, Benedict picked himself up, brushed himself off, and strode to the ditch. There he bent, one hand on his knee, the other extended to Heloise.

She stared at it. He might have been offering her a spider, so great was the disgust curling her lip. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“Um. I’d like to help you up?” Benedict said. It was more a question than a statement, as though he wasn’t certain this was the right response to give.

Heloise continued to stare. Then she shrugged, kicked a bare foot free of her tangled skirts, and pulled herself upright. “I don’t need help,” she said, then took a step and almost slipped back down the incline. Out of pure necessity her flailing hand caught his, and she found herself held in a firm grasp which drew her back up onto the path.

It was then that Heloise caught sight of Benedict’s hat lying in the middle of the road and she knew whose hand she held and at whom she had just so roundly cursed. Now it was her turn to blush.

Heloise had never before seen Master Benedict close up. He had been away at university for several years now, only home for the occasional visit, and she could not recall having glimpsed him even once during those intervals. She knew the general idea of what he looked like, however: tall, fair, and thin, like his mother. All the farm girls of Canneberges claimed that he was handsome, though now that she saw him up close, Heloise thought his features rather more odd than attractive. In fact, she thought he looked a bit like Rufus the Red (the rooster, not the ancestor).

But everyone on Canneberges estate knew that the marquis’s son wore a bright blue cap set with trailing peacock feathers. There wasn’t a hat like it to be seen anywhere else on the estate and not a finer one to be had in all the kingdom. Or so the dyer boys claimed, with no little envy. After all, who wouldn’t want a hat adorned with peacock feathers?

And this was the hat Heloise now saw with one feather bent and broken at a terrible angle.

“Oh, sweet Lights Above,” Heloise whispered. She shook her hand free of Benedict’s grasp and tried to curtsy so hard she almost sat down. “Master Benedict! Sir! I—”

I wish I had pinned up my braids like Evette suggested.

The thought flashed through her brain, and it was enough to make her want to gag. Dragons blast it! Why was Evette
always
right?

Benedict waited a polite interval to see if the peasant girl would finish her excuses or explanations. But she had apparently lost all power of speech. “Well,” he said at last, “no harm done.” He turned to fetch his hat and immediately spotted the inaccuracy of that statement. “Oh.” He picked up the hat, and the broken feather dangled forlornly before falling, leaving behind a sorry stub. The bright eye of the peacock feather gleamed in the dust of the path. “My man will have something to say about this,” Benedict muttered, more to himself than to Heloise. He sighed and placed the hat on his head.

The next moment a great wind gusted, and the hat was off his head and caught in Heloise’s hands.

She stared at it.

Benedict stared at it.

“Um,” said Heloise.

“Um,” said Benedict. He put out his hand. “May I have my hat back, please?”

Bobbing another curtsy, Heloise all but threw the hat at him. He accepted it with more grace and carefully set it at a jaunty angle over his hair. No sooner had his hands let go of the brim, however, when—

Heloise gasped as the hat hit her in the face. She caught it and dragged it down, her eyes round and staring into the equally startled gaze of Master Benedict.

“Excuse me, little girl,” said he, “but would you kindly not . . .”

At least he had the good grace to stop talking. Heloise would grant him that, even if she couldn’t find it in her heart to forgive him for calling her “little girl.” (He wasn’t that much older than she was! Perhaps closer to Evette’s age than hers, but still!) She narrowed her eyes and watched him as he calculated whether or not there had been enough time for her to leap that distance, snatch the hat, leap back again, and slap it across her own face.

“Nope,” she said, tossing the hat back to him. “It wasn’t me.”

Benedict flushed a brighter crimson than ever, if that were possible. “Then how—”

He didn’t finish. Before he could, the wind caught the hat again and returned it to Heloise’s hands. It giggled. And a strange, mad giggle it was, high-pitched and otherworldly. No human throat could make a sound like that.

Nevertheless, Benedict’s brow lowered in a scowl which he focused on Heloise. She scowled back, determined he wouldn’t begin to imagine that
she
had made such a twittering noise. “Here,” she said, stepping closer and holding out the hat. “Take it.”

Benedict, unused to being ordered about by girls, looked as though he would put up a fight. Heloise braced herself for verbal battle. But Benedict was not entirely made up of red Cœur blood. Bellamy rationality ruled at least half of his brain. So, without argument, he did as he was told and took hold of the brim of his hat. Heloise held on as well, and they clutched it suspended between them.

The breeze watched without eyes, tittering softly, poised to leap. Heloise glanced sideways at the sound, then focused her gaze on Benedict’s red face. “When I let go,” she whispered, “run.”

Benedict leaned in to catch her words. “What about my horse?” he said, as though asking permission for something.

Heloise made a face at him. “Run after the horse then,” she said. “I don’t care. Just run—not yet! When I say.”

Benedict’s pale eyes scanned the air over her head and to either side. He dropped his voice still lower, so that she had to read his words on his lips. “Do you know what this is?”

“No. Why would I? Get ready.”

Benedict shook his head. “I can’t abandon you with . . . whatever it is. It wouldn’t be . . . I mean, I mean it wouldn’t be gentlemanly. Leaving a little girl alone in the forest and all. It wouldn’t . . . I mean, king and honor and country and all that.”

Heloise wrinkled her nose at him. But she could see that, despite his babble, he was in earnest, so she said, “If you stay here, we’ll spend the rest of the day trading your hat back and forth. Maybe
you
have time to waste in an endless game of catch, but
I
have work to do. Now get ready.”

“Um,” said Benedict, working his way up to another protest.

Heloise didn’t give him the chance. “Run!”

She felt the startled thrill run up his arms at the suddenness of her shout. Then, grasping the hat with both hands, he turned and fled down the path the same direction his horse had gone. His blue cloak flapped behind him, but he made good speed, she had to admit. Indeed, he might have given any of the farm boys on Canneberges estate some competition at the summer games if his dignity permitted him to join them. But then—and Heloise folded her arms across her skinny chest at this thought—fear can be quite an inspiration, and who knew how he would run under more normal circumstances?

The wind in the boughs of the oak tree overhead laughed hysterically at the sight then plunged down and swished off after Benedict like a dog snapping at his heels. Just as Benedict rounded the bend and disappeared out of sight into the trees, however, the wind stopped, whirled up, and came tripping lightly back to Heloise.

She could see it coming. Or rather, she could see the signs of its coming as leaves and pine straw on the path blew wildly off to either side and away, and little shreds of paper bounced along in its wake. Some small part of her brain told her that she should be afraid. But at the moment she felt more curious than anything.

This breeze giggled to itself, a most unnatural sound considering it had no throat or mouth with which to giggle. Heloise stood with her arms folded and waited as it approached. It swooped down, picked up the broken end of the peacock feather and twirled it about as though between two fingers before presenting it to Heloise.

She eyed it, one eyebrow upraised. “What? You expect me to take it? Like a gift?”

The breeze giggled again and went on twirling so that the iridescent eye of the feather gleamed and winked.

“You embarrassed me, you know,” said Heloise, refusing to take the proffered item even when it was tickled under her nose. She swiped a hand and sent the feather tossing to the ground. “You embarrassed me in front of Master Benedict. The marquis’s own son!” She snorted, and a smile wanted to tug at her mouth, so she scowled more fiercely. “Evette would have died if it was her.”

“Died?” said the breeze, and then burst into a still more manic, “
Heeeeeeeeee heeheehee!
Died! Died! Would have died!”

So,
Heloise thought.
So. It talks. It’s alive.

She felt all the blood in her face rush down her neck and away, leaving her ghostly pale and light-headed. But she was able to hold onto enough self-awareness to remind herself that breezes weren’t really that scary, and ultimately wouldn’t one prefer a breeze that talked rather than one that only laughed? After all, if it talked, surely it could reason.

Had her feet not been firmly rooted, she might have been tempted to run. “What’s so funny?” she demanded. “Do stop laughing, at once. What is so funny about anyone dying?”

The breeze seemed to draw a long breath, which was odd considering it was made up of almost nothing but breath. Then, eager like a puppy, it wound its way along the ground to Heloise’s feet. She felt puffs like fingers touching her toes and pulling at the hem of her skirts. Once more she almost ran. But she stood her ground.

“Mortal, mortal, mortal you are,” said the wind. “Mortal you live and mortal you die. Oh, it is a strange and wondrous thing! Have you seen it? Have you seen this death?”

And there it came, flashing across Heloise’s memory.

The image that returned to her every year on a certain cold night in the depths of winter, every year in that sleepless darkness: The image of her mother standing over the open hole in the ground. Her mother, who couldn’t hear her calling:
“Meme! Meme! Don’t!”