The Soul Mirror Read Free Page B

an act of will. My sister was dead and no one would tell me why. But she was the daughter of Michel de Vernase, and slander already tainted her memory in a place that should have been her shelter. Had her tutors murdered her before fifty witnesses here in Seravain village square, no one in the world would care, and I could do not a blasted, bloody, wretched thing about it.
     
     
    “LET ME ROUST REMY, DAMOSELLE. He’ll parse you up to the house. It’s past middle-night.” Mistress Constanza, the proprietress of the Cask, watched the Tigano coach rattle out of her rutted innyard. Her ample figure filled the bright-lit doorway of the sole inn in Vernase. Wavering yellow light spilled around her robust silhouette, along with the sounds of hearty laughter, boisterous conversation, and well-lubricated singing. “If you’ll pardon my saying, dearie, you’ve got the look of a rug’s been beat too many times.”
    “I think I’d rather walk home tonight. Thank you, Constanza. The rain has left the air so pleasant after the hot day.”
    “Sure you won’t come in and ease your bonesprits with a cup?”
    “Not tonight, mistress.” I could not bear the thought of company, the sidewise glances, knowing nods, and incessant murmurings: Treason . . . unholy sorcery . . . wife near burnt the place down . . . the wild boy prisoned . . . the youngest so odd . . . that plain’uns the eldest, no feelings, corked tight as a swollen bung, damned her own father . . . Gossip helped fill the friendly Constanza’s ale mugs, but my family had provided enough of that for a lifetime of swilling.
    “As you will, dearie.” As I picked my steps carefully across the innyard, she called after me. “Is your brother hale, then, damoselle? Such a direful confinement in the river damp. I suspected perhaps this journey . . . so sudden . . . Or was it the contessa, sweet angeli comfort the poor dear lady? Still helt in the mountains with her kin, is she? Her brothers tend her, I think.”
    “My brother endures, mistress.” Though when I wrote Ambrose this day’s news, he would surely batter his head to pulp against his prison walls. “And my mother’s condition is unchanged. Thank you for your concern.”
    My aching back would have appreciated transport, even in Constanza’s rickety donkey cart, but I had used up the last of my ready money for the stonemason and the coach fare. I’d not so much as a kivre to tip Remy. On another day, the petty humiliation of such impoverishment might have bothered me more. But all such nagging worries had long coalesced into a single overriding truth: My family was broken, and nothing in the wide, starry universe was ever going to repair it.
     
     
    THE STEEP HIKE UP TO Montclaire stretched very long and very dark. The only sentient being I encountered along the path was the soldier assigned to that particular portion of the estate’s encircling watch posts. Four years they’d kept up this stranglehold, lest the traitor conte abrogate his celebrated intelligence and attempt to visit the family he had abandoned.
    The insolent guardsman near singed my hair with his torch as he examined my face and questioned my late excursion. With well-practiced hauteur, I rebuffed his attempts to pry out gossip. By the time I let myself through our outer gate, climbed the last swell of the hill, and used the faint light from the stable lamp to step carefully through the churned muck of the yard, the moon had set.
    A sturdy man, more grizzle on his chin than on his round head, awaited me on the flagstone terrace, lamp in hand. “Mistress Anne, we have a—”
    “It’ll have to wait until morning, Bernard. I can’t think another moment.”
    Underneath the spreading walnut tree, that dearest of men traded his lamp for my cloak. He wore the faded purple jacket and breeches, meticulously white linen shirt, and threadbare hose that he donned in the evenings when he became footman, chamberlain, and porter after a day spent