The heavy silver lay in my palms like a dead, slippery weight; it seemed to avoid my touch, knowing it had no place at this table. I checked the alignment of knives and forks, while from above, from Arabella’s chambers, came her measured step. Thus a beast paces in a cramped cage, sensing that the bolts are strong and there is no freedom.
William arrived at noon. The rumble of his carriage and the slam of the door filled the yard, and then his voice burst into the hall — young, ringing, full of authority. He spoke of the murk and the boredom of the road, of how exhausted the horses were, and of his impatience to see his bride. His speech was as clear as crystal, but I wanted to shatter that tone, so that at least one living sound might escape from beneath it. In his voice there was no shadow of doubt, no aching pulse that makes a man human. It was as smooth as the polished side of his carriage: it reflected the world but did not let it inside.
“Arabella must still be dressing for our meeting,” said William with that condescending warmth with which one speaks of children who have done something charming and predictable. “I always say: a woman has a right to mystery, especially in the morning hours. In London, ladies take an eternity to prepare. My mother, I recall, would not leave her boudoir until lunchtime, and then she would appear so dazzling that the drawing room would fall into silent admiration. I am sure Arabella will not deviate from this example. She has breeding, which cannot be acquired through education — it is innate. I remember, on my first visit with my father — she must have been sixteen? — she stood by the window with a book and did not even turn at our entrance. My parents doubted then: ‘William, this girl is too proud for you.’ But I answered them: ‘Pride is what our family needs. At Sandford Manor, there is an excess of complaisance and a desire to please. I need one who looks at the world from a height, not seeking approval.’ And now I see I was right. She does not ask for mercy. She waits for the world to adapt to her whim. Such women are as rare as white roses in our latitudes.”
He spoke, and his words fell evenly, like pebbles smoothed by the sea. They had no roughness, none of those living irregularities that mark genuine speech. I looked at him, thinking how prophetically he was mistaken: Arabella truly did wait for the world to bow before her. But the chambers she craved had nothing to do with his plans. She had no need of London, no need of the glitter of balls, no need of the burden of being mistress of Sandford Manor. She languished for the one who at this moment was in the stable, mending harness, and, surely, was likewise fixing his gaze upon her windows.
“She will come down,” Richard remarked with that unshakable certainty with which only those whose command is sacred speak. “My daughter knows of your arrival. She will not prolong your wait beyond what is proper.”
I went upstairs. Arabella stood by the window with her back to the door. She had already put on that same pine-colored dress; the high collar rose so forbiddingly that it seemed not fabric but the wall of a prison. Her hair was subdued into a heavy knot, depriving every strand of its will. The silk pressed her flesh up to her chin, cutting off her breath. She stood straight, like a taut string; I saw the tension in her shoulders and her whitened fingers gripping the windowsill.
“He is waiting below,” I said.
“I know,” she answered. “I heard his words. About London, about his mother, about my rarity, likened to a white rose. He speaks as if I am not flesh and blood, but a precious find spotted at an auction. He judges me while I am here, not knowing: I hear him measuring my price, without asking whether I wish to be sold.”
“He only wishes for your good,” I said, and these words sounded so empty that I myself found no truth in them.
“Good for whom?” She turned, and I saw her face. Pallor, a feverish flush on her cheeks, and eyes that looked through me into another distance. “For my father? For William? For this house, which stands on a marsh and seeks an heir so it may not collapse for another century? And for me? Is there even a small part of this ‘good’ for my soul, Agnes?”
I was silent. What could I say? Should I try to convince her that William would give her shelter, successors, and that respect with which the world crowns virtue? I knew: that was not what she craved. I had seen it the moment I found her in the stable before Damian, when her hands had reached for him of their own accord, defying her will. I knew the truth, but duty commanded me to weave a web of lies, as was expected of me.
“He is a worthy man,” I said. “He will surround you with care.”
“Care,” she echoed, and the word sounded like a curse. “Do you know what my mother wrote in that letter? ‘There is no air here. No life. Only walls. And you, Richard, look at me without seeing.’ She could have written these lines today. Changing only the names. Instead of Richard — William. Instead of one prison — another. But the essence is unchanged. I will remain in his chambers, listening to speeches about London, bearing his children, and suffocating. And he will look at me, remaining blind. Like my father. Like everyone in this world.”
“Arabella…” I began, but she cut me off.
“Agnes, answer me truthfully. If you could return to your springtime, if before you arose a choice between a proper existence and that from which the heart beats so fiercely it threatens to tear your chest apart — which would you choose?”
I looked at her, and a veil of the past covered my eyes. I was seventeen, I stood by the well in my father’s house, and a young man walked past, one who was fated to disappear into the city forever. He said: “You are beautiful, Agnes. I would take you as my wife.” I only laughed: “You do not even know my name.” And he cut me off: “Agnes. I know. I know everything about you.” And he smiled. And then — disappeared beyond the horizon. I remained. A year later my father died, two years after that my mother, and I hired myself out to Greyvud Hall, for there was no other path. I chose the proper life. And now I stood here — old, alone, with hands that remembered every cup and every napkin in this house, but held no warmth of palms that might have been mine.
“I would choose that from which the blood boils in one’s veins,” I said. “But I have no right to incite you to the same. For I do not know the price of that choice. Perhaps I would have found happiness. Or perhaps I would now be looking from another window at the life I rejected, grieving for what was lost. We always long for what is lost. And no one values what is found.”
She held my gaze for a long time. Then she approached and squeezed my hand. Her fingers were cold as ice, and I felt their fine, unceasing tremor.
“Thank you,” she said. “For the truth. Even if it is not the one I wanted to hear.”
She released my palm, straightened her collar, and smoothed the folds of her skirt. Stood still before the mirror. I stood behind her shoulder, gazing at her face — alien, distant. So in childhood she had looked at the portraits of her ancestors: with curiosity, but not a trace of recognition. She did not find herself in that silk, in the bone vise of the corset, or in the impeccably arranged hair.
“I am ready,” she said. Her voice was as empty as an abandoned house from which all living things had been removed.
She walked to the door. In the dining room, order reigned. The tablecloth — white, starched — rustled like an icy crust on puddles. The silver, polished to a mirror gleam, reflected the candle flames, faces, and shadows. The porcelain with the family crest — a blue thistle on a snowy field — crowned every place setting.
I looked at that thistle and thought that it would be on her wedding gifts, on the linen of her marriage bed, and on her tombstone, if she chose the “proper life.”
William sat to the right of Richard. He had already changed from his travel clothes into a home coat of fine dark blue cloth with silver-embroidered buttons. His hair was smoothly combed, his face fresh and clean, without a trace of road weariness. He sat with military straightness, his gaze fixed on the door in anticipation of the main trophy of his fate. In a tall crystal vase stood his roses — dense, heavy, cut at dawn in the greenhouses of Sandford Manor. Their scent was so fierce that it overpowered the aroma of the food. Sweet, thick, cloying — this smell filled the whole space, tangled in the folds of the linen, settled on the silver. It seemed that if this scent were visible, it would appear as a white sticky web, enveloping the living, depriving them of the will to move.
Richard sat at the head of the table. Everything showed how pleased he was: the order he had been building for years was triumphant. His daughter was obtaining a worthy husband, the name was being inherited, the walls stood strong. He looked at William, seeing in him not a son-in-law, but a support for his own will.
“She will come down any minute,” Richard said. “Delay is the eternal privilege of women.”
William laughed. His laugh was light and pleasant — such is the sound of the voices of people who have never known true waiting, exhausting hope, or genuine fear.
“Arabella may delay as long as she wishes,” he said. “I would accept an eternity of waiting for her face. In London I saw many lovely girls ready to do anything for the name of Mrs. Hawthorn. But not one would bear comparison with her. It is not a matter of beauty — many are endowed with that. Within her rests a certain inner stillness; thus only those who do not wholly belong to this world stand still. I noticed it at our very first meeting. She stood by the window, and it seemed to me that her gaze was directed not at the garden, but at some distance beyond the house and life itself. I asked my father then: ‘What is she thinking?’ He cut me off: ‘What we are not given to understand.’ And I understood: I wished to become the one who would share that knowledge with her.”
The door opened. Arabella entered.
I lurked in the shadow of the sideboard, watching her progress to the table. Her figure was straight, and her face wore that impeccable, empty smile with which I had taught her to receive guests. She approached, William rose impulsively and pulled out her chair, assisting her. His fingers lingered on the carved back longer than necessary, and I noticed how Arabella barely perceptibly drew back, unwilling to allow even a fleeting touch to her shoulder.
“Arabella,” said William, and in his voice appeared a warmth capable of melting ice. “You look wonderfully well today. This dress… it brings out the emerald of your eyes. I have always said that green is your color. You resemble a princess from a legend, imprisoned in a tower awaiting her deliverer.”
“I seek no deliverance,” answered Arabella. In her speech cut through that same note that had sounded in her childhood: when adults took her words for insolence, not sensing the bitter truth in them. “I simply exist here.”
William laughed again, not grasping the meaning.
“That is what I value in you,” he said. “Your directness and honesty. In London, people say one thing, think another, and do a third. You, however, are like clear glass. One can see right through you.”
I gazed at Arabella and saw how her fingers, hidden beneath the tablecloth, clenched convulsively. Clear glass. Right through. Oh, if only he knew that within that glass a crack had run, from the very foundation, threatening at any moment to shatter her being. If only he understood to whom her thoughts were directed now, while he poured out words about London and the charm of roses. If only he knew: her hands held not the memory of the fine kid of his gloves, but the smell of tar and hay. And in his speeches about marriage, she felt only suffocation, for the corset I had laced that morning pressed her ribs, giving no freedom to her breath.
“William was speaking of a journey to London after the ceremony,” Richard remarked with that impatience that betrays a desire to settle matters quickly, without recourse to excuses or defense. “I think it is a good intention. You must show yourselves to society. The world must understand: the Greyvud line is not dying out; we have a future.”
“We have always had a future, Father,” answered Arabella. “The question is only what form we give it.”
She said this in an undertone, almost a whisper, but I caught every word. Richard also heard them. For an instant, his face turned into that old one, from when he was just beginning to realize: his wife was looking at the marsh, not seeing him. But he immediately looked away, lifted his glass, and drank wine.
“You will give it the proper form,” he cut off. “I have no doubt of that.”
Arabella kept silence. She touched her fork to her plate, raised it to her lips, and returned it to the table, not tasting a crumb. I watched as she studied the food on the porcelain, knowing: she would not be able to swallow even a small piece. Every time she bent toward her plate, the bone armor dug into her body, reminding her of the cage. The food was for her not nourishment, but stones to be swallowed for the sake of propriety, to convince everyone that she was here, that she was one with them.
“I hear you have a new stable hand,” William remarked, pushing away his plate and touching his glass. His tone was careless, as if he spoke of something devoid of weight. “Damian, is it? Where is this fellow from? I watched him working yesterday. A rare breed. One does not hire such men by the roadside — one must be born with that instinct. He has a skill that cannot be acquired by learning. He hears the beast before it senses his approach. My coachman, who has given thirty years to horses, admitted he has seen such a man only once in his life.”
Arabella’s fingers trembled. It was a fleeting, almost ghostly movement that no one but me would have noticed. But I saw it. Saw how her shoulders tensed and how for an instant her breath stopped. Damian’s name hung in the air like a stone thrown into stagnant water; ripples from it spread to the darkest corners of the dining room and the depths of her soul.
“He came to us a week ago,” Richard answered with the indifference of a man speaking of a household object. “He sought work. Old John is failing, a helper was needed. I took him on trial. He works well, the horses are docile. He is silent — and that is a good quality in a servant.”
“Silence is a virtue,” William agreed. “But I wish to examine him more closely. They say he is skilled with harness. Perhaps he can manage my new stallion? The animal is fractious, lets no one near. I have changed two stable hands, but in vain. Your Damian, Richard, seems to me capable of this feat. There is something in him… wild. The stallion will sense a kindred spirit.”
“Take him for a while, if you wish,” Richard said. “I raise no objection.”
“I should like to see him today,” William continued. “Let him serve dessert. Thus I shall judge his bearing. A servant who has mastered himself is worth more than one who merely cleans harness. In London, I am accustomed to servants who are invisible, yet present. It is a delicate art: to be near, but not to intrude. To be useful, without imposing. I wish to see if he possesses this gift.”
I convulsively gripped the edges of my tray. The dining room became impossible to breathe in. The order to summon Damian here, to the starched napkins and the silver, sounded like a death sentence upon our fragile world.
Richard inclined his head. His gaze for an instant darted to Arabella, checking her submission. She sat, not raising her lashes; her hands were hidden in the folds of the tablecloth, and her face wore that frozen mask she had put on at the stairs.
“So be it,” said Richard. “Agnes, see to the dessert. And let this… Damian… serve the guest.”
I left the dining room. My feet dragged on the floor, my fingers trembled. I felt that same straw in the folds of my apron — now it pricked my skin sharper than a thorn. In the kitchen, Damian was already standing by the door with a tray in his hands. He stood imperturbably, as if his name had not been bandied about at the table, as if he was not being called for a show, likened to a purebred stallion before an auction.
“You are wanted,” I said. “They wish you to serve dessert. William desires to see you.”
Damian nodded almost imperceptibly. He took the tray, and I saw his knuckles whiten, the veins on his hands swell with silent tension.
“Did he say anything else?” Damian asked. “About me?”
“He mentioned your wildness. And that his stallion will surely sense a kindred spirit in you.”
Damian smiled. In that grimace there was no trace of amusement.
“A kindred spirit,” he echoed. “Hawthorn does not know how close he is to the truth.”
He walked to the dining room. I followed like a shadow behind his back, to stand by the doorframe, to see and know everything to the end.
He crossed the threshold, and the silence in the dining room changed. The previous languid, leaden muteness disappeared; it was replaced by a numbness with which one meets the appearance of something wild and untamed. Damian walked steadily, carrying the tray; his steps were heavy and full of a confidence that does not befit a servant at a master’s table. He stopped beside William’s shoulder, and I saw Hawthorn fix him with his gaze — greedy, appraising, the way one eyes an expensive object before purchase.
“Set it here,” William said, indicating the place before him. “I wish to taste the fruits of Agnes’s labors. They say she has no equal in baking.”
Damian set down the tray. Slowly, impeccably, without a single unnecessary gesture. His face remained empty, as it had been that midnight when he stood at the threshold awaiting permission to enter. He did not deign to look at either William or Richard. His whole world had narrowed to the edges of the porcelain and his own palms. But I knew: he felt her presence. I knew — he knew how she breathed and how her fingers tore at the napkin beneath the tablecloth.
“They say you are skilled with horses,” William said, accepting his dessert fork. “Is that true?”
“I have the craft,” Damian answered.
“My new stallion is fractious and will not be handled. Do you think you can manage him?”
“I may try.”
“Are you always so laconic in speech?”
“I have been taught silence.”
I saw Arabella shudder. It was a fleeting, convulsive movement, as if struck by a whip. She did not raise her lashes, gazing at her plate, but I knew — she was catching every sound of his voice, every breath. He stood three paces away, and she dared not turn, not look at him, not even meet his eyes.
William tasted the dessert and nodded approvingly.
“Worthy,” he said. “Convey my praise to Agnes. And one more thing,” he added, when Damian had already turned to leave. “I have agreed with Mr. Greyvud. You will come with me for a week. Help with the stallion. We shall see what your true worth is.”
Damian froze. For a brief, frightening moment, his imperturbability cracked. I saw his fingers, gripping the tray, whiten with tension. He did not deign to look at William — his whole world had narrowed to Arabella. She raised her gaze, and in that blinding flash, everything collided: the secret closeness in the stable, the unfulfilled hopes, the fateful predetermination of their paths.
“Very well,” Damian said. “I will come with you.”
He left the dining room. The slam of the closing door returned silence to the room, but in it there was no longer any peace — only the echo of a fracture. Arabella sat, her head bowed; I saw how beneath the tablecloth her hands trembled convulsively. She sought no answering glance from either her parent or Hawthorn.
“A worthy servant,” William remarked, pushing away his porcelain. “I think a week at Sandford Manor will be enough to assess his character. If he manages the stallion, I will keep him in my household. I need such people.”
Richard inclined his head in agreement. He avoided looking at his daughter, focusing all his attention on the guest — on this impeccable, smooth, advantageous man who was already disposing of the future of Greyvud Hall.
“So be it,” said Richard. “I will give the orders.”
Arabella raised her eyes. Fixed her gaze on her father, on William, on the guttering candles — on everything that was called her proper existence. On her lips appeared that same smile she wore only in her hours of extreme exhaustion.
“I obey your will, Father,” she said.
In her voice reigned emptiness. In it was heard neither protest nor agreement — only scorched earth.
I left the dining room and went to the kitchen. Damian stood by the window, gazing into the darkness; his face was empty. He did not turn at my step.
“She is to marry him,” I said. “You know this.”
“I know,” he answered, not changing his position. “She will submit. For so command those who have arrogated the right to decide for her. I know.”
“And what do you hope for?”
He was silent for a long time. I gazed at his powerful shoulders and his hands gripping the windowsill. At last he said dully:
“I will do my duty. I will work for my pay. I will keep silence. I will wait.”
“For what?”
“I do not know,” he said. “Perhaps for what is fated to happen. Or for what will pass us by. I will simply remain in waiting.”
Chapter 8 The PullNight descended upon Greyvud Hall heavily, like a coffin lid. William had departed while it was still light, but his offering remained. The white roses, filled with the poison of sweetness, stood frozen in the tall crystal vase I had placed on the dressing table without being asked. Their scent was so fierce that it seeped into the corridors and beneath locked doors, reaching my little room, where I sat frozen on the edge of my bed, listening to the silence. I knew: she would not sleep. She lay prostrate in the darkness, counting the beats of her heart that echoed dully in her temples. Like nails being driven into the wood of her future.
I heard her measured steps — from corner to corner. The bed creaked as she rose. Then — a rustle to the window. And a long, viscous silence, broken only by the howling of the wind in the chimney and the rare clicks of cooling floorboards. I knew every complaint of this house, every breath. Now she stood frozen at the glass, staring into the murk; she craved what could not be found beneath these vaults.
She was waiting.
The roses gave off the scent of decay. I sensed this smell even through the stonework — cloying, suffocating, like the essence from an embalmer’s shop, where spring mingles with death. Cut at dawn, in the warmth of the room they had already begun to bow their heads toward the crystal, like the executed put on display. William had left them as a reminder of his right, of his power, of the coming life at Sandford Manor. But Arabella saw in them only decay. The prototype of that death awaiting her in his house, beneath the shadow of his impeccable and empty speeches.
The wind brought cold and dampness from the depths of the marsh. The window casement answered with a sharp creak that cut through the night like a gunshot. Air rushed into the room, carrying a smell I had known since my orphanhood. That same odor of wet earth and rotting roots, the heavy moisture that rises from the quagmire and lays its seal upon all living things. But now something else pulsed within it — bitter, animal, powerful. Tar. Horse sweat. Tanned leather. Him.
The room became all ears. Arabella stood frozen at the window; her breath — ragged, impulsive — betrayed her fear of missing the moment when silence would give birth to sound. The wind fell, and in the stillness a breath rushed past — not a moan, but the semblance of a cry strangled at its birth.