While village women struggled with clothing for Lydia’s children, I summoned some help for my own child. Sitting on the side of my bed, late at night, I said, “Fenoderee, I need a friend,” only to look down and see him there.
“You’re lookin’ older,” he said impudently.
“You knew how old I’d look,” I said. “You and Puck, when you sent me back. I heard you chanting at me. Ragtag and motley, indeed!”
“You can look as young as you like,” he told me.
“As Elladine does,” I said. “As Mab does?”
He looked down at his feet, suddenly discomfitted.
“Fenoderee?” I asked.
“Don’t bother him,” said a voice, and Puck stepped out from behind the tapestry on the wall. “He’s afraid to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” I faltered.
“That with Thomas gone and you not there, Queen Mab went into a fury and used your mama as the teind.”
There was a moment of soundlessness, and I came to myself lying flat on the floor with both of them bending over me and Fenoderee saying to Puck, “Ach, you fool, she didn’t need to know that.”
“Yes, she did,” said Puck. “Lest she have her boots carry her back to Faery, expecting Elladine to be there. Lest she say something unwary where Oberon could hear. So far he blames us Bogles for getting Thomas loose. So far he doesn’t know Beauty was involved. Nobody knows but Carabosse.”
“What … is Mama dead?” I asked.
Puck shook his head. “Us of Faery can’t be killed so easy, Beauty. She’s even kin to the Dark Lord. He despises Faery, but it’s not Faery he wants to destroy. Carabosse says to tell you like as not, he’ll play with Elladine for a time, then turn her loose. He does that with things that amuse him.”
They helped me sit up, and Puck gave me a bit of wine from the bottle in the cupboard. He went to it, as though he knew right where it was. As though he had been there before.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “Carabosse says you are not to upset yourself or think of doing anything! She says you will understand what she means.”
I did understand. If it came to a choice between Thomas, who was a fellowman, or Elladine, who was my mother but did not much care about that, I was not sure where duty lay. In any case, Carabosse was right. I could do nothing about it. Anything I tried to do would only draw attention to me.
“You wanted something or you wouldn’t have called us,” said Puck.
It seemed foolishness, then, but I told them what I wanted. Someone to make some dresses for Elladine’s namesake, my daughter. I had thought of doing it myself, as I had made dresses in Faery, but I felt insecure with the idea. “I want someone who’s done it a lot, who knows what they’re doing,” I told Puck. A kind of look went back and forth between them, and Puck said he’d send someone along. As he was about to go, I asked him, “When I was a child and saw you in the woods, was it Carabosse who sent you?”
He looked at me insolently. “Me?” he asked. “Why would I have been in your woods? I’ll send you a seamstress.”
She came. A Bogle seamstress, to make Elly’s gowns. Three bright white dresses: one embroidered with daisies over a yellow underdress; one with periwinkles over blue; one with roses over red. The trader had said the red silk was from the Far East, beyond the Holy Land. It was the only place where the dyers could achieve that color, so much brighter than madder. Cochineal, perhaps. It must have been China, I told myself. Even in the twentieth, some of the finest fabrics came from there. The seamstress also made three spider veils for Elly’s hair. One with pearls, one with sapphires, one with rubies. I am keeping everything hidden as a surprise.
ST. LAMBERT’S DAY, SEPTEMBER
When the morning of the first celebration arrived, Gloriana and her sister decided to bathe. Though I stayed as far away as possible, I could not help hearing the screams as tangled hair refused to be combed, and long embedded dirt refused to let go. Elly sat in a corner of my room and smiled remotely, as though she were already far away, dancing with her prince. I spoke to her, cautioning her to keep her temper in check, to smooth the frown lines from her brow. I told her that men like girls who are sweetly spoken. She merely smiled, as though nothing I could say applied to her. It was as though she was fated, and knew it. A small, cold chill made its way down my spine. What could I do?
That evening Harry and Bert rode off with their sisters toward the manor, some seven or eight miles away. I told Lydia that Elly and I were going for a ride also. Instead we repaired to the stables where I had accumulated certain supplies. A pumpkin. A cageful of mice. Six lizards. One fat toad. I had already created a wand, to add to the drama of it all, though a wand is totally unnecessary. With what Mama and Oberon had taught me, I could have done it blindfolded and with my hands tied behind me.
The mice became horses, prancers, matched grays of considerable spirit. The pumpkin made a golden
