She nods. ‘Your father didn’t care for anyone on this estate. He was pretty and arrogant and high-handed, thought himself better than everyone. He was devoted to your mother, but that’s all I can say was his saving grace. He never consulted, only gave orders, never took advice, didn’t share any information unless he had to. He was a bad manager, and only your mother’s hand kept people here.’
I already know Uncle Edward is no great estate manager; my father neither apparently. ‘Miriam, who told you that Edward Elliott was my father’s brother?’
‘Nelly. She said, back when she bothered to say anything, that they’d met on the road, a chance encounter.’
‘And they were all in the house together for three months?’
She nods. ‘Then one night there was the fire and Meraud died, and the next day your parents left for Breakwater, and that same afternoon your uncle told all the house staff they were no longer needed.’
‘What happened when Nelly’s daughter died?’
‘Your uncle told Mr Redman there had been an accident. That the wing would be closed off, there’d been a fire.’ She nods at Ena. ‘This is the closest I’ve seen Miss Ena in several months.’
Told. Told, but no one to gainsay or speak the truth and the only people who knew otherwise were Nelly Daniels and Edward Elliott. I look down at Ena, sleeping there. A thought creeps over me. Two girl children, enough alike to pass as sisters; one happy, one miserable. And this little sister at my feet who’s not been seen by anyone but Nelly Daniels for months and who’s nature has so miraculously “settled” since then?
I swallow hard. Ena was not my mother’s first baby; she would not have been branded the way I was, the way Isolde was, the way Aoife was, nor any of the first born O’Malleys.
Edward Elliott emptied the house of witnesses. My parents are dead. What if Edward lied about when the fire occurred? When Meraud died? What if all this was sparked by a tiny murder?
‘How was Nelly’s temper with my sister? Ena was a difficult child.’
The way Miriam’s lips press together tells me all I need to know.
33
When I returned to the house, I hand Ena over to Nelly who, I suspect, is the child’s true mother. I go to my room and lock the door. From the bottom of the blanket box I pull out the book of O’Malley tales Isolde had begun to remake, the first chance I’ve had to truly look at it.
There are ten pages at the beginning that are blank and this strikes me as strange. I think of the old version back at Hob’s Hallow, of the pages sliced from its front. I carefully go through the tome, examining every sheet, making sure that none are stuck together. I look at the bare folios: I flick water on them, hold it up to the afternoon sun at the window, light a candle to see if smoke will show any secrets hiding there, I nick a finger and try the same with blood, all to no avail. And then, at last, I reach the end. Stuck to the back cover, in no way hidden, is a small fold of parchment to make a pouch. And in the pouch, sheaves covered with tightly written jagged script – in a hand I cannot recall seeing before – on the same sort of paper from the old book of tales, their edge neatly sheared by a knife, perhaps one with a pearl handle.
I put the volume onto the floor beside my chair, smooth the pages in my lap and I begin to read.
* * *
There was a woman, once, who sang.
She wasn’t beautiful, or at least not noticeably so, not like other women about whom bards crooned or poets wrote, but she was tall and dark-haired, dark-eyed, she moved with a grace that could render her invisible if she chose, or the centre of attention if, again, she so chose.
But she sang.
And she played a harp made not of wood, yet carved in the same shape as might be expected. The strings were knotted from hair as black as ebony and enchanted to make the right notes. The instrument was made of bone, which anyone who got close enough to examine it would realise, though it had been varnished to a high shine. The strings were held in place by finger-bones, yet the sounds that issued from a thing made of death were nothing short of bewitching. And none knew whose bones had been used in the creation of the thing, and none ever would.
And the woman, she sang.
She sang with a voice that might have called souls from bodies, caused hearts to turn from their dearest beloveds, and minds to lose their grip upon any sort of rationality. She sang thus and thus she made her way in the world.
She might have settled in any number of cities, become a favourite of a prince or kingling, become wife to a rich man, lover to a rich woman, or a creature of means all of her own. But she was never content. Nothing was enough. She made fortunes, then lost them, over and again, not through carelessness or stupidity but boredom. She had made them before, she wanted to see if she could make them again. And she did.
She did.
Without anchor, she wandered. From city to city, town to town, village to village, wasteland to wasteland. She even entered the Dark Lands for a time and left them once more, intact, untouched by the Leech Lords for her voice affected even those with neither soul nor conscience nor regard for life beyond that it might be taken as sustenance. And perhaps, there, she learned things too about getting one’s own way, although the gods knew well enough that
