Tess stood and began the final pinning. “If you please, my lady,” she said in her soft, northern accent. “Arms out.” She measured the length from my shoulder to wrist, hands trembling a fraction as she worked. There was an intimacy in the motion, and I saw, for just a flicker, something like pity cross her face before she masked it.
Mother didn’t notice. She’d moved on to the vanity, straightening combs and trinkets, anything to avoid being idle in a room with her own daughter. “You may go once she’s finished, Scarlette. I’ll not have you soiling the gown before the artist arrives.”
I wanted to ask if the portrait would be in oils or charcoal, if the artist would let me watch, and if I could keep the failed sketches for myself. Instead, I said, “Yes, mother.”
The seamstress finished. She stepped away and let the silence stand, thick and judgmental. I watched her reflection in themirror. She was a small, birdlike woman with a birthmark across her left cheek and two missing fingers on her right hand. The result of a childhood fever, she’d once told me in confidence, a fever the village priest blamed on her mother’s salt bread. No one believed her, of course. Women’s stories always warped in the retelling.
Mother turned, and I forced my own reflection to meet hers. For a moment, we both stood perfectly still, like a pair of chess pieces waiting for someone else’s hand to move us.
She softened, just enough that I could pretend to remember the woman who used to lift me onto her lap after a nightmare. “I know it’s difficult,” she said. “But you are the only hope we have left. A good marriage will restore us all.”
I blinked, not trusting myself to answer.
With a single gesture, Mother dismissed Tess, who gathered her spools and shears and hurried out, leaving behind the faintest trace of wool and camphor.
I waited, counting to forty in my head, until I heard her soft footsteps fade down the corridor. Mother lingered longer, rearranging things in the next room, perhaps waiting to see if I would misbehave in her absence. I stood as still as I could until the cold forced me to move.
Only then did I let myself breathe slowly, shallowly, so as not to split the dress at the seams. I twisted from the mirror, unwilling to look at the finished product any longer.
Instead, I moved to the bed and knelt, lifting the woolen blanket. The boards beneath were warped by years of chamber-pot spills and frantic midnight pacing. I knew exactly which one would give with the right pressure. The third from the left, a fraction thinner than its neighbors, with a dark knot at its heart like a pupil. I slipped my fingers into the gap and pried until it came loose.
Beneath, wrapped in an old kerchief, was my one treasure. A slim, battered volume with half the cover torn away, pages so brittle they flaked to dust if turned too quickly. Not scripture, nor poetry fit for the parlors. These were verses forbidden, words that spoke of passion and flame, words that dreamed of flight. They’d been copied and recopied by a monk whose name I would never know, given to me in secret by a kitchen boy with more freckles than sense.
I sat on the floor, the silk crushing under my knees, and read:
She was never meant for hearth or home,
The wildness in her blood betrays
The shackles of her birth. She lives
For moments stolen from the blaze.
I read it three times, then pressed my thumb to the ink until the whorls on my skin tinged blue-black. I wanted to eat the words, swallow them whole, let them anchor somewhere inside me. But the footsteps outside my door reminded me this freedom was borrowed, never owned.
I tucked the book away and slid the floorboard shut. The seam of it would never be perfect again, but I doubted anyone cared to look so closely. I glanced at my reflection one last time. The silk had left a faint welt across my ribs, the beginnings of a bruise where the seamstress’s hands had lingered. I ran my hand over it, wondering how many marks I’d accumulate before the wedding night.
Somewhere down the hall, the clock struck the hour. The sound made me jump, more out of habit than fear. I stood, composed myself, and crossed to the window.
Outside, the sun was struggling up behind the trees, a pale, uncertain thing. Crows swirled above the melting snow, arguing over the carcass of some smaller beast. I envied their hunger. It was honest.
When Mother came back, she found me at the window, hands folded, the picture of compliance. But inside, I repeated the forbidden verses, over and over, like a litany that might one day split the stone around my heart.
***
It started as a sound, something high, sharp, then suddenly silenced. I had just slipped the poetry back beneath the bed, fingers still raw from the splinters, when the noise pierced through the stone, a note of alarm that didn’t belong to spring mornings or even to ordinary misery. At first, I thought a sheep had gotten loose in the yard, or one of the new maids had dropped a pail and shattered the peace for a moment. Then the shouting started, and I ran to the window with my heart stuttering in my chest.
The courtyard below was already thick with movement. Villagers in rough tunics crowded at the gate, faces pale and set, while the household staff drifted at the edges, feigning disinterest but unable to stay away. At the center were a handful of men in church livery with black habits, coarse ropes at the waist, who herded a girl so small I didn’t recognize her at first. She was barefoot, legs streaked with mud, her shift clinging to bony shoulders where the fabric had torn. Only when she turned, and I saw the braid yanked half free, did I realize it was Agnes, the kitchen girl.
She made a pitiful sight, like a lark trapped by crows. Even from my high window, I could see how she trembled, every muscle tensed as if waiting for the sky to fall. Brother Tomas Whitcombe stood before her, not a hair out of place, his face composed in that infuriating way the pious have, equal parts sympathy and condemnation. He held a small leather pouch aloft, pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“Unholy remedies,” he proclaimed, his voice slicing through the gathering. “Found in the possession of this girl, who claims to serve the Ashburn house. Such is the rot that grows when the Lord’s order is neglected.”
Agnes shook her head so violently that the braid whipped her cheek. “It’s for my mum, Father Tomas. She’s sick, she can’t breathe, I only—”
He cut her off with a flick of the hand. “And did you obtain these herbs with permission from your master? Or from the healer, as is proper?”
She started to answer, but the nearest guard cuffed her hard enough to set her teeth rattling. She sagged to her knees, mud splattering up her shins. For a moment, I thought she would curl in on herself, curl so tightly she’d vanish from the world altogether.
