It was a spacious room with bright windows set deep into the thick outer walls, and a person-sized fireplace stoked high. The bed itself was something strange and small, raised up on a plinth with a series of steps going up to it, and heavy drapes hanging all around. But the most remarkable thing was that all the walls had been painted with an interlacing pattern of vines and leaves and flowers. Faded green on whitewash, the branches swept up the walls and onto the beams in bursts of rose and peony and mugwort blossom to nestle in between the timbers. Set amongst them were knights and women in medieval dress, shields and swords in hand.
I went around in wonder, touching the faded paint, looking at the tiny brushstrokes still fixed in the plaster, the mark of a hand that had been dead and withered for centuries gone. It wavered on the line between beautiful and terrifying. No different, I told myself, than my mother’s painted silk wall hangings, or the vast battle scenes that hung in our formal dining room. But it unsettled me. The tangling vines, the strange flat eyes of these ancient people.
Only the swatch of plaster over the fireplace was bare – then I realised it was not undecorated, but rather the decorations had been chipped away, just as protestants had hacked the saints off church walls. From what remained of the paint, it looked to have once been a coat of arms; only the curl of a fleur de lis and the lost angle of a chevron left their mark. I touched a finger to the coarse plaster. Bristles of horsehair sprouted from the raw surface.
‘Will you be wanting a meal, my lady?’
I turned to find a woman in the centre of the room, from where she had come I could not say. Average height, average build, everything about her seemed entirely calculated to be unremarkable. She wore the apron and shoes of a servant – the housekeeper perhaps? The great ring of keys the size of my hand hanging from her waist confirmed it.
‘Oh – yes, if it’s no bother.’
‘Doesn’t come into it, my lady. I will bring up a tray.’
She began to leave and I called out without meaning to. ‘Wait – don’t go –’
Turning back to me, her face was placid and disinterested.
‘What I meant to say is, you have not told me your name.’
‘Wolf.’
‘Wolf?’
‘Ursula Wolf, my lady.’
I misliked that answer as much as I misliked her name.
‘Do you live in the castle?’
A small smile at that.
‘Oh no, my lady. The staff live in the village. It is only yourself and the mistress who will stay here overnight.’
‘And where is the village? I couldn’t follow our route here.’
Wolf considered her words. ‘You are right, it is quite an out of the way place.’
‘Perhaps if I could see a map.’
‘There are no maps. If you are wanted here, you are likely to find your way. If not...’
Her vagueness unsettled me. I chewed over the question I had wanted to ask the Witch the whole journey here but had not had the courage to. I leaned towards her, lowering my voice as though confessing to a priest. ‘Please tell me, what exactly am I to do? What did my predecessors—’
‘Meals will be brought to your room three times a day,’ said Wolf as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘You’re free to leave the castle – the doors are never locked – but beware, the forest around these parts is treacherous.’
‘I know my way around the forest quite well, thank you.’
Her cold eyes held no humour in them. ‘Things are different here, my lady. You’d do well to take care.’
I shivered.
‘Would you like me to bring more wood for the fire?’
‘Just something to eat. Thank you.’
She left, with no curtsey, though I reminded myself I didn’t care about such things.
I could run now. The castle was an empty horror; no one would see me if I simply left and took my chances on foot. Then I thought of the twisting holloway that climbed the mountain, the close-gathered trees meeting over the sunken road. The confusing geography that made me feel strange and dizzy if I tried to hold it in my mind.
