Wolf made simple work of the preparations. There were only two of us, so it hardly required changing her menus and the castle kitchen was packed with food stores. I dug around for anything I could use to decorate our breakfast room. All I owned was rocks. In the end I made do with what I would have used for Christmas: pine cones and fir branches and swags of ivy. I cut up a silk petticoat and sewed the pieces into something approaching flowers.
The day came and I spent too much time going through my things – all my stupid, boring, plain, sensible things – and hated myself for hiding behind tweed and serge and shapeless wool. There was little I could do about it, stuck as I was with my cage crinoline that was too wide to take in my dresses to a proper, fashionable shape. In a moment of desperation and inspiration, I tied the two sides of the cage together, pulling the elliptical shape into a lozenge, with the bulk of it to my back side to create a bustle. Then with a petticoat and dress over it, it looked like I was at least a little fashionable.
The dress I settled on was a rich green silk and taffeta with a scoop neckline that showed off rather more of my bust than I would usually be comfortable with, an underskirt in gold, with gold and black ruffles looping the overskirt and neckline, and great puffs of fabric in the skirt bunched up until I looked like a strange cloud. The maid Wolf had found to ‘do’ for me wrestled with my hair, brushing it out into a frizzy blonde nest, then braiding it up in a crown.
At last I was ready.
I had never been so nervous about a dinner in my life.
The Witch and I arrived within minutes of each other and we took our chairs with a few awkward exchanges. She had dressed in something truly spectacular, a black shot silk dress from the previous century cut a la française with a full sack-back and square, low-cut neckline, and panniers so wide she came through the door sideways. We ate well, a whole roast goose accompanied by apple and sausage stuffing, red cabbage and potato dumplings, bottles of hock and claret finished off by a slab of cake Wolf brought on a silver platter.
After, the Witch beckoned for me to follow her; we passed through shadowy ice-cold hallways, her hand hot in mine as she led me on. The study was as over-full as always, so it took me a minute to realise what had changed: the collection of couches, armchairs and footstools normally gathered around the fireplace had been rearranged, and now a new desk was set to the left-hand side, with my books and things stacked upon it. I was speechless, one hand at my throat as I took it in.
‘I thought you should have a place of your own,’ said the Witch. She showed me the drawers stocked with ink and paper, the oil lamp to better see my samples and the chair tucked neatly underneath.
‘Oh.’ It was all I could safely say without crying.
‘Do you not like it?’ Her brows knitted tight in concern.
I put my arms around her and said against her neck, ‘I love it.’ She went still; I could feel the tension in her muscles so strong, she was trembling. Then she disentangled us, and stepped a good half metre back.
‘It is only a desk.’
We both knew it was more than that, but I understood what she needed.
I ran my hand along its surface and took in the view from my new place. ‘Thank you.’ From my old cupboard, I took out a lumpy parcel wrapped in a shawl. ‘Don’t think I forgot you,’ I said and handed it to the Witch.
She held it like it might explode. ‘Why are you giving me something? What is inside?’
‘You have to open it to find out. You’ve given me two gifts now. I wanted to return the gesture.’
She arched an eyebrow, but she complied. The shawl fell away to reveal a pair of woollen socks in dark grey yarn.
‘I’m not very good,’ I said, ‘and I had to estimate the size but they should at least be warm.’
The Witch was silent, looking at the parcel in her lap. I had asked Wolf for any spare yarn and a set of double point needles once the idea had come to my head. When Wolf brought me several skeins of yarn, it was undyed, raw wool carded and spun by the women in the village. I took great pleasure in dying the skeins with Wolf, boiling walnut hulls and iris roots in water and soaking the wool, hoping for black but being satisfied with grey. I had never enjoyed this sort of craft before, but now I understood it. It felt different when it was for someone you cared about.
‘You always have bare feet,’ I continued. ‘And it’s so cold now I wanted you to have something a little comforting. I care about that even if you don’t.’
I had found her filthy feet repulsive when I had first known her, but now they only inspired pity in me that she cared so little for herself. That there was no one else to care on her behalf.
She smoothed a hand over the wool. ‘Thank you.’
I almost asked her to try them on, but I knew not to push too far.
Then she did something that shocked me more than any single thing that had come before. Gently, she placed the socks and shawl and string down on the side table, before rising to put her arms gingerly around me in a return of my own gesture before. It was an embrace – only a brief second of contact, her chest to mine, the swell of her breast and the thrum of her heart pressed close against me, the smoothness of her cheek and the sandalwood scent of her hair.
She drew back and turned to stoke the fire as if it had never happened.
But the memory of her skin against mine was intoxicating.
b
One night in February, when I looked to the sky to hope for its lightening and still wiped frost from inside my window panes, Wolf summoned the Witch from the study with a curious message about a ‘snag’ that I couldn’t understand. The Witch went ashen, and followed Wolf to the kitchens. I was tempted for a moment to follow her.
During the days, the Witch would still disappear for hours and hours into the Tower to do her ‘work’, of which I understood nothing. The door was always locked, the key on a string around the Witch’s neck. If I lingered nearby, an unbearable pressure built in my skull like a vice clamped around my head like a warning. Now, she breached the careful terms of our agreement to attend to some emergency. I had tried to swallow my curiosity, but curiosity had driven me up mountains and down into the bedrock, and now it sent my thoughts after the Witch, up into the Tower and its mystery.
No. I must not.
