The Lion Lies Waiting Read online

  “Is that so terrible?” Clementine asked. “There is no shortage of men in the world.” She gestured toward the crowd. “I mean, take your pick! Tall, short, dark, light, blonde, auburn, fat, thin. They’re all here, darling! And I’m sure any one of them would love to be the father of the heir to the Chase fortune!”

  “We had our hearts set on this one,” Eva said. “He is of particular note.”

  “Ah, I see. What is he, a lord? A politician? A businessman?”

  “He’s a baker.”

  Clementine looked confused.

  “And now, I admit we are uncertain what to do,” Eva said.

  “Can’t you settle for another, lesser donor,” Clementine said. “Though I’m hard-pressed to think of something lesser than a baker…”

  “Clementine,” Eva said, sternly.

  “Oh, I’m just teasing,” Clementine said with a laugh. “You’re worrying too much about this. So your plans came to nothing, so what? You never know what life will bring. Take me, for example. I mean, you should always compare yourselves to me, for though you will come up short it’s important to strive for greatness wherever possible.”

  “You will be approaching your point sometime this evening, I hope?” Eva asked.

  “Don’t be brusque, dear, it ruins the complexion. My point is everyone thought I was a boy until I was old enough to know my own mind and correct them. None of my family expected as much, none of them planned for it. Life took a turn, as life is wont to do.”

  “But—” Iris started.

  “Anyway, I think it’s just as well,” Clementine interrupted. “You don’t need a child. You don’t need to be laid up for weeks and months. You don’t need the mess, or the stress. You don’t need to be woken up at all hours with screaming and crying. Even with a nanny, you’ll hear it, I assure you! Trust me, darlings, you’re better off!”

  Her wisdom dispensed, Clementine rose from the settee and took the arm of her hedgehog companion.

  “Oh, I do believe I see Mr. Thaw over there!” she said, “And garbed in a heliotrope banyan, no less! I simply must congratulate him for his bold sartorial choices!”

  She waved goodbye and joined the swirling crowd of dancers to find company rather more complimentary to her mood.

  “She’s right, in a way. We don’t need a child,” Eva said, taking Iris’s hand. “But we do want one.”

  “More than anything.”

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Eva said. “You know how I get.”

  “Yes,” Iris said softly, “I know how you get. Your father is the only person I’ve ever seen crack through your shell. What are you going to do?”

  “He’s making me choose,” Eva said, hearing the frustration in her own voice. “Choose between you and my birthright. Between a family and everything I’d wanted since I was a child, everything I’m entitled to.”

  Iris hung her head and took a deep breath, a look of overwhelming disappointment on her pretty face.

  “I understand,” she said.

  As she spoke, a glimmering shoal of lights reflected from a spinning mirror-tiled orb caught her russet curls and made them glow like a twist of flame from a raging inferno. Eva had never seen a sight more beautiful in all her days.

  “You changed me, you know,” Eva said. “You showed me there was a whole world outside the ballrooms and galas and the elite of Port Knot. You took me to all the places my family told me never to go. The taverns, the playhouses, the markets.”

  “Steady on.” Iris laughed. “I’m not exactly an urchin!”

  “You’re from a blacksmith family. You know what that means here.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Precisely. And there was a time I thought the same way. I would have carried on thinking it, ended up like them, if I hadn’t seen you that day, standing on the pier, looking radiant.”

  “I remember. You were stepping out of a carriage with your father. He scared me, even then. I could hear him shouting at the dockhands from clear across the harbour. But you were so elegant standing next to him. So tall and regal. The great Lady Chase, standing right there!” Iris giggled. “And then you looked at me and I knew there was something special about you.”

  “Is that why you pursued me with such vigour?” Eva said, with a grin.

  “I seem to recall you didn’t need much persuasion.”

  “I thought I was happy until I met you and I saw what happiness was. You dazzled and thrilled me in ways I never imagined. Before you, I was—”

  “Spoiled?”

  “Sheltered. You showed me a bigger world. One outside of myself. One I should have seen a lot sooner. One I’m still discovering.”

  She thought of the prison and its terrible treatment of those within its walls. It shamed her to have her family name associated with such a place.

  “Would you have married Baxbury Mudge, do you think?” Iris asked.

  “I like to think I wouldn’t. I like to think I’d have stood my ground, but just between us, I don’t know. I think without the strength you give me, Father would have ground me down.”

  “You were always strong-willed, from what I hear.”

  “Perhaps, in my own way. Father was so mad when I told him my intentions. He’d been telling all of his associates about Baxbary and me for months, he’d even arranged the handfasting. I thought he’d shout the walls to dust. He forbade me from ever seeing you again.”

  “Which, of course, was the worst possible thing he could have done,” Iris said.

  Eva looked at her wife. Her magnificent, incandescent wife. In her eyes, Eva saw all the days of her future, written as plain as day. In those eyes, she saw the moment her life truly began, and she saw how she wanted it to end.

  “Iris. Why do you want a baby?”

  Iris looked confused for a moment. “Whatever do you mean? I want to be a mother. I want us to be parents. I want to have a child to love, to raise, to care for. I want to feel like my life is worthwhile.”

  “You feel your life is meaningless without a child?”

  “No, of course not, that’s not what I mean at all. I love my life, I love you, but I can do more, I can give more. I suppose it’s the desire in all of us to have the comfort of knowing we’ll survive into the future, beyond our years. Knowing we’ll be remembered after we’re gone. Knowing a part of us will carry on. It’s the need to be a part of something more, something greater than just ourselves.”

  She clasped Eva’s hands in hers and held them to her heart. “We could give such a wonderful life to a child, Eva, I know we could. Even if we ended up penniless and shivering in the streets, we would love our child fiercely and completely. But I spoke to Edwin. He said no.”

  Eva had never expected him to reject their offer and it had taken her by surprise.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Eva said. “We will find another, I am sure of it.”

  “Really? I was certain you wouldn’t want anyone else.”

  “Edwin Farriner is a wonderful man, but there is bound to be another suitable candidate.”

  “Not Robin,” Iris said.

  “Not Robin,” Eva agreed, with a giggle. “As dear and sweet and gentle as he is. But someone. Don’t fret, this won’t stop us. Nothing in this world can stop a Wolfe-Chase.”

  She was pacing the floor with vigour, her voice carrying high over the music. Suddenly she stopped and spun on her heels.

  “Damn Marley bleddy Chase,” she said, showing for the first time a sign of picking up the Merryapple accent and raising a cheer from nearby carousers. “Damn the money and damn the bleddy Swan mask. As long as I have you, I am the wealthiest woman alive. As long as I have you, I have the sun itself. How could I freeze in the warmth of your love?”

  Eva knelt by her wife’s side and took her hand, kissing it. “I’m sorry for how I behaved earlier. Truly, woefully sorry. I don’t care what he does. I don’t care about the house, the company, none of it. I believe in my heart throughout all the world, there is
no other woman like you. Your love is fire and gold. And it’s all that I need.”

  “A BIT MEAN, weren’t you?”

  The man in the hedgehog mask spoke delicately, precisely, showing barely a hint of his original accent. Clementine sipped from her glass and smiled. From where they stood, they heard only bits and pieces of Eva and Iris’s exchange, yet every line of Eva’s body screamed her intention.

  “Mean? Oh, my darling, I may be vexatious, I may even, at times, be perfidious, but I am never mean. I have known Eva since we were children. I know when she needs a little push and I know how best to push her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “HURRY!” VINCE BELLOWED.

  The shortest day of the year was coming to an end. Once the light of the setting sun poured through the standing stones on the highest point of the island, the parade would begin. He shoved his way through the crowd. There wasn’t time to be subtle. He was followed by Robin and Edwin, who kept apologising to everyone as they passed. It was infuriating.

  “What about this gunpowder, where did it come from?” Robin asked.

  “Keep your voice down!” Vince barked. “Mudge has a contact in the Roost who arranged it. Time was we’d have smuggled it in through Pharebluff, but it was destroyed by the hurricane, so I arranged for the dockhands to be distracted when it arrived in port. Boxing match with odds too good to pass up. It’s what I was doing when I saw you lot arrive.”

  “And it’s for this uprising you mentioned?” Edwin asked. “The one Mum is involved with?”

  Vince shushed him too and looked around to make sure no one was listening. “Not so damn loud! Mudge is planning to arm the people of Gull’s Reach and use their support to take over the council.”

  “And you’re workin’ for this man?” Robin exclaimed.

  “Didn’t know he was planning it until recently. Wasn’t meant to happen until the new year. Thought I had time to…Look, it’s all happened fast and I’m…I’m trying to make it right now, yes?”

  “Still a pretty terrible thing to be involved in,” Robin said.

  “Been my brother for only a day and I’ve already disappointed you. It must be a record.”

  “’Alf brother,” Robin corrected.

  Vince scowled. “We’ve got to get to the main parade route, they’ll be setting off from the stones around now.”

  “What about the uprising?” Edwin asked.

  “We can’t deal with both,” Vince replied.

  Vince led them through snow-clogged Entries, some so narrow he and Robin were forced to traverse them sideways. He led them up steps and under bridges, through arcades and down slippery cobbled hills. The closer they got to the town square, the more people they had to push through.

  “They’re here!” shouted Vince.

  From the corner of the Lion Lies Waiting came the heralds of the parade. Three women, their faces covered, carried tall torches, flames licking the midwinter darkness. Behind them was the glow of the tar barrels which had been lit at the standing stones on the hill. Held aloft, each barrel blazed into the evening sky, showering sparks across the jubilant crowd. One of them was getting ready to enact Baxbary Mudge’s plan, and they were moving fast.

  Every participant in the parade wore costumes or disguises one kind or another and so were dubbed “guisers.” Some had long strips of fabric sewn to their clothes, others wore overcoats covered in buttons or fur, still more were decked out as fantastical creatures—strange chimeras with wings and hooves, whiskers and feathers, scales and antlers. The crowd were likewise decorated. Piskies and bucca with bright wings danced merrily, mermaids were pulled along on carts and creatures made of seashells cavorted in the crush. Masks were commonplace. Everywhere they looked were owls, deer, geese, toads and more. A menagerie of celebrants. The parade could have up to a hundred guisers marching, though only around forty—men and women—would carry the barrels, and to be chosen was considered quite an honour.

  Many in the procession carried smaller, shallow barrels on their heads, while the stronger amongst them heaved huge ones onto their shoulders. Regardless of size, the barrels left a trail of smoke and sparks in their wake. It was an old ritual, meant to bring light to the darkest part of the year. Scholars would say it symbolised the light of knowledge banishing the darkness of ignorance. Whatever the meaning, it was a spectacle like no other. To outside eyes, it was chaos, a huge riot waiting to happen, but there was an unseen order to it. The locals knew when to duck out of the way, when to clear a path. It was one of the oldest traditions on the island, and the participants exhibited a type of deep-rooted instinct when it came to avoiding the obvious dangers.

  The moon was hidden behind a blanket of thick cloud and the cold, dark sky was smeared in vivid reds and golds from the flaming procession—the familiar warming glow the inhabitants loved so much. The shower of sparks falling where so many others had fallen before, dancing on the slick cobblestones. Every now and then a barrel would belch a plume of fire from its innards, causing the crowd to lean back before unleashing a mighty cheer. There were plenty of private parties taking place, and inebriated townsfolk—often topless, bottomless or altogether clothesless but never maskless—hung from balconies overhead, watching the river of molten gold running through the heart of the town.

  “You two go find Duncan,” Robin shouted above the din of drums and cheers.

  Edwin opened his mouth to object.

  “I’m not as fast as you, I’ll not get there in time. I’ll find the jackdaw. Go, go!”

  ON THE STAGE by the waterfront, Sylvia Farriner took her seat behind the councilmembers. Rabbit sat in the front, with Fox, Badger and Magpie staggered behind her, all wearing their masks of office. Each chair was placed on its own plinth and all were set at different heights and angles.

  “Damn stupid layout, this is,” huffed Badger as he tried to turn his seat. “I’m going to have a crick in my neck after this.”

  “The designer claimed it was to further the illusion we were peering out from the undergrowth,” said Magpie.

  “Nothing to do with avoiding arguments about perceived prominence, I’m sure,” said Badger.

  A number of seats had been placed on the back row for honoured guests, usually local business owners, as well as members of the committees who chose the council members. Sylvia sat nervously fidgeting with her shawl. How far she’d come. When she arrived in Port Knot, she managed to secure a position at the Lion Lies Waiting by convincing Pearl Firebrace she was close friends with her brother, George Reed, of the Moth & Moon. She once asked Pearl why she’d kept her husband’s name after he left her and she said because it was her daughter’s name, too. Odd woman, she thought.

  Over the past few months, Sylvia had purposefully made a nuisance of herself in the council chambers, barging in unannounced to demand action be taken about the suffering of the Stormlost. Mr. Mudge had been so kind with her, so patient—promising to do whatever he could to assist—she’d gladly helped him gain support among the people of the Roost. But to be invited to sit on the stage at the Tar Barrel parade was an honour she little expected.

  Since Edwin had walked out on her—forsaken her to the cold, wet darkness—she’d been in a haze of doubt. She couldn’t think what she’d done to anger him so. Hadn’t she explained how she’d tried to help his brother? Hadn’t she tried to save her grandchildren from succumbing to the same illness? And what was her reward? Abandonment! Cast aside like she was nothing! One wouldn’t treat a dog so poorly.

  “Are you quite well, Mrs. Farriner?” Baxbary asked.

  “Fine, fine, fine. I’m fine,” she replied.

  She tried not to look directly at his fox mask. In the dim light, it bristled and twitched, his true face worn over the pink one he’d been born with.

  “You look quite pale, if I may say so. I’ll fetch you a little water,” he said, rising from his seat.

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s no trouble, you’re my guest and I want you t
o be comfortable,” he said as he lifted the flap at the side of the stage and descended the steps.

  Sylvia sank into herself. All about her were animals in human guise with teeth bared and claws sharpened. She drew her shawl tightly about her chest. The gathered crowd in front of the stage rolled and tossed like waves. More animals amongst them, but not just beasts of the earth—strange figures dressed all in rags, faces black with soot, bells, and ribbons in their hair, dancing and singing and cheering, but not for her, not like on her stage in the Roost. No, those fiends sang to the fire, calling it down from the sinister circle of stones on the hilltop. The cleansing, pure fire held aloft by the horrible men from under the hills. Here they came, those half-wild half-breeds, those animal people, those creatures. She’d heard tell of them from the people of the town. They lived under the earth, in a great pit of copper and coal. They toiled and screamed and danced in the darkness and emerged but once a year to carry the red-hot light from the very heart of the world away from their home, away from the mother gloom. A gift to us but curse to them, for the light did burn their eyes and singe their skin. Darkness was mother’s milk to them. Darkness was home.

  She nearly jumped out her skin when a hulking great ogre burst through the curtains and began bellowing at her. He was enormous, bearded, angry and…familiar? He was one of Mr. Mudge’s man. Vince, wasn’t it?

  “Get off the stage!” he roared.

  “We’ll do no such thing!” yelled Rabbit. “Away with you, brute!”

  The bravest of the dignitaries attempted to manhandle Vince from the stand, but he easily shrugged them off. Sylvia darted from her chair.

  “Listen to me, you idiots, there’s gunpowder underneath you!”

  That got their attention, and they began to panic.

  “Lots of it! Move! NOW!”

  ROBIN HAD GOTTEN as close to the guisers as he could. He pulled his cap low over his eyes to protect them from the sparks whirling around. It was as if the snow itself had caught fire and was falling from the clouds as little orange stars. Each mask passing by him was different from the last. A vole, a blackbird, an adder, a goose, all went whizzing along. His heart was pounding, sweat gathering on his brow.