fixing what I hoped was a pleasant expression on my face.
“And how are you enjoying your stay at the Abbey, Mrs. King?”
“Oh, it is an extraordinary place, my lady.” She spread her hands, gesturing toward the single great column standing stalwartly in the centre of the room and the tapestries, older and smaller than those in the great drawing room, but depicting the same subject, a boar hunt. “This room alone quite takes my breath away.”
I shrugged. “I suppose it is impressive enough on first viewing. This room used to be the chapter house, where the monks gathered for the abbot to read the Rule of the Order. The vaulting of the ceiling is quite remarkable, although in the family we think it’s frightfully inconvenient. That central column is necessary for support, but it makes it devilishly difficult to arrange the furniture properly. Besides which, the room is draughty and the chimney never draws properly.”
As if to prove my point, a gust of wind roared down the chimney, scattering sparks and ash on the hearth and a few bits of soot on Aunt Dorcas. If the night grew any windier, we should have to dust her.
“Well, perhaps it is not the most convenient of rooms,” she temporised, “but the history, the very ancientness of the stones. I cannot imagine what they have seen. And the tapestries,” she added, nodding toward the stitched panels. “They are enough to rival anything in a museum, I should think.”
Portia joined us then, passing tiny glasses of port that shimmered like jewels in the candlelight.
“If you like the tapestries, you must ask Emma to tell you the story behind them. No one can spin a tale like Emma,” Portia advised Mrs. King, gesturing with her glass to our cousin. “Emma, pay attention, my dear. I am telling tales out of school about you.”
Emma started like a frightened pony, then relaxed, smiling at Portia. “What have you been saying to Mrs. King?”
“That you are a splendid spinner of stories, actually,” I put in. “Mrs. King was admiring the tapestries, and Portia suggested you tell her the story behind them. She is quite right. No one does it as you do.” I thought to raise her confidence a little. She had always been quiet, but there was a new shyness in her that troubled me. I felt Emma was in danger of becoming a sort of recluse, particularly now that Lucy was marrying. Emma had always lavished all of her attention on Lucy, and I wondered what would become of her once Lucy became Lady Eastley. It was to be hoped Lucy would repay her many kindnesses with a home when it was in her power to provide it. Emma could not be happy governessing in the wilds of Northumberland. It would be a poor showing on Lucy’s part to leave her there.
“Come, Scheherezade, tell us a tale,” I coaxed.
Emma flushed a little, not prettily as Mrs. King did, but a harsh red stain that tipped her nose and ears.
“If you really think that I should,” she said, looking hesitantly at Lucy.
“You must,” Lucy said firmly, and we added our voices to the chorus, insisting she take a chair nearer to the fire. She seated herself, turning so the light threw her face in sharp relief as she began to speak.
THE SIXTH CHAPTER
Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in a woman. —KING LEAR
“The story begins long ago,” Emma related, her voice soft. We gathered around her, skirts billowing over each other like blowsy roses in a country garden. Aunt Dorcas had nodded off in her chair, and her little snores punctuated the tale. Emma paused and took a breath, heightening our anticipation.
“This abbey was once the home of an order of monks, holy men who passed their lives in contemplation and good works. They tended the crops and the flocks, minding both the animals and the souls of men, and they were much loved. But then Henry VIII directed his lustful gaze at Anne Boleyn, and the monks were doomed. During the Dissolution, these lands were taken from them, and they were cast out of this holy place to make their way in the world, penniless and without friends. One of them, the elderly abbot, who had known only this place as his home since boyhood, cursed it as he left, calling upon the very stones them selves to witness the injustice visited upon his order. He conjured a curse against the new owner, a courtier of the king’s, crying out that the man should not live out a year in his ill-gotten home.”
She paused again and I glanced at Mrs. King, not surprised to see her spellbound expression. Emma had always been an excellent storyteller. During their Easter visits we frequently abandoned our books and games and insisted she spin us tales instead. She always demanded a trinket for her troubles, but her stories were so enthralling we never minded parting with a doll or pair of shoes as the price of an afternoon’s entertainment. I turned back to her, noticing that her eyes were shining now, brightened by her enthusiasm for her story. She would indeed have made a fitting bride for Shahriar, I thought as she picked up her tale.
“The new owner, the Earl March, laughed at the old man, and swept into the Abbey with his young countess. But his bride, a girl of seventeen, was not so insouciant as her lord and master. She feared the old abbot, for she had seen that he was touched with holiness, and every night when she made her prayers she begged God to spare her husband, for theirs was a love match.
“The months stretched on, and the seasons turned, and the young countess began to hope her husband would survive the curse. She doubled her prayers, and spent so much time on her knees that she wore holes into the silk of her gowns. Her husband mocked her, but still she would not cease praying for his deliverance. Until one day, when he grew impatient with her piety, and they quarrelled. To calm his temper he whistled for his horse and his hounds and he rode out to hunt boar. The countess fell to her knees in the chapel, vowing not to rise until her lord returned.”
Emma paused and leaned very slightly closer. “They brought him home the next day, carrying him on a door, broken and bleeding from the tusks of his quarry. He died that night, in agony. His countess, fearing her husband’s spirit could never rest in this place, raised a crypt in the village churchyard and buried him there. And after his funeral, she withdrew to the chapel and began to stitch. For nine years she worked, her fingers bleeding, her hands stiffening until she grew so withered she could no longer put down her needle. She told the story of that fateful hunt in silk and wool, stitching her grief until at last the story was complete.”
Emma raised her eyes to the tapestries, nodding toward the last, a magnificent piece that depicted the broken earl being carried home, his hunter and dogs trailing sadly behind.
“In all those nine years, not a morsel of food passed her lips. Village folk said it was a miracle, that she lived on her grief and her tears, nourishing herself with pain until her task was complete. And as soon as the last stitch was set, she lay down on the floor of the chapel and died. She was buried next to her lord in the crypt, but the tapestries survive to tell us the story. And somewhere in the Abbey, there is still a door, stained with the blood of a proud young nobleman, and no matter how many times the wood is sanded or scrubbed, the blood remains.”
Emma sighed, and in an instant, Scheherezade was gone, and she was my plain little cousin again, her hair too severe, her complexion too sallow for prettiness.
“That was beautiful,” Mrs. King breathed. “What a tragic story, and how wonderfully you tell it.”
Emma smiled. “Words are a cheap entertainment,” she said softly, catching Lucy’s gaze. The two of them exchanged a knowing look, and I wondered how many times Emma’s stories
