On the verge of bawling herself, Anne left.
Anne watched Austra’s face, limned against a landscape of rolling pasture broken by copses of straight-standing cedar and elegant cottonwood. Her head eclipsed a distant hill where a small castle lorded over a scattering of red-roofed cottages. A herd of horses stared curiously at the carriage as it rattled by.
“Won’t you talk to me yet?” Anne pleaded. “It’s been three days.”
Austra frowned and continued to look out the window.
“Fine,” Anne snapped. “I’ve apologized to you until my tongue is green. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”
Austra murmured something, but it went out the window like a bird.
“What was that?”
“I said you could promise,” Austra said, still not looking at her. “Promise not to try to run away again.”
“I can’t escape. Captain Marl is much too watchful, now.”
“When we get to the coven, there will be no Captain Marl,” Austra said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “I want you to promise not to try to escape from there.”
“You don’t understand, Austra.”
Silence.
Anne opened her mouth to say something else, but it fell short of her teeth. Instead she closed her eyes, let her body fall into the restless shuddering of the coach, and tried to pretend she was far away.
She put on dreams like clothes. She tried on Roderick, to start with, the memory of that first, sweet kiss on horseback, their steadily more intimate trysts. In the end, however, that brought her only to that night in the tomb and the humiliation that followed. Her whole memory of that night was tainted, but she wanted to remember, to feel again those last exciting, frightening caresses.
She changed the scene, pretending that she and Roderick had met instead in her chambers at Eslen, but that went no better. When she tried to imagine what his chambers in Dunmrogh were like, she failed utterly.
At last, with a burst of inspiration that stretched a little smile on her face, she imagined the small castle on the hill she had seen a few moments before. She stood at its gates, in a green gown, and Roderick rode across the fields, brightly caparisoned. When he came near her he dismounted, bowed low, and kissed her hand. Then, with a fire in his eyes, pulled her close against the steel he wore and kissed her on the mouth.
Inside, the castle was light and airy, draped in silken tapestries and brilliant with sunlight through tens of crystal windows. Roderick entered again, clad in a handsome doublet, and now, finally she could conjure the feeling of his hand on her flesh, and imagine more, that he went farther, that they were both, finally, unclad. She multiplied the remembrance of the touch of his palm on her thigh, imagining the whole length of him against her. There was just one part she couldn’t picture, exactly, though she had felt it against her, through his breeches. But she had never seen the privates of a man, though she had seen stallions aplenty. They must be shaped the same, at least.
But the image that conjured was so ridiculous she felt suddenly uncertain, and so she adjusted her imagination again, to his eyes staring into hers.
Something didn’t fit there, either, and in swift horror, she understood what it was.
She couldn’t remember Roderick’s face!
She could still have described it, but she could not see it, in the shadows of her mind. Determined, she shifted scenes again, to their first meeting, to their last—
But it was no good. It was like trying to catch a fish with her hands.
She opened her eyes and found Austra asleep. Frustrated, Anne watched the scenery go by and now tried to imagine what sort of people lived out there, in that country so unknown to her.
But in the vain search for Roderick’s face, she had somehow awoken something else and found a different face.
The masked woman with amber hair. For almost two months, Anne had pushed that phantasm away, encrypted it as she had the dream of the black roses. Now both came back, joined, nagging for her attention, despite Praifec Hespero’s assurances. Having endured three days of silence and Aus-tra’s sulking, and with nothing else to distract her, thoughts of that day on Tom Woth nagged at Anne like an itch, and the only scratch for it was thinking.
What had happened? Had she fainted, as the praifec believed? That seemed most likely, and it was what she most often told herself. And yet, in the middle of her heart, she knew somehow it wasn’t the truth.
Something real had happened to her; she had seen a saint, or a demon, and it had spoken to her.
She could almost feel the voice in her head, a sort of remonstration, a scolding. How could she be thinking of herself and Roderick when so much was happening? Her mother and father were in danger, maybe the whole kingdom, and only she knew it. Yet despite that, she had done nothing, told no one, pursued this hopeless, selfish love. The praifec’s word had only given her the excuse.
“No,” Anne said, under her breath. “That isn’t me talking. That’s Fastia. That’s Mother.”
But it was neither, and she knew it. It was Genya Dare, her voice whispering across the leagues from that crack in her tomb. Genya Dare, the first queen, her most ancient ancestress.
Would Genya Dare have ignored her responsibilities for the selfish pleasure of youth?
Anne gave a start. That hadn’t been her own thought; that had been a voice, spoken into her ear. Not a whisper, either, but a confident tone. A woman’s voice.
The voice of the masked woman, she was nearly certain.
Anne tossed her head back and forth, searching for the speaker, but there was only Austra, sleeping.
Anne settled back in her seat, breathing hard.
“Are you there?” she whispered. “Who speaks?”
But the voice didn’t return, and Anne began to wonder if she had dropped into sleep for a moment, long enough for the Black Mary to whisper in her ear.
“You are not Genya Dare,” she murmured. “You are not.”
She was going crazy, talking to herself. That was certainly it. She had read of such things, of prisoners in towers who spoke at length to no one, whose minds were shaved of reason.
She shook Austra’s knee. “Austra. Wake up.”
“Hmm?” Austra opened her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
“I promise, Austra.”
“What?”
“I promise. I won’t try to run away.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. I have to …” She frowned, embarrassed. “Everyone is trying to tell me the same thing. Mother, Fastia, you. I’ve been selfish. But I think—I’m needed for something.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. Nothing probably. But I’m going to do my best. To do what I’m supposed to.”
“Does that mean you’re giving up Roderick?”
“No. Some things are meant to be, and the two of us are fated to be together. I asked Genya to make him fall in love with me, remember? This is my fault, and I can’t just abandon his love.”
“You asked Genya to make Fastia nicer, too,” Austra reminded her.
“But she was,” Anne replied, remembering their last two meetings. “She was. She was almost like the Fastia I loved, when I was a girl. She and Mother did this thing to me—but they think what they are doing is for the best. Lesbeth explained it, but I didn’t want to listen, at the time.”
“What convinced you?”
“A dream, I think. Or a memory. Mostly you. If even my dearest friend thinks I’m a selfish brat, how can I not wonder?”
“Now you’re starting to worry me. Did you bump your head, going out the window?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Anne said. “You wanted me to be better. I’m trying.”
Austra nodded gravely. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”
“I was lonely, without you to talk to.”
Austra’s eyes watered up. “I was lonely, too, Anne. And I’m afraid. Of where we’re going, of what it will be like.”