Five
Cold.
The Raven curled up tight and wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes still shut. She tried to scrub her upper arms with her hands without waking but it didn’t work. Grumbling in her throat, she opened her eyes. The fire had died down and the room was dark. The sleeping shapes of the others made solid shadows on the floor and in the two chairs.
There were goose bumps on her arms. She shifted closer to the fire and bumped into Colby’s chair. He stirred and sighed: the Raven sat up in despair. Everything was peaceful and very quiet. No sound came from the street except for a tiny scuffle in the alley behind the house. Probably a rat, she decided, tucking her knees under her chin and shivering. Or a stray cat.
A memory twitched. Cat. Stray cat – house cat – her cat. Her cat. Com, the Raven thought suddenly. My cat Com. There had been another cat before Com; darker, sleeker, belonging to… to… Who?
The Raven frowned slightly, trying to untangle the elusive, floating knot of her memories. There had been Com, when she was with… with Druth? Yes, with Druth. Druth and Com in the cottage with the chickens and the goat and the bird and the sea-view and the cold air and – fire.
She shied away from that memory and landed on another thought. The other cat. Black and coarse and fierce. He hadn’t liked anyone, only… Only someone… someone with fire in her eyes and… fire in her mind and… strong, capable hands. She remembered the hands: pale and firm, with a gold ring on one finger. Cleaning a scraped knee, holding a needle threaded with blue silk, resting on the shoulder of someone else… someone else… a man…
She sighed, chewing on her lower lip in frustration. Too many memories of too many people, all slipping and sliding over each other like fish caught in a net, like worms in the earth, like puppies in the womb…
Something niggled in the back of her brain. She thought she Sensed a flash of sudden movement, and she started violently, looking over her shoulder to see the door opening. A tiny light flickered and the doorway was suddenly lit up by a candle.
‘It’s in here!’ someone whispered and four people darted into the room.
Before the Raven could do anything, someone yanked a handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet. She half screamed, and the candle was pushed into her face. She shrank away from the flame and someone hissed, ‘Keep quiet, freak.’
‘Please – let go my hair – you’re hurting –’
Someone hooked a finger under her collar, and her hair was released. The candle was held up and she saw four young men, none of them over twenty-one and all of them smelling of cheap ale. One of them, a short redhead, held the candle close to her face, and she stared at him, her breath coming in short, panicked gasps. The candle flame was dancing hot and wicked near her face…
He smiled slowly, wonderingly. ‘Cor,’ he breathed. ‘It’s true, then. A real life ’ybrid like what Anselm said. Look at its eyes, Curt.’ He passed the flame in front of her eyes. ‘They go all gold in the light.’
The flame was so close, burning bright and hot and yellow in front of her. The Raven’s heart was fluttering like a trapped bird’s, beating against her ribs as though against the bars of a cage. Flames growing, burning, destroying everything they touched, so hot so hot so hot so near so close burning in the roof burning burning burning –
‘What’re you doing?’
Redhead and his friends whipped around in alarm, and the Raven sagged in the boy’s grip, weak with relief as the boy lifted the candle to light the room. Frona was sitting up and yawning, pushing back her hair from her face with one hand.
‘Private viewers, love,’ one of the blond-haired boys said, recovering himself with a smirk.
Frona gaped a little, and she looked blearily at the Raven. ‘Private viewers?’
The Raven stared at her disbelievingly, her hands raised to tug ineffectually at Redhead‘s wrists holding her collar.
The tallest blond-haired boy bent down to Frona’s level and smiled. ‘And what’re you then? One of the private freaks?’
Frona stared at him, then leaned over to shake the twins awake, but the boy swatted her hand down. ‘Hey, don’t wake up any more boys, there’s enough of us here to make things exciting.’
‘Frona?’ the Raven hissed. ‘How about screaming?’
‘But I don’t understand,’ she began.
Redhead lifted the Raven’s hand and prised open her fingers. He pinioned her first finger and held it dangerously close to the candle flame. ‘You say one more word, freak,’ he breathed in her ear, ‘and I burn your skin black. Black. You got that?’
The Raven gave a jerky nod, watching the candle flame with wide eyes. She remembered another flame, but that was different; higher, hotter, roaring and crackling in the thatched roof, not quite loud enough to drown out the screams… This flame was little in comparison. Tiny, like a little yellow-white flower petal. A burning petal from a killing bright flower. She looked at the floor and closed her eyes, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
The blond boy stroked Frona’s face. ‘Pretty little hunchback, ain’t you though?’
From the look on Frona’s face, she had suddenly got hold of an idea of how this might end. ‘No,’ she whispered, trying to pull away.
The boy laughed and pushed her back onto the floor. She fell awkwardly, silent tears tracking down her face.
Redhead chuckled quietly. ‘Keep her, Rigg, and don’t use it all –’
‘What are you doing?’ Eldreda sat up in her chair, her eyes and mouth wide open in horror. ‘Frona!’
The Raven’s head snapped up at the sound of Eldreda’s voice. The candle flame wobbled, and she felt the warmth from it spill onto her hand, making her flinch.
‘Oh, stuff it, Legs,’ Rigg said, one hand cupping Frona’s cheek. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’
‘Pace!’ Eldreda’s scream almost blew out the candle flame. Colby jerked awake and the twins snapped upright simultaneously.
Redhead rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, great.’
‘Pace!’
‘All right, Legs. We’re going, we’re going.’ Redhead’s finger tightened around the Raven’s collar, and for one mad moment she thought he was going to drag her along with him.
Rigg leaped up and bounded for the door. ‘Come on, George!’
Redhead tilted his head to one side, still looking at the Raven, his mouth curling up into a half smile. The others had already fled, and Rigg hesitated for only a moment longer. ‘Come on!’ He dashed out of the door. Redhead released the Raven’s collar and followed. The Raven staggered back against the wall, her hands pressed flat on the hard panelling. Breathe. No fire, she told herself. No fire. No smoke. It’s gone. Gone. Gone. Fire gone.
Colby knelt down beside Frona. She was still crying silently, and he pulled her to him, hugging her tightly. ‘It’s all right,’ he crooned softly, for once not stuttering. ‘It’s all right.’
Frona buried her face in his shirt, her shoulders shaking.
‘You bitch.’
Eldreda’s face was tight with fury. The Raven raised her head and stared at her. ‘Pardon?’
Eldreda got to her feet, stalked towards the Raven like a furious mother bird defending her young. ‘You utterly heartless bitch.’
‘What?’
‘I saw you, I saw you! You were just standing there – not doing anything!’ The Raven backed up against the wall, staring wide-eyed and bewildered. ‘Do you know what could have happened to Frona, do you know what that would have done to her? Do you know what she’s been through – what happened to her before she came here?’
‘But I didn’t do anything! She should have screamed – it’s her fault, not mine. If she was really that scared, then she should have screamed, so as she didn’t scream then maybe she wasn’t that scared really. Maybe she was in league with them all along and paid them to break in so that she could get loads of attention and –’
‘Stop it!’ Eldreda was breathing as though she had just finished running, her face flushed.
‘Maybe she did,’ the Raven insisted, feeling better at the sound of her own babble. ‘Maybe she’s secretly a highwayman or a highwaywoman or a highwaygirl and those boys were actually her henchmen and her friends and she paid them to break in and steal all of your savings, so it’s actually her fault, and it’s not my fault at all, it's her fault, she wanted it to happen and it did happen and she wasn’t really scared, she was just pretending and she’s not really crying now, she’s just faking it ’cos she wants sympathy and maybe she actually likes Colby and wants to marry him but she can’t bring herself to tell him so she planned all this so that he’d hug her like he’s doing now and they can have stuttering hunchback children and breed a new generation of freaks and then you can be the nursemaid and –’
She didn’t see how it happened, but Eldreda made a movement and the Raven hit the floor with a thud. Eldreda knelt on her arms, and that really hurt.
‘Ow!’ The Raven squirmed, trying to reach up and bite her. Failing that, she spat in her face, baring her teeth.
Eldreda smiled mirthlessly, immune to the Raven’s show of fierceness. ‘It hurts, does it, hybrid?’
Colby, still rocking Frona, said, ‘I think I c-c-can hear P-p-p-pace coming.’
‘He took his time,’ Lyndon said, looking over Eldreda’s shoulder. ‘You know, hybrid, it’s just like everyone said.’
‘Hybrids are animals, with no human thoughts or feelings,’ Lionel finished.
‘He had a candle!’ the Raven protested. ‘He was going to burn my hand if I did anything! It was fire and it was hot and it burned and I was – it wasn’t nice and you’d have done just the same –’
Eldreda shifted one of her knees onto the Raven’s stomach and she yowled wheezily.
‘You sound like a dying cat,’ Lyndon said contemptuously.
‘And I – I suppose you’d sound like a songbird if you had a great – hulking Armless Wonder rupturing your lungs! I suppose you’d have – got help even if you were going – to get burned!’
‘Oh dear,’ Lionel mocked. ‘You were threatened by a candle? What a shame, what a traumatic bloody shame. You are pathetic. Couldn’t you think of someone else, someone worth more than your stinking yellow self?’
The door slammed back on its hinges, and turning her head on the floor, the Raven saw Pace and Quennel in the doorway. Pace had his trousers on under his nightshirt, and looked completely ridiculous.
‘Get off my hybrid!’ Quennel screeched, leaping forward like a startled deer. He wrestled Eldreda out of the way and the Raven scrabbled over the floor and latched onto the hem of his nightshirt, gripping the coarse white fabric as though it were a lifebelt in a storm.
Pace rounded on his freaks. ‘What the blazes has been going on here? What’s the matter with Frona?’
Colby rose to his feet. ‘There was a b-b-b-b-break-in, sir. A couple of youths. They m-must have come in through the k-kitchen. They w-wanted to see the Raven.’
‘See the Raven?’
‘Yes, sir. And then they… g-g-got d-d-d-istracted.’ Colby pressed his lips together into a thin, pale line.
Pace ruffled Frona’s hair. ‘You all right, Frona?’
Frona drew a long, shuddering breath and bit her lip. She nodded.
‘Good girl.’ Pace glared around at the others. ‘And what else happened?’
Quennel tapped the top of the Raven’s head, and she looked up at him, still holding onto his nightshirt. ‘Raven,’ he said deliberately. ‘What happened?’
The Raven looked at Eldreda, still flushed and panting, and then at the twins who were glaring at everyone through half-lidded eyes. ‘They got cross ’cos I didn’t help Frona,’ she said simply.
There was a pause. Quennel lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’s it? They “got cross”?’ He glared at Eldreda. ‘Getting cross is no reason to try and suffocate my hybrid!’
Eldreda returned his look, but addressed Pace. ‘I think all of us are agreed, Mister Pace. We won’t have the Raven with us anymore.’
‘Oh, you are agreed are you!’ Pace scoffed. ‘Well, I’m not agreeing. That hybrid’s bringing this shop more business than the lot of you would ever get, and if they pay to see that freak, they’ll pay to see you as well. The Raven is staying.’
‘With respect, sir,’ Lionel said. ‘No.’
‘“No”? I’m your manager! You can’t just –’
‘We can, actually. We’re the ones who make the money, Mister Pace, and if we don’t go out, the show can’t go on.’
Pace’s face turned pink. ‘Are you threatening me, Lyndon?’
‘I’m Lionel, sir. And no, I am not threatening you. Just bargaining. Unless the Raven goes, there’s no show.’
‘Now look here,’ began Quennel. ‘You can’t fold up everything like that just because the Raven upset you. She can be difficult, I know, but if you just give her time, she’ll get better.’
Eldreda laughed. It sounded harsh and short, more like a bark. ‘If I found a rabid dog, Mister Quennel, I would shoot it. I wouldn’t give it time, and neither would you. Your freak goes.’
Another uncomfortable silence. For the first time the Raven noticed Morley and Mistress Addie in the doorway. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece, a strangely mundane, homely sound in the tightly strung room.
Pace blew out his breath in a huff and shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk about this more in the morning. I’ll tell the watch about the break-in. You freaks go back to sleep. You’re tired and upset; if you sleep on it, it’ll be better in the morning.’ He turned and went out. They heard him go back to his room and close the door.
Quennel looked at the freaks: Eldreda grimly defiant, Frona still tear-damp and shaking, Colby silent but unforgiving, the twins furious and showing it.
‘We mean it, sir,’ Eldreda said.
Quennel yanked the Raven to her feet and pushed her out, past Morley, along the corridor to his own room. The Raven stumbled over her own feet, whimpering as Quennel twisted her wrists sideways. Her face had turned a dirty yellow colour.
‘When,’ Quennel whispered through clenched teeth, ‘when, oh when, oh when will you learn?’
‘I didn’t do anything, Master! I really didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t! The others, they just don’t like me, they don’t like hybrids and they had a candle and they were going to burn my hand and it was so hot and hot and it hurt and I thought she would scream and I didn’t want to get burned and they kept on whispering so no one would hear –’
Quennel shoved her against the bed and fumbled to find his trousers on the floor. He unthreaded his belt. The Raven buried her face in the patchwork quilt, the squares of material creating a mad, distorted jigsaw in front of her eyes. An embroidered daisy on red cotton. Light blue feathering across a cream background. Rough brown homespun, coarse and practical. The neat stitching binding them together; thin white thread running out and through like a spider web of sinews.
Quennel swung the belt, and she closed her eyes against the impact, taking refuge in the plain darkness behind her eyelids.
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More character impressions here. More thoughts on the Raven?
