Cruel Beauty

Just thinking the words left me shaking. I knew it was wrong and my throat tightened with guilt, but before I could say anything else, Aunt Telomache dragged me to my feet and out of the room.

I’m sorry, I mouthed over my shoulder as I crossed the threshold. The morning light had left the statues and picture shadowed; from the doorway, I could no longer see the gods’ or my mother’s faces.

We went back up to my room, where the maids waited. Walking in, I caught a glimpse of Ivy’s face looking pale and pinched with worry—but the moment she saw me, she smiled hugely. Elspeth only gave me a bored look and opened the wardrobe. She drew out my wedding dress and whirled to face me, the dress’s red skirt swirling in a frothy wave.

“Your wedding dress, miss,” she said. “Isn’t it lovely?” Her smile was all bright teeth and wormwood.

Elspeth was peerless when it came to hair and wardrobes, but she performed every one of her duties with that harsh ironic smile. She hated the Resurgandi for being masters of the Hermetic arts yet never raising a hand against the Gentle Lord. She hated my father most of all, because it was his duty to offer the village’s tithe, the tribute of wine and grain that would persuade the Gentle Lord to leash his demons. Yet six years ago, though Father swore he made the offering correctly, her brother Edwin was found whimpering and trying to claw his skin off, his eyes the inky black of someone who had looked on demons and gone mad. She was glad to see me wed, because it meant that Leonidas Triskelion would lose someone just as dear.

I couldn’t blame her. She couldn’t know that for two hundred years, the Resurgandi had been secretly trying to destroy the Gentle Lord, any more than she could know how little Father would miss me. Like all the folk in the village, she knew only that Leonidas, the mighty Hermeticist, had bargained with the Gentle Lord like any common fool, and now, like any common fool, he must pay. It was justice; why shouldn’t she rejoice?

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.

Ivy blushed as they dressed me, and the dress was worth blushing over: deep crimson like any other wedding dress, but far too gaudy and enticing. The skirt was a mass of ruffles and rosettes; the puffy sleeves left my shoulders bare, while the tight black bodice propped up my br**sts and exposed them. There was no corset or shift underneath; they were dressing me so I could be stripped as quickly as possible.

Elspeth snickered as she buttoned up the front. “No use making a new husband wait, eh?”

I looked blankly at Aunt Telomache and she raised her eyebrows, as if to say, What did you expect?

“I’m sure he’ll fall in love with you at first sight,” said Ivy bravely. Her hands were shaking as she adjusted my skirt, so I managed to scrape up a smile for her. It seemed to calm her a little.

For the next few minutes, we all pretended that I was happy to marry. Elspeth and Ivy giggled and whispered; Astraia clapped her hands and hummed snatches of love songs; Aunt Telomache nodded, lips pursed in satisfaction. I stood quiet and compliant as a doll. If I stared very hard at the wall and reviewed the Hermetic sigils in my head, the bustle around me faded. I still noticed everything they did, but I didn’t have to feel much about it.

They combed my hair and pinned it up, hung rubies in my ears and around my neck, painted rouge on my lips and cheeks, and anointed my wrists and throat with musk. Finally they hustled me in front of the mirror.

A gleaming, crimson-clad lady stared back at me. Until this day, I had worn only the plain black of mourning, even though Father had told us when we were twelve that we could dress as we pleased. Everybody thought that I did it because I was such a pious daughter, but I simply hated pretending that everything was all right.

“You look like a dream.” Astraia slid her arm around my waist, smiling tremulously at our reflections.

Everybody said that Astraia was the very image of our mother, and certainly she could not have gotten her looks anywhere else: the plump, dimpled cheeks, the pouting lips, the snub nose and dark curls. But I might have been born straight out of my father’s head like Athena: I had his high cheekbones, his aristocratic nose, his straight black hair. In a rare burst of kindness, Aunt Telomache had once told me that while Astraia was “pretty,” I was “regal”; but everyone who saw Astraia smiled at her, while people only nodded at me and said my father must be proud.

Proud, yes. But not loving. Even when we were very young, it was clear that Astraia took after Mother, and I after Father. So there was never any question which one of us would pay for his sin.

Aunt Telomache clapped her hands. “That’s enough, girls,” she said. “Say good-bye and run along.”

Elspeth looked me up and down. “You look pretty enough to eat, miss. May the gods smile on your marriage.” She shrugged, as if to say it was no concern of hers, and left.

Ivy hugged me and slipped a little straw man into my hand. “It’s Brigit’s son, young Tom-a-Lone,” she whispered. “For luck.” She whirled away after Elspeth.

I crushed the charm in my hand. Tom-a-Lone was a hedge-god, the peasants’ lord of death and love. The village folk might sacrifice to Zeus or Hera sometimes, when custom demanded it, but for sick children, uncertain crops, and unrequited love, they prayed to the hedge-gods, the deities they had worshipped long before Romana-Graecian ships ever landed on their shores. Scholars agreed that the hedge-gods were merely superstition, or else garbled versions of the celestial gods—that Tom-a-Lone was but another form of Adonis, Brigit another name for Aphrodite—and that either way, the only rational course was to worship the gods under their true names.

Certainly the hedge-gods hadn’t saved Elspeth’s brother from the demons. But the gods of Olympus hardly seemed inclined to rescue me, either.

With a sigh, Aunt Telomache unfolded my fist and plucked out the crumpled Tom-a-Lone.

“Still they cling to their superstitions,” she muttered, and flung it into the fireplace. “You would think Romana-Graecia conquered them last week and not twelve hundred years ago.”

And from the way Aunt Telomache talked, you would think she was descended in a straight line from Prince Claudius, when in fact she and Mother came from a family that was only three generations removed from being peasants. But there was no use pointing that out to her.

“You don’t know,” Astraia protested. “It might bring good luck, after all.”

“And then the Kindly Ones will grant her three wishes, I suppose?” said Aunt Telomache, sounding more indulgent than annoyed. Then she turned a stony gaze on me. “I trust I don’t need to remind you how important this day is. But it is easy for the young to forget such things.”