Free The Swan Kingdom by Zoe Marriott Page B

her. “Why?”
    Her gaze did not lift from her toes. “I couldn’t say, Lady.” She wrung her hands. Suddenly I heard what she could not say. It had been shut up to keep me in. That realization was the final straw. Overwhelmed by weariness, I sat down on the strange bed with a bump and put my head in my hands. What was I doing here?
    I had forgotten that Anne was in the room until a hand came to rest tentatively on my shoulder. “There now, Lady,” she whispered. “Don’t take on so.”
    I raised my head to look at her, and saw kindness – perhaps even pity – in her eyes.
    “She doesn’t even know me,”
    I whispered back. “Why should she hate me so?”
    “She doesn’t. Don’t think that, Lady. The mistress is, well … difficult.”
    The moment the words left her mouth I could tell she regretted them. Looking shocked at herself, she straightened and removed her hand.
    “I … Mistress said you should have your supper in here, Lady. I’ll bring it to you in a few minutes, then I’ll draw your bath and unpack for you.” She bobbed a quick curtsy, and hurried out of the room.
    I put my head back in my hands. As I sat there in the faded bluish light, I realized that I had said not a word during my interview with my aunt. I’d let her silence me, just as my father always had. Why could I never speak up for myself?
    Please come for me soon, I begged my brothers silently. Robin, David, Hugh…please come soon.
    Supper was a plain affair. I was offered something called tea – bitter brown liquid that I could not stomach. I drank milk instead, but found it watery. There was a flan, a round pastry base filled with egg, onion, tomatoes and mushrooms, and there were boiled potatoes with butter. I refused the cooked chicken and ate instead the mashed-up mixture of carrot and swede with more butter. I finished with a strange pudding, which mostly consisted of bread soaked in milk, though there seemed to be some fruit in it too. I was puzzled by the lack of flavour in everything I ate. Even the tomatoes, usually a favourite of mine, were almost tasteless. I was offered salt – a rare delicacy at home – but I found that once I sprinkled it on the food, it was all I could taste.
    The bath, at least, was a comfort. My mother had made Father purchase copper bathing tubs from Midland when I was very young, so the gleaming metal bath that was placed before the now blazing fire was familiar and welcome.
    By the time I emerged, pink with scrubbing and the heat, I was so sleepy that it was all I could do to keep my eyes open as the maid towelled my hair dry. Before the footmen came to take the bath away from the hearth, I had fallen into bed and into sleep.
    As far back as I could remember, the tides of enaid had filled my dreams. I felt them wash and ebb in a way that was more than hearing or seeing; they rippled through my own veins, or perhaps carried me with them like a leaf swept along with the rush of a river. They had lulled me to sleep from the cradle.
    During that first night at my aunt’s house, they were not enough. The weak whispering of magic in this country was too fraint to drown out the unfamiliar noises of the house settling around me. I woke in the darkness, and could not find sleep again. I had dreamed of those pale things that had flown through my tortured mind the night my brothers and I crept into Zella’s room. They were the rare great white swans, I realized, mute swans. Their shadows had passed over me in my dream, and I had looked up to see them, their wings rippling and spreading across the sky like clouds, their wing beats like thunder.
    Gradually, as sleep faded, I became aware that the thundering noise was not all in my dream. It was the sound of the sea. It seemed to roar against the closed window. Surely it had not been so loud before. Maybe the tide of water was coming in, just as the tides of magic had done at home. The thought of home made me clench my eyes shut. I would see my home