A Nest of Idle Puppets

By Hayley Poh

Little Larch seems, at first glance, a perfectly ordinary place. The children are well-behaved and the scenery is beautiful. But look closer, you won’t have noticed this before: Little Larch is ruled by a prejudiced tyrant whom everybody calls the Mayoress. The hierarchy is divided into three primary groups—the plebeians, the commoners; the neutral ones, who refuse to pick a side; and the patricians, the upper-class pseudo-nobility, who will do everything in their power to keep the Mayoress in power.
Then there’s Hildegard, whose plebeian family is just like any other. Hildegard, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have considered trying to change the social hierarchy. She knows only a fool would attempt to overthrow the seemingly all-powerful Mayoress. But this is different. The witch who (rather reluctantly) agreed to turn Hildegard’s heart to ice wants something to change. In any case, the next Election Day is nearing, and if she wins this one, the Mayoress will get to do whatever she wants once and for all. Magic must be added to the chaotic mess to give Hildegard and her mysterious ally a shot at succeeding, but beware—there’s a price for everything, including doing whatever it takes to win.
So there goes the story: a bizarre tale of social commentary, strange, deadly magic, and the consequences of taking shortcuts. The ultimate question is, Does the end justify the means?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jul 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781543770438

Hayley Poh

Hayley Poh enjoys reading and writing stories making up imaginary worlds. When she’s not doing any of those things, she spends her days formulating ways to immerse herself in stories. She has dreamed of writing and publishing a book since she was five, when she realized she had an affinity for wordplay. She lives in Penang

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Copyright © 2022 by Hayley Poh.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

This book is dedicated to J – prodigy and pesky sibling.

CONTENTS

Prologue: Nightfall

PART 1. AUTUMN

1     Overtures

2     Opening Act

3     Herald

4     Focal Point

5     Receptacle

6     Bullseye

7     Equidistant

8     Medium

9     Midway

10   Midst

11   Accord

12   Variance

13   Recrudescence

14   Girdle

15   Revival

16   Treble

PART 2. WINTER

17   Contralto

18   Orchestral

19   Accelerando

20   Allegretto

21   Canon

22   Countertenor

23   Grandioso

24   Bass

25   Schadenfreude

26   Fieramente

27   Coup De Grâce

28   Crescendo

Epilogue: Denouement

List Of Notable Characters

Writer’s Note

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Nightfall

The cobbled streets are deserted, the houses are bustling with activity. It is only early evening, verging on six, but dinners are already being set out on tables, fires in hearths are lit or logs added, the kitchens the busiest of all.

In small towns such as this, there is no need for emphatic privacy. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, and people who try to hide things are often viewed as untrustworthy and dishonest, although discretion in discussing such matters is encouraged. So, the curtains are drawn, bolts of plaid and tartan, checked and striped, floral and houndstooth, pulled away from each other to reveal scenes of housewarming cosiness. Warm golden light from the flames and lamps spill from the windows onto the cobbles.

Just as curtains are constantly apart, windows are used to being shut. Windy days are not uncommon in Little Larch, and neither are rainy days. Once there was a hailstorm, too, but now the worst that could happen is a massive thunderstorm. Rain will pelt the glass, thunder will shake the sturdy foundations, lightning will strike a few trees. Nothing the townsfolk can’t repair or regrow.

Imagine you are a visitor, new to this place. You stand here in the middle of the silent, dusk-cloaked street and marvel at the archaic loveliness of the gabled houses built in parallel rows along the sidewalks. A light wind arrives and stirs your hair and chills you to the marrow, so you put on a coat. So fixated are you on the architecture that you do not pay attention to the setting sun slowly giving way to night until you realise the streetlamps have gone on and you can no longer see the long shadows thrown over the ground before.

Frowning, you retrace your steps to the inn, where you intend to stay for a few days or so before you leave. As you pass the rest of the rows, you cannot help but stare. Gnarled trees flank each house like sentinels. In the imminent dark, you pick out oaks, larches – a lot of larches – rowans, proud aspens, alders, even the occasional bowing willow. Bushes line almost every garden out front; flowers clamber up trellises. The wind rises to a soft, high pitch, whistling through the place. The faint impressions of stars bloom across the sky like diamonds.

You notice that the moon is a perfect circle.

Inside the inn, a small, warmed cottage with a thatched roof by the grandly twisting river, you finish your bowl of hot soup and salted herring and climb the rickety stairs to your room. Setting down the candle provided by the kindly innkeeper, you sink onto the comfortable bed and pull the sheets over yourself, turning onto your side to stare out the window at the star-flecked horizon.

As the candle wanes, dripping wax into its porcelain bowl, and nightfall deepens into true night, you begin to succumb to your weariness. But your mind conspires to keep you awake, choosing to mull over the day’s sights and sounds. Everything you have witnessed and tasted, you do so for the second time in bed.

The ample-bodied mayor – no, mayoress, that is what they call her – welcoming you with a beatific smile and viperous eyes. The near-undetectable undercurrent of hostility rippling beneath the beaming smiles at the flea market, on the streets you just walked. Daggers concealed in silk and velvet. Poorly disguised intrigue and suspicion upon your entrance; they do not warm immediately to newcomers, you recall sleepily. The elegant horses clip-clopping over the stones, ridden by two kinds of people. One is humble, plain and unambitious; the other is proud and prone to displays of wealth. You are not blind. You saw this but made no comment.

Ah, and the alien coaches, pulled by said horses. Who can miss them? Strange clanking sounds come from their bellies, the more familiar whirring and grinding of gears and cogs and machinery. Several are topped with flags with crests, adorned by curlicues. They all trundle and make a loud racket when they move.

With the passage of day and the infiltration of night comes the usual deep, unmoving silence in the inn. You pull the burlap curtain over the window to block the moonlight, blearily wondering if the people do the same at night. Your eyes focus on the wavering candleflame until it flickers weakly, the wax no more than a stub, and blows out, plunging your room into total blackness.

Your dreams are untroubled by the morning’s observations. When you wake up to a beautiful morning, you forget that you ever suspected foul play within the old veins of the town and set out to renew your experiences.

PART 1

Autumn

Friday July 16th

… for as long as we have lived, there has never been absolute equality. Not here, the archaic tomb of larches, where witches have been said to escape death on broomsticks made of the very wood we cultivate for our homes, powered by corrupted magic birthed by the lines we put up to separate our community. Prejudice and bigotry roam wide, and yet how is it that we are equal in some ways, unfair in others? As the primary chronicler of these Concordances, I must have a say in how we remember ourselves. Truth is overrated; history only remembers those who strive to be different, to do different, and from there we, the historians and scholars who hold the keys to the so-called ‘truth’, pick up the trailing threads and weave them into familiar, comfortable, but false stories that will allow us all to sleep well at night. If I cannot have a say in how we write our stories, then I shall control what goes into this book of records you have so graciously permitted me to fill.

—From the First Scholar, Dame Imogen

Clayderman, to Mayor Julian Reichmann,

in a letter concerning her finest project,

The Concordances of Little Larch, which

are still being updated today

A List of All the Things the Mayoress Has Banned

1. Dancing in public events and places, anywhere, anytime, which has obviously crippled the dance companies; in fact, eight of them have gone bankrupt, and three more follow

Punishment: fines up to 1,000 sterling

2. The unapproved pairing of a patrician and a plebeian, which needs to clearance from the High Jury of Clementia (which is mostly patrician anyway, so what’s the point really), but this rule is largely ignored these days, because love conquers all

Punishment: nothing

3. Magic, not that it exists. I wonder why she bans a myth

Punishment (unconfirmed): public execution by burning

4. Oh, and witches! Don’t forget witches. The Mayoress hasn’t exactly condoned public burnings of ‘witches’ (if they’re even real) at the stake, but everyone can tell that she wants to. If only executions hadn’t already been outlawed by the High Court, which is surprisingly equal in the difference of status

Punishment (unconfirmed): public execution by burning

5. Cross breeding a horse and a donkey to produce a mule, especially if the horse is a mare and a thoroughbred

Punishment: unconfirmed, probably immediate euthanasia?

6. Fairness and equality, in a nutshell

7. Plebeians attending the Southern Hills Collegium – no commoners allowed at an elite tertiary school

8. Venturing farther than the Deeps into the Wilds – be eaten by wild bears and wolves and heathers know what else lurks in the Wilds at your own risk

Punishment: self-explanatory

9. Penny dreadfuls, also an unpopular rule, because they’re such fun to read (Hildie has a few)

Punishment: confiscation … only if you are caught

10. Prenuptials

I think that’s it. I crossed out number six and that bit in number two because you never know who might trespass in your personal space. I hope nobody takes offence at number five – Aunt Siobhan has a mule. And it’s just about the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.

As compiled by Cymbeline John Le Fanu on the my birthday and checked by Hildegard Aisling Hoffmann

I

OVERTURES

Her name was Hildegard Hoffmann, and she tried to understand him like no one else tried. Their mutual friend tried too, but he hardly visited either of them now. He was looking for ideas for his manuscript from the books he had coerced her into keeping. As it was, he came over to her house every other weekend for a joint reading session, after informing his family. Naturally.

Did their families approve? His certainly didn’t. Hers didn’t know how to say no. In the event that a parent voiced their disapproval, Cymbeline had prepared a sum of excuses that bordered on the unrealistic.

‘No one will believe you,’ Hildegard had warned him. He shrugged. ‘No one believes me, even when I tell the truth.’ She had opened her mouth to argue further, but her easily jilted conscience prevented her from it.

Hildegard had a sensitive character, but that didn’t mean she was a complete hothouse flower like Emily Gardner in a popular penny dreadful written by a famous supernatural fiction writer from her town, Highwater Damsels by Tarquin Jessup – in which a pretty, petty, absolutely loathsome sixteen-year-old girl went on a chase around a fictional town to catch a ghoul gone rogue. A mistake as it turned out. Everyone who’d read the story before it was banned had an idea how the storyline went. Emily Gardner broke down in a hysterical tantrum after said ghoul scared her on Blackwater Bridge, ran screaming down the street about fanatical cults and being possessed and murderous spirits, was arrested by a patrolling guard, exchanged hysteria for uncontrollable sobbing, was pitied and released, slipped on slick stones and fell to her death into the river.

And then, as the final twist, her vengeful spirit rose from the murky depths of the river and fled screeching into the afterlife when the ghoul she had been pursuing in hopes of winning a prince’s hand in marriage as a reward jumped out from a dark alley and howled BOO in her ghostly, ephemeral face. Good riddance.

But that did not mean Hildegard and Emily had anything in common. Having a sensitive heart and a cowardly heart was quite different, as she had ever tried to convince her best friend, Cymbeline, who laughed at her insistence every time she did.

Anyhow, Emily did not cry once in the penny dreadful (aptly named, that). Her heart was cowardly, to be sure, but it was hard and scornful.

Now he was sprawled at the foot of her bed casually flipping through a gardener’s manual with a pair of shears wedged in the spine and smirking. Hildegard picked at the loose threads in her quilt, hoping the methodical snaps her nails made when they plucked the threads like harp strings would relieve her of her boredom.

Sometime before, she had lurked in the foyer and spied on her redheaded friend on the threshold, facing her mother. Charlotte van Schuyler was less fond of the Le Fanu boy with his affable way of talking and unpredictable moods and would deign to minutely disapprove of his relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter behind closed doors if not for the assurances of her friend Phoebe, who was also the mother of the boy who completed the trio.

‘My intentions are wholly honourable, sir,’ was his usual propagation to Hildegard’s father, Manfred, who was Papa to her and liked Cymbeline quite a lot. ‘Allow me to serenade your daughter with my humble … ah, sonnets.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Cymbeline!’ exclaimed Manfred, affecting pleased surprise. Hildegard was glad to see that he was in a jolly mood and not the default ‘Now young man, let’s here have a man-to-man talk about how you’re treating my little girl’ mood to which countless unsuspecting boys had been subjected at Lahr when they were Cymbeline’s age, not excluding Manfred himself. ‘Excellent to see you. Now …’ Hildegard groaned inwardly. ‘I assume you’re here for Hildie.’

‘She hates that nickname, you know,’ Cymbeline informed him cheerfully. Because, well, Hildegard told him that. They were that well acquainted. ‘Makes you think of the name Minnie and a hothouse flower, which she insists she is not.’

Manfred, to her immense relief, chose to ignore the impudence clearly etched in the boy’s sly face. ‘I think I had better let you in. She hates to be kept waiting, as I’m sure she told you …’ He let it hang, but shuffled aside to let him in. Manfred, as always, was more tolerant of Cymbeline than Charlotte was.

‘Not at all!’ The moment he pranced by her hiding spot and out of her father’s sight, Hildegard seized his arm and hissed, ‘What did I say about letting slip confidential details?’

He looked puzzled. ‘How was that confidential?’

‘It was personal.’

‘But your father knows!’

‘No he doesn’t. And did you really have to say that? Would you like it if I yakked about your embarrassing childhood habits to just about everyone at Lahr?’

‘Did we discuss about mine?’ Cymbeline’s grey eyes gleamed. Not a good sign, in Hildegard’s experience. ‘I recall a time when Max and I tried to unearth our worst memories from infancy, six and below. The more humiliating the better. Oh, let’s see … he said at five he’d puked at Freya Valverde’s wedding to a Rousseau cousin, which might have been excusable if he’d gotten the mess anywhere else but on the groom’s shoes. I countered with the time when Mam was cutting the berry bushes and unknowingly snipped off some of my hair while I played hide-and-seek with Halcyon in the garden. Don’t remember you with us then. Was it sometime before—’

Hildegard frowned. ‘I don’t care what you did with Maxim.’ She dug her nails into his forearm, making him yelp. ‘Continue your long-winded soliloquy and I’ll tell Mama you’re attempting to breach the bounds of propriety.’

Sure as she had expected, Cymbeline’s freckled face paled. Mentioning Charlotte had that effect on him. Perhaps she’d bring her up every time he did something to annoy her. ‘No, no, lead the way. What with my load and all, I can’t, umm, go up without tripping …’

She smiled smugly. ‘Of course not. Right this way.’

They cleared the foyer and the living room and ascended the west stairwell, the one closest to the kitchen. Hildegard didn’t miss Cymbeline peeking in, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever might be inside. Currently there was no one; her mother, Charlotte, worked as a butcher and maintained the vines growing on the roof, jobs that kept her busy and out of the house. Mostly she was more of a caretaker than a housewife, preferring to have every meal of the day done and stored in the cold storage as chilled dishes wrapped in plastic film rather than whipping them up at the appropriate time, as most mothers do.

If she forgot to make them at the crack of dawn each morning, then it was up to either Manfred or Hildegard to feed themselves. Since she was trained in the art of decapitate live fowl to be made into stew, Kiev, soup, broth, sandwiches, jambalaya, Provençal, fried cutlets, chopped fricassee, skinned delicacies, gravy stars, succulent steaks, and (this was considered civilised food in Little Larch) balls of garnishing fat, there was plenty of nourishment to choose from the cold storage.

‘Where’s your mother?’ Cymbeline asked.

Hildegard glanced to him as they rounded a banister post and stepped into a patch of landing awash in sunlight. ‘Butcher’s.’ The sunlit patch passed, and the stairs loomed up in front of them, the final furlough before her bedroom. ‘Looking for pies?’

Her friend’s cheeks, paler than hers, flushed a rosy pink. ‘No one makes better chicken pies than your mam, even if she is terrifying. I suppose Esther at the Porkpie Pub comes a close second, but I still like Mrs Hoffmann’s pies better.’

Reaching her door, Hildegard was tempted to say Oh? but had a hunch that he would simply implement his famed silver tongue to dismiss her contemptuous snort. Besides, being the sensor that he was, and she was not, the sudden change in tone might alert him to thoughts that she preferred to keep hidden.

And that would surely make things awkward.

His feet were clad in thick woolly socks that muffled his steps through the door into the room. Hildegard noted the extravagantly blocky cables winding down the slope of the backs and the dark green yarn. No – it wasn’t just dark green, but dark green with lighter green and white flecks. Tweedy yarn, courtesy of his mother’s membership at the fabric store. Then he disappeared through, causing her to start and scurry in after him.

‘Still working on the manuscript?’ She voiced the question in low, conspiratorial tones, even though they were the only ones on this level. Cymbeline had seated himself in the wicker chair normally found in the en suite bathroom, one ankle flung insouciantly over the other.

He squinted against the dazzling sunlight pouring in through the window on his right before answering. ‘Nothing else.’

He might have taken more time to squint at everything in his friend’s room, were he not so focused on his task. But of course, he’d been in here a million times before, and so why would he look at them now? It had not changed a bit. The walls were still covered in books in two massive bookshelves made by Manfred’s own hands from pine planks, harvested directly from one of the countless groves peppering the town. Pinewood, sometimes confused with the not-so-evergreen larch wood, was so common, every house had furniture made from it. Five planks cost fourteen sterling, the official currency in this part of the world. The bookcases in Hildegard’s bedroom were worth barely fifty sterling.

But it was good quality wood, and that was what really mattered. Money was not to be made into a mountain these days, when the rich and the elite pulled the strings behind every major event, every major public decision. The Reichmanns had had their very own mascot running for the post of Mayoress three years ago … and she had won. The Fifth Act of Freestanding Power in the lawbook permitted a leader to lead their town, city or village however they liked once they completed three years of service in a row. Only Bathsheba had ever come close. Now the woman sat on her throne, the self-appointed empress of Little Larch, armed with cultivated charisma and pure maleficence, lording over the town with a hawk’s eyes and intelligence and rewarding her supporters’ greed with even more lies. Now, of course, no one but her held her strings – Bathsheba Reichmann was her own creature.

To resume the description of the bedroom, there was not much to remark on. Nothing remarkable to look at unless you were the tolerable kind and thought that a plain bed, a red quilt, a pine closet holding ordinary day clothing and nightclothes, vulcanized rubber boots, simple long-necked lamps and chenille curtains were remarkable.

For Cymbeline, however, there was one thing that was. Remarkable, that is – the books.

Or should she say … many things.

He was already up and standing before the nearest shelf and running his hands over the cracked spines of the volumes they shared between them with a sort of reverence usually reserved for the religious trappings of old-world monks perusing their scripted collections. Poetry, classic folktales, illustrated children’s tales, cookbooks (those, they politely skimmed over), knitting manuals, penny dreadfuls (of course he insisted on keeping every one of Tarquin Jessup’s poorly written stories), onionskin tomes directing magic spells, which were banned in the public library. Real spells that an adult would dismiss as mumbo-jumbo balderdash which Nuala had given her, though for what purpose she hadn’t said. She should have disposed of them long ago, but couldn’t bring herself to do it: the Mayoress Reichmann was incandescent in her hateful campaigns against supposed ‘witchcraft’. Evidence was noticeably missing, but hell hath no fury like a fanatic on the warpath.

And here lay the danger in hoarding spell books. Those in her room were tokens from the owner of the sweetshop at the end of the Larch Road. She was known as Breanne Sharpe to the people who came to buy her excellently boiled sweets and whatnot, but to Hildegard, and only Hildegard, she was her real person: Nuala Cahill, ancient practitioner of the light and dark arts of magic.

Also known as a witch. Sworn ‘enemies’ of the current mayoress.

How Hildegard came to know Nuala’s real identity was a long and complex story, but needless to say it included a jewel-blue potion that Hildegard had never seen again since then, and although she was still wary of her motives, she trusted her enough to reveal slivers of her own, unilluminated past, a small part of which lived in Hildegard’s knowledge.

This meant secrecy. Hiding Nuala from her family, too close-knit for secrets; from Cymbeline and Maxim, her best friends from childhood and therefore holders of the deepest trust and assurance woven among them. To keep the witch’s identity secret was the worst crime of all … but what choice had Hildegard?

Cymbeline had selected a thick oxblood-bound manual from a shelf and was reading it intently at the foot of her bed. She, cross-legged on the quilt, couldn’t see him apart from the unruly curls poking up, relying on the shiff-shiff sounds that came every now and then which indicated he was indeed absorbed in the fine art of trowelling.

Her choice of reading material this day was a slightly better penny dreadful, at least compared to Jessup’s Damsels series. Danielle Vane, Ocelots in the Undergrowth. As opposed to Jessup’s ghost-hunting hothouse roses, Vane wrote about the animal dead. So far there had been ghostly rabbits who fed on their living brethren, ethereal frogs building a fort in a pond using the skeletons of dead flies (as if such a thing were possible), vicious fanged deer spirits prowling the outskirts of a forest village in search of adorable baby wolves to snatch … and now this, a ridiculous tale of séance-obsessed wildcats. But Hildegard had to admit that the writing was a marginal step up from the light-hearted froufrou that was Jessup at his worst, and the plots were stellar, at least compared to theirs.

So, really, not much better.

Cymbeline reached the middle of the manual and Hildegard realised she had turned not a page at all. Scowling, she snapped it shut and flung it on the pillow in defeat. The sound of well-worn leather hitting soft down was a terrific slap in the hollow silence in the wake of death cellos.

‘What are we doing this for?’ she sighed, jumping lightly over the side. Her bare feet smacked on hard, sanded wood floorboards and groped their way to the fleece slippers, sliding into the familiar caverns of furry wool. Hildegard stalked to the sun-bright wall and stood with her back to it, facing Cymbeline, who looked up, startled, saw her there and laughed.

‘I thought you knew.’

‘Oh, the old excuse?’ She snorted. ‘Looking for inspiration for your manuscripts?’ He smiled a bit, for her benefit. It was a long-running private joke between them.

Cymbeline had written two manuscripts already, locked up nice and tight in the back of her closet. He was working on a third. The primary reason he came here was because his family would disown him if he kept what she did in his room, and her parents didn’t mind, because they trusted her. Or so they said.

Well, I’d say it’s because we’re friends,’ he replied ever so matter-of-factly. ‘Have been since our mams put us in the same cradles and fed us the same mush. But it’s because I’m still insisting on writing that book.’

Hildegard crossed her arms and ankles and chewed on the ends of her hair, a habit she’d gained from the tender age of six and had yet to find a way to break. Cymbeline pretended not to notice. Chewing on your hair had to be revolting, not to mention the split ends Hildegard had accumulated over the years … but she insisted it was her way of coping with prepubescent anxiety.

‘Oh?’ he’d snorted when she explained. ‘And how does it help you?’

‘I get to take out my frustration on my hair.’

‘Poor hair.’

‘I just cut off the brittle ends if that helps your tiny brain to comprehend.’

‘It doesn’t, but I appreciate your efforts.’

‘What are you thinking now?’ he asked presently.

‘Oh, everything in general. How did we get here? Why does Patrice Osbourne always beat me in races even though I’m taller than her by a whole head? Why is the Mayoress such a cow? Why do we see stars only at night?’

Cymbeline worried a snaggletooth with his tongue, burying his irritation at the irregular jut responsible for roughening the corner of his mouth. Hildegard noticed and frowned. ‘Stop doing that, you’ll make it worse.’

He closed his mouth and closed the book. ‘Orthodontics in Little Larch are useless. The most the good Dr Campbell has ever done for me is cleaning out my molars.’

‘You can’t expect any one of them to bind an entire row of teeth just to correct one snaggletooth.’

‘Ah, but what are orthodontists for if not correction? No matter the number of teeth?’

‘I don’t think you get it.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, to answer you, Patrice always beats you because she’s better at distributing her stamina into long doses. The Mayoress is awful because she’s herself. You only see stars at night because in the daytime the sun is too bright for them to come out.’

He stood and walked to replace the manual in its place. The sleeve of his jumper snagged on the top of a jutting hardback, and he cursed as it was yanked forward and toppled to the floors, landing with a cringeworthy smack.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Hildegard said quickly, picking it up before he could. Cymbeline merely shrugged, as if to say, You’re probably right, and slipped out, hands stuffed in his pockets.

‘’Bye, Hildie-birdy.’ Ha! Let her try to come up with something worse.

She didn’t rebuke him, preoccupied with shoving the hardback (102 Easiest Shrubs to Grow in Spring & Summer by Frances D. Holmes) between the gardening manual and a dog-eared compilation of a crocheter’s intermediate patterns. The best designs for tea cosies, afghans, quilts, and gloves! He paused and turned. A sigh slipped out from his lips.

What was so special about her that he and Maxim kept her in their company? The notion that he was a teenaged boy and attracted to switching his present companions for better, socially more acceptable ones kept rearing its annoying head, despite his best efforts to stamp it out. He thought it over. Hildegard, five feet three, was lightly tanned all year round and kept her chestnut hair short. She preferred the grungy practical wear her parents favoured. A curious streak of gold shot through her wispy bangs. Heavy, sculpted brows arched over eyes the colour of a fawn pelt. An interesting face, an intelligent face.

The fact that the three of them had known each other from infancy? That her mother would start demanding answers if any of them cut ties with her precious daughter?

That wasn’t right. He was not here against his own will. Nor would Maxim if he came here. Rarely he did so, preferring their presences at his house. Cymbeline never hosted a rendezvous; his mother’s beloved flowering bushes released a beehive’s worth of pollen every hour. And Maxim’s nose had a grudge against pollen. One whiff and he’d be sneezing his head off before you could say hay fever.

He frowned at her. What, exactly, prompted him to come here so often? What were they really doing? It was just as she had asked. What and why. Scouring books for … what? It wasn’t like any publishers were going to accept his half-done manuscript of a comedy.

In all honesty, they should be outdoors relishing the heat like every other teenager in Little Larch. Summer was not the time for languishing at home, doing things people only did when the weather was uncooperative. Cymbeline was pretty sure dazzling sunlight qualified as a good thing for most towns.

In which case the Question persisted.

What did he see in Hildegard Hoffmann? A willingness to listen. He could have his pick of company; Maxim was always warmly welcome towards them. There were lots of boys at school, patrician or plebeian, interested in his company. Girls twice that number, for they apparently found him good-looking. Several were very keen. (Which did not mean he returned their intentions. He was too busy for them.)

Instead, he’d lain back and retained the same friends through the years. Cymbeline disliked change, and new friends were change. Better to hold on to the same rather than braving strange waters. Besides, he didn’t dislike either of them. He liked Maxim’s unassuming ways and quiet demeanour and Hildegard’s direct manner of addressing things, refreshing after the coy words of the flirting girls at school. When she wanted something, she stated it firmly. No beating around the bush and certainly no guesswork.

Sometimes he blamed her for roping him in because it was easier. The alternative was embarrassing: that he had never ventured further due to the firm bond that is developed between cradle mates. Why they had grown up together, he had no idea. Charlotte seemed to despise him of late, constantly glaring and muttering whenever he came over. If she was present. He had no idea why … unless … could it be that she suspected they were up to illicit things? He hoped she wouldn’t mind.

What did Hildegard see in him? Maxim he could understand, softspoken, polite and welcome to new additions. But him? Not even his mother understood his inclinations, his odd moods. Hildegard, though – inscrutable puzzle that she was, she seemed to see and understand everything about him when they were alone. No need to pretend or put on a brave face. They sat quietly, comfortably, side by side and did just what they wished.

He couldn’t imagine anybody else willing to do that.

Still, she puzzled him. As far as he was aware Hildegard had no hobbies or inclinations as he did, as Maxim did. The books were his, stored in her room because he’d run out of space in his.

Not that she minded. On the contrary. Before he came along with his books, she had had nothing better to do than sit in her pretty house all day long, trekking about town to visit her working parents at the butchery on Higher Larch Street or the woodworkers’ guildhall. Manfred was a clockmaker, experienced in the manipulation of wood. Wood abounded in the town. Half of the men could do with their bare hands what Manfred did in overalls, but finesse was something they lacked.

Unless Hildegard intended to follow in either of her parents’ steps, she would have remained talentless and hobby-less if not for him and Max.

He wondered why he had bothered introducing her to reading. He had no doubt Maxim’s contribution was out of sympathy for her – no. Wrong. He was wrong about that on all counts! Cymbeline shook his head in bemused exasperation. When had he started thinking about Maxim like that? He was nothing like … like a patrician. Didn’t operate on nothing-comes-without-a-price policies. He reserved some goodwill towards Hildegard, and that was probably why.

‘Did you get any inspiration?’ she asked him.

He looked at his ink-splattered hands. Old ink. New ideas waiting to sprout from the end of his pen. ‘I’d say a fair amount.’

‘Good. Remember you’re going back with Umber,’ she called after him as he turned once more to go. ‘She’s waiting for you on the street.’

Umber. One of the two Shetland ponies the Hoffmanns owned and used to tow their creaky coach when they travelled long distances. Cymbeline gave a slight nod and pulled the door shut.

He turned towards the staircase, hands stuffed harmlessly into the pockets of his jacket.

He did his best not to flinch.

Charlotte van Schuyler was watching him from the landing, a mere three feet away. Her eyes were so much like Hildegard’s that he thought for a wild moment that it was her older twin he was facing. She wasn’t Hildegard’s twin, though. She was her mother.

Whoever said women weren’t intimidating had obviously never met Charlotte van Schuyler. Or the wonderful Mayoress Reichmann herself. Somebody like that hadn’t even set foot in the town.

But he thought it was unfair of him to blame his easily jittered nerves. Mrs Hoffmann appeared to have blitzed home straight from the butchering shop in her work-clothes, bloodstained apron, and gore-splattered boots and all. Well, no; her feet were bare save for a pair of stockings rolled down to midcalf. Her apron was soiled, yes, he could see it up close. The bits of chicken or duck (or mutton?) smeared on the milky expanse of protective cloth were the colour of dried blood. Exactly like dried blood. Cymbeline felt his face go pale and he coughed, looking away hurriedly as bile rose in his throat. He smelled the raw meat flecks from this distance. He put a hand over his mouth as if hoping saliva didn’t spray out.

‘Don’t you know that it’s considered a societal breach for a man to enter an unaccompanied lady’s room? And a young, respectable one, too?’

‘Only patricians think that.’

‘They spread the biased poison and the seeds of prejudice among us and that is what they become. We adopt what they think, and soon, no matter the status, we become like them.’ It was an oddly insightful, not to mention poetic, statement from Old Man van Schuyler’s daughter, but Cymbeline wisely kept his mouth shut.

Hildegard came out of her bedroom, to his relief. ‘Mama? You’re supposed to be at work!’

‘It just happens that Elliot needed a sharper knife; his went blunt after a year of going nowhere near the whetstone,’ her mother said flatly. ‘So, I offered to get a new one for him. Then I went up to see you. Observing you, you don’t look happy to see me.’

‘I was surprised to see you. That’s why I’m being impolite.’ What an attitude she had!

Charlotte’s mouth twitched up at the corners while her eyes remained hard. Now that she was certain her daughter was in one piece, the tough mother bear façade was allowed to fall away bit by bit. She would keep up the sternness, however.

‘I was just going,’ spoke Cymbeline, hoping she would dismiss him with an absentminded flick of her hand. He suddenly craved the warmth of sunlight on his skin, the natural perfumes of grass and apples and flora, the rough texture of the flagstones beneath his feet, anywhere but being stuck in this claustrophobic space with a puzzle he didn’t know how to solve and the puzzle’s terrifying mother. Who knew being indoors all summer long had this effect on him! Oh well. As the raconteurs’ old saying went, Hide from the sun and eventually the sun will refuse to hide from you, so don’t hide at all.

He reminded himself that he was the wordier of them and opened his mouth to reassert his intentions as he had to the father at the front door.

And he wished he hadn’t drawn Charlotte’s attention when her eyes fell on him again.

Charlotte nodded slowly, pointedly avoiding a reddening Hildegard. ‘Ah, so that’s why you and Phoebe’s son keep circling around my girl like besotted suitors every chance you get.’

‘His name is Maxim,’ Hildegard said irritably. ‘And I’ll not have you imply that, please.’

‘What? Suitors? To everybody else, that’s what they are.’ The accusing finger in its rubber glove seemed to jab into Cymbeline’s eyeballs as violently as a stick, and he winced, imagining her fingers prying them out of their sockets and flinging the squishy spheres at her screaming daughter. ‘Heathers damn me if I should continue to let my daughter consort with the likes of you! I like your family well enough, boy, but you—’

‘Mama!’ said Hildegard, exasperated and angry. Her cheeks were red. Cymbeline was glad he wasn’t the only embarrassed one here. ‘All the rumours you’ve heard about him aren’t true. Just because he’s quick-witted doesn’t mean he’s a dishonourable liar.’

‘Most are bold lies, to be sure.’ Charlotte looked sceptical. ‘I wouldn’t trust Freya and Harmonia Valverde farther than I could throw them both.’ This was said with a darkly knowing look. ‘I know he isn’t a toad in disguise, although I think there’s some truth in—’

‘Excuse me,’ Cymbeline interrupted. ‘I really have to go back.’ He fled faster than he ever had before, feeling as though he had a working furnace for a head.

Behind him he heard mother and daughter arguing heatedly.

II

OPENING ACT

Quickly, he put on the pointy-toed moccasins he’d left on the doormat before and threw open the door. I’m never doing this again, he vowed. Hildegard and Maxim can pester me all they like, but any future rendezvous are going to be at his house. Not hers. Never again for as long as I live. An idle thought was, Charlotte van Schuyler scares me.

The wave of relief that swamped him as he stumbled into the bright, airy spring sunshine was stupidly immense that his knees buckled in their worn corduroys, and he flung out a hand to steady himself.

A passerby – the consummate woodsman, equipped with a large axe sharpened to a lethal edge, wearing suspenders and patched deerskin trousers – gave him a peculiar look.

Then he saw who he was ogling and frowned in recognition. ‘Say, aren’t you Marian’s boy? You have her eyes.’

He did, unfortunately or fortunately. His mother’s arched, slate-coloured eyes drew more attention at school than his red hair, compliments from the girls and mocking catcalls from the boys. Probably because they looked better on his mam than on him. If he wound a scarf over his mouth and nose, and covered his short curls with a hat, he’d pass for female.

Cymbeline didn’t know this man, but his memory was sharp, and Cymbeline was on the verge on a total panic. Which meant the faster he went home, the better.

‘Sorry, I think you have the wrong person,’ he lied, scrambling for the little velvet-brown pony patiently waiting on the mostly empty street and heaving himself up and settling into the saddle. ‘I’m Marian’s nephew. Siobhan’s son.’ He took hold of the reins, slid his feet into the familiar metal stirrups (these he’d swapped with Hildegard for a collection of rare poetry, and what a relief it was to feel them locking his feet tight once again), and prepared to gallop down Milliner as swiftly as Umber could run.

Siobhan was his mother’s half-sister who did indeed have a son, named Halcyon. Hopefully this woodcutter was in the dark about the spat they had had some days before, and how Siobhan had packed up her things and moved from the house beside her sister to inhabit an ugly converted pigsty on the rim of the town square with her family, none of whom were all that chummy with Cymbeline anyway. Of course, with the speed gossip travelled along around the place, the man might not buy his fib and instead call his bluff.

Umber saved him by whinnying loudly in impatience. Good girl, he thought blearily, and kicked in his heels, gently lest his moccasins’ blunt edges hurt her.

‘Hold on,’ called the woodcutter. ‘You don’t look like Siobhan at all – she has blue eyes, for heathers’ sake, and you have Marian’s husband’s face! Did you think I’d believe—’

No, I don’t think, Cymbeline wanted to yell over his shoulder, but the wind roaring in his ears and whipping his flyaway curls relieved him of his ability to talk. Besides, he was already a good seven feet away from his initial position when the man finished shouting his doubts at Umber’s ample rump, or rather her swishing mahogany tail, which Cymbeline patted at the turn of the street.

‘Good girl,’ he said aloud, leaning forward in the saddle. ‘Good girlie.’

Umber, preoccupied with her galloping duties, snorted affably. Her hooves clattered on the street in a rapid rhythm and slowed when he yanked on the reins.

She neighed impatiently, straining towards the intersection.

‘Wait. All right, trot. Slow but steady now.’ Digging in his heels. He looped the reins around his wrists, shortening them.

She chose to listen.

The reason he had slowed was because of the scenery. Cymbeline was aware of his hometown’s charms, very aware; hadn’t he lived here his whole life and relived the turns of the seasons over and over until every shade of sky and earth and sea was imprinted upon his impressionable mind?

In the heart of Little Larch, it was far from the sea. He’d gone down to the pier once or twice to see the migration of the bowhead whales,