Read Online The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner - Free Book Online Page B

loved you with all my being.

    When I arrived in London all those months ago I had never experienced a loss quite like that of being parted from you. Only in your shell did I find comfort. I would lay it on the palm of my hand and see it almost shimmer as I asked it if you were safe. It has a voice, soft, like a gentle wave lapping at the seashore; it always sings the same song: ‘He must love you so much to have given away such a talisman, he must love you so much … . A lullaby to soothe my troubled heart.

    What would I have done without your letters? Don’t think I don’t know what danger they put you in, but I have counted the days between them, been frustrated beyond belief when there wasn’t anything from you and even my dear postman would look sad. Poor Mr Trippen, I think if he could have conjured a letter from thin air he would have done so.

    There is no one else. Goodness knows what you have heard. It is true that my uncle and aunt have introduced me into society. I can tell you this: all I ever meet is empty-headed or vain young men. I feel like an automaton dressed up and wheeled out. My fault, I fear, for once again I have retreated into silence. There are no words I want to share with anyone but you.

    Here my soul is imprisoned. Only you can set it free.

    You have been with me in everything. And you will always be with me. You are my beginning, you will be my end; in the middle lies our future. I am with you in spirit, as I feel your spirit is with me. I will wait, Yann. You and only you have the key to my soul.

    Je t’aime.
Sido

Chapter Eight

    W hen Sido arrived eighteen months earlier, she found London a noisy old lady wheezing monstrous in all her smoke and fumes. With her mantle of twisting narrow streets oozing into the countryside, uncontained by city walls, she was so different from Paris that to begin with Sido felt bewildered.

    She was further bewildered by her aunt and uncle’s genuine love of her. Juliette had tears in her eyes when Sido first entered the drawing room in Queen Square for, as she told her, she looked almost identical to the beloved sister she had lost.

    That was their only similarity, as Juliette soon discovered, for here was a young woman who possessed not only beauty but understanding that exceeded her years. In her aunt’s eyes, Sido’s gentleness made the cruelty of what she had suffered even more repugnant. The Laxtons felt very protective towards her. There was a vulnerability about Sido that Juliette thought came from neglect. Henry knew it had more to do with the atrocities she had witnessed in the Abbaye prison and the ordeal she had suffered at the hands of Kalliovski. He shuddered to think of the obscene marriage contract and what would have happened if Yann hadn’t rescued her.

    It had been Mr Trippen, Yann’s old tutor, who, sensing Sido’s feelings towards his former pupil, had encouraged her to write to him. That first letter had taken ages and when it was finally finished she felt it was stiff, awkward and childish. Her only hope was that Yann might see all the invisible words written between the lines, words her quill was too shy to shape. She had left it on the silver plate in the hall with all the other letters to be posted.

    That afternoon Juliette and Sido sat in the drawing room, Juliette at her needlework, Sido reading, as the fire crackled in the grate and the clocks ticked gently.

    Outside horses clip-clopped by and Sido, half dreaming, did not at first hear her aunt when she said, ‘My dear, I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of removing the letter from the hall table.’

    Sido was wide awake now.

    ‘Here it is,’ said Juliette, handing it back to her. ‘Please don’t think me rude, but it is really not safe to write to Yann.’

    ‘I wanted to thank him,’ said Sido, feeling her cheeks flame.

    ‘My goodness,’ said Juliette, ‘it is a very good thing you didn’t. If he were to receive a letter from an emigre,