Read Online Wasp by Ian Garbutt - Free Book Online Page B

swooping blackbirds.
    A splash from the pond. One of the ducks stretched its wings. The land was still half asleep.
    She ran a hand over the door. Wood felt warm where sunlight played across it. A splinter dug into her finger. Beth yelped and slipped it into her mouth. She glanced back at the walled-in house. For a moment she fancied she could see George Russell galloping across the grass on his hunter, a breathless fantasy in cream cravat and tasselled tricorne. All this supposed freedom and she didn’t know what to do with it.
    The door swung open. Beth screamed. The noise sent the ducks flapping off. Hot air wafted over her, and queer smells flooded her nose. She couldn’t make another sound. A figure stood in the doorway, clad in a brown smock, with long grey hair tumbling about its face. Its mouth opened.
    ‘Come in,’ it said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

Friends and Enemies
    Bethany tingles all over; a warm, fresh feeling. She’s been scrubbed to her roots and no longer feels greasy or smells of old sweat. The tattooed maids sprinkle her with rosewater, pull a clean linen dress over her drying body and slip her feet into a pair of cloth slippers. After retying the linen cap, the flower-cheeked woman leads Beth out of the room and along a lantern-lit passage hung with tapestries. They all depict fierce beasts and dense pagan forests.
    ‘How long have you been a servant here?’ Beth asks.
    ‘I’m no maid, Kitten. As you heard me say to Ebony Mare, we all take our turn pampering the new girls. It reminds us what we once were.’
    ‘What were you?’
    ‘Cold, hungry. The same as you.’
    ‘And what are you now?’
    ‘Think of me as a business associate.’
    The corridor ends in a scarlet curtain. Beth is ushered through. Beyond lies a dazzling hallway draped in more of the scarlet cloth. Marble pillars climb to a domed ceiling from which dangles a chandelier that glitters like ice. The floor is also marble, and cool even through her slippers. Black-and-white rings ripple outwards from the centre. Directly across from her lies a wide staircase, carpeted in red, that spirals upwards to a gallery. To her left is a closed door, painted a glossy black. Beside it stands a desk similar to a lectern in a church, only bigger.
    Two tall windows either side of the door throw slabs of daylight across the marble. Beth cranes to see if she can spy anything of the street outside but the tops of some railings are all she can glean.
    Ahead stands a set of double doors. Beth’s escort pushes them open and enters the room beyond. ‘The Kitten as requested, Abbess,’ she announces. Bethany creeps in and finds a circular chamber with more scarlet drapes that loop and swoop around cream walls. Underfoot, a red carpet splashed with white goatskin rugs swallows up her steps. In the middle of everything a crescent of embroidered sofas, fat as pregnant cows, have been arranged around a polished table.
    Seated is an old woman, slim and finely boned. Coloured patches cover her face and arms, leaving no scrap of bare flesh bigger than a farthing. And that hair. Long, almost to her waist, and lightning white. But her eyes are blue, like the sky during the height of summer when all the clouds have been baked out of it.
    The Abbess pats the cushion beside her. ‘Come, sit down. I like a busy face and yours is full of questions.’
    Beth slips onto the sofa beside the older woman. It’s impossible not to stare at that patched visage. Painted emblems colour her cheeks and brow, and plunge down the neck of her shimmering gown.
    ‘You like them?’ The Abbess smiles. ‘These patches are copies of all the Emblems in the House. I wear my girls, proud as you like, on my skin for everyone to see. There’s a space for you here,’ she taps an inch of bare skin beside her left ear, ‘just as soon as we decide who and what you are to be.’
    ‘And what shall I be?’ The girl knots both hands together in her lap. ‘A whore? D’you think