Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

down the lane, and found, beyond the next bank of trees, the village was before her, spangled in the sun, all its doors and flowers open wide.

Anna paused, undecided. There were women about mostly, with baskets, or pegging out washing in their little grassy yards, where roses grew in hearts of blood.

But the first woman glanced at Anna, and then, strangely, quickly away.

Anna crossed to the low wall. “Excuse me, please…”

The woman dropped a sort of curtsy, not quite the house bob, scattered her clothes pegs and trotted away indoors, Across the gardens, the width of the village street from her, was the public house, with its sign of the knight and the dainty dragon.

Anna went there.

The interior was now not so dark, sunlit from the door and the little pebbly windows. Red blooms stood in pots, and there were brown jugs with round hips gathered on the counter. The ceiling was low, and a bird cage hung from the beams, without a bird.

The room was full of men, Anna saw, huge brown men. Some smoked pipes, and most drank glasses of beer, and there were plates of bread and ham and cheese, and dishes of yellow mustard and jars of magenta pickles.

Over all floated a clock, with its hands at eleven.

Had she been so long wandering about? How could that be? Yet it had seemed several hours, at least.

There was only one woman in the bar-room, but for herself, Mrs Izzard-Lizard, who leaned on the counter with her fat tawny arms. She wore over her dress a blue pinafore dotted with sprigs of flowers. Her eyes were today the colour of water in which such flowers might have died.

“G’dee. Muz,” said Mrs Izzard, showing her selected teeth. “Can I gee a drink?”

“Thank you,” said Anna. She felt the eyes of the giants on her fragile back, piercing through her too-hot coat.

Mrs Izzard did not ask what Anna would have, and Anna was quite glad. She thought there would be nothing but beer or strong ale, for women were not entitled to drink here. But after all there were some large gleaming bottles set to one side and from one of these a colourless fluid was poured, into a long-stemmed glass.

This was placed before Anna, but when the woman specified money, Anna could not understand the sum. She put one of the crackling notes on the counter.

“Thassa take all my till, my dearie,” said Mrs Izzard. “But Mas Rarl issa sum.”

She took the note and put it away, and brought back to Anna a cupped palm of overflowing shining coins.

“You gwon fur the ladies’ perlor,” said Mrs Izzard, and coming out from the counter by means of a flap, showed Anna into a small back room.

Here was a single table, with a crocheted mat, and three chairs upholstered in something like sackcloth. A vase without anything in it stood on the windowsill, where lay also an exquisite dead moth with tissue wings. There was a painting on the wall of a girl child in old-fashioned dress, and with a pig’s face.

Mrs Izzard put down a brown jug, which was filled with water.

Anna sipped her drink. It might be gin. Raoul had bought her a gin at a station. This was very acid, metallic.

“I have to go up to London,” said Anna, speaking slowly and distinctly. “Would someone drive me to the nearest station? I shall be happy to pay, of course.”

“No stazn a males,” said Mrs Izzard. She smiled her teeth. When she did this, each time Anna felt a need to count them. “Twod be a longold drav.”

“But I must,” said Anna.

She thought, Oh of course I can’t escape. They won’t let me go. But that was totally unreasonable.

Mrs Izzard spoke with mild decision. “You drink your glaz, Muz, anile seef uny willin. You set.”

Anna said quickly, “Five pounds.”

She guessed this was a ridiculous amount, but Mrs Izzard smiled now with her mouth shut, so Anna couldn’t count.

“Ull see. You set. Jusset, beyeezy.”

She went out, and Anna had another mouthful of the gin, which stung her like a serpent.

The parlour was hot. Presently she undid her coat. She felt inadequate and silly, fleeing in fear from the sinister mansion, like a heroine. Anna was not a heroine.

She could hear the murmur of the giants’ voices, the clink of glasses. Sunlight bubbled, trilled.

The poor moth. It must have been shut in here and died, dashing itself fruitlessly at the window.

Anna’s head drooped. Her ears sang like the sea. She shut her eyes, only for a moment.

When she opened her eyes, she was in bed. She had the impression the bed, too, was in a box. A hot box. Everything was greyish-brown, but for one slab of latening apricot light. For some reason, although this was not the same, she was reminded of the hospital at Preguna. She was swathed in a cotton nightdress.

The next time her eyes opened, which now they seemed to do without her volition, a bloated vulpine face drifted from the ruddy gloom.

“Yuad a litt bid of a turn, my dearie. Nodda fret.”

Anna knew she was indeed a prisoner. (There had been another one, below, hadn’t there, in the parlour, lying dead.)

She pushed her hand – it looked so frail and white – up over the tons of heavy quilt. The diamond Raoul had bought for her glimmered cool.

“Do – you – want this?”

“Wun that, my dearie? Never.”

“Take it, please. It’s quite valuable. I must get to…” Where was it? Anna felt panic rise. She remembered. “To London.”

“Butta dunt wan her, Muz Animal. Tes only a bidda glass.”

Chapter Six: Entering Through Doors

Returning was not like the arrival. Not at all.

It was night, for one thing, or rather, earliest morning, and everything was black but for the headlamps of the creaking old car. The car was not up to the short journey from the village to the house. It stopped two or three times. The car did not want to take Anna back.

In the rear