Stepsister Read online

  By the time the wagon passed by, Tavi was clutching her seat, and Isabelle’s hands were trembling so badly she had to squeeze Martin’s reins hard to steady them. Tantine’s mouth was set in a grim line. No one spoke.

  Isabelle remembered her book, An Illustrated History of the World’s Greatest Military Commanders. She and Felix had pored over it when they were little, looking at the hand-colored plates depicting famous battles. The pictures made them look glorious and exciting and the soldiers who’d fought them dashing and brave. But the suffering she’d just witnessed didn’t seem glorious at all. It left her stunned and sickened. She tried to picture the man responsible for it. Volkmar. He was a duke, she’d been told. Did he wear medals on his uniform? A sash across his chest? Did he ride a horse? Carry a sword?

  For a moment, Isabelle’s vision narrowed. She no longer saw the road ahead of her, the stone walls that lined it, the roses that tumbled over them. In her mind’s eye, a figure, tall and powerful, strode toward her across a battlefield. White smoke swirled around him, obscuring his face, but she could see the sword he held in his hand, its blade razor-sharp. A shiver ran through her, just as it had in the marketplace.

  Tavi spoke and the image faded. “Where are they going?” she asked.

  “To an army camp on the other side of Saint-Michel. I heard villagers talking about it,” Isabelle replied, shaking off the strange vision and the sense of dread it left behind.

  “I’ve seen many such wagons on my way from Paris,” said Tantine. “Ah, girls, I fear this war will not go well for us. Our king is young and untested, and Volkmar is ruthless and wily. His troops are fewer, yet they defeat the king’s at every turn.”

  The three fell silent again. The only sounds were of Martin’s plodding hooves, the creaking of the cart, and the droning of insects. Before long, they reached the turnoff to the LeBenêt farm. A dusty drive led to an old stone farmhouse. Threadbare white curtains hung in its windows; sagging shutters framed them. Chickens scratched around the weathered blue door.

  The cow barn and dairy house, also built of stone, were connected to the farmhouse. Behind them, cattle grazed in a fenced pasture, and fields bearing cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and onions stretched all the way to the edge of the Wildwood.

  Losca was out of the cart before it stopped. As Isabelle helped Tantine down, and Tavi opened the back of the cart to get her trunk, Madame LeBenêt, threadbare and weathered herself, came out to greet them, if one could call it a greeting.

  “What do you want?” she barked, the look on her face sour enough to curdle milk.

  “We’ve brought your great-aunt, madame,” Isabelle said, nodding at Tantine. “She has come all the way from Paris with her maidservant.”

  Madame LeBenêt’s eyes narrowed; her scowl deepened. “I have no great-aunt,” she said.

  “I am Madame Sévèrine, your late husband’s great-aunt,” Tantine explained.

  “My husband never mentioned you.”

  “I’m not surprised. There was a family feud, so much bad blood—”

  Madame LeBenêt rudely cut her off. “Do you take me for a fool? Every day now, strangers fleeing Paris come to Saint-Michel pretending to be someone’s long-lost this-or-that to get themselves food and shelter. No, madame, I’m sorry. You cannot stay here. You and your maid will eat us out of house and home.”

  Eat them out of house and home? Isabelle thought. This little old lady? Her scrawny maid? She ducked her head and fiddled with a buckle on Martin’s harness. She didn’t dare look up lest Madame caught her rolling her eyes.

  The whole village knew Avara LeBenêt was a miser. Not only did she have bountiful fields, she had two dozen laying hens, ten milk cows, berry bushes, apple trees, and a large kitchen garden. She made a small fortune at the market every Saturday, yet all she ever did was complain about how poor she was.

  “Ah, I am sorry to hear you have no place for me,” Tantine said, with a crestfallen sigh. “I fear I shall have to settle the inheritance on another member of the family.”

  Madame LeBenêt snapped to attention like a pointer that had spotted a nice fat duck. “Inheritance? What inheritance?” she asked sharply.

  “The inheritance my late husband instructed me to bestow upon your late husband. I thought to possibly give it to your son, but now …”

  Madame LeBenêt slapped her forehead. “Tante Sévèrine!” she exclaimed. “Of course! My husband often spoke of you! And with such fondness. You must be exhausted from your travels. Let me fix you a cup of tea.”

  “She should be on the stage,” Tavi said to Isabelle.

  Madame LeBenêt heard her. “What are you two waiting for?” she snapped. “Fetch her trunk!”

  With great difficulty, Isabelle and Tavi managed to slide the trunk off the cart and carry it into the house. Isabelle hoped Losca might help them, but the girl was peering intently at a grasshopper on the scraggly rosebush near Madame LeBenêt’s door, completely absorbed by it. Madame directed Isabelle and Tavi to place the trunk in a small bedroom, then hurried into the house to start the tea. When the girls returned to their cart, they saw that Tantine was still standing by it.

  Tavi climbed back up into the cart and sat down, but Isabelle hesitated. “Will you be all right here?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Tantine assured her. “I can handle Avara. Thank you again for the ride.”

  “It was nothing. Thank you for saving me from certain death at the hands of Cecile,” Isabelle said wryly.

  She turned to leave, but as she did, Tantine caught hold of her hand. Isabelle was surprised by the strength in those gnarled fingers.

  They stood there for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes, perfectly still. Fate, a creature with no heart and no soul, who walked with the dust of Alexandria on her shoes, the ashes of Pompeii on her hem, the red clay of Xi’an on her sleeves. As old as time. Without beginning or end.

  And a human girl. So poorly made. Just tender flesh and bitten nails and a battered heart beating in a fragile cage of bone.

  Isabelle had no idea whose fathomless eyes she was gazing into. She had no idea that Fate meant to win the wager she’d made, no matter the cost.

  “We must be going, Tantine,” she finally said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  Fate nodded. She gave Isabelle’s hand one last squeeze. “Yes, and I hope you will, too. Be careful of those fleeing Paris, child,” she warned. “Not all refugees are harmless old biddies like me. Some are scoundrels, just looking to lead young girls astray. Be wary. Close your shutters. Bolt your doors. And above all, trust nothing—nothing—to chance.”

  Many hours later, on a blue damask picnic cloth, in a field well south of Saint-Michel, a diva, a magician, and an actress sat under an oak tree eating fruit and sweets.

  Around them, musicians played. A juggler tossed flaming torches into the air. A sword-swallower gulped down a saber. And three noisy capuchins leapt to and fro in the branches of the oak while the fourth sat on the picnic cloth, eyeing the diva’s pearls.

  “Watch out. The little robber is planning his next theft,” the magician warned.

  “Nelson,” the diva cautioned, wagging a finger at the monkey. “Don’t even think—”

  Her words were cut off by a loud bellow. “Now?”

  “No!” came the shouted reply.

  The three women turned toward the source of the racket. Chance, hands on his hips, was standing by a large, painted carriage. He’d flung off his coat. His white ruffled shirt was open at the neck, his long braids gathered up and tied with someone’s shoelace. Sweat beaded on his brow.

  Standing on top of the carriage, and on top of one another’s shoulders, were four acrobats. The bottommost had rooted his strong legs to the roof; the topmost held a telescope to her eye.

  “Go,” Chance commanded a fifth, gesturing to the carriage. “Tell me what you see.”

  A moment later, a wiry boy was climbing to the top of the human tower.

  “Any
thing?” Chance shouted as the boy took the telescope from the acrobat under him. “You’re looking for a village called Saint-Michel. It has a church with a statue of the archangel on it …”

  “I can’t see it!”

  Chance swore. “You’re next!” he said, to a second wiry boy.

  “Another one?” the diva said, turning away. “I can’t look.”

  Chance and his friends were lost. The driver had been navigating on instinct and had taken a wrong turn. He’d had no road map to consult; Chance didn’t like them. They spoiled the fun, he said. Now evening was coming down, the village of Saint-Michel was nowhere in sight, and Chance was hoping his acrobats could spot it.

  The diva helped herself to a macaron from a pretty paper box in the center of the picnic cloth and bit into the sweet. Its brittle meringue shattered; crumbs fell into her cleavage. The monkey scampered over and fished them out.

  “Nelson, you fresh thing!” she cried, swatting him. Nelson threw his furry arms around her neck, kissed her, and shot off. Had she not been so annoyed by his antics, she might’ve noticed that he was trailing something through the grass.

  “The crone’s already there. I feel it,” the magician fretted, threading a silver coin in and out of her long, nimble fingers.

  “If she finds the girl before Chance does, she’ll poison her with doubt and fear,” said the diva.

  “But this Isabelle, she’s strong, no?” the actress asked.

  “So I’ve heard,” said the magician. “But is she strong enough?”

  “He thinks so,” the diva said, nodding at Chance. “But who can say? You know what it takes to break free of the crone. It’s a battle, as we who have waged it well know. And battles inflict wounds.”

  She pushed up her sleeve. An ugly scar ran from her wrist to her elbow. “From my father. He came after me with a knife when I told him I would not enter a convent as he wished but would go to Vienna instead to study opera.”

  The magician pulled the neck of her jacket open to show her scar, livid and shiny, just under her collarbone. “From a rock. Thrown by a priest who called me a devil. Because the townspeople liked my miracles better than his.”

  The actress’s hand went to a gold locket pinned on her jacket, over her heart. She opened it and showed the others painted miniatures of a girl and a boy.

  “No scar, but a wound that will never heal,” she said, tears shimmering in her eyes. “My children. Taken from me by a judge and given to my drunken husband. Because only an immoral woman would exhibit herself upon a stage.”

  The magician pulled the actress close. She kissed her cheek and wiped her tears away with a handkerchief. Then she balled the handkerchief up and pressed it between her palms. When she opened her hands again, it was gone and a butterfly was sitting in its place.

  As the three women watched, the butterfly took wing, carried aloft by the breeze.

  It flew past a little monkey playing with a rope of pearls. Past a violinist and a trumpeter, a cook, a scientist, and three ballerinas, all with scars of their own.

  Past a man with amber eyes, raging at the falling dusk. Swearing at the treacherous roads. Building his teetering human tower taller and taller.

  A smile, small but defiant, curved the magician’s full red lips. “That’s what we do with our pain,” she said, watching the butterfly rise. “We make it into something beautiful.”

  “We make it into something meaningful,” said the diva.

  “We make it matter,” whispered the actress.

  As night came down, Fate sipped a cup of chamomile tea with Madame LeBenêt, Chance tried to find his way to Saint-Michel, and Isabelle, standing in her kitchen, cast a worried glance at her sister.

  Tavi was doing what she always did in the evening: sitting by the hearth, a book open in her lap. But the furrows in her forehead looked deeper tonight, the shadows under her eyes darker.

  Always bookish and inward, she’d become even more so since Ella had left. Sometimes Isabelle felt as if she were watching her sister fade like cooling embers, and that one day soon she would turn to ash and blow away.

  The two sisters were a year apart in age and looked very much alike. They both had auburn hair, high foreheads, a smattering of freckles across their noses, and eyes the color of strong coffee. Tavi was taller, with a lean figure; Isabelle was curvier. But it was their personalities more than anything else that set them apart. Tavi was cool and contained; Isabelle was anything but.

  As Isabelle arranged slices of ham, apple, bread, and cheese on a plate to take upstairs to her mother, she wondered how to draw her sister out. “What are you reading, Tav?” she asked.

  “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing by the Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi,” Tavi replied, without looking up.

  “Sounds like a page-turner,” Isabelle teased. “Who’s Al-Khwarizmi?”

  “The father of algebra,” Tavi replied, looking up. “Though many believe the Greek mathematician Diophantus can also lay claim to the title.”

  “That’s a funny word, algebra. Don’t you think?” Isabelle asked, eager to keep her talking.

  Tavi smiled. “It comes from Arabic. From al-jabr, which means ‘the reunion of broken parts.’ Al-Khwarizmi believed that what’s broken can be made whole again if you just apply the right equation.” Her smile dimmed a little. “If only there were an equation that could do the same for people.”

  She was about to say more, but a voice, shrilling from the doorway, cut her off.

  “Isabelle! Octavia! Why aren’t you dressed? We’re going to be late for the ball!”

  Maman stepped into the kitchen, her lips set in an icy frown. She was wearing a satin gown the color of a winter sky and a plume of white ostrich feathers in her badly pinned-up hair. Her face was pale; her eyes were feverishly bright. Her hands fluttered around her body like doves, patting her hair one minute, twining in her pearls the next.

  Isabelle’s heart sank at the sight of her; she had not been right since Ella left. Sometimes she was her competent, imperious self. At other times, like tonight, she was confused. Lost in the past. Convinced that they were going to a dinner, a ball, or the palace.

  “Maman, you have the date wrong,” she said now, giving her a soothing smile.

  “Don’t be silly. I have the invitation right here.” Maman showed Isabelle the printed card she was holding, its ivory surface smudged, its edges bent.

  Isabelle recognized it; it had arrived months ago. “Yes, you do,” she said cheerily. “But you see, Maman, that ball has already taken place.”

  Maman stared at the engraved words. “I—I can’t seem to read the date …” she said, her words trailing off.

  “Come. I’ll help you undress. You can put on a nice comfortable nightdress and lie down.”

  “Are you quite certain about the date, Isabelle?” Maman asked, her tyrannical tone giving way to a bewildered one.

  “Yes. Go back to your room now. I’ll bring you your supper,” Isabelle coaxed, taking her mother’s arm.

  But Maman, suddenly vexed again, shook her off. “Octavia, put that book down!” she demanded. “You’ll ruin your eyes with all those numbers.” She strode across the room and snatched the book from Tavi’s hands. “Honestly! What man ever thinks, Oh, how I’d love to meet a girl who can solve for x? Go get dressed. We cannot keep the countess waiting!”

  “For God’s sake, Maman, stop this!” Tavi snapped. “That ball was ages ago and even if it wasn’t, the countess doesn’t want us anymore. Nobody does!”

  Maman stood very still. She said nothing for quite some time. When she spoke again, her voice was little more than a whisper. “Of course the countess wants us. Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Because she knows,” Tavi said. “About Ella and how we treated her. She hates us. The whole village hates us. The whole country does. We’re outcasts!”

  Maman pressed her palm to her forehead. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the febrile brig
htness had receded and clarity had returned. But something else was there, too—a cold, menacing anger.

  “You think yourself very clever, Octavia, but you are not,” she said. “Before the prince came for Ella, I had five offers of marriage for her. Five. Even though I turned her into a kitchen girl. Do you know how many I’ve had for you? Zero. Solve that equation, my dear.”

  Tavi, stung, looked away.

  “What, exactly, do you expect to do with all your studying?” Maman asked, waving the book in the air. “Become a professor? A scientist? Such things are only for men. If I cannot find a husband for you, who will keep you when I’m no longer here? What will you do? Become a governess to another woman’s children, living in some cold attic room, eating leftovers from her table? Work as a seamstress, stitching day and night until you go blind?” Maman shook her head disgustedly. “Even in rags, Ella outshined you. She was pretty and pleasing, and you? You make yourself ugly with your numbers, your formulas, your ridiculous equations. It must stop. It will stop.”

  She walked to the hearth and threw the book into the fire.

  “No!” Tavi cried. She leapt out of her chair, grabbed a poker, and tried to rescue it, but the flames were already blackening the pages.

  “Finish dressing, both of you!” Maman ordered, striding out of the room. “Jacques! Bring the carriage!”

  “Tavi, did you have to upset her?” Isabelle asked angrily. “Maman!” she called, running after her mother. “Where are you?”

  She found her trying to open the front door, still calling for the carriage. It took Isabelle ages to get her back upstairs. Once she had her in her bedroom, she helped her undress and gave her a glass of brandy to calm her. She tried to get her to eat, but Maman refused. Eventually, Isabelle managed to get her into bed, but as she was pulling the covers over her, Maman sat up and grabbed her arm. “What will become of you and your sister? Tell me?” she asked, her eyes fearful.