Gloaming (eBook)

A Strange Tale of Enchantment

Charlotte E. English (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
235 Seiten
Frouse Books (Verlag)
978-0-00-003215-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Once upon a chime...

Every day at four o' clock, an enchanted twilight sweeps over Vale Argantel. Strange things happen under its eldritch influence: mists boil up out of the ground, rain pours out of a cloudless sky, and the roses grow wild and fey. Such is the way of things.

But when her friend falls through a magic mirror and disappears, Margot realises something's changed. An ancient enchantment has gone awry, and chaos quickly spreads. Magic-drunk, confused and hampered at every turn, Margot must find a way to reclaim Oriane - and before anybody else disappears.

But for Oriane, things are stranger still. Lost in a topsy-turvy world, how can she ever find her way home? For she's adrift in a place very like Argantel - eerily familiar, yet strangely different; a place which follows none of the usual rules...

Praise for Gloaming:

'One part Eleanor Farjeon, one part Lord Dunsany, one part Vera Chapman, but mostly her unique self, Charlotte English is the first new (to me) writer to make me excited in a long, long time. Her faultless prose by turns ascends with the lark, leads you down secret paths like the willow-the-wisp, bewitches you into bewilderment, and sparkles with eye-bedazzling wonder, taking you at last to an enchanted ending that leaves you as drunk on words as her protagonists on ensorceled rose-wine. Please, milady, more!' - Mercedes Lackey

Textauszug

1

The day was warm for hard work, and Margot De Courcey hitched her green cotton skirts a little higher, tucking folds of the fabric into the waistband until the hems rose above her knees. She spared a blush for propriety’s sake, but only a fleeting one, for who was to see her, save those employed in a similar labour? And every one of the winemakers of Landricourt wore their skirts the same way, today.

The summer was well on its way towards the fall of the leaves, and the air was thick and close. Margot had made her way as far as the dining-room, where the empty windows allowed only occasional wisps of a sluggish breeze to touch her damp skin. The roses had come in through the ceiling in this part of the rambling old house, and by now the thicket of thorns and bright, burnished leaves had claimed two of the walls and half of a third. All summer long they had been abundant with fat, heavy blossoms, their translucent petals hovering somewhere between silver and white; pale like the moon, folded around a clear glimmering heart like the wrappings of some promised gift. Such roses only grew at Landricourt. Some of them flourished still, but many had bowed their majestic heads and spilled their petals all across the dining-room floor. Only the hearts remained, and these plumped and fattened as the days passed, forming round, polished hips fragrant with a tantalising scent all their own.

These Margot was engaged in gathering, her hands clad in thick leather gloves against the prickling thorns. It was a shame to wrest them from their stems, she always thought; they glittered faintly, as though a mote of starlight slumbered somewhere within, and she felt like a thief stealing nature’s finest jewels. But they were succulent and fragrant, and the wine made from these fruits of autumn was beyond compare.

‘They are a gift,’ Maewen Brionnet had once said, and she had been a winemaker at Landricourt for years beyond counting. ‘Shall we leave them to rot, ungathered? Tsh! Such would be a crime.’

It sometimes fell to Margot to cut the roses from their stems before they had chance to wither, for it was also tradition that the petals should be pressed and distilled into rosewater, and this added to the brew. Where these traditions had come from, no one knew; nor who had been the first to harvest the strange, moon-pale roses of Landricourt and craft them into wine. It was only known that this was done, year upon year, and under Maewen’s direction the process had continued uninterrupted since before Margot’s birth.

It must be growing late, Margot felt, and even as she formed the thought the song began: a low, wordless humming, Adelaide’s rich voice leading the others. The Quincy family had always led the song, and Adelaide was a true daughter of theirs. For a few moments Margot merely listened, for Adelaide’s voice was like warm, rich chocolate mixed with honey — if her glorious notes could be likened to anything earthly at all. When Margot’s ears had drunk their fill of the melody, she lifted her own, less spectacular voice in her accustomed harmony. There were never words to the eventide song, but all knew the melody — even if its source was as lost to time as the tradition of winemaking.

The chimes came, melding with the music so perfectly that Margot struggled to make them out at all. One chime, two, three — grand, ringing sounds which echoed across the whole of Vale Argantel, emanating from the very skies.

A fourth resonant chime announced the arrival of four o’ clock, and, as was the way of things, the Gloaming swept across the valley. The sun dimmed and faded, lingering only as a faint, muted presence upon the far horizon. Shadows crept out of the corners and danced across the dining-room, and what light remained turned as silvery as the stars.

The sun took most of the day’s fierce heat away with it, and Margot wilted with relief. She clambered down from her perch atop an aged wooden step-ladder near the grand double-doors, holding her skirts carefully to keep her harvest of rosehips from spilling to the floor. Maewen had given her a basket the week before, a lovely woven thing more than capacious enough to hold many a rosehip. But Margot found it cumbersome, and preferred to continue using a fold of her skirt, turned up at the hem to form a cloth bag.

She regretted this a moment later, when a sudden hollering at the door caused her to start so severely that she dropped her skirt altogether. Her rosehips bounced and rolled away all over the floor, and Margot was left to curse both her own clumsiness and that of the visitor as she chased after them. She loved the evensong; it soothed and transported her, perhaps rather too much.

‘I suppose you have brought something, Master Talleyrand?’ she said tartly, for the noisy young man who had upset her harvest was Florian from the emporium in town. In the doorway he stood with his hands in his pockets, a flush staining his brown cheeks. He had got flour onto the tan cotton of his waistcoat somehow, and wisps of grass stuck out of the sage-green thicket of his hair.

Raucous he might sometimes be, but he was not boorish, for he flushed with dismay at the results of his too-eager greeting and hastened to help Margot collect them all up. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, and by the time all the pale rosehips were gathered and placed in Maewen’s wicker basket, he was as red and perspiring as she.

Margot straightened her aching back with a wince, feeling far older than she ought at her relatively youthful age. Working all day in the heat had its deleterious effects; that must be her excuse. ‘Well, what is it?’ she prompted, when Florian seemed disposed only to stand there and observe her discomfort in silence.

‘Actually, Seigneur Chanteraine requests your presence.’ Recovering his composure, Florian said this with a bow, as though he were inviting her to attend a dance rather than to attend upon his employer at a moment’s notice.

‘I shall come at once,’ she replied with a small sigh, for she had hoped to go directly to one of the streams behind Landricourt and wash away the day’s aches and grime. But a leisurely walk home through the cool of the Gloaming would be pleasant enough. ‘Why is it that I am wanted there?’ she enquired. The request had perhaps come from Sylvaine, Seigneur Chanteraine’s daughter and her occasional friend.

‘He asks that you bring a bottle of the new season’s rosewater.’

‘I?’ This was curious. ‘Why does he not direct such a request to Oriane? She is his usual aide at Landricourt, is she not?’

‘He did in fact ask for her at first, but I am told there is no sign of her today. I could only find Madame Brionnet, who sent me in search of you instead.’ He added, with his swift grin, ‘I found her at the top of the south-west turret, all used up for the day. I didn’t know that snoring was a component in the evensong.’

Margot felt a moment’s chagrin, for while she had been breaking her back in the dining-room, Maewen had been resting at her ease in a breezy tower-top! But the feeling melted away soon enough, for Madame Brionnet rarely allowed her age to slow her down. Instead, she laughed. ‘Only if it is suitably melodic snoring, in keeping with the harmony.’

‘It was, of course,’ said Florian, undoubtedly with more gallantry than truth.

‘Help me carry this basket,’ she pleaded, for though she was strong she was weary, and Florian made a fine picture of boundless energy. He fell to the task willingly enough, and accompanied her through the rambling old mansion as she went in search of the rosewater. They left the basket in the main hall, with the rest of the day’s harvest; a fine medley of containers was already deposited there, all brimming with rosehips.

Madame Brionnet stood over them as superintendent, and fixed Florian with a gimlet eye as he passed.

‘I have said nothing, ma’am,’ he assured her, mendaciously and in a loud whisper.

‘I am sure there is nothing of which to speak,’ said she stiffly. To Margot she added: ‘Take two bottles of the water, my dear, and quickly. Seigneur Chanteraine may be pleased to have a little to spare.’

Maewen’s eagerness to oblige the Chanteraines did not surprise Margot, for it was an attitude shared by many in Argantel. She hastened to obey the directive, glad to have Florian to assist her, for the great clay bottles were large and bulky and she did not feel equal to carting more than one of them across the valley.

As they left Landricourt in the deep twilight, the roses woke up around them, stretching their sparse petals under the soft, blue light. Their hearts swelled and shone, drinking up the effulgence, and Margot knew that when she returned in the morning there would be many more to collect. It was raining a little, though the sky was clear, and the distant strains of long-lost melodies drifted upon the wind.

 

Vale Argantel was not large. Landricourt was built against the downward slope of the hillside to the far west of the valley, and the town of Argantel nestled in the centre, at the valley’s lowest point. It was a safe spot, protected from high winds by the steep-sloping hills that rose all around it. Mist gathered in the early mornings and was slow to lift, clinging to the stone cottages and grey brick townhouses in a soft, white shroud.

Several small shops clustered around the central square. Arnaud Morel’s bakery was famed for the excellence of its bread, freshly baked every morning; Heloise Guillory made gowns and coats all day long in the establishment beside; Osmont Charron and his wife Nolwenn sold the fresh produce grown in the fields that covered half of Vale Argantel. But chief among them...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.9.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-003215-8 / 0000032158
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-003215-7 / 9780000032157