The Mansion of Nettles — 3
Kasvren stood speechless for a moment before the grandeur of Drasken Mansion. Its walls of rare gray brick made it look less like a house than like a mountain of rock hewn straight and true. The black windows, polished yet curtained off, might have belonged to the hundred-eyed monster of some old myth—peering in every direction for intruders, brooding over when best to swallow them whole.
He waded through stinging nettles that rose to his knees and stubborn vines that clung to his insteps, until he stood before the entrance. Before the firmly shut door he paused to collect himself and took hold of the knocker. It was horribly, unsettlingly cold. He could almost hear it shrieking in disgust at the arrival of an unwelcome guest.
Boom. Boom.
The sound of his knocking rang through the entire mansion. He stepped back the proper distance from the door and waited for someone to answer. No one came. Could the place be abandoned after all? No—that was impossible. Had he not heard all the stories from the villagers?
Kasvren decided to knock again and reached for the knocker. And at that very instant, the left-hand door swung open with a grating creak, agonizingly slow.
His shoulders shuddered, as if a ghost were pulling it. But when the one responsible for opening it appeared before him, Kasvren could not help but scoff at his own cowardice—a weakness he hadn't known he possessed. The one who opened the door was no ghost—a ghost, of all things, what nonsense—but a middle-aged servant who looked to be of very advanced years. Deep and shallow wrinkles alike blanketed his face, and death-flowers bloomed at his temples, yet his eyes were clear. No—they were positively piercing.
The old man remained silent long enough for Kasvren to feel more than sufficiently flustered. It almost seemed as though he were waiting for the visitor's spirit to wear out and flee. Then, quite suddenly, he asked, in a pronunciation startlingly weighty and distinct:
"What business brings you here?"
Kasvren understood instinctively that no welcome awaited him in this place. The brusque tone, the hostility in those eyes, the depth of darkness settled into the wrinkled face—it all felt like a brand stamping the word intruder onto his own forehead. And that gaze, sweeping slowly down him from head to toe! Suppressing his disgust and discomfort, Kasvren strove to maintain the most gentlemanly and courteous bearing he could manage.
"I am—"
The words caught in his throat. How was he supposed to introduce himself? The Selvain Marquisate had nothing more to do with him now, did it not? Kasvren Selvain of the Selvain Marquisate had ceased to exist. He had no connection to that house anymore, and he was certainly not its heir. But short of that claim, he had no way to prove who he was.
As he hesitated, the old man's eyes grew more suspicious still, and he made to shut the door. What a temperamental old codger, Kasvren thought, cursing inwardly, and forced himself to speak.
"I am Kasvren Selvain."
"You come from the Selvain Marquisate, you say?"
"That is so."
Even so, the old man showed no inclination to admit him, only staring fixedly into his eyes. Kasvren felt his unease deepen, certain that the old man's gray eyes were boring straight through to his innermost thoughts—until he realized it was not so at all. The reason his heart felt so ill at ease was not the old man's sharp gaze. It was because he himself, Kasvren, had not come to this mansion with a light and easy conscience in the first place. And the dark, gloomy glimpse of the interior through the gap in the door lent ample support to that discomfort.
Then it happened.
"Who is it?"
At the voice that rang out from inside the mansion, Kasvren blankly turned his gaze toward its source. Might the voice of an angel descended from heaven sound something like this? Kasvren did not believe in God. He did not believe in the existence of angels, either. And yet that voice was too beautiful to be human's, and far too human to belong to something inhuman. A being that resembled a human but was not one—surely that could only be an angel, seated solemnly at the right hand of God with a long trumpet in hand.
The door opened. Only then could Kasvren take in the whole of the mansion's dim hall, and after it, a woman descending the semicircular staircase.
He recognized at once that she was the youngest daughter the godfather had spoken of—Isolde Drasken, the last survivor of House Drasken. The assured stride, and yet the featherlight, graceful movements that made her seem to walk as delicately as a bird; the expression steeped in sorrow and loneliness, set against eyes so black and so vivid it was as if she had stolen the cosmos and hidden it within them.
The old man stepped back a pace. The mistress of this majestic and taciturn mansion stood proudly facing Kasvren, arrayed in a spotless white dress without a speck of dust upon it. She was small in stature but seemed solid enough that a needle's tip could not have found entry, and her slender brows lent her a keen, exacting air.
"May I ask who you are?"
When she spoke again, Kasvren realized the voice he had first heard had been slightly amplified by the hall's acoustics. Her voice remained lovely, though a touch low. At moments it sounded faintly dry, like sand-soaked gravel.
"Forgive the abruptness of my visit. I am Kasvren, of House Selvain in the capital."
"Selvain...? You mean the Selvain Marquisate?"
"Yes, that is right. Have you had dealings with them, by chance?"
Her brow drew into a fine crease.
"I have only heard of them. Though I do know my father exchanged courtesies with them once, long ago. What sudden business brings you all the way here? When my father's funeral was held, I recall that no one from the Selvain Marquisate attended."
A faint guilt stirred in Kasvren at the wariness in her tone. She may have said it without meaning anything by it, but his failure to attend the godfather's funeral had been a thorn lodged in a corner of his heart ever since he had learned the man was dead. He laid a hand over one side of his chest and bowed with courtesy.
"So it was. Though late, I offer my condolences."
She offered no word of thanks, only staring straight at him. Her expression was so cold it seemed to say, state your business and be gone. Haughty, proud young ladies he had seen plenty of in the capital—but someone like her he had never once encountered in his life. Feeling like some wretch who had barged uninvited into a temple, Kasvren opened his mouth with careful politeness.
"If I am not mistaken, you are Lady Isolde Drasken, Princess of Drasken."
"I am. I am Isolde Drasken."
"Someone you have never met knows not only your family name but your given name—and you are not even surprised?"
"You would have passed through the village to get here, surely? Then there is no way you didn't hear about me. What did they say? A witch, a murderer, a woman living under some dreadful curse in the House of Drasken—don't they tell it so?"
He had heard exactly that, and worse besides. Pity and bitterness rose in Kasvren unbidden. Clearly, even to this lonely and secluded place, rumor spread with the virulent vitality of a poisonous seed. Not wanting to answer yes, he said instead:
"I have come at the request of my godfather. Her Grace's late father, Grand Duke Drasken, was my godfather. It was he who entrusted you to me."
"What are you saying? My father died years ago. I have never heard a word about his having a godson."
"Most people wouldn't know. My godfather sought no advantage from it—he simply took pity on me, and of his own accord became my godfather."
"That is the sort of thing my father might well have done. But I know nothing of you, and so I cannot admit you to this mansion. I am sorry, but please turn back—and do not come here again."
And then. Dear God. Before Kasvren's very eyes, she moved to close the door. So sudden was it all that he, wide-eyed and all but ejected, wedged the toe of his shoe into the doorframe at the last possible instant and stopped it from closing. His face burned hot at the thought that he had behaved no better than common riffraff, and anger flared in him besides. However much one lived alone, to turn away a guest who had come announcing his name in such a fashion—he had never heard of such a thing, not once in his life.
"Please, wait just a moment!"
At his obstruction, she flung the door open again, her expression livid. For the first time, something resembling emotion rose in those two black eyes that seemed to draw everything in and swallow it. As he watched the searing blaze kindle there, a storm of thoughts churned through his head—the murderer who had slaughtered his own family, and a witch—yet Kasvren hastily drew the small pouch from his pocket and held out the ring he had found among the Grand Duke's effects.
"Please verify whether this is your father's ring."