Crown of Stars: A Novel

Prologue

Margaret

I wake in darkness. I smile. The time has come at last.

I press my palms against the heavy weight of stone above me. I push upward with all my strength and the lid moves slowly until there’s a slim lip of gray light. I work one hand out, and then the other. My fingers grip the sides of the coffin as I slowly sit up. Here, in the crypt, torches flicker with blue flames, though they cast no heat or real light. Stone angels stare with sightless eyes. The air is tepid, with a faint tang of dust.

This is a place that even the dead have forgotten.

I emerge. Vertebrae stacking one upon the other, muscles, tendons, fibers, blood, bone, and flesh. I stand. Then, slowly, one foot in front of the other, I begin to walk. One foot in front of the other, one step leading to another. Each more sure than the one before. Faster. Faster now. I run. Up the stone stairs and through the passageway past the Great Hall, my palms sweeping along the rough-hewn walls, my footfalls echoing dully in the silence.

I remember tiptoeing down to the crypt that night, careful to blend with the shadows, careful not to be seen, but now I look neither left nor right as I fly past the black maws of the cavernous hallways. There is nothing to see. There is no one here to see me. No lords nor ladies in their finery. No servants scurrying on errands, knights in the courtyard nor horses snorting in the stables. No fires smoking in the hearths. No tapestries stirring against the walls or rushes whispering upon the floor. This is only the shell of a memory.

I run from the castle to the world beyond. With a single step I cross valleys and fields, mountains and oceans. I run from the Old World to the New World. The world of here. The world of now. And I am within it again.

The breeze is soft upon my bare flesh. I thrill to it. I run on. He is close.

There, on the shore of the lake, a small boat waits for me. It waits to take me to him, on the other side of the water. I row and row. I relish the strength in my arms each time I plunge the oar through water. Each stroke pulls me closer. I could be blind yet I would still find him.

I reach the far bank, the sliver of beach, and run into the small wood beyond. The earth is damp beneath my feet. It teems with life. I trail my fingertips against the trees. I hear the faint rustle of the leaves, and the hum of insects.

The wood dissolves to a path of small stones, pale in the moonlight. Up ahead is a dwelling from which bright light shines out, eclipsing the moon.

He is there. God alone knows how long I have waited for this. God alone knows what I have sacrificed.

I do not stop to marvel at the two monstrous hunks of steel, the size of oxcarts, looming just off the path. I have waited too long. Instead, I slip through the open door and up gleaming wooden steps, which lead to an outside balcony.

Through the dimness I can just make out a figure lying motionless upon a pillowed bench. Another one of his victims? But no, as my eyes adjust I can make out the broad shoulders and tapering torso of a sleeping man.

Something catches the corner of my eye. My quarry’s victories must have made him careless. Why else would he have left it gleaming upon a table?

I slowly, reverently, pick it up, savoring its heft within my grasp. I press my thumb lightly against the blade and delight in the bead of blood.

There is a muffled thud beneath my feet, and a creak followed by another. He is coming.

I slink back into the darkness. A slight tremor shakes the balcony, and there he is, the one who I have waited for.

He approaches the man who lies upon the bed. He is so intent that he does not notice the absence of the knife. He does not sense me at all. He clutches an ordinary carving knife, and I suddenly understand. He would not use his sacred blade upon the body of a man.

He raises the knife above him.

I step out of the shadows.

He turns. His eyes widen in surprise, and could it be fear? I grin.

Katherine? His voice holds a question, holds doubt. Katherine, my heart?

A growl wells and swells deep within my chest. My lips draw back; I bare my teeth. I will rip his eyes from his face. I will tear his skin from his bones.

I lunge.

He is caught by surprise, but he struggles. I claw at his face, his throat. He is fighting hard, holding me back. Again he calls me by a name that is not mine.

Katherine! he cries.

I spit and hiss. I am a silver serpent. I am burning coil and poisoned fang. I will crush him in my folds, I will crack his bones, I will strike his neck, I will suck him of life.

Then his face softens. He stops struggling, turns limp. The Thing that defends itself drains away, and he opens his arms up to me as my own lover once did, a lifetime ago.

Please, he begs.

I do not stop to question why he would surrender, for now it is my time. For the spilled blood and the wasted centuries, the slaughtered children and innocence defiled, for the warped and twisted lives left moldering on the scrap heap, for the agony and injustice suffered by all he butchered, and for my own life too, I scream. I scream out all my rage and pain as I drive his knife in up to its hilt, splintering bone and severing sinew, twisting the curved blade deep into his heart. It is vengeance. It is ecstasy. It is mine.

His eyes roll back, and I cry out with joy. A million voices join my song in triumph.

Now someone else is screaming. The man on the bed has woken and he screams and screams. But he is of no importance to me.

I have kept my vow. And again, for a while, I can sleep.

First Trimester

1

Katherine

Tell me a story, the little boy says.

What story would you like? she asks.

You know the one, he says.

She does. It’s a story about Princess Katherine and Prince Lucas and their quest to find a magical treasure that grants health and happiness to those who discover it. The treasure is hidden in the dark, cold castle of King Spear, guarded by a Griffin and a Sorceress and a Giant Toad. The little boy’s favorite part of the story is when the Giant Toad falls in love with Princess Katherine and tries to give her great big, slimy toady kisses. He giggles and squirms as she imitates the Toad’s blubbering croak and gives him a raspberry on his neck. Then the story is over. The Princess and Prince escape, thanks to their courage and bravery, to search for the treasure another day. Meanwhile, it’s bedtime.

The woman tucks the little boy up under the covers. She tells him she loves him. She gives him a good-night kiss on the forehead; then she gets up and turns out the light. She is careful not to close the door all the way as she leaves, careful not to leave him in full darkness. She’s promised him a night-light when they finally find their own apartment. Until then she leaves the door open a crack. That will have to do.

Once outside, she takes a moment, stands on the opposite side of the door. It seems as if she is listening for something, but for what, she cannot say. At any rate, there is nothing to hear. She gathers herself together and walks into the next room slowly, almost wading through the air, and now that she is alone and does not have to tell stories, we can see how tired she is. She falls, arms outstretched, face forward, onto the bed. She wonders where she will find the strength to undress, to brush her teeth.

How am I doing, Andrea? she asks the silent room.

There is no answer. Why would there be?

Andrea, the mother of four-year-old Lucas, who now sleeps in the other room, is dead. She’s dead, and these days the dead stay quiet.

There was a time, not so long ago, when this was not the case. But Andrea Bowers, the eleventh victim of David Balan, a serial killer known as the Sickle Man, is dead, and Katherine Anne Emerson, his only survivor, is tired. She’s bone-tired after working all day as a temp at Sterling and Spear Investment Fund Management. She knows nothing about investments or funding, only knows that she has none and needs some.

Katherine’s life is ruled by ifs. If she does a good enough job in her temporary position, maybe Sterling and Spear will make it a permanent one. If she becomes permanent she can get health insurance, and if she gets health insurance she can afford to go to the doctor. She doesn’t want to go to the doctor, but she needs to go to the doctor. The small plastic stick with the two pink lines tells her she must.

And she’ll have to tell him. Him, the man she loves, Sael de Villias. Possibly the most pretentious name ever.

"It’s pronounced ‘Sah-el,’" he had told her, staring at her with his merciless, pale eyes, when she had mistakenly first called him Saul.

Sael, who proposed; Sael, the man she thought she would marry; Sael of forever and ever. Sael, who now hates her.

She can’t remember much of that night. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the shrinks say, all of them, and there have been many . . .

She was running, naked and terrified, through the woods, and then came those strange images, nightmares that made no sense. A figure in a boat. A castle. A coffin. The woman in the green dress.

She doesn’t remember how she got back to the cabin, though apparently she used an abandoned rowboat, nor how or where she found the strange, curved knife.

She doesn’t remember plunging it into David’s chest.

But after that, she remembers more than she wants to. She remembers Sael screaming. She remembers David falling backward over the balcony. The crunching sound of the wooden rail breaking, the soft thud of his body hitting the earth below. She remembers the way Sael looked at her as he cradled his friend in his arms.

You killed him, you killed him, you killed him!

In the world’s eyes, Katherine is a heroine. In Sael’s eyes, she’s a murderer.

David was his best friend. David had also been her friend, and also more than a friend. The truth is, it doesn’t matter that she acted in self-defense, or what horrific acts David had committed. The moment she killed David, she severed the bond between herself and Sael. He couldn’t get past it, couldn’t look at her in the same way again.

Katherine will survive. She’s a survivor, only she knows that surviving isn’t the same thing as living. There have been days, many of them, when she didn’t think she could make it out of bed. Had it not been for Lucas, she would have stayed there, maybe taken too many of the tranquilizers she’d been prescribed. But there is Lucas, and now there’s a little plastic stick that confirms what she’s known for a while.

She’ll have to tell Sael. Soon.

2

Margaret

It is said to be spring, but Old Mother Winter will not be so easily banished. She rattles at the doors and shrieks down the chimneys and scrapes her bony knuckles against the shutters. Luckily, in the King’s Head, the doors have been fastened and barred against her. For tonight there is a celebration, the wedding of the most popular man for miles around and his young, beautiful bride. The whole village is here, at least those who endured the bitter cold, the illnesses, and the meager portions.

They are here because everyone knows that when the tavern owner is wed, the drink is sure to flow, and they are not disappointed. John Belwood is generous to a fault, and his ale is famed throughout five counties.

If it were not for me, my father would have been wed an age ago.

The women wear their finest dresses, the men their best tunics, bright reds and blues and greens and yellows. They have even washed for the occasion, hauled bucket after bucket from the well, stoked the fires, heated jugs, scoured themselves with tallow and wood ash. After the long, harsh winter, everyone has a pale, plucked look to them, scrawny fowl scarcely fit for the pot. Still, tonight they’re happy. There’s a pipe and tabor, a fiddle and dancing. There is drink and food for all. The evening is filled with laughter and songs and toast upon toast to the bride and groom, but especially to the bride. Toasts to her pink cheeks, and toasts to her blue eyes, and above all to her golden hair, which is almost as famous as the Belwood ale.

My father grins as he sits at one large table, already in his cups, accepting those slaps on the back along with the good-natured ribbing that must come when a much older man marries a young and beautiful girl.

And where is Cecily, the bride? Why, she’s there, surrounded by her friends, a gaggle of girls who giggle and coo. The older women watch indulgently. They are ready to give advice, to reminisce about their own wedding days, to whisper of the failures that took place in the marriage bed. Occasionally they will glance over toward their husbands to make sure that they have not been overheard. But there’s little chance of that, what with the clamor of lumbering young men attempting to dance with their squealing partners and the roar of laughter at stale jokes freshened, for a time at least, by ale. Meanwhile, Cecily remains extraordinarily self-possessed for one so young. She sits calmly enough through the gale of teasing and advice and compliments. She lowers her eyes fetchingly, letting her lashes graze against her soft cheeks. She knows that she is the most beautiful, most desirable girl in the county. She knows she has made a good match. And she knows she can afford to sit and smile and simply let the praise rain down upon her.

I wonder, not for the first time, what my mother would think if she could see her.

Pretty, she might have said. Pretty as a bird, and as cunning as a serpent.

I bite my lip. Surely my mother would have wanted my father to be happy. It is only I who stand and watch with such bitterness in my heart.

But no, I look over and see another who sits by herself. She is young, but her pinched expression makes her seem older than her years. Her hair is yellow, but not the gold of Cecily’s. More the color of soiled straw. Her watery, pink-rimmed eyes remind me of a mouse’s. I silently name her Mouse Wife, although I know who she is, as everyone in the village must. Her true name is Bertha, and she is the collier’s new wife, after his first died in childbirth along with the baby. It is unspoken, but generally agreed, that this was a lucky escape for her and her child. Upon their deaths, the collier left town and a few days later returned with this thin, sad thing. I feel sorry for her, married to the collier. I think of his thick, grimy fingers reluctantly working the coins from his purse, how his small, rheumy eyes crawl over my breasts and hips. He is known to be rough when drunk. As if on cue, he roars at a jest and the Mouse Wife flinches. I wonder what would happen if I went and sat next to Bertha, offered her a cup of ale. Perhaps she would look at me and smile. After all, Bertha has not yet been poisoned by the others. For a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like to have her as a friend. I picture walking with her to the marketplace, exchanging gossip and stories as we go the way the other women do. I would make a poultice for her bruises, be there when she needed to cry. Bertha in turn would defend me when the women talk.

Pay them no mind, she might say, for what do they know? She could help me keep my temper.

The dream is a heady one. But why not? On the day of my father’s wedding, perhaps I too could have some luck. I swallow and rise to fill a cup to the brim; then I take a step toward her. The Mouse Wife looks up and, miraculously, she meets my gaze. She sees my outstretched hand holding the cup and a little grin flickers at the corners of her mouth. Really, she is not so mousy after all when she smiles. She rises, opening her hand to receive the cup, but before she can do so Mistress Faye swoops down like a great black crow and sweeps her up and away to the older women’s table.

Her rescue is executed with astonishing speed. I am left standing, cup in hand. I watch as Bertha the Mouse Wife is ushered into the group, watch how they move over to make room for her. I know that, if it weren’t for me, Mistress Faye and her lot would have taken their time, been slower to welcome Bertha to their circle. After all, she is still a stranger. But even a stranger must be protected. Even a stranger must be warned.

The women gather in. Any moment now they’ll tell Bertha why they rescued her. Why she must never speak with me. It will be Mistress Faye, or Mistress Bigge, or the old crone Webb who will tell her all about the night I was born. How the heavens flashed with light and rolled with thunder, how the wind wailed and the sleet sliced like daggers. How the pigs screamed and the horses bucked and the dogs howled in despair. How grown men shook in their boots as women shrieked and tore their hair out by the roots, convinced that the Day of Judgment was upon them. How the midwife who had delivered me was found dead the next day, her black hair turned white as snow, her face frozen with horror.

Then they will tell of my mother, Isobel, whom they had all adored. And of her fate.

Even when I was a little girl, she would take me foraging in the wood south of the village for wild mushrooms. On the day that began no different from all the others, she and I had set out for wood ears and slippery jacks and scarlet hoods. Nightfall came, but brought neither of us home with it. My father led a search party of village men, and it was he who first discovered my mother’s body, near dawn, at the far edge of the wood. She was naked and ravaged. Her throat had been sliced from ear to ear. Most fearsome of all, intricate symbols had been engraved deep into her flesh. They could find no sign of me. They said that my father’s face was an open grave of sorrow. His neighbors could barely look at him, so terrible was his anguish.

Three days later, I returned, crusted with dirt, loam and leaves in my hair, but nary a scratch upon my body. My father wept; then he pleaded with me for my story. Who had attacked us and killed my mother and why had I escaped? They say that I would not speak, but in truth I could not speak, for I remembered nothing.

I still do not remember.

After that, the other children in the village would not play with me. Instead, they ran and hid, the older ones behind the hedges, the younger back to their mothers’ skirts. Their parents shuddered when they saw me. Even my father was too sore of heart to look upon me. I was a reminder of the evil done unto my mother. I had come back, and my mother had not. To the people who had buried and mourned her, I was a reminder that the world was not safe. I was a lonely, pitiful little thing, reviled and neglected, my father still too steeped in grief to care for me.

It was Father Aiden who found me in the long grass outside his cottage, eavesdropping on the lessons he gave to the sons of wealthier merchants. He must have thought my passion to learn curious, although it was the attention he lavished upon the students that I craved. He decided to teach me the rudiments of reading and writing, I am sure for his own amusement rather than a true desire to help. After all, he soon began to teach me other lessons too, his gnarled fingers inching closer and closer. I would bite my lip and stare at the thin, swooping lines on the faded vellum, trying to withstand the indignities, but this betrayal grew too much to bear. I became a mongrel cur snapping and snarling at whomever came near. When my father sent me away to a nunnery, I am sure the villagers young and old sighed with relief. Now they could go on with their lives and forget.

How sorry they were when I returned.

I know the villagers can only speculate. How bad must I be for even the nuns to cast me out? What terrible evil could they sense? My father and Widow Clancy were to be wed, but after I returned she refused. It is no secret that I frightened her. I frighten them all.

At this point in the story, the Mouse Wife appears to ask a question. I cannot hear her, but I wager it concerns the fate of my father’s new bride. The older women glance as one toward the table of girls where Cecily no longer sits. She excused herself with a blush and smile only moments ago. After all, she is not used to drinking so much ale.

The women cluck and ruffle, a fierce brood of mother hens, protective of their charge. But even I would know better than to ply my wiles upon such a sweet and innocent girl. The village would not stand for it.

Surely the Mouse Wife will want to know of my dark deeds. The women will hesitate; real proof is hard to come by. Still, there are rumors; soured milk and sickened children when I crossed their path, odd and awful dreams when I looked in their direction. There are those who claim to have been stung by wasps, or wrenched an ankle, after somehow displeasing me. And so these women will talk on and on, their eyes growing bright with malice and drink. On and on and on.

I imagine what would happen if I walked up to them, jug in hand, to offer more ale. They would scarcely dare to blink, let alone shake their heads. For a moment I am tempted, just to see, but then I turn away. What is the use? Bertha is lost to me now. Instead, I head down to the cellar.

It is cool down here in the dark. I close my eyes and lean my head against the damp wood of a cask. Above me I can hear muffled shouts of laughter, the pounding feet of the graceless dancers. I wait for my flushed cheeks to cool, for the sour taste at the back of my throat to subside. I still see their spiteful faces shining in the firelight, hear their endlessly wagging tongues.

Mother, I whisper. Mother.

It would be a relief to cry, but I hardly ever do, and have not since I was a little girl. Not since that night. What is the use in crying? Still, if tears do come, no one will hear me. I am safe in the cellar.

There’s a noise. Not the scrabble of rats, but a strange ruffling, panting sound. I peer forward into the darkness, and can just make out the shape of a woman and a man in a passionate coupling. They writhe against the wall. With a small gasp I draw back behind the barrels again, but they must have heard me, or else sensed my presence, for they both fall silent. I hold my breath, willing even my heart to still.

After an eternity, I hear sharp, furtive whispers. The fun, for now, is over. One of them begins to ascend, and the light falls on the broad back of a young man as he turns his head and stalks up the steps like a tomcat. The girl holds back, taking a little more time to set her dress straight, to run a hand over her hair and wipe her face. She climbs quickly and nimbly, and then at the last moment she peers back into the cellar. I only take in a glimpse of her, but it is enough. Her narrowed eyes are hard as she searches for the intruder. It is she who should be fearful, abashed, and yet somehow I am the one crouching in the dark. Finally she turns again, and heads back into the light and laughter.

I stand, but do not move to leave yet. Instead I wait for a long while thinking of her cold eyes, the grim set of her rosebud mouth, her beautiful golden hair. And I know.

I have been seen.

3

Katherine

At four, Katherine is sitting and waiting in a diner.

The diner is nothing special, just one of those diners you can find anywhere in midtown Manhattan—lime-green booths, cracks in the faux-leather, dull Formica counters, a massive laminated menu, Greek salad, eggs any way you want ’em, a meatloaf special. So far, all Katherine has ordered is a cup of coffee, milk on the side. She really just wants water, which comes in one of those tall, clouded plastic glasses so specific to diners, but she has to buy something in exchange for her seat. Her eyes are fixed on the door. She got here early, 3:45. Told the office she had a doctor’s appointment, but nobody cared anyway. She’s only a temp.

At 4:04, the door opens and she sees him standing there. Dark, angular, somehow pulling all the energy in the diner toward him. He looks around. She half lifts her hand in an over here gesture, a little ridiculous with the place so empty, then puts it down again, unsure of what to do with her limbs.

He sees her and comes over, but hesitates a moment, as if he needs her permission.

Sit, she says.

He slides in opposite her. He’s wearing jeans, a dark sweater, a light peacoat. She sees he has new lines; he looks tired, drawn, too thin. He bends his head down to study the menu.

I’m over him, she thinks in triumph.

A waiter approaches. He looks up.

Coffee, Sael says. Black.

The waiter lopes away. He’s seen this kind of setup before; he can bet no one’s going to be eating.

They stare at each other.

Katherine.

He makes her name a sentence in its own right. He smiles, and she knows that all is lost.

Sael.

How have you been? He asks as if he really wants to know.

She thinks about the nights she lies awake, the weight of worry squeezing the breath from her chest, her heart pounding in her mouth. The days of staring at computer screens but not seeing anything. Praying to a god she doesn’t believe in. Wondering how they’ll survive.

Hanging in there. Only by the tips of her bleeding fingers.

Good, that’s good.

And you?

I’ve been okay. He’s grave. Some days are better than others.

After these lifeless platitudes offered like limp bouquets, they sit in silence.

It’s clear he’s gathering his strength, gathering his thoughts.

I wrote to you because I wanted to see you, I wanted to talk.

She says nothing, only looks at him.

I wanted to apologize for the things I said that night, for cutting you out of my life. I blamed you. I guess you can understand that. But some of the things I said . . . I was wrong, completely wrong. And when you reached out, when you wanted to talk, I shut you down. I wouldn’t, I couldn’t at the time, but I know that wasn’t right. I just didn’t know how to handle it. I’m sorry.

She’s been waiting to hear this for so long. She’s not sure what to say.

Can you forgive me?

She thinks about a time they made pancakes. She’d burned two, but he ate them anyway, insisting they were good. The small kitchen was flooded with sunlight. He had pulled her down onto his lap, his kisses tasting of pancake batter.

Now he sits opposite her in the diner, a stranger apologizing.

Yes, she says. I forgive you.

The relief on his face is painful to see.

I can’t tell you what that means to me.

It’s okay. I really do forgive you, she says again. She wonders if she’ll ever be able to say anything else.

It’s important for me that I told you how I felt because . . . You see, the thing is, I’m moving to England.

Katherine just looks at him.

I’ve been offered a position in London, and I’ve decided to take it. It might be time for a fresh start, maybe leave New York for a while.

She nods, but he’s stopped talking, so she’ll have to say something.

How long will you be gone? Her mouth is bone-dry. She tries to take a sip of her water, but her glass is empty. There’s never a waiter when you need one.

Depends. He shrugs. It’s all up in the air at the moment, for six months to a year at least. Then we’ll see how the project is going, how I’m feeling.

Katherine has never really understood what Sael does, something highly technical to do with coding and computer systems. Something, apparently, that has him in great demand, and that pays extremely well.

You can’t do this, she thinks. That’s great, she says.

I’m glad you think so. He is earnest now, more earnest than she has ever known him to be. I really wanted to talk with you.

The thing is, he does look glad.

It’s good to clear the air, he continues.

Katherine smiles and murmurs something. She excuses herself and heads to the bathroom, passing a booth where an old man sits, engrossed in the newspaper.

He glances up at her approach. Best keep it to one cup.

What? she says.

You shouldn’t drink more than one cup of coffee, it’s not good for the baby. He seems lost for a moment in a memory, then comes back to the present. Now usually you could probably drink two cups in a day and that would be fine, but I’ve been coming here for fourteen years and I know this coffee, this coffee is strong.

Excuse me, sir. Katherine’s voice is icy. Her spine almost crackles it’s so stiff.

The old man is unperturbed. He smiles gently at her. Also, it’s best not to get upset. It raises your blood pressure, that’s no good. It will be okay.

He goes back to his paper as if nothing had passed between them.

In the bathroom she examines her face in the mirror, looking for any telltale signs, although what they would be, she has no idea. A maternal glow? A flush? The old man’s crazy. He must be crazy. But how did he know?

She braces herself for a further encounter on her return, but he’s once again absorbed in his paper.

Sael looks concerned. Everything okay?

Yeah. She tries to manage something related to a smile.

You were talking to that man . . . You seemed sort of upset?

It was nothing, he’s a little eccentric.

Oh. So how’s everything going with you?

Now that Sael has unburdened