First Installment

I’ve decided to share some of what I’ve accomplished so far this November. As always, please remember that this is a first draft. It’s unedited. I try to catch spelling errors right off the bat, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any and I know I have a tendency to think faster than I type, which means I leave words out sometimes. You may have already noticed that in my entries. o_0 So without further ado, I present the first installment of Our Lady of the Mountain. This section will be public, but from here on out all installments will be set to Friends Only. So if you want to read more, please let me know.

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Alina gasped as the pin nipped her finger and watched the blood well up in a bright scarlet bead.

            “Now rub it into your cheek,” Giulia commanded. When Alina continued to stare at her finger, the brisk nurse grasped her hand and wiped the blood onto the girl’s face. Then she squeezed the finger hard, forcing more blood from the pinprick, and dabbed this onto the other cheek. With an exasperated sigh she handed Alina a handkerchief and used her own hands to rub the blood into her skin.

            Alina sat at her vanity and suffered through Giulia’s ministrations. In sixteen years, the matter-of-fact nurse had never steered her wrong. She pressed the handkerchief against her finger, watching the blood blossom against the white cotton like a rose blooming before her eyes. She raised her eyes to the glass and her flushed cheeks.

 

            It was not blood that flushed her cheeks now, but the fierce sun of the high western desert. Not silver-backed glass that she used to examine her reflection, but the brightly polished copper of a water vessel, one of the few good things she still had. It turned her dark blond hair to ginger and her olive green eyes to bright topaz. Behind her, from beneath the shelter of the wagon’s canvas cover, came a soft mewling as Sara dreamt. Alina wondered what she was dreaming of, if she closed her green eyes and saw her father, felt his hands gentle as her stroked her black curls. Alina wished that she could close her own eyes and dream of that face and those hands. Sometimes she did, but too often her dreams ended as blood streamed from the soft, sensitive mouth. It had once been so quick to smile, but that was a long time ago.

            Alina stirred their small camp fire with a long stick, sending sparks drifting up to the roof of the cave they were sheltered in. This was by far the best camp she’d found. The cave was tall and wide and deep enough to shelter them well away from the open air. The entrance was screened by rocks and straggling bushes. Even the horse and wagon fit easily inside. She would even be able to sleep tonight without worrying that they would be spotted and robbed.

 Moving quietly so she wouldn’t wake Sara, Alina went to the far wall of the cave. A wet spot had told her that water dripped down the wall there and she had stuck a pot beneath the tiny trickle. Now the pot was nearly full. She exchanged it with one of the large copper vessels from the wagon and brought it back to the camp fire, where she suspended it on a small iron tripod over the flames. She went back to the wagon and dug into a rough burlap sack. A shaggy wolfhound raised his head from his paws and watched her as she gathered a potato, a couple carrots, and a turnip, placing them in her upheld skirt. The dog rose and stretched, then jumped from the wagon and followed her to the fireside.  Now she picked up the rabbit he had brought in earlier in the day and skinned it roughly.

Alina couldn’t help grimacing a bit at the feel of the skin tearing loose from flesh. If it hadn’t been so necessary to their survival, she wasn’t sure she ever would have eaten flesh again. In the predawn light of the morning she had crept away from the city of her birth, Venice’s gutters had been black with blood, the whole town become as rank with swollen flesh as the butchers’ district. Before the light had come up she had wondered what the stench was and as the sky grew light she wished she could have returned to blessed ignorance. The one blessing of that gray morning had been that the lightening sky showed her where the bodies lay in the street where they had fallen, so that she didn’t drive over them. 

She cut the rabbit meat and vegetables with her belt knife and threw them into the pot. She set some of the meat aside for Prince and Bandit. Prince had been her father’s best hunter, and she was grateful to find him tucked into the wagon beside her when her father had driven her through the prison gates hidden among bolts of fabric. Bandit was a mangy tortoiseshell cat that had attached herself to Alina somewhere west of Barcelona and refused to be left behind when Alina tried to put her out. She had chased down the wagon and leapt in when Alina stopped at a crossroads. Alina found her curled up beside Sara when she stopped to camp that night, and they’d been together ever since.  Now Bandit jumped lightly down from the wagon and came to sit by the fire with Prince, waiting for Alina to cut the rabbit up further. For such a mangy creature she had quickly adapted to life with people and seemed to regard Alina as a useful source of food and comfortable places to sleep. Not for the first time, Alina wondered if she had been a pampered pet, driven from home by the sweeping mania of the new religion, which seemed to regard cats as demons ofsome kind. But Barcelona had not yet been so overrun as Venice, and it didn’t seem likely.

The stew bubbled softly, and the animals happily ate happily. Alina sat and stared into the flickering flames, losing herself in memories.

 

Giulia tucked a stray blond curl into place beneath a rose pink velvet ribbon, and eyed her charge with a critical eye, one thick black brow raised. She plucked at Alina’s sleeves, then leaned down and tugged at the bottom of her bodice, exposing more décolletage than Alina’s mother would have approved of. But Margaret and Charles Wainwright were already mingling with the guests downstairs and Giulia had never been shy in her disdain for Madam’s prudish ways. Alina blushed and fidgeted with the lace at her bust line, feeling very exposed. Giulia slapped her hand away and fluffed the lace quite unnecessarily.

“Mother won’t like it,” Alina whispered, her hand drifting back up in an effort to hide the wide expanse of creamy skin.

“She won’t embarrass herself or you by mentioning it until after the party, and by then it’ll already have worked its magic. Now bite your lips,” Giulia commanded.

“Why?”

Giulia rolled her eyes. “To make them red, of course. Haven’t you listened to anything I’ve taught you?”

“I feel naked!” Alina’s voice shook and she blushed darker than ever. She looked into the hall mirror and saw a strange woman gazing back at her. Her honey blond hair had been washed and dried, twined and twisted and fell in a cascade of ringlets from its many pins. Her face was dusted with powder and her eyelashes darkened with tint. The powder was acceptable, but she knew her mother would object to the lash tint. Her mother had been far too busy preparing for the party, however, and had been happy to leave her daughter in Giulia’s care. And Giulia had insisted that Alina’s blond lashes were nowhere near dark enough for her first evening party. She would have been happy to add face paint to redden Alina’s lips and cheeks, but even she knew that such artifice was not acceptable for girls of Alina’s class.

Alina bit her lips and watched the glass as they flushed with blood. Her eyes traveled down her reflection, from blood-reddened cheeks and lips to the simple strand of pearls at her throat and the gold disk with a moonstone eye below that, a charm to ward off the evil eye that she never took off. There seemed to be a great deal of space between her necklace and the top of her bodice, and she was very conscious of the gentle swell of her breasts above the lace, enhanced as it was by her corset. Despite the low neck line, she was very pleased with the dress. It was a dusty rose pink, a darker color than maidens usually wore, but very flattering against the richness of her hair and creaminess of her skin. She stroked the soft velvet, her corset hard beneath the luxurious folds of fabric. Soft ivory colored silk puffed out through her sleeves at shoulder and elbow, then fell like a fabric waterfall from her wrists. She felt cocooned in silk, as the fabric wrapped her legs and flowed around her from shoulder to toes.

“I look beautiful,” Alina breathed, her eyes moving to meet Giulia’s in the mirror. Giulia laughed.

“You’ll do,” she said with gruff good humor. She leaned over and pulled back the red velvet drapes that hid the stairs, just enough to let in a shaft of golden candle light and the sound of the string quartet that greeted guests in the hall. Alina heard the hum of voices and the occasional tinkling laugh as men and women flirted and gossiped. She couldn’t believe they were all here for her.

“Plenty of handsome young men about,” Giulia said, dropping the curtain back into place. “That Nicholas Gallavetti is here.” She smiled archly. It seemed to be common knowledge among their set that the youngest Gallavetti boy had taken a fancy to the pretty Wainwright girl, though he had been only twice in her company, and always with her parents. Alina couldn’t understand why he liked her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever even spoken to him. “Perhaps you won’t even have a whole season in society before you are whisked away in a bridal carriage.”

“I’m not ready to be a bride,” Alina replied, but she blushed and couldn’t hide the slight smile that played around her lips. Orsino Gallavetti’s youngest son was indeed very handsome and at twenty-eight he was perhaps the most eligible bachelor in Venice now that his brothers were both married. She couldn’t help feeling flattered by his attention.

Just then the musicians played a flourish and the voices outside in the great hall below fell silent. Her father’s voice sounded close, and Alina could tell he had mounted the stairs to address the guests.

“My friends, my wife and I are pleased to welcome you to our home tonight. We are honored that you have joined us to celebrate our daughter’s sixteenth birthday. She has been a joy and a blessing to us and we thank the gods everyday that they have entrusted her to us. Now, we are pleased to introduce our daughter, Alina Margaret Wainwright.” There was a cheer and the musicians struck another flourish. The velvet curtains parted and the light of a thousand candles fell on Alina’s eyes. And there, waiting for her with his hand outstretched was her father. Stepping lightly as she had been taught, she descended the steps toward him.

~Liz