Page 55 of Insolence (Eisha’s Hidden Codices #1)
There are steaming hand pies of chicken and roast mutton.
Glazed ham with sauteed greens and herbed potatoes.
Various cheeses and sliced radishes and kohlrabi, served alongside succulent greenhouse fruits.
A hearty cabbage and lentil stew is served with crusty rolls.
To my delight, jars of pickled blueberries and pepper jam sit in front of my place setting, as if someone requested as much from the handmaidens who set up for this sumptuous feast.
Desserts range from heavenly, fluffy sponge cake to fruit pies and flaky pastries. Finally, every table bears carafes brimming with more hawthorn wine than we could possibly guzzle in a week, much less one night.
Awful as she is, the prioress certainly knows how to throw a party. Dinner is delectable, and the refectory is utterly charming.
Gauze is draped between the ceiling crossbeams, and stag antlers are mounted to the walls between sconces.
More antlers grace the tables in honor of Aodh, and boughs of sharp-smelling juniper lie on gauze table runners between flickering candles in pewter holders.
All-too-familiar winter flowers overflow in vases and drip from urns around the room.
Disappointingly, none of them are thousand-petal roses.
According to Imogen, who ran up to greet me and Cordelia after the candles were lit, fireworks will go off over the temple complex at midnight to mark the close of the first full day of the new year.
Now that the food has been paraded before us, she’s seated between Kiera and Brigit at the table the handmaidens are sharing with the kitchen staff.
The prioress and Maida have been drinking and laughing together since dinner began. A burst of raucous laughter goes up between them now, startling me. Sandwiched between Maida and Ghisele, with Sadrie at the far end of the table, Elodie appears distant from her dinner companions.
“How strange. I’ve never seen her at any meals,” says Cordelia, drawing my focus.
When I look where she’s staring, I almost drop my fork. Lydia is in attendance and seated next to Ailen, poor girl, at the end of the sisters’ table.
Beneath her plain black mask, her mouth is still stitched closed. All she can do is watch and wait for everyone else to finish eating. Judging from her expression, she’s not amused.
“That’s cruel,” I breathe. “Does she eat?”
“She certainly looks healthy enough. Likely within the confines of her room, I imagine.”
“Oh, gods.” I look at Cordelia, an awful thought occurring to me. “In order for her to eat, they have to remove the thread from her mouth and sew her back up every day .”
“Every few days, at least,” says Cordelia.
The idea of undergoing such torture repeatedly is horrific.
Cordelia clutches the delicate bracelet encircling her wrist, staring a bit harder and blinking. “What I’d like to know is why the rest of them are so lucid tonight.”
Part of me is wondering about the alert and chatty betrothed girls myself. They look strangely underdressed without their veils tonight, wearing only simple black masks and tasteful black gowns of various cuts.
“At the rate they’re going, they’ll soon be drunk, so I suppose it doesn’t much matter.” I watch them pass around their many carafes of rich red wine yet again.
“But it does matter.” Cordelia glances at the prioress refilling Lady Maida’s goblet with enthusiasm. “Keeping them drugged all the time, only to leave them lucid at a party where they’re fed as much wine as they can drink, makes little sense.”
The fact that she has a point is more than vaguely unsettling. I grasp the onyx pendant resting just below my collarbone.
Sudden squabbling breaks out at the sisters’ table. When I look over, Ailen is jabbing a bony finger at Viv, who’s purple in the face. Ailen’s expression twists beneath her mask, giving her a ghoul-like resemblance.
A second glance confirms someone knocked over a goblet. Wine spreads on the table between them while others scramble to sop up the mess with linen napkins. Lydia watches with something akin to satisfaction on the set of her mangled mouth.
For the most part, dinner passes uneventfully.
Toward the end, Elodie rises from her seat with a jarring scrape of her chair.
The invisible thread stretches between us, so tense and strained it’s borderline painful.
She crosses the room in graceful strides, her elegant dress clinging to her curves like liquid, trailing sleeves nearly touching the floor.
The door is barely shut behind her when the prioress rings her bell again. She stands as a hush settles over the room, her cheeks rosy with wine. “If I may have your attention. For any who wish to follow me outside, there are more festivities yet to be had in the courtyard.”
A cheer goes up, and the room breaks into happy chatter. Goblet in hand, Deirdre wobbles down from the dais and leads the way out of the refectory. The rest of us pour into the hallway behind her.
Cordelia and I join the throng, and I quickly lose sight of Lydia’s glossy, dark head.
“I’m going to find Sadrie.” Cordelia turns to me. “Find us outside if you’d like!”
I watch until she falls out of sight, swallowed by the crowd.