Iron Butterflies Read Online Free PDF Page B

forehead.
    ‘There is hot water?” I broke the silence between us.
    She started and for the first time her eyes met mine. She colored and gestured toward a screen. “But, yes, gracious lady. Water—all else for your comfort. Please to look, if all is not right, then I am to do your will.”
    The screen, which was taller than my head, masked a fire on a hearth which was wide enough to be like an alcove. Flames burned bright and hot. There stood a bath and beside it a row of water cans—from others set on the hearth spirals of steam arose. I gave a sigh of relief. Such luxury had not been a part of the service in any of the inns.
    Later, some of the ache and stiffness soaked out of me, my damp hair which had been expertly washed by Truda, and brushed and blotted near dry with towels before being coiled up loosely, I sat down, clad in the warmest of my chamber robes, to eat. So soothed was I that even the bed now ceased to wear its forbidding aspect.
    The food was very good, a clear soup, duckling with peas, tartlets filled with fruit, cheese, a trifle smotheredin rich cream. I drank sparingly of some wine and perhaps that added to my sleepiness, for I yawned and yawned again.
    But I was not too weary to keep close to hand the packet which I had guarded closely during this whole journey. When I settled in the bed, finding it somewhat awkward to edge to the center, I pushed that beneath my pillows. The gold I had begged from Weston, the parchment Colonel Fenwick had brought me, my grandmother's last letter, and the necklace, a talisman to keep my mind firmly on my mission here, formed my secret hoard.
    The screen which had hidden the hearth was folded away so I could see the flames. Truda would have drawn the bed curtains, but that I refused. Watching the fire, I drifted into sleep at last.
    I was not too tired to dream.
    Once more I was back in my grandmother's room, sitting with my shawl about me, even as I had on the day of her death. There she was also, but no pillows backed her now. She sat proudly erect, her eyes holding mine. Though her pale lips did not move, there was that in her gaze which was urgent, demanding, striving to tell me something. I was cold, not chilled by the room, but with an ice of fear which filled me, prevented me from speaking or moving.
    Then the walls behind my grandmother's chair changed. From the familiar patterned paper I had always known, they showed gray—they were formed of stone blocks. There was no longer light from any window.
    For the windows had narrowed into slits through which only pallid gleams reached us two. Still I sat and stared at my grandmother and she back at me, struggling, I knew, to communicate. I saw one hand rise from her lap, rise so slowly that it was manifest she put into that action the greatest of efforts, or the dregs of some fast-failing energy.
    Between her white fingers swung a vividly black chain, moving slowly back and forth as might the pendulurnof a clock remorselessly counting out vital minutes, hours. I knew what she held was the string of iron butterflies. Their delicate charm was lost, they could be rather the silhouettes of ill-omened bats, or some other creatures of an evil, haunted night.
    So very slowly her hand moved, but the chain swung faster and faster, until it was a whirling blur. Then it flew free of her grasp—spun through the air toward me, as if it were a knife blade aimed at my throat. Still I could not move, or cry out, but was held in the vise of that ice-cold fear. So great was the terror which now filled me that I felt my heart could not continue to beat but would burst apart in my breast.
    I made the greatest effort of my life and somehow brought up my arm, holding it as a shield against the threatening whirl of the still-spinning chain. Only that never touched my skin. Instead my eyes blinked open— I lay looking up into the reaches of a vast dark cavern.

Chapter 3
    Lying in a cavern? I was sweat drenched, tangled within the