Black Pearls - Louise Hawes [11]
Soon she was tearing at the stones with bloody hands, ripping them from the mortar until she'd made a small hole through which she could push open the door. She raced upstairs then and found what she had known she would—an empty room with Rampion's gowns all gone, her trinkets carried off, except for a basket of blackberries placed neatly on the table, and the lovely necklace, which must have come undone and now lay broken, its bright jewels scattered across the floor.
For three days Tabby waited, the hearth untended, sunset and sunrise finding her still beside the window. Sometimes she leaned out to stroke the head of the gargoyle whose gaping mouth had held Rampion's hair. "If witches cry, perhaps monsters can, too," she told the crusty stone. "When she returns, though, we must not tell her how we have wept."
For another week she lived on hope and the few provisions they had stored in the tower. Surely the gift of the berries meant that Rampion cared, that she was coming back. Surely the years of love, and of squabbling, yes, like a hen and her chick, before the two of them settled beside each other, could not have ended.
Finally, though, driven by hunger, Tabby took to the woods to gather wild fruit and to trace her daughter's steps. Each day she wandered a bit further, fanning out and out from the tower, searching for a small boot print, a dropped handkerchief, a whisper of what she had lost.
Two moons filled, then faded before she heard the tale from gypsies camped in a clearing deep in the woods. It was the story of a witch's child, and the woman who told it to Tabby, juggling two babes on her lap by the fire, had heard it from a groom whose mistress claimed to have learned it from a troubadour who had gotten the tale firsthand from a jester in a palace leagues away.
It seemed an evil witch had won the child from her terrified father and kept her prisoner in a tower. But one day Rapunzel—yes, the woman was certain that was her name—had escaped and run off with a handsome prince. She was a sweet young thing, Rapunzel was, with long flaxen curls, and wasn't it a blessing she had tricked that scheming witch?
"I've heard of such a girl," Tabby told the woman, something inside her crumbling, blowing away like dust. "But her name was Rampion."
"Rampion," the gypsy repeated, her accent heavy, slow. "That is how you say it here, yes?" She held her fingers up to show what she meant. "A small plant for salads, is it not?"
Tabby nodded, desolate.
"In our country, we call it rapunzel." But the gypsy had ab ready forgotten her story. She begged now to trade a beaded belt for the vest Tabby wore. Behind her, her husband proffered a leg of venison to sweeten the deal, but it was all Tabby could do to bid them farewell and stumble back to the tower. There she lit a fire and threw the girl's necklace into the flames. Then she unclasped a tiny locket from around her neck and took out the strand of yellow hair curled inside. That, too, went into the flames, where it flared, lit up the hearth, and was gone. For a while, as the jewels on the necklace cracked and blackened on the grate, Tabby thought she heard Rampion calling her. "Mother! Mother!" the voice in her head cried until she felt she might go mad. But then, as the gems split apart and finally turned to ash, the voice was quiet at last.
For three days, she slept, dreamless, on her pallet until the light woke her. The moon was full again and