Maresi Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  “Yes, Mama,” said Maressa through a mouthful of porridge. “Can we go to the market now?”

  “Soon,” replied Jannarl. “How has your summer been?”

  “Mostly good,” said Míraes, who was still standing at the head of the table to make sure we had everything we needed. “Some of the fields were affected by the late frost, but only the small ones. We’ve had a good harvest, and healthy piglets have survived from all three of my sows. There are more soldiers in the village than just the salt merchant’s of course,” she sighed. “They do take their taxes—I lost nine piglets. Not to mention the flour they took. Year by year it’s becoming more and more arbitrary how much the Crown thinks we ought to be taxed. This household has a lot of mouths to feed and it looks like a bleak winter ahead.” She shook her head. “We’ll manage, but it’ll be a tough winter. And there are many who are not as fortunate as we.”

  “Has the harvest been worse for others?” asked Mother.

  “No, not exactly. But many still haven’t recovered from previous hunger winters. And with these harsh taxes recovery is impossible for most. You’ll see for yourselves at the market.”

  “Shouldn’t you be a little careful sister,” Father said quietly. “Don’t voice your discontent so loudly with the nádor’s men in earshot.”

  “Oh but it isn’t the nádor who has decided all this,” said Míraes, surprised. “He is only following orders from the Crown. The Sovereign of Urundien is the true extortioner.”

  Once we had eaten we went to the market. We were tired, but the children were eager, and we had only two days to fulfil all our tasks. We left our wares at home with Míraes and walked into the flurry of sounds and scents.

  The market was wonderful—until I saw what was happening at the edge. But up until that point, I was able to enjoy all the festively dressed people, the delicious smells and the wonderful products displayed on tables. There was fabric, yarn and thread for sale, and lots of pots and pans. There was a metalsmith and a blacksmith, each with an anvil. There were basket-makers, musicians, jesters, medicine men, spice merchants, and there in the middle of the crowd was the salt merchant’s stall with its blood-red canopy and two soldiers stationed either side. There were plenty of soldiers moving through the crowd, taking what they wanted without paying and staring at all the beautiful young girls. I was in constant fear of seeing the ones that had been in our village. The ones that took my silver and defiled Marget’s body.

  We moved as a group, Maressa on her father’s shoulders, Dúlan in her mother’s arms. Like a little flock of rural chickens we made our way through the stands. Náraes was the first to notice something strange.

  “See how hardly anyone is selling livestock. And few are selling food either.”

  It was true. We found one man with a few skinny young pigs for sale at a ridiculous price. One woman was selling duck eggs and another was selling chicks. A merchant from the south-west had various smoked sausages on offer, and there was a large, red-cheeked woman selling aromatic fried piggies. Father said he had never seen food so expensive at a market. Everyone feared the coming winter and their stores were sparse. And sheep, which Náraes was after, were nowhere to be seen.

  “I suppose I’ll just have to buy wool then,” my sister said disappointedly. “I’d so hoped I could start keeping my own sheep.”

  I found neither paper nor ink. Literacy is practically unheard of in Rovas.

  It was as we were walking along the edge of the market, where the few animals that were on sale were kept, that I saw them. A group of soldiers were taking aim at something small that kept poking out of a rubbish heap with weasel-quick movements. One soldier threw an apple core at the moving figure, and a mop of dark hair disappeared into the pile. Soon it was back, and another popped up beside it.

  They were children. More than two. Emaciated children in ragged clothes, swiftly rummaging through the waste in search of something edible. I saw one—I could not say if it was a boy or a girl—nabbing the scrap the soldier had thrown and swallowing it in two bites. The soldier swore and picked up a stone, a big one. He threw it and it hit one of the children on the leg. The child did not make a sound, but just crawled away and stayed out of sight.

  I had my staff, but no silver door appeared for me to open. The soldiers were many, and we were unarmed. I looked at the soldiers and I cursed them, summoning the Crone’s wrath and the Maiden’s curse and the Mother’s spleen. One of them turned around.

  It was the one who took my silver that first spring, the one wearing finer garments than the others. I turned my head quickly and hid my face in the hood of my cloak, but not before I saw him frown, as if trying to recall something. I positioned myself behind Mother, but he followed us with his gaze as we made haste to disappear into the throng of people. My heart was pounding—with rage and with fear.

  And that is what I saw during this trip, Jai. I saw destitution. I saw starvation. Not only those children. There were grown beggars too, and families forced to walk from village to village after being thrown out of their homes, driven away by the nádor because they could not pay their taxes or debts, or because they could no longer survive on the meagre provisions of the soil.

  Suddenly I saw them everywhere at the market, where at first all I had seen was woollen fabric and black pots. They drifted between the stalls with hungry eyes. They sat on the ground, wrapped up in threadbare blankets, with hands or wooden bowls outstretched to the passersby. Often without saying a word. The worst was seeing the families with small children. I could barely bring myself to meet the parents’ gaze. Their eyes were full of the pain of failing to feed their own little ones.

  The evening meal was excruciating. The salt merchant and his soldiers joined the family table, and all the women in the house had to wait on them. The atmosphere was formal and heavy with unspoken words. What bothered me the most was that Maheran, the salt merchant, a tall, grey-haired man from Irindibul, would not stop complaining about Rovas—about how lazy people are here, and how the nádor does his best to help anyone affected by hunger, illness or accidents, but it is almost impossible to help people as gormless and stubborn as the Rovasians. And nobody contradicted him! Quite the opposite—Aunt Míraes’s family all agreed, especially Cousin Bernáti. They blamed the high taxes on the Sovereign of Urundien and made the nádor out to be an intermediary who did the best he could but received only ingratitude from all sides.

  “The nádor is doing what he can for Rovas,” my cousin said to the salt merchant, who was wearing a black velvet jacket with pearl embroidery and sucking the meat from one of Míraes’s cockerels. “He lends money liberally to those in hardship. But it’s clear that they are loans, not handouts, and then people seem to be in an uproar about having to pay them back.”

  I exchanged a brief glance with Father. We said nothing. We said nothing about the children being pelted with stones by soldiers. We said nothing about Marget and all the girls like her of whom we had heard tell. We said nothing about the sky-high loans. Nothing about how we were almost forced to leave our home and land. We looked down at our plates and all the delicious food that this wealthy household had to serve even in a time of hardship such as this, and we said nothing.

  That night when I was in bed with Tessi, and Unéli and Maressa were already sleeping in Unéli’s bed, Tessi told me that the children we had seen were orphans whose parents had died from sickness or starvation, and now had no one to take care of them. This is a new concept in Rovas. We have always taken care of the vulnerable. If a child loses their parents they move in with a neighbour. If a widow finds herself alone with several children to take care of, neighbours and friends will help with the sowing and reaping. That is the way it is—the way it has always been, until now.

  Now there are too many people who are hungry, weak and alone. And nobody considers themselves in a strong enough position to take care of them. Tessi said that she sometimes leaves food out for those little children, but only when Bernáti and he
r parents do not see. They are too concerned about their own fate this winter.

  “We have our own little ones to think of, they always say,” she whispered in the warm darkness of the room. “We have to take care of our own first. But I can’t agree with them.”

  After this conversation I sat awake for a long time with a shawl wrapped around my shoulders. I recalled the taste of bread baked with wood shavings and bark, and the feeling of hunger so intense that I tried to eat twigs and grass. I thought about the children being pelted as they tried to eat refuse.

  Finally I got up and dressed, careful not to wake anyone, and went downstairs. I moved as quietly as possible in the darkness, but when I came down into the living room someone grabbed my arm.

  It was Mother.

  “Not a sound,” she whispered in my ear. “Follow me.”

  She led me out through the back door. “The soldiers guard the salt store at night as well,” she whispered. “Hurry.” We sneaked past the privy. My heart almost stopped when a shadow separated from the darkness and came towards us. “It’s Father,” whispered Mother when I froze. “He’s brought some food.”

  I swallowed my fright. “The children,” I whispered. “I cannot sleep.”

  “I know. We’re going to help them.”

  Father came to us with a bag under his arm. “We’ll have to hurry.”

  I had got up with the intention of helping the starving children, but I had no plan. Mother and Father, on the other hand, had made up their minds as soon as they saw them. “They were so skinny,” whispered Father. “They looked like you kids did during that terrible winter. We can’t just leave them here. But my sister mustn’t know of our plans.”

  “She’s too anxious about her stores,” Mother tutted when we had left the yard. “We took a little of her food and a little of ours. We don’t need anything from the market, not really. I overheard people talking yesterday and I know where the children usually spend the night.”

  We found the orphans in a barn outside the village, buried deep in the hay. The first we found was a girl who looked around ten years old, though perhaps she was older and only appeared younger due to malnourishment. She regarded us silently, expectantly. She looked at Father.

  “As long as he leaves the little ones alone, I’ll do him for three copper coins.” She looked at the bag under his arm. “Or bread. I’ll do it for bread too.”

  Father did not know what to say. Neither did I. Mother took the bag from Father, stuck her hand in and pulled out a loaf of bread. She crouched before the girl, who had hay in her hair and smelt indescribable.

  “Here. Eat. You don’t have to do anything in return.”

  The little girl looked at her, then at the bread. Then she grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth piece by piece until she could fit in no more. While she was chewing, clutching the bread tightly, she looked at Mother.

  “How many of you are there here?” Mother asked.

  The girl did not answer. She just continued chewing.

  “Do you want to come with us? We’re from a village in the east called Sáru. You can have food there, and a warm place to live.”

  “Why? What you gonna do with us?” She eyed Mother, not suspiciously, but calculating. Would it be worth it? Worth the risk of going with these strangers? It was a terrible expression to see on the face of a child. I will never forget it.

  “Because I have watched my children starve,” said Mother slowly. “If their father and I had died, I would hope that someone would have helped them.”

  The girl swallowed the last crumb of bread. “There’s Mik and Berla and me. And Mik’s little sister, dunno her name, he just calls her the littl’un.”

  “Are any of your parents alive?”

  The girl shook her head. “Mother died last winter, and I ain’t seen Father for years. Mik and the littl’un’s parents died last spring for sure, the soldiers killed them. And Berla, I dunno where she comes from, but if anyone cared about her she wouldn’t be here.”

  “Tell them to meet us tomorrow at dusk by the footbridge over the stream. Do you know where that is?”

  The girl nodded. Mother took more food out of the bag: bread, cheese, sausages and carrots.

  “Share out the food, but don’t eat it all at once or you’ll get sick.”

  The girl stared silently at the food. She took the cheese in her arms and caressed it.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. She looked up at me with wide eyes.

  “Silla,” she said.

  We walked back in silence so as not to attract attention. I could not ask Mother and Father what they were planning to do. But I was incredibly grateful for their courage and initiative. And I was proud. Proud to be their daughter. I squeezed Mother’s hand in the darkness before climbing back upstairs, and she patted my hand in response.

  We visited the market again the next day and bought and exchanged what we could. There were only everyday items and tools on offer, such as axe heads, nails, a kettle for Mother, yarn and carded wool for Náraes, linens and some spices—no animals or food. There is a visible lack of anything edible. We had planned to sell our eggs and flour and my cheeses, but Mother, Father and I looked at one another and wordlessly agreed to bring our food back home again instead. The children would need it. I only sold a few pieces of cheese.

  When we had bought everything we needed we gathered in the little square in the centre of the marketplace, around which the food vendors were clustered. Father had promised Maressa and Dúlan a fried piggy each. But before we could reach the fryer woman, three soldiers barged through the crowd to get to a post that stood in the middle of the square. Two of them were dragging a half-unconscious man between them. My stomach clenched into a knot of fear. The square went quiet. Náraes tried to turn her daughters around, but curious folk were pressing forward from behind us, and more soldiers were behind them. We could not get away. The two soldiers lashed the man to the post, on his feet, and the third, who was wearing expensive leather gloves, unfurled a scroll and nailed it to the post above the man’s head.

  “In the name of the Crown, our most benevolent and esteemed nádor punishes this man for his heinous crime,” read the soldier in a loud voice. “He has been caught stealing salt from the Sovereign-appointed salt merchant’s stores, one of the worst crimes that can be committed. The nádor, in his infinite mercy, has decreed to spare the man’s life, but to take his right hand, so that he will always be recognized as the thief and criminal he is.”

  “By all the spirits of Rovas,” Akios swore quietly.

  I gave him a little shove to tell him to keep quiet. Looking at the soldiers’ faces, I saw the same ruthlessness, the same love of violence and power as I saw in those men who forced their way into the crypt that spring on Menos. I did not see the door of the Crone. Yet my entire body was humming, my teeth were aching and my vision was blurred.

  We averted our gaze as the soldiers carried out the punishment. But we could not block out the man’s screams. We could not avoid the smell of burnt flesh when they singed his arm stump to staunch the blood. Akios squeezed my hand. Father stood close to me and I leant against him with my eyes fixed on the ground, trying to fill my nostrils with the smell of wool and sweat from his jumper. I thought of the girls, but could not bring myself to look at them.

  When it was over they loosened the man’s binds and he fell to the ground. A woman rushed over to him and fell to her knees by his side. She cradled his head in her lap and cried and screamed. The soldiers stood a short distance away and watched the woman. They laughed at a private joke. I walked slowly over to the post and the man. The woman holding him was younger than him, perhaps his daughter. I crouched beside her, with the soldiers’ eyes boring into my back.

  “Do you have somewhere you can take him?”

  She sniffed and nodded. Her face and hands were dirty.

  “You must keep the wound clean. Do you understand? Never touch it with dirty hands. Wash your hands every time you t
ouch him. If he gets a fever, give him a brew of boiled willow bark, can you manage that? Or lime blossom. I have some at home, but not here.”

  My words were whispered and rushed. She sniffled.

  “He didn’t take any salt. It’s not salt we need—it’s food! But no one believes him. No one would help us.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulder, felt how bony she was beneath her thin linen blouse.

  “Remember! Lime blossom or willow bark. And wash your hands.”

  Suddenly a child’s voice cut through the air.

  “That isn’t what it says here. It says: ‘the salt thief must pay a fine in the form of one cow, or equivalent, or bear five lashes’. It says nothing about death or cutting off his hand.”

  Maressa was standing in front of the post squinting at the paper the soldier had nailed up. The paper with the real orders directly from the Sovereign of Urundien.

  The soldiers stopped talking and looked at Maressa. Straight at her. Jannarl came running and scooped her up in his arms, but it was too late. The commanding soldier, the one with the fine leather gloves, approached in long strides.

  “What did the girl say?”

  “Nothing,” mumbled Jannarl. “She’s always making things up. She’s at that age.”

  “No I’m not!” Maressa roared. She looked at me. “I can read! Maresi taught me, didn’t you? Maresi, tell them!”

  I rose slowly. There I stood, in my fire-red mantle, the likes of which no one in Rovas has ever seen. I wished fervently that I was not wearing it at that moment. I wished I had not shown compassion for the condemned man and his daughter, and had not been seen talking to them. I wished I was in my bed at Novice House, safe under my blanket.

  “Of course the girl can’t read,” I said slowly, almost as if I were slow myself. “No one can, apart from the high lords in the nádor’s castle.”

  Maressa’s eyes filled with tears. She hid her face on Jannarl’s shoulder and sniffled. “Stupid Maresi,” she whispered. “Stupid, horrible Maresi.” Jannarl held her tight to prevent her from saying anything more. The soldiers forgot about the little girl and directed their attention at me. Jannarl and Maressa managed to slip unnoticed into the crowd.