Floodtide

by Heather Rose Jones

  We never had time to do more than see the beginnings of the cure now before we moved on. The whispers that followed us from one sickroom to another told us it still worked.

  Like I say, I stopped remembering how many days it had been, but someone reckoned it up later and it was no more than six. I would have sworn it was a month. All I know is one morning we left a sick house, blinking in the morning light, and when Celeste stepped into the boat with Liv, she put the next to last bottle empty into the crate and carefully slipped the last one into her charm basket. And as we looked around to be told where to go next, we heard shouts and the splash of feet in careful rhythm like a drum beat and then a row of men in uniforms came around the corner and drew up in a rank when they saw us. They weren’t the city guard who kept peace in the streets or even the scarlet-clad soldiers who had been guarding the bridge. They wore the uniforms of the palace guard who served the princess herself.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  October 1825—Summoned

  Brandel stepped in front of Aukustin and drew his sword—the first time he’d drawn it in all the time since it was buckled onto him. He thought better immediately and put it away again. The men who had come to guide us to the next sick house slipped away into the side streets.

  It was one of those painting moments, when everything froze in place. Celeste stood up in the boat, clutching her charm basket to her breast like something precious. Iulien and I waited by the chanulez steps, holding each other’s hands and wondering what would happen next. Only Liv’s dog Chennek wasn’t still. He started barking furiously until Liv snapped her fingers and held him tight by the collar.

  The frozen moment broke when one of the guards looked from face to face and said, “Mesner Atilliet!” with a sharp bow. And then to us all, “You’re to come with us.”

  A voice behind him cried out, “Iuli!” and Maisetra Sovitre pushed through the ranks of the guards and ran toward us to take Iulien in her arms. Her face was as worn and haggard as every other face we’d seen for days. “Iuli, what are you doing here?”

  “We’re curing the fever,” Iulien said, as simply as one might say, “I’m pouring the tea.”

  Maisetra Sovitre held her out at arm’s length to look at her. “Is it true? Antuniet said…”

  She looked at us, from one to the other, all tired and filthy. I could tell what she was thinking. We didn’t look like anyone who’d be bringing miracles through the streets of the city.

  It was Celeste who answered. “It’s true, maisetra. By the grace of Saint Rota, we think we’ve done some good.” She hugged her carrying basket closer.

  I could tell the guardsmen were getting impatient, and the one repeated his order. “You’re all to come with us. Now.” I didn’t know if they were rescuing us or putting us in prison.

  Celeste looked like a wild trapped thing. She glanced down at Liv in the boat as if she might try to escape that way. “My work isn’t done. There’s still fever…” But I could hear the dull echo of resignation in her voice. We couldn’t have kept on much longer. She was swaying with exhaustion and there was only that one last bottle of the sacred water.

  They could have forced us, but Maisetra Sovitre held out her hand like a beggar. “Celeste Giraud. I’ve heard your name on so many lips I feel I know you. Serafina speaks so highly of you. Will you come for her sake? The fever has come to Urmai…”

  Celeste’s face crumbled and she wailed, “No!” but it was in despair, not refusal.

  “Come with us,” Maisetra Sovitre said more urgently. “Will you trust me to see your work carried on? We’ll need you to teach us.”

  * * *

  Later, after we’d slept the day through, I tried to remember what came next, but it was as jumbled together as the days before. The guards were there for Mesner Aukustin, of course. They went ahead and took Brandel away too, saying something about an accounting. Liv was left behind. The guards must not have thought her of any account. I think we crossed the river at the Pont Vezzen. I was walking with Celeste and holding her up on unsteady legs, though mine weren’t much steadier. I think there were still soldiers on the bridge, but they must have let us through and I remember thinking that of course they’d break the rules to fetch Mesner Aukustin back. I remember how quiet Iulien was. That stuck in my mind because she never ran out of words.

  When we came off the bridge, there was a carriage waiting and no one questioned that I climbed in along with the others. I was going to stick fast to Celeste’s side until she didn’t need me any more. I must have slept as soon as the carriage started moving. I thought we were going to Tiporsel House and was glad of the ride even for that short a distance. But when we jerked to a stop and I woke up, there was a wide lawn to one side, with the river lapping halfway across it, and on the other side an enormous stone building that seemed as big as the palace. A group of women in the habits of the Poor Scholars helped us down from the carriage.

  I must have been gaping in confusion. Maisetra Iulien whispered to me, “We’re at Urmai—at the academy.”

  The place made Tiporsel House look like a cramped tenement. It was overfilled with people rushing here and there—the students like Maisetra Iulien and the Poor Scholars and children peeking at us around corridors and even whole families in the rooms we passed.

  Celeste peered anxiously into every doorway. “Where is she? Where’s Maisetra Talarico?”

  She was still clutching the basket with her charmwork like it was the hope of her salvation.

  “You should eat first,” Maisetra Sovitre said.

  But Celeste shook her head. “No, we could be too late.”

  I could see her thinking of those limp bodies in the sickrooms who had been carried away before we came to them.

  My stomach had leapt at the suggestion of a meal, but I stayed with Celeste until we came to the room they were using as a sickroom there at the school.

  There weren’t as many with the fever as I feared. Nothing like what we’d seen in the lower city. The white sheets and clean basins were nothing like it either. Every sickbed had some of the alchemical fever-stones tucked under the covers. With that many, they might cool the blood long enough for the body to heal itself. We’d had a few handfuls to use—certainly not enough to leave behind.

  I don’t know that I would have recognized Maisetra Talarico if we hadn’t been brought straight to her bedside. Her skin was more gray than black and like the other sick women they’d cut her hair short to cool her head. She’d had beautiful long ringlets, but now she looked like a newborn lamb.

  Celeste took her hand and whispered, “Maisetra,” and her eyes fluttered open briefly.

  “Cara mia,” she said, and then something else in a foreign tongue.

  “Saint Rota’s going to make you better,” Celeste said. But her voice was all choked up, and I wondered how she was going to be able to say the charms and prayers properly.

  I could feel Maisetra Sovitre’s eyes on us as we started setting up for the charm. The maisetra looked like she was a cook on the night of a banquet watching over a brand new kitchen maid. Celeste didn’t notice. She did every step as carefully as she could. She wanted to pour all her care into that one charm. We worked it together the way we’d done it in those hot damp sickrooms when the paper had run out and we were guided by what Celeste saw in her visions. Maisetra Iulien found a lamp that had been left to gutter and mixed up oil and soot on her finger to trace the charm-signs on Maisetra Serafina’s brow. I stood by to hand Celeste anything she needed and repeat the charms and prayers.

  Celeste took out the last precious bottle of Saint Rota’s water and let a few drops fall between Maisetra Serafina’s fever-cracked lips. Then she pressed her hand to the inked signs and prayed to draw the fever out into the flame. As she passed her fingers over the candle, I felt that warm, wanting feeling in my belly that told me how strong the charm was, like a shiver going through my whole body. And then, because we wanted to give her every scrap of help we could, the
three of us joined hands, Maisetra Iulien on one side and me on the other, and repeated the prayers together. I could hear Maisetra Sovitre whispering along with us as she came to stand close and laid a hand on our shoulders.

  When I was a girl in the Orisule school and the sisters celebrated her name-day mystery, I imagined the saint holding her starry cloak out around all of us girls, like she was watching over us and protecting us. All I could think was how wonderful it would be to feel that way always.

  All through those long days and nights working the fever charms, my magic feeling never really went away, though being tired and hungry, I didn’t pay it much mind. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel like that all the time. Maybe it was better if it was rare and special.

  But when Maisetra Sovitre spread her arms out like that and put a hand on our shoulders, everything got jumbled up together in my head: all my memories of the picture of Saint Orisule and all the times working with Celeste on charms and how being with Nan had given me that magic feeling too and that was why I’d never thought it was a sin, and it all shivered through me at once.

  Maisetra Talarico’s face relaxed and her eyes fluttered open again and she smiled at us before sinking back into a natural sleep.

  “That was…extraordinary.” Maisetra Sovitre didn’t sound surprised exactly—not like she’d expected Celeste’s charm not to work. It was more like if you were talking about a beautiful sunset even though you knew the day would come to an end somehow. “When Serafina said you were skilled in market charms, I expected—”

  Maybe she thought better about saying what she’d expected from Celeste’s charmwork because she fell silent for a moment. Then she was all business-like. “Let me gather the thaumaturgy students before we celebrate the mystery for the other patients. I promised you I’d see your work complete. We’ll need every skilled hand turned to it.”

  “It isn’t a mystery, maisetra,” Celeste said quietly. “Just a charm.”

  “If it catches the ear of the saints,” Maisetra Sovitre said, “and they grant you a miracle, then it’s a mystery. There’s no other word for it than that. It seems it’s a lesson I need to learn over and over.”

  Soon the sickroom was as crowded as any of them we’d worked in south of the river. It was strange to see all those women crowding around and hanging on Celeste, talking through the bits of the charm one by one as they took notes on their slates. Some of the women asked questions about this and that until Maisetra Sovitre told them to wait for later. They sounded like Celeste when she first asked me about Aunt Gaita’s washing charms: picking them all to bits then putting them back together again. This was where Celeste belonged, I could see it the same way Celeste could see charms working.

  Somewhere in the middle of it all, I fell asleep, sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of one of the sickbeds. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the softest bed I’d ever slept in. At least, it felt that way, I was that tired. There was a bit of light coming through the curtained windows, but I didn’t know if it was evening or morning. When I sat up, I could see a second bed next to mine and Celeste’s face dark against the pillow. Mefro Dominique was sitting on a chair beside her holding a finger to her lips silently. Someone must have gone to fetch her. Then I went back to sleep for a long time, knowing all would be well.

  * * *

  I can see how it would be nice to be a maisetra, being able to sleep as long as you please. And when you wake up, someone’s brought a pitcher of hot water to wash, and there’s bread and tea waiting for your breakfast without you having to poke up the fire and heat the water. I was tired enough to enjoy it for that one day. Longer than that and I think I would have died of embarrassment.

  Liv was there too, so I knew they’d opened the river again. She joined Celeste and Mefro Dominique and me as we took breakfast together with Maisetra Iulien. Liv told us what had happened in Rotenek after we were carried away. Maisetra Sovitre had managed what we never could: going to the palace to open up the way to Saint Rota’s well to fetch more water, then sending out her mystery students throughout the streets, with the city guard to protect them, bringing Celeste’s fever charm into all the places we hadn’t had time to reach.

  It seemed too easy when someone like Maisetra Sovitre ordered it to happen. But would she have listened to Celeste if we hadn’t spent those days and nights in the lower city? If there hadn’t been crowds of people telling how Mama Rota had passed through the flooded streets taking away the fever?

  The floodwaters were going down slowly and there was so much to clean up. People would still die of river fever, but not nearly as many as would have without us. They’d unblocked the bridges. Boats were going back and forth across the river once more bringing food and good water.

  Liv told it like it was a story. “All through the chanulezes, Celeste, they’re talking about you,” Liv said. “And talking about how Mama Rota came to save people and touched those who looked to her.”

  Maisetra Sovitre had come to stand in the doorway as well, and I saw her smile a little at that. I don’t think she believed that Saint Rota was a real saint, but she believed in the miracles done in her name.

  When Maisetra Iulien saw her, she jumped up and asked, “May I tell her?”

  I didn’t know it was me she meant until the maisetra came over. I scrambled to my feet to give her a curtsey. She wasn’t actually my maisetra any more, but I still knew better than to stay sitting.

  “Rozild, Iulien has told me everything that happened.”

  I glanced over at Maisetra Iulien and wondered how much that “everything” actually was. Better to keep quiet until I was sure.

  “Under ordinary circumstances I’m sure you’d understand I can’t have that sort of disobedience in the household, especially when it put my cousin in danger, but the last weeks have been far from ordinary circumstances. I think a great deal can be forgiven. Iulien has asked me to let you keep your position. I’ll speak to Charsintek and let her know how things stand.”

  I knew I should say something, but I didn’t know what. I’d figured that running away from Tiporsel House to help Liv meant I didn’t need to make that choice. And when I’d had time to dream about the future in the last day, I’d been thinking about more people than me.

  “Aren’t you glad, Roz?” Maisetra Iulien said. “After the city is cleaned up the season will start—my first real Rotenek season—and I’ll need you more than ever. You’ll be a real lady’s maid now, not just for making do.”

  “Maisetra—” I licked my lips, trying to think how not to have to say yes or no before I knew for certain. “Maisetra Sovitre, is it true that you’d take Celeste as a student if she wanted to?”

  She frowned a little. “Yes, of course. We’d be happy to have her join us. I don’t know why Maisetra Talarico never suggested it.”

  “She did ask me,” Celeste said. She’d gone all quiet and looked over at her mother. “But I can’t.”

  “You can,” I said. “Celeste—”

  “I hope she explained the arrangements,” Maisetra Sovitre said. She sounded uncomfortable, like rich folks often did when talking to people like us about money. “You needn’t worry about fees. And if you want to live in, that will be covered as well, or you can ride down with the girls coming from the Poor Scholars. It isn’t charity. We’ve been the losers for not having you as a student.”

  It was all there in Celeste’s face: how much she wanted it and how much it hurt to say no. “I’m sorry, Maisetra Sovitre, but I can’t. Maman needs me. Who will do the work in the dress shop if I’m kicking my heels in a classroom all day?”

  “I will.”

  I’d been thinking hard about it. I knew why she’d said no, because she told me when she hadn’t told anyone else, not even Mefro Dominique. And that was what I’d been thinking about when I saw Celeste talking to all the maisetras and their students about making charms. That maybe there was a way we could both have our dreams.

  “I’ll do your wor
k, Celeste. Mefro Dominique, I know I’m still an apprentice, but if you agree, I’ll take a daughter’s place so Celeste can go to school. You won’t have to pay me wages any more than you paid her. I know you told me you’d get in trouble having me work for charity, but it isn’t charity if I could be doing something else, is it?”

  I thought about all the other things it would mean. No wages meant nothing to send back to Sain-Pol. And Maisetra Iulien would be unhappy. I’d miss doing for her. I’d miss that feeling of turning her out proper and keeping her secrets. But once I’d said it, it felt right, like coming home after a long journey.

  Mefro Dominique looked stunned. She came over and held me by the shoulders, looking into my face, then she hugged me tightly.

  Celeste scowled at me in that way she’d done in the early days in the shop when I’d done something clumsy or foolish, but I knew how to read her face now. I wanted to repeat that speech about how I’d go to the ends of the earth to bring her her heart’s desire. But if I said that, then Maisetra Iulien would know I’d read her book when I wasn’t supposed to. So I kept that part in my heart and said, “Celeste, don’t be a silly goose. Say yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Afterward—Lavender

  Sometimes life is like the scent of fresh lavender as you strip it off the stems. It crawls up your nose and spikes into your head until it pounds and throbs in pain. Sometimes it’s like the close work in the still room, turning the flowers into sweetness. Sometimes it’s like the soft scent of lavender water sprinkled on the sheets in a faint reminder of sunlight giving you good dreams through the night.