by Jo Spurrier
‘What happens if they want to leave before you think they’re ready?’ Aleida asked. ‘Or when their husbands or pimps come looking for them?’
‘Well, it’s not just men who try to talk them into going back home, I hope you realise,’ the mother superior said. ‘We’ve had grandmothers and mothers and all kinds of kin turn up weeping at our gates, promising the earth and the moon. Whenever the lowest rung on the ladder breaks another one has to take the weight, you see. It really upsets the applecart.
‘But when someone comes pounding on our gates demanding their little dove come home, I usually speak to them myself. They can curse and bluster at me all they like, I don’t care, and the waterworks don’t do anything for me either; the Lord and Lady have granted me the grace to see the truth behind their lies. And most of them have better sense than to raise a hand to an old nun. If they make more trouble, or if they hang around for more than a few days, Lord Belmont sends some men down to move them along. If the girls want to meet with their kin they can, but we won’t let them be alone together. If they do wish to leave after the meeting I encourage them to pray for guidance. I spend the night in vigil with them, and ask them to reflect on what brought them here, and the lengths they went to in order to reach safety. I do manipulate them, I admit, but it’s for the best.’
‘And if they still want to leave?’ I said. At my tone Aleida turned towards me, one eyebrow raised.
Mother Ellendene looked me over with a cool gaze. ‘You’ve been talking to Kara, haven’t you, child? She’s very adept at spinning a tale, and at painting herself the innocent young girl who’s been wronged most cruelly.’
‘Kara?’ Aleida said. ‘Is that the lass with the sword?’
‘That’s her. I imagine she told you quite a story, Miss . . . ?’ she let her voice drift away, and her gaze glided back to Aleida. ‘I think it might be time for you to tell us who you are, and just what it is you’re seeking here.’
Aleida drained her tea, and set the cup on the table. ‘I suppose it is. But there’s not much to the tale. I have some money to dispose of, and I’d like to see it do some good.’
‘Dispose of?’ Sister Lodova said, raising one eyebrow. ‘Dirty money, is it?’
Aleida hesitated. ‘You might say that.’
‘Just how dirty are we talking?’ Mother Ellendene said. ‘Is it cursed? Like you?’
My teacher shifted in her seat, edging forward, gathering her feet beneath her. Taking my cue, I set my cup down. I wasn’t sure what was going on here, but I could see that she was gathering herself. ‘Not directly,’ she said. ‘Just . . . tainted.’
Ellendene and Lodova exchanged a worried glance. ‘I think we’d like to have a little more information. If you please, Mistress . . . ?’
Aleida sighed. ‘Blackbone. My name is Blackbone. Does that mean anything to you?’
Another drawn-out silence, another significant glance. ‘I’ve heard that name,’ Mother Ellendene said, slowly. ‘Is anyone going to come looking for this money?’
‘Nope,’ Aleida said. ‘It’s all mine. An inheritance, shall we say.’
Mother Ellendene frowned. She squinted at Aleida, and then leaned back, pinching the bridge of her nose as though her head pained her. ‘So the old Blackbone witch . . .’
‘She’s dead.’ Aleida said. ‘Took a bit of doing, I might tell you.’
‘I see. So the curse . . .’
Aleida shrugged and leaned back again. ‘I came by it honestly.’
Sister Lodova huffed derisively, but I studied the mother superior, wondering exactly what she’d seen. The money had been Gyssha’s, before my teacher had killed her. In her last act, Gyssha had cursed Aleida, her traitorous daughter in the craft. A death-curse was nothing to sneeze at, especially from a witch as powerful as Gyssha Blackbone.
‘And this money,’ Sister Lodova said. ‘What do you expect in return, exactly?’
Aleida straightened again. ‘I expect it to be used wisely.’
‘For yourself,’ Lodova said, her face drawn tight. ‘What do you expect for yourself? I do know the name Blackbone. Your mother is dead, you say? I’m glad she can do no more harm, but if you are who you say you are, you’ve no small amount of blood on your hands too.’
‘I’m not asking for any favours,’ Aleida snapped. ‘I’ll solve my own problems, thank you very much.’
‘Sister,’ Mother Ellendene said, her voice quiet. ‘Hush. It is not for us to pass judgement on the women who come to our haven.’
‘But she—’
‘We pledged, did we not, never to turn away a woman who seeks healing? Who seeks to turn away from a life of pain and suffering and find a new path? Didn’t we, sister?’
Lodova’s face looked like a thunderstorm. But she folded her hands in her lap and drew a deep breath. ‘Indeed, we did, Mother Ellendene. True, it wouldn’t be the first time dirty money has come into our hands, and it likely won’t be the last. If you see fit to make a gift, Mistress Blackbone, it will be received with gratitude. And prayers for your soul.’
‘Well then,’ Aleida said, in the sort of voice that would make me choose my words with added care. ‘I daresay those will come in handy.’
‘But what about Kara?’ I said. It felt like talking out of turn, but I wasn’t about to let her be swept aside so easily.
Mother Ellendene turned my way with her mouth pursed. ‘Miss Blackbone, is it?’
‘It is,’ Aleida said, before I could speak. ‘My apprentice. She’s still very green, though.’
I glared at her, but I couldn’t really argue. ‘Kara,’ I said, instead. ‘She says you won’t let her leave. That’s rather at odds with everything you’ve said, isn’t it?’
Aleida gave me a look I read as amusement. In truth I half-expected her to tell me to drop it, but she held her tongue while the mother superior looked me over. I was braced for scorn, expecting her disapproval over daring to question her. But there was no rancour in her gaze. ‘Well, miss,’ she said. ‘I’m not in the habit of gossiping about our girls, but Kara is a special case. I imagine she told you quite a tale, didn’t she? Perhaps you would repeat it, so your mistress knows of what we speak?’
Now, I’m not completely dim. I realised I must have made something of a misstep, and felt a flush creep over my cheeks. ‘She said her father is missing,’ I said. ‘No one will help her look for him, and she’s being held here against her will.’
‘I see,’ Mother Ellendene said. ‘And what did she tell you about her father?’
There was something pointed about the question, and immediately I felt on edge, worried I was about to be tripped up. ‘He’s . . . he’s a caravan guard,’ I said.
Aleida shifted and gave a small sigh.
I turned to her. ‘What?’
‘Dee, what do caravan guards do when they can’t get work?’
I gave her a puzzled look.
‘Think about it. They know the roads, they know the blind corners and secluded stretches, the watering holes and the best places to stop. And the merchants. Caravan guards bleed and die so the merchants don’t have to, and they get paid a pittance. And when there’s no work and mouths to feed at home, what are they going to do?’
‘Of course, you’d understand how it works,’ Sister Lodova said with disdain.
I ignored her. ‘I don’t see . . .’
‘Dee, the caravan guards make their living off the merchants, one way or another. At heart it’s a protection racket; the mercenaries are getting paid whether the merchants hand it over willingly or at a sword’s point.’
I felt myself blink a few times, absorbing the words. ‘You’re saying her father’s a bandit?’
‘Probably. She’ll never admit it, though.’
‘That’s the conclusion we’ve come to, as well,’ Mother Ellendene said. ‘Belly — Lord Belmont, I mean — agrees. Left to her own devices, I’ve no doubt Kara would head out in search of him, and those woods are no place for a lass of sixteen.’
/> ‘But she’s got her sword,’ I said, glancing at Aleida. ‘And it looks like she knows how to use it.’
She shook her head. ‘She’d have to sleep sometime, have to find food, water . . . Wouldn’t take long for those bandits to get wind of her and track her down. It’s no place for a young girl alone.’
‘Which is precisely why Lord Belmont had her brought here,’ Mother Ellendene said. ‘It was that or keep her shackled in the dungeons under the fort, which is hardly suitable for a young girl either, I’m sure you can agree. If I had my druthers, she’d have had that sword taken away from her, too, but we were afraid she’d do something drastic if we forced her to give it up. She even sleeps with the thing, keeping her hand wrapped around the hilt. She’s a tough little nut, I’ll grant you that.’
I frowned, rubbing my forehead. ‘What makes you so sure she isn’t telling the truth about her father?’
Mother Ellendene cast a grimace Aleida’s way.
My teacher sighed. ‘I did say she was green.’
‘So you did. I know a lie when I hear one, child,’ she said to me. ‘It’s one of the graces the Lord and Lady have bestowed on me.’
I just scowled. ‘All right. So it’s not safe out there for her alone. What if she wasn’t alone?’
Aleida slid a foot towards me and kicked me sharply in the shin.
‘Ow!’
‘Dee,’ she growled. ‘At least let me talk to the girl myself before you start making grand plans, would you? I came here to offload some of Gyssha’s damn blood money, not to start collecting waifs and strays.’
‘So you’re not going to help her? Ow!’ I yelped as she kicked me again.
‘Kindly don’t put words in my mouth.’
Mother Ellendene was watching us both with disapproval. ‘Clearly I can’t stop you from taking the lass out of here, if that’s what you choose to do.’
‘Good grief,’ Aleida said, ‘do I look like I’m in the habit of making a rod for my own back? Well . . .’ she amended, casting a glance my way. ‘. . . actually, I can see why you’d say that.’
I opened my mouth to protest, only to hurriedly clamp it shut again when I saw the look in Aleida’s eye. I’d gone about this all wrong, I realised, bringing it up in front of the nuns. From the way she squinted at me I could guess I was going to hear all about it later.
Once she could see the message had sunk in, Aleida’s eyes cut back to the mother superior. ‘Do you want any help with the girl?’
‘I have the matter well in hand,’ Mother Ellendene said, with the same breezy superiority I’d heard so often from my own teacher. ‘But you’re welcome to have a word with her, if you wish. Will you and your apprentice be staying with us tonight? You’re quite welcome; I can have some of the girls prepare a room for you.’ Sister Lodova looked quite scandalised at the suggestion.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Aleida said. ‘We have some other business to attend to.’
‘Well then,’ the nun said, rising from the couch. She was quite sprightly, despite her age, heaving herself up with little trouble. ‘Let’s take a turn around the place, and you can see where your money would be going.’
Aleida all but ignored me as the nuns showed us around the grounds. For my part, I tried not to dwell on how deeply I’d put my foot in it. My new friend Kara was nowhere to be seen, and for that I felt rather chagrined. I’d liked her, following our brief exchange, and I wasn’t sure I could just accept Aleida’s pronouncement that Kara was lying through her teeth — she hadn’t so much as spoken a word to the girl, after all. The question was answered when we returned to the wagon — Kara was in the stable, leaning against the wall with her arms folded across her chest, her face like stone.
‘Kara,’ Sister Lodova said with reproval. ‘Aren’t you rostered to work in the garden today?’
‘Workers get paid,’ Kara said. ‘But if you feel that I’m not earning my keep, Sister Sourpuss, you can always evict me.’
Aleida looked away to hide a smile. ‘Come with me, Dee,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need your help to lift this blessed thing down.’
She clambered up to the footboard ahead of me — and then stopped, running her fingertips over the door.
The hesitation made me look up. ‘What is it?’ I murmured.
She tapped her fingertip to a spot beside the lock, and a sigil marked upon the wood gleamed faintly in the darkness. Then, without another word, she opened the door and beckoned me inside.
Within the wagon, she lit a hanging lantern with a touch of her finger. ‘Someone tried to get inside and set off one of the wards. Would have made a nice little flash.’
‘You didn’t feel it?’ I said.
‘Pfft, no. There was no power in the effort. I’m guessing they tried to pick the lock. Here, help me get this chest out, would you?’
Our wagon was rather nice inside, if I might say so myself. There was a little wood stove and a cabinet that latched closed firmly against the rocking and bumping of rutted roads. A bench seat along one wall also served as a storage chest, while a panel halfway along folded down to make a little table, or, more often, a writing desk. At the end opposite the door was a narrow bed, with a second tucked away underneath rather like the box bed back home at the cottage. But, at the moment, the lower bed was packed full of crates and baskets and chests. I made my bed on the floor instead, on a pad of felted wool.
The lower bed could be screened off with a sliding hatch, and Aleida slid it back to start hauling things out while I stacked them up as best I could in the narrow space. ‘You think it was Kara.’
‘I said no such thing.’
‘But you were thinking it, weren’t you?’
Aleida shrugged. ‘And what do you think?’
With a sniff, I declined to answer, but she’d already moved on. ‘Ah, here it is . . . oh good gods, I can barely move the thing.’
‘Let me get it,’ I said. ‘You’re still naught but skin and bone. You don’t eat enough.’
‘Yeah, yeah, what are you, my mother?’ Still, she shuffled back out of the way to let me reach into the cramped space. I didn’t mind sacrificing the space to storage. I was afraid that if I did try to sleep in there I’d have nightmares of suffocating — and then thump my head against the roof when the bad dreams woke me up.
‘But seriously, Dee,’ Aleida said as I wriggled in to get a grip on the heavy chest. ‘What do think of the place? How do you like it?’
‘It seems nice,’ I said. ‘Peaceful, you know?’
‘Mm. Could you have ended up somewhere like here, do you think?’
My head buried in the musty darkness, I paused. ‘What? Lord and Lady, no. It’s not for me — for the me I was before I met you, I mean. It’s for the girls who are really mistreated, who are beaten and worked half to death and kept like prisoners, or worse.’ Dragging the trunk across the scarred floorboards, I inched my way out again into fresher air. ‘If that bastard Lem had taken to beating me, or tried to get me married off, then maybe. If I knew about it, and could figure some way to get here . . .’ Just thinking of the obstacles on that path was overwhelming. How would you even begin? ‘What about you?’ I said.
She laughed at that. ‘Never in a thousand years. I’d sooner have died than let myself be taken off to the countryside. But then, I was like you — I hadn’t yet been tipped out of the frying pan and into the fire. There’s plenty of folks who don’t have such luck. Compared to the path I was on before Gyssha found me, a place like this would have done me a world of good.’
I bit my lip then. There were words hovering on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t let them spill. If you had to choose, which would it be? The nuns? Or Gyssha? I fancied I already knew the answer. As much as she scorned her old mistress, Aleida loved witchcraft too much to choose a different path. ‘I guess it’s a godsend for those who need it,’ I said. ‘But what about those who’d rather be elsewhere? A pretty prison is still a prison.’
‘Mm. All right, fin
e, I’ll have a word with our lost little lamb out there.’
The trunk was small, but it was cursed heavy. I had to heave it little by little to the footboard, and then Sister Lodova helped me the rest of the way. She lifted it more easily, though she still grunted at its weight.
It was only a fraction of Gyssha’s hoard, but I was still glad to see it go. Back at Black Oak, I’d glimpsed a little of what Gyssha had done to get hold of all that gold. There was not a piece of it that hadn’t been tainted with blood and suffering and despair. Maybe now some good would come of it. Not enough to wash away the evil that had been done but it was a start.
While the nuns dealt with their bounty, Aleida beckoned me with a jerk of her head and turned towards Kara, who was still glowering against the far wall. ‘Hey, girl,’ she called, starting over. ‘C’mere.’ She was limping again, I noticed. She’d spent too long on her feet.
From the look on her face Kara didn’t care for the summons, but she squared her shoulders and came over, anyway. ‘Yes, miss?’
Aleida hooked her thumb into her belt while she studied the girl. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You found that door a bit trickier than you expected, did you?’
Kara scowled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yeah, you do. Just as well, kid, messing with anything inside would have been worse. Did it burn you? Or just scorch your sleeve?’
Kara pulled her sleeves down over her hands. ‘Look,’ she said, eyes sliding away. ‘I just want to get out of here. I need to find my da.’
‘You think he’s in trouble?’
Hesitantly, Kara glanced up to meet Aleida’s eyes. ‘I know it.’
‘How?’
Kara huffed an impatient sigh. ‘I just do.’
‘All right,’ Aleida said. ‘But he’s not really a caravan guard, is he?’
Kara’s eyes snapped to hers, and she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘He is.’
‘Pays well, does it?’
‘We get by,’ Kara said, guardedly.
‘Enough to buy that sword you’re carrying? It’s good quality.’
‘He got a bonus,’ Kara said. ‘For saving a rich merchant’s life. And he bought it for me because he’s gone so often, he wanted me to be able to defend myself.’
