Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  “Of course it does, just as pounding roadbed takes a toll,” said Dulsia. “Even a painter, spreading his own heart upon the canvas, gives it up for money and weeps afterward. There is no pain-free path, sweet girl. Choosing is what makes life bearable. Every month, my brothers and I count our money and decide whether to quit. When I can’t do this anymore, they’ll have a turn supporting me. They talk about opening a ribbon shop.”

  It was such a delightfully incongruous image that Tess laughed, and then Dulsia’s thumbs on either side of her spine found a pocket of tension that almost brought her to tears. This backrub had her bouncing between extremes.

  “I couldn’t have survived without my brothers,” Dulsia was saying, “or without friends like Gen watching out for us. She gets hers for free, forever, in gratitude.”

  Tess turned a skeptical eye. “What could you possibly do for a woman?”

  “Are you being nosy, or are you requesting something specific?” said Dulsia, pausing with her hands below Tess’s rib cage.

  “Neither,” said Tess hurriedly. “But our part in…marital relations”—she felt supremely ridiculous saying that to Dulsia—“is all duty and pain. St. Vitt repays our endurance of it tenfold, provided we keep faith and don’t stray, and thus the bitter trials of womanhood are worth something, in the end.”

  “Dear little virgin—” Dulsia began, a smile in her voice.

  “I’m not a virgin,” said Tess. “Truly. I’ve borne a child. I know what goes where, and why, and so I know that there’s nothing two women could possibly—”

  “There’s something crucial you seem not to know. A woman may take as much pleasure from relations as a man,” said Dulsia. “She may even do this on her own, no man required.”

  And then she told a tale so outlandish that Tess’s mind rebelled and rejected it. There was no such thing as a nupa—Tess couldn’t even translate the word into Goreddi. It had to be a lie.

  Tess would have hotly refuted this nonsense if the damaelle’s skilled hands had not, at that very moment, reached the tightest and most terrible of her muscles, the fibers of her lower back.

  Where Tess had hurt, exactly, excruciatingly, when Dozerius was born.

  The memory had been locked in her back, like coins in a strongbox, like a prisoner in a dungeon, and pounding roadbed had bound it tighter. Feeling the same hurt again set the memory free. Pain sprouted across the ready ground of Tess’s body and bloomed: pink clover pain, bright buttercups of sorrow, flaring poppies of agony.

  Violent sobs, like barking, burst from her throat. She could not hold them back, or she’d split down the middle.

  “What is it?” cried Dulsia, pulling her hands away, but too late. Tess was wrecked on the rocks of memory, and there was no returning from this. She shoved the damaelle’s hands aside, clutched her jerkin to her chest, flung wide the door, and rushed out into the blinding sunlight.

  Her workmates looked up from pounding roadbed and burst incongruously into cheers, until they saw her face.

  Tess rushed to her tent. She heard Gen snapping at everyone to stop gaping and get back to work, and then heard the soft sound of the flap as someone came in.

  Tess looked up from her cot, face streaming, but it wasn’t Gen who’d come after her, and it wasn’t Felix (her second guess). It was Big Arnando.

  He sat cross-legged on the ground near the head of her cot until her sobbing stilled. Then he ran a hand through his graying hair and said, “I told those fools, Felix and Mico, that you seemed unenthusiastic about the damaelle, that maybe you were a Daanite—like me—and didn’t want to tell them. They didn’t listen, and here you are. Felix has a good heart, even if he has no sense. He’d have rushed in here, but I thought you might not want to see him yet.”

  “Thanks,” said Tess, who never cared to see Felix again, and hoped he fell down a hole.

  Arnando lowered his voice. “Gen’s prowling around, keeping everyone away. Nobody’s going to overhear you. You may tell me anything, comrade, if it would help. Dulsia didn’t make you do anything against your inclinations, did she?”

  Tess shook her head, but started crying again. Arnando took her small, newly callused hand in one of his enormous rough ones.

  He asked for no further explanation, but still she wanted to give him one. The memory was loose in her, and she was too wrecked to fight it down and lock it up again. The only way to release it was to utter it aloud.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing one tells a stranger, and yet there was comfort in the fact that Arnando wasn’t a friend. It would be like confession to a priest or, based on the size of him, a mountain. She could hand him her pain, she felt instinctively. She wanted to.

  “She made me remember my baby,” said Tess, and then she was off her cot and in Arnando’s arms, weeping against his mighty chest.

  And he didn’t say, Wait, you’re a woman? or Your name isn’t really Tes’puco? You didn’t become the foreman of Boss Gen’s crew unless you impressed her, and you didn’t impress her unless you were smart.

  Arnando cradled Tess to him, a rock in her stormy sea, and said, “Tell me your story.”

  * * *

  Grandma Therese had been a comfort during Tess’s pregnancy, but Chessey the midwife had been solid as granite. At their weekly checkups in the cherubic panopticon bedroom, she was all business. When she said, “Gown off,” Tess obeyed. Chessey would prod and palp with devastatingly competent hands, listen to Tess’s belly through a tube, and measure the latitude and longitude of her bump.

  If Tess felt sorry for herself and began to weep—as sometimes happened—Chessey snapped, “None of that. You may’ve played the dog in getting this baby, but you’ll play the princess delivering it. This is not defeat, not ‘illegitimate,’ whatever your family says. Heaven brought each of us forth into this world, and you can’t tell me Heaven don’t know what it’s doing.”

  The night Grandma Therese died was the night the contractions began, three months early. The memory was blurred now: Tess screamed in the garden; Uncle Jean-Philippe brought her indoors; a scullion was sent running to the village for the midwife; someone must have carried her grandmother’s body indoors, but Tess was privy to none of that. She was sent to the cherubic chamber, where servants buzzed around her like bees, fetching towels and boiling water. By the time Chessey arrived, they’d swaddled Tess like a mummy.

  “No,” barked Chessey, shooing people out and excavating Tess from the mess of linens. She laid hands upon Tess’s belly, reading it with her fingers. “That feels serious,” she muttered, flinging back Tess’s chemise. Tess was too racked with contractions to protest.

  Chessey shook her weathered head. “Saints’ bunions,” she said. “You’re determined to have this baby right now. I don’t like it, but you’re so far along the tea wouldn’t stop it. Might even hasten it. Can you stand with an arm around my shoulders?”

  Tess answered with the negative, or tried to, but all that came out was a steam-kettle shrill of panic. Chessey wedged a wadded rag into Tess’s mouth.

  “Be quiet and listen,” she said in a voice that brooked no compromise. “You can give birth the agonizing, terrible way, or you can do it the less terrible way. The latter involves listening to me and doing what I say. What’s it going to be?”

  Tess, tears streaming down her cheeks, pointed urgently at Chessey.

  “Good,” said the midwife. “Now stop screaming. It wastes power you’ll need later. Stand up.” She pulled Tess firmly upright and plucked the rag from her mouth. “It’s less frightening on your own two feet, I promise. Walk with me—I won’t let you fall—and when your time comes, you shall face it upright, like a proud young lady, not flat on your back like a cowering hound.”

  They walked, paused for pain, walked some more, paused again. Every time they paused, every time Tess began to flag and fear, Chessey whispered: “You a
re the traveler, taking this journey. You are the hero, writing this story. When the trickster Pau-Henoa wandered under the earth, what did he find?”

  “The sun,” Tess gasped when the contraction had passed and she could speak again.

  “Right,” said Chessey firmly. “Even the pagans knew: you will wander the dark places under the earth, but you will come back with the sun.”

  The image of the sun, the idea of light, sustained her. She walked when she could and waited when she had to, Chessey guiding her through the labyrinth of pain.

  By the time the baby came, Tess had walked herself toward proud young lady, every trace of terrified, subjected dog long gone. Chessey caught the baby, as she’d caught generations of sun-stars, and she cut the cord and bathed the child. Tess—who, having striven and conquered, was permitted at last to lie down—arranged her exhausted limbs on the bed, and yet she wasn’t entirely exhausted. Her heart soared with unexpected euphoria, like she could do anything, like nothing would ever hurt again.

  Chessey brought the bundle, and Tess gazed for the first time upon that tiny, wrinkled face, like a wizened old man’s. His hands were perfect. A warmth rose in her chest, the purest, most aching love she had ever known. Her baby stretched his neck like a tortoise, eyes closed, feeling for her with his mouth, and Tess thought she might die of joy.

  “I’m here,” she whispered into his damp, sweet scalp. “Always, Dozerius, my heart.”

  * * *

  His breathing wasn’t right. Every intake was raspy and irregular; Tess felt the sound like cuts against her skin. “What is it, Chessey?” she cried, but the midwife shook her head grimly.

  “He came too soon,” she said. “Like bread too early from the oven. He’s unfinished in the middle.”

  At Chessey’s urging, Tess tried him at her breast—“Not that you’ve much to give yet, but let’s see if he can suckle.” His mouth was so weak and tiny that he choked and turned blue. Tess panicked, but Chessey, unflappable, revived him. She had goat’s milk brought from the village and showed Tess how to dip the corner of a handkerchief and let milk dribble into his mouth. Some went in, some came up. Dozerius didn’t open his eyes and didn’t sleep, either, mewling fretfully like a kitten.

  By the next day, his limbs, never strong, grew floppy; his skin, never bright, grayed alarmingly. Uncle Jean-Philippe had sent a fast rider to Lavondaville as soon as Tess’s confinement began; Mama arrived without Papa, Jeanne, or Seraphina, and the little bit of sun Tess had managed to retain went out. Mama stormed in, a cloud, and glowered over the bed.

  “It’s a mercy,” she said at last. “I prayed to St. Vitt that you’d miscarry, but this will do.”

  “You talk like he’s already dead,” said Tess, clasping Dozerius to her chest.

  “Steel your heart to it. I’ll fetch a priest to do his psalter so some Saint may petition for his entry into Heaven, irrespective of your sins. We’ll need to name him.”

  “I’ve already named him,” said Tess coldly. “He’s called—”

  But she couldn’t say Dozerius, when it came down to it. She couldn’t say that she’d named her child after the adventure stories Mama had never approved of, that had propelled her into the world to get herself in trouble. She knew what Mama would say and couldn’t bear to hear it, so she sat there, gaping like a fish, trying to come up with a quick substitution.

  “Julian,” Tess said at last. “After your grandfather, the count.”

  “That old devil?” said Anne-Marie, frowning, but she didn’t suggest another name, so Julian he stayed, officially. The priest came, and the baby’s psalter Saint was determined—St. Polypous, the devious one, apropos for both Dozerius and Count Julian. After that, as if reassured that he had a good advocate for entry into Heaven, little Dozerius began to fade away. His skin grew nearly transparent, his breathing so light and shallow that it could barely be heard, and he died in Tess’s arms upon the morning of the third day.

  She couldn’t…remember how she knew. Only that she lay clasping him to her chest, hoping against hope that this had all been a dream and that, in accordance with the logic of dreams, he might melt into her heart.

  “You’ve been given a gift, even if you don’t realize it,” said her mother softly, taking the tiny body from her arms. (Where had she come from? How did she know?) “We only had to hide this pregnancy; now we won’t have to hide an embarrassing bastard, too.”

  Tess could not reply; she had no muscles left, no will.

  “When you’re well enough to travel, we shall return home, and you’ll follow your sister to court. She needs you to keep her to the righteous path, for you know it now. Maybe someday the Saints will hear your prayers, and your penance will be enough.”

  No penance could be more terrible than this. Her very heart was dead.

  * * *

  “I went numb,” she said, raising her head from Big Arnando’s shoulder. “I could see my sorrow in the distance, and I knew that it would kill me, so I didn’t let myself feel. I cut it off—cut everything off—like taking a cleaver and hacking off my own—”

  Foot. Like in her dream at the Queen’s summer palace, except in the dream it had been an act of courage, not cowardice.

  “You did what you had to do to survive,” said Arnando, pressing his cheek against her forehead. He smelled like the dusty fields. “One thing I’ve learned about grief: it’s like a creditor’s bill. You can put off paying, but it eventually falls due, and exacts usurious interest.”

  “Do they send someone to break your fingers?” said Tess, thinking of the Belgiosos.

  Arnando laughed softly. “You find a way to break them yourself.” He paused to let her think about what that entailed; she had some idea. “There’s a room in my heart full of unpaid bills,” he said. “We all have one. It’s useful to go in occasionally and open a few.”

  Tess pulled away and wiped her eyes. “Then they’re paid? Am I done with Dozerius?” Her voice broke as she said his name, and she knew that she was not.

  “That’s a big one, so I doubt it,” said Arnando, his blue eyes mournful. “You might have to pay it in installments, but now you know you can. It won’t kill you. You have the funds, ’Puco.” He paused, embarrassed to have called her Stupid.

  “Tess,” said Tess.

  “Tess,” he agreed, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’re stronger than you were when it happened.”

  She nodded, inhaling one last sob-breath. They sat in silence a moment, and then she said, “I would like to get to work now.”

  “Good,” said Arnando, standing and extending a hand. “There’s always more to do.”

  He pulled her to her feet, and they went out together, into the blazing noonday sun.

  Arnando, true to his word, never told anyone what had passed between him and ’Puco. In fact, he went back to being her foreman, to Tess’s great relief, and not her particular friend. Having disburdened herself, she wasn’t sure how to talk to him afterward.

  Mico joked with her as if nothing had happened, but Felix, at least, felt guilty for sending her to the damaelle against her inclination. He cringed like a kicked dog with big, sad eyes, as close as he could get to apologizing. She didn’t forgive him, quite, but she might have if he could have brought himself to ask.

  * * *

  Tess was awakened one night by chirping, as if a cricket had crawled down her shirt and started singing. She sat up, half-panicked, swatting her chest, before realizing it was the thnik. Pathka never called her—it was always the other way around—and she hadn’t expected it to sound like a cricket. She clapped a hand over the device to muffle it, grabbed her boots, and sneaked out of the tent without waking Felix, Mico, or Aster.

  “Pathka, what’s happened?” she asked when she was far enough from the tents not to be heard. It was well after midnight. Gen set watches along the road, so Tes
s had run perpendicular, into the wheat. She stopped and wiggled bare feet into boots.

  “There’s a windmill downwind from your camp,” said Pathka faintly. “I’ll be there.”

  Its triangular sails were outlined against the rising moon, half a mile off by her estimate. “I’m on my way,” cried Tess, hastening her steps. Pathka didn’t answer.

  Tess had been watching the windmills on distant hillsides for weeks, fascinated by their majestic slowness. Up close, this one groaned and flapped; some internal trundling mechanism kept up a persistent thump. The door was locked.

  Tess scoured the perimeter, and finally looked out at the wheat on the far side of the ridge. A trail of crushed plants was just visible; it ended twenty feet downhill from her. She plunged into the field and found Pathka, collapsed, the bowl-scales clasped to his back.

  A glittering among the stalks gave the tableau an aura of enchantment until Tess realized it was the moon reflecting off a puddle of silver blood.

  Pathka’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he had three more broken head spines. The blood was coming from a series of punctures in his side, all the same depth, in a tidy curve.

  Tess knew only one thing that could make such a wound: Kikiu’s bite enhancer.

  Tess fell to her knees and laid a hand on Pathka’s head.

  “You came,” said Pathka, his voice faint and gritty like sand underfoot.

  “What happened?” said Tess, stroking his drooping spines.

  His breathing sounded strangely doubled, a gasp followed by a hiss, and Tess realized with alarm that his lung had been punctured.

  “Don’t speak,” she cried. “Tell me after—”

  “Might not be an after,” he croaked.

  “Did Kikiu do this?” said Tess furiously, uselessly.

  “Bit me like an animal.” Pathka paused, panting. “Not like a quigutl at all. That monster—”