Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

She thought she glimpsed him once, but it was clothes on a line, a trick of the light.

  The embroiderers’ district, she quickly learned, consisted of a narrow byway called Crewel Ramble. Crewel, of course, referred to a style of embroidery. Tess understood Ramble the minute she laid eyes on the street: it was having trouble committing to being a street at all, crooked and narrow as it was. Most streets run in a certain direction, but this one stumbled and teetered between the looming half-timbered buildings, as if it were drunk.

  She asked after work at several houses, but as soon as she asked for accommodation also, they all directed her toward a house at the end of the street called Fine Eyes. “Mother Gaida’s got a room you can have for free, if you’re strong enough, but she won’t let you have it if you’re working for another house,” was the general consensus.

  Tess didn’t need to be told more than thrice. She knocked at the door of Fine Eyes (wondering whether the name was a pun on “fine work,” eyes and work being quite similar words in Ninysh). Three young women, blond and giggling, answered the door. They’d spotted Tess through the corbelled window and taken her for the young fellow she appeared to be. Tess doffed her cap and gave one-quarter courtesy—more than they merited—causing a rapture of squealing.

  “Forgive the intrusion, ladies,” said Tess, dredging her manners up from the bottom of some deep river in her soul. It was a nice cold river; it had kept them fresh, if slightly damp. “I’m looking for Mother Gaida.”

  The ladies left Tess in the parlor on a densely embroidered sofa between riotous pillows. The fringed drapes were overgrown with brocade. Tess found herself grinning stupidly at a framed shepherd and shepherdess above the hearth. Smoothly executed satin stitch, she noted, and finely rendered features. Dove knots. Helical whorls. She stood for a closer look, hands clasped behind her back.

  “Can I help you, sir?” said a crisp voice. Tess turned to face Mother Gaida, a diminutive old woman in a close-fitted caul, lean and tough as a strip of hide. “Are you here with a portrait commission?” The woman lifted her brows, indicating the figures above the hearth. “I do those myself. We embroider clothing, of course, and take in mending on the side—unless you’re from the Guild of Tailors, in which case I deny everything.”

  “I’m looking for work, madam, and a place to stay. The houses up the street said—”

  “That I might hire a young fellow like you?” said Gaida, quirking an eyebrow.

  “I’m not a ‘fellow,’ first of all,” said Tess. “And I know my stitches. I embroidered at the court of Goredd for Lady Farquist—”

  “We’ll see about that; I’ll want a sample,” said Mother Gaida, raising a bony finger. “You also said you need a place to stay. I have one, but you may not want it, not-fellow.”

  “No?” said Tess, crestfallen, because that was what she needed most in this strange city.

  “Because of my son, you understand,” said Gaida. “I need a boarder who can help care for him. He was thrown from a horse several years ago and can’t walk. He’d be dead, but for the miracles of St. Blanche the Mechanic.” She kissed her red knuckle. “He can do most things himself, Saints hold him, but he needs help getting in and out of the bath, for example. I can’t lift him, and I’ll wager a weedy thing like you can’t, either.”

  “Indeed I could,” said Tess, feeling the woman was being unfair to both herself and her male alter egos. “I mean, unless he’s big as a barn.”

  Gaida drew herself to full height, which wasn’t much, and sniffed disdainfully. “He takes after his mama in all his finest qualities, including his svelte phys—”

  She got no further because Tess, tired of trying to move the immovable, ducked her head under the old woman’s outstretched arm and flung Mother Gaida over her shoulder like a sack of grain. Turning hay and pounding roadbed had given Tess some strength in her arms and back. The old woman shouted shocking obscenities as Tess turned her around. Back on her feet, Mother Gaida swayed dizzily, swatted Tess’s ear, and began to laugh.

  “What are you?” she cried, unable to fit Tess into her usual categories for human people.

  Tess wanted to say, A child of the Road, but feared she was already too eccentric for the old seamstress. Instead she said, “Just myself, Mother Gaida. Nothing more.”

  The old woman still hesitated. “But…you’ve seen a man naked before? I’m afraid it’s not quite decent work for a young lady.”

  “Let me meet him,” said Tess. “If he and I together feel it could work, I’d happily be his nursemaid until the end of winter.” Perhaps longer, but she wasn’t sure she’d want to keep that promise. Come spring, the Road would surely start calling again.

  This satisfied the aged embroiderer. She tested Tess’s stitches, came to an agreement about wages, and found Tess some fill work to do (shocking her other embroiderers, who found Tess less giggle-worthy now). At the end of the day, Gaida locked up shop and led Tess a short way up the crooked street to another house, bigger than the place Tess’s family had been living in for the last couple of years. Its three stories were cantilevered above the street, each a little farther than the last, stone and then brick and then timber. The front entrance was a double door, like the doors of a stable.

  The sun had set, but it was bright within; someone had lit the lamps. They seemed to have walked directly into the kitchen. “The house is laid out to accommodate my boy,” Gaida was explaining. “His bedroom is here.” She indicated another double door across the room. “Sitting room’s upstairs. You’ll be on the third floor, under the eaves.”

  Before Tess could answer, a clanking and creaking from the next room raised the hairs on her arms. She shot a glance at Gaida, whose fuzzy chin wrinkled anxiously.

  The double doors sprang open together, and in the doorway stood a man with eight legs.

  Tess did not cry out or gasp; if she was afraid, it was only for a moment. First she saw that the spider legs belonged not to the man but to an iron chair he was sitting in; his own legs, thin as sticks, were curled under him. In the next instant she realized she’d seen this man before.

  The walking chair had been built for him by St. Blanche, in thanks for his service to Ninys before the war. He’d been a herald, and Seraphina’s guide as she collected other half-dragons. When Tess was twelve, he’d come to Lavondaville to visit Seraphina; the family had met him at the home of the Ninysh ambassadress, Dame St. Okra Carmine. The chair had been new, a marvel of engineering, the only thing anyone could talk about, but Tess had been struck by his face and by the shadow of sorrow under his eyes as he looked at Seraphina.

  He’d been in love with her, Tess was convinced. He’d come all the way to Goredd to see her again, and she’d broken his heart.

  He didn’t look heartbroken now. In fact, he looked very well, his long reddish hair tied back, his chin beard tidy, his blue eyes smiling. If only she could remember his name.

  Gaida saved her the awkwardness. “I’ve brought home a prospective boarder, Josquin. A lady, despite all appearances. She’s called…”

  Tess had given Gaida her name, but the old woman’s memory hadn’t retained it. “Tess,” she said, stepping up and shaking Josquin’s hand. “Tess Dombegh.”

  “Dombegh!” he cried. She’d forgotten how deep and pleasant his voice was. “That’s a name I always like to hear,” he added in Goreddi. “Your sister’s well, I trust?”

  Tess wasn’t sure of the answer. “She had a baby,” she began feebly.

  “It was hers, then, not the Queen’s,” said Josquin. “I wondered.”

  “That’s my guess,” said Tess, unsure how much he knew and didn’t know. “I haven’t been home in six months, but I saw Seraphina pregnant.”

  “And you’re certain the Queen couldn’t have got her that way,” said Josquin, with a smile that suggested he knew rather a lot, in fact. Maybe he knew more than she did.
<
br />   “I am never certain of anything where those three are concerned,” Tess said dryly, “and that’s the way they prefer it.”

  Josquin threw back his head and laughed. Gaida, who didn’t speak Goreddi, was losing patience. “If you knew him, why didn’t you say?” she fussed, seeming to forget that she hadn’t mentioned his name. “Don’t deny it. All the women know him, and I never understand how.”

  “They talk among themselves, Mother,” Josquin called as Gaida led Tess upstairs. “They say, ‘What a fine, mannerly man Mother Gaida raised, and have you seen his marvelous legs?’ We can’t stop them talking. I could be less mannerly, I suppose.”

  “Rapscallion,” muttered Gaida under her breath, but she was smiling.

  Tess settled in quickly; the attic room was tiny and she had only her pack. She came downstairs to stew and crusty bread, a collaborative effort of mother and son. Tess relished every morsel and helped with the washing up, and then Gaida said, “You’d better talk to him and learn what you’re to do. See if you want this job. Clearly, you get along already”—her mouth pinched suspiciously—“but that will only take you so far. He needs care, and care is work. You may be too delicate for it, after all. We shall see.”

  Gaida toddled upstairs. Josquin clanked toward his bedroom, beckoning Tess to follow. He closed the doors behind them with a lever. One end of the room was set up as a study, with a broad desk and bookshelves; at the other end was a railed bed and an enormous round bath with a gleaming boiler tank behind it.

  “More of St. Blanche’s handiwork,” Josquin said, noting where her eyes lingered. “A pump fills it from the well, which I can work myself, but the boiler is hard for me to stoke.”

  “You’re lucky to get so much personal attention from a living Saint,” said Tess, realizing only afterward that Saint might remind him of Seraphina. She didn’t want to make him sad, or invite a comparison she could only lose from.

  “Blanche feels guilty for trying to kill me the first time we met.” He directed his chair across the room toward another set of doors. “She also built the privy in the yard. I can use it without help, unless there’s snow.”

  “Light the boiler; shovel snow. What else can I do?” said Tess, folding her arms. “Your mother hinted, but didn’t say much.”

  “There isn’t much to say,” said Josquin, falling serious. “The house is set up so I can take care of myself. I’m not an invalid.” His chair crabbed toward the desk, where he started tidying papers. “Honestly, it’s my aging mother who needs help. She insists on doing too much. I have to butt in to do my share of cooking; she won’t hear of moving to a smaller house. Anything you could do for her—pick up the slack, take her arm on the stairs—I’d appreciate it.”

  Tess peeked over his shoulder at the papers he was shuffling. They looked like verses, but he whisked them away too quickly for her to read. She leaned her backside against the desk. “Your mother worried that I wasn’t strong enough to lift you out of the bath, but I threw her over my shoulder, which convinced her.”

  “I wish I’d seen that,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d consider doing it again?”

  “She’d hate me,” said Tess, “and I need a place to stay. I also want to properly earn my keep. You can do everything yourself, but you don’t have to all the time. I’m not squeamish, and I’m not afraid. I’ve seen naked men before.”

  Josquin, who’d taken up a deck of cards from the corner of his desk, paused mid-shuffle. “You get straight to the point.”

  “Don’t spare my imagined sensibilities, is all,” said Tess, drumming lightly on the desk. “I spent two months with a road crew, turned hay, mucked stalls, helped care for a senile old man—” She kissed a knuckle Heavenward. “My sensibilities are back on the road somewhere.”

  Josquin eyed her with new interest. “I don’t like to pry, but I remember your family and I can’t not ask: why did you leave home? Not to work on a road crew, presumably.”

  Tess opened her mouth and closed it again, not sure how much to trust him with. “I’m just walking the road, looking for reasons to keep walking.”

  “The road becomes its own reason, doesn’t it,” said Josquin softly, and Tess met his eye again, surprised. “I was a herald for ten years, riding all over Ninys, and the thing I miss most keenly isn’t the use of my legs but the road itself. Possibility around every turn; the horizon always out of reach.” He grew misty. “You must have some good stories.”

  “I have all the stories,” said Tess warmly. Here was a fellow traveler, his journey cut short by circumstance, and she felt for him. “If that’s how I can help, by bringing the road to you, I’ll tell every single one. Twice if necessary.”

  Josquin laughed and lowered his gaze. He was still shuffling cards, his large hands competent and precise. “I’d like that,” he said. “That is help I would willingly take.”

  * * *

  Tess quickly found her niche. Routine sorted itself around her, like a river around a new rock. She woke before dawn to make everyone breakfast. Tess and Gaida went to the workshop, while Josquin puttered around, reading and writing; they came home for lunch (Gaida’s bailiwick) and then again for dinner (which Josquin had declared officially his). In the evenings Josquin had his bath, a long therapeutic soak in St. Blanche’s tub. Tess ended up supervising this because the old woman put her foot down. Gaida’s greatest horror was that her son would hit his head in the bath and be drowned.

  It was hard for Tess to begrudge her. She’d fulfilled her own mother’s worst fear, bearing a bastard; if she could ease Gaida’s mind for so little effort, she’d do it.

  Josquin was somewhat sour about this at first. Tess would ask, per Gaida’s instructions, whether he wanted help getting in, then again later whether he needed a hand getting out, and he would answer tersely that he wasn’t a child.

  Tess didn’t mind the snapping; it was all a formality. She was really there to tell him stories. If the bath went cold before Josquin remembered to climb out of it, Tess considered this a sign of good storytelling and felt satisfied that she was doing her part.

  “Isn’t this delightful,” Gaida said one evening as they lingered around the hearth, too full to move on to the next stage. “You’ve fit yourself right in, my dear. Rebecca never made that kind of effort.”

  “Mother,” said Josquin warningly.

  Tess’s ears had perked up with interest, however. “Who’s Rebecca?”

  “Oh, she was Jos’s caretaker before you,” said Gaida, scraping the bottom of her empty bowl with her spoon. “A midwife from the Archipelagos, always flitting about, attending her patients before my Jos. I never liked her.”

  “You loved her, Ma,” said Josquin, weariness in his voice.

  “Indeed I never! I supposed she would do, since we couldn’t find a man to take care of you, and she was coarse and boorish enough to be one. But my gut said she was trouble. The Pelaguese always are. I wasn’t the least surprised when she left and broke your heart.”

  “You realize that Tess will leave us come spring,” said Josquin, rubbing his neck. “She’s mentioned it several times.”

  “What? Oh, I know what she said,” said Gaida, suddenly flustered. “But spring is a long ways off. No need to dwell on it now.”

  Tess listened with a certain amusement, and when Josquin retired for his bath, she followed, grinning. “So, this Rebecca,” she said as she stoked the fire. She tried not to sound teasing, but almost certainly failed. “Were you two…you know…”

  “Yes,” said Josquin, pulling off his shirt, and then Tess realized she’d been too vague. There were several unspoken questions he might’ve been answering. Were they? They were.

  “Mother hoped Rebecca would marry me,” he offered. Tess, behind the boiler, could hear the smile in his voice. “She came here to study, and then it was time for her to go back home. It was alwa
ys going to happen—she told me, I knew—but she dashed my mother’s hopes.”

  “Am I going to dash them, too, when I leave?” said Tess, tapping the temperature gauge and then opening the spigot.

  “Of course you are,” he said lightly. There was a long pause while he removed his breeches, something of a project from his spider-legged throne. “Can’t be helped,” he said at last, placing neatly folded pants on the bed and gesturing for Tess to fetch two enormous towels. “She’s scared that she’s going to die and I’ll be all alone.”

  Tess’s face must have reflected the same concern, because he added quickly, “I won’t be alone, Tess. I’ve always been good at making and keeping friends. You don’t need to worry, and you don’t need to stay here beyond your own inclinations.”

  Tess nodded, a little flustered now that he was entirely naked. She usually kept hidden behind the boiler during this part, but they’d been conversing, and he’d left the towels across the room, and…she could turn away right now. She might do so at any time. She was entirely free to engage her good manners, starting this very moment. Or even right about now.

  She was a little in awe, though, of how he lifted himself out of his seat, how he grasped spider legs and then tub railings with his hands and swung himself into the water. He had enough control over his legs that he could tense them and bring them over the edge; they helped slow his descent. His arms were wiry but strong; Tess could see every muscle in his shoulders working.

  She watched the whole operation, fascinated, then forced her gaze to the corner of the room. “What can I tell you tonight?” she mused, but she already knew what she wanted to tell him. She’d been putting it off, practicing in her head. It was the story words wouldn’t stick to, and she needed to say it out loud, get it right, before taking it to the Academy.

  “When I was a child, my best friend was a quigutl,” she began. “He told tales of seven great serpents beneath the surface of the world. I always assumed they were a myth.”