The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  “There’s a robe hanging on the larder door, my dear. Could you be a helpful honeybee and fetch it yourself? My legs are just a little achy today.” The bulky figure swiveled round a fraction farther. “And as for you, Emith, go into the larder until I call your name. I’ll have no one saying that anything untoward goes on in my household. Stepping into a room where a lady is standing in her nightgown, indeed! What on earth would your father have said?”

  “Sorry, Mother,” came Emith’s reply as his feet pattered away in the distance.

  Feeling as though she’d made a terrible mistake, Tessa dove for the larder door. She reminded herself that this wasn’t her world now: things that meant nothing to her meant everything to these people. It wasn’t that attitudes were necessarily different here—her own mother wouldn’t have approved of her appearing in a flimsy nightdress in front of strangers—but they were certainly more condensed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the back of Mother Emith’s head as she shouldered on the robe. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone.” Noticing a set of ribbons sewn high up on the collar, Tessa tied them tight for good measure before walking into the old woman’s line of vision.

  She was met by a face that was somehow both long and round, boasting a pair of deep-set blue eyes that twinkled as brightly as the fire. “Nothing to worry about, my dear. ’Twas my own fault. If it weren’t for my old legs here, I would have brought you the robe myself.”

  Tessa looked down at Mother Emith’s legs. Everything but her feet and ankles were covered by her dress. The skin on her ankles was red and swollen, and her feet had a purple tinge. Mother Emith patted her knee. “Come closer, my pet, so I may see you more clearly.” Then, shouting over Tessa’s head: “You can come back now, Emith. Pour us all a cup of warm milk.”

  Tessa moved closer. Mother Emith leaned forward in her chair and slapped a warm palm upon Tessa’s forehead. “Hmm. No fever. Open your mouth, my dear. Wide.” Tessa did as she was told. “No swelling. Good. Good. Now turn around so I can see the back of your head.”

  Mother Emith hmm’d a bit more, then Tessa felt a bright flare of pain above her ear as the woman touched a tender spot. “Easy, my dear,” soothed the old lady. “You’ve a lump the size of a crabapple up there.”

  “Here you are, miss,” Emith said, drawing close with two bowls full of steaming milk. He handed the first to Tessa with a shy smile. “I added a sprinkle of cinnamon.”

  “I hope you put the cinnamon in while the milk was warming, Emith?” said his mother. Emith nodded. Satisfied, his mother tapped Tessa lightly on the shoulder in dismissal. “You’ll need some witch hazel on that, my dear, and perhaps we should brew up a pot of wort-leaf tea just to be safe.”

  “Should I do it, Mother?” asked Emith, placing the second bowl of milk on the small hand table at his mother’s side

  Emith’s mother patted her son on the arm and smiled. She was very old. “You’re a good boy, Emith. I’m glad you’re home. If you could just turn my chair a shade for me first. It’s getting a little too warm facing the fire.”

  Tessa watched as Emith worked to shift his mother’s chair while his mother sat in it. How had such a large woman managed to have such a small son? Despite their differences in size, there were similarities between them: they shared the same dark blue eyes, and both dressed with extreme neatness. Comb lines could be spotted in both Emith’s graying hair and the few snow white tufts that were left of his mother’s.

  Glancing around at the room, noticing the way it was laid out, Tessa got the distinct feeling that the solid oak chair that Emith was currently struggling to move marked not only the geographical center of the room, but also its very heart. Tessa had an odd image of Mother Emith and her chair slowly turning to face various points in the kitchen as the day went by, ticking around like the hands on a clock.

  “Where is Ravis?” Tessa asked, pushing away the bowl of milk. She had never cared for warm milk; it reminded her of being ill as a child.

  Emith wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow. His mother was now in place, and after settling her feet on a small footstool, he said, “Lord Ravis went out very early this morning, miss. He asked me to tell you not to worry, he would be back later.”

  “Oh.” Tessa tried not to sound disappointed, tried not to feel disappointed. At some point during all the madness yesterday, she had begun to think of Ravis and herself as a team. Foolishness, she told herself. What use was she to a man who was in as much trouble as Ravis?

  Tessa shivered as details of all that happened last night flashed through her mind: Ravis fighting the two attackers at Widow Furbish’s door, the yellow glint of teeth, Swigg’s broken body, the mad leap into the river. The journey back through the city had been little more than a blur.

  Tessa had never thought of herself as physically weak, yet after she’d dragged herself up from the mudbanks she’d barely been able to stand. She remembered leaning heavily against Ravis and then not leaning at all. Ravis had picked her up and carried her through the dark, silent streets of Bay’Zell. By the time they’d arrived at Mother Emith’s house, it had taken all of her strength to lift her head off Ravis’ shoulder, and Tessa now found she couldn’t remember any of what had happened once they’d crossed the threshold into the warm, fragrant shadows beyond. She and Ravis had turned up wet and filthy, yet Emith and his mother had taken them in all the same.

  “I want to thank you,” she said. “Both of you. You’ve been very kind to me, and I—”

  “Ssh, my dear,” Mother Emith said. “There’s no need to thank me and Emith. Emith warned me you might be coming to stay last night when you dropped him off.”

  “He did?” Tessa was immediately suspicious.

  “Yes, miss.” Emith was in the process of replacing Tessa’s bowl of milk with a bowl of something else. “After we talked about Master Deveric’s illuminations on the way home from Fale yesterday, when you showed me your drawing, I began thinking that perhaps you were the one my master was talking about. Perhaps you were meant to carry on his work.”

  “Be sure to drink all your tea, my dear,” Mother Emith cut in. “There’s nothing like wort-leaf tea for soothing achy muscles.”

  Tessa took the bowl in her hands. Odd flakes of dark matter floated on the surface, bleeding green pigment into the liquid. “You have no way of being sure it’s me, Emith. All I did was sketch a ring.”

  Emith nodded. “You’re right, miss. But the thought niggled away at me all the way home.” As he spoke, Emith cleared a space on the huge trestle table that dominated the far wall of the room. Fat sacks of flour and spices were shoved to one side, along with pots, pans, cleavers, and root vegetables. “There was something about your sketch, miss. The way you draw curves reminds me of my master.”

  “You should listen to Emith, my dear.” Mother Emith twisted around in her chair to face Tessa. “He’s not one to rush to judgment on anything.” Slapping her hand against her thigh, she said, “I know, just to be sure, why don’t we all take another look at the sketch, here, in God’s good light of day?”

  The sketch? The last thing Tessa remembered about it was folding it up and stuffing it down her bodice on the road back to Bay’Zell. “I must have jumped into the river with it,” she said, walking into Mother Emith’s sphere of vision. She didn’t like seeing the white-haired lady strain.

  “It was a charcoal drawing, miss. There’s a fair chance it would have survived a wetting—ink or paint and it would have run clean away.” Having cleared a good portion of the table, Emith was now taking things out of a chest: small glazed pots, brushes, scrolls, wads of cloth, flight feathers, and rolls of cork. “Your clothes are in the basket by the fire, miss.”

  “If you don’t mind, my dear,” Mother Emith said, “could you just fetch the basket yourself? I’m afraid you’ve caught me on a bit of a bad morning. Any other time and I’d be scurrying around the kitchen like a lost ant. Wouldn’t I, Emith?”

  Emith nodded softly. When he spoke his
voice was subdued. “Yes, Mother.”

  Tessa walked past Mother Emith, trying hard not to look at her swollen ankles. The basket by the fire contained the remains of Tessa’s dress and her shoes, nothing more. The scroll must have floated from her bodice when she was in the river. “I can’t find it.”

  “It doesn’t matter, miss,” Emith said, mixing water and matte black powder into a bowl. “I’ll soon have everything ready for you to try your hand at something else.”

  “Yes,” echoed his mother from her chair. “Never mind about the sketch, my dear. Some things were made to be lost.”

  Thinking it a rather odd thing to say, Tessa looked up at Mother Emith. The old woman looked back at her, eyes twinkling.

  “Come on, miss,” Emith said, knife and flight feather now in hand. “I’ve just cut you a fresh nib. Let’s see if you can scribe something to match the sketch you lost.”

  Tessa looked at Mother Emith a moment longer, then crossed over to her son. The kitchen was a large, low-ceilinged room with so many items hanging from the rafters that she had to duck constantly to avoid them. The floor was good, plain stone of the sort that she had seen a lot of during the ride to Fale. Light came mostly from the fire burning in the hearth, but thin strips of sunlight banded the room, spilling from two unglazed windows cut high into the wall.

  “Here, miss,” Emith said, taking the bowl of wort-leaf tea from Tessa and handing her the quill. “I’ve cut a fine tip, perfect for detailed work. It’s a hard one, too. I boiled it myself a week ago, and it’s spent all the time since in sand.”

  Tessa ran a finger over the nib. “Boiled? Sand?” She didn’t understand what Emith was saying.

  Gently Emith corrected her grip, moving her fingers so she held the quill like a fountain pen. “Yes, miss. You can’t just pluck a goose and expect to write straight away with the feather. It has to be boiled to clean it and to make it soft and ready for shaping. While it’s still hot I take my dutching hook and flatten the nib and the shaft. See?” He pointed to the areas of the quill that had been shaped. “And once that’s done, I bury it in sand to make it good and hard. The longer you keep the feathers buried, the harder they become.”

  The nib felt as tough and smooth as a fingernail. It was almost the same color too. Looking at the eager expression on Emith’s face, Tessa felt she should say something complimentary. “This feels like a good one,” she said, weighing it in her hand. “I’m sure it will last a long time.”

  Emith shook his head. “Master always said it’s the best ones that last the least.”

  Tessa was beginning to feel like a fool. “Why?”

  “Because the better the pen, miss, the more a scribe will favor using it, and the more times the nib will have to be recut. I’ve seen Master Deveric whittle down as many as three pens in one day.”

  “So the nib wears down?” Feeling its hard toughness, Tessa found it hard to imagine.

  “Yes, miss.” Emith spoke softly and without a trace of impatience. “But you needn’t worry about that. I’ll be here ready to recut it for you as soon as the line thickens.”

  “Be sure to listen carefully to Emith, my dear,” said Mother Emith. “There’s no one in Bay’Zell who knows more about scribing than my son.”

  Emith actually blushed. He hurried on, pulling out a chair for Tessa to sit. “Here, miss,” he said, guiding her hand toward a pot of ink. “This is how you dip to pick up the right amount of ink. You need to do it at an angle. See?” Tessa nodded. “And then you bend your wrist a little to keep the ink in the pen when you move it.”

  Tessa did as she was told, though a large drop of ink splashed onto the table. Emith was ready with a cloth. Drawing the pen over the square of parchment, Tessa was surprised at how difficult it was. Not like using a fountain pen at all. The nib scratched a furrow in the parchment and the ink pooled, then soaked into the lines created.

  “Emith, could you bring the vegetables over? I’ll need to peel them for the herring bake.”

  As Emith collected vegetables, bowl, and knife for his mother, Tessa concentrated on getting the nib to do as she wanted. The parchment itself was a problem because it was so much rougher than the paper she was used to. By the time Emith got back she had made a complete mess of the page.

  “You don’t have to press so hard, miss,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “Let the ink do the work for you, not the nib.”

  “The ink?” As Tessa spoke, Mother Emith began humming a tune. Vegetable scraping sounds soon followed.

  “Yes, miss,” Emith said. “You only need to touch the page lightly. The ink will soak in of its own accord. It’s made from gallic acid, you see, so it burns right into the page. Scrape too hard with your nib and the ink will sear the page like a cattle brand.”

  “This is acid?” Tessa found herself becoming interested in what Emith was saying.

  Emith nodded. “Gallic acid, gum, and lampblack. I make it myself. Of course it’s going to be more difficult for me to find gallnuts now I’m in the city. I’ll probably have to buy them at market, so they won’t be nearly as good.” Seeing Tessa’s puzzled expression, Emith explained further. “Gallnuts grow on the bark of oak trees after they’ve been stung by laying insects. There’s a grove of fine oaks just at the back of my master’s house, and all I ever had to do when I needed ink was take a walk and gather them. I’d chop them off, soak them in water overnight, and by the following morning they’d be ready to take the lampblack.”

  Tessa raised an eyebrow.

  “Carbon powder,” Emith explained without being asked. “It’s what forms on the glass of burning oil lamps.”

  “Emith, could you set these vegetables to boil?” Mother Emith held out a copper pan. “And while you’re up could you bring over the fish to be gutted?”

  Tessa wondered how Emith’s mother had gotten along before her son came. It was beginning to look as if she couldn’t move from her chair. Yet the kitchen was so tidy and fragrant, and good things were cooking on the hearth. Tessa smiled: Emith’s mother had a rare talent for asking people to do things without seeming bossy or troublesome. That probably had a lot to do with it.

  Doodling with pen and ink, Tessa marveled at all Emith had told her. She liked hearing the details of scribing, ink making, and quill shaping. She even liked the feel of the quill in her hand. Carefully she began to trace spirals similar to the coils in the ring, turning the nib every so often to broaden the line to a barb. It was good to be here, in a warm kitchen, with Emith and his mother taking care of her. After all the madness of yesterday, she welcomed the peace and quiet. Funny, but she didn’t feel like relaxing, though. She was determined to make the quill do what she wanted and make the ink go where it was supposed to. And as Emith turned his mother’s chair another degree and put the vegetables to boil on the hearth, Tessa turned her full attention to the parchment. She was going to draw a better pattern than the one that had gone missing in the river, one that wasn’t made to be lost.

  Ravis walked through the streets of Bay’Zell. He knew Camron of Thorn would be waiting in Marcel’s house to meet with him, yet he felt disinclined to be prompt for his new master. Let him and his newly inherited fortune wait.

  Bay’Zell was a slow city at noon. Ravis walked down Fortune Street with its stylish pastry shops, elegant cobblers, and discreet pawnbrokers, then headed north into the Hemming Quarter, where the well-to-do middle classes and the respectable prostitutes shopped.

  Prostitutes in lace hoods and carefully muted dresses of gray and brown greeted Ravis with a raise of an eyebrow or a slight incline of the head. The middle-class women simply ignored him. Sitting in shaded arcades, they sipped warm arlo thickened with honey and nibbled at apple tarts laced with sloe gin. Later on in the afternoon they would head over to Fortune Street and rifle through the pawnbroker’s stores, anxious to buy anything that had been sold off by noblemen who had fallen upon hard times.

  The middle-class women all knew their husbands visited prostitutes
, but it gave them some satisfaction to say, “At least it is a girl from the Hemming Quarter, not one of those cheap, gaudy trollops from the docks.” Still, no matter how stoically they regarded their husbands’ indiscretions, the main reason they frequented the Hemming Quarter was to keep an eye on the prostitutes, lest they develop a taste for finery and fine airs to go with their heavy purses. The prostitutes, for their part, saw fit to play along. And although they wore enough red silks and golden threads by night to upholster a dynasty’s worth of thrones, they always dressed discreetly during the day. Such were the moral standards of Bay’Zell.

  Ravis was well aware of how he appeared to the middleclass women: his dark coloring marked him a foreigner, and his dark clothing marked him as dangerous. Yet, they thought as he approached their dainty arcades, he holds himself like a nobleman, and his clothes, although unfashionably black, are surely of the finest cut and cloth. Then he got close enough for them to see his scar, and each and every one of them looked away.

  Normally Ravis would force them to look at him by bowing and offering the greeting “Ladies.” Today he passed them right by.

  Down Enameling Street with its slight, shabby shopfronts boasting goldsmiths, silversmiths, scribes, clerks, money lenders, and jewelers, down onto the north quay, where the rough cobbled road gave way to smooth dirt and a fresh easterly breeze blew away the smell of smoldering metal, acid, and once good timbers turned to rot.

  Occasionally, out of the corner of his eye, Ravis would catch a glimpse of a man dressed in a dark green tunic with a silver insignia on his breast. Thorn colors. The man dodged sunlight only tolerably well and was slow to move from his mark’s line of vision when spotted. And considering he was wearing a bulky winter cloak for the sole purpose of concealing a crossbow beneath it, he succeeded only in drawing more attention to himself. No one in Bay’Zell had business wearing such a thick cloak in late spring. All in all, the poor man wasn’t doing a very good job. Camron had obviously sent him to track down and then follow his new hired hand, and the only question that currently interested Ravis about the matter—for he guessed the man had caught up with him just after dawn when he returned to the brothel to check on Camron’s story—was the dire possibility that this guard was one of Camron’s best.