The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  “Oh dear,” Angeline whispered. She didn’t say it, but Ederius looked just like Father during a bout of wet fever.

  “My lady,” Ederius said, not looking her in the eye, “you must go. The king has forbidden me to see you.” The last words were spoken amid a hail of coughing.

  Angeline knew all about coughing. Father always developed a terrible cough before the wet fever took him. Everyone in Castle Halmac—grooms, servants, attendants, and poor relations—lived in fear of hearing Father cough. Coughing meant sickness, and sickness meant death. The minute Angeline heard Father coughing, she would run to the kitchens to warm up some honey and almond-milk tea. Though servants and physicians always did the same, Father blatantly refused to take any of their medicines. “I’ll take a sip of Angeline’s honey cup,” he would say, “nothing more.” Angeline’s heart always swelled to hear him say it. Only she could make Father well.

  Ignoring the scribe’s protests completely, Angeline walked into the room. Ederius needed looking after, and she was the person to do it. “I don’t care what Izgard says,” she cried, knowing it wasn’t true but enjoying saying it all the same. “He can’t stop me from doing whatever I choose.” With that, she took Ederius’ arm and walked him back to his desk.

  The scriptorium was a little cold and lofty for Angeline’s tastes. The ceiling was high enough for bats, and the windows, being large, let in dust and drafts and moths. Angeline did like all the tiny pots of pigments laid out around the edge of Ederius’ desk, and the rainbow of powders they held were as pretty as could be, but some of the more brightly colored ones smelled strange, and she knew from experience that if she inhaled their scents too deeply, they would cause her head to ache.

  Gently Angeline helped Ederius into his chair. The old scribe moved slowly. He felt cold and stiff, and Angeline could tell he was nervous. Once he’d resigned himself to receiving her attention, though, he seemed strangely affected by it and kept touching her wrist and fingers, as if to ensure himself she was real.

  “There,” she said, patting his good right shoulder. “You sit and rest while I go and fetch us some tea.”

  Ederius shook his head. “No, my lady. Please. I will be fine. I have just had a tiring day.” As he spoke, Angeline noticed that his fingers quietly pulled an unfinished leaf of parchment over a brilliantly colored painting on his desk.

  “You’ve been working too long at your patterns,” she said, trying her best to make her voice stern, like Gerta’s. “Izgard has been making you do too much.” She reached over to pull out the painting from beneath the vellum.

  “No!” Ederius slammed his palm upon the desk.

  Frightened, Angeline jumped back.

  Realizing that he had acted harshly, Ederius said quickly, “Forgive me, my lady, I did not mean to startle you. The painting is not fit for anyone to see. I . . . I am ashamed of it.”

  Angeline wasn’t sure how to react. She dearly wanted to see the painting now, but Ederius looked genuinely distressed. Then the scribe began to cough, and the matter was settled. Her expert healing skills were called for. She couldn’t go to the kitchen to make honey and almond-milk tea—it would take too long and Izgard might be back at any minute—but she could at least fetch Ederius a glass of water and pat his back until the coughing stopped.

  Painting forgotten amid the greater excitement of playing nurse, Angeline scanned the room for a water jug. She found what she was looking for on a side table set back against the wall behind Ederius’ chair. Rushing over, she spied a handful of glazed cups farther along down the table. Picking one of the cups at random, she filled it to the brim with clear, sparkling water.

  Ederius was bent over his desk. He was no longer coughing, but his face looked very red.

  “Here,” she said, holding up the cup of water. “I brought you this. I’ll just take a sip first to make sure it’s not too cold.” Pleased with herself for thinking of such a nurselike thing to say, Angeline brought the cup to her lips.

  “Stop!”

  Angeline froze. Her gaze moved from the rim of the cup to Ederius’ face.

  “Don’t drink from that cup,” he said, standing up and walking toward her. “You must never, ever, drink from anything in here. Ever.” He snatched the cup from her. “I use these to mix pigments in, and some of those pigments are very dangerous. They could kill you if you drank as much as a drop of them. Do you understand?”

  Angeline nodded, not really sure if she understood or not. She was too upset. Ederius had never spoken to her like this before. All she had wanted to do was be a good nurse.

  Seeing her expression, Ederius softened. He placed the cup on the desk and raised his hand toward her; not quite daring to touch her but wanting to nonetheless. “I’m sorry, my lady. When I saw you were about to drink, I was frightened. I wouldn’t want any harm to come to you. Some of my pigments are very strong poison. I should have explained that to you before.”

  “Poison,” Angeline repeated, understanding exactly what Ederius meant now. She knew all about poison: both Father and her brother, Bors, had feared it, and Izgard was so afraid of being poisoned that he ate or drank nothing that had not been tested. Sometimes he even made her try things first.

  “Yes, my lady,” Ederius said very gently. “You must always be careful when touching anything you find in here. Not everything is dangerous. The plant dyes you painted with yesterday—the saffron yellow and turnsole purple—they’re both safe.”

  Ederius worked hard to stifle a cough, and Angeline felt herself softening toward him once more. He had just been trying to protect her, that was all. Just as Father would have done.

  “And the red one?”

  “Yes, kermes red is safe, though that comes from insects, not plants.”

  Angeline thought the idea of pigments being made from insects rather unpleasant, but didn’t say so. “Which ones are dangerous, then?” she asked as she moved to stand behind Ederius’ chair. Laying her hands on Ederius’ good shoulder, she forced the scribe to sit.

  Patting her fingers, he said, “The sparkling white color over there on the shelf.” He pointed to one of the pots. “That’s white arsenic, and the scarlet color beside it is mercuric sulfide. Both can be very dangerous.”

  “But you have other whites and reds you can use,” Angeline said, gently working her fingers across the scribe’s broken shoulder bone. “So why do you paint with them at all?”

  “As the nature of my work changes, so must my pigments.” Ederius suddenly appeared to get agitated again. He shrugged her hand from his shoulder and glanced toward the tall windows. “You must leave now, my lady. People will be worried about you.”

  Angeline opened her mouth to object, but she knew Ederius was right. Gerta would be looking everywhere for her, and Izgard may have arrived back from the pass. Reluctantly she nodded. “I’ll make Gerta fetch you some honey and almond-milk tea.”

  “You’re such a good girl, Angeline,” Ederius said, using her name for the first time. “I’m sorry I frightened you earlier. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you.”

  Angeline felt her eyes prickling. Father had said something very similar to her once when he’d pulled her off a mean-mouthed horse. “That horse has a mean mouth,” he had said. “And a temper to match. I can’t risk him turning on you the moment you’re out of sight. What would I do if anything ever happened to my best girl?”

  Feeling sad, Angeline bent over and kissed the scribe on his old cheek. His skin was very frail. It reminded Angeline of Mother’s old silk dresses: even locked away in a chest to prevent insect damage and weathering, they had still managed to fade to nothing over the darkness of twenty years.

  As she straightened, a wisp of night air ruffled the papers on Ederius’ desk, lifting up the sheet of unfinished vellum and allowing Angeline a peek at the painting beneath. What she saw made her mouth go dry.

  There was something monstrous on the page.

  A terrible, unnatural d
esign.

  Then the wind withdrew and the vellum fell back into place, and Angeline doubted she had seen anything at all. Just a lot of jumbled colors thrown together with little thought.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” Ederius asked, unaware of what she had seen.

  “Yes, quite all right. I must go now.” Angeline made her way toward the door. She was shaking but didn’t know why. The idea of being back in her own chamber, with Gerta spitting pins and the no-good dog chasing his tail, suddenly seemed appealing, and Angeline took the stairs two at a time. She needed very badly to get back to the ordered boredom of her life.

  “Any finely ground powder is called pounce,” Emith said, running his hands through a dish of white powder. “I mostly use chalk to whiten the hides, but others use ash or breadcrumbs, and a few use ground-up bones. Sometimes when the hide hasn’t been soaked for long enough before being scraped, I’ll rub it with a little pumice to take away the grease.” As he spoke, Emith took a handful of the white powder and began working it into the hide with a small wooden block. “Just before Master Deveric started work on an illumination, he always insisted I pounce the parchment one last time, to raise the nap and make it ready to take the ink.”

  Tessa nodded, trying hard to remember everything Emith told her.

  They were sitting around the large table in Mother Emith’s kitchen. Mother Emith and her chair had done a full turn from this morning and were back facing the fire. The old woman’s head was resting on her shoulder, and a faint snoring noise could be heard escaping from her lips. According to Emith, she wasn’t sleeping, though. Merely resting.

  Pots of delicious-smelling stews, stocks, and sauces were bubbling in copper pots over the fire. Tessa had already eaten two meals since this morning, but she found herself eager for a third. Mother Emith could cook like a demon. Well, Emith did all the actual cooking, but his mother was the master chef: supervising spicing, boiling, blanching, and garnishing all from the safe haven of her chair.

  Emith had explained to Tessa that before Deveric died, he always spent two days in every seven in town with his mother. Deveric had insisted upon it. During the five days when Emith was in Fale, his mother relied on a local girl to come and help her in the mornings.

  Tessa had yet to see Mother Emith move from her chair, and as it was now full dark outside, and the shutters were closed for the night, leaving trapped moths to busy themselves around the flames, she had finally given up waiting. Perhaps, like the toys in children’s stories, Mother Emith only moved when everyone else was fast asleep.

  Tessa liked Emith and his mother. They were both kind, if a little odd, and they seemed very anxious to please. If she shivered, Emith would dash off and get her a blanket. If her stomach rumbled, bread would be buttered and sent her way. If the light wasn’t bright enough for her to sketch by, enough tallow would be brought to illuminate a church, and all she had to do was hold up a hand to test the swollen lump on her head to be regaled with ointments, herbal teas, and advice.

  Although she had never received such attention before, Tessa found herself growing used to it rather fast. It was nice to be here in this warm, busy kitchen, so unlike her own sterile, cheerless one at home, and just sit and listen and learn.

  It was a new experience for her to be able to concentrate completely on what she was doing, not have to worry about her tinnitus recurring, and so be free to immerse herself in just the kinds of details she’d always avoided before. Work for her was normally a series of reflex actions: hear something, acknowledge it, encounter an awkward question, evade it. Her job in telesales had been about saying what she wanted to say, while delivering it into a form that others wanted to hear. Tessa could do it in her sleep. Her mind was neither challenged nor engaged—that was the way she’d liked it. It was the way she had liked all her life: no commitments, no details, no thought.

  She’d fallen into telesales after she’d dropped out of college. As always, the big changes in her life were precipitated by tinnitus. The first year at New Mexico State had gone smoothly enough. She attended all the usual run of classes, made a few close friends, kept up with her coursework. Everything was fine until she began her second year. Art history was her major, and as soon as she started classes after summer break things started to go wrong. She couldn’t concentrate in class. The slightest noise would distract her; the drone of the air-conditioning, a car pulling out in the car park below, someone in the row behind clearing his throat. Tessa became snappish with her roommate, Nyla, no longer able to tolerate Nyla’s endless chatting on the phone and late night music sessions. Work started to suffer. Books piled up waiting to be read. Whenever Tessa tried to concentrate, noises grated in her temples, itching away beneath her skin like something wanting to get out.

  Full-blown tinnitus attacks grew more frequent. Tessa bit her nails down to the quick. Waiting. She was always waiting for another attack to begin.

  She started dropping classes. Soon Professor Yarback’s course on the Byzantine empire and the Coptic art of Egypt was the only class she could bring herself to attend. It was the patterns that drew her out of bed in the morning, made her pull on her clothes and brush her teeth. The stonework of the period was rich with patterns and geometric designs. Intricate, fantastic devices slithered up stone columns, over door frames, and under arches.

  Tessa would spend hours in the library, copying, tracing, and researching the designs. And in the long afternoons when Professor Yarback talked of the “naturalism of human figures” and “the importance of religious iconography,” Tessa found her mind drifting away in the lecture hall, hands doodling on her notepad, trying to reproduce the last pattern she’d seen.

  They always made such perfect sense to her. She could see how they had been constructed from a basic set of lines. How even a seemingly complicated design could be traced back to the simplest of grids.

  It was during the last of Professor Yarback’s lectures, “Coptic Influences on the Insular Art of Ireland and Britain,” that Tessa had her worst attack of tinnitus ever. Professor Yarback was clicking slides at his usual snail’s pace—Egyptian manuscripts, murals, stonework—when he stopped at a slide of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

  “See how the panels resemble the key patterns and fretwork found in Coptic design?”

  That was the last thing Tessa heard Professor Yarback say. The world began to fade away as she studied the pattern on the slide. She had never seen anything so minutely detailed before in her life. It buzzed with life and movement. Strange, elongated birds chased their tails across the page, twining and retwining around themselves, all claws, scalelike feathers, and beaks. On top of this seething bed of blank-eyed birds were laid self-contained panels filled with geometric designs: fretwork, knotwork, trumpet spirals, and interlaces.

  Tessa felt her head begin to ache.

  The controlling hand of the scribe was a palpable force in the room. It was the only thing that stopped the birds from breaking into a chaotic frenzy and spoiling the ordered symmetry of the page.

  Softly, very softly, Tessa’s ears began to burn. A high-pitched noise skittered through her eardrums, and the muscles on either side of her temples began to throb.

  The slide dominated the entire front wall of the room. Its colors reflected off the faces of sixty students. The lecture hall smell of close bodies, old sweat, new varnish, and pine detergent faded away with the sound. Tessa caught a whiff of something strange—like paint, only spicier, more fragrant.

  The sound in her ears sharpened to a knife point of gray noise.

  Tessa couldn’t take her eyes off the slide. It was an enchanted tangle of lines, curves, and forms, and she wanted very badly to make sense of it. Her gaze fell upon a single bird in the top left quarter of the page. Its wings were painted with stripes, not scales. It was the only one of its kind.

  Professor Yarback was speaking, pacing, and pointing. In no rush to change the slide, he held the clicker limply in his hand.

  Tessa’s head was p
ounding. Her vision began to blur. Tears glazed her eyes, distorting the patterns on the slide. The dull eyes of the birds all looked her way, their beaks moved, scissoring up and down along the talons and body parts that were held in their grasp.

  Tessa felt rather than heard her pencil drop to the floor. Professor Yarback stopped pacing. His head formed the center of the slide. Bird features projected over his own features like a mask, transforming him into a tattooed man.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, Tessa began pressing her fingers into her temples, trying to squeeze out the noise. It was unbearable now, a steel wire cutting through her thoughts. There was the pattern and the pain, nothing more.

  Tessa’s books slid from her desk onto her lap. Dimly she was aware of people around her, mouths open, hands up, eyes as black and glassy as birds’. Tessa wanted none of them. They blocked her view of the pattern, stopped her from getting to the source.

  A high shriek, like the call of a sea bird, sounded. And then Tessa’s world faded to so many shades of black.

  She awoke a few minutes later in the campus infirmary. The tinnitus was still with her, but it was now little more than a vague background noise, like traffic heard in the distance. She could live with it like that. The nurse, a large Puerto Rican woman in a crisp white coat and high heels, explained that Tessa had fainted at her desk. She gave Tessa two Percodans and a can of soda and made her promise to go straight to a doctor.

  Tessa took the Percodans, drank the soda, went straight to her room, and stayed there for a week. The tinnitus got steadily worse. Every time she tried to catch up on her work, read a course book, or even flick through a magazine the noises would beat away in her head. Every night she dreamed of the slide in the lecture hall, and every morning she awoke ill rested and drenched in sweat.

  After the fifth day, Tessa knew the tinnitus wasn’t going to go away on its own. As long as she stayed where she was, it would give her no peace. This she accepted as a simple fact. She needed to get away.