by Iris Anthony
“No.”
“May I have it then?”
“You may do as you wish.”
“Thank you.” He bowed and then sat on a stool and made quick work of the food.
I looked away as he chewed. It made me hungry.
When he was done, he simply sat there, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the floor. “I suppose I shall go then.”
“You should do what you like.” I had not invited him, though now that he was here, the gloom seemed much less frightening.
“I could stay, if you want. Nobody’s looking for me.”
I wouldn’t either. He was such a small and puny boy, I wondered that anyone ever noticed him at all.
He was watching me, brow quirked, waiting, I suppose, for an answer.
“You can stay. For a while. As long as you tell me how you got here.”
He had gone back to the tray and was picking at the crumbs. But at my demand, he jerked an elbow at the wall he’d come through. “By the stair.”
“The stair is there.” I nodded in the other direction toward the door.
“I meant the other stair.”
“But there is no other stair. There’s only one way in.”
He’d gone on to quaff his thirst with my wine, so he dried his mouth on his sleeve before he answered. “There are two of them.”
“But there’s only one door.” If there were a second, I would have noticed. There was only one way into the tower, and there was only one way out of the palace grounds.
He seemed to think on my words for a moment as he took another drink. “That’s true. Just one door.”
“Then, pray tell, how can there be another stair?”
“You probably wouldn’t call it a stair, my lady. It’s not a proper one, in any case.”
“Then show me the improper stair, please.”
I followed him toward the wall through which he’d come. But this time, he did not walk through it.
“There is no stair here!”
“It’s not on the inside. It’s on the outside.”
“Outside?”
As I stood there, perplexed and befuddled, he jammed his toes into a crack in the wall and vaulted up, curling his hand around the window’s opening. And then he pulled himself up onto it.
“Where are you?”
He lay on the ledge and reached a hand down. “If you just put your toe in that crack there, my lady…”
“You want me to—to come up there?! There’s no room for me.”
His wiggled his fingers as he reached for my hand. “If you want to see the stair…”
“I cannot just—” do what it was he seemed to expect me to do.
“It’s not much different than mounting a horse. Only it’s a bit higher. And you would not wish to put too much force into it, or you might just throw yourself through the window. And if—”
“Yes, I see.” I put the toe of my shoe into the crack and then stretched up, grabbing at his hand.
He tugged on my arm, but it did little good. “You’re heavier than you look, my lady.” He released my hand, and I fell back to the floor. “I can’t hoist you.” He pushed to sitting, letting his legs dangle over the edge.
I pushed up onto an elbow as I swept my hair from my eyes. “But you say there’s a stair out there?” If I could exit the tower without being seen, then perhaps there was a way to exit the palace grounds as well.
“I’m the only one who ever uses it.”
I picked myself up from the ground and shook out the fur that had fallen from my shoulders. There had to be some way to reach that window… Ah! “Come down and move my bed over here so I can climb up on it.”
“The bed?”
“That way, if I fall, I won’t come to any harm.”
He jumped down and scrambled over to the bed. Crawling across it, he fixed himself between the bed and the wall. But no matter how he pushed and heaved, he could not move it. Finally he came away from it and stood before me, panting, hands on his knees. “You’re going to have to help, my lady.”
Shedding my fur, I applied myself to one side of the frame. When pulling did not get us anywhere, I moved to the other end and pushed. But still, even the two of us could not budge it.
The boy finally gave up. “It’s no use.”
I agreed with him, though it pained me to say it. “Then get my chest. That will have to do.”
The boy made short work of pushing it over to the window. We ought to have used it from the first.
He hopped atop it and then leaped up to the window ledge.
“Come on, then!” He was already lying on the ledge, arm extended.
I stepped up onto the chest and grabbed his hand.
“Jump.”
“Jump?”
“Jump!”
I jumped. He gave a mighty tug on my arm, and soon I found myself kneeling in the window beside him, though it felt as if he had wrenched my arm from my shoulder.
The moon had bathed this side of the tower in silvered light. I could see now there was nothing behind the structure but the palisade that enclosed the palace grounds.
Leaning forward, I looked out over the edge. First to the left, then to the right, but I saw no stair. “Where is it?”
“There.”
I looked beneath us to where he was pointing, but I could see nothing. “Where?”
“Right there.” He’d leaned rather farther out than was prudent and took a big swipe at a sort of peg, which seemed to protrude from the wooden walls.
“See? Look at them.”
“That is the stair?” I used the term loosely, for his stair appeared to be made of stubby pegs shoved into the tower between the boards at irregular intervals. “That’s not a stair.” And it wouldn’t help me.
“I made it myself. I wanted a place just for me, where I could go whenever my father—” He broke off speaking.
“Whenever your father…what?”
He shrugged. “He does not seem to like me much, my lady.”
“Was it he who did that?” I put a finger to his cheek.
He winced, though he said nothing.
I considered that I ought to let him keep his pride, since he had very little else to show for himself. “You could not use the real stair like everyone else?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Sometimes you don’t want anyone to know where you are. And I can climb it quick as a squirrel. Want to try it?”
“No.” I did not. I had not suffered from my time here, only to lose my life by pitching myself from the tower’s window.
“It’s not so difficult.”
As I watched, he turned and rolled onto his belly. Then he slid out the window and dangled by his fingers as he felt along the wall with the tips of his toes. Finding the first stub, he beamed up at me. “See? First one’s the worst.”
“They all look bad to me.”
“It’s easy. There’s hardly any sport to it.”
I leaned out farther to watch as he climbed down, hopping this way and that to follow his stair. He jumped the last bit, leaving me gasping when he fell. But he soon bounced up like a court tumbler. Collecting his hat, he doffed it as he bowed. And then he gave a cheery wave as he ran toward the front of the tower. For the first time since I’d arrived, I slept without once waking in the night.
CHAPTER 18
Juliana
ROCHEMONT ABBEY
As I walked toward the church, eager to reach my sanctuary of golden light, a great wailing arose from the hospice. As I watched, the door was flung open and the abbess’s new bailiff appeared. He was dragging a woman behind him. As soon as she passed the threshold of the door, he pushed her out into the muddied courtyard.
Astonished, I came to a halt.
He soon reappeared, arms filled wi
th a wriggling man whose feet were bound in rags. He proceeded to pitch the man into the mud beside the woman.
Striding toward him, I held out my hand, anxious that he should stop his abuse. “What happens here?”
“They’re to leave.”
“But why?”
“The abbess’s orders.” He drew me aside as another man, one of the laymen, pushed several other people from the door.
“But they’re not well.”
“Harvest was lean this year. She said there’s no stores for those who don’t deserve them.”
“Don’t deserve!” We none of us deserved any good thing. I watched the eviction with growing horror. “This is not right!”
The abbess’s men paused to survey those who sat on the ground, gazing about with befuddlement. “We’re just doing what the abbess said.”
Just doing what the abbess said had become synonymous with unseemly parsimony and an appalling lack of good sense. These pitiful men and women had not the wherewithal to help themselves, and now the men were adding children to their number.
Not the children!
Anyone but them. Anything but those. “Stop.” I put a hand on the arm of the man who transported several of the youngest into the yard.
“Abbess’s orders.”
I fisted my hand in the fabric of his tunic. “But this is madness!”
A child, eyes shimmering with tears, reached for me with outstretched hands.
As I felt those old cords of guilt and shame draw tight about my heart, I retreated, grasping my black tunic tight about the throat. “You cannot cast out the children.”
“Don’t have any choice in the matter.” He dropped the children to the ground and then turned to go back inside.
They stood there, bare feet sunk into the frost-scarred mud. I might have expected one of the men or women to gather them up, but no one moved. They all seemed rendered witless by their rude dislodgement.
And then one of the children began to cry. It was not a shriek. I might have remained unmoved by a display of umbrage or anger, but the child whimpered. That piteous, heartfelt cry crumbled every defense by which I had hoped to buttress my wounded heart.
I snatched up the mite, clasping it to my chest, and went in search of the abbess.
***
“Who?” The abbess looked up at Sister Berta, her new prioress, as I stood in the entrance to her chamber.
I set the child down beside me.
Sister Berta’s frown deepened as she glanced at me. “Sister Juliana. She tends Saint Catherine’s chapel.”
The abbess’s gaze sharpened. “The one who takes in all the pilgrims’ gifts?”
I took it upon myself to reply. “Among other things, Your Grace.”
“Why are you here?” The abbess pulled a dried date from a tray that rode her lap. She rolled it between her fingers before putting it into her mouth.
I stepped across the threshold. “Women and children are being evicted from the hospice, Reverend Mother.”
Her brown eyes looked at me with neither surprise nor apology. “Yes.”
“You must put a stop to it.” The child slipped its cold, bony hand into my own. Glancing down, I saw its gaze fixed upon the abbess’s tray. “The men said you had ordered the eviction.”
Her eyes flicked from me to the child. “I did.”
“Why?”
“Because we cannot afford them.” She plucked another sweet from the tray.
“But it is not for us to decide. We are keepers of the poor, sanctuary for the weak, and solace for the brokenhearted.”
“Yes. All of whom expect to be housed. And fed. Those who can leave should do so. Somewhere, someone must be eager to put an able-bodied child to use.” She pronounced the words without inflection or emotion. “The pilgrims can stay for one night and pass on. And then the sisters who keep the hospice can apply their efforts elsewhere.” She paused, and then looked up toward the ceiling where someone had begun pasting gold leaf onto the beams. After sighing, she continued. “For us to keep those who cannot contribute to this community is not possible. The harvest has been poor.”
“And yet, you eat those?” I do not know how I dared to speak those words.
She glanced down at the tray. “I had them brought special.”
I advanced and took a date from it and then gave it to the child.
“What!”
“In a year of lean harvests, the poor must eat whatever food can be found.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I shall have you—I shall have you—”
I felt my brow quirk.
“—you—!”
“This place is not here for your service. Your position is supposed to be used in the service of others.”
“If you have such grave concerns about the welfare of the hospice, then you shall be the one to care for those who are left.”
I had walked into a trap of my own making. “Not the children, Your Grace.” I had avoided that fate thus far. I would beg if I had to in order to be released from it now.
“The children? You mean the young ones? Like that?” She gave a pointed look at the urchin by my side.
I nodded.
“No. I did not mean them. They’re to be put out to those in the village. I meant the others. The dull-witted.”
The dull-witted. This abbey, like all the others in the realm, collected them. Those not fit for earthly duties were always given to us so we could fit them for the heavenly realms, or at least look after them until they stepped from this life into the next.
She looked at me, lips pursed as if reconsidering. But then she nodded and picked up another date. “Yes. I think I would like you to look after them. That should keep you busy enough not to put my commands to question.”
“But what will happen to Saint Catherine?”
“I’ll have one of the others, one of those novices, look after her.”
“But they don’t know—”
“They don’t know what? How to light a candle? How to trim a lamp? We both know that’s not what you’ve been after down there. My father always wondered why the abbess didn’t have more funds at her disposal.”
“Are you speaking of the pilgrims’ gifts? Because they aren’t collected for the abbess. They are collected for—”
“Why do you stand there gawping? You have charges to be looked after.” The Queen Mother herself had never been so imperious as this young girl who had taken on the duties of abbess. She shooed me away with a hand as she contemplated her next selection of sweetmeats.
***
Taking the child with me, I returned to the hospice. None were left of the dozen that had been rudely cast out not long before. As I drew the door open, a scene of chaos greeted me. If I had once thought the abbey plain, this place was even more austere. But now the pallets had been overturned, and the stools had been tossed about. The table sat on its side.
“Sister Juliana?” Sister Sybilla stopped setting the room to rights long enough to pause beside me.
“The abbess sent me to you.”
Her brow peaked. “Then who is tending Saint Catherine’s chapel?”
I might have answered, but at that moment, a hackle-raising screech rang through the air. We turned to see a girl screaming at…nothing at all.
“What—what’s wrong with her?”
“She can’t speak.” Sister Sybilla gave her a sharp glance. “Or she won’t.”
A certain gleam in the girl’s eye made me think perhaps the latter was the case.
“And this one hardly ever stops.” She pointed to a boy who might have seen a good dozen years. He was sitting on one of the righted stools, bobbing his head to some melody only he could hear.
His dark eyes were slanted at the corners, and as we passed, his mouth tipped up into a smile. “Hardl
y ever stops. Hardly ever stops. Hardly ever stops.”
“A right mimic, he is.”
The boy stood and slipped a hand into Sister Sybilla’s.
She pulled hers away, took him by the shoulders, turned him around, and pushed him back onto the stool.
She pointed to a boy who stood in the middle of the room, flapping his arms up and down. “That one there hasn’t the sense God gave a goose.”
“Yes, he does.” A boy nearly fully grown rose from the floor to defy the nun.
She seemed to cower under his gaze. “He’s never said one blessed word to me.”
“It’s only because you always grab at his arms and try to make him stop. If you would leave him be, then he might say something.”
The boy in question took a deliberate step away from us and then a hop. A step and a hop. Another step and another hop, all the way to a corner.
The older boy gave us a scowl and then joined the younger one in the corner at the other side of the room.
“Who is that?” The young man’s clothes seemed too fine to be one of the workers, and he held himself more like a young lord than a peasant.
She crossed herself. “He’s the young abbess’s brother, and the devil incarnate! He may look as if he has his wits about him, but just as soon as you think it, the demons come to possess him again.”
“Then why does he stay?” I would think those with demons would flee the work of Our Lord.
“Where else can he go? Their father entrusted him to our care. The heir he is, though he’ll never inherit. We can do nothing else but look after him and hope he won’t eventually murder us all.”
I eyed the boy over my shoulder. He did not look like one possessed. He was sitting now beside the girl who had been screeching, patiently spooning gruel into her mouth.
“And those?” I nodded toward a group of children who reclined upon the packed earth of the floor, boys and girls together, not unlike a litter of pups. As I discerned one from the other, I saw their limbs were twisted and bent.
“Lame, the lot of them.” She went over and picked through the pile, separating one from the rest and dragging him out by the elbow. “But they have to be toileted now and then.” She slung an arm around his waist. “Help me.”
