Repentance gasped.
"That's right. I'll take the price of Lord Carrull's girl out of your sister's back."
"No," Repentance screamed. "You leave Comfort alone!"
Madam Cawrocc laughed. "She'll work for me until she dies. It should take a couple of weeks, give or take a day. And every day, as she's being beaten I'll make sure to remind her that she has you to thank."
Repentance lunged at the woman, wrapping her hands around Cawrocc's neck, intent on choking the life from her.
Lord Carrull squealed like a girl. "You mustn't!"
Something cracked into her skull and everything went black.
Actions have repercussions. Toss even a tiny pebble into the still morning waters at the swimming hole and watch the water move aside to accommodate the pebble's new place. The ripples go on and on. Likewise, when I move, the person next to me has to shift over to accommodate my new place, and the person next to her has to shift over, and on and on the ripples go. Oh, dear Providence, I didn't know.
~Repentance Atwater, Healing House Journal
Chapter 10
"What's wrong with her?" A woman's voice filtered its way into Repentance's fuzzy consciousness.
"She's asleep." A man.
Fingers massaged her skull and hit a sore spot. She winced.
"She's concussed." The woman again. "She has a lump as big as a cumquat on her head."
Repentance took a deep breath.
The air felt hot and heavy.
She opened her eyes.
Fog.
A woman bent over her. White hair, gleaming teeth, brilliant eyes. Jadin. "Do you know who I am?"
She pushed herself up.
And fell back down, grabbing her head and gagging.
"Holy Providence," Jadin swore. "Who did this to her?"
The world seemed to be spinning. Repentance looked to her side, trying to focus on something that would stabilize her. She was lying in the bed of a slave cart, with Jadin leaning over the side.
Slave cart. Fog. Sore head.
A man's face came into focus beside Jadin's. "Lord Carrull hit her. She was about to kill Madam Cawrocc."
She remembered.
"I've got to go!" She tried to jump from the cart. The man pushed her back, then jumped into the cart and wrapped steely arms around her. She fell back against him, dizzy and nauseous.
"You don't go. You do as you're told," Jadin said.
"My sister, my sister!" She'd tried to yell, but it came out more like a croak. "I need to warn my sister. Please!"
"Warn her about what?" Jadin's voice was steady like the voice the midwife would use to calm a fussy babe.
"Madam Cawrocc is going to kill her."
"She's going to do no such thing."
"She is. She told me." Repentance squirmed weakly against the man, her head throbbing as if it would split open.
Jadin's eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"
"Please."
"You tell me right now what you did to pull that threat out of Cawrocc, or I swear I'll get your sister and both brothers and kill them right here in front of you."
Repentance sagged back against the man. "I ran," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." She looked up at Jadin. "Please help my sister."
"Your sister is fine," Jadin said. "At present. It's up to you if she's to stay that way."
"I killed her. She's dead already."
"Oh for the love of Providence," Jadin said. "What good is she to me in this condition?" She looked at the man. "I paid for perfection and Cawrocc's given me a lunatic."
"You can hardly blame Cawrocc. The girl was crazy from the start. Refused a buttoning, and chose the slave cart."
"I don't want to live," Repentance said.
"I want you to tell Cawrocc I hold her responsible for this. First she lost control, so the girl needed to be hit on the head, and then she obviously chose to withhold any healing powder or potion. She thought she'd make the girl suffer, no doubt. Only she has no business deciding how to punish my slave."
"I killed my sister," Repentance said, tears coursing down her cheeks. "Give me a dragon stick. I'll do it myself. I don't want to live anymore."
"You stop talking," Jadin said, sternly.
"Kill me now!" Repentance screamed.
Jadin slapped her. Hard.
Her head exploded in pain and her face went numb.
She put one hand to her cheek, wondering what had just happened.
Jadin got right up close to her. "Now you listen. Your sister is fine. Madam Cawrocc will not harm her. I know this because when I bought you, I bought rights to your family. They are mine if you misbehave. Cawrocc doesn't own them, I do. Do you understand?'
"Comfort is alive?"
"I am going to have this trooper let you go in a minute," Jadin said. "Do you know where you are?"
She looked past Jadin. The healing house stood behind her. She was back in Hot Springs. Back in the gray. Back in the swamp. But Comfort was alive. Maybe.
The trooper released her, and she scrambled down from the cart. Her legs buckled. She landed in a heap at Jadin's feet, the foggy world spinning crazily before her eyes. And darkness fell.
She woke next on a comfortable settee with her head on a soft pillow. Gray light filtered into the room through wide windows. She was in the healing house, she supposed. In all her years, she'd never been in the building. The villagers were not allowed to use the hot springs. That privilege was for overlords only.
"You live," Jadin said, entering the room like a cool breeze.
Repentance nodded. And winced. Her head ached with a dull pounding.
Jadin handed her a small cup. "Drink this. It will help your head."
"How long have I been asleep?"
"An hour."
"My sister?"
"Is still fine."
"May I see her?"
Jadin examined her for a long moment. "I suppose you are no good to me unless I can convince you she's alive."
"If she's alive I'll do whatever you want."
Jadin considered. "I'll let you see that she's alive. And I'll give you my promise that if you give me any trouble after that, she won't be alive long."
Repentance pushed herself off the settee, and Jadin put out a hand to steady her. "First you need to get cleaned up and give that healing potion time to work. I'll have the cook make you some food while you bathe."
Two hours later she stood, fed and bathed and dressed in light-weight britches and blouse, in front of the healing house with Jadin and a big overlord man called Lok, who carried a dragon stick. A dull ache pounded at the base of her skull, but she could walk without feeling like she needed to throw up, and she desperately wanted to see Comfort, so she said nothing about the pain.
"The girls will be picking their nets in another half hour. Take this one and hide in the bushes by her family's set-net site." Jadin pulled a burlap sack over her head. "Just in case you run into anyone."
Repentance could see through the burlap. And she could breathe, though the sack was dusty and made her sneeze.
Jadin poked her with a slender finger. "No noise. No one is to know you're here. If they find out, your family will suffer."
Lok laid a giant hand on Repentance's arm to lead her into the woods. He kept Repentance off the main paths, stopping and cocking his head often, listening for villagers.
Each time he stopped, the musty, marshy smell of home came in through the burlap bag which covered Repentance's face. And the sounds of the woods filled her ears. The small animals digging, the bugs buzzing, the constant drip, drip, dripping from the trees. But she heard no villagers moving about.
What would people do if they knew she was so close? What would they do if they knew that outside the fence there were states where lowborns did not live as slaves? Should she call out when she saw her sister? Should she tell her to try to escape?
No, her people were not interested in fighting. They were content to give up
their first two sons and to go on with their lives.
She walked silently beside Lok.
The canopy of leaves above her wept.
The set-net site was empty when they arrived, and Repentance and Lok had no trouble finding a spot in the dense woods and undergrowth where they would be able to see without being seen. They couldn't see well—the fog was as thick as cotton—but she would be able to know if Comfort was well.
Repentance, squatting beside Lok, was overcome with homesickness so strong she felt like she might not be able to breathe. She longed to see Comfort again. To hear her laugh. To sit by the river while her little brothers swam and while Comfort sat nearby, drawing.
Sweat covered her scalp and face, and she struggled to breathe in the bag. She pulled the bottom of the sack open to let in fresh air, but the swamp air was hot and humid, and she gulped it in without feeling much relief. She was about to ask Lok if she could take the bag off, when she heard someone coming along the path.
Repentance heard Comfort's voice before she saw her.
"Why do they blame me?"
Repentance strained to see her.
"I'm sorry," Aggravation answered Comfort.
"You aren't sorry!" Comfort said. "You could fight if you wanted."
The two of them came into view, passing a few feet from where Repentance hid.
"I've got to think of my little brothers," Aggravation said. "If my family aligns with yours now—"
"It would prove that there's nothing to be afraid of. When people saw me keep my promise to you …. If you don't trust me, you who know me better than anyone, then no one will. I'll ride the slave cart."
"Someone else ... a fifth-year boy—"
"No one! No one will ever trust any of us. I'll ride the cart and so will both of my brothers."
"You can't blame me for that. It's Repentance—your cursed-from-birth, selfish sister. She's the one you can thank."
Repentance jerked as if she'd been slapped. No, no, she didn't do it to be selfish. She'd only wanted to save—
Lok grabbed her, maybe afraid she would jump up.
"I'm sorry," Aggravation said again. Then he fled like a coward, running away from the girl he had been promised to for years.
Comfort squatted and pulled the set net in, her tears falling on the fish as she picked them.
Repentance gulped and gulped trying to get rid of the lump in her throat and keep herself from breaking down sobbing. She wanted to go to Comfort. She wanted to wrap her arms around her sister as she had done through every crisis since the overlords took Tribulation. But all she could do was watch Comfort through the burlap and through the fog, knowing this picture of her sister crying over the fish net would haunt her for the rest of her days.
Finally, after eternity and more, Comfort threw her net back out into the river, picked up her pail of fish, and headed down the path.
Lok kept hold of Repentance, forcing her to remain still.
Pain thudded against the base of her skull.
The trees dripped.
A small animal splashed into the swamp.
Insects thrummed through the heat.
And Repentance sat in her burlap sack, quietly weeping.
After a few minutes, when no one approached, Lok released her. She followed him in silence. In shock. Oh, Dear Providence, what had she done?
If she obeyed Jadin, if she pleased the prince, she could keep them from taking Comfort right away. But in two years, Comfort would still make her way up the mountain in a slave cart—an unwanted, unbuttoned girl.
Repentance left Lok at the bottom of the porch steps. She pushed open the door of the healing house and stepped into the large room with the settee, where she had woken up earlier that morning.
A young woman—a beautiful, pale, overlord girl a few years older than Repentance—sat on the settee with a book.
She looked up and lifted her upper lip in a sneer. "How did you get in here?"
"I walked," Repentance said, still distracted by her worry over Comfort.
The girl's pale eyes—perfectly matched to the light blue of her satin gown—opened wide. "Did I ask for your sarcasm? Why are you here?"
Repentance dropped her eyes, not willing to anger any more overlords. "I'm looking for Jadin."
The young woman shook her head and her short blonde hair swung around her face. "You can't march in here like this. For the love of Providence, do we need to hire troopers to protect us, now?"
Jadin came through the archway. "Ah, you're back," she said to Repentance. "And you have seen that your sister is alive?"
Without waiting for a reply, she looked at the young overlord woman. "Tawnic, this is Repentance. Would you give her a tour of the place, please? And then give her the bed Mek vacated last week."
"A lowborn?"
Jadin winked at Tawnic. "Take good care of her. If she pleases the prince, he might leave you alone."
"The prince with a lowborn?"
"He does like his forbidden fruit, Tawnic. You know that."
Repentance shivered.
"Oh, well, then," Tawnic said. "I wouldn't mind a trickle of rest. In truth." She shot Repentance an ugly smile. "He's got more energy than a hyena, that one."
Repentance wasn't aware that hyenas were especially energetic, but she understood the point perfectly. She would have hated Tawnic, with her ugly smile and nasty personality, only she was too tired to muster up the anger.
Tawnic led her through the archway, grabbed a torch from the wall, and proceeded down a narrow stone stairway. They were going underground. The healing house was not the wooden building it looked like from the outside. That building stood in front of a huge cavern in a cliff. In the cavern, walls had been erected to make separate rooms and a second story had been built.
Repentance, even in her light swamp clothes, began to sweat as they descended. She understood why when Tawnic threw open a door at the bottom of the stairs.
"The hot spring," Tawnic said in a bored voice. "This water is for healing." A large pool—easily four times the size of the swimming hole in the swamp, bubbled in the floor of the cave.
"Is it boiling?"
Tawnic rolled her eyes. "How would people swim in boiling water? It's bubbling out of the underground spring."
Along one wall of the cavern were several doors. Tawnic waved toward them. "Those are the guest rooms."
There were three more large pools, two were warm-water springs and the third was fed from a cold mountain stream, which came down through the cliff.
Behind the last pool were more doors.
Tawnic threw one open to reveal a small, dark, damp, stinking-of-mold-and-sweat room with furnishings consisting of mats on the floor. Plus nothing. Three mats, each one with a small pile of night clothing folded up where a person's pillow normally lay.
"The slave quarters," Tawnic said, a nasty smile marring her beautiful face.
Repentance stepped into the stinking room where the slaves slept. "Which bed is mine?"
Tawnic stared at her, unanswering.
"Jadin said I was to have a bed. Which one?"
The overlord girl rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't I love to leave you down here? You'll get your stench all over the upper floor." She turned and led the way back up the stone stairs.
Repentance followed.
On the next level Tawnic pushed open a door in the back of the room with the settee. "The kitchen," she said.
Repentance had already seen the kitchen. She'd eaten a bowl of soup there before she'd gone to see Comfort.
"Jadin's quarters." Tawnic waved down the hall, then turned the other direction and led the way up a flight of wooden stairs which ended in a wide hall with rooms on both sides. She threw open the third door on the right.
Repentance slid past Tawnic, who didn't bother moving out of the way.
The room was huge compared to the slave quarters downstairs. Bright yellow walls. A bed—off the ground and with a thick mat—was shoved against the
far wall. Against another wall stood a desk with a reflecting stone above it. A wardrobe stood in one corner.
Repentance swelled with a tiny feeling of hope.
Yellow walls.
When the prince came, she'd deal with him. Until then, she had yellow walls.
I gaze into the midnight gloom; an evil fast approaches.
I steel my heart to face my doom; a devil now encroaches.
But lighting rends a peaceful morning,
with ne'er a sound or hint of warning.
A danger bursts forth from a quarter unseen.
And I am undone.
~Repentance Atwater, Healing House Poetry Collection
Chapter 11
"The prince is coming, the prince is coming!" An excited chattering and nattering swelled through the halls of the healing house.
From bits of overheard conversation, Repentance understood that the girls were happy because the food and wine always improved when the royals visited.
Tawnic, especially, was looking forward to the visit. She'd apparently not been able to enjoy the festivities on prior occasions because of the prince's strenuous demands on her. She'd taken every chance, over the previous three weeks, to let Repentance know how much she was looking forward to the next royal party.
Repentance pulled her blanket over her head trying to drown out the whispers in the halls.
Despite Tawnic's cruel gloating, life had not been hard on Repentance the past few weeks. She and Jadin had come to an understanding. Jadin had complete control over her life. Repentance had gagged on that truth but finally choked it down.
It had been driven home the last time she worked in the kitchen. The potatoes she was paring had put her in mind of Sober on his potato farm. She wondered how he was doing and tried to picture him working in a sunny field. She remembered his earnest face and his sorrowful smile.
Thinking about Sober, remembering his eyes and his kind look, instead of concentrating on the task at hand, she'd slipped and jabbed the paring knife into the center of her palm.
Jadin had quickly slathered ointment—onion milk and hog's grease—on the wound.
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