Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  I know more about Menders now, as a great deal of his childhood has been revealed to me during his fits of delirium. I knew a great deal about his father, who was an infamous reprobate who had been banned from Court by Morghenna the Terrible prior to Menders’ birth. It is not difficult to see that Menders’ extreme upright morality is in direct reaction to his father’s lack of the same. However, I fear that he is setting too high a bar for himself, requiring a standard of behavior that will be impossible for him to sustain. As it is, his unfortunate association with Ermina has strained his emotional health, as it goes entirely against the grain of his morality – and I would venture to say that the concomitant stress has, very possibly, weakened his resistance to the infection. It is certainly not an affair that will sustain or help him in any way.

  To make matters worse, Mistress Ermina is throwing her weight around in her role of housekeeper now that Menders is not able to keep an eye on her, and is creating household dramas on an ongoing basis. I have told the others to keep this from Menders, as he is far too weak to contend with the situation now. Time enough when we have some idea if he will regain his vision and health.

  What sort of country trains children to be killers? Knowing that Menders was put into training as an assassin at the age of eleven and sent out to kill when he was fifteen has made me understand a great deal about him. In any other occupation, he would have been considered a youth – but as an assassin, he had to become a man long before he was physically or emotionally ready to be one. The damage this has done to his mind is considerable. I fear that his life will never be free of the impact of those years where he killed so many.

  The doctor sat back and considered the conundrum of boys being sent into the dark to kill in the name of a Queen who probably didn’t know of their existence.

  ***

  Once Menders was no longer critically ill, Franz permitted visits by the household. Cook would sit by the bed, chatting away as she peeled a basket of potatoes or kneaded bread in a bowl. Lucen brought every news sheet in and faithfully read every word aloud, slowly and laboriously. Zelia dropped by for brief visits with Hemmett, which were lively and often hilarious.

  Ermina came to Menders’ room as well, but he couldn’t be glad about it. She fussed and fidgeted, moved suddenly, chattered constantly and was always bossy. Being completely blind with his eyes still covered, it drove Menders near madness. He felt exhausted after she’d been with him. Sometimes when he heard her coming he would pretend to be asleep, just so he didn’t have to listen to her or refrain from lashing out and swatting her hands as they fluttered around him constantly, like giant moths.

  Franz helped pass the time. Katrin was a healthy child and though Franz ran a practice from his office, seeing to the medical needs of the tenant farmers and other people in the locality, he had plenty of spare hours. He would read to Menders or talk, and Menders had persuaded him to play DeGratz, having Franz call his moves out loud and telling Franz where to move his own pieces. Menders had won two out of three games that way. Franz scolded him fiercely and had refused to play since.

  As spring progressed, the work of the estate was in full swing. Menders spent much time alone, unable to see. It became tedious very quickly without his notebook, sketchbook or anything else to occupy himself with.

  Eiren was a saving grace. She was a bright child who loved to read. She often asked for books from the estate library, usually requesting one ‘with adventures in it’. When Menders could have visitors she’d talked to her father, who came to see Menders.

  “I know that you’ve always made a point of never being alone with the young girls and as a father I appreciate that. But I know you would never do anything improper, Mister Menders. Our Eiren has told me that she would like to read to you, if you had a mind for her to do that. I wanted to let you know that I have no objections to her sitting by you and reading or talking while you’re in your sickbed.”

  Mister Spaltz was a forthright man and Menders made an exception to his rule of never being alone with one of the nurserymaids, though he insisted that the door be kept open during Eiren’s visits.

  Now she was at his doorway.

  “Well, hello Eiren,” Menders said pleasantly. He smiled at the sound of her indrawn breath.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “By your walk. You have new boots and one of them squeaks. The right one, I believe.” Menders was guessing which boot it was, purely for effect, figuring he could only be fifty percent wrong. He imagined her staring down at her feet.

  “I thought you might be asleep,” she said.

  “No, just taking a walk around the estate with my ears.”

  Eiren muffled a giggle. “With your ears?”

  “Yes that’s right. Sit down, close your eyes and listen very carefully.” He heard her settle on the bedside chair. “Now, tell me what you hear.”

  “I… I don’t hear anything,” she said shyly.

  “Nonsense! There is always something to listen to. Now, imagine you walked downstairs from this room and out into the yard. See in your mind’s eye what you would pass, then listen for those things.”

  “I hear… my breathing. And yours.”

  “Filter those out and listen further afield.”

  “I hear… oh! Katrin and Kata, playing in the nursery.”

  “Yes. They’re playing with blocks, you can hear them click together.”

  “Oh! So you can!”

  “What else?”

  “Um… the big clock in the entryway! It’s almost like a heartbeat. Funny, I’ve never noticed how it sounds before. And then… Cook, in the kitchen, moving things, talking to someone… no, arguing with someone… has to be Ermina.”

  Menders smiled at the way Eiren mouthed the name Ermina, as if she were spitting out bitter berries.

  “Listen further away, outside and across the estate,” he prompted.

  “Wind in the trees, yes… and birds! Popinjays, forest strutters, a red warbler, I think.”

  “Do you hear someone working in the woodlot?”

  “Oh that’s much too far – no, wait! Yes, yes I can!” Eiren’s voice had become breathless with excitement. “Big heavy strokes! Has to be Lucen, nobody can swing an axe like he does. And then, just past that, the bells on Kleint’s cows.”

  Menders strained his ears and then finally located the sound. Gods, even he hadn’t heard that at first! She really can do it, he thought to himself. What a rare little bird!

  “Very good.” He smiled.

  Eiren inhaled sharply. He imagined she had opened her eyes and was looking at him. “That was amazing! I almost saw myself there.”

  “It’s a trick assassins use to focus and concentrate. It passes the time. I have a lot of empty hours, I’m afraid.”

  “Would you like me to read to you? I looked in the library and found a new book with pirates in it. And I brought you some flowers. I’ll put them in the glass. They’re jewelflowers and hide-tights.”

  “Pirates sound just right,” Menders said, turning on his side and getting comfortable, at least for a while. Who would ever think that lying in bed day after day would actually start to hurt?

  Eiren clinked around on his nightstand for a moment, poured water and then took his hand, touching it to individual blossoms as she told him which was which.

  “I can smell them and if they’re as pretty as they smell, they must be the best jewelflowers and hide-tights in the entire garden,” he complimented her.

  “They don’t have much smell at all,” Eiren protested.

  “They do if you can’t see. I can smell all sorts of things now. If you can’t use your eyes, you’d be surprised by how you begin to notice things like that.”

  “How do they smell?” she asked.

  “Thin and green. Like springtime.”

  “You can’t smell those things!” She was laughing, which made him smile. “You can’t smell shapes, and colors.”

  “They smell thin and green
nonetheless. And I can smell that you stopped off in the kitchen and ate two of Cook’s best ginger biscuits.”

  “How can you tell I had two?” she asked.

  “Ah, that is a mystery for only me to know,” he teased. She always took two of things, because she was too hungry to stop at just one and three would be greedy. This applied to slices of bread, cookies, sweets and helpings at meals. Of course, she had no notion that he’d observed this, just as he observed everything about everyone. At least, he used to, he reminded himself.

  “I would have brought you some, but Cook says you still can’t eat them.”

  “No, but I’m glad you thought of me.” He could hear her pulling the chair closer and settling herself again. His diet was very restricted, as his stomach was somehow involved with the infection and he vomited frequently.

  “How’s Katrin?” he asked, before Eiren could get launched on the pirates.

  “She’s had a good morning and ate a big lunch. She didn’t want to settle for a nap, so Kata’s playing with her, like we heard. Shall I read now?”

  “Of course, let’s hear about the pirates.” He tucked a hand under his cheek and listened while she launched into the book, which was intended for a child her age. She read easily, having been taught by her father, who was the most literate of the estate farmers. When Eiren lost herself in the story, she became very expressive and would vary the voices of the characters. Sometimes her performance was unintentionally funny, and twice he had to hide the fact that he was smiling at a passage that was supposed to be particularly dramatic. Finally he slipped and grinned just as she was giving a grand impersonation of a particularly wicked pirate, with heartfelt growls and an attempt at a Surytamian accent.

  “Mister Menders! This is supposed to be thrilling and you’re laughing!” she protested.

  “I’m sorry, Eiren, it is thrilling. It just reminded me of something funny that happened when I was little,” he said quickly. “Tell me, what would you like to do when you’re older?”

  He heard her close the book. “I like it here at The Shadows,” she said slowly. Eiren had a fear of being discourteous.

  “Yes, but I know you don’t want to be a nurserymaid the rest of your life, or a farm girl either. Katrin won’t need nurserymaids forever. It’s just for now, while she’s little.”

  “Well… no. Not that I don’t love Katrin. I do, very much. She’s such a funny, sweet baby. But I would like to teach. I can read and I can do figures well. I think that if I read enough books, I could have a little school in that old unused building on my father’s farm. I would teach the children from the other farms, so that they would know how to read. Someday I want to know all the things you know, Mister Menders.”

  “Oh, I know a great many things,” Menders said, thinking that some of them weren’t suitable for little girls to know.

  Being a nurserymaid was sufficient for now. It gave her experience and a salary, and it also relieved her family of having to keep her. They had eight children to provide for, with only Eiren old enough to work. But as he’d come to know her, he’d begun to realize that Eiren was not content with her lot, and he’d pondered on what this girl, isolated in a remote place, might want to do with her life.

  “That’s quite an ambition,” he prompted, “To be a teacher.”

  “I think it would be a great thing,” she said quietly. “You’re right. I don’t want to live on a farm forever. It’s a hard life for a woman.”

  He was about to laugh and say that she wasn’t a woman, but then remembered that most girls on the estate were married and expecting their first child at sixteen. Eiren was fourteen. She was being realistic.

  “My mother… Mister Menders, she’s had eight children and she’s lost at least one tooth for each one of us. She’s only thirty-one. She works all day and the work is never done. I work here, but there’s Kata to do some of it and when the day is over, it’s over, unless Katrin needs a diaper in the night. But Mama is up before anybody else, she goes to bed after everybody else and her hands are never still. And when she had my brother, right before you came to The Shadows – Mister Menders, it was terrible. I was the only one there to help her and the baby came wrong and there was so much blood …” Her voice trailed away, quivering.

  He knew about that birth, where Marjana Spaltz had nearly died while Eiren struggled frantically to save both her mother and her youngest brother. It was said that the girl hadn’t spoken for a week after the birth, only coming out of her shell when he had walked into The Shadows with Katrin in his arms on their arrival from Erdahn. The damage done to her young mind was obvious. Her mother’s predicament had obviously made her think seriously about her choices in life – or lack thereof.

  He heard Eiren shift in the chair, as if she had forced herself upright from a slumping position.

  “It may be wrong and ungrateful, but I don’t want to be like that. I love my mother and our farm has given me everything I have, but I don’t want to be like that,” she continued fiercely. There was sudden determination and a touch of desperation in her voice.

  “That’s understandable, Eiren,” he replied. “I think your idea of a school on the estate is an excellent one. Having more people who can read would be an improvement.”

  Indeed it would. Most of the farmers couldn’t so much as read the almanac or manuals for farm equipment. It was seldom that Menders rode anywhere on the estate without someone running to their gate and asking if he would read something for them. He’d had the heartbreaking experience of being handed an official letter, which had been kept unopened for two months because the farmer and his wife couldn’t read, to find that it was informing them of their only son being killed in Mordania’s latest military action. The poor couple had been completely unknowing, and were devastated because the letter had been lying on the table for so long while they had believed their son to be alive.

  “Do you know that there are schools for teachers, where you can go not only to study different subjects but also to learn the best methods of teaching?” Menders asked.

  “There are? But that would cost a great deal of money,” Eiren replied. Her voice trembled a bit with excitement.

  It would be something to ponder, during all the hours he had to lie here doing nothing. He had money of his own from his personal estate, wisely invested and with no-one to spend it on since Katrin had a royal income. Perhaps he could sponsor Eiren to attend teacher’s college someday.

  “Eiren! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the nursery?” Ermina’s peevish voice cut into his thoughts. He’d been so absorbed that he had failed to hear her approach.

  “I asked her to read to me for a while, Ermina,” Menders said.

  “I didn’t hear any reading,” she sniffed. “Kata could use some help with the nursery laundry.”

  “This is Eiren’s free afternoon, Kata’s on duty now,” Menders said, snapping his voice. It got her attention.

  “Well, she needn’t stay here. I’ll read whatever you want,” she responded, sounding as if he was two years old. Her tone made Menders bristle.

  “Since I have the afternoon free, I’ll walk over to my parents’ house and see if Mama needs any help,” Eiren said quietly. “I’ll leave the book.” With that she was gone; Menders could hear her footsteps retreating down the hall.

  There was a rustling of pages and then Ermina let out a snide little laugh.

  “Pirates?” she said sarcastically. “Very deep reading. I’m sure you were fascinated, considering your usual reading matter is incomprehensible to mere mortals.”

  “Yes and that child would have loved to spend her free time today reading just that book. Now she’s going to walk two miles to work hard for the rest of the afternoon,” Menders said angrily.

  “Oh darling, don’t be upset, it isn’t good for you. Why don’t you lie back and I’ll read whatever you want.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t be grouchy. Is your head hurting?”

 
“It always hurts! My eyes are still the size of fists and running rivers of pus,” he answered viciously.

  “I’ll bathe them for you.”

  “No.”

  “You are being difficult.” Smugly, as if she was speaking to a fractious child she knew would have to do her will sooner or later.

  “Do you know, Ermina, that Eiren would like to be a teacher? That she’s afraid of ending up like her mother, worked half to death and an old woman at the age of thirty? That’s what we were talking about when you decided to come in here and interrupt.” He pulled away from her hands, which were patting and tugging and adjusting the bedclothes, his hair, the bandage around his head, his nightshirt.

  “Well you shouldn’t encourage such unrealistic nonsense, it’s simply not possible for a farm girl to be a teacher,” she nattered. “No wonder she’s half in a dream all of the time. I’ve been thinking about letting her go.”

  Menders sat upright and turned his head in her direction.

  “You have nothing to say about who is employed here,” he said coldly.

  “I’m the housekeeper!”

  “You have nothing to say about who is employed here,” he repeated, gritting his teeth.

  “Well! You must be running a fever, if you want to play with the little girls and get angry if I wish to dismiss a lazy servant!”

  Menders knew this could go on for hours. He’d been round it before. Ermina liked arguing, if you could call it that. Baiting and contradicting was more like it.

  “Leave me alone,” he sighed. “I’m tired. I want to sleep a while.”

  “Here, I’ll help you settle down …”

  “For the Gods’ sake, Ermina, I can manage to go to sleep by myself!” he shouted.

  “What a pisspot!” He could hear her flouncing out.