A Secret of Birds & Bone

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  Sofia’s heart thumped harder.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ She shrugged. ‘A frippery.’

  ‘Do not lie to me, child.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Sofia again.

  ‘Orsa,’ said Duchessa Machelli lazily and, fast as a lightning bolt, the bird launched itself forwards. Sofia barely registered the pain in her cheek before the bird was back on her mistress’s shoulder, Sofia’s blood dripping from her talon.

  ‘Let’s try that again,’ said Duchessa Machelli. ‘What is it?’

  Sofia swallowed, bringing her hand up to her cheek. It was a shallow scratch, a warning.

  ‘It’s a key,’ she said, settling on a half-truth.

  ‘A key?’ said Duchessa Machelli, searching Sofia’s face before seemingly deciding it was the whole truth. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘I can show you,’ said Sofia shakily.

  Duchessa Machelli sat back in her chair, considering, and then nodded. ‘All right. But if you try anything . . .’

  Orsa snapped her beak.

  Sofia stood, and walked to the table on shaking legs. She reached out a trembling hand and fumbled for the locket, losing her balance on the rucked edge of the thick carpet. She banged her palm on to the table, righting herself unsteadily.

  ‘Careful,’ hissed the duchessa. ‘Idiot girl.’

  ‘S-sorry,’ stuttered Sofia. She held up the locket. ‘It’s a key. For the cathedral. See?’

  She pointed at the grooves along its edge.

  ‘Clever,’ murmured the duchessa. ‘I’ll have your mamma build me a handle for it. She’ll have plenty of time during her life imprisonment. Oh, don’t worry,’ she continued, smiling unkindly at Sofia’s expression. ‘You’ll be joining her.’

  ‘Me?’ Sofia shuddered. ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ll wait for her to explain.’

  ‘Duchessa Machelli,’ said Sofia eventually. ‘May I ask you something?’

  ‘So polite suddenly,’ said the duchessa, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. ‘I do not like politeness. It gets you nowhere and makes people think you are weak.’

  ‘All right. I want to know something,’ said Sofia more boldly, and the duchessa laughed her shockingly beautiful laugh again. ‘The children. Why did you lock up the children?’

  ‘Children,’ said the duchessa, an ill-concealed shudder in her voice. ‘Vermin. Always catching colds and fevers. And surviving! So, when the smallpox came I knew I had to contain as many of them as possible, keep them in the orphanage. I stayed off the streets, diverted the water so I would have my own clean supply.’

  ‘But the citizens,’ said Sofia, unable to stop herself. ‘There’s a drought!’

  ‘You can ask your mother about that,’ sneered Duchessa Machelli. ‘You sound like my late husband. He caught smallpox from children – orphans he was helping in the street. He brought home their disgusting disease and gave it to me before I could lock him away to protect myself.’

  She sighed, as if his death was the most terrible nuisance. ‘And then I needed a ready supply of subjects to experiment on.’

  ‘Experiment?’ said Sofia in a faint voice, remembering the prisons in the cathedral and the shining instruments on the table in the bone room.

  ‘Science requires sacrifice,’ hissed the duchessa. ‘The orphanage was perfect. I could lock up children there, take them when I needed them – out of sight, out of mind. I know there’s a way to extract their youth, their resilience. I thought the solution might be in their blood.’

  Sofia clapped a hand to her mouth, bile burning her throat. She felt sick but Duchessa Machelli spoke calmly, almost bored.

  ‘Rosa and the magpies helped me. She recruited that tunnel urchin to round up strays and bring them to the orphanage. Anyway, my citizens are too stupid to question my authority. They didn’t care. Peasants.’ The distaste in her voice was horrid to hear. ‘My husband was never a true leader. He didn’t have the stomach for it.’

  At that moment, a guard burst in from outside.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the duchessa, reaching for her veil. ‘Is the bone builder here already?’

  The guard’s face was pale. He looked as though he’d been slapped. ‘Duchessa.’

  Sofia heard his voice echo back at them.

  ‘What?’ snapped the duchessa.

  ‘Duchessa,’ repeated the guard, his voice a whisper and yet still Sofia heard it as it spread through the palazzo. ‘The lever . . .’

  And now Sofia heard something else. Shouts, coming from the piazza. Though the duchessa had forgotten a world outside this thickly tapestried room existed, the Palio crowd was still thronging the square. But what Sofia heard were not shouts of joy, or excitement. They were angry voices. And then, hammering began on the large wooden doors.

  ‘What on earth?’ said the duchessa. She leant in closer to the lever, and then looked from it to Sofia. She reached out and pulled the lever back.

  Her face turned the same shade of red as the blood on Orsa’s beak. When Sofia had stumbled, she’d moved it to its second setting. The lever had turned the pipes on, and projected their conversation to the whole piazza.

  Duchessa Machelli’s lips twisted in fury. ‘You!’

  She lunged then, faster than Orsa had, something black and terrible in her face like a serpent about to unleash a fangful of venom. Sofia stumbled back, tripping over her chair. The duchessa was almost upon her, hand raised to strike, but at that moment the doors swung open – banging on their hinges and shaking the tapestries from the walls.

  In poured the people of Siena. The duchessa was drawn into the angry crowd, as they shouted and shrieked. Sofia caught only snatches of words, all of them furious.

  ‘Our children!’

  ‘The orphans!’

  ‘Evil!’

  Sofia was yanked to her feet, and she recognized the guard who had come to tell the duchessa of her blunder.

  ‘Go!’ he cried. ‘Go home!’

  Sofia didn’t need telling twice. Snatching her locket from the table, she pushed through the furious mass of bodies and out into the piazza.

  The journey felt the furthest she’d ever travelled. Behind her, the angry shouts faded and soon all she could hear was her own heart hammering in her ears.

  Sofia pounded through the city’s narrow streets, past the shops, the tanning pits. It could not be so simple, could it? It could not be that just past the city boundary, next to that familiar hill, Mamma was home?

  She stopped to catch her breath as she reached the hill, hands on her knees, heart jumping in her chest. She looked up at their olive grove, and a dozen sets of eyes stared back.

  ‘Sofia!’ Carmela ran forwards out of the grove, arms wide to embrace her. Sofia returned the hug and peered over the girl’s shoulder to see the other rescued children emerging from the trees, eyes hollow, chewing crusts of bread. Sofia wondered what they must have seen, if any of them had already experienced Duchessa Machelli’s experiments. The thought was too horrible to hold.

  ‘You’re here!’ Ermin’s voice rose from the grove, and then he was barrelling towards her. She released Carmela and held him close, Corvith flying excited loops round their heads. ‘Mamma was just about to leave to look for you!’

  ‘Sofia?’

  There, in the doorway of their house with her arms full of lavender and a bone tucked behind her ear, was Mamma. Sofia’s breath stopped, her heart stopped, the world stopped and did not start again until a stem of lavender fell to the floor, then another and another until it all came tumbling down in a tide of purple and green as Mamma threw open her arms.

  And then she was running towards Sofia and Ermin, trampling the stems underfoot – the bright, familiar scent was in Sofia’s nostrils and in her hair as they collapsed together, Mamma’s rough hands clutching them so tight Sofia felt she might never let go.

  Eventually, Mamma released them. She did not stop crying though, and laughing, and smoothing their hair and wiping away their tears even as more and mor
e spilt down her own cheeks. Sofia had missed how it felt, to be looked at like that, like she was something rare and precious.

  ‘Mamma?’ she asked, as though this may yet be a gift taken away.

  ‘Carissima.’ She held Ermin to her again. ‘Carissimo. My dear, dear ones. You did so well.’

  ‘Capitana Rosa is dead, Mamma.’ Sofia could not stop crying. ‘And the people are rioting, and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘It is not your fault. You did it all perfectly . . . beautifully.’ Though Mamma’s words were soft, her face was alight with a fierce love. ‘I am so proud of you both.’

  ‘But why, Mamma?’ Sofia felt suddenly angry. She shuffled away from the pile of lavender, away from her mother and brother, conscious of the curious eyes of the orphans in the grove. ‘Why didn’t you tell us what was going on?’

  ‘Sofia.’ Mamma reached out. ‘I am so, so sorry.’ She looked round at the orphans, who had settled back to their meal. ‘Ermin, will you fetch our guests more water?’

  ‘I want to—’

  ‘Please,’ said Mamma firmly. Ermin sighed and stomped off up the hill.

  Sofia turned to Mamma, dry-mouthed. What did Mamma want to tell her that Ermin couldn’t know?

  ‘Come inside,’ said Mamma, as though Sofia had spoken aloud, ‘and I’ll do my best to explain.’

  Mamma offered her milk and honey, but Sofia couldn’t stomach it after their encounters with Capitana Rosa at the orphanage. She sat at their scrubbed table and waited for Mamma to find the way to begin.

  Finally, Mamma took a deep breath and fixed her eyes squarely on Sofia.

  ‘What do you remember from when your brother was ill?’

  This was not a question Sofia had been expecting. ‘Ill? A few years ago, you mean?’

  ‘Three years ago, yes.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad. You healed him.’

  ‘No,’ said Mamma. ‘He was very ill. Gravely ill. He nearly died.’

  Now it was Sofia’s turn to shake her head. ‘You took him to the well, and he got better.’

  ‘He had smallpox, Sofia. He was so small, and weak, and he was going to die.’

  Sofia gaped at her for a moment. ‘Well then, you are an even better healer than I thought.’

  Mamma watched her with an intensity that made Sofia squirm. ‘I love you both, so much.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sofia.

  ‘Love makes people desperate. You saw it, when Capitana Rosa showed me the hank of hair. I would have tried to heal Ghino, even though I knew I could not.’

  ‘You can—’

  ‘Listen. I’m trying to make you understand.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I could not have healed Ghino, just as I could not heal Ermin. That night . . .’ She shuddered. ‘We were losing him. I was desperate. The hospitals were full. The doctor who came to our house said nothing could be done. As the sun rose, I decided to try to call the Fiori gift to me. I took him to our well, the well that our ancestors have used for centuries, and tried to make the gift come. I laid my hands on him, drenched him in the water, laid bones on to his skin—’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘It wouldn’t work. And then, you were there. You’d snuck up to see where we’d gone.’

  Sofia could remember now, but it was not the memory as she had always recalled it with Mamma calm and washed in morning sunlight. In this new memory, Ermin was writhing and pale and Mamma was crying, her face frantic.

  ‘Nothing worked. Nothing worked until . . .’

  But Sofia didn’t need Mamma to finish. She knew, now, what had happened.

  She had been smaller, her hands unable to wrap round Mamma’s as she tried to comfort her. She remembered Mamma weeping and holding Ermin to her chest, and pulling Sofia to her too. Sofia remembered her brother, wet from well water – remembered resting her hand on his hand and wishing with all her body, all her heart, all her blood and soul and bones, that he would live and be well. And hadn’t there been something small and delicate in her hands, as thin as a wafer, pressed against his chest?

  Mamma smiled sadly as Sofia looked up at her, her eyes blurring with tears. She remembered now, that feeling she had when Mamma gifted her the locket. Like she’d held it before.

  When Sofia spoke, it was both a question and something she realized she’d always known.

  ‘You didn’t heal him,’ she whispered. ‘I did.’

  ‘Nothing worked until I touched him,’ said Sofia, her voice gaining strength. ‘I . . .’

  ‘Saved him,’ finished Mamma. Sofia slumped back in her chair, the memory of Ermin’s illness carrying her back to the tunnels, to the moment Ghino had not been breathing and then suddenly had.

  ‘I’m a bone binder?’

  ‘More than that – you are a healer. The strongest in our line, perhaps since the first Fiori breathed.’

  ‘And you . . .’

  Mamma sighed. ‘I am not.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I thought it was too much responsibility,’ said Mamma. ‘You were so young and I had never known power like it, in all the generations of Fioris. It frightened me, knowing what might happened if people found out you could pull people back from the brink of death. You saw what Duchessa Machelli did to me, keeping me imprisoned.’

  ‘But you helped her!’ said Sofia. ‘You built that room. I know you did.’

  ‘I didn’t know what she needed it for,’ said Mamma desperately. ‘I thought she only wanted something beautiful, somewhere peaceful to live out her mourning. She asked me to help channel the river, so she could bathe in it daily.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ asked Sofia.

  ‘I convinced myself she had good reason,’ said Mamma. ‘I felt sorry for her, being trapped by what other people thought of her.’

  ‘The children in the orphanage—’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Mamma sadly. ‘Please believe me, Sofia. I am guilty of ignorance and allowing myself to be flattered by such a woman, but I am not cruel. You must know that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

  ‘The river,’ said Mamma, her face creased with remembered anguish. ‘The hidden river of Siena. She discovered that I’d been channelling the river into our well too, to keep Ermin healthy.’

  Sofia could not believe what she was hearing. ‘You did what?’

  ‘I know.’ Mamma looked wretched. ‘She said she would tell you, and I knew you would never forgive me. You are better than I am, Sofia. You would have told me it was wrong to keep the water for ourselves.’

  She hung her head. ‘The day before your birthday I finished my final commission, the reliquary. I thought she was trying to harness the power of the relics. I told her I would not help her any more, but that’s when she told me she had a second secret to hold over me. Worse even than the river.’ Mamma swallowed. ‘She told me she knew about Ermin surviving.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The doctor,’ said Mamma. She looked exhausted, but Sofia was not done with hearing the story yet. ‘The doctor who came to see Ermin, who told us he would not survive. He told her about the boy brought back from the brink of death. The whole thing had been a trap. She’d been making me build the room to imprison me in. She was going to keep me there, going to use the power of the relics and the water to heal her, to stop her ever falling ill again. To carry out more experiments . . .’

  Mamma trailed off, the pain in her face so clear that it was obvious she knew what the experiments involved. And yet, Mamma had helped Duchessa Machelli. Sofia knew this would have been her fate if Mamma had not protected her. But still she could not forgive the lies, the way Mamma had helped the plan, trapped the river. Not yet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Mamma. ‘I wanted the deception to end. But instead it unravelled further. I still can’t believe I put you in so much danger. You should never have been in the tunnels.’

  ‘Ghino took us,’ said Sofia with venom. ‘He was working for Capitana Rosa and the duchessa.’

&nbs
p; ‘Don’t blame him too much,’ said Mamma sadly. ‘He has no family and believes his looks to be a curse.’

  ‘Then why did you offer to cure him? Even when . . .’ Even when you could not.

  ‘I would have tried anything, while I thought you were in danger.’

  ‘You might have hurt him,’ said Sofia accusingly.

  ‘Love is dangerous,’ said Mamma. ‘It makes you selfish. Makes you blind to all others.’ She looked at Sofia. ‘You would have thought I’d have learnt my lesson, but there is still nothing I would not do for you.’

  Though Sofia was still angry, the tight bud of annoyance in her chest loosened slightly. She understood a little of what Mamma was saying. She would do, had done, anything to keep Mamma safe. Even followed a thief on a trail into the belly of their city, crawled through tunnels, braved magpies and hidden rivers.

  ‘How did you make all the things we saw in the tunnels?’ she asked. ‘The counterweights, the grate?’

  ‘The Fioris have used that river for centuries, taking the sick there to heal at the saint’s spring. It is not all mine. I merely maintained the grate and the cogs. But I added the model, to show the way home.’

  Sofia thought of the imprints in the chalk, the press of many knees. How she’d felt it was like a church – and it was, of a sort. The church of the Fioris. But she would not let them keep it for themselves any longer.

  ‘The river,’ she said. ‘We have to release it. We have to fill the wells again.’

  Mamma nodded. ‘We need a special key for that.’

  Sofia met her mother’s gaze. ‘Mamma, did you give me a skeleton key?’

  At last, Mamma nodded. Sofia slumped back in her chair, this final amazement knocking her breathless as she reached for her locket. ‘I can use this to free the river?’

  ‘Not quite. You need the handle.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Here,’ said Mamma, and drew out her hairpin from Sofia’s curls. The pin Sofia had made all those years ago. ‘I designed the locket so only this makes it a true skeleton key. Go on. You should do it.’