“Then go work as a whore on the Bridge brothel, if they’ll have you.”
Valeria looked up, somewhat surprised. “The Bridge brothel no longer exists, sir. Indeed, the Bridge no longer exists. I am amazed you don’t know this. It is the most dramatic event in years.”
“Did you not notice that I have been away, madam?” He spoke quietly as though in threat.
Valeria glared back. “I could hardly have missed it, sir, since you had sworn to me that my miserable step-son was dead as a hat pin, and I believed you. Until, however, he turned up on my doorstep, looking for you.”
He turned away. “Then do your own butchering, madam. You cheerfully slaughtered your own husband. So attempt some significant thought for once in your simpleton life, and arrange a method for eliminating your step-son. And, madam, while you are at it, either find a use for this slut, or throw her in the oven.” Now standing at the doorway, his palm over the handle, he stared one last time at Doria. She had crouched in the corner, thrusting herself back against the wall as though it might open for her, allowing escape. “You were lucky not to have died years ago,” he said, half smiling, “so accept what comes now.” And he turned back to his mistress. “I will now keep my appointment with my father-in-law, a meeting which will surely be more pleasant and certainly more profitable than this.”
Now standing, fists gripped at either side, Valeria hissed, “Not even time for bed?”
“Not today, madam. I am sated.” And he left, snapping the door shut behind him.
Her fists remained tight, and Valeria stared down at the grubby female cringing at her feet. More furious with Kallivan than with the unknown girl, Valeria was unsure what she should do, stamped both feet, and summoned anger. The tone of dislike and disrespect from Kallivan was normal enough and often preceded sexual delights, but there had been no bed, not even a light kiss. Dumping a slattern on her floor was an insult, as well as a damned complication.
“Get up, whore,” Valeria ordered her. Doria, accustomed to obey, struggled to her feet. “You’re ragged and filthy. Do you never wash?”
“I do,” Doria gulped. “But Lord Kallivan, he don’t let me.”
“He is Sir Kallivan, and not yet a lord,” Valeria told her. “Your hems are frayed and show the disgusting scratches on your ankles, which are black with dirt. The snot of your nose is caked across your cheek, and your hands are like filthy claws. What is your name?”
She told her. “My Dad was Rudd and he got killed cos of your family or summint. It was a mean pig of a man who came and got that bitch of a girl. Now me Dad’s dead and I ain’t got no one but you.”
“And you don’t have me either,” Valeria said. Who was the girl? Ah, yes, I remember, the other whore from the Bridge. She’s dead too, then?”
“No.” Half a whisper. “She got away.”
“And so did you.”
Doria glared again. “I weren’t no fucker’s prisoner, so I didn’t get away from no one. T’was Kallivan as asked me to come along and he’d find me a house in the city. So here I is.” Now, legs apart and fingers twitching, Doria had summoned courage.
Her own fury had subsided, but Valeria was tired. The situation was absurd and unattractive. “Just go away, then,” she said. “You can’t stay here and I’ve no wish ever to see you again. Find a whore house or beg on the street. Follow Kallivan. I really don’t care. Indeed, it is thoroughly tedious. Just go away.”
Hesitating, not wanting to run, Doria stuttered, “I ain’t eaten two days. You got food at least?”
“Yes, I do indeed,” laughed Valeria. “But it is mine, and I shall eat what I have bought. There is nothing for the sluts of the street. So go. Now. And quickly, before I take a cane to you.”
The laugh had been a mistake. Doria stared. Her intake of breath sounded like the train’s horn. On the wall over her head hung a tapestry, a little faded, of a frilly woman picking apples. It was supported by a thick wooden stick, arrowed at both ends. With a small jump, Doria reached this and pulled it down into her hands, with the sharp end ramming forwards like a pike on a battlefield. Valeria was not unused to protecting herself and retaliating when she wished. But the sudden rush was entirely unexpected, the wooden rod pierced nothing, but it knocked her backwards and she tumbled, legs in the air, hems flying.
The rod had broken. Now the pointed end was gone, but instead there was the jagged splinter of wood, and Doria ran again.
Dodging, rolling over and then up, Valeria grabbed at the wood, but Doria, younger and stronger, pulled it away and swept it sideways against the other woman’s head.
Valeria’s hand was bleeding, and one long splinter was rammed through her palm. The swipe against her ear had made her head ring, she was now dizzy and in pain. As her attention, bleary and gasping, centred on the splinter cutting through her hand, Doria slashed downwards, and the splintered point rammed into Valeria’s stomach, swaddled only by a silk skirt and a bleached linen shift beneath. She screamed. Neither dead nor dying, the older woman was in serious pain. She ran screaming at the younger girl and knocked her flat onto the rug beneath her. The floor shook.
The couple living in the downstairs apartment looked up in disgust at their vibrating ceiling. The wife ordered her husband upstairs to complain.
Bruised and bitterly angry now, Doria kicked upwards. Both clogs slammed into Valeria’s knees and one cracked. She screamed again.
“What the devil’s going on?” shouted the man from downstairs, now thumping on Valeria’s door.
And at that moment Doria hurtled onto Valeria, sitting now on her chest, and smashing both fists into her nose. The blood was like a swarm of wasps in both their faces, and now both screamed. The man outside continued to bang and shout. Doria continued to use both fists. Valeria was now silent and Doria hoped her dead. She stood up and grasped a fallen cushion. First stuffing the cushion down onto Valeria’s face, Doria then sat on it. There seemed no movement, but it was a long time later that she accepted the need to rise. She had, after all, no need to hurry and nowhere to go.
Looking beneath the cushion, she saw a face mangled and crushed, thick with dark sticky blood, and glazed, bruised eyes. Her hand was also bloody, the splinter gone but the blood sufficient to have caused a small puddle. The woman’s swelling stomach had bled too, but now lay like a pillow itself, although slack and entirely still.
The splintered wooden rod now lay beside the corpse, and Doria slung the pillow away across the room. As a final gesture of her own admirable ferocity, Doria kicked the head. It rolled sideways but did not flinch and the eyes did not flicker. So Doria opened the front door. The man from the apartment below was still there. He had presumably returned to his own home, grabbed an axe, and hurried back upstairs. Now he faced Doria and raised the axe. “What have you done?” he demanded. “Did you scream? Or have you hurt Lady Lydiard?”
Doria stared back. “I doesn’t know you,” she said, “and I doesn’t know any Lady Lydiard. But that raggy old crone in there done hit me and I screamed. Now I’s going so get outta me way.” She pushed past, ran clumping downstairs and out into the new spring sunshine.
Hawisa’s body lay crushed beneath the fall of stone. Her hands bleeding, Freya tugged away every rock and slab, hurling aside everything she could lift, and Pod knelt beside her, tugging at the heavier pieces. Although it seemed impossible, Freya still had hope that Hawisa might live, and once uncovered, she lay across the splayed corpse, sobbing and calling Hawisa’s name. Pod touched her lightly on the shoulder. “My dear. She’s gone.”
Through the weeping, Freya whispered, “We can’t be sure. How can I help her?”
Pod nodded. “You’re the doctor, my dear. You must see that our friend is dead.”
Freya now seemed as lifeless as Hawisa beneath her, both silent, both lying and waiting, as though some magic whisper might bring life after all.
Simply waiting, Pod sat beside and cried, very, very quietly, to himself. It was a long while later when he
finally said, “Freya, my dear. We must go. We have to see if our home still stands, and the little we own still in it.”
“I can’t leave her,” Freya whispered.
She knew it had not been love, but a trust and friendship had grown that seemed to shout deeper than love. It had become something more complicated, and utterly indispensable. Freya said, “I have to light a pyre. I have to say goodbye.”
“Come on,” Pod said. “We’ll both collect wood. There’s enough of it around. Houses reduced to rubble. Doorways smashed, window frames and broken furniture. , thorn bushes and tumbleweed.”
Bending, collecting and stacking, Freya’s back groaned but she barely noticed it. Flat topped, the pile of broken wood rose high enough, reaching to their chins as they flexed the pieces, with plaster and stone beneath for stability. Hawisa was heavy to lift. Freya, now sobbing without control, twice lost her footing. An hour had passed, and it was dawn as they laid the blood clogged body upon the pyre. One arm fell down at the side, flopping over the stacked wood. Freya managed to reach up and straighten the skirts, fitting them down over Hawisa’s ankles. Then Freya said, “I don’t have a fire lighter.”
“Nor do I.”
“There’s the old way,” Freya murmured.
“I’ll do it,” said Pod.
As the new dawning sun climbed in the east, spinning its colours over the sands, bringing alight the glisten and pushing back the night’s shadows, Pod snapped two small twigs from the collection, and sat rubbing them together. The first spark was immediate, but then immediately gone. The second spark was suddenly a flame, and Pod carefully held this to the side of the pyre. It caught. The larger flames rushed. And then the pyre was virulent and all consuming.
Freya stood and watched, scorching her face, and said her goodbyes. “My wonderful friend,” she said under her breath. “You saved my life more than once. And you cared. It was so wonderful to have someone who cared. You hugged me and tucked me in at night, and you fed me, and got me the poppy drink that kept me alive. At the mill and all those months without you, I only missed three people, and you were one of them. You, and Symon, and – Jak. And now I shall miss you for ever and ever and ever. If there is a way to peep down and say something, please try to do it.”
She wiped her eyes and when the tears flooded her all over again, she simply let them trace down the curves of her face, and stood there as the flames rose, merging into the golden dazzle of the sun.
They waited until the last tiny sparks flared, and the pyre was flat ashes. Freya walked backwards, away from the remains of the funeral, not wanting to see what was left of Hawisa, her bones or her shrivelled flesh.
“I want to remember her how she was.”
“Of course you do.”
“So we leave? But leaving means going somewhere? I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to lie on a bed and cry.”
“You can. I won’t interrupt,” Pod said, taking her hand. Her fingers clutched at his. “We’ll go back to the rooms and see what’s left.”
The township was a helpless panic of desperation. From the outskirts, where nearly everything was flattened, to the inner scramble where roads met and the Cornucopia River still flowed, people were running, crying, shouting and collapsing. Homes had been ruined and valuable belongings swept away. Some, finding their homes intact, hurried inside and locked their doors. Young men threw stones, smashing windows and grabbing whatever they could steal from those who still owned anything worth stealing.
“You got a home,” someone screeched. “You got chairs. You got a bed and blankets. I ain’t got nothing. So you gotta share.”
A woman was sitting in the gutter, staring down at her bare feet. She looked up at Freya as she passed. The woman smiled. “You’s still alive, lady? I’s glad enough fer that. You was in that magic theatre, and I were so happy fer a couple of hours. Thanks fer that, lass. But then came the worst storm I ever seen, and now I got no home and no sister.”
Bending down, Freya stroked her cheek. “If I had a home, I’d share it with you. But I have nothing either. My mother is dead. And I think I have nothing left.”
“I never knowed a storm to kill so many,” said the woman, half choking. “We gets them every year o’course, mabe one, maybe two, maybe three or even four. Some poor bugger dies. Four years ago, me husband died. But he weren’t no loss. I’ll miss me sister more.”
Someone else looked around. He was carrying a sack of bricks. “We start again,” he said. “We build. We try. Not much else we can do, is there? I’ve got a house with two walls and no roof. But I can build anew. And you’re right, it’s the worst storm I ever saw.”
“I reckon there’s fifty dead,” shouted someone else.
People were crowding round. “There’s a lass over there, in that house still standing apart from broken windows. Gave birth, she did, right in the middle of it.”
“The theatre’s gone. A hundred houses, maybe two hundred. The river’s clogged with rubble from broken this and broken that. And the dead pile up like a pestilence running wild. I’m not wandering off to look, for it could be dangerous. But I’d wager the sands are blown flat, and half of it out to sea.”
Pushing between the gathering crowd, Pod and Freya now stood in front of the house where they had been offered rooms by the owner and had felt loved and honoured by the offer. The house was now a shell, and inside every room spread in unsheltered chaos. The woman bent at the broken doorway was crying. Half the world, it seemed, was crying.
Freya put her arms around the woman’s shoulders. “Tricia, I’m so sorry. But at least – you’re alive. You were so kind to us all. You were so kind to Hawisa, but now – she was killed in the storm. She’s dead. I lit her pyre.”
Tricia clutched Freya back. “I’m so sorry. That’s far worse than losing a house.”
“We’re sorry for both,” said Pod. “Your home was beautiful, and we were so grateful to share it. But now we have nothing to stay for and the theatre’s just fallen stones, so we’re going. I wish you luck, and happiness.”
“Perhaps in time. You’ll come back one day, won’t you?”
“One day,” said Freya. She pushed her full purse into Tricia’s hands. “You never charged us a penny. And we earned good money from that one performance before the storm. It may help you rebuild.”
“Tis losing Toby wot’s the bovver,” muttered Symon. “I should orta bring him, poor little bugger.”
“In the train?” Udovox leaned forwards. “I had to leave my kitten baby too. Animals don’t like trains. And my baby’s mother was killed by one.”
“Nobody won’t dare kill my Toby,” said Symon beneath his breath.
Jak was half asleep, half staring from the window. Tom, glued to the excitement of the window, pointed, delighted. “The ship-builders. There’s my friend. We bought his neat little ship, and he was good enough to buy it back.”
“Saving my life?” murmured Jak. “Yes, I must salute the two, the ship-builders and the owner all. But mainly Tom and Udovox, crazy enough to save my life.”
Nodding to himself in rhythm with the train’s wheels, Symon muttered. “’N me an’ all.”
Jak returned to the morose contemplation of failure. Feeling himself reborn into indecision, he avoided further conversation. He had grown fond of Tom and Udovox, and respected them for their rescue, saving his life when he had simply been a stranger. He respected Symon and felt a deepening regard for the man. It was himself he despised.
The rhythm of the train sang to him. ‘No identity. No conclusions. Tumble – stumble – success less -. no gain – nothing—’ simply the repetitive churn of the wheels and the blasts of thick black smoke against the windows.
Finally they had discovered the mill. Sand crusted clogs, too large for Freya, and a puddle of sticky black smeared over the pebbles. Blood. A fight, then. But no living soul remained and no sign of Freya. Exploring the countryside mid north had art first seemed a pleasant hope, and his companions pl
easant too. But endless failure brought no hope. Now they headed south, but without significant direction.
Jak wondered whether discovering Freya mattered as much as once it had. In many ways, the Council mattered more. Justice and security – building an Eden worth living. He could achieve – perhaps – the changes that mattered. But if failure dogged him, then he would be as worthless in the Council as his search for Freya had proved.
The horn sounded deeper and more malicious from inside the carriage than it had seemed from outside. Udovox and Jak were fairly accustomed to it. Symon and Tom were not. Tom flinched at each boomed warning. The perpetual rattle of the wheels, however, made them sleepy. Behind the engine and its great wafts of smoke, the glimpses of the fire which maintained the speed, and the rumble of the levers, the huge crates of grain and roots, milk and meat from the farms, and the massive holders of rock, marble, limestone and granite from the quarries, rolled through the land. In the seasons of harvest and spring, up to a hundred vast crates hurtled behind each engine. At other times there were fewer crates as the farmers stored what they could and little grew. But hay was still gathered and sold, and the quarries never stopped work.
Then, after the crates, came the carriages for those who could pay. The platforms that followed, grabbed by those who needed to cross the terrible and endless distances but without the coin to pay, were now equipped with handrails, and passengers tumbled less often to their deaths.
As Symon stared out at the golden dunes, he wondered if he should have stayed at home. In truth, he had no home and nor did Tom or Udovox. But the sands stretched into the end of the world and the simmering heat scorched down on the shimmer of moving dunes, skitting and sliding in the breezes.
That evening, stiff, sore and cramped, each drifted into a sleep of restless discomfort, woke many times throughout the night, and peered from their window into a night of a million stars. The sounds of the wheels was somehow relaxing, but their seats were the opposite. And throughout the journey, the sands stretched on without change.
The Mill Page 27