by Bobby Adair
As Franklin sat on his pew, staring and ruminating, he couldn’t stop wondering what Fitz was doing. At first, he thought Fitz’s friends were coming to comfort her over her broken heart. That was just the sort of thing women did, right? He imagined them in there talking about what an unsupportive, self-centered ass he’d been. He wanted to hate those women, because the more he imagined them in that room talking to Fitz, reinforcing her anger, the harder it would be for Fitz to forgive him.
But then Franklin cursed himself silently, because he was doing exactly what had gotten him into trouble with Fitz in the first place. He was letting his jealously and insecurity convince him of a whole litany of fictions that put both Fitz and the other women in Brighton in a bad light. And then Franklin spent an hour or so telling himself what a worthless, unclean man he was. No wonder he’d ruined his relationship with Fitz. He didn’t deserve to have such a beautiful woman in his life.
And so it went.
Periodically, Novice Joseph would come in and take a place beside Franklin on the pew and beg him to eat. Franklin didn’t. He saw no point in eating. In fact, he’d lost all desire to eat ever again. The idea of food never crossed his mind except when Novice Joseph came to speak of it. Even the smells from the kitchen were no longer tempting. In fact, they ran counter to Franklin’s goal. He was thinking that maybe if he sat in the pew long enough, and refused food long enough, he might shrivel up and turn to dust. Then he’d no longer have to suffer through the memories of his long list of mistakes.
That’s what Franklin wanted, for his suffering to end.
Chapter 78: Franklin
Franklin listened to the sound of rain pounding on the Temple roof. The rain was coming down in torrents, probably flooding the streets and turning the fields into swamps, surely pouring into people’s houses. If it got bad enough, the river might come out of its banks and wash away sections of the circle wall. Stories told of it happening long ago.
Franklin tried to recall the last time it had rained so frequently. He couldn’t. This had to be the dreariest weather of his life. And it was fitting. The thunderous clouds smashed each other in the sky and blazed lightning down on everything below, drowning the whole flat earth with their tears and matching Franklin’s mood exactly.
It was as if the world felt his pain and were crying with him.
Franklin liked that idea.
No man, no matter how alone he tried to make himself, wanted his misery to be a personal thing. As much as Franklin pretended he didn’t like the clergy spread among the pews and fasting along with him, he preferred it. And now the heavens were joining them.
Franklin leaned back on his bench and stared up at the Temple roof, lost in the blackness of the night shadows far above him. He felt the rumble of the thunder and the pounding of the rain. He felt the saturating humidity in his clothes, and he smelled the rain in the air.
As he took in the sensations of the storm, allowing himself a respite from his wallowing self-pity, he sparked a sliver of a thought, a thought so different, so out of place, shining so brightly distinct, that it felt like a renewing ray of sunshine.
No.
He didn’t want renewal and sunshine.
He wanted black storms until his bones were dust and his name was forgotten.
But even as he pegged his identity to the idea of roiling clouds and the violent thunder, he couldn’t help but think of the natural course of things, the morning after. Storms always passed. They washed the world clean, and the sun always returned.
What if sulking wasn’t the only path? What if there was a way to win Fitz back?
Maybe there was.
Fitz wanted to change Brighton. She had big ideas, and she saw the roads to her goals. She’d pushed Franklin along one of those roads. It also happened to be the road Franklin wanted to travel—to Winthrop’s seat on the Council. But where both Franklin and Fitz wanted a less brutal Brighton, Tenbrook had a different goal. He wanted all the power in his hands to do what he wished. And he was winning.
Franklin had spent days feeling, among other things, that Tenbrook had already won.
But Tenbrook was nothing more than a cavalry officer who only knew how to bully his men, whip his horses, and kill stupid beasts. He was no mental match for Franklin, especially with Fitz at his side.
As brilliant as the lightning in the sky, Franklin had an idea to put all the pieces of the mess back together again.
Chapter 79: Franklin
Franklin hurried down the hall, knowing that he had the answer to everything. He stopped at the room he’d shared with Fitz, put a hand on the knob, and paused. Inside, he heard the voices of a dozen women talking all at once. It was late for Fitz to have so many guests. Still, Franklin would not be put off. He knocked.
Immediately, the sound inside the room stopped.
No one invited him in.
Franklin knocked again.
“I won’t need you until the morning,” Fitz called, as if talking to Novice Joseph, or one of the serving girls.
“It’s me,” Franklin said.
A long pause.
An older woman’s voice said, “Go away. Come back another time.”
That made Franklin angry. He thought of flinging the door open and throwing the bunch of hens out of his Temple. How dare they tell him to go away?
Franklin grasped the doorknob as he weighed what to do, and it occurred to him that throwing these women out would win him no favor with Fitz.
Patience.
“Please talk to me, Fitz.” He wanted to pound his skull on the thick wood over his choice of words and tone. He didn’t want his request to sound like begging.
Indecipherable whispers passed back and forth inside for long moments until they suddenly ceased.
Footsteps sounded, coming toward the door. Fitz said sternly, “I’m busy. Return in the morning if there’s something you wish to say.”
Beaten already. Franklin’s brilliant idea suddenly seemed terrible, every single bit of it. And of course it was terrible—he’d been thwarted by the first pitfall. He hadn’t guessed that Fitz might refuse to open the door to hear what he had to say.
Of course, she hadn’t.
Franklin turned away from the door and took a step up the hall, stopping himself midstride.
Wait.
Why give up?
Franklin wanted Fitz back more than anything. Why let one rebuff be the obstacle between him and happiness? Franklin turned and put his hand back on the doorknob. “No,” he called through the door, firmly but not angrily. “We need to talk now.”
“Franklin, I can’t. I won’t.”
“You must.”
“Why does it have to be now?”
“I thought about what you said.”
“I said a lot of things,” Fitz told him through the door. “You’ve been sitting in the Temple for days. What could be so important just this minute?”
“Maybe I’ve treated you unfairly. Maybe we all have.” It was the first time the words had come out of Franklin’s mouth. They felt awkward, considering that they’d been swimming through his thoughts for so long. He leaned his head on the wood as he waited for Fitz to respond. She didn’t, so he pressed on. “I listened to you in the Temple when you shamed all of us. You opened my eyes. I’d never thought of things the way you said them. You were right.” Franklin rushed to add, “You are right.”
“I know,” Fitz told him through the door, the level of her voice rising with each word. “It took you all this time to realize what every girl knows from the moment she’s old enough to wash a man’s clothes or to slap his hands away when he grabs her butt?”
“I can tell it makes you angry to talk about it.” Franklin took a moment to select his words carefully. “Maybe I can’t know. I’m not a woman. I know women
have their tribulations, but I never really thought about it the way you described it. I knew it in my head, I think. But now that I’ve seen your passion and I’ve felt your pain, I know it in my heart.”
“You’ll never know it in your heart,” Fitz snapped back.
“Maybe not the way you do,” said Franklin. “But you have to understand, that though women may be treated badly, men are treated unfairly as well. Everyone lives under the foot of the one above. Even me, and I am the Bishop of Brighton. When I was a novice on the dais looking on as General Blackthorn, Minister Beck, and Father Winthrop presided over the burnings, I believed with all my heart that they were the three most powerful men in Brighton, and I dreamed of one day being one of them so that I’d no longer be subject to the whims of other men. I didn’t fully understand at the time that everyone in Brighton, even the women, must feel the same way. We all suffer at the hands of the powerful.”
“That’s true,” Fitz agreed in a softer voice.
“I never would’ve guessed that when I took Father Winthrop’s seat, I’d still be under the boot of a powerful man.”
“So this is about you now?” Fitz snapped, her anger returning.
“No, no,” Franklin disagreed. “Please listen. I’m only saying that Tenbrook’s lust for power makes me see that all of us men, women, and children in Brighton are tyrannized by the powerful, no matter who we are or what role we fill, from the dirty, hungry waifs in the orphanage all the way up to the Bishop of Brighton. I don’t know how to fix that, not for certain, but I do know that it’s wrong.”
“Wrong for everyone?” Fitz asked. “Even for Barren Women? Even for whores?”
“I’m sorry. I was wrong to say anything like that,” said Franklin. “If you hate me for the rest of my life for what I said, I’ll understand. Right now, I’m asking for your forgiveness. You don’t have to grant it to me, but please think about it. More important than what I want is what we need to do for Brighton.”
“What’s that?” Fitz asked.
“We need to stop Tenbrook. We need to stand up to him.”
“We can’t, Franklin. He’ll put us on a pyre.”
“I have a plan. We can build on what we started, and we can bring it to fruition.”
“Don’t be a fool, Franklin. Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“No,” Franklin told her with much more force than he intended. “It must be done tonight. We must start now. I’m going back to the Temple sanctuary. I’m going to wake all the fathers and the novices, and I’m going to send them out into the rain to wake all of Brighton. I want everyone here before sunrise. I don’t know what I’ll tell them, but we’ll figure something out that will touch their hearts and make them follow us to march on Tenbrook’s stronghold. His soldiers can’t stand before the might of the whole town.”
“We’ll go to war with them?” Fitz asked.
“It must be done,” said Franklin. “We’ll put him and the captains on the pyre. It’s the only way to change Brighton.”
Chapter 80: Fitzgerald
The Strong Women, that’s how Fitz thought of them. Eighteen girls and women, some widows of men burned on the pyre by Tenbrook, the rest probably widows after their men had been taken on Blackthorn’s folly into the Ancient City. They were the ones who’d been in her room late at night, bickering mostly over trivial things and avoiding the biggest problem of all, how to unseat Tenbrook. They discussed at length where the power in Brighton would rest if Tenbrook magically disappeared from the picture. With Evan dead and Tenbrook gone, that would leave Franklin, a weak-willed man to rule. Not one woman believed that would lead anywhere good.
After these discussions, Fitz was frustrated, as she often was.
They all seemed to have the same general goals, but they couldn’t come to any agreement on the actions they might take to achieve those goals. The point they couldn’t seem to grasp was that cooperation and compromise was the only road forward.
Nevertheless, after Franklin had spoken through the door for all the women in the room to hear, the meeting broke up and the women left one by one, going to pitch their lot in with the clergy on Franklin’s errands, to muster as many old men and women to the Temple as could be convinced to come.
And as Fitz sat on the edge of her bed, watching them through the windows as the night sky lost its blackness, she heard the sound of thousands of hushed, anxious voices echoing from the Temple down the hall. It seemed that Franklin had done what he’d set out to do, fill the Temple in the dark of night, in a howling thunderstorm, defiantly facing down Tenbrook’s threats and executions.
Maybe Franklin was finally growing into the man that she’d always believed he was.
Those thoughts made Fitz’s heart ache, because Franklin, despite what the two of them shared, had accepted the vile words of another man at face value, despite the blatant lies. Franklin was a man in a man’s kingdom. And Fitz would always be a woman, and in the back of Franklin’s mind, a whore.
As badly as Fitz wanted to go into the Temple with everyone else to see if Franklin could take the last victorious step in the plans that she’d laid, she couldn’t make her feet move.
Chapter 81: Tenbrook
The woman stirred, jostling the mattress. Tenbrook grew angry, thinking it was her squirming and whining again.
Why’d I let her lay with me through the night?
It always made him feel dirty when he woke up smelling a woman, hearing one snore, or worst of all, feeling her clinging to him in that parasitic embrace they all seemed to have bred into their weak, needy souls.
They were so necessary, but he hated them.
And when he saw this one, sitting up on the edge of the bed, her hair matted into scabs that were just starting to crust on her back as she curled up with her knees under her chin and her shins wrapped tightly in her arms, he thought about punching her in the mouth so hard she’d learn once and for all not to whimper and wake a man trying to get his rest.
She remained quiet. Watching him.
Not making a sound.
In fact, barely moving, not even shivering, though her skin was covered in goose bumps from the cold air in the room.
Thunder rumbled through the night sky, loud and close.
That must have been what had done the waking. It wasn’t the girl’s fault.
With that thought dispensed, Tenbrook gave a thought to rolling the girl on her belly and taking her for another go. Why not? Morning couldn’t be far away. It would make for a good beginning.
The thunder again.
Only it was different.
The girl was looking toward the door.
It was both the thunder and the door. Someone was beating on it, seemingly intent on breaking it down with a single fist.
Tenbrook’s temper erupted. He swung a foot up and brutally shoved the girl off the edge of the bed. “Go see who’s at the door. Are you a fool?”
She scrambled up from the floor, fresh blood on her knees from new scrapes, and stumbled across the room, looking from side to side for something to wear, moving more slowly with each step.
“Hurry, girl. Do you think you’re the only naked bitch anyone’s ever seen? The door!”
The girl reached the door, grasped the handle, and looked back at Tenbrook.
Tenbrook reached for a dagger he kept on a nightstand beside the bed. “Open it, stupid girl!”
She pulled the door open, swinging it into the room while trying to hide her nudity.
Tenbrook sat up and leaned against the headboard, not making any effort to temper the scowl on his face.
Captain Sinko strode through the door in his uniform, sword hanging menacingly in its scabbard. He gave the naked, bruised girl a glance as he passed by before turning his attention to Tenbrook. “General.”
&n
bsp; “What is it, Captain?”
“The Bishop. He’s assembling the townsfolk in the Temple.”
“Is he?” Tenbrook grinned. He turned his attention to the girl. “Get out of here.”
The girl stepped away from the door, moving toward a garment laying on the floor across the room.
“Go now!” Tenbrook bellowed.
The girl ran through the open door and down the hall.
Captain Sinko turned to watch her run. “A pretty one.”
“They’re all pretty,” said Tenbrook as he got out of bed, anxious now to start his day with some bloodshed. That was better than toying with a skittish, used-up blonde. “How many has Franklin mustered?”
“I had a man check,” said Sinko. “The guess is a thousand, but he said all the pews in the Temple were filled and more people were standing where they could find a space.”
“A thousand was the guess?” Tenbrook started to dress. “The Temple holds nearly three thousand. So there must be more than that.” Tenbrook knew few of his men had their numbers. To them, a thousand was the largest quantity imaginable. “With the rain coming down as it is. That is impressive. Perhaps I’ve underestimated our Bishop friend.”
Sinko neither agreed nor disagreed. “More are in the street. All going to the Temple.”