Tender Morsels

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘And I seen you watching, Branza. You dint run away nor blush; you looked me straight on, me and my big rod. Don’t you tell me it did not excite you.’

  He walked sideways beside her. What would she do if he stopped and blocked her way? And if he showed her again—for his trousers were all malformed over himself, she could see from the corner of her averted eyes—whatever would she do?

  ‘You wanted of me, just like that lady-bear did. I seen it in your face.’

  ‘You did not,’ she said shakingly, ‘for it was not there.’ She stepped aside as if to go around him. The bend was just ahead; soon they would come in sight of the town gate, and maybe a guard.

  He was terribly close. He had hold of her arm. His breath was in her eyes. ‘Oh, I seen it, all right. How long had you stood there, watching? For we had been going there a good long time, that time, I remember it. How could you watch it and not want some?’

  She twisted from his grip and ran from him, and was around the bend. There were people: a cart coming out the town gate, and a woman talking over the fence of the pig farm. Branza did sob then, with gratitude, though they were too far away to hear.

  Wurledge rounded the bend behind her and stopped; she heard him as she hurried on. ‘Never mind, you will have me, Branza Cotting.’ His voice diminished behind her. ‘I have had your titty out your bodice before. I will again. You will lay down with me again like you used to.’

  She ran a few steps, then slowed to a hurrying walk. She trusted to glance behind her. He was making for the trees at the road-edge, in his stooping, sneaking way.

  She composed herself to pass the carters, and then to walk up into the town. Such a long way, it was, up there to Lady Annie’s! She would never leave there again, not without Mam or someone. What a hideous person, that Teasel Wurledge! How could she have guessed—

  But she could, she could have guessed. The bear showing himself off, the man boasting of that—that rod; of course they were the same. And all his playfulness as Bear, all his company and comfort, had been in order to push himself up close to her, and fumble with her skirts and clothing. And she, so stupid, stupid—Mam had known, Mam had known exactly. Mam had always been looking dark, and pressing her lips together about him. Why had she not said out-and-out, directly? Why had Mam not warned her?

  She passed the end of the laundry lane. Two of those red-armed girls looked up from slapping wet laundry on a wash-rock. Sunlit water sprayed and shone in the lane behind them; steam billowed across and girls turned ghostly within it, and men pushed barrows there of sodden cloth and stacked clean. Their talk was brazen tones, with no words or feelings in it, with no meaning; a kind of garbled, harsh music.

  ‘Someone have been a-wandering in the forest,’ fluted one of these closest girls to the other.

  ‘Such luxury, to amble about and lose one’s senses.’ These words came, quite clear, like small, evil people, across the cobbles to Branza’s ankles, where they stood and smirked up at her.

  She made herself walk on. ‘. . . and then to lie back on my pillows, no? And call for a glass of Franitch wine . . .’

  ‘Watch the visions sporting in my bed-curtains . . .’

  ‘Oh, visions, is it? Well, that would make a change.’ More slapping sounded, and laughter.

  Branza picked two curled dead leaves from her hair and dropped them on the damp cobbles. In my town, she thought, your lane was dry and empty. My sister and I thought those stones were there for us to climb on. Mam must not have liked you either, to have wiped you so cleanly from the world. It cannot only be me, then, who feels this fear and out-of-placeness.

  Someone hawked above her, and a white spit hit the cobble just before her skirt passed over it. It is that Tallow boy at his window, she thought. I will not look up and encourage him.

  ‘Here she is, the donkey’s saviour.’

  Young men—six of them, or seven—crowded in the mouth of a lane, all ready to laugh at her. Branza’s twig-teased hair wisped across her eyes. She tried not to falter in her walking.

  ‘I hear she did not manage to save the poor old beast.’

  ‘Bone-arse Bobby? Oh, no, he is dogmeat now. Whipped into slices, neat as a cleaver done it.’

  As if a single mind moved them, they made of themselves a curved wall of chests, an arm’s length around Branza. She turned and tried to walk around the end of their line, but the curve of them moved with her, cupping her, and her progress became a horrible dance, with Branza leading and all the more ridiculous for doing so.

  ‘Ooh, do not beat him, Mister Strap!’ one cooed. ‘I pray you!’

  ‘Leave his poor, lazy bone-arse be!’ said another.

  ‘Or I will take the ribbon from my hair and stripe your own flanks with it, so I will!’

  ‘How could you be so cruel?’

  ‘Oh, Mister Strap!’

  ‘Mister Strap, how could you?’

  They moved rapidly with her up the street. They had a smell, collectively, so strong it stopped her thinking. Their feet sounded harder than her shoe-soles on the cobbles. When she tried to see her way, the rows of their teeth and eyes bobbed below the rooves and the window-shutters.

  She stopped, and closed her eyes. Maybe she was still asleep, still adream on the cottage doorstep. Maybe she’d only to pass through this nightmare and there she would be, with the garden-rows spreading out at her feet, with Wolf trotting up the path to say his good-mornings.

  She breathed the boys’ smell. Their noises swarmed in her head: bumpings of bodies and cooing voices and slapping feet. If only Wolf were beside her now! His growl bubbled in her throat.

  ‘I shall whip and whip you, Mister Strap!’ sang a boy.

  ‘I shall whip you and worse, I shall!’

  Branza bared her teeth.

  ‘I shall bring the law down on you!’

  She barked, sudden and deep. She bit at the air, right close to the ones in front of her.

  ‘What the buggery!’

  Surprise knocked one of them to the ground, and others, more agile, leaped back.

  ‘We have druv her mad! We have broke her brain!’

  One of them crouched up the hill, in her path. ‘Come, doggydoggy-dog!’ he crooned.

  She walked to him. She was full of wolf-teeth, wolf-love of herself, wolf-rage on her behalf. She took the boy’s head in her two hands and bent to him among the others’ hoots and whistles, and she bit his cheek hard—which was salt, which gave, meat under her teeth, the scratch of his reddish beard on her lower lip.

  It did not matter what happened thereafter. They encircled her, but none touched her. She tasted the boy’s blood on her teeth. They held the bitten boy back from her, and none would come near her. With conviction that felt like magic, she reached for another boy’s head. He shrank before her, and she walked through their circle and up the hill, past a stunned matron here, a wide-eyed child there, doors opening, and windows, past the end of the lane where the donkey had been whipped to death, and on upward.

  Finally Liga had slept, after most of the night staring at her own fears playing themselves out against the ceiling. In her exhaustion, in her body’s relief at her mind’s ceasing to strain it with onerous thoughts, she had slept well beyond first light, and Urdda must have decided to let her sleep, and told Annie to do the same, for neither of them had disturbed her.

  What woke her was commotion outside, down in the street and coming closer. Young men’s voices, a group of them, overexcited—the frighteningest sound in the world.

  She was at the window before she came properly awake, knowing in an instant they had come for her, for her babies, to commit whatever outrage they could. She clawed the drapes aside, clawed the lace. There they were. There, there!, was her bab, all-grown-up Branza, in their midst, tall and fair and besieged. What were they about, with their rage and taunting? How dare they even look at her, let alone speak, let alone speak in those tones!

  ‘Oh, my poor child!’ Liga fumbled with the window-catch. It resisted
her frightened fingers. She stood imprisoned at the glass.

  Look at the girl! Look at her hair, all wisping and leaf-littered; Urdda would be appalled! Urdda would be appalled at Liga herself, all bed-clothed and frantic, displaying herself at the window. But look at her elder girl there—what gave her cause to walk so firmly, so straight-backed? She might be Miss Dance, she had such purpose in her step. And she glanced around at the lads with a face Liga had never seen on her daughter before: a taunting smile, bright ready eyes, almost greedy for trouble! And could that be a smudge of blood on Branza’s chin? What on earth had she done?

  Whatever it was, whether she had torn someone’s throat out with her teeth or only bitten her own lip in some scuffle against these boys, a warm wave of purest relief, foaming at the fringes with pride, now washed through Liga, to see her daughter so. Look how they circled her, not daring to touch! In some way, she had bested them; they were afraid of her, look! It was marvellous that she, Liga, so frightened herself, had made a girl who could claim a path ahead from a pack of hostile lads! She wished she could fling open the window and cheer—how angry Urdda would be if she did! She had to laugh at the thought, even as she drew the lace across and continued her watching through it.

  Gracious, there was Whinney, the constable, hurrying up the street from behind, two young men running with him, chattering wide-eyed, waving their arms. Shutters were flinging open now, on other houses, at the noise below; the Kitcheners, across the way, were coming out onto their doorstep to watch.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Liga, pleased that people should see Branza so calm and sure and strangely happy; that they should see how she held her own among those shouting, skittering boys; pleased too that they would disapprove it, that Urdda would disapprove too, yet here went Branza like the queen of a spring parade, bestowing her smile, her wicked smile—she must have some witch in her!—on her tormenters. But how could they be tormenters if Branza refused to be tormented by them? They became just jumping children, scared of this tall, beautiful, smiling girl with her madwoman’s hair.

  Liga heard the front door open, although nobody had knocked. She could not see Branza clearly at that angle; she only knew that the constable had reached her, heard his firm voice under the lads’ noise. Urdda, too, spoke, and her voice was clearly audible: ‘What have you done, Branza?’

  Liga laughed again—two of them! That both her daughters could face such a mob of men—a constable among them!—and keep their voices, and their posture, and their spirit, astounded her, delighted her.

  Now they were babbling at Urdda, those lads. Some were angry, some laughed in their excitement, and others joined forces to drag forward one of their number—oh, look at his face there, the flap of flesh, the stripe of blood down his front! That was the deed, that was Branza’s crime! Oh!

  Liga was caught between covering her face with fright and clapping her hands. What would Da have done if she’d bitten him so; what would those boys? And yet she wished she had; she wished she had had some blood from them, as they had had from her.

  Out of the confusion below, the constable very determinedly led Branza by the arm; she did not resist, but appeared to be just as happy to be led by him as she had been to conduct herself up the hill.

  ‘How dare he!’ And Liga pushed aside the lace, wanting to open the window and shout at the man like a laundry-woman.

  But even as she loosened the catch, she saw the cloaked figure of Urdda pushing forward through the rabble, taking Branza’s other arm. That smaller, more fiery figure turned then, and, as if she had read Liga’s mind, she shot her a look, even as Liga pulled the lace around her face like an Eelsister’s wimple—a warning look if ever Liga saw one—before walking on, as straight-backed and certain as her sister among the milling men.

  ‘What the blazes?’ Annie flung back the bedchamber door.

  ‘My Branza appears to have been arrested,’ said Liga.

  ‘For biting that Hopman lad, who’d-a-thought!’

  Annie joined her at the window, and they both stood there laceless, in clear view of curious neighbours and of trailing lads who might turn to look. ‘Not that someone oughtn’t to’ve bit him a long time ago. But I’m not sure that that Whinney-man has my same sense of justice. Look at him, loving the fuss. Look at them all.’

  ‘Look at Branza and Urdda—are they not brave?’ breathed Liga.

  Annie peered and grinned. ‘Heh-heh. There is nothing like upbringing in a heaven to give a girl false confidence.’

  ‘False, you think?’ said Liga anxiously, dropping the lace back across the window.

  ‘The size o’ that mob, Liga? I say false. Get yourself dressed, girl, in your very best; we will need to summon all the menfolk and all the respectability we can, if she’s not to be whipped in the street.’

  Branza slept in perfect peace. The world echoed empty around her. Her bed was stone; she must have moved from the weedy wall sometime in the night. The light was dim yet; before long, the sun would come up over the trees and warm the cottage step as it always did. That dream where she became a wolf and bit the man attacking her, where she was paraded like a prize and like a naughty child through the town, where she sat in that cold room with the bloodied boy and the boy’s raging mother and the constable shaking his head and the clerk staring and scribbling by turns—that would all be burned away. Wolf would come from the forest and greet her; Mam would start to move about in the house; and another peaceful day would lift out of night and begin its slow arc over her.

  The sounds of rubbing metal and thudding wood woke her into the cell: to the glistening stone walls, to the stone bed like a sarcophagus, to the cool light spilling in from the barred window. The door was opening, the heavy door, and there in the cool light, improbable, stood Mam and Urdda, with the constable hovering warily behind them, his key in his hand.

  Branza sat up. ‘So it was not a dream,’ she said. ‘The constable, and all those people shouting.’

  ‘Leave us a moment, please, Mister Whinney,’ said Liga loftily, without looking over her shoulder at him. ‘While we explain to her.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Make sure she is quite clear, though, as to what’s required.’

  Liga nodded and waved him away, again not dignifying him with a glance. ‘He is angry,’ she whispered across to Branza. ‘Ramstrong has just given him a right talking-to. And on top of a nagging from Wife Hopman, I believe. Poor man is beset, all sides.’

  They stepped in, Urdda pausing to shudder, Liga coming straight to Branza. She took up her hands and clasped them, and looked straight into Branza’s heart—it felt to Liga as if she stabbed her daughter with a sword, but at the same time it opened her own eyes so that all the pain and worriment she had had since Branza took the jewels and left the house last night shone there, ached there. All the certainty and humour Liga had had at the cell door vanished, and these other emotions—Branza saw them coming like unlocked water down a mill-channel. Then up they welled and down they spilled, and Branza rose from the bed-stone and took hold of her, and mother and daughter wept on each other’s shoulders.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Urdda. ‘But it is all fixed now, and well.’

  ‘No, it is not; no, it is not!’ said Liga, and wept so hard that Branza made her sit down beside her on the stone in case she collapsed to the floor.

  When she calmed enough to speak, Liga said, ‘How did you think life would be here, if you were not with us?’

  ‘Why, much as it was without Urdda, I would say, for ten years.’

  ‘No, no!’ Liga sprang fresh tears. ‘That was in my heaven! I felt nothing there, nothing unpleasant! Here I feel everything, and fears and sadnesses the worst, because I am so out of the habit of them, after all my years of serenity.’

  ‘So why may I not go where I am free of those bad feelings, Mam? You wanted to go—why should I not?’

  ‘But I did not have a mam who wanted me to stay!’

  ‘Or a sister!’ said Urdda. ‘No!’ said Li
ga.

  ‘Or good work, or fine friends such as Ramstrong and Lady Annie, and all these others we are meeting and making dresses for! Or prospects of marriage, and making a happy old grumma out of your mam! I went because I was so unhappy; had I stayed, I would have died of it, died of it. I came to that cliff, and I was determined to die of it, all on a sudden, and I held you out, and I—and I—’

  Branza gathered Liga up and held her tightly. ‘Stop, Mam, stop! I did not mean to have you so distressed. Of course, of course I do not want to be dead; of course I am not as unhappy as that! Hush, now!’

  But Liga would not hush; she sobbed and groaned and rocked in Branza’s arms as if the memories were blows, cuffing her this way and that. Urdda sat the other side of Liga, to contain her misery that way.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mam!’ Branza wept. ‘I’m sorry! Forgive me! I won’t talk of it again, Mam, I promise! I won’t try, I won’t run away. I’ll stay with you, I will! Morning till night,’ she sobbed, ‘just as you want it!’

  Liga shook her head, and could not speak for a while.

  ‘I will not go, Mam,’ said Branza. ‘Or even try to go, I promise, if it upsets you so—’

  Liga’s hand over her mouth interrupted her. ‘Hush that,’ she said, and now she recovered herself, and in a few moments it was as if she had not shed a single tear, so suddenly steady were her voice and figure. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is entirely my own doing. I should not be surprised, not the tiniest bit, at any of it. Miss Dance told me I ought not to have kept you—you, nor Urdda neither—in that place for so long. Hush, let me finish, Branza-girl! No, it was my world, as she said; my idea of what the world should be like, conceived when I was fifteen and in miserable times. It was no place for a girl to grow up in. I should have let you grow in the true world, and make your decision, on truth, what life you wanted to lead. And now—she is right—I have spoiled you for the true world. I have grown you up believing that things are one way when they really are another. I have deceived you, is what it is. I have practised a cruelty upon you just as bad as those—as they did—as bad as any cruelty that was ever done me.’ She pushed away a memory with her hands.