She did not allow herself to dwell upon her shredded clothes, the dirty fingers that had touched her. Nor did she linger over worries of where everyone was.
Evie shut those things deeply within. She would deal with it later.
When she heard raised voices, Maddoc's grip about her shoulders tightened imperceptibly. Then, he released her and made his way to where the tunnel widened into the main body of the sphere.
The sentry nodded at Maddoc and called out, “I cannot leave me post!”
Maddoc understood perfectly. Reginald was their last point of entry. He was there to alert the inhabitants of the sphere to take refuge if the unthinkable happened.
Maddoc glanced behind him, and seeing that Evie was fine, he sprinted in the direction of the noise.
What greeted him was such a surprise he halted in his tracks.
A female friend of Clara's—he could not recall her name—lay broken like a lifeless doll on the ground. Maddoc’s sister knelt next to her.
His brothers of the Band had torn a sphere-dweller’s body asunder, the limbs and head ripped from the torso. It was the cruelest display of their strength that Maddoc could imagine, a grisly task only executed by the Band and under only the direst of circumstances.
Philip stood and spoke quickly, “Do not let the females see this.”
“Yes.” Maddoc turned, and Evie stood there, the color wiped clean from her face. Suddenly, he wished her pseudo-father, Bracus, was in attendance.
“What—” Evie covered her mouth when she saw the pieces of Clarence's body scattered about like gory tree limbs.
It was bad indeed that Evie had survived mistreatment of the first order, only to see the limbs of someone she might have rubbed elbows with at the Gathering Hall strewn in the street.
“No, Evie, do not look,” Maddoc said, pulling her against him.
She spun in his arms and buried her face in his chest.
Matthew took Clara's hand as he crouched beside Sarah's body, the lovely pink of her skin falling to the ashen of death.
“She did not deserve this, Matthew!” Clara wailed.
Matthew brushed his fingertips over Sarah’s cornflower-blue eyes, closing them.
He turned and looked at Erwin, who took the silent cue and pulled a blanket from the carriage. Erwin approached and took out the rough wool blanket then let it float softly over Sarah’s corpse.
Blood ran in the cracks between the cobblestones.
Clara looked down at her blood-soaked knees and scrambled away with a groan, covering her mouth with one hand at the horror at her feet.
“Clara,” Matthew said, reaching for her.
She screamed, a piteous wail of mournful rage and suffering, as she staggered away.
Matthew came toward her, and she fought him, smacking him with her fists against his chest. “No, no. Shush. I am here.”
“No!” she screamed. “Sarah! Sarah!”
Evie watched the unflappable Clara come apart before her eyes and understood so well.
She stayed beside Maddoc. She could not offer solace when she was incapable of offering it to herself.
“No, Clara!” Matthew bellowed. “She did it to save you.”
Matthew gripped her shoulders. “She sacrificed herself for you.”
Clara stopped, tears staining her face. The blood of Sarah lay like a smear of rust against her dress. He stopped just shy of embracing her. “Let me love you, Clara.”
Clara put her fists to her eyes and sobbed. She cried so hard that no sound came. Her body seemed about to shake apart with the force of her absolute grief.
Matthew's hand went to her nape as she shook. Finally, she took deep some breaths of the moist sphere air and could taste a recent cleanse on her tongue. She let out a hiccup that sounded like a semi-hysterical laugh.
The air be fully pure, but what of the stench of death all around her?
Clara nodded in assent to the question posed minutes before.
Let Matthew love her? Oh yes, she would.
She must. Her very survival relied on that pure love. Her friend lay dead at her feet because she had loved Clara.
Yet, Matthew did as well. She would not let Sarah's sacrifice be in vain.
Clara tilted her head until it lay against his hand as it moved to rest on her shoulder.
Matthew pulled her against him, exhaling roughly.
Joy would be theirs again but not this day.
He turned and watched Philip begin to string Clarence’s limbs up in the large tree at the entrance of the tunnel.
Philip heaved twined hemp over a branch and pulled the loose end on the other side. He made a noose of sorts and used it to hang a bloody chunk. He continued the process with more rope.
Bracus, Daniel, and Edwin assembled around them, taking in the hideous scene.
There would be much to discuss.
*
Later
Evie sank into the water, her mind utterly blank.
She allowed her thoughts to float as her body did. It was a safer mindset than any she currently wished to entertain.
Clara was in the adjacent room, taking her own bath. The two women had said virtually nothing to each other. There was naught to say. Their deeply shocked systems were numb, but for different reasons.
Maddoc had been most reluctant to let Evie leave his sight. That had made the corners of her mouth turn up. He was a good male.
The memories of the bad ones crowded her mind, and Evie shook her head to rid them from her thoughts.
Evie forced herself to think of good things.
She was alive.
Olive, though having taken a bad blow to her head, would pull through.
The doctor had passed from life. The hope was that his son might have enough memory to take his place. The coding of their people remained in the fabric of their genetic memory.
Such things seemed orchestrated by the Travelers. They of the future would have seen fit to make a certainty of medicine, that it would not die out from lack of knowledge, which would be seeded from within their very genetics.
Evie rolled her head until her cheek touched the side of the copper tub. It held heat perfectly as the hot water lapped at her skin and contained sorrow. Lavender crystals, traded from another sphere, had been added, and Evie smelled wonderful, though she did not feel clean.
She had washed between her legs three times. She could not remove the tactile memory. Her body still felt dirty from the man's fingers and where they had been, what they had done.
Evie sat so long in the tub that the water became cold and her fingers pruned. Tears that she was not aware she shed mixed with the cooling bath water.
Clara entered and softly called, “Evie?”
Her dark red hair hung like bloody ropes against the cream of her dressing gown, the ends scattering damp dots across her waist.
Clara touched Evie's bare shoulder.
Evie cringed and whispered, “I do not think I can feel right again.”
Clara pushed the hair away from Evie's pale brow.
“It is not a matter of feeling right again, Evie.” She pulled the stopper from the drain, and the scented water drifted away through the copper tubes that would fill the gray water cisterns beneath the Royal Manse.
In Evie's eyes, Clara saw the added tragedy and wisdom fixed irrevocably. She recognized it because her own heart held just that same look of bruised knowledge.
Clara grabbed a towel from the steam-heated brass bars in the shape of a ladder above the radiator. When she turned back to the tub, Evie stood naked before her.
Evie hung her head and shivered as she reached for the towel. “Do not look upon me. I am unclean.”
Clara studied her. Evie had the curves of a woman upon her body, but the mind did not yet match the physique. But soon, Evie would be ten and six. If Maddoc did not join with Evie, Clara would eat an oyster, shell and all.
Clara wrapped the younger woman in the large towel and held Evie’s elbow as
she stepped out of the bath.
Though it had only been half a day, her shoulder felt much better. Yet Clara did feel a twinge when Evie leaned on her proffered hand.
She was concerned by Evie's strange and distant behavior, but it was not an unnatural reaction from one who had been captured by Fragment. Maddoc had given Clara the barest recounting, all that he had left out hidden in the timbre of his voice.
Clara had easily filled in the gaps.
“They did not rape me,” Evie blurted.
Clara stared at her. “There are many types of rape.”
Evie's artificial iciness melted at those words. She had not been able to give into self-pity or anguish, for there were so many women who had been abused in just that way—total violation.
How could she possess the right to wallow in her misery when she had escaped true torture?
Clara held her as Evie began to cry.
Eventually, Evie lifted her head. “How do you… how do you carry on? How do I?”
Clara shook her head sadly. “Grief will not ruin us. It only wounds.”
“I do not know how long these wounds will take to heal,” Evie cried, “before I can be with Maddoc as a female should. Mayhap I am too broken for him to want!”
Evie had revealed her innermost turmoil: that Maddoc would discover she was tainted, no longer innocent, not worth the time he had spent trying to save her.
Clara understood that sometimes, when horrible experience was survived, afterward, one was wont to feel unworthy, even though it be a false reckoning of true events.
“We can seek joy even if injured. We tend ourselves while reaching for the happiness we deserve. Human beings are only constrained by their own choices.”
Clara dropped the towel and gripped Evie’s shoulders. “Choose life, Evie. Choose happiness.”
Evie looked chastened. “What of Sarah?”
Clara flinched. “She lives here,” Clara said, placing a hand to her chest.
Evie took in Clara's red-rimmed eyes, the turquoise of her irises a shocking contrast inside her swollen lids.
“When does the pain leave?”
“The pain does not leave but can coexist with the joy.” Clara linked her fingers in illustration.
After a moment, Evie cupped her hands around Clara's as their foreheads touched.
If Clara could survive all the abuse she had suffered and the recent murder of her friend, then Evie must try.
She would not reject the pain, but embrace it.
Evie would not allow sadness to rule her in the hours of her life yet to come.
*
“He is not responding well,” Roe said.
He looked so like his father, Ronald, that Clara found it difficult to look at their new healer’s face.
Clara turned to the bed.
Charles would not meet her gaze.
It had been a week since the carnage at the mouth of the tunnel. What was left of Clarence’s body still hung, stinking up the passageway as an effective reminder of treason's consequences.
Her heart had hardened since Sarah's death.
She had not argued the deterrent as she certainly would have in the past.
She had even allowed a sign to be hung beneath the ghastly remnants.
Traitor of the Kingdom of Ohio
If it kept others who might suffer ideals of prejudice, control, or insurgence from repeating Clarence’s treachery, then the horror at the tunnel outlet was well worth it.
Clara pulled on her gloves and told Roe, “Please let me know when he is well enough to be tried.”
“I assume you cannot wait to have my body join what remains of Clarence?” Charles asked.
Clara trembled with anger.
“You allowed a man who had been ruined by torture to whisper his thoughts into your bent ear. And you thought so little of me as a human being as to think I would then concede your hand.”
Clara snorted.
“I am within my rights to dispatch you permanently. A boy who was my friend and remained such until the death of Ada…” Clara shook her head.
“I do not know what happened between us, but I cannot spend another second of my time speculating about it. I have a kingdom to rule.”
She leaned in close to Charles's face. “And a king to wed.”
It was a more petty comment than any she had ever allowed herself, but she was beyond numb with the pain from the death of Sarah.
Charles frowned. “And what of me, then? You plan to toss me to the mercy of the Fragment Outside?”
Clara straightened. Where had her selfless friend gone? It was as though he was the fabled character, Jekyll and Hyde. And which was he now?
The evil one. “No Charles,” she whispered. “I have made arrangements with a neighboring sphere. They will take you in.”
“What of my family?” Charles shouted.
“My queen…” Roe began, obviously uncomfortable with someone yelling at her.
“Clara?” Matthew called through the door.
“All is well, Matthew.” Clara looked at Roe and gestured for his silence.
Clara told Charles,
“Your family may visit you there, but I cannot have someone that conspired against the crown to… remain.”
Charles fell back onto the pillows and groaned. The wound from Clarence was still fresh. A little lower, and it would have pierced his lungs. Of course, if he were Band, he would be right as rain.
But he was not. And there lay the crux of the problem as far as he was concerned.
Charles scowled at Clara, so beautiful and regal before him. “Fine, banish me. It does not change that taking one of the Clan as husband will not improve the sphere, Clara.”
“I would rather have a hot-tempered, reactive male who truly loves me and thinks of my welfare first than a sniveling, conniving sphere-dweller who has only his own devices in mind.”
Matthew opened the door. Clara stared at Charles a moment longer then turned and walking across the threshold.
She did not look back.
Charles watched her walk away then met Matthew's gaze. “What are you looking at, Band?”
Matthew's azure eyes narrowed to slits. “A life spared for one who does not deserve such.”
Charles's face turned red. “And you be so perfect?”
Matthew shook his head. “A lesson you have not yet learned, even in this late hour and with two deaths on your conscious. This is not about perfection.”
“What of Clarence?” Charles asked.
“I do not include that swine.” Matthew put his hand on the well-worn brass door handle. “Integrity is what you should have sought, and all things would have fallen into place. You chose badly. I was wrong to have ever trusted you with Clara.” He lifted his broad shoulders in a dismissive shrug.
Charles made a noise deep in his throat. “Get out. You are not wise. You are naught but a crude oaf.”
Matthew nodded. “That is what you choose to see.”
He backed out of the room and quietly shut the door.
Matthew laid his forehead against the wood and continued to grip the handle until it squeaked beneath his hand.
It had been so difficult not to pound Charles's sanctimonious face into a bloody pulp.
He felt Clara behind him and turned, taking her into his arms. “That was a brave show you put on for Charles.”
Clara nodded “It helps that he does not care for me as he once did.”
Matthew lifted her chin with his finger, studying her thoroughly. “Aye, but even with all that he has done, you still care for your friend.”
She nodded.
“Once you give your heart, it is forever.”
Clara smiled through her sadness. It was the truest thing about her. A terrible strength. A crippling weakness.
The paradox of fools.
CHAPTER 21
Life from Death
“My subjects,” Clara began. The crowd stilled as though the very heat and air fr
om inside the sphere had been stolen.
She continued in the valley of their silence. “We are gathered today to honor a dear friend and teacher, a woman who was cut down in the prime of her life cycle.”
Clara gripped the royal podium. Artfully carved with a gargoyle at its base, the piece rose to a bevel topped with a sloping slab of marble. She clutched the sides of the cool stone and gazed into the sea of faces. Some she knew intimately; others not as well. Yet, all were hers.
Her eyes met those she had worked the fields with, riding in the pungy and stealing tangerines. Sydney and Russel nodded back at her.
Billy stood proudly, holding the royal guard like an anchor astride the door, and Clara thought of how expertly he had baked breads for the sphere, and how well he had hidden her when Ada had been deep within her cups and looking for a certain whipping girl. Now he guarded her with enthusiasm, a hidden aptitude realized.
Her gaze bounced to Theo, Band enough to have rescued her yet Fragment enough for ambivalence.
Finally, she spotted the tight-knit group of the Band—dead center and four horse lengths from where she stood.
Philip remained beside Calia, and though she was still a warrior, he had rounded her edges. Clara smirked. Or rather, Calia had allowed the change.
Bracus and Rowenna stood to their left, her mother's lavender eyes sparkling with pride and pleasure. Clara knew not if she would venture to the far eastern seaboard again whence Rowenna hailed. Yet they had come to terms with who needed to rule where, and this was Clara's home. That was an undeniable truth, though her true-blooded family awaited her in that distant place.
Maddoc stood with Evie, and he looked proudly forward, so pleased to have the woman he loved in his arms that it showed in the posture of his body, the lines of his face, and the lift of a mouth that seemed always ready to smile.
Evie stood to the side. Clara saw a fissure that might need more than Maddoc could provide. Evie met Clara's stare and lifted her chin in acknowledgment. Clara dipped her head in response.
There was no denying the bond that had been forged through trauma.
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