Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  “I’m glad you reached that conclusion on your own,” said Pathka, stuffing her clothing into her satchel. “I didn’t want to have to tell you how terrible you smell.”

  “This, from a quigutl!” scoffed Tess.

  “Exactly.” Pathka sounded relieved. “You see how dire it is. Also: your monthlies are nearly here.”

  Tess froze, appalled that he’d mention such a thing.

  “Don’t doubt this nose,” said Pathka, unfazed by her glare. “You’ll want to plan for them, because it’ll be hard to maintain your disguise if your breeches—”

  “Stop talking. Now, please,” snapped Tess, rubbing her goose bump–covered arms.

  Pathka clasped her belongings to his back, boots on top, and swam into the mist. He was out of sight before Tess, already shivering, managed to stick her feet in. The water was cold, and the rocks on the bottom were slimy. She waded up to her thighs, excruciatingly slowly, clutching the towrope. The current wasn’t strong this close to the bank, but she disliked not seeing the other side. It felt like walking into the underworld.

  The sun, which had been dithering in the trees, rose higher and began melting the fog. Tess felt unpleasantly exposed; the water was only up to her hips.

  Even though it meant letting go of the towrope, she crouched in the shallow water so she wouldn’t have to see herself illuminated, white belly, flat breasts. Her body horrified and embarrassed her. It was the locus of her badness.

  And here she was, in the middle of nowhere, stark naked in a river. She never learned.

  She waded in deeper until she could stand with only her head and neck exposed. She had assumed she’d be able to reach the towrope again, but it hung just out of range. The current tugged and sucked at her ankles like a baby, and then she was in too deep, standing on tiptoe, face lifted to the sky. The weight of water constricted her lungs, and she felt a twinge of terror.

  Pathka had deposited her things on the far bank and was chugging steadily back to help her along. He was going to arrive too late.

  She teetered, her only options sink or swim. It could go either way. She had not yet decided to walk on today; Pathka had gotten her moving before she could make her daily promise. She was not going to find an easier way to die than this. She had merely to let go, let herself be pulled down and pinned underwater in darkness. She would be swept away and never found.

  Swept away was a fortuitous choice of words: it made her mad. She’d been swept away once—hadn’t she been up all night remembering it? She’d let herself be, hoped and desired to be; that’s how it always went in romantic stories.

  She’d never be that passive again. It was far, far better to choose.

  She’d seen Faffy swim, years ago, when their mischievous trio had discovered an abandoned coracle, like a tortoise shell, bobbing on the Mews River. Pathka had swum out and nudged the tiny (pirate) boat toward shore. Faffy was having none of it. Tess had carried the whining dog aboard, but the moment she let go, he sprang over the side and lit out for shore, frantically churning his skinny legs.

  If a bony snaphound could swim, Tess could, too. In a fit of optimism, she lifted her toes and went under immediately. Water flooded her ears and nose, but she imitated Faffy’s motions, hands circling like millwheels, legs kneeing back and forth like an infant’s. She held her breath and believed, and when her head broke the surface, she yelped in triumph.

  “Coming!” cried Pathka, snaking toward her.

  Tess, flailing, might soon have tired and sunk, but Pathka reached her. She clasped his dorsal hand and let him tow her shoreward. The water felt like a rolling caress, like the fingers of a god, like she was not just clean but new. She rolled onto her back, chest toward the sky, let her limbs drift open, and for a moment forgot to be disgusted with herself. Let sun and clouds get a good look. She was the river, and the river had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “It’s shallow enough that you can stand now,” said Pathka, but Tess didn’t want to. She’d worked out how to float, limbs spread wide like a water-strider with her back arched toward the sun.

  She spent the rest of the morning swimming. Pathka didn’t complain. In fact, Pathka—the sensitive nose—washed her clothing and laid it on rocks to dry. When Tess finally crawled out of the river, exhausted and noodle-limbed and a bit sunburned, her linens were dry, but her breeches and jacket were not. She half dressed, enough that nonexistent passersby wouldn’t be scandalized, and then she used the last of the spare linen in her pack to make herself three small pillow slips, lunessas, for her supposedly impending monthlies. She filled them with moss.

  The sun had slipped past zenith by the time she finished. She apologized to Pathka for using up the day, but he was unperturbed. “At least the caretaker won’t smell us coming.”

  “He’ll smell you,” said Tess, still chafing on this point.

  “Even if he does,” said Pathka evenly, “he won’t know what he’s smelling.”

  Tess followed Pathka up the weedy verge, less noisy than the gravel drive. The lodge wasn’t far; in fact, Tess’s river bath would have been visible from the lone turret had anyone been watching. She felt an unnecessary, belated pang of embarrassment.

  The hunting lodge was absurdly fortified with battlements and a dry moat. Pathka led Tess down the ditch, through a patch of what turned out to be nettles (thank Allsaints for good boots, but the nettles stung her knees through her breeches). He ducked up a hole in the embankment; Tess followed on hands and knees. “I found this yesterday,” said Pathka from the darkness ahead. “I thought it might lead down to a cave, but it leads up to the kitchens.”

  “You couldn’t take what you needed then?” asked Tess, helping push open a trapdoor.

  “Didn’t occur to me until you smashed that ring,” said Pathka, his tail disappearing through the opening. Tess followed him into a pantry. Pathka, his tongue alight, led the way to the kitchen door.

  The kitchen had grimy diamond-pane windows and an obvious rat problem. “Go up front,” Pathka instructed. “If the caretaker comes in, that’s where he’ll enter. You can run back and warn me.”

  Tess had no objections. She didn’t want to know what Pathka was stealing, although she was practical enough to pinch a few pantry items for herself. She wandered up a corridor, past rooms of ghostly, sheet-covered furniture. She wished the servants had covered the deer heads in the great hall, too; this lodge’s owners made Lord Heinrigh look like an amateur.

  She finally found the grand entrance foyer, which was decorated with ancient carven stonework—ogham posts, green-man bosses, and a “Yawning Nancy,” as the pagan figurine was euphemistically called. It wasn’t her mouth yawning. She’d likely been a fertility goddess at one time, but her real name was lost to the ages. Tess kept her eyes religiously averted.

  She’d been there a quarter of an hour, admiring the tapestries, when suddenly a deep bell tolled in the heights of the tower. Tess nearly jumped out of her skin, fearful of the caretaker, but it wouldn’t be him ringing. He’d have a key. It must be a visitor.

  A visitor would eventually go away or try the caretaker’s cottage. Tess settled onto a bench and ignored the bell when it rang again. She ignored the knocking and hollering. Only when she heard a hard grinding sound, like chewing, did she grow concerned. Something was gnawing the door; daylight began to show through in a spiral around the lock. Tess leaped to her feet, but before she could bolt, the door was kicked inward with a tremendous crack.

  “I told you that door worm would be to our beneficence,” said the door-kicker in a gruff voice. He was a tall man of nearly thirty, wiry and hairy-armed, with a face like a peevish mule.

  “But where are we to get another?” whined a second man, fat and sweaty, behind him. They were dressed in grimy peasant smocks and braes; their caps had once been grain sacks.

  “Fortune favors the fortunate, Rowan,
” said the tall man, blinking as his eyes accustomed to the interior dimness. “Who’s there?”

  Tess’s wits had frozen in place along with her body, and she couldn’t think of any name but her own. She didn’t dare tell them that. Her voice squeaked, distressingly girly, as she managed to stammer, “W-what do you want?”

  “We wanted you to open the door, you worthless jackanapes,” said Rowan, the fat one. “Look what you made us do. Your lord won’t be pleased.”

  His long-faced partner drew a knife from a thigh sheath, pointed it at Tess’s throat, and held her gaze as if waiting for her to flinch. “You don’t belong here,” he said with surprising certainty, wiggling the end of his knife against her skin. “A servant wouldn’t be so derelicious of his duty unless he were drunk. You’re a squatter—come out of the cold.”

  Rowan drew closer. He, too, had a knife strapped to his meaty thigh, although he didn’t draw it yet. He was staring hard at Tess’s chest, as if he could see through her clothes.

  He can’t tell, she thought desperately, like a prayer, trying to keep panic in check.

  “That’s a nice jacket,” said Rowan at last, and Tess almost collapsed with relief. “Don’t get blood on it, Reg. I want it.”

  He reached his thick fingers toward her buttons.

  “Touch me and I’ll scream,” Tess said, cringing at how feminine that threat sounded. “The caretaker will gut you,” she added, trying to beef up her rhetoric.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Reg, tapping her chin with the flat of his blade, unconcerned.

  “My quigutl is behind you, ready to attack,” said Tess. This was a lie. She hoped Pathka had had the good sense to flee, in fact.

  Reg didn’t blink at this, but Rowan looked around apprehensively.

  “He’s trained to do what I say, and his bite quickly runs to gangrene,” said Tess. “Which is your favorite limb? I’ll make sure he gets it.”

  Both ruffians reflexively clamped their knees together. Tess might have found this amusing in better circumstances.

  Reg abruptly resheathed his knife; maybe he feared imminent quigutl attack, or maybe he decided she wasn’t worth his time. “You’re clearly our fellow malcontempt,” he said, gazing over her head into the great hall. “I respect that, and you may keep whatever you’ve taken. There’s plenty enough here. Rowan, bring in the old man.”

  Tess was too busy taking deep, shaky breaths to wonder whom he was talking about.

  Rowan and Reg looked out at the bright afternoon sunshine. “Damnation, he’s bogged off again,” said Rowan, trotting outdoors. After some yelling and thumping, Rowan returned with a beardy old man in tow, pale and skinny, his right hand missing two fingers.

  It was the beggar from Trowebridge.

  * * *

  The oldster met Tess’s gaze and held it. Surely he didn’t recognize her. He’d been half asleep and addled, and she’d looked like a girl. He put a skinny finger to his lips, though, as if they shared a secret.

  Rowan steered him by the arm while Reg directed his attention around the front hall, pointing out distinctive artwork and asking, “How about this unicorn tapestry, Griss? No? Were you an aflictionado of green-men?”

  “He is a green-man,” muttered Rowan under his breath.

  “You’d prefer Yawning Nancy?” said Reg, and they both laughed.

  They were appalling. Tess shuddered to think that if they’d arrived an hour earlier, they would have spied her bathing. She thought about bolting while their backs were turned, but didn’t like her odds. She wasn’t a fast runner, and they’d surely give chase. That was basic hound logic, learned from Faffy: if you ran, you were prey.

  They led Griss into the great hall and continued the odd interrogation. Are these your armchairs? Your hearths? Your spooky buck heads? The old man shook his head after every question and said, “I d-don’t know. I think I own a fire…fire…fire door like that.”

  “Damn it all.” Rowan kicked over the lacquered fire screen—the word Griss had been looking for and hadn’t found—and it clattered to the floor.

  “Temper,” said Reg, his frown plowing furrows beside his mouth. “I told you, his brain’s a wormy cheese. What we need are lords and ladies who recognize him. He comes from quality, trust me; someone will know him.”

  Tess boggled. Had they broken in to determine whether this was the old man’s home? Were they trying to return him to his family? She supposed a noble family might offer a reward for a missing lord, but she couldn’t believe the old man had ever been lord of anything.

  “Dear Lord Grissypants,” said Reg, pinching the man’s sallow cheek. His fingers left a red welt. “You’ve put us to a great deal of trouble. I think we deserve a little condensation.”

  They went upstairs to look for it, leaving Tess and the old man alone, to her great surprise. Were they so sure she wouldn’t run away?

  Griss made no move to flee; he shakily seated himself in one of the velvet armchairs and unsmilingly waved Tess over. She considered ignoring him, getting herself well quit of this house and these villains, but guilt won out and pushed her to the old man’s side. He seemed recovered from the ferocious rib-kicking, thank Allsaints, but what might these two villains do to him if they never found his manor house?

  And what could she do about it? She owed him an apology, at the very least.

  He rose at her approach, grabbed Tess by the shoulders, and shook her. “What are you doing here, Johnny?” he hissed. “These are dangerous men. I’ve been trying to lead them away from you, and Annie and baby Lion, and now you…you…you…”

  His eyes went vacant and fearful, as if he saw something that wasn’t there, or had suddenly lost his bearings.

  “I swore I’d kill you if I saw you again,” he said mournfully, “but I’m not sure I have the…the…” He patted his concave chest meaningfully.

  Tess pulled out of his grasp; his gnarled hand wasn’t strong enough to hold her. “I’m not Johnny. My name’s, uh, Jacomo.”

  Griss looked crestfallen, which compelled her, absurdly, to reassure him. “Easy mistake to make. Same first letter.”

  “Jacomo?” said the old man, scrutinizing her. Even his eyelashes were white, the eyes behind them dark as well water. “Sweet St. Siucre! Forgive me, child: you’ve grown so tall I didn’t know you.”

  Griss approached again, raising shaky hands to her face. She let him touch her cheeks with hands as dry as paper. “You look like your mother.”

  “My mother…Annie?” asked Tess. It was the only name she had to guess with.

  Griss’s face fell. “Oh, Johnny. Haven’t you heard? Annie’s dead, and it’s your fault.”

  In Trowebridge, Tess had found him frightening. The truth, now that she was talking to him, was of a different flavor, and nearer her heart: he was like Grandma Therese.

  Before the baby came, Tess had spent two months at Dombegh Manor with her paternal grandmother, who’d been convinced that Tess was her dead sister, Agnes. Uncle Jean-Philippe had called his mother’s condition antiquitus extremus; Chessey the midwife had preferred second childhood. Tess had thought of her grandmother, somewhat poetically, as having come unbuttoned from time. She always thought it was some other year, other place, other people.

  Griss was not some contemptible creature worthy only of her pity. There was a person in there, however confused he might be.

  Tess guided Griss back to his chair. “I’m not Johnny, but tell me all about him.”

  Tess knelt, holding his withered hand. His beard was matted, and he was missing several teeth (his remaining teeth, emboldened by the extra room, had rebelled against the tyranny of standing in line). He licked his lips with a pale tongue and said, “I mistook you for my brother. Your face—I thought I—this keeps happening. Nothing stays where I put it. I’m sorry, Ja…Ja…”

  “Jacomo,” s
aid Tess.

  “You were the most honest of your household, with the greatest…the greatest.” He patted his heart again; apparently he found that word too slippery to hold. “I’m glad they haven’t beaten it out of you. We try, don’t we?”

  “We try what?” asked Tess, barely following. He seemed to mean some Jacomo he’d really known, not his brother Johnny again, but it was hard to be sure.

  Griss stared into the cold hearth. “We try to do right, and we…we…they gang up on us, fear and pain and revenge and…and then we find we’ve done wrong.”

  Tess felt her own slippery heart constricting. His words touched close to the truth she’d meant to tell him. She had only enough courage to whisper: “I need to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he asked, his face slack and baffled.

  She took a shaky breath. “I kicked you in the ribs, back in Trowebridge, and then I ran off and left you because I couldn’t face what I’d done.”

  Griss’s shaggy brows drew down as he studied her face. She thought for a moment that he might recognize her, but then he said, “Was I in Trowebridge?”

  “Trowebridge isn’t the main thing,” said Tess. “Do you recall someone kicking you?”

  His expression went dreamy; he touched his side with his three-fingered hand. “It wasn’t a…no, no, I saw the dragon. It took Annie, and I…I ran after it. Then I couldn’t work out how to get home. Someone moved the mountains.”

  It should have been a relief to know that she hadn’t left him permanently wounded or terrorized, but still Tess squirmed with frustration. It was like apologizing to a wall: how could he forgive her if he didn’t remember she’d wronged him? How could she assuage her guilt without his forgiveness? It didn’t evaporate when she apologized, instead continuing to rack her fiercely.

  Loud cursing resounded from the front of the house, followed by a whistle and raucous barking.

  Tess’s blood froze in her veins.

  The caretaker had come to check on the lodge and found the broken door.