“Love, then?” said the old nun, tucking the quilt back around her patient, who quietly thanked her. She patted his frail hand and carried the slops to the next bed. “Love is a worthy motivation, although you see how quickly it can sour into guilt. He loved his sister, after all.”
Jeanne involuntarily, painfully, leaped to Tess’s mind. Will wasn’t far behind. “Are they really separate things?” Tess asked, glancing up. “I can’t seem to tease love and guilt apart.”
“You’ve been thinking about it,” said Philomela, sounding pleased and surprised. She busied herself with the next patient, an old woman. “You’d never guess, but hospice is an excellent place for thinking while your hands, almost incidentally, do good. I’ll tell you this: love and guilt are like ham and eggs. So many people enjoy them together, but there’s no rule saying you must have one with the other. They don’t even come from the same animal.”
She emptied another pan. “Here’s an analogy I like: guilt is a runaway wagon down the mountainside. It may carry you a long way, but it usually ends in disaster. Love, on the other hand, is much slower—just your own two feet, really,” she said, casting a meaningful look at Tess. “But it’s more likely to take you somewhere worth going.”
Tess had never met anyone who talked like this, all up on the abstract plane, and she didn’t know quite how to respond. “I do like walking,” she said at last, limply.
“You’ve got good boots for it,” said the nun, bustling over to the last patient.
Tess smiled wryly. “And callused feet. Walking the road gives you time to think, too.”
“I could tell you were a philosopher,” Philomela said warmly. “Let’s hear what you’ve come up with, then.”
“Walk on,” said Tess, feeling unexpectedly shy as she said it, as if she were showing the sister the inside of her heart.
Philomela was silent as she emptied the pan, then said, “What, that’s it?”
“It’s harder than it sounds,” said Tess, folding her arms. “Whenever I start feeling like I want to…like I’m not going to make it, I decide to walk on until tomorrow, at least, and—”
“And then you do it, eh?” said the old nun. “Sounds a bit like running away.”
“No!” cried Tess, stung. “It’s the opposite of running away.”
“Running toward?” said the nun, hefting the slops bucket. She gestured toward a double door with her head; Tess opened it. Outside, in the courtyard, rain spattered noisily. Mother Philomela left the bucket under an overhang and shut the door again. “I’m not saying don’t run—or walk, as you say—only that it sounds incomplete, as a life’s philosophy. I meant to prompt you to think further.” She dried her hands on her apron. “What do you do when you get there?”
“You don’t get there,” Tess said, growing crabbier. “You’re on the Road, and the Road goes ever on and on.” Tess felt herself capitalize Road, as if it were a person; she hadn’t realized she felt this way until she said it aloud.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. We’re all on this road, metaphorically,” said the old nun, returning to the hearth. “This is our lot. Is that what you’re getting at? And one must choose to walk on, rather than petulantly sitting on one’s rump and pouting?”
Why did it sound stupid from Mother Philomela’s mouth when it had felt so profound while she was walking? “I guess,” said Tess, who was beginning to pout, and almost certainly would have sat down petulantly if there’d been a chair available.
“It’s a start,” said the old woman, washing her hands in a basin near the fire. “Tell me something, though: is walking the only virtue in your philosophical system? What if someone decided to stay in one place and not walk on—on purpose? Would that be bad?”
Tess considered. “I have been walking, literally walking, for two months, and I feel…right when I do. My mind is clear; the world makes sense. Walking is a good in itself.”
“Of course it is,” said Philomela brusquely, “but it’s not the only good. Since we’re being literal now, have you felt clear and sensible at other times during your travels?”
The question startled Tess into thinking. “While turning hay. Swimming in the river, crawling through caves…once I was lying under a cattle guard, eating bread, and the sky was blue and there was a bee—” She cut off, embarrassed. It was hard to explain about the bee.
“Right,” said Mother Philomela firmly. “Working, swimming, eating. Walking.”
Tess blinked, unsure what she was getting at.
“You feel whole when you’re doing things, Jacomo. When you’re in your body,” said the nun slowly, as if Tess were stupid. “The mind may hare off in all directions, but truth is centered in the body, ultimately.”
The body sounded like a corpse at a funeral. “The body, as in…the wellspring of sin? The author of excess and misery? That body?” Tess said, trying to plumb the nun’s meaning.
“Don’t quote me St. Vitt,” snapped Philomela, her face like a bulldog’s. “That is not what I mean. We don’t subscribe to his contemptuous credos here.”
“ ‘The flesh is but a sack of goo’?” Tess sang badly, batting her eyes.
The nun raised her jowly chin. “Goo is a description, not a judgment. How could I do this work”—she encompassed the ward in a broad gesture—“if I held the body in contempt? Our sisters are midwives, too, you know.” Tess did know. “We usher bodies into this world, and we usher bodies out. As your aged friend here so poignantly reminds us, the mind goes. The soul…who can say what it is or where it’s located? In the end, often as not, our bodies are all we are.”
Tess’s chest felt suddenly very tight under her jerkin.
“I would guess, based on your knee-jerk quotations, that you were raised to despise the flesh and all its fleshly doings. So tell me, young gentleman,” said Philomela, putting a light emphasis, not quite sarcastic, on gentleman, “in your philosophical estimation—or in St. Vitt’s—is the body born evil, or does it do evil for the sheer anarchic joy of it?”
Tess went cold. Philomela was quoting her father. She’d seen through Tess, deduced who she must be. She shouldn’t have sung that snatch of song. “Born evil,” said Tess, heart pounding. “St. Vitt says explicitly that the female—”
“Wrong,” snapped the old nun, her sharp green eyes taking in every nuance of Tess’s reaction. “First, I gave you two choices as a test: there are never just two choices. That is a lie to keep you from thinking too deeply. Second, and more important: the body is innocent. Deeply, beautifully, fundamentally innocent.”
“That isn’t true,” Tess half whispered. Every one of Philomela’s words was a knife, prodding a deep, unhealed wound.
“Third,” said the sister, as if Tess hadn’t spoken, “consider children, who merely follow their natures. They may be born difficult or contrary, but never evil. The ones who enjoy misbehaving can be taught better. Too many, alas, have parents who hold them in contempt.”
Tess trembled so hard her teeth chattered.
“So it is with the body,” said the nun, eyes narrowing fiercely. “The hated innocent becomes hateful. Goodness withers when it is continuously ground underfoot. We fulfill our parents’ direst prophecies, then curl around our own pain until we can’t see beyond ourselves. You want to walk on? Walk out of that shadow. Walk, girl.”
Tess wrestled back tears.
“I saw what they thought of you,” said Mother Philomela, her voice gentling. “I rejoiced that you’d struck out on your own, but you’ve a long way to go still. Your kindness toward this one, when you needn’t have troubled yourself”—she gestured at Griss—“shows me the true heart of you. Your credo goes further than you realized: walk on, yes, but don’t walk past people who need you. Uncurl yourself so you can see them and respond.”
Tess was too distraught to take everything in. The words bounced off
her like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake.
A stone may skip a long way, but it always sinks eventually.
“How did you know who I was?” said Tess when she could speak.
“I wasn’t sure until you confirmed it, but it seemed possible,” said Philomela. “Your case stuck with me. Your parents, when they learned you’d gone, were like characters in a bad play, overacted and overwrought. They were embarrassed to have brought me out for nothing. It didn’t have to be for nothing; I might’ve counseled them on handling the loss of you, or how to improve themselves for your eventual return. They weren’t interested. Underneath the huffing and puffing, I suspect they were relieved.”
This made Tess feel no better. “What about my sister? Not Seraphina, but—”
“Your twin?” Old Philomela’s memory hadn’t dulled a bit. “I met her, and her softhearted husband. I won’t lie: you cut her. She’s got walking and uncurling of her own to do, and without the boots and stubbornness. She’ll find her way. If she can’t, it isn’t your fault.”
Tess felt cut herself; a lukewarm wash of guilt made it sting. “But how did you come to be all the way out here?” she asked, feeling about for a less painful subject.
Mother Philomela laughed. “Would you believe, your departure got me thinking. I’ve never gone far afield myself, and I haven’t many years left. I’m on a farewell tour to as many hospices as I can reach upon my own ass.” Her eyes twinkled; Tess remembered her donkey. “Three down, and I feel hale as a cowherd. I may get all the way to Samsam before I’m done.”
Mother Philomela turned to Griss and laid hands upon his woolly head. “As for you, old friend: Annie chose that hilltop,” she said. “The dragon was an unlucky happenstance. You didn’t kill her. You each wanted to do right, and it all went wrong.”
“Wait, you knew his story?” said Tess. “It happened the way he said?”
“More or less,” said the old nun sadly. “I was born and raised in Trowebridge. Everyone of my generation knew the tale. It became a popular ballad.” She began to sing:
Then Johnny ran off, ne’er did repent,
And left his brother’s poor heart rent,
Left him there to rant and rave
At Annie’s nonexistent grave.
Griss perked up at the sound of her singing and joined in:
The years roll on, the worms fly by,
Our Annie’s tomb is in the sky.
Mother Philomela smiled wanly. “When the rest of the mind has fled, sometimes there’s music left. We’ll take care of him, daughter. But what do you intend to do next?”
Tess glanced back. Rain still drummed on the roof, but the outlines of the windows were becoming visible; behind a quilt of clouds, the sun was rising. “It almost feels like a sign from Heaven, finding you here,” she said. “I almost feel like I should stay.”
“Almost isn’t good enough,” said Philomela. “Just like guilt isn’t good enough.”
She was right, and Tess felt a weight come off her heart. She threw her arms around Griss and held him a moment. He smelled terrible, but Tess, friend to quigutl, didn’t mind such things. “You’ll be safe here,” she said, “away from Wreck and Ruin. I’ll miss you, though.”
Griss was weeping. “Oh, Annie, goodbye,” he sobbed. “I never said goodbye.”
“You just did. Goodbye, old love,” said Tess. She kissed his forehead, wiped her eyes, and was ready to go. The novices resumed spooning soup (the old man was a bottomless hole). Mother Philomela led Tess out to the courtyard, through drizzle and gloam, toward the front gates. It was still noisy outside, even though the thunder had ceased.
“You could stay and rest until the sun’s properly up,” said the nun, slowing her steps.
“Thank you, but I have promises to keep,” said Tess, although the noise was beginning to concern her as well. It had begun as thuds and clatters, but now there was shouting and snarling.
Mother Philomela detoured to one side of the courtyard and knocked on a door. “Sister Mishell,” she said, her voice light and calm, “ring the bell. Now, please.” Philomela gestured for Tess to keep still. A bright bell tolled, whereupon Mother Philomela took up a rusty fire poker that had been left near the gates, unbarred the doors, and swung them slowly inward.
At the gates of the hospice, Reg and Rowan battled two quigutl. The first quigutl leaped at Reg and got a frying pan to the face. It sprawled out cold on the ground. The second quigutl dodged left, feinted right, and then clamped its jaws upon Rowan’s meaty thigh.
His scream tore the air like lightning.
It was Pathka who’d fallen to the ground.
Tess fell to her knees in the mud beside him, scrabbling for the hot pulse at his throat, praying to every Saint she knew (except her sister) that he wasn’t dead. He shuddered and then took an enormous breath, but his eyes didn’t focus. His throat pouch had a three-inch gash in it that bled copiously.
Tess shielded him with her body from the mayhem that continued on all sides. Reg was shouting obscenities, Philomela was brandishing her poker, and Rowan was screaming incoherently. Then villagers descended in a flock, summoned by the bell, waving hay forks.
Mother Philomela ordered the villagers to seize Reg and haul him to the stocks, crying, “I will see him later, and he will be sorry to see me.” She approached Rowan cautiously, as if he were a roaring, thrashing bear with a quigutl clamped to his thigh. “Be still, or I’ll have to knock you out,” she said in a voice of unassailable authority. Rowan struggled to hold his roar to a whimper and his thrashing to a violent shudder.
“Little neighbor,” Mother Philomela said to the second quigutl, “if you release your grip, will his femoral artery gush and kill him? Hang on, if so.”
The quigutl carefully opened her mouth and moved away, leaving Rowan’s leg in the grip of a steel contraption, a set of false jaws as strong and spiky as a wolf trap.
“Teth,” said Kikiu, “tell her that he will bleed out as soon as anyone unclamps him.”
“What is that thing?” cried Tess. “And what are you doing here?”
“Bite enhancer,” said Kikiu mildly, as if it were not some heinous contraption of death. She drew nearer and pressed her hollow tongue to each of Pathka’s eyes, checking some unknown quigutl vital sign. “And my story can wait. My mother-utl needs care most urgently.”
Nuns bundled Pathka and Rowan onto portable cots and fetched them into the hospice. Tess helped as she could, keeping one eye on Kikiu. Why would the hatchling have come back with a steel trap in her mouth unless she intended to bite Pathka again?
Kikiu, as if she could read Tess’s suspicions, cocked her head spines sarcastically and gave Tess a fthep around the knees with her tail as she turned to follow the nuns inside.
* * *
The sisters specialized in palliative care, but they knew their way around surgery. Rowan was easy; they had him stitched and locked up with his companion in the village pillory by the end of the day. “Conspiring to commit violence against nuns” was the official charge. Reg and Rowan would be tried at the local lord’s convenience; the entire village of Muddle-on-the-Fussy was ready and eager to testify.
Pathka required more extensive interventions. In addition to his throat pouch perforation, he had a concussion and a dislocated dorsal arm. “It could be weeks before he can travel,” said Philomela, never one to honey-coat things. “But you’re welcome to stay until he’s fit.”
Thus Tess ended up staying among the nuns longer than anticipated. She didn’t begrudge it, and unexpectedly she wasn’t bored. She explored Muddle-on-the-Fussy, the nearby fields and hills, the black raspberry patches along the river. She told stories to Griss and the other hospice patients. It had been a long time since she’d stayed in one place with enough to eat and no urgency to get anywhere. Apparently she’d needed r
est as well.
Tess felt some guilt over Pathka’s injuries. Following Reg and Rowan, getting Griss to safety, had been entirely her project; Pathka had participated reluctantly and paid a heavy price. She needed to make it up to him. If she could locate a large cavern in the vicinity, Pathka might finally be able to do his kemthikemthlutl, to dream with Anathuthia and call to her.
Tess asked around. If there were large caves nearby, there would be stories. Surely cows sometimes fell down them, or young lovers got lost. Nuns and villagers alike gave the same answer: she should try Big Spooky, a cave so enormous it had swallowed an entire castle.
She told Pathka about the cave after he’d been in the infirmary a couple of weeks; he still seemed to be in a lot of pain, and she thought he could use the encouragement. “It’s only a couple of miles away,” Tess told him. She’d nearly said an hour’s walk, but she wasn’t sure how quickly he’d be walking, or how soon.
Pathka, curled in the nest of quilts the nuns had made him, didn’t respond.
“You still haven’t found your subterranean monster?” sneered Kikiu, who was just sauntering in from wherever she slept at night.
Kikiu was still here after two weeks, leaving Pathka’s side only to sleep. Tess had eyed the hatchling with skepticism at first, unsure what Kikiu intended, but the youngster had made no threatening move. The nuns had locked the bite enhancer in a strongbox, which eased Tess’s mind considerably.
Pathka raised his head for Kikiu, at least. “Did you get it?” he rasped. The hole in his throat made it difficult to speak.
Kikiu bent over Pathka and bared her teeth. They glistened coldly.
“Don’t you dare!” cried Tess, almost before she understood what she was seeing.
Kikiu was wearing the bite enhancer.
The young quigutl swiveled her eye cones, looking shifty, but Pathka interjected, “It’s all right. I asked ko to…show me. Wanted to…understand.”
Tess of the Road Page 24