Strong arms lifted her.
“Time to go, wife.”
On the way back to Rozemberk Keep, Mouse’s water broke, trickling between her legs onto the horse in a warm wash. She did not cry out and none of Vok’s men noticed. It was raining; everything was wet. Vok rode at the front.
He’d had nothing to do with her after that first day when he had carried her to the monastery guesthouse, had bathed her and washed the maggots from her hair himself because he did not want to wait for a woman to come up from the village, had sat with her until she ate, sat with her while she slept.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
For a long time, Vok had just looked at her, something he rarely did, but she was too tired, too consumed with grief to read him. He had finally shrugged and said, “You saved my life that day in the prison. You held the water, gave me a moment of peace, gave me hope.” He rubbed his hand absently across his forehead. “A deed for a deed,” he said and then he left.
The next morning he put her on a horse. And now Mouse was in labor.
Pulling her mount a little closer to the man nearest her, she asked, “How long until we reach the keep?”
“We could be there tonight, my Lady, but for the weather. See?” He pointed to the south. Mouse had been shrouded in mourning and had not noticed the massive towers of dark clouds that climbed over the hills. “We will likely make camp soon, and if the weather breaks by sunup, we will be home before midday.”
Mouse chewed at her lip. She could ask Vok to make for home despite the weather, but she had understood him all too well when he said “a deed for a deed”—he had paid the debt he felt he owed her, and he was done. She certainly did not mean to beg a favor or to obligate herself to him in turn. She urged her horse on and hoped that the storm would hold off. Mother Kazi had told stories of women who had been in labor for days with their first child; Mouse hoped that might be the case for her.
Both hopes died an hour later as bright flashes of lightning crashed down on the hills around them and Mouse felt the contractions pull her stomach taut. Vok led the men to a somewhat sheltered nook in the foothills and bid them make camp. She leaned against a rock, swaying, as they put up her tent.
The wind whipped at the flaps as she tied them shut and rain ran under the edges of the tent as she stripped down to her linen undershirt, which was stained with blood. She paced as she could and squatted or knelt against the camp bed when the contractions built to a peak.
“Can I bring you food or wine, my Lady?” the guard called at her door.
“No, thank you,” she hissed through gritted teeth, her hands gripping the bed covers as she laid her head against the low frame.
As the storm passed, Mouse smiled to herself, her fear abating and her confidence growing as each contraction came and went. In the intervals, she closed her eyes and checked the baby’s heartbeat, strong and steady. But in the deep of the night, another line of storms rolled in, more violent than the first, the wind screaming as it pushed past the hills, the canvas tent popping at the gusts.
Mouse was on all fours, her fingers and toes digging into the saturated rug, sweat dripping from her hair as the contractions came fast and hard until finally she cried out, moaning with the wind.
“My Lady?” someone called out at the tent door.
But she could not answer. The last contraction had left her shaking, curled up on her side, trying to catch her breath before the next one came. She wanted Mother Kazi or Gitta. Father Lucas. Someone. Anyone. She was scared.
Hail pounded the roof of the tent, tearing a rent near the seam along one wall. Little white pellets bounced on the rug.
And then the next contraction took her. She pushed herself onto her knees again, rocking with the pain, breathing fast and shallow. She tried to listen for the baby’s heart, but all she could hear was the scream of the wind and her own high whine; she tried to look for his tiny glow, but all she could see were bright flashes of lightning and of her pain, running in angry red streaks against the blackness of her closed eyes.
Someone ripped the cords that fastened the doors, letting wind and rain and hail rush into the tent. Mouse turned and saw Vok standing over her holding a lantern, its candle flame dancing in odd rhythm with the candle near the bed. A guard stood at his back.
Mouse whimpered, shaking again as the contraction let her go for a moment, comforted that at least someone would be with her through the last of it. Vok would deliver the baby.
But he turned, stepping back out into the storm.
“Leave her be,” he shouted to the guard over the wind and rain.
“But my Lord, she needs—”
“She will live or not as God wishes. Leave her be, I said.” And then he was gone.
The guard tied the frayed ends of the flap back, shutting out some of the storm.
Mouse was alone.
“I will do this. I will live, whether God wishes it or not.” She pressed her head to the floor, hands wrapped in her wet hair, as her belly locked up, tight as stone. She barely had time to breathe as it left before she felt the next one coming.
“No, please, not again,” she moaned, rocking herself, and then she slammed her fist against the ground.
Again and again through the night, she battled the contractions until she thought they would never end. She was afraid to die, sure her soulless state and the curses she’d flung to God would condemn her, but it was want, not fear, that ultimately drove her onward. She wanted to meet the little life she had carried, the soul she had nurtured and shared; she wanted to leave a legacy of goodness to balance the evil she had done. She could die, but not until the baby was born, alive and well.
And so in the middle of raging storms, alone, she pulled herself to a squat, legs trembling, and gave herself over to the urge to push. She chewed her cheeks raw rather than give Vok the satisfaction of hearing her scream, despite the searing pain when her body ripped as the baby’s head pushed free and then his shoulders, and then the whole of him. Her son lay bloody and crying, curled on the sodden rug.
Mouse worked quickly to cut the cord and tie it off with a bit of thread she’d already prepared. She wiped the baby clean and wrapped him in the bed linen before the pains began again and she delivered the afterbirth. When it was done, she lay in the bed beside him, exhausted, and brought him to her nipple, letting it play along his lips until he latched on. She sang him a lullaby—the one her mother had sung to her, held note for note in Mouse’s perfect memory and her only proof that she had been loved. It was her first gift to her son.
“On t’aime, mon petite. On t’aime. Le bon Dieu, au ciel, t’aime. On t’aime, mon petite. On t’aime. Ta mère, à jamais, t’aime,” she sang. “You are loved, little one. You are loved. By God in his heaven, you are loved. You are loved, little one. You are loved. By your mother, forever, you are loved.”
TWENTY-NINE
No,” Vok said when she came out of the tent pale and so sore she could hardly walk but alive and with a new understanding of love swaddled in her arms. She had asked about the baptism first thing. She was determined to claim for her son all that she’d been denied—membership in the Church, God’s blessing, and a name. Love she could give him in abundance, but the others required quick thinking on her part. Vok would not want Ottakar’s bastard to bear the Rozemberk name, but Mouse meant to steal it if she could.
“A baptism can wait. We ride straight for the keep,” he ordered.
“I will stop in the village myself then.”
In a few long strides he was on her, towering over her, his shame and anger flashing in his eyes. “You will obey me, wife.”
“I will, Vok.” She spoke softly so none of the men would hear. “In every way, I will be what you expect in a wife. Once this is done.”
“No. You will do as I say. Now. And I will not give your bastard my name.”
“Everyone assumes he is yours, and they need never know otherwise unless you announce it with your wo
rds or your actions. Claim him and you have a son to bring you honor. Refuse and you open yourself to their scorn.” She nodded to the dozens of men breaking camp.
“By the saints!” He drew back his hand; she would not flinch. “I said no.”
But when they rode down the hills, the tower of St. Nicholas Chapel peeking over the treetops, Vok sent a rider ahead. Gitta and Luka were waiting beside the priest at the altar to become godparents, and so Mouse gave her son a name: Nicholas, for the secret gift-giver, Lucas, for the Father she lost, and Rozemberk because she had no other. As they left the church, she felt the power of being part of a family for the first time, and a new determination settled on her to make peace with Vok, to make them a family in more than name only.
Her hope was short-lived.
Vok stayed for less than a week. While Mouse kept to her room recovering, mourning for Father Lucas, and reveling in her new joy, Vok would come crashing in unannounced, sometimes before dawn, other times in the middle of the day. Scowling, he would watch her nurse the baby or stand staring down into the basket where little Nicholas slept. It frightened Mouse; she could see the hurt in Vok’s eyes, could hear the heavy, hard thud of his heart. He would rub at his forehead and then turn to look at her, sometimes like he was pleading with her, sometimes like he hated her.
She was glad when he left.
As the leaves turned scarlet and the wind carried a promise of the coming winter, Mouse’s heart filled completely for the first time in her life. She belonged to someone. She and the baby spent their days learning each other. Nicholas would reach his hand up to play with her face as he nursed, gently tracing the line of her jaw, the shape of her nose, the curve of her mouth, which seemed now to always be smiling. She would play with his toes, lift the fine, tawny curls from his face, and sing to him. And Mouse would laugh. Nicholas would laugh.
She told him stories to help him fall asleep and lay beside him on the bed so when he dreamed and startled, hands and legs flung out in panic, she was there to put her hand on his chest, whispering to tell him he was safe, to sing their lullaby—“You are loved, little one. You are loved.”
Ottakar sent Vok home on St. Andrew’s Eve. Mouse stood with Lady Rozemberk and Luka to greet him. He kissed his mother, clapped Luka on the shoulder, and walked by her without even a glance as he went into the hall, asking someone to bring him a cup of warm ale. Mouse tried to talk to him at supper, to ask about Prague and Ottakar’s new acquisition of Styria, but Vok kept his back to her.
She was playing on the floor with Nicholas when Vok came to her room the next morning.
“And how does the sheep go, my smart little boy?” she asked Nicholas as he played with a wooden lamb she’d carved.
“Da-da-da-da.” The baby mumbled then stuck the lamb in his mouth, gnawing it with swollen gums.
“No, no,” she said as she took it away from him. “You do not eat it, silly. And a sheep says ‘baa, baa,’ not—”
“Ottakar wants you in Prague,” Vok said from the doorway. Mouse noticed the lack of formality, no “my Lord,” no “the King.” Just Ottakar.
“Da-da-da,” Nicholas said again as he turned to look at Vok.
Mouse watched Vok’s eyes soften as he took a step forward, but then he stopped short and his face drew up like a withering flower.
She sighed. “Why does he want me in Prague?”
“He says his father is ill again.”
Mouse looked down at Nicholas’s blue eyes and gold hair. It would darken as he grew older, like his father’s, but even now anyone would notice the resemblance if they saw them together. The gossipers at court would surely spare no ill word in making the connections. Mouse shook her head. She had no interest in opening fresh wounds either—not for Vok, not for herself or for Ottakar.
And Ottakar would know Nicholas was his. He would love him as she did. He would want him for his own.
“No,” she said. “Nicholas is too young to travel, and I will not leave him.”
Vok shifted. “You would defy me still?”
Mouse stood, wrapping Nicholas in a blanket. “Gitta, will you take the baby for some fresh air?”
Vok wasn’t angry because she didn’t want to go Prague; he was angry about Nicholas. Mouse was afraid of what he might do to the baby and so gave him another target instead.
“You want me to go?” she asked as Gitta closed the door.
“I want—” He shook his head, gritting his teeth. “I will not be made a fool!”
“No one thinks you—”
He scrambled toward her. “You are my wife, not his. Mine. This body,” he grabbed her waist, put his other hand roughly on her breast, “is mine to do with as I please.”
“So do as you please,” she said, holding her arms out to the side and looking him in the eye.
He leaned down, his mouth covering hers, and then pulled back. He waited a moment. “By the saints!” he swore. “They say you are a witch. Even my mother speaks in fear of how you spelled a raging bear. What have you done to me?”
He shoved Mouse’s hand to his crotch, and she understood now why he had come so often to her room but left without touching her.
“I have done nothing to you, my Lord.” She kept her tone level and her eyes on his.
His hand snaked around her wrist. “You think yourself brave. You are just stupid. I can break you without even trying.”
He squeezed.
She looked at him.
He squeezed harder, twisting her arm between the vise of his fingers and thumb.
Mouse used all of her unnatural control to hold her face still; she knew what would happen, could feel the bone bending, but she’d made a new deal with God a few days after Nicholas was born when she woke from a night filled with dreams of him dead by disease or at Vok’s hand or, horribly, dead by command of her own careless words. She swore she would not use her power so long as God protected her son, not only from death but also from her own fate. Every day she watched for signs of unnaturalness, of “gifts” in the baby; she saw none. And every night she looked for the glow in him, found it, and fell asleep smiling and content or crying with relief and longing.
As long as God kept up his end of the deal, she would keep hers, and so she stood waiting until the bone cracked with a sick pop.
Vok let her go. She cradled her arm against her chest.
“You broke me. Now what?”
He left without a word.
But he came to her every night. After the first night, Mouse sent Nicholas to sleep with Gitta in a nearby room, close enough so she could nurse him if he woke but safely out of Vok’s awareness.
Vok came to her hungry, wanting her body and her fear; she was willing to forfeit the first, but his own body continued to fail him, and Mouse refused to give him her fear. Every night he left her bruised or broken, but he also left dissatisfied. When he saw how quickly her wounds healed, her bruises faded, he crossed himself against her, but rather than scare him off, it seemed to fuel his determination to mark her as his in some lasting way.
Near dawn on Innocent’s Day, before he left to visit the other keeps and townships under his command, he slammed her door open and went straight to the fire in her room. He took the fireplace forks, twisting the logs and stirring up the flame. He was drunk.
Mouse slipped out of the bed and moved toward the door, but Vok was closer. He grabbed her arm, spinning her toward the fireplace and then pushing her down onto the floor.
“This is not what you want, Vok,” she said, her voice forcibly calm but her breath ragged, her body eerily still as she waited.
“Burn a witch,” he slurred as he turned. “Make her mine.”
Mouse felt the heat long before it burned through the linen and into her skin. She blacked out as the pain grew, Vok raking the scalding fork across her back, but in her mind she could see the image he burned—the five-petal rose of the Rozemberks—and she could hear him sobbing.
Still on the floor when she woke to N
icholas’s hungry cries, her back stinging, Mouse knew something was going to have to change. Vok was going to kill her, and then Nicholas would be alone in the world just as she had always been. Even as she watched Vok ride away later that morning while Gitta rubbed a salve against the blistered rose, Mouse knew he would come back again. She needed to be ready.
She and Nicholas had the spring and early summer to themselves. They celebrated his milestones—sitting up, crawling. They spent most of their time outside in the little garden or in the woods with Gitta and Luka, Nicholas beheading the flowers, handing them to Mouse with a full-faced grin, or cackling as he gripped her fingers and waddled along the paths, giddy with his newfound mobility. Even as she lost herself in the warm days and sweet smells and joys of her son, Mouse’s mind worked constantly to find a way out for both of them.
But as many paths as she traveled down, she could not find one where Vok would leave her alone—or Nicholas either, if he was with her. If she went back to the abbey, if Mother Kazi let her, or to Mother Agnes’s convent at Prague, Vok would come for her. Even if she sold all she owned or stole what she needed, she had nowhere to go, and, though she was more than willing to risk herself traveling alone, she would not risk Nicholas. Once again, Mouse could find no future for herself and Nicholas.
As the days grew hotter, Nicholas must have sensed his mother’s foreboding. He screamed for her, his little body trembling, whenever she left his view. He would crawl after her, calling, “Ma-ma-ma-ma,” and pull himself up by her skirts, reaching for her until she picked him up, and he would kiss her on the cheek, openmouthed as if he were taking a bite, happy that all was well with the world again.
And then Vok came home just before Nicholas’s first birthday.
At first, he seemed reconciled, at peace, but as Mouse watched him interact with others in the hall or the bailey, she noticed that he never smiled and rarely looked at anyone even when he was talking with them; he either yelled or spoke in a hollow whisper, ate less and drank more. He rubbed constantly at his forehead. Mouse wanted to help him, but he had ignored her since his return, and she was scared of drawing his attention, scared for both herself and for Nicholas.
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