by David Waid
“You are welcome.” The woman said, smiling as the wagon jolted along the road, wheels creaking. “I gather from the guards I’ve spoken to that you are known as Nicolo. That will do for them, but not me.”
Teresa, aware that someone had changed her clothes, also remembered standing outside this very wagon, curtsying to the lady. Her cheeks grew warm and the woman laughed.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I saw you were a girl on the first day, all the way across the yard where the wagons assembled.” She shook her head. “It was not very good was it, your disguise? Still, the men were all fooled.” She leaned close, speaking in a mock whisper. “I think they would have accepted you as a bear cub if that’s what they’d been told.”
“Here,” she said. “I will make it easier and go first. I am Lady Benedetta Tummia. This is my servant, Mina. You see? Now it would be rude not to tell me your name.”
Teresa studied her benefactor’s face, then her servant’s. Could she trust them? Did she have a choice?
“My name is Teresa.”
How much did they know? What had they seen? Mina stood in silence and simply stared.
“How did I get here?” Teresa asked. “I remember…an orchard.”
“When you ran into the woods you looked terrified and I saw the men give chase. It made me angry and I sent Mina. She is strong and fast. By the time she caught up, fires raged in the orchard. The men were running away and had been burned, worse even than you. What happened that night?”
The men were worse.
“I…I don’t know.” She did know, but would never tell. Not ever. The first touch of the wine made Teresa dizzy, but she felt the lady’s presence. “Are you hiding me?”
Tummia tipped her head to one side, clicked a fingernail against her teeth. “Perhaps. For all I know, you are the thief they have named you.”
Teresa’s cheeks grew warm. “I’m no thief.”
“Mmm,” the lady mused. “I believe you. The old man you traveled with remained behind, searching for you. Yet there is still Bukhardus to contend with. I have not told him or the others about you. As long as you remain hidden in the wagon, they will not think to enter, nor dare it.”
The wine made thinking difficult and the wagon’s confinement made it hard to breathe. Teresa couldn’t decide what she might safely say or ask. Her head rested on a pillow, yet felt as if it were listing to one side. “Did you find my book?”
“I did not know you had a book. Mina, did you see a book?” The servant woman returned a flat look, said nothing and Tummia continued. “Mina found no book. She brought back only you.”
“I have to go back and look for it.”
“We are four days gone from your orchard.”
Teresa’s mouth fell open. “Four days!” She tried to sit up, but the lady eased her down again.
“Your book is lost, but we are the Hansa. Not without resources. I can get you to wherever you must go in safety.”
For a moment, Teresa was speechless. She hadn’t even thought through what it meant to be separated from Father Hugh. There’d been no time. But it was true she had no money, no grimoire, no way of getting to Ireland or going home. Per Dio! Even the clothes on her back were not her own. It was like standing on the brink of an abyss, a terrifying, limitless abyss where she could fall forever. And yet here was Lady Tummia extending a hand.
“Thank you.” Teresa’s voice trembled. The surge of her relief blotted every other thought. “I need to go to Ireland.”
“Ireland! Strange. I am bound for Dublin myself.”
The simple statement echoed in Teresa’s mind. I am bound for Dublin myself. That is a lucky circumstance, she thought. Lucky. In the room’s semi-dark, the Hansa woman’s eyes suddenly seemed small and sharp, her face pinched.
“A fast ship waits for me on the coast,” Tummia continued. “We can take you with us.”
Teresa’s experience with Father Hugh had taught her not to trust friends, much less strangers. Arms crossed at her waist, Teresa glanced sidelong at the lady. “Why are you going to Dublin?”
“Because trade is my business. I have no choice. I might ask the reason behind your own journey — and your need for disguise. Certainly, your answer would be more interesting than mine.”
“Why are you helping?” Teresa said. “You don’t even know me.”
“I see you are suspicious. Certainly you are no prisoner. There lies the door. Walk if you prefer, though I cannot protect you from Bukhardus, and you will need to tread a hundred leagues of water to reach your goal.”
Teresa studied Lady Tummia’s face, a thousand thoughts running through her head. But it didn’t matter, the lady was right; she had no choice. And so she nodded, though a chill danced along her back and arms. Teresa tried to smile, but the smile wobbled, her cheeks trembled. A painful grimace is what she imagined on her face.
“I will go with you, lady. Thank you.” And so it was done.
Lady Tummia said four days would get them to the sea and shipboard, yet the hours moved slowly. Teresa was confined to the wagon, hidden from sight and the other Hansa, so that nights and days were measured out in boredom and suspicion. The first night she didn’t rest at all, listening to her benefactors breathing in the dark, afraid these women would rise and murder her in her sleep, even though they hadn’t when she was unconscious.
When the lady examined Teresa’s burns, or blotted the wounds with a fresh cloth, the girl sat stiff, expecting evil. Food was prepared outdoors where she couldn’t see them lace it with poison. Each mouthful tasted strange, yet she ate it. How else could she get to Ireland? It was just another abyss and Teresa was falling, falling.
The lady came in and out on her Hansa business while Mina served in unshakable silence, an apparent mute, every motion spare, except for that disconcerting tic of the head. By the third day, when nothing had happened but the never-ending roll of unseen roads, boredom triumphed over suspicion. Teresa began to think of her fears as foolish. She grew impatient for their arrival at whatever port held the ship. She and the lady spoke at length and Teresa told the woman tales of growing up in the de Borja household.
The fourth day came and, as promised, they arrived on the northern shores of France. Not a city or town, as Teresa had expected, no crowded wharfs, just limitless beach. Tummia’s wagon stood on a white, rutted road that ran along a promontory where farmland gave way to dune grass above a broad sea. The other wagons that had been part of their caravan had clearly diverged at some point because here they were alone, no Bukhardus, nor anyone else save the single driver. Teresa breathed deep of cold, expansive sea air. White dunes descended to a great wet flat that extended a furlong at least to the water’s edge. Another furlong beyond that rested a merchant cog in waveless water.
Teresa and Lady Tummia trudged across the flat, accompanied by Mina and the driver carrying baggage. From the ship, two boats launched to collect them and Teresa remembered the times she had explored the merchant coasters her father did business with. The two skiffs bobbed as they were loaded, tiny wavelets casting flashes of reflected light and slapping the hulls with a hollow sound. Overhead, seagulls screeched and wheeled, all of it music to Teresa. In the face of so many obstacles, she would make it to Ireland. She’d accomplish what Ignacio asked.
The sailors laughed, singing as they stowed baggage in the first rowboat, then the passengers went in. Teresa, standing in knee-deep water, waited impatiently with Mina behind her as Lady Tummia was assisted. A little wave rocked the boat and Tummia lurched backward. Her hand reached out and Teresa instinctively steadied her. As she did, the lady’s sleeve lifted away and Teresa saw a web of scars cut in her wrist, a pattern barely glimpsed. Enough, however, to make Teresa’s mouth gape. Looking up, she saw the lady staring at her. Teresa had seen and Tummia knew it. Steadying herself, the lady yanked her hand away and jerked a sleeve to cover her scar.
Something Ignacio had written in his journal rang in Teresa’s memory. It seemed a thousand years ag
o she’d read it. He had talked about the Maleficarum and a sign its members bore on their wrists, etched in scar tissue. Each sign has its own significance, its own name, and Teresa had read some: Lac Dolorum, Milk of Sorrows; Conscivit Arbor, the Suicide Tree; Patronus Malorum, Patron of Maladies. There were others, but all had disquieting names like these.
Teresa stood with one hand on the boat’s side until Mina pressed up behind. The sailors, oblivious to what she’d seen, took her arms, lifting, and she offered no resistance. Her growing hope collapsed. No — worse, it mixed with the slurry in her stomach to form sour paste, lumping in her belly. There it sat, heavy and hurtful.
The oars groaned in the oarlocks as their boat pulled away from land. Tummia sat opposite, gaze never wavering from Teresa’s face. The girl felt its burn, but kept her own eyes averted. Mina sat next to her and she, too, was staring, one hand hidden behind her thigh. Teresa imagined a knife clutched there in case Teresa tried to escape or slip into the concentration Father Hugh had shown her. She looked over her shoulder. The wagon they’d ridden had disappeared behind the swell of dunes. The second boat pushed away from shore.
Teresa had little if any control of the fire she summoned, but didn’t care. Let her get a moment of concentration and she would do to Lady Tummia what she’d done to the men in the orchard. No other flame was present, but she could do the trick without it, she thought. Anger bubbled hot, like it had before.
“Everything happens for a reason.” The lady said, jolting Teresa from her thoughts. Tummia tipped her head back to the sun, eyes closed. “You can feel the currents of fate here. Things are coming together.”
They approached the ship from its bow where a tall forecastle perched with a crenellated rail. Below it was the ship’s figurehead — a carved and painted dolphin, leaping from curled waves — and beside it, the ship’s name, Beornsdæd. The skiff rubbed against sea-blackened ship timbers and Teresa climbed a rope ladder to the deck of the cog. She scanned the sea, but no other sail marked the horizon. On shore not a soul to witness.
The lady walked her below deck to the sunless space where sailors slept, though now it stood empty. The dark enclosure smelled of old sweat and the bitumen used to caulk timbers. Near the bow were two little cabins separated by a corridor so thin Tummia was forced to turn nearly sideways to manage it. When the lady opened one of the doors, Teresa expected a reeking, improvised gaol, but found instead a small room fitted with a bunk and a folded pile of warm blankets.
“You seem surprised,” Lady Tummia said. “What is it you expected?”
Above their heads, feet drummed across the topside deck. In the distance, sailors shouted as the anchor chain rattled.
“I know what you are,” Teresa said. “I know what you want.”
“Yes, I actually believe you do.”
“I may be afraid of you, but you should be afraid of me, too.”
The lady laughed. “Oh, my dear, but I am. Yet I believe you will not hurt me while we are on this ship.”
“Those men in the orchard thought I couldn’t hurt them.”
The smile wiped from Tummia’s face. “Do you know what every sailor on the open sea fears more than storms?”
Thrown by the question, Teresa stared hard at Lady Tummia’s face, trying to read something in it, some clue to what she planned.
Returning the look with a level gaze, Tummia said, “Fire.”
The word hung between them, as did the image of the orchard’s burning trees and the charred men, stumbling away. “One wayward flame can consume an entire ship,” the lady continued. “All hands perish without exception. The fire would kill you and me but, alas, many innocents, as well.”
“You are a devil,” Teresa managed at last.
“Good.” Lady Tummia nodded. “We understand each other. All you need do to save lives is let me bring you to the very place you asked to go. In the meantime, I suggest you lay down. You look ill.”
29. Bells and Bantam
Leinster
When Caitlin woke, she could barely talk. Cradling her head, Nairne fed the girl broth made from the bones of mutton served the night before. When Caitlin saw Eamon she spoke his name in a weak voice.
He wanted to dance for joy and shake her and ask a hundred questions, but Nairne became cross. “Whisht!” she said. “Yer sister is weak and needs rest. Away with ye.”
Unable to help, he sat on the floor and watched from a distance. All he could give his sister was his presence, so he said, “I’m here, Catie,” but she made no response he could hear.
Nairne stroked Caitlin’s hair until she fell asleep. The quiet of the room and the old woman’s slow, rhythmic motion lulled Eamon, too. He’d slept little since their flight from the mountain. His head nodded between his knees until, barely awake, he lay on his side and pulled a blanket over his shoulder. When he woke, he had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but Caitlin was in her bed, Nairne on her pallet.
Though his muscles were stiff and sore, Eamon felt rested. From the inn’s common room, the sound of voices drifted. He caught the scent of cooking food and his stomach rumbled. Unable to lie still, he pulled on his shoes and left.
The short, wood-planked corridor outside ran to the edge of the common room. A step down brought him to a floor of hard packed dirt, covered in rushes. The room held an odd, mismatched assortment of tables and chairs and smelled of the heavenly stew simmering by the fire.
At one of the tables a stranger sat eating from a bowl with a broad, wooden spoon. A second, half eaten bowl sat near, and on the ground by it a young boy played. The child was occupied with a pair of finger bells, one on his forefinger, the other on his thumb, clapping them together.
A brood of hens pecked seed in a corner of the room while a rooster paced nearby, his head held high and his cockscomb and wattle an angry blaze of red. A round-faced girl held her apron out, scattering seeds from it while keeping a watchful distance between herself and the strutting bird.
Looking up from the vegetables she’d been cutting, the hostler’s wife said, “Ah. Awake. Sit by the fire and I’ll put some food in ye.”
“I…I don’t need food.”
“Nonsense. Empty sacks won’t stand.”
“I’ve got no money.”
“Don’t think of it. Yer grandmother’s been out several times since yesterday and taken care of it all. Sit down, boy, but watch out for the lord of the manor,” she said, waving her knife toward the rooster.
Dropping onto a bench, Eamon marveled over what she had said. If Nairne had come out of the room yesterday, then he’d slept through a full day and another whole night. He thanked the woman as she filled a bowl of fish and vegetables from the hearth and set it before him.
On the floor, the little boy sat cross-legged, bewitched by light from the fire as it reflected off the brass of his tiny instruments and danced in golden curves across his thighs. Every once in a while he snapped his fingers together and the bells rang out. The child’s father rubbed his temples and looked at Eamon, shaking his head.
“Two nights ago, I traded fer these beauties with a musician,” he said. “The Devil! I thought I’d done well. I’m only now discoverin’ the true cost. The boy won’t let them be.”
He laid a hand on the child’s back and gave him a gentle shake. “We must set forth, lad. Malingerers make bad merchants. I’ll see to our baggage and the animals and be back for ye.”
“Yes, Da.”
The merchant swung a heavy cloak around his shoulders and left. Soon enough, the silence was broken again by the chiming of the little boy’s cymbals.
“Are ye from near here?”
Eamon turned to find at his side the girl who’d been tossing chicken feed.
“Excuse me?”
“Are ye from off the mountain?” she said.
The question seemed odd, considering most travelers surely traveled north and south along the king’s road. Firelight glittered in her eyes and there was keenness in the way she leaned
forward. Eamon was inexperienced, but he’d seen enough in the last few days to be wary.
“No,” he said.
It seemed to him the girl’s shoulders sagged a bit, though it could have been imagination.
“Where are ye from?” she asked, but already she was glancing away.
“Um. Dublin,” Eamon said. He could think of no place else. He’d never been off the mountain.
“I wish I could go,” she said. “Dublin’s close, but it could be Jerusalem fer all the good it does. Is it lovely, then?”
The problem with playing people false, Father Rhys had said, is that one lie begets another until you have a squalling household of them crawling underfoot and can’t remember their names. Eamon found the problem to be the opposite: no clever lies would come to him at all and he realized just how little of the world he knew.
“It is,” he replied.
“I’ve heard the harbor’s filled with great ships.” She stared off as if seeing them. “And the streets are full of grand people.”
“Yes.”
“So where are ye bound with yer sister and grandmother?”
“I…” His words trailed off, because nothing came to mind. The moment stretched on, her gaze sharpened and still he could think of nothing.
“Surely you know where yer goin’?”
He could toss out the name of any place and she’d be none the wiser…if he could remember one. But he felt her eyes on him and couldn’t think. He looked away and felt color rising in his cheeks as if he’d been caught stealing.
“Come, Branagh.” The alewife stood by the open door with hands on her hips. “Stop dallyin’ with the lad and fetch a bucket of water. When yer done, ye’ll help me stack the wood yer da’s cut.” The girl looked to her mother and back at Eamon. Her eyes narrowed, and he could see she wanted to ask another question.
“Branagh!”
With a scowl, the girl scooped up a wooden bucket and left.
Eamon cursed under his breath. He’d been a fool to leave the bedchamber; every place held danger. Before the innkeeper’s daughter returned with her questions, he needed to leave this room. Yet while he’d been distracted, the rooster saw an opportunity for mischief. The bird crept behind the boy on the ground and visciously pecked the nape of his neck. The child sprang forward onto his hands and knees and the cock followed, leaping and striking as the little boy screamed.