by Megan Hart
Yet she wasn’t utterly without heart, so she said quietly, “All things in their time, Tansy.”
Tansy said naught in reply, and after some time Annalise fell to sleep.
Kellen. What is this?” Cassian spoke more severely than he’d intended, but the boy had near run him over as he rounded the corner.
The boy held something behind his back, face a guilty mask, mouth smeared with what looked, suspiciously, like tumbleberry jam. “I don’t have tarts in my trousers!”
Cassian crossed his arms and pressed his lips together so as not to laugh. “Indeed?”
Kellen shook his head but couldn’t look Cassian in the eye. Cassian, however, had been a boy, and even though it felt like a hundred score years ago, he could still recall how grand an idea stealing a tart might be until the thief were caught.
“Show me your hands.”
They were dirtier than the lad’s face. Cassian sighed, shaking his head. Kellen hung his, scuffing a foot along the bare wooden floor of the hall.
“Kellen, you know I’ll have to ask you to turn out your pockets.”
Kellen looked up, eyes wide. Raised in a house of women, he’d had no shortage of coddling, this Cassian knew. He’d been disciplined as well, never harshly and always with love . . . but never by Cassian.
“Sir?”
“Turn them out.”
Kellen did, reluctantly. The left held naught but a few stones and bits of paper folded into boats. The other, several tumbleberry tarts wrapped in a napkin. Falling apart, oozing jam, they smelled delicious and probably tasted so, but they’d made quite a mess.
“Not only did you take what wasn’t yours without permission, Kellen, but you made a mess of your trousers, and they’ll have to be washed. I know you don’t launder them. You’ve created work for someone else with your foolishness. But worse than that,” Cassian said sternly, “you lied to me. And that, lad, is what I find most deserving of punishment.”
Kellen swallowed hard. His eyes glinted with tears, but he didn’t cry. He looked into Cassian’s face bravely, then nodded. “Your mercy, Master Toquin. I . . . I shall prepare for my beating.”
“What?” Cassian stepped back, appalled. “Mother Above, Kellen. I don’t intend to beat you!”
“You don’t?”
“Lad, have I ever raised a hand to you? Has anyone in this house ever?”
“Mother Harmony once washed my mouth out with soap,” Kellen confided.
“For what reason?”
Kellen sighed and looked shamefaced. “For cursing.”
Cassian’s own mother had done the same to him when he was about Kellen’s age, and more than once to Calvis. He sighed. “Walk with me.”
They fell into step. Cassian looked down at the lad, who’d clasped his hands behind him in an identical fashion, whether in direct mimicry or by natural inclination, Cassian didn’t know. He took the boy into the kitchen, where Cook was dozing by the fire. She startled to consciousness when Cassian cleared his throat.
“Ah, Master Toquin. And you,” she said with a jabbing finger at Kellen. “Didna I chase you and yon companion out of here already once tonight?”
“Kellen. Return the tarts.”
“But sir!” Kellen looked distraught, small face turned up, eyes wide.
Cook snorted. “What? Stole some tarts, did he? Well, think you I’d want them back after them grubby hands has been all over them?”
She narrowed her eyes and heaved herself up from the chair to put fat fists on her hips. “It was the other one put you up to it, eh? Don’t tell me it wasn’t, I heard him whispering to you, when I’d have given you summat to fill your bellies, eh? But he wanted the tarts, not my day-old biscuits.”
Cassian looked at the boy. “Is this true? Was it Leonder who put you up to it?”
Leonder, a year or so older than Kellen and another of the Order’s Blessings. Kellen shook his head. Cook tutted.
“Kellen, remember what I said. It wasn’t the theft but the lying I’ve issue with.”
Kellen looked up at him again. Cassian could see the struggle in the lad’s eyes. He waited for the boy to speak.
“It was me,” Kellen said with the barest wobble in his voice that led Cassian to believe he wasn’t being utterly truthful. “I am the one who stole the tarts.”
“This fact isn’t in question. But tell me, lad, if it was Leonder . . .”
“It was me.”
Cook snorted and waved her apron at them. “Never no mind, Master Toquin. It’s not the first time someone’s snitched a tart or two from the rack, and it won’t be the last. The lad’ll suffer enough the next time he’s denied his dessert, which I think should be the punishment.”
“For the stealing of the tarts, yes. I’d say a full three days of no dessert should suffice.” Cassian did his best to look stern. “But for the lying, I’m afraid there will have to be somewhat else.”
Cook snorted again. “That I’ll leave to you, and you’ll get yourselves gone from my kitchen before you do it!”
Cassian took the boy out the back door and into the yard, though not beyond the light spilling from the windows. Darkness cloaked the rest of the yard, a light from the stables in the distance. Here they were mostly in shadow.
“Sit,” he said.
Kellen sat on the wooden bench outside the kitchen door. Cassian sat beside him. He said nothing, remembering full well how the anticipation of the punishment was oft more difficult to bear than the punishment itself.
At last, he looked at the boy. “When I was your age, my brother discovered a desire for a certain kind of apple grown in a neighbor’s orchard. We had apples of our own, and peaches, and ferlas, but Calvis decided that the golden apples of our neighbor were sweeter. The neighbor, unfortunately, was no friend to our family and had refused to allow us permission even to gather the fallen apples, the ones he couldn’t sell.”
“So what did your brother do?”
“He decided the sweetness was worth the risk, even though it was wrong, and he snuck into the orchard to gather as many as he could. The problem was, Calvis wasn’t content simply to take the fruit from the ground. Since he’d been denied what he really wanted, he thought to pluck fresher apples from the trees themselves. Only he couldn’t do this alone. He needed someone’s shoulders to stand on so that he might reach.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
Kellen looked at his hands, still sticky and dirty from the tarts. “Did you want to go with your brother, or did he talk you into it?”
“My brother was ever able to talk me into trouble, but I was the one who decided whether or not to follow him. In the end, I was the master of my conscience.”
“What happened?”
“We were caught. Calvis fled. I was not so swift. Our neighbor, Lord Veldant, was well-deserved in his reputation for fury, and our father was not inclined to defend sons who’d done so blatant a crime. I’d been caught with the apples in my hands, you see. Foolish. Lord Veldant took it upon himself to beat me with his own belt.”
Cassian could still remember the sting of leather on his bare flesh, the crack of the belt. The pain. The shame. And below it all, the anger that he’d been left to take the punishment for both when it had been his brother’s idea.
He looked at the lad next to him. Kellen’s face, shadowed but still lit enough by the kitchen lamps to see, had gone still. His mouth worked. Cassian put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the small muscles twitch and strain.
“I took the punishment for my brother because I had no other choice.”
“Leonder said he would fight me if I told it was his idea. And . . . sir . . .” Kellen coughed with a shrug. “I wanted the tarts, too. It was Leonder’s idea, but I did it. I took them. I should take the punishment.”
Cassian could take no pride in this lad, nor shame either. But as he squeezed the boy’s shoulder again and stood, he felt a little of both. “You’ll suffer the next few days after meals. But no
more than that.”
Kellen stood, too. “You’re not going to beat me?”
“I told you I wouldn’t. But never lie to me again.”
Kellen nodded, then held out his hand. “I won’t.”
Surprised, Cassian took it, and they shook. A moment later the lad hugged him hard around the waist, surprising him further. Cassian’s hand went naturally to the boy’s soft hair. Kellen’s cheek pressed Cassian’s belly, his arms tight ’round him, and then he let go and stepped back.
“Thank you, sir!”
“Go on,” Cassian said quietly. He could still feel the softness of Kellen’s hair. He watched the boy dart through the doorway, but it was some long moments before he followed.
Chapter 8
Annalise had thought to find her time in the Motherhouse, if not torture, at least somewhat unpleasant. Yet she discovered much of what she was required to learn she’d already been taught. The art of brewing tea, of tatting lace, of how to properly fold a napkin—these paled next to the skill of unobtrusiveness, of comfort. Of grace. Annalise had no doubts she could learn to arrange flowers or play the pianoforte, if required. She could be taught to do anything.
What challenged her was learning how to be.
She looked at the other novitiates, the Sisters and Mothers. Some more accomplished than others, to be certain, but most of them with the same common serenity Annalise had not yet discovered. She chafed, frankly, not at the tasks she was set but at the notion she should perform the dullest or most odious of them not only without hesitation, but with cheerful, consistent pleasure.
Even so, there was pleasure to be found in domesticities, in simplicity. In combining the perfect measures of herbs to provide just the right brew or setting a table, making a bed with clean, sweet sheets. No matter her previous skill, Annalise learned there would always be new ways to perform.
Annalise had only been put in one place she knew to be incorrect. With other classes, once she’d proven she either already had the ability or learned it quickly enough, she was allowed to sit with other students of her level. In herb-mixing and elementary baking and pantomime she was advanced several levels within the span of a sevenday, and even in the discussion of art and history, for those two subjects she’d studied for her own pleasure and upon which could converse competently with even a scholar. Yet in the one group with whom she absolutely did not fit, Annalise was not moved.
Master Toquin’s Faith instruction.
Annalise had spent her childhood so fully immersed within the practice of the Faith she could pray in circles ’round the other women in her class. She could read with more proficiency, dissect the simple passages with greater clarity, and in addition she knew by heart dozens of other texts and commentaries Toquin never once mentioned.
He didn’t like being challenged, she’d learned that early on when she brought up an alternative argument about one of the stories. She’d thought at first perhaps it was because she was a woman, but then decided a man who’d decided to live and teach in a house solely composed of women would have to be stupid to also refuse to believe a woman could be literate, educated, and understand the Faith. No, it wasn’t her sex that kept him from admitting she could hold her own in a discourse.
It was her.
She’d asked to be removed from his class and been denied. No explanation. Just a simple refusal. It was the only time since she’d arrived Annalise felt the silent admonition that she could do as the Mothers had decided, or she could leave. She wasn’t ready to leave. She stayed in Master Toquin’s class.
This is what Annalise had thought she knew about the Order of Solace—that it was a society of women bound to practice their faith through service. That they believed each moment of absolute solace they provided their patrons sent one more arrow to fill Sinder’s Quiver, and that when it was full, the Vacant Father and the Invisible Mother would be reunited with their son and the time of peace would be at hand.
Annalise was no blush-cheeked virgin, but the idea of taking a stranger to bed—of being in charge of a patron’s satisfaction, or of being required to service a patron’s whim, had heated her. Annalise had no desire to pretend even to herself that she wasn’t curious about this part of a Handmaiden’s duty, even if she never intended to actually take her vows. Yet of all the classes to which she’d been assigned, of all the instruction she overheard other novitiates discussing, there seemed to be nothing to prepare them for the more intimate side of taking a patron.
“How do you know if you’re ready?” Annalise asked Tansy one evening in the quiet of their room.
“For a patron? We don’t have to know when we’re ready,” Tansy answered. She turned from her place at the basin where she was washing her face.
Clad in the cream-colored shift, her hair tied atop her head with a bit of green ribbon, she looked younger even than she was. Earlier she’d been wearing a layer of cosmetic, applied by a too-heavy hand, and the remains of it clung to her eyes, lips, and cheeks.
Annalise got up from her bed and crossed to take the cloth from Tansy’s hand. “Because the Mothers-in-Service know for us, is that it? Here. Let me. Who did this to you?”
“I did it to myself,” Tansy said with a sigh and tipped her face up as would a child. “Some patrons would require such.”
“Some might require you to dress as a brothel whore?”
Tansy frowned. “I meant some would require the use of cosmetic! Did I—was it too much?”
“I suppose that depends upon the eye that views it.” Annalise scrubbed gently. “And I’m fair certain you need no such heavy touch to bring out your own beauty, Tansy. Good cosmetic enhances one’s features, not obscures them.”
Tansy sighed again. “No wonder Perdita was making sport of me.”
“Perdita,” Annalise said darkly, “makes too much sport.”
“And yet she’s so far advanced. She’s already accomplished so much, and I heard that she’ll be granted a patron before the year’s end. She’s been here only a sixmonth, Annalise, and I’ve—”
“The Mothers know their business.” Annalise swiped the last bits of cosmetic from Tansy’s mouth. “There. If you like, I can show you how to apply it so none would even know you’re wearing it at all.”
“Would you? Oh, thank you!” Tansy went with skipping steps to her armoire and pulled out a casket of pots and brushes. As with everything she had, all were of the finest quality.
Annalise studied the wealth before her. “Would you take this with you to a patron?”
Tansy caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “I . . . suppose not. We’re to take only the clothes we travel in and a few other small items. The patrons provide us with what we need.”
“Do you think most men would think to provide a Handmaiden with tools such as these?” Annalise plucked a pot of lip rouge. “This is lovely, Tansy, but very costly. Patrons must be able to afford us, true, but most of them are men. And men, in my experience, think naught of such feminine fripperies as cosmetic.”
“I could take it with me, I suppose, even if it’s not usually done.” Tansy sounded doubtful.
Annalise smoothed Tansy’s damp hair from her forehead. The girl had skin like milk. Against it, Annalise’s fingers looked ever the darker. “It would better serve you to learn to use what you’ve access to in any household.”
“But Seducta said—”
Annalise laughed aloud, unable to help herself. Handmaidens were granted their names based upon the quality the Mothers-in-Service determined their most prominent, not necessarily the best. “Seducta? She’s the one who favors crimson lip rouge and lightens her hair, yes? The one with the overlush figure?”
Tansy, Sinder bless her, wasn’t likely to say a negative word against any of the Sisters, but her blush meant Annalise was right. Annalise laughed again and hugged Tansy quickly. The girl was sweet beyond belief.
“There are some men, true, who prefer such a woman. But you, dear one, are not that sort of woman, and I dare
say will never be. Perdita might be, if she doesn’t watch the number of creambuns she stuffs into her sly mouth, and if she relies on the charm that lies between her legs rather than any other skill. And I suppose she will be granted a patron before the year’s end for that reason, as what I know of men leads me to believe there are many who require such simple solace as that. But Tansy”—Annalise made sure the girl was looking at her face before she continued—“you are different and special. You know better than I that a Handmaiden’s pleasure and purpose is never the same from patron to patron, nor from Sister to Sister. When you are granted your patron, it will be because only you can satisfy him. I know it.”
Tansy’s blue eyes welled with tears, and she clung to Annalise with a small sob. “I fear I shall never be granted a patron! Never! I stumble so, I cannot learn grace! I know the five principles, I know all the positions of Waiting, I am mired fully in my faith . . . and yet . . . I stumble, Annalise! Over and over, when it comes time for me to shine, I do not!”
“Hush.” Annalise pushed the clinging girl from her, but gently. “If there is a Handmaiden in this room, it’s surely you, not I.”
Tansy wiped at her eyes. “Oh, no. You . . . you are so bold and certain. You’ll be granted a patron soon enough. You already know so much more than most of the women who come here.”
Annalise thought of the hours spent in Master Toquin’s class and felt her mouth thin. Just two days before he’d ignored her when she tried to interject into his discussion. She hated to be ignored. “Just because I can quote the Book from back to front makes me no more ready for a patron than you, and perhaps less so, for I’ve not yet mastered the other skills necessary.”
“But you shall, easily enough. Is there aught you’ve ever set your mind to you’ve not managed?” Tansy laughed. “I would not believe it of you.”