Flesh and Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  The Vineart nodded, as though this confirmed something he had expected. “What did you feel, Jerzy? When the crush spilled?”

  What did he feel? The question again made no sense. “Nothing, Master.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, Master.” He dropped back down to the ground, awaiting his punishment. What answer had the Master wanted?

  “Ah. No tingle? No desire? No need to run your fingers through the liquid, to feel it touch your skin?” The words were like hooks, trying to pull something out of him.

  “I. . .Master, I. . .there is something wrong with it, Master.” The words spilled out of him before he even knew what he was going to say. Idiot, he thought again, and braced himself for the next blow, expecting it, at last, to be the deadly stroke.

  The Vineart’s expression didn’t change, but he nodded once again, as though finally satisfied.

  “Come with me. Now, Jerzy.”

  The Vineart turned and walked away, toward the taller stone building behind the vintnery that housed the Master’s living quarters. The House of Malech. Forbidden territory to even approach, for a slave. The overseer aimed a kick at the slave in order to get him moving, but the boy rolled and was on his feet, nimbly avoiding the blow. The paralysis that had held him earlier was gone, and his entire body felt alive again. He was alive. He wanted, very much, to remain that way.

  His face still averted, his shoulders hunched from years of habit, the slave followed his master away from the harvest and everything that had, until then, been his life.

  The overseer’s whipstick cracked in the air behind them, and his low growl sounded over it: the boy flinched, even though it was not aimed at him. “Back to work, you worthless bits of flesh! The sun’s still up and there’s fruit to be taken in! Stop wasting the Master’s time!”

  The boy, following blindly, almost mindlessly, felt the dry soil under his feet give way to sun-warmed paving stones, and then to the rougher cobble of the wide pathway separating vintnery from the Master’s own building. He paused, risking one last glimpse over his shoulder. Already the vintnery seemed impossibly far away, the vineyard and sleep house farther yet. He felt no regret, no sense of loss to be leaving it behind. And yet, something made him stop.

  Before the sleep house and the fields, there had been only the slavers’ caravan. Weeks filled with endless hours of walking, of traveling from one market to another, praying to be chosen, to be overlooked, to die, to survive.

  “Are you coming?” the Master asked, still in that same dry, incurious voice. “Or do you wish to stay in the fields?”

  The vintnery was safe, in its own way. For the past however many years he could remember, it had been his home. But no, he didn’t want to stay there.

  Head bowed, the boy followed his master across the pathway, under the green arches of the entrance proper, and into the House of Malech.

  Chapter 2

  Those few steps, and forbidden territory was suddenly, immediately, real. The path was smoother underfoot than the cobbled road, and up close, the boy could see that the green arch he walked under was made of vines similar to those growing in the fields, palm-sized leaves twined over a frame so thickly the wood could not be seen underneath. Unlike those growing in the fields, there were no grapes hanging from these stems, and the greenery seemed to rustle as he passed underneath, although he could no longer feel the breeze on his skin. Crossing those cobblestones, he might as well have entered a different land entirely.

  Something tickled the back of his neck as he walked under the archway; that nonexistent breeze touching his sweat-damp skin like curious fingers, and he almost shuddered. Not unpleasant, exactly, but unexpected. Unexpected rarely meant good news, and his nerves were already twitching. Not for the first time he felt sympathy for how the rabbit felt when the tarn passed overhead.

  There was no time to linger on that, or to gawk at the line of plants, twice his height and heavy with fragrant, dark red flowers lining the path, because the house—the House of Malech—demanded his attention. A tall stone façade, the same golden color as the path, was set atop a slight rise, with narrow windows glittering with colored glass on either side of the entrance. It was even more impressive—terrifying— up close. If a building could speak, he thought, this one would sneer at a slave coming so close to its walls.

  Slowly he forced the nerves away and noticed that the great polished wooden doors were open, standing ajar as though they never needed to be closed against night or theft or weather. Maybe, the boy thought, they didn’t. Not even a winter storm would dare enter such a grand structure without permission. He wasn’t sure he should enter, either, but the Master went inside, not pausing to check on the slave behind him. Torn between uncertainty and the Master’s certain anger if he fell behind, the boy followed.

  The doorway did not strike him down when he crossed through it. Once inside the entrance he had to stop, completely overwhelmed. The hallway inside was more than three times the Master’s height, and large enough for a handcart to travel through without scraping the walls. Those great narrow windows let in colored sunlight, sparkling off a gleaming, pale brown stone floor. What words he had failed him utterly, and he gaped like a fish.

  “It’s just a building, boy.”

  The Master’s voice made him blink, and his jaw slowly closed as he looked around, trying to find something more reasonable to focus on. He looked at the Vineart, the tall, lean form somehow less terrifying here, but had to look away again quickly, for fear of being trapped by the Master’s too-bright gaze. All he caught was the impression of a long, lean face, framed at one end by graying hair and at the other by a pointed beard of the same gray-brown.

  The hallway was not any easier to comprehend. On either side of him, plastered walls were covered by richly colored tapestries depicting scenes of vineyards, while directly in front of him was a wide staircase made of polished golden wood, rising up to a second level and a smaller wooden door, this one closed. The door was easier to look at. A closed door he could understand.

  Having determined that his slave wasn’t going to pass out in shock, Master Malech turned around as though searching for something himself.

  “Detta! Detta, attend me!”

  The Master, the boy thought, startled, had a set of lungs you wouldn’t expect, looking at him. Tall and slender, like he had been half starved and never quite made up the difference, and yet his call to the unseen Detta filled the entryway and echoed up the stairs as if it came from the chest of a much larger man. His voice sounded different here, too, although the boy couldn’t say how or why.

  The summons was quickly answered, as a woman came out from behind the stairs, wiping her hands on an apron tied around her mid-section. The boy left off staring at his surroundings, and stared at her instead. If the Master was narrow, this was the roundest woman he had ever seen. Her face was round, her hips were round, even her eyes were round, and got even rounder as she noticed him standing there, a few paces behind the Master. He was still uncertain if he was truly meant to enter the building or if this was some strange test he was about to fail and finally be punished for his insolence.

  “A new one?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “It will be needing a bath, then. A solid scrubbing, if I remember rightly. Why you don’t just throw them in the river before you bring them in; it would be much the same to them.”

  “Detta.” The Master’s voice was quieter now, again with a tone to it the boy didn’t quite understand. A slave who spoke so to the Master. . .It was incomprehensible, impossible. And yet this Detta stood there with her hands on her rounded hips, her graying curls swaying as she shook her head and contradicted the Master without any fear whatsoever. Even when he thought he was dead, he would never have dared speak that way, or to look the Master straight in the eye like that.

  Whoever this Detta was, she clearly was no slave and therefore had standing far above his own. He ducked his gaze back down to the stone floor, before he wa
s caught and punished for that as well. So many things he didn’t understand, rules he didn’t know. He reminded himself that he should already be dead; what more could happen?

  The woman made a disapproving noise. “At least the hair on this one’s short, less chance of anything hiding in there. All right, come on then, you. I don’t bite, although I will slap you if you cross me.” She made a gesture, catching the boy’s gaze. “Come forward then, what’s your name?”

  “Jerzy, mistress.” Saying it the second time was no easier than the first, but at least his voice didn’t crack this time.

  “Well then, come along, Jerzy. I’ll have the managing of you, for now.”

  “Master?” He wasn’t going anywhere without permission, if not a direct order.

  “Go with Detta, boy. She’s quite right; you stink, and I doubt you’ve cleaned some of those crevices since you were a babe in arms.”

  The boy didn’t understand what the Master meant, but he knew an order when he heard one. Bowing his head in obedience, he followed the woman Detta when she turned and went back under the stairs.

  The arched doorway she disappeared through wasn’t visible from the main entrance, but once he walked through it, another world opened up before him. Where the hallway was grand and slick, the hall he was in now was far homier, almost comfortable, and he was able to breathe more easily, without fearing he might accidentally touch something and ruin it. White-daub walls and reddish-brown clay tiles on the floor echoed the sound of Detta’s steps back at them, and made him aware for the first time of his bare feet, coated with dust and juice. His toes wiggled against the cool tile, and he opened his mouth to ask a question, but Detta kept walking ahead of him, and his courage failed.

  “Mistress?” he ventured finally.

  “Detta,” she said. “Just Detta. I’m no mistress of anything, save this household, and there’s no need for titles for that, not for one such as you.”

  More words he didn’t understand, but had to obey, somehow.

  “Detta.” He was just trying the sound of the word out now, not trying for her attention. She seemed to understand that, nodding in approval and walking through another arched doorway.

  This one led to a large room, still with white-daub walls, but lined with plain wooden benches around a great table, light coming in through tall, narrow windows on the far wall. The clean and bright lines of it, so different from the large but dark sleep house, made him forget the question he’d meant to ask.

  “This is the meal hall,” Detta said. “If you’re not dining with the Master in his study or the workroom, you’ll take meals here with the rest of us—we’re not grand enough to warrant a second hall.”

  Dining with the Master? The boy decided at this point that they were all mad and any moment someone would strike him for daring to be here at all, but until then there was nothing to do but play along.

  And then they were through that room, into a space that was filled with noise, heat, and bodies, a huge table at the center, and a massive fireplace against the far wall.

  “Roan, Geordie, you useless sacks, mind the spits! And you, Lil, I know those breads should be ready for the oven by now, if you weren’t slacking. Must I stand over you every breath you take, make sure you don’t choke on your own air?”

  None of the workers did more than roll their eyes at Detta’s shout, their work continuing at the same busy pace. This, at least, was familiar to the boy, even if the surroundings were strange. A kitchen was a kitchen, no matter how grand.

  “Lil, I’ll need hot water, and much of it. Soap, two cakes from the look of him, and. . .” Detta stopped and touched a finger to the boy’s chin. “No shears for this one, and no razor. I doubt it’s old enough to shave regularly yet.”

  He was, barely, but a sharp-edged rock had taken the growth off a few days before, and it hadn’t grown back yet. The overseer did not like slaves with body hair that might be hiding lice or other parasites. It seemed Detta felt the same. Geordie was not only clean shaven, but had a shaved pate as well, and both of the girls had their hair cut short and tied back with red cloths around their heads.

  There were no females among the vineyard slaves, but Jerzy often saw local girls walking along the roadway, going to and from market with their baskets and barrows, and the Players often had women in their troop, although no slave came close enough to do more than note their gender. Closer, the cook who worked the sleep-house kitchen had two young daughters who were kept under their father’s watchful eye. Their laughter while they played sometimes triggered a faint memory, almost a dream, of a woman with dark eyes, and a younger girl child who cried silently, but he could not name them, and after a few years he stopped trying to remember.

  “Tub’s still set up from last night,” the girl at the spit, Roan, said. “And a kettle’s just been to boil. We’ll have him scalded nice and pretty before he knows what’s what.” She smiled at him, and the boy blinked at her in confusion. He was to be scalded? There was too much new, too much out of his experience, and he was lost.

  “Bet it’s never had a bath before,” Geordie, the other slave at the spit, said. A taller boy, dark skinned and dark eyed, his red cloth tied around his neck, his expression wasn’t as friendly as the girl’s.

  “You hadn’t, either, when you came here,” the girl said, tossing her head so that her short cap of dark brown hair rose and fell like a sparrow’s wing. “And you smelled.”

  “I did not.”

  “Like a cess pot,” the girl replied. “I thought I’d die of the stink.”

  “I’ll have Michel bring out the water,” the other slave—Lil—said, ignoring the two spatting, even as they turned the spit, roasting a great slab of meat over the fire. She was pale as the stone, from hair to skin, and taller than any girl he had ever seen before. “And clothing?”

  “Not for now. Let’s see how things go before we know where he goes.”

  Lil raised pale eyebrows at that. “It’s not sealed?”

  “Master just plucked him from the field. Bath first, then the testing.”

  The boy breathed a little easier, knowing for the first time what was happening, if not why. There were always tests, to see what you knew, what you could learn. It was like being assigned a new task as he had been this morning; they would tell him what he had to do soon enough. But first. . .

  “Detta?” He had to ask. “What do you mean, bath?”

  “No!”

  “Stop being such a baby and get in.”

  “No.”

  “Jerzy. In. Now.”

  The boy stared at the wooden tub, half as large as a wine cask and filled to the brim with steaming hot water, and considered balking again. A stream, yes. Standing under the rain with a handful of soap-weed, that was natural. This. . .was. . .unnatural. You cooked with hot water, you didn’t wash in it!

  But Detta stood behind him, her arms folded across her ample chest, and he had the bad feeling that if he refused, she would have no hesitation about throwing him in headfirst.

  “You’ve nothing I haven’t seen before and I doubt I’ll be impressed now, boy child.”

  Her voice, more than her words, convinced him. Stripping off his tunic and pants, he dropped them on the floor of the small room and lifted his leg to cautiously step over the edge of the tub.

  The water steamed around his leg, but didn’t burn. In fact, it felt. . .good.

  “There, now you know you won’t die of it. All the way in.”

  Since the alternative was to stand, naked, in a room that wasn’t as warm as it had seemed when he was clothed, the boy got all the way in.

  “Now sit down, Jerzy.”

  Sit? He looked down dubiously at the water, then back at Detta.

  “Sit!”

  He sat. There was a low bench in the tub he hadn’t noticed before, just long enough to rest his buttocks on. It was surprisingly smooth, as though hundreds of backsides had been seated there before and worn the wood down. Water came up to his
ribs, and he felt a pleasant warmth soak into him.

  Then something rough and prickly hit him on the back, where the overseer’s whip had landed, and he yelped as much in shock as pain.

  “Hush, boy. Those marks need to be cleaned else they’ll fester, with the layers of dirt you’ve been rolling in, and I don’t trust you to do it yourself.”

  Detta had a scrub brush in one hand, a bar of something white in the other, and was working his skin as though it were the inside of the crushing vat the day after Harvest.

  “You’ll take my skin off!” he protested, even as she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him forward to get a better angle.

  “Then you’ll grow a new layer, and it will be a sight cleaner than this one,” she retorted. “Hold still, and we’ll be done sooner than not.”

  But no sooner had she finished with his back than she started on his front, making him raise his arms and lift his legs so she could make sure pits and feet were clean. The boy submitted, knowing by now that he had no choice.

  “Right, then. Almost done.”

  He lifted his head at that, barely daring to hope, and a bucket of more steaming water was dumped over his face, getting in his mouth and eyes and making him splutter.

  “Once more, and be thankful your hair’s short, else we’d have to wash it, and cut it, too.”

  Warned, he closed his eyes and shut his mouth, and the second bucket of water cascaded off his face and down into the tub without further insult.

  “There you are. All done. Up and into the towel, then.”

  He stood up, and Detta wrapped him in a length of cloth. Some vestige of memory moved within him, and he stepped out of the tub on his own, rubbing down his skin until he was dry.

  A glance back at the tub stopped him mid-rub. The water that had been steaming clear when he got in was now the color of the river’s side pools after a bad storm, reddish-brown and murky.

  “Told you you were filthy, my boy,” Detta said, seeing where his gaze had gone. “All that, off your skin. Want to see what you look like now?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but took hold of his bare shoulder and directed him across the chamber. “There you go.”