Sofia couldn’t be sure, but the reaction of the crowd confirmed her worst fear.
‘They’ve started the race,’ she said faintly. ‘He must not have seen her!’
Her imagination showed her awful images. Somewhere, in the corners of the city, the riders would be raising their whips and spurring their horses into action.
‘The horses!’ she cried, horrified. ‘She’ll be crushed!’
Mamma was running like a woman possessed. The birds began to swoop, snipping their beaks, pulling at her hair. The crowd jeered. Corvith tried to struggle free of his nest, but Sofia held him in place and passed the skull to Ermin.
‘Where are you going?’ Ermin gripped on to Sofia’s wrist, but Sofia could not think straight. She didn’t understand anything of what was happening, but she knew Mamma was in trouble. She had to help her.
Shrugging free of Ermin, heart thrumming in her ears, Sofia forced her way forward and, with the guard distracted by Mamma, slipped under the barrier.
Mamma still had half the piazza to cover and Sofia hurtled towards her, taking the shortest route directly through the centre, panic making her deaf to the shouts of warning rising around her.
Mamma caught sight of her and Sofia saw her expression change, from determined to terrified. Mamma curved towards her, gesturing madly.
‘Get back! Go home! The locket—’
Sofia hesitated, her heartbeat filling her whole body, making her legs tremble and seeming to shake the whole ground.
And then Sofia realized. It was not her heart beating that tattoo.
The horses were near.
They burst out on to the piazza like a tidal wave, eyes rolling with effort, their riders like imps crouched on their backs, urging them forward. It was as though time had slowed. Sofia dragged her gaze from the horses back to her mother.
Mamma’s eyes were still fixed on Sofia. She had not seemed to notice she was crossing the horses’ path and was about to pass the centre point of the piazza, where the swirling black and white seemed to converge like a whirlpool about a drainage grate set into the ground.
Sofia was not going to get to her. Not before—
‘Mamma!’
But it was not the horses who reached her first. Two guards had caught Mamma up, and now they snatched her about the waist. They lifted her bodily, magpies screeching, and Mamma kicked and struggled, all the time yelling at Sofia to go, to run.
The whole world was the thunder of horses, and Sofia turned in time to see them bearing down on her. She shut her eyes, as though she might be able to make it all vanish, make everything right if only she could not see what was coming.
Small hands caught her about the waist, forcing her to the ground.
When Sofia opened her eyes, she saw dust and hooves passing close to her head and when she turned to see her rescuer, there was only a glimpse of brown skin.
It was a child, a boy, about her height, his brown eyes intent upon hers. The rest of his face was obscured by a thick scarf. He dragged her clear of the horses and before Sofia could catch her breath, before she could thank him, something in the boy’s eyes changed. They narrowed, and then his hand was snatching at her cloak, her neck.
‘What the—’ Sofia bit and kicked, dust in her eyes, and managed to bite down hard on the boy’s hand. He swore loudly and she threw him off in the direction of the horses.
Before Sofia could stop him, before she could do more than shut her eyes again against the horror of it all, he rolled beneath their hooves and was gone, leaving nothing but dust.
One moment he was there, the next . . . nowhere.
Sound rushed back to Sofia: screaming, yelling, the trumpeter too late sounding an alarm to stop the race and the crowd surged forwards, overtaking Sofia as she struggled on legs caught in invisible mud.
The horses were rearing, kicking out as the crowd surrounded them, and Sofia could not see Mamma, nor her rescuer-turned-attacker. The guards’ magpies were screeching, ducking low over the seething throng, and Sofia felt like she’d fallen into one of the paintings in the cathedral – one full of hellish creatures, and fire, and damnation.
Her breath would not come and even as she tried to fight her way forwards, she felt someone holding her back. Wheeling round, ready to fight her way free from the guard or a well-meaning watcher, she instead saw Ermin’s tear-stained face. His eyes were as wide as the horses’.
‘Where is Mamma?’ he gasped. ‘What happened?’
Casting a helpless look at the writhing mass of horses and people, Sofia swallowed her terror, making herself be brave.
‘She’ll meet us at home. We have to get out of here!’
Sofia swept her little brother into her arms and ran through the twisting, dishevelled streets. More people were pouring towards the piazza, the chaos drawing them like devils. Sofia ran like she was possessed, like Mamma had, and she imagined she had some of her mother’s fear in her own chest.
They finally broke out of the narrow streets by the tanning pits, and on to the path home. Sofia, exhausted, lowered Ermin to the ground. She felt dazed, her mouth full of dust. The image of Mamma being dragged away by the guards and the horses bearing down on her filled her mind, repeating like a horrible song.
And the boy, the boy who had saved her life and then grasped for her neck. The boy who she had thrown off, towards the horses . . .
She had not seen him get hit, or trampled, but surely he would not have managed to weave through so many hooves?
‘Sofia?’ Ermin tugged on her sleeve. ‘Are you all right?’
No, she thought. No, no, no. It was her fault. Mamma had seen her. That was why she’d run across the centre like that, slowing her down enough for the guards to catch up. It was her fault. She pressed her lips together, against the tide of acrid guilt. Ermin slipped his hand into hers.
‘Sofia? Keep going.’
She let him lead her home.
Finally they reached the clean air of their bone-built house and turned the finger-bone key in the knuckle lock. Sofia pulled up a chair to the window, the shutters slightly parted, and peered outside. Ermin climbed into her lap and Corvith settled lightly on her shoulder. His feathery weight was a comfort and he chattered slowly, purring against her ear.
‘Mamma will come home soon, won’t she?’ asked Ermin.
‘Yes.’ Sofia was not a practised liar, and the word stuck in her throat.
They waited, and waited. The day dropped into a stifling night. The stars hung in a hazy dark sky. Sofia’s eyelids grew heavy, her legs aching from sitting on the hard chair. Midnight passed and with it, Sofia’s birthday. And they waited on, into the yellow, early hours of day again.
Still, though Sofia wished it with every bone of her being, Mamma did not come home.
Sofia was twelve, she told herself sternly, and, more than that, she was a big sister. She knew that however much she wanted to cry, or shout, or panic, she must not, because Ermin and Corvith were relying on her.
So when her brother finally fell asleep, his head lolling on to her shoulder, she swallowed down her tears and lifted him gently, carrying him with great effort to her own bed. It brought back that far-off morning at the well, when Mamma had healed him. Sofia had helped lift him, his body very warm and very light. She tucked him in, echoing Mamma’s touch of hand to his forehead. He was blessedly cool. She settled Corvith in his skull nest, stroking his beak until his black eye closed.
Then she took three very deep, very shaky, breaths and tried to think. Mamma had promised her a birthday celebration worthy of a saint’s day – instead it had turned into a sort of hell. She was so tired from waiting for Mamma to return it felt as though someone had taken up a spoon and stirred her thoughts into a gloopy gruel where nothing would stick. She needed fresh air.
She turned the key very quietly in its lock, the bone bolts smooth and perfect, and went out. It was still early, the day cooler than the one before and scented with lavender from the bushes bunched about the
foundations.
She stripped some of the purple herb from its stalks and started to climb the hill, ducking under the dawn-brushed grove. As she walked, she rubbed the flowers between her fingers, recalling Mamma’s scent, trying to bring some of her mother’s cleverness to her. She broke out from the olive trees, to the well at the top. She drew up water in the bucket, and drank. It was clean and plentiful as always, so why were the wells in the city so low? No wonder everyone was in such a bad temper.
She sighed and sat on the wall of the well. Inlaid on top were their initials: ‘R’ for Renata, ‘S’ for Sofia and ‘E’ for Ermin, all entwined. Mamma had made this little bone emblem for them a few years ago and Sofia had added a wonky ‘C’ for Corvith when the crow swooped into their lives, an orphan kicked out of his nest.
The bone was worn now, from years of her tracing the intricate letters. This was always her favourite place to think, the place she felt safest and most at home. Across from her, the city was bathed in gold, the white-and-black stripes of the cathedral muted to a burnished shine, the whole city clumped on the hill and seeming small enough to fit in Sofia’s pocket. The magpies between the two towers were tiny as flies. At this distance, the cathedral tower was the same size as the one round her neck, and she reached for her locket.
Sofia’s heart fluttered in time with the distant magpies’ wing beats.
She checked her neck again, feeling for the clasp. She searched the front of her tunic, down her trouser legs, all the way to her shoes. Then she felt her neck again.
But she was not mistaken. There was no sign of the locket. It was gone.
It matters, Sofia. Keep it safe, always.
Tears welled hot in her eyes, drowning the sight of the distant city, and she was all set to collapse to the ground and wail, when she stopped. The memory of the boy, the one who had saved her from the hooves, floated on the tide of her tears and back into view. His hands, grasping for her neck—
‘Thief,’ she hissed to the sunrise. ‘He’s a thief!’
Angrily wiping the tears from her eyes, she set her jaw. She would show him. She would go back to the city and find that boy, and if the horses hadn’t got him she would throw him into the nearest well she could find. And if there was no water to cushion his fall, too bad.
Sofia marched back down the hill, new purpose filling her. She’d leave Ermin at home this time, but had better let him know where she was going. She went back inside. But she found the bed sheets pulled back, the room empty.
‘Ermin!’ She stumbled forward, panic making her clumsy.
The door of the workshop swung open and Sofia turned in time to see her little brother coming out, Corvith in the cranium upon his shoulder, and a pile of assorted bones in his arms.
‘Ermin.’ Sofia melted with relief. ‘What are you doing?’
He carefully lowered the pile of bones into the middle of the floor, where they sat in a pool of golden sunlight that streamed in from the open front door, misty with dust.
‘Happy birthday!’
Sofia blinked at him.
‘Well, really it’s a second birthday.’
‘Ermin . . .’ Sofia started, as gently as she could. ‘Mamma is—’
‘Home soon,’ he said, a little too fast. ‘You said so.’
‘I did?’
‘Yes,’ said Ermin. ‘You told me. She’ll straighten it out with the guards and come home. So we might as well get on with this in the meantime.’
‘Get on with what?’
Ermin grinned. ‘The new bone bed, like Mamma said. I’ve measured it all out, so we can build it bigger.’
Sofia turned back to the door and screwed up her eyes. A moment later she felt Ermin’s hand on her shoulder, as high as he could reach.
‘Don’t you like it? You’re always hitting your head, so I thought . . .’
Sofia swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘It’s not that.’
‘So, you can help me then? I think this is everything we need . . .’ He chewed his lip, like he always did when he was upset or nervous. ‘I’m sorry. We can wait for Mamma.’
‘No, we can’t!’ Sofia’s temper was more at herself, but still she shrugged off his hand. All her resolve to go to the city had melted away, and she felt very tired and alone.
But she wasn’t alone. From behind her, there was the soft scrape of bone on bone as Ermin began to gather his gift up. She wasn’t being fair. She took another deep breath.
‘Wait.’ She rubbed her eyes and turned round. Ermin was straightening with the pile in his arms, his sweet face serious. ‘Yes. Please. Let’s do it. It’s a lovely idea.’ She hoisted a weak smile on to her face. ‘Let’s build the bed bigger.’
They opened all the windows to let as much light in as possible and moved the furniture out of the way. Ermin fetched Mamma’s tools from the workroom: a wrench, pliers, glue beads from bones they’d boiled themselves, a special hammer that was coated in rubber so it could knock bones together without shattering them, sandpaper made of crushed molars stuck to leather.
‘I couldn’t find her chisel,’ he said, frowning.
‘We’ll make do,’ said Sofia, looking down at the tools: everything they would need to break and then remake the bed.
They lined up the bones in size order, from the femurs that would form the extra length of the frame to the ribs for the struts. They took the sheets off the bed and Sofia carefully removed the canopy of toe bones, placing it safely on the table.
The bed, like all their mother’s handiwork, was sturdily made and the legs would not come loose easily. Luckily, Mamma was too skilled to use glue and so it was simply a case of loosening the joins and then everything would slide apart. Still, it took Sofia ten minutes to remove the first leg and a further fifteen for the second. Ermin was the better builder, but pride prevented her from asking him to take over. She whistled Corvith awake from his cranium bed on the desk and got him to measure out enough glue beads in his beak to affix the extra femurs.
Once Corvith had grumpily done this and been rewarded with bread dipped in honey, they let the glue beads melt over a lamp. The room, already hot from the afternoon sun, filled with the heady smell, stinging Sofia’s throat – but it was too familiar to be unpleasant. It always sent Corvith to sleep, and she supposed its effects were stronger for birds and other small things.
They sanded down the joint ends of the femurs, until they were straight enough to fit flush with the existing frame. Mamma would have worked out a way to make them all slot together, but this was beyond them. They placed a clamp over the join to help it hold.
‘There!’ said Sofia, regarding their creation. It didn’t look pretty, but it would stay strong. ‘Now to hang the canopy.’
Knock knock.
The siblings froze. Sofia held her breath, pressing Ermin to her.
‘Who is it?’ hissed her brother.
‘I can no more see through walls than you,’ she whispered back. Her heart was thumping. She hadn’t locked the door.
Knock knock knock knock.
Sofia’s mind cantered. Mamma would not knock. She stood and approached the rattling door warily. But before she could reach it, there was another knock, harder this time, and the unlocked door flew open.
Ermin screamed.
A giant magpie, high as a man and with a great stabbing beak, stood in the doorway, its black-clawed foot clutching a ball of fire. A massive crow stood beside it.
Sofia stumbled, reaching to slam the door shut, but as she did so the world resolved into sense again.
It was not a magpie but a palazzo guard, holding a lamp. In his blue-and-white livery and black gloves he was a poor imitation of the bird chained on his shoulder, but the long cone protruding from his face was rather beakish.
Beside him stood not a crow, but a woman in long black robes. A nun.
‘Mff mffr mm!’ shouted the guard, voice muffled by the cone. Sofia recognized it as a doctor’s mask, like the one the man who had come to see
Ermin had worn during the smallpox epidemic. She could faintly smell the rosemary and mint it was stuffed with, to purify the air he breathed.
It brought back the memory of the night the doctor had said there was nothing to be done for Ermin. Sofia sniffed her sleeve, scented with lavender, to comfort herself as the man repeated himself. ‘Mff mffr mm!’
Sofia’s hands were shaking, and she tried to steady them. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I told him the cone was unnecessary,’ sighed the nun. ‘Take it off, man.’
The guard lifted his cone warily and repeated himself, parting his lips only slightly.
‘This is the house of Signora Fiori?’ He was tall and thin, casting nervous glances at the piles of bones as he hovered the mask before him.
Sofia rolled her eyes. Some people were superstitious about their bone house, thinking it held pox and death, when actually the washed bones were the purest, cleanest materials imaginable.
‘It is.’
‘You are Sofia Fiori?’
‘Yes,’ said Sofia cautiously. ‘Did my mother send you?’
‘And this is Ermin Fiori? I am here at the command of the duchessa. You are to come with me.’
Sofia shrank back. Was this the guard who had arrested Mamma, here to arrest them too? The nun tutted, seemingly at the guard’s rudeness.
Sofia was regretting not locking the door. ‘How do you know our names?’
The guard sighed impatiently. ‘I am a duchessa’s guard and do not have to explain myself to you.’
‘Really,’ said the nun sternly. ‘I apologize, child. I told him you’d give us no trouble, and that I could come on my own, but apparently the duchessa insisted. She’s so precious about her subjects, especially her little ones.’
Sofia wrinkled her nose. Her little ones?
‘I’m Sister Rosa.’ She gave Sofia a warm, kindly smile that stretched her round face like kneaded dough. ‘And I’m from the Serafina Convent.’
Sofia’s throat filled with acid. The Serafina Convent, named for the duchessa herself. The orphanage. She began to shake her head. Ermin sidled up beside her.
A Secret of Birds & Bone Page 3