Red Mantle

by Maria Turtschaninoff

  And that is what I saw during this trip, Jai. I saw destitution. I saw starvation. Not only those children. There were grown beggars too, and families forced to walk from village to village after being thrown out of their homes, driven away by the nádor because they could not pay their taxes or debts, or because they could no longer survive on the meager provisions of the soil.

  Suddenly I saw them everywhere at the market, where at first all I had seen was woolen fabric and black pots. They drifted between the stalls with hungry eyes. They sat on the ground, wrapped up in threadbare blankets, with hands or wooden bowls outstretched to the passers-by. Often without saying a word. The worst was seeing the families with small children. I could barely bring myself to meet the parents’ gaze. Their eyes were full of the pain of failing to feed their own little ones.

  ϖ

  The evening meal was excruciating. The salt merchant and his soldiers joined the family table, and all the women in the house had to wait on them. The atmosphere was formal and heavy with unspoken words. What bothered me the most was that Maheran, the salt merchant, a tall, gray-haired man from Irindibul, would not stop complaining about Rovas—about how lazy people are here, and how the nádor does his best to help anyone affected by hunger, illness or accidents, but it is almost impossible to help people as foolish and stubborn as the Rovasians. And nobody contradicted him! Quite the opposite—Aunt Míraes’s family all agreed, especially Cousin Bernáti. They blamed the high taxes on the Sovereign of Urundien and made the nádor out to be an intermediary who did the best he could but received only ingratitude from all sides.

  “The nádor is doing what he can for Rovas,” my cousin said to the salt merchant, who was wearing a black velvet jacket with pearl embroidery and sucking the meat from one of Míraes’s cockerels. “He lends money liberally to those in hardship. But it’s clear that they are loans, not handouts, and then people seem to be in an uproar about having to pay them back.”

  I exchanged a brief glance with Father. We said nothing. We said nothing about the children being pelted with stones by soldiers. We said nothing about Marget and all the girls like her of whom we had heard tell. We said nothing about the sky-high loans. Nothing about how we were almost forced to leave our home and land. We looked down at our plates and all the delicious food that this wealthy household had to serve even in a time of hardship such as this, and we said nothing.

  ϖ

  That night when I was in bed with Tessi, and Unéli and Maressa were already sleeping in Unéli’s bed, Tessi told me that the children we had seen were orphans whose parents had died from sickness or starvation, and now had no one to take care of them. This is a new concept in Rovas. We have always taken care of the vulnerable. If a child loses their parents they move in with a neighbor. If a widow finds herself alone with several children to take care of, neighbors and friends help with the sowing and reaping. That is the way it is—the way it has always been, until now.

  Now there are too many people who are hungry, weak and alone. And nobody considers themselves in a strong enough position to take care of them. Tessi said that she sometimes leaves food out for those little children, but only when Bernáti and her parents cannot see. They are too concerned about their own fate this winter.

  “We have our own little ones to think of, they always say,” she whispered in the warm darkness of the room. “We have to take care of our own first. But I can’t agree with them.”

  ϖ

  After this conversation I sat awake for a long time with a shawl wrapped around my shoulders. I recalled the taste of bread baked with wood shavings and bark, and the feeling of hunger so intense that I tried to eat twigs and grass. I thought about the children being pelted as they tried to eat refuse.

  Finally I got up and dressed, careful not to wake anyone, and went downstairs. I moved as quietly as possible in the darkness, but when I came down into the living room someone grabbed my arm.

  It was Mother.

  “Not a sound,” she whispered in my ear. “Follow me.”

  She led me out through the back door. “The soldiers guard the salt store at night as well,” she whispered. “Hurry.” We sneaked past the privy. My heart almost stopped when a shadow separated from the darkness and came toward us. “It’s Father,” whispered Mother when I froze. “He’s brought some food.”

  I swallowed my fright. “The children,” I whispered. “I cannot sleep.”

  “I know. We’re going to help them.”

  Father came to us with a bag under his arm. “We’ll have to hurry.”

  I had gotten up with the intention of helping the starving children, but I had no plan. Mother and Father, on the other hand, had made up their minds as soon as they saw them. “They were so skinny,” whispered Father. “They looked like you kids did during that terrible winter. We can’t just leave them here. But my sister mustn’t know of our plans.”

  “She’s too anxious about her stores,” Mother tutted when we had left the yard. “We took a little of her food and a little of ours. We don’t need anything from the market, not really. I overheard people talking yesterday, and I know where the children usually spend the night.”

  We found the orphans in a barn outside the village, buried deep in the hay. The first we found was a girl who looked around ten years old, though perhaps she was older and only appeared younger due to malnourishment. She regarded us silently, expectantly. She looked at Father.

  “As long as he leaves the little ones alone, I’ll do him for three copper coins.” She looked at the bag under his arm. “Or bread. I’ll do it for bread too.”

  Father did not know what to say. Neither did I. Mother took the bag from Father, stuck her hand in and pulled out a loaf of bread. She crouched before the girl, who had hay in her hair and smelled indescribable.

  “Here. Eat. You don’t have to do anything in return.”

  The little girl looked at her, then at the bread. Then she grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth piece by piece until she could fit in no more. While she was chewing, clutching the bread tightly, she looked at Mother.

  “How many of you are there here?” Mother asked.

  The girl did not answer. She just continued chewing.

  “Do you want to come with us? We’re from a village in the east called Sáru. You can have food there, and a warm place to live.”

  “Why? What you gonna do with us?” She eyed Mother, not suspiciously but calculatingly. Would it be worth it? Worth the risk of going with these strangers? It was a terrible expression to see on the face of a child. I will never forget it.

  “Because I have watched my children starve,” said Mother slowly. “If their father and I had died, I would hope that someone would have helped them.”

  The girl swallowed the last crumb of bread. “There’s Mik and Berla and me. And Mik’s little sister, dunno her name, he just calls her the littl’un.”

  “Are any of your parents alive?”

  The girl shook her head. “Mother died last winter, and I ain’t seen Father for years. Mik and the littl’un’s parents died last spring for sure, the soldiers killed them. And Berla, I dunno where she comes from, but if anyone cared about her she wouldn’t be here.”

  “Tell them to meet us tomorrow at dusk by the footbridge over the stream. Do you know where that is?”

  The girl nodded. Mother took more food out of the bag: bread, cheese, sausages and carrots.

  “Share out the food, but don’t eat it all at once or you’ll get sick.”

  The girl stared silently at the food. She took the cheese in her arms and caressed it.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. She looked up at me with wide eyes.

  “Silla,” she said.

  We walked back in silence so as not to attract attention. I could not ask Mother and Father what they were planning to do. But I was incredibly grateful for their courage and initiative. And I was proud. Proud to be their daughter. I squeezed Mother’s hand in the darkness before climbing b
ack upstairs, and she patted my hand in response.

  ϖ

  We visited the market again the next day and bought and exchanged what we could. There were only everyday items and tools on offer, such as ax heads, nails, a kettle for Mother, yarn and carded wool for Náraes, linens and some spices—no animals or food. There was a visible lack of anything edible. We had planned to sell our eggs and flour and my cheeses, but Mother, Father and I looked at one another and wordlessly agreed to bring our food back home again instead. The children would need it. I sold only a few pieces of cheese.

  When we had bought everything we needed, we gathered in the little square in the center of the marketplace, around which the vendors were clustered. Father had promised Maressa and Dúlan a fried piggy each, and they were disappointed at the lack of goods. But before they could complain, three soldiers barged through the crowd to get to a post that stood in the middle of the square. Two of them were dragging a half-unconscious man between them. My stomach clenched into a knot of fear. The square went quiet. Náraes tried to turn her daughters around, but curious folk were pressing forward from behind us, and more soldiers were behind them. We could not get away. The two soldiers lashed the man to the post, on his feet, and the third, who was wearing expensive leather gloves, unfurled a scroll and nailed it to the post above the man’s head.

  “In the name of the Crown, our most benevolent and esteemed nádor punishes this man for his heinous crime,” read the soldier in a loud voice. “He has been caught stealing salt from the Sovereign-appointed salt merchant’s stores, one of the worst crimes that can be committed. The nádor, in his infinite mercy, has decreed to spare the man’s life, but to take his right hand, so that he will always be recognized as the thief and criminal he is.”

  “By all the spirits of Rovas,” Akios swore quietly.

  I gave him a little shove to tell him to keep quiet. Looking at the soldiers’ faces, I saw the same ruthlessness, the same love of violence and power as I saw in those men who forced their way into the crypt that spring on Menos. I did not see the door of the Crone. Yet my entire body was humming, my teeth were aching and my vision was blurred.

  We averted our gaze as the soldiers carried out the punishment. But we could not block out the man’s screams. We could not avoid the smell of burned flesh when they singed his arm stump to stanch the blood. Akios squeezed my hand. Father stood close to me, and I leaned against him with my eyes fixed on the ground, trying to fill my nostrils with the smell of wool and sweat from his sweater. I thought of the girls, but could not bring myself to look at them.

  When it was over they loosened the man’s binds and he fell to the ground. A woman rushed over to him and fell to her knees by his side. She cradled his head in her lap and cried and screamed. The soldiers stood a short distance away and watched the woman. They laughed at a private joke. I walked slowly over to the post and the man. The woman holding him was younger than him, perhaps his daughter. I crouched beside her, with the soldiers’ eyes boring into my back.

  “Do you have somewhere you can take him?”

  She sniffed and nodded. Her face and hands were dirty.

  “You must keep the wound clean. Do you understand? Never touch it with dirty hands. Wash your hands every time you touch him. If he gets a fever, give him a brew of boiled willow bark, can you manage that? Or lime blossom. I have some at home, but not here.”

  My words were whispered and rushed. She sniffled.

  “He didn’t take any salt. It’s not salt we need—it’s food! But no one believes him. No one would help us.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulder, felt how bony she was beneath her thin linen blouse.

  “Remember! Lime blossom or willow bark. And wash your hands.”

  Suddenly a child’s voice cut through the air.

  “That isn’t what it says here. It says: ‘The salt thief must pay a fine in the form of one cow, or equivalent, or bear five lashes.’ It says nothing about death or cutting off his hand.”

  Maressa was standing in front of the post squinting at the paper the soldier had nailed up. The paper with the real orders directly from the Sovereign of Urundien.

  The soldiers stopped talking and looked at Maressa. Straight at her. Jannarl came running and scooped her up in his arms, but it was too late. The commanding soldier, the one with the fine leather gloves, approached in long strides.

  “What did the girl say?”

  “Nothing,” mumbled Jannarl. “She’s always making things up. She’s at that age.”

  “No I’m not!” Maressa roared. She looked at me. “I can read! Maresi taught me, didn’t you? Maresi, tell them!”

  I rose slowly. There I stood in my fire-red mantle, the likes of which no one in Rovas has ever seen. I wished fervently that I was not wearing it at that moment. I wished I had not shown compassion for the condemned man and his daughter, and had not been seen talking to them. I wished I was in my bed at Novice House, safe under my blanket.

  “Of course the girl can’t read,” I said slowly, almost as if I were slow myself. “No one can, apart from the high lords in the nádor’s castle.”

  Maressa’s eyes filled with tears. She hid her face on Jannarl’s shoulder and sniffled. “Stupid Maresi,” she whispered. “Stupid, horrible Maresi.” Jannarl held her tight to prevent her from saying anything more. The soldiers forgot about the little girl and directed their attention at me. Jannarl and Maressa managed to slip unnoticed into the crowd.

  “Maresi,” said the soldier. “And where do you come from, Maresi?”

  He knew my name now. My whole body was shaking. “From Assa. In the north.”

  “Do you know this criminal?” He pointed at the unconscious man on the ground. I shook my head. “Why were you speaking to that woman?”

  I could think of nothing to say. The young woman on the ground looked up. There was fire in her eyes.

  “She was trying to rob him! To see if he had any coins or salt in his pockets.”

  “I see.” The soldier laughed. “And your cloak, did you steal that too?”

  Suddenly I knew what I must do. I whispered the name of the Rose, stood up straight and smiled straight at the soldier. “No. It was given to me by a salt merchant. For my services. I am his special favorite.”

  The smile that spread across the soldier’s face made my stomach turn. “Is that so? You must be very talented in that case.” He straightened his trousers with a gloved hand.

  I swished my cloak and stuck out one hip in a way I hoped was alluring. “You can ask him yourself.”

  “Maybe you could show me your talents? Tonight, once I’m off duty. I can’t give you a cloak like that, but I can pay well.”

  I smiled at him suggestively. “Where will I find you?”

  “At Gennarla Farm, you know where that is?”

  With a pounding heart I nodded, curtsied and disappeared into the crowd. No one followed me.

  When I reached the edge of the market square, I could no longer hold it in. I fell to my knees and vomited. Mother found me there and helped me to my feet. She pulled off my cloak and rolled it into a bundle under her arm as she dragged me back to my aunt’s farm. We set off at once, without waiting for cover of darkness. I had to hide under yarn and linen and sacks in Gray Lady’s cart until we were well away from the village. Maressa lay curled up among the bundles and cried the whole way home. Because she had not gotten the fried piggy she was promised, because she had to leave her relatives’ wonderful farm and the exciting market, and because her beloved aunt had betrayed her.

  We set up camp when we reached the forest, and Mother and I walked back to the footbridge over the stream in the dusky evening light. Three children and one toddler waited for us there, silent and frightened, and we brought them back to our camp as quickly as we could, and gave them all something to eat. They traveled with us in the cart back to Sáru, and Maressa soon put them at ease. Full bellies helped to put them at ease too.

  I think that perhaps Silla
could make the journey south to Menos in the spring. We cannot send her now that winter is coming, but it is the right place for her—I can feel it. She needs the knowledge and protection that only the sisters can provide. I have already started planning the journey, and Mother and I are sewing and knitting clothes for her and the other children. Silla and Berla are staying with us, while Mik and his little sister (whose name turned out to be Eina) are living with Náraes and Jannarl. Mik adores Jannarl and follows him everywhere, keen to show off what a little man he is. Dúlan and Eina are of a similar age, and Náraes says that taking care of two little lasses is much the same as one. I cannot say I believe her, but she seems content enough. Only Maressa is not entirely pleased about the newcomers, but Mik is her obedient servant and does everything she asks and demands, which placates her somewhat.

  And Berla, black-haired Berla. She is around nine years old. She says very little. She is difficult, always pilfering food and other items, or hiding in hay barns and drying houses, going missing for a day at a time, or longer. But she always comes back. She will talk to no one but Silla.

  Your friend,

  Venerable Sister O,

  When we returned home from our trip to the Murik market, the soldiers had found their way to Jóla. I am certain that my absence was to blame. I have only been intentionally protecting my home village of Sáru, but I believe that the protection has extended to Jóla, for no one has demanded taxes or harassed the inhabitants there for a long time either. As soon as I left the villages the protection weakened. It must have retained its integrity around Sáru, but for a short time Jóla was exposed, and that was all it took.

  The soldiers plundered barns and sheds mercilessly in the name of taxes. As luck would have it, Géros had seen the soldiers approach and managed to beat them back to the village via the quicker forest trails. Forewarned, all the young girls had time to hide in the underground storehouse that they have dug into the side of the hill, and which is so overgrown with grass and bushes that the soldiers would never find them.