Black Spring (8 page)

I
remember the first days of Damek’s residence as a kind of dark tunnel, a memory reinforced by the continual rain which kept us indoors. It seemed endless, although it must have lasted little more than a week or so. The master left the day after delivering Damek into our care, and Lina blamed Damek, for no reason at all, for her father’s absence. It simply confirmed the boy’s evil in Lina’s eyes; she resented him bitterly and did her best to make him run away.

She confessed as much to me the first morning. “We don’t want him here, do we, Anna?” she said as I brushed her hair. “He’s nothing but a dirty peasant. Look at his skin! Why has Papa done this to me?”

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” I said. “The king —”

“Oh, the king!” Lina swept that aside impatiently. “What could the king care for a lowborn bastard?”

I was shocked and told her that she ought to show some respect. At the back of my mind, I saw the Wizard Ezra and his talk of some mysterious truce; although I didn’t understand the complex dealings of adults, which took place in a universe over the top of my head, I couldn’t but believe that somehow Damek’s presence and the wizard’s obscure warning were connected.

“I’m going to make him run away,” she said. “I hate him. I don’t want a brother. And if he runs away, Papa can’t do anything about it. It’s not his fault, is it? How could the king blame him then?”

I began to tell her that if Damek ran away, it would shame our house, but Lina tossed her head and said she didn’t care. And nothing I said in the following days could persuade her to care for the honor of the king or her father.

Her strategy was simple: she made herself as unpleasant as possible to everyone in her vicinity. This was sufficient to turn the household into a purgatory. There was Lina at breakfast, brows like thunder, throwing her plate at Damek and scalding him with hot porridge; Lina in the passageway, screaming and kicking my mother, who was attempting to stop her from pulling Damek’s hair; Lina brooding in the front room, sending black clouds of dolor through the entire house, so that everyone was cross and impatient and out of sorts.

The part of me — a very small part — that wasn’t irritated with Lina beyond endurance couldn’t help but admire her stubborn persistence in the face of every rebuke and punishment; there was not one moment when she wavered from her obdurate hostility. I have sometimes wondered whether that week showed the first sign of her powers, because when she walked into a room, everyone flinched against the turbid energy she brought with her. Even when my mother, her patience tried to breaking point by Lina’s perversity, whipped her with a belt and locked her in her room without meals for a whole day, she shouted and screamed for hours until her voice was hoarse, hammering on the door so her knuckles bled. My mother only let her out because she was afraid that she would make herself ill, and I vividly remember the flash of triumph in Lina’s eyes as she stalked out. And then the first thing she did was to find Damek and slap his face for causing her to be locked up.

I confess that although in those first days I could not like Damek, I admired how he bore Lina’s persecution. Even when she threw porridge at him, he didn’t react; he merely stared at her expressionlessly and wiped it out of his eyes. He never once attempted to hit her back and never answered any of the horrible names she called him nor complained to anyone. Once or twice I saw a flash in his eyes that hinted at a dangerous and implacable anger, but he suppressed it at once. I have since wondered where he learned such stoicism; I suppose he must have come from a place where he suffered much cruelty. This lack of response, as I think he knew, only irritated Lina to further extremes: she pinched him until his arms were mottled black and green and kicked him in the shins and pulled out chunks of his hair. Nothing my mother could say or do abated Lina’s behavior. Used as I was to her, I was shocked: this was different in kind from her tantrums. It was unforgiving and bitter, with no swift, following laughter to clear the sky.

Without warning, when all of us were limp with exhaustion and despair, the oppression lifted. Lina came down late to breakfast, her face set in her now habitual scowl, and as she sat down, a beam of sunshine broke through the clouds and shafted across the table. It scattered a spectrum of colors over the white cloth as the beam broke through the glass decanter and struck fiery sparkles from the silver cutlery. As it glanced on Lina’s face, she looked up with a sudden luminous delight, her dark mood ambushed and destroyed by this stray sunbeam; by chance her eyes met Damek’s, and she stopped, arrested. I don’t know what passed between them in that moment; I remember her sitting in the room, as still as if she had been caught out of time, the smile lingering on her lips, her eyes serious and dark, but quite without hostility. She looked most of all as if she were remembering something important that she had forgotten.

I’ve often wondered what happened when Lina was ambushed by that stray sunbeam. It was such a tiny thing, but it changed all our lives. She would never tell me, even when I asked her directly; she would simply laugh and say that someone like me would never understand. I’m not sure that even she could explain it. I surmise that in her unguarded joy, her soul flung open its doors, permitting her to see Damek for the first time. But what did she see? A brother, perhaps, moved by the same passions as she was, a wild kindred soul who chafed as she did against the mean laws in which we lived, a will as stubborn and obdurate as her own? I never realized until much later how lonely Lina was. Even I, who was closer to her than anybody else, often failed to comprehend her. It may be that her sense of isolation sparked her childish rages: while every human being desires to be loved, perhaps we crave understanding more.

For the first time for days, breakfast passed peaceably. Lina was atypically demure and polite; she was playing the southern-born lady again and said please and thank you, instead of haughtily demanding my service and trying to slap me if I was too slow. (Not that I accepted such behavior without giving her a sharp telling-off. She ignored me, but it relieved my own anger.) She didn’t speak to Damek, but at the end of the meal, when she pushed her chair back to leave the table, she met his eyes again and nodded slightly before she left. Damek seemed much struck, and it was a few moments before he too laid his napkin on the table and left.

As I tidied up after them, I drew a deep breath. Perhaps this was the end of the storm, and our little household would be an easier place. I had chores to attend to and didn’t see either of them all morning; I was therefore wholly taken aback when Damek and Lina walked in together to the luncheon table and sat down as if they were intimate friends.

“What?” I said to her. “Are you talking now to your brother, Miss Lina?”

“Oh, Anna, he’s not my brother!” said Lina. “That’s the mistake. He’s my
friend.
” And she smiled radiantly and leaned forward, in a pretty manner she then affected, to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Aren’t we the best of friends, Damek?”

He muttered something I couldn’t hear in response, and she laughed and turned to me.

“He’ll be less surly soon, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s only that he’s shy.” At this I saw the back of Damek’s neck redden. “But he has forgiven me my lack of manners.”

“Well, Mr. Damek is a better human being than you are, Miss Lina,” I said. “Look at those bruises on his arm! For shame!”

Lina tossed her head, quite unembarrassed. “If he doesn’t mind, I don’t see why you should, Anna. And you’re just a servant anyway. It’s not your place to make remarks.”

Lina had never before asserted her rank — it was of the nature of an unspoken agreement — and that stung me. I had opened my mouth to protest when my mother came into the room with a roasted peahen and put an end to our conversation. After that I was coming and going from the room, waiting upon the two of them. I was still hurt by Lina’s remark and was, I fear, excessively formal, though I’m sure Lina never noticed. I studied her change in manner toward Damek with amazement, unable to believe that she was sincere. She pulled her chair closer to his and murmured to him as they ate, her eyes flashing mischievously. He said very little, mostly nodding now and again in response, and I mistrustfully wondered what devilry she was hatching now.

I confess a little pain of jealousy started in my heart, watching the two of them huddled together so intimately; Lina and I had always been close, for all our differences in rank and sensibility, and now it seemed that she was replacing me in her heart with this sullen, mysterious boy.

I
t’s difficult to remember things precisely. All this happened so long ago, and when I reflect, it seems to me that I have forgotten many important things, while others which perhaps seem trivial stand out vividly from the shadows. I was, you know, a most ordinary child, with no precocious abilities; I had all the usual childish griefs and joys, and my life has been, for the most part, remarkably without incident or tragedy. Lina used to laugh at my equable nature, claiming I had all the sensibility of a stick, and as a little girl I did feel that I was a dim and shadowed lamp next to her brilliant flame. Yet for all that, I never envied her; I would always have far rather been as I am. Which is a happy chance, really, since I have no choice in the matter.

In my education I was fortunate above most of my peers, because when the master employed a tutor from the South for Lina and Damek, he instructed him to teach me as well. This was not really an enlightened decision on the master’s part, although I certainly benefited; his kindnesses were almost always self-interested. Lina was at best an erratic student, and predictably she regarded the classes (as I think her tutor did) as a means of torture, which she thought was especially devised to frustrate her deepest desires. Even her father’s disapproval, which could cast her into a pit of despair for days, did little to make the necessity of staying indoors to study verbs and history palatable, even with Damek for company. However, when I joined the morning lessons, her natural competitiveness was fired, since she couldn’t bear to be outshone by a mere servant. I enjoyed the classes and even earned the tutor’s praise on occasion, and this made her turn furiously to her work.

Thus it was that I learned my letters and was given one of the great consolations and pleasures of my life. It is no boast to say that I am probably as well read as any on the Plateau, since Master had collected an excellent library and permitted me to read freely in my spare time. Like many things in my life, it altered me and made me different from my kin. My mother disapproved of my education: she would never dare to gainsay the master and did his will as always, but I think no decision of his angered her more. She said it would give me ideas above my station and would take me away from my roots. In this, her instincts were correct: although I can’t say I have suffered from it, I have always been a little outside things. I was fated, it seems, to be between: neither northern nor southern, neither an illiterate servant nor a noble. Once, when I was young and foolish, I did wish that I was the same as everyone else and could fit in more easily, but I was lucky enough to marry a good man who saw my virtues with a straight eye, and I have led a decent and hardworking life, which is more than can be said for some of my kin.

But forgive me; I am wandering from the story.

After that day, Damek was Lina’s slave. I watched them suspiciously, unable to believe that it was more than a passing fad on her part, but all I saw was sweetness and light. Certainly, their friendship made a great deal of difference to Damek. I think it likely that he had never had a friend before. As in everything she did, Lina approached the friendship with all the force of her fierce passion, and any resistance he may have felt quickly melted. At the time I was surprised by his instant capitulation — given those bruises, I would have coddled my resentment for much longer. But now I suspect that they might not have become so close if Lina hadn’t behaved so cruelly to begin with, and that part of his respect for her stemmed from his initial experience of her demonic temper.