Of Sorrow and Such (9 page)

The rose window’s fragments of coloured glass are not vibrant, their hues are bleached either by design or some strange alchemical fading, and I have an excellent view even through the tints and cobwebs. Dawn is breaking over Edda’s Meadow and the sunrays slant down like golden knives; I imagine them cutting through the roofs and walls rather than being stopped by them. I imagine them slicing through those gathered in the square where a tall stake has been set, a sea of branches and kindling around it.

I wonder at my insistence on seeing this, though every particle of my being counselled flight. I think of Bitterwood all those years ago, when I stayed too long. I think on how much damage I wrought there to avenge my mother. I wonder if I still have the heart for such destruction.

Am I better now, or worse?

In this moment, I cannot tell. Perhaps when the aches and pains have settled, when I can breathe without wincing, sit without groaning, sleep without dreaming of men in purple capes telling me how damned I am. Perhaps.

Behind me, Gilly and Selke wait and watch. I cannot begin to guess at their thoughts. Fenric’s head is in my lap, the fur so thick beneath my hands. His tail thumps happily on the floor; the sound must travel down through the house beneath and I’d be worried if we were anywhere but where we are.

As we watch the crowd grows bigger; Ina and the Alhgren women appear, pushing through the press of bodies towards the front. People make way for them. The townsmen were up and about before daylight, putting the finishing touches on the bonfire, making sure there were twigs of rowan to protect against any malevolent sprites I might summon and sprigs of lavender to lay my spirit. A dais has been hastily erected, close enough for excellent viewing, but not so close that the sparks might leap across and scorch the most important of witnesses. A table with four highly polished straight-backed chairs I recognise from the mayory’s furnishings waits there.

There is a disturbance at another edge of the congregation: here come the churchmen, Pastor Alhgren and Balthazar Cotton, who wears a frown and carries something concealed at his side. The disappearance of Fenric has been discovered, surely, but only he will ponder its deeper meaning. The others will shrug, say
dumb animal.
At the end of the serpent’s tail trails Doctor Herbeau. Have he and the pastor had words? Or has his failure to find my deadly store of herbs made him a pariah
amongst
his fellows? When they mount the dais, he finds he must stand, for there is no place for him. Even at a distance his expression of displeasure is plain to see. There is no sign of Karol Brautigan.

Once the inquisitors are settled, Beau Markham strides proudly in front of the pile of kindling, carrying a tray laden with goblets and a carafe, all in gold, the gems in their sides catching the morning light. Oh, that my death should have brought forth such finery! Oh, that it should have rendered this humble serving task one of such pride for that empty-headed boy!

Gilly touches my shoulder, points towards the front of the pastor’s house: Haddon Maundy appears in the open doorway. He steps out and leads my doppelganger in his wake. Has he tried to talk to that shell, shouted about betrayal or begged forgiveness for what he must do? His grip on its—her—arm seems loose, perhaps from tenderness, perhaps from fear. He knows now he bedded a witch: does that make him shrink and shrivel at his very core? He leads me—it—her to the ladder and helps her—me—it onto the small platform in the centre of the balefire. Haddon ties her—it—me in place. I concentrate on her: she looks just me, no more, no less. Maundy climbs back down; I cannot see his expression. He does not join the crowd, but slips away into one of the thin alleys that run between the buildings lining the square.

Now Karol Brautigan appears, coming from the direction of the smithy. He has the burning brand, freshly lit. He waits patiently while one of the churchmen spouts cant at the crowd. I scan the assembled faces. Some are sad, like the women I’ve helped and the children I’ve saved, like Sandor. Some are neutral, as if they’re afraid to show sympathy but cannot bear to display pleasure. And yet others, shining with a fervour no amount of rational thought or compassion can quench: they simply want to see a burning. They will believe
anything
if only they may witness a burning.

At last the god-hound is done and Brautigan turns to the great construction of tinder. In his movements, I think I sense a hesitation, a reluctance: I saved his sister, after all. Then it is gone and he’s resolute. He touches the torch to the branches at the base, then higher and higher, like a diligent firestarter, making sure it catches well.

The flames grow and reach upward, they lick at the dress, then engulf the skirt. The replica’s lips part, the mouth opens and a shriek so piercing that it can be heard in our hiding place issues forth. Or perhaps it’s only me; Selke and Gilly do not seem unduly troubled. It seems to me that she’s screaming in my ear. I realise my own lips are parted and I’m whimpering. There’s a rush of heat from my feet to my face as if I’m the one standing in those flames, and I check to ensure there’s no trace of smoke coming from my limbs. Selke says, “It will pass.”

And then I notice what Balthazar Cotton has carried with him. He stands, holds it up for all to see, and then flings Wynne’s great book into the inferno. That hurts more than anything and I cry out.

“What a waste,” says Selke. She cannot know what the book meant to me, though she recognises the sort of tome it was.

Gilly strokes my hair. “We should go, while they’re all distracted.”

“Not yet, Gilly-girl. Not quite yet.” I claw back my sobs and pat her hand. “Watch and witness: remember why you don’t want to be different, my dove.”

I feel a tremor skitter through her, but keep my eyes on where my double shrivels and writhes, moving far longer than I’d hoped. On the dais, Beau Markham is pouring bloodred wine into five goblets for the fine gentlemen who’ve surely broken a sweat in the burning of one helpless woman. Doctor Herbeau, slightly mollified by his share of the libation, raises his drink and the others mimic him politely, then down the fine crimson liquid in greedy gulps.

There’s a lightness in my heart.

It does not take long.

First one then another grabs at his throat as water, not wine, begins to bubble through lips turning purple-blue. It gushes as if they’ve become fountains or whales to spurt liquid up and out of themselves. I smile with relief as they drown on dry land: Ina did not disappoint me. She slid through the last of the night in her shifter shape and into the mayory, and found a way to slip the powdered waterweed into the beverages. For a moment, she is the only one not looking at the pantomime on the dais: only she glances at the bookstore, at the window of Sandor’s attic chamber, just for a moment. Then her face splits with the talent of a great actress and she begins to wail along with the rest of Edda’s folk, as if this were not what she expected at all. Sandor’s head is lowered to hide whatever expression he may have.

I rise slowly. Dislodged, Fenric gives a fussy whine. I take in the room: there’re just boxes and books stored here, and our packs and cloaks. We’ll leave nothing behind, no trace. We will give no farewells to Sandor, who took us in without a moment’s hesitation, who had no fear when we appeared at his door, for some men know that women are more than just the sum of their parts. We will leave and soon Edda’s Meadow and those in it, those we’ve loved or loathed, will be no more than fading memories.

“Now we can go,” I say.

How to recount our flight? How to describe the dread, the apprehension that wrapped itself around us like a miasma as we snuck down the stairs and carefully slipped out the back? How to describe the moment when breathing ceased as we ran through the deserted streets and past the gaol-house, where Haddon Maundy was paused upon the steps? How to tell the wash of relief when, in the moments after our eyes met and widened, he turned away and closed the door behind him?

How to tell all these things, the taste of freedom and the threat of its loss.

How?

And how to tell, when we’ve travelled almost a whole day and finally allow ourselves rest in a grove knit tight about with branches and shrubs, vines and brambles, of the rushing terror to hear a disturbance in the foliage. We all carry knives and are ready to use them.

One of the bushes shivers and shifts: Sandor steps through. We are frozen with unreasoning fear, waiting. Are there others? But no, there is only Sandor.

There is only Sandor, pack on his back, wide-brimmed hat on his head, cloak around his shoulders. And a smile, uncertain, but determined, playing across his mouth. There is only Sandor who’s given up all he possessed to follow. He has eyes for no one but Gilly. She stands, poised, uncertain and flighty as a doe. Her head swings from his face to mine and back and back again.

There are things I want to tell her. Things I should share. Things I’ve kept too long and now there is no time.

I smile at her.

“Go, my Gilly-girl. Go.”

And she does, all hesitation fled. One last quick hug between us, a brisk hand on Fenric’s head, and the closest thing I’ve ever had to a child of my own is gone. She crosses the clearing, her hand reaches for Sandor’s, touches, makes a connection, a bond, and then they disappear into the green depths, and away and away and away from me.

I watch for a little while, part of me wondering if she’ll return, though my heart knows she won’t.

“Time to leave,” says Selke quietly.

“Why did they come for you? God’s hounds?” I ask Selke when darkness has fallen and we’ve finally stopped for the night. Fenric is curled at my feet, gnawing happily on a rabbit he hunted up. At first I think she won’t answer, but there’s no room for secrets anymore. She sighs.

“I told you the wolves in Lodellan cathedral are mine, my work. And so they are: they’re not normal, not alive in any way anyone else might understand. They were dead once, but I brought them back.” She licks her lips. “When I arrived in the city, you need to understand how callow I was, yet how ambitious. Things had happened in my life and I swore I’d learn from them, but . . . I left them behind, and the lessons I should have held onto I forgot willingly enough. In Lodellan there was . . . all I’d ever dreamt of: riches, fine gowns, jewellery, a workshop equipped with everything I might ever need or want . . . and no limits. No limits on what I did or said, what I could try, the experiments I might make. And a man. The archbishop, Narcissus Marsh, so fine-looking, so clever and charming. A real man, not a boy . . . or so I thought. A man who gave me these things and all I had to do was bend my power in his service.”

She rubs her eyes. “For a long time our desires were either the same or so close that the difference did not matter. We became lovers. When I became pregnant, he was ecstatic.”

“An archbishop.” I laugh.

“You know only the lower orders of priests and pastors are allowed to marry, but in general churchmen live their lives as they wish, especially those as high up as he. They think they’ve got no limits either, think they’re so close to God they can touch the sky with their fingertips and it will sigh in pleasure.” She snorted. “I had the child, a little lad, too soon and so small he came. He didn’t last more than a few days. I was bereft, but Narcissus . . . Narcissus was mad with grief.”

She stands, kicks at the space where we might have made a fire if we’d felt confident, and paces. Fenric watches her. Tomorrow night will be different, when we’re far enough from Edda’s Meadow that it’s naught but a sharp, bitter recollection.

“We might have been happy still, might have gone on had he but . . . He came to me one night after the child had been dead a week and kept in the cool of the catacombs beneath the cathedral, for Narcissus couldn’t bear for his boy to be in the ground. He said that the solution had been staring him in the face all along. That
I
could fix it. What I did with the wolves I could do with our son; I could put a new piece of soul inside him and bring him back to us. That I could make our child into something that . . .”

“You refused,” I say quietly.

She stares into the blackness of the forest around us. “And I refused. I’d found my limit at long last. I would not do that to my child, bring him back to nothing more than a half-life. The wolves live with one foot in deepest shadow, the other in twilight. And their minds are not whole things, for there is not enough soul left to balance it. I would not do that to my baby.”

“You fled,” I guess.

“And he has pursued me in the ten years since,” she soughs and sits again. “He never did like hearing
no.
” She wipes at her cheeks where moonlight picks out the damp diamonds of tears. “I wonder . . . wonder sometimes if the child is still there, in the catacombs, waiting.”

I can offer neither comfort nor condemnation. She has done what she has done and I have done what I have done. I am no judge of Selke and her life.

After a while she says, “Sleep, time to sleep. We’ll need to be off early tomorrow if we’re to put distance between us and the mess we left behind.”

I appreciate that she does not say
your mess.

When I wake she is gone. She’s taken no more than her own things and half the food. She’s left nothing more than a sketch in the dirt by my head, a smiling face, and a gift: a small package of living clay that I recognise not by unwrapping it but by the way it moves under my hand. There is a rustling in the undergrowth and Fenric’s large head pushes through, a dead squirrel in his jaws.

I think of Gilly and wonder how far she is from me now, whether she will be content and accepting of her lot. I think of Charity Alhgren and her mother-in-law, safe at last from husband and son. I think of Ina Brautigan and wonder how long before she deals with her brother and how she will do it. I think of Balthazar Cotton’s nameless daughter and wonder who she will become.

I eat a small breakfast of bread and hard cheese, then stretch until my body feels less resistant to moving, and finally hoist the satchel Gilly brought for me from the alder grove over my back. The absence of Wynne’s book pulls at me as though it still has weight. In many ways, I suppose it does and it will be a burden, a phantom limb that haunts for a long time to come. I wonder if I’ll ever be free of it.

I bite back tears, push away the loss, and take my bearings.

To the north lies the great cathedral city of Lodellan. In his fine home, Narcissus Marsh sits and waits. Waits for one of his hounds to drag Selke back.

In one of the many pockets inside my cloak is the grey pouch filled with the last of the powdered waterweed. There is a final service I can do for my friend, though she may never know it, in return for the saving of my life.

I take my first steps into the new day, Fenric dancing beside me.

We head north.