The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter Page 14

  Nahid looked up once more. The parchment seemed as warm as flesh. He could not tell what the people in the back were doing. He cleared his throat. “‘In the spring, Mummu will visit, returning from the mountains. Mummu has no exemplar or congregation, for he is solitary. When Mummu arrives, he calls his sisters, Kingu and Aspu, from across the water. Anu seldom appears at weddings. His energy is low, and needs to be conserved. Offerings to Anu should include whelps, stillborn infants, corn on the cob, and all forms of metal.’”

  “Metal,” agreed the old man, nodding. He smiled at Nahid. “I heard he liked metal. And infants. He was somewhat monstrous. Please continue.”

  “Did you write this?”

  “Of course not. We’re not writing these documents. We organize them.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re preparing the temple. For the return of the benevolent sisters.”

  “You think goddesses are coming back? Is that what this is about? Your gods were spoiled children.” He wanted to throw the parchment down, walk away, but he hesitated.

  “We are all spoiled children,” the man said. “There are poisons inside each of us, trapped. These have spoiled us. And perhaps they spoiled the gods, too. Until these poisons are released, none of us will be able to walk side by side. We cannot point fingers without first looking inward.”

  “These aren’t concerns for me.”

  The old man said, “There are other concerns for you, it’s true. Streets are not safe anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There are fraternities. Factions. Scapegoats sacrificed. There is violence in the alleyways. Already, you must know, gods and goddesses have flown overhead. Soon seraphim will arrive in Nowy Solum. They will teach us to release the poisons. This will be a night of reckoning. No god will land until the city is clean. The skies, the river. You need to join hands with us. You need to come in.”

  “No,” Nahid said. Sweating, he held out the parchment.

  Beyond the doorway, the rain had abated, though the water dripping from the stonework was loud. Receding thunder rolled across the clouds.

  The old man took his parchment. Looking at it, he seemed rather confused and even smaller.

  Nahid stepped away and down, into the humid air of the street. His fingers tingled. Barefoot, he splashed heavily in warm puddles.

  From the temple to the Gardens of Jesthe—which was a worn patch of land adjacent to the centrum, hardly a garden at all—completely shadowed by the crooked structure of the palace—was only a short walk. Nahid had seen the chatelaine’s servants here, lingering on their breaks, having a smoke, though never had he seen his sister. Then again, he had not stayed for very long.

  Now he squatted by a tenement, veins pulsing.

  He would wait a moment to see if Octavia showed. If she did not, or if she appeared but would not listen to him, return with him to where she belonged, he would—

  Kill the chatelaine.

  This sudden thought was like a cold stone materializing in his mind, leaping up from the black and bottomless lake.

  Kill the chatelaine.

  Of course. That’s what he had to do.

  He felt a chilly clarity.

  Several large girls loitered in the Gardens, dressed in shabby robes. They talked with each other in clipped tones. One snorted brief bursts of laughter, no doubt at the expense of another. Maybe even at Octavia’s expense. Did his sister dress like these girls? Did anyone in Jesthe talk to his sister, other than the chatelaine?

  A head of staff—or whatever the women in charge were called—shouted at two of the staff, telling them to get back inside. They had been smoking. Now they ground out their butts on the wet ground and complied, but not before another curt shout had been barked by their superior. Get a move on. Breath misted.

  Nahid grew cold, and colder still. Certainty of what he was about to do spread through him like ice. He wondered how easily the chatelaine would die. On her bed, with his hands at her throat?

  As he imagined the spirit rising up from her corpse, three palatinate officers approached, heading across the Gardens from the mouth of Turnbuckle Lane, heading toward their barracks, and Nahid had the sensation they could read his thoughts. He stood and began walking again, planning to circle back, but as he passed the tenements of Endicott’s Alley, a massive form came whistling from between the buildings, occluding what little light filtered from the clouds, and with a startling crash made contact with the brickwork just above him. Nahid wheeled to see a glimpse of what could only be a giant bat with the face of a toothless man coming directly at him before impact obliterated everything.

  the second partition

  In the gloom of Bedenham House, on the stone bench, Tina lamented. This was her child’s seventh day. Though she felt much stronger, her stomach had remained too unsettled to let her break fast. She had slept, but only in tiny, futile increments . . .

  Getting up from the mattress, Tina sat on the stool next to the basinet—which was two pieces of wood, forming a shallow V-shape—holding her baby boy in her arms, face up against the warm, wonderfully scented head. She had sat on this stool every day for the entire week, cradling the child. She murmured to him. She held him when he woke and she tried to comfort him when he wailed.

  On the seventh morning, the boy showed signs of continued health and greedily nursed. Then he rested, but he did not sleep. Neither did he cry.

  These, of course, were the good signs.

  A brief rain fell in the city, loud on the street outside, turning the dirt to mud. The floor in the room Tina shared with her husband and son was gravel, and damp. They could not afford a new door—the old one had been stolen, no doubt for firewood—and so a yellow muslin curtain hung between her and the rest of Nowy Solum. Tina liked yellow. At least, the rain had briefly muted smells that a curtain could never keep out.

  When her baby was finally dozing, she placed him down into his basinet, ate a small apple and a piece of hard cheese, vomited it up, and got dressed. Desperate for any form of luck, she fastened a lavender broach to the neck of her tunic. Then she called to her husband, Cadman, to tell him she was ready. He had been back from work for a while now and, by this point, was waiting at the curb, having a cigarette with the decrepit neighbour.

  Tina did retain a modicum of hope—for there always had to be hope, no matter how slim. The boy seemed lively now. Almost happy. He had smiled the previous day, a tiny twist to his sweet puffy lips she was sure was a smile. A gift so precious. She tried hard, heart breaking, breath catching in her chest, on this morning (and every morning for the past seven mornings, for hours and hours) to get her baby to laugh or chuckle or show any sign of amusement. Nothing. Some babies made gorgeous, throaty sounds. She had heard these before, many times, and had seen the relief on the faces of their mothers.

  The boy was starting to round out, too, his blue eyes so alert, shaped like Cadman’s, who had once been almost handsome.

  Today her son would be named, one way or another.

  She wrapped the boy slowly in a blanket. He woke to gaze calmly at her. She wept. “There’s blood in your veins,” she whispered. “I know there is.”

  The crime of testing one’s own child before their trial by officers of the palatinate was punishable by rack: Tina had not been tempted to jab the baby with a pin, as some anxious mothers had.

  Tina nuzzled her boy, then, suddenly, with a surge of desperation, tickled his ribs. Made cooing sounds.

  Nothing.

  “Laugh,” she said, cheeks dripping, lips salty with tears, the love she felt painful inside her. “For goodness sake, please laugh.”

  Water at the centrum well had been exceedingly difficult to draw over recent months, and with Cadman at work every day, standing in line was impossible, especially holding onto a baby and a heavy pot at the same time, so Tina had not bathed her son, as was tradition prior to bringing infants into Bedenham House; she had only rubbed at his skin with her own hands, and with d
ry straw, to try to stimulate the temperate humours within and diminish any darker biles.

  The first few days and nights, the boy had cried constantly.

  This had only recently stopped.

  When her milk finally started to flow, it trickled reluctantly, from cracked and bleeding nipples.

  Now the boy would not react at all.

  These were the bad signs.

  Tina did not want to dwell on them, not here, not in the gloom of Bedenham House. . . .

  When Cadman stood in the doorway, shoving the muslin aside, he held his hat in both hands. “Ready?”

  She stood.

  Because her baby boy was so tiny, so light, the walk through the streets of Nowy Solum, toward the centrum, was not as arduous as it might have been. Not physically, at least. They passed people going about their daily struggles, crowds shopping at Kirk Gate, a huge gathering in Grey Close Square (though she could not hear the bare-chested, shouting orator), passed wealthy families from North End, in fancy clothes, walking the promenade by the river. Did children of the rich, Tina wondered, ever get tested? Maybe melancholy was a product of being poor, the essence of a tired and wanting womb.

  Palatinate officers pounded on a Torchmere Street door. She turned away, hiding her bundle, cheeks gone hot.

  Coming into the centrum, where Jesthe rose above the sagging rooftops and vanished into clouds, Tina saw a teenaged kholic, a young boy with a beautiful face, leaking black fluid from his nose, obviously crazed or high or both. He was heading straight at her. She stopped, shocked by an urgency that struck her like a slap. The boy would tell her something, maybe advice concerning the trial he had obviously failed, or foresight about her own son. This kholic was himself the son of a woman who had made this same walk, years ago, and who had been filled with the same dread that filled her now.

  He looked directly at her.

  There was a moment of panic. Never before had Tina seen the eyes of a kholic, not directly, not for this long. Blazing from the black mask, the gaze was intense. She felt the torment and anger, and she needed more than anything to hear what the kholic had to say, to learn his story, as if this might be the only way to save her own child from the palatinate’s mark.

  At the last second, the teen veered into the crowd.

  During the rush she felt, she considered chasing the boy, but that would be madness; her son had an appointment to keep, to be at Bedenham House before the afternoon expired. . . .

  Across the floor from where she sat, in his cot awaiting judgment, her child now made a mewling sound. Could she grab him, leave here, leave the city?

  Escape to where?

  Cadman, at her back, said, “Get a move on, Tina. Shake a leg. I have to be back at the mill in an hour.”

  The encounter with the kholic had thrown what little resolve Tina had managed to muster. Her abdomen still ached from the labour and anxiety. She was bringing her lovely boy on what could very well be a one-way trip. She stopped again. She could not get the image of the kholic’s face out of her head.

  Cobali suddenly spiralled around her feet, racing in circles, looking up at her, exposing their little teeth. The creatures were crude and foul and Cadman stepped forward, trying to kick at the pests, but they were too fast for his clumsy feet.

  Used for many purposes—physicker licenses, applications of all sorts, signings, official leechings—Bedenham House was long and low at the foot of Jesthe, just opposite the Garden. The roof was red and sagging. Through wide openings each end, all citizens passed. Bedenham House looked unassuming, yet sitting in it now, waiting, the place filled Tina with foreboding.

  Above the south doorway, the crest of Jesthe—a fish gutted on a platter—indicated the palatinate’s faith. As an adult, Tina had twice previously been inside this building, once to get her marriage document approved and another time to purchase a permit to sell two chickens at Soaper’s and Candles—birds she inherited from an uncle who had recently died. Money from the sale of the chickens had gone to a back-alley physicker, much to Cadman’s protests—who wanted only to purchase ale—getting advice on how to keep her unborn baby content, flowing inside with red blood. . . .

  Cadman tried to keep up, following several paces behind. He did not speak much at the best of times and this morning he held his face downcast, like a kholic. He had long ago given up. He was certain how this visit to Bedenham House would end. Cadman and Tina fought several times about this attitude: once he’d actually tried to convince her not to get “too attached” to the baby, which was such a ludicrous and hateful thing to say to a young mother that it made Tina sick and she could never look at Cadman’s face the same way again, ever. He had concerns about resources. Resources they didn’t have. Food and coin, and the space it would take to raise a child. Fucking resources!

  How could he believe that if elements of black choler were found in the veins of their son, and the child was taken away to be raised as a ward of the city (becoming a lost soul, just like the wounded boy she’d seen), that it would be merciful for them as a couple? Cadman had even said they could try again for another in a year or so. A second boy, maybe, when they had more money, more food, more room—

  Cadman (decided Tina, biting her lip) was an imbecile.

  No good could come from having a child taken away.

  Behind her husband followed the elderly neighbour, whose name she could never recall and perhaps had never known. His presence was in lieu of a close friend. All Tina’s friends had been conveniently busy this morning. Even the ratty old neighbour only cooperated in hopes of a promised pint, and who knew where they would get the coin to buy it when this was finally over.

  Tina stood directly before the south entrance, the baby asleep on her shoulder. A palatinate officer within, wearing the long red robes of his position and holding a lantern, saw her and beckoned.

  The chamberlain and his men knew how many babies had been born in Nowy Solum over the past month; they knew how many had survived. If Tina had not brought her son here before dusk, officers would have come during the night.

  Again she considered fleeing, taking her chances with monsters and dead gods and who knew what else lurked in the unending wastelands outside the city.

  She had never been outside the walls.

  Bedenham House was exceeding dim and smelled of oil and camphor. There were four large fireplaces, burning low, one either side of each door, each end. Along the west wall was arranged a line of small cots from entrance to exit, perhaps twenty in all. The palatinate who led her inside without a word, swinging his lantern all the while, made his way to one of these cots and gestured for her to place the baby down.

  The boy, of course, woke immediately, staring blankly up at the wooden ceiling. Her hands shook. The officer did not even look at her son but instead watched her face, searching it, his expression impassive, as if seeking something in her features that could betray aspects of her child’s biology.

  Then the officer motioned abruptly with one hand toward the bench; she took her place, like all good citizens would.

  Glancing outside, she saw Cadman standing with the neighbour, who grinned in at her. Cadman faced away, watching (she imagined) Horse Market, where barkers shouted and women shopped and children played with their friends or walked with their parents and life went on for all those lucky ones.

  She turned away.

  Deeper in Bedenham House, another mother—a woman she had not previously noticed—waited in the shadows on another bench. She tried to wave but the woman was not looking her way.

  Tina’s son did not fall asleep for a long time. The officer waited quietly by the cot, like a predator, a slight smile on his face, swinging his lantern so that scented smoke rose up to the gables. Tina listened to the quiet sounds her baby made and knew he was hungry and scared and tired.

  “Please,” she whispered, watching the palatinate as he, in turn, stared straight ahead. No. He was not like a predator, more like a statue, cold stone.

&nbs
p; From the north entrance, near Jesthe, two more palatinate officers entered then, murmuring, and as her eyes adjusted to the relative glare, Tina realized with shock that one of the men—the one on the left, in the deep crimson robe, who moved slowly, and hunched—was Erricus himself, the chamberlain of Nowy Solum.

  The second man wore a dark sash at his neck, clearly a physicker. He had a boy’s face and did not appear old enough to shave. The chamberlain, of course, was ancient.

  Both men walked the length of Bedenham House, stopping briefly at a cot near the other woman, then proceeding to where her own boy lay.

  There they conferred.

  Tina had never seen the chamberlain this close. Her heart thudded as he nodded and turned toward her. When he approached, she stopped breathing. He was a dead man, a corpse.

  She imagined the chill of his bony hands upon her, his hollow face, his leather skin.

  He asked, “You are the mother of this boy?”

  She nodded.

  “What is your name?” His eyes glistened.

  She replied.

  “I am here to oversee trials this day. We were waiting for you. Though, of course, it was well within your rights to come any time before dusk.” The chamberlain coughed, light and dusty. He pressed his fingers together. “Your son will be tested first. He is older than the girl over there by nearly nine hours.”

  “I understand.” Though Tina did not understand. How could she? How could any mother? As far as she knew, Erricus had never presided over an infant’s trial, not in decades.

  At the south entrance, Cadman stared in, though if he recognized who was speaking to his wife was not clear. Probably he recognized nothing.

  Chamberlain Erricus lingered by the bench a moment longer. Finally, he coughed again. “Very well,” he said. “Let us begin.”

  Back at the cot, the physicker held out a small, ornate jar, which he now cracked open.

  Holding both hands up for silence, or to evoke his gods, the chamberlain returned to the cot while the physicker made a big show of listening, apparently to her baby’s breathing. Then the physicker touched her boy lightly in several places Tina could not identify from where she sat. The officer did not wake her son, or at least the boy remained quiet throughout this process. Erricus had closed his eyes. Finally the physicker put his fingers up to his own face, sniffed them, and produced a small vial of liquid from the jar. He sprinkled a few drops, watching her boy intently.