Chapter 17
XVII
Aloud knock jerks me violently from a forgotten dream. I force open my eyes, but all I see is a wall shrouded in darkness. I don’t recognise where I am.
When something heavy shifts atop me, things quickly come back: stinging hands, pleaded words, whispered confessions.
Only when Aba? moves off me does the air rush back into my lungs. Suddenly too light and chilly, I bury myself deeper into the heavy blanket, wrapping myself until only my eyes are visible. Aba? sits up, rubbing his face sleepily. His hair is rumpled and sticking up all over the place.
“What?” he growls.
“Young master, the custodian is missing!” Bayard screeches through the door.
“Fuck your trifles!” Aba? shouts. “Don’t trouble me with your simpering.”
“I apologise, young master. I will wait and hope he returns soon,” he quavers before retreating.
Aba? flops back onto the bed with a groan. “I despise that white-livered knave,” he mumbles, face half-buried in a pillow.
“Why don’t you just fire him?” I ask, but his responding grumbles are too muffled to make out.
I don’t want to leave the bed, but my stomach wants to eat itself, and my throat is so dry that talking hurts.
“I gotta go,” I say, sliding from between the sheets.
Aba? lifts one eye, glaring at me while I search for my clothes. The moment I’m dressed, the door opens slowly. I turn. Aba? is nearly completely buried under the covers, nothing but one hand visible. With this hand, he’s holding the door ajar for me.
I feel awkward standing here, not knowing what to do with myself. Mumbling a quiet goodbye, I leave the room.
Before I can think where to go, my stomach makes an embarrassingly loud sound. It’s unusual for me to feel this hungry, but apparently I pushed my body a bit too far, and now I’m in urgent need of some sustenance.
I’m grateful to see a bowl of porridge already sitting on the table when I reach the kitchen. Next to it sits a bright green apple.
“Good morning, Astaire! I’m so relieved to see you’re still here,” Pepper says cheerily.
I look up, startled. I was so focused on the food, I hadn’t noticed her in the kitchen.
“Uhm, morning,” I mouth around the spoon of gruel already halfway between my lips. Once I’ve shovelled most of the bowl down my throat, I manage to come up for air. “Thanks for the apples, by the way. That red one, perfect timing!” I say, before I continue eating.
“The red one?” she asks, confused. Pepper picks up the large pot boiling on the cooker with a rag and brings it over to the table. Wordlessly, she scoops more of the porridge into my bowl. She watches me, pot still in hand, seemingly waiting for me to clarify.
“The apple. Yesterday, you know,” I try to explain.
But her eyebrows only furrow. “I wasn’t here yesterday, love. I come only on Sundays,” she says, returning the pot to the cooker.
Wait… I’m sure Bayard would rather crawl over a bed of nails before giving me fruit.
“But the stew? You didn’t make stew yesterday?” I ask.
The air in the room stiffens. Pepper’s back tenses, then she slowly turns back around, rag clasped between both hands.
“You must be mistaken, love. I was not here yesterday. I come only on Sundays,” she repeats slowly and strangely precise.
Pepper jumps at the sound of flat footsteps approaching. Before she can turn around to the range again, Bayard storms through the door.
“Where were you?” he demands, seething.
Pepper looks like she’s trying to melt into the cooker. She’s clutching the oven doors, trying to stop her hands from shaking.
When I don’t answer, Bayard slaps his hand on the table. He leans closely, too closely. Stale breath hits my face, and I have to control every muscle not to recoil in disgust.
“Me?” I say as innocently as I can muster. “I was here eating.”
He glares at me in disbelief, but instead of shouting the obscenities written on his face, he storms back out of the kitchen. Air rushes out of the room the moment he shuts the door with a bang. Pepper still grips the range, the gruel quietly bubbling on the fire behind her.
She looks so scared, almost terrified.
I can’t imagine she knows about Aba?’ nature. He said he’d had no human contact at all, that Bayard was in charge of these kinds of things, including the hiring of the staff. I wonder if she knows about the murders then. She couldn’t be this afraid just because Bayard is unpleasant.
Alright, unpleasant is an understatement.
Before I can say anything, Bayard returns. With a loud thump, he drops a crate on the table. Pepper jumps a little as it topples over and seeds spill across the wood and down to the floor.
“Finish that tonight,” he bites, before leaning very closely. “No one is going to rescue you,” he whispers so quietly I’m sure only I can hear it. Before I can respond, Bayard leaves again.
I look at the seeds, sitting there, waiting for me to remove the thin skin from their flesh.
An image of a young girl crouched in ash, picking peas out one by one, flashes through my mind.
I’m pretty sure I know exactly what Bayard is trying to do, but I don’t really care.
Not that I have anything better to do anyway.
I make a small pile in front of me and start peeling.
It doesn’t take Pepper long to finish cooking and cleaning the kitchen. While I hull seed after seed, I watch her as she washes the dishes, cleans every surface, and gets ready to leave. She stands there for a moment, looking awkward and lost.
“Thank you for the apple,” I try to say as cheerily as she had been earlier today. But I fail miserably, and it comes out as half a croak.
Her face distorts into an empty smile. “It’s the young master’s orders,” she says quietly. I watch her, trying to see if she’s afraid of him, but she just seems nervous.
“Are you okay?” I honestly don’t know why I just asked that. Maybe because she looks so miserable.
“I’ve never met the young master,” she blurts out. “I mean….” She closes her mouth abruptly.
“You only deal with Bayard?” I try to finish her sentence.
She looks both relieved but also tenser than before. She nods almost imperceptibly.
“Did he hurt you, Pepper?” I ask.
Her eyes go wide, and she pushes her hands inside her coat pockets. I stand up, hands planted on the table.
“Not like that,” she says quickly. When I narrow my eyes at her, she adds, “I swear he never touched me.” She looks sincere, but still terrified.
Pepper moves toward the door, coming so close I can smell the faint odour of boiled oats in her hair.
She holds onto my shoulder and whispers, “I fear for you,” before rushing out of the room.
I stand there confused, taking a moment to process everything.
I’m wired and restless, too tired to pace, too awake to rest. So I sit and start hulling the seeds, paying no attention to them. I just want to keep my fingers busy.
There’s a small—tiny, even—part of me that’s wondering if I should do something. What, I honestly don’t know. I mean I barely know what this even is. Do I dislike Bayard so much that I’m reading into the situation, or is he actually terrorising Pepper?
Pepper’s look, her body language, spelled her emotions out clearly. It made it feel too much just being in the same room with such intensity.
Then I remembered what Aba? told me last night—the things he can feel, the things he endured. Could he sense Pepper’s fear when she was in the kitchen? I don’t know how close Aba? has to be to a person to feel their emotions, but if he could do it over the distance between here and his room…
I shake my head. It’s all too much. At least all the abuse is part of the past.
As I continue to peel seed after seed, images of yesterday burrow themselves deeper through my mind. Rough scars beneath my hands, the scent of spices. Pleading eyes and cold skin.
It’s all so new—shocking, yet thrilling. The possibility never crossed my mind before, but then, in the moment, it was as if something just took over. Something that felt so right. So whole.
I…feel…exhilarated. Intoxicated. Falling for Aba? feels like I’m slowly poisoning myself. I never know if he’s going to scream in my face or pleasure me with those big hands.
But why did he confide in me? The vulnerability of the trauma, the horrors of his abilities, and the revelation of his age. I’m an insignificant man. Nothing. Barely even alive.