Chapter 21 Csilla #2
He pushed her hand into her lap. ‘You’re not a child. You can pray for yourself.’
She shouldn’t have expected better. But her face must have shown her disappointment because he beckoned her to kneel closer to him. Together they leaned against his altar, and if she wasn’t entirely comforted, at least she wasn’t alone. Shared weariness was still companionable.
Please help us. Please come back. We’ve messed everything up, but we’re trying.
The prayer was hollow. She didn’t want to deliver empty thoughts to equally empty air. All her cold fingers wanted was ágnes, her body hungry for the safety of sitting with someone who loved her. She sucked back what might have been a sob.
‘You can go to her if you like.’ Ilan opened his eyes again, though they flickered with hesitation. ‘She’s been worse lately.’ Csilla pressed her lips.
‘How did you know I was thinking . . .’
‘You’re easy to read. And I do also have a mother.’
She supposed he must, though she couldn’t picture him as a child. The idea of his sharp expression on a small, rounded face was vaguely unsettling.
‘ágnes no longer goes on mercy rounds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes into anchorage soon,’ he continued.
The ill and elderly went into anchorage when they were ready for deliverance, spending their time in solitary prayer and writing their reflections to guide the future members of the Church.
It was meant to be a joyous time, the culmination of a life lived in Brilliance.
But when Csilla thought of ágnes spending her last days alone, with no visitors or care, her chest seized so strongly she lost her breath.
‘I don’t know if she’d even want to see me,’ she said after a moment. ágnes had been so disappointed in her when she found her in the cell. She could only be more so to find that Csilla hadn’t taken any of her advice.
‘It’s up to you. But it might be your last chance.’
She opened her mouth to protest again, but the soft determination in his eyes stopped her.
‘For her sake, Csilla.’
The words were another Church-sanctioned kindness that felt like pain.
She nodded, trying to reconcile the priest who caused the agony that still rang in her ears with the man before her, urging her to do what she was made for: comfort.
Regardless of his personal feelings, he understood her. She would try to offer the same.
‘Thank you.’
?
ágnes was in her room, lap draped in fur and a copy of the writ, and she was sleeping. It was relief and pain in one. If she was too ill to tend to others and take mercy missions, she’d be sick in heart as well as in body.
‘ágnes?’ Csilla crouched before her, placing a gentle hand upon her knee. The older woman’s thin lashes fluttered, and she looked down with rheumy eyes.
‘If I wasn’t still so cold, I’d say this was a vision. A welcome one,’ she added at Csilla’s worried frown. ‘Why are you here?’
‘You,’ Csilla answered, achingly aware that wasn’t the whole of it. ‘I hope they’ve been helping you.’ It didn’t look like it.
‘I help myself, and Erzsébet keeps my lap warm. I’m glad to see you,’ ágnes said, and Csilla lit with guilt. ‘But you’re still only in Silgard because of the heretic, aren’t you?’
ágnes always had been able to see right through to the truth of Csilla. It didn’t take blood to know a daughter.
‘Yes.’ But only until I can come back, she added silently. It was one of a thousand little darknesses that would be swept away in greater glory once they saved the city. ‘I can’t leave Silgard. I don’t want to leave you.’
ágnes touched her cheek. Sitting at her feet was like being young again, being read to on long, lazy afternoons, told it was because she was bright and loved the word best. She’d only learned much later those afternoons had been when families were coming to take other children.
ágnes had tried to spare her the pain of being passed over by making her feel chosen, darkening her own soul with the lie.
Just like she was doing now, allowing Csilla to sit where she didn’t belong and take up her precious seconds, soft tokens of affection worth more than any gift.
‘I’ll be gone soon, Csilla. I’ve worked with illness too long not to recognise it in myself.
I’m not hastening it, trust me,’ she soothed Csilla’s small noise of distress.
‘But there’s nothing to be done.’ She swallowed back a shaking cough.
‘Here, I’ll read to you. Asten hasn’t taken my eyes yet, so there’s that blessing. ’
‘No, let me.’ Csilla took the book from her lap and settled back. She leaned her head against ágnes’s legs, in tears at the gentle pressure of a hand on her head. ‘If it gets worse, you will tell me before you go into anchorage, right? You can send word through Ilan. He knows where to find me.’
A person’s final days were between them and Asten. But ágnes stroked her hair gently and nodded.
‘I will, dearest.’
Csilla nodded and opened the book to a saint story, one of the first she’d memorised when she was small: St. Ferdek’s miracle that brought a springing well to a parched town and saved thousands overnight.
The angel Orsolya had given him a running crown of her tears, and the illustration had always reminded Csilla of her dozen unlucky baptisms. The madder and azure were more faded than she remembered, years of finger pressure eroding the crispness of the pages.
She used to love to think about the miracles and how wonderful it was that divine magic came to save.
Now what lay on her heart was how terrible it was that people needed saving. People could find meaning in suffering but that didn’t mean it meant anything on its own. If Asten were here, and just, Their creation wouldn’t have to hurt. They wouldn’t have let it break, leaving Shadow and pain.
‘Do you think,’ she asked carefully, forming the delicate words like they were bubbles of spun glass, ‘Asten intends to come back at all?’
Among the questionable games a pack of orphans with little supervision played was one of holding their heads underwater in a trough to see who could hold their breath the longest. In the end, everyone came up, but whoever won the game had a headache and sore chest for their prize.
What was happening now didn’t feel like worship. It felt like that standoff, and the world on the edge of drowning.
‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ ágnes frowned, leaning forward slightly. ‘I know your road is hard, but don’t make it harder with doubt.’
How? she wanted to ask.
From far below came the shrill whistle of alarm, quick blasts that could only mean death. She stood so quickly her knee popped.
‘Csilla?’ ágnes reached a hand out. ‘That was the alarm. Stay here.’
‘I know,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss the old woman’s cheek, catching the scent of the mint oils used on sore bodies in a last effort to soothe aches.
‘That’s why I have to go.’