Chapter 5 Jude
Jude
Jude awoke as the sky gradually lightened to a stormy, limpid blue.
There would be no sunrise today – no hazy shafts of russet and ochre illuminating the patchwork shape of the moors.
Mist fogged the edges of the orchard where it met the far wall, dew coating each lichen-webbed branch.
A delicate lace border of frost ringed his window.
The rain might as well have been a thunderstorm with how his head ached.
He downed the cup of water Elden had left on his bedside in three gulps.
It left a stale aftertaste, but anything was better than whisky.
At the edge of the bed, his cat Olive gave a luxurious stretch.
She padded up to him, butting against his arm with her tail held high.
At least someone would still look him in the eye after last night’s antics.
He flopped back in bed. Fucking hell… what had he been thinking?
He never got drunk. Ever. Not only for how it affected his loose-fingered grip on his magic but for how it made him feel the following day.
Something he’d clearly decided to disregard last night.
He’d wanted to think of nothing but how the whisky was slightly smokier than his preference.
Easy thoughts. Ones that wouldn’t drag him down or fill his head with hazy, half-remembered fears.
Jude pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes.
Maybe he could push his eyeballs back into his skull and summon a quick death.
At least he hadn’t vomited. Small mercies.
Stifling a whimper, he forced himself out of bed, into the bath, and finally down the stairs. The house creaked around him. The acrid smell wafting from the kitchen told him Elden was cooking.
He stopped in the doorway, scrubbing at an eye.
Elden was lying on the floor, poking at the coals lining the bottom of the cookstove and grumbling under his breath.
Even from his position in the doorway, Jude could tell the coals were too hot to make anything palatable.
His stomach churned at the charred smell emanating from the open hatch at the top.
If Elden would just let him cook, none of this would be happening.
‘Is all this truly necessary?’ Jude asked with a sigh.
Elden grunted. One hand slapped the flagstone by his hip, searching the ground. Loosening the rigid set of his legs, Jude leaned down to grab the poker and slide it into his waiting palm. Elden’s huff sounded vaguely thankful this time. An improvement.
‘I’m going to make something,’ Jude told him, pushing back to his feet before Elden could argue.
He took up the knife and a handful of carrots, chopping them into equal pieces.
Some of the tightness banding around his ribs loosened.
He liked to cook. Perhaps he’d make a stew to have later.
He moved on to the onion. At his feet, Olive wound around his ankles.
Jude dropped a piece of chicken. She hunched over it, black fur glinting amber down her spine.
‘Jude,’ Elden growled, finally freed from the stove. ‘Let me do it.’
Jude rolled an undersized parsnip under his fingers, inspecting the discolouration around the base.
He’d need to spend some time in the garden to get it ready for the colder temperatures on their way.
The women who ran Oakmoor’s market wouldn’t be pleased with a half-rotted and shrunken selection.
He pushed the parsnip aside, holding up a sprout for inspection next.
Sheena would be having words with him the next time he hauled himself down the road, of that he was certain.
Elden cleared his throat.
Jude sniffed at the burnt air. ‘What were you trying to make? Bread? Or the memory of it?’
Elden slid the knife out from between Jude’s fingers. ‘Go make yourself useful elsewhere. Leave me and my kitchen be.’
Jude didn’t have the energy to argue today.
He poked Elden’s ribs as he stepped back from the butcher’s block.
Elden flinched, his grumbling hiking up a notch.
Kitchen control had been a constant battle between them in the years since Elden had showed up.
In all fairness, the other man was better than he used to be.
Elden picked up the knife and cut a parsnip clumsily in half, barely missing his fingers in the process. The end of the parsnip rolled promptly to the floor.
Maybe Jude’s assessment had been too generous.
Rain splattered the windows lining the kitchen.
A fresh bout of nausea found a home in his stomach as he brushed aside a hanging bushel of garlic, tracking droplets as they raced down the glass.
Outside, the sky had darkened to near black.
The pane rattled with a gust of wind. A day to be indoors if he’d ever seen one.
Light fluttered at the edge of his sight. Jude blinked.
Abruptly, he remembered – the iconographer.
He dug his nail into the soft, damp wood lining the window, thinking.
She’d be here tomorrow. He needed to control the situation.
Alongside her assignment to paint him, he had no doubt she’d be reporting back to the Abbey like the dutiful acolyte she was.
His movements, his words, his house… all of it would be under her watchful eye.
He needed her to see only what he chose to reveal and nothing more.
He turned back to Elden. ‘Have you seen the keyring?’
Elden dropped the knife blade first into the chopping block and rooted in his pocket, drawing out a ring of well-worn keys. ‘Here.’
The force of the gold swirling in Jude’s vision momentarily blinded him as he reached for the keys, far too late to stop the momentum of his already moving body. As Elden’s hand accidentally brushed his, Jude’s world spun out from under him.
He sat at a scuffed wooden table, sticky with the liquor remnants.
Too loud voices echoed around him, the candlelight overly bright to his feverish mind.
He only recently had begun to feel stronger after his sickness, but not enough to leave the house willingly.
His trembling fingers jostled his half-full pint.
He wanted to leave. To be back under the open sky or tucked under a quilt on his sofa.
Anywhere but here. He’d left the limestone halls for a reason.
Even a half-day’s ride away was too close for comfort.
But he was meeting someone. Someone who promised the medicine he needed to cure the sickness that had been wracking his body for months. He needed his health back if he wanted to return to work, if he wanted to maintain his freedom.
Footsteps sounded behind him, louder than the tread of patrons who maintained a wary distance from his brooding figure.
He stilled, taking a deep breath before turning.
He didn’t know what to expect. His eyes fell on the dark hem of a cloak.
Strange, given the summer’s heat. He looked up, barely making out the curve of the stranger’s jaw—
Air came thin to his lungs as Jude fought to clear Elden’s memories from his mind. They lingered like glimmering smoke, gold-tinged and agitated. Panic turned his movements jerky as he hastily stepped back.
Did Elden realize what had just happened?
Jude met the other man’s eyes, worried what he might see. The pale blue was hazy, irises glinting almost metallic before he blinked. Elden rubbed one eye with the back of his hand. When his gaze met Jude’s, it was clear once more. ‘You all right?’
Jude took a moment to reply. Elden had never mentioned battling sickness before. He’d never seen him with so much as a running nose. And… perhaps more importantly, had Elden honestly not noticed his memories had just been invaded?
At least, it was a rare occurrence for the most part.
It had only happened twice before with Elden and once, very briefly, with the barman Sean, nothing more than a hazy memory of a bare back and rumpled sheets.
Never on purpose, and always when Jude was feeling particularly strung-out, his grip on his emotions tenuous.
It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.
For the hundredth time since leaving the Abbey, Jude wished for answers. Instead, he was left stumbling in the dark with only his unwieldy magic to guide him, tainted by the Abbey’s touch. More broken than it was whole.
‘Jude?’ Elden’s voice brought him back to the present. ‘Are you? All right?’
His brain chugged slowly into action—‘I’m fine.’
‘You’d forget your head if it weren’t attached,’ Elden said fondly.
He tried to smile as Elden returned to the sprout he’d chopped into a near-mashed state. ‘Probably.’ With that, he slunk away from the kitchen and headed towards the front hallway.
He needed to visit the library and release the poison from his blood like a leech held to his skin.
Keep the magic from ruining his carefully maintained sense of stability.
If he didn’t… well. Elden wasn’t the only one at risk of having his memories viewed without his consent.
Jude’s magic loved memory, even if his own resembled a moth-eaten sheet.
Threadbare and rendered useless with holes.
Before Elden arrived three years ago, he’d been a woodsman somewhere up north.
Whenever he spoke about his past, which wasn’t often, his words were stilted and awkward on his lips like he was dredging them from somewhere deep within.
Stories about the moors and highlands, the perils of the ever-mercurial weather, and conversations with strangers under a star-filled sky.
He painted a picture of a quiet life. A simple one.
Jude had long nursed a poisonous, tenacious worry that the reason Elden couldn’t remember much of his life before ánhaga was because Jude had stolen his memories. An accidental touch that had taken far, far more than he could control.
Elden was only a few years older than him.
Had he grown up as Jude had, with prayers and bowed heads, salt in his nose?
Jude guessed he had some connection to the Abbey – who else would’ve sent him?
It had made him suspicious initially, but the other man’s quiet patience and kindness had worn Jude down in time.
If the Abbey had sent Elden for some nefarious reason other than keeping him alive, keeping him somewhat functioning, he would’ve acted by now.
The Abbey needed him whole if they wanted to continue using him. A pig kept healthy for slaughter.
Jude shuddered.
Elden might not have been working under ulterior motives, but the iconographer—
He needed to lock the house down. There wouldn’t be a room, a single cupboard available for her to pry into that he wasn’t aware of. Especially the library. The secrets he kept there were for him, and him alone. In no world would she ever be permitted inside his library.
His study, the dining room, the drawers on the empty sideboard he’d never used. Even the broom cupboard was sealed tight, home to little more than a mouldering mop and a handful of spiders. He breathed easier with each lock click.
Rolling out his shoulders, Jude walked up the stairs to the first floor and opened the door to his library. The scent of books and magic hit him with a gust of heated wind, the subtle smokiness of a candle blown out, underpinned with a faint metallic edge that stuck to his lungs when he inhaled.
He locked the door behind him and rubbed his chest with the flat of his palm. He’d put off coming here a few weeks longer than he should have. It was painful, sometimes, going back to his knees, though Jude had never shied away from what hurt the most.
The days where he wished himself back towards devotion were the worst. He was never sure if he missed the person still haunting the rose-tinted halls or if he grieved a life already decided for him.
The urge to bow his head and pray wasn’t easily fled from.
It’d worsen once she was here. A constant reminder of everything he’d left behind, both stolen and forgotten.
He stared at the tall expanse of books, unable to dismiss the feeling he’d lifted his head in the wrong direction.
His mind wasn’t as boggy as it used to be, in his earliest days away from the Abbey.
Each day, each month and year brought more clarity, like the Abbey’s grip on him was at the end of an ever-fraying rope he still felt the tug of.
He would never lose it completely as long as they still held his magic. As long as icons still existed.
Gold flickered with growing intensity in his peripherals. The voices grew louder in his ears, shifting from hum to chant as he crossed the space towards the window, searching for one final, desperate sign of reassurance.
He found it in a small robin perched on the sill. Its reddish-orange chest was vibrant against the grey stone and even greyer sky. The robin cocked its head. Jude took a deep breath.
Then, a flutter of movement from the library behind him. A stirring as if the room drew breath; the soft pad of footsteps.
Jude whirled.
Nothing.
He rubbed his chest again. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt a presence in the library.
Like it held memories of its past occupants written into the walls.
Shaking off the feeling, he pulled a book off the shelf and knelt, arranging it open on the floor before him.
It wasn’t one of the tomes on Abbey sacraments or history left behind by whoever the house belonged to.
Instead, the pages were still blank. Snowy white and deceptively innocent for all it took from him.
He closed his eyes and placed his hands on the book.
It didn’t take long. It never did.