Chapter 11 Jude
Jude
Candlelight cast long shadows over Jude’s desk late the following day. Each score across the wood stood out in sharp relief. Crude etchings, mostly of what he saw from his window. Apples and blackbirds and falling leaves.
Jude smoothed his hand over the crisp white envelope before turning it over.
It was different than the letter he’d stolen from the iconographer’s bag, the one he’d yet to find the courage to open.
It had taken him nearly a day to work up the nerve to open this one as it was.
The paper was thicker, the edges neatly creased.
Ezra was written on the front above the address.
No surname, no craft delineation. Just a name.
Most likely her mentor, as he’d told Elden. An Abbey elder.
Abbey members abandoned their surnames when they entered as children. Jude didn’t remember what his had been, let alone anything about his parents or childhood before the Abbey. He might as well have been born there for all he could recall, carved from the walls themselves.
If Maeve had been writing to a fellow acolyte, their craft would have been written below their name.
If anyone had thought to write to him during his years at the Abbey, it would’ve arrived labelled Jude – illuminations, to mark his years learning the craft of embellishing manuscripts.
A title that had been stripped from him the second he was shunted from their fold.
Unlike the letter he’d stolen from her bag, he didn’t hesitate to pull this one free of its envelope.
She’d written it – written about him. He had every right to look. He lined the bottom edge up neatly with the edge of his desk. He would read what she reported and decide where to go from there. Nothing rash. Nothing without thought.
Nodding to himself, Jude focused on the page and began to read.
Ezra,
I hope you’re doing well and the preparations for the winter intercession have not been too tiresome. I dearly hope to be home for it, especially if you are leading some of the hymns this year.
Jude rolled his eyes. She might as well get down and lick his boots herself at this rate.
Despite the rain, the journey went smoothly. I’ve started on the preliminary sketch for Jude’s icon and hope to begin the underpainting next week. He’s not been the easiest to work with so far, but I am confident I will have his icon ready for you before the end of the year.
In regards to my other task—
Jude is very isolated and appears markedly lonely, with little contact with life outside his home.
The house contains no icons, no Abbey sigils or symbols, and no obvious signs of his ability.
The housekeeper, a man called Elden, seems to remember little from his time before Jude, outside of a few years spent as a woodsman, though I am sure he is purposefully concealing things from me.
I will do my best to find and relay more information on him and Jude.
While Jude’s daily routine holds little variety, he frequently disappears to a room he always keeps locked.
I’m curious to discover what lies inside, as I fear it may be important.
I aim to discover what’s inside it before my following report – hopefully, it holds answers to how he’s corrupting his magic.
The paper creased with the force of his grip.
The magic Jude corrupted? Was that what they’d told her?
That he had been the one to taint his abilities?
Not the Abbey with their greedy fingers, their poisonous touch?
Fury pulsed in his chest at the blatant lie.
Somehow, they kept finding new and creative ways to surprise him.
He blew out a slow breath, forcing himself to keep reading. His eyes skimmed down the page. Her handwriting abruptly changed from even, albeit messy, penmanship to an outright scrawl. Ink splatters marred the page.
Jude shows a remarkable lack of respect towards the Abbey and the saints’ glorious magic, bordering on outright hatred. I’m more convinced than ever that he’s hiding something. I will report back within the week.
By the saints—
Maeve
Well.
Jude leaned back in his chair. So, his suspicions were correct. She was a spy, after all. He shouldn’t be surprised. Of course, her presence here would serve a dual purpose.
Iconographers were fundamental to the Abbey, perhaps even more so than just as artists.
They would never force one away unless they were desperate…
and they must really be desperate to have an updated icon of him to choose Maeve, of all people.
At her age, she would’ve completed all her training to be a fully fledged iconographer, and the Abbey didn’t have many of those. To send one all the way out here…
But why now? Had something changed to renew their interest in him?
His eyes returned to the page.
Jude is very isolated and appears markedly lonely.
He pushed to his feet and paced from one end of the room to the other.
His lungs felt tight, his throat constricted.
He yanked the collar of his jumper roughly to the side and peered down at the tattoo just below his left collarbone, tucked into the soft hollow where his shoulder met his chest. A vertical line bisected by three horizontal.
SAINT.
His first tattoo and the only one he hadn’t inked himself.
The memory of its inking was another that refused to leave. The hands holding him down, the burning pain. The praying and chanting and fevered voices—
Jude traced the symbol with shaking fingers and resisted the urge to get the supplies to push it deeper into his skin.
If he was lonely and isolated, it was because they made him so. If he was bitter, it was their doing.
Instead, he reached beneath the lip of his desk for the tin box he kept wedged there, full of cigarettes he stole from Elden, the dried plant inside one he grew in their greenhouse.
The flame from his match sent wavering pools of gold into the furthest reaches of his vision.
He’d smoked regular cigarettes before, in a previous life where filching them from townspeople was the height of rebellion.
Elden’s didn’t taste as he remembered, nor did the swirling wave he had come to associate with the herbal taste lend itself to tobacco or clove.
The pressure under his skin slowly receded, just as he had hoped.
Once his mind settled, he would confront her. He needed to approach her carefully, and a repeat of the heated argument in his former bedroom was the furthest thing from careful.
Jude tipped his head back and exhaled a stream of smoke into the air.
Ideas swirled and dipped on a gust of wind. He took another drag and thought of a bird as it plummeted towards earth, safe in the confidence of its wings.
He set the cigarette on the tin’s lid.
It had done its job – he was ready to open the second letter.
Maeve hadn’t noticed he had stolen the letter from her bag. It had been tucked into a pocket along the side, the buckle stiff with disuse. Maybe she hadn’t even known it was there at all, secreted away for her to find on her arrival.
Pity, Jude thought as he laid it atop her letter to Ezra. It was his now.
Only her name was written across the front, no craft. The envelope was crinkled and water-stained but still sealed with the Abbey’s sigil of hands cupped around a sun.
He wanted to open it – badly.
But something stopped him. Not quite the jaded sense of morality that still lived inside him, but close. A recognition that the letter wasn’t for him to read, at least not yet. The one he’d stolen from the mailbox had been about him. He’d been right to open it. But this one…
Discomfort tightened his chest. It crawled up his throat and lingered heavy on his tongue. The smoke swirling in his thoughts made cutting through the chaff easier than normal, erasing the ever-present edge of anxiety that hounded him like a hungry dog.
Had he reached the point where he wanted to take a step he couldn’t draw back from?
He wasn’t sure. Not yet, at least.
He wasn’t regretful he had taken the letter, but equally, he wasn’t ready to open it. Not while he still had his own questions. Questions around her craft, around her beliefs, her reliance on prayer.
The smallest embers of hope stirred freshly in his chest.
If he could discover how the elders accessed the magic within the icons, he would be one step closer to breaking the link. He wouldn’t need to protect his mind or his memories, wouldn’t have to live in fear of losing control. His life would be his own.
Perhaps the iconographer had the answers.
In the edge of his vision, his reflection wavered.
Jude spun slowly to look himself in the eye. For a moment, the candlelight formed a corona around his head. A golden halo of light, marking him as something holy. A vision he only saw when he let himself smoke. He could never decide if he loved it or hated it.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Was that how she’d paint him if she had the chance? Would she pick up her brushes and show him not as he was, a ghost of a man who trod too lightly to leave footprints behind, but as a saint? She was sure to be talented. All Abbey iconographers were.
It would be a masterful rendition, even if it was blasphemous.
He wanted to pick her apart. Parse through the shroud of devotion and misplaced faith until he discovered what she knew.
Was she aware of the power she held when she put brush to canvas? Was there something purposeful she did when she painted that linked the saint’s magic to their icon, some process he could disrupt that would free his magic from the Abbey’s hold?
If the Abbey had an icon of a saint, they could access their magic. In return, the saint would lose their memories, draining them like water from a well. The iconographer had a part to play in it; so did prayer. What it was, he wasn’t yet sure.
Jude drifted his fingers through the candle’s flame as the smoke fogged his mind.
His magic flew restlessly under his skin, searching for an outlet. He hadn’t visited the library for more than solace since Maeve’s arrival. He should, he needed to, but the idea of allowing himself that kind of vulnerability while she was mere walls away was unfathomable.
Light flashed behind his closed lids. If he accidentally touched Elden now, his magic would eat into his memories with a voracity Jude couldn’t control.
Corruption of his holy magic, indeed.
If only Maeve knew the truth – he wasn’t the one doing the corrupting.
He scrubbed his eyes, loosening a groan. He couldn’t move smoothly until he dealt with her.
First, he needed to destabilize her foundation.
The idea made him feel strangely guilty – he didn’t like having to poke and prod at her beliefs.
But she wouldn’t help him look for answers if she was still confident in the Abbey, in what she’d been taught.
Jude needed to be certain of the solidness of her beliefs before he sought to shake them.
He rose to his feet, extinguishing the cigarette on the tin lid.
He could give her a few choice bits of information if it would help him discover if she knew anything about the link between her craft and prayers, her paintings and magic.
As long as the Abbey didn’t catch wind of his library, of how he’d learned to store his memories somewhere they couldn’t be reached, he would be safe.
Nothing, nothing was more important than getting her out of his house.
Whatever it took.