Chapter 25 Jude
Jude
Morning found Jude seated in his usual spot in the front room, Olive on one knee and a botany book open on the other.
He flipped through it idly. Bethan and her mother were bound to arrive in the next few weeks, as they did once a season.
Bethan was a keen forager, and Jude and Elden often helped her comb through the property for the ingredients she needed.
Winter brought hawthorn and sloe berries, wood blewit mushrooms and the occasional crab apple.
Chestnuts for roasting and nettles for tea.
With any luck, she would bring a batch of gin from last year’s sloe harvest. She knew it was his favourite.
He let his eyes drift back to the window. A writhing headache pulsed behind his eyes. He tried to ignore it. What it meant.
In the distance, Maeve picked her way through the fields bordering the northern wall. Her fair hair hung loose and gleaming down her back, stark against the blackness of the greatcoat.
His greatcoat.
His fingers twitched in his lap. He could still feel the liquid smoothness of her hair, softer than anything he’d ever felt.
Shining like spun gold in the candlelight.
He leaned closer to the window as she tilted her head back to face the drizzling rain.
He could see the edge of her smile, even separated by walls and windows. His stomach clenched.
Tender, unwelcome emotions. Lingering where they shouldn’t.
He turned back to his book, finding it harder than usual to focus.
Praying to the icon had to work, not just to regain his memories, but to erase the strange miasma its presence had settled over him.
The incessant headache that had cropped up when Maeve had begun painting hadn’t yet abated.
His memories felt like colours leaching from a late-winter sky. Growing less and less vivid by the day.
He’d sneaked away to his library each morning to hide his memories in his books, though his magic had felt sluggish to come to the surface, reluctant to answer his call.
It was more of a protective measure than anything else – Jude’s magic hadn’t had the same uncontrollable energy it usually did, writhing under his skin like a hungry beast. It hadn’t in a while.
Not since he had jumped into Maeve’s memories after the bog, now that he thought of it.
Something in him was changing, though he wasn’t yet sure if it was down to his new icon or the iconographer lurking in every long-forgotten corner of his soul. Both, maybe. Most likely.
He tried to control the roll of nausea in his belly. The gnawing ache of fear.
His icon was almost finished. When Maeve asked him to pray to it, he’d have to go back to that dark place of devotion he’d tried so hard to move on from.
As much as he wanted to regain his memories and free himself from every last tie binding him to the Abbey, he was afraid of what the memories of his childhood might show.
A time characterized not by care and laughter but by blood and steel and salt.
He knew enough by now to call it by its true name.
Abuse.
His abuser’s face may have been wiped from his memory, but his body still bore the scars.
Glancing at the window to ensure Maeve was still out on her walk, he carefully pushed back the sleeves of his jumper to bare his forearms. He kept them covered even on the hottest days of summer.
The slender inked lines and crudely formed symbols were starkly black in the pale morning light.
It would be the same if he lifted his shirt and looked at his stomach and thighs.
Down the insides of his arms and from hip to hip were neatly ordered lines inked for passing weeks.
Under his collarbone bore the sainthood symbol.
BELONGING marred the hollow of his right hip below the tallies.
Small symbols for loyalty, piety, commitment, and devotion were scattered over his arms, legs, and stomach.
The largest was at the centre of his chest, a half-circle with three lines fanning from the top. The Abbey’s sigil.
A reminder of everything lost and everything taken from him. Tattoos he’d driven into his skin during his weakest moments when he believed he’d deserved the torment he’d endured at the Abbey.
Though his memories were distorted and vague, the rot had long sunk into his marrow. He remembered punishment. Coercion. Venomous words in his ears and words carved into his skin. The hot sting of the knife. The grip of a fist in his once-long hair.
He’d been told to keep the blood and his scars hidden.
What would the other acolytes think if they saw?
They’d believe he deserved it – a weak, cowardly boy punished for his failings.
It had taken Jude a long time to fight the voice that told him his behaviour did warrant the abuse.
To realize he had been a child, and no child deserved to be harmed by someone meant to protect them, even if he couldn’t remember who that person was who had made it their mission to turn his upbringing into a living nightmare.
Now, when he felt the urge to reach for ink and needle, he turned to his books, instead. It was a dreadful practice, maybe – viewing one’s pain play out in live action – but it was therapeutic all the same. Jude didn’t deserve the abuse. Nor did he deserve to be continually punished for it.
He saw that now.
It had been almost a year since he last pushed the ink into his skin.
His heart thrummed frantic behind his ribs as he saw Maeve turn and start to make her way back to the house.
Animal quick, urging him to run. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel taking on the role of acolyte once more.
It had been almost a decade since he last prayed, longer yet since he believed.
He may have been marked a saint in the eyes of the Abbey, but that didn’t make him holy.
What would his icon show – a saint or a heretic?