Chapter 46 Maeve
Maeve
Maeve thought she knew her way around the Abbey, but the room Brigid had pointed her towards was entirely unfamiliar.
She tried to quell the nervous shake in her legs as she looked around.
The narrow space smelled of neglect and seawater and was filled from end to end with piles of forgotten items. Why had Brigid wanted her to come here?
Her panting breath cut the silence as she crossed the room to where two frames were stacked near the windows. The only paintings she could see amidst the stacks of stools and hampers of crumpled bed linens, a sideboard topped with teetering plates and a low bench covered in a white sheet.
She knelt before them, willing her racing heart to slow.
The wood of the larger one was chipped and aged, paper backing spotted with mould. Her hands shook as she reached for the closest painting and turned it over.
A boy – a young one, too. Perhaps seven or eight.
Very, very young to be a saint.
He stared back with a reckless gleam in his bright blue eyes.
Something about him looked familiar, but Maeve couldn’t place it.
The shade of his eyes, maybe, or his sandy curls.
Flakes of paint were missing from the gilded halo behind his head.
She’d never seen an icon show any kind of age; even the oldest paintings in the basilica were pristine.
An illegible signature marred the left corner of the painting; the boy saint was just as anonymous.
Did Brigid know him? Was that why she wanted his icon burned?
Maeve’s throat convulsed, fear gripping her before she forced it back, reaching for the next icon. Its frame was made of rough-hewn wood, the paper backing newer and mould-free. She flipped it over.
For a heartbeat, she could only gape.
Her face stared back at her.
She gently touched the tip of her forefinger to a peak of dusty grey paint in the corner, rubbing it between her fingers. Still wet. The icon was recently finished. No wonder she’d been feeling so awful.
It was odd. She’d expected to feel connected to her icon somehow. She’d seen Jude’s expression when he’d sat before his finished icon: the awe, the slack-jawed wonder as his gaze had moved from his icon to her – his iconographer.
All Maeve felt was emptiness. And, if she was being entirely honest, a little offended.
She wouldn’t have spared it a second glance if she’d seen the icon in the basilica. It was just so startlingly average. Amateurish, even in style. The blending between colours was just – she wasn’t impressed. Had Brigid refused to paint it, and they’d used an apprentice instead?
She studied the flatness of her hair, hanging in a single braid over her left shoulder. The end of the braid was smooth besides one single strand, a bright slash of near-white against the dark blue of her dress. Everything else about the painting was monotonous, as uninspired as a tracing.
So why was the single hair out of place?
Her nose was a little off, her mouth thinner in the painting than in reality, but they’d got the darkness of her eyes and the point of her chin correct. Whoever had described her face had known her well.
She stilled, fingers still hovering over the icon.
Ezra was the only one who knew her well enough to describe her face so accurately. Even taking the iconographer’s magic into account… especially for apprentices, the description needed to be accurate. Who else would it have been but Ezra?
The realization sank like iron in her stomach as her gaze returned unwillingly to that damned stray hair. She wanted it gone.
Slowly, Maeve stuck her hand in the pocket of her habit, fingers closing around the slender box of matches.
She’d taken them from the piety shop she’d stolen the habit from, desperate for anything that could help her start a fire.
Before she’d left the inn, she’d pawed through Elden’s bag that Jude had brought up, finding only the books he’d shown her.
No fire materials. No fuel, no matches, no wood.
Only books. Gardening books. Somehow the sight of all those books on urging up plants from the tough winter soil was as much a stab in the back than the fact he’d sabotaged them in the first place.
She slid open the box of altar matches. There were only eight. Eight chances to burn the icons.
Maeve picked one up, hesitating. Should she use one now? She wanted her icon gone… but was it worth an entire match? There weren’t any candles or lit sconces in the storage room, but there would hopefully be some in the basilica she could grab – if the guards didn’t stop her first.
A candle wouldn’t be much hope on the higher-up icons on the wall, would it?
But neither would the matches.
She ran her thumb over the tip of the match. Fear tightened her chest. Her eyes locked with their painted replicas. That fucking stray hair—
The sharp smell of phosphorous filled the air as the match struck. She raised it to the boy’s icon first, but as soon as the flame touched the canvas, it extinguished, leaving nothing more than a singed hole in the painting.
‘No,’ Maeve gasped. ‘No.’ She picked up another match, barely pausing to think before she struck it.
She had to burn the icons. She would find other matches, candles, maybe, or fuel somehow, but these icons needed to go first. She had to succeed at something if she was going to believe she could burn the entire Abbey.
This time, it caught.
She burned the icon of the boy first, then drew the lit match to her own visage.
Her vision grew quickly hazy, prickling against the malleable recess of her mind.
She expected to have a reaction like Jude when she’d burned his icon, to pass out or hallucinate, but instead, there was a vivid flash of gold light, a sharp burst of pain behind her eyes, and then – nothing.
But something was different. Her mind felt refined, like copper after the fire, and her magic felt… accessible, as if she could have reached out a hand to grab it.
And her memories—
The pressure in her skull was consuming, pulsing, sending a wave of pain across her forehead.
She gasped, cradling her head in her hands, and tried to fight back the volume of the memories calling for her attention.
Amidst the torrent of the past few days – crossing the bitterly cold moors, Caleb’s cottage, Elden’s terror-white face at the doors of the church – deeper memories surged to the forefront.
A flash of gold like the sun. A drop of blood like paint.
A groan slipped past her clenched teeth. With a concerted effort, she managed to wrench the memories back, staggering to her feet in the process.
Burning the icons worked – the memories pounding fists against the back of her mind were proof enough. But she couldn’t let them consume her. Not yet. Not until she found Jude.
Smoke from the still-burning icons was ripe in the air as she made for the door.
She would crawl through the Abbey if she had to, bloodied and exhausted.
Anything to find him. Anything to save him.
She burst from the storage room and froze, her back against the doorframe.
Her nails bit into her palms as her gaze locked on a door directly in front of her.
With a quiet snick, it clicked open.
Maeve cast around desperately for somewhere to hide, shoving herself into a nearby alcove behind a marble statue of a woman, praying the darkness was enough to hide her.
A figure emerged from the double doors. Brown habit, iron-grey hair—
Ezra. She bit her cheek so hard blood filled her mouth. She wasn’t ready to see him. Wasn’t ready to explain what she was doing here. He had lied to her. Constantly and without remorse. He was complicit in the Abbey’s treatment of Jude. Of her.
Ezra closed the doors behind him and turned. Light from his upheld candle cast the beaded seams of his chasuble milky white, the hundreds of gems hoarding the light. An invitation for the fire to eat away at it until all that remained was a tattered hem.
Maeve pressed tighter into the alcove, too frightened even to breathe.
He paused, running his fingers over something hanging from his neck before pushing his hair back from his face.
A sheen of sweat on his forehead caught the meagre candlelight.
Her gaze dropped downwards, past the reddish stains on his habit to the slim silver locket bouncing on his chest. Two more hung beside it.
Maeve choked back a gasp at the sight of the relics. Three of them – was one of them hers? Disgust welled up in her throat. Deep in her belly, fear gnashed its teeth. Gold flickered in her peripherals.
Ezra looked up. His pale-eyed gaze scoured the hall, sweeping over the alcove Maeve hid inside. His chin lifted as he sniffed the air. She clenched her hands into fists as he moved towards her, gaze fixed on the open door to the storage room on her right.
If he went in there, if he saw the burned icons… Maeve had no doubt he’d know she was here, and what they were planning on doing. But if she tried to stop him, he’d find her even faster.
She had no choice but to let him discover the icons and run while he was preoccupied.
She clenched her eyes shut as he passed, turning her face towards the wall. The door to the storage room clicked shut behind him.
She had minutes, if that.
As quietly as she could, Maeve slipped from the alcove and headed towards the door he’d just left.
The faint sounds of singing came from the basilica, yet somehow, she knew Jude wouldn’t be there yet.
If they wanted to use him for the Call of the Sun, they would hide him away until the final moment to create the biggest impact on the already fevered crowd.
Her hand froze on the handle for one, painful heartbeat. The reddish stains on Ezra’s habit… those had been blood, hadn’t they? And the relics he wore around his neck…
Had he just come from Jude? Was Ezra responsible for his capture?
She pushed the question down with all the others, letting them fester in her stomach, fuelling her as she pushed open the door. What was one more treachery amidst the wreckage of her entire life?
The door opened to a narrow hall broken up by slender, salt-stained windows.
She plucked a lit candle from one of the sconces and used it to light her way.
At the end of the corridor was a single doorway which, from her memory of the Abbey’s layout, led to the largest classroom in the western wing.
She hadn’t been there in years but remembered a vast space of stone and glittering windows, acolytes’ voices echoing off the arched ceilings above.
The handle spun easily, the door shoving forward into a darkened room. The candle did little to penetrate the thick blackness. The air filling her mouth tasted of salt, underwritten with something sweet and metallic. She swallowed down an acidic rush of nausea.
Something wasn’t right. She knew it in her bones.
Maeve turned, braid whipping against her face. The sound of her shoes and the sharp inhale of her breath lit the space. She skidded to a stop in front of the door.
It had shut behind her.
She set her candle by her feet and ran her hands around the edge of the doorframe, searching for the handle. Her testing fingers met a gouged chunk of wood, the sharp sting of disfigured metal.
The door handle was missing, locking the door after it shut.
She knelt to examine the pale glint of naked wood at the base of the door. Thick scratches were scored deep into the door, evenly spaced in five long lines. The shape was familiar…
She raised her hand, fitting her fingers into the shape of the marks.
Human.
Fear sank its teeth in. The scratches continued up the edge in deep, painful gouges, like whoever had made them was willing to sacrifice life and limb if the door would just open.
Candlelight caught an iridescent gleam. The wood around the upper left corner was chipped, the point missing.
Embedded between the grain was a ragged half-moon, transparent and delicate, the edge dark with crusted red.
Maeve covered her mouth.
A fingernail.
She needed to get out.
Rising to her feet, Maeve turned back to the blackened expanse of the room.
The cavernous space was an unknown, but it was better than the door.
Anything was better than the door. She rushed forward, cupping one hand over the candle.
Heat singed her palm. Her footsteps echoed through the expansive space like a heartbeat.
Something skidded to her left.
She stopped.
Her lungs burned. ‘Jude?’ she called, voice thready and weak.
The silence pulsed in reply. She raised her candle to shine towards where she’d heard the noise, half-convinced her terrified brain had imagined it. But, no—
There it was again. A light scraping, like fabric against stone.
Maeve edged forward. Inky blackness parted around her. Through the shadow, she made out the shape of something crumpled. Candlelight caught on a pale curve.
An arm. She was looking at an arm.
‘Oh—’ she gasped.
With a groan, the mass rolled over.
At first, all she could make out was the livid red of fresh blood streaming from his nose to coat the lower half of his face. Dark hair and angular features, distorted in pain. His eyes, staring blankly towards her, not a hint of recognition on his face.
The picture completed with a series of sickening snaps deep in Maeve’s skull.
Jude.