Chapter 8 Now
8
Now
A deep red stain appears on my nightgown between my legs, and when I stand, I discover its gory twin on my mattress. I don’t have time to wonder at the horror of it before my insides contract so forcefully that I fall to my knees, fingers grabbing hold of the sheets to keep myself from spilling onto the floor completely. A raw metallic scent confirms what I already know.
This is blood.
With the understanding formed into a coherent thought, it’s harder to breathe. Am I dying? I groan as a terrified hand wanders between my legs to find a slick, warm wetness. My fingers return a deep maroon, the dark hue indicating that the blood is old. I’ve been bleeding, and for a while.
A current of panic surges through my limbs . I need help. I stumble to my feet and reach for the bedroom door, pushing aside the chair that blocks it. When I finally fling it open, Margery already stands at the threshold. She nearly drops the tray of gruel she’s prepared me, her eyes flooding with concern when she reads my expression.
“Lady Thelia! What’s happened? Are you all right?” She pushes past me into the room to deposit my breakfast and notices the sanguine spot on the mattress’s center. It looks like the bed’s been gutted. I haven’t moved, still frozen in place with my soiled hand in the air, unable to find the right words to express my terror.
She chuckles knowingly, her right hand moving to rest upon her heart. “Oh, my lady! It’s only Eve’s curse! You frightened me!” I watch wordlessly as she opens a chest at the far side of the room to retrieve a new mattress shell. “I’ll fetch you a rag.”
Eve’s curse? I don’t understand the phrase’s meaning, though I remember Eve from yesterday’s Bible study. But Cora never referred to Eve and Adam’s exile as a curse—was there more to the story? Was banishment from Eden not punishment enough? No, of course not. Expulsion is hardly a creative penalty to a god. Better to dress it up with feathers and talons, or in this case, blood.
Margery strips the soiled sheets from my bed, and her calm allows another, less alarming thought to surface: Am I flowering? I hadn’t yet before my transformation, and after, there was no reason for it. Hybrids can’t bear children, and although Pisinoe and Raidne bled before our mutation, they lost their menses when they gained their wings. My jaw drops, and I turn from Margery to try to hide my disbelief. She takes this as a display of modesty and laughs.
“No need to be embarrassed, Lady Thelia. It’s quite natural.”
But not for me, I want to scream. Instead, I stumble to the tray and take a large gulp of cider. The fermented drink slides down my throat, and for the first time since I woke, my heart finally begins to slow.
Does this mean I can conceive?
My chest tightens. When we were young, Proserpina and I often dreamed of being mothers. We would carry dolls lovingly in our arms, swaddling and cradling them, cooing gentle songs into their unhearing ears. A visiting oracle predicted that she would bear two children. When I asked how many I’d have, the old woman only smiled sadly. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but once we were banished to Scopuli, I realized she didn’t want to be the one to tell me what my future held.
After that, I ceased to dream of children.
“Of course,” I stammer through trembling lips, forcing away the thought. “It just caught me by surprise. It’s early.”
Margery nods knowingly as she picks up the sullied linens. “I’ll be right back with a rag, my lady.” Her eyes find the red between my legs. “And perhaps a bath for good measure. Though we’ll have to be quick about it. We don’t want to be late.”
“For what?” I ask, but Margery, consumed by the task at hand, is already gone.
Everyone files into the meeting hall. The jovial atmosphere that filled the space earlier this week is gone, replaced with an air of severity. The tables have been pushed to the walls, and their benches are aligned in several rows before the elevated platform at the back of the hall. People crisscross one another to slide into specific spots as if they’ve been assigned. Thomas and Mistress Bailie head to the first row, where she claims her place at the end of the pew. I follow, leaving an empty space between Thomas and me. He moves to fill the gap, but before he can, Cora slides into it. My skin flushes at the sight of her, but she’s not here for me. Thomas resigns himself to his current spot, but he still folds his arms across his chest in a display of irritation. Mistress Bailie watches the scene play out, but her face is like carved stone—it’s completely unreadable, betraying no emotions. I almost envy her ability to hide her thoughts beneath such a placid exterior; I seem incapable of it.
“That’s Master Sampson,” Cora whispers, nodding toward the older man who arranges himself behind the pulpit. His sharp eyes cut to her, and he clears his throat dramatically. The hrgn-hrgn-hrgn snaps Cora’s attention back to the front of the room as a flush crawls up her neck. I look over my shoulder and find everyone else’s attention is locked on him as well.
He leads the villagers through a morning prayer, and then more than one hundred voices speak “Amen” in unison. It’s an unsettling sound that makes me rock forward in my seat, but Cora reaches for my leg to steady me. Her hand is hot on my thigh. Its warmth permeates all the suffocating layers of clothing and sears into my flesh. It makes my breath quicken, my heart pound.
Why does this friendly gesture cause a ball of anticipation to form in my root? The last time someone’s touch made me feel like this was with Proserpina. I can almost see the delicate outline of her jaw that I once kissed, the gentle curve of her shoulder where I rested my head. I bite my lip, my gaze wandering to Cora’s hand. Her fingers are so slender and elegant, with trimmed and clean nails like bows atop a present. My mind wanders to things I suspect Master Sampson considers blasphemous.
What would the tips of those fingers feel like brushing against my lips? What would they taste like?
I have to hold myself tightly to keep from trembling at the thought, and then her hand is gone, back in her own lap. The place where it rested burns cold in its absence, as if it was never whole without her touch. I am left wanting in a way I can’t begin to put into words.
The service passes by in a blur of ritual and sacrament that means little to me, except for the part where a giggling child is called to sit in a chair before the entire congregation as a form of punishment.
I know how it feels, to be a girl punished before a crowd. As soon as Master Sampson snaps his Bible shut, she’s the first to dart from the meetinghouse. My heart aches for her, but at least she was allowed to leave on her own two feet. She wasn’t dragged away, strong hands clamping down like shackles on her wrists.
“The Chapmans are always causing trouble,” Mistress Bailie remarks self-righteously. “If it’s not John making a drunken scene, it’s one of their brood interrupting services. Despicable.”
Outside, the little girl has found comfort in Alis’s arms. Alis looks exhausted, but still she rocks her daughter gently, a dejected but loving expression settled across her face. I can’t help but watch them like that, mother and daughter finding comfort in each other. I’m so transfixed that I don’t notice Will appear beside us.
“I miss having you sit with me,” he says to Cora, his breath forming a small cloud in the cold air as he speaks. “Church is certainly less entertaining without you.”
“You know I have to sit with my betrothed now,” Cora says, exasperation filling her voice. Even after our talk last night, I wonder if she truly must sit with Thomas or if she insisted on it because of me.
As if summoned by my thoughts, Thomas breaks into our huddle, sliding an arm around Cora’s waist. She beams at his touch, and resentment stirs inside my stomach. Even if her exuberance is only a show to endear herself to him, it still makes me feel things I didn’t expect: possessiveness, jealousy. A darkness flickers across Will’s face as well, but he quickly masks it beneath a smile.
I’m reminded of the same reaction he had at my welcome feast. I thought his displeasure was directed at me, but what ill will could he hold against his sister? Unless…
“Care to join us for a walk, Lady Thelia?” Wenefrid’s voice materializes from behind me, and I turn to find the older woman with Emme in tow. Thomas snorts, and Emme’s expression darkens. Wenefrid acts as though she didn’t hear it, but the slight twitch of her hand at her side reveals that she did.
“Mistress Powell, don’t be sil—” Agnes begins, no doubt intending to chide her about how such an activity is below my rank. But the thought of returning home with them, with Cora as she watches Thomas with that glowing expression, makes my stomach twist.
“I’d love nothing more,” I interrupt, and though Cora opens her mouth in surprise, I link an arm into Emme’s. “Shall we?”
Wenefrid leads us both to the eastern gate. “Fun little secret for you, my lady.” The older woman’s eyes twinkle as she tilts her head up toward the empty post on the palisade. “The guards usually take their time returning to their posts after services.”
“Where are we going?”
“Into the woods,” Emme answers. “Wenefrid’s teaching me how to make bayberry candles.”
Wenefrid clicks her tongue, her features growing dark as she peers into the future that winter threatens. “The way we’re burning through livestock, there soon won’t be any tallow left.”
“Maybe if Sybil Browne would lift her curse from the traps…”
How strange memory is, that a name’s enough to transport you to a different time and place. I’m suddenly curled up at Raidne’s feet, flanked by Pisinoe and Proserpina. Raidne’s perched on an old rocking chair in Proserpina’s palatial room, a large book spread across her legs. It contains the story of Aeneas, and his desire to find his father in the Underworld. In order to reach him, he needed guidance from the Cumaean Sibyl, the only person capable of straddling the lines between the living and the dead.
Trojan, Anchises’s son, the descent of Avernus is easy.
All night long, all day, the dark door of Dis stands open…
But that’s where the story was wrong. We stalked the shores of Lake Avernus for months looking for Proserpina, watching as entire flocks of birds fell dead from the sky into its waters, but Dis’s dark gates never opened for us.
Wenefrid turns on Emme with an admirable fierceness for such an old frame; it takes the younger woman by surprise, but not me. I’m well aware of how far anger can carry an aging body. “Be careful how you speak about other women, Emme. With Sybil cast out, they’ll soon need a new person to pin all our misfortune on.”
Emme swallows hard, scarlet rising to her cheeks. “You’re right, Winny. I’m sorry.”
“Who’s Sybil?”
“She’s a skilled healer,” Wenefrid says. “One this pitiful city desperately needs. Her expansive knowledge of medicinal plants is why she was recruited to come here in the first place.”
“So where is she?”
Emme sighs. “A few days after we first landed, a scouting party reported that they’d seen natives circling the fort. The men on watch fired shots into the trees but found no bodies. But Mistress Bailie noticed Sybil slipping out of the fort at odd hours and had her followed. She’d found an injured Croatoan man and was nursing him back to health.”
My brows furrow. Did I hear her wrong? “They punished her for helping someone in need?”
“Our laws forbid us from bartering with the natives without explicit approval from the Council. Mistress Bailie said the supplies Sybil used to treat him were equivalent to theft from the colony, and that by healing him, she’d traded those goods without permission. It’s absurd, of course. Everyone knew Mistress Bailie and Sybil didn’t get along. But both theft andbartering are offenses punishable by death. Agnes convinced the Council it was a mercy to simply exile her from the city.”
“That way, if someone is truly sick, they can still beg Sibyl for help.” Wenefrid’s features are pinched with disgust, and she waves a hand in the air to brush the conversation away.
A large, dense shrub appears before us, and we follow Wenefrid’s lead to separate its tiny blue fruits from its serrated leaves until our skirts are filled with them. The process is tedious but far from over. Next, we return to her cottage and boil the berries to coax their waxy finish from the flesh beneath. The concoction is then strained through a cheesecloth to separate the fruit from the liquid. As it cools, a light olive-green wax floats to the top, where it hardens, finally ready for collection. It smells of pine and winter.
“We were friends,” Wenefrid admits as she dips a wick into the remelted wax. “But I still let them chase her out into the woods.”
“Sybil?” I ask softly.
She nods. “Some days, I wish I’d left with her. Now it’s been so long, and I never tried to visit…I was too afraid to find her when she needed me, and I’m still too afraid to go to her now.”
The admission stokes the embers of my own guilt. Although the novelty of being here allows me to temporarily forget, regret has been my most intimate companion over the course of my long life.
“If no one would punish you for it, would you go to her?”
“Of course,” she answers sadly. “But how could such a thing be possible?”
A knock on the door interrupts us. Emme opens it and a weathered Elizabeth draws inside, Ambrose crying in her arms.
“Sorry to bother you,” Elizabeth says, her voice cracking.
“You’re no bother, child. What’s the trouble?”
“It’s my goat again.” Ambrose squirms, and Elizabeth shifts him to her other hip. “I can’t get any milk from her…”
The child in her arms sobs harder, and Elizabeth coos into the top of his head. When she looks back to Wenefrid, I notice that dark circles ring the young mother’s eyes. “Can you try? You’re always able to coax something out of her, and he’s starving.”
“Come, I’ll show you my technique,” Wenefrid says, pushing herself to her feet. “Lady Thelia, can you take him?”
I balk, hands rising to my chest. “Oh, I don’t think that’s—”
But Elizabeth is already handing Ambrose to me. The moment she releases him, the boy unleashes an ear-piercing scream.
Emme moves to follow them.
“Wait—” I start, but Wenefrid turns to me with a warm smile.
“We’ll only be a minute. Just bounce him gently.”
Before I can speak another word of protest, the three women are gone.
I didn’t think it possible for the boy to cry louder, but he loses his grip on reality the second his mother vanishes from sight. I pull him closer to my chest and do my best impression of Elizabeth’s coos, bouncing him gently in my arms. His hair is soft beneath my fingertips, little copper curls that catch the muted light that filters in through the slats in the window shutters.
There’s only one way I know to soothe him. I sing—a quieter melody than I’m used to, almost a whisper, that promises to tell him his future glories if he can quiet himself long enough to hear them. I don’t expect much without the curse’s magic, but Ambrose reminds me that my voice is beautiful without it. The little boy’s wails dwindle into hitching sobs, which eventually soften into the occasional whimper. When he rests his head against my shoulder, I know I’ve won. Exhausted by the tantrum, he lets his thumb find its way into his mouth. It takes only minutes before the child is asleep.
I keep swaying and humming, and my eyes fall closed as well. A strange sensation settles over me—an expansive feeling in my chest that’s hard to put words to, and so I don’t try. Instead, I marvel at the little body so warm against mine, so breakable. At what age does evil sink its teeth into a boy? Because the sleeping child in my arms seems shockingly innocent.
“Oh!” Elizabeth makes a surprised sound, and my eyes snap open to find her and Wenefrid smiling in the doorway. When she speaks again, her voice is much softer. “I’ve been trying to calm him for the past hour but haven’t been able to.”
To my dismay, my arms are reluctant to return him. Why do I suddenly feel so exposed? “He must have just tired himself out.”
Elizabeth’s blue eyes twinkle as she pulls Ambrose in close. “You’re good with him.”
“I should be heading back to the Bailies’.” I brush out my skirts, suddenly eager to put time and distance between myself and this moment.
“I’ll walk with you,” Elizabeth says, and after bidding Wenefrid goodbye, we both return to the streets.
Mistress Bailie is seated at the head of the table with Thomas to her left. A large roasted bird that’s already been carved rests before them, and their plates are piled with its meat.
“There you are, my lady,” Thomas says, motioning to the empty setting to his mother’s right. “Please, won’t you join us?”
I’ve barely had time to settle into my chair before Agnes clears her throat.
“Perhaps this isn’t my place,” she begins, “but those women are far below your rank. Surely you know that?”
She’s testing me and my story, and, of course, she’s right. Proserpina would never have run off to spend the entire day with commoners. I slide my hands, my fingers stained blue by the bayberries, beneath the table and away from her prying eyes.
“You’re right,” I offer, and when Agnes smirks triumphantly, I add, “it’s not your place.”
Her expression sours into a scowl.
Thomas rushes to change the subject. “Now that you’ve settled in, tell us more about the challenge for your hand, my lady.”
I think of my wings, my talons, my old form to give me the strength to keep from melting beneath the heat of their combined attention. Thomas tears into a bite of meat as he waits for my answer; juice from the roasted bird leaks from the corners of his mouth.
“On Scopuli, it’s tradition to hold a wrestling match for a woman’s hand,” I say, bringing a finger to my chin to mirror where the juice runs. “The men fight until only the strongest remains.”
Thomas grabs the napkin from his lap and wipes his face, then turns to his mother with a grin. “That sounds like exactly the kind of competition I’d excel at.”
“If you weren’t already happily betrothed,” Mistress Bailie adds, a pale eyebrow raised, though I can’t tell if her admonition is genuine or simply an act for me. The glint leaches from Thomas’s eyes, leaving behind an empty smile that’s somehow worse to behold. The sight of it makes my stomach churn.
“Of course,” Thomas answers coolly, then turns to me again. “When will it be?”
I reach for the glass of wine before me, swirling its contents. That moment of softness with Ambrose, the appearance of my menses—gods, even the jealousy toward Cora’s affections for Thomas. They’re all just distractions, pulling my focus away from my one true purpose.
I can save you, she’d said. But I need more blood. And to give that to her, I need men to follow me to Scopuli.
“In four days’ time. On the next full moon.”
Perhaps its light will bless the endeavor.
“And what happens after you’ve found your husband?” Agnes asks, stumbling, just barely, over the word husband . It’s the obvious next question, but that tiny slip of her tongue gives her away—despite what she read in my letter, Agnes is still suspicious of me and my motives. But can I really fault her for that, given her son is what’s at stake?
“I want to return home with him before winter truly sets in. Though he shouldn’t be the only one who joins me—I’ve heard talk of the city’s rations. People say there’s not enough food to keep everyone alive through the season.”
Thomas’s eyes widen with consideration, but Agnes shoots him a cutting look. “We can’t blindly send the entire colony to a place we’ve never been, my lady. And even if we wanted to, the only ship large enough to carry us all returned to England two summers ago. The pinnace that you’ve seen offshore only holds about twenty people.”
Twenty is hardly one hundred, but it’s still enough.
“So send a scouting party to accompany us,” I offer. “If Scopuli passes their assessment, formal plans to move the colony can be made after they return, if winter demands it.”
Agnes strokes her chin, her cold eyes finding Thomas’s.
“We’ll need to discuss the idea with the other Council members,” he says slowly. “But I don’t see a reason why we shouldn’t explore it.”
“After the competition is held, how quickly can we leave?” I ask, my stomach twisting as I prepare myself to flirt. “And would you join us? I’d love to show you my home.”
Especially the hidden sea cave, whose sand will swallow your blood below.
Thomas smirks, and immediately, the biscuit I barely managed to eat threatens to come back up. If Cora heard this, she’d hate me.
So what? You’re not here for her.
Was that my voice, or Proserpina’s?
“Within the week, I imagine. And I’d never decline an invitation to stand at your side.”
I force a soft smile, suddenly exhausted.
“Are you tired, my lady?” Agnes asks. I fear I’ve given myself away once more, but Mistress Bailie’s attention is locked on Thomas. She wants me gone from this room as much as I want to be.
“Yes, actually. Would you mind if I retired for the evening?”
“Not at all, Lady Thelia. Go rest.” Agnes waves a hand to dismiss me and then slides her chair closer to Thomas’s. Immediately, the two descend into whispers, so lost in their plotting that they barely notice my retreat.