Chapter 56
THE TALE OF A BABY
IT WAS SCREAMING again, piercing, ceaseless wails.
Maylie stood by the door, leaning forward, balancing on the balls of her feet. She could run. Part of her wanted to run. But she stayed.
Tiny limbs flailed in a tatty basket on the floor. Maylie forced herself closer. She bent and jiggled the basket with her foot, but nothing stopped the crying. The infant’s face became red and blotchy.
Maylie’s chest contracted. ‘Just give me a moment,’ she hissed.
She turned away, intending to collect herself.
The squalor of the one-room shack faced her: mouldering food on the table, murky water in a bucket and dirt from the dark, wet streets outside slathered across the rickety floorboards.
It was a different shack from the one she had shared with Esmelie, on the other side of the Pits.
Maylie had not been able to face staying in their old lodgings after her sister’s death.
She had hurriedly found somewhere new, not realizing it was even drabber and bleaker than their past abode until it was too late.
‘Just give me a moment,’ she repeated, picking up one of the soiled plates. Perhaps if things were cleaner, everything would be better. Perhaps she would not feel so hopeless.
But the baby’s screaming continued. On and on.
‘All right!’ she finally cried, her voice breaking. ‘We’ll try.’
Maylie sat on the edge of the sagging bed.
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the tears gathering in her eyes.
Untying the neck of her dress, she pulled one shoulder free and tucked the fabric beneath her left breast. Bending over, she lifted the baby from the basket and slipped it into the crook of her arm.
Then, counting to three, she latched the baby on.
It began to suck and Maylie winced, her toes curling. For a moment, there was quiet, but then the baby began to wriggle. Its face puckered and its back arched. With a scream of rage, it ripped its mouth from Maylie’s breast and threw up its head.
There was no milk. There had never been enough milk.
‘I’m sorry,’ gasped Maylie, tears wetting her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The baby roared and Maylie let it slip from her lap on to the bed next to her. She dropped her head into her hands, her shoulders shaking.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered. She was angry and heartbroken and scared. She turned to the baby and yelled, ‘I don’t know what to do!’
The baby paused, stunned. Then its face creased with dismay. It began wailing louder.
Through her tears, Maylie looked at the door. She remembered what she had heard earlier that day – what she had not stopped thinking about since.
She stood up.
Then sat down again.
Still the baby screamed.
Maylie retied her dress and crossed the room to the cupboard by the sink, wiping her damp face on her sleeve.
There were a few oats left in a cup and a bit of goat’s milk from yesterday.
Maylie mixed them together in a bowl, fingers trembling, and carried it to the screaming baby.
Manhandling the child into her lap, she scooped up a spoonful of mush and tried to drop it into the dark hole of the baby’s mouth.
The infant coughed and cried more.
Maylie tried again, teeth clenched with the effort.
Finally, it took the mush. Then sucked hungrily at the edge of the wooden spoon.
Maylie managed to push some more into the baby’s mouth before its gaze started to drift. Its eyelids flickered and its limbs slackened, exhausted from the fight.
With its tiny belly full of something at last, the baby fell asleep.
Maylie breathed out.
In the sudden hush, thuds and rumbles sounded from the neighbours.
She thought she might have heard one of them banging on the wall earlier, while the baby was screaming.
Initially they had been full of sympathy – poor girl no more than a child herself left alone with a newborn baby – but their compassion had dwindled as the days passed and the baby would not stop crying. They just wanted peace.
Maylie wanted peace too, but she knew it was not what she deserved. This baby was a punishment. A penance for her transgression. She had done an awful, terrible thing and now she was paying the price.
She looked down at the sleeping infant. Smooth button nose, twitching lilac eyelids and tiny pink lips. All was calm now, but Maylie knew it would not last. Before sunset the baby would awaken, starving and desperate for milk.
The whole thing would start again.
Maylie gulped back the panic already clawing up her throat. She could not go on like this. Something must be done.
Again, she remembered what she had overheard that morning as she carried the screeching baby up and down the street, rocking and jiggling it in her arms. Above the roaring howls, she had listened to the women who leant out of shack windows, chattering and sharing gossip with one another.
They were all aflutter with the latest, shocking news, discussing it in husky, scandalized voices.
The Queen was looking for a baby. A girl. To raise as her own.
Of course there would be no shortage of options, they all said with a smirk.
Every whore in the Pits would proffer their child, desperate to rid themselves of a mouth to feed.
One lucky baby would be chosen, and the rest would be sent back to poverty and despair.
How distressing. It was like something from an old, brutal ballad.
The woman living in the shack opposite had remarked loudly that it was a terrible, unthinkable thing for a mother to do – if she was willing to give up her baby, then she should not be a mother at all.
And everyone had nodded in agreement.
Maylie had nodded along too. And yet the possibility had lodged itself in her mind, buzzing and humming, refusing to go away.
A tantalizing proposition that she could not help but feel drawn to.
An opportunity to escape the dark, relentless terror of her circumstances.
The more she tried to push the thought aside, the more it returned like hunger.
Perhaps it was a terrible, unthinkable thing to do.
Or perhaps it was the only way they would both survive.
Maylie looked at the curled hand resting upon her breast, pale fingernails like shells.
The baby was thin, small and always hungry.
From the moment it had arrived, it had needed what Maylie could not give it: milk, safety and love.
She had tried, but her body was weak, her cupboards empty, her heart hollow with fear.
She could almost hear two voices inside her; one was sharp and scolding, the echo of the shack-woman and the nodding heads: ‘A mother does not abandon her child.’ The other voice was quieter, but more persistent: ‘A mother does what she must to keep her child alive.’
For a while, Maylie did not move.
The buzzing thoughts in her head only grew louder, thrumming through her bones until stillness became impossible.
Then she climbed to her feet – careful not to disrupt the infant – and walked to the door.
She draped a shawl over her shoulders, tucking it around the warm, coiled bundle in her arms. She hesitated at the threshold as if the wooden frame were a barrier between one life and another. Then she stepped outside.
Fading daylight cast long, grey shadows in the narrow street.
Men and women traipsed over the cobbles, returning from working the cold fields on the outskirts of the city, their hands and feet caked in dirt.
The clanging and banging of pots and pans could be heard from open windows and doors, as wives and daughters hurriedly prepared the family dinner.
A loose chicken skittered at the edge of the street before a filthy beggar child lunged from the shadows and grabbed it, scampering off into the crowd.
Maylie drifted past, the baby asleep on her chest. She kept her head down as she climbed the twisting lanes out of the Pits. Every so often, she would wonder at what she was doing. But whenever thoughts of turning back arose, she chased them away.
It had been like this throughout her pregnancy.
‘I have a summer sickness,’ she had told herself when she began vomiting daily and her moon blood had stopped.
She had ignored the looks and whispers of the other servants at the townhouse until Piepe called her into his office and said that she must find employment elsewhere; Ms Delaphio had noticed her swelling belly.
Without a word, Maylie had left, her last payment of flecks clinking in her pocket, pretending she did not feel the soft, fluttery kicks of life inside her stomach.
She had found work selling sugared crackers in Midtown instead, plodding up and down the cobbled streets, balancing her tray of sweet-smelling goods on her ever-expanding waist, as the seasons changed from late summer to autumn, then winter.
The birth had taken her by surprise one evening.
Hearing screams, a neighbour had come knocking and stayed to see her through the worst of it.
‘You’ve no family or friends to help?’ the woman kept asking as the labour stretched on and on, long and difficult.
But Maylie could only scream and weep in return.
Afterwards, things were no better. The baby was a furious, demanding stranger and Maylie was terrified and weak.
She could mix herself simple tonics to aid healing, but the ingredients were hard to come by in the city.
Herbs that grew wild in the mountains were expensive at the markets.
Her recovery slowed. The baby screamed. Her savings of flecks ran low.
The winter dragged on. Everything was hard, cold and endless.
The baby was barely a moon old now, but Maylie already knew that they could not carry on like this. Something had to change.
She reached Midtown, where the streets widened and the crowds thinned.
She turned in the direction of the nearest square, her pace quickening.
Carriages and wagons rattled by, a few smartly dressed couples strode arm in arm along a row of townhouses and a little girl with braided hair sang for flecks, her voice high and mournful.
Maylie headed towards two liveried guards dawdling beside a tavern.
One of the guards noticed her. ‘What do you want?’
‘I have a baby girl,’ Maylie replied. ‘For the Queen.’
She was surprised by how steady and clear her voice sounded.
The guard looked her over. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’
She followed him into the streets of the Old Quarter, the baby still lying on her chest; snuffles of breath puffing into her neck.
Maylie tried not to think of what she was doing or where she was going.
She had slept so little since the birth – snatches of rest between the infant’s piercing screams – that life had taken on a vague, filmy quality anyway, as if she were wading through a trance.
Maylie looked up to see Syonno Castle before her.
She had only visited the main square a few times since moving to the city and she was struck by its imposing beauty.
She had a sudden realization that Esmelie must have come this way for the Maiden Sacrifice too and passed between the very gates that were now drawing open.
Her step faltered.
She could not bear to think what her sister would say if she knew what Maylie had done. The terrible, awful mistake that had led to the baby in Maylie’s arms.
‘This way,’ said the guard.
They crossed a courtyard, the grand splendour of the surroundings bewildering and disorientating.
Ahead lay a tall, circular building at the back of the castle strung with ribbons: the Sanctuary.
Passing through a shadowed archway, they turned down a narrow corridor before arriving at a large wooden door.
The guard knocked.
They entered a cluttered, round room where a man sat bent over a desk piled with books and scrolls. He was wearing a distinctive long, black cloak.
Surprise jolted through Maylie’s shame and grief. This was the Royal Master. She felt dizzy with the strangeness of it all.
‘Another baby?’ he barked.
‘It’s a pretty one this time, Master Jakespurcia,’ replied the guard. ‘And tiny. The mother’s young and pretty too. Fits what you’ve been asking us for.’
Master Jakespurcia’s gaze flicked to Maylie. ‘How old?’ he asked.
It took a moment for Maylie to realize he was speaking to her.
‘Just over a moon.’
‘I meant you. How old are you?’
Maylie swallowed. ‘Sixteen winters.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘The father’s not around, I suppose?’
She shook her head.
‘Good. We don’t want anyone turning up to claim the child back. Is it sick?’
‘No.’
‘Is it settled?’
‘Yes,’ she lied.
He tugged on his beard. ‘I’ve seen plenty of babies today,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘I’ve got to accept one of them.’ He turned back to Maylie. ‘Are you sure about this? Once the Queen has the baby you won’t be able to get it back …’
Maylie’s stomach clenched. She looked down at the sleeping child, serene and pure. ‘I’m sure,’ she said.
‘You’re a Mountain girl, aren’t you?’
Maylie did not know if this would be a strike against her, but there was no use denying it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I live in Tormale. In the Pits.’
Master Jakespurcia was quiet for a beat. ‘Bring the child here,’ he said.
Maylie stepped forward and carefully lowered the baby on to the desk, still wrapped in her shawl.
For once, the child did not rouse. One delicate hand was clenched around the tie, a pale pink ribbon wound between tiny fingers.
With a start, Maylie realized it was her treasured ribbon – Esmelie’s ribbon – pinned on her shawl so that she could have a little piece of her sister with her always.
She leant forward to remove it, but Master Jakespurcia was already sweeping closer to look at the baby, brushing her aside.
‘I’ll conduct a quick examination and we’ll let you know,’ he said.
Maylie blinked.
‘You can wait outside,’ he added.
Maylie slowly moved backwards. A voice inside her screamed to stop and grab her baby, but she forced herself to turn away.
Something had to change. This way they could both survive.
Just as the door was closing, Master Jakespurcia called, ‘Oh, what’s your name, girl? I’ll need to mark it in the records.’
Without thinking, she replied, ‘My name is Esmelie. Esmelie Tuchi.’