11. Now Dandelion
NOW: DANDELION
Iturned and stood in the street watching him walk away, his hand slipping behind his neck to rearrange the hood over his head.
“Who the hell was that?” I asked aloud. No one answered. Around me, townsfolk were going about their days. Soldiers marched up and down the street, rolling barrels, carrying crates, and leading horses. It was as if everyone was dismantling a town that had thousands of winters of history behind it.
I tried Tessa’s house again and this time she answered, whipping the door open and exclaiming, “It’s you. My gods, get inside.”
“What now?” I asked, stepping in. “Can there be even worse news?”
Sheets of rich, folded parchment were thrust at me.
“It’s a letter from Adelaide,” Tessa rushed out, speaking over me. “It’s bad.”
Already bewildered in a general sense from the upheaval around us and in particular by the one-eyed man, I replied, “Alright,” and started to read, not even allowing for myself to dwell on her use of “bad.”
My dearest stepmother,
I hope you and Father are well. I know the evil of Tintar now spreads inland from their eastern shore, bringing war to nearly every country and settlement.
It is not enough that Tintar owns all of the east, save for the Helmsmen in the Hintercliff mountains and the islands of The Flavored Three.
They want to own the whole of the continent, it would seem.
I looked up at Tessa. “I think she means Perpatane in that first part. Trade ‘west’ for ‘east’ and then she’s got it right.”
“Keep reading,” she answered me.
As you know, our good and generous king, Pollux the Second, has established the penitent pilgrimages for Sheridan, Carver, and other settlements on the border of Nyossa.
Sheridan is the first of these, due to Lord Torm’s friendship with our king, and nearby godless Carver will benefit from that.
I would advise, as my loving husband wisely instructs me, to throw in your lot with Father Starling and come to Skow, the City of the Tower.
You will have safety from Tintar’s encroachment.
My father has always indulged you, and I believe he will continue to do so after you sign on as a penitent.
Extend my advice to my aunt if you so choose.
Though I have always felt your being in our house with my dear mother to be a sin in the eyes of our saint, if you confess to this, sign the penitents’ list, and come to the tower, your soul will be saved. Both my priest and my husband assure me of this. I have much affection for you.
Your loving stepdaughter, Adelaide
I huffed and flapped the letter. “Tessa, this is outrageously insulting. Firstly, she never had a thing to say against you and Rowena. She was such a self-involved girl, I doubt that she ever cared. In fact, she rather adored you. And secondly, ‘extend my advice to my aunt if you so choose’ has got to be the most petty string of words I have ever read.”
“Look at the second page,” was all Tessa had to say in response.
I pulled the first page away from the second. A windflower was drawn, the waxy poppy-like petals fanning out around a dark center with a few three-pronged leaves nearby. Next to it was a dandelion, the puff of the flower head accompanied by the jagged tooth of the leaf. There was no text written.
“No,” I whispered. “Does she even know what this means?”
“Every woman,” Tessa asserted, “knows what that means. Every woman does, whether or not she ever put a windflower wreath on her door. Even if she doesn’t want to admit that she knows, even the most devout woman who follows Saint Rodwin knows.”
In winters past, when we had felt that the church was watching us even more than usual, when we worried about Starling’s breathing down our necks, we had expanded on Magda’s old code of women putting garlands on their windows made from anemones, which regular folk called windflowers.
In addition to anemones, we had listed other flowers in the code.
One moon during the moss delivery, with all of that valued paste packed into small apothecary tins, we had tied with twine a note around each tin that read:
Sister, destroy this after reading. The very writing and reading of it breaks the law.
Anemone has the same meaning it always has had.
Should you need something more than the moss, should you need help, should you be in great pain or need, weave dandelions in amongst your wreaths and garlands.
You will be visited in secret to ascertain your emergency.
Should you fear being found out, gillyflowers and no one will darken your door with an unwanted delivery.
Remember, sister, anemones mean what they always have, dandelions mean exigence, and gillyflowers mean stop, danger lurks.
Commit this to memory and burn this letter.
Sincerely, a sister
“Every woman knows,” Tessa repeated. “An anemone with a dandelion means ‘a woman with an emergency.’ This is a call for help.”
“An anemone with a dandelion in a garland or wreath has almost always meant a woman who needs an act of care,” I countered.
“If she is in need of an abortion, it will be too late by the time we even get to Skow. And if she wants your help—my help, as I am the only one qualified to provide the act of care—she could have been a tad more polite about it.”
Tessa shook her head. “She uses the anemone to indicate the code. The windflower was always the code. The dandelion was added, along with the gillyflower, later, by us, to Magda’s old system.
The anemone implies she is using the code.
The dandelion implies she is in a state of emergency. She is asking for our help.”
“Then why was her letter so rude?”
“The seal was broken when the soldier delivered it. Her husband is in their army, and it was brought here with their latest influx of troops. She likely wrote it with the intention that someone would read it. That’s why she used the code.
She is begging for help, but she can’t come out and write that. ”
“Is she even clever enough to think of that?”
My sister-in-law sighed. “You have always been so hard on her.”
“The three of you have always been so lenient,” I responded, trying to keep judgment from my manner. “Thane and Rowena and then you.”
Tessa shrugged. “I loved her so much. As I love her now. I was so grateful she did not see me as the foreigner tearing her family asunder.”
“Then why the dig about how your being with my sister was a sin?”
“Robbie,” Tessa implored, bringing her face closer to mine.
“Think about it without so much resentment in you. A Perpatanian was reading that letter. We’re at war.
All correspondence is being read if it is delivered by their army.
I’ve already heard tell of folks worried that their sins will be too much to even join the caravan.
She is saying that explicitly in the letter so that if my signing the penitents’ list comes into question, I have a letter saying a priest already approves of it.
‘Both my priest and my husband assure me of this.’ That’s what she is saying. ”
“So, what, she is in a bad marriage and asks for rescue?”
Tessa frowned. “I think so. I’m going, Robbie. I swore to Rowena I would protect Adelaide. And I have failed. That was a deathbed vow.”
“She was feverish and tired. She knows you did your best—”
“No! I avoided a row with my stepdaughter. You may have been too hard on her, but you were the only one who challenged that girl. Thane and I were both so terrified of upsetting Adelaide, of driving her away, we just agreed to the wedding.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Well, my last words to her were in anger. I doubt she wants my help.”
“She needs it.”
I grimaced. I had never told Tessa of my fight with Adelaide.
A few moons after my dear sister had died of a chill in her chest, like our parents had, one of the Perpatanian soldiers had begun to court my niece.
He quickly proposed marriage and that she accompany him back to Perpatane as his post in the low country was at an end.
Tessa had suggested a longer betrothal, and Adelaide had practically bitten her head off.
Consumed with grief, Tessa had taken back her suggestion and said Adelaide was free to do whatever she wished, that she loved her.
And then Tessa had taken to her bed, awash in sorrow again.
I had pulled Adelaide into the small courtyard with the garden where Tessa kept a few vegetables and plants that aided in her candle-making. In a whisper, I had berated my niece for being so short with Tessa.
“Take all the ire you hold for that woman out on me. Spare her your stupidity and venom, I beg of you. I can ignore what is directed at me but not what you sling at her. You’ve no idea what it is to lose a spouse.”
Adelaide had snarled at me that she did have an idea of what it was to lose a mother, and before I could apologize—before I could explain I too was weathering the loss of her mother, my twin, that I too had lost a mother—she pushed me out of her way and stormed back into the house.
Other than a smile, nod, and congratulatory greeting on her wedding day, I had said nothing else to her.
“The flower drawings are too much to ignore,” Tessa was saying, trying to catch my gaze. “I just came from showing this to Thane. I tried to explain it to him. Without fully explaining the flower code,” she said when I widened my eyes at her. “You know I would never betray us like that.”
“What did he say?”
“He tried to hear me out, but he says he cannot understand my concern. And then of course, he offered me whatever coin I needed to go.”
“Maybe we should just tell him the code?”
“We always said the fewer men who know, the better. I have an abiding love for Thane, I really do. But he isn’t Avery.
” She hesitated, and then she said, “I’m going to Skow.
Tintar retreated back to their country after Eccleston, but war has been declared.
It is certain they’ll take over the border towns if Perpatane doesn’t get to them first. The four of you should come too. ”