14. Now Bread
NOW: brEAD
The first day was endless. We were all silent as we began to comprehend the reality that there were moons of this ahead. When the sun was lower in the sky but still bright, another unit of soldiers rode down the line from the front and ordered wagons to all come to a slow stop.
“Now we make a little camp alongside the road, and in a few hours we can collect our bread rations from the army,” said Tessa. “They dole out loaves every other day.”
When do we deliver the moss? Fox signed.
“Tomorrow night,” Jade suggested. “Or in the middle of the night tonight. During dinner, we could walk up and down and look for the garlands.”
Ilsit and I sighed. “I cannot walk another step,” I said, trying to speak before Ilsit could say the same but more foully.
We were all sitting on a quilt Jade had laid out, watching the goats now tethered to the back of the wagon eat the grass on one side of the dust road alongside the five horses. The chickens were pecking and clucking inside the collapsible pen Tessa had constructed out of spiked dowel rods and rope.
Daisy was curled up in Fox’s lap, but her orange eyes were on the hens.
Stop worrying, my apprentice signed, catching me eyeing the fox.
“What happens if someone wants to use the road and comes across a couple thousand people camped out in the middle of it?” Ilsit asked.
“Suppose they just have to go around,” Tessa said.
We ate baked potatoes Jade had made and wrapped in linens. She had packed a whole sack of them and said she could bake them in a fire pit each night for our dinners the next day.
“We should halve these tomorrow night,” Tessa sighed, stabbing her tin spoon into her potato.
“This is a lot of food for one body. Plus we’ll have bread.
Now, look, Robbie. I’m going to ride Zara up and down the line tomorrow during the day while you rest. I’ll look for the garlands.
You can deliver the moss tomorrow night. Probably best if only one of us goes.”
“You’re supposed to stay in line,” Jade protested. “They told us not to ride or walk out of formation from the rows.”
“I’m going to tell them one of the goats got out,” Tessa explained. She set her potato down on the quilt, and Daisy left Fox’s lap to finish it.
“Brat,” Ilsit said, shaking her head at Tessa.
“I got us into this,” Tessa went on. “I’ll take some of the risk. It’s not just Adelaide who needs our help.”
Before we lost the light, I walked towards the front of the caravan to collect our bread rations.
The undertaking was so long, I reasoned it might take me a half hour to reach the front.
Though I had protested walking to deliver the mother’s moss that night, I did want to get the lay of the whole caravan.
I could carry on in my service the following night.
I needed a good night’s sleep in me. I also needed to track the moon as I would be forced to use Magda’s trick of moss delivery on a full moon.
For a long time, I had resorted to moonless nights for protection, but I could not memorize a path in the dark when every night we would be somewhere different.
Tents and wagons spread out nearly as far as I could see in every direction on either side of the dust road. The making of camps became more uniform the farther I went, and soon I fell into a line of other civilians queuing at a small circle of army wagons that smelled of bread.
“It is so kind of King Pollux to do this for the penitents,” I heard an old woman say next to me.
When I got to the front of the line, I was met with a man sitting at a small table, a ledger spread out before him. The circle of wagons was closed behind him and guarded by more soldiers.
“You must worry about bread thieves,” I jested in greeting.
“Wagon number,” he said without looking at me.
“Oh. Four hundred and twenty-three,” I answered.
“Three!” he called out so loudly I jumped.
A teenaged boy outfitted in the Perpatanian gray came out from between two of the guards and set three small, round loaves of bread on the table.
“Oh, hold on,” I said. “I’ve five in my party.”
“No, you don’t,” said the man with the ledger. “Next!” he called.
“Sir, I mean no trouble, but we’ve five women in our wagon—”
“Next!” he repeated.
“Please check again,” I pleaded. “It is myself, Roberta Finch, my apprentice, Fox, who uses my last name, Tessa Tanner, Jade Atwood, and Ilsit—” I stopped, understanding my mistake.
“Madam, get out of the way,” the ledger man said. “It seems you travel with those listed as dead. The church and therefore the army do not recognize them as souls in need of the king’s graces. Next!”
“But that’s five mouths to feed on three folks’ rations.”
“Listen, woman,” said a burly man behind me. He jerked his head at the line of people behind him. “These folks have a right to eat. You travel with sinners who didn’t sign the penitents’ list. They starve because they do not repent. Move along. Let the repentant get the meals they deserve.”
He was right. Only Tessa, Fox and I had signed on as penitents. We would get only rations for three. That meant food for three split amongst five for at least a whole season of travel. Halving potatoes would not stretch that far.
“That’s right!” called out a man further down the line. “Only the faithful get to eat! That’s what the priest said.”
“That’s the way it is!” said a third man, and others joined in to agree.
The burly man stepped up to take my place at the table, pushing me to one side and the loaves to the ground.
“No!” I groaned. I scrambled to pick them up and brush off any dirt on the sides.
I piled them into my apron and clumsily stood to my feet.
When I did, I saw the one-eyed man standing so close to the burly man it was almost intimate.
He had his right hand resting, almost in a caress, on the nape of the other man’s neck.
His lips rested just at the edge of the man’s ear, and he said something.
The other folk in line had fallen quiet, watching.
The man with the ledger and the guards nearby watched too.
The burly man began to shake his head and jerk away from the one-eyed Vyggian, but then he went slightly limp and began to shudder.
The hand on his neck had tightened.
“Apologies, lady,” he gasped in my direction.
“Kindly give her two more, sir,” the one-eyed man said to the army officer, releasing his grip on the man.
The man tipped forward and barely caught himself before he fell.
“Look, I don’t want to be cruel,” said the officer. “But we can’t feed sinners who didn’t sign the list. Or the dead. Good Rodwin folk who signed the list are who get food. It’s the nature of this whole enterprise, stranger.”
The Vyggian man nodded, smiled, and crossed his arms. “I’m a stranger to you, of course.
I should have explained. Let me tell you who employs me.
I work for Thane Sheridan, also a churchgoing man and owner of these transport wagons.
Your army employs his wagons, horses, and drivers to carry most of your cargo and the members of your clergy.
He employs me to keep an eye on things, make sure everything between his business and your army runs smoothly.
It’s our first night on the road, good sir. I hate to begin this way.”
All around us people were hanging on his every word.
His voice was not loud or commanding, but it carried, had a weight to it.
It was a bit raspy, as if he had just cleared his throat.
His manner was not charming or supercilious, but his smile was calm, assured, as if the outcome might not matter to him.
“I see you’re in a bind, friend,” he said to the army officer.
“Give the woman two more loaves, and if your superiors question it, send them to me. I’ll tell them I was a boor, a bully, gave you no choice.
And in two nights, you can go back to giving her three loaves as she is allotted.
I’ll come up with another solution, one that doesn’t create an imbalance in your books or inconvenience you.
Consider it a one-time favor. I am now in your debt, of course. ”
The officer stared up at the one-eyed man, lips parted. Then, as if he could not understand what he did, he called out, “Two!”
The same boy returned with two loaves.
I stepped up and held out my apron to him.
“Slattern!” a woman screamed behind me.
“Cheat!” someone else yelled.
All down the bread line, people were outraged, calling out that I must be the one-eyed man’s whore, that they knew who I was, the forager woman, the midwife. It was no surprise that I had whored myself out to a man.
“Disregard them,” came that slightly husky voice. “Walk back now.”
I looked up and to my right.
The man had put himself between me and the line of complaining folk, but I was on his left side—the side with the eye patch—and could not catch his gaze.
I felt his hand on the small of my back as he urged me forward, guiding me to keep going, keeping his body between me and the line of angry people.
The farther we walked, the fewer people had seen what had transpired. Hollers of protest turned into complaints of impatience.
I observed him next to me. He was again in that short-sleeved leather jerkin with the hood. I could see there was a small pocket sewn into the side, and again I observed that little booklet of his. It was tucked into the pocket.
“Is that why you did this?” I asked.
“Did what?” he said, still facing forward.
“Intervened. Did you intervene so you could swive me?”
He stopped and turned to me, his countenance without expression. Then he said, “Is that how you get what you need in life?”
“What if it is? Do you judge me for it?”
The Vyggian man smiled. “I would not. Nor have I ever judged any man or woman who earned such a living. But I’m not a man of appetites nor is there a need to offer yourself. I intervened because I don’t think it fair. Not because I expect you to invite me into your bed.”
“I wasn’t offering, salt man,” I retorted, immediately regretting my rudeness.
His smile receded somewhat.
“What did you say to him?” I asked. “The man who bumped into me.”
He reached inside his hood, scratched a place behind his ear, and said, “I told him to apologize.” He ran his tongue along the inside of one cheek and then continued, “That—and that if he so much as looked at you again, he would find himself with twice my own life’s burden.”
“I don’t understand.”
The scout pointed at his patch. “I told him I would gouge out his eyes. Both of them.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“You’ll receive five loaves next time,” he answered and turned to walk away, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll see to it.”