83. Now Tower
NOW: TOWER
We suffered. The food they delivered was stale, or at least it tasted so.
Sleep was hard on stone. Around us, folk were either restless or listless.
Some people argued over petty things like the spread of one wagon’s occupants up against another’s.
There was always squabbling in line for the privies, which while plentiful, still did not seem enough for the hundreds of us.
And those that did not disagree with each other were sluggish and dull eyed, as if they were continually on the edge of sleep.
Once, while stretching my legs walking down the many rows, I spotted Kate, the wheelwright’s wife, sitting on a crate.
When I called her name, she did not reply.
It took two or three tries to get her to notice me and when she did, it seemed like she was pretending to remember me.
I knelt next to her and asked if she was alright. She had little to say.
Twice Starling, accompanied by a retinue of guards, stalked up and down the rows, inspecting each and every person that came into his view. Both times I hid, once in the wagon and once in a privy.
At the end of that week, after we had watched several fights break out between penitents and some people openly weep at their confinement, Thane visited.
He informed us, standing next to our wagon, hands on hips, that he was sorry for the delay in his seeing us.
He had been very busy collecting the funds promised to him by the Perpatanian army, paying his drivers, and corralling his wagons to the timber forest outside the Gates of Sound.
He explained that there was no room for his wagons, mostly used for the transport of goods and higher-ranking officers, inside the Tower of Skow.
Then he told us that Adelaide was waiting in the street outside and that he had permission for us to see her, but only for Tessa and me.
We followed him down the long lines of other penitents, noticing how many more soldiers were stationed along the rows. He exchanged words with the men at one of the round entrances, and we were allowed to exit.
“They keep looking at me like I am insane in my trousers,” Tessa said to me. “I mean folks did in Sheridan, but these men look like I am committing a crime.”
“There is a chance you are, in this hellish place,” I said. Yet again, countless times as I had before, I put aside the thought that I was a once-arrested, accused witch that had nearly been burned alive by a church—a church whose country I was now trapped in.
Outside, the sun after days indoors and the sight of the enormous buildings were nearly violent to me, too bright and too big for my mind to hold in place.
That was soon forgotten with the drop in my belly at what looked like a darker-haired version of my sister around the time when she had been a bride.
My niece was standing in the street, not with a husband or a soldier, but with Dermid and a man I recognized as one of Thane’s drivers.
She had Thane’s coloring, but she had Rowena’s naturally upturned mouth, regal brow, and the general elegance that my sister had always possessed.
Tessa began to cry.
I resolved not to, but when I opened my mouth to greet her, I hiccuped.
Dermid gave us a brief nod.
Adelaide’s head turned from where she had been looking down the busy street, and her face crumpled when she saw us.
A soldier approached us and asked for Thane to follow him somewhere. Thane waved for this driver to follow him and then told us he would return shortly, that we should not move from this spot. Dermid assured him he would watch over us.
“What are you doing here?” Adelaide nearly wailed when her father had departed us. “I cannot believe you are here! After the trouble I went to—”
“I see we won’t be getting a proper greeting,” I said, my emotions dulled by her berating.
“Your letter,” Tessa began, but she was cut off.
“Didn’t you get the code?” my niece went on, consternation in her question. “It was a warning, Tessa. Didn’t you think I was mean? Why are you here? I don’t understand why you would come!”
“Wait, you’re saying your cry for help was a warning not to come?” I exclaimed. “What are you talking about, girl? You drew a godsdamn anemone and a dandelion together. Are you stupid?”
Tessa, still crying, half turned to me and slapped my arm. “Shut up, Robbie.” She turned back to Adelaide and said, “Come hold me, girl. I have missed you like you cannot begin to understand.”
Bewildered, my niece stepped into Tessa’s arms. They cried together while I stood there confused, furious. I was angry at myself that I had always let my niece get to me, had always spatted with her instead of trying to understand her or meet her halfway.
Dermid paid attention to everything around us, acting as if there were no display of emotion taking place. Soldiers and other men that looked like some kinds of army officials marched by.
“Can you please explain,” I began again, my manner infused with determined patience, “what it was you meant in your letter? You drew a dandelion and an anemone together. Our old code says that calls for an emergency, usually an act of care. We’re here because we thought it a cry for help.”
Adelaide shook her head, pulling away from Tessa. “No, a dandelion means danger lurks.”
Before I could bite her head off, Tessa said, “Greet your aunt, child.”
We ignored her.
I said, “Well you are mistaken.” Then I quoted the message delivered many winters past to the women of Sheridan. “Remember, sister, anemones mean what they always have, dandelions mean exigence, and gillyflowers mean stop, danger lurks.”
Adelaide put her hands over her mouth. “I forgot about gillyflowers.”
“You’re saying you did not want us to come?” Tessa asked.
Adelaide nodded.
“We thought,” I hissed, “you were in danger, not that you were warning us from it. An anemone with a dandelion means ‘a woman with an emergency.’ You are telling me we left everything we ever knew, ever held dear, that I left my home where my husband was laid to rest, because you were too daft to remember a code that comprised of three—three—symbols?”
Tessa swatted at my arm again. “Adelaide, are you unhappy in your marriage? Is that why you sent for us?”
“No, I—Well, yes, but that’s not why. This is a disaster.”
“You think?” I sniped.
“Robbie,” Tessa shot at me. She was done with me.
“If you cannot stop mistreating your niece, I will ask you to leave us. She cannot be expected to remember a code she never had to use.” She took Adelaide’s hands in her own and said, “You must explain it all to us. Quickly, before your father returns unless you want him to know that you are unhappy.”
“He already suspects,” Adelaide started, but then she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.
She withdrew her hands from Tessa and brought her fingertips to her chin.
“My husband, Roland, is a part of the city guard here. He is higher ranking now and, the thing of it is, I cannot really explain it except to say that that is cursed.” She pointed to a spot behind us.
“The tower is like a poison. It makes anyone who lives in it mad and weak with terror. Then they become subservient. Usually, before this pilgrimage business, they put new army recruits there for their conditioning. It makes them pliant and their minds turn to mush and . . . I don’t know what else I can say. ”
“You make no sense,” I mumbled, but I began to think of the rising tensions of the penitents, of my Zara’s flinching, of my own sense of doom, of how none of us could sleep well.
“Keep talking,” encouraged Tessa and reached down to pinch my arm.
Adelaide shifted her weight from foot to foot. “The men here? In the army, powerful ones, friends of the king—they all talk of ‘feeding’ it. I swear to you, some kind of presence lives there. It feeds off of people. I think they are feeding the penitents to the tower.”
“It’s not as mad as it sounds,” Dermid interjected, not taking his eyes off of the people around us, staring back at every soul who eyed the tattoos on his face and neck. “Magic and gods exist, and that means the evil and the good of both is to be taken with serious measure.”
“Tell us about your marriage,” Tessa ordered, reclaiming Adelaide’s hands.
“He seemed like a nice young man. Your father and I were so unsure of what to do and we did not want to keep you from any happiness, though it was a speedy courtship. And so soon after the loss of your mother. Do you desire a divorce? We will make that happen.”
“It is illegal here—”
“We will make that happen,” Tessa repeated, releasing her hands. “Do not concern yourself with their laws from a darker age even than this. Tell us.”
There was a squeak in Adelaide’s response when she said, “He is not unkind, but I do not share his ideals or his . . . or his god. I miss my mother’s gods.
I miss your gods,” she tacked on, looking at me.
“This god, their Rodwin, makes me feel so vile, like I am a bad person. And Roland believes it. He loves me, but he believes I am naturally wicked.”
I could have said that this was something I had said all along about the church of Perpatane.
I could have said she should have noticed their tyranny by the time she was past the age of ten back in Sheridan.
Instead, I stepped forward, took her in my arms, and held her against me.
Instead, I said, “We’re going to take you away from here. We’re going to help you start over.”
She wilted against me a little.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in her ear. “I am never kind towards you, and I do not know why. You deserve better from me.”
When Thane returned to us, Adelaide dried her tears. While he spoke to his driver, who had returned with him, about seeing to Adelaide getting home safe, asking that Dermid accompany her, I asked in an undertone, “Is your father staying with you at your husband’s house?”
She nodded.
“And he can see your unhappiness, you think?”
“Tell him,” Tessa answered before her stepdaughter could. “Tell him everything, girl. The letter, the code, the tower. Tell him everything. We may need him in your escape. And he deserves to know. I tried to explain it to him moons ago, but it is better explained by you.”
“But my grandfather and uncle and the priest? What if he tells—”
“Tell him if he loves you as his daughter, he’ll assist in this,” I said, cutting her off.
And I had to believe it to be true. Thane may have been the son of a lord, privileged and well fed, may have been brought up in the church that he was the superior sex, yet he had married Rowena to save her from shame, punishment, and even death and had made room for Tessa in their lives.
Tessa made a noise of agreement, and then Thane was helping his daughter into a small wagon that was clearly meant for city travel.
Dermid turned to me and said, “Tell Reed to look for a cellar tonight,” then climbed into the wagon next to Adelaide before I could ask what he meant.