Chapter 44 Maeve
Maeve
By the time the Abbey loomed in front of her, Maeve could hardly remember the steps she’d taken between leaving the tavern and hurrying up the steps towards the hulking limestone building.
None of the shops had been open, leaving her to break into a piety store and steal a set of pilgrim’s robes on her own.
It wasn’t their original plan – Elden was meant to buy them when they got to Whitebury – nor was it her proudest moment, but the rising sun and sleeping city had forced her hand.
At least she’d sneaked in via a back door and left coins on the counter instead of breaking a window.
The fact they had been in Whitebury the entire time didn’t sit right with her.
Even if the Abbey had her icon and was using it, she should have known.
Had Elden known the Abbey would take her memories of the town?
He’d locked her door without her noticing, after all.
Perhaps he’d been the one to orchestrate the Abbey taking Jude, too.
The reminder throbbed like a bruise she couldn’t help but prod.
Had Jude realized what was happening in the moments before the hand clapped over his eyes? Maeve pictured him following Elden back to the inn like a lamb to slaughter, thinking only of the safe hand guiding him forward. She rubbed her chest as the ache spread, demanding to be felt.
Her nose dripped. She wiped it with the cuff of her pale grey pilgrim’s habit.
The cloth smelled of sweat and salt, tinged with the subdued iron of washed-out blood.
Bodies pressed in at every side, so tightly they breathed as one as the pilgrims ascended the almost two hundred steps up to the Abbey’s yawning entrance.
The chord of longing it once pulled had been replaced with icy dread.
Somehow, her home had shifted from salt-crusted limestone and stained glass to a draughty house shaped by wild winds, woodsmoke on her tongue, and him.
A pocket of watery blue emerged through the clouds above the tallest spire, visible only for a heartbeat before it was gone. Jude would have liked to see it – that talisman of blue. Rage and grief expanded in her chest like a living thing.
Her toe caught on the final step, forcing her to right herself against the cold iron of the Abbey’s inner gate.
The pilgrims joined several queues snaking past the guards and through the main doors.
Maeve quickly scanned her options, picking the line watched by the least familiar face.
She gathered a handful of coins into her palm and prayed the sweat on her skin didn’t stick to them.
The guard’s eyes narrowed as she approached, focusing on the glint of Maeve’s pale braid under her hood. ‘Name?’ His eyes dropped to the coins nestled in her cupped palm. ‘Ah.’
Pilgrims had two options for Abbey entrance – secure a guided tour months in advance, putting their name on a list the guard held between his gloved hands, or pay off the guard directly. One was Abbey-sanctioned. The other less so but arguably more effective.
He dropped the bribe into his pocket with a lazy, incongruous movement.
Clearly, he wasn’t worried about being seen.
His gaze continued to rove boldly over her face.
Maeve met his eyes evenly, praying to anyone listening for the guard not to spend any longer wondering why she’d chosen to pay him off instead of getting her name on the list of cleared pilgrims.
Finally, he dipped his chin in a slight nod, waving the next pilgrim forward.
For once, she was grateful corruption didn’t stray far from the source.
She moved deeper inside, leaving the vast expanse of the hallway for the cloisters that ran the outer stretch of the Abbey’s western wing. The fetid smell of salt and candles left to burn out lingered at the back of her throat as though she’d bitten into something rotten.
She’d expected to feel worse within the Abbey, something similar to the drugging sluggishness she’d felt in Mr Peters’ church, or worse – lose track of herself entirely, waking to find large swathes of time lost to memory.
It was almost concerning that she felt mostly present in her mind.
She worried that it meant the Abbey wanted her here. Wanted her cognizant.
Singing from the basilica trickled down the walkway, hitting her like a punch to the chest. Pulling the sides of her hood close to her face, Maeve drew back from the railing and followed the pilgrims down the cloistered hall.
They’d been clicking through hymns like hands on a clock.
There’d been at least three since the sunrise that morning, right on schedule for the Call of the Sun to commence at daybreak tomorrow.
She was running out of time.
Ahead of her, the group of pilgrims parted as a figure emerged from around the corner. Dark grey habit – an acolyte or artisan.
Maeve froze. There was nowhere to go. She was about to be seen.
Turning, she hurried back down the corridor, scanning the wall as she went. A small doorway was tucked between two archways, perhaps twenty paces away. Just as she was about to make a run, a voice called her name. Soft, almost choked.
Despite everything in her screaming to run, Maeve turned.
Brigid stood halfway down the cloisters. Her eyes were wide in her ashen face as she rushed towards Maeve. ‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed. ‘Are you stupid? Why would you come back?’
Maeve flinched. ‘The memories… My icons, your icons, Brigid. I couldn’t—’
‘Hush,’ Brigid all but begged. She seemed to have aged a decade in the weeks since Maeve had last seen her. Her normally neat hair hung lank and greasy around her face. ‘I know. I know, Maeve, but not here. Saints—’ she gasped. ‘Anywhere but here.’
‘You knew about the memory magic?’ Maeve asked. Anger pulled at her seams. ‘You knew the Abbey uses our icons to manipulate memories? You know that you’re a—’
‘Maeve,’ Brigid hissed, eyes wide. ‘Yes, I know. I know all of it. But we can’t talk about that now. You need to leave.’
‘I can’t,’ Maeve pleaded, stepping closer. ‘My… Jude. His housekeeper, his friend, betrayed him. The elders have him now. He’s here somewhere. I have to find him.’
‘Who?’ Brigid asked, her voice pitching abruptly louder. ‘What housekeeper? What friend? The name.’
Maeve blinked, briefly stunned. ‘Elden. Do you know him?’
The other woman’s eyes slammed shut. She took a deep breath before reopening them.
Her gaze pinned Maeve in place. ‘Ezra can’t know you’re here,’ Brigid said, ignoring Maeve’s question.
‘No one can. Actually—’ she cast around wildly, gaze locking on the doorway Maeve had spotted minutes earlier.
‘There. Go there. Servants’ halls. It leads to a storage room.
There are icons in there. Burn them. Promise me you’ll burn them. ’
Icons?
‘Burn? Why… okay?’ Maeve jumbled out. She didn’t understand what Brigid was asking, not entirely, but they needed to burn the icons anyway, so Maeve would do what she asked. She nodded, firmer this time. ‘Okay, but then I need to—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Brigid interrupted. ‘From there, you can search for your Jude or whatever else you need. But please, promise me,’ she grasped Maeve’s hands in both of hers, ‘once you find him, you take him and run. You can start a new life. Make new memories.’
Before Maeve could reply, footsteps sounded down the hall. She shoved Maeve towards the doorway, pushing her unceremoniously inside. ‘Go. Now.’
Brigid shut the door behind her. Silence pressed against Maeve’s eardrums, broken up by the steady pounding of her heart and her panting breaths.
She pressed her ear to the door. Voices: Brigid’s and someone else’s.
A man, his voice unfamiliar. Reluctantly, she peeled away and descended a short flight of stairs.
How long had Brigid known of the power in her icons, the power in her blood? Why would she choose to comply with the Abbey using her abilities to harm? Brigid was an iconographer – a saint. Why had she been allowed to stay at the Abbey? And why couldn’t she burn the icons herself?
Maeve turned the questions over in her mind as she walked down the dank tunnel. She couldn’t erase the memory of the naked fear on Brigid’s face. The warning in her voice.
Regularly spaced openings were dug into the walls, peering into various rooms and hallways.
She stopped to look through the closest one.
The corridor hung lower than the room she was looking into, putting her eyes at ground level.
The faint pounding of the sea trickled through the thick walls.
These passages would be the first to flood if the waves ever gained entrance.
Their occupants, herself or the maids they’d been built for, wouldn’t stand a chance against the tide.
She hurried on.
The path curved to a slender iron staircase jutting up from the floor. A sudden echo of wings flapping slipped down the corridor. Maeve pressed against the wall as her heart leapt into her throat.
Nothing. No birds, no maids.
Her hands trembled. The corners of her eyes glinted metallic as the pressure in her chest increased. She closed her eyes, giving in to the gold, the memories that weren’t hers.
Immediately, the passage changed. Lamps now hung from the ceiling, casting the dank surroundings in an oily glow.
Cool air came in through the windows above her head, bringing the scent of dusty books and stone wet with seawater.
Before she could inspect further, voices sounded from the narrow door at the top of the stairs. Whispering.
‘He’s asleep,’ a male voice mumbled, not a child’s voice, but not an adult either. ‘It worked.’
A prickle of awareness slid down Maeve’s spine as another person laughed. It sounded like Jude, his voice younger and higher-pitched than his friend’s. His answering whisper confirmed her guess—‘I have the key.’
Their footsteps faded out as the gold leached from her vision. Maeve blinked. Whose memory had she just viewed? It wasn’t hers, and she doubted it was Jude’s without a book present. How had the memory been triggered?
The urge to slam open the door she leaned against and find him was stronger than anything she’d ever known, even if what she’d just heard was little more than a faded memory. She wished it was real. She wished Jude was here. Safe. Hers.
Maeve had little experience with secrets. She knew gossip – where the cook kept the tins of biscuits or who had sneaked out to meet a local boy. She knew the power of hidden words whispered between friends and lovers. She’d never had much reason to keep secrets from herself.
But this… this feeling like she was drowning, like everything was dull without him, was new.
Something she’d kept hoarded away like a precious jewel.
It consumed her. Transformed every part of her being until Maeve was rewritten entirely.
A new creature made with trembling fingertips upon malleable clay.
She wouldn’t put words to it. Not yet.
Holding her breath, Maeve pushed open the door, leaving behind a scatting of gold dust covering what was once dirty and neglected with the gilded remnants of what she would not name.