The words singed my mouth as I spat them, and Henry flinched, all the optimism drained from his face in a moment.
He set his jaw and spoke with an unnerving softness. “Fine, Edyth. I tried to do my best by you. If this is your thanks…then we’ll say goodbye now. The wagon will be here for you at dawn.”
He opened the cupboard and grabbed half a loaf and filled his waterskin with ale. I had never been angry with my big brother before, my best friend, my hero—but desperation lit one last flaming arrow on my tongue.
“Traitor! It’s you and me, Edie,” I mocked his childhood promise. “What a lie! You don’t care about anyone but yourself! It’s Henry and Henry, and to hell with little sister! Edyth, Edyth, Round and Red, might as well be left for dead!”
Henry turned and gave me a look I’d never seen. Something about the muscles in his face made him look much older than eighteen, like fate had cornered and caged him. He clenched his teeth and his muscles pulsed; he sniffed hard, walked quickly out of the house and slammed the door to my enraged scream.
I sank to the floor, skirts in a pool around me, and cried.
* * *
—
The day darkened early. A raindrop hung pregnant from the edge of the windowsill, all silvers except for a thin strip of rainbow edging its metal belly, and I could feel those colors on my tongue, like the time when I tried licking the edge of the cold kettle, just to see if it tasted like I thought it would: yes, like blood and ash, like the dark brown stripes that appeared at the outsides of my eyes. That was when Mam could stir things in the kettle, the green alexanders with the fresh spring butter. She could stir things in a kettle, because she was alive.
That was when Da was alive, too, and he would dip the hardest edges of the brown bread and sop up the iron-tinged butter, and it would drop in his beard and glisten there for a bit, until he’d grab the corner of Mam’s apron and wipe his mouth proper, like a gentleman.
But my father was no gentleman, much as Mam would have liked him to be. He was stout and red-bearded and loud and butter-drippy. Da, with a belly like the raindrop, with a belly rivaling Mam’s, carrying the child that would end her life.
* * *
—
Nothing can be done about it now. Come spring, Lord Caxton will turn Henry out, and someone else will be living in that house where I was born. Someone else will make their pottage on our fire, rise their bread dough in our proofing pot. But before the next family moves in, they’ll bring the priest to cleanse the house of the evil that once resided there, the scourge that caused a whole family to fail.
— 2 —
Somewhere in Derbyshire, the road beneath us changes suddenly from packed dirt to bumpy stone and jostles everyone awake to a harmony of groans. Little lightning bolts shoot at my vision with every crash of the wheels. The stones of the old Roman way are at odd angles, and the driver eventually moves off to the grass just to avoid them. Days upon days have passed, and we are all road-sore.
“Stopping,” says the driver, pulling in through a town gate. “I’ll go find a tavern. Wait here.”
He’s taking a while, so I jump out and stretch my legs. The town’s not a large one. But it’s eerily quiet, except for some skinny horses and sheep in the streets. The driver comes back with a distant look on his face.
“Strange,” he says. “Town’s empty. Old man told me to stay out—everyone’s dead. Some kind of illness…he’s the only one left.”
Dead. That’s a word I’ve heard too often this year. I tuck my face into the hood of Mam’s cloak and will her to be alive for me, just for this moment, while we shake the dust of the town off our feet.
* * *
—
After Henry left that last day, the wattle gate crackled open and a pair of shoes shuffled on the flagstone. I was afraid of being alone in the house like that. No one could be trusted, and no one was asking for my trust, anyway. Henry and Edyth le Sherman were poison people, not to be pitied, only shunned.
Once I was sure the stranger was gone, I rose slowly from the hearth and cracked the door open. On the threshold, placed on a thin layer of fresh snow, was a wooden box. Inside was a kettle of just-made porridge, steaming hot. A loaf of bread, some dried apples and a cheese. A thick woolen blanket, a little moth-eaten. Two pairs of old knit mittens. A palm-sized cross carved from stone.
Mason.
* * *
—
Is that sort of kindness even possible now, where I’m headed? I’ve heard about priories, vast and cold, where women go to hollow out and shrivel until their skin’s like the parchment of their prayer books.
A place where I’ve got to hear day and night about God.
After He took every good thing from me, to make me go to the very place I can’t escape Him? It’s like giving vinegar to someone dying of thirst.
* * *
—
At the edge of town, by a bend in the river, Mason and his da lived in a house smaller than mine. Mason’s mam died when he was very young, and not one to stand on ceremony or comfort, Old John chopped off a third of their house and burned the walls as fuel. Piles of different kinds of stone lay in the yard. A small barn barely held a horse and its tack. Mason’s people weren’t crofters like us; they earned wages or were paid in kind, so there was a meager kitchen garden but not much land. Besides, stonemasons travel where the work is, so home was a relative concept.
Just as I lifted my fist to knock on the door, Mason came out of the barn, clapping dust and straw off his hands.
“Edyth!” He started. “What are you doing here?”
I pulled my hood back a little; I couldn’t hide the despair in my eyes. “Could we go somewhere?” I asked flatly. “I need to tell you something.”
He searched my face with apprehension. “Let me tell my father.”
Mason came out of the house a few minutes later. We walked to Saint Andrew’s churchyard and sat beneath the yew tree, where we had talked for the first time in May.
“I made you something, Mason. Here…I’m your Saint Nicholas.” I placed the square of parchment in his palm, smiling to conceal the way my heart was being sliced in half. It was a miniature drawing of this yew tree, our tree, cut away to show two doves inside, with the tips of their beaks touching.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Did you draw this?”
“Yes.”
He quietly traced the thin lines with his finger. “There’s so much I wanted to—” His voice caught, and he didn’t finish.