Marek loped down the mountain trying to catch up with his father. He wondered if Ina could bring the boy back to life. He looked out at the morning for whatever birds might be out there. Could he communicate with them somehow? Could they be sent to Ina’s to fetch some herbs? Could they return, find Jude, and drop the herbs in Jacob’s open mouth and have him suddenly revive, his eyeball sucked back into its socket, his bones heal, his clothes clean? Was there any chance Ina knew how to turn back time? Marek knew that the answer was no. Only God could do that. If only his mother were alive, he thought, she would hold him tight to her chest and defend him. ‘You can’t take my son, he is perfect and beloved. To harm him is to damn yourself to hell, Villiam. Leave us alone.’ Jude would not defend him. Poor Marek. He slipped as he ran down the mountain, then gained enough speed that he could see Jude’s back and the dead boy over his shoulder, Jacob hanging upside down, stiff-necked. His dangling eyeball bobbed up and down with each step Jude took. Would it be unkind to wonder what would happen to Jacob’s shoes? Would they be buried along with him? If Marek could wear them to hell, his feet would be protected from the flames, at least.
* * *
*
Villiam was asleep in his four-post bed. He dreamt that the bed was made of human flesh, a living thing of fat and soft baby skin. He was under the covers, caressing his fine silk sheets. He had never known injury or hunger, yet he was rawboned and his body often hurt from its own frailty against the cushioned chair or the fine velvet settle. Bed was the only softness that gave his body peace. He was a glutton, ate for an entire family, stuffed himself at every meal and in between. But he was never full and had barely an inch of flesh on his bones. He didn’t take walks or do much but sit and be entertained by whoever was at his service on a given day.
He had spent the night before eating and drinking in his room with his accountant, Erno, and his head guardsman, Klarek. They were supposed to discuss the reallocation of funds for new tariffs paid to Kaprov. Ivan, Villiam’s brother-in-law, had raised duties and now Villiam had to pay more for his guards to pass through his fiefdom on the way to the sea to sell Lapvona’s crops and livestock. There wasn’t enough money in the coffers to make up the difference; the lord had spent too much that winter on furs and wine.
‘Next month, tell the villagers that the spring harvest was intercepted by bandits and take all the money from the sales at the port,’ he said. ‘Use what you must to pay off Ivan, and bring the rest back to me.’ Erno nodded and left. Erno and Klarek, like all the northerners, complied with Villiam’s requests without reserve. There was something in their temperament that made them especially well suited to amoral servitude. Villiam never tried to hide his cruelty or silliness around them. This was what saved him from fear of God’s judgment. His life was plain for all to see, though not all did see it. No villager was allowed past the drawbridge at the manor. Most had never even seen Villiam. The guards carried out any punitive action the lord directed if a family had failed to pay its taxes or had voiced some grievance to the collector or priest. Oftentimes punishment consisted of a little poison in the family’s well, just enough to make the wife and children sick for a week. The priest would say that God punished those who didn’t uphold their responsibilities as citizens. This was the way Villiam governed. Surreptitiously.
Villiam had spent the rest of the evening asking Klarek over and over to do the comic trick of crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. Each time, Villiam laughed so hard that the wine spurted from his nose, and he’d need a long moment to recover before he’d ask Klarek to do it again. They stayed up until dawn just horsing around. The night had been no different from most nights. He never spent time horsing around with his wife. He despised Dibra, in fact. She was a bore and a nuisance. Marrying her, his parents had said, would be good for business. Of course, like so many other things, they had been sorely mistaken. ‘Her brother, Ivan, is trying to ruin my life,’ he told Klarek. Klarek understood this and pretended to pity him. ‘You poor man,’ he’d say every time the wine spurted out of Villiam’s nose. Servants came in now and then to tend the fire—it was cold in the stone manor even in the spring—and to mop up whatever Villiam had spilt and refill his cup and bring a new plate of food. Villiam’s tongue was wide and thin, more like a bit of cloth than a muscle. When he chewed, the taste of food struck him powerfully and immediately and then disappeared. Sometimes food got stuck in his throat and he’d choke and cough, ringing his bell for a servant to come in and slap him on his back. More than once, someone had to reach into his throat to pull out a chicken bone or a peach pit. The man had no sense about what to swallow.