Marek’s mind went blank. He said a little prayer in his mind, but his prayers had become strange since he’d come to the manor. He found himself praying to his own mind rather than to God. ‘Think of something good,’ he prayed.
‘Quick, Marek,’ Villiam said good-humoredly. His voice was never mad or cutting. He was a kind man, Marek thought.
‘What is brown in the winter, brown in the spring, and brown in the summer?’
‘Hmm, let me think. . . . Give me a clue, Marek.’
‘It’s also brown in the fall.’
‘I’ve got it,’ Villiam said. ‘A brown dog.’
Marek smiled and nodded. Villiam slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Getting stronger, eh?’ he said.
Marek believed that Villiam truly valued his company, and that the man’s insistence on lightheartedness was a way to alleviate Marek’s guilt over Jacob’s death. This generosity softened Marek’s need to self-flagellate. The times that he’d tried to hurt himself at the manor, he had been caught. The first time it happened was the first night. Villiam had handed him over into the care of Lispeth, and she had spent the evening bathing him, cutting his matted red hair, clipping his nails, and applying salve to his cuts and bruises. Marek had been stony with her, trying not to feel the gravity of the day’s events. But then, the kindness of the salve was too much for his shame to bear. When Lispeth’s back was turned, he picked up his old shoe and started swinging it over his shoulder so that it hit him in his back. Having just finished his bath, Marek was naked and clean for the first time. He was beside himself, crushed by Jude’s abandonment and disgusted with the filth that Lispeth had sloughed off his skin. Marek deserved to be punished, not attended to by the dead boy’s girlfriend. The pain of the shoe digging into his twisted ribs and spine released what felt like a spirit of hurt, as though it had been lodged within his body and was now set free.
‘Oh please,’ Lispeth muttered in irritation, grabbing the shoe from his shaking hands. Marek let go and crouched down, both to hide his genitals from the girl and to expose his back for more lashings.
‘Then you do it!’ he sobbed.
Lispeth wasn’t moved by this at all. Rather, she was nauseated at the sight of the boy’s body. It had been hard enough for her to bathe him, holding the memory of Jacob’s beauty in her mind, how his skin felt under her wet fingers, how his muscles twitched at her touch, how he stretched his arms overhead for her to scrub his armpits so that their faces came so close. He’d stared at her and made her feel naked, too. They had never kissed or touched much outside of the bathing and dressing, but a few weeks before Jacob had died, he held her hand for a moment under the table while he was practicing his penmanship. It had been a mindless movement, as easy and natural as scratching an itch on your neck or swatting away a fly. But as soon as her hand was in his, they’d both held their breath and turned inward. They felt the pulse of blood in each other’s fingers, and just the slightest movement of a thumb or pinky was ecstasy. It had been so intense that Lispeth had closed her eyes and dropped her head, and Jacob’s mouth had opened and his gaze had drifted away from his ink and paper into the corner of the room. Then a bird flew into the window and Lispeth gasped and took her hand away and got up and went to look at the glass, where there were tiny yellow feathers stuck like a butterfly. She remembered the look Jacob gave her when she turned around, his hand still held midair where she’d left it under the table. It was a look of shock and love, something true that had been growing underground for years and was finally breaking through. She had blushed and smiled, then cleared her throat and circuitously made her way around the table and back to her chair. She folded her hands in her lap and bowed her head. Jacob took his time to collect himself, said nothing, and looked back down at the paper he’d been writing on. A puddle of ink had pooled under the pen. He crushed the paper in his hands and pulled a book into its place. He pretended to read to himself until Lispeth said it was time for lunch.
All of that, years of longing and the wish for a future, and now Jacob was dead because of this deformed child who had no regard for life, even his own. Lispeth had looked down at his naked body hunched and dripping wet from the bath. She held the shoe behind her back and wanted to beat him in the head.
‘Get up, my lord.’
She had brought him his supper privately that first evening, in his new room, and had showed him all the objects as he ate his potatoes and drank his milk, skipping the lamb roast and blood sausages.