‘I have nothing for you, Jude,’ she said.
Jude was quiet, stunned.
‘But if you would bring me something to eat, I might spare a suck, if you can find a nipple.’
Jude stepped into the dark of her cabin and looked around. Every vessel, usually filled with leaves and herbs and dried flowers, was empty. Even the ashes in the hearth had been swept out. There were teeth marks on the wooden bedframe. Tiny fragments of bones were littered on the floor—the bones of birds, Jude thought. Had she eaten the sacred animals who spoke to her? Jude overturned a bucket, shook out the dead spiders, collected them into his thin palm, and approached the bed.
‘Here, Ina,’ he said and fed the little spiders into her mouth—a cavern of white, bloodless flesh—one by one. She chewed. Jude sat and listened to the bones of her jaw creak, her teeth grind the stale legs of the insects, her dry tongue scrape the roof of her mouth.
‘Are you better now, Ina?’ he asked after she had swallowed and gagged and coughed, her head rolling back and forth on the bed, which was emptied of hay. It was a stupid question.
‘Bring the blind boy and cook him.’
‘You’re crazy, Ina. I saved him,’ Jude said.
‘He’s dead,’ Ina said to him. ‘And you’re dying. I can smell it on you.’
‘I won’t eat a man, no,’ Jude said.
‘Then cook him for me. I’m hungry.’ She was serious. ‘And then I can nurse you, I’m sure.’
‘What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.’
Jude paced, the mud and water in his stomach sloshing. He didn’t want to have to cook the man. He had taken the body for just that reason—to save Klim from being eaten.
‘There isn’t much meat on him,’ he said lamely, trying to deter her.
‘Go get him,’ Ina said, her head rolling like a fallen apple on the ground. ‘I’ll eat him raw, I’m so hungry. Do it. Now.’
* * *
*
Lispeth had failed to hold her breath for very long. The huge gasps of air made her lightheaded, and she fainted a bit, then revived and held her breath again. Villiam had beaten Marek in the eating contest, of course. The score was 71 to 30, and Villiam could have kept going had Marek not forfeited the game by vomiting into his bucket.
‘Delicious,’ Villiam pronounced. ‘We should do that more often. Clod?’ he called. ‘I think I’ll take a nap. Carry me up the stairs.’
Clod was very tall and strong, his thick hair, beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes so pale blond, they were nearly white. He towered over Villiam naturally, but was so attuned to his master’s need to feel respected that he bent from the waist like an old man and bowed his head as he approached him at the dining table. He hoisted the frail lord gently from his chair and moved smoothly out of the room.
‘What will you do with the leftover sausages?’ Marek asked Lispeth, who was now carting away the bucket of vomit.
‘We will feed them to the chickens.’
‘Why won’t you eat them?’
‘It is against our God,’ she said, ‘to eat the flesh of His creatures.’
Marek gasped at this bit of purity. He had forgotten purity. It had been brushed aside and replaced with a desire to please. He was immediately embarrassed.
‘It is against my God, too,’ he said halfheartedly.
Lispeth said nothing. Marek took a last glance at the shiny, brown muck of regurgitated meat in the bucket as she took it away, and then he burped and got sweaty and hot with shame. Jenevere and Petra, the other female servants, came in to clean the rest of the mess. Marek watched in a daze, his mind strangely clear, but perhaps not altogether lucid. He thought he saw something hidden beneath the cover of calm in the servants’ faces. Underneath the placid kindness, he saw, was disgust and pity. The flatness and ease with which they performed their services were not in deference, but in charity. They were not doting servants to Villiam, they were slaves in their hearts to God. And they were judgmental observers. Who could blame them for having judgment? Marek was jealous of their power. He remembered the pride that he used to feel as Jude’s son, like a noble witness to that precarious soul that couldn’t help itself but sin. And the more abuse he took from his father, the better he was in God’s eyes. He had always known that virtue was determined in relation to others. He was on the losing end now. Each time Lispeth slopped his vomit out to the chickens, God was watching and sent her another blessing, taking a blessing away from Marek in turn.