Marek got up, wiped his tongue with a napkin and rushed through the manor to the large doors. ‘Let me out,’ he said to Pieter, who did not hesitate to unlock the doors and lower the drawbridge. Marek winced, moving from the dark cool of the stone manor to the bright sun. The air was hot and teeming with bugs from the water in the moat. The level was higher since he’d arrived that spring. How different life had been that day. And how tricked he felt now that the servants were so secretively cruel and pious. He could feel their satisfaction, like a rash on his skin. The worse he behaved, the more God loved them.
The land around the manor was green and aflutter with butterflies and bees humming around the flowers. The stableboys were bent over in the garden, filling baskets with vegetables. Luka was feeding carrots and apples to a steed by a trough of gleaming water. The cows grazed the dark, rich grass. Bunny rabbits slept on their backs under the shade of a tall pear tree. All was well, it seemed, though it was hot. Marek followed a path up the hill to gain a view of Jude’s pasture. The last time he’d seen the pasture was the day he had climbed the hill to the manor with Jude carrying Jacob on his back. Marek had grown stronger since then. His breathing was easier now as he climbed, his feet in their supple leather slippers digging into the hot wet soil. At the top of the hill was a grove of peach trees. A ripe peach fell at his feet, and he stooped down to pick it up—it was pink and yellow, red streaks nearly splitting it open. The fragrance made him swoon. He bit into it, and despite his previous nausea from the sausages, the sweetness sent him into a state of heady relief. He leaned against the peach tree and sucked the fruit, the juice dripping down the heel of his hand onto the lap of his fine satin pants. No matter, he thought. Lispeth would bathe him and clean his clothes. Every day there was a new set of pants and shirt, specially tailored to fit his own strange body. So quickly had he forgotten his shame and unhappiness. Sugar was the cure. He sucked the juice as though it were milk from a lamb’s teat.
The sky was cloudless as he stood and walked to the ridge of the hill and looked down. At first it was all a haze in the heat, the air vibrating and blurring. And then a breeze hit him like a slap in the face, and his vision cleared for a moment. Lapvona came into focus. It was all gray. The trees were bare. The roads were nearly white with arid dirt. He saw no water in the streams, only pale rocks. There were no animals being herded through the lands. He could see Jude’s pasture, a graveyard of dry dirt, no lambs, no movement. He looked down at the peach in his fist. A worm squirmed out of the flesh, a small pink thing that seemed to rear its head toward Marek, then burrowed back into the flesh of the peach, drunk on the sugar of its home. Marek was horrified. He threw the peach over the ridge and watched it roll along the soft dirt. Crows quickly descended on it.
Marek felt himself grow faint. He turned and vomited the sweet peach and saw another worm crawling through the chewed flesh at his feet. He vomited again, the last of the sausages. It burned his throat and he gagged, heaving more and more. A voice from below spoke to him.
‘Shall I carry you home?’
It was Lispeth. She had followed him up the hill.
‘No, Lispeth. You shouldn’t do anything for me anymore.’
He caught his breath and started back down the hill to the manor. Lispeth followed.
* * *
*
Jude had not eaten Klim yet. He had, however, chopped dead trees outside Ina’s cabin and built a fire in her hearth, then stood, sweating and licking the sweat off his arms from thirst as he waited for Ina to change her mind. He couldn’t bear to look at her, her body so mangled in its emaciation. Her head tilted blindly toward the floor. She raised her eyebrows as though she could see a fine meal spread before her. She smiled and sniffed at the sooted air. ‘Take off his clothes and burn them in the fire. Then chop him into pieces.’ Jude recognized her madness. It was the same insanity that he’d seen in Agata while she was in labor with Marek, a female power, evil, something he would never understand.
He should let her die, he thought. The old woman had lived too long already, prolonged by the tricks she played with nature. Every time she’d felt the slightest pang of illness, she’d gone outside and the birds had dropped herbs, shat seeds, sang her songs to cure her. She’s been spoiled enough, so let her die, he thought. She’s got no milk left anyway. All women were villains, users, he told himself, remembering the bloody baby in his arms and his rage at Agata, that cunt, that selfish child, what he wouldn’t give to have seen her die on the floor for real. Take the baby with you to hell, he would have said. And Ina had tried to help her. She was like all women: only concerned with their own comfort. He could be strong if he just kept his anger close. He had almost convinced himself to walk away. But then Ina started to gag and cough. It was too pitiful. He felt too sorry. Comfortable or not, the poor woman had nursed him. After his parents drowned, she took him in and healed him, fed him. She taught him how to gain strength from within himself. She gave him his life. God knew that. So Jude surrendered. Klim was already dead, he reasoned. Wouldn’t God favor a sacrifice to save the life of an old woman? Feed the blind to the blind. It had a certain logic to it.