Agata couldn’t sleep either. She had recognized Marek immediately: he looked exactly like her brother. What cruel luck that the child had survived. A miracle, really. She had taken tansy tea every day and stuffed the fresh toxic flowers up her sheath to poison the thing inside like Ina had instructed. And she’d punched herself in the stomach, climbed up and jumped down from the tallest trees in the woods when Jude was busy with his babes and confident enough to leave her untied. But Marek had been a leech, indestructible. She’d thought it was her own strength that was keeping him alive. She had assumed that he’d died once she’d run off, that he was helpless without her. She’d refused to hold him, that gnarled creature that had fed off her and made her sick for nine months. She despised it. And so she despised Marek still. He really looked just like her brother, the one that did it. She was not at all surprised when the boy came into her room. She knew he would.
‘Mother?’
Agata took his hand and held it between her own, felt his skin on hers. It was not an act of tenderness, but rather a procedure, a test. The feeling of his skin on hers was the feeling of her own young hand on hers. ‘My name is Marek,’ the boy said. She threw Marek’s hand away, like she’d bit an apple and a worm had crawled out of its frothing flesh. ‘Mother,’ he said again. She nodded. He fell at her feet and kissed them. Agata restrained herself from kicking him in the face. That he had survived until now and had been adopted by the lord, she had to grant him some respect. He had done well for himself, it seemed. She went to the bed and lay down, hoping the boy would go back to his room. But Marek followed. He peered at her in the moonlight, his twisted body contorting in wonder and fright.
‘Are you alive or dead?’ he asked her.
Agata shrugged. Who could answer such a question? She let him grope her legs, his face in awe at the feel of her flesh and bone. Her knee, her thigh. He ducked under her robe, as though he wanted to return into her body somehow. Agata gave no resistance. He took her nipple into his mouth and sucked. A shade of pride prickled her face, but she let him. Surely she enjoyed her mastery over the boy in some way. Yes, there was pleasure in self-degradation, but it was easily spent. She pushed him away and gathered her habit tight around herself. Marek, undeterred, simply cuddled against her turned back. Finally they slept. Marek woke up now and then when she stirred in the bed next to him. Each time, he was astonished at his great fortune. God had taken his father but had delivered his mother back to him, an angel. More than a fair trade, he thought.
* * *
*
By morning, Dibra’s horse had returned to the manor bareback, without her. Both its eyes had been gouged out. The guards inspected it for messages but found none. The carafe of water was nearly full and still strapped to the horse’s tether, but the guards removed it. They had seen Dibra ride out the night before and hadn’t stopped her. They didn’t want Villiam to blame them for a lapse in security. So they instructed the servants to report that there had been an attack in the night: someone, a bandit most likely, had come and mutilated the horse. The stablehands had slept through it, or perhaps one of them had turned and let the bandit into the stable, the guards suggested. But the servants refused to carry that lie.
Jenevere said nothing. She hid in Dibra’s room with her breakfast, which she ate herself. She lay in Dibra’s bed. She was also afraid, like the guards, that her knowledge of Dibra’s departure would anger the lord. It would be grounds for dismissal from the manor. She would have to find her way back north, to her parents who had sold her to Villiam to pay off their debts to Ivan. She didn’t want to go back, she couldn’t. Rather than lie to Villiam, she kept her mouth shut. The rest of the servants huddled in the kitchen and decided that for their collective safety, they ought not say anything. And so, midmorning, Clod knocked on Villiam’s door, set his tray of breakfast onto the table, and announced simply that a horse had its eyes gouged out. Villiam grunted and ate and wondered at the news briefly before returning to bed for several hours, drifting in and out of sleep. Finally, when he had fully awakened, it dawned on him that the horse might be sending a message. It was a warning. What did a blind horse signify? He had no idea. He stayed in bed, lazily imagining what it could mean. Horses were about power, he thought. So a blind horse was about blind power. Was this a message from Ivan that Villiam’s lordship was superficial? Was he angry that Villiam had not paid enough in tariffs? Villiam was too tired for a morning metaphor. He let himself drift off again.