‘Will you miss the dead animals?’ Marek asked her.
Agata shook her head and flicked her hand at Marek, as if to shoo away a fly. She did not waver in her disgust for Marek, although she was slowly growing accustomed to him. Still, she couldn’t stand his inquisitiveness. Everything he asked her was a plea for affection. He didn’t care for her, not really. He only wanted to seduce her by seeming to care, so that she would care for him. Children are selfish, she thought. They rob you of life. They thrive as you toil and wither, and then they bury you, their tears never once falling out of regret for what they’ve stolen. That was how she felt. She was still a bandit at heart: cruelty ran in her blood. Yes, Marek was her son, but he was a bastard, a scar. That’s what a child of rape was, in fact—evidence. A pang of pity for Jude rose up in her from time to time. The fool had raised the creature instead of burying it alive. She would have told him, ‘This is a bandit’s bastard,’ if she could have spoken. But Jude must have known. He just didn’t care. He had made the decision to keep the baby for himself. A stupid man. But Jude was fond of babes. Oh, he was, he was, Agata remembered. How many times did he squeeze her tiny breasts in his great, hardened hands and whisper how he liked how small she was, that she looked about twelve years old in this light by the fire, and oh, the pleasure of the tight sheath was beyond him. Beyond. Beyond what Agata could tolerate, finally. She’d been raw and insane with shock when Jude had found her in the woods and fallen in love. He could only love a starving child, she thought. No grown woman would touch him. He must have known that. Such stink. She hated Jude. And although she knew Marek was not his, she recognized their similarities—blood wasn’t all that mattered, after all. Their stubbornness and their neediness, their longing like a loop of rope around her neck. She’d been happier being a slave at the abbey than she had been at Jude’s, a slave to his lust while the creature inside her fed off her body more and more each day, no matter how hard she tried to kill it.
She knew the same was happening now. Another creature had taken hold of her insides, and she was hungry. The hunger was torture to her. It meant she couldn’t leave the manor. Before, in her quiet moments at the abbey, she had felt she existed simply as a breath, a witness to light and dark, a weight in the room. With hunger and desire, life troubled her. She couldn’t control her hunger any more than she could control her need to breathe. She was a slave now to the baby in her womb. No one had noticed it yet. Beneath Agata’s robes, despite the scantiness of her flesh, her face still drawn, drawn further still despite the regular foods—she’d been permitted only wheatmeal and yogurt at the abbey, a fruit now and then—her belly had swollen past her lean silhouette. Marek had figured it was just the taking on of weight, that her body had swollen there because the dress permitted it. He understood nothing about maternity.
‘I helped Jacob hunt a lot of those animals,’ he said to Agata. She didn’t smile. Nothing Marek said made her smile.
Agata had indeed grown fond of Jacob’s animals. She admired their faces, the prettiness of their stripes and spots, the funny crookedness of their whiskers. And she had felt a sense of superiority around them, a kind of pride that said, ‘I’m alive and you’re not.’ Trapped in death, each face held an expression of awe—an innocent meeting its maker. Perhaps this was what allowed her the little pity she took on Marek. ‘I’m your maker,’ she said to him in her mind. He clung to her more and more now that the nights were chilled and the warmth of her body might soothe him. He leaned up against her like a slime, but she wouldn’t put her arms around him. She would turn away from his breath and sleep irritably, sometimes elbowing him in the back if she needed more space. Jenevere paid no mind to Marek’s nightly presence. Petra and she had an unspoken way of attending to both the nun and the boy simultaneously, getting them washed and ready for bed, lighting their candles, closing the curtains.
Without Marek to serve, Lispeth could have slept all day or taken up a hobby. She could have practiced her singing or dancing. She could have gone for walks in the fresh autumn air. But she would not. She simply sat in Marek’s empty room out of spite, waiting for him to come back. She became completely consumed by her longing for something to hate.
* * *
*
There were no tears shed for Dibra. Her disappearance struck everyone silent, no mourning, as neither Jenevere nor the stablehands nor the guards ever spoke a word to anyone about her departure. They didn’t even discuss it among themselves. Villiam didn’t ask the bandits for details, but he assumed they’d taken care of her as they’d cared for Luka. Unlike Dibra, the bandits liked to make Villiam happy. So forget the woman. She was out of his head as soon as the rains began. ‘She cried enough,’ Villiam said to Father Barnabas, but had neither the energy nor the interest to finish his sentiment. The priest understood what he meant. Dibra had cried so much, she had exhausted the moisture from the atmosphere. She had been so dreary and morose. It was her, and not Jacob’s death, that had steered the story wrong.