Grigor stopped and went back to the flower, squatted to inspect it. Only a few petals were damaged. He plucked the broken petals and handed them to Klarek. ‘Forgive an old man.’
‘This garland is meant to represent the noble blood line. Every flower embodies a past lord of Lapvona, and his loving blessing on Villiam and his new bride, leading them into Holy Matrimony.’
‘There haven’t been so many lords in Lapvona.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Grigor looked up and down the garland, assessing the number of flowers strung together to reach the hill and the manor. There were thousands of flowers, he guessed.
‘If each flower is a lord, that would mean there were thousands of lords. That’s impossible. A man lives fifty years usually. That’s fifty thousand years of life, at least.’
‘Are you schooling me in science?’ Klarek winced. ‘That’s heathen talk.’
‘My father died when I was ten,’ Grigor replied.
‘And mine at twelve.’
Grigor wiped his brow although there was no sweat on it. ‘I’m telling you, Villiam’s lineage isn’t this long. A few flowers at most. His great-grandfather took the manor over from the Duke of Lapvoon, so the story goes.’
‘I don’t think you know your history.’
‘I know what my father’s father’s father had to say about it.’
‘I don’t think you do.’
‘Ach,’ Grigor said, walking away. ‘Whatever.’
‘You better dye your clothes soon, old man!’ Klarek hollered after him. ‘If you don’t wear red, you’ll be hanged for treason.’
* * *
*
It was odd, Ina thought, that the birds hadn’t alerted her of Grigor’s arrival, but she herself felt drawn to look through the trees and saw the old man stepping over the new shoots of tansy. She recognized Grigor. She had nursed him many, many years ago, and remembered the little dimple in his bottom lip. He carried with him a small wreath of canniba that he had saved along with his seeds during the drought and rains. It was only on a hunch that Grigor thought Ina might be pleased by the herb; he didn’t know she suffered from headaches, only that she was very old. Grigor knocked on the door. She opened it. She saw Grigor’s dimple and blushed and smiled.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I guess you heard about my fertility treatment?’
‘No, no. I have come to confess something.’
Ina stepped back from the doorway to let him enter. Looking around her room, he saw the dried herbs and flowers, a pot steaming on the hearth. The air smelled of frankincense, pine, orange, and fire. Ina sat on her bed and rubbed the place beside her. Grigor did not sit down, but handed her the wreath of canniba.
‘I have brought you this gift. It is good for us elderly. It staves off forgetting.’
‘Aha.’
‘I take it to remember where I’ve put things,’ he said. ‘And it helps me sleep.’
‘I don’t need sleep,’ Ina said. ‘But I like to smoke it for my headaches.’
‘As you like,’ Grigor said. The priest had said to give her a gift and she would relieve his anger. But now that he was in her home, Grigor was a bit afraid of Ina’s powers. He could not look her in the eyes. They used to be green and small, and as a baby he had wondered up at them as easily as if they were his own mother’s. He remembered that now, and so he asked, ‘What happened to your eyes?’
‘The old ones?’ Ina reached for them on the mantel and unwrapped the cloth. ‘They’re right here.’
Grigor gasped. The eyes were now shriveled and black and smelled of rotten fish.
‘I keep them to remember, I suppose,’ Ina said. ‘Like the canniba. You like remembering things, Grigor?’
‘I’m surprised you remember my name.’
‘I remember the names of all my babes.’
Grigor’s nose had begun to water from the stink of those old eyeballs. Ina sensed his disgust, but she didn’t put them away. Instead, she plucked them from the cloth, placed them on a little ceramic plate, and put the plate on the bedside table. She struck a fire to light a tallow candle, whose smoke rose like ribbons in the air and followed her decoratively back to her seat on the bed. Witchy, Grigor thought. She pointed to a chair, a new one she had recently been given in payment for servicing the carpenter and his wife, who was now expecting.
‘I came because the priest told me to,’ Grigor said, worried he would fall victim to the smoke. It was only candle smoke, but he was afraid.