‘Marek takes after me, don’t you think?’ Villiam asked the priest one day.
‘I don’t see how that’s possible,’ Father Barnabas replied.
Lately, everything the priest said inspired a minor existential crisis in Villiam. Just the slightest provocation and Villiam was tense and seething. But the lord kept quiet. He worried, needlessly, that the priest would report any signs of weakness to the vassals and high priests. Then they might come after him, boot him out, find him unworthy of the sacred role he would soon play. If he played it well, he might become a saint, he thought. Like Joseph. He’d better act like one, he knew, but it was so boring. It was terribly depressing.
Villiam’s depression didn’t have a profound effect on the goings-on at the manor. It was simply a charge that followed him around now, a kind of desperation. The servants noticed the change, but they were too consumed by their duties to really care. Along with depression, Villiam had been growing increasingly suspicious that there was a force outside the limits of Lapvona that wanted to destroy him. He had Father Barnabas arrange for a shipment of wine and spirits for Christmas from the south, where the priest’s good standing would ensure that the drink would be untainted. Villiam was even suspicious that the wine already stored in the cellar had been tainted somehow. He instructed the servants to bury it all in a far corner of the estate, where the priest promised nothing would leech into the ground and poison the dirt. Even so, Villiam was worried. His waning appetite was probably due to his fear that the earth now held something toxic.
Villiam had moved his chair at the dining table to the center, next to Marek’s. The priest had moved his place setting down to the other end. Viewed from above, it looked like the remnants of a chess game, king and knight lined up side by side, and a rook in the corner. The game was almost over. Ina, although she’d moved into the manor to monitor the pregnancy, didn’t eat with the others at the table; she was considered, like Jude, one of the servants. And she and Agata were in strict quarantine in Agata’s room. Not even the female servants were allowed in. One stray germ and the Second Coming wouldn’t come. It was too dangerous. Food and water and herbs were left by the door.
Inside the room, Agata was not even allowed out of bed. Given how Agata had wanted Marek destroyed, and how he’d turned out in the end, Ina didn’t trust her to care for the unborn child. Ina took full charge. ‘Do as I say, or this time the baby will surely kill you.’ Agata didn’t mind the incarceration or the pillows propped under her back or the ropes around her wrists and ankles tying her to the posts of the bed. When she was awake, she was made to eat the stewed livers of chickens to strengthen her blood. Ina fed them to her with a spoon, blowing on the brown stuff and testing each bite with her own tongue. The tonic she gave Agata made her sleepy all the time. Winter herbs were especially potent. Agata felt no pain in her womb, not a kick or a single cramp or pressure. Ina sat with her ear to her belly constantly, whispering to the baby inside, sometimes going up with her hand to caress its face or let it curl its tiny fingers around her thumb. As long as Agata took what Ina gave her, she felt nothing. Less and less.
Grigor came to the manor once a week to deliver the herbs Ina needed. Often he stopped by the stables to say hello to Jude in an effort to get to know him. He had seen Jude whenever he’d brought his babes to market and herded them up onto the cart, crying in the dust like a man bidding adieu to his wife and children. Grigor had heard gossip that his boy had died.
‘I know what it’s like to lose a child,’ Grigor told Jude. ‘I lost my grandchildren to the bandits.’
Jude told Grigor the truth of his situation—that he had traded Marek for Jacob when his son had killed Villiam’s, that Agata was the bastard’s real mother, but the Christ babe was his. Grigor wasn’t sure what to believe, but he saw the poor man’s heartache, and that was enough to earn his sympathy. He admired Jude’s solitary lifestyle at the stable, how he’d refused to conform himself to the ways of Lapvona, and now the ways of the manor.
‘Work harder this year and the Devil will scare,’ Father Barnabas still said. On top of farming and smelting and baking and building, now the villagers were also restoring the old church. Every available hand was expected to rebuild, repaint, sand, and polish the place, while Barnabas barely even showed his face. It was all crooked. Grigor could tell that Jude knew it, too.
‘Why should I be a slave to fear if Jesus has already saved me?’ Grigor asked.