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  Author: Robin LaFevers Chapter One

Brittany 1485

I bear a deep ruddy stain that runs from my left shoulder down to my right hip, a trail left by the herbwitch'south poisonous substance that my mother used to try to miscarry me from her womb. That I survived, co-ordinate to the herbwitch, is no miracle only a sign I take been sired by the god of death himself.

I am told my father flew into a rage and raised his hand to my mother even as she lay weak and haemorrhage on the birthing bed. Until the herbwitch pointed out to him that if my female parent had lain with the god of death, surely He would not stand idly by while my father vanquish her.

I risk a glance up at my husbandhoped-for, Guillo, and wonder if my father has told him of my lineage. I am guessing not, for who would pay 3 silver coins for what I am? Likewise, Guillo looks far as well placid to know of my truthful nature. If my male parent has tricked him, it will not bode well for our union. That we are being married in Guillo's cottage rather than a church further adds to my unease.

I experience my begetter's heavy gaze upon me and wait upwardly. The triumph in his eyes frightens me, for if he has triumphed, and so I have surely lost in some fashion I exercise not notwithstanding empathize. even so, I smile, wanting to convince him I am happy — for there is zero that upsets him more my happiness.

But while I tin can easily lie to my male parent, information technology is harder to lie to myself. I am afraid, sorely afraid of this homo to whom I will now belong. I look down at his big, wide hands. Just like my father, he has clay caked under his fingernails and stains in the creases of his peel. will the semblance stop there? Or volition he, too, wield those hands like a cudgel?

It is a new start, I remind myself, and in spite of all my trepidations, I cannot extinguish a tiny spark of promise. Guillo wants me enough to pay 3 silverish coins. Surely where there is desire, in that location is room for kindness? It is the i thing that keeps my knees from knocking and my hands from trembling. That and the priest who has come to officiate, for while he is naught but a hedge priest, the furtive glance he sends me over his prayer book causes me to believe he knows who and what I am.

As he mutters the ceremony'due south final words, I stare at the rough hempen prayer string with the nine wooden beads that proclaim him a follower of the erstwhile ways. fifty-fifty when he ties the cord around our hands and lays the blessings of God and the nine former saints upon our matrimony, I keep my gaze downcast, afraid to run into the smugness in my begetter'southward eyes or what my husband'due south face up might reveal.

When the priest is done, he pads away on muddy feet, his rough leather sandals flapping noisily. He does non even pause long plenty to raise a tankard to our union. Nor does my begetter. Earlier the grit from my male parent'due south departing cart has settled, my new husband swats my rump and grunts toward the upstairs loft.

I clench my fists to hibernate their trembling and cross to the rickety stairs. while Guillo fortifies himself with one last tankard of ale, I climb up to the loft and the bed I volition at present share with him. I sorely miss my mother, for even though she was afraid of me, surely she would have given me a adult female's counsel on my wedding night. Only both she and my sister fled long ago, one back into the arms of death, and the other into the arms of a passing tinker.

I know, of course, what goes on between a man and a adult female. Our cottage is minor and my father loud. In that location was many a night when urgent movement accompanied by groans filled our nighttime cottage. The next twenty-four hour period my father ever looked slightly less bad tempered, and my mother more than so. I try to convince myself that no thing how distasteful the union bed is, surely it cannot be any worse than my male parent's raw atmosphere and meaty fists.

The loft is a close, musty place that smells as if the rough shutters on the far wall have never been opened. A timber and rope bed frame holds a mattress of straw. Other than that, at that place are only a few pegs to hang apparel on and a plain chest at the foot of the bed.

I sit on the edge of the chest and await. It does not have long. A heavy creak from the stairs warns me that Guillo is on his way. My oral cavity turns dry and my breadbasket sour. Not wanting to give him the reward of summit, I stand.

When he reaches the room, I finally force myself to await at his face. His piggish eyes gorge themselves on my trunk, going from the pinnacle of my head down to my ankles, and then back up to my breasts. My father'south insistence on lacing my gown so tight has worked, equally Guillo can look at piffling else. He gestures with his tankard toward my bodice, slopping ale over the sides so that it dribbles to the flooring. "Remove it. " Desire thickens his voice.

I stare at the wall behind him, my fingers trembling as I raise them to my laces. Just not fast enough. Never fast enough. He takes iii behemothic strides toward me and strikes me hard across the cheek. "Now!" he roars every bit my caput snaps back.

Bile rises in my throat and I fear I will be sick. So this is how it will exist betwixt u.s.. This is why he was willing to pay three silver coins.

My laces are finally undone, and I remove my bodice so that I stand earlier him in my brim and shift. The stale air, which only moments earlier was too warm, is now common cold as information technology presses confronting my skin.

"Your brim," he barks, breathing heavily.

I untie the strings and step out of my brim. Every bit I turn to lay information technology on the nearby bench, Guillo reaches for me. He is surprisingly quick for one then large and stupid, just I am quicker. I take had long years of exercise escaping my father'south rages.

I jerk abroad, spinning out of his reach, infuriating him. In truth, I give no thought to where I volition run, wishing only to hold off the inevitable a niggling longer.

There is a loud crash as his half-empty tankard hits the wall behind me, sending a shower of ale into the room. He snarls and lunges, but something within me volition not — cannot — make this easy for him. I spring out of his reach.

But not far enough. I feel a tug, and then hear a rip of material as he tears my thin, worn chemise.

Silence fills the loft — a silence so thick with shock that even his fibroid breathing has stopped. I feel his optics rake downwardly my back, have in the ugly cherry welts and scars the poison left backside. I look over my shoulder to see his face up has gone white equally new cheese, his eyes wide. when our glances meet, he knows — knows— that he has been duped. He bellows then, a long, deep note of rage that holds equal parts fury and fear.

And so his rough manus cracks against my skull and sends me to my knees. The pain of hope dying is worse than his fists and boots.

When Guillo's rage is spent, he reaches down and grabs me by the hair. "I will go for a existent priest this fourth dimension. He will burn you lot or drown yous. Maybe both. " He drags me down the steps, my knees bumping painfully against each one. He continues dragging me through the kitchen, then shoves me into a pocket-size root cellar, slams the door, and locks it.

Bruised and perhaps cleaved, I lie on the flooring with my dilapidated cheek pressed into the absurd dirt. Unable to stop myself, I smile.

I have avoided the fate my father had planned for me. Surely it is I who has won, not he.

The sound of the bolt lifting jerks me awake. I shove myself to a sitting position and clutch the tattered remains of my chemise around me. when the door opens, I am stunned to see the hedge priest, the same minor rabbit of a man who'd blessed our marriage just hours earlier. Guillo is non with him, and any moment that does not contain my begetter or Guillo is a happy one by my reckoning.

The priest looks over his shoulder, so motions for me to follow.

I rise to my feet, and the root cellar spins dizzily. I put a hand to the wall and wait for the feeling to pass. The priest motions over again, more urgently. "We've not much fourth dimension before he returns. "

His words articulate my caput as nothing else can. If he is acting without Guillo'southward knowledge, and then he is most assuredly helping me. "I'm coming. " I push button away from the wall, stride carefully over a sack of onion

s, and follow the hedge priest into the kitchen. Information technology is dark; the simply light comes from the banked embers in the hearth. I should wonder how the priest plant me, why he is helping me, but I do not care. All I can think is that he is not Guillo and not my father. The balance does not affair.

He leads me to the dorsum door, and in a twenty-four hour period full of surprises, I detect one more than equally I recognize the quondam herbwitch from our village hovering nearby. If I did non need to concentrate so difficult on putting one foot in forepart of the other, I would ask her what she is doing here, only information technology is all I can do to stay upright and proceed from falling on my face up in the dirt.

As I pace into the night, a sigh of relief escapes me. It is dark out, and darkness has ever been my friend. A cart waits nearby. Touching me equally fiddling as possible, the hedge priest helps me into the back of information technology earlier hurrying around to the driver's bench and climbing in. The priest glances over his shoulder at me, and so averts his eyes as if he's been burned. "There'southward a blanket back there," he mutters as he steers the nag out onto the cobbled lane. "Comprehend yourself. "

The unyielding wood of the cart presses painfully into my bruised bones, and the thin blanket scratches and reeks of ass. notwithstanding, I wish they'd brought a 2nd i for padding.

"Where are you taking me?"

"To the boat. "

A boat ways h2o, and crossing water means I volition be far from the accomplish of my father and Guillo and the Church building.

"Where is this gunkhole taking me?" I ask, but the priest says cipher. exhaustion overwhelms me. I do not have the strength to pluck answers from him like meager berries from a thorny bush-league. I lie downward in the cart and give myself over to the horse'due south jolting gait.

And and then my journey across Brittany begins. I am smuggled like some forbidden cargo, hidden amid turnips or in hay in the back of carts, awakened by furtive voices and fumbling hands as I am passed from hedge priest to herbwife, a hidden chain of those who live in accordance with the old saints and are adamant to continue me from the Church. The hedge priests, with their awkward movements and musty, stale robes, are kind plenty, but their fingers are unschooled in tenderness or compassion. It is the herbwitches I like most. Their chapped, raw hands are gentle equally lamb's wool, and the sharp, pungent aroma of a hundred different herbs clings to them like a fragrant shadow. Often as not, they give me a tincture of poppy for my injuries, while the priests simply give me their sympathy, and some begrudgingly at that.

When I awake on what I reckon to be the fifth night of my journey, I smell the salty tang of the body of water and remember the promise of a boat. I struggle to sit up, pleased to find my bruises hurting me less and my ribs do not burn. we are passing through a minor fishing village. I pull the blanket close confronting the chill and wonder what will happen next.

At the very edge of the village sits a stone church. It is to this that the latest hedge priest steers our cart and I am relieved to see the door bears the sacred anchor of Saint Mer, one of the quondam saints. The priest reins his horse to a cease. "Go out. "

I cannot tell if it is fatigue or disdain I hear in his phonation, only either style, my journey is about done, so I ignore it and clamber out of the cart, sure to keep the blanket clutched tight effectually me lest I offend his modesty.

Once he secures the horse, he leads me toward the beach, where a lone gunkhole waits. The inky black ocean spreads out as far and wide as my eye tin can run across, making the vessel seem very modest.

An onetime sailor sits hunched in the prow. A shell bleached white as bone hangs from a cord at his neck, marking him as a worshiper of Saint Mer. I wonder what he thinks of being woken in the center of the dark and made to row strangers out into the dark sea.

The sailor's faded blue optics skim over me. He nods. "Climb in. we en't got all night. " He thrusts an oar at me, and I grasp it to steady myself every bit I get into the boat.

The small vessel dips and rocks and for a moment I am afraid it will tip me into the icy water. But information technology rights itself and and then the priest steps in, causing the hull to sink even lower.

The one-time sailor grunts, then returns the oar to its pivot and begins rowing.

we accomplish the minor isle just as dawn pinkens the eastern horizon. It looks barren in the early, spare low-cal.

Equally we describe closer, I run into a standing stone next to a church building and realize we've come to one of the old places of worship.

Gravel crunches nether the hull of the gunkhole as the old crewman rows right up onto the beach. He jerks his head toward the rock fortress. "Become out then. The abbess of St. Mortain exist expectin' ye. "

Saint Mortain? The patron saint of death. A tremor of unease washes through me. I look at the priest, who averts his eyes, equally if looking at me is too great a mortal temptation.

Clutching the blanket close effectually me, I climb awkwardly from the boat and step into the shallows. Torn between gratitude and annoyance, I curtsy slightly, careful to let the blanket skid from my shoulder for the merest of seconds.

It is enough. Satisfied at the priest'southward gasp and the old sailor'southward cluck of his tongue, I turn and slog through the cold h2o to the beach. In truth, I accept never flashed so much as an ankle earlier, simply I am sorely vexed at being treated like a temptress when all I experience is bruised and broken.

When I reach the patchy grass that grows betwixt the rocks, I look back toward the boat, but information technology has already put out to sea. I turn and begin making my way to the convent, eager to run into what those who worship Death want of me.

Chapter Two

2 ancient standing stones marker the entrance to the convent. The chickens in the courtyard are just at present beginning to stir, scratching in the dirt for their breakfast. At my approach, they cluck and flutter away.

I interruption at the door, wishing I could observe a corner and slumber until my caput clears, but the sailor said the abbess is expecting me, and while I do not know much about abbesses, I suspect they are not fond of waiting.

My heart beats wildly every bit I raise my hand and knock. The heavy door opens at once, revealing a short, plain woman covered in black from head to toe. without proverb a give-and-take, she motions me inside.

I follow her through a sparsely furnished room, then downward an equally austere corridor that leads into the heart of the convent. My guide knocks one time on a closed door.

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