Captivity (16 page)

When he was finished Reynaldo stood up, his
chest puffed out with pride, as if he had accomplished something.
He closed his breeches and signaled for an announcement, pointing
to the pathetic creature on the floor, her legs still spread, blood
showing between them. “Look here!” he said. Everybody’s head
snapped around on command. “That dress is my gift to the girl.
My
gift.”

Michaela came to her daughter’s aid. She
pulled the skirt down and caressed her daughter with what
gentleness she was capable of. “You’re a woman now,” she said, as
the girl continued to cry, clutching her knees, drawn up in a fetal
position on the floor. “And cheer up. It won’t hurt so much next
time.”

Reynaldo shoved Michaela away, grabbed the
girl’s arm and forced her to stand. “All gifts come from me,” he
said. “‘Gravina Aranyi, and her children, and her clothes and
jewels, are
mine
because
I
knew how to get them.
Whoever wants a share must earn it.” He slapped the girl on her
rear and pushed her toward her mother.

Tomorrow night, little lady
, he
thought to me.
Tomorrow I’ll be your Margrave Aranyi. Then you
too can start earning your keep
.

I bolted out of his mind in panic and fear.
The malevolence in his words was clear enough, but not the sense. I
knew he was planning to kill Dominic, but marrying or possessing
widowed ‘Gravina Aranyi would not make Reynaldo Margrave Aranyi.
Yet he had not said “your husband,” or even “your lord husband.” He
had used Dominic’s title.

My simple pleasure in the stolen food and the
slight resurge of strength was gone. I had hoped my extra energy
would help me learn Reynaldo’s plans, but his mind was peculiar,
even for a telepath. His brain waves were different from others I
had encountered, inappropriate thoughts appearing in wrong places,
emotions transposed or distorted. The usual signals I received from
others’ minds were masked or nonexistent in his. Reynaldo’s bizarre
personality had defeated me, it seemed. Possibly his madness
offered a perverse kind of protection against intrusion, or easy
interpretation of what the intrepid explorer might find.

And yet his mental pathways reminded me of
something. Could I have encountered someone similar once? No. It
would have made a strong impression. Repellent, but
unforgettable.

The night passed in disordered dreams and
feverish nightmares. Dominic fondled me, then turned slowly into
Reynaldo while I stared at his face in horror, the features melting
and reforming like holographic effects. The man laughed in
Dominic’s deep baritone, then sniggered in Reynaldo’s maniacal
voice and forced his erect penis down my throat until I gagged. I
woke up in the blackness of predawn, on my back, my dry mouth open,
my head pounding as if wooden stakes were being driven in.

This morning I had fever, no doubt of it. I felt
Val’s forehead. It was hot, flushed, sweaty. “My head hurts,” Val
said, whining at my lingering touch, scratching himself fitfully. I
peered inside his shirt, could see little in the semi-darkness, and
inserted my hand. He had the same rash as mine, the little raised
oozing blisters, although he had no wool on his skin. In his
sickness he barely moved, but wet his diaper where he lay.

I looked at Jana, afraid to touch her. Jana
stared back at me, frightened by the terror she saw in my face.
“What’s the matter Mama? Are you sick?”

She seemed as healthy as ever.
Please let
her stay well. Isis and Astarte watch over my girl
. I prayed to
the goddesses of motherhood and childbirth like any credulous
peasant woman. “It’s just a cold,” I said, my voice a croak. “Val
has it too.” I felt a horrible foggy delirium overtaking me. “It’s
safer if you don’t come too close.” The effort of speaking
unbalanced me. I clawed through the dress at my suppurating
skin.

Michaela was surly and silent when she
brought breakfast. She had a dark black eye and another tooth was
missing, blood still encrusted on her mouth. I forgot to tell Jana
to cover her short hair, but the woman never noticed.

After the brief meal was done, the door
locked, Jana shook her head at me like an adult. “Aren’t you
hungry, Mama?” she asked over and over, to my repeated,
increasingly unconvincing denials. Jana stood in front of me, feet
apart, hands on hips, demanding a privilege she knew she had
earned. “You’re sick. You need food. Let me go out.”

My mind wobbled tipsily through the spinning
in my head, the buzz of fever, struggling to perform a gargantuan
task that had once come automatically: thinking. Yesterday’s raid
had been so easy and successful, it was tempting to try again. But
the consequences of failure seemed too terrible to contemplate.
Dominic was supposed to arrive tonight. Surely we could hold out
until then. “No, love,” I said. “Papa will be here soon. There’s no
need to take such a chance.”

Val and I lay in a stupor. He suckled less
and only whimpered when I spoke to him. Jana fretted with worry.
Every few minutes she climbed up to the grate. “It’s safe, Mama,”
she said as she jumped down, her footfalls rocking my brain like
thunderclaps. “I could go.” I thought of what I had seen and heard
last night. It wasn’t safe, not at all. I had been mad yesterday,
sending my daughter into danger for so little gain.

Each time Jana proposed going I shook my
head. I swigged water from the skin, tried to get some into Val, to
fight the fever. The day went by without incident. Val nursed a
little, then slept. Jana gave up on her fruitless activities and
lay down, near me but not touching. She was growing foreign, the
strong and healthy one unconsciously distancing herself from the
weak, sickly ones that Val and I had become.

Late in the afternoon I felt something in my
mind. The fever was reaching its peak, the delirium growing
stronger.
Amalie, Amalie!
The voice formed a pattern,
separating itself from the blur of constant headache, grew sharper
with my prolonged inattention. Dominic! I tried to clear the fuzz
from my brain.

Dominic
, I thought to him.
Where
are you?

My husband’s mind was shielded, open only so
far as to allow filtered communication.
It’s better you don’t
know
, he said. He spoke brusquely, forcing his worry and love
down into a part of his mind where those emotions wouldn’t
interfere with the difficult work he had to do.
But listen. I’m
not coming tonight. I’ll be another day. I’m sending Niall on ahead
to start the negotiations while I– while I do this. If there’s a
problem with that fucking maniac, tell him I’m just outside the
walls. Niall knows how to make him believe it.
Dominic prepared
to break communion
. I’ll talk to you again as soon as I
can.

Dominic!
I called out to him once, and
stopped myself. What was I going to do? Tell him I was sick? That
Val and I had a high fever? What would that accomplish? Dominic was
not going to rescue us for another day. If he had made a decision
like that, it was out of necessity, because he needed more time to
complete his preparations.

What is it, beloved?
Dominic asked,
concerned by my frantic cry.

My mind plodded through the mire of my
delirium and fear.
Reynaldo’s planning to kill you
, I
said.

Yes, my love
, Dominic said, as if I
had told him I loved him.
I know that
.

I mean it
, I said, struggling to sit
up. That was it. I had to warn Dominic.
He’s trying to lure you
here so he can—

Please, Amalie
, Dominic said.
Don’t
distress yourself
. He thought more carefully.
Do you know
anything specific?

I’m sorry
, I said.
I can’t– it’s
difficult to go inside his mind. He always knows I’m there, and it
scares me.

My poor darling
, Dominic said.
Just
hold on a little longer.
He remembered the pleading he had
sensed when I called his name.
Is something else wrong?

Nothing, my love
, I said.
I was
worried, and glad to hear your voice. I will look forward to
Niall’s arrival and the negotiations
. I forced as much false
courage into the thoughts as I could.

Be strong, my lady wife
, Dominic said.
In another day I can be strong for both of us.
He did not
kiss me in farewell, or touch me, or ask after the children. His
mental and physical powers were almost completely absorbed by his
current endeavor, and he did not want to risk revealing the details
in the openness of full communion. Ignorance was my best
protection, as Reynaldo would not be able to pry knowledge from my
mind that it did not possess.

“Was Papa here?” Jana asked, seeing my
attempt to sit up and clear my head.

“Yes,” I said. “But he’s not coming
tonight.”

Jana swallowed, then nodded. “He’s planning
his strategy.” She studied me for a few seconds while I worked to
keep my expression neutral, apparently not succeeding. “Let me go
out,” Jana said, pleading now. “You need food, because we have to
wait another day.” As I hesitated, Jana pressed her advantage. “I
have your knife. I’ll be safe.”

I can only justify my actions because of the
fever.
The delirium made me do it
. In truth, there was no
excuse, except that I was weak and frightened, for Val and for
myself. The bandits had gone out again after their midday break.
Supper was still an hour away. Surely Jana could be out and back in
no time.

Turning the lock was more difficult today.
The spinning and swaying in my brain made it hard to find the
correct angle for bending the light from my inner flame into my
eyes, but I got it at last and Jana eased out. She ran upstairs,
sure of the way now, but hesitated once outside. Yesterday’s sense
of mission was not as strong today, with no rehearsal to remind her
of the itinerary she must follow. Her mind was awhirl with
excitement and she was desperate to explore, as she had been
deprived of doing the first time. She made a decision, ran in a low
crouch toward the front courtyard.

The other way
, I thought intensely to
her, pushing the desire into her mind. It seemed harsh, like
flogging an animal, but my daughter felt no pain, only an atypical
urge to move in the less interesting direction I was pointing her.
She slowed and straightened, then retraced her steps with dragging
feet.

When she was halfway back, Val moaned and I
had to turn my attention to him. He was burning up like a heated
stone in a fireplace. I knew what high fever could do to a child.
It could fry his brain, turn him into a living corpse. I sprinkled
the last trickles of water in the skin over him, hoping to bring
his fever down. Then I wrapped him in my cloak and held him. When I
tried to focus on Jana again I had lost her.

An eternity went by, or perhaps my own
internal clock had slowed.
Either this man is dead or my watch
has stopped
. Insane giggles bubbled up in my thoughts, more
like Reynaldo’s dysfunction than a mother’s care.
Stop it
, I
scolded my own brain.
Act responsible
.

I forced myself back to sobriety. With the
growing twilight I had no way to tell if Jana had been gone five
minutes or five hours.
No
, I thought,
Michaela would have
brought supper. It hasn’t been long. It’s just my fear stretching
the minutes into hours
.

As I had the thought, the footsteps came
slapping down the stairs. Panic almost made me pass out. Then I had
an inspiration. I found Jana’s dress and felt for the swatch of
hair I had saved. I unwound my cloak from around Val and bunched it
into a lumpy shape on the straw. A corner of the dress’s skirt
peeped out at one end, some black tresses at the other.

The lock squeaked and worked back and forth,
followed by loud cursing. Michaela burst in, a harpy come to life.
At the sight of me and Val sitting calmly on the straw, she
stopped. “Fucking witch!” she screamed. “How did you open the
lock?”

In my rush I had had no time to lock the
door, had not wanted to bolt it with Jana outside. “You left it
open,” I said. My head throbbed and my fever spiked sharply. “After
breakfast, you forgot to lock it.”

Michaela paused, thinking. She had been
preoccupied this morning, angry over her daughter’s rape and her
own beating. I tried to enter her mind and confuse her further. My
consciousness was in such a muddle from the fever it could only
help. The woman had no specific memories of the morning’s tasks,
could retrieve no image of the lock or the door from the cloud of
her unhappy thoughts. “And you like it here so much you just
stayed?”

“Where would I go?” I said. This was the
truth and we both knew it. The door protected as much as it
confined me.

Michaela peered into the gloomy, foul cell.
“Where’s the girl?”

I pointed to the heap on the straw. “She’s
sick,” I said in a whisper. “Asleep,” I added quickly, moving to
intercept Michaela as she bent to look. “We’re all sick, me and my
son. But my daughter has it worst. Please don’t disturb her. If she
sleeps, perhaps she’ll recover.”

Michaela hesitated. I could sense her dawning
apprehension. The sickness shone out of my eyes and my flushed
greasy skin. Val looked just as bad. “What’s the matter?” she
asked. “Is my fine lady having a fainting spell?”

“Typhus,” I said. I had been poring over my
knowledge of extinct Terran diseases, had remembered the name of
one that came from lice and filth.

The woman jumped back in terror. The word was
a synonym for death in poor villages, in any community like this
one with insufficient food and worse sanitation, where lice
infested the population. Probably the bandits were all survivors or
carriers and had little to fear, but the woman might not know that.
In this cell, she saw only an angel of death and her two
cherubim.