The Kingdom of Little Wounds (53 page)

My heart is a hammer cracking my ribs. I wish and pray and wish for a swift dispatch of my duty — I should be glad to have dispatched Grammaticus, at least, but now I am alone with a demon growing heavier by the second, and I don’t know how long I can carry it before my body splits and my very soul pours out.

I am a jelly, there is nothing else inside me. Just the sensations of fear and the chill, pliant flesh remembered on my fingers.

When I transferred the thing from its fur wrapping to the leather bucket, its boneless body curled easily inside, as if longing for a familiar shape. I got a closer look at the one-eyed tumorous head, the long stalk hardly marked out for belly or legs, tiny stumps of arms that bent neatly to fit against the bubbling eggs where a mouth belonged. A monster from a fairy tale, a figure from a nightmare. Worse than either one; this was life. And the creature must be disposed of.

Somehow I march through four rooms, five rooms, six.

I’m not heading to the privy, of course, or any other place I’d name to Grammaticus. Imagine if a devil were found floating in the pits the next day! The inquiries, the talk of witchcraft. No, I have to deposit this mistake in a much more permanent spot.

By the time I reach the courtyard, I’m gasping. I lean against the outside wall and gulp down cold air till my throat is coated with the airy sweetness that floats there. My arms ache as if I’ve carried the bucket a great distance. But I put my head back and pass another final pair of sentries as if this is an ordinary errand, then slide across the cobblestones to the portal of the dock. I hope there will be fewer guards posted here than at the square, especially as so many must have rushed to the twin poles of Nicolas’s chamber and the Queen’s.

It is so quiet I can hear my own breath, pounded out below my heart. I hear the vapors of the earth steaming up from the muddy crack of the witch’s hollow.

When I follow the steam upward, I see that all clouds have gone and we have a completely clear sky with a moon and stars shining in a great bubble over the palace. My father’s star is dimming into gold, but it — no more than any of the others — does not waver while I stare.

It is at this moment that the chapel bells start ringing, then the bells of the cathedral. Announcing a birth. Almost immediately it seems that bells ring all over the city, and in their clanging tongues I hear the rush of feet — as if every pair in the palace is headed now not for Nicolas or Isabel but for me, for this particular spot I occupy.

With that, I end my decline into madness. I skate the last few yards to the witch’s hollow and upend the bucket.

Queen Isabel’s miscarriage tips onto the ooze. I throw the bucket after it.

For a moment, as the bucket itself sinks, the little demon floats like the bloated corpses of the Great Sickness. The single milk-skinned eye stares upward at the mystery of the heavens as it rotates gently. A sleet of sugar and star-shine clings to its skin.

I close my eyes; I cross myself. It’s as if I’m bidding farewell to everyone I’ve already lost: mother, brothers, Jacob Lille. Father. And, of course, the baby I once carried inside and that I lost when it was far less shaped, even, than the horrible creature I’ve been carrying tonight. I say good-bye to my life.

God’s wounds. When my eyes open again, the fetus is still there.

I fear it will be the one object that cannot sink into the hollow, that its unholy nature will keep it floating on the sulfurous mud. I prepare to turn my heels and flee.

But then the slow spin arrests itself, and I can’t look away. A rumble comes from deep beneath my feet, and a gulping sound that makes the stones vibrate. The hungry spirits of the center of the earth — mud-witches, muck-maids, whatever they are — reach up to pluck my offering, and the ground swallows the poor demon-child.

T
HUS the dwarfs beneath Count Nicolas’s bed are left in sole possession not only of the truth but also of the jeweled dagger that killed him. Neither they nor the dagger will be seen again.

I am running and it runs too. That slug part of Nicolas, eel part of him, will not rest. Its blood mixes to my sweat, and the eel swim down tween my bosoms in a wake of slime.

Arthur has me by the arm and he hurries me, but gentle, down a passage that he think he have invented him self, he is so proud to know the way.

He have said again that he loves me. In spite of all he ’ve seen. And I did not think there were ever such a person as he. All this, his love, in pay for sheets of broken language.

The eel of Nicolas reach my belly and stop on the Lump. I feel the Lump a-kicking. To clear that thing away, may be, or else say
Bonjour
to its
papa.

I think it as we scurry underneath the moon:
For this Arthur had me hold his pen. This is why I can write his language.
I hope the Lump be of him, all though he be about to send me far from here.

Far, but where? And do it matter, if I go with out him?

So sudden, I believe there is love. I love Arthur.

My thinking makes me deaf as I am mute, be cause I do not hear the bells till Arthur speak of them.

“It means we have very little time,” he says, but yet he stop to listen while the palace vibrate round us.

I know in this moment that he have no plan, even the lessons of history have taught no thing of this situation. A black mistress who have changed a good infant for a bad and who carry a baby inside with out surety of the father, and also who have helped to kill one man that might have planted seed in her.
And
who have cut away that evil part of him and carry it with her, Arthur do not know why.

For a time I wish for one tongue, so I might explain it fast . . .

But I am wrong. This is not why Arthur have stopped his hurry. He stops be cause he sees Ava.

Ava. Arthur.
The snake find another inch to slither. Love turns on me to hiss.

Then Arthur be dragging me toward her. My knees lock and feet do n’t move, but they ride rough over the yard stones toward that place she stand in a cloud that lurch from the earth. She has a bucket. She throws it at the witch that sleep in that muddy bed of many tricks.

Now Arthur halt again. I fall against him, my knees are soft. I am tired. I think may be his plan is throw me after the bucket. So he and Ava can be together so long they like, with Ava’s brother on the throne and her father free and no me to remind of what they did.

So swift, I lose belief. I regain fury.

The hornets clog my throat with wings and stings. I could spit rage. I could spit
words
before I die.

I growl.

Arthur shush me. I push him, though I be weak. Ava turn now and see us.

Her eyes are white in the moon. “D-did you see?” she ask.

“I saw,” whisper Arthur.

I am having pain above the Lump. I cannot breathe. I hate them.

Arthur say, “I saw it blink.”

Ava wail in her throat then, she makes sounds like mine. “It can’t —” She does not finish.

They are not discussing me.

“I saw a blink,” Arthur say. “. . . Or I thought I did.”

Ava cover her face in her hands. She is of heart to confess. “It was born days ago. Yesterday? I’ve lost count — only Midi knows for certain. She was there. It could not live. It’s the Queen’s baby, you might as well know . . .”

Arthur turn to ask what I know, and he notice now that I feel pain. My belly have brought me to knees, and I swim dizzy in the sparkled heavens.

He kneel beside me.

“I shall,” he promises with an equal mix of pride and humility — only a scholar could manage it —“I
will
take care of History.”

He says this as a sort of plea, there by the witch’s bed. With one arm he supports Midi. His love. Who is staring at me with her usual deep-boring eyes, but this time, perhaps with a little less hatred than usual and a bit more . . . yes, pleading. Her belly is causing her pain; that much is obvious.

“We have to leave this place,” I say, also obvious; uneasy about who else might spot us here and whether the demon-baby will fight his way up, if he’s as alive as Grammaticus seems to think. “Go to the dorter — maybe pretend to sleep . . .”

“You have to leave the palace altogether,” he says. “Both of you. Right away — there’s danger, awful danger.”

Just as I think I don’t know how to feel more fear, now comes another wave of it. “What do you mean? Has Isabel confessed? Has Nicolas discovered the switch? Has he taken my brother?”

“Ava, please.” Grammaticus is gathering Midi into his arms — arms that have rarely carried more than a book or two.

“I suppose Midi’s told you who the baby in Isabel’s room really is.” My poor brother, who did nothing to create this situation but exist.

Whether she has or hasn’t, Grammaticus considers the baby’s identity a trivial matter. “No one will take him away,” he vows dismissively. “Certainly not Nicolas.” He staggers under Midi’s weight to the arched gallery that rings the inner yard. “The Queen wants that boy — everyone wants him — a good, healthy king.” He pants. I trail along behind, hands empty.

Grammaticus says, “I’ll make sure the baby’s entered into the annals that way, as the Dowager’s birth. But you’ll have to leave.”

“Why?” Relief followed by dismay nearly topples me over, just as Grammaticus lays Midi carefully on the ground. He covers her in his black robe; he looks skeletal and frail without it, like something I shouldn’t see. “Arthur, everything is falling into place — I can watch over little Klaus as he grows up. I’ll make his clothes. I’d like my father to see him — if Father is alive, Queen Isabel promised to free him no matter what Count Nicolas says . . .”

“You must watch over Midi instead,” he says, rubbing her hands between his own. “She is the vulnerable one now. And she cannot stay here. She has done — something.”

At the same moment, I feel blood escape my cloth again.

“To Nicolas?” I guess.

“She finished what Beatte began,” says Arthur. “She killed him.”

I cannot describe how this news makes me feel. Elated — I could sing and feel the stars and the seas would sing with me. Also ashamed, as if I had a hand in his death, because I wished so hard for it. And, finally, suspicious: What if Midi and Arthur have settled on me to take blame, as one of the murderous Bingens? I feel another rush of blood. I take a step backward. Where will I attain absolution now?

“Tell me,” I say, “
is
my father alive?”

With that, it seems, the cats who followed Midi and me discover us once more. They stream darkly to her fallen body, curling and rubbing on it both as if they wish to eat her and as if they might keep her warm.

“Please” — Grammaticus arrests me as he tries to shoo the animals —“won’t you help us? Take her away? I’ll fix History so neither of you appears at all. You’ll simply vanish from the record. Come, you have always said you wished to travel . . .”

Travel.
Sail away from Skyggehavn, from my brother and Sabine (who may have died or else is rich with Nicolas’s ruby); even from my father, whom I have just rescued, if Isabel keeps her bargain.

It will be a kind of rescue for me too, though one that brings an exile. In the company of Midi Sorte.

“Where?” I ask cautiously. “How?” Without the ruby, I have no wealth at all, just the handful of silver coins left behind in the dorter to which I cannot return.

“A boat,” he says. “We’ll find one on the quay used by the laundresses. You can reach one of the green islands, at least . . .”

“A rowboat won’t get us that far.” A plan, a wish, is bubbling in my mind already. Do I dare?

We argue back and forth a few quick minutes, while Midi slows her breath to recover strength; but it is clear to all of us that in the fullness of time (and sooner than I’d like), Midi and I will be in a boat rowing into the bay.

Meanwhile, the inner yard grows more populated, with people running back and forth bearing news and demands; and bells all over the city have taken up the cathedral’s cry.

“I must return to my duty,” Grammaticus insists, cowering behind a pillar. “It’s expected. If I’m not in one place or the other, all of us could lose everything.”