The Taker (23 page)

“Please stop saying that. You’re frightening me.”

“You will get used to this, and very soon, you’ll never be frightened again. There will be nothing to be frightened of. There is only one rule for you to follow now, one person you must obey, and that person is me. Because I have your soul now, Lanore. Your soul and your life.”

“I must obey you now? Does that mean you are God?” I snorted, too, being as brazen as I felt I could be with him.

“The God you were raised on has given you up. Do you remember what I said before you received the gift? You are my possession now and forever. I
am
your god and if you do not believe me and care to test what I tell you, I invite you to try to defy me.”

By then, I had let him lead me to the bed and didn’t protest as he lay beside me. He fed me the mouthpiece and stroked my damp hair as I sucked in the heavy fumes. The narcotic wrapped around me, cradled me, and my fear collapsed like an exhausted child. Now that I was worn down and sleepy, Adair was almost tender. “I have no explanation to give you, Lanore, but there is a story. I’ll tell you that story,
my
story. I’ll tell you how I came to be, and perhaps then you’ll understand.”

NINETEEN

H
UNGARIAN TERRITORY, A.D
. 1349

A
s soon as Adair saw the stranger, he knew with the unmistakable chill of premonition that the old man had come for him.

The end of the day was the time when they celebrated, the nomadic laborers with whom Adair’s family traveled. As night descended, they built giant campfires to enjoy the one piece of the day they could call their own. Their long hours working in the fields were over and so they gathered to share food and drink and entertain one another. His uncle would not yet be drunk and so would play folk tunes on his peasant’s violin, accompanying Adair’s mother and the other women as they sang. Someone would bring a tambourine, another would bring a balalaika. Adair sat with his whole family, his five brothers and two sisters, along with the older brothers’ wives. His happiness that night was complete when he saw, on the far side of the leaping fire, Katarina approach the circle with her family.

He and his family were wanderers, as were Katarina’s family and everyone in the caravan. Once upon a time they had been serfs to a
Magyar lord, but he had deserted them, leaving them to bandits. They fled from the villages in their wagons and had lived in their wagons ever since, following the harvest as itinerant workers, digging ditches, tending fields, taking whatever work they could find. The Magyar and Romanian kingdoms were fighting then, and there were too few Magyar nobles spread over the countryside to protect the vagabonds, should they even be inclined.

Still, it hadn’t been so long ago that they had been forced from their home that Adair couldn’t remember what it was like to sleep inside a house at night, to have that small bit of security. His brothers Istvan and Radu had been babies, though, and had no recollection of the earlier, happier life. Adair felt bad that his younger brothers had never known those times, but then they seemed in their own way to be happier than the rest of the family and were perplexed by the melancholy that haunted their siblings and parents.

The stranger had appeared suddenly, at the edge of the gathering that evening. The first thing Adair noticed about him was that he was very old, practically a shrunken corpse leaning on his walking stick, and as he got closer, he looked older still. His skin was papery and wrinkled, and dotted with age spots. His eyes were coated with a milky film but nevertheless had a strange sharpness to them. He had a thick head of snow white hair, so long that it trailed down his back in a plait. But most notable were his clothes, which were of Romanian cut and made of costly fabrics. Whoever he was, he was wealthy and, even though an old man, had no fear of stepping into a gypsy camp alone at night.

He pushed through the ring of people and stood in the center of the circle, next to the bonfire. As his gaze rippled over the crowd, Adair’s blood stood in his veins. Adair was no different from every other boy in the encampment: uneducated, unwashed, underfed. He knew there was no reason for the old man to single him out, but his sense of foreboding was so strong that he would have leaped to his feet and run from the circle if his youthful pride hadn’t stopped him—he hadn’t done anything to this old man, so why should he run?

After a silent search of the faces illuminated in the fire’s lambent glow, the old man smiled unpleasantly, lifted his hand, and pointed directly at Adair. Then he looked over at the group of elders. By now, all activity had stopped, the music, the laughter. All eyes fell on the stranger and then moved to Adair.

His father broke the silence. He pushed through Adair’s brothers and sisters and grabbed Adair by the forearm, nearly yanking it from its socket. “What have you done, boy?” he hissed through his gaping teeth. “Do not just sit there—come with me!” He pulled his son to his feet. “The rest of you—what are you staring at? Go back to your storytelling and your foolish singing!” And as he dragged Adair away, Adair felt the stares of his family, and Katarina, on his back.

The two went to a dark overhang under a tree, out of earshot of the campfire, followed by the stranger.

Adair tried to deflect whatever trouble had found him. “Whoever you are looking for, I swear it is not me. You’ve mistaken me for another.”

His father slapped him. “What did you do? Steal a chicken? Take some potatoes or onions from the fields?”

“I swear,” Adair sputtered, holding the fiery spot on his cheek and pointing at the old man. “I don’t know him.”

“Do not let your guilty imagination run away with you. I’m not accusing the boy of any crime,” the old man said to Adair’s father. He beheld both Adair and his father with contempt, as he might beggars or thieves. “I have chosen your son to come work for me.”

To his credit, Adair’s father was suspicious of the offer. “What use could you have for him? He has no skills. He is a field hand.”

“I need a servant. A boy with a strong back and sturdy legs.”

Adair saw his life taking an abrupt, unwelcome turn. “I’ve never been a house servant. I wouldn’t know what to do—”

A second slap from his father stopped Adair short. “Do not make yourself out to be more worthless than you are,” his father snapped. “You can learn, even if learning is not among your strengths.”

“He will do, I can tell.” The stranger walked around Adair slowly, appraising him like a horse for sale in the thieves’ market. He trailed a scent in his wake, smoky and dry, like incense. “I do not need someone with a strong mind, just someone to help a fragile old man with the demands of life. But …” Here his eyes narrowed, and his countenance became fierce again. “I live a distance away and will not make this trip again. If your son wants the position, he must leave with me tonight.”

“Tonight?” Adair’s throat tightened.

“I am prepared to pay for the loss of your son’s contribution to your family,” the stranger said to Adair’s father. With those words, Adair knew he was lost, for his father would not turn down money. By this time, his mother was approaching them, keeping to the tree’s shadow, wringing her skirts in her hands. She waited with Adair, as his father and the stranger haggled over a price. Once a sum was settled upon and the old man left to ready his horse, Adair’s mother flew to her husband.

“What are you doing?” she cried, even though she knew her husband would not change his mind. There would be no arguing with him.

But there was more at stake for Adair and he had nothing to lose, so he turned on his father. “What have you done to me? A stranger walks into camp and you sell one of your children to him! What do you know of him?”

“How dare you question me!” he said, lashing out, knocking Adair to the ground. The rest of the family had come down from the bonfire by now, and stood beyond their father’s reach. It was nothing new for them to watch a sibling being beaten, but it was unsettling all the same. “You are too stupid to know a good opportunity when you see it. Obviously, this man is wealthy. You’ll be the servant of a rich man. You’ll live in a house, not a wagon, and you will not have to work in the fields. If I thought the strange man would agree to it, I’d ask him to take one of the others as well. Maybe Radu, he is not so blind that he cannot see when a good thing falls in his lap.”

Adair picked himself off the ground, shamefaced. His father cuffed
him again on the back of the head for good measure. “Now, pack your things and say your good-byes. Do not make this man wait for you.”

His mother searched her husband’s face. “Ferenc, what do you know of this man you are entrusting with our son? What has he told you of himself?”

“I know enough. He is a physic to a count. He lives in a house on the count’s estate. Adair will be indentured to him for seven years. At the end of seven years, Adair can choose whether to leave or remain in the physic’s employ.”

Adair calculated the figures in his mind: in seven years, he would be twenty-one, halfway through his life. As it was, he was just coming into marrying age and was impatient to follow in his older brothers’ footsteps and take a bride, start a family, be accepted as a man. As a house servant, he wouldn’t marry or be allowed to have children; his life would go into suspension during this most crucial time. By the time he was free, he would be old. What woman would want him then?

And what about his family? Where would they be in seven years? They were itinerants, moving to find work, shelter, to escape the bad weather. Not one of them could read or write. He would never be able to find them. To lose his family was unthinkable. They were the lowest class of society, shunned by everyone else. When he left the stranger’s employ, how would he survive without them?

A cry broke in his mother’s throat. She knew as well as Adair what this meant. But his father stood firm in his decision. “It is for the best! You know it is. Look at us—we can barely earn enough to feed our children. It is better if Adair took his burden on himself.”

“You mean that we are all burdens to you?” Radu wailed. Two years younger than Adair, Radu was the sensitive one in the family. He ran up to Adair and wrapped his thin arms around his brother’s waist, blotting his tears on Adair’s ragged shirt.

“Adair is a man now and has to make his own way in the world,” their father said to Radu, then to all of them. “Now, enough of these hysterics. Adair must pack his things.”

Adair traveled all that night, riding behind the stranger, as instructed. He was surprised to find that the old man had a magnificent horse, the sort of horse a knight would own, heavy enough for its hoofbeats to shake the ground. Adair could tell they were headed west, deeper into Romanian territory.

Toward morning, they passed the castle of the count by whom the physic was employed. There was nothing lyrical about it. It was meant for siege—squat and solid, foursquare, surrounded by a scattering of dwellings and pens of sheep and cattle. Cultivated fields stretched off in all directions. The two rode for another twenty minutes through a dense forest before coming upon a small stone keep, almost hidden by trees. The keep itself looked dank, overgrown with moss that ran wild without sunlight to keep it in check. To Adair, the keep appeared more dungeon than house, seemingly without even a door cut into its daunting facade.

The old man dismounted and instructed Adair to take care of the horse before joining him inside. Adair lingered as long as he could with the giant equine, stripping off the saddle and bridle, fetching water for it, rubbing its sweaty back with dry straw. When he could avoid it no longer, he picked up the saddle and went into the keep.

Inside, it was almost too smoky to see, a small fire burning in the fire pit and only a miserly narrow window to let the smoke escape. Looking around, Adair saw that the keep was one large, circular room. A woman slept next to the door on a bed of straw. She was easily ten years older than Adair and matronly, with large florid hands and almost sexless features. She slept surrounded by the tools of her gender: mixing bowls and clumsy wooden spoons, pots and buckets; a slab of a wooden table, worn and greasy; stacks of wooden chargers that served as plates; crocks of wine and ale. Garlands of peppers and garlic hung from hooks in the stone walls, along with ropes of sausage and a string of hard circlets of rye bread.