Heaven's Bones (3 page)

He remembered: Margaret stopping by the gypsies' stands outside the Vatican, pausing to examine the trinkets and cheap jewelry.

“Gold from a secret treasure,” squawked the vendor, wrinkled and brown as a berry and missing half her teeth. She wore a kerchief of bright, beautiful colors—red and blue and rose—elaborately binding up her hair. “Gold from a Roman house—no one knows
where. But my son found it, my lady, and …”

“Nonsense,” said Margaret, so gentle and friendly in her manner that the crone stood a moment with her mouth open, and then laughed until she turned dusky red. Margaret smiled at her and continued looking over her wares.

The vendor, her manner frank and open now, showed her the bracelets and medallions, explaining which was what, with no claims of rare and ancient and improbable provenance. Sebastian was content to let her linger, and himself enjoyed watching the pigeons fly in great waves over St. Mark's Square and the bustling groups of people, both native and foreign. The gypsy vendor's voice was a soft murmur in the background, and he caught the sound of names strange and familiar: George, Theresa, Veronica.

“And this, Margherita,” said the crone. “She will protect you in travail, in childbirth.”

“Oh, I think I'd better have her, then,” said Margaret, giving him a sly look. As she pulled money from her purse the woman suddenly cupped her cheek with a brown, wrinkled hand.

“You will need it, my child,” she said, her voice low and serious. “And I will pray for you.”

Margaret had laughed gently, and tucked away the little medallion of St. Margaret, and they hadn't mentioned it since. But now Robarts remembered with a sick chill the mutter of the old woman when she bowed her head as they passed:

Saint Margaret with the Wyrm, Saint Katherine with the Wheel, Saint Teresa in her Tower …

On the other side of the door Margaret screamed.

Damn Symons. Robarts put his shoulder to the door and burst inside. Margaret's lovely face was distorted into a horrible mask of pain, and her legs were spread impossibly wide. She was white as
the pillows beneath her head, which made a terrible contrast with the gouts of dark red that soaked the sheets from her waist down. Everywhere on the floor were blood-soaked clothes.

From between Margaret's legs protruded a round bulbous head, a baby's head. His son's head. It was blue.

Symons turned and saw him in the doorway.

“For God's sake, man, are you mad? Meadows!”

The servant loomed from the corner of the room.

“Take him away!”

Meadows hesitated.

“Do what I say, now!” bellowed the physician.

Meadows complied, glad to be given a direct order, a task to accomplish in this chamber of helpless horror. Strong hands seized Robarts and pulled him gently but implacably away.

He couldn't resist. The sight of Margaret rendered him helpless and weak as a puppy. God knows he'd seen worse in his practice, but this …

… this was Margaret.

He sank against the wall for support and sat on the floor, burying his head in his hands.

A wyrm was a dragon, he remembered uselessly. A wyrm was a dragon.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked up, startled. Could he have slept? The light was dimmer, more golden than before.

“Sebastian,” said Symons. “God help me, I am so very sorry. So very, very sorry.”

The door to the chamber was wide open now, and the assistant—what was his name, after all?—stood there, wiping his hands over and over with a towel. Such delicate hands he had, for a man. Perfect for delivering babies.

In a trance he walked to the door. After a worried glance at Symons, the assistant moved aside to let him pass.

“It was a son, after all,” said the burly doctor behind him. Beside the bed stood Janet, her usually cheerful, ruddy face streaked with tears. She held a white-wrapped bundle in her arms. It was very still.

“Strangled in the womb,” continued Symons. “The position … well. I can only say I'm sorry.”

Symons' words seemed far off and nonsensical. Margaret lay still in the bed, her hair a great dark cloud on the pillow, framing her white face.

As if in a dream Robarts stopped beside Janet. He flicked open the blanket that covered the baby's face.

His son was still, and pale blue now without a trace of purple. But for the color he looked like a doll, a finely wrought plaything crafted of wax.

“Oh sir …” began Janet, and her face crumpled.

“That's enough, girl,” he said, gently covering his son's—Margaret's son's—face with the cloth. He recognized it now—Margaret had spent a week embroidering the yellow and green daisies on it. He patted Janet on the arm, automatically, feeling nothing for her.

Margaret's chest moved ever so slightly and Robarts sat on the bed beside her. As his weight shifted the mattress her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at him, her pupils huge and unfocused.

“Sebastian?” she breathed.

He smiled down at her wanly. Her color was ghastly, and the remote dispassionate, professional part of his brain recognized the symptoms of blood loss, irreparable, the shadow of death on her brow. Her gown was drenched in sweat, and through the loosened laces at her breast he could see the medallion of St. Margaret gleaming dully. The chain had dug into her neck, he saw, and left it red and irritated. Automatically he reached behind her neck, brushing away the damp tendrils at the nape and unclasping the offending chain.

“How are you, my love?” he whispered, stifling the tremor in his voice, forcing a calm expression on his face. He knew she was dying.
If God was merciful, she didn't.

Her eyes closed again and for an instant he thought she was gone. Then they blinked open, with an energy that startled him.

“The baby, Sebastian. I don't hear any crying …”

He brushed a lock of hair from her face.

“That's because you dozed off, my dear. He's had a good strong bawl and Janet is giving him a bath in the other room.”

He felt tears creeping down his face and knew she couldn't see them. Her eyes were glazing over already.

“A boy?” she managed. He had to bend close to hear.

“Yes,” he said firmly, willing his voice not to break. “A fine healthy boy. Sleep, my love, and when you wake you can see him.”

Her eyes drifted halfway shut and stayed there. A smile crossed her lips. She sighed once, and was gone.

He stayed sitting there a long time, dimly aware of others going about their business in the room, moving things, cleaning up. When he was quite sure she wasn't going to stir he reached up with an only slightly shaky hand and thumbed her eyelids shut.

Then he saw that his hands still had her blood on them, drying and peeling, and that he'd left traces on her neck and eyelids.

The medallion chain was still tangled about his fingers. He looked at it a minute. A crude little figure, barely identifiable as female, with a snake-like form tangled around her legs. The dragon seemed to be smiling up at the saint, in collusion with her instead of planning to devour her.

He tucked the medallion in his pocket. He sat a long time beside Margaret's body as the shadows in the room grew long and the light behind the curtains faded away.

At one point Janet, or at least some woman, came and touched him on the shoulder, asking him a question. He ignored her and eventually she went away. Symons came and spoke to him and Robarts looked at him blankly, seeing his mouth move and hearing
garbled sounds but understanding not a word.

Eventually he felt about for a discarded damp cloth, and wiped his hands over and over with the rough fabric until the blood was gone and his fingers were chapped and raw.

Robarts rose and walked to the doorsill. There his legs failed him and he leaned heavily against the frame.

He hung there a second. Then he drew back one arm and struck the wall with all his might.

Beneath the bright striped wallpaper the plaster dented. Robarts examined his fist.

The skin across the knuckles was torn, and blood welled in the pink gash. The flesh was already starting to purple.

He didn't feel a thing.

When he dreamed, Tibor saw his sister's face.

They were gathering the freshwater mussels that clustered thick as grapes under the banks of one of the many rivers that branched from the Musarde in the land of Kartakass. It was the end of summer, when the river was low enough to get at the mussels easily, and that was a good summer, he remembered, stretching out over the beginning of the autumn season when the land gave and gave like a generous lover.

They went there almost every year so that the men could break the Lord Meistersinger Harkon Lucas's horses, and the good weather held so long that year they stayed longer than usual, until the halfwild creatures were so tame they would come at a child's call. He and Jaelle brought armloads of sweet grass to their fields, and the mares and half-grown foals came readily to eat what they brought and to mumble at their fingers.

Lord Harkon was well pleased with the weather and their work, and ordered three great heifers to be slaughtered and delivered to the Vistani camp with his compliments, together with a barrel of strong red wine. Jaelle remembered the mussels and promised their aunt a good skirtful to make stew, together with the seaweed and tubers they'd gathered that morning.

There'd been no rain for at least a month, and the banks of the river were eroded under like the empty crust of a pie. Tibor and
Jaelle walked along a stretch where the channel had been forced deep into bedrock. Under the lip of the bank Tibor spotted a bunch of mussels all grown together and left exposed when the waters receded. He kneeled, grasped the shellfish, and gave them a determined tug.

The crust of sand and stone crumbled under him and he hung over empty air, the still-forceful torrent of the river on the rocks below, ready to sweep him out to sea. Still grabbing onto the cluster of mussels with one hand, he paddled desperately in the air with the other.

“Tibor!”

Jaelle was by his side, moving faster than thought, and seized his forearm in a strong grip. He struggled back from the brink, collapsing into her.

“Don't let me go,” he said, although he was safe now.

“Never,” she said.

He realized he still held the shellfish, torn free from their rooting-spot under the banks, and he waved it at her triumphantly. An instant of astonishment, and they both burst out laughing.

There: Her face, Jaelle's face just before it crumpled into laughter, that's what he saw when he dreamed.

Not the anger.

Not the betrayal.

Not the lift of her chin when she vowed to destroy him, even if it destroyed her in turn.

Not the look in her eyes when she realized he would pay every last measure he had, including her, for the power he sought.

He only saw the laughter.

Tibor didn't dream much. For the most part, he didn't even exist.

And then, little by little, he started to come together, coalescing out of the Mists that were his sea, his doom, his rocks, and his prison.

Sometimes it was as if he was suspended, spread out in particles like dust over strange lands and peoples. Awareness was dim, and not related to any particular sense; he was a deaf, blind, insensate witness to events he couldn't begin to comprehend.

Then, slowly, he realized he could see a little, the barest lightening or shadowing of the invariable gray. And sound—sometimes a whisper threaded through his consciousness before it vanished and was gone forever.

How long passed before he understood any of it, he never knew. It might have been centuries.

But then—a tickle of sound in his ear. So long it had been since he heard words, even his own; at first he didn't recognize them for what they were.

Words.

A little twist and I'd have it
.