Soul of the Fire (29 page)

Not only was there no end to the women swooning to fall under the man, but he was a glutton about it. Even so, he had certain standards. Like many men as they got older, he savored youth.

He was able to indulge his wont for voluptuous young women without needing, as most men passing fifty, to go to prostitutes in the city. In fact, Bertrand Chanboor avoided such women like the plague, fearing their virulent diseases.

Other men his age who could have young women no other way, and could not resist, did not get a chance to grow much older. Nor did the young women. Disease swiftly claimed many.

Bertrand Chanboor, though, had his pick of a steady supply of healthy young women of limited experience, and standards. They flew, of their own accord, into that candle flame of high rank and nearly limitless authority.

Dalton ran the side of his finger gently along Teresa’s cheek. He was fortunate to have a woman who shared his ambition but, unlike many others, was discerning in how to go about it.

“
I love you, Tess.”

Surprised by his sudden tender gesture, she took his hand in both of hers and planted kisses all along it.

He didn’t know what he could possibly have done in his life to deserve her. There had been nothing about him that would augur well for his ever having a woman as good as Teresa. She was the one thing in his life he had not earned by sheer force of will, by cutting down any opposition, eliminating any threat to his goal. With her, he had simply been helplessly in love.

Why the good spirits chose to ignore the rest of his life and reward him with this plum, he couldn’t begin to guess, but he would take it and hold on for dear life.

Business intruded on his lustful wanderings as he stared into her adoring eyes.

Claudine would require attention. She needed to be silenced, and before she could cause trouble. Dalton ticked off favors he might have to offer her in return for seeing the sense in silence. No one, not even Lady Chanboor, gave much thought to the Minister’s dalliances, but an accusation of rape by a woman of standing would be troublesome.

There were Directors who adhered to ideals of rectitude. The Directors of the Office of Cultural Amity held sway over who would be Sovereign. Some wanted the next Sovereign to be a man of moral character. They could deny an initiate the Seat.

After Bertrand Chanboor was named Sovereign, it would not matter what they thought, but it certainly mattered before.

Claudine would have to be silenced.

“
Dalton, where are you going?”

He turned back from the door. “I just have to write a message and then send it on its way. I won’t be long.”

Nora stirred with a groan, thinking it must be light already. Her thoughts fumbled woodenly in the numb blur between asleep and awake. She wanted nothing so much as to sleep on. The straw beneath her was bunched just right. It always bunched just right in perfect, comfortable, cuddling lumps, right as it was time to be up and out of bed.

She expected her husband to slap her rump any moment. Julian always woke just before first light. The chores had to be done. Maybe if she lay still, he would leave her be for just a few moments longer, let her sleep for a few dreamy minutes more.

She hated him at that moment, for always waking just before first light and slapping her rump and telling her to get up and to the day’s work. The man had to whistle first thing, too, when her head was still a daze in the morning, rickety with sleep still trying to get out of her head.

She flopped over on her back, lifting her eyebrows in an effort to wake by forcing her eyes open. Julian wasn’t there beside her.

A feeling skittered up her insides, bringing her wide awake in an ice cold instant. She sat up in the bed. For some reason, something about him not being there gave her a feeling of queasy dismay.

Was it morning? Just about to be light? Was it still somewhere in the night? Her mind snatched wildly to get her bearings.

She leaned over, seeing the glow from the embers she’d banked in the hearth before she went to bed. A few on the top still glowed, hardly diminished at all from the way she’d left them. In that weak light, she saw Bruce peering at her from his pallet.

“
Mama? What’s wrong?” his older sister, Bethany, asked.

“
What are you two doing awake?”

“
Mama, we just gone to bed,” Bruce whined.

She realized it was true. She was so tired, so dead tired from pulling rocks from the spring field all day, that she’d been asleep before she closed her eyes. They’d come home when it got too dark to work any more, ate down their porridge, and got right to bed. She could still taste the squirrel meat from the porridge, and she was still burping new radishes. Bruce was right; they’d only just gone to bed.

Trepidation trembled through her. “Where’s your pa?”

Bethany lifted a hand to point. “Went to the privy, I guess. Mama, what’s wrong?”

“
Mama?” Bruce puled.

“
Hush, now, it be nothin’. Lay back down, the both of you.”

Both children stared at her, wide-eyed. She couldn’t stick a pin in the alarm she felt. The children saw it in her face, she knew they did, but she couldn’t hide it no matter how she tried.

She didn’t know what was wrong, what the trouble was, but she felt it sure, crawling on her skin.

Evil.

Evil was in the air, like smoke from a woods fire, wrinkling her nose, sucking her breath. Evil. Somewhere, out in the night, evil, lurking about.

She glanced again to the empty bed beside her. Gone to the privy. Julian was in the privy house. Had to be.

Nora recalled him going to the privy house just after they ate, before they went to their bed. That didn’t mean he couldn’t go again. But he never did say he was having no problem.

Consternation clawed at her insides, like the fear of the Keeper himself.

“
Dear Creator, preserve us,” she whispered in prayer. “Preserve us, this house of humble people. Send evil away. Please, dear spirits, watch over us and keep us safe.”

She opened her eyes from the prayer. The children were still staring at her. Bethany must feel it, too. She never let nothing go without asking why. Nora called her the “why child” in jest. Bruce just trembled.

Nora threw the wool blanket aside. It scared the chickens in the corner, making them flap with a start and let out a surprised squawk.

“
You children go back to sleep.”

They lay back down, but they watched as she squirmed a shift down over her nightdress. Shaking without knowing why, she knelt on the bricks before the hearth and stacked birch logs on the embers. It wasn’t that cold—she’d thought to let the embers do for the night—but she felt the sudden need for the comfort of a fire, the assurance of its light.

From beside the hearth, she retrieved their only oil lamp. With a curl of flaming birch bark, she quickly lit the lamp wick and then replaced the chimney. The children were still watching.

Nora bent and kissed little Bruce on the cheek. She smoothed back Bethany’s hair and kissed her daughter’s forehead. It tasted like the dirt she’d been in all day trying to help carry rocks from the field before they plowed and planted it. She could only carry little ones, but it was a help.

“
Back to sleep, my babies,” she said in a soothing voice. “Pa just went to the privy. I’m only taking him a light to see his way back. You know how your pa stumbles his toes in the night and then curses us for it. Back to sleep, the both of you. Everything is all right. Just takin’ your pa a lamp.”

Nora stuck her bare feet into her cold, wet, muddy boots, which had been set by the door. She didn’t want to stub her toes and then have to work with a lame foot. She fussed with a shawl, settling it around her shoulders, fixing it good and right before she tied it. She feared to open the door. She was in near tears with not wanting to open that door to the night.

Evil was out there. She knew it. She felt it.

“
Burn you, Julian,” she muttered under her breath. “Burn you crisp for making me go outside tonight.”

She wondered, if she found Julian sitting in the privy, if he’d curse her foolish woman ways. He cursed her ways, sometimes. Said she worried over nothing for no good end. Said nothing ever came of her worrying so why’d she do it? She didn’t do it to get herself cursed at by him, that sure was the truth of it.

As she lifted the latch, she told herself how she wanted very much for him to be out in the privy and to curse her tonight, and then to put his arm around her shoulders and tell her to hush her tears and come back to bed with him. She shushed the chickens when they complained at her as she opened the door.

There was no moon. The overcast sky was as black as the Keeper’s shadow. Nora shuffled quickly along the packed dirt path to the privy house. With a shaking hand, she rapped on the door.

“
Julian? Julian, you in there? Please, Julian, if you’re in there, say so. Julian, I’m begging you, don’t trick with me, not tonight.”

Silence throbbed in her ears. There were no bugs making noise. No crickets. No frogs. No birds. It was just plain dead quiet, like the ground in the lamp’s little glow around her was all there was to the world and beyond that there was nothing, like if she left the lamp and stepped out there into the darkness she might fall through that black beyond till she was an old lady and then still fall some more. She knew that was foolish, but right then the idea seemed very real and scared her something fierce.

The privy door squeaked when she pulled it open. She hadn’t even been hoping as she done it, because she knew Julian wasn’t in there. Before she got out of the bed, she knew he wasn’t in the privy house. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did.

And she was right.

She was sometimes right about such feelings. Julian said she was daft to think she had some mind power to know things, like the old woman what lived back in the hills and came down when she knew something and thought she ought to tell folks of it.

But sometimes, Nora did know things. She’d known Julian wasn’t in the privy.

Worse, she knew where he was.

She didn’t know how she knew, no more than she knew how she knew he wasn’t in the privy. But she knew, and the knowing had her shaking something fierce. She only looked in the privy because she hoped she was wrong, and because she didn’t want to look where she knew he was.

But now she had to go look.

Nora held the lamp out, trying to see down the path. She couldn’t see far. She turned as she tramped along, looking back at the house. She could make out the window, because the fire was going good. The birch logs had caught, and the fire was throwing off good light.

The feeling of terrible wickedness felt like it was grinning at her from the black night between her and the house. Clutching her shawl tight, Nora held the lamp out to the path again. She didn’t like leaving the children. Not when she had her feelings.

Something, though, was pulling her onward, down the path.

“
Please, dear spirits, let me be a foolish woman, with foolish woman ways. Please, dear spirits, let Julian be safe. We all needs him. Dear spirits, we needs him.”

She was sobbing as she made her way down the hill, sobbing because she feared so much to find out. Her hand holding the lamp shook, making the flame jitter.

At last, she heard the sound of the creek, and was glad for it because then the night wasn’t so dead quiet and frightfully empty. With the sound of the water, she felt better, because there was something out there, something familiar. She began to feel foolish for thinking there was no world beyond the lamplight, like she was on the brink of the underworld. She was just as likely wrong about the rest of it, too. Julian would roll his eyes, in that way of his, when she told him she was afraid because she thought the world was empty beyond the light.

She tried to whistle, like her Julian whistled, so as to make herself feel better, but her lips were as dry as stale toast. She wished she could whistle, so Julian could hear her, but no good whistling sound would come out. She could just call out to him, but she feared to do it. Feared to get no answer. She’d rather just come on him and find him there, and then get cursed for her foolish crying over nothing.

A gentle breeze lapped the water against the edge of the lake, so she could hear it before she could see it. She hoped to see Julian sitting there on his stump, tending a line, waiting to catch them a carp. She hoped to see him look up and curse her for scaring his fish.