“I realize now I shouldn’t have read it, but I thought I’d never seen you or him again.”
“It’s all right. Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I hid it at the bottom of a chest and didn’t touch it after that. I looked for it now because I remembered you from two years ago. My father doesn’t remember you, you know. He thinks this is your first time at the Black Eagle. But I remembered you because you were with him, and he forgot his book. It didn’t come to me at once because... Well, because you look different.”
She smiled bitterly. “Because I’m blind.”
“Yes. And you’re with a different man, and this one is not handsome.”
To that, Seraphina didn’t know what to say. The situation was strange and unexpected, but she was glad this was happening. Now she had something of Matteo’s, something intimate that he’d cared about deeply. A part of him lived in these pages even if she couldn’t read them. Maybe one day she’d find someone to read them for her, someone trustworthy.
Rune... He could read them for her. He could learn from Matteo’s work.
The moment that idea came to her, she shook her head. Who knew what Matteo had written about her? The opposite was also a possibility. Maybe he hadn’t mentioned her at all. Whichever it was, she didn’t want Rune to know. It felt appropriate to keep these two men separate – in her heart and from each other.
“Thank you for giving this to me,” she told Kaspar.
“What happened to the handsome man? Why aren’t you with him anymore?”
Her fingers squeezed the edges as she bowed her head.
“He’s... somewhere else.”
“Oh.”
“Will you promise me that you’ll never tell anyone what you read? That you’ll take it to your grave?”
The boy shuddered, and Seraphina cursed herself silently. She shouldn’t have said that. It was insensitive of her when someone died every day, when his own mother was lying in a hospital bed, when he and his brother were covered in purple spots.
“I swear it,” he whispered.
“Thank you. I will never forget you, Kaspar, and what you did for me.”
“It was nothing at all, Miss. I’m sorry I didn’t find it in time before you left. I would’ve returned it then and never read it.”
“It’s all right. You did no harm.”
“I... I truly hope so...”
Before Seraphina could wonder about the hesitation in his voice, his father came with a basket of food he’d prepared for her and Rune. Kaspar jumped to his feet on his arrival.
“Have you fed the chickens?” his father asked him.
“No, I was going now.” With that, he rushed out into the cold to continue his daily chores.
Peter shook his head. “Boys.”
“You’re doing a great job with them.”
“They need their mother.”
Seraphina got the hint. She thanked him for the food and made her way back to the church. Before entering, she set the basket on the steps and tucked Matteo’s journal into one of the inner pockets of her cloak. It fit perfectly, and when she buttoned up the cloak, she felt it rest against her ribs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
When the ground froze solid, there was nowhere else to put the dead.
They worked all night to finish the lattices that would purify the water in the poisoned wells. Rune’s theory was that once the water was clean, it should be given to the patients to drink, and they would be healed. He called the new pattern the Lustral Wheel, as it was also round, like the Pestilent Wheel it had been created to counteract.
