“Probably best not to tell her. She would enlist you to physic the penitents at the refuge.”
Val smiled sadly. “I would have liked that, being open and aboveboard about the whole thing. Believe me, Julia, I never meant for it to come to this. I did not intend to deceive Father. I was offered the chance to work and I took it. I know it was stupid and rash, but I knew better than to ask Father. He would never have agreed.”
“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” I said quietly.
He continued to roll the wineglass in his palms, watching the wine turn through shadow and light, changing colour with the reflection of the candles.
“We’ve always found that the best way to handle Father, haven’t we?”
“I suppose. But what of the prostitutes? What do you do for them?”
The wineglass rolled to a halt, then resumed its slow revolution. “Whatever I must. Sometimes the men are rough and there are bruises, even broken bones to treat. Many of them are diseased, and must be dosed for it. Some are pregnant, and must not be.”
I held very still. “Abortions,” I said flatly.
He nodded.
“Oh, Valerius, how could you?”
It was a question, not an accusation, and he knew it.
“Because someone will if I do not, and likely it will be a drunken, ham-fisted old butcher who would perforate their wombs and kill them. At least if I do it, they don’t die.”
“No, they live to go out and get pregnant again!” I hurled at him before I could stop myself. I held up my hand before he could reproach me. “I am sorry. That was unkind.”
He shook his head. “No. It was true. That is the most difficult part, you know. Trying so hard to save them from themselves—healing the bruises and stitching up the wounds, hoping that this time, just perhaps this time, they will gather up whatever shreds of human dignity remain to them and leave while they still can. I always thought Aunt Hermia was daft for caring so much what became of her charges. I remember her coming home, weeping or creating a ferocious row with Father because one of her penitents went back on the game. I never understood why she couldn’t simply shrug and go on. There are so many of them to save. And yet I find myself doing just the same. I remember the faces and the names and the stories of every girl I have ever seen in that brothel. Sometimes one of them does not come back and I pretend it is because she’s gotten away. More likely it is because she died, or failed to please and was sold to a cheaper, rougher sort of place. And I always hope, when one of them comes to me because she is with child that this time will be her last—that she will listen and learn. I do my best to educate them, to help them prevent it from happening again.”
“Are you successful?”
There was that faint, heartbreaking smile again. “Once in a while there is a girl young enough to listen. And I hope that she will remember what I have taught her. And one day, if she leaves the game and marries and settles down to a respectable life, she will be able to have children, unlike many of her sisters.”
“Oh, Valerius. Why this? Why not the workhouses? Or the orphanages?”
The smile fell from his lips and his expression was one of raw, unblunted grief.
“Because of Mother.”
“Because she died in childbed?”
“Because I killed her,” he said very quietly.
“Don’t be stupid,” I told him sharply. “You were an infant. It was hardly your fault.”
He shrugged. “I know that now. But there was a maid at the Abbey, one of the local girls who worked in the nursery. She always used to look at me slyly and whisper to me how much everyone loved the countess, and how she had died because of me.”
“That was stupid and cruel—backstairs gossip, and completely untrue.”
“But you believed it,” he said softly.
“I was six years old! I also believed in fairy rings and wishes on clovers. As you say, I know better now.”
He nodded. “Well, when I began to study medicine, I wanted to know—everything. All about birth and why some women, with no medical care at all, can have a child as easily as breathing and why others, even with the best doctors, die from it.”
“You were her tenth child in sixteen years,” I pointed out. “Perhaps she was simply exhausted. In that case, blame Father.”
“I did, for a while, once I stopped blaming myself,” he said blandly. “But I did not much like that, so I decided to blame God.”
“When did you stop doing that?”
