“I have said nothing to shame you, lady.” Waltrude’s voice was even. “You are the one who flounders and rambles in your guilt.”
“No,” Agnes said forcefully. “Not guilt.”
She had decided, the evening that she wed Liuprand in the dark, that she would not feel it. She would forbid that emotion to blaze its path within her. She had chosen her course; she would not be blustered from it. It was the only way she could live—to lock her guilt behind a great stone door, within an impenetrable vault. It was a cursed object, like a talisman imbued with black magic centuries old.
Waltrude merely lifted one shoulder and then let it fall back again. “Very well, lady,” she said. “I will bring your cold milk from the kitchens.”
Later, when she was alone in bed, Agnes sipped her chilled milk—the summer was nearing its apex, and its hot, gusty breath even managed to penetrate the walls of the castle, ordinarily so cold as to bastion its inhabitants against such heat—and she thought.
She thought of Adele-Blanche, who had long since ceased to visit her in her dreams.
She thought of her mother, and the taste of infant’s flesh.
She thought of Marozia, and the musky slide of juice in her mouth.
But in the end, her thoughts always returned to Liuprand. It was not only passion she felt for him, the torrid, desperate longing that slicked the place between her thighs; it was exquisite and immeasurable tranquility, a peace and safety she had never thought possible. He had vanquished all of her ghosts. His embrace was a blessed haven. A refuge. She had yearned for it all her life and had not even known her own loneliness until she had seen his face and felt his kiss.
There was no force greater in the world than this. Than love. Nothing could dissuade her—she did not dare to give it up. She was the lady Agnes, Mistress of Teeth, Liuprand’s bride in the dark, queen by the candlelight. She curled up beneath the covers and pressed these thoughts of him into her mind; the theater behind her eyelids was a riot of light and color.
And yet, when she did find sleep, her dreams were of Marozia. Her dreams were sweet milk and sharp teeth.
VII
A Reward Bestowed
Truss was fanning himself rather ineffectually with a bouquet of lemongrass when the man entered. At least he seemed like a man at a distance. And if he had kept his distance, Truss would have thought nothing more of it. But as he approached in an awkward, loping gait, Truss came to realize that this creature was either more than a man or less. He wassomethingaberrant, something different, something peculiar, and this alone was enough to make Truss perk up with interest.
He scrambled from his cot into a sitting position and nudged Mordaunt sharply with his elbow. The other leech stirred, and Truss leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Look.”
Mordaunt blinked fiercely—he had been roused not from rest but from slumber. “At what?”
“That thing,” Truss answered. “Over there.”
The creature wore a ragged tunic, hem falling just above his knobby knees. He looked blankly about the room, his gaze filmy, as if still with the mucuses of sleep, and then gave two very loud, persuasive sniffs. He inhaled creakily. And then his eyes found Truss and Mordaunt.
“Hello, Your Scrupulousnesses,” he said, in a throaty voice, as he hobbled toward them. “Hello, My Superiornesses.”
Truss and Mordaunt exchanged glances. Mordaunt, irritable at being woken, tugged up the hood of his robe and asked, “Who are you? And what is your business in the leeches’ bay?”
“Business,” the thing repeated. “Business…I have performed my labors already. I am seeking the reward my master promised me. Butthis castle is a labyrinth and I cannot find the kitchen. Please, will you help me?”
Truss gave the man a once-over, from the balding, misshapen head to the bare toes with their blackened nails. He was thin, painfully so, his collarbones jutting out like two sharp blades. His waxy skin was more yellow than white, and even as he stood still before them, he was occasionally racked by full-body tremors that made his scrawny limbs jerk upward, as if attached to erratically tugged puppet strings. Truss also noticed something peculiar about his hands—they were coated in a thick layer of dust.
“Your master,” Mordaunt repeated, and he got to his feet. “What master? The king?”
The creature scratched his belly. “No, no king.”
“Then who?”
He grimaced, making even more dramatic the sloped hollows of his cheeks. “I have been forbidden to say. Else I will lose my tongue for it, and how then would I enjoy my reward?”
Mordaunt frowned. He was displeased that this queer creature had interrupted his sleep, but Truss was now enthralled in this peculiar matter. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in years. It was like discovering a new species of animal. Or learning a new game of chance.
“What is your name, man?” Mordaunt demanded.
“I am the eater of offal and entrails, of pluck and spleen, of tripe and head cheese. Trotter and udder, suet and tongue—”
“Yourname,” Mordaunt cut in.
