Father Leon didn’t know how I’d come to be engaged to Raleigh.How could he?Of course he would think Father paid the dowry.The whole valley knew about that bloody dowry.
But where had it come from?Though that money had cast such a shadow over my life, it had never occurred to me to wonder howFather had accumulated so much.Mother had her own income from her family’s estate, but that stopped after her death.Father owned no land, and his salary from Raleigh was modest at best.I’d never thought to question it until the answer was staring me in the face.
I gave Father Leon my apologies and, with a garbled excuse even I barely understood, left him by the cheese stand, oblivious to my epiphany.I found Enrique at a picked-over stall offering scrawny fruit that had limped into ripeness.He was holding up an apple, scrutinising it with an unmatched intensity, while the woman selling looked ready to run if he so much as spoke to her.
‘We need to go,’ I told him.
‘These apples were harvested too early,’ he said.
‘I don’t care,’ I spat out before I could stop myself.‘I need to leave.’
He took notice of me then, his face tinged with a very rare trace of concern.‘Did something happen?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.‘I need to talk to Raleigh.’
‘He won’t be awake yet.Let’s shop first.’
‘I don’t care about your damn apples, Enrique.’My emotions were threatening to spill, but I wasn’t sure what they were yet.‘I need to go now.You can come with me or come later, but I’m leaving now.’
Enrique put the apple down.‘Something happened.’
I turned away from him, pushing back into the marketplace.He tried to follow but was immediately cut off by the crowd.I pressed forward without him, the crowd blurring behind too many emotions to name.Confusion.Dread.Grief?Butwasit grief?Was there anything to grieve?I didn’t know.I didn’t understand.I needed Raleigh.God, why couldn’t Raleigh be here?
Enrique caught up to me halfway down the stairs leading to the entrance of town.‘What happened?’
I stopped and took a breath, trying to reason through my racing mind.‘Where were you living before Raleigh hired you?’
Enrique regarded me warily, clearly trying to decipher whether or not this was a test.‘Versailles before the revolution.Then Zurich until the invasion,’ he said, ‘But Raleigh found me in Salzburg.’
‘Did they talk about the Rostenburg famine there?’
‘No,’ he said.‘Never.’
‘Did Raleigh ever speak to you about it?You’re his chef – he must have briefed you.How do you order in ingredients?’
‘Can you ask one question at a time?He told me the Orlfen Valley was recovering, so Moira sourced everything from around Triz.What are you really asking me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.My pulse felt like it was fizzing.‘I don’t understand.Father always said the whole region was starving, but Triz is fine.And now people are telling me that Father was selling them food and—’ A heaving sob racked through me, cutting me off mid-sentence.And then I couldn’t stop.I never let myself fall apart like this in public: even Yann had only seen me break down on a handful of occasions.But in that moment it felt like every emotion I’d felt over the last six months piled upon me at once.
On the day I’d turned twenty-five everything had seemed so simple.Bleak, terrible, with a single shining light at the centre, but simple all the same.Now I was part of a world I didn’t understand, only two months away from possibly losing my mortality forever, and suddenly not even the famine made sense.It was too much.
Enrique swore to himself in French, clearly unsure whether it was appropriate to comfort me or not.To my immense relief, he didn’t try, but let me sob until my tears dried out.I was wiping my face with my handkerchief, ready to press on, when something caught his eye.
‘You!’Enrique barked.
On the other side of the stairwell a man was just reaching us, red faced and out of breath from the climb.He jumped when he realised Enrique was addressing him, and I could tell he was assessing whether it was too late to pretend he hadn’t heard.‘Me?’
‘Do you know who we are?’
The man looked at me, my tearstained cheeks, then back to Enrique.‘Should I?’
‘No.We’re researchers from Vienna.What do you know about the Orlfen famine?’
‘Oh, the “famine”.’The man raised his brows to exaggerate his scepticism, visibly relaxing now that he knew he wasn’t in some sort of trouble.‘No more than anyone else.’
‘Why did you say it like that?’I asked.
‘Well, it wasn’t really a famine, was it?The mayor was up here every other month selling off the surplus food.’
