Helena exhaled and turned her face full towards mine. “I am worried about her. She is comelier with every day.”
“Yes, my niece is a beauty.”
“And so are Catrin and Mischa. And so are you!”
“Do not count yourself out.”
She tried to look amused, but I could tell she was also trying not to cry.
I made myself accept the serious mood she wanted to take then. “It is as I said in the chapel. They are religious men. Because of our alleged religious office, I do not think they will have their way with us. It would be sacrilegious. If we find ourselves at the worst, I will offer them myself to save Maureen. As would Mischa.”
Helena’s eyes began to shine. As the sun rose higher, I could more clearly make out my friend’s elegant bone structure and warm, brown eyes.
I continued. “She is like the daughter I will never have. It has been an honor to be your friend all this time and twice as much one to be a part of her growing up.”
“You don’t want us to buckle under fear, but you’re making grand speeches.”
I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Without you, we’d all be dead. But I am scared.”
“I have felt like pissing myself all night. I’m quaking in these boots. Boots that will be hot in about four hours. I already feel so grimy and I doubt we’ll be bathing soon. This is absolutely terrifying. For many reasons.”
“What are you whispering about?” Mischa grumbled, stepping over a still drowsy sitting Maureen. She looked towards Quinn telling River and Catrin they had not missed anything happening while they slept. Bronwyn and Eefa were still quarreling but it was subdued, both of them still sleepy. Turning back to us, she said, “Did you hear those men talking? They were planning on kidnapping someone just not us.”
I nodded. I wanted to tell my two closest companions about what Quinn and River and I had discussed but Helena had just said she was scared. I would tell them soon, when we had all fully accepted our state of captivity.
6. Tattoo
As anticipated, the spring sun blazed down on our heads. The four of us scribes had still had our aprons on under our now filthy priest robes. We managed to tie them together and string them from one side to the other of the wagon, but it only offered coverage for most of the space. Later on in the day, I had not had a turn to rest and had stationed myself to stand in the sun. Behind me, everyone was resting on the floor or leaning against each other under the aprons. I was the only one awake. I could not find rest in any position. I was also the only one fully in sunshine. We could have used the priest robes but we had dismissed that suggestion. When pretending, the last thing a pretender does is remove a disguise.
Two men rode on each side of the wagon and two rode ahead with the rest of the company behind. I noticed they shifted positions every few hours. They did not stop to eat or drink. Some of them pulled jerky from their saddlebags or took swigs from canteens. I prayed we would be fed soon. It would seem the goal was to cover as much ground as possible.
Sensing the pinkness spreading on my skin and not wanting to increase my freckle count, I turned away, offering the sun the other side of me through the slats. My eyes met the captain’s. He had apparently taken a shift riding on this side of the wagon. How long had he been there?
“No shade for you, priestess?” he asked, unblinking, his gaze going from the stretched aprons and back to me.
“I do not mind the sun,” I said. I made myself not look away.
“What need does a priestess have for an apron?” His tone was bored as was his face, as seemed to be its permanent state. But his eyes were alert.
I opened my mouth to suggest we were feeding the poor, as would a cleric in the order of Rodwin, but Mischa and I both had blue and black ink all over ours and Helena and Maureen’s were full of colors for illuminating manuscripts.
I had always been an imaginative child. My parents had said I was a liar. Perhaps I was. But when you leave an intelligent child to their own devices, they have to devote themselves to something. I devoted myself to books. I read everything I could find that was not the teachings of Rodwin or essays on the teachings of Rodwin. Many stories were deemed too sinful to have in the house but my pious father had a liking for adventure stories. I had cut my teeth on those and then graduated to other more secular texts and histories. And in the right parts of Apollon, Perpatane’s capital, in the right shops, you could find the really good books, romances. In my youth, allowed to roam for an hour or two on market days, I found these shops. I had a small allowance as the child of a priest, a king-paid position. I was not from a wealthy home, but we were comfortable, my father respected in the clergy. I spent every coin on books.
The books in Eccleston had been endless. I read every affordable book that I came across, as long as it was not one of faith. In most parts of the continent, printing presses were not prevalent and books remained expensive, so scribes and scriptoriums always had work. But Eccleston was the city-state of education and we had more presses and bookshops than any city. Eccleston even had a public library but fines were high if you damaged a book.
Our little family of four shared every book one of us got their hands on. Helena and I had been instant friends, both hired at the scriptorium at the same time. She was paying a neighbor woman to watch a little Maureen while she illuminated to support them. We had shared books with each other. One winter later, Mischa had been hired and her love of books endeared her to us. Eventually, we, because of books, became a sort of family, me, a runaway wife, Helena and Maureen, an abandoned mother and daughter and Mischa, determined to be independent. I thought of our three little bookshelves in each of our three little homes and sighed. I could not think of that now.
And as a woman with an imagination and a love of reading, I could tell a story. I looked at my left hand resting on my right one, both holding on to a wooden slat, my cheek, the three blue streaks now smeared, resting above them.
“Did you see the ink on the aprons?” I asked the captain.
He blinked.
Taking that as a yes, I held out my left hand through the slats. On the back, covering it nearly entirely was the blue tattoo of a ranunculus flower. “We often mark each other in sacred symbols that honor Saint Agnes. This flower holds meaning for us as each bloom can hold over one hundred petals. Agnes wrote in her journals that it was her favorite flower. Because our minds can contain multitudes.” I hoped he didn’t know the difference between ink for the skin and ink for lettering and painting. I also hoped he had no familiarity with the journals of the pragmatic saint for, while her words were always cheerful endorsements of industry and learning, I doubted she had included her favored blossom.
Around my thirtieth winter, when Mischa had come to the scriptorium as a willful woman of twenty-one with a moth tattooed on the side of her neck, I went with her to see her tattooist. I let a mute woman with ink in every color on every part of her skin, mark a small quill on the inside of my left palm. I had thought I would get something easily hidden and that had been in vain. For I found I loved looking at my little quill. I felt, at that age, if time could put lines on my face, I could put them on my body. And so on my left arm, from shoulder to knuckles, I had botanical illustrations in blue, some designed by Helena and Maureen, some by the mute woman. The most painful was the back of my left hand. But it was my favorite. And Thrush would have hated it.
