What made me pocket the key, I did not know.
83
NOW: TOWER
We suffered. The food they delivered was stale, or at least it tasted so. Sleep was hard on stone. Around us, folk were either restless or listless. Some people argued over petty things like the spread of one wagon’s occupants up against another’s. There was always squabbling in line for the privies, which while plentiful, still did not seem enough for the hundreds of us. And those that did not disagree with each other were sluggish and dull eyed, as if they were continually on the edge of sleep.
Once, while stretching my legs walking down the many rows, I spotted Kate, the wheelwright’s wife, sitting on a crate. When I called her name, she did not reply. It took two or three tries to get her to notice me and when she did, it seemed like she was pretending to remember me. I knelt next to her and asked if she was alright. She had little to say.
Twice Starling, accompanied by a retinue of guards, stalked up and down the rows, inspecting each and every person that came into his view. Both times I hid, once in the wagon and once in a privy.
At the end of that week, after we had watched several fights break out between penitents and some people openly weep at theirconfinement, Thane visited. He informed us, standing next to our wagon, hands on hips, that he was sorry for the delay in his seeing us. He had been very busy collecting the funds promised to him by the Perpatanian army, paying his drivers, and corralling his wagons to the timber forest outside the Gates of Sound. He explained that there was no room for his wagons, mostly used for the transport of goods and higher-ranking officers, inside the Tower of Skow.
Then he told us that Adelaide was waiting in the street outside and that he had permission for us to see her, but only for Tessa and me.
We followed him down the long lines of other penitents, noticing how many more soldiers were stationed along the rows. He exchanged words with the men at one of the round entrances, and we were allowed to exit.
“They keep looking at me like I am insane in my trousers,” Tessa said to me. “I mean folks did in Sheridan, but these men look like I am committing a crime.”
“There is a chance you are, in this hellish place,” I said. Yet again, countless times as I had before, I put aside the thought that I was a once-arrested, accused witch that had nearly been burned alive by a church—a church whose country I was now trapped in.
Outside, the sun after days indoors and the sight of the enormous buildings were nearly violent to me, too bright and too big for my mind to hold in place. That was soon forgotten with the drop in my belly at what looked like a darker-haired version of my sister around the time when she had been a bride. My niece was standing in the street, not with a husband or a soldier, but with Dermid and a man I recognized as one of Thane’s drivers. She had Thane’s coloring, but she had Rowena’s naturally upturned mouth, regal brow, and the general elegance that my sister had always possessed.
Tessa began to cry.
I resolved not to, but when I opened my mouth to greet her, I hiccuped.
Dermid gave us a brief nod.
Adelaide’s head turned from where she had been looking down the busy street, and her face crumpled when she saw us.
A soldier approached us and asked for Thane to follow him somewhere. Thane waved for this driver to follow him and then told us he would return shortly, that we should not move from this spot. Dermid assured him he would watch over us.
“What are you doing here?” Adelaide nearly wailed when her father had departed us. “I cannot believe you are here! After the trouble I went to?—”
“I see we won’t be getting a proper greeting,” I said, my emotions dulled by her berating.
“Your letter,” Tessa began, but she was cut off.
“Didn’t you get the code?” my niece went on, consternation in her question. “It was a warning, Tessa. Didn’t you think I was mean?Whyare you here? I don’t understand why you would come!”
“Wait, you’re saying your cry for help was a warningnotto come?” I exclaimed. “What are you talking about, girl? You drew a godsdamn anemone and a dandelion together. Are you stupid?”
Tessa, still crying, half turned to me and slapped my arm. “Shut up, Robbie.” She turned back to Adelaide and said, “Come hold me, girl. I have missed you like you cannot begin to understand.”
Bewildered, my niece stepped into Tessa’s arms. They cried together while I stood there confused, furious. I was angry at myself that I had always let my niece get to me, had always spatted with her instead of trying to understand her or meet her halfway.
Dermid paid attention to everything around us, acting as if there were no display of emotion taking place. Soldiers and other men that looked like some kinds of army officials marched by.
“Can you please explain,” I began again, my manner infused with determined patience, “what it was you meant in your letter? You drew a dandelion and an anemone together. Our old code says that calls for an emergency, usually an act of care. We’re here because we thought it a cry for help.”
Adelaide shook her head, pulling away from Tessa. “No, a dandelion means danger lurks.”
Before I could bite her head off, Tessa said, “Greet your aunt, child.”
We ignored her.
I said, “Well you are mistaken.” Then I quoted the message delivered many winters past to the women of Sheridan. “Remember, sister, anemones mean what they always have, dandelions mean exigence, and gillyflowers mean stop, danger lurks.”
