“If your patron requires it, you shall be.” Cassian flicked a hand at her. “That, among everything else.”
“Not every patron shall wish his Handmaiden to decipher dusty texts, surely.” This again from Annalise, whose tone might be sweet but whose gaze was most definitely meant to prick.
“The best Handmaiden is not the one who knows everything, but understands what she does not know and how to best learn it,” Cassian said. “Besides, the patron who requires a scholar of the Faith will be assigned one who can so serve. No, Wandalette. You need not know everything. But you must know at least something.”
She drew in a hitching breath but looked him full-on without more tears seeping. “Thank you, sir.”
He’d done naught. It had been Annalise who’d forced him to reassure the girl. “Study the texts as I require and the Mothers request, Wandalette. You can do no more than that.”
“It was a true vision,” she said. “The Mothers-in-Service said so. They believed it was so.”
“The Mothers-in-Service believe all visions are true,” Cassian said with a glance toward Annalise.
Annalise cocked her head to look at him but said nothing. The chime sounded for the class’s release, and he watched them file out of the room, their chatter instant and exuberant and exhausting even in the few moments to which he was subjected.
He ran his palm over his eyes again and gave a sigh, and when he looked, expecting the room to be empty, he found instead Annalise, still at her desk. She’d gathered her belongings but not yet stood. She was half smiling.
“They . . . weary me.”
“They would weary anyone, but I should imagine you’d be well accustomed to girls like that by now.”
“I’m too old,” he said without thinking.
Annalise looked faintly surprised. “Surely you’re not. You’re not old at all.”
She didn’t sound combative, but he took no flattery from it. “I
feel
too old.”
At this she laughed, and the light bell-tinkle of it made him want to join her. He held back. He waited for her to go, and when she didn’t, he pointed at the door.
“You’re dismissed.”
“I know it. I’m going.” She gathered her things and gave him another look before she went to the door. “I’ve read commentary that said Kedalya bore other children when she left Sinder, and that’s why the Holy Family will never be rejoined no matter what any of us do. Sinder accused her of infidelity and she proved him right when she came up pregnant.”
The depth of her knowledge impressed him. “If you so believe, why are you here? There can be no use to your future as a Handmaiden if naught you do brings about the return.”
“I didn’t say I believed it, I said there’s a commentary. There are many, as you well know. One can’t believe them all.”
“What do you believe?” he asked, curious.
Annalise gave her head the barest shake. “I believe whatever I shall be taught by you, Master Toquin, so that I might be released from this class to the immense relief of us both.”
“Some do say Kedalya bore twin sons with Sinder as their father.” He’d not meant to share this, but his tongue tripped out with it and once spoken, the words couldn’t be called back.
Annalise lifted a brow, her hands closing her pen flannel. “I’ve heard no such commentary, yet it makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“It makes . . . connection,” she compromised. “It fits with the others I have heard. Stories of what happened after Sinder’s accusation of her betrayal. For who, if Sinder created the land and the sea and the air, did Kedalya cuckold him with?”
“Who created his lady wife, if not himself?” Cassian asked.
“What happened to the twin sons?”
“They went brother against brother,” Cassian said after a moment. “Spilled the first blood. The commentary says that’s where we come from. Us of the Faith. That we sprung from the drops of blood one brother drew from the other.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Does it make any more sense than that Sinder grew the first of us like flowers, plucked us from our beds, and thrust us out of the Land Above so that we might make merry for his amusement?”
She laughed, and again he wanted to join her. “As I said, sir, I believe what you deem it fit for me to know.”
“You already know much I’ve not taught. Or ever would.”
“And why is that?” She chewed the softness of her lower lip for a moment. “What use is knowledge if you never share it?”
“Sometimes it’s the having of a thing that gives it the most value.”
“So instead of gold you’re a miser of your knowledge? Why become a teacher, then?”
“I’m not a teacher. I’m—” Cassian stopped himself. He didn’t want to tell her he’d been a priest. Some knew it, but none who’d spread the truth. He shouldn’t be ashamed, and yet he always was.
Annalise looked him over thoroughly but only nodded, didn’t speak. When she left, the door swung closed slowly behind her, and Cassian waited for some long moments before he went to it, so that he might be sure she didn’t wait on the other side.
The days continued passing quickly. Annalise was grateful for the sunup-to-sundown schedule that kept her too busy for ennui. The skill she’d thought would be the easiest turned out to be the worst to endure. Annalise had ever chafed at bending to the command of another, and so when she first learned of what was called Waiting, the series of kneeling positions Handmaidens employed to center themselves, her gut had clenched along with her jaws.
Waiting, Readiness.
On her knees, buttocks resting on her heels, the back of one hand resting against the other’s palm.
Waiting, Remorse.
On her knees, buttocks resting on her heels, her hands this time placed palm down on the floor in front of her, presumably with downcast gaze as well, for a Handmaiden in this position was in an act of contrition.
Waiting, Submission.
The position that curled Annalise’s lip. On her knees, back straight, hands clasped behind her neck. There were women who craved such a place, but that would never be her, she thought as her skin crawled the entire time she was required to keep the stance.
And finally,
Waiting, Abasement
. On her knees, stretched so her forehead rested on the floor, arms stretched out, palms down, on the floor in front of her.
“Why would anyone require such a stance?” she asked upon its demonstration, appalled.
The other novitiates had taken it at once, following the Sister-in-Service’s command. Annalise, whose knees and back ached, thought it would at least stretch her muscles and provide some relief, but the concept of the position’s necessity lifted her gorge into her throat.
Sister Merriment looked at her. “One hopes one must never need to use such a position. This is the position for a Handmaiden who’s failed so grievously in her function that she has disgraced herself and the Order.”
Annalise couldn’t hold back the curling of her lip this time. Remorse she could understand. Submission, tolerate if necessary—she was, as one of the five principles stated, a woman at the start and the end, and femininity had well trained her for submission no matter how she might despise it.
But abasement? Failure? Dishonor and disgrace?
Watching the others bent forward, their faces pressing the floor, Annalise shook her head and didn’t move. “What could possibly be so horrible that a Handmaiden would feel it necessary to proclaim herself so disgraced?”
Sister Merriment neither laughed nor frowned. “Would that you will never know, Annalise.”
“But I would like to know, now.” Annalise Waited in Readiness.
Merriment faltered, her mouth pursing. “I honestly can’t tell you, I’m afraid. If any of my Sisters has so failed in her function, I’d not be privy to it.”
“Surely there are stories. There always are.”
Around them, some of the other novitiates shifted but didn’t remove themselves from their Abasement. They’d not been told to get up, and so they did not. Annalise looked at Merriment and waited for an answer.
“We don’t speak of such things.”
“Of failure? When learning from another’s folly we might gain knowledge of how to prevent our own?”
Merriment frowned, now, and shook her head so the end of her pale braid swung against her hips, one to the other. “A Handmaiden who’s been so shamed would be unlikely to return to the Order.”
This raised both Annalise’s brows, even if it didn’t bring her off her knees. She’d discovered in the hours required of her that Waiting, Readiness, was an infinitely comfortable position to hold. “Even more reason to have heard tales. Women talk, Sister. Women we begin and women we shall end, yes?”
Though nobody else had dared raise a head, there was no doubt all were listening. Annalise watched Merriment carefully, her intention not of rudeness or rebellion, but curiosity. Merriment paced a few steps and set the hem of her gown swinging.
“I . . . I don’t know of any, personally,” she said finally before halting her steps to look back at Annalise. “I would venture I hope to never know of any.”
“Yet by teaching us this, you put the notion of its possible requirement in our heads.”
Merriment blinked rapidly. “I can do no less than to prepare you for whatever you may encounter, Annalise. Perhaps if this is too much of a burden for you, you might reconsider your desire to serve.”
Annalise sighed and drew back her questions. She shifted herself, hands and forehead on the floor, and closed her eyes.
“I will never,” she murmured so softly none but she should have heard, “perform this for a patron.”
C
assian made his way through dim, quiet halls and out a back door into the courtyard, past stone benches and flowerbeds being tended by a pair of lads dressed alike. Like brothers, but not brothers. These boys were Blessings, children born to Handmaidens in the service of a patron. Fathered by kings or thieves, rare in their existence, but well-loved for it.
“Good day, Master Toquin!” Kellen, the smaller. Blond hair fell over one dark brown eye and his merry smile tilted on its side. He waved.
His partner, Leonder, nudged him. Taller, with dark hair the color of harvest leaves, he’d outgrown his last pair of trousers and exposed a full finger’s length of limb between the hem and his clog. “Don’t bother him. He’s on his way somewhere, can’t you tell?”
“Where are you going?” Kellen dusted his hands on the seat of his trousers and hopped along the crushed stone path to make it to Cassian’s side. “For a walk? Out to the pond? Or to the forest where the waterfall is?”
“I haven’t yet decided.” Cassian resisted the urge to ruffle the boy’s hair. It was already a tangled mess, with bits of grass caught up in it.
“The pond’s got an eel in it,” Kellen said. “I’ve seen it. Just a wee one, about this long.”
Cassian studied the boy’s measurement. “That long? ’Ware, else you’ll find yourself the eel’s supper.”
“They don’t eat people!” Kellen’s small mouth rounded and he turned to his companion. “Do they, Leonder?”
Leonder shrugged. “If Master Toquin says . . .”
Kellen took a leap back. Leonder laughed. Cassian smiled. The boys began an argument over which was better, steamed or roasted eel, and the best way to catch one, and what to use for bait.
Cassian left them to their rough and tumbling, the sound of their boyish shouts following him. He’d wrestled with his brother much the same way. He’d sometimes even won, if his brother felt magnanimous enough to refrain from dirty fighting.
Now, he walked. And thought. He often sought the forest, but today he went through the grass and fields toward the pond. It had been hand-dug when the Order’s first manse was built. The original founders had thought to breed fish in it and eels, for which the depth and brackishness of the water was better suited. He didn’t think they’d ever thought of boating or ice-skating, though sometimes the sisters came out here to take part in such pastimes. But not today.
He couldn’t imagine the hours of labor that had carved the pond. Boulders lay piled around its edge, proof of how hard the ground had been, how difficult the effort. Cassian had never swam in it—nobody did except the sorts of foolish boys who might tempt an eel to nibble. But he had gone out to the center in a small skiff on a day so bright the sun had cut through the dark water like a flame. He’d seen the pond’s depth as well over a tall man’s head. It wasn’t over-large, but it was deep enough to drown.
Of course, it didn’t need to be deep for that. He knew of an upstairs maid in the home of a childhood friend who’d drowned herself in a bucket. Nobody had said why. As a man, Cassian could guess at any number of reasons she’d done so, especially since she’d taken her life in the bedchamber of the house’s master with a bucket dragged all the way from the stable. But as a boy, he’d only heard the tale of how she’d been found, facedown, her skirts not even wet. How she hadn’t struggled or fought but simply put her face into the few inches of water at the bucket’s bottom . . . and breathed.
Calvis had seen her himself, he claimed, and been the one to tell the tale. How he’d managed to get inside the bedroom and view the maid he never quite explained, but he’d told the story often and with few embellishments. The lack of frills convinced Cassian his brother had indeed seen the dead girl. He’d been envious at the time, thinking it some treat to witness the subject of the story that had the county buzzing.
“You don’t want to see it.” Calvis had said this with clouded eyes and a shake of his head. “Not really. It’s not a sight for the likes of you.”
Later, when they outgrew short pants and slateboard lessons and had moved on to the pursuits that would shape them as men, Calvis had told him a different version of the worn-thin story. Not frilled or furbelowed.
“She put a bar of soap between her teeth,” he said.
“Why that? Why a bar of soap?”