Terra Incognita

43

Tilla was beginning to know what to expect. There were the shriekers, the starers, and the believers like Rianorix who whispered, “Have you come to haunt me, daughter of Lugh?” Ness was a starer. Then she launched herself across the doorstep and held Tilla close, crying, “You are home, you are home! I knew you were alive! Oh mistress, the goddess has brought you home at last!”

“Ness!” gasped Tilla, hugging the bony creature who had been their family cook for years and had only been saved from the raid by being at a relative’s house nursing a broken ankle. “I thought I would never see you again!”

“I am not that old, mistress,” pointed out Ness, recovering from her uncharacteristic outburst of affection. “Although your uncle and cousin are doing their best to work me to death.”

“Are they here? I need to talk to my uncle. Rianorix was arrested.”

“We know. Your uncle is out on business. Your cousin is in her room. I will tell her you are here.”

Ordinary people grew thinner as the winter progressed, but the rich carried their weight through to the next harvest. So it was no surprise to see Aemilia plump and well fed. What was unusual was to see her pretty cousin confined to her bed with the sun still so far above the horizon, her wide blue eyes rimmed with red, and her fine clothes looking as though they had been slept in for several days.

“Cousin! Are you ill?”

“Daughter of Lugh!” Aemilia threw back the blanket, lurched to her feet, and flung her arms around Tilla. “Is it really you? Have the gods sent you to comfort me?”

Tilla’s return of the embrace was wary. The cousin she remembered as fastidious smelled stale. Her hair was clumped and greasy. When her grip showed no sign of slackening, Tilla patted her on the shoulder and stepped back. “Veldicca tells me you have troubles.”

“Everything has gone wrong!” Aemilia flung herself back onto the bed. “Where have you been? I have missed you terribly!”

Tilla opened her mouth to answer, but Aemilia carried on. “Everything has gone wrong, cousin, and I am all alone with nobody to help. Nobody understands!”

Tilla sat on the bed and eyed her cousin in the uneven light that entered the little room through the thick green window glass. “I am sorry to hear it.”

“Such horrible things have been happening. You cannot imagine. Felix is-oh, I cannot say it-and Ness says Doctor Thessalus has gone mad and Rianorix is arrested and the builders have gone away and I am not with child after all and Daddy says I was a disgrace at the funeral but I couldn’t help it, I really couldn’t!”

“Rianorix has been released,” said Tilla, grasping for an end in this tangled account.

“Oh, thank the gods!” Aemilia ran her fingers through her hair, leaving pale tracks running back across her scalp. “Oh cousin, it was not my fault! I never meant anything to happen to him, truly! But nobody will believe me!”

“You didn’t mean anything to happen to Rianorix?”

“No, no-you don’t understand!”

“You asked Rianorix to curse one of the soldiers, but you didn’t expect anything to happen to either of them?” asked Tilla.

“No! When I thought I was with child I asked him to help me, but I didn’t mean he should… oh, why is he so stupid? This is all his fault, and everything is ruined!”

Tilla had been right. Aemilia had not changed. She was not even interested in where her cousin had been for the last three years.

“I must look terrible,” blurted Aemilia suddenly, groping beneath her pillow and producing a mirror. She peered into the polished bronze surface, gave it a vigorous rub against her sleeve, and peered again, tweaking her hair and muttering, “Oh, dear. Oh, dear…” She scrambled down to the end of the bed and began rummaging among a jumble of pots and vials and earrings and hairpins strewn across a small table. “If only your mam were here now! She would understand. She would know what to do.”

Tilla closed her eyes and thought of the time Aemilia had refused to get off the swing, shouting, “Push me! Push me harder!” and then run crying to Mam, blaming everyone else, when she fell off. The time Aemilia had watched from a safe distance while the daughter of Lugh groveled about collecting eggs from the hens’ cobwebby hiding places, then offered to help carry them and run to the house shouting, “Look at all the eggs I found!” The time when, finally exasperated, the eight-year-old daughter of Lugh had grabbed the cousin with the silly Roman name by the hair and shoved her into the nettle patch. The daughter of Lugh had been given a beating and the cousin with the silly Roman name had been given sympathy, a drink of warm honeyed milk, and crushed nettle stems to treat her stings. Whatever Aemilia did, Mam excused her on the grounds that she was a poor motherless child. Now Mam was not here to excuse her, yet still Tilla felt guilty for being angry with her. She said, “Rianorix is released, but they are still asking questions about him.”

Aemilia turned, makeup brush in her right hand, mirror in her left, revealing one painted eye and one naked one. “Did he tell them anything about me? They won’t come here, will they?”

“I don’t know.”

“It wasn’t my fault!”

Tilla felt the muscles in her jaw tighten and took a deep breath. Getting angry with her cousin, she reminded herself, was like getting angry with a sheep for being stupid. It ruined your day and the sheep was too dim to care. “What Mam would say,” she announced, “is that you should get up and wash and change your clothes and have something to eat and you will feel much better.”

Aemilia sniffed. “Do you think so?”

“Yes.”

“But how will that change anything?”

“Give me your clothes. I will hand them out to Ness. Does this window open? It stinks in here.”

Aemilia sniffed again and looked as though she was about to cry. “Don’t be angry with me, cousin. Please. I couldn’t bear it if you were angry with me.”

“You should be angry with yourself for what has happened to Rianorix. Do you know what the soldiers do to people when they question them?”

“You aren’t angry? Are you sure?”

Tilla, unlatching the window, ignored her.

“You are so kind, cousin. Just like your mam. She was always kind to me when nobody else was. Oh, I do miss your mam!”

“So do I. Now give me your dirty clothes. And stop crying. The makeup will run and then you will have to clean it all off and start again.”

Aemilia wriggled out of her tunic and began to release her heavy bosom from the creased and sweat-stained breastband. “Daddy and Ness are both angry with me,” she said.

Tilla took the pile of crumpled clothing and opened the door. “I will fetch some water.”

“Will it be warm?”

“I will see what I can do.”

“Tell Ness not to give my silk tunic to the washerwoman. I don’t want it lost!”

“Warm water, and the silk tunic is not to be sent to the washerwoman,” repeated Tilla, wondering how she had become a servant again so quickly.

“Oh, cousin,” cried Aemilia. “I am so happy to see you again!”