The Cockney scratched the back of his neck with the broken lamp. A thatch of armpit hair poked through a hole in his shirt.
“Fing is,” he said, “I don’t give a monkey’s arse what you want. Seems to me you fink you’re royalty. You ain’t. Seein’ as how you made me run and lose me breath, I’m gonna beat you nearabouts to death, then haul you back to Dervish. He’ll give me somethin’ for my troubles, I suspect—a bit of rest, like.”
“You would betray me for a little sleep?” said X.
“I’d do it for less,” said the guard.
It was the last thing he said before Maud struck him from behind. She hit the Cockney once behind the legs to bring him down and once in the back of the head to knock him out.
He fell to his knees, wavered, then toppled forward.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Maud told X, “but he didn’t seem to be listening to reason.”
“You’re quite right,” said X. “He’s one of Dervish’s spies, and he was about to take me apart. I owe you a debt.”
He knelt, and inspected the Cockney to make certain he was unconscious.
“Do we tell Regent?” said Maud.
“If we do, he might call off the search for my mother,” said X. “He might think we’ve endangered ourselves.”
Maud pursed her lips. X had only known her a matter of hours. He had no idea what she would say next.
“Then we won’t tell him,” she said.
They returned to where the Ukrainian and the cat lay sleeping. Maud had only just laid the bat near the guard’s open palm when Regent approached from the other direction, and told them it was time to press on.
The Ukrainian, waking slowly, rubbed his face, and said, “Is morning, yes?”
It was an old impulse from when he was alive, from when there were such things as mornings. X wanted to answer, but what could he say?
Maud scooped up Vesuvius, and they headed deeper into the torch-lit tunnel. Almost immediately, the passage grew more cramped, as if it were funneling them together. Maud walked just behind X, and continued her story.
“By the time I was twenty-five, Fernley was never home, particularly in the evenings,” she said. “I can’t describe the relief. Your mother had always wanted a child but she refused to give one to Fernley. She used to say, ‘I’d rather go to hell than make that man someone’s father!’ I’ve always remembered that, for obvious reasons. Fernley used to carouse with a surgeon friend. He’d come home at dawn, so drunk he couldn’t make it up the stairs. Your mother had to have the banister rebuilt twice because he crashed through it. Fernley had stopped leering at me for the most part. He actually told me that I was too old for him now—and he had turned forty-five! But I was grateful for the peace. I got lulled by the rhythm of the days, and I made the mistake of thinking I was safe.
“It was November. Starting to get cold outside. I remember the windows were covered with bugs trying to get in. One morning, I got up especially early. Fernley was sprawled at the foot of the staircase. He was sleeping off a drunk. I couldn’t get around him, so I went to step over him—and his hand shot up and clutched my leg.
“I screamed. Tried to shake free. But he pulled me to the ground, and climbed on top of me. His breath was horrid. He grabbed me, hard, between the legs. I heard a scream. It was your mother at the top of the stairs. She had the porcelain pitcher from her washstand in her hand. She flew down the steps at Fernley, and clobbered him with it. It didn’t knock him out. It just infuriated him. But it made him forget about me—and go after her. I ran to my room, and pushed my bureau in front of the door.”
Maud paused before going on. They walked on awhile, the story suspended in the air.
“I’ve always been ashamed of running away like that,” said Maud. “I think it must be the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“Why?” said X.
“Because while I was hiding in my room—while I was holding Suvi and telling him everything would be okay—Fernley picked the pitcher off the floor, and beat your mother into a coma.”
X stopped walking, and put his hands against the wall as if he might move it. The thought of Fernley hurting his mother sickened him. “Were Fernley in front of me,” he said, “I would knock him down, tell him that I’m my mother’s son, and put my foot upon his throat.”
“I still rage at Fernley, too,” said Maud. “Even in my dreams. Even after nearly a hundred years. But, if you don’t mind my saying, the answer to a violent man is not always another violent man.”
“I am sure you’re right,” said X. “Yet what is it, then?”
“In this case,” said Maud, “it was two violent women.”
“A stable hand carried your mother up to her bed for me,” she said when they were walking again. “Fernley refused to do it. He sent for the surgeon he caroused with, and told him your mother had been trampled by a horse. Fernley actually winked when he said it. The surgeon pretended to believe him. ‘Damned clumsy of her!’ he said.
“Your mother was unconscious. Her bruises were horrific. She was sweating and swollen all over, so I packed her with ice—made a little ring around her. Days passed and the farm fell to pieces. Work came to a dead stop. Fernley was useless, and nobody would listen to him because everyone knew what he’d done. So he stood on the back steps one morning, and screeched that everyone was fired and would be jailed if they were not gone in fifteen minutes. He’d been drinking too much to afford them anyway.
“I sat beside your mother all day, every day, in a rickety chair I brought up from the kitchen. I talked to her. Cleaned her. Rubbed her limbs to keep them from atrophying. I couldn’t tell if it was working. Fernley and the surgeon stumbled in every night, well and truly sloshed. They seemed pleased that your mother hadn’t recovered yet. If I gave them so much as a cross look, Fernley would slap me across the face or pinch my arm until it was blue.
“One night, while I was pretending to sleep in my rickety chair, the surgeon announced that if your mother didn’t wake before morning, he’d have to operate. He said he could relieve the pressure in her skull with some kind of drill, though it’d be dangerous and Fernley shouldn’t get his hopes up. He said the procedure sometimes left patients docile and spacey—sometimes even mute! Well, Fernley’s eyes lit up when he heard the words ‘docile’ and ‘mute,’ of course. He bent over your mother, and said, ‘Should we give it a shot, honeybun?’ Then he straightened up, and told the surgeon, ‘Honeybun thinks we should give it a shot!’ ”
X slammed the wall with a fist as he walked.
“Don’t,” said Maud. “Let me finish. All this is terrible to remember, but I want you to know everything your mother knew when she did what she did.”
“I understand,” X said. “As far as I am concerned, you needed no more excuse to put Fernley in the ground.”
X shoved his fists into his pockets, and Maud continued.
“I spent that night begging your mother to wake, and trying again to rub life into her arms and legs. She didn’t open her eyes, but she wriggled a bit, which exhilarated me. Eventually I passed out next to her in the bed. I don’t remember when.