The fair was set up just on the edge of the town, with caravans and tents in ordered rows. The tents were mostly colored, though often sun-faded, and the caravans painted and decked with flags and banners. Tash wasn’t that good at reading but knew which banners meant what products were for sale—food, drink, jewelry, pottery, ironwork, silverware, and more. Tash knew Gravell would be eating, very probably drinking, and hopefully negotiating a sale too.
Tash worked her way around the fair. It was one of the largest she’d ever been to, and Dornan had been transformed to ten times its normal size. It was getting to lunchtime, and delicious smells eventually made her give in and eat a pastry with a flaky crust and spicy meat and potatoes inside. She asked the vendor if he’d seen Gravell. He hadn’t, but another customer said, “The big bloke? He was in Milton’s bar in the center of town earlier.”
Tash stomped back to the town and found the bar. It was gloomy and the smoke hung low from the ceiling, though not low enough to affect Tash, who was tiny compared to most of the clientele. She checked all the corners for Gravell but he couldn’t be seen, so she asked the landlady, who said he’d left earlier. “Said he was going to the bathhouse.”
Tash went back to where she started—the bathhouse was close behind the cobbler’s shop. She walked past the window and saw that the gray boots—her boots—were still high on their shelf. Round the back of the shop and down an alley, with fields behind, was the bathhouse.
She’d been here before and knew the layout. It was a small building that had started out as a barn but now had three large wooden baths in it. Each bath was like a huge wine barrel with steps up to it. The water was heated by a fire in the yard and carried to the baths in large pitchers by two scrawny boys employed for their height and long arms.
At the front of the barn was a separate area where four barber’s chairs stood. Last time Tash was here, she’d been with Gravell and he’d been the only customer, but now it was busy. The chairs were all currently occupied, and more men waited on a row of stools nearby. Hair was being cut and dyed, beards were being trimmed and boots shined at the same time. She asked one of the barbers if he’d seen Gravell. The man glanced at her dreadlocks and said, “You could do with a good trim, luv.” He snapped his scissors at her and laughed. Another of the barbers joined in, saying, “We could get rid of all that. It’d cost you, though.” Everyone was looking at her now.
Tash stood her ground. “Have you seen Gravell? The big bloke. Big enough to kick the shit out of you both in one go.”
The men only laughed and Tash was trying to think of another comment when she saw the man who ran the bathhouse, so strode over and asked him if Gravell was in the bath.
“He’s a friend. My boss. It’s important.”
“Privacy is our watchword.”
Tash rolled her eyes and said, “Bollocks is your watchword, more like,” and she was pleased with how confident she sounded, even if the words didn’t make much sense.
She walked round behind the barn, hoping to find a way in. There was a small door that the boys used to carry the hot water in to the baths, and Tash waited until one of them carried a pitcher into the barn and slipped in behind him. There was a series of three curtains partitioning the left side of the barn, and she knew that behind each was a bath. But which one was Gravell’s? Only one way to find out . . .
Tash sidled into the first curtained-off area.
There was a pair of boots behind the bath. Fine dark brown leather with green stitching. Very nice. And definitely not belonging to Gravell. There was a splash from the bath as its occupant ducked underwater, and Tash took the chance to dash behind the tub, but blocking her way was a ladder from which hung numerous towels. She had to squeeze behind it and, just as she did so, her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on the rim of the bath, a youth rose out of the water. He had his back to her as he swept the water from his shoulder-length brown hair and stood, revealing shoulders, waist, hips, and buttocks. Then he turned round, to reach for a towel.
He stopped, arm out, staring at Tash.
Tash stared back. The young man was naked.
Tash’s eyes rose and she realized the man wasn’t totally naked. He was wearing a gold chain with a strange pendant. At first she thought the man’s skin was red and blotchy from the heat of the water, but then she realized that he was covered in bruises.
“Seen enough?”
Tash turned her head away, shielding her eyes.
“Sorry, wrong bath!”
And she slid between the ladder rack and the wall and on to the next bath, feeling the eyes of the young man on her all the time. She peered round the partition. The half-barrel bath was huge, but Gravell still managed to make it seem small.
She slid round the curtain and smiled at him winningly.
Gravell said, “If this is about those bloody boots you can leave now.”
EDYON
DORNAN, PITORIA
THE BATHWATER was no longer hot and Edyon’s aches hadn’t eased by much. He’d paid the lads at the bathhouse to wash his piss-stinking clothes, giving them six kopeks each, promising the same again if the clothes were dry by the time he was.
Edyon gently soaped his body, going over the events of the morning as he went over each lump and bruise: Madame Eruth’s refusal to see him; Stone’s trap (stupid, stupid!); the beating; and then, most surprisingly and pleasantly, the young man called March with the beautiful eyes. March had improved his day immeasurably and certainly fit the handsome-foreign-man prediction. He’d drink with him tonight, eat with him, perhaps more.
Edyon floated on his back, thinking of March’s face, his lips on the water bottle. Nice lips. Not too fat, not too thin, just right. Yes, he’d see March tonight, but he really needed to see his mother too. The money for Stone was a big problem. Fifty kroners was a lot of money. His mother had it, but she wouldn’t just give it to him. Edyon would have to explain why he wanted it. And he suspected that if he lied to his mother, Stone would somehow find out and hold it over him forever. The only way to avoid that was to tell his mother what had happened. The truth. A full confession. That was the way forward.
You must be honest . . .
And yet, fretted Edyon, sometimes his mother was not good at understanding the truth. She loved him, he knew that, but she lacked an appreciation of what real life was like, at least for Edyon. When he’d told her that the university rules said that a father must put his son forward for a place, she’d said, “You’re too negative, Edyon. Rules are meant to be broken.”
At first he’d believed her, working hard with his tutors, first in languages, then in law. The people he knew in the fairs didn’t care if he had no father, that his name was his mother’s. And so he’d gone to the university at Garya and stood in front of the professor, explained his interest in law, and the professor seemed delighted . . . until the question of family came up, at which point the professor had politely, sadly even, but firmly pointed out that it was impossible. The professor at Tornia had been even clearer: he’d looked at Edyon as if he was a dog turd and said, “We only teach gentlemen.”
Since then Erin had suggested he try working as a clerk in court, which seemed even more laughable to Edyon. If a university treated him like shit, a court certainly wouldn’t be any better.
Erin was unusual in being a successful businesswoman, and being an unmarried mother wasn’t unique, but her disdain for convention was the problem. She had affairs with men and made no effort to hide them or pretend that she was interested in marriage. She’d once said that if she met a man who was attractive, loving, and intelligent, she might marry him—but that she doubted such a combination existed. And that made Edyon wonder what she really thought of him. At the core of it, Edyon thought that his mother didn’t actually like men very much, and the older Edyon got, the more like a man and less like a boy he became, the less she liked him too.