Mia heard a voice parting the crowd, causing the whispers to stop. She could hear the bodies shifting, faces turning to hear him more clearly. She had seen him enter the church just two days ago. He had held their attention, even then, just by being new. Now he held them rapt and hungry. Mia marveled that a person could charm a village in two days. But he fascinated her, too, his face hard and clever, his eyes moving rapidly across the crowd. He seemed to be making secret judgments. Mia straightened her back, turning her face away from Bjorn’s chest. She forced up a pleasant expression.
“Friends of my Savior, welcome in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
She lifted her head for a better view of Bastion, tilting it to keep the witch out of her field of vision. Mia took little comfort in the cage. She did not know what powers a witch had. The witch might look into her and know everything from Mia’s past. She would know that good Christians were burning all over Europe, and Mia herself had helped light the fire long ago. A witch would know why other women here avoided Mia suddenly, why whispers started as soon as she was three paces gone. Mia did not know for certain, but she had a guess. She guessed she was filthy in her heart, just like the witch. Nothing lovely grew there, just shame that she never knew how to clean herself like the others did. She never knew how to present herself or do anything other than fail and watch as the ones she loved died. A witch might know that God was allowing Alma to die, to punish Mia.
The witch might look at her and know everything. The witch raised a bent finger caked with dirt, pointing right at Mia, and screamed. Mia’s eyes went wide in fear.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Bastion began, his eyes settling on Mia. “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.”
Mia mouthed the first words of the rosary along with the others.
Bastion held his hands out to the people, and they waited. Tears formed in his eyes, and he forced them out with a slow blink. He held his arms out above them until they began to shake. Erick ran to catch hold of them and lift them up, causing Bastion to weep without shame.
“Bless the strong youths here tonight. Bless those who use their strength for service to others. Bless those who uphold the cause of righteousness and seek to banish the oppressor.”
A tiny drop hit the back of her hair. Looking up at Bjorn, she saw a tear run away down his face. He caught her looking up at him and did not look away. She reached up to touch his face, but he caught her hand with a gentle touch, pushing it back down. Whatever Bastion had taught last night, Bjorn’s heart had opened. It would never matter to her if it was truth.
What mattered was his touch. She had lived for years without comforting touch, ever since she saw her father murdered and walked to a new city, where she lived unknown and unloved, a child of the streets. A seasoned grifter named Thomas had found her, treating her as a valuable find among the refuse of the street. But he did not touch her. He did not hold her or hear her sorrow. He spoke to her when he needed money, and sometimes not then; he rattled his wood cup at her and threw it in the street.
He spent his days drinking beer in the town square, watching with narrowed eyes as customers purchased rags from his table in the market. They cheated him, he once yelled at the sky. Nothing but cheats and liars, he yelled, and he’d be a fool to stand on his feet all day while they cheated him. He’d rather sit with a beer, so the day wouldn’t be wasted.
She had been lucky to have him.
After the deadly raid, her father’s death, the screams, and pecking birds, finding Thomas had been a stroke of rare good fortune. Mia had been just shy of eleven, afraid to enter church again alone. A priest might ask questions. He would ask what Mia had done, what her father had done. She couldn’t lie. She didn’t want to sin and make God angry again. She did not want to tell anyone her name or why she fended for food alone. Let them all think she had been abandoned through some fault of her own. It might even be true.
God had spared her life, but He hadn’t saved her. That was her work to do in this life. Her penance.
So for three years she stayed by Thomas’s side, scavenging for firewood and rags and begging for alms on his behalf. She could usually get a goodly number of alms after Mass. She watched for the church doors to open. Those doors meant salvation—until she began changing, her body filling out in new ways, her monthly courses beginning. After that, when she begged after a Mass, women scowled at her and pushed their husbands along. They must have seen she was broken, the kind of broken that begins inside, marking the heart and the face.
She worked harder then, scavenging, learning to eat less and ignore the pains in her stomach. It had been a fall day, winter fast approaching, when her life ended for a second time.
Thomas would not rise one morning though she shook him—which she never dared to do—and told him that she had enough to buy dinner, plus enough firewood to last through at least two days. He looked beyond her, unblinking.