Bastion fell asleep before Stefan got through the bag.
One of the village boys rang the church bells, calling him, and the village, to morning Mass. Stefan walked to the window in a stupor, his hands shaking, seeing his people leaving their homes and the market stalls, more people than he had ever seen awake, ready to worship at this hour. Their faces looked anxious for Stefan’s words. Stefan had once thought crowds were a sure sign God blessed him. When the people came in great numbers, God was blessing the work. God should be credited.
God and no one else, Stefan thought. Unless, perhaps, God could not be found in this at all.
Chapter Sixteen
In the late afternoon, waiting for Bjorn to return from an errand in the village, Mia watched Alma napping with the kitten tucked into her side. Mia sat, hands folded in her lap, watching the steady rise and fall of both chests, the serene curves of their closed eyes. Behind her, Margarite sat in a chair near the fireplace, her chin almost touching her chest. She snored softly, her injured arm held close. Outside, a woodpecker tapped against a tree.
Mia stood, keeping her movements slow and quiet. She walked to the door, picking up her garden trowel from the basket near the door. The ground would still be hard and too cold for planting the seeds she harvested last fall. Swinging the door on its hinges only a breath at a time, she eased it open and stepped outside. After pacing in every direction, surveying the path that led to her home, and the woods around her, she chose a spot. Using one hand, she swept away leaf litter and pulled up dead vines, getting to the bare earth. Using her trowel, she began digging. She didn’t need a big hole, just a deep one, a well to swallow up her sin.
The hole completed, she sneaked back into the house. Her body felt weak. Fear drained her strength. She should eat, just for strength. But her appetite had fled. Maybe that was how the miraculous maids resisted food. Maybe they were afraid too.
No one had stirred inside, although the kitten opened its round eyes and blinked once, watching her without interest before returning to its nap.
Mia slid the delicately tooled chest from the dark, unused corner of her home. Alma sometimes used the chest, with its heavy frame and strong lid, as a stool. Mia should not have allowed that, she thought now.
She took a deep breath and opened the lid. Inside hid linens and pearls, gold thread and fine needles. They sparkled, even in the dim yellow light of the fire. Mia pushed them aside. She had used this chest only once, four years ago when she made a christening cloth, anticipating her first birth. Alma had been born in distress, and Mia lost much blood.
“Have her keep the christening cloth,” Father Stefan had told Bjorn at the christening. “We’ll bury the child in it.”
Bjorn became cold, unwilling to have another child, loath to touch either of them.
“You look so sad,” Dame Alice had said to her as Mia passed by her home on the way to the market. “Come inside, dear.”
“No, the baby is unwell today. I need to get her home.”
“Don’t you trust me, Mia? I’ve had children too.”
Yes, but they died, Mia thought. “Perhaps later.”
And then other women began to turn a cold shoulder to her, as if she had offended them. She had sought advice sometimes, working up the courage to speak to another new mother, only to be rebuffed.
“Have I done something?” Mia asked Rose. They had both reached for a summer apple at the same time. Rose jerked her hand away as if burned and turned to walk away.
“Please tell me,” Mia called after her.
“Perhaps later.”
Alma survived that first stone-cold winter. Mia had spent all her energy keeping Alma warm, willing her to breathe.
“There was no time later,” Mia said to herself, thinking of Rose. To drive the thoughts away, Mia moved her hand under the sewing goods and clutched a metal square, drawing it up into the light, turning herself from the door so she could not be seen with it.
She traced the outline of the perfect letter M. Her father had given it to her when she was just a few years older than Alma. Mia glanced back at the door again. She had to bury it forever. Her stomach burned. Her knees were shaking as the memories came back to her.
She had been so happy, peeking around her father’s legs, making him swat at her with feigned impatience. He held his impossibly strong arms—the arms of a printer—straight out, grasping the handle, pulling it to him until the press shook with terrible creaks and snaps.
Releasing the handle, he nodded to Mia, who pulled the paper free with her small, gentle hands, walking somberly with the sheet as though she held the emperor’s crown. She took it to the sad man who sat so often by the window.