“I offered you the truth.” He pulled the cover back up. He wanted to see her face.
“But what good is your so-called truth to me?” She scrambled to him, her face inches from his, her filthy fingers wrapping around the bars. He flinched, but she could no longer hide the humanity in her eyes. “Will your truth mend my heart?” she continued. “Will it make me forget my son? Will it set me free of the guilt and pain that pierces me through every time I take a breath? I don’t want your truth. I want peace. I want my son. Can you give me that?”
“No. But I can bring you beer,” he said. Saints help me, he prayed. I am losing my mind. I am reduced to offering drink instead of wise counsel.
She wiped her face, streaking black from her palms across her cheeks. She blinked rapidly before answering. “Yes.”
Stefan returned with a tall mug of his best beer. Water would kill a woman in such a weak state, but he used the best grains, the most careful attention, for his beer. Many ailing people felt renewed after a mug. Probably the only miracle he had ever offered or witnessed.
He couldn’t fit it through the bars, so she pressed her face against the bars, opening her mouth, and he poured it in. He tried to be careful and not spill it, pushing the mug against the bars, watching how he tilted it, willing the stream to go slow and not spill over.
She drank it all, using her long skirt under her shift to wipe at her mouth, leaving a wet stain across it.
He looked at her, this mess he had created. She looked down at herself, then at him and burst into laughter.
“Shhh,” he urged, glancing behind. “I would be stoned for this.”
“I have not tasted beer since my arrest. Just spoiled wine reeking like vinegar, whatever dross Bastion did not trust to give the village pigs. And never clean water, though I am tortured by the sound of the rivers as we travel. You cannot imagine my thirst.”
She looked up at the moon, squinting.
“One time,” Stefan said, “I ruined a batch of my father’s beer, spoiled the hops, letting them ferment, so I fed them to my mother’s pigs. I didn’t know pigs could get drunk. My father came home from the fields and found all his pigs staggering about, foaming at the mouth. He thought them possessed, so he ran them all off into the forest out of fear for his life. We had no bacon that winter.”
She laughed, and Stefan did too, shaking his head.
She reached her hand through the bars at him.
Stefan remembered the beating she had given him, but he did not step away. Her hand touched his face. He reached up and caught her face too, and they stood in the strong moonlight, not looking away from each other.
A light shifted in the dormitory windows as someone inside walked past a candle.
Stefan dropped his hand and replaced the covering. He ran inside the church before his crime could be discovered.
The next morning Mia set out to find a bit more firewood. She had used up her winter supply. She hated the forest and worked quickly, bringing home just enough fallen, dead branches for today.
As she opened the door to her home, a sword winked at Mia as Bjorn turned it over, wiping down the blade with a polishing cloth.
Bjorn did not look up as Mia came through the door. She held her breath and entered as Alma grinned and rushed for her legs. Mia bent down and scooped her up, kissing her on the cheek, exhaling with relief. Alma made everything better. Even when Alma was frightened by a noise outside the window or a flash of lightning in the sky, it was Mia who felt comforted as she cradled Alma. Alma could never know the deep relief Mia had on those nights just touching her, holding this soft, trembling little flower. Alma gave Mia a reason to be brave. God let women bear children so women would never give up hope. Even if here on earth women were denied everything else, God would always let them bear children. Alma hinted at His goodness. Children were a promise brighter than the rainbow.
Mia sat Alma back down, swatting her on the rump to nudge her in the direction of her doll. Alma grinned and went back to it.
Bjorn had still not said a word nor even looked at Mia. She kept watch on him out of the corner of her eye, her body stiff with dread. Stefan had given no comfort or help yesterday. Mia had gone to Mass early today anyway, careful not to look at Stefan in the eye. She had focused on the statue of the Virgin Mary, who remained blind to her too. No one in town said a word to her as she left.
“I am sorry,” she said. She was sorry for it all: the missing dinner, the leaving with no word yesterday, the anger.
Bjorn looked up, his eyebrows arching. “For what?”
“I am surprised you need ask.”
He stood, lifting the sword, turning it to catch the light from the fire under the cooking pot. “I’m going to ask you a question, Mia.”
She waited.
Stepping closer to her, he offered her the sword, hilt first.