Pathka had deposited her things on the far bank and was chugging steadily back to help her along. He was going to arrive too late.
She teetered, her only options sink or swim. It could go either way. She had not yet decided to walk on today; Pathka had gotten her moving before she could make her daily promise. She was not going to find an easier way to die than this. She had merely to let go, let herself be pulled down and pinned underwater in darkness. She would be swept away and never found.
Swept away was a fortuitous choice of words: it made her mad. She’d been swept away once—hadn’t she been up all night remembering it? She’d let herself be, hoped and desired to be; that’s how it always went in romantic stories.
She’d never be that passive again. It was far, far better to choose.
She’d seen Faffy swim, years ago, when their mischievous trio had discovered an abandoned coracle, like a tortoise shell, bobbing on the Mews River. Pathka had swum out and nudged the tiny (pirate) boat toward shore. Faffy was having none of it. Tess had carried the whining dog aboard, but the moment she let go, he sprang over the side and lit out for shore, frantically churning his skinny legs.
If a bony snaphound could swim, Tess could, too. In a fit of optimism, she lifted her toes and went under immediately. Water flooded her ears and nose, but she imitated Faffy’s motions, hands circling like millwheels, legs kneeing back and forth like an infant’s. She held her breath and believed, and when her head broke the surface, she yelped in triumph.
“Coming!” cried Pathka, snaking toward her.
Tess, flailing, might soon have tired and sunk, but Pathka reached her. She clasped his dorsal hand and let him tow her shoreward. The water felt like a rolling caress, like the fingers of a god, like she was not just clean but new. She rolled onto her back, chest toward the sky, let her limbs drift open, and for a moment forgot to be disgusted with herself. Let sun and clouds get a good look. She was the river, and the river had nothing to be ashamed of.
“It’s shallow enough that you can stand now,” said Pathka, but Tess didn’t want to. She’d worked out how to float, limbs spread wide like a water-strider with her back arched toward the sun.
She spent the rest of the morning swimming. Pathka didn’t complain. In fact, Pathka—the sensitive nose—washed her clothing and laid it on rocks to dry. When Tess finally crawled out of the river, exhausted and noodle-limbed and a bit sunburned, her linens were dry, but her breeches and jacket were not. She half dressed, enough that nonexistent passersby wouldn’t be scandalized, and then she used the last of the spare linen in her pack to make herself three small pillow slips, lunessas, for her supposedly impending monthlies. She filled them with moss.
The sun had slipped past zenith by the time she finished. She apologized to Pathka for using up the day, but he was unperturbed. “At least the caretaker won’t smell us coming.”
“He’ll smell you,” said Tess, still chafing on this point.
“Even if he does,” said Pathka evenly, “he won’t know what he’s smelling.”
Tess followed Pathka up the weedy verge, less noisy than the gravel drive. The lodge wasn’t far; in fact, Tess’s river bath would have been visible from the lone turret had anyone been watching. She felt an unnecessary, belated pang of embarrassment.
The hunting lodge was absurdly fortified with battlements and a dry moat. Pathka led Tess down the ditch, through a patch of what turned out to be nettles (thank Allsaints for good boots, but the nettles stung her knees through her breeches). He ducked up a hole in the embankment; Tess followed on hands and knees. “I found this yesterday,” said Pathka from the darkness ahead. “I thought it might lead down to a cave, but it leads up to the kitchens.”
“You couldn’t take what you needed then?” asked Tess, helping push open a trapdoor.
“Didn’t occur to me until you smashed that ring,” said Pathka, his tail disappearing through the opening. Tess followed him into a pantry. Pathka, his tongue alight, led the way to the kitchen door.
The kitchen had grimy diamond-pane windows and an obvious rat problem. “Go up front,” Pathka instructed. “If the caretaker comes in, that’s where he’ll enter. You can run back and warn me.”
Tess had no objections. She didn’t want to know what Pathka was stealing, although she was practical enough to pinch a few pantry items for herself. She wandered up a corridor, past rooms of ghostly, sheet-covered furniture. She wished the servants had covered the deer heads in the great hall, too; this lodge’s owners made Lord Heinrigh look like an amateur.
She finally found the grand entrance foyer, which was decorated with ancient carven stonework—ogham posts, green-man bosses, and a “Yawning Nancy,” as the pagan figurine was euphemistically called. It wasn’t her mouth yawning. She’d likely been a fertility goddess at one time, but her real name was lost to the ages. Tess kept her eyes religiously averted.
She’d been there a quarter of an hour, admiring the tapestries, when suddenly a deep bell tolled in the heights of the tower. Tess nearly jumped out of her skin, fearful of the caretaker, but it wouldn’t be him ringing. He’d have a key. It must be a visitor.
A visitor would eventually go away or try the caretaker’s cottage. Tess settled onto a bench and ignored the bell when it rang again. She ignored the knocking and hollering. Only when she heard a hard grinding sound, like chewing, did she grow concerned. Something was gnawing the door; daylight began to show through in a spiral around the lock. Tess leaped to her feet, but before she could bolt, the door was kicked inward with a tremendous crack.
“I told you that door worm would be to our beneficence,” said the door-kicker in a gruff voice. He was a tall man of nearly thirty, wiry and hairy-armed, with a face like a peevish mule.
“But where are we to get another?” whined a second man, fat and sweaty, behind him. They were dressed in grimy peasant smocks and braes; their caps had once been grain sacks.
“Fortune favors the fortunate, Rowan,” said the tall man, blinking as his eyes accustomed to the interior dimness. “Who’s there?”
Tess’s wits had frozen in place along with her body, and she couldn’t think of any name but her own. She didn’t dare tell them that. Her voice squeaked, distressingly girly, as she managed to stammer, “W-what do you want?”
“We wanted you to open the door, you worthless jackanapes,” said Rowan, the fat one. “Look what you made us do. Your lord won’t be pleased.”
His long-faced partner drew a knife from a thigh sheath, pointed it at Tess’s throat, and held her gaze as if waiting for her to flinch. “You don’t belong here,” he said with surprising certainty, wiggling the end of his knife against her skin. “A servant wouldn’t be so derelicious of his duty unless he were drunk. You’re a squatter—come out of the cold.”
Rowan drew closer. He, too, had a knife strapped to his meaty thigh, although he didn’t draw it yet. He was staring hard at Tess’s chest, as if he could see through her clothes.
He can’t tell, she thought desperately, like a prayer, trying to keep panic in check.
“That’s a nice jacket,” said Rowan at last, and Tess almost collapsed with relief. “Don’t get blood on it, Reg. I want it.”
He reached his thick fingers toward her buttons.
“Touch me and I’ll scream,” Tess said, cringing at how feminine that threat sounded. “The caretaker will gut you,” she added, trying to beef up her rhetoric.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Reg, tapping her chin with the flat of his blade, unconcerned.
“My quigutl is behind you, ready to attack,” said Tess. This was a lie. She hoped Pathka had had the good sense to flee, in fact.
Reg didn’t blink at this, but Rowan looked around apprehensively.
“He’s trained to do what I say, and his bite quickly runs to gangrene,” said Tess. “Which is your favorite limb? I’ll make sure he gets it.”