“In light of all that,” Tess went on, not daring to meet her mother’s eyes, “I was hoping—”
“What, that you might get married, too?” crowed Neddie the Terrible.
Tess flashed him a dirty look, but Paul was already taking up the cry: “No, she wants to run off in search of World Serpents. Don’t you remember any of her old manias?”
“I thought she was crazy for boys, not monsters,” jeered Neddie.
“She was mad for both,” said Paul. “Nobody’s sure which got her in trouble.”
“Saints’ knuckles, will you stop?” cried Tess, slamming the bread pan down on the table between them, making them jump.
She looked to her mother; Mama’s eyes had gone icy and distant. “What an ugly temper you have. You’re supposing that your time is up, your task is complete, and you are free to go?”
“Something like that,” said Tess warily. These kinds of questions were usually a setup for a lecture on why she was wrong.
“And where do you propose to go, exactly?” said Mama, turning toward the fire and lifting the lid on the stew. It bubbled ominously. “You’ve spoiled your chances at marriage.”
“Not everyone marries,” said Tess. “I could work as a seamstress.”
“Or a harlot,” muttered Paul. Both boys burst out giggling. Mama said nothing, which stung as badly as whatever she might have said.
There was no way not to hurt. Tess gritted her teeth against it.
Mama scraped at the bottom of the pot, where the stew was sticking. “The boys are right: seamstress today, slattern tomorrow. It happens to undefended women all the time.” She straightened and stretched her lower back, her eyes on Tess’s. “You fell once, and we picked you up. We can’t keep doing that. A convent would keep you respectable and safe.”
Tess opened her mouth to object, but her mother cut her off. “You’ve made your bed most abundantly, Tess. Don’t imagine you’re finished lying in it. Quoth St. Vitt: ‘Thou shalt pay for thy sins ten times ten what they cost thee, but if thou hast fallen all the way to the ground, woman, there shalt thou lie.’?”
“So I’m to lie and pay,” said Tess, seething, “with no recourse.”
“You knew this before you set off bullheadedly down the road to damnation,” said Mama, cold as well water. “I brought you up in full knowledge of the scriptures. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done with your eyes open and your chin set defiantly against me.”
Tess’s chin quivered now, her defiance spent. There was no talking to Mama once she started quoting scripture. All authority was ceded to St. Vitt, the most implacable and unsympathetic Saint in Heaven.
One would have thought, after St. Jannoula’s War and the apparition of St. Pandowdy (Heaven shine upon his scaly hide), that the Saints might have relaxed their grip upon the hearts of Goreddis, just a little. The Saints of old had been revealed as ityasaari, half dragon, and that should have created more room for doubts, not less. Tess’s half sister, Seraphina, was a Saint by that definition, and Tess felt that should have been enough to make anyone question the whole setup. Tess could have made a list of Seraphina’s un-Saintly qualities—her morning breath and noisy chewing, how she’d twist your arm if you came into her room without asking, burps and farts and every common, earthy thing—but somehow the actions of one sister were not enough to cast aspersions upon an entire pantheon of Saints.
Tess’s mother, after the war, had dug into her piety all the more deeply, like a tick burrowing into a dog’s ear.
There were no arguments. Not only was Mama’s faith intractable, but Tess knew in her heart that she was right. However bitterly Tess might protest, she had done this to herself and she deserved what she got. In a way, she was lucky: St. Vitt had advocated the stoning of women like her, but in this day and age her mother could never have gotten away with that.
Or rather, she could, but only if the stones were words.
* * *
In the end, Mama and the boys couldn’t make it to the Treaty Eve ball for the betrothal. Two days before the happy event, they came down with influenza—perhaps contracted from the neighbor’s toddler, who’d coughed on their fresh-baked bread, or perhaps brought home from Mass. Only Papa was well enough to come; he never set foot in church (which suggested the bread was blameless) and had too little meaningful contact with his wife to catch it from her.
Four couples announced their engagements at the ball. Lord Thorsten, apparently inspired by all the romance in the air, proposed to Lady Eglantine in front of everyone, which was merely embarrassing for Lord Thorsten. Tess could have told him he had no chance with Lady Eglantine; Tess knew everyone’s business.
That was one thing she’d miss about court. Did nuns gossip? With her luck, that would be considered a sin. Tess grimaced, feeling like she’d already glimpsed the first way she’d get in trouble at the convent. It was nice to know these things in advance.
The families of the four betrothed couples stood upon the dais at the head of the hall while the whole party applauded. Tess felt sad for Jeanne’s paltry showing, only two people, and Papa barely counted. He’d grown so thin since he’d lost his law practice that he could hardly be seen from the other end of the hall. Jeanne took his arm, however, and nodded at Tess, who understood to do the same, and maybe that was sufficient. Maybe they’d be remembered as the Dombegh twins, bearing a twig between them.
The in-laws-to-be were invited for a private reception in the Blue Salon, where Queen Glisselda would congratulate them personally. Jeanne went ahead with Lord Richard’s family, who’d traveled from Ducana province for the betrothal announcement: his parents, Duke and Duchess Pfanzlig, and his middle brother, a congenial, pumpkin-headed fellow called Lord Heinrigh. Tess took her father’s arm so he couldn’t disappear and led him doggedly after.
“We couldn’t skip this?” Papa muttered as they entered the salon. “The announcement’s made. Surely we’ve done our due dilige—”
“Jeanne needs you here,” Tessie snapped. She had no patience for her father; everything about him irritated her, from his balding pate to his dated houppelande to his meek posture, like an apology for being alive. “You do little enough for us. You can suck it up and socialize.”
She scanned the room for where they needed to be. Richard and Jeanne were talking to the Queen at the farthest point of the room. The duke and duchess and Lord Heinrigh stood near the center with a small group. They were the ones Papa should be meeting; Tess hauled him forward. Duke Lionel was speaking grandiloquently, and Tess slowed her steps, knowing it would not do to interrupt a duke. As the Queen’s second cousin once removed, he outranked everyone but Her Highness and the prince consort.
“I disapprove the Queen’s decision, and I don’t mind saying so,” he said, tossing his mane of white hair.
Tess froze, fearful of what the duke might say next. One criticism of the Queen reflected upon her own family: the royal cousins’ peculiar relationship with Seraphina. Nobody, not even Seraphina’s sisters, knew much for certain, beyond the fact that Seraphina lived in the royal family’s wing of the palace. That was quite enough fodder for speculation, however—and enough to stain Jeanne’s reputation if one were of strict and censorious mind. They’d been lucky, Tess felt, that no one had thought to paint them with that particular brush.
“Saints’ balls, I’ve said so to her face,” Duke Lionel pontificated, unaware of Tess’s anxious presence behind him. “?‘It is wrong to let quigs roam free and terrorize innocent people,’ I told her. ‘Lock them in at night, like your grandmother used to, or this is going to come back and bite you in the arse.’ And it will, too—perhaps literally!”