Tess didn’t mind the snapping; it was all a formality. She was really there to tell him stories. If the bath went cold before Josquin remembered to climb out of it, Tess considered this a sign of good storytelling and felt satisfied that she was doing her part.
“Isn’t this delightful,” Gaida said one evening as they lingered around the hearth, too full to move on to the next stage. “You’ve fit yourself right in, my dear. Rebecca never made that kind of effort.”
“Mother,” said Josquin warningly.
Tess’s ears had perked up with interest, however. “Who’s Rebecca?”
“Oh, she was Jos’s caretaker before you,” said Gaida, scraping the bottom of her empty bowl with her spoon. “A midwife from the Archipelagos, always flitting about, attending her patients before my Jos. I never liked her.”
“You loved her, Ma,” said Josquin, weariness in his voice.
“Indeed I never! I supposed she would do, since we couldn’t find a man to take care of you, and she was coarse and boorish enough to be one. But my gut said she was trouble. The Pelaguese always are. I wasn’t the least surprised when she left and broke your heart.”
“You realize that Tess will leave us come spring,” said Josquin, rubbing his neck. “She’s mentioned it several times.”
“What? Oh, I know what she said,” said Gaida, suddenly flustered. “But spring is a long ways off. No need to dwell on it now.”
Tess listened with a certain amusement, and when Josquin retired for his bath, she followed, grinning. “So, this Rebecca,” she said as she stoked the fire. She tried not to sound teasing, but almost certainly failed. “Were you two…you know…”
“Yes,” said Josquin, pulling off his shirt, and then Tess realized she’d been too vague. There were several unspoken questions he might’ve been answering. Were they? They were.
“Mother hoped Rebecca would marry me,” he offered. Tess, behind the boiler, could hear the smile in his voice. “She came here to study, and then it was time for her to go back home. It was always going to happen—she told me, I knew—but she dashed my mother’s hopes.”
“Am I going to dash them, too, when I leave?” said Tess, tapping the temperature gauge and then opening the spigot.
“Of course you are,” he said lightly. There was a long pause while he removed his breeches, something of a project from his spider-legged throne. “Can’t be helped,” he said at last, placing neatly folded pants on the bed and gesturing for Tess to fetch two enormous towels. “She’s scared that she’s going to die and I’ll be all alone.”
Tess’s face must have reflected the same concern, because he added quickly, “I won’t be alone, Tess. I’ve always been good at making and keeping friends. You don’t need to worry, and you don’t need to stay here beyond your own inclinations.”
Tess nodded, a little flustered now that he was entirely naked. She usually kept hidden behind the boiler during this part, but they’d been conversing, and he’d left the towels across the room, and…she could turn away right now. She might do so at any time. She was entirely free to engage her good manners, starting this very moment. Or even right about now.
She was a little in awe, though, of how he lifted himself out of his seat, how he grasped spider legs and then tub railings with his hands and swung himself into the water. He had enough control over his legs that he could tense them and bring them over the edge; they helped slow his descent. His arms were wiry but strong; Tess could see every muscle in his shoulders working.
She watched the whole operation, fascinated, then forced her gaze to the corner of the room. “What can I tell you tonight?” she mused, but she already knew what she wanted to tell him. She’d been putting it off, practicing in her head. It was the story words wouldn’t stick to, and she needed to say it out loud, get it right, before taking it to the Academy.
“When I was a child, my best friend was a quigutl,” she began. “He told tales of seven great serpents beneath the surface of the world. I always assumed they were a myth.”
Josquin closed his eyes and sank into the water up to his chin beard.
And so she told Josquin about her search, with a few omissions: how she had gone to St. Bert’s hoping to learn more; how only Will had seemed to believe her; and how they’d planned to go searching for the World Serpents together, but that had fallen through (she didn’t go into detail); how she’d determined to find one on her own after she ran away from home (she felt some delicacy about Pathka’s pilgrimage, so she glossed over it); how she’d fallen down a hole and glimpsed the beast; how she’d followed it to its lair, met a mournful monk, and then the library of Santi Prudia had sunk into the earth.
Josquin listened without interrupting. Tess drifted around the room as she narrated, from the desk to the bed and back, until she was seated on the little bench beside the tub, with his towels. His body looked pale and contorted under the water, like some strange fish.
Tess leaned her elbows on her knees. “I want to present this discovery at the Academy,” she said. “What did you think of it? Is it believable?”
Josquin opened his serious blue eyes. “I believe you, but the way you tell it is a bit personal for an Academy presentation. You’d be telling hundreds of strangers, you realize.”
“Personal?” cried Tess. That was what she’d been trying to avoid by leaving out Pathka’s quest, Will, and Julian/Dozerius—by concentrating on the facts. “Which part was personal?”
Josquin exhaled, rippling the surface of the water. “I don’t even know what to call it. The ecstatic-revelation-alongside-a-monk part?”
“That’s the most important part,” said Tess, crossing her arms.
“Important to you,” he said gently. “The Academy isn’t always sympathetic to that sort of thing. If they get scornful, it’s going to hurt.”
Tess laughed. “I’ve got a mask to wear. I’ll go as Tes’puco. He can take it.”
Josquin rolled his eyes. “You know that name is childishly rude?”
“I revel in it,” she said haughtily.
“If you’re going under an assumed name,” he said, “at least pick something with more dignity. What’s the other ne’er-do-well you sometimes pretended to be? Brother Such-and-so?”
“Brother Jacomo?” Tess shook her head. “Not for this. He’s too earnest, desperately trying not to be the terrible clergyman he knows he is in his heart. He would take it personally if they laughed. Tes’puco is sassy and bold. Tes’puco doesn’t care.”
“If you say so,” said Josquin, clearly unconvinced.
“Anyway,” said Tess, waving it off, “they won’t think twice about the personal parts, not when there are so many significant facts for them to cogitate upon. How does it glow? What does it eat? How did it heal me?”
She blurted out the last question before it struck her that Josquin would have feelings on this subject. In fact, she’d expected him to ask about the healing, and was only now thinking that perhaps his silence meant something—but what?
“I don’t know if it would be possible to…to collect its blood or something,” Tess stammered. “Did the blood heal me, though, or was it touching the serpent that…?”
Josquin pursed his lips and said nothing; his fingers drummed on the rim of the tub.
He didn’t seem hopeful or excited or even particularly curious about the prospect. Tess tried to make sense of that and couldn’t. She’d assumed…she’d assumed Angelica would be grateful. Assuming was, perhaps, not the best way to understand things.
“Would you want to be healed, if we could figure out how?” Tess asked quietly.