The old knight quaffed more stew then rapped his empty bowl on the table. “Is that what you hurried home to tell me, Jael? Am I finally going to have some grandsons?”
Leonhardt and her mother both flushed fever-pink; bright, angry spittle quivering on Dahilla’s lips, yet she remained quiet—Jael too, until suddenly, under the weight of her father’s stare, the words gushed as one breathless cluster. “I’m leaving for Pareo tomorrow with Saint Paul to join the Cross.”
Ricard blinked and rubbed his nose, listening half-incredulous as his daughter told him of her day’s events. Sentence by sentence, his expression transformed from skepticism to shock to teary-eyed ambivalence. By the end, he was grinning and crying. “The Cross!” he said, “spinning with his daughter lifted overhead, arms outstretched, just like when she was a little girl—when the world had yet to reveal its shadow. “I can’t believe you convinced old Cornelius to let you in! God, it’ll be fun. What I wouldn’t give to be in your place.” Ricard returned her to the floor and glanced toward the doorway. “Wait here. I have something for you. God! If only you knew how long I’ve been waiting for something like this,” and he left through the rear entrance, turning tightly alongside of the house. From outside, the cellar door creaked, and his feet drummed the stairs until they disappeared on the soft dirt beneath. Then he was gone, and with her father vanished Jael’s elation.
“I’m so glad,” her mother crooned. “Why didn’t you say something sooner? And to think I got so upset over a little spill. How silly of me. This is wonderful!” She rose from the table and took their finished bowls to the water trough, filled a clean pot, then hung it above the hearth. Leonhardt watched, frozen, counting the beats of her heart until her father returned, afraid to look away as Dahilla stoked the flames. A few minutes passed, and the pot was steaming. Jael gripped the scar on her inner thigh. Her mother sighed, “Yes, this is wonderful. I’ll have him all to myself, and you can go off and get fucked by as many goatherds and soldiers as you like. Go, go off and be some priest’s personal heifer. With shoulders thick as yours, he’d hardly know the difference.”
“You’re disgusting,” Jael hissed, tugging at her shirt, her face burning and twisted, eyes on the floor. “When I tell father—”
Dahilla turned, holding the water from the hearth. “What, you think he doesn’t know? He does; he just doesn’t care. Why would he? You’re not a woman to him. You’re an ox. You’re an ass. You’ll never wear your own wedding gown, and praise God for that! No one wants to look at a man in a dress, but you keep on acting like one, then you talk to me like it’s my fault. Jealous slut. And after everything I’ve done. I swear to God, I should have smothered you in your swaddling clothes. If I’d had known you’d grow up to such an ugly—What are you staring at? Look at me!” she spat, tracing her daughter’s eyes to the stained lilac silk. Then madness: a howl, hot water, an iron pot flung into the air, Jael’s right hand blistered, footsteps, the slam of the cellar door, the bite of the burn growing—broader, deeper—her father on the threshold with a bundle of crimson cloth, grinning— now snarling—Dahilla’s face a look of horror. “My God, that clumsy girl! She nearly burned me! I was just trying to clean up after—”
“Enough!” roared Ricard, his cheeks flushed scarlet.
“But, Love, I—”
The muscles in his neck went thick as ropes. “Get out!” he bellowed, and the whole house trembled. His wife mouthed a few words caught in her throat, but he had already turned to tend to his daughter. Dahilla dissolved into a corner on the floor—rocking and sobbing. Jael could not stand to look, so she buried herself in her father’s arms, shaken and hurt and hurting worse by the moment. She pressed her hands together and felt the fiery sting as she prayed to God for recompense, for retribution, for vengeance. Curse her to Hell! said thesin quivering like spittle on Jael’s lips. It was ready to leap off her tongue, to become something she could never reverse. Then an icy hand clutched her heart. Forgive me, she thought, Please God, help me forgive her. It was Ricard who answered. He squeezed her tighter and said, “I’m sorry.”
After, they dressed Leonhardt’s burn with a fresh cloth from the trough. It was only her palm; she was thankful for that, to not waste her last day in Herbstfield in an apothecary’s sickroom. Instead, she and her father went out into the fields in front of the house. It was a long walk through tall grass and brisk winds. The old knight’s salve, Jael recognized: time and distance. Strange, though, was the crimson bundle Ricard carried under his arm—his surprise from the cellar. Leonhardt tried to feel excited.
They stopped just short of where the road curved north near the front of their house. At last, the sounds of weeping had faded, yet there was a familiarity to the bare, uncultivated hills. They had come this way on a number of occasions, Jael and her father, for time and distance—and, on one such an instance two years ago, for a question as well. She prayed that this time he would answer.
“Why did you marry my mother?”
Ricard was staring down the road to the north. He glimpsed toward the bundle, then to Jael, then the road again. She waited. A long while passed, and the same stale disappointment reared its ugly head. Maybe Zach’s still at the meadow, she considered returning and telling him the truth. Or maybe I should tell Gavin I take the whole thing back.
Only when she turned to leave did Ricard dare to speak. “Why did I marry her?” he started.
