A Breath of Snow and Ashes (61 page)

37

LE MAîTRE DES
CHAMPIGNONS

T
HE SMALL LIMESTONE CAVE we used for a stable was home at the moment only to a nanny goat with two brand-new kids. All the animals born in the spring were now large enough to be turned out to forage in the wood with their mothers. The goat was still getting room service, though, in the form of kitchen scraps and a little cracked corn.

It had been raining for several days, and the morning broke cloudy and damp, every leaf dripping and the air thick with the scents of resin and soggy leaf mulch. Luckily, the cloudiness kept the birds subdued; the jays and mockingbirds were quick to learn, and kept a beady eye on the comings and goings of people with food—they dive-bombed me regularly as I made my way up the hill with my basin.

I was on my guard, but even so, a bold jay dropped from a branch in a flash of blue and landed
in
the basin, startling me. Before I could react, it had seized a fragment of corn muffin and darted off, so quickly that I could scarcely believe I’d seen it, save for the racing of my heart. Luckily I hadn’t dropped the basin; I heard a triumphant screech from the trees, and hurried to get inside the stable before the jay’s friends should try the same tactic.

I was surprised to find that the Dutch door was unbolted at the top and stood an inch or two ajar. There was no danger of the goats escaping, of course, but foxes and raccoons were more than capable of climbing over the lower door, and so both doors were normally bolted at night. Perhaps Mr. Wemyss had forgotten; it was his job to muck out the used straw and settle the stock for the night.

As soon as I pushed open the door, though, I saw that Mr. Wemyss was not to blame. There was a tremendous rustle of straw at my feet, and something big moved in the darkness.

I uttered a sharp yelp of alarm, and this time
did
drop the basin, which fell with a clang, scattering food across the floor and rousing the nanny goat, who started blatting her head off.

“
Pardon,
milady!”

Hand to my thumping heart, I stepped out of the doorway, so the light fell on Fergus, crouched on the floor, with straws sticking out of his hair like the Madwoman of Chaillot.

“Oh, so there you are,” I said quite coldly.

He blinked and swallowed, rubbing his hand over a face dark with sprouting whiskers.

“I—yes,” he said. He seemed to have nothing further to add to this. I stood glaring down at him for a moment, then shook my head and stooped to retrieve the potato peelings and other fragments that had fallen from the basin. He moved as though to help me, but I stopped him with a shooing gesture.

He sat still, watching me, hands around his knees. It was dim inside the stable, and water dripped steadily from the plants growing out of the cliffside above, making a curtain of falling drops across the open door.

The goat had stopped making noise, having recognized me, but was now stretching her neck through the railing of her pen, blueberry-colored tongue extended like an anteater’s, in an effort to reach an apple core that had rolled near the pen. I picked it up and handed it to her, trying to think where to start, and what to say when I did.

“Henri-Christian’s doing well,” I said, for lack of anything else. “Putting on weight.”

I let the remark trail off, bending over the rail to pour corn and scraps into the wooden feed trough.

Dead silence. I waited a moment, then turned round, one hand on my hip.

“He’s a very sweet little baby,” I said.

I could hear him breathing, but he said nothing. With an audible snort, I went and pushed the bottom half of the door open wide, so that the cloudy light outside streamed in, exposing Fergus. He sat with his face turned stubbornly away. I could smell him at a goodly distance; he reeked of bitter sweat and hunger.

I sighed.

“Dwarves of this sort have got quite normal intelligence. I’ve checked him thoroughly, and he has all the usual reflexes and responses that he should have. There’s no reason why he can’t be educated, be able to work—at something.”

“Something,” Fergus echoed, the word holding both despair and derision. “Something.” At last, he turned his face toward me, and I saw the hollowness of his eyes. “With respect, milady—you have never seen the life of a dwarf.”

“And you have?” I asked, not so much in challenge as curiosity.

He closed his eyes against the morning light, nodding.

“Yes,” he whispered, and swallowed. “In Paris.”

The brothel where he had grown up in Paris was a large one, with a varied clientele, famous for being able to offer something for almost any taste.

“The house itself had
les filles, naturellement,
and
les enfants.
They are of course the bread and butter of the establishment. But there are always those who desire . . . the exotic, and will pay. And so now and then the madame would send for those who dealt in such things.
La Maîtresse des Scorpions—avec les flagellantes, tu comprends? Ou Le Maître des Champignons.
”

“The Master of Mushrooms?” I blurted.

“
Oui
. The Dwarf Master.”

His eyes had sunk into his head, his gaze turned inward and his face haggard. He was seeing in memory sights and people who had been absent from his thoughts for many years—and was not enjoying the recollection.

“
Les chanterelles,
we called them,” he said softly. “The females. The males, they were
les morels.
” Exotic fungi, valued for the rarity of their twisted shapes, the strange savor of their flesh.

“They were not badly treated,
les champignons,
” he said, abstracted. “They were of value, you see.
Le Maître
would buy such infants from their parents—there was one born in the brothel, once, and the madame was delighted at her good fortune—or collect them from the streets.”

He looked down at his hand, the long, delicate fingers moving restlessly, pleating the cloth of his breeches.

“The streets,” he repeated. “Those who escaped the brothels—they were beggars. I knew one of them quite well—Luc, he was called. We would sometimes assist each other—” The shadow of a smile touched his mouth, and he waved his intact hand in the deft gesture of one picking pockets.

“But he was alone, Luc,” he continued matter-of-factly. “He had no protector. I found him one day in the alley, with his throat cut. I told the madame, and she sent the doorkeep out at once to seize the body, and sold it to a doctor in the next
arondissement.
”

I didn’t ask what the doctor had wanted with Luc’s body. I’d seen the broad, dried hands of dwarves, sold for divination and protection. And other parts.

“I begin to see why a brothel might seem safe,” I said, swallowing heavily. “But still . . .”

Fergus had been sitting with his head braced on his hand, staring at the straw. At this, he looked up at me.

“I have parted my buttocks for money, milady,” he said simply. “And thought nothing of it, save when it hurt. But then I met milord, and found a world beyond the brothel and the streets. That my son might return to such places . . .” He stopped abruptly, unable to speak. He closed his eyes again, and shook his head, slowly.

“Fergus. Fergus, dear. You can’t think that Jamie—that we—would ever let such a thing happen,” I said, distressed beyond measure.

He drew a deep, trembling breath, and thumbed away the tears that hung on his lashes. He opened his eyes and gave me a smile of infinite sadness.

“No, you would not, milady. But you will not live forever, nor will milord. Nor I. But the child will be a dwarf forever. And
les petits,
they cannot well defend themselves. They will be plucked up by those who seek them, taken and consumed.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and sat up a little.

“If, that is, they should be so fortunate,” he added, his voice hardening. “They are not valued, outside the cities. Peasants, they believe the birth of such a child is at best a judgment on the sins of his parents.” A deeper shadow crossed his face, his lips drawing tight. “It may be so. My sins—” But he broke off abruptly, turning away.

“At worst—” His voice was soft, head turned away, as though he whispered secrets to the shadows of the cave. “At worst, they are seen as monstrous, children born of some demon who has lain with the woman. People stone them, burn them—sometimes the woman, too. In the mountain villages of France, a dwarf child would be left for the wolves. But do you not know these things, milady?” he asked, suddenly turning back to face me.

“I—I suppose so,” I said, and put out a hand to the wall, suddenly feeling the need of some support. I
had
known such things, in the abstract way one thinks of the customs of aborigines and savages—people whom one will never meet, safely distant in the pages of geography books, of ancient histories.

He was right; I knew it. Mrs. Bug had crossed herself, seeing the child, and then made the sign of the horns as protection from evil, pale horror on her face.

Shocked as we had all been, and then concerned with Marsali, and with Fergus’s absence, I hadn’t been away from the house for a week or more. I had no idea what people might be saying, on the Ridge. Fergus plainly did.

“They’ll . . . get used to him,” I said as bravely as I could. “People will see that he isn’t a monster. It may take some time, but I promise you, they’ll see.”

“Will they? And if they let him live, what then will he do?” He rose to his feet quite suddenly. He stretched out his left arm, and with a jerk, freed the leather strip that held his hook. It fell with a soft thump into the straw, and left the narrow stump of his wrist bare, the pale skin creased with red from the tightness of the wrappings.

“Me, I cannot hunt, cannot do a proper man’s work. I am fit for nothing but to pull the plow, like a mule!” His voice shook with anger and self-loathing. “If I cannot work as a man does, how shall a dwarf?”

“Fergus, it isn’t—”

“I cannot keep my family! My wife must labor day and night to feed the children, must put herself in the way of scum and filth who misuse her, who— Even if I was in Paris, I am too old and crippled to whore!” He shook the stump at me, face convulsed, then whirled and swung his maimed arm, smashing it against the wall, over and over.

“Fergus!” I seized his other arm, but he jerked away.

“What work will he do?” he cried, tears streaming down his face. “How shall he live?
Mon Dieu! Il est aussi inutile que moi!
”

He bent and seized the hook from the ground, and hurled it as hard as he could at the limestone wall. It made a small chiming sound as it struck, and fell into the straw, startling the nanny and her kids.

Fergus was gone, the Dutch door left swinging. The goat called after him, a long
maaaah!
of disapproval.

I held on to the railing of the pen, feeling as though it was the only solid thing in a slowly tilting world. When I could, I bent and felt carefully in the straw until I touched the metal of the hook, still warm from Fergus’s body. I drew it out and wiped bits of straw and manure carefully off it with my apron, still hearing Fergus’s last words.

“My God! He is as useless as I am!”

38

A DE’IL IN THE MILK

H
ENRI-CHRISTIAN’S EYES nearly crossed with the effort of focusing on the yarn bobble Brianna dangled over his face.

“I think his eyes might stay blue,” she said, peering thoughtfully at him. “What do you think he’s looking at?” He lay in her lap, knees drawn up nearly to his chin, the soft blue eyes in question fixed somewhere far beyond her.

“Oh, the wee ones still see heaven, my Mam said.” Marsali was spinning, trying out Brianna’s new treadle wheel, but spared a quick glance at her newest son, smiling a little. “Maybe there’s an angel sitting on your shoulder, aye? Or a saint who stands behind ye.”

That gave her an odd feeling, as though someone
did
stand behind her. Not creepy, though—more a mild, warm sense of reassurance. She opened her mouth to say, “Maybe it’s my father,” but caught herself in time.

“Who’s the patron saint of laundry?” she said instead. “That’s who we need.” It was raining; it had been raining for days, and small mounds of clothing lay scattered about the room or draped over the furniture: damp things in various states of drying, filthy things destined for the wash cauldron as soon as the weather broke, less-filthy things that might be brushed, shaken, or beaten into another few days’ wearing, and an ever-growing pile of things needing mending.

Marsali laughed, deftly feeding thread to the bobbin.

“Ye’d have to ask Da about that. He kens more saints than anybody. This is wonderful, this wheel! I’ve not seen this kind before. However did ye come to think of such a thing?”

“Oh—saw one somewhere.” Bree flicked a hand, dismissing it. She had—in a folk-art museum. Building it had been time-consuming—she’d first had to make a crude lathe, as well as soak and bend the wood for the wheel itself—but not terribly difficult. “Ronnie Sinclair helped a lot; he knows what wood will do and what it won’t. I can’t believe how good you are at that, and this your first time using one like it.”

Marsali snorted, likewise dismissing the compliment.

“I’ve spun since I was five,
a piuthar.
All that’s different here is I can sit while I do it, instead of walking to and fro ’til I fall over wi’ tiredness.”

Her stockinged feet flickered back and forth under the hem of her dress, working the treadle. It made a pleasant
whish-whir
sound—though this was barely audible over the babble at the other side of the room, where Roger was carving yet another car for the children.

Vrooms were a big hit with the small-fry, and the demand for them unceasing. Brianna watched with amusement as Roger fended off Jem’s inquisitiveness with a deft elbow, frowning in concentration. The tip of his tongue showed between his teeth, and wood shavings littered the hearth and his clothes, and—of course—one was stuck in his hair, a pale curl against its darkness.

“What’s that one?” she asked, raising her voice to reach him. He looked up, his eyes a mossy green in the dim rainlight from the window behind him.

“I think it’s a ’57 Chevrolet pickup truck,” he said, grinning. “Here, then,
a nighean.
This one’s yours.” He brushed a last shaving from his creation and handed the blocky thing to Félicité, whose mouth and eyes were round with awe.

“Issa vroom?” she said, clutching it to her bosom. “
My
vroom?”

“It’s a druck,” Jemmy informed her with kindly condescension. “Daddy says.”

“A truck is a vroom,” Roger assured Félicité, seeing doubt begin to pucker her forehead. “It’s just a bigger kind.”

“Issa
big
vroom, see!” Félicité kicked Jem in the shin. He yelped and grabbed for her hair, only to be butted in the stomach by Joan, always there to defend her sister.

Brianna tensed, ready to intervene, but Roger broke up the incipient riot by holding Jem and Félicité each at arm’s length, glaring Joan into retreat.

“Right, you lot. No fighting, or we put the vrooms away ’til tomorrow.”

That quelled them instantly, and Brianna felt Marsali relax, resuming the rhythm of her spinning. The rain hummed on the roof, solid and steady; it was a good day to be inside, despite the difficulty of entertaining bored children.

“Why don’t you play something nice and quiet?” she said, grinning at Roger. “Like . . . oh . . . Indianapolis 500?”

“Oh, you’re a great help,” he said, giving her a dirty look, but he obligingly set the children to work laying out a racetrack in chalk on the big hearthstone.

“Too bad Germain’s not here,” he said casually. “Where’s he gone in the rain and all, Marsali?” Germain’s vroom—according to Roger, it was a Jaguar X-KE, though so far as Brianna could tell, it looked exactly like the others: a block of wood with a rudimentary cab and wheels—was sitting on the mantelpiece, awaiting its master’s return.

“He’s with Fergus,” Marsali answered calmly, not faltering in her rhythm. Her lips pressed together, though, and it was easy to hear the note of strain in her voice.

“And how’s Fergus, then?” Roger looked up at her, kindly, but intent.

The thread skipped, bounced in Marsali’s hand, and wound itself up with a visible slub in it. She grimaced, and didn’t reply until the thread was running once more smoothly through her fingers.

“Well, I will say, for a man wi’ one hand, he’s a bonny wee fighter,” she said at last, eyes on the thread and a wry note in her voice.

Brianna glanced at Roger, who raised an eyebrow back at her.

“Who’s he been fighting?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“He doesna often tell me,” Marsali said evenly. “Though yesterday it was the husband of a woman who asked him why he didna just strangle Henri-Christian at birth. He took offense,” she added, offhand, leaving it unclear as to whether it was Fergus, the husband, or both who had taken offense. Lifting the thread, she bit it sharply off.

“I should think so,” Roger murmured. His head was bent, marking off the starting line, so his hair fell over his forehead, obscuring his face. “Not the only one, though, I take it.”

“No.” Marsali began winding the thread onto the niddy-noddy, a small, seemingly permanent frown showing between her fair brows. “I suppose it’s better than the ones who point and whisper. Those are the ones who think Henri-Christian’s the—the devil’s seed,” she finished bravely, though her voice quivered a little. “I think they’d burn the wee man—and me and the other weans along with him, if they thought they could.”

Brianna felt the bottom of her stomach drop, and cuddled the object of discussion in her lap.

“What sort of idiots could
possibly
think such a thing?” she demanded. “Let alone say it out loud!”

“Let alone do it, ye mean.” Marsali put aside the yarn and rose, leaning over to take Henri-Christian and put him to her breast. With his knees still curled up, his body was scarcely half the size of a normal baby’s—and with his large, round head with its sprout of dark hair, Brianna had to admit that he did look . . . odd.

“Da had a word here and there,” Marsali said. Her eyes were closed, and she was rocking slowly back and forth, cradling Henri-Christian close. “If it weren’t for that . . .” Her slender throat moved as she swallowed.

“Daddy, Daddy, let’s
go
!” Jem, impatient with incomprehensible adult conversation, plucked at Roger’s sleeve.

Roger had been looking at Marsali, his lean face troubled. At this reminder, he blinked and glanced down at his thoroughly normal son, clearing his throat.

“Aye,” he said, and took down Germain’s car. “Well, then, look. Here’s the starting line. . . .”

Brianna laid a hand on Marsali’s arm. It was thin, but strongly muscled, the fair skin gold from sun, spattered with tiny freckles. The sight of it, so small and brave-looking, clutched at her throat.

“They’ll stop,” she whispered. “They’ll see. . . .”

“Aye, maybe.” Marsali cupped Henri-Christian’s small round bottom, holding him closer. Her eyes were still closed. “Maybe not. But if Germain’s wi’ Fergus, he’ll maybe be more careful who he fights. I’d rather they didna kill him, aye?”

She bowed her head over the baby, settling into the nursing and plainly disinclined to talk any further. Brianna patted her arm, a little awkwardly, then moved to take the seat by the spinning wheel.

She’d heard the talk, of course. Or some of it. Particularly right after Henri-Christian’s birth, which had sent shock waves through the Ridge. Beyond the first overt expressions of sympathy, there had been a lot of muttering, about recent events and what malign influence might have caused them—from the assault on Marsali and the burning of the malting shed, to the kidnapping of her mother, the slaughter in the woods, and the birth of a dwarf. She’d heard one injudicious girl murmur within her hearing something about “. . . witchcraft, what would ye expect?”—but had rounded fiercely to glare at the girl, who had paled and slunk off with her two friends. The girl had glanced back once, though, then turned away, the three of them spitefully sniggering.

But no one had ever treated her or her mother with any lack of respect. It was clear that a number of the tenants were rather afraid of Claire—but they were much more afraid of her father. Time and habituation had seemed to be working, though—until the birth of Henri-Christian.

Working the treadle was soothing; the whir of the spinning wheel faded into the sound of the rain and the bickering of the children.

At least Fergus had come back. When Henri-Christian was born, he had left the house and not come back for several days.
Poor Marsali,
she thought, with a mental scowl at Fergus. Left alone to deal with the shock. And everyone had
been
shocked, her included. Perhaps she couldn’t really blame Fergus.

She swallowed, imagining, as she did whenever she saw Henri-Christian, what it would be like to have a child born with some terrible defect. She saw them now and then—children with cleft lips, the misshapen features of what her mother said was congenital syphilis, retarded children—and every time, crossed herself and thanked God that Jemmy was normal.

But then, so were Germain and his sisters. Something like this could come out of the blue, at any time. Despite herself, she glanced at the small shelf where she kept her personal things, and the dark brown jar of
dauco
seeds. She’d been taking them again, ever since Henri-Christian’s birth, though she hadn’t mentioned it to Roger. She wondered whether he knew; he hadn’t said anything.

Marsali was singing softly under her breath.
Did
Marsali blame Fergus? she wondered. Or he her? She hadn’t seen Fergus to talk to in some time. Marsali didn’t seem critical of him—and she had said she didn’t want him killed. Brianna smiled involuntarily at the memory. Yet there was an undeniable sense of distance when she mentioned him.

The thread thickened suddenly, and she trod faster, trying to compensate, only to have it catch and snap. Muttering to herself, she stopped and let the wheel run itself down—only then realizing that someone had been pounding on the door of the cabin for some time, the sound of it lost in the racket inside.

She opened the door to find one of the fisher-folks’ children dripping on the stoop, small, bony, and feral as a wild cat. There were several of them among the tenant families, so alike that she had trouble telling them apart.

“Aidan?” she guessed. “Aidan McCallum?”

“Good day, mistress,” the little boy said, bobbing his head in nervous acknowledgment of identity. “Is meenister to hame?”

“Mee—oh. Yes, I suppose so. Come in, won’t you?” Suppressing a smile, she swung the door wide, beckoning him in. The boy looked quite shocked to see Roger, crouched on the floor, playing Vroom with Jemmy and Joan and Félicité, all industriously screeching and roaring to such effect that they hadn’t noticed the newcomer.

“You have a visitor,” she said, raising her voice to interrupt the bedlam. “He wants the minister.” Roger broke off in mid-vroom, glancing up in inquiry.

“The what?” he said, sitting up, cross-legged, his own car in hand. Then he spotted the boy, and smiled. “Oh. Aidan,
a charaid
! What is it, then?”

Aidan screwed up his face in concentration. Obviously, he had been given a specific message, committed to memory.

“Mither says will ye come, please,” he recited, “for to drive out a de’il what’s got intae the milk.”