Dark and Deepest Red(37)

Petrissa gives what Lala guesses is the best smile she can manage. It is still pitifully small.

“You asked what we were doing with the fire,” Lala says. “I fear I did not give you the answer you hoped for.”

Now the smile falls. “Each time my sister comes back from her fits, she remembers less and trembles more. God forgive me, if I thought it would spare her, I would try anything. I would ask the devil himself for his prayers.”

Lala should rush to judge this woman. She understands that she should. But the fierce love Lala has known herself—for Alifair, for Tante, for the baby she has not even met, for the families whose voices brushed the beams inside their house—only makes Petrissa’s words sound in her own heart.

Lala is grasping for something to say when Alifair jumps down from the cart.

“Stay back,” he says, in a whisper so loud it becomes a hiss.

Petrissa halts the ox, murmuring to him like a skittish child and then asking, “What is it?”

“Just stop and stay where you are.”

Alifair darts ahead, keeping hidden among the blackthorn.

Lala hears the horses’ steps moments before they appear.

And moments before she understands that Alifair has erred.

The horses have not kept to the road.

They ride between the trees, trampling the wild angelica.

Then they stop.

Lala sneaks through the trees until she sees them.

Fine, tall stallions, ridden by two men in velvet-adorned tunics. Embroidery and gold embossing declare their families’ crests, and fur-lined mantles drape their shoulders, of no use in the summer but to display their wealth.

These are the sort of men who consider the woods theirs, and who so often have the force of law on their side. They are the kind who could have had Alifair lashed if they’d caught him scavenging fallen branches in winter. They are ones who would see Lala’s skin and hair, and pin the word exotic to her, a bright flag they would chase for sport.

These are the same kind of men who thought her a deer, and would have little guilt over slaying her and discovering her to be a woman.

Except there are no wolves this time. The daylight has driven them into hiding.

“And look what we have found,” one of them says. “A feral boy de la forêt.”

“Out here all on your own?” the other asks, in mincing imitation of concern.

“Stay with the ox,” Lala whispers to Petrissa.

“Lavinia,” Petrissa warns her. “You can’t.”

“Keep back,” Lala tells her, and then runs between the trees.

Alifair catches the sound of her steps before she reaches the clearing, his head turning just enough to meet her eyes through the trees.

He shakes his head, so slightly the men on horseback might not notice.

She does not slow.

His chest falls, his eyes shutting.

Not relief.

The settling resignation of something going even worse than it was.

In a moment more, she is close enough for the two men to see.

How quickly and easily they come down from their horses shows their youth, and their leers show the sense of place they have no doubt learned from their fathers.

They do not care how clearly Lala and Alifair see their faces. They show off their pride and power like the embroidery on their doublets, silver as just-minted groschen.

Nothing Lala and Alifair say against them would ever be believed.

“Mais non, not on your own.” With a breath of amusement, the fairer haired of the two steps forward. “She goes with you?” He glances at Alifair. “Let’s see how well you share.”

Alifair pitches forward after him.

The second man shoves Alifair away.

Lala casts herself at the fair-haired one, but he bats her to the side. With each throw of their fists, the men pen them in, backing them toward a stand of trees.

That fair hair is now askew, matching the rage in the man’s eyes. “I’ve had servants whipped for far less.”

The fair-haired man lunges forward, the other raising a fist toward Alifair.

Then, like a celestial body descending from heaven, a dark round comes down on the second man’s head.

It is so strange and miraculous, it seems a new moon is swinging downward from the sky.

The man tumbles like a felled tree.

The fair-haired man turns.

The dark moon arcs once more and catches him in the temple.

He falls, revealing the woman who holds the black moon.

An iron pan, the long arm gripped in both her hands.

The woman looks near Petrissa’s age, with similar delicate lines around her eyes. But the colors of her are each different. Black hair instead of auburn. Brown skin instead of Petrissa’s pale that has gone pink in the sun.

Instead of small, fragile-looking features, hers more closely resemble Tante’s.

And Lala’s own.

The woman stands with her feet far enough apart to plant her, still holding the iron pan. She wears a plain blouse with skirts of linen and lace, the sort of clothes that are familiar only because Lala knows she cannot wear them.

The ends of Lala’s hair prickle with the sense that there are others in the woods behind her. It is far different than her worry over the men in fine tunics. More a familiar comfort, as when Tante moves around the wattle and daub when she thinks Lala is asleep.