Dark and Deepest Red(57)

He looked at her, with her staring eyes dark enough that he couldn’t pick out the points of black at the centers. Yes, she was a gadji, but she knew what it was to look how they looked in a town like Briar Meadow. And she could maybe guess what it was like to be his family five hundred years ago.

“Yes,” Emil said. “Because they were Romani. And because they were unmarried women who made their own living. Because everyone thought they were witches. All of the above. Whenever something happens, people go looking for someone to blame.”

She kept staring in a way he couldn’t read. Disbelief? Horror? Deciding to stay really still until he just forgot she was there?

After everything he’d just said, the silence pricked at him.

Then her expression shifted, like a flame changing from one color to the next.





Strasbourg, 1518


Which four brothers live under only one hat?

(The legs of a table.)

Which mother and son can you see only after sundown?

(The night and the moon.)

All this is an awful, living version of the riddles Lala’s father so loved.

Tante says that the harder they were to solve, the more joy Lala’s father took in them. But what would he tell her now? How to save a boy who has made Lala’s confession his own is the most impossible riddle, the most stubborn knot.

“Your favorite priest tried to speak for him, you know,” Tante says. “And they brushed him away as if he were a troublesome child.” She squeezes her eyes shut, giving a small shake of her head.

That shift in expression nearly drags Lala to the floor. She has always known Tante cared about Alifair. But the grief in her face now makes plain how much she loves him, as she would a brother or nephew.

Lala sinks onto a stool. “What has happened to this place?”

“Nothing that has not been happening for hundreds of years,” Tante says, and the breaking in her voice makes it sound younger than Lala has ever heard it. “Those who dance just make it plain. Men tell their wives to be pure in the sight of God but then beat them and force them and show them less regard than their dogs. We lie sick in our beds while the wealthiest demand that the physicians see them first so that they don’t bring our dirt across their thresholds.”

Her voice grows bitter and cruel.

“Our roofs cave in while the councils debate if the cathedral needs another small fortune of gold.” Tante tosses her hands, as though there is no helping it. “We endure cold and hunger while rich men take our tithes, swearing they’re for the poor and for work of the Lord. Then they turn around and buy marble for their houses and silk for their mistresses.” She releases a bitter laugh. “And they’re the ones meant to commend us into heaven. Our spirits depend on baptism from them.”

Lala cannot see tears in Tante’s eyes, but she can hear them.

“And then they marvel when the bodies of their flock speak the truth their mouths cannot.” Tante kicks at the frayed edge of a rush. “If the devil has hold of anyone, it’s the men at their high posts, not those who dance.”

Lala folds Tante’s words and her rage into her body. How she wishes God would show Himself enough that the canons understood their part in all this, how their hearts have become as unyielding as the jewels on their fingers.

And now the wattle and daub speaks of Alifair’s absence. Gall nuts swell and rot on the tree. The woad grows at hard angles like briar, as though it knows. The attic stays quiet. The straw goes undisturbed.

“This won’t end.” Lala doubles over, resting against her thighs. “They’ll go looking for demons no matter who they’ve killed.”

“Those who go looking for demons always find them,” Tante says. “Even in angels.”

Tante’s words raise Lala upright.

They brighten and deepen, like the light and air turning woad dye from yellow green to blue.

The riddle comes to her, one that would be at home amid her father’s garude lava.

How can a witch who is not a witch become one yet remain not one?

And with it, the answer.

If angels could be counted as demons, so could anyone.

So could she.

She has feared it for so long, never before considering how she might use it.

“Lala?” Tante asks as Lala moves toward the door.

“Rest,” Lala says. “If you won’t for you, then for your child.”

“Where are you going?” Tante asks.

“Church,” Lala says, letting Tante assume she will beg masses for Alifair’s soul.

Lala runs to l’église Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux.

She finds it empty save for Geruscha and Henne, on their knees before a transept altar.

Lala has no will in her to be exasperated.

At the sound of Lala’s footsteps, Geruscha and Henne look up, casting her pained, watery glances before returning to their prayers.

The kind priest emerges from the shadows. Even from across the church she can see his grief in the stoop of his back.

“They have been praying for him since dawn,” he says quietly enough that it will not echo. “And yesterday all before nightfall.”

Lala glances back at their bowed heads.

Her friends have all made their retreat. Agnesona. Melisende. The merchants’ daughters who once greeted her in the lane. They recoil from the taint of witchcraft. They see it on Lala like brambles caught in her hair. So why these two pray for Alifair as though he is their brother is as far a mystery to Lala as the path of the stars. She wants to take them by the shoulders and ask why they do not give up on her.