Lapvona(18)

Like the idiot he was, Marek put a hand on his father’s back and asked, ‘Is he dead?’ as if his father might determine this all to have been a joke, a staged horror. Jude breathed heavily, too distracted by his heaving to slap Marek’s hand away. ‘He is, isn’t he?’ Marek continued, trying to make his voice soft and sad. ‘Poor Jacob. He was such a nice boy. He always wore such beautiful shoes. I guess they’re ruined now.’

Jude had seen death before, of course—villagers slain by bandits or ravaged by illness. He had seen the bandits hanging, their innards spilling. He’d seen his own parents dragged from the lake, bloated and rotting. But the dead boy’s body was a horror he hadn’t imagined, the body flattened on one side, the wretched look of slow agony in his clawed hand, the other arm broken at an insane angle, the hand bent backward. Jude knew he would have to climb down somehow to retrieve the body.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Marek, part of him wishing the false story about the evil wind might come true and dispose of both of them without a word.

‘Should I follow you?’ Marek asked.

Jude was too perturbed to reply. He didn’t care what Marek did. It was at this moment that he loosened himself from the creature that was his so-called son. Villiam would surely kill him. Jude would spit on his body as it swayed from the gallows, denounce him completely, disown him, or else the villagers would turn against him and he’d be hanged next. His only hope would be to ingratiate himself with Villiam. ‘I am your cousin,’ he would say. The good lord couldn’t kill his own flesh and blood. But Marek, a bastard murderer? Executing the boy was only fair.

Jude walked back down the path and explored the area of the mountain where the cliff evened into a slope. There was a trail there that he guessed was a passage worn by wild goats. Lapvonians let them wander unchecked, as their meat had been deemed inedible by the northerners. They said the wild goats were noxious. Jude had always seen the flocks clomping up and down the mountains and tried to ignore them. But now he was glad for them, as the path they had worn spun around the mountain. The path was long but indeed led to the outcropping as it looped back around. All Jude had to do was climb the face of the rock to get to the boy’s body. He said a prayer before gripping the edge of the sharp crag and pulled himself up.

Marek stayed behind, sitting with his legs dangling off the cliff. He peered down and watched his father turn and vomit again off the outcropping. The man had no stomach for it. Perhaps it was this kind of weakness, the same as he had for his babes, that had plagued his grandfather and divested the family from the lord’s fortune. Maybe there was a way out, Marek wondered, and fingered the rock beside him, the very rock that he had thrown at Jacob. ‘If my father was to die, nobody will know what I’ve done,’ he heard his mind say. He picked up the rock and kissed it, not thinking of its impiety, but automatically, as though it were a dying bird. Just then, Jude grunted below, wrestling the stiff legs of the dead boy.

Jude had never seen Jacob close up before. He saw no similarities between Jacob’s features and his own. He was a strong boy, yes, but that was likely because he had grown up well fed, and not starved with scurvy, itching with mites, and filthy his whole life, like Jude. Jacob had had hot milk before bed and had slept in a cloud of feathers, not a scratchy mattress of hay. Marek was right about his shoes—they were the finest shoes Jude had ever seen.

‘Papa!’ Marek called down.

Jude ignored him. He pulled Jacob’s feet over the side of the outcropping. One of the boy’s legs dragged—it had been broken at the knee. Jude climbed back down onto the goat path and turned his back to the rock and reached up with both hands and pulled the boy’s body down by its feet over his shoulder. Jacob was heavy and stiff. But he smelled like violets and rain. Holding Jacob’s thighs against his chest, Jude tracked through the brush toward the main path and started down the mountain. Balancing the weight of the body would take concentration if he was going to keep his steps braced correctly on the slippery dirt. He focused on his breathing. He had a long way to walk to Villiam’s manor. But he felt no need to stop for food or water. The dead boy on his shoulders was like the hand of a herder pushing him along.

Marek loped down the mountain trying to catch up with his father. He wondered if Ina could bring the boy back to life. He looked out at the morning for whatever birds might be out there. Could he communicate with them somehow? Could they be sent to Ina’s to fetch some herbs? Could they return, find Jude, and drop the herbs in Jacob’s open mouth and have him suddenly revive, his eyeball sucked back into its socket, his bones heal, his clothes clean? Was there any chance Ina knew how to turn back time? Marek knew that the answer was no. Only God could do that. If only his mother were alive, he thought, she would hold him tight to her chest and defend him. ‘You can’t take my son, he is perfect and beloved. To harm him is to damn yourself to hell, Villiam. Leave us alone.’ Jude would not defend him. Poor Marek. He slipped as he ran down the mountain, then gained enough speed that he could see Jude’s back and the dead boy over his shoulder, Jacob hanging upside down, stiff-necked. His dangling eyeball bobbed up and down with each step Jude took. Would it be unkind to wonder what would happen to Jacob’s shoes? Would they be buried along with him? If Marek could wear them to hell, his feet would be protected from the flames, at least.



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