Lapvona(22)

‘I’m your cousin,’ Jude said instead, staggering a little. ‘Our grandfathers were brothers.’

‘I didn’t know my grandfather had a brother.’ This was true. Villiam’s father had never once mentioned any relation outside the manor. But Villiam wasn’t suspicious. He played along.

‘My name is Jude.’

‘Why don’t you set down your prop? You look tired. Lispeth, bring this man, Jude, my cousin, something to drink.’

‘I’m fine,’ Jude said.

‘Is that so?’

Nobody knew, even as Villiam instructed Jude to set Jacob down in the side room, whether Villiam had lost his mind with grief or simply did not believe that the body there, half smashed and stinking, was really Jacob’s. Villiam was a happy person. He was immune to such tragedies. It wasn’t real. It was impossible. But he accepted it somehow, as a game. He sat down on a chair and thought a moment.

‘I suppose we’ll need to negotiate an exchange,’ he said finally, crossing his legs. He looked at Jude. ‘Ah! I have an idea. I’ll take your boy, and you can take mine.’ This would surely upset Dibra, he knew.

‘Papa!’ Marek cried as Jude shook Villiam’s limp, bony hand. But that was it. The trade was a fair one. An eye for an eye.

Then Jude was gone, carting off Jacob’s stiffening corpse, not a word to the boy he had raised for thirteen years. No matter, Jude said to himself, balancing the weight on his shoulders and angling through the open doorway. Marek was not his son anymore, and in fact never had been. Yes, Agata had come to Jude already pregnant. Thank God. Finally, the truth was a comfort to the man.





Summer





Jude woke up late, having been trapped all morning in a dream in which he wandered lost in a maze. The walls were made of limestone, the air heavy with the blood smell of iron. Each time he turned, hopeful that he had found an escape back into the forest, he was met with another wall. The sun was high and strong, and sweat dripped into his eyes. Bright white lights eclipsed his vision. In a shaded corner, he stopped to collect himself. His feet were bare and cut up from the coarse brambles that grew up between the stones. A puddle of water was stained with rust, and he kneeled to drink from it. He slurped voraciously, his thirst finally relieved after ten handfuls of brown water. Now his vision cleared and his head cooled enough to assay his surroundings with more certain intelligence. There was an iron gate at the end of the passageway. Thank God. He could climb over it. He cupped his hand and dipped it into the puddle again, but now the water was not brown but red. Blood dripped from his hand. He let it go and it splashed onto the stones. A sudden pain in his groin made him double over. A baby cried. Then thunder struck, and in an instant, the sky was filled with heavy gray clouds. ‘Thank God,’ he said out loud. ‘Rain.’ But then the short gate at the end of the passage disappeared. He turned and turned, following the narrowing path. He had seen the gate, he was sure. He had seen the flow of green trees swaying through the bars in the prestorm breeze. There was his freedom, but he couldn’t find it.

His thirst returned as the dream faded. He lay face up on the floor of his cottage. He was neither tired nor refreshed—his constant hunger had lulled him into a state of perpetual dreaminess and agitation. He couldn’t remember falling asleep the night before, only the darkness of the room and the way his mind made it darker, how the ground seemed to be drawing him downward. Whether he fainted into sleep or simply fell, it didn’t matter. He was starving, but he was still alive.

The summer heat did not retreat at night as it did in summers past. And there was now an infestation of flies and bees in the pasture due to the drought and subsequent death of all flowers. The bugs were attracted to the moisture of breath exhaled by living creatures, and perhaps to their blood as well. A few nights in early June, when Jude had tried to sleep outside with the lambs, he’d woken up with dozens of bees collecting themselves into his nostrils and mouth. Fortunately, Jude was immune to bee stings. He’d been sorry to watch the bees die, pulling each tiny tooth from his withering skin. Since then he’d kept the doors shut and slept in the baking heat inside with the lambs. It made the air harder to breathe, but at least they were safe inside. They were thirsty and hungry, but nobody could get to them. By August, that was a dream in itself.

He could hear the bugs buzzing this morning. They were waiting for him, but he figured they would die out soon, like everything else. He was alone in his cottage now—no babes. Through his single window, the sun beamed in a solid ray, as though it were shooting out from the palm of God. It made Jude think of Marek. He closed his eyes. There wasn’t a single bird singing.

It had been months now since the last rain in Lapvona. Not since the night Jacob died had a single drop fallen from the sky. The late spring harvest had been carted off to the north as usual, but then bandits had intercepted it—all was lost. Then the summer crops had failed completely, leaving the villagers with little money and nothing to buy with it. They traded their stores of goods among themselves until there was nothing left. The whole village was starving, and the wells had dried up. Jude had wasted weeks digging for water in the pasture, upturned the soil enough to spoil the dead grass for grazing. He’d been desperate, not thinking clearly. Villagers had come to him early on with grains and potatoes, jams, dried summer fruits, asking if he would trade one of his ewes or a few babes for food, but he’d refused. ‘Eating meat is a sin,’ he’d insisted. He held out some hope for his own garden, pulling the carrots from the dry dirt when his patience waned, but they were just little strings. Nothing could grow. His lemon tree had lost its blossoms and leaves and dried out and died. His strawberry bushes dried and died. Jude prayed for rain, like everybody else. Maybe something will grow back, he hoped, after just one storm. Just one. For a long while, the ram, by some miracle, had seemed immune to starvation. He paced and drank his paltry ration of water, which became harder and harder for Jude to carry from the lake, since all the streams had dried up. The river had dried up completely by mid-June. The ram slept with a frown on his face, wasting.