Lapvona(38)

Luka didn’t attend the servants’ late-night cabbage dinners in the cellar. He didn’t participate in their gossip or rituals, as he was wholly committed to Dibra, far more seriously than she was to him. She was a married woman, after all. She had to be practical and careful. Luka understood this, sneaking silently into her chambers after everyone was fast asleep. He tried to keep to himself around the estate, as if his very existence was a secret. He preferred to be private, an observer. He had a clear view of the grounds from the stable: from the front gate he could see the drawbridge and the main entrance of the manor, and from the side gate he could see the kitchen door that led to the herb garden, and the path that led further into the fruit orchard. The guards continuously walked the perimeter of the property on foot. Luka could see them as they crossed the horizon. Dibra warned him that her brother in Kaprov, Ivan, was a tyrant and a lunatic, but as long as they didn’t tempt him with trouble, he would stay away. ‘And Villiam doesn’t care about fidelity,’ Dibra assured Luka. ‘He just doesn’t want to be publicly humiliated. So be careful.’ She had no idea that after fifteen years, Villiam had tired of the charade. She wouldn’t believe it, anyway. He was so childish and spoiled, nothing seemed to bother him but his own immediate needs and wants. Food, wine, entertainment, money. When Dibra learned that he was sending for the lullaby singer, she thought nothing of it. Villiam, of course, had sent word ahead to the bandits. With Luka dead, he could continue to play the clueless fool, and Dibra would dance around to hide her agony. She would be stuck with it, and Villiam would enjoy watching her play her own charade, masking her grief in what—insanity? A mother’s sorrow was tiresome, but a whore’s heartache? It would be a good show.



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Luka had left for Krisk at dawn to fetch the singer. As he prepared his horse and carriage, he had witnessed not only the naked priest wandering down from the reservoir, but Marek, too, shuffling exhaustedly up the hill from the village in the priest’s black robes. He thought it odd that the priest had no clothes on, but Luka had no concern for Marek. He refused to acknowledge his existence. To Luka, Marek was nothing. A scarecrow. A shadow. A spot in his eye.

He rubbed his eyes now as he rode. He hadn’t slept much. It would take half the day to get to Krisk and he was tired. He chewed a sprig of tansy to soothe his unease, the sun rising behind him. He passed Agata as he rode down the hill. She looked like a typical nun coming to visit Villiam, as they did on some holidays, to perform a mystical ritual Luka knew to be hokum. But it was strange for a nun to be walking alone. Usually Luka himself went to the abbey to fetch them. And it wasn’t a holiday. It was a Tuesday. He noted the young nun as odd, but these were odd times. Perhaps they had run out of food at the nunnery. She would get her fill at the manor, he knew.

Luka took the image of the nun walking alone up the hill as a sign and tried to put meaning to it as he rode, sipping from time to time from the carafe of water and chewing bread the girls had given him for the trip. He also carried a basket of fruit and lunch for the singer, who was rather fond of food. He had the gut of a sloth, which is what gave his lullaby voice its rotund softness. Luka imagined he’d be waiting, anxious, thinner and nervous and hungry, as Krisk had also suffered from drought, though not as devastatingly as Lapvona. Luka knew well that the people of Lapvona were starving, but he wasn’t afraid of them. If he saw someone begging on the road, he’d throw them a grape or an apricot. He didn’t like fruit himself, the sweetness was too heartbreaking for him. The guards on the road nodded to him as he passed. Did they know that Jacob had been Luka’s son? he wondered, then shook his head. Everyone knew, of course. Villiam knew, the servants knew. Lispeth knew. Perhaps Jacob himself had known. This thought depressed him. Maybe the nun was a sign indeed: devote yourself to God now. You need Him.

Halfway to Krisk, Luka stopped to take a nap in the miraculous shade of a dead chestnut tree. He crawled into the carriage and lay down. He fantasized that some maniac would burst in and slay him, steal the horse and take off, leaving him dead to drift up to heaven where Jacob was waiting. Finally, he could claim him as his son. ‘He is mine,’ he would say. It was all any man wanted, to point at his son as he passes and to say to the people, ‘He is mine. That is my boy. I made him. There he goes.’ Luka cried and grew tired. He turned to face the dark of the carriage. Eventually he did sleep. His dreams were thin and sweaty, just pictures. The brittle landscape of the plains outside of Lapvona, empty farms he’d passed, dried worms on the hard, cracked ground, an itch in the back of his throat. He awoke disappointed that he’d not died in his sleep. It was a luxury to die in one’s sleep, he thought. Of course, God would not make it so easy. This was what his mind repeated—‘God would not make it so easy’—as he watered his horse a little and mounted it again.



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When Luka didn’t return with the singer in time for the feast, the stableboys were concerned that the horse had given up in the heat. But Dibra had a worse feeling. She paced as the servants set the table. ‘I loved that horse,’ she said to Father Barnabas, who sat, already eating the chicken. He seemed not at all bothered that the singer hadn’t arrived, for there was, magically, a replacement guest—a young nun with scorched cheeks. She sat glumly on the edge of the settle. Dibra didn’t like the burnt look of her face. She could see bits of flaking skin on the nun’s lips. Would she offer her some salve? No.