Lapvona(46)

‘You see?’ Villiam cried. He kissed the blind horse’s snout again and trudged back up to the manor, just in time to stay out of the rain.





Fall





The rain fell for too long. The ground had been so hardened by drought that the water just collected and stood and rose. The long fields turned to shallow lake and muck, and the men of the village waded around, trying to remember the boundaries of their plots, arguing viciously through the noise of the rain, although they were exhausted and still starving. But eventually the dirt softened and the rain turned to mist, and then a fog hovered, as though God were covering His eyes while the villagers—profoundly changed by the horrors of drought and famine—shrugged off their sins, dismantled their camps, and moved back from the lake to their homes with their belongings. A few days of strong sun dried up the mud, and the damage of the floods in their little cottages was quickly repaired with materials from cottages that had been abandoned and never reclaimed. Half the population of Lapvona had disappeared.

Now the world was so fecund and humid it was hard to get a fire started. Thank God the seeds had survived, stashed per tradition on a high shelf above each mantel. The villagers began farming again, accepting the boundaries of memory, too desperate to quarrel over a foot here or there. They were stunned when the green stalks popped up in the black earth as soon as they did. None of them would have believed such a thing could happen, that life could begin again so quickly. This renewal of hope gave everyone energy, so they were swift to renew themselves too, to emerge from the depths of their fear and hunger, to cut their hair and put on their autumn cloaks and dresses and get back to normal. They laughed at the chill in the air, how spontaneously the sun had retracted, as though it had made a mistake. ‘It’s like it all never happened,’ they said, and nobody spoke of the people they’d eaten, though the absence of certain families was acute at Sunday Mass—half the pews sat empty. The neighbors of the departed took their land over, as well as their tools and seeds.

With the cool air the birds came back. Doves, crakes, coots, swifts, smews, quail, grouse, partridge. Geese and swans returned to the lake, whose level had risen back to normal with the rains. Cranes came. And then the mice and the rats, ground squirrels, moles, shrews and pine martens. Finally the larger animals returned—bears and wolves, who paraded around at night with human bones in their mouths. Nobody remarked on this. The rains had washed the blood off their hands and refilled the streams. The rains had cleaned the village of its summer stench of death, too. Then moose and bison. Villagers had no qualms hunting and roasting the flesh of these animals now. Human meat had disabused them totally of their vegetarianism. Everyone looked happy because they were no longer starving.

To celebrate God’s mercy, Villiam had sent down a shipment of grains and summer fruits to every household. That was in August, on the Day of Assumption. Erno had no say in the matter, as he had mysteriously vanished during the rains, and with him all bookkeeping of Villiam’s hoarded stores. ‘Lucky for Lapvona that her lord is so generous,’ Klarek said. It was his job now to take a census of which villagers had survived, and what food they’d each been given. Most villagers meted out their rations to last as long as possible, until the plants had grown enough to be eaten, but they didn’t stay hungry. The church provided fertilized chicken eggs and cheese from the manor once a week. A drove of oxen arrived to replace the ones that had been slaughtered and eaten. Goats, donkeys, and lambs came in from the south. The lord was so generous, he simply added the cost of these gifts to the taxes each family owed. In a year, he would turn a profit, if everything went as planned.

Jude didn’t want any babes. He was done with babes. He had not returned to his home in the pasture since the night he’d raped Agata in his dream, but had retreated up to the cave that Ina had lived in when she was young, coming out only now and then to beg food from the farmers. He felt that being a beggar suited him after all he’d lost, that it was a righteous occupation befitting his destiny. He had no energy left for contemplation or prayer. He was ruined now. He knew it. Death would have been a boon, had he only surrendered to it when he’d had the chance.

Once the village had restablized, the priest returned to his paltry duties at the church, leading Sunday Mass and visiting the homes of those villagers who showed any lingering derangement from the trauma of drought and starvation. He hadn’t been alive during the Great Pestilence, but had heard from his peers in school that survivors needed divine justification for such tragedy. He made a lame attempt to comfort the people, to soothe their guilt and the scars of their hardship. All he could tell them was that God worked in mysterious ways. They feigned complacency and thanked the priest with grains or fruit, which he accepted simply to keep up the appearance of poverty. Not one of the villagers would confess to a breach of their faith. ‘God is mysterious, yes, but He is not cruel,’ they all said. Their faith had been shattered, but they wouldn’t admit it. Barnabas felt that their hidden shame gave him a new special power, like the keeper of a grave secret. Everyone smiled and rejoined around him in an effort to mask their sins. The priest liked the farce. It was just his style. He had no real knowledge of the Bible—he spoke no Latin, read only a little, understood nothing—but he walked around with the Good Book anyway to give the impression that he knew it all, and at each household he opened it to random pages and spoke in a gibberish that made the villagers cross their hearts and bow their heads. He told everyone that the nobility would protect them. ‘Villiam knows of your suffering and applauds your hard work. Soon you will have new neighbors. How lucky we are that our little village will grow and prosper.’