The Reckless Oath We Made(106)

I would not plead to be locked away safe for some unnumbered years, but to spare my father and mother, I would plead. For I did those deeds by mine own hand, and by pleading, I would free myself sooner. The lady Howell spake with the prosecutor, and returned to tell me what he offered. If I vouched my guilt for slaying Paul Scanlon, I should serve no more than five years.

That week ’twas my mother that visited, and she was wroth with the lady Howell, and with me, and with God, methought, for she cursed us all.

“Lord, don’t test me! I won’t allow you to do this!” she cried out with fierce feeling. I knew it well, for oft she had turned it upon me when I was a stubborn boy.

“Mrs. Frank, honestly, this is a good offer,” said the lady Howell. “He’ll probably only serve two to three years. At the rate things are going, he won’t even go to trial for another eighteen months.”

“I don’t care. He cannot go to prison. Do you hear me, Gentry? You’re not taking this plea deal.”

“My mother, I hear thee, but prison be not Battle of the Nations,” I said. “Thou canst not forbid me go, as thou didst then.”

I readied myself for her wrath, but she wept, and still I could not give her what she longed for. After some while, she drew from her purse her kerchief and dried her eyes. When she laid her hand upon the table, I gave her mine.

“Gentry, please, listen to me,” she said, and her voice in its hoarseness reminded me of the lady dragon. “I know you take what the Witch says very seriously, and I understand why, but you can’t trust her to help you make decisions like this. She doesn’t know any more than you do. She’s not psychic.”

“Sooth, I know it. My mother, rememberest thou when first the voices spake to me?”

“Of course, I remember.”

“And I was frighted, for I knew them not. And thou said, Fear not. They aren part of thee. They aren thy voice. I say to thee, it is so. If I rely upon the Witch’s wisdom, ’tis myself I rely upon. This is my choosing.”

I told her not that the Witch was silent. She spake not to me since I broke my vow to protect Lady Zhorzha. ’Twas I alone that chose this path, the sooner to be free.

Tho til the last, my mother tried to sway me from it, I made my plea. I went before the judge, and there I swore a true confession of what crimes I committed. My lord asked, kenned I my plea and felt I remorse for what I had done? I assented I did, tho in truth I thought my crimes not very horrible.

At last, I was delivered to the place of my servitude, where I was put into a barber’s chair still shackled. The first cold dread crept into my belly when the clippers with their gnashing metal teeth were put to my head. Tho I longed to be brave and stoic, I was not. I cried out like a small boy, like the small boy I had been when the therapist would do what she called desensitizing. I never could be made insensible, for ’twas not a battle to be fought, but a torment to be endured. My gaoler called for another to restrain me, and they scorned against me, as I was put to the blades.

The place was called Malvern, a name that struck fear into my heart. Malvern cometh of the Welsh moel bryn, meaning a bald hill, and in my mind I saw Bryn Carreg, its stones tumbled down to strip the hill bare. I saw my dreams turned to rubble and dust.





CHAPTER 52





Zee



The City of Wichita used a Bobcat to clear Mom’s front yard, while she stood on the porch, screaming and crying. When they were done, there were no waterlogged china cabinets, no boxes, no books, not even any grass left. Just a patch of dirt with a few broken bits of china here and there.

Mom didn’t speak to me for a month.

I went back to waiting tables at the Cantonese place, and I picked up some shifts at a biker bar, where I got my ass grabbed ten times a night. With both of those, I could keep Mom and me afloat without dipping into the money from Uncle Alva. I moved that, a hundred a week, into a savings account for Marcus. Not enough to make anybody suspicious, but it would add up to fifty thousand dollars by the time he was eighteen.

I hired a lawyer, who took my retainer in cash and started filing paperwork to get me visitation with Marcus. Because the Gills and I were all nonparental relatives, the lawyer thought I had a good chance.

I rented a house off Craigslist. A little run-down bungalow on Seneca with scuffed wood floors, a pink-tile bathroom, and a fenced yard for Leon. I furnished it with a bed, a dresser, and a coffeemaker. When I wasn’t working or sleeping, I laid in bed and read, so that was all the furniture I needed. I wondered if this was what prison was like. It was what I deserved.

I still had Gentry’s Yvain book, but I put it away after I got to the part where Yvain overstayed his year and a day, just like I knew he would. Laudine had given him a magical ring to protect him, but she sent a servant to get the ring, and to tell Yvain not to come back. After he realized how badly he’d screwed up, Yvain wandered off into the woods like a crazy person. A whirlwind broke loose in his brain, so violent that he went insane. If I let myself think too much about what I’d done, I might go insane. He hated himself above all else, the book said, and that was how I felt. I drank too much and smoked too much, trying not to think about it.

I’d never lived alone before, and sometimes it felt like being the last person on earth. At night it was worse. I started taking Leon for walks along the river when I came home from the bar shift at three o’clock in the morning. Leon helped me remember that I had obligations, that I couldn’t wander off into the woods like a crazy woman.