“What do you mean, you can’t go?” said Mama dangerously. “We’ve been training you to fulfill this duty for almost two years.”
Tess heaved for air, fearing she’d faint, wishing she would. Jeanne propped her up, muttering soothingly. Tess’s thoughts jumbled—how did her mortifying story begin? With the World Serpents, or Kenneth, or natural philosophy? With “Will promised he’d marry me” or “Will is gone, and no one knows where,” or…Saints in Heaven, Will was gone and he’d taken everything with him and left her to carry this on her own and she couldn’t….
She was burning up, a sour-salty taste rising in her throat.
“Mama, I’m sorry. I’ve ruined myself. I’ve ruined everything,” was the last thing she managed to say before all of her breakfast and all of her dinner and all of the food she’d ever eaten—it felt like—plus all her guts and dreams and future came hurtling up out of her depths and splattered upon the wooden floor.
* * *
Jeanne, it was determined, would go to court on time; someone had to. She’d take Tess’s place as Lady Farquist’s maid of the robes, and Tess’s place in the hierarchy of marriageability and family-saving. Jeanne, presumably, should have been the elder twin to begin with, if she hadn’t politely allowed Tessie to exit the womb first. It was just like Jeanne to do that.
It was just like Tessie to elbow past her sister, thinking of no one but herself.
Papa, in an unprecedented convulsion of paternal conscience, wanted to find Will and either kill him or drag him back to marry Tess. Mama felt this would merely draw attention to their daughter’s disgrace, jeopardizing Jeanne’s prospects. Seraphina suggested Tess might go on pilgrimage, which was met with eye-rolling all around (nothing says surprise pregnancy like a pilgrimage), but then she hit upon the idea of Dombegh Manor, and that seemed to suit everyone.
Everyone but Tess, who didn’t count. She’d forfeited everything.
Belgiosos swarmed over Lavondaville like termites in a hollow tree, but Tess had never met the Dombegh side of the family. Papa’s elder brother—Jean-Philippe, Baronet Dombegh—and his ancient mother, Therese, were ensconced in the deep country and never came to town. Tess’s story could be whatever her parents decided it should be; no one would check.
In an act of (wholly characteristic) filial piety, therefore, Tess had insisted upon attending her Grandma Therese’s final days, or so the story went. Tess would come to court later—dear, tenderhearted girl!—to attend upon her sister. She was as selfless and giving and dutiful as one could hope for in a daughter, and Anne-Marie Dombegh (née Belgioso) felt blessed every day.
Tess, now famously pious and compliant, was bundled off to Dombegh Manor in the middle of the night.
* * *
Uncle Jean-Philippe, Baronet Dombegh, was a portly, mustachioed man, what Papa might have looked like if he’d spent forty years eating, drinking, and chasing women instead of fretting, lying, and cringing. The baronet met Tess outside the house and, even though she was clearly exhausted from her night-long ride, he walked her to the village first. “Your grandmother is napping,” he explained, “and she’ll be a shrieking, disoriented harpy if we wake her too soon.”
Tess barely heard him. She stumbled along, sights rolling off her like water off a goose’s back. Uncle Jean-Philippe introduced her to the midwife, Chessey, a stout, middle-aged woman with a mess of chestnut hair going gray at the temples. Her eyes were bright and clever as a crow’s, and she had a faint mustache, which made her look a little like a bear.
“You’ll be in excellent hands, niece,” said Uncle Jean-Philippe. “She’s caught all my illegitimate issue, twenty-six and counting. ‘Old Bastard-Catcher,’ I call her.”
“There’ve been twenty-three, m’lord,” said Chessey, curtsying. “You must’ve got your imagination pregnant, too.”
Tess was too numb to find the joke appalling; she didn’t even feel hurt when her uncle called her “little slut” as they were leaving. Chessey’s mouth turned down in a scowl.
Tess’s grandmother Therese had awakened by the time they returned. A harried maidservant led the bony old woman into the parlor. “It’s your granddaughter,” the maid explained loudly—for the umpteenth time, to gauge by her exasperation. “Claude’s little girl.”
“Who?” cried the dowager baroness. She was in her dressing gown, her cobwebby hair loose around her shoulders; her eyes rolled like a panicking horse’s. When she spotted Tess, she froze. “No, it can’t be,” she said, tears welling up. “Agnes, my love. You came back.”
She threw her arms around Tess as if greeting a long-lost sister—no, not as if. She was doing exactly that. Her grief pierced Tess’s veil of numbness, and then they were both weeping and clutching each other under the scornful eye of Uncle Jean-Philippe.
“I’m so pleased you like your namesake, Mother,” he said nastily.
Grandma Therese scowled, as though he were some intruding ape, and led Tess to a musty couch. She pulled Tess onto the seat beside her and whispered loudly, “Ignore that lout I married, Agnes. He’s a liar who only wanted to hide behind my good name. I should’ve followed your example and been happy, rather than let his title and money tempt me.”
“I can hear you,” cried Uncle Jean-Philippe across the parlor. “And you’ve mistaken me for Father again, you old buzzard. Do you even remember the names of your sons?”
“There was little Claude, who ran off to the city,” said Grandma Therese, tapping a white finger against her chin. “Then my eldest, born a villain…what did I name him?”
She looked at Tess sidelong, her eyes two chips of opal, and Tess suspected that her grandmother knew his name, knew she was playing a game. Jean-Philippe stepped close, arms akimbo, ready for a quarrel.
“I remember!” said Grandma Therese brightly. “The elder was called Jean-Philander, and he was a beastly sack of malfeasance, like his father.”
Uncle Jean-Philippe raised a hand as if to strike her. Tess, with a cry, wrapped her arms around the old woman to shield her from the blow. Her uncle stayed his hand, using it to tug his mustache as if that had been his intention all along. “She’s yours, little slut,” he said, rocking on his heels. “That’s what you’re here for, officially. I wish you joy of her. She’s pleasant now, believing you’re Agnes, but Heaven help you when she decides you’re her mother.”
Though she hated to credit Papa with wisdom, Tess soon realized he’d kept his children away from Dombegh Manor for a reason. She was already growing afraid of her uncle. Luckily, Jean-Philander was easily avoided: Tess had only to stay by his mother’s side.
Left to herself, Tess might’ve filled her days with weeping or plotting ways to end it all—the manor had nice high gables overhanging flagstone yards, or there was always that old standby, the well. Her grandmother needed her, though, and Tess found the old woman’s company surprisingly pleasant. They were like merry children together, even if one was pregnant and the other a venerable seventy-eight years old.
Grandma liked having her hair brushed; she’d close her eyes and practically purr. They had tea parties and tried on all the jewelry and antique gowns. Grandma Therese liked to embroider, but everything came out muddled, patches of uneven satin fill, a thicket of wild herringbone, a scattering of seed stitch. Eventually she’d realize it looked terrible and weep with frustration. Tess would trade hoops and turn her blobs into fanciful animals and landscapes, delighting her grandmother, who seemed not to recall her part in creating them.
Tess envied her forgetfulness, a bit. It would have been such a relief to forget Will, Mama, all her shame and loathing, but Tess was doomed to remember everything she didn’t actively push down. St. Siucre had answered Tess’s prayer, her blessing a curse.
Grandma Therese’s other favorite pastime was napping, which Tess felt herself well suited to. They’d doze off in the parlor in patches of spring sunshine
, a lovely, comradely way to pass an afternoon. Tess did not at first realize that her grandmother was tired because she was up half the night, wandering the gardens in her nightdress, weeping and lamenting. The spooky sound woke Tess three or four times before she dared open her shutters and peek out.
What she saw frightened her more than any ghost. Her grandmother was going to get lost or hurt or eaten by wolves. (Tess’s imagination still worked, even while she was pregnant.)
Grandma Therese’s door had a bolt, but the maid refused to employ it. “It’s an insult and an indignity to lock the dowager baroness in her room,” the woman insisted, glancing over her shoulder. “Besides, I’ve tried it. She screams and bangs on the door all night. The baronet will have none of it. She can’t hurt herself in the garden.” The maid looked back again and lowered her voice further. “Her son is the greater danger—to all of us—if she annoys him too much.”
“You couldn’t stay in her room at night?” Tess pleaded.
The maidservant looked offended. “If she needs me, she’ll ring. Plus she snores. I need rest, too, you know.”
Tess began bunking down on the floor outside her grandmother’s room, waking to chaperone the old woman’s wanderings. Grandma Therese always took the same route, through the topiaries to the rose garden, where she circled for hours. Sometimes she walked until dawn, despite Tess’s pleas to go back indoors.
The midwife, Chessey, checked up on Tess weekly, prodding and measuring her beneath the peevish gaze of the cherubs on the ceiling. At their sixth meeting, she declared everything right as rain, “except that you’re clearly not getting enough sleep.” She glared from under her single stern eyebrow.
“I’ll nap more,” said Tess. Her eyes refused to focus; she gave up trying to keep them open. “Only I’m afraid for my grandmother.” She told Chessey the whole sorry story (with her eyes closed)—how threatening Uncle Jean-Philippe was, how he let his own mother wander the night unsupervised. “Surely St. Loola’s has a hospice nearby?” Tess asked. The midwife wore no habit, but she would have been trained by the nuns, without a doubt.
“Tried that,” said Chessey, mouth flattening. “Your uncle threw our Mother Superior out on her ear. St. Loola’s isn’t prestigious enough, he claimed. He has a point—a rotten, selfish point—but plenty of holy houses would take her. St. Clare’s, St. Katy’s. He could scrape up enough dowry that monks might take her, even, and she’d be out of his sight forever, but he won’t spend the money. I think he wants her here, suffering where he can see her.”
Soon after, Tess was on her way to her grandmother’s room, carrying the quilt she slept in and two bolsters. Dombegh Manor was a chimerical structure, like a house made of other houses; the corridors didn’t match up, and some were rarely used. The shortest path between Tess’s room, the chamber of peevish cherubs, and her grandmother’s took her through a dark, unused part of the house, where the doors were nailed shut (ever curious, she’d tried a few).
Her uncle stepped out into the corridor ahead of her, and she stopped short, afraid.
Uncle Jean-Philippe looked harried; he’d clearly come in from outside. His boots were muddy, his cloak sodden. Tess pressed herself to the wall, hoping he’d pass by without speaking, but he saw her. His breath was so heavy with alcohol that she could have ignited it. He grabbed her roughly and cried, “I know you’re devoted to the old crow, little slut!” He spit while he ranted; his nails dug into her. “She looks so sweet and innocent to you, and I look like the devil, but who made me? Who made your namby-pamby father? When you grow up with a bitter, backbiting bitch of a mother, what hope is there for turning out well?”
He began to weep. “Every good thing I ever tried to do, she ground under her heel. Any tenderness in my soul was a plump partridge for her to sink her teeth into. She’s a monster, and it isn’t fair that her mind is going. She can forget her cruelty, rename herself a senile Saint, and I can’t. I can’t.”
He released Tess and staggered into the darkness, periodically trying to force open an unopenable door.
Tess was quaking like a mouse. Outside, thunder rumbled.
Tess hurried to her grandmother’s door, arranged herself on the straw pallet the maid had put out for her, and tried to sleep. Lightning illuminated the windows, and branches tried to claw their way in, but it wasn’t the storm keeping her awake. Tess’s thoughts were a jumble of terrible mothers and unforgiveable cruelties. Why shouldn’t Grandma Therese remake herself? She’d been kind to Tess; that wasn’t nothing. Was there redemption for anyone in the end, or would there always be some Jean-Philippe of your own creation, injured and obsessed, out for blood? Tess’s mind mixed mother with child, Saint with sinner, cruelty with kindness. Between her turmoil and the storm’s fury, she hardly noticed how her back ached and stomach cramped.
She awoke with a start; the windows glowed with predawn twilight. Had Grandma not come out? Tess struggled to stand, pausing to catch her breath as her abdomen seized. The pain should have been frightening, but she had practice ignoring her body.
She tapped timidly on the bedroom door. No reply. She opened it a crack and listened for snoring. All was silent. It was too dark to see, so Tess crept through to open the heavy drapes. Grandma Therese had accumulated seventy years’ worth of souvenirs—vases, knickknacks, a bearskin rug, poufs, a globe, a suit of armor—and Tess bumped most of them crossing the room. Even a half-deaf old woman should have been awakened by the noise.
Tess whipped back the curtains, and wan half-light fell across an empty bed.
Grandma Therese must’ve sneaked out during the storm, without Tess hearing. “No, no, no,” Tess repeated down the corridor, down the stairs, through the house, into the grounds, waddling as fast as she could, pausing whenever shooting pelvic pain stole her breath away. It felt like her monthlies times a thousand. She’d have to remember to mention it to Chessey next week.
The gravel paths were riddled with puddles; Tess’s slippers were soon soaked, but she could only imagine how wet and cold her grandmother would be, out all night without shelter (unless she was in the gazebo; no, she was not). “Therese!” Tess shouted—the old woman rarely responded to “Grandma.” At the rose garden, her heart sank; the plants were only waist-high, so she should have seen anyone on the paths.
Anyone upright. Tess plodded the perimeter doing grim due diligence, her heart quailing.
Someone had dug a pit in the middle of the path at the far end of the garden. Not deep, but too wide to walk around. An old woman might not notice it in the dark. An old woman might fall and break her hip, or her neck. Whoever had dug it might or might not have anticipated that it would fill with water in the storm—only an inch, but an inch was enough.
Tess teetered at the edge of the pit, staring at her grandmother’s body, the pale hair like wet weeds, the soaked clinging chemise spattered with grit. Tess would have wept, but she was gripped by a terrible contraction at just that moment, so she screamed.
Sharing food with Reg and Rowan didn’t gain their goodwill. Tess’s supplies were gone by breakfast, and the two ruffians, their own packs still full, had not a morsel to spare for her. If they’d hoped to drive her off, though, they were sorely disappointed. Tess stayed on them like a tick, determined to free Griss.
Alas, she needed to eat. By the second morning, her stomach rumbled unbearably; she’d have to abandon them and go steal something for herself. She hit up a farmhouse for bread and cheese, but the farm wife spotted her and chased her with a rolling pin. Tess was forced a mile out of her way, and when she found the road again, the three men were nowhere to be seen.
They couldn’t have gotten far; Griss, in particular, shuffled slowly. Half a mile along, Tess and Pathka reached a village. Normally they would have skirted it, on the principle that Pathka was going to alarm people, but the village was nearly empty. It was a fine, warm day, and everyone was out on the surrounding
hills doing farmwork.
In the middle of the village, Pathka abruptly veered toward a large, sturdy building, a public house, and Tess understood: the men had stopped for lunch. She found them in the taproom, Reg and Rowan drinking ale, Griss dozing with his chin on his chest.
Tess sat at their table, startling Griss awake. He smiled blearily. Reg and Rowan picked up their mugs and pointedly changed tables, which was ridiculous; the room was empty except for the four of them. Tess sighed, envying their ale a little bit, and then felt a tug on her sleeve.
“Johnny,” Griss whispered, “you can’t keep poaching. You’re going to get…” He mimed wringing a chicken’s neck.
“If you know some better way to feed myself, I’d like to hear it,” said Tess sulkily.
Griss kept worrying her sleeve until she looked up. He pointed out the window. Beyond the thatched houses sloped a field of tall grass. Upon the hillside, a line of village men mowed with scythes; behind them, the women raked and tossed cut grass into piles running the length of the meadow. Tess could just make out snatches of song.
“You don’t need to…to…There’s honest work to be done, Johnny,” whispered Griss. “The world is full of work, waiting for you. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Have you?” said Tess absently, entranced by the rhythm and efficiency of their movements. It was like a dance—cut, turn, rake, repeat.
And that was how old Griss, whom Tess had set out to save, may have saved her in turn. As inept as she was at stealing, she’d never given farm chores a second thought. Hitherto unconsidered possibilities now opened up before her.
She discovered that she loved turning hay, loved the feel and weight of the seven-tined pitchfork, loved the way fresh grass smelled green, demi-dry smelled sweet, and crackling-dry smelled good enough to eat. She loved the rip and swish of the scythes, the songs (she never stayed long enough to learn the words, alas), the way the women giggled at her preference for the feminine task of turning the piles (Tess wasn’t strong enough yet to keep up with the cutters). She loved the way her shoulders ached, and the way her skin felt when she finally scrubbed it free of dust in some secluded stream at the end of the day.