In the Ruins - Page 149/233

“Which one will you refuse?” he asked Bel. “Let it be your choice. And if not yours, then whose? Who will volunteer to be the one who chooses which supplicant lives and which dies?”

No one answered him.

“Yet your Aunt Bel is right,” said Henri later as they readied the boats for sailing. “If we give all our stores away, we’ll starve, too. That seems not just foolish but stubborn.”

Below the house, workshops, and gardens lay a narrow trail that led to the boat shed, built two years ago. They rolled the new boat down to the tiny beach and pushed it out onto the water. Julien and Bruno set the sail and put out into the bay to test the waters while Henri and Alain remained behind to look over the old boat, always in need of repairs. Alain slid under the boat, which was propped up on logs. The work came easily to his hands. The smell of sheep’s wool greased with tar made memories swim in his mind of the days long before when Henri had taught him the skills of shore and boat.

Inspecting his work, Henri grunted. “Well, Son, you haven’t forgotten how to fasten a loose plank. Here. There’s another spot.”

They worked in companionable silence. Alain ran his hands over each fingerbreadth of the hull while Henri replaced the leather lining and hemp rope that secured the rudder to the boss. A gull screeked. Water slurped among the rocks.

From the boat shed, angled to take advantage of the view, they could see north over the sound. The eastern islands floated on gray waters. The distant promontory shielding Osna village gleamed darkly, and beyond it to the northwest lay ragged shoreline and white breakers where once the vast Dragonback Ridge had vaulted. A flash of sail skimmed the bay to the north.

“Rain,” said Henri, pausing, hands still, to stare across the waters.

The smell of salt and tar and wet wool caught in Alain’s mind, and he was swept as by the tide into memory.

Two slender ships skim up onto the strand. Scale-skinned creatures pour out of them. They cannot be called men, and their fierce, horrible dogs cannot be called dogs, but there are no other words to describe them. They burn as they go, destroying the monastery and the hapless brothers.

There is one who watches with him, her gaze sharp and merciless. “It is too late for them,” she says.

“No!” He jerked back, slamming his head against the boat.

“Alain?”

“She is the enemy,” he said raggedly. His head pounded. Stabs of pain afflicted him, waking that old headache that had caused his blindness and muteness.

“Who is the enemy?”

“The one who says, ‘This is as it must be, we can’t do anything else even if we want to.”’

“Do you speak so of your aunt?”

“No, no.” He rubbed his head. Spots and flurries of light blurred his vision. “Of the one I met on the road.”

“What one?”

“The Lady of Battles.”

“Who is the Lady of Battles? Are you well, Alain? Is your headache back? Maybe we’d better go back to the hall and let you rest.”

“What was my mother like?”

There came a silence from Henri and only the answer of the land around them: the hiss of surf, the wind in leaves, a branch snapping under the weight of Rage’s paw, a distant shout of laughter, a bird’s warble, quickly hushed. The ache in his head faded as he breathed, waiting.

After a bit, he felt Henri move, then heard the noise of the file as Henri worked to shave the curve of a wooden plug to the exact fit for its oar port, to replace one eaten away by dry rot. Alain leaned back against the boat, recalling the familiar comfort of familiar patterns. Henri had always had a habit of thinking as he worked, or perhaps it was better to say that working helped him think, that the motion of hands teased patterns of thought into symmetry.

The hounds snuffled into the woods. The sea sighed.

“Is that what drove you?” Henri asked at last. “Seeking your mother?”

“I admit I have always wondered.”

The file scraped at the wood.

“Not so much about my mother,” Alain continued. “What she might have been like, of course I always wondered that. Yet if a birth is witnessed, and the witnesses tell the truth, there’s no doubt of a mother’s identity. It was wondering who my father was that drove me.”

The file stilled. “Do you wonder that still?”

Alain shifted to look into Henri’s face. He took Henri’s seamed, callused hand in his own and held it tightly. “No. I know who my father is. He is the one who raised me and cherished me.”