Selfish is the Heart (11 page)

“How do the Mothers-in-Service decide when a novitiate is ready to become a Sister? And how long past that time does she take a patron?” Annalise asked the question into darkness from her narrow bed, with Tansy across the room and the third bed yet empty between them.

“The Mothers know best.” Tansy didn’t sound sleepy, though the tenchime had just sounded and the fivechime would wake them even before the sun. “They always do.”

“But how do they know?”

Tansy shuffled in her blankets before answering. “I don’t know how, Annalise. They just do. It’s their purpose to know, as it will be ours to serve when they decide we are ready.”

“Purpose and place.” Annalise mouthed the words she’d heard so often since her arrival. “And pleasure. But what of the pleasure, Tansy? I’ve yet heard little of that part of it.”

“Do you not gain pleasure from the learning? Each new skill I master brings me great pleasure!”

That wasn’t what Annalise had meant. She shifted, too, down deep into her covers. “I speak of a different sort of pleasure. The sort that nobody has yet spoken of to me, yet I know must exist within service to a patron.”

“Oh.” Tansy cleared her throat, then giggled. “You mean the pleasure between a man and a woman?”

“Between two people, yes.” Annalise thought of Jacquin and his penchant for the company of his own gender. “Handmaidens are always female, but they’re not always assigned to men.”

Tansy drew in a sharp breath. “We are assigned to patrons to whom we would be best suited.”

Amused, Annalise turned her head on the pillow to look at the dim shape across the room. “And for you that would always be a male?”

“Well, yes,” Tansy replied hesitantly. “I do believe so. I’m fair certain the Mothers wouldn’t give me to a woman who expected . . . that.”

“Lovemaking?” Annalise asked, just to make her roommate blush, even if she couldn’t see the pinking cheeks.

“Oh, Annalise!”

“What? Surely you know there are those who do so prefer the company of their own sex. And though nobody’s said as much to me since my arrival, I also know it’s a Handmaiden’s duty to provide solace to her patron in any way necessary, and I know that often includes . . . intimacies. Everyone knows that.”

“And many believe that’s all a Handmaiden does,” Tansy retorted.

Annalise herself had heard the tales and was therefore much astonished at how long she’d been in the Order without anyone instructing her on the etiquette of orgies. She laughed at the sound of Tansy’s outrage. “And yet I daresay to those who matter, those who have actually sought the company of a Handmaiden, such stories are of no import. Anyone who is granted the service of a Handmaiden has been well-instructed in her function, yes?”

It had been one of the first things they’d discussed, the lengthy process by which patrons were assigned their Handmaidens. Mother Complacence had spent the better part of two chimes with the group of young women gathered in her classroom, Annalise the newest among them, but the others there no more than a week ahead of her. Mother Complacence had shown them the files every patron was required to complete, including full medical, financial, and personal histories. Thick binders of information that would take hours, if not days, to complete.

And yet nothing comparable was kept for the Sisters-in-Service, nothing concrete that could be used to match them to a patron.

“How do they do it?” Annalise asked again, more for her own musings than from hope of getting an answer from Tansy. “How do they know how best to match them?”

“Perhaps when I am a Mother-in-Service, I might tell you.” Tansy sounded a little breathless, though still not sleepy.

Annalise yawned. “Seek you that honor?”

“The Mothers are well-loved and well-respected. Why wouldn’t anyone wish to become one?”

“Mothers-in-Service no longer serve patrons, that’s all. I’d imagine you’d wish to perform the function for which you so long trained. Especially when it does seem to take such a long time. Longer than I’d expected.” Not that she minded. The longer it took for her to be considered patron-ready, the better, in Annalise’s opinion, as she had never intended to actually enter service.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Why are you so wise, Annalise, when I am not half so bright and yet have been here for so much longer?” Tansy sounded sad.

“You said yourself, they know best. I’m sure your time is coming, Tansy. You’ve accomplished much, have you not?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. But I’ve not yet been taken for my final testing before being granted the title of Sister. I fear . . . I sometimes think . . .”

Annalise waited, but Tansy had shut up tight, and sometimes it was better not to pry. If Annalise pressed her, Tansy might confide her deepest griefs, and then Annalise would be expected to do the same. Or at the least, comfort the other girl, and Annalise felt in no position to offer such a service.

Yet she wasn’t utterly without heart, so she said quietly, “All things in their time, Tansy.”

Tansy said naught in reply, and after some time Annalise fell to sleep.

 

 

K
ellen. What is this?” Cassian spoke more severely than he’d intended, but the boy had near run him over as he rounded the corner.

The boy held something behind his back, face a guilty mask, mouth smeared with what looked, suspiciously, like tumbleberry jam. “I don’t have tarts in my trousers!”

Cassian crossed his arms and pressed his lips together so as not to laugh. “Indeed?”

Kellen shook his head but couldn’t look Cassian in the eye. Cassian, however, had been a boy, and even though it felt like a hundred score years ago, he could still recall how grand an idea stealing a tart might be until the thief were caught.

“Show me your hands.”

They were dirtier than the lad’s face. Cassian sighed, shaking his head. Kellen hung his, scuffing a foot along the bare wooden floor of the hall.

“Kellen, you know I’ll have to ask you to turn out your pockets.”

Kellen looked up, eyes wide. Raised in a house of women, he’d had no shortage of coddling, this Cassian knew. He’d been disciplined as well, never harshly and always with love . . . but never by Cassian.

“Sir?”

“Turn them out.”

Kellen did, reluctantly. The left held naught but a few stones and bits of paper folded into boats. The other, several tumbleberry tarts wrapped in a napkin. Falling apart, oozing jam, they smelled delicious and probably tasted so, but they’d made quite a mess.

“Not only did you take what wasn’t yours without permission, Kellen, but you made a mess of your trousers, and they’ll have to be washed. I know you don’t launder them. You’ve created work for someone else with your foolishness. But worse than that,” Cassian said sternly, “you lied to me. And that, lad, is what I find most deserving of punishment.”

Kellen swallowed hard. His eyes glinted with tears, but he didn’t cry. He looked into Cassian’s face bravely, then nodded. “Your mercy, Master Toquin. I . . . I shall prepare for my beating.”

“What?” Cassian stepped back, appalled. “Mother Above, Kellen. I don’t intend to beat you!”

“You don’t?”

“Lad, have I ever raised a hand to you? Has anyone in this house ever?”

“Mother Harmony once washed my mouth out with soap,” Kellen confided.

“For what reason?”

Kellen sighed and looked shamefaced. “For cursing.”

Cassian’s own mother had done the same to him when he was about Kellen’s age, and more than once to Calvis. He sighed. “Walk with me.”

They fell into step. Cassian looked down at the lad, who’d clasped his hands behind him in an identical fashion, whether in direct mimicry or by natural inclination, Cassian didn’t know. He took the boy into the kitchen, where Cook was dozing by the fire. She startled to consciousness when Cassian cleared his throat.

“Ah, Master Toquin. And you,” she said with a jabbing finger at Kellen. “Didna I chase you and yon companion out of here already once tonight?”

“Kellen. Return the tarts.”

“But sir!” Kellen looked distraught, small face turned up, eyes wide.

Cook snorted. “What? Stole some tarts, did he? Well, think you I’d want them back after them grubby hands has been all over them?”

She narrowed her eyes and heaved herself up from the chair to put fat fists on her hips. “It was the other one put you up to it, eh? Don’t tell me it wasn’t, I heard him whispering to you, when I’d have given you summat to fill your bellies, eh? But he wanted the tarts, not my day-old biscuits.”

Cassian looked at the boy. “Is this true? Was it Leonder who put you up to it?”

Leonder, a year or so older than Kellen and another of the Order’s Blessings. Kellen shook his head. Cook tutted.

“Kellen, remember what I said. It wasn’t the theft but the lying I’ve issue with.”

Kellen looked up at him again. Cassian could see the struggle in the lad’s eyes. He waited for the boy to speak.

“It was me,” Kellen said with the barest wobble in his voice that led Cassian to believe he wasn’t being utterly truthful. “I am the one who stole the tarts.”

“This fact isn’t in question. But tell me, lad, if it was Leonder . . .”

“It was me.”

Cook snorted and waved her apron at them. “Never no mind, Master Toquin. It’s not the first time someone’s snitched a tart or two from the rack, and it won’t be the last. The lad’ll suffer enough the next time he’s denied his dessert, which I think should be the punishment.”

“For the stealing of the tarts, yes. I’d say a full three days of no dessert should suffice.” Cassian did his best to look stern. “But for the lying, I’m afraid there will have to be somewhat else.”

Cook snorted again. “That I’ll leave to you, and you’ll get yourselves gone from my kitchen before you do it!”

Cassian took the boy out the back door and into the yard, though not beyond the light spilling from the windows. Darkness cloaked the rest of the yard, a light from the stables in the distance. Here they were mostly in shadow.

“Sit,” he said.

Kellen sat on the wooden bench outside the kitchen door. Cassian sat beside him. He said nothing, remembering full well how the anticipation of the punishment was oft more difficult to bear than the punishment itself.

At last, he looked at the boy. “When I was your age, my brother discovered a desire for a certain kind of apple grown in a neighbor’s orchard. We had apples of our own, and peaches, and ferlas, but Calvis decided that the golden apples of our neighbor were sweeter. The neighbor, unfortunately, was no friend to our family and had refused to allow us permission even to gather the fallen apples, the ones he couldn’t sell.”

“So what did your brother do?”

“He decided the sweetness was worth the risk, even though it was wrong, and he snuck into the orchard to gather as many as he could. The problem was, Calvis wasn’t content simply to take the fruit from the ground. Since he’d been denied what he really wanted, he thought to pluck fresher apples from the trees themselves. Only he couldn’t do this alone. He needed someone’s shoulders to stand on so that he might reach.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

Kellen looked at his hands, still sticky and dirty from the tarts. “Did you want to go with your brother, or did he talk you into it?”

“My brother was ever able to talk me into trouble, but I was the one who decided whether or not to follow him. In the end, I was the master of my conscience.”

“What happened?”

“We were caught. Calvis fled. I was not so swift. Our neighbor, Lord Veldant, was well-deserved in his reputation for fury, and our father was not inclined to defend sons who’d done so blatant a crime. I’d been caught with the apples in my hands, you see. Foolish. Lord Veldant took it upon himself to beat me with his own belt.”

Cassian could still remember the sting of leather on his bare flesh, the crack of the belt. The pain. The shame. And below it all, the anger that he’d been left to take the punishment for both when it had been his brother’s idea.

He looked at the lad next to him. Kellen’s face, shadowed but still lit enough by the kitchen lamps to see, had gone still. His mouth worked. Cassian put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the small muscles twitch and strain.

“I took the punishment for my brother because I had no other choice.”

“Leonder said he would fight me if I told it was his idea. And . . . sir . . .” Kellen coughed with a shrug. “I wanted the tarts, too. It was Leonder’s idea, but I did it. I took them. I should take the punishment.”

Cassian could take no pride in this lad, nor shame either. But as he squeezed the boy’s shoulder again and stood, he felt a little of both. “You’ll suffer the next few days after meals. But no more than that.”

Kellen stood, too. “You’re not going to beat me?”

“I told you I wouldn’t. But never lie to me again.”

Kellen nodded, then held out his hand. “I won’t.”

Surprised, Cassian took it, and they shook. A moment later the lad hugged him hard around the waist, surprising him further. Cassian’s hand went naturally to the boy’s soft hair. Kellen’s cheek pressed Cassian’s belly, his arms tight ’round him, and then he let go and stepped back.

“Thank you, sir!”

“Go on,” Cassian said quietly. He could still feel the softness of Kellen’s hair. He watched the boy dart through the doorway, but it was some long moments before he followed.

A
nnalise had thought to find her time in the Motherhouse, if not torture, at least somewhat unpleasant. Yet she discovered much of what she was required to learn she’d already been taught. The art of brewing tea, of tatting lace, of how to properly fold a napkin—these paled next to the skill of unobtrusiveness, of comfort. Of grace. Annalise had no doubts she could learn to arrange flowers or play the pianoforte, if required. She could be taught to
do
anything.