Captivity (5 page)

W
e were at last herded into
a doorway, down some narrow steps, and pushed into a dark stuffy
room. A bar clanged into place on the outside of the door, a key
turned in a lock. There were no windows. A small grate near the low
ceiling looked out onto what was floor level in the great hall. We
were in a storeroom, the kind of place that, in Aranyi, is used for
dry goods, wood or weapons, things that need no air or light.

Wearily, hopelessly, I made the inner flame,
snapping the fingers of my left hand and willing into life the
little jet of fire that
crypta
can create from a spark of
the body’s own static electricity. I was proud of this ability to
make the light without using a prism, a skill I had learned before
my marriage, during six months of training in the uses and control
of my gift. I had practiced it ever since, when I realized I would
be spending the rest of my life in a world that depends on candles
and torches, the occasional lamp filled with rendered animal fat,
for all artificial illumination.

The blue flame burned low and fitful with my
waning strength, barely showing through the cupped fingers of my
right hand that I used as a screen. Before I let the flame die I
saw a candle stub in a niche and lit it. Our shadows grew, tall and
tapering, the slightest breeze from our movements making the
unprotected flame flicker wildly, but I was grateful for the
comfort.

There was a pile of sodden straw in one
corner. I unpinned my cloak, spread it out, and Val and I sank down
in exhaustion. We were up again at once as a horde of bugs crawled
out, delighted at the feast that had landed from above.
Ravenous—they must not have eaten for weeks—in seconds they had
burrowed under our clothes and into our flesh. Val cried and shook
himself, stamping his feet in frustration, as I helped him as best
I could, squashing the little bodies between clothes and skin,
brushing off the visible ones and combing his hair with my
fingers.

“I want to go home!” he screamed. “I hate it
here!” He looked into my eyes as he unleashed the ultimate weapon,
making sure it hit the target. “I want Isobel. Isobel is nice.
Isobel won’t give me bugs.” He had never expressed a preference for
his nursemaid before, secure in the knowledge that I might humor
him, where Isobel would more likely enforce the rules.

To Val’s surprise I hugged him close, weeping
real tears of my own. “I want Isobel too,” I said. “I hate it here
too.”

Val put a grubby finger in his mouth, shocked
into silence. He had never seen his mother helpless. Lightheaded
from hunger, shaking from the long ride and the lingering effects
of Reynaldo’s torture, I could feel every control in me slipping
away. It had become so natural to rely on Dominic, his strength and
decisiveness. Now I had to be the strong one, for my children, but
I was running on fumes.

I took in deep breaths and let them out with
a whoosh, telling myself there was a reserve of energy in me
somewhere still untapped. After a few minutes, against all
expectations, I discovered there was. I wiped sweat and tears from
my face with my sleeve, stood with Val in the center of the pallet,
then held up the stub of candle at eye level. Without a prism I had
no way to separate the light, but its spectrum was limited, nothing
like sunlight or even moonlight, mostly yellow, with a useful bit
of blue near the wick. It would suffice. By holding the candle out
to the side and staring straight ahead, I angled the light in
obliquely. After a few blinks and false starts, I was able to
create a mild jolt of electricity that killed every living thing in
the straw, and also anything that had remained on me and Val.

“It’s all right now,” I said. “They’re all
dead.” I set the candle back in its niche, shook out my cloak and
spread it again on the straw, sat down with Val in my lap, and
watched Jana bending over something in the corner.

Jana straightened up. “I have to go to the
bathroom,” she said, clutching herself in desperation. “But I don’t
want you watching me!” The thing in the corner was a chamber pot.
Jana had never been troubled by girlish modesty before, and I
figured the squalid surroundings and the fatigue had spooked her,
like me and Val.

After my experience with the bedbugs I could
not trust anything here. “I won’t watch you,” I said. “But let me
see that pot.” Jana brought it over and I peered inside from the
relative safety of my arm’s length. Just as I suspected, a huge
spider was lurking inside the curve of the lip at the top.

This time, as I reached for the candle again,
I hesitated, remembering Reynaldo’s threat. I had promised not to
use my gift against him or his men; surely my oath had not
encompassed arthropods. And so far, I had felt no sense in my mind
that my impromptu extermination had alerted Reynaldo to my
disobedience, if that’s what it was. From the shrieks of revelry in
the hall above us, it sounded as if the bandits and their camp
followers were more interested in celebrating the imminent upturn
in their fortunes than in monitoring their hostages. But there was
no need to risk everything for a spider, even a big one. I knocked
it out onto the ground and Jana stomped it.

At Jana’s continued insistence, I turned my
back and made Val do the same. There was a great rustling of
skirts, and Jana seemed to take forever with the riding knickers,
but at last she was done. By then I, too, was clutching myself, and
only just made it to the pot in time.

When I had finished Val sidled over with a
confession. “I went in my pants.” His lower lip trembled with
shame. “I couldn’t help it.” Poor lamb, he had worn his soiled
diaper all this time and not complained. Now he had wet himself
again while Jana and I used the pot.

“Of course you couldn’t help it,” I said,
shaking with maternal rage as I recalled Reynaldo’s brutal
treatment. “I almost wet myself too. You’ve been a good, brave
boy.”

Val had been making real progress recently,
learning to tell me or Isobel ahead of time, proud that he usually
stayed clean and dry all day like an adult. We had put a diaper on
him this morning—better to be safe on the journey home—but I had
not expected Val to need it. What had happened today was a sad
setback for him.

I undressed him, removing his little breeches
and the soaked and soiled diaper. I wiped the worst of the dirt off
his backside and between his legs with the outside of the diaper
and laid it on the floor beside the chamber pot. I was at a loss
for what to do next. Val still wore a diaper at night. There had
been one clean diaper in the baggage pack, for our first night at
home. By now all our baggage was no doubt distributed amongst
various loyal supporters of Reynaldo’s. Val would have to sleep
naked, wetting into the straw if I couldn’t catch him in time for
the pot. By morning his breeches would be dry. “You’re such a big
boy now,” I said. “You can sleep without diapers tonight.”

Jana had watched all my activity with a
cynical air. “Val’s a big baby,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “And
he stinks. He smells like a bandit.”

Val lifted his weary head, always ready to do
battle with his bullying older sister. “I don’t stink,” he said.
“
You
stink.
You’re
a bandit. I hate you.” He began to
cry again, blubbering little sobs from being tired and hungry.

I turned on Jana in fury. “Thank you very
much for your help,” I said with crude sarcasm. “I was hoping to
make Val cry some more, but I don’t have your talent.” Jana’s face
fell and her mouth opened, but I was too angry to stop myself.
“He’s not having the wonderful adventure you are, and he isn’t
Captain Reynaldo’s little darling like you.”

Jana’s shoulders slumped and she hung her
head. I heard a strange sniffling, hiccupping noise. How long had
it been since this tough little girl had allowed herself to cry in
my hearing? She had held up like a trouper, only to be defeated by
her own mother.

“I am so sorry,” I said, appalled at my
cruelty. I grabbed Jana’s hands as she fought me, then wrapped my
arms around her and kissed her teary face. “I have the best girl in
the whole world. We’re all tired and hungry, and it makes us say
stupid things, even me. Can you forgive your wicked mother?” My
voice trailed off. I was not good in a situation like this, unsure
how much of the truth I dared express to young children or whether
it would be better to mouth sunny platitudes of hope to keep our
spirits up. My children knew me well enough to be suspicious of any
unnatural optimism on my part, but there was no point in burdening
them with too much reality.

Jana was not appeased. “You said I was only a
girl. You told him Papa wouldn’t pay for me.” She broke away from
me, backing against the wall and screaming her next words. “But
Papa loves me best. Papa will come for me and take me home, and
leave you here with that– that stinking baby you love so much!” She
broke into loud, uncontrolled sobs.

My head whirled with fatigue as I was thrust
back into the intense emotions following Val’s birth. Jana had
loathed the little being from the moment of his arrival, the scrap
of humanity that had taken her place at my breast and in my bed.
She had denied or forgotten that, at three-and-a-half, she had not
nursed or slept a full night with me for close to two years, and
reacted as if Val had thrown her out bodily from her rightful
position in the family.

At first she had reverted to infancy,
speaking baby talk, pretending to dislike solid food or to be
unable to walk. When that had failed, provoking Dominic’s admiring
laughter but no action, and only my weary disregard, she had fallen
back on violence. I had caught her once, Isobel many times, bending
Val’s limbs at unnatural angles or gouging at an eye with
determined fingers. It had been established as a firm rule that
Jana was never to be left alone with the baby under any
circumstances.

Niall Galloway, new to our household, and
with the jaded experience of being the eldest of six children, had
given us the benefit of his expert opinion. “Don’t worry,” he said,
“when the next one comes she’ll love it as if it were her own.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Amalie,” he said,
“I give you fair warning. If there is a ‘next one,’ I will deny
fathering it.” He had not really expected Val, had never demanded
that his wife give him a son, although he had seemed pleased enough
with the gift after the fact. But two children were sufficient in
what had been, not so long ago, a purely masculine household.

“Dominic,” I said, “if there is a ‘next one’
you may divorce me for reason of insanity.”

Slowly things had improved. Jana was always
Dominic’s favorite. It was normal for a man to prefer a child, who
could talk and think, who had a personality, to an infant, and
there was already a natural sympathy between this father and
daughter. Dominic took her riding and hunting, short expeditions to
introduce her to his favorite country pastimes. He gave her a tiny
knife and showed her how to hold it, telling her she could use it
only when he was with her. He let her fall asleep in the Margrave’s
bedroom, carrying her upstairs to Isobel and the nursery later when
he wished to make love with me or with Niall. Jana knew she had one
parent she could count on to put her first, and while she resented
the way Val had wormed himself into my heart, she drew closer than
ever to her father.

Then one day Jana just let it go. As far as
she was concerned, Val did not exist as a human being. She rarely
spoke to him except to berate him or call him a name. If he reached
for one of her possessions with a curious baby hand she would slap
it away. But she ceased going out of her way to hurt him, and I had
assumed the worst was over, that she had accepted the fact of a
permanent younger sibling.

Now I saw Jana’s jealousy had merely been
submerged under her growing maturity. In this time of stress the
old feelings came out as strong as ever. And I was saddened that my
words on the road, my failed attempt to save Jana from captivity,
had only put more distance between us. I looked from Val to Jana,
my two so very different children, each demanding more from me than
I could deliver. Val was clinging to my legs, clutching through my
skirts, trying to stay upright but about to lose the battle. Jana
was slumped against the wall. She, too, looked ready to drop. As I
was. My legs shook so much now after squatting over the pot that I
had to sit down again on the straw.

Val followed me, pulling at the front of my
dress. “I’m hungry,” he said. That was one complaint I could do
something about. My breasts were swollen and heavy with the day’s
accumulation of milk, my dress and shift wet with leakage, and I
was glad to ease myself as well as Val. As he suckled contentedly,
I called Jana over to join us. It was a mark of how defeated she
felt that she forgot her anger and came eagerly to sit on my other
side. I put my arm around her and kissed her. I had thought about
what I must say.

“I need to tell you something important,” I
said.

Jana looked up. “Is Papa coming?” She was
accustomed to the fact of her parents’ wordless communication, was
sure Dominic was sending his thoughts to me.

How I wished I could lie. Dominic didn’t even
know yet what had happened. “He will be,” I said. “But you must
listen to me in the meantime.” I started in, wanting to keep things
on a level that Jana could comprehend. “Do you remember the story
of Ciaran and the giant?”

Jana turned her head away. “I’m not a baby. I
don’t want to hear a baby fairy tale.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because I’m not going
to tell you one. But that story reminds me of you.” She made no
response but sat rigidly beside me, waiting. “In the story, Ciaran
climbs the tallest tree in the forest, up to the giant’s castle in
the sky. The giant asks Ciaran what the stone is on the handle of
his dagger. And Ciaran tells him—”