The Salbine Sisters (30 page)

“Yes, help us!” Maddy said, seizing the opening Lillian had thrown her.

Emmey screwed up her face. “There won’t be one like that around here, Miss.”

“Well, let’s go back to the horses and try to find one, all right?”

“And then I can have my clothes?”

“Yes, you can have your clothes.” Maddy straightened and caught Emmey’s hand.

It took them a couple of hours to find an inn that suited their needs. “Can I have my clothes now?” Emmey asked after they’d booked a room and were gathering a few items from Ticky’s saddlebags.

Maddy glanced at Lillian. “I’ll tell you what. It’s almost supper time now, isn’t it? Why don’t you have supper with us? It would be silly for you to go on an empty belly.” She dropped to one knee. “To be honest, I wish you’d stay with us until we know you’ll be all right.”

Emmey stuck her fingers in her mouth. “I got nowhere.”

“That’s why I think we should stay together until we find you somewhere. What do you think?”

“You kept your promise, Miss.”

“I promised I’d take you home to your ma. But things didn’t work out quite the way we expected, did they?”

Emmey shook her head. “I didn’t think my ma would want to see me, but I didn’t think she’d be gone.”

“I see.” Maddy digested this new information. Was that why Emmey hadn’t been excited? But she’d wanted Maddy to take her home. After the prison fire, Emmey had reminded Maddy of her promise. “Since your ma’s not here, why don’t we stay together a while longer? If I don’t know you’re safe, I’ll worry about you.”

“Would you, Miss?” Emmey asked, her eyes bright.

“Of course I would. So will you stay with us, then?”

“Can I have stew?”

Maddy smiled. “We’ll see what’s on offer. Come on.” She looked around for Lillian, who seemed awfully quiet. Lillian wasn’t there.

“She went into the inn,” Emmey said.

“She must be hungry. Here, do you think you can carry this paper? We should practice our letters tonight.”

A boy who looked to be about fourteen sauntered into the stables. “Sister inside says I’m to bring a roll in for the lass.”

“Thank you.” Guessing that Emmey would stay with them wouldn’t have been a stretch. Maddy had only pretended that Emmey had a choice; she never would have let her disappear into Pinewood alone and coinless. They waited while the boy hoisted a roll onto his shoulder, then followed him into the inn.

Supper was a subdued affair. For once, Maddy and Lillian did most of the talking, with Emmey throwing in a word here and there. “Can I go to the room?” Emmey asked the moment she’d spooned the last of her stew into her mouth.

“Are you sure?” Maddy said. “The bard’s singing isn’t that bad.”

“I’m tired.”

Maddy frowned. “You’re not ill, are you? Perhaps I should go—” She felt Lillian’s hand on her arm. “You go on. I’ll be up soon.”

Emmey scampered up the stairs.

“We need to chat,” Lillian said. “And give her some time on her own. She’s a proud little thing. Let her have a cry in private.”

“She’s cried in front of me before. She sobbed her heart out when we said good-bye at the prison.”

“That was different. She hadn’t been rejected by her own ma. And I suspect that’s not all she’s crying about.”

Maddy dropped her spoon into the bowl. “I feel so stupid. I pictured her and her ma hugging each other and hanging onto each other and crying . . .”

Lillian smirked. “And sunshine and rainbows and birds twittering with joy?”

“I wanted the bloody rainbows! I can’t believe it—what kind of ma just abandons a child?”

“The kind of ma that sends out her children to steal while she stays home and whores herself.”

“Whenever I thought of Emmey’s ma, I always imagined her beside herself with worry and grief, powerless to get her daughter out of prison.” Maddy slowly shook her head. “She probably doesn’t even remember her name! Probably wouldn’t recognize her!”

Lillian gulped down some cider. “My pa didn’t pay me much attention, but I always felt safe. I always had a roof over my head, food on the table, and a pillow for my head. And Sophia.” She wiped up her remaining stew with a piece of bread. “I never felt hard done by, and if I had, I’d be chiding myself for it now.”

“I’m the luckiest of all.” Maddy’s ma and pa loved her and were probably worried sick, not having heard from her in months. The first thing she’d do when she returned to the monastery was get a letter off to them, even if her letters weren’t perfect. “What are we going to do? We can’t just leave her to her own defences.”

“That woman mentioned an orphanage,” Lillian reminded her.

“It could be another Lila’s.”

“We won’t know until we’ve had a look. I thought I’d go over now. The barkeep knows of the blacksmith’s on the north road. He said it’s not far.”

“I want to see it too,” Maddy said.

“If I think it might be suitable, we can all go tomorrow.”

“Why don’t I go?”

Lillian patted her hand. “Because I’ll be more objective. I’m not sure any orphanage will be good enough for you, not without a bit of persuasion.” She hesitated. “And I can defend myself. I’d rather you stay here, with Emmey. She’ll want you, not me.”

Maddy sighed. “I don’t know, she seems eager to get away from both of us.”

“You don’t believe all that rubbish, do you? Do you know why she’s upset? Because she thinks you’re going away now.”

“No, she’s upset because her ma isn’t here.”

“That’s only a small part of it, Maddy.”

Maddy vigorously shook her head. “Before she knew I was dying, she reminded me to take her home. She was upset that I wouldn’t be able to.”

“She reminded you because it meant you’d still be together. There was nothing stopping you from leaving the prison without her. She doesn’t want you to go away.” Lillian met Maddy’s eyes. “Don’t you see? All that talk about leaving with her clothes and releasing you because you’ve fulfilled your promise is her way of rejecting you before you reject her. Because that’s what she’s expecting. Another rejection.”

Maddy swallowed. “She knows I’m a sister and that we have to go back to the monastery. She always knew we couldn’t stay together forever.” But Emmey was only eight. Had she truly understood? Had Maddy somehow misled her? “We were in a cell together for months. I couldn’t avoid caring about her. Perhaps someone else could have remained detached, but I couldn’t. I didn’t even know if I’d ever get out. And when I did, I couldn’t just turn my back on her.” She buried her face in her hand.

“I’m not blaming you, I’m just telling you how I see things.” Lillian gently pulled Maddy’s hand away from her face. “We’ll sort this out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Lillian said sheepishly. “But we will. Let me go see this orphanage.”

“All right.” But as she watched Lillian push back her chair and drain the last of her cider, Maddy felt like a liar. Emmey wasn’t the only one who wished they could stay together. “Lillian?”

Lillian looked down at her. “What?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I should hope the orphanage will be a wonderful place for Emmey. But I don’t.”

Lillian’s face softened. “I know. That’s why I’m going.” After a furtive glance around the common room, she kissed Maddy on the cheek and left.

*****

Maddy put her finger to her lips when Lillian stepped into the room. Lillian tipped her head toward the door, her face grim. “Let’s go down to the common room,” she whispered when Maddy joined her.

Only a single fire burned, in the fireplace near the bar. Lillian sank into one of the chairs arranged around it and heaved a sigh. Maddy sat next to her. “I’m guessing the orphanage won’t do?”

“That’s an understatement.” Lillian stared at the fire. “It’s more a sick house for children. I’ll drop off some herbs when we pass it on our way out, though all that will do for some of them is ease their suffering until they leave this realm. Poor things. It’s fairly clean, though, and the women tending the ill seem compassionate. But it’s not the place for Emmey.”

Maddy wouldn’t pretend to be disappointed, but what now?

“There are still a couple of towns between here and Merrin,” Lillian said.

“So we’ll go from town to town until we find a place to dump her?”

“I didn’t say that. Do you have a better idea?”

“I might. I thought about it while you were gone. I think we should take her with us to Merrin.”

Lillian turned toward Maddy, her mouth open. “We can’t take her to the monastery.”

“It would only be temporary.”

“Maddy—”

Maddy lifted her hand. “Hear me out. Here we are, thinking of leaving her at an orphanage in some town we don’t know. If we’re going to do something like that, let’s do it somewhere we do know and where we’ll be close by. We know Merrin, we know the folk in Merrin. Even if she ends up in the alleys, at least she’ll be in Merrin. I can arrange to meet her once a week, help her if need be. She won’t be completely alone.”

Lillian pressed her lips together.

“Well, do
you
have a better idea?” Maddy asked.

“Not right now.”

“Then let’s do that.”

“You’re assuming Sophia will let her through the gates. She has every right to turn Emmey away. Even those marked by Salbine aren’t allowed through the gates until they’re sixteen, and we’re going to show up with an unmarked eight-year-old?”

“Emmey could be marked,” Maddy said desperately.

“And she might not be. Either way, she’s only eight. I know Sophia’s kind and compassionate, but she’s obligated to put the monastery’s interests first.”

“It would only be temporary, until we find her somewhere to live. She could sleep in the stables!”

Lillian fell silent. Maddy turned to the fire and forced herself to wait for Lillian to speak. Lillian hadn’t said no, and pushing her wouldn’t help. Seconds stretched into minutes. Was Lillian considering the idea, or deciding how best to gently turn it aside?

“I’ll only agree to this because what you said about having Emmey in Merrin makes sense,” Lillian finally said. “But you have to be prepared for the possibility that Sophia might turn her away at the gates. And if she does, no arguing. No pleading. Not after we’ve put her on the spot and asked for something we shouldn’t.” She raised a finger. “Sophia sometimes indulges me, but this will go well beyond being a pain in the arse.”

Maddy sagged. Not the unqualified support she’d hoped for. “If you’re uncomfortable with it, let’s not do it.”

Lillian threw up her hands. “What else are we going to do? I suppose we could leave her in Merrin before going up to the monastery, but there’s no harm in trying. Sophia will forgive us. Eventually.”

“I’ll try to think of where we can take her if the abbess does turn her away.”

“Why do you insist on calling her the abbess?”

“Because she is the abbess. She’s not family to me, like she is to you.”

Lillian drew breath, then apparently reconsidered and kept her own counsel. Maddy would have loved to know what she’d intended to say.

“You’ll have to try to explain all this to Emmey,” Lillian said. “You have to make sure she understands that she’s not going to live at the monastery with you.”

“I will.”

“She might want to stay here. She knows Pinewood, or at least part of it.”

Maddy shook her head. “She wouldn’t survive. She doesn’t like to steal, Lillian. Scraps will only take her so far. I’ll make sure she knows the monastery won’t be her home, but I’ll also make sure she knows she has a better chance in Merrin.”

“I think she’s bright enough to figure that out for herself.”

Maddy sighed. “An eight-year-old shouldn’t have to face this sort of decision.”

“No.”

They lapsed into silence again and watched the fire, lost in thought. Maddy would never take her privileged life at the monastery for granted again. To think she’d seriously considered turning her back on it! All right, her spiritual life was a mess, but what better place to sort it out than the monastery? If she hadn’t already decided it was her home and the Order her destiny, she’d certainly come around to it now.

At the prison, any lessons to be learned from her ordeal had eluded her. Not anymore. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that her prison experience would remain a harsh teacher throughout her life, a prospect that excited her. It infused her wretched existence in that cell with what she sought most: meaning. And that could only come from one source:
Salbine
.

*****

Maddy rolled over, opened her eyes, and yawned. Lillian still breathed rhythmically next to her. If they were at the monastery, she would have been up over an hour ago, if Maddy’s guess at the time was right. But they’d stayed in the common room well past their usual bedtime, staring into the fire in companionable silence.

“You awake, Emmey?” she whispered, peeking over the side of the bed. Emmey’s roll looked empty! “Emmey? Emmey!” Maddy sat up and nudged Lillian. “Lillian! Lillian!”

Lillian groaned and rolled toward her. “What?” she mumbled.

“Emmey’s gone!” Maddy threw aside the thin blanket and grabbed her robe. “She can’t have gotten very far.” She stepped into her robe, pulled it over her shoulders, and tried to do up the first button. In her haste, she fumbled it. “Bloody, stupid button!” She almost stamped her foot, then remembered where she was.

“Calm down, Maddy. Let me.”

She stood anxiously as Lillian did up the offending button and moved on to the next, working her way upward. When she reached the top button, Maddy fought the urge to tear out of the room.

“Go!”

Maddy needed no further encouragement. She bounded down the stairs and into the common room, frantic to get outside and start searching. After the trouble they’d had finding Emmey in Reedwick—in fact, they hadn’t found her; she’d found them—Maddy feared this time would be even harder. Emmey probably didn’t want to be found.

A man stood behind the bar, polishing a glass. “Sister!” he hissed as she flew past him. “Sister!”

Pretending she hadn’t heard him would be rude. Maybe he could help. She backtracked. “Have you seen a little blonde girl?”