Bed Forty-One

She had imagined it a hundred ways.

She had imagined it in the Wax Cathedral, with the saints weeping gold. She had imagined it at the Night Market, between stalls of bottled laughter. She had imagined it in every hole they crawled through, and every corridor, and every darkness, with her cheek against the cold of a stone wall: the door, the room, the bed. A bright morning. A face on a pillow. She had run it through her head so many times that it had worn thin, like a coin handled too long, and she no longer knew what she hoped for.

Now she was in the corridor, and it was real, and she could not make her feet move.

"It's this way," said Gideon, gently.

They stood at the end of a long white passage in the east wing of the Sanctum, among nurses. There were a great many of them. They stood in twos and threes along the walls, in the gray linen caps of the Order, with their sleeves rolled and their hands hanging empty, and they were weeping. They had been weeping, Isolde thought, for some time. They had the dazed, wrung-out look of people who have sat up all night at a sickbed and been told at dawn that they may stop.

Petals lay everywhere.

They lay on the floor in drifts, black and curled and dry, like burnt paper. They lay on the sills, and in the corners, and in the folds of the nurses' skirts. A sister was sweeping them from a threshold with a broom, slowly, with her eyes shut. A boy of ten sat on a bench with a petal in his open palm, and stared at it as though it had spoken.

And from every room along the corridor, behind every half-open door, came the sound.

It was a small sound. It was voices. They were thin, and weak, and rusty with disuse, and some of them were quarreling, and one of them was singing, and a great many of them were laughing in the helpless hiccuping way of people who have not laughed in a year. But they were alive. They were talking. She heard a man ask for a pie. She heard a woman say, in a cracked indignant whisper, "Where on earth are my teeth?"

"They woke at dawn," said Gideon. "All at once, as if somebody had pulled a string."

"All of them?"

"Every ward in the kingdom, so far as I know. The runners are coming in." He wiped his eyes. He had washed his face at a basin, and bound his arm, but he still looked as though he had been dragged through a hedge. "Forty-one is the last door. The one with the blue lintel. I'll wait here."

"Gideon."

"Go on, Miss Hale."

"Thank you," said Isolde.

"Don't." He shook his head. "I've done nothing. I only carried the book."

She looked back.

Valerian stood at her shoulder. He had insisted on coming. He had been given a chair, by an anxious brother, and a cloak, and a cup of broth, and he had drunk the broth with an expression of profound concentration, like a man learning to ride. Now he stood propped against the wall, ashen, in a borrowed gray cloak, with Brannoc's hand under one elbow. He was looking at her with a face that she could not read. It was very tender, and very frightened, and rather shy.

"Go," he said. "I will be here."

"Will you—"

"I shall be exactly here," said Valerian. "I do not think I could go anywhere if I tried."

She turned. She walked down the long white passage, over the black petals, to the blue-lintelled door at the end.

…

It was a small room.

It was a plain whitewashed cell, with a narrow bed, and a washstand, and a window that looked out over the Sanctum's roofs. The sash was open. Morning poured through it in a shaft of clean pale gold, and along the sill a row of petals lay in a curved black line, as though they had been put there on purpose. A smell of lavender soap hung in the air. And in the bed, propped against a bolster, with her knees drawn up to her chin and a blanket round her shoulders, a girl was sitting.

She was thin. That was the first thing. Dreadfully thin, in a gray flannel nightgown too big for her, with her wrists like sticks and her neck like a stalk. Her hair, which had been long and brown and curling, had been cut off close to the head, in the Hospice fashion. She had a smudge of freckles across her nose. She had a face that was a half-inch too narrow for its eyes, and a mouth that was a half-inch too wide. And in her right hand, held out in front of her like a lantern, with the wax guttering over her fingers, she was holding a candle.

She looked up.

She looked at the door. She looked at the woman standing in it, with her braid come down and her face streaked with dust and her boots in ribbons and a dented pot lid clutched to her chest. She looked at her for a long moment, quite still, with no expression at all.

Then her face crumpled up like a paper bag.

"Izzy," said Linnet.

…

She did not remember crossing the room.

She remembered the bed, and the smell of lavender, and a pair of thin arms that went round her neck with a force that nearly overset her. She remembered the weight of a small bony body, hot as a coal, pressed against her own. She remembered the candle, which Linnet had flung away in the first moment, and which rolled across the floor and went out in a puddle of wax. She remembered the sound.

It was a wet, enormous, gulping sound. It was the noise a child makes after a nightmare. It came out of both of them at once, and neither could have said which had begun it, and for a long time they did not try to stop. She had her face in the short stubble of Linnet's hair. She had both hands knotted in the back of a flannel nightgown. She was saying a name, over and over, in a voice she did not know.

"You took ages," said Linnet, thickly.

"I know."

"I woke up and it was morning. And the petals were all over everything, and Sister Maud was crying into the soup." A hiccup. "And nobody would tell me anything. And I thought, Izzy would know. And you weren't there."

"I'm sorry."

"I'd a dream," said Linnet. "I dreamed there was a house with a lot of doors. I couldn't go in. I had a candle. I stood at the end of the passage and held it up, and I thought: if she can see the light she'll know it's me. I held it for ever so long. My arm ached." She sniffed. "Was that stupid?"

Isolde could not speak.

"Izzy?"

"It wasn't stupid," said Isolde. It came out in pieces. "It was the cleverest thing anyone's ever done."

"Really?"

"Really. I— I saw you. In the hall. I saw you, and you hadn't got a light, and I knew it wasn't you." She was laughing and crying together. "You're afraid of the dark. You always have been. You'd never walk down a passage without something to hold."

"I'm not afraid of the dark."

"You make me leave the candle."

"That's because it's rude to go off without one." Linnet drew back, scrubbing her face on her sleeve. Her eyes were swimming. They were brown, and very large, and full of an expression that Isolde had last seen on her at the age of nine, when she had come downstairs on Midwinter morning to find that the pudding was on fire. "You look awful."

"Thank you."

"You've got something on your face. It looks like glass."

"I fell down a staircase."

"Is that what it was?" Linnet peered. "You've got a pot lid."

"It was a friend's."

"Is she nice?"

"She was," said Isolde, and her voice went. "She was the nicest person I've ever met."

Linnet did not say anything for a moment. Then she put her thin arms round her sister's neck again, and held on. And they sat together on the narrow bed, in the golden light, with the black petals on the sill, and for a long time there was nothing in the room but the sound of two people breathing.

…

"I wasn't there," said Isolde.

It came out of her by itself, in the end, as it always did. She had not meant to say it. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with Linnet's hand in hers, and the sun had moved across the quilt, and it seemed to her that a thing which had lain in her chest for so many weeks could be let out now in daylight, as one lets out a bird.

"That Tuesday. I stayed late. I should have come home. You were on the floor for hours." She stared at their hands. "I've been so sorry. I've been so angry. I wanted to tell you. I thought you'd never forgive me. I thought you'd wake up, and look at me, and know."

"Know what?"

"That I wasn't there."

Linnet's brow furrowed.

"Izzy," she said slowly. "I fell over a rug."

"What?"

"The rug. By the bed. It had a corner." She waved a hand. "I got up for a drink of water, and my arm went funny, and I fell over the corner. It hurt. I yelled. Nobody came, because you weren't there, and Mrs. Hobb next door's deaf as a post." She shrugged. "I lay there a bit. Then I remembered you said you'd be late. And I thought, she's reading about a monk. And I felt better."

"You felt better."

"Course I did. You always look so happy when you've a monk." She grinned, with her chipped tooth. "I thought: I'll lie here and think about her face when she gets home and finds me. And then you did, and you went all white, and you shouted. It was the loudest I've ever heard you." A sniff. "It was quite nice, really. I've never had anyone shout for me before."

Isolde stared at her.

"I'm not dead, you daft thing," said Linnet. "I'm not even cross. You've been going about with a face like a funeral for weeks, haven't you? I could see it in the ward. You'd sit by the bed and read, and you'd go so quiet." She poked her. "It was a rug. It would've been a rug if you'd been in the room. You'd have been in the next chair, with your nose in a book, and not noticed till I hit the floor."

"I would not."

"You would."

"I'd have heard you."

"You didn't hear the fire at Mr. Grubb's."

"That was a very difficult chapter."

"You carry things like a mule," said Linnet fondly. "You always do. You pick up all the heavy ones and you won't put any down. It's very annoying." She squeezed her hand. "Put it down. It was a rug."

Something in Isolde's chest came loose.

It was not the dramatic release of the Crowning Hall. There was no flash, no relief, no tingle of freedom. It was quieter, and sweeter, and more complete. It was the slow ordinary unclenching of a fist that has been shut so long it has forgotten it was a hand. She sat there with her sister's small hot fingers wound in hers, and the sun on her face, and she thought: I can put it down.

I don't have to be free of it. I only have to put it down.

It was a rug.

She began to laugh.

…

"Who's the man?" said Linnet.

She had been staring at the door for a minute.

Isolde turned. He stood in the doorway, leaning on the jamb, in the borrowed gray cloak. Brannoc had gone. The corridor behind him was empty but for the petals. Valerian's face had the white and exposed look of a man who has been awake for three centuries and slept for a week, and he was hanging onto the doorpost with both hands. But his eyes were on the bed. They were wet.

"I did not wish to intrude," he said.

"Is this him?" said Linnet, in a loud whisper.

"Linnet—"

"The one in the book? With the nasty doors?"

"He's not in a book."

"He looks like he is." She eyed him critically. "He's got a scar. Is he the villain?"

"I have been called that," said Valerian gravely.

"Have you killed anyone?"

"Not on purpose."

"That's all right, then." She nodded, satisfied. "Do you want to sit down? You look like you're going to fall over."

"I think that I should like it very much."

"There's a stool."

He came in. He crossed the little room in four careful steps and lowered himself onto the three-legged stool by the washstand, as a man lowers himself into a hot bath. For a minute he said nothing at all. He sat with his long hands hanging between his knees, and looked about him at the whitewashed walls, the narrow window, the cheap candle in its puddle on the floor; and Linnet watched him with her head on one side.

"You're staring," she said.

"Forgive me."

"I don't mind. I only wondered why."

"I have not been in a room," said Valerian, slowly, "in a very long time. With a girl in it who was not a ghost." He glanced at Isolde. "I was told, once, that there was a sister. I did not remember. I find I am— I am very glad that you are real."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"There are many things that are not."

"Well, I am," said Linnet. "Do you want a biscuit? Sister Maud left a plate."

"I should like that more than I can say."

She passed it to him with great ceremony. He took it. He held it in both hands for a long moment, turning it over, with the grave and wondering attention of a scholar presented with a rare manuscript. Then he bit into it. His eyes closed.

"It's only a biscuit," said Linnet.

"I know."

"It's a bit dry."

"It is the best thing," said Valerian, "that I have ever eaten."

Isolde put her hand over her eyes.

…

"What's in the lid?" said Linnet.

It was a quarter of an hour later. The biscuits were gone. The sun had reached the foot of the bed. They had told her, in pieces, in the wrong order, with a great deal of interruption, and she had listened with her eyes growing rounder at every turn, and her mouth, at the part about the knife, falling open. At the end of it she had said, "You didn't," in a tone of such dreadful indignation that both of them had laughed until they were sick. And now she sat cross-legged on the quilt, and pointed.

"What?"

"The lid. It's moving."

It was.

It was lying on the coverlet, where Isolde had set it down, a dented tin disc with a ring of gold on the rim. As she watched, a small dark ribbon uncurled from it, and wound up and over the edge, and sniffed at the air, like a kitten waking from a nap.

"Hello," it said, in a small clear voice, in a tongue that she could no longer read.

"Oh," said Linnet.

"Don't be frightened. It's—"

"Is it the Hunger?"

"Yes."

"The one behind the door? The one that ate all the people?"

"It didn't mean to," said Isolde.

"I'm very sorry," said the Hunger, politely, in the Old Tongue. "Is this a bad time?"

Linnet looked at it.

She looked at it for what seemed like a very long while. Her face did a number of things. It showed fear, which went; and doubt, which went; and a thoughtful, narrowing curiosity that Isolde knew of old. It was the look she wore when a book got to the good part. She leaned forward on her hands, until her nose was an inch from the lid.

"It's warm," she said.

"Is it?" said the Hunger, pleased.

"It's like a hot-water bottle. A sad one."

"I am sad," the Hunger agreed. "A little. It's getting better."

"Can I hold it?"

"Linnet—"

"I won't drop it." She was already reaching. "I like the nasty ones, Izzy. You know I do. I never liked the wolves because they were frightening. I liked them because they were lonely."

Isolde stopped.

She sat very still, on the edge of the bed, with the morning in her face. She watched her sister gather the little dark heap up in her two thin hands, as one gathers a baby bird, and lift it, and draw it against her breast. It settled there at once. It nestled into the folds of the flannel nightgown and let out a long, shuddering, happy sigh. She heard it say a word.

It was the one she had given it. The one she could no longer read.

Linnet looked up. Her eyes were bright.

"What's it say?"

"It says 'home,'" said Isolde, and found she was smiling. "In the Old Tongue."

"But you can't read the Old Tongue."

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Not a word," said Isolde. "It took it. As a gift."

"Does it mind?"

"I don't think it knows."

"Do you mind?"

She considered.

She looked at the girl on the bed, with her close-cropped hair and her chipped tooth and her arms round the warmest, saddest, most terrible and most ordinary thing in the kingdom. She looked at the sun on the quilt. She looked, last of all, at the tall pale man on the stool, who had stopped eating his biscuit and was gazing at the two of them with an expression she did not dare to name.

"Ask me tomorrow," said Isolde. "I think I'll mind tomorrow."

"Will you tell me?"

"I'll read it to you. Whatever I've got left."

"With the voices?"

"With all the voices."

"Even the wolves?"

"Especially," said Isolde, "the wolves."