part 1 of a multi-part Count Cain fanfic by Risu-chan, Jan. 2003
(Rated PG, considerably more in-character than the other one...)
"I'm going," he announced. "Leave a light on, will you?"
I could have said a thousand things, if I had been anyone else. I could have said, It's a trap! Don't you know it's a trap, or don't you care? Or I could have said, I'm not letting you go. You'll only get yourself hurt, or worse. You keep doing these dangerous things--
But it was not my place to say those things; all I could say was, "Yes, sir."
He heard the thousand other things anyway; he always did. He actually stopped to smile at me, standing in the doorway, and he said, "You worry too much."
"Yes, sir." If I don't, sir, who will? You certainly don't worry enough...
He threw his dark rain-cloak about his shoulders, and left. And all I could do was light the lamps and wait, and pace, and worry.
That night, he came home with his face bruised and several sharp gashes in his arm and shoulder; I said nothing as I helped him out of the bloodstained clothes, cleaned and bandaged his wounds, tucked a blanket around him in his sitting-chair, crushed some ice and folded it into a soft compress and held it to his cheek.
His golden eyes laughed at me and my silence. "Well, at least you won't be able to tell me to dress up as a woman again any time soon."
I bit back my first three responses to that through long and studied habit, and my voice didn't waver as I replied, "Certainly I can. A woman can use makeup. --And must you feel compelled to collect scars with each of your cases, sir?"
"Souvenirs, Riff, souvenirs..." It must have hurt him to smile, because those luminous eyes flickered for a moment. I cupped his own hand against the compress, so that I could turn away to compose myself again and pour the tea I'd prepared, while I'd been hoping so desperately that he would come back in a state to drink it.
For the past decade, he had only permitted sugar in his tea if I had personally brought the sugar and prepared the tea for him; there were so many hurtful memories in it that I rarely offered. But on that night, I didn't ask; I simply put a spoonful and a bit of sugar in his tea and stirred it and handed it to him.
Because, if one laid all the history and all the pain aside, the child he had once been had liked his tea best when it was a little sweet... and it was a cold night, and he had been soaked through and wounded, and it was all the comfort I could offer. He would have had to laugh at me if I offered him warmed scones this far past midnight, and it would have hurt him to laugh. Over a decade, I had learned these things well enough to make them a minor art form, a private one, appreciated only by the two of us.
He sipped at it, and sighed a little, and told me, "You worry more than my mother did."
That's not difficult, sir. "One of the perks of the job, sir." I knelt to untie his shoelaces for him.
He made a small wry sound, and set down the tea so that he didn't need to use the injured hand to cuff me across the head lightly, barely enough to rumple my hair. "Stop worrying. That's an order."
Then he picked up the tea again; I had learned to calculate its sweetness more to his taste than he would ever admit.
I knew how to hear his thousand other things, as well. Any other man would have said, I'm sorry I made you worry. Or, another thing that he hadn't said, It's not worth your concern. They're only scars; it's not like I don't have my share of them. Or, if he had been feeling particularly honest, or particularly vulnerable, he might have said, Why do you worry? It's not like I'm worth your concern. It's not like I've ever been worth anyone's concern. Which was why he carried so many scars; his parents had taught him far too young that to them he was nothing but a vile sin and a shame to be kept secluded, and he had never truly learned to see himself in any other way. And so if he was beaten or wounded, it was only to be expected. It hurt, of course; he was not so inhuman as to be unhurt. But, to him, being wounded by those around him was only a natural part of life. Because he had never lived any other way.
I should have said, Yes, sir, or I'll do my best, sir. What I said was, "Then stop making me worry, sir."
Even then, even after a decade and more, I still didn't understand how the villains and murderers he hunted could bear his gaze. Those uncanny golden eyes could see straight through to a man's soul, when he chose -- like a falcon, sometimes, merciless and analytical and utterly without human compassion for the small writhing things he saw there.
I kept perfectly still, kneeling at his feet, and waited for him to decide whether or not he was going to wound me for whatever it was he saw. It took a long time.
Finally, tiredly, he reached out and smoothed my hair where he'd rumpled it earlier. In a soft and exhausted voice, he said, "I don't deserve you, you know. But I am a selfish wretch, and intend to keep you regardless."
Whatever he had seen this evening had left more wounds than the physical ones. "I'm glad to hear it, sir," I said, and meant it. "Because I intend to keep you too."
It was a miscalculation on my part, because he laughed then, despite his battered face. "You do, do you? Which of us do you think owns whom?"
"You are my master, of course," I said. "But you are my master. So, in that way, you are mine, Master Cain."
He smiled a little, crookedly, and closed his eyes. "Then perhaps I should occasionally try to give you a few less reasons to worry."
"I would be grateful, sir." I laid his mud-stained shoes aside to clean later, and went to bring dry night-clothes for him, and decided that he really couldn't scold me for scones in the morning. Besides, Miss Merry would be delighted.
But each time he flinched as I helped him coax the injured arm into his nightshirt and prepare for bed, I silently cursed everything that came to mind. Him, for being such a rash and stubborn and impulsive hazard-seeker. Myself, that I couldn't protect him from himself no matter how much I tried. His father, both for the scars on his back and for the scars in his soul that I could never even touch to try to mend. Whichever petty fool of a villain had seen fit to assault him this evening. Him again, for allowing it, for valuing himself so little, and for being so completely unwilling or unable to learn anything from the devotion I had offered him for so many years. His father again, for hurting him so deeply that I could never make him believe I gave him such devotion because he was worthy of it. Both of his mothers, for being so wrapped up in themselves that they thought nothing of what was being done to their defenseless child. --And the universe, for allowing things like this to happen. That seemed a good comprehensive curse to end with, as I carefully tucked the blankets over him.
"Good night, sir."
"I know why you're still single," he said drowsily, with a mocking golden glitter beneath his half-lowered lashes. "You can't find a woman who makes a better wife than you do."
"And why then are you still single, sir?"
"Because I already have you, of course!"
I considered several comebacks while I bent to blow out the lamp at his bedside, and finally settled on my most urbane, "Thank you, sir."
He giggled like a much younger boy, and stuck out his tongue at me, and made a small shooing gesture; I picked up his shoes, and was careful to close the door quietly behind myself.
* * *
I let him sleep later than he would otherwise have wished, because I knew he would rest badly with his wounds. But Miss Merryweather was awake and underfoot bright and early the next morning; at times it would not be difficult for someone to convince me that the child had an internal clock set to 'trouble.'
"Brother came back late last night," she said, "didn't he. Was he out with a lady?" She sounded entirely too suspicious.
"I wouldn't know," I replied, "since I was here."
"But you always stay up until he comes in. Didn't you ask him?"
"No," I said, which was true enough. "If Master Cain wishes me to know something, he tells me."
"Aren't you going to tell me anything?"
"If Master Cain wishes you to know something, he tells you as well."
"You're no fun at all!"
"Not even when I bake scones for breakfast?"
"Scones...?" But then, unwilling to relent so easily, she said, "Just a little fun. Maybe. Sometimes. -Hmph." She turned on her heel and flounced out of the kitchen.
Master Cain and I had come to a quiet understanding some time earlier. Miss Merry was never to be worried by her brother's escapades, whether or not I was. At first, tying his shoes for him had been nothing more than an indulgence; later, it permitted us a way to keep Miss Merry from realizing when he came home hurt, or at least to keep her from realizing how badly hurt, if it was too obvious to hide. If it had been unusual for me to enter his room and help him dress, she would have been far more suspicious far more quickly; but by then it was a long-established pattern.
I often wished that his silently concealing injuries had not become quite so much a part of the pattern. He had been in the habit of hiding his scars from anyone but me for too many years, though; it had never been difficult to hide new scars with the old ones.
Once his vest and jacket were in place, he tucked the hand of the wounded arm into the outer pocket, to appear casual, and to ease the weight on his shoulder, and to give Miss Merry a reason to target the other hand. Master Cain never did anything for only one reason.
He glanced in the mirror, more to judge whether the hand in the pocket was an acceptably idle-looking subterfuge than anything to do with his dress or hair; and then he gave me a still-slightly-crooked grin, pointing at the bruised cheek.
"What did we use last time? An argument with a doorknob in the dark, or an argument with some lady's outraged kinsman?"
"We used the doorknob last," I said, "but Miss Merry was quite curious this morning to know whether you had been out with a lady."
"The kinsman then?"
"It may be difficult if you cannot actually produce the lady, sir. Something a bit closer to the truth perhaps? Out walking late, and you tripped over a badly-placed cobblestone..."
"I'm not that clumsy!"
"Would you prefer to display a compromised lady and outraged kinsman for inspection, sir?"
He waved his free hand irritably. "Fine, fine. I'll swallow my pride for once." Then he looked up at me with one of his more sly grins: "But as for the lady..."
"Of course there is a lady, sir," I said tiredly. "There always seems to be a lady involved in these cases of yours. The question is whether or not you wish Miss Merry to insist upon an introduction to this particular one."
"Not to Merry, no. Actually I thought I might introduce the two of you." He chuckled at my expression, which I suspect must have been somewhat less stoic than usual, and opened the door with a flourish. "Well, then, off to face the lions!"
As I held his chair at the table, Master Cain gave me a good solid glare for the scones, but since Miss Merry was already happily devouring one with every evidence of sheer delight -- and jam-sticky fingers -- there was really nothing he could do but eat them beside her. This morning I was careful to ask both of them whether they wanted sugar in their tea; Miss Merry did, of course, and Master Cain refused, with what in anyone else I would have called pique.
When Miss Merry scampered off to play in the garden, the tirade I was about to receive was mercifully interrupted by the arrival of the housekeeper, who chased us both out into the lawn so that the cleaning of the house could commence.
"It seems to be a good day for a leisurely ride, sir," I offered.
The hotly yellow-eyed glare he turned on me might have caught something on fire, if he hadn't immediately followed it by clutching at my sleeve so that he could laugh himself light-headed.
* * *
Perhaps, on reflection, I should not have played into his hands so directly; I hadn't forgotten his half-threat of an introduction to the lady of his latest case, but I hadn't expected him to take that direct an interest in pursuing his plans. I also hadn't expected that my master of all people would become entangled with one who was so clearly not a lady. When the horses were saddled and we were leaving the manor gates, though, I should have been more aware of his intentions the moment he turned his mount rather than allowing it to take its own direction. Perhaps it would have changed nothing; but then again, perhaps it could have.
He led us to where a Gypsy caravan had camped in a clearing in the nearby woods. At first I thought I saw a boy sitting on the steps to the caravan, but the sound of our horses carried further than sight through the underbrush, and I was behind; when we came to a halt in the clearing, the step was empty.
"Althea?" Master Cain called, and swung down from his horse. "I have brought someone whom you should meet."
There was no reply from inside, until he put his boot on the bottom step leading up to the wagon. Then a voice from within said wearily, "Go away. Go and take your accursed demon's eyes with you. I want nothing to do with your curse, or your sight, or your pity. Go."
"My curse is nothing to do with you," he replied, far too levelly for my peace of mind; it was perhaps a good thing for her sake that this Althea had not known him long enough to recognize that voice. "My sight is my own, and as my eyes have already been claimed by a collector of such things, I dare say he would fight you for the privilege of removing them. And you will have no pity from me if you do not wish it; but there is one here whom I may pity whether or not it pleases you."
He tied his horse's reins to the wagon, and shrugged off his riding-cloak to leave it over the saddle, and walked up the steps quietly.
"I said go away."
"But I," he replied, dangerously cheerful, "being the demon-eyed rogue that I am, have no intention of obeying you! I would ask your pardon; but, as it is clear that you will not grant it--"
And he swept aside the curtain at the back of the wagon to let himself in, neatly dodging a flung pot in the process. "Riff, come on."
He still startled me far more often than I would ever admit. I could feel my face burning. "Master Cain--"
"Now, Riff."
The woman inside was cursing his name pungently in a variety of words I had never heard, but could well guess at, considering that I was thinking many of the same things, though less colorfully. "Yes, Master Cain," I said, and bent my head to follow him.
It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the more shadowy interior of the wagon, and the assortment of wildly varied shapes within -- a slim dark shadow edged in white was Master Cain, of course, but for a moment I could not distinguish which of several other brightly-patterned objects were furniture and which was the person whom he had addressed.
"And just what is this giant white-haired ox you have brought, you ill-mannered witch-eyed blackguard?"
The caravan was considerably too small for me, though Master Cain could stand upright inside it; I hit my head on the ceiling trying to turn toward her voice.
Master Cain said, in a voice that was clearly amused despite himself, "This giant white-haired ox is a dear and loyal friend, and I trust him with more than my life. But more to the point, Riff has had medical training. --I do assume that you would prefer to be attended by someone more educated than your seven-year-old brother?"
"Go away."
I could see, now, what Master Cain had seen, and why he had brought me here. The woman, Althea, was lying abed in the darkest corner of the wagon, with a wild-colored shawl dragged over her dress to distract the eyes; but when I looked at the shape that she made, not at the patterns she hid behind, it was clear enough.
"Whether or not you wish it, Althea, you cannot escape now," he said. "Your condition is too advanced; and all the wailing and recriminations in the world will do nothing to prevent the child's birth, when the time comes. I do not ask you to be pleased with this; I do not even ask you to consider that the child itself never asked to exist. All that I ask is that you allow me to care for it, once it has come."
"Get out!" she said. "Get out, or I will curse you to the third hell--"
Master Cain laughed aloud. "Curse me? Woman, don't waste your breath! I am in and of hell itself. Did you not see it in me the moment we met?"
He bent closer to her, still wearing that wild, brilliantly dangerous smile. "Look into these damned yellow eyes and tell me if there is any curse you can give me that I have not been given," he said. "My mother wished me dead before my birth, and cursed me with her life and her death; my father, who tried to kill me, cursed me that I would live in pain and die alone; what is there that you can possibly add to that? --Do go on, my dear lady, I'm intrigued now."
After a long shaking moment, she said again, "Get out. Please..."
I would have sat down to catch my breath, if I hadn't been afraid of breaking something unrecognizable under a pile of fabric. "Master Cain," I said, "forgive me, but if she asks... If a lady who... if... --Master Cain, is she... yours...?"
He turned to stare at me in consternation heavily laced with hilarity. "You mean, is the child mine? Good God, no! Her brother brought me here last week, because he thought I could poison the baby so that she would not need to bear it."
But for all the affected levity, his voice shook badly at that. It startled me. I think it even startled her.
"You say it yourself," Althea said, trembling. "It is not yours; I am not yours; this is none of your concern. Go. Leave me alone."
"It is my concern," he said, sharply. "If I do nothing, there will be a child born here whose name is cursed just as mine was. Give me the child. I am nobly born, even if not nobly mannered; I can afford to feed and clothe and educate it, and my sister would love to have another child in the manor house. --I seem to be collecting a menagerie of the cursed and reviled, beginning with myself; it would not be the burden to me that it is to you. Or if you cannot trust me so far, at least promise me that you will see that it is well cared for. Please."
"Why do you care?"
"Because you carry my brother, or my sister," he said. "Not of blood, but of pain. A child just as unwanted as I am... I feel the kinship in that, even though no law would agree. At least let me raise it in a place where we are accustomed to living this way... it is a cursed house, yes, but it is all I have. Please. I will beg if you ask it." His voice shook on the verge of breaking. "I am... not skilled in kindness, or in love; my family was not one which could teach such things. But I have tried; I can try..."
"All I wanted from you was poison," she said unhappily. "If you will not give it to me, go away."
"I told you," he said, ragged-voiced. "You cannot poison the child without poisoning yourself."
"Then poison me!" she said. "Just let me be done with this. All of this."
Master Cain made a sharp, frustrated movement; I reached over to catch his shoulder before he put a fist through a wall or window.
"Miss Althea," I said, still holding him carefully, "there is a small cottage-house on the Hargreaves lands, just past the edge of the forest. The village children often play there, as though it were their own; we would need to convince them that they could no longer burst in unannounced, of course, but it would be a good thing for the village to have someone in that house, someone who knows what it is to care for children. Master Cain mentioned that you have a young brother; would you truly wish to die and leave him?"
She looked up at me with something unspeakably old and hollow glittering in her dark eyes. "I'm... I'm just... so tired... I just want to be done..."
"I understand," I said, carefully. "I would guess that your time is very near now, isn't it? It must have been difficult, being alone, needing to care for yourself and for your brother, and being frightened of what is happening to you. Will you come out into the sunshine for a bit, and allow me to answer your questions, so that perhaps you need not be as frightened...?"
"You're a man," she said. "What would you know of it?"
"I am also a man," Master Cain said darkly, "and yet you had no reservations in asking me for death; that is all that a master of poisons such as myself can give to you. But Riff is far gentler than I, and has made a study not of death but of life. I should think that you would find him a much more agreeable conversationalist, when it comes to matters of living, and ways to begin it rather than to end it."
After a moment, she said, "You aren't going to leave unless I do as you demand, are you."
"Riff would, if I were not here," Master Cain said, toying idly with the handle of his cane. "He is a gentleman, whereas I am merely noble."
"Master Cain--"
"But since I am here, and since you've already witnessed the efficacy of cursing my name and my lineage and anything else that comes to mind," he informed her blithely, "you may as well surrender now."
So I unearthed a chair from a tangle of rugs and blankets and carried it outside, and Master Cain helped her down the stairs since he could move about in the wagon without setting off an avalanche of some sort, and between us we saw her settled in the chair as comfortably as could be managed for one so late in her condition.
"It hurts," she said, fretful, and holding on to the arms of the chair tightly.
"Where?" Master Cain asked, utterly heedless of propriety.
I am certain that in the sunlight my blushing was quite a bit more visible; it is one of the more regrettable results of having such a pale complexion. Althea looked at me with an expression that somehow both offered sympathy and asked for a return of it.
"You silly woman, how are we to be of assistance if you will not tell us what it is that hurts you?" Master Cain said with a sigh, chin propped in one hand.
"I thought you said you were only a poisoner!" she flared back, and reached for my hand so that she would have an excuse not to reach for his. She curved my hand against the top of her swollen abdomen, and looked away. It only took a moment for me to realize what she felt.
"That's natural, Miss Althea," I said. "The baby is kicking; that's all."
"Natural or not, it hurts," she said.
"It should settle when it becomes accustomed to your new position."
I pressed carefully, to see if I could encourage the child to shift its position, and then moved my hand a bit lower to press again. After a few moments' cautious exploration, although I had not finished my medical training and although this was hardly the most professional of examinations, I felt relatively confident that the child was resting properly for such advanced pregnancy, with its head lowered toward her hips.
I had thought it quite likely that her poor unwanted babe would be safely born, then.
Althea said, "Ox, make him stop staring at me. His eyes are like corpse-candles."
Master Cain was, in truth, staring at her -- absorbed in some fierce and private contemplation. Not entirely certain what to do myself, I cleared my throat a little; he looked over at me then.
"Can you really feel that?" he demanded.
"Er... feel what, sir?"
"Can you really feel the baby moving...? Inside...?"
"I... er... oh, dear." I looked at Althea, whose expression was far from promising. "Miss Althea, if you wouldn't mind too much, might I possibly presume so far as to...?"
"So: someone condescends to ask things now, rather than commanding? How novel." She reached over and caught at Master Cain's arm herself -- the wrong arm.
He gasped sharply, and jerked away. Althea stared at him, then at me; her face wore the horrified reflection of the whispered rumors and superstitions about a man with a cat's yellow eyes, who made death his favorite hobby.
"Master Cain was injured last night," I said, struggling to fight off the impulse to take his coat off him to see whether she had reopened the wounds. "Sir...?"
He shook his head, still a little short of breath from the sharp jolt of pain, and held out his unwounded hand imperiously. But Althea showed no great eagerness to touch him again; with a sigh, I set my fingertips against her belly to feel for any movements within, then brought his hand to rest against one particular place.
"Breathe," Althea said. For a moment, it bewildered me, until I realized she meant Master Cain, who had apparently stopped doing so.
He did, with a small gasp; then he bent closer to the loose fabric of her gown and stroked a bit, very gently. "Hello, there, little brother," he murmured. "Or little sister. It is -- it is a terrifyingly sweet pleasure to meet you this way..." Then he looked up at me swiftly, sharply. "Every mother can feel this--?"
I nodded a little, because the raw pain in his eyes had just taken all my words from me.
"Every mother can feel this," he repeated, staring down at my hand and his own, resting together upon Althea's heavily distended abdomen. "Every mother can... --And still she hated me...?"
"Your mother never wanted you either?" Althea said, tilting her head back to stare up at the sky. "You're a man. You don't understand at all."
"What is it that a man would not understand?"
"A man doesn't get himself mocked, and reviled, and chased out of a city with flung rocks, and a man doesn't have to suffer with it," she said, sharp-voiced. "For months and months, it hurts; everything hurts; and at the end, it hurts a lot more. And you can't help thinking, 'If only this damned thing were never here. If only the damned creature had never quickened in me, I wouldn't have to suffer this. For the rest of my life I'll be despised and treated like filth, because of this damned thing growing in my belly.'"
"But is it the child's fault?" he asked.
"Of course it is!" she said. "The father does what he does and walks away whistling, and there's not a thing a woman can do to prove what happened, and no one cares anyway; but if there isn't a child it doesn't matter. It's only when there's a child that the woman has to suffer for it. It's certainly not my fault I was taken and--" She stopped short, and looked away, and said angrily, "Of course it's the child's fault."
"I see," Master Cain said, far too quietly.
For one brief moment, I hated Althea with all my soul; because she was there, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't take him in my arms and hold him, or take him by the shoulders and shake him and tell him, She's been badly hurt and she's bitter and she's wrong. Your parents were sick and mad, and it's not your fault that they were! I couldn't think of a single thing that I could do or say in front of her.
Still in that terrifyingly quiet voice, Master Cain said, "But if you give me the child, then it will be almost like it never happened, for you. You would never need to think of it again; you could go away and forget that it had ever lived."
He looked up at her with something unreadable hidden beneath the golden shimmer of his eyes, and added, in far too dark and fey a temptation, "Wouldn't that please you? Wouldn't you like that very much...? "
She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. "What, are you mad? Of course I would, you -- you... You're actually serious, aren't you...?"
"Perfectly."
"You'd actually take the wretched thing and let me go? Just like that? Nothing held over me, no favors demanded for keeping your silence?"
He sat back on his heels then. "I am Count Cain Hargreaves, and you are a vagrant," he said, rather coldly. "What could I possibly wish to demand from you?"
Her lip curled. "The usual."
So did his. "I prefer not to share my bed with vermin from lice on up."
She glared at him, but it was obvious that there was no reply that wouldn't sound like an invitation. Instead, arch-voiced, she said, "How do you know I won't come back and claim you as the child's father?"
"What difference would it make if you did?" he countered. "The child will be cared for, and former mistresses who lack the courtesy to take their dismissals gracefully can find that there are far less graceful dismissals to be had. Particularly if they were never mistresses in the first place. --And, as you said, a father's guilt cannot be proven anywhere near as readily as a mother's."
"Would you poison me if I tried to make trouble for you?"
Soft as silk, he replied, "Do you intend to make trouble for me, in order to find out?"
The battle of wills held for a long silent moment, fierce black eyes staring into molten gold.
Althea looked away first. Perhaps someone should have warned her earlier about the dangers of arguing with my master. I was not feeling charitable enough to lay the unclaimed responsibility upon myself.
"I go where I wish, when I wish, once the child is born," she said, glaring off to one side.
"When you intend to leave," he said, "you give me two weeks' notice, so that I can find a nurse for the child."
"If I give you two days' notice, young master witch-eyes, you can call yourself lucky."
"One week. After all, you will be fed and housed; it is not so vile a servitude I would place you in."
After a moment's consideration, she spat in her palm and held it out to him, and said, "Deal."
If Master Cain was anywhere near as taken aback as I was, he certainly did a much better job of concealing it; he mirrored the gesture precisely, with only a hazed glimmer of distaste in his eyes, and she shook his hand.
Althea shifted uncomfortably in her chair, a hand pressed to her side, and said, "Why does it feel as though I have made myself a bargain with the Devil?"
"If you were to come to care for your child," he said, "if it were to become precious to you, I would release you from this the moment you asked."
She laughed, shortly and sharply. "Oh, you can have it. ...But you're quite certain you're not going to change your mind and 'charge' me extra for my keep?"
"You can rest assured," Master Cain said, with half-lidded eyes. "And quite virtuously alone, as you please."
There were, of course, details to be arranged; the people of the manor would be startled by and suspicious of a wandering Gypsy woman who simply took up residence in the abandoned cottage where the children played.
Master Cain left it to me; he wandered off toward the edge of the woods, his attention caught by some flower that I dared not ask about. I had made that mistake before; too often, his blithe and smiling reply had been not Look, how beautiful, but Look, how deadly. Or, even more disturbing, both at once.
As much as I admired him, and as much as I would never serve any other man the way I served him, there were still parts of my master's soul that I did not understand; and silently I prayed that I never would understand such things.
Althea was a nasty and suspicious haggler. But I was completely certain that, unlike Master Cain's mother, she was not out of her wits; she wanted to be cared for and tended through the end of the pregnancy and the birth, particularly if it was at a nobleman's whim and expense rather than her own. We came to both an arrangement and a type of mutual understanding.
Watching him kneel on the far side of the clearing with his uninjured hand carefully picking through the undergrowth for some small and white and unremarkable-looking flowers, she asked me, "Ox, is your witch of a master actually mad? Did the poisons muddle his mind that much? Or does he only try to make people believe he is mad?"
"Ox, indeed; a fine thing for a disgraced woman to call her only semblance of a doctor. My name is Riff," I said.
"So? --Mad like a hatter or mad like a fox?"
"You've spoken with him for more than five minutes now," I said, tired. "Therefore, you should know for yourself that that is hardly an easy question to answer."
"If he makes a habit of taking every unwanted child in the country," she said, "you'll have quite a brood on your hands."
"I am fond of children," I said. "And he..." He would not be so close to alone, then, or so afraid of becoming alone. "He is rather a paragon."
"A what?"
"Exemplary."
She was still staring at me.
"...Never mind." Even if the woman understood the words, she would never understand the meaning; not when she could not forgive her child its father's sins, nor understand why it was that he could care for a child not even born, and not even his own, because it was unloved by those who should have loved it.
And he said that he was unskilled in kindness. It was perhaps one of the world's most bitter ironies that his golden eyes could see straight through any rogue in the country; and yet because he hated his own eyes so, he could never bring them to bear upon any mirror in which he might see that which rested within his own soul...
The flowers were not in evidence when he returned; they had been either discarded or carefully tucked away for later use. Consequently, I was uncertain whether their absence should have relieved or concerned me. But his silence certainly concerned me, as we rode back. I could think of a thousand things that needed to be said to him, and not a single way to say any of them.
"Riff," he said, "your mother..." And then he stopped.
"Yes, Master Cain...?"
"Never mind."
What could I have said? That I knew not all mothers were like Althea and his own, because my mother had loved me? It would hardly have helped him to hear yet again that he had been hated in a way few children were.
And so I said nothing, and listened to his silence, and every step of the path hurt.
* * *
Miss Merryweather was a charming, headstrong, wilful, and somewhat spoiled little girl, but she was far from insensitive. Her first impulse was to pester us mercilessly about where we had been and whether her elder brother had been seen in the presence of some lady. But within two minutes of watching Master Cain flinch at her heedless insistence on hearing details of the afternoon, and watching myself trying to deflect her from his reactions, she realized that she was hurting him somehow, even if she didn't understand how or why.
She stood in front of us with her hands on her hips and her head tipped to one side, like a puzzled little bird; then she ran up and flung her arms around her brother's waist, and startled him.
"Tell me later, all right?" she asked. "And, Riff, make some tea for big brother; he likes your tea best of all." She hugged him carefully, and said, "If you feel like playing later, I'll be in the garden. I can tell your fortune if you like, or Riff's. I'll be sure to make it a good fortune!"
She caught his free hand and pressed her cheek against the back of it for a moment, wistfully; while he was still staring down at her in astonishment, she let go, and skittered away like a bit of dandelion fluff blown by an intangible breeze.
"If I may, sir," I said, daring more than I should have. "Never doubt that you are loved. Never doubt that you are dearly loved."
"But the pair of you are at least as mad as I," he said, with a strange strained smile. "More so, in that you think fondly of a half-mad poisoner, which hardly seems a sane trait to cultivate. Is all love a type of madness, then, as is all hate? It seems to me that the two cannot be so very far divided... although I do acknowledge that I have not had the most ideal models upon which to base my judgements of familial behavior. --Or even sane behavior, come to that. I think that perhaps I have no business even pretending to raise a child."
"Of course her child will be happier here, with you and with Miss Merry," I said. "Any child would be happier in a house where it was loved, rather than hated."
"...And there I must take your word; because I wouldn't know, would I."
With a knot in my throat, I said, "No, sir, I suppose not."
I made tea, and offered cream, and he waved it away vaguely; he spent far more time staring into the cup than drinking from it. But as much as I wanted to sit down beside him and take him by the shoulders and shake him until he either shouted at me or burst into tears or reacted in any way other than sitting there gnawing a hole in his own soul -- however much I wanted that, I was his servant, not his family, and I had duties in his service which I could not simply ignore.
In the afternoon, I convinced Miss Merry's tutor that she should spend some time with her music lessons, and left the doors to Master Cain's study open so that he could hear her play.
Sometimes he would wander down to the conservatory and stand by her shoulder, and once in a great while she could tease him into singing with her. Not often; his voice was untrained, a light, tentative, rather boyish tenor; and he was embarrassed to reveal even that much, even around his family. But when she was particularly charming, and when he felt particularly glad to have her, and a little less frightened by the thought of losing his still-fragile new family, then he would sing with her, in order to see her smile.
I knew when I left the doors open that this was unlikely to be one of those days; but I hoped that the sound alone might remind him.
Dinner was an awkward business; Miss Merry was going out of her way to win some sort of reaction from her brother, and Master Cain was going out of his way to keep his silence, and not to let his darker thoughts intrude upon the rest of us. So she behaved badly, and he barely even noticed. It ended up with the housekeeper scolding the girl for making a mess, Miss Merry bursting into tears and running out and slamming the door behind herself, and Master Cain looking up at the sound of the door slamming, in some perplexity.
I could have laughed, or cried; rather than either of those, I said, "Shall I bring something to your study instead, sir?"
He nodded a little, and stood, and walked out; I looked around at the empty room and the disordered table, and in the echoing silence I could barely hear myself think. So I tried not to think, as I put together a tray with a plate and a pot of tea to carry up to him.
Master Cain was standing at the window when I tapped on the open door and walked in; since he didn't respond to my presence, I set the tray down and picked up a spoon, and said, "Milk or sugar, sir...?"
He spun around and knocked the spoon out of my hand with one sharp blow.
Stunned, I took a half-step back, staring down at him. "Master Cain...?"
"Why?" he asked. "Why do you do these things? Why are you still doing these things?"
Hurt more than I wanted to admit, I said, "I assure you there is nothing wrong with the tea, sir."
"Not that way," he said, and dug a hand through his hair. "Merry -- she's a child. She has no one else in this world, nowhere else she can go. She stays with me because I am her only kinsman and her only protector. Of course she would not leave this place; she could not. But you... you could leave."
"But I have promised you, sir, that I will not."
"Why not?" he demanded. "You were to be a doctor! You have the mind for it, and the talent; why are you still here serving me?"
Badly shaken, I said, "I... I thought... that you wanted me here, sir, and so..."
"Oh, I do," he said, grimly. "Selfish, shallow-minded bastard that I am -- of course I want you here. But do you know why you are still here? Because you, who could have been a doctor -- I have made you into my whore."
I was so shocked I couldn't help laughing. "Master Cain, I would think I would have noticed--!"
"Have I not?" he asked, uncompromising. "I pay you for your every kindness. You offer me services which bring me pleasure, and they are bought and paid for... but not as they should have been; I pay you just enough to keep you in pretty clothes, and dependent upon me..."
"Master Cain, I serve you because I care about you," I said. "And I have no wish for a raise, and I have no wish to be fired either. I am very happy to serve you, and I very much hope that you are pleased with my service."
"But if I were a good man," he said, "rather than just a greedy and lonely child, it would have occurred to me a decade ago what I should have done with you. I should have paid your way through that medical school the day I became Count Hargreaves, and I should have set you free. But I did not, because I wanted to keep you for myself."
"Master Cain--"
"Why did you never ask me?" he whispered. "Why did you never ask me to return the life my father took from you? Even if I was too selfish to see it for myself -- if you had asked me, I would surely have realized then what I had made of you...! Why did it take me so long to realize that I should not keep anyone here, whether or not a child, because all that binds anyone to me is the lack of a way to leave--"
He was becoming hysterical; I took him by the shoulders carefully, and held him still.
"Master Cain," I said, "if I asked, would you still give me the money to go to medical school?"
He stared up at me, with a shimmer of unshed tears gathering in his brilliant eyes. "Yes," he said. "Damn it, yes. I... should have expected-- I'll go and--"
"No, you won't," I said, holding on to his shoulders tightly. "You're not going anywhere, because even if you tried, I would not and will not accept it. Keep your money. And keep me. Because I don't want medical school. What I want most in the world is to stay here at your side."
The tears spilled down his cheeks; with a strained half-laugh, he said, "Even though I have made you my whore?"
"You offered me my freedom," I said. "I gave it back. I don't want it."
"But... Riff, you could..."
"Master Cain, I have tried for many years to live in such a way as to show you my devotion through my service," I said. "I had fancied that my efforts were not unappreciated. I would be most bitterly disappointed to be wrong in that."
"Riff-- I--" He gulped hard, and said, "You're not wrong. It's just that-- you should have been more than--"
I brushed a careful fingertip over his cheek to try to dry his tears, and my own voice was none too steady as I pushed the point home. "If I am not wrong, and you have understood and appreciated why I offer you my company and my service, then I am precisely where I should be. And so if you ever again try to say to me that 'the only thing binding me here is a lack of a way to leave,' I may blacken your eye for you, sir."
I let him go then; there were still tear-streaks on his face, and I needed a moment to compose myself as well. Looking around for a distraction, I picked up the fallen spoon and put it in my pocket for later washing, then spotted another in with his pens on his desk and reached for it.
"As I asked some time ago, sir, mil--"
Again, he knocked the spoon out of my hands, although this time not angrily -- rather more frantically.
"Not that one; I used it to measure cyanide!"
Struggling to keep a straight face, I replied, "The tea should be black this evening, then?"
"Yes, please," he agreed, weakly, and streaked the back of his arm across his face, and bit his lip; but the giggle escaped anyway. "A fitting mishap that would be, you so careful with the sugar and me poisoning my own spoon...! How my father would laugh..."
"I would far prefer never to give him such pleasure, sir."
All in all, it was quite an evening of soothing tempests. After I left Master Cain looking at his dinner with the first sign of interest he had displayed for a while, I sought out the housekeeper and spent some time placating her about the occasional frustrated behavior of a little lonely orphaned girl whose only brother's moods could be difficult for a child to understand -- if one were to put it mildly. The housekeeper rather sourly granted me the validity of that point, and charged me with seeing to it that the child improved her behavior; I promised to give it my best, of course.
After that, I found Miss Merry tearfully sticking sharp hatpins into a doll with a stolen handkerchief-apron and a scribbled-over face, and could guess what sorts of curses she was heaping on the poor housekeeper's head. While I doubted her viciously applied hatpins would in any way impair the real housekeeper, the sentiment behind it was hardly to be encouraged. That storm-in-a-teacup took me much more coaxing to settle, and a few reminders of how nicely the housekeeper cooked, and a few not-so-subtle musings on how I would feel to be despised by Miss Merry for doing my duty in her brother's service; and how likely the housekeeper would be hurt by her anger, just as I would be; and how, if Miss Merry were not to produce wanton wilful messes in order to express her frustration, the housekeeper would be better able to serve both the master of the house and Miss Merry herself.
I suggested that next time she wished to distract Master Cain from his silences, she might go and pick wildflowers for him, and ask him to teach her about them. Silently I dreaded the sorts of conversations two such morbid-minded siblings might produce over a handful of unidentified herbs, but at least it would save on recriminations with the staff, and the idea seemed to comfort her a little. All she had wanted was a little attention and conversation from her brother, and with a bit of steering she seemed willing to try new methods, since the first attempts had been self-evidently fruitless.
Finally Miss Merry scrubbed the tears off her face and began to pull the pins out of the abused doll and replace them in her jewelry-chest. I helped her wash its face, and her own, and praised her change of heart lavishly as I tucked her into bed cuddling a much cleaner aproned-housekeeper doll.
Then it was time to make the rounds of the house, checking to be sure that all the windows were properly latched and shuttered and that the lamps had been extinguished in all the empty rooms, and to review with the housekeeper and the other servants what was to be done the next day. The maids were still sulky about having cleaned up after Miss Merry's tantrum; I tried to soothe injured pride as best I could, and to both express sympathy for their position and ask sympathy for Miss Merry's. The girls were busily nursing their sense of being greatly put upon, though; it seemed wiser to try again when the memories weren't quite so fresh.
Although my feet were dragging a bit as I went back up the stairs to Master Cain's study, I thought it was a pardonable lapse in decorum, considering what a trial the day had been. Apparently I was not the only one worn out by the day; Master Cain had fallen asleep in the bay window, with several books and a notebook in his lap and propped open beside him.
It took a moment's hesitation for me to decide what to do. On the one hand, I had both no business seeing Master Cain's notes and no wish to find out whether those plain little flowers had been toxic after all. On the other hand, I knew he always rested badly when he was injured, and once he had fallen asleep, it would be kindest not to move or disturb him.
So I put the tea and plates back on the serving tray and straightened the rest of his desk quietly, to clear some space so that I could shift the books from his lap to the desk; then, very carefully, I took the books one at a time, from beside him, and then from under his hands. Once the books and the pencil had been safely removed, I brought a blanket to tuck around him, and then saw to unlacing his shoes.
His hand came to rest very gently upon my hair; still, since I hadn't been expecting it, it startled me.
"Sir...?"
He couldn't have been more than half awake, if that. "Thank you," he murmured, "for everything."
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, sir," I said, "but you might find your bed more comfortable than the window."
Definitely not half awake, even; he blinked a little, and I could see that it had been too complicated a sentence when he might have caught one word of six. Instead, he stroked my hair a little, as though I were Miss Merry's age. "You promised me..."
There was only one promise that mattered to him, of course; only one that tied so deeply into the nightmares that still woke him screaming some nights.
"I promised, sir," I said, as I had a dozen times before, hoping that one of these years he would come to believe it even in that terrified corner of his soul where the only sound he could hear was his father's voice cursing him to a life of lonely pain. "I'll never leave you."
That was what he had needed to hear; he let himself relax then, his eyes drifting closed. "Thank you," he murmured, letting his hand rest on the crown of my head as though it were too heavy for him to support. "Don't leave me. Don't ever leave..."
I sat perfectly still for a long, long minute.
Of course I understood that he hadn't meant it so literally; of course I knew he was far enough asleep that I could have shifted his hand and gone to my own bed. But it seemed to me that of all days, this was certainly one in which someone should remind him that he was not alone. He wanted to bring Althea's child into the manor for his own sake as much as Merry's; he wanted one unwanted child in the world to come into the sort of home he had never had, with people who saw a child as a child, not as a shameful breathing reminder of their own sins and passions and guilts. He wanted to give an unwanted infant the sort of comfort that he had never been given, until his father gave me to him as though I were a replacement for his dead bird.
Perhaps to Alexis I had been; Alexis had never seen anyone but himself as human. Alexis had never seen anyone but himself in his world. His sister was an object to be possessed; his child was an object to be despised and beaten; likely, to him, his child's pets and his child's servants were equally disposable and replaceable and subhuman. And so he had given me to his son, because another bird had not been at hand.
And so Master Cain had been appalled at a reflection of his father that he had never seen in himself. Although I had been his servant for years and his friend just as long, I had also been the first treasure he had ever been given which was not taken away or destroyed beyond mending. For a moment, he had been horrified at the thought that he might have been treating me as his father had treated him -- as an object with no thoughts or desires of its own, even if a treasured object.
At one time, many years ago, I would have been overjoyed if Master Cain had offered to pay my way through that medical school. I would have thanked him profusely and left with a light step, and perhaps I might occasionally have come back to visit, to reiterate my thanks and to repay my debt as I could. But, since I was not an object, I did have thoughts and desires of my own -- and over the years, since I was living and changing, those thoughts and desires had changed accordingly.
I would have been completely devastated if Master Cain had insisted on sending me away to medical school now, through guilt at what he had not seen in the past. And I knew it had been a much closer call than I wished to consider.
When he was convinced that what he was doing was right, it would take a more formidable opponent than death itself to dissuade him. He had made himself the master of a thousand different forms of death, and death did not frighten him; life did. And I was certainly nowhere near formidable enough to oppose him, and I knew it. By all rights, I should have been a doctor, and that evening I could have been sent away through that same unshakable "should have been," and the thought still terrified me to the core of my bones.
Even half asleep this evening, he had reached to touch me to reassure himself that I was real, and that my presence was not simply a pleasant dream from which he would wake to his father's cursed lonely agony. So I chose not to take that from him even in his sleep. But also, I chose not to take from myself the gift that he had reached for me, that he had wanted me at his side.
I sat down more comfortably next to him in the bay window, and tucked the ends of the blanket around myself as well. I was careful not to disturb his hand as I quietly settled my head into his lap and closed my eyes.
* * *
Part 2 (coming soon I hope... ^^;;)