Winters for our Sins V

avery street

The Conell house fronted on Avery street, better known as the Baron's Sty because it curved west out of the square and ended at the old Baron's manor. Those who had lost their house to tithe and those who couldn't afford citizenship came west out of the central city and took shelter in the mess of disorganized housing until they died of cold or malnutrition. Closer to the wilderness of the estate farm plain, huts were built from the fickle branches and straw of the dying field. The most desperate for shelter entered the broken manor for temporary relief, but rumor believed a group of petty thugs to claim the place their territory. No one cared about a fatality in the slum populace and if a poor man went missing in the manor it went unnoticed. Walking from the city square to the farmyard gave the impression of traveling back in time: buildings regressed, people regressed.

Nearer to the square, the Baron's Sty was a busy slum. The houses and merchant establishments were taller and they pressed into one another until unstable, upper floors created triangular alleys in the dirt beween buildings. The first, second, and sometimes third floors were separated by business and family so that an inn might sit above a shoe maker or above a widow's hovel. If a land owner couldn't afford stairs to his second story, a ladder was used to reach a window or balcony. Collapsing structures were commonplace. The dead, drunk and unclean slumped in the street until their belongings were stripped and their bodies taken to the graveyard. Avery was like a disease. Its residents infected nearby streets and the poor swarmed in a quarter mile radius from its stretch.

Dashiell was waiting against the post rail beneath a sign where someone had carved an elaborate dragon. He had his horse, a chestnut mare, tied to the banister that climbed to Simonette's. Old man Conell owned the second story of a rectangular house. It had steady beams and daubbed insulation, making the interior a fairly comfortable living environment. Conell had turned the place into a tavern on an old dream that he would make his living serving ale and good conversation. It was called dewch i mewn on a sign that faced the street but Avery regulars knew the place as Simonette's. Conell's charming daughter was a hit with the locals who came there to try for her attention. Where citizens were lucky to have teeth to speak, Simonette's smile was better than sunshine, her skin softer than spring flowers, and her figure an idol for every lonely man. Consequently, for its location, Conell's tavern did good business.

"Dash, sorry. Got here quick as I could make it on foot."

"I don't see you breathing heavy, blaidd*. Where's your trotter?" Dash asked. He was built like a laborer and when he leaned on the post rail the wood leaned with him.

"Trotter's Stabled." Tomas breathed. He was breathing heavy. Dashiell smiled. "Oberon's got him in a stall. He doesn't want me leaving Caer Gwaun I don't think."

"God's hooks. Oberon ..."

"Careful." Said Tomas. Dashiell knew what he was talking about. You say God's name and he can hear you, every time.

"I know. He got a wrangler in there with the horse, or choristers? Do you know?"

"He's got choristers, yeah. Why?"

"Because we're leaving Caer Gwaun." Said Dash, grinning. On anyone else it would have looked devilish, but Dashiell was innocent. He had short hair, in his eyes, and his clothes were unassuming. Instruments of warfare: a knife for skinning, a knife for maiming, and a hatchet for wood-cutting were attached to him on belts. A skin was draped on his shoulders that belonged to the same slender animal as the skin that Tomas wore when he traveled. It wasn't these things that made him innocent but the presence of immortal youth that glowed like a halo.

"I can't." Said Tomas.

"Huh?"

"I've got business, now. The Bishop's assigned me some things to take care of."

"Yeah, tell me about it? Or is it another secret punishment for yourself. Like the one in Estershire."

Dashiell looked around himself threateningly, watching for anyone a little too interested in the tethered mare. Those days the horse was as likely to be someone's meal as it was a purse of coins. He pulled his sleeve down over a pigment birthmark on his right wrist.

"I take it it's a secret then, cause you're not saying anything." Said Dash. He focused back on Tomas, who was slumping his few belongings against the mare and sliding them into the pack on its saddle. The Mandrake flowers remained in their hiding place.

"You know you ought to work on lying. It's better to tell someone a lie and appease their curiosity. Just say 'Dash, I've got to perform the eucharist at evening mass.' Now you try." He said.

Tomas tied the pack shut and kept his mouth the same. He looked at Dashiell apologetically and then at the stairs leading to Simonette's. Dash turned and climbed them after a last sweeping study of the Avery crowd. "You think it's going to happen tonight?" He asked.

"Winter Solstice? You should be asking Simonette that question, not me. From what I know there's at least a week before that."

"You were the way you are last year and all your life. I don't know. They say that's an evil night. What do you think?"

"I say God help us." Said Tomas. He smiled. "Now you try."

Simonette's had a dark interior. Windows were considered dangerous in second story architecture. Conell said he liked the lamp light but the truth was he couldn't afford a window. The supplies in that age were expensive with a window that didn't crumble. Besides, as everyone who frequented Simonette's knew, Conell had just made the most lavish purchase of his life in a set of proper, coopered barrels.

"Simonette in?" Tomas asked, and slid his hand along the counter-piece.

"Tomas!" Shouted Conell. He was hard of hearing and often didn't limit the volume of his excitement. "They ain't call it Simonette's for nothing! She's in the back, but she got company." He winked.

Dashiell raised his eyebrows.

"Second room in the hall, on the left?" Asked Tomas.

"Third one today, Preacher." Conell grinned boyishly and re-assembled his collection of already clean mugs, looking busy. A candle flickered on the counter that gave romantic ambience to the unwashed walls.

Tomas walked across the crowded little room to a hall that stretched between the storage chamber and a series of congested bedrooms. At the hall's third door a light was being nursed through imperfections of the wooden frame.

"You just going to go in, without knocking?" Dash asked. "She's with someone." He had lowered his voice.

Tomas made no sound and pressed his ear to the door. The rosary around his neck slipped from behind his collar and clipped lightly against the wood.

"... the green lands were called Gwynedd, a magic forest where there were once faeries and good, strong people who farmed for their families and not for the Church. The only church was Mother Earth, and she asked nothing of her children but provided them with gifts in the form of seasons and flowers. The King of Gwynned was named Math Mathonwy and he lived in a big castle named Caer Dathyl. His companion was a lady named Goewin who loved Math with all of her heart."

"How old is she!" Asked a tiny voice.

"No older than you are, and just as pretty." Said the story teller. "Which was so beautiful that all of the knights in Gwynedd were jealous of Mathonwy, including his nephew Gilvaethwy. Gilvaethwy fell in love with Goewin, but he could not have her because she belonged to Mathonwy. With the help of his brother Gwydion, Gilvaethwy tricked Mathonwy to go to war and when Caer Dathyl was empty, Gilvaethwy stole Goewin and made her his own. She could never again be Mathonwy's because a great piece of her would belong to Gilvaethwy forever.

Mathonwy returned to Caer Dathyl and discovered what the two brothers had done. He struck them with his wand and they became mating deer. For a year they wandered Gwynedd and were not allowed to return. When the year was over, the deer were allowed to return, but Mathonwy remained angry with the brothers. He turned them into mating pigs and forbade them to return to Caer Dathyl for another year. Seasons went by and the brothers arrived as pigs in Caer Dathyl on the anniversary of their transformation. Mathonwy still could not forgive them for what they had done to Goewin, so he turned them into a pair of mating wulves. They could not return to Caer Dathyl until they produced a child for Math, so they remained in the woods for exactly one year and came back to Mathonwy with a newborn pup. 'I will take this child, and his name will be Bleiddwn,' said Math. 'You have both been punished for long enough, and I will turn you back to people.' - so he touched the brothers with his wand and restored them to men. Math then married Goewin to give back her missing honor and peace became the land of Gwynedd. They were all happy for a long time."

"Is Gwynned like the forest outside Caer Gwaun?" Asked the tiny voice.

Tomas rapped on the door with his knuckle and it opened gently with no doorknob to hold it. "Simonette?" He asked, but he knew it was her. The voice of the story teller was lurid and strong. The other women in Baron's Sty were meek and they lacked the academic values to speak their mind.

"That's nice, Tomas. The next time you creep outside my chambers I'll wound you like you were a bandit." She said. "Though what can I do for you, or are you here for some bed-time hisstory?"

There was a creature shivering in the shadows near Simonette. Tomas could see it in the candle's light because it was slicked with its own oily sweat. Wisps of childlike hair threaded down and pressed against its forehead and where there were no blisters on its skin, black patches resulted of bacterial necrosis. Tomas knew at once that it was a victim of Saints' Fire.

"I was here to see you, but if you're busy I can go." He said.

Dashiell was less adjusted to cursed and diseased individuals so he remained outside the door.

"This is Tomas, Ally. He's a priest and he lives for the Christian God." Said Simonette. She ran her hand through the thin straw of the girl's hair.

"How come his friend is hiding?" Asked Ally. She hid her mouth in Simonette's blankets. Bedding covered the rest of her body, and Tomas wondered how much of it the little girl could still use.

"He's shy because he lived in the woods all his life. He'll come in soon. For now, he likes the dark." Said Tomas. He took a step into the candle light. The chamber smelled like feces and rot.

"If you serve God, then he is like Math Mathonwy. Can you turn me back human?" The little girl said. When Tomas stepped closer, she withdrew into the shadow. She did not want him to see her.

The room was simple, unardorned, and small enough that it only fit a single cot. Conell called them bedrooms and by Avery standard that's what they were. In this one an eleven year old girl was dying of Ergotism, the Saints' Fire, a gangrene devourer of flesh that was born in the Caer Gwaun fields and matured faster than any child could grasp that they were not to eat the corn.

Simonette smiled. She had a beautiful smile, like the rest of her, but Tomas could tell that it was forced.

"What ever the other children call you, Ally, your soul remains human." He said. "I'm not like Mathonwy, he's part of a story that Simonette tells, but there's a real God who can perform real miracles. He's watching you right now and he loves you. He wants you to be better, so he sent me here to tell you that everything's going to be good from now on."

Ally stifled and began to cry. She was already glistening but Tomas recognized tears by the marks they made on the quilt.

“Simonette, you brought those things I wanted you to?” He asked. She nodded and took a parchment bundle from the dresser in the corner of the chamber. Her eyes were glacial.

“Dash. Dash.” Tomas said to the door behind him. Dashiell appeared, his face was white and his innocent expression had become something haunted. Tomas was 24, Dashiell was 27, and Simonette was thirty even. The majority of that room, in the hesitation that framed each other’s motions, had reached the consensus of action to follow. They were not children anymore. They did not have the priveledge of naivety.
“Ally, do you know that sometimes God gives us presents in the form of tests. and he gives them especially to people who he knows are strong enough.”

The little girl kept gently sobbing. Tomas looked to Simonette who was staring coldly at the wavering candle. She caught his eyes and stumbled into an invented ramble.

“Goewin was part of a test too, Ally. Do you remember? She was very strong and for her effort, Mathonwy married her and they fell in love.” She said.

“Yes,” said Ally. “I remember.”

“God has asked a test of you, in exchange for a single one of your arms he is going to give you a much bigger heart. You will have the biggest heart of all the little girls in Caer Gwaun, and when you grow up, because you have such beautiful features, knights will stop to look in your eyes and see that you are capable of amazing strength.” Said Tomas. He didn’t like to lie: he had to. A woman missing a limb would never be married and never hold a job.

“O’kay. I get to be Goewin?”

“You get to be Goewin, yeah.” Said Tomas.

Dashiell shuffled until he was against the dresser and out of the circle of light.

“Can you close your eyes for me, now? It will be easy, I promise. God has told me that it’s going to be fast, and you’ll be a lot better when we finish the operation.”
Tomas couldn’t see her eyes, but a confirmed nod came from Simonette, who stepped forward with the bundled instruments. She leaned in.

“You hate blood, Tom. You’re sure? You can back out. We can annoint her.”

“No, she’s going to suffer painfully. Oberon doesn’t have to know. Her left arm is closest to her chest, and if the necrosis spreads, we lose her by heart and lung. I knew a man suffering lung rot and it’s the worst.” Whispered Tomas.

“Thank you.” Simonette said. She looked him in the eyes and he could feel the depth of her emotion. She got this way last time, right before she kissed him. “You actually believe this stuff you’re telling her?”

Dashiell grimaced. He caught one of the words while they whispered. Trafford was always the one to ceremoniously decapitate the corpses.

Tomas held his hand out to accept the instruments. He didn’t answer Simonette, partly because he didn’t know the answer to her question.

“What’s your favorite animal, Ally?” Tomas asked. His voice carried on a flat tone, the medical tone used by clerics when they really didn’t care about their patient’s response. The ‘this is going to be extremely painful’ tone.

"A horse." Ally said.

"Well Dashiell has a horse outside, a wild mare." Tomas said. He looked at Dash and then at the curved knife that Dash used for skinning deer. The scout noticed him studying it and unfastened the belt from his midsection. He tossed the belt and the knife at Tomas.

"Maybe Dash will let you groom her after, when you're better." Said Tomas. He opened Simonette's parcel and spread its contents on the dresser's surface. A long, thin pin, a sturdy piece of rope, a shallow bowl and a pestle.

Tomas held Dash's knife in a pot of hot coals and rummaged in his pockets for the Mandrake flowers. He produced them, pushed them into the bottom of the mortar bowl, and ground them to powder. Simonette was turning Ally's head to the wall. The little girl's face was sweating through black flakes of broken pores.

"Are you feverish, girl? We can take off the blanket. Tomas is going to give you a medicine." Said Simonette. She looked casually at Tomas's concoction.

"No, I want the blanket." Said Ally.

"We have to get at your arm." Tomas told her. "Can you turn on your other side and face where Dashiell is?"

Dash squirmed. He watched Ally position herself beneath the wool layers, light catching the terrible scarring on her jaw. Tomas brought the mortar and the serrated knife to the bed side and navigated around Simonette, who was chewing on her lower lip.

"Ally, sit up. Simonette, hold her shoulders please." Said Tomas. He looked in Ally's eyes and saw their youthful spark still resonating. "This may taste sour, it's from a vegetable. You'll feel very little when we use the knife."

He put the mortar to Ally's lips and opened the contents onto her tongue. She swallowed the paste and looked at Tomas resolutely, determined not to cough.

"Do you know this man?" Said Tomas. He produced a crucifix with the figure of Jesus Christ lain in bronze upon its wooden cross. Ally looked at the sobering torture of God's son and shook her head.

"This is Jesus the Christ, Son of God, who has given his life so that our Sins are forgiven in the eyes of our Father. If you can, try to meet his kind eyes for as long as you are capable."

Simonette flinched. Her long brown hair was veiling her forehead. She studied Tomas as he drew the cruficix back and forth in front of Ally, allowing her to follow the Jesus figure with her eyes. When her vision drooped and the little girl fell back against the blanket, Tomas gave the nod to Dashiell that they were going to begin severing. He tied the belt around Ally's tiny arm and pulled the clasp tight to stop the circulation.

"Keep a firm grip on her shoulders if you can, Simm."

She nodded.

The serrated blade tore into the young flesh of Ally's arm midway between her elbow and her shoulder. A clean wash of blood spilled out of the wound, deep as rutabaga purple and thick with life. Tomas continued solid butcher motions of the knife until he was through her gentle muscle and sawing into bone. For a long while the girl did not respond.

"Her mouth, Tomas! She'll choke!" Shouted Simonette.

"Turn her!" He cried.

Ally's lips were quivering and the peachy skin on her throat had gone a vibrant red. Tomas could see that it was swelling. Her eyes were wide and frightened and their pupils had become the size of poppy seeds. A series of dry grunts escaped through the girl's vocal column.

"Tom, she's frightened to death!" Yelled Simonette.

"Hold her down! Dash!" Tomas shouted. His fingers went white against the gangrene limb as they pressed into the bedding for stability.

"Tomas?" Simonette was halfway out the bedroom door,

"Yes!" The knife made brittle grinding noises.

"This is poison. She's poisoned. How much did you give her and what of?"
Blood spilled and soaked through the thin matting, creating a dark pool on the floor and creeping along the crude boards. A man was yelling in the house beneath Simonette's that was currently a potter's studio.

"It's Mandrake. Muscle restraint. Gave her enough to have her sleep while we finished."

"Oh, you—" Simonette said, but she disappeared into the hallway and her words went unheard. Dashiell leapt onto the bed and took Simonette's place at Ally's shoulders. The little girl, who was black from her collarbone and up the side of her exposed face, was rattling violently against his grip. Her throat swelled in little red flower shapes until rosy lumps reached to her ears and under her chin. The effect on her respiratory passage was an audible hissing panic.

"Mandrake is a nightshade!" Simonette shouted, announcing her return to the tiny bedroom. She carried a pitcher of water that sloshed messily with herdistressful movements. "It's properties are poisonous. She needs water."

"And if we don't stop this wound she will have no blood, so help me finish. Dash, I need your strength."

Dashiell took the knife and Tomas moved his hands to Ally's shoulders. The force of her convulsions caused her afflicted shoulder to thrash and the knife to slip into a new, deep wound in the infected portion of the little girl's forearm.

"Stop, Dash." Said Tomas, quickly.

"I know." He said. "We need to clean the knife!" He looked at Simonette and she stared back with intensity. Dashiell went to the dresser with the knife, leaving trails of bad blood on the woodwork. Simonette took his place on the bed and oriented herself so her face was directly above Ally's.

"It's going to be alright, girl. You get to be Goewen." She said, taking the pitcher and angling a trickle of water into Ally's mouth. The girl's arm was whipping about. There came a loud crack when her wild motions caused the fraying bone to splinter and the appendage was left to hang by flesh. Tomas took his hand from Ally's shoulder and pinched the severed artery. In absense of the blade, he grabbed and tugged the wrist of the lifeless arm, breaking it forcefully at the strand of the remaining tissue. With water on her tongue and down her throat, Ally was able to release an operatic shriek and she began crying. Tomas believed he would do the same in her position.

"Now the poison. Tomas. Tomas, I can do that." Said Simonette. She indicated the wrapping of the wounded shoulder. They swapped places and the rotting forearm was dropped to the floor where it was kicked into the corner by the commotion. "Where is the *uisce (whiskey)?" She asked frantically.

"With Dash's mare." Said Tomas.

"On Avery?"

"Yeah, we need it. We'll go." He said. He could tell that Dash was looking for an excuse to leave the littered bedroom and he knew enough of Simonette to believe in her skill with medicine. Ally wailed against the poison in her throat and dug her tiny, remaining fingernails into the matting of the cot.

Simm nodded, her hair in her eyes. "Go," she said. "And bring enough back for me. Goodness knows I'll need some too!"

They left her in the room and returned through Conell's crooked tavern to the stairs that faced the street. Dash descended two steps at a time until he was down on Avery, feet stirring up a cloud of dust.

"Why'd you give the girl poison, Tom? Bloody!" He shouted to the priest behind him.

"I-... Mare's gone?" Asked Tom.

"Yes!" Dash exclaimed. "God damned robbers I was only gone two lamb-shakes! Where's my cutter?"

"... in the girl's arm, Dashiell. You're going to hunt this one?" Tomas was serene.
"Yeah, by axe." He said, eyes gleaming. His head spun wild in the direction of nearby alleys.

Avery was settling down for the night, sundown showing orange halos over roofs and treetops. The street crowd contained lazy beggars, some dead and appearing asleep against street-side walls with their bottoms in defacated puddles. Men who made coin in theft and trade were easy to spot. Their eyes were peeled back to reveal a daily struggle and the nervous necessity of the evening's bread and wine. They often took the smaller things: hair ribbons, canteens, and horse-shoes. A full grown horse was a trotting jackpot, and any man's meal ticket for a fortnight.

"You had furs, a canteen, what else?" Asked Dash.

"Uisce, flour." Said Tomas. "A scripture, ink and quill, some coin but only spare."

Dashiell darted into the alley and out of sight, furs bouncing like a sinister porcupine across his shoulders. Tomas didn't expect to see the horse back. She was wrangled for use as the militia's scout lead, a position for only the lightest and flightiest of beasts.

When he looked back at Simonette's, its namesake maiden was propped against the door's frame in a tangle.

"Simm."

"She's dead I think, I don't know how to tell. I can't feel a heartbeat and her eyes are like glass. You killed her, Tomas, with that Mandrake."

She looked at him in expectation of a reaction but Tomas's face was only weary.

"I thought you knew. If there is a piece of God in you then you should have known, or he should have. Those flowers grow everywhere."

"What do you want me to say, Simm? The church doesn't perform Charlatan miracles! I tried to help, she has my blessing. I will pray that her soul joins heaven. I have to talk with Oberon. Your father hasn't paid his taxes. You know we need the tithe, yes?"

"Need the tithe! Can you think of anything else but clerical cattle-shit, Tomas? Sometimes I think I don't know who you are with all this. Ally just died. My blankets are still warm with the blood you cut out of her. I don't— you know what, don't talk to me. Don't come around. If Oberon wants to overstuff his tithe-barn with my tattered family wealth he can light a fire at my door himself!"

She looked down the stair to where he stood coolly among the fluid crowds. Tomas had never seen her such a mess. Circles were starting under her pretty brown eyes and her hair appeared wiry. There was no usual shine on her lips that seemed in the light to be showing a frown of age.

"I suggest you burn the quilts, Simonette." He told her.

She looked savagely down her nose before disappearing back into the tavern. The door was shut behind her.

Tomas stood alone at the border of the Baron's Sty. He thought he heard Dash's voice among the long shadows and the street denizens but the only squabble was a man whose purse was looted by a young boy. The boy was being forced against the bakery shutters by his arm and his day's work taken righteously by Avery vigilantes.

Tomas contemplated the use of the remaining Mandrake petals, wanting to crumble them into Oberon's communion chalice. The last light of day found him walking off toward the diocese. He wouldn't play with the children in the bog that night. "Thou shall not kill", he thought.

PREVIOUS