Mortal Heart

“It took them forever to reach it, with the rain and the mud, and the lady having to stop every few minutes and wait for the pain to pass. It was like someone had wrapped iron bands around her stomach and was squeezing. She dropped to her knees in the mud twice due to the pain.



“But she refused to have her baby—even a bastard babe—in the mud, so she pressed on, using her poor, near hysterical maid as a crutch.



“The herbwife—” Here the abbess pauses, a faint smile playing on her lips. “She seemed to be expecting them and opened her door as they drew near. The fire had already been built up, and clean sheets put on the single narrow bed in the one-room cottage. Drying herbs hung from the ceiling, so low the lady had to duck in places.



“The pains were coming much more quickly then, so quick she could scarce catch her breath. Before she could even lie down, there was a great gushing and water ran down her leg. She thought she would die from embarrassment, but that feeling quickly dissolved in the next squeeze that gripped her belly.



“The herbwife and the maid helped the lady onto the bed, and the next hours narrowed into an endless blur of pain and sweat. She could not help but scream, as she feared the pains would rend her in two—punishment, no doubt, for the sins she had committed.



“You arrived in the world after one last anguished push.” She smiles again and glances up at me with such fondness, such tenderness, that I am struck dumb. “As the herbwife wrapped you tightly in swaddling, the lady’s maid cleaned up her mistress as best she could, and then you were placed in her arms. You were perfect even then.”



“How can you know all this?” I whisper.



She lifts her gaze to meet mine. “Have you not yet guessed, Annith? You are my own flesh and blood, born of my body. Every sin I have committed, every rule I have broken, every girl you feel I have betrayed in some way—it has all been done out of my love for you, for you are my own daughter.”



The sheer audacity of her claim presses down on my chest, making it hard to draw breath. My mind scrambles to fit this new revelation into all that I know of the world. If I am sired by Mortain, can the abbess also be sired by Him? Surely He would not lie with His own daughter? “So you lied to the convent? You are not sired by Mortain?” The enormity of this is such that I can scarce wrap my mind around it.



The abbess stares at me, her eyes more human than I have ever seen them, and there is genuine sympathy there. It is all I can do not to place my hands over my ears, and something cold and slippery slithers in my belly.



“No, Annith. I am not.” She takes a step closer, and although I long to back away from her, the wall is already behind me and I have nowhere to go. “And neither are you.”



Chapter Thirty-Eight



MY WORLD SHATTERS into a thousand pieces, each one of them as sharp as glass. Each one of them slicing me from the mooring that has anchored me my entire life.



I am not one of Mortain’s own, not His daughter, not His handmaiden. I am nothing to Him. Nothing. My chest grows tighter and tighter, as if the god Himself is wringing the very air from my lungs until I can scarcely breathe. “You are lying,” I say, but my voice is weak, my words a feeble attempt to fend off an opponent’s mortal blow. “You are simply saying that to taint me with your sins, in the hope that I will fear whatever punishment heaped on you will also fall upon me. You, not me, have deceived everyone into believing you were sired by Mortain.” A hot bitterness fills my belly and I fear I will be sick.



She ignores my outburst and continues with her story. “All my anger and outrage at my circumstances disappeared in that moment, for whatever else I had endured, it had brought me you. My feeling of euphoria lasted but an hour before worries of what we would do, how we would survive in this world on our own with no family to support us and no friends willing to take us in. I even asked if I could apprentice to the herbwife in exchange for my keep—and yours—but she laughed and said she could scarce scratch out a living on her own.



“So all that long night, as I held you and you dozed and suckled at my breast, I tried to think of a way we could be together and have some life that did not involve begging or selling ourselves to the highest bidder. Since you were a bastard—a mistake—I could have taken you to one of Saint Salonius’s orphanages, but they would not have allowed me to stay, so I would never have seen you again. Or I could have found work at a brothel or tavern, but who would hire a woman with a babe for such work?



“And then I remembered my youngest sister, who had been sent away to a convent when she was thirteen, a convent that took in young girls and trained them for service. So in the morning, when some sleep had returned my wits, the herbwife asked me who the father was, and I told her Mortain, and began to lay the foundation for my great lie.”



“And she believed you?”



“She did, for as she explained, Mortain brought many daughters into this world, and I must be especially favored if I was allowed to live to raise mine.



“But while that meant the convent would take you in, it would not gain me entrance, except mayhap as a wet nurse for the first few months of your life. So I plotted some more, and by the end of the week, I had a plan firmly in place. It was not without its costs, and they were high, but it was the best I could salvage from the wreckage of my life, and so I committed to it with every fiber of my being and vowed to make it work.



“I told the herbwife I would accompany her to the hedge priest who would see that you were delivered to the convent, which I did. That was the hardest part, being separated from you for the first few months, but it was so we could be together for the rest of our lives.



“As I stood in the shadow of the church and watched the night rower row you out to the convent, I cried so much I thought I would die from it. The pain of that was far worse than any of the birthing pains.”



“Then what did you do?”



“And then I went to Brest, found work in a respectable tavern for three months, and came up with a convincing story that I could present at the convent when I arrived, a story that I had been sired by Mortain and come late to His service.” She spreads her hands wide in supplication, desperation shining clearly on her face. “Surely now you understand why you cannot speak of this to anyone. While my sins might be the greater, you will suffer as well.”



I cannot think. I cannot even feel. I am empty as a barrel. “What is the punishment for such deceit?” I ask.



The abbess shrugs. “I do not know. I have never heard of anyone who has done it, but perhaps that simply means it was dealt with in silence.”



“And my father? Who is he really?”



“He was charming, and well-titled. His family’s holding bordered ours, so I had known him since I was a young child. I loved him. Or thought I loved him, and I was sure that he loved me too. He came to visit often, either to hunt with my father and his men or to pay court to the ladies of our house.



“I knew that at first he came for my older sister, Marie, but it soon grew obvious—at least to me—that in her fickleness, her attentions turned to another. But he did not see it, or would not accept it. Even now I do not know which it was. But my fair sister had higher ambitions than the neighbor baron. And even still, he thought he had a chance—thought that she was being forced by our parents into a different match.



“He and I talked frequently, either in person or by note. I thought this meant he had turned his attention—and his affection—to me, but he was merely gathering information on the one he truly desired.”



“So he played you false.” I harden my heart against her and what must have seemed a shocking betrayal to her. “What is his name? My family’s name?”



She turns away from me then. “Is it not enough to know that he is not Mortain? What lies between us is old history that I do not wish to resurrect.”



“Tell me.”



She sighs, the sound coming from some great well of despair deep within her. “Crunard,” she says at last. “Your real father is Crunard.”



Chapter Thirty-Nine



AS I LEAVE THE ABBESS’S chambers, I feel as if I have been shrouded in a thick mist that prevents my thoughts from taking shape. It is as if someone has reached inside my chest and yanked my very self from my body. Or as if, with her words, the abbess created one loose thread, which she then used to unravel my entire soul.



I was not fathered by Mortain.



I bear not a single drop of His blood.



I was not born to serve Him, have received none of His gifts. Have, in fact, been an impostor on such a massive scale it is hard, even now, to grasp the fullness of it.



My mother never lay with Death, never welcomed Him into her life, except when she needed a refuge, a safe place to hide from the world. And she has pulled me, unwitting and unwilling, into the duplicity with her.



Even worse, she tried to have me commit patricide. For of all the crimes she has committed, surely that one is the most vile. I could have killed my own father and never even known it.



Of course, that was the abbess’s intent. It is easy enough to see that now, with the benefit of hindsight. One quick strike, and the only person from her past who could expose her secrets would be silenced forever.



Without thinking about it, I find my feet leading me toward the back of the palace, then outside and down two long, winding flights of stairs until I find myself at the door behind which my true father sits, awaiting his judgment.



The lone guard considers asking me what my business is, but when he takes one look at my face, his mouth snaps shut. He, at least, does not yet know I was not sired by Mortain.



There is a single torch outside Crunard’s cell, the light cast by its oily flames feeble against the thick darkness of the dungeon. I move as silently as a shadow to him, then lean back against the wall to watch him unobserved. Although I make no sound, he lifts his head and sees me. Slowly, he straightens, his eyes meeting mine.



“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask.



He tilts his head. “I suspected, which is very different from knowing.”



“Did you suspect from the very beginning, when I first showed up in Guérande?”



“No. Then I knew only that you had been sent to silence me. It wasn’t until we were on the road the next day and I saw you in broad daylight that I noticed the similarities between you and the abbess.”



I hold his gaze, unflinching. “And did you also know then that you were my sire?” I cannot call this stranger father.



His entire body stills. Indeed, it does not look as if he is even breathing. And then something in his face shifts and he smiles, surprising me. “You are my daughter. Well, I had wondered. Your abbess was a virgin when she and I knew each other, and your age seemed about right.”



He stares at me with such a painful mixture of warmth and hope that I cross my arms, as if by that gesture I can ward off his affection. “You will forgive me if I do not greet the news quite as warmly. All my life I have been laboring under the assumption that I was sired by a god. To learn instead that I was sired by one of the kingdom’s greatest traitors brings me little joy.”



He shrugs. “And you will forgive me if I seem overzealous, but I have sat in the dungeons of Guérande for over three months now under the assumption that the very last of my children had been killed. To find that I have another is an unexpected mercy I never dared dream of. Even if she did try to kill me.”



And then it hits me. Not only do I now have a human father—but I once had an entire family. The thought brings a surprising twist of pain with it—that I learned this only after they were all dead is yet one more thing the abbess has stolen from me. “Why did she want you dead?”



The sly look is back on his face before I have finished my question. Clearly, any affection he may feel for his daughter will not be at the expense of his own hide. “To cover up her crimes, of course.”