Chapter 11: Mara’s Call

Frankie

The river came through town carrying half a fence and somebody’s pig. The pig looked offended. I sympathized. I had just paid to repair the bridge.

By noon, the lower street was under water. By one, the church was taking families in. By two, a merchant named Pell arrived at the tavern to complain that Aldric had stolen his property.

“What property?” I asked.

“Two bond servants.”

Mara stopped writing.

Pell put a document on my desk.

“Nessa and Jory. They abandoned my warehouse in the middle of an emergency. I demand their return.”

“Where’s the warehouse?”

He named a building beside the river.

“That the one currently becoming a boat?”

“It contains valuable stock.”

Mara stood.

“How old is Jory?”

Pell glanced at her, then at me.

“She asked you a question.”

“Sixteen.”

Mara took her coat off the peg.

“We’ll need Hobb.”

“For Pell?”

“For the warehouse.”

I called for Hobb.

* * *

Nessa met us on the church steps with wet hair plastered to her face. Jory sat behind her, wrapped in a blanket. One foot had swollen to the size of a ham.

Aldric stood between them and the street. He saw me coming and got that look.

Apparently we were having an argument. Nice of him to start without me.

“They will not be returned,” he said.

“Morning to you too, Al.”

“Their master locked the storehouse while the water rose.”

Pell protested that the door was secured against thieves.

“Were they inside?” I asked.

“They had inventory duties, yes, but—”

“Try answering without that word.”

Mara knelt beside Jory.

“Who is still there?”

Nessa’s face changed.

“Della went back for her bedding. Old Tem was on the loft.”

“You left others?” Aldric asked.

“We told your man,” Nessa said. “The one carrying blankets.”

Aldric turned toward the nave. Three volunteers were moving injured people among the pews. One had blood on both sleeves.

Three men doing six men’s work. Somebody had been missed.

Mara stood. “The front stairs will be flooded. There is a loading door above the millrace. We need a cart, ladders, and rope.”

Pell began explaining that the loading door was private.

Hobb looked at him.

Pell stopped explaining.

“You got healing left?” I asked Aldric.

“Some.”

“Then come on. We can argue after nobody’s drowning.”

He came.

* * *

Mara knew which alley stayed high. She knew which wall hid a stair. She knew that the woman with the blue shutters had a ladder because her husband repaired roofs, and she called through the window using the woman’s name instead of my title.

We had the ladder before I finished explaining we needed it.

“You been here before?” I asked.

“Servants deliver things. People don’t always notice.”

At the warehouse, Hobb waded into water up to his chest and braced the ladder against the upper loading door.

Pell’s key did not fit. While he suggested we try the main entrance, Hobb broke the lock with one blow.

Worth every crown, whatever a crown was worth.

Inside, sacks floated against the rafters. An old man clung to a beam above them. A woman crouched on a shelf with a bundle hugged against her chest.

“Della,” Mara called. “Pass it to me.”

“It’s everything I have.”

“I know. Pass it.”

The woman did.

It weighed almost nothing.

I held the ladder while Aldric climbed to the beam. Hobb anchored the rope. Mara talked Della across a narrow plank one step at a time, telling her where to put each foot.

Halfway across, the shelf shifted. Della screamed, and Mara grabbed her wrist. Her wounded leg buckled as she took the weight.

I caught Mara around the waist before both went over.

My shoes slid. Mara’s belt cut into my hand.

One more inch and the river could have all three of us.

Then Hobb hauled the rope, and we came back hard against the doorframe.

Mara made a sharp sound through her teeth.

“Leg?” I asked.

“Still attached.”

“Good standard.”

She shoved Della’s bundle at me.

“Keep that dry.”

So I did.

* * *

Pell met us on higher ground with the expression of a man whose property had been rescued in the wrong order.

“The grain,” he said.

I handed Della her bundle.

“Is wet.”

“You could have saved the east loft.”

Aldric stepped toward him.

I stepped between them.

“We still got a town full of people to move. Pick a better time to become a martyr.”

Pell clutched his papers.

“The contracts remain valid.”

“Let me see them,” Mara said.

He looked past her. That was becoming a habit.

“Governor.”

Mara sat on a dry crate and stretched her wounded leg in front of her. She untied the packet and read the first two pages, then a receipt tucked between them.

She turned to Nessa. “He charges you for the loft?”

“And food.”

“Even when there isn’t food?”

Nessa nodded.

“That is customary,” Pell said.

“Not under this agreement.” Mara held up the receipt. “Board is his part of the bond. These charges extend a debt by counting his own obligation as another loan.”

Pell took a step toward her.

Hobb took one too.

“She is not qualified to adjudicate,” Pell said.

“She’s qualified to read,” I said.

“This concerns livelihoods.”

“Yeah. Theirs.”

Aldric stood beside the rescued workers. “No debt justifies ownership.”

“Fine principle,” I said. “You gonna settle every bond in the valley this afternoon?”

“Would you prefer to preserve them?”

I had an answer ready until I looked at Mara. She was studying the documents with the fierce concentration she’d used to move Della across the plank.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Everybody turned toward her.

“Me?”

“You know the contracts. You know these people. What’s fair?”

Pell began objecting.

I held up a hand.

“Her call.”

Mara drew the first account toward her and began.

The false charges would be removed. The original advances would be counted against work already performed at the ordinary local rate. Nessa’s debt had been paid seven months ago. Jory’s had been paid in spring. Pell owed them the difference.

The other workers’ accounts would be reviewed the same way.

“You will ruin me,” Pell said.

Mara didn’t raise her voice.

“You collected the money. You can return it.”

I put my seal beneath her decision.

The crowd started cheering. Mara held up the papers.

“They need their money, not applause.”

That quieted things down.

Pell asked how he was supposed to pay with his stock underwater.

Finally. A question that wasn’t about getting his slaves back.

Mara asked what had been stored on the upper shelves. Soap, lamp oil, two bolts of wool. Goods the town needed immediately. She arranged for Hobb and the carters to recover them once the water fell, with the sale receipts held against the unpaid wages.

“The workers can help with the salvage,” Pell said.

“If you hire them,” she said. “And if they agree.”

Nessa shook her head before anyone could ask.

“I’m going to my sister.”

Pell looked surprised.

Apparently the woman had a sister. Imagine that. A whole life when she wasn’t carrying his sacks.

Jory wanted to stay, provided he could sleep somewhere with a door that opened from the inside. Della asked whether the tavern needed laundry done. Old Tem said he intended to spend one entire day doing absolutely nothing.

Mara wrote it all down.

I’d been figuring where I could put them. Della in the laundry. Jory making deliveries. Work for Old Tem once he’d had his day off.

Nessa was still talking about her sister.

I shut up and let Mara finish.

Aldric watched me do it.

He said nothing.

I preferred that to most of the things he usually said.

* * *

By evening, the water had stopped rising.

The tavern smelled of wet wool and soup. The church had the injured. We had everybody else, including a pig someone had tied beneath the stairs.

It was still offended.

Mara sat at the back table with a clean bandage and three more sets of accounts.

I put a paper beside her.

“What’s this?”

“Your release. Signed and sealed. Nobody can sell you or call in that debt again.”

She read it twice.

“Why today?”

“Because I been saying you’re free while I got a paper that says different.”

“You realized that today?”

“Watching you with Pell.”

She touched the seal.

“You said I belonged to nobody in your room.”

“Oughta apply outside it.”

I put a second paper down.

Wages. Her own room. Permission to go through the books and hear complaints.

Considering who most of the complaints would be about, I was probably gonna regret that part.

“I still need somebody to keep these books straight,” I said.

“Someone must.”

She folded the release carefully and tucked it inside her bodice. After reading the offer, she signed it.

“Your offer is low.”

“Your handwriting’s beautiful.”

“Then it will cost extra.”

I laughed.

She smiled, then looked down at the papers like I hadn’t caught her. For a second, I forgot every other person in the room.

Then the pig knocked something over.

Son of a bitch. We’d been having a moment.

A business moment. About wages.

* * *

Aldric came after supper to see whether anyone needed treatment.

Rosella fed him again.

One of these days I was sending God a bill.

He sat across from me after the last patient left.

“You trusted her judgment.”

“She knew what she was doing.”

“Many men with authority would have needed to make the decision themselves.”

“Many men with authority are idiots.”

He almost smiled.

“There is a place for men who can learn that,” he said. “In service to something better.”

“Here we go.”

“Instruction. Restitution. An oath freely sworn. Baptism, if you would receive it.”

“Already baptized.”

He looked at me.

“You are?”

“Saint Anthony’s. My mother would’ve had the priest chase me through Chicago otherwise.”

“You know the obligations?”

“More or less.”

“And confession?”

“We had that too.”

He folded his hands.

I waited for him to explain how our church was wrong because the statues had the wrong ears.

He didn’t.

“Then you know better.”

He reached for his gloves. One had split across the palm during the rescue.

“Your oath cover all that?” I asked. “Going into rivers. Fixing idiots afterward.”

“It names duties. It cannot name every river.”

“What duties?”

He laid the torn glove beside his cup.

“I shall defend the innocent committed to my keeping. I shall not knowingly deliver them to death. I shall not purchase my safety with their lives.”

“Pretty particular about that.”

“So were the men who swore it first.”

“And if you break it?”

“The light fails. The vows must be renewed through service and restitution.”

“Even if you got a good reason?”

“A captain of our order once handed a prisoner to a mob. An innocent man. He believed the mob would burn the village if he refused.”

“Did they?”

“They hanged the prisoner and went home.”

I waited.

“The captain’s sword went dark in his hand.”

“So he saved a village and lost his job.”

“He had sworn to protect the man.”

“And what would you have done?”

“I hope I would have found another way.”

“Hope don’t stop a mob.”

“No.”

He picked up the glove.

“I was younger when I swore. I thought courage would always make the right course plain.”

“And now?”

“Now I know to be afraid when it seems too plain.”

He went to ask Rosella for a needle.

I stayed with my drink.

Then you know better.

Four words, and somehow he still managed to hit the same place.