Page 21 of Bitter Burn
The art underneath my drawing is a copy in a simple frame: Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham has Isaac shoved to the altar, a knife poised to fall on his son, stopped only by the angel grabbing his wrist. Isaac’s mouth is open in a soundless scream, his eyes wild with horror. Because there is no part of Abraham that suggests he wasn’t going to do the unthinkable and call it blessed and right to do so.
I think of what Tristan told me before I came here and close my eyes. Then I shake my head. I’m seeing darkness where there isn’t any, and there is plenty of darkness for the taking as it is.
I move through the large office toward the rest of the apartment, guided only by my memory of the floor plan Mark had in his safe, the floor plan I stole, among many other things, when I left Lyonesse.
Again, my uncle’s taste is evident. Restraint in everything, but of course, the restraint is purely to highlight the utter spaciousness of the residence, the restored plaster, the centuries-old art pressed into the ceiling itself. You do not need to crowd your rooms with furniture to show your wealth and taste when they are rooms like these.
A dim light at the end of the hallway and a voice: prayer in a swaying Irish lilt. I reach the bedroom door—it is open enough for me to slip inside, which is ideal, since my uncle would never keep a door well oiled, for the same reason he would never sleep in a fully carpeted house, and then I’m standing behind him as he prays a chaplet at his prie-dieu. He’s only in a collar and a jacket now, not his simar yet, although he’s wearing his pectoral cross and his ecclesiastical ring. The sapphire glints in the light from the small candle he has lit nearby.
He finishes praying St. Faustina’s closing prayer—for Jesus is our Hope: through His merciful Heart, as through an open gate, we pass through to Heaven—and without turning says, “Very good, Isolde. Now how did I know you were coming?”
“Two cameras in the courtyard, one in the stairwell,” I say, expecting the question. “A motion sensor in the office.”
“If not for those precautions, it would have been very well done. I didn’t hear a thing.” He crosses himself and stands, turns to face me. He smiles, my mother’s smile, the smile of the grandparents I barely knew, and then beckons me forward into a hug.
I allow this, and I even embrace him in return, pressing my face down into his shoulder and smelling the smells of Rome. Incense and sunshine.
“I’m glad to see you, child. It’s not your custom to disappear after you’ve been given a mission. I was worried that Mark had hurt you. Trapped you somewhere.”
There’s no sense in wondering why, if he’d thought this, he hadn’t tried to send help. That’s not how things are done—if a saint falls, then they are a martyr and a new voice in heaven to intercede for the saints below. The will of God is a greater imperative than a single life, even if that single life is your niece.
I remember Mark’s note at Morois, the stark brevity of the first line. Your uncle is the head of Ys, and he is using the saints for Ys’s ends now, not God’s.
And then his warning to Tristan last night, that my uncle wanted me dead, that even now, my fellow saints have been ordered to kill me. I have been declared an apostate.
I laughed when Tristan told me, felt like Mark was a boy telling scarier and scarier stories to frighten the girls on the playground.
Mortimer, the head of Ys?
Mortimer, kill me?
I pull back and say, “There was a struggle, All Saints’ Eve. I had my knife to Mark’s throat and nearly killed him, but I was stopped.” I don’t mention that I stopped myself. “I had no choice but to run afterward. I’ve been hiding in England with Tristan Thomas.”
His brows, a mix of red and silver, pull together. “The bodyguard?”
“Yes.”
He searches my face. “Tell me that you have not been foolish. Tell me that you have not been weak.”
I bow my head against the hand holding my chin. “I’m sorry, Uncle. It was not…planned.”
He examines me a moment more, then fully releases me to go sit in a chair in the corner. Blue-gray light is leaking deeper and deeper into the room now. “So you have tried to kill Mark and failed. It seems likely that you have committed adultery and run away with your lover. You have hidden all these weeks from both Mark and me, and now you have reappeared. Why, Isolde?”
His voice is brisker than it usually is with me. The briskness of a man with another meeting on the books, a man ready to have something over and dealt with.
It stings, that briskness. Funny that it should sting after Mark’s note, his warning delivered through Tristan, but somehow it does.
“When I heard the Holy Father had died, I knew I needed to find you and see if you required me.” I must be careful here—but not so careful that what I’m not revealing is just as apparent. “And Mark found Tristan. He says all will be forgiven if I come home.”
“All will be forgiven…such as your attempted murder of him?”
This requires no artifice, no care at all. It’s the whole, unvarnished truth. “I’m almost certain my husband sees a knife at his throat as a novel way to flirt.”
Mortimer’s mouth flashes down into a frown of distaste and then levels out again. “But he could certainly never trust you as he has before. You’ve lost any chance of an easy kill.”
It’s been years since I’ve fidgeted when speaking in front of him, but now I’m struggling to stay still. I’m asking for too much at once. I’m betting chips I don’t even have. On the heels of failure and adultery, I will not be granted anything so uncomplicated as blanket permission to do what I need to do.
Tristan knew this. He begged me not to come this morning, thought it was beyond dangerous. But I had to. I had to have a moment alone with my uncle so I could look at his face and see for myself if any of what Mark claims could be true.
