Work Text:
Home
The autumn rains came early, along with an unusually chill wind down the mountains. Campione stood in the doorway, studying the misty hillside as the rain poured over the eaves. He coughed, that hacking cough that had never really gone away since the night he first came to her door, wet and miserable.
“I wonder,” he said, once he regained his breath, “if perhaps we should spend this winter at my house, on the other side of the island.”
His house?
Of course she understood that he had to have come from somewhere. The clothes he had been wearing when he showed up on her doorstep, though filthy and tattered, were well crafted, of good fabric. The books, the knives – all these things spoke of a finer life somewhere, before her and her goats and her village. And he was thin, so thin, despite all the cheese and eggs, butter and milk, bread and meat and honey continuously pressed upon them by grateful neighbors. And yet –
His house, his world, whatever that world was before he became a part of hers. That world, and whoever belonged to the name he still sighed sometimes in his sleep. Would he still -
He coughed again, hawking wet phlegm out into the dooryard. The chickens fluttered away, squawking.
“We’ll need to borrow a cart, and a driver to bring it back," Sofia said. " I’ll ask Anselmo to lend us one of his sons."
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Campione kept asking, but donkeys will only go as fast as they will go.
Campione kept craning his neck, scanning the hillsides, thrumming his fingers on the wooden seat, impatient as a child. Finally something must have inspired the donkeys, for they picked up their pace, madly careening around a curve, nearly running over a boy and a flock of goats.
"You idiot!" Campione started, but then, "Niko! Is that you?" he gasped. To Sofia's amazement the boy stared a moment, and cried then out, "Lord Alec! You've come back!" (Lord Alec?)
"I have indeed," Campione replied. "Now, I want you to run up to the house and tell Marina we are on our way. Have her light the fires in every room, and heat up some wine. And supper! Fish, with fennel and garlic and dill, the way she always makes it. I've missed it. Greens if she has any. No goat. Anything but goat."
"Marina's dead, but Nedra has been keeping care of the house. I'll go tell her. I'm not sure if she has any fish, or fennel. I'll ask." Waving his stick, he and the goats dashed down the road.
Campione looked at Sofia and shrugged. "He used to be much smaller. And so did the goats."
While Campione slept, Sofia explored, tiptoeing through the house like a thief.
Exquisite wall hangings, bronze figurines, tableware and glassware more delicate than anything she had ever seen. One bare-floored room was completely empty except for wooden chests containing swords and knives, carefully wrapped in oilcloth, the scent of clove oil lingering like a memory. She was surprised, never having imagined Campione as devoted to swordplay, but clearly, there was much about him that she did not know.
And books – so many books! Gold-stamped leather bindings, marbled endpapers, embroidered silk page markers. Some of the books consisted mostly of beautifully detailed illustrations: odd machines, mysterious animals and birds, elaborately dressed men and women. Others were words only, incomprehensible to her – Campione’s native language. The books were not enshrined in a single room but strewn all over the house, overflowing the bookcases, stacked on the floor next to a cushioned chair by the fireside, lying face-down on a bedside table, all of them seeming to be suspended in time, waiting. How could he have borne to leave all this? But then, remembering his bitter grief, she understood that it was not his possessions that had held him to the white house above the sea.
She didn’t want to gossip, she really didn’t, but it was so hard on those long rainy afternoons not to sit in the kitchen, drinking mint tea while Nedra kneaded bread and shelled dried peas.
“We had never seen anything like them. Of course, men loving men was no surprise to us." (Sofia nodded, trying to look wise. A man's name, then. Reechard.). "But the money they spent! It flowed like rain, a blessing to our village, so we could overlook their quirks. They always went to bed early and got up late. The Master practiced the sword for hours each day, while Lord Alec read or studied the bees or the weather or played card games by himself."
"I did not even realize the Master was blind for the longest time, " she laughed. (Blind?) They had no visitors, except for the little girl, Lord Alec's daughter (Daughter?). What a little monkey she was! Lord Alec pretended to be distant, but oh, the Master adored her, and you could see the little secret smile on Lord Alec's face when he watched them together.
They were easy to work for, once we got used to Lord Alec's temper. When he cursed us, we just pretended not to understand until he was over it. He never held his anger long; the Master could ease him out of it soon enough. When we heard them laughing we knew it was safe to come out again. Though..." she glanced sideways at Sofia, "there are some who say they heard he killed a man in his country, a rival for the throne, beat him to death with a bronze hammer, but it's ridiculous, the kinds of stories people make up." (Breathe, just breathe, Sofia tells herself.)
“When the Master died, we feared Lord Alec would go mad. How he howled in his grief! Hacked out chunks of his hair, tore at his arms until they bled. We put a chest in front of the door to the Master's sword room, we were that afraid, and Marina had us block off the path down to the sea with thorn-tree branches, so he couldn't follow him there. After a few weeks he seemed calmer, though he hardly ate, and cared not a bit for his bees and their new honey. Then one morning he was gone. Joachim and Tito tracked him up into the hills, but then they lost him.
We were not really surprised when he ran away; this house was too full of memories. People would tell us whenever they got word of his whereabouts, so we knew that he had not died in a ditch somewhere. When we heard that he had taken up with the healer woman on the other side of the island, and married her, we were relieved. But we kept his house ready, for when he would come home."
Even in the autumn and winter she could see that the gardens were beautiful. Lavender and rosemary, myrtle and rue and artemisia. The hillside above was awash with wild red thyme. And at the edge of the garden overlooking the sea, a cairn of stone.
She found him there one day, in the springtime, leaning on his stick; the first day it was warm enough for him to venture outside. The cairn was dotted with little white anemones, windflowers they were called; early-waking bees droned nearby. The sun on the sea dazzled her eyes. She tucked her arm into his, resting her head on his shoulder.
"I wonder," he said, taking her hand; his hands were as beautiful as ever, but fragile now, an old man's hands. (He is not an old man, he is not, he is not.) "I wonder if we should go back now, to my city across the sea. There is nothing to hold us here, and I should like to die at - "
"No," she said, taking his hand, spreading his fingers across her belly. "No, you are not going to die. I won't let you speak of such things," (But yes, you know that he is.) "but perhaps your son should be born in the land of his fathers."
"My son?" he whispered, wonder in his voice. "My son. Yes. Take us home, Sofia."