The Nobodies Album (19 page)

“Octavia,” she says. “It’s Chloe. I was just wondering—did you get Milo’s text?”

It takes me a minute. “No,” I say. “I don’t even know how to read text messages on my phone.”

Chloe laughs. “See, that’s what I told him. You’re lucky I’m around. I mean, not that you’re not totally-I’m-sure tech-savvy, but texting is kind of a generational thing.”

“Right,” I say. “So … what did it say? Is everything okay?”

“Oh, everything’s fine. Well, you know, not fine, but not worse than yesterday. I think he just said that you should come over to Roland’s for dinner if you want to. We’re just ordering some takeout.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Yes, I’ll come. Can you tell me the address again?”

She does, and I repeat it. “Lia will be glad you’re coming,” she says. “She was just talking about you.”

“Really?” I say.

“Mm-hmm. She asked me what Uncle Milo’s mommy’s favorite color is.”

I look around me: rust-colored taillights, red and green neon, black-denim sky. And I think of Lia as she looked when I met her, violet dress, auburn eyes. “Purple,” I say. “Tell her it’s purple.”

“She’ll like that,” Chloe says. “That’s her favorite, too.”

We hang up, and as I start to look for a cab, I’m thinking about time-lapse video and the way that it can reveal the aging of a flower from bloom to wilt or turn a dotted procession of headlights into an unbroken white line. Imperceptible movements made visible; the sum of our progress revealed. I think of the furrow my footsteps have made upon the earth, my life’s passage written as a single continuous crease, and I wonder what obeisance I can make, what prayer I can offer, to keep that line moving in this direction, on and on, until my time is through.

From the Jacket Copy for
SANGUINE
By Octavia Frost

(Farraday Books, 1997)

M
atilda, a young widow in sixteenth-century England, supports herself and her son, Hugo, through her work as an “empiric” lay healer. Her skill at bloodletting and delivering babies has made her an indispensable member of her community. But now, as more and more female healers and midwives are charged with witchcraft, Matilda reluctantly puts away her lancet and her herbs. Until Hugo falls ill.

A novel about redemption, maternal responsibility, and that vital substance that flows through our veins,
Sanguine
is a poignant and gripping achievement.

Excerpt from
SANGUINE
By Octavia Frost
ORIGINAL ENDING

On the tenth day of June in the year of our Lord 1572, I was taken to the Court of Assizes held at Chelmsford for the County of Essex, before Sir Edward Saunders, Lord Chief Baron of His Majesty’s Court of Exchequer. When I was called to the Bar, I proclaimed to all assembled that I wished to plead not guilty, whereupon the jury heard the details of the Crown’s evidence, as shown in my examination before the Justice of the Peace in the Quarter Session in my own town of Maldon.

The jury—fine men all, I’m sure—heard how Sarah Baker had come into my house carrying a basket of eggs and found me kneeling beside Hugo’s bed, my hands splashed with blood. (No matter that he had been cold and melancholic a half hour before, and that bleeding him was the only way to release the evil black bile. No matter that any physician or barber would have done the same.) They heard that I had been present at the birth of Sarah Pilly’s baby, and that the girl had been born blue and still, and again that I had been with Beatrice Spynk at the birth of her son, which child is now a drooling idiot who spends his days tied to a pew in the church in the hope that the divine words of the Mass will soothe his mad soul. They heard how Margery Carter examined me and found me to have a Devil’s mark in the shape of a crescent moon between the blades of my shoulders. (This I have never seen, but I know it is there because my husband would sometimes put a finger on it and say that it must be good luck to have a wife who carried the moon on her back.)

There seemed to be no end to it all. I keep a frog; I have used love magic to provoke a depraved infatuation in the chaplain Thomas Corker; my son was once heard to say that “Mama can see me even when she’s not looking,” and subsequently I was discovered to have two freckles that appeared as eyes on the back of my neck.

When at last the alleged evidence of my wrongdoing had been presented, the jurors retired with a list of the prisoners whose fate they were to judge. There were sixteen of us, and the jury took only an hour to return with their decrees. I watched as a vicar was ordered to be pilloried for slander and a peddler was sentenced to hang for stealing birds’ eggs. And then the judge read my name, and one of the jurors—a bony man who I suspect suffers from a harmful excess of phlegm—pronounced me guilty. The judge had me brought forward so that he could look at my face as he told me my lot: death by hanging, for the crime of witchcraft. I shall be executed tomorrow week.

•  •  •

In the gaol, as I starve and freeze, I have much time to reflect upon my various crimes and to ready myself for my reckoning. I am kept with the other women who are awaiting punishment. We sleep on the floor with the rats and mice, and when the food is brought in, we fall upon it like wild beasts. None of us is above using our fingernails or yanking at someone’s hair to try to get a larger share for ourselves. When villagers pay the turnkey tuppence to come and jeer at us, we take it in turns to stick an arm through the metal grate in the hopes that one of them will pass us a bit of hard bread or an apple gone soft and brown. How many times have I given a penny at church for the Souls in the Hole, thinking it would provide them with something more than this?

Because I am known as a witch, I am given a bit of space. There is one other here who is to be hanged for witchcraft, but as her crime was merely attempting to learn the span of the Queen’s life through divination, she is not as feared as I. I am the one who killed harmless babes and sickened my neighbors’ pigs. I am the one who took a lancet to my child’s arm and drained his blood into a basin for Heaven only knows what evil purpose.

My child lives, I tell them. My child lives because of my ministrations, and if I had my herbs and my purgatives, my cautery irons and my urine flask, I could ease all of your ulcers and your hemorrhoids and your apoplexies. But the group of them—thieves and poisoners and heretics—do not want to hear.

When it is dark, though, and the imminence of our souls’ departure weighs heavy on us all, sometimes one or another of them will come to ask my help. Mary Gadge, who murdered her husband barely a month ago, wants me to bewitch the turnkey so that he will fall in love with her and help her to escape. Agatha Nanton, a scold who will soon have her tongue cut out, wishes me to teach her to fly. And Susanna Tabart, a habitual beggar, wants me to wring her neck before the hangman has a chance to.

Aside from that, the only time anyone speaks to me is when the Reverend John Wolton comes to offer comfort and spiritual advice. I’m happy to sit with him and listen to his words about repentance and redemption, but I don’t tell him that my soul is not the thing I worry about. I have made my confessions, though not all of them are the ones he would like to hear, and I trust that my soul will live on, as God wishes. I mourn for my body, splendid companion that it has been, which two days hence will cease its life forever. I mourn for my broken neck and my stilled pulse, for the blood that will no longer flow through my limbs, for the skin that will waste into dust. The vital apparatus of bone and muscle, nerve and humor, is God’s greatest work. And though I am ready for death, I am sorry to leave it behind.

•  •  •

Thoughts of Hugo are, of course, the last in my head before I rest and the first to rouse me when the sun has begun to creep. In my most pitiable moments, I have wept to think that I have orphaned him so wretchedly. Though my sister will keep him and feed him, though his cousins will find room on their pallet that he may lie down and sleep, he will always now be a boy alone. But I cannot dream a way that it might have been different, and if it pleases our Lord that I die so my son may live, I can have no argument. I cannot believe God will punish me, for I have done no more than He asked. This is what mothers are meant to do, the most important job we’re given: we keep our children alive.

•  •  •

The morning of my death, the guards come to get me soon after breakfast. They put me into shackles and take me outside to lead me to the village green. Though they handle me roughly and though I know where we are going, it is a relief to be out of the dark, stinking gaol.

“Not much time left,” one of the guards says to me. “Best be thinking about your crimes and asking God for forgiveness.”

I think of the fevers I have eased and the babies brought safe to this world. If I have committed crimes, they were not crimes in my heart.

My first sight of the gallows sets my blood racing, but I gather my courage and stand tall. A crowd has gathered to watch and, I suppose, to cheer for my demise. But I do not know any of them. For good or ill, my kinfolk and neighbors are far from here. If I am to be jeered and spit upon in my last moments, I suppose I would rather it were done by strangers.

As I climb the steps, I’m thinking of Hugo, his stubborn chin, his hair like a haystack. My boy. I will never see him again. But he lives. My child lives.

The crowd is noisy, but I’m high above them. All the times I have stood in such a throng, standing on my toes so I might see some scoundrel brought low, I never knew how distant we seemed to the poor soul climbing to his judgment. Their shouts and gibes are no more to me than the buzzing of flies. I am apart from them already. I walk on feet that will never again touch the dirt.

The headsman places the rope around my neck. The day is bright, so bright. And I find myself, in a frightened moment, whispering “God forgive me,” though I do not know what guilt I might be confessing.

I breathe in, steady myself on the platform. A cracking noise, an instant of movement. And I feel myself go.

Excerpt from
SANGUINE
By Octavia Frost
REVISED ENDING

The crowd is noisy, but I’m high above them. All the times I have stood in such a throng, standing on my toes so I might see some scoundrel brought low, I never knew how distant we seemed to the poor soul climbing to his judgment. Their shouts and gibes are no more to me than the buzzing of flies. I am apart from them already. I walk on feet that will never again touch the dirt.

The headsman places the rope around my neck. The day is bright, so bright. And I find myself, in a frightened moment, whispering “God forgive me,” though I do not know what guilt I might be confessing.

I breathe in, steady myself on the platform. A cracking noise, an instant of movement. And for a curious moment I find myself back in our little house in Maldon, kneeling by Hugo’s bed. I’ve been bleeding him for what must be a very long time, and I fear the treatment has stopped working. But still I keep at it. I move feverishly; this is my child, and I will get the poisons out of him. I hold my bowl aloft and gently squeeze his flesh until Sarah Baker walks through the door and sees the poor pale babe, lying lifeless on his little cot. She drops the eggs she’s carrying and lets out a woeful cry. “Matilda,” she says, her voice full of fear. “What have you done?”

A cracking noise, an instant of movement. As I feel myself go, sliding out of the sieve of my body, I have a terrible moment of pain and of knowing. I am overcome by my grief and my shock and my guilt, and I fear that God has abandoned me, or that I have abandoned Him.

But it only lasts a moment. For there he is, my Hugo, a figure of light at the edge of the crowd. Waiting for me. He holds out his hand, and I go forward to meet him.