Where Heaven Bleeds

Chapter Seven

The Church official's name was Deacon Ridley, and he arrived on a horse that was better fed than anyone in Ashenmere.

He was not an unkind man; precisely that would have been simpler. He was a frightened man with authority, which was a much more dangerous combination. He had been sent north from the diocese to assess the scope of the dying, to collect what tithes could still be collected, and to ensure that the plague was not being attributed to any cause the Church would find inconvenient.

He arrived on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning, he had identified a culprit.

The miller's wife, Edith Holt, had recovered from the plague three weeks prior. Her neighbor's son, a boy of sixteen with more fury than sense, had told Ridley that Edith had always practiced 'strange customs,' which meant she grew herbs and kept a black cat, and once, during a dispute over a fence, said she hoped God would repay her neighbor according to his deeds.

Ridley had the miller's wife brought to the square.

Aldric got there first.

He arrived to find Edith Holt, a woman of forty, solid and red-handed and clearly terrified, being questioned by Ridley in front of what remained of the village, and something in him went very cold and very still.

"Step away from her," he said.

Ridley turned. He took in Aldric's size, his scarring, the manner of a man who had done his worst violence overseas and come home quieter for it, and to his credit, he did not immediately retreat, but his shoulders went up. "This woman has been accused."

"By a grieving boy," Aldric said. "Who lost his mother? Grief makes accusers of people who cannot otherwise explain their pain. You know this."

"The Church's investigation"

"There is nothing to investigate," Aldric stepped forward. "There is a plague. Millers' wives do not cause it. It came from the east and moved west, and it is killing people across all of Europe, including people who have never in their lives grown herbs or spoken unkindly to a neighbour. You are frightening people who are already frightened. If you wish to help, I can show you ten households that need a man of God. If you cannot help, I am asking you to leave."

The square was silent.

Ridley looked past Aldric's shoulder, and something in his expression changed, not fear, but a kind of arrested attention, the look of a man who had caught something in the corner of his eye.

Aldric did not turn. He already knew what was there.

"Go home," Aldric said. "All of you. Please."

They went. Ridley went last, and as he passed, he said, very quietly: "Who is she?"

"A healer," Aldric said. "From the south."

Ridley said nothing more. But he looked back once, from the far end of the square, with the expression of a man who had seen what he had always believed and found that belief was not the same as readiness.

When they were alone, Seraphel said: "That was reckless."

"Probably."

"He will remember you. He will ask questions."

"Let him." Aldric turned to face her. "Why did you do that? Step forward. You didn't have to."

She was quiet for a moment. "He was going to arrest her."

"So, you put yourself at risk."

"I am difficult to arrest."

"That's not the point."

She met his eyes, and something in her expression was careful in a new way, not guarding her nature, but approaching something unfamiliar on unsteady ground. "No," she said, at last. "I suppose it is not."

They walked back through the empty market square, and Aldric thought: she protected someone. She didn't have to. She chose.

He did not say it aloud. But he kept thinking it, all the rest of the day.