The Truth-Teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn
When I fell into bed and instantly tumbled into sleep, I did have one final thought before dreams overtook me: Tomorrow at this time I will be with the man I love.
I woke the next morning feeling as if someone had scraped out my stomach with a trowel. My guts clenched and twisted with a sort of quivering horror, like a housekeeper who’d spotted a mouse in her kitchen and shook from an excess of revulsion. I managed to stagger up and dress myself, but after my third visit to the chamber pot, I could not move again. I lay myself gingerly on my bed and prayed for the world to end.
My mother found me about an hour later when she came bursting into my room in a fit of temper. “Eleda! What are you doing still in bed? There are the breakfast dishes to be done and the lunch to be started, not to mention the cakes and pastries to be prepared for tonight—”
One more word about food and I certainly would have vomited right at her feet, but just then her voice stopped, and she fluttered across the room. “What is it? Are you sick? Oh, poor thing, look at you, you’re as white as milk.” More food references. I actually groaned. She put her hand on my forehead. “A fever? Maybe, a little one. I can’t tell. When did you get sick? Last night?”
“This morning,” I whispered.
She made a tsking noise. “Oh, dear. Let’s see. I can—I can send Adele to Mary Percy and see if she can help out this afternoon—and then I can send your sister up to take care of you—”
“I don’t need taking care of,” I managed. “I just want to lie here and die.”
She laughed very softly. “Yes, no doubt, but I don’t want you to die. And on Summermoon! How sad to die on such a happy day. Have you been able to keep anything down? Water? Shall I bring you some tea? Come on, let’s get you out of these clothes and into your sleeping shift—”
She fussed over me another twenty minutes or so, easing me out of my day clothes and back under the sheets. There is really nothing like having your mother nearby when you’re sick to make you feel as if the world is not quite such a miserable place. She was so busy she would scarcely have time to wash her own face and braid her own hair, yet she stayed beside me long enough to do both those chores for me, and then kissed me on the cheek.
“I’ll come back every so often and check on you,” she said. “Call out if you need me, and one of us will come running upstairs.”
“I’m just going to sleep,” I said, and closed my eyes.
I don’t remember much of that horrid day, except that I felt much worse before I felt any better. The fever built over the next three hours, so that Adele had to go fetch ice from the dairy and lay packs of it around my face and chest. My father came in twice to look down at me fearfully and make me recite my name, my birthday, and my recent history. Nothing could convince him that you were really in danger until you began to hallucinate and forget your identity, so each time he left me, he seemed completely reassured. My mother blew in about once an hour, checked my temperature, made me drink some water, and told me I would be just fine in a day or so.
I slept intermittently, and every time I woke up, Adele was sitting there watching me. She never said much, but as soon as she saw my eyes open, she stood up and offered me something to drink. Once, after I choked on a glassful of tepid water, she brushed the back of her hand against my cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in a soft voice.
“I hope that it’s not the sort of thing everyone else is going to catch,” I whispered.
“No one else seems to feel sick. Yet,” she replied.
I closed my eyes. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” I said.
I expected her to say Neither would I, but she was silent. Or maybe I had fallen asleep before she even had a chance to speak. Before I knew it, I was dreaming again.
It was dark before I remembered how I had planned to spend this Summermoon Eve.
I groaned and tried to push myself out of bed, but I was so weak I fell back on the covers before I could even achieve a sitting position. Edgar! What would he think when midnight arrived and I was nowhere to be found? Would he suppose I had grown fearful and reluctant? Would he assume that my parents had found out about my plan and locked me in my room? Would he think I had been teasing him all along and had never had the intention of showing up for our rendezvous? How long would he wait? Would he worry? Would he be angry? Would he forgive me when I was finally able to make my excuses in person, two or three days from now?
Would the troupe even still be here? Would I ever see him again?
Anxiety and despair made me feel even worse, and I fretted on my bed, turning my head from side to side and tangling myself in the sheets. When my mother next entered the room, she found me fevered and hysterical. “Adele!” she called down the stairs, and a few minutes later, my sister appeared in the door. Between them they convinced me to drink a dreadful-tasting tea that I knew had been doctored with some kind of soporific herb.
“No,” I wept, trying to push the cup away. “I don’t want to sleep. I want to get up. I have to go. I don’t want that, I don’t want it—”
But though I spilled half of it down the front of my night-shirt, half of it did go down my throat, and I lay back on the hot pillows, sobbing. “I’m getting worried now,” my mother said.
“I’ll sit with her awhile,” Adele replied.
“Yes, I think that would be best.”
I suppose she did stay; I was asleep within ten minutes. I don’t think I stirred again for another three or four hours. I woke with a peculiar lightheadedness, as if my brain had been siphoned from my skull and the whole interior cavity was now empty. My body felt weightless and strange, as if all the bones had been similarly hollowed out. I was fairly certain that if I could navigate to the dark window and push myself out, I would float down to the ground in a gentle, pleasant swirl.
I tried to sit up and managed to do so, though the movement made me dizzy for a moment. Once my head cleared, I attempted to climb out of bed. I had to stand there a minute or two, swaying on my bare feet, but eventually I was able to straighten and take a few cautious steps. And, since I was still on my feet, I kept walking till I arrived at the window situated between my bed and Adele’s. I glanced at her bed, which was empty. It was either sometime before midnight, or she had chosen to sleep elsewhere than the sickroom.
I knelt on the floor before the open window and leaned out to smell the fresh air. It was deep summer, and so the breeze was full of summer scents—the green smell of cut grass, the dense smell of hot brick, the rich, heavy perfume of a myriad of flowers. Even at this late hour, traces of smoke lingered in the air; I could catch a whiff of spilled wine and stale bread. The streets were almost empty, though. Close by I could hear the quick tapping sound of running footsteps—farther away, the clustered tread of two or three people walking together. A light laugh drifted through the air. But the streets were dark. The common torchlights were extinguished, and no light spilled from the windows of the houses and shops as far up and down the street as I could see.
Past midnight, then. Only an hour or two till dawn. Summermoon was over, and I had missed my appointment with Edgar. I lay my head on my crossed forearms and wept again.
In the morning, I felt remarkably better. I had crawled back to my bed sometime after my last bout of tears and curled up in a tight ball under my sheets. I had assumed that grief would kill me off before sunrise, so I was actually a little surprised to find myself still alive when I opened my eyes. Alive, free of fever, clearheaded, and hungry.
I sat up in bed and looked around. There was a tray of fresh water and juice on the chair by my bed. The window was open and bright sunshine streamed into the room, making me feel almost cheerful. Adele lay fully dressed on the other bed, curled up on her side facing me. When I made some small noise as I poured juice into a glass, she stirred and sat up.
“Good morning,” she said, inspecting me with those mismatched eyes. “You look like you feel better.”
“I do feel better,” I
“Do you want something to eat?”
The glass to my mouth, I nodded as vigorously as I could without spilling anything. “Oh, yes,” I said, after I’d swallowed half the contents. “I’m starving.”
She swung to her feet. “I’ll tell Mother.”
A few minutes later, Mother arrived, bearing a tray of fruit and toast and scrambled eggs. Adele helped her set it up across my lap, and the two of them watched closely to see how well I would retain my food. But I was ravenous. I ate everything she’d brought and glanced around to see if there might be more.
Mother smiled. “Now, this is encouraging. You act as if you’re completely well.”
“May I get up, then?” I asked. It was a rule of our house that you had to stay very quiet for at least a day after you had been sick, so that you did not misjudge your strength and suffer a relapse. But I really felt perfectly fine. “There’s so much I wanted to do yesterday that I would like to do today—” Go see Edgar. Tell him why I failed him the night before. Promise him I would come to meet him tonight or tomorrow night or some other night while the troupe was still in town.
Mother reached out and smoothed the lank hair back from my forehead. I could not help glancing at Adele, who looked tired after her long day yesterday, but whose hair was at least clean and combed. She looked gravely back at me but didn’t say anything. “I think you’d better stay in for today,” Mother said. “You can come downstairs, though, and sit quietly in the kitchen.”
“I want to go out,” I said pettishly. “I want to see Roelynn. I want to see my friends.”
Mother looked unexpectedly grim. “At least one of your friends is in no condition to be seen,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Before speaking, she glanced at Adele, who apparently already knew this story. “Something terrible happened last night to your friend Eileen Dawson,” Mother said at last. Eileen wasn’t really a friend of ours—she was our age, and she had been in all our classes when we were younger, but she was the daughter of a wealthy shipowner, and she considered herself too fancy to associate with innkeepers’ daughters. What made her easier to dislike was that she was not only haughty, she was beautiful, and she believed all the young men in town were secretly in love with her. Roelynn was forced to socialize with her fairly often, because Eileen’s father and Karro did business together, but for myself, I would never have considered Eileen a friend.
Still. Clearly there was interesting news about her. “What happened?” I asked, leaning forward in my bed.
“She had a tryst last night with a young man—an actor who was in town for the festival,” Mother said. “Apparently he—well, he was not the kind of man she thought. He took advantage of her—and used her very badly—”
She seemed to be having difficulty finding the words that would convey the horror of what had happened without upsetting me too badly. I frowned and looked over at Adele. Who said flatly, “He raped her, and beat her, and left her bleeding on the side of the road. Someone found her this morning and thought she was dead, but she’s not. They think she’ll recover in a day or two.”
Mother stroked my hair again. “I can’t believe that such wretched, cruel people exist,” she said.
I felt a tight pressure building up in my chest. “Do you know—did she say—who did this to her?” I choked out. “You said—it was—an actor, but—”
My mother nodded. “They had built a stage down on the south end of town. The Harst and Hope Regional Traveling Troupe. I can’t remember the young man’s name—”
“Edgar,” Adele said entirely without inflection.
“That was it. Edgar Beauman. Of course, Eileen’s father and uncles went off immediately to find this dreadful man, but he was gone. The whole troupe had packed up and left town sometime in the middle of the night.”
My stomach twisted beneath my rib cage. I looked around wildly, grabbed the pitcher from the tray, and retched up all of my breakfast. I kept vomiting and vomiting long after my stomach was empty.
So I slept most of that day, too. When I finally came downstairs around dinnertime, I was listless and sad. Mother and Adele were busy making and serving dinner to the many guests who still remained at the inn, so I sat alone in the kitchen, picking at my toast and spooning up a few mouthfuls of chicken broth. My father sat with me for twenty minutes, speaking in the loud, hearty voice he thought was most likely to cheer up an invalid, and then had to hurry out to help a new arrival with luggage. I took another bite of toast, thought I might gag as I tried to swallow it, waited a moment, and was able to choke it down.
I had never felt so miserable and stupid in my life.
How could I have been so mistaken? How could I not have seen through the mask of charm and beauty that was Edgar’s outer self to the dark soul underneath? I was a Truth-Teller—it was automatic with me to know when someone was lying, when someone was presenting a false face to the world. Why had the counterfeit timbre of his voice rung true to me? What had prompted me to believe a man who spent most of his life dissembling? Why had I, usually so suspicious, become so credulous and simpleminded in his presence? Was it just that I had wanted to hear someone tell me he loved me? Was it just that the words he spoke, the vows he swore, were so freighted with sweetness that they would have seemed true no matter who spoke them? Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be beautiful. Perhaps lovers’ vows are always believed, no matter how insincere the speaker is. Perhaps they have a magic so potent that they trick anyone who hears them. Or perhaps it is darker than that. Perhaps lovers’ vows are always so false that no one can be expected to hear the lie. They just must take on faith that the lie is always there.
I ate a little more soup, then set down my spoon. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t think I would ever be hungry again. I didn’t think I would ever be anything except lost and sad and shaken.
My mother came in through the door that led from the dining room to the kitchen, Adele right behind her. “Have you eaten something? Good,” Mother said. “Can I get you anything else?”
I shook my head. “I just want to go upstairs and sleep. Forever.”
She grinned. “I imagine you’ll feel better in a day or so. Actually, considering how sick you were yesterday, I’m surprised you’re doing so well today. What kind of strange illness was that? Almost as if you ate something that made you sick, and once you washed it out of your system, you were fine.”
“Almost,” I said. “Like I accidentally swallowed poison or some tainted food . . .” My voice trailed off and I stared at my sister across the room. She was standing at the stove, ladling soup into a tureen, but she looked up when she felt my gaze on her face. Her eyes met mine, blue eye staring into blue, green eye staring into green, but her expression didn’t change. After a moment, she returned her attention to the ladle and the serving dish.
“Well, I’d hope you didn’t swallow any poison,” my mother said briskly. “I put down some powder now and then for the rats, but you’d never take something like that by mistake.”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think I took anything by mistake.”
Adele put the lid back on the tureen, stepped away from the stove, and pushed through the door back to the dining room. She hadn’t said a word since she’d walked into the kitchen.
“More soup? Just a little bit?” my mother said in a coaxing voice. “I’m so glad to see a little color back in your cheeks. How about some tea? Doesn’t that sound good?”
When I’d finally eaten enough to please my mother, I sat outside for a little bit on the bench between the kirrenberry and chatterleaf trees. The air was still warm this late at night, but the breeze was fresh and felt good on my skin. I’d scrubbed my face but hadn’t bothered to bathe or wash my hair, and I felt sticky all over. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I would wash away two days’ worth of dirt, the remnants of my illness, the memories of the last three week
I waited a long time before Adele finally came out of the inn and sat beside me on the bench. It was completely dark by then, and the moon, one night past full, had risen fairly high in the clear night sky. I was tired but not exactly sleepy. I was prepared to wait as long as it would take for her to join me.
Once she sat, though, we passed another ten minutes in silence. The chatterleaf tree whispered and murmured in the light wind, but the kirrenberry waved its full summer leaves without making the slightest sound.
“How did you know?” I asked presently.
That could have meant almost anything, but she chose to answer the question I had intended. How did you know what I was planning to do last night? “Roelynn told me,” she said. “She was worried about you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?”
“You weren’t speaking to me. And I didn’t think anything I said would stop you.”
I sighed heavily and leaned against the back of the bench. We were quiet for a few more minutes. Then I asked in a low voice, “How did you know about Edgar?”
“Last year. When the troupe was in town. Something of the same sort occurred. Except the girl wasn’t so badly hurt, only humiliated. She told me about it.”
“And why didn’t you tell me that?” I demanded.
She looked at me, her face very grave. “The story was told to me in confidence,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t repeat it, even to you.”
“Stories like that,” I said in a stern voice, “should be shouted from the rooftops. Everyone should know those kinds of tales.”
“Eileen has chosen to tell hers,” Adele said. “Now everyone does know.”