Chapter Text
Samuel was one of the orphans who lived in the orphanage attached to the chapel at Ashbrook End. He was lanky and skinny, like most of the children were. He had recently received the honour of being the very eldest of the boys at the orphanage. Daniel, light-haired and brown-eyed, always laughing until the laughs became coughs—would forever be seven. Samuel was six or seven, depending on who you asked. He used to tell Daniel he was eight. But Daniel was gone now, so there wasn't anyone left to impress.
Unlike the others, he was on the rooftop. The others were singing hymns downstairs, right below him. Right now, it was Confitebor Tibi.
He mouthed it: "Confitebor tibi, Domine, in toto corde meo, in consilio justorum, et congregatione…"
Was that from Psalms 111? Perhaps. He'd check later, after the dreadfully long Litany, which he was up on the roof trying to avoid.
The many hymns today meant that today was the Assumption of Mary. Pilgrims had already been trickling in already, but they wouldn't come in full force until the Feast of Mater Dolorosa.
Ruth probably wouldn't survive this year's Feast. And they had just buried Benjamin, too.
"Sancta Maria—"
The priest's voice.
And he joined in, instinctively: "Ora pro nobis—"
Slightly higher than the other children, as he had been taught to sing. A weak harmony that could make him believe in something sometimes, when he stood alongside the other children.
It was still summer. There was no point thinking about winter. It was festive outside. Tomorrow they would all go and collect alms, much more than the usual, and they would eat better than usual, as if to make up for winter. Winter—when the food and warmth and daylight were scarce, where the infants grew cold, then silent, and then gone. Soon, he would have to think of all those names for the infants who would arrive in the name of Mater Dolorosa.
He could use Daniel.
He would be able to use Benjamin.
Perhaps Ruth.
Jacob…
"Per Christum Dominum nostrum."
And he'd told himself not to think about winter.
He replied instinctively: "Amen."
He watched the colours of the sun set and disappear, then closed his eyes.
He heard the echo of Ruth's coughing speech as he lowered Daniel into the grave:
"All go unto one place, all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."
It was the first few days of Autumn. The Nativity of Mary.
Before leaving to collect alms, they had to scrub the steps of the chapel. They did it every morning and night. It was the cleanest place of the chapel, this time of the year. Ruth explained to a confused Jacob that they did it so that the mothers' knees would be clean when they left their children behind. Jacob suggested making markings on the steps "so that each one has enough space", which was firmly rejected by the priest.
Ashbrook End was in a festive mood, still. Pilgrims came in clusters in the day. The children would be able to collect a good amount of alms, even though much of it wouldn't end up on their tables. Jacob took a while to prepare, so Ruth and Samuel waited outside.
She jerked her arm up and then relaxed it. A piece of bread appeared in her palm. She was already chewing when he realised what had happened. She was the best of all the orphans at sleight-of-hand.
She did it slower, again, and he caught it this time. She tossed him the bread. Showed him the stitch.
"Your boot?"
He reached down and checked for the knife hidden cleanly in his sock.
Ruth nodded. "Good."
"I'm done!" Jacob burst out from behind them. "Let's go."
He was definitely going to run off with or without them, so Samuel grabbed him by the collar. "And do you remember, when someone says Dominus vobiscum, what should you say?"
Jacob tilted his head. He'd forgotten. "Um. Thank you! Or was it Amen?"
"Et cum spiritu tuo," Ruth said. "Try it."
Jacob repeated it thrice before she was satisfied. He was a little less jumpy now. They walked down the street, the two of them a few steps behind Jacob. He looked too happy, with his ruddy complexion and easy laughter, to get alms out of pity. Samuel, who had been told he had a handsome, frail figure, was always the one who got the most alms.
Ruth told Jacob to hold on, before coughing into her sleeve. When she caught Samuel looking, she gave him a small smile, and walked a little faster.
Some pilgrims gave them coin, others fruit that sometimes smelled nearly of rot, but most gave bread that was rock-hard, or sometimes even bitten into, already. When they ate from their baskets, they had to be careful. Leave no traces or witnesses.
They greeted a family who gave them a meat pie. Eat it fresh, the father said. They didn't. But they thanked them.
They avoided a smiling, hollow-eyed man who offered to buy them lunch.
They thanked a couple who cried when looking at them, giving them three coins, apologising over and over.
They ignored the strange old lady who asked where their parents were.
A man reached towards Samuel, not quite touching, but voice low.
Jacob had been looking at a bloated, dead rat near the river, but he was back now, eyes wide and innocent. He asked suddenly if they were going home already.
Ruth took it as an excuse to pull Samuel away, her voice a murmur, her hand already steering him away: "Quickly."
He felt the cool metal in his boot, the gaze of that man as they left.
"Are you still going to read?" Ruth asked on the way back. "I'm going to try my luck on South Street."
Samuel considered this for a moment, seeing Jacob skipping about with the basket in his arms. He looked at Ruth, who was bone-thin to begin with and yet seemed to get thinner with every cough.
"Yes. Once winter comes, I won't have daylight. I think I'll get it down soon."
She never understood his obsession with reading. He wasn't making much progress, either, so he couldn't disagree with her, not really. Pickpocketing in South Street would've been better, but also more dangerous. He reached down and in one swift motion, drew the small knife and passed it to her. She slipped it into her sleeve expertly, but slowly enough for him to see.
"You don't even like the verses," she muttered, stifling a coughing fit. "I'll be down South if you change your mind."
The book he was looking for was on the pulpit in the chapel. The children weren't allowed to touch it, of course.
It was an old, illuminated bible—with Latin on one side of the page and English on the other. There were still traces of shiny gold, but most of it had long since faded. The pretty capitals were still vibrant. It was very large, and Samuel had to tip-toe to read it properly.
He ran his fingers over the lines. The little black letters jumbled together.
He tried to recite what the priest had said just this morning.
"He…that loveth silver. Shall not be satisfied with silver. Nor that he that loveth abundance with increase. This is also vanity."
He repeated the line to himself.
It seemed right. From Ecclesiastes, chapter 5, verse 10.
The priest always read this out before the children left to collect their alms. He also used it to scold anyone who ate from their baskets. If they were first-time offenders.
Now he just had to find it. Ecclesiastes. Wherever this was.
It was easier with Daniel around. Two sets of eyes were better than one. No matter. Samuel turned one page, then another. The words kept swimming. Too small. The light already fading.
He guessed at one book—the one that looked the right length, had that 'E' shape that he remembered. He ran his hand down the numbers—chapter 5. The smaller number: 10.
The words didn't seem to line up. The line looked too short, and the length of the words were all wrong.
But he tried to read it anyway, finger on each squiggly word as he sounded what he thought the words were:
"Be…something," he said, squinting, "Be…in thy…something. And let thy…word. Be the…same."
It didn't sound familiar at all.
He went back to the very front of the bible. The list of book names.
He remembered Daniel's voice, the way he pointed at one of the book names: "This one's my name. See? Daniel."
Samuel ran his finger over it. Daniel's name.
He looked up the list of books again, from the bottom, where it was easier for him to see. The one starting with 'E' had been wrong. Then his finger stopped at Revelation. He knew this, because Daniel liked to say—
"And I looked! And behold….A pale horse!" His voice would drop then. "And his name that sate on him was Death, and hell followed with him: and power was given unto them, over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword! And with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. Revelation, chapter 6, verse 8."
Samuel wondered if Daniel believed the pale horse named Death came for him when he started coughing more than he laughed.
Still, Revelation. The first letter—the one with a straight spine, that curve, that sticking out leg. If Revelation read that way, that letter was unique enough for him to remember. He traced it with his finger, then again in the air, larger, as he worked his way up the books.
There was one book with a very short name. It started with the letter 'R', too. It had a little squiggly curve next to it—small, tight. The last two letters were a 'th', which he remembered seeing before. Like in 'thy'. Like in—he moved his finger down again, until he reached 'Bel and the Dragon'. The 'th', like in 'the'.
"R…th," he tried pronouncing.
He traced the name again. Then it dawned on him.
"Ruth? Oh, I found Ruth's name."
By then the light was fading already, so he hadn't any time to properly memorise it. His legs were shaking a bit from being on his tip-toes for so long, but he made sure to remember how her name looked like. He'd come back tomorrow after the alms collecting. Memorise it. Write it out for her. Before the pale horse came for her, too.
He wondered if she'd care about writing, if it were her name.
By the time winter came, Ruth was spending most of the day near the hearth, not speaking much. She wasn't eating much but things that were already mashed or liquid. Her coughs had turned watery. Bloody. There were three infants they thought weren't going to survive much longer. They were the parting gifts of the pilgrimage season.
There had been one more, a very small toddler, who wouldn't stop crying even before his mother left him. His mother kept muttering apologies to Mater Dolorosa on the steps, but left him there anyway. She said to call the child Clement, to please call the child Clement. But he died soon after, so Jacob actually asked Samuel why she didn't just bury him at home. Samuel hadn't any answer. If Ruth did, she didn't have the energy to reply.
At night, Ruth didn't sleep much, and neither did Samuel. She was always coughing now, no longer hiding the sanguine that stained her hands when she jerked violently.
He snuck off to the chapel more often than he should've, in the cold, trying to write her name. Memorise the way it was written.
They were just preparing for bed when Samuel made it back in, shutting the door behind him. He shook off the powdery snow in his hair and off his clothes. Ruth was already lying down, but she wasn't sleeping.
He shook her a little, and couldn't shake the feeling that he was simply touching bone.
"Samuel," she said, without looking up. She looked awfully tired, already long gone. But she reached up—and with that same, familiar action, retrieved a few pieces of bread she'd been keeping up her sleeve. Likely her whole dinner portion. "Here."
He took it wordlessly. Then he took her hand. He had to do it quick, before she had one of her coughing fits. Ruth drew her hand back, and he saw what she was trying to hide. Dark brown bloodstains dyed a long patch on her sleeve.
"I figured out how to write your name, Ruth."
She didn't respond, but stopped trying to pull away.
He wrote it, gently, on her palm. The funny 'R' with a spine, a curve, a tail. The small 'u', like a little bowl. The 't' and the 'h', like a cross, and a house with a chimney.
"I think the first two are pronounced 'roo'. Then the last two—'th'."
She looked at him like she was considering something. Really looked at him, thinking.
"How about yours?" she asked finally, softly, "Did you find yours?"
"No. I was trying to learn how to write yours…" He looked to the door. He could probably spend a little while more at the chapel, but she held onto his arm with more strength than he thought she still had left.
"Don't. It's too cold." Ruth smiled a little. He knew she was going to have a coughing fit soon. The fits seemed too violent to be coming from her feeble body. "Thank you, Samuel. Can you write my name again, for me?"
He did, even as she started coughing into her other hand. It was dark, but he knew she could tell he was crying.
27th of December, night.
Samuel pressed his hands together, rubbed them. To stop them from trembling.
Jacob had passed just three hours before Ruth, just as the harsh winter sank into the dirt, making it near impossible to dig deeply without his hands going all shaky and numb. Samuel's breath came out in white wisps, the cold stabbing his lungs sharply. He thought about covering the graves, but there might be a new corpse to bury soon. He didn't want to end up in a grave while digging another's.
He decided to leave them open. It would be slightly easier tomorrow, and who was to say the last infant wouldn't join them?
He set the shovel against the fence, looking at the dim light in the orphanage, then at the darkness of the chapel, and the bell began to toll. Midnight already. Today was another Feast, wasn't it? He squinted one last time at Ruth, still at last, no longer racked with violent coughs. She looked peaceful, and clean; he'd done a good job at washing away her blood…
He kneeled one last time, forcing himself to speak.
"All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."
Then he forced his heavy feet to move through the snow, keeping his hands in his pockets, chattering from the heavy cold.
He and the rest would survive winter now, he thought. Tomorrow—no, today, actually, was another Feast. There would be soup, even if it was very, very thin soup. At least it was warm, and their portions had increased.
He walked back, but as he turned the corner, he saw something on the stairs. It was an image familiar to him, but it was unusual for its timing. The heart of the harshest of winters. He knelt down to take a look at the infant.
Still warm, but barely.
Still breathing, but barely.
Still alive, but barely.
She was a little thing, wrapped in cloth that already seemed to be frosting over, no letter, no name, no embroidery.
"All right, your poor thing."
She wouldn't survive the night, and he'd already managed to find a little stone for Ruth's grave. At least she wouldn't be alone when he buried her. And she'd have a name.
He picked her up gently and whispered: "Your name is Ruth."
By night, the little infant Ruth was still quiet, in that awful way Samuel had learned to recognise as the stillness unto death. None of the others had even tried holding her. They were expecting the girl to stop breathing at any time. This whole day, she had never cried, not at all.
When he tried to spoon some broth into her mouth, some water—it only seemed to dribble out. Her mouth kept opening and closing though, but she would not take the soup.
"It needs milk," one child remarked.
Nobody replied. There wasn't any milk, of course. Samuel ate well, forcing the broth down, but Ruth would not eat.
"Ruth, come on," Samuel tried to coax her, "it's not hot. You'll die."
The other children looked at Samuel, trying to feed the little thing broth she could not drink, and said nothing. Her face turned away from him, but she didn't cry out.
"It's going to die," another child said.
At night, he hugged Ruth to sleep, trying to keep her warm, at the very least. She was so cold. Like she was still on those steps, in that frosted cloth.
"It's already dead, isn't it?" The priest had asked when Samuel had reported her arrival. "It's not a good sign, coming today of all days."
Like any day was a good one for being left to the mercy of Mater Dolorosa.
He was awoken in the middle of the night by a good slap in the face by Ruth.
So she was alive, after all.
And then another.
"What's wrong?"
She didn't gurgle. Only looked behind him.
And it was drafty behind him—oddly cold and windy. He looked behind him, holding onto Ruth.
The door was open, which explained the drafts.
But at the door there was a goat, its rectangular pupils staring right at Ruth.
Samuel watched it walk towards him—no, towards Ruth. It laid down next to him, and Ruth reached out for the goat.
The goat was warm, unbelievably so. It looked at Samuel.
"You came for her?"
Ruth snuggled into the goat's warmth. Samuel snuck to the door, closed it, careful not to disturb the others, who were still somehow sound asleep. He was convinced he was dreaming himself. But the warmth was real. And the smell—not like a usual goat's smell. It smelled sweet, of honey instead of the sweetness of rot.
The goat fed Ruth with milk, and she drank deeply from it.
He sat there watching, eyes wide. When he convinced himself to sit, Ruth tried to reach for him. He thought she was going to slap him again, the little rascal. But she didn't.
"Are you telling me to drink, too?"
Ruth reached out again, probably to slap him, everything considered, which would have been perfectly fair to Samuel.
Both the goat and Ruth were very still, like they were watching him.
The milk tasted like honey. He didn't want to drink too much—who knew when the goat would bolt, or run out of milk? Ruth needed it more than him, didn't she?
She reached out again. By now he knew how to catch her little fist.
"Spare me, Ruth."
She only made a little sound that seemed like a laugh. First sound he heard out of her mouth.
He drank a little more of the milk, and wasn't hit by Ruth's tiny fists again.
Next morning, the goat was still there, and some of the other bolder and hungrier children drank the goat's milk as well. Even the warier children soon drank from it, too, when they heard the other children say it tasted like honey. The priest and the other adults did not like the goat at all, and did not enter the sleeping room, where Ruth slept warmly throughout winter. The goat fed the children if they were gentle, and watched the adults with a distant stare. Samuel had a feeling that if the adults tried, something terrible would happen. But nothing happened. The adults were wary, and the children were full.
And the children were full until spring.
The goat should have died long ago, but it only weakened come the last week of Lent. Even some of the children had become wary of the milk, because the goat was bone-thin but the honey-tasting milk seemed never-ending. Ruth was the healthiest infant Samuel had ever seen in his life, and even he had put on some weight, though he was still underweight. He sometimes wondered if Ruth would be able to wean off the goat's milk, considering it tasted like honey. Not even honey tasted like honey here.
When the goat finally died on Easter Sunday, Ruth did not cry. She was still holding onto it, sleeping peacefully.
The adults did not like it at all that the goat died on Easter Sunday of all days. At least they were still so shaken that they weren't hard to convince, and gave Samuel the knives he asked for, as long as he skinned and cut or whatever he wanted to do, far away from the orphanage. So Samuel dragged the corpse of the goat and the knives and the shovel to an open field near the river with some difficulty. Ruth was strapped onto his back, because he wasn't sure what the adults would do to her if he left her alone.
He laid out everything, still panting from the effort. He set Ruth down as well, a little to the side, so she wouldn't get too much mess on her.
He was probably supposed to drain the blood first, but he had no idea how. At the very least, he had to get some of its meat, and hopefully its pelt. So he went by feeling.
It was bloodier than he expected, dissecting a goat. He had his sleeves and pants rolled up, but the blood still went everywhere. He tried wiping the blood on the grass and by washing his hands in the river, but gave up at some point because there was just so much blood. The innards were warm and slimy, which was unpleasant. It might have felt pleasant if it were winter. He'd just about accept anything warm during winter.
Some blood got onto her, too, but at least Ruth didn't cry. She just lay there, reaching out sometimes, gurgling.
Everything useful he put aside. He couldn't let anything go to waste. It had come for her, after all.
He did a rather good job with the pelt, although it ended up all bloody. It couldn't be helped. The earth was soft and giving, unlike in winter, so he didn't have a particularly hard time burying the rest of the goat that he didn't think he could salvage.
He wrapped everything up in a bloody, dripping satchel.
A breeze was picking up. He picked the pelt up and wrapped Ruth in it, hoping she'd stay warm now. And now she started crying. From the gore, or perhaps from the warmth? She didn't look uncomfortable, though, so perhaps it was his face, covered in splotches of blood.
He tried to wipe the blood away, but his hands were covered in blood, too.
"You're okay, you're okay…"
He tried to calm her, the only way he knew. He fell back on the first hymn he'd been taught, feeling all helpless.
"Dominis regit me," he sang softly, but she kept reaching for his face again, wailing, "et nihil mihi deerit…"
The blood was all sticky on his face, and it reminded him of the way the milk, tasting like honey, had clung the same way to his skin as well. He pressed his face against hers, crying too, wishing she'd stop crying already. She'd survive. She'd surely survive. He couldn't remember the other words suddenly, but at least the end:
"Et misericordia tua subsequetur me omnibus diebus vitae meae," he whispered to her, barely keeping to the tune, "et ut inhabitem in domo Domini, in longitudinem dierum."
Her face was all sticky, too, with blood. He tried to wipe it away again, but she'd stopped crying, and seemed happier with the blood on her face, like she had wanted to be matching with him. Probably the exhaustion was getting to him.
"All right, Ruth. Now you're going to scare them all, you little rascal."
That night, he was full and warm, for the stew he had made. Ruth didn't cry again, and she drank the broth this time. She also did not slap him again. The pelt was just outside, drying. None of the others would touch it. Some of the orphans partook in the stew as well. This was almost a serious Easter feast for once, he thought. But none of the adults touched it at all. They did not like the goat from the beginning, but dare not act on it, for the orphans were more obedient than they had been in years. The way they looked at Ruth was almost damning. Still, she was alive, and that was most important.
Between sips of warm broth, he looked at Ruth. He thought of the way the goat had looked at him when it had died. Its rectangular pupils. Soundless. He picked her up in his arms again. She was so warm and smelled of honey. He had done a good job washing away the blood.
The girl could not know that the children would be fed for a week for her goat's sacrifice. Only Samuel spoke: "Don't give it away this time. Your name is Ruth."