Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [52]
“My mother.”
“Who is not … Cauvin’s mother.”
Slowly Bec nodded, even though he’d missed a few words between who and mother. “Want your tea?” he asked, swirling the cup so a few drops splattered onto Batty’s blankets.
The old man clutched the cup between long, bony fingers. Bec expected him to make disgusting noises as he sipped the way Poppa and even Cauvin did when Momma served soup for supper. But Grandfather had Momma’s manners, aristocrat manners. He drank quietly, and his lips were dry when he lowered the cup.
For several long moments, Grandfather stared at nothing.
“You need me to do something?”
Grandfather blinked. “There’s so little time left, but there’s nothing to do. Your bullheaded brother won’t talk to me, and I can’t put pen to parchment without seizing up from pain.”
“I could write for you, Grandfather.”
It seemed to Bec that the old man looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. “What I have to say is more difficult than ‘wouldn’t’ or ‘won’t,’ boy. I’ve gone through a score of scribes in my time—twoscore. Trained men, well versed in the subtleties of our language, and I’ve driven all but a few of them to drink. I have no liking for children, but you’ve done nothing to deserve that from me.”
“I can write for you—if you go slow and spell out the hard words.”
“No. It’s beyond question.”
“Then my brother and me better take all that writing stuff back to the scriptorium, ‘cause it’s not going to get used. Cauvin can’t read but maybe ten Imperial words, and the only one he can write is his name—’cause I taught him how to make the letters.”
The faraway look returned to Grandfather’s eyes. “There is justice, boy,” he said softly. “Cold, bitter justice. Very well, get the parchment. What’s left to lose, eh?”
Bec got to work. This was more to his liking, more what he had in mind when he’d surprised Cauvin in the loft the night before. He scavenged a curved bit of crockery, wiped it off on his breeches, and set it against the wall.
“That won’t be necessary,” Grandfather advised him.
“But we don’t have any wine—”
“Water will do.”
Muttering, Bec doused the crockery with water from the skins. He set about mixing ink for only the fourth time in his literate career. Usually he wrote with chalk chips on a piece of slate. Momma didn’t trust him with ink, much less with parchment. The feather quill felt awkward in his hand and was damnably difficult to fill with ink.
“I’m ready,” Bec announced at last. He’d seated himself cross-legged on the hard ground with the parchment flat in front of his knees. Looking at Grandfather from that angle, all he saw was a wrinkled face hovering above the drab blankets.
“You’ve done this before, have you?” Grandfather asked.
Bec nodded emphatically and a great dollop of black ink landed on the parchment. He swiped it quickly with his sleeve.
“And which language do you write best, boy? Rankene or Ilsigi?”
“Imperial. My mother wouldn’t teach me Ilsigi letters, and my father can’t. I’ve picked up a few—some of them are the same as Imperial letters, only the sounds are different. It’s confusing,” Bec admitted. “But if you speak slow, I can sound it out and write it down. If I can’t do that, I’ll ask you to spell it out for me, if you can. What am I going to be writing about? When Momma dictates, I do better if I know what the words are about.”
Grandfather spat out a mouthful of syllables. Imperial was like that, leading bits and trailing bits attached to a center word that might not mean what it sounded like it meant when the word was finished. Bec heard the sounds for “man” and “right” and—maybe—“blood”; he got no meaning at all.
After a deep sigh, he warned, “Maybe you better start off spelling.”
“Well, you tried—”
“I can do it! All you’ve got to do is tell me what I’m writing about and spell me the hard words!”
“All right, boy … Bec. Our story begins more than two hundred years ago, in the city of Ilsig, which gave its name to a kingdom and a language.” He paused until Bec finished writing the words. “The Ilsigi called the