Around a central pillar, thick and crusted as the boll of an ancient tree, stairs spiraled downward into darkness and upward toward the light, each step a thick slab of wood set fanwise upon the one below, one end buried in the central pillar, the other in the outer wall. Their cupped centers were smooth beneath her soles, worn glossy by generations of feet. The arched openings that pierced the tower on its inward side admitted slanting beams from the lantern to disclose venomous night hunters resting in the embrasures, creatures coiled or segmented or multilegged, all with huge many-lensed eyes.
Defiantly, she placed her right hand on the outer wall, the left hand on the pillar, stepping upward, feeling the roughness of mud brick and split wood, letting her hand trail needlessly near the stinging creatures. She was in a self-destructive mood, hating herself for not having known better what Barbara’s fate would be, for not having pursued her own vision to find some means of warning her.
The stairs ended at the floor of the tower room. The trapdoor had been thrust up against the outer wall, which continued upward, enclosing a circular wood-floored, flat-roofed space, its radiating rafters supported at the center by a mud-brick pillar less massive than the one below. Open arches looked out in all directions, and on the courtyard side, a ladder led up to another trapdoor in the roof, this one closed.
She stepped up onto the floor, lowered the trapdoor to prevent her plunging down accidentally, and went toward the western arch, away from the courtyard, intending to lean there as she had leaned in her window at Mrs. Blessingham’s. She could not. The stone trembled beneath her hands, her arms were shaken and thrust back by the song that she felt coming toward her across the desert like an arrow aimed at her heart. She staggered at the physical thrust of the sound, her lungs and throat conjoining without her consent to bellow defensively into the night, “I hear you, I hear you.”
The words went from her like a shot from a great cannon. All tiny, subliminal sounds of the night stopped at once. The song stopped a moment later. A profound and waiting silence pervaded the desert. She leaned against the wall of the circular room, shivering, lips clamped tight shut to prevent any other sound from escaping her, her eyes fixed on the cleat across the room where the coils of the lantern rope were neatly hung.
The rope was a long one, long enough for the lantern to be lowered to the atrium floor for filling. Which meant it was long enough to bring here, to the outside, and lower over the outer wall. Though the gate was locked, she could climb down the rope and get away! If she didn’t want to deal with that sound, she could run!
She shuddered, blinking angry tears away. Oh, yes, she could run, but she couldn’t escape from today, not from Barbara’s blind eyes, from the wail of the child, from Willum’s sweaty face, his dull, matter-of-fact voice: “Shall I kill it?” His own son!
Or perhaps not. Knowing Barbara, if Willum had scorned her, she would have accepted passion elsewhere. Had Barbara ever, even for an instant, known what was going on? How long had she been drugged into acceptance? The marriage ritual between nobles required the noble bride to drink from the so-called Cup of Acquiescence. Had Barbara been formally married in that way? Was the drug in that cup? Or did she receive her first dose later, at the wedding supper? Or later still, when she and Willum were alone together? Did all the nobles in Haven use it on their wives, their daughters? Was it routinely served at Mrs. Blessingham’s? Did that explain Genevieve’s own years of patience and resignation, her lack of rebellion?
“Oh, I have been so tender,” she told herself with scathing self-loathing. “I have been so delicate, so pure. I’ve been well schooled not to look at ugliness, well trained not to experience life. I’ve cowered in corners and watched, refusing to take part. All my life I’ve had these visions and I’ve let them drift in and out of my mind like cloud pictures, spouting them out on command, all unquestioning. I’ve gathered information as a child collects shells on a beach, a mere pastime, knowing nothing about them, learning nothing! I loved Barbara, I might have saved her, but I did nothing to keep her from destruction!