A Matter of Taste - Chapter 3

It should have been easy to remove Bansi from my life. I wanted it to be. But we had begun to build the image of our future as it lay before us, and I had been adjusting my life in that direction for the past year or more. Every day, it seemed, brought with it new reminders of what I had lost. Of what had been taken from me.

I felt empty, bereft. I felt as though a thief had come in the night and taken everything that mattered most to me. I wanted to track it down, to claim my life and return things to the way they were meant to be.

But there was no thief, only Bansi, and what I wanted from him couldn't be taken, only given.

I moved on. I worked, because work always needed to be done, and it gave my hands purpose and my mind focus. I still went to the market, and smiled through all the inevitable questions about why Bansi wasn't there at my side. I visited with Ilis and Corine, and I bounced Yvas upon my knee so they could work, and slowly, I was able to hold him and play with him and look on his bright, toothless smile without feeling the ache of the child I had wanted, and thought I'd nearly had.

Two months on, I had built a semblance of peace from the wreckage of my life with Bansi when a knock at the door came while I was working on my accounts.

I nearly ignored it. At such an hour of the day, the only company who came around tended to be street vagabonds in search of a few coins from those inclined to charity, or at least pity. I hadn't anything to spare and I disliked having to refuse those in need when I wished I could do otherwise. But the knock came again, a brisk report that cut through my already-flagging ability to concentrate.

If they were persistent, I wasn't going to be able to tally these accounts anyway, so I shut the book and rose, crossed to the door to answer it and tell whoever it was looking for handouts on the other side that I hadn't anything to spare, and to try somewhere else. If they'd known Copper Street at all, they'd have known better than to hope for charity here.

I pulled the door open just as the woman on the other side was raising her fist to knock again. She blinked and rocked back on her heels, then turned a brilliant smile on me. "Milord!" She rose up onto her toes to kiss my cheek, then bustled inside. "Where is the other?"

"Leisl?" I tailed after her. "What are you doing here?"

"I come bearing happy tidings, of course. But where is your man? I want to tell you both."

I tightened my jaw. "He isn't--"

"Wait. What is that?" She threw up a hand, her eyes flying wide with alarm. She turned in place, her head whipping about, searching for something I couldn't name. She sniffed the air. "Is that-- Oh devils.“ And before I could make sense of why she was even here in my home, she was running for the door, one hand clapped over her mouth.

I followed after her, but hesitated when she bent double just outside my door and cast up what looked like it must have been breakfast all over my stoop.

"Leisl! Are you ill?"

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then grimaced and shook it as though she could fling the sick from it. She straightened a little and gave me a watery smile. "Not so unwell as I was last time we spoke, sir. Forgive me. I can't hardly smell a thing these days without it bringing up every last bite in my stomach." She sighed and wiped away a strand of hair that had come loose in the violence of her retching, sidestepped about the mess outside my door and shouldered past me inside once more. "But there, now my stomach's gone and given me away, when I wanted to wait until you were both here to tell."

"Tell me what?“ I snapped, too disoriented by her being here, when I had not counted on ever seeing her again, for patience or care to be within my grasp. She spoke strangely, as though I'd walked in halfway through a conversation but she assumed I'd overheard it all, and I just wanted her gone. I'd only been staying strong by excising from my life nearly everything that reminded me of Bansi or what I'd thought we would have together. To have her here, now... It brought the grief back, and I didn't want it.

She pulled out one of the chairs at my kitchen table and lowered herself down into it. "That I'm with child after all." She beamed at me like she'd just delivered the news that a distant relative had died and left me his fortune. "There, now you've made me spoil the surprise twice over."

I froze instinctively, halfway across the kitchen on my way to retrieve the pitcher to wash the mess from my stoop. But as her words settled upon me, I shook my head and resumed the journey once more. "I don't know why you thought this news was worth delivering to me."

I carried the pitcher out and rinsed the mess away. When I came through the door, she was frowning at me, her chin in her hand. "It is your child. I rather thought you two would want to know, all things considered. It's what you wanted of me."

"No." I slapped the pitcher down on the table, hard enough that it rattled. Leisl jumped, then slid her chair back, giving me a baleful look. "You bled. It's not ours. It's not--" My voice frayed. I stopped and forced myself to draw a deep breath. "It's not his."

"It is so! I bled, right enough, but not half so much as I thought to. And I ain't bled once since, not once, though up 'til now I've been regular enough you could mark the days off me. I went to the physician before I came to you and he told me I am with child, no doubt, and he says sometimes, early on, your body can go right on bleeding out of sheer habit, despite the child growing inside you, so don't you call me a liar, Renad Davyas!"

I dropped into a chair and leaned my head into my hands with a sigh so deep it seemed to steal all the breath in me. "Even if you are with child, it's been two months. How can you be sure that the child is Bansi's? Anyone else you might have been with since--"

She slapped me, open-palmed straight across the cheek. I sat back hard in my chair and stared at her in fury and astonishment. "You hold your tongue before I decide to scrub it clean for you. I haven't lain with no men, not a one since your Bansi, and that's the honest truth. You paid me to do a job and I've been doing it right, and the devils can claim me if I'm lying."

I rubbed my stinging jaw and considered my response. I didn't care to be struck again, and she looked ripe to do it, so I said only, "Did you just threaten to wash my mouth out with soap? Listen to you. You'll make a fine mother, indeed."

Leisl released a sharp breath and scowled. "I don't want to be a mother. You're the ones who wanted a child, not me, and I'm happy enough to carry this one for you 'til it hatches, but I sure expect you to take charge of it once it has."

I sighed again and leaned once more into the table. Suddenly I had no strength left at all, and my head hung down between my shoulders as I said, "Bansi's gone, Leisl."

She'd been fussing with the fall of her hair, twisting a lock about her fingers, but at my words, she froze. Her gaze snapped to mine. "What do you mean, gone?“

"Just as I said." I had to spit the words out between my teeth. "He left. The last day we saw you. He went home."

She stared at me, slack-jawed. "The devil did he do that for?"

There were any number of things I could say to that. He was scared. He was selfish. He was a wretched, horrible excuse for a man. But none of them made me feel any better, so I held my tongue and just shook my head miserably.

"But he can't be in gone. He only paid for my flat three months out. The landlady'll throw me to the streets next month if he don't pay her her due!"

I half wanted to wring her neck, or slap her the way she had me. "He's not going to pay it, Leisl. He doesn't want a child after all."

She was quiet a long moment, breathing hard and fast through her nose, like she was angry. I knew the feeling, but I'd worn through my anger a month before. Now all I was was weary. I wished she'd leave. It was harder to forget about Bansi when she was sitting at my kitchen table reminding me.

"Do you?"

I lifted my head and looked at her a long minute, but time didn't help her question make any more sense to me. "What?"

She leaned across the table and caught my hands, quick as a whip. I tried to pull away, but she dragged them down, pressed them flat against her stomach, and pinned me with her gaze. "Do you want this babe?"

A knot of emotions stuck in my throat, holding the words back. I wanted to tell her no. The words were there, ready on my tongue, except I hadn't the breath to speak them. No, I want Bansi. I want the future I thought we had together. A child? Alone? No, I couldn't possibly do that, I don't want to.

But when I finally managed to speak, what came out of my mouth was hoarse, strangled, and not what I'd expected. "I don't know.”

Leisl nodded once, smiling at me with a sharp, fierce sort of satisfaction. "There you are, then. I'll bear you this babe, and you'll take it from me when it comes, and I think we'll both get along well enough, together.”

*

Leisl's satisfaction with the arrangement lasted a month. Then, a pounding at the door jolted me from my sleep in the wee hours of the morning. I pulled on a dressing gown as I staggered out to answer it, fearing fire or something worse. But when I opened the door, all I found was Leisl standing there, a trunk on the street behind her and a sour look on her face.

"She booted me!" She stormed inside, dragging her trunk in behind her. It scraped dreadfully across the floorboards and took up half my tiny kitchen. "Middle of the night, do you believe it? Now what am I supposed to do -- go home?" She turned to me and stamped her foot like a petulant child. "This is not the arrangement we made, Renad!"

I shook my head and pulled her trunk away from the stove, so I could stir up the coals and boil water for tea. My head was stuffed with cotton and she was pacing about my kitchen, huffing and sulking like a dervish. "Sit." I waved her to one of the chairs around the table. If the word came out rather more like a plea than a command, well, I was still half-asleep and too tired to care. "Tea?"

She gave a sharp sigh and glared at me. "I don't want tea, I want the accommodations I was promised. A fine flat, you said, all to myself, and rich food and nice clothes. That was the deal you made me."

"Bansi," I muttered. I leaned my head in my hands and scrubbed at the sand in my eyes. "Bansi made that deal with you. Do you suppose, if I had the means to pay for a fine flat and rich food, I would be living here? Like this?"

She looked over my home and her mouth pulled up into an even tighter pinch. "This was your plan from the start, wasn't it? Lure me in with promises of finery, plant your seed in my belly, and then snatch it all away once it's taken root and there's no going back on my half of the deal, and what am I supposed to do, refuse to give you the child and have another mouth I've got to feed? You scoundrel.“

"No." I slapped my hand down on the table, making her pull back and glare at me. "The plan was that I would be with Bansi now, and we'd be happy and he'd be here and we would be preparing for our child. None of this was how I planned it, Leisl." I sat back and tried to release the anger that had risen up in me like a sudden thunderstorm. "Things change. We must make new plans."

She eyed me balefully for a long moment. "I ain't going back home," she said at last. "You promised me a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food on my plate. I want what's owed to me."

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers until the pain galvanized me. The kettle was starting to rumble, but I removed it from the stove, then caught Leisl by the arm and drew her up out of her chair. "Come. Come with me."

She stumbled after me, looking confused and uncertain. When I shouldered open my bedroom door and she saw the bed inside, she dug her heels in and wrenched her arm from my grasp. "No! I ain't lying with you, not even for a nice roof over my head. I did what you asked of me. You want more than that, you go find yourself a doxy." She jerked her chin up and stared me down obstinately. "I ain't one."

"Leisl." I sighed, then snatched my pillow and one of the blankets from the bed. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared me down when I gestured to the bed, with the pillow and blanket that still remained upon it. "Take the bed. I can't give you a lavish home or fine food, but I can give you this." I gestured to it again. "Go on. Sleep. It's far too early in the morning for sensible people to be up."

"I ain't sleeping with you."

"You could, if you liked," I muttered, half to myself. "Your virtue would be safer with me than most any other man in the city." But the bed was too small for two, unless pressed skin-to-skin as Bansi and I had always done, and I didn't suppose she cared to nestle up that close to me any more than I did to her. "The bed is yours," I said instead, louder. "Do as you will in it." And I laid my pillow on the floor beside the bed, then stretched out and covered myself with the blanket.

For the space of a moment, there was no sound but Leisl's breathing. Then I heard her move, the scrape of her footsteps followed by the creak and rustle of the mattress.

"Renad."

I pried my eyes open. She was hanging off the edge of the bed, peering down at me. "You mean to sleep down there?"

"I could join you, if you'd like," I said, my words already slowing with sleep.

She pulled back up onto the mattress as though she feared I might accost her right then. Only her head remained, leaning out beyond the mattress to stare down at me like I was some curiosity on display. "You mean to sleep there until the babe comes? That's another sixmonth!"

"Go to sleep, Leisl." I pulled the blankets up over my head and prayed that, this once, she would do as I asked. "We can discuss sleeping arrangements once the sun has risen."

*

Beyond her initial resistance, Leisl didn't put up much of a protest about claiming my bed for her own, particularly once I woke up later that morning grumbling and rubbing at my sore back.

I put wood on the dying coals inside the stove and cooked breakfast for us both. She made a face and picked at the plate I set before her, and I knew she was missing the sort of fare she had grown accustomed to under Bansi's patronage.

I missed it, too, but there was no sense starving ourselves over it. She gave me another sour look when I said as much.

The look she gave me when I dropped a box of gears and bolts and springs in front of her and asked her to help me sort them was the kind of look that I imagined could have melted glass, or turned wine to vinegar.

"You don't imagine the food I'll be feeding you comes free to me, do you?" I nudged the box closer to her with my elbow. "I can scarce feed myself, some days. If I'm going to feed you and the babe as well, I'll need help."

She huffed, picked a handful of the parts from the box, then threw them back with a look of disgust when one left rust upon her fingers. "I'm already doing one job for you, Renad. Now you'll demand a second from me, too?"

I shrugged, purposely blithe, and began to sort. "I don't know. It's up to you. How well do you like to eat?" It was cruel, perhaps, but  I couldn't afford to spoil her the way Bansi had. Down here on Copper Street, we worked or we starved, and I was only one man. I couldn't work enough to feed the both of us, plus the child growing in her belly, not if I meant to sleep at all the next six months.

She glared at me like she'd kill me if she had half a chance. But the moment passed, and she began to sort. 

A few more months in, when her belly had grown large enough to strain the limits of her bodices and I was starting to wonder where I was going to find the coin to buy her new, she came home with a smile fit to split her face in two and a few strapping young men carrying a worn mattress in behind her. I looked them over as they bustled through my home without so much as a by-your-leave, and quirked an eyebrow at Leisl. "Is there something wrong with my mattress?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at me. "There's nothing wrong with my mattress. The problem with yours is you haven't got one." She looked to where the men were positioning it in the bedroom and her smile grew. “Hadn't."

I turned my head to stare at her, taken aback by the thoughtfulness of the gesture. "How did you pay for this?"

"I ain't completely useless, you know." She glanced at me sidelong and caught me gaping at her. She pulled her shoulders back and cocked her head at an angle. "Besides, I'm tired of you waking me up all the night long with your grumbling." She patted her belly. "Bad enough I've got this one doing a jig on my ribs all hours. I thought babies needed their sleep, but you wouldn't know it, the way yours carries on."

I wondered if perhaps I'd misjudged her and her willingness to work for what was needed. But another month on, I came home from market and found her bundled up in bed though it was the middle of the day.

"Layabout," I teased her, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe. "What are you doing, lazing in bed at this hour?"

"Renad." She had the coverlet pulled up to her chin, and stared at me over it with wide doe eyes. "I'm not well."

"Devils! You aren't going to vomit in my bed, are you?" I hurried to retrieve the bucket we'd started leaving in the room for these occasions. "I'm not going to change mattresses with you if you soil yours."

"No! Renad.“ Her voice came in a sharp hiss. Her fingers tightened on the coverlet's edge until they were white and bloodless. "I'm..." As she trailed off, the fire in her eyes dimmed, and left her looking cowed and uncertain. "Send for the midwife," she whispered, staring at me. "Please?"

The midwife? My heart thumped hard in my chest. It wasn't time. We were still months away. If the baby came now...

"Renad!"

I jumped, then dug my fingers into the jamb to keep myself steady. "I shouldn't leave you alone," I said on a reedy whisper.

She pushed herself up a little, scowling. "Are you going to take a look between my thighs and tell me what's going on?"

The thought of it made the blood drain from my face quick enough to leave me light-headed. She took one look at me and rolled her eyes. "Go!"

I turned and ran. The midwife was only two streets down, but it seemed to take me an age to get there. She seemed impatient when I couldn't tell her what was wrong, only that Leisl had said she was unwell and asked for her, but she followed me back and closeted herself in the bedroom with her, shutting the door firmly between us.

That was just as well. My knees were already weak at the thought of what might be happening on the other side of that door. I wanted no window onto it.

I paced the kitchen for a few moments before I chided myself for acting the fool and made myself sit at the table. But though my body was still, my mind raced unfettered, spinning through fear for the child and worry over what might be happening and a hundred other concerns that all flashed through in a moment.

In the end, it did not take half so long as I had resigned myself to expect. The midwife came back out a short time after going in. I jolted to my feet, but she didn't look worried, or as though she were about to break bad news upon me.

"She's well enough," she said with a glance my direction. "The child's well. You needn't look like that."

"What happened?"

"She was bleeding, and it frightened her."

I pressed my fingers into the tabletop, fighting back the fear that had an iron grip around my chest. "Bleeding? But... there's nothing wrong?"

She shrugged one shoulder and gave me a sympathetic look. "Women bleed, sometimes, for no reason at all. Let her lie in bed a few days, see if it clears up. So long as she doesn't keep bleeding and the baby doesn't decide to come early, there's not much cause for alarm." She gave me a pat on the arm and moved on past, toward the front door. "You call me right quick if the child does decide to make an early appearance, though, you hear me?"

I nodded, swallowing down the acrid taste of fear, and saw her to the door. When she had gone, and my heart had climbed back down out of my throat, I knocked uncertainly on the bedroom door.

"Heaven's sakes, it's your room, you half-wit. You ain't got to knock."

The familiar snap in Leisl's voice made it possible for me to smile as I cracked the door open and stuck my head inside. "How are you feeling?"

"A little foolish," she admitted. A hint of color washed across her cheeks. She ducked her head and plucked at the edge of the coverlet. "But I saw that blood, and feared I was losing the baby."

I sat beside her on the mattress's edge and petted her hair soothingly. She leaned her head on my shoulder and sighed. "Tea?" I asked after a while.

"Please."

She made as though to rise out of bed and follow me into the kitchen. I held her down with a hand upon her shoulder and didn't release it until she'd subsided back. She crossed her arms and sent me a look that seemed none too pleased.

"You rest," I told her firmly. "You'll do as the midwife says."

She sighed again, sharp and aggrieved, as though I might have mistaken her thoughts on the matter. "You'd think you was my man, the way you order me about."

I left her behind without a comment. When I'd returned with the tea, I passed it to her, along with a cube of the sugar I knew she liked but couldn't often indulge in, on account of the expense. "I'm not your husband," I said as she sipped, and made her laugh.

"Oh, I'm fair sure I'd remember it, if we'd made vows."

I tugged at a lock of her hair. Gently, but she still yelped in protest and clutched her head like I'd yanked it out. "You're the one who said you were doing a job for me," I continued. "If I'm your employer, I think I've the right to say how you do your job."

"Maybe I quit," she said, prim and coy. I knew better than to take her at her word, by now. She teased me mercilessly about it because she knew it riled me up. But I knew that she had no interest in raising the child herself, even now, though I'd had myself half-convinced for months that she'd feel the child growing inside her and would change her mind and I'd find the future that I wanted snatched out of my hands all over again.

"Quit, then, and I wish you well," I said easily, and reached and took the tea back from her.

She yelped, pretense gone and laughing at me as she leaned in, reaching to get the cup as I held it away from her. "You blackguard! Give that back. I'm bearing this child for you, I'm bleeding for you, and you won't even give a poor girl a cup of tea?"

I relented because she looked like she was ready to climb out of bed and jump on my back in order to get the tea from me, and I didn't want her exerting herself. But I made a show of reluctance, of giving in and generosity. When she settled onto the bed again, I gave her the tea. I held my hands up in a show of innocence when she scooted away from me, hunched protectively over the tea.

"Rest, Leisl." I ruffled her hair for the way it made her squawk at me and tug it frantically back into order. "Do as your midwife says." I shut the door so she would, so she wouldn't come out to visit with and tease me.

As the weeks passed, though, Leisl lost her reluctance to obey the midwife, and I lost my patience with it. It seemed like every time I turned around, Leisl was lingering in bed, the coverlet pulled up over her head, moaning, "No, Renad, go away, I can't today." And a few days later, she would be feeling better -- or acting better, I thought uncharitably, and wondered if she wasn't just growing bored with her self-imposed confinement -- but then, as soon as I thought she was well enough to bear a few responsibilities about the place, she was back in bed again, begging me off with those doe eyes.

I brought the midwife again once, and though mostly I brought her out of concern for Leisl, a small, secret part of me was pleased that, if she were feigning the illness so she could laze about without being put to work, the midwife would uncover it.

She did not come out of the bedroom and declare it all a fraud, to my mild surprise. She just shook her head, assured me that Leisl was not in any discomfort aside from her own concern about the situation, and reminded me to send for her straight away if there were any sign of labor.

A few weeks before the midwife warned we might start to expect Leisl to have the baby, I was woken in the middle of the night by a piercing scream.

I scrambled upright, still half-asleep, though fear was rapidly pushing the cobwebs from my head. From my mattress on the floor, I could see Leisl sitting up in bed, a lit candle dancing in one hand, the other pressed to her mouth, muffling hysterical sobs.

"Leisl? What is it?" I pulled myself to my feet, half-convinced already that it was just a night terror that had woken her. But once I was standing, I could see what it was she was staring at, what it was that had made her scream and cry. She was lying in a sticky pool of blood, so brilliantly crimson that it seemed like the only color in the room.