The Serpent Gift by Lene Kaaberbøl

Author:Lene Kaaberbøl [Lene Kaaberbøl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782692300
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2019-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

The bed did not look as if it had been slept in, so perhaps he really had been waiting for me. On the table was an open book, and the oil lamp was still lit.

“Sit,” said Sezuan and pointed to one of the three chairs by the table.

I sat. I still felt dizzy and battered by my fall, and the shoulder was very painful by now. I didn’t lean against the backrest; it would have hurt too much.

Sezuan did not sit down. He remained standing a little distance from the table, looking at me.

“You’ve come because of your brother,” he said.

I nodded.

“You heard everything your mother and I said to one another, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” My voice was hoarse and croaky, the way it often was when I grew nervous.

“But your mother does not know that you are here.”

“No,” I whispered. I didn’t even dare think about what she would do when she found out.

He smiled slowly. It was not a nice smile. There was a hard and glittering edge of triumph to it, as if he had won and Mama had lost.

“Poor Melussina,” he said. But it didn’t sound as if he was really sorry for her, and his tone made me angry. There just wasn’t a lot I could do with my anger, not if I wanted him to help Davin and Nico.

There was a knocking at the door. Sezuan opened it, and Adrian entered with a pitcher of hot water and some linen strips.

“For Medamina’s injury,” he explained, bowed to me and to Sezuan, and left.

“Wash yourself,” said Sezuan. “Both the wound and the rest. I cannot abide filth, it is so unsavory.”

There was no special weight to the way he said it. I couldn’t even figure out whether it was meant to be insulting. But he made me feel small and dirty and vaguely disgusting, and I was loath to loosen my bodice and take off my blouse while he was watching.

“Well?” he said, after a while. “Will you get on with it?”

“Not with you watching,” I said, embarrassed but also stubborn. I meant it.

He raised one eyebrow. “I beg your pardon.”

He took the book from the table, deliberately turned his back, and presumably began to read.

I took off my bodice and eased the blouse off the injured shoulder. The gray material was dark with blood and had a tear in it as long as my hand. I twisted my neck, but the wound was too far down for me to see it.

The blouse wasn’t worth much now. I took it off, soaked it in the hot water and used it for a wash cloth. It wasn’t easy to cleanse a wound I couldn’t see. It was harder still to manage some kind of a bandage out of the linen strips that Adrian had brought. I couldn’t help thinking that it should have been Mama doing this; she was always the one who took care of us when we were hurt or ill. It would be a

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