By: Jasper Jose
Davila recalled the first few weeks of her son’s life as she tried to manoeuvre through court life without an income or a husband. After leaving tutoring, she had faded from the social circles of Orrieto, though she still felt whole in the quiet of her apartments and inns as she nursed the boy. There were none, however, willing to accommodate the two of them, for who would offer extra coin for a babe who did nothing for them?
She thought of the cold first. The nights spent curled against the boy, a hand cupped over his belly to keep him warm, her breath ghosting over the crown of his head. Winter was not kind to the destitute—not that she had yet admitted to herself that she belonged among them. She had still carried herself with the manner of a woman accustomed to softer sheets, shoulders squared, and a voice steady when she inquired for work, a room, or a favour. But the silks she once wore grew thin, her gloves lost to some unremembered place, and soon she could no longer ignore the way innkeepers looked at her: first at her face, then at the bundle in her arms, and finally at her hands, which were beginning to show the rawness of scrubbing floors.
She had learned quickly that charity was never given freely. The first time she pleaded—gently, with the words arranged just so, framed in the humility of a woman between fortunes—she was met with a smirk. The proprietress of the inn had tilted her head, appraising her the way one does a mare at auction. The woman’s hands stunk of cheap wine.
She did not return.
Instead, she had spent her last bit of silver on a smaller flat—one so cramped that she could touch both walls if she lay like a corpse. She had sat against the thin mattress, rocking the boy in the dark, listening to the sounds of the city beyond the shutters. The scent of damp wood and old linens curled in the corners. She had wept once he fell asleep. No mother should wonder if love alone could keep her child alive.
In those weeks, she came to understand hunger in a way she never had before. She took to chewing stale bread slowly, letting it soften on her tongue before swallowing, fooling herself into thinking it was more than it was. But the hunger was nothing compared to the fear—fear that her milk would dry up, that the boy would wail and wail, that she would wake one morning and find him quiet in her arms, his breath stolen by a night too cold for them both.
And still, the baby’s father did not reply. She hoped that a courier had erred and that he had yet to read her letters.
Some nights, when she dozed between waking and dreaming, she thought of the convent—the candlelight flickering over parchment. She could still taste the ink at the corner of her mouth. She had left, knowing she did not belong, though she longed for the hush of the chancels, of the priories where she had lived. At least there she knew that the absence of hunger was a guarantee.
But then the boy would stir, and she would feel the warmth of his cheek against her collarbone, the way his small hands twitched in sleep.
By a chance encounter, she had heard Verron’s name on a missive, casually mentioned in a conversation between merchants. The last letter she had sent was well before her son was born.
She did not seek him out right away. At first, she let his name settle on her tongue. Verron. Anger had curled in her chest on nights when the boy would not sleep, when hunger gnawed, too sharp to ignore. Yet, despite her reluctance, as she thought of the last time they had met, she knew of the reflection that glinted back.
There was a fear in his eyes back when she told him. There was no resentment. There was no anger—simply fear. He was once again a boy faced with a fate he was never prepared for, grasping for any escape—one that had come at the cost of her suffering. She should have hated him for that, and there were many times when she did. But she had known him as a child, as a boy who hung onto her every word, who was clever but uncertain, sharp but restless. He had not been born callous, and he had yet to learn of her circumstances. Her claim to his coin would be diminished if he dared to face her. What remained after the harrowing of hunger was pity, and a quiet, determined grace she swore to share with him. Prayer had become stronger as the leaves grew back, and the winds blew more kindly. She would hold him accountable, but she could never hate the father of her child, the boy who had known only her and the heartless order of Orrieto. She would believe in his potential for honour, as she did back when he was but a boy in her lap, a boy with an endless capacity for knowledge.
That night, she hesitated with the quill in her hand, staring at the bare parchment on the wooden slope.
And then she wrote.
Davila refused to let him become what his world wanted him to be.