“People are starving,” a wrinkled woman said into a lull in the conversation. People eagerly mumbled their acknowledgment, as if this were an umbrella to run in under to escape the drenching silence. “I see it every day. If we could just help some of those unfortunate people.”
One of the other women puffed herself up like a chicken ready to lay an egg. “It’s just terrible the way no one will give them a job, when there’s plenty of work if it was just spread around.”
“I know,” Mother said with a tsk. “I’ve talked to Howard until I’m blue in the face. He just hires people who please him, rather than those needing the job the most. It’s a disgrace.”
The others sympathized with her burden.
“It isn’t right that a few men should have so much more than they need, while so many people have so much less,” the man with the droopy eyelids said. “It’s immoral.”
“Man has no right to exist for his own sake,” Mother was quick to put in as she nibbled on a piece of dense cake while glancing again at the grimly silent man. “I tell Howard all the time that self-sacrifice in the service of others is man’s highest moral duty and his only reason for being placed in this life.
“To that end,” Mother announced, “I have decided to contribute five hundred gold crowns to our cause.”
The other people gasped their delight, and congratulated Mother for her charitable nature. They agreed, as they sneaked peeks across the room, that the Creator would reward her in the next life, and talked about all they would be able to do to help those less fortunate souls.
Mother finally turned and regarded Nicci for a moment, and then said, “I believe my daughter is old enough to learn to help others.”
Nicci sat forward on the edge of her chair, thrilled at the idea of at last putting her hand to what Mother and her friends said was noble work. It was as if the Creator Himself had offered her a path to salvation. “I would so like to do good, Mother.”
Mother cast a questioning look at the man in the straight chair. “Brother Narev?”
The deep creases of his face pleated to each side as the thin line of his mouth stretched in a smile. There was no joy in it, or in his dark eyes hooded beneath a brow of tangled white and black hairs. He wore a creased cap and heavy robes as dark as dried blood. Wisps of his wiry hair above his ears curled up around the edge of the cap that came halfway down on his forehead.
He stroked his jaw with the side of a finger as he spoke in a voice that almost rattled the teacups. “So, child, you wish to be a little soldier?”
“Well…no, sir.” Nicci didn’t know what soldiering had to do with doing good. Mother always said that father pandered to men in an evil occupation—soldiers. She said soldiers only cared about killing. “I wish to help those in need.”
“That is what we all try to do, child.” His spooky smile remained fixed on his face as he spoke. “We here are all soldiers in the fellowship—the Fellowship of Order—as we call our little group. All soldiers fighting for justice.”
Everyone seemed too timid to look directly at him. They glanced for a moment, looked away, then glanced back again, as if his face was not something to be taken in all at once, but sipped at, like a scalding-hot, foul-tasting remedy.
Mother’s brown eyes darted around like a cockroach looking for a crack. “Why, of course, Brother Narev. That is the only moral sort of soldier—the charitable sort.” She urged Nicci up and scooted her forward. “Nicci, Brother Narev, here, is a great man. Brother Narev is the high priest of the Fellowship of Order—an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator’s will in this world. Brother Narev is a sorcerer.” She cast a smile up at him. “Brother Narev, this is my daughter, Nicci.”
Her mother’s hands pushed her at the man, as if she were an offering for the Creator. Unlike everyone else, Nicci couldn’t take her gaze from his hooded eyes. She had never seen their like.
There was nothing in them but dark cold emptiness.
He held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Nicci.”
“Curtsy and kiss his hand, dear,” Mother prompted.
Nicci went to one knee. She kissed the knuckles so as not to have to put her lips on the spongy web of thick blue veins covering the back of his hairy hand floating before her face. The whitish knobs were cold, but not icy, as she had expected.
“We welcome you to our movement, Nicci,” he said in that deep rattling voice of his. “With your mother’s caring hand raising you up, I know you will do the Creator’s work.”
Nicci thought that the Creator Himself must be very much like this man.
From all the things her mother told her, Nicci feared the Creator’s wrath. She was old enough to know that she had to start doing the good work her mother always talked about, if she was to have any chance at salvation. Everyone said Mother was a caring, moral person. Nicci wanted to be a good person, too.
But good work seemed so hard, so stern—not at all like her father’s work, where people smiled and laughed and talked with their hands.
“Thank you, Brother Narev,” Nicci said. “I will do my best to do good in the world.”
“One day, with the help of fine young people like you, we will change the world. I don’t delude myself; with so much callousness among men, it will take time to win true converts, but we here in this room, along with others of like mind throughout the land, are the foundation of hope.”
“Is the fellowship a secret, then?” Nicci asked in a whisper.
Everyone chuckled. Brother Narev didn’t laugh, but his mouth smiled again. “No, child. Quite the contrary. It is our most fervent wish and duty to spread the truth of mankind’s corruption. The Creator is perfect; we mortals are but miserable wretches. We must recognize our wicked nature if we hope to avoid His righteous wrath and reap our deliverance in the next world.
“Self-sacrifice for the good of all is the only route to salvation. Our fellowship is open to all those willing to give of themselves and live ethical lives. Most people don’t take us seriously. Someday they will.”
Gleaming, mousy eyes around the room watched without blinking as his deep, powerful voice rose, like the Creator’s own fury.
“A day will come when the hot flames of change will sweep across the land, burning away the old, the decaying, and the foul, to allow a new order to grow from the blackened remains of evil. After we burn clean the world, there will be no kings, yet the world will have order, championed by the hand of the common man, for the common man. Only then, will there be no hunger, no shivering in the cold, no suffering without help. The good of the people will be put above the selfish desires of the individual.”
Nicci wanted to do good—she truly did. But his voice sounded to her like a rusty dungeon door grating shut on her.
All the eyes in the room watched her, to see if she was good, like her mother. “That sounds wonderful, Brother Narev.”
He nodded. “It will be, child. You will help bring this to be. Let your feelings be your guide. You will be a soldier, marching toward a new world order. It will be a long and arduous task. You must keep the faith. The rest of us in this room will not likely live to see it flourish, but perhaps you will live long enough to one day see such a wondrous order come to pass.”
Nicci swallowed. “I will pray for it, Brother Narev.”
Chapter 11
The next day, loaded with a big basket of bread, Nicci was let out of the carriage, along with a gaggle of other people from the fellowship, to fan out and distribute bread to the needy. Mother had attired her in a ruffled red dress for the special occasion. Her short white stockings had designs stitched in red thread. Filled with pride to at last be doing good, Nicci marched down the garbage strewn street, armed with her basket of bread, thinking about the day when the hope of a new order could be spread to all so that all could finally rise up out of destitution and despair.
Some people smiled and thanked her for the bread. Some took the bread without a word or a smile. Most, though, were surly abo
ut it, complaining that the bread was late and the loaves were too small, or the wrong kind. Nicci was not discouraged. She told them what Mother had said, that it was the baker’s fault, because he baked bread for profit, first, and since he received a reduced rate for charity, baked that second. Nicci told them that she was sorry that wicked people treated them as second-rate, but that someday the Fellowship of Order would come to the land and see to it that everyone was treated the same.
As Nicci walked down the street, handing out the bread, a man snatched her arm and pulled her into the stench of a narrow dark alley. She offered him a loaf of bread. He swiped the basket out of her hands. He said he wanted silver or gold. Nicci told him she had no money. She gasped in panic as he yanked her close. His filthy probing fingers groped everywhere on her body, even violating her most private places, looking for a purse, but found none hidden on her. He pulled off her shoes and threw them away when he found they had no coins hidden in them.
His fist punched her twice in the stomach. Nicci crashed to the ground. He spat a curse at her as he stole away into the shadowed heaps of refuse.
Holding herself up on trembling arms, Nicci vomited into the oily water running from under the mounds of offal. People passing the alley looked in and saw her retching there on the ground, but turned their eyes back to the street and hurried on their way. A few quickly darted into the alley, bent, and scooped up bread from the overturned basket before rushing off. Nicci panted, tears stinging her eyes, trying to get her wind back. Her knees were bleeding. Her dress was splattered with scum.
When she returned home, in tears, Mother smiled at seeing her. “Their plight often brings tears to my eyes, too.”
Nicci shook her head, her golden locks swinging side to side, and told Mother that a man had grabbed her and hit her, demanding money. Nicci reached for her mother as she wailed in misery that he was a wicked, wicked man.
Mother smacked her mouth. “Don’t you dare judge people. You are just a child. How can you presume to judge others?”
Stopped cold, Nicci was bewildered by the slap, more startling than painful. The rebuke stung more. “But, Mother, he was cruel to me—he touched me everywhere and then he hit me.”