Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jacomin saw him coming about a mile down the road one early summer afternoon, watching him come up as she nursed the baby, who was too young to have a name yet, but who she had privately started thinking of as Arent.  The man coming down the road wore a loose country traveling coat against the sun, but his hat was too new for him to be local and his shoes were broken in but expensive.  A census taker, maybe, like the one they'd chased off last fall, or a rent collector like the one the neighboring landlady had sent the year before and gotten back in a box.

The stranger stopped a respectful distance away when he drew near, just out of the shade of the tree Jacomin sat under.  She could hear her husband Petrus stop in the field to watch.  "Auntie, could you help me?" the man said, taking off his hat respectfully.  A city-bred accent, with the snub nose of Jacomin's father's family, but then, half of everyone in the area had that nose.  He was quite pink in the face, gold hair crushed from sweat and the hat; not used to walking so far in the sun.  "I'm looking for madam Janneke Geertruidae," he said, stumbling over the family name in his silly accent.  Not really a family name, since they all had the landlady's name up until six years ago, but Jacomin's mother had picked it for the last grandmother's grandmother she could recall, and so now it was the family name.

Jacomin raised her eyebrows and took the sleepy baby from her breast, putting herself together.  She bounced the baby on her knee to burp.  "There's no madams around here, stranger," she said, rejecting his auntie and making him blush even more deeply, glancing at the ground and doing his best to stand his ground.  "What are you looking for mama Janneke for?"

The stranger swallowed hard, rolling his hat in his hands for a moment before stopping suddenly.  "I answered an advertisement that she was looking for a child," he said, very careful.

"You're mister nobody?" Jacomin said, using that empty nothing name he'd used to sign his letters, the kind of thing helots used who were still helots in their hearts and had no people and no place in the world.  Her mother hadn't expected mister nobody to turn up for weeks yet, if at all, someone far away in another country answering her ad, who said he had a birthmark behind his knee like little baby Arent.  Lots of people had birthmarks.

Mister nobody was younger than she'd thought he'd be, or looked younger, like he'd never worked a day in his life.  He nodded tightly, shoulders tight and head half turned from her like he expected a slap even though she was well out of reach and sitting besides.  So maybe he had done a different sort of work after all.  

Jacomin tucked the baby back into his sling and stood.  "Well, come on then," she said.  She waved at Petrus to keep working and started off down towards home.

Mister nobody followed her, two quick steps to catch up and then matching her pace.  She took a drink of switchel from her canteen and handed it to him, lest he fall over before they got home.  She watched him sideways as he drank, taking in the little shadows of old piercings in his ears and his lip when he handed it back.  He caught her frank look and ducked his head, hiding under his hat.  He'd be about a height with her brothers Claes and Jurge if he didn't have so much practice making himself small, every movement tight and careful despite his fancy accent.  Jacomin patted the baby safe in his sling and tried not to think about why such a pretty boy would need to make himself so small.

Jacomin walked them to her sister Lyntie's place first, Lyntie old enough to remember little Arent and on the way besides.  They found her in the back, tending the kitchen garden with her husband and her flock of children fluttering around with the chickens.  Mister nobody nearly balked when everyone caught sight and stopped what they were doing to watch them, Lyntie giving Jacomin a doubtful look.

"Mister nobody," Jacomin said by way of introduction.  Lyntie was oldest, he could be her problem.

"Birthmark?" Lyntie asked as all the children crowded around and her husband kept a respectful distance.  Nobody glanced between them, watching them all sideways and looking half ready to bolt.

"Didn't ask," Jacomin shrugged.  She didn't remember what it looked like anyway.

"Roll up your trousers," Lyntie said to mister nobody.  Her blonde hair had started to go gray, hanging in a thick rope down her back even if she had the same nose as mister nobody.  "Right leg."

Mister nobody did what he was told, holding perfectly still as Jacomin and Lyntie leaned in to look at, sure enough, the two little marks there behind his right knee.  Lyntie and Jacomin shared a look.  

"What's your name?" Lyntie demanded as mister nobody rolled his trousers back down.  "Where are your people?"

"Kal,  Kallius," mister nobody said, blushing again, and if he'd taken off his hat he'd have fiddled with it.  "I haven't got any people."

Lyntie gave him a frank up and down look, leaning on her hoe in the sun.  Baby Arent had been five when he'd been taken away, Jacomin not even three, but Lyntie had been almost ten.  "How did they take you away?" Lyntie asked, more gentle this time.

Kal looked away, like he'd been expecting that question but dreading it.  His jaw worked and he looked down at his feet.  "The buyer was a woman, I think she had dark hair," he said eventually, quiet.  "She had an older woman with her, a helot.  There was crying, and my mother told me to be brave.  Then the buyer took my hand and told me I'd see my mother again if I was good, and there was a long ride in the back of a wagon."

Lyntie and Jacomin shared a long look; Jacomin didn't remember all of that herself, but some of it, and the rest from hearing mother tell it every fall, when baby Arent had been taken away because the harvest was bad.  The dread of watching the landlady's daughter come down the road on her beautiful horse with her beautiful clothes, like she had done a few years before to take away the neighbor's girl Aegetie, who still hadn't come home, and listening to their mother scream after the wagon.

"Hugo," Lyntie said over her shoulder to her husband.  "Take mister nobody here to the springhouse.  Get him cooled down and give him something to eat before he falls over."

Kal looked mulish like he wanted to say something, but kept his mouth shut and touched his forehead respectfully like they were free born town ladies and not dirty country helots with bare feet.  They watched Hugo lead mister nobody up the hill to let him stick his feet in the cold water and eat some bread and cheese, the children trailing after the novelty of a stranger.

"That's him," Jacomin said to Lyntie when they were gone, patting her sleeping baby in his sling, thinking about how she'd like to kill the old landlady and her daughter.  Too bad the landlady and her daughters had the good sense to pick up sticks to the city before they'd burned her house down.

Lyntie shook her head.  "Lots of babies went away.  Let mama see him first before you say anything and get his hopes up."

"That's him," Jacomin said stubbornly.

They took mister nobody up the road to the old overseer's house, the big one mama had bought for a song when the estate collapsed and the landlady ran away.  They looked like a little parade, mister nobody at the head between Lyntie and Jacomin, trailing babies and chickens and husbands, and picking up more neighbors along the way like it was a holiday.  Mister nobody kept his head up this time, looking like they were marching him to a hanging.  Jacomin decided she liked him; he had the good sense to be quiet and he kept his head up the more scared he got.

Mama heard them coming down the road, impossible to miss by the time they stopped in the shady courtyard.  She came out from the grand entrance, the archway all covered with the first flowers of the year, and she just stood there looking at mister nobody for a long while.  He took his hat off respectful and kept his chin up even though he looked like he wanted to cry, hands almost white clutching the brim of his hat.  Mama had her gray hair pinned up in a crown of braids around her head.  She was more delicate than she had been even a few years ago and unsteady on the stairs when she finally stepped down.

Lyntie nodded sharply when mama looked at her, mister nobody following the exchange close.  No one said anything but the chickens, the neighbors and the children gathered behind them hushed and watching.  Mister nobody rolled up his trousers leg again when Lyntie and mama looked back at him, mama's face carefully blank in case it wasn't him after all.  Jacomin couldn't look at mister nobody's face right then, sick at the thought of her little baby Arent taken away and come back like that, almost thirty years later.

Mama took his face in her hands and pulled him down to kiss his forehead, half a head shorter than him.  "My baby," she said, and folded him down with his head on her shoulder.  Lyntie and Jacomin looked away to let mama and mister nobody pretend not to cry in front of a crowd.

Lyntie and Jacomin did their best to chase everyone out of the courtyard and give them some privacy, but the news spread to the neighbors fast and they came pouring in to see.  

"Don't these people have homes to go to?" Lyntie groused as the sun went down and the third family handed her a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese for what was by then a holiday.  

Her husband Hugo grunted, busy laying out food for the too many babies underfoot, everybody making the same decision as Jacomin and having their babies now that they couldn't be taken away anymore.  Lyntie shut her mouth quick when Mama brought mister nobody–Kal–Arent–down to the kitchen and pretended to feed him, the rest of them crowding in and making the kind of pressing quiet only a crowd of people staring can make.

Mama fussed over a slice of bread and cheese for mister nobody, nervous.  "The landlady said you were going to be a valet? Or a housekeeper?" mama asked, the hope in her voice painful.  

Kal winced minutely.  "I swept floors and hauled water until I was about fifteen," he said quietly, shoulders hunched.  "And then--and then, after a while, I--worked for a young man, a landlady's son," he said, twisting his hands together until he realized everyone was watching him.  Lyntie and Jacomin shared a grim look over his head.  None of them had ever had to see the landlady more than twice a year, and he'd had to live with one.  A prostituted child, sold off to be a toy.  Lyntie scowled out the door, in the direction of the old landlady's manor house.

"So you were a valet?" mama asked hopefully, ignoring that painful silence after fifteen, determined to ignore what the rest of them understood.

Kal flinched like he had a lot of practice being slapped.  "No, but I wrote accounts for him? Sometimes?  And I--I paint, now?" he said, looking up at her hopefully.

"Houses?" mama asked, smiling like she wanted to cry.

"Pictures? Of people?" he said, still painfully hopeful.

"Oh," mama said.  The rest of them looked at each other; Jacomin didn't quite understand what that meant either.  A rich people thing.  "Are you married?" mama said, taking his hands in hers and seizing on something she could fix.  "You're so pretty, we'll find a nice wife to take care of you right away."

Kal winced again.  "I have a--friend? A housekeeper," he said, dancing around it again and looking at his hands in mama's to avoid her eyes. Rich people talk for husband, Jacomin supposed. She wondered who exactly mister nobody was, to dance around all these rich people things and flinch like he still expected a slap.  "I left him in the village," he said.

"Oh," mama said again.

Kal took his hands from hers, folding even further in on himself.  "I'm sorry," he said to no one in particular.

"Are you hungry? You're so thin," mama said, even though he had an untouched slice of bread and cheese in front of him.  Before he could answer that she was chasing everyone into eating and feeding the neighbors and avoiding the question of who was sorry for what.

They fed mister nobody up on the best of the spring food, good bread and soft cheese, pine nuts and chickpeas in oil.  He ate daintily, like someone was going to take it from him, and mama looked like she finally understood him then, fussing at him to try this and watching grimly as he picked at that.  Then the neighbors from the other side arrived to gawk at the news and eat up their food, and then the neighbors from further away who were actually cousins too arrived because they'd heard from the boy Lyntie sent off to look for their papa who was visiting his sister.  So there were introductions to make, except that mister nobody looked smaller and smaller in that growing crowd of family and not quite family and might as well be family, the crowd so big mister nobody almost looked like he was going to get swallowed up.

"He's so skinny," mama said, twisting her hands where she fretted in the corner with Lyntie, watching mister nobody disappear sitting right in front of them.

"He's fine, mama, leave him alone," Lyntie said, watching their brothers Claes and Jurge come in from the fields and circle around mister nobody, taking him in before introducing themselves.  Claes had been just a baby in arms when Arent went away, but Jurge had been almost eight. The three of them did look like a set, mama's pretty gold hair and papa's snub nose, but Claes and Jurge had paler hair and darker skin from too-long days out in the fields or herding sheep, and both Claes and Jurge had children running underfoot already.  Mister nobody looked like some fancy little game hen among barnyard geese, too delicate and fancy for them.  He didn't need anything from them, noone quite sure what to do with him and not sure what to make of him.

Mister nobody slipped away sometime in the heavy crowd that evening, everyone sharing looks over his head and muttering about what the landlady had done.  Jacomin missed him between one breath and the next, the pressing crowd so busy talking about him that no one was talking to him and he just up and disappeared.

Jacomin bundled up the sleeping baby against the evening chill and went out to look for mister nobody.  Kal, she supposed, more than Arent now.  She found him, whoever he was now, sitting out at the edge of the fields, smoking with his back to the house.

"That's a filthy habit," she said, sitting down next to him.  Smoking was the kind of thing city helots did when there wasn't enough food and she didn't like what it said about him that he'd rather sneak off to smoke than be fed in the kitchen.  

He looked over at her, profile dark.  "I know," he said.  He took one last drag of it and ground it out.  Dragged a hand through his hair.  "I'm sorry I disturbed you all.  I'll leave in the morning."

"What for?" Jacomin demanded.  "You just got home.  Papa's not even back from his sister's yet."

Kal pressed the back of his hand to his mouth.  "I can tell I'm a disappointment," he said finally, voice rough.  "I'm not—I shouldn't have come out here."

"Little brother," Jacomin said, heart hurting.  "Everyone's angry for you, not at you."

Kal took a deep, shaky breath at that.  The baby snuffled in his sleep against Jacomin's breast and the sound of the pressing crowd carried from the house, but mister nobody didn't say anything.  The night was too cool to be comfortable even with the baby wrapped in her coat, but it felt good after the warm crush of the crowded kitchen.

"I used to have nightmares about fields like this," Kal said after a while, back of his hand still pressed against his mouth, knees drawn up.  "My–master used to take me out to his mother's estate every summer and I'd have nightmares about getting lost in the fields and someone chasing me down."

"Mama used to send us into the fields when the landladies came," Jacomin said, chest hurting.  "We used to call them the witches, because they'd snatch the babies away when the harvests were bad.  Mama said you got lost in the grain for two days when she was pregnant with me and she was afraid she'd never find you." Jacomin patted the baby in his sling, settling herself more than settling him.  "The landlady found you to take away because you were trying so hard to keep me from crying."

Kal inhaled sharply at that, a soft sound, easy to miss until he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"It wasn't your fault," Kal said, crying the same way all their siblings did, silent, so they wouldn't get found in the grain.  So they did have something in common after all.

"It wasn't your fault either," she said, leaning against him.  "You cry like all the rest of us do, you fit right in."

"The pimp used to take a switch to us for ruining our makeup," he said, pretending to smile as he wiped his eyes.

"Did anyone take care of you, after they took you away?" Jacomin asked.  "Mama's been killing herself trying not to ask."

Kal shrugged tightly.  "The first woman who owned me wasn't so bad, I just swept floors and she never made me go hungry.  Her daughter sold me when she was too old to live by herself anymore.  I worked in a laundry for a bit.  No one kept me for very long until the whorehouse and m–my master."

"He must have been awful," Jacomin said, from the way Kal stumbled every time he mentioned him.

Kal huffed a laugh under his breath and dragged a hand through his hair again, resting his head in his hands. "He could have been worse."

"Do you want to hold the baby?" Jacomin said.  "I should take him back in to bed soon." Lyntie was always after her to not spoil him by letting him sleep on her all the time, but he was Jacomin's first and maybe her last, so she'd spoil him all she liked.  She'd refused to carry a pregnancy when the landladies could just take the baby away like they did Arent, but once they couldn't anymore, Jacomin found she couldn't catch or stay pregnant no matter what she did.

They shuffled little baby Arent around, such a sturdy, fragile little body at the edge of such a vast empty field.  "What's his name?" Kal asked, tracing the baby's cheek with one finger.

"He's too little to say it out loud yet, mama said she named you too young and that's why the witches took you," Jacomin said.  "I'm going to name him after you, though."

Kal took another unsteady breath but his voice was even.  "Not a very lucky name," he said, frowning down at the baby in the dark.

Jacomin bumped him with her shoulder.  "A very lucky name.  You came back."

The other one came down the road a few days later riding a fine horse, leading another one, and trailed by a pack donkey and one of Jacomin's stupid, stupid cousins.  Jacomin sat in the shaded courtyard struggling through the  letters Kal had shown her on a wax tablet with the baby at her breast. Petrus could manage their field himself; once Jacomin could read and write, she'd see to it that all the babies could.  Kal had left her work through it and went in to their mother, the children chasing around them like lazy fall bees.  Jacomin didn't even notice the other one coming until all the children stopped playing to watch him coming down the road.

The baby stirred sleepily as she shifted him off the breast and set down the stylus, a sweaty, perfect little weight as she shook out her sore hand and stood.  This new one was dark haired and guileless, face too open to be a helot and wearing an expensive coat and hat besides like some landlady's get.

"What do you think you're doing bringing a stranger here, Olphert?" Jacomin yelled at her cousin as he and the stranger dismounted just inside the courtyard.

"Lay off, Jaco, he said he was looking for mister nobody," Olphert said sullenly, stupid as a post as he dismounted and helped the stranger with his horse.  Like nothing had changed, like they were still helots.

"And he paid you, didn't he," Jacomin snapped, the baby stirring sleepily at the noise.  She bounced him as she stabbed Olphert in the chest with one finger.  "What if mister nobody didn't want to be found, you ever think about that?"

"Peace, auntie," the stranger said, holding up his hands like she was supposed to find him charming, "I don't look like a slave catcher, do I?"

"You look like exactly what you are, which is some landlady's get, and no one asked you," Jacomin snapped at him without looking at him.

"Marcus," Kal said sharply from the door.  So this was the husband.  "I told you to wait in the village."

"I was worried," the rich idiot said.  "You said you'd be gone three or four days and it's been eight." He was loyal, Jacomin gave him that.

Kal and Jacomin traded a look.  Papa had come home the next day, all tears and bringing with him his sisters, their husbands, and every neighbor from the other direction, the chores for half the old estate thrown into chaos with everyone treating it like a holiday to come and whisper.  Between feeding the cousins and actually introducing Arent–Kal–around to them all as a person to talk to instead of a thing to talk about, the last of the neighbors hadn't even been chased off until two days ago. The days had all blended together.  The best thing Jacomin could say about Marcus was he hadn't brought another parade with him.

"Arent, who's this?" mama said, coming out to stand behind Kal on the step.

"Mother," Marcus said formally.  He stepped forward to take her hand and kiss it, like she was the landlady.  Behind her, Kal rolled his eyes.

"This is your husband?" mama asked, clearly charmed as the rich idiot straightened.

"Your husband, Arent?" Marcus said. He looked far too delighted with both those words for Jacomin's taste.

"Mother, my friend Marcus Hortensiae," Kal said.

"Like senator Hortensiae?" mama said, impressed, tucking her hand into Marcus' elbow to guide him into the house.

"My sister," Marcus said as Kal rolled his eyes again.

"She gave that nice speech about expanding the vote, we heard it read in the village this spring," mama said.

Jacomin leaned into Kal as they followed mama into the house.  "You have bad taste in men," Jacomin said to him, loud enough for the rich idiot to hear.

"I know," Kal said, and his rich idiot husband gave him a jaunty little smile over his shoulder.

Marcus wasn't completely useless, Jacomin gave him that.  He borrowed work clothes from Jurge when the sheep were due to be sheared and helped in the fold without complaint.

"Since when do you know how to shear sheep?" Kal asked him, hanging over the fence with Jacomin and the babies to skeptically watch Marcus wade in to grab an ewe.  Claes and Jurge watched with their own shears in hand as Marcus tipped the sheep over and began to shear her belly, like he was an old hand.

"What did you think I was doing gone a week every spring?" Marcus asked Kal, catching the sheep's head between his thighs to turn her and shear her side.

Kal muttered something under his breath that made Marcus blush furiously.  Fucking Lodee , it sounded like, but Jacomin didn't press him.

"It's not hard," Jacomin said instead, bumping Kal with her elbow.  "If your husband can do it, so can you." Jacomin didn't add, since he's an idiot.

"C'mon, Arent, I'll show you," Jurge said, passing him a shears over the fence.  Kal took them like they were a snake but dutifully climbed over the fence.

"Don't look so grim, Arent, you'll do fine," Marcus said with that stupid smile that was supposed to be charming. He straightened to let the sheep he'd sheared jump up and wander away, clapping Kal on the back as he passed.

"Don't call me that," Kal hissed at him, just quiet for Jacomin to catch. Marcus, to his credit, didn't say anything to that, just frowned and went to catch another sheep.

Marcus fit in as well as Kal didn't, even though they were both dressed in borrowed work clothes.  Marcus had broad enough shoulders to hold a sheep in place with no trouble and moved like he knew what he was doing besides.  He could have been somebody's husband, one of Petrus's cousins from the other side of the estate, if he hadn't shown up in his expensive coat like he owned the place.

Kal flinched away from the sheep every time it kicked, Claes and Jurge laughing as they held the sheep for him.  He held the shears too delicately, the children not helping by yelling at him how to do it.

He'd nearly gotten the hang of it when Claes gave him more control, letting Kal hold the sheep so he had her head pinned against his thigh, holding her front leg with one hand and the shears in his other, when the sheep kicked suddenly.  Kal went backwards, sitting in a mess of muddy sheep shit as Claes and Jurge and Marcus laughed along with the children as the sheep escaped, half shorn.

"You'll get the next one," Claes laughed, offering Kal a hand up.  Marcus patted him on the shoulder as he stood, Kal's jaw tight and his face bright pink to the tips of his ears.

"Come help with laying out dinner, I need another pair of hands with the baby," Jacomin said, waving Kal out of the sheep fold.  He followed her out dignified as a wet cat. She didn't need the help, but she wanted to give him a chance to save face.  Let Marcus roll around in sheep shit.

After Kal got cleaned up, he followed her closely, shoulders hunched tightly at the sound of Marcus joking around with their brothers.  They'd thawed towards Marcus faster than they had towards Kal, who didn't have any calluses on his hands and didn't know the first thing about anything on a farm.

Jacomin watched Kal bounce little baby Arent as she laid out the midday meal.  Everyone knew why Kal didn't know one end of the sheep from the other, which was part of the problem.

"Where'd you find him, anyway?" Jacomin asked him, drawing a jug of beer.

"A bathhouse," Kal lied smoothly without quite looking at her, like he'd been ready for this question.  "Marcus invited me to lunch."

Jacomin frowned at his bent head but left the lie alone for the moment.

Jacomin heard them bickering that night when she went to fetch them for supper.  Mama had put Kal in the nice guest bedroom, the one with a view out over the fields and nothing else, and Jacomin wondered about Kal's nightmares.

"Stop being a show off," she heard Kal say as she went up the steps.

"I'm just trying to be polite," Marcus said, stupid.

"You're not being polite, you're being a show off," Kal snapped.  "I told you to stay at the inn because I knew you would do this."

"I'm not doing anything, I don't know what you want me to do."

"They like you better than me because you're not broken.  They don't have to feel guilty about you."

Jacomin leaned her head against the wall, because it was true.  They didn't have to figure out how to make a place for Marcus or what to call him.  Marcus was easy to understand, even if he was some landlady's get; no one felt like they needed to tiptoe around why he didn't know something.

"You're not broken," Marcus said stubbornly, loyal to a fault, and Jacomin hated that she liked him just a bit more for it.

"I am, because you bought me out of a whorehouse, Marcus," Kal spat and all the hair on the back of Jacomin's neck stood up.  So that was how they'd met; Marcus wasn't just some landlady's son, he was that landlady's son.  That would kill their mother to know, after she'd been so charmed by how pretty and polite Marcus was; no wonder Kal had lied about it and tried to leave him in the village.  "You can pretend everything is fine, but I don't get to."

"Would you like me to leave?" Marcus said tightly.  Jacomin nearly knocked on the door to tell him to get out herself.  Lyntie would kill him if she ever found out.

"No," Kal said, quiet and miserable.  "I would like to stop being what I am."

Then the sound of one of them moving, and Jacomin's heart aching. "I love who you are," Marcus said, muffled and soft, making Jacomin scowl at him through the door.  Jacomin started back down the stairs to leave them to it, frowning and not sure if she hated Marcus more or less than she had before.  "I'm sorry this is so hard." 

"I want a picture of the baby," Jacomin told Kal the next morning after breakfast.  This time he'd let Marcus go out to the sheep without him, staying behind on the excuse of helping Jacomin with her letters.  She muddled through on the wax tablet while he washed up.

"Excuse me?" Kal said, looking up from the dish he was washing.

"You draw pictures," Jacomin said. "I want a picture of the baby to keep after you leave."

Kal made a noncommittal noise at that, finishing what he was washing.  He did the same as Lyntie when she was thinking, which was frown at his hands and say nothing.  Jacomin let him disappear after the dishes were done, frowning at the stupid wax tablet because she did the same.

Kal reappeared with a book in his hand a few minutes later and handed it to her wordlessly, sitting next to her at the table to fiddle with his hands like he'd rather be smoking.  He hadn't smoked, that she'd seen, since she caught him at it that night.  Jacomin gave him a look and set the wax tablet aside to page through the book.

"You did all these since you've been here?" she said, leafing through the sketches all done in loose brown ink.  Claes with his youngest daughter on his shoulders; Lyntie and her husband in the garden; baby Arent, fat and round and perfect.  A picture of their parents with their heads bowed together, looking fragile. Marcus, with that stupid jaunty smile in the sheepfold.

Kal nodded tightly, not quite meeting her eye.

"Is this what rich people pay you for?" Jacomin asked, paging past a picture of the house as it looked from the road, a sketch of herself sitting under the tree when mister nobody had stopped with his madams and his silly accent.

"No.  They want pictures of themselves, mostly," Kal said quietly, watching her turn the pages.  "Wedding portraits, pictures of the sky, that sort of thing." Kal twisted his hands together in his lap and then stopped.  "These were just for me."

"There's no pictures of you in here," Jacomin said, reaching the end of it.  She sat back to give him a considering look.  "I want a picture of you, for mama."

Kal blushed to the roots of his hair at that.  "I'd need a mirror," he said.

Mama cried when they left after a few weeks, still early in the summer so they could get back to the city before the weather turned sweltering.  Kallius looked strange in his expensive city clothes even though he had papa's nose and Lyntie's cheeks and mama's gold hair.  There was, thank goodness, less of a parade to see them off than there had been for Kal's arrival. Marcus saddled their horses and little pack donkey and for once had the good sense to keep his fool mouth shut.

"You really want to come visit?" Kal asked her skeptically when it was her turn to say goodbye.

"You promised I could," she said, handing him the baby to hold.  "I want to see you paint."

"Yes, little sister," he said, calling her that for the first time as he bent to kiss her forehead.  The baby stirred against his chest, round and perfect, when Jacomin took him back.

Jacomin gave Marcus a long, skeptical look when he finished saddling the horses and came to stand behind Kal like a dutiful, polite husband with his hands in his pockets.  "I don't like you," Jacomin told him, low enough to not carry to Kal making his goodbyes to papa and mama.  "You'd better take good care of him."

"I know," Marcus said, having the good sense to not try to charm her.  "Thank you for asking him to do the portraits."

"How do you know I did?" she demanded suspiciously.

Marcus shrugged, watching Kal.  "He wouldn't have left a self portrait on his own.  And I think you know him well enough by now to know that."

Jacomin shrugged herself and tsked at him without answering that, annoyed with Kal's bad taste in husbands.

Mama took forever to let them go, making sure they had enough food and fussing about the weather and making Kal promise again to visit in the fall, so he could come back when he'd been taken away.  Jacomin wasn't sure she'd have been able to let her baby Arent go again after missing him so long, watching Kal press his cheek to their mother's crown of braids, but he'd made a whole life for himself.

They watched Kal go from the parlor with the windows overlooking the road, where mama had seen them coming that first day with the parade and Kal looking like he was going to a hanging.  He hadn't brought his paints with him, he'd said, but he left copies of loose ink studies for the paintings he said he was going to do that winter.  Mama and papa with their heads bent together, looking fragile; baby Arent, perfect and round; Claes and Jurge and Marcus in the sheepfold; Jacomin and Kal sitting in front of a mirror.