Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran Read Free Book Online

love. Maybe if there were a man who knew her, who could understand her as well as her family did. She banished the thought. No such man existed in her world, certainly not this old miller. Why should she trade the joy of working with her father for life with a stranger?
    Her father watched her but said nothing. She walked to him and laid a kiss on his sweaty head.
    Stay here, Papa , she signed, staring into his eyes.
    Martin’s shoulders drooped. “If this inquisitor does turn his eye on Narbonne…”
    Auda touched his cheek but he moved away.
    “Wife of a miller could bring good fortune. You would have wealth, at least. And with wealth you can do many other things. Perhaps this is the chance we waited for.”
    It didn’t seem like any good chance at all. Auda scowled, trying not to give in to tears.
    Make my own chance.
    Martin’s voice grew gravelly. He laid a heavy hand on Auda’s shoulder. “I don’t know what to advise. But your sister was right about one thing.” He dropped his hand and turned away. “It’s what your mother would want.”

Chapter Seven
    Auda climbed the ladder to the loft where her father slept and let herself sink into the hay bed beside the window. Loneliness solidified into a lump between her shoulders.
    The impressions she had of her mother were few, either imagined or given to her by Poncia. Had she lived, how would Elena look today? Martin rarely spoke of his beautiful wife who had died so young. Auda imagined that she must have looked just like Poncia.
    Would things have been different had she lived? What had her mother’s last thoughts been? Were they for the baby she carried, a prayer for the life she might have taken to the grave? Or perhaps she’d been angry at this mewling ‘it’ that clawed inside her, blamed it for tearing through her. Perhaps she’d held her breath and shut her legs, had never wanted Auda to be born, died to keep it from happening.
    Uncharitable thoughts, Auda realized. She should be blaming herself for taking her mother from her sister and father. She wondered, not for the first time, on the circumstances of her birth. Neither father nor sister would speak of it, except to say her mother loved her.
    Yet whoever she’d been, whatever she’d thought, Elena had taken a piece of her daughter with her. Not just the lack of color that had left Auda an unsightly specter, nor the flesh cut from her living body. Something deeper. Tears collected in the corners of Auda’s eyes.
    Maman, help me if you can , she prayed. She meant to ask for her mother’s guidance: was Poncia right to insist Auda should move to a strange home with a strange man away from her family? Who would take care of her father? Yet other thoughts invaded instead.
    Please, Maman, am I to find someone who loves me as Papa loved you? Will he want to know me, know what I think and what I write? A darker thought surfaced—would he even let her write?
    Her father and sister had never talked to her about such things. Martin only spoke of books and writing, and gossip he learned while scribing. Poncia had not spoken much of love to Auda either, never shared dreams of the future. She just worried over Auda’s safety.
    So how then was Auda to know what to hope for?
    Sighing, she drifted back down to the studio. Martin had brought out his mould and deckle, the basic tools of his trade, for cleaning. Each mould consisted of a wire sieve mounted in a wooden frame that would be dipped into the paper vat to filter the pulp slurry. A larger wooden rim, the deckle, fit on top of the mould, creating a tray that both kept the pulp from sliding back into the vat and defined the edges of the sheet. The fibers left after the water dripped through the wire screen would be pressed and dried, and cut into pages.
    Her father usually used his favored mould and deckle set, acquired from his apprenticeship in Spain, but over the years he’d collected many others. There was the large set formaking receipt books for