Five

The nurse, Tullia, shifted in her sleep. She had known Serban for many of his years, and many of those years had been good. Her mother, an Irish housekeeper with a talent for black-eyed wretches, met him on Rathlin Island. He so obviously needed someone to keep him that she had been willing to let go of Tullia, a girl of fifteen, for only two months’ wage and a promise. Although no one described her as fetching, Tullia was strong and not yet strong-willed. Serban had no use for beauty; he needed someone, just someone, to anchor him.

Their first week together had been an awkward one. Tullia had not known what to expect of the man who now owned her, and their constant traveling left her spent. He insisted that she sleep in front of the door each night, a routine that she found maddening. For breakfast each morning, they shared raw oats with honey and a prayer, thick with the scent of the east.

The afternoon hours were full. Visitors called him the Serb, although he was from Romania, and they came in a steady stream, leaving behind fingerprints and bits of bread. Sometimes they smiled at her, and she smiled back. They never spoke English, and over time, she learned that her job was just to be present, just to make sure that the walls stayed nailed to the floors. Tullia spent her afternoons thinking of London, which she had not yet seen, and of what she would do when she no longer had to sleep in front of the doorway. Serban had promised to send her to the city, to a life that was far from Glenarm and the island's basalt cliffs.