“And you yourself,” the man went on, his voice mellow as the ale Gird had not drunk. “So different from what I’d expected— truly a prince of peasants.” Gird controlled his reaction with an effort. Did the fellow think peasants had never heard lying flattery before? The calf the steward had praised so highly had been taken as a “free gift” to his count’s marriage celebration. “I’m sure you will not misunderstand—” The voice had a slight edge in it now; Gird braced himself for the thorn all that rosy sweetness had been intended to conceal. “Some of my colleagues are—alas—less than frank with you. They have their own standards, not perhaps what you would understand, being so honest yourself.”
Gird was tempted to say “Get on with it, man! Is it gold you want, or someone’s life?” He merely grunted, and walked on a little faster. The man’s hand touched his sleeve, slowing him. Gird glanced ahead, to the torchlight where his men were on guard at the corners of the market square.
“There’s fair, and there’s fair,” the man was murmuring, his hand still on Gird’s arm. “A man like you, peasant-born—good solid stock, I always say, Alyanya’s good earth—” That came out of him as harshly as a cough; Gird would have wagered that the man had never given Alyanya a thought in his life. “I just want you to know I’m your friend; you can trust me. And as a token, I have a little gift—” The little gift came heavily into Gird’s hand, round and smooth, with a slightly oily feel. He knew without looking that it was gold, the first gold he had ever touched. With anger and revulsion came curiosity: he wanted to peer at the coins, to see if it was one of the fabled gold seadragons, or the more common (by repute) crowns. He opened his hands and let the coins ring on the cobbles of Brightwater’s main street.
“You dropped something, trader!” he said loudly. Heads had turned at the sound of gold hitting stone; he himself would not forget the almost musical chime, or the edges of the five coins against his fingers.
“You stupid fool!” The trader’s voice was low and venomous. “You might have been rich, powerful—”
“I might have been your tool, or dead,” said Gird softly. Then, louder, “Best pick them up, sir; there’s been enough coin scattered today.”
“If you dare tell anyone—” began the trader, crouching and scrabbling over the cobbles for his coins. “I’ll—”
“You’re threatening me?” Gird’s voice rose, the day’s frustrations and his anger getting the better of him. “You snivelling little liar!” The trader’s hand slid into his gown, and the torchlight glinted on a thin blade; Gird batted it aside, hardly aware of the shallow gash it gave him. He could heard his men coming to see what was going on. His second swing felled the trader as if the man had been a shovel leaning on a wall. Gird stood over him, sucking his knuckles.
He wished the man would stand up, so he could knock him down again.
“What happened?” Jens, the Brightwater yeoman-marshal had come with the others. Gird didn’t answer until they had all arrived, perhaps two hands of his own yeomen and those citizens of Brightwater who had been on the street and brave enough to hang around when trouble began. He looked around the circle of faces.
“This one came with me into the city, tried to bribe me, and pulled a knife when I refused his bribe. Tried to tell me the others were dishonest.”
Jens snorted. “That doesn’t surprise me. Short weight, scant measure, stone-dust in the meal, and it’s been said for three years that it’s his bribes to the council chair that preserved his license to trade here. They’re not all bad.”
“I didn’t think so. But it’s this sort of thing I’m going to get rid of.” Gird looked around the faces again, seeing varied expressions from glee to worry. “An honest man doing honest work should be able to survive that way—one reason he can’t is cheats like this. If you want my help, that’s what the cost is to each of you—I won’t tolerate bribes, cheats, lies. One rule, the same for all, and fair enough to let a man live if he’s willing to work honestly.”
“And women?” asked one of the two women there. He nodded.
“And women. Same rule—no more being cheated because only a man can hold a cottage or craftcot. Earn the pay, get the pay.”
“I’m for that,” she said. Gird wondered who she was, she looked smaller than any of his women, but her face had the same resolute expression.
“What about him?” asked Jens. “Are you going to kill him?”
Gird was startled; it had never occurred to him, but from Jens’ voice and the reactions of the townsfolk, no one would think it odd if he sliced the man’s throat on the moment. “No,” he said. “We’ve proclaimed no laws—he could claim he didn’t know—”
“Not if he was dead,” someone muttered. Gird ignored that.
“It’s got to be fair,” he insisted. “The lords kill for whim; we don’t.” That we included those around; he saw by their faces that they realized it, and were surprised. “No, this’n goes back to his own wagon, out there, with his money, all of it, and the other traders must know.” As he said it, he realized that he would have to do part of it himself. They were still not accepting Jens or even one of his own marshals. He wished he could have a mug of ale; his belly needed it. He pushed that thought away, and pointed to two of his men. “Simi and Bakri—you carry him. I’ll come along and explain. Jens, you come too: I can’t stay here forever, and they’re going to have to learn to respect you. The rest of you— back to your posts, and call out replacements if you need them.”
Fires were still flickering in the traders’ field; Gird could see a cluster of dark forms around the one where he had eaten. He hailed them, as his yeomen carried the trader toward the fire. By the time they laid him down, he was beginning to stir and groan.
“This man,” Gird said, “told me some of you were dishonest, and then he tried to bribe me. I dropped his gold on the street—he got it back, threatened me, and then drew a knife.” He pulled up his sleeve, and showed the fresh gash still dripping blood. “So I knocked him down, and here’s his purse. Anyone here know much he had, so they can verify it?”
The other man who had seemed upset at Gird’s original comments on fair trading scuttled forward. “I’m his partner—I know—” and then his voice trailed away. Gird could imagine what he was thinking. Supposing he did know how much his partner had had, should he give that amount, or something higher—and claim Gird had stolen it—or something lower, and let Gird keep the bribe he would be sure Gird had taken. Gird looked past him to the trader he had already picked as the most trustworthy. He had asked Jens about him, on the way out, and Jens said he had a reputation for fair dealing.
Gird carried the purse to the trader. “He gave me five coins, gold I think, but he picked them up when I dropped them. Would you hold his purse?”
Reluctantly, it seemed, the trader reached for it, and then upended it into one of the wooden bowls they’d eaten from. “Five gold crowns,” he said. “Three silver crowns, and two copper crabs.” He stirred the coins, picked up one of the golds, and bit it, then examined it closely. “And this one is false—poor Rini, he couldn’t even bribe honestly.” Several of the others chuckled. The trader looked hard at Gird. “I presume you have a reason for bringing him back here rather than slitting his throat for him?”
“I don’t do that,” Gird said. The gash on his arm was beginning to sting, and he felt suddenly foolish and countrified, standing there with his sleeve torn and blood dripping down his hand. He did not like the feeling, or those who made him feel so. It should have been obvious why he came; it had been obvious to him.
“Well.” The trader cleared his throat. “He won’t trouble you again, I daresay, and if you intended to be sure none of the rest of us offered you bribes, I may say that some of us would not, anyway.”
He sounded almost angry; Gird realized that from the trader’s point of view they might resent being lumped with the dishonest one. “I didn’t think all of you would,” he said. “But it seemed fair to return him here, whe
re he was known, and make sure you knew his purse was with him.”
“Oh.” The trader’s voice had changed. “You were not accusing us of being his accomplices? Of sharing the bribe?”
That had not even occurred to Gird; it opened new insights into the ways merchants thought—not reassuring. “No,” he said firmly. “I thought before that most of you were honest, but one or two—” he carefully did not look at the unconscious man’s partner, “—were less happy about what rules I might make. I spoke to you, sir, because you seemed honest before, and Jens said you were.”
“Jens? Oh—that—uh—
“The yeoman-marshal of Brightwater barton,” Gird said.
“I thought he was a harness-maker’s—”
“I was a farmer,” Gird interrupted. “And now I’m the marshal-general.” It was the first time he had used the title Selamis had come up with; it felt strange in his mouth, and sounded strange on his ear. He went on before the traders could comment on it. “We consider all yeomen equal, whatever their skill. Yeoman-marshals guide each barton; marshals train yeoman-marshals and command cohorts.”
The traders looked a little dazed; the one who had been speaking before said, “Is it like a guild, then? More like that than an army, it seems—”
Gird knew nothing of guilds, and did not want to admit it right then. “It’s enough of an army to fight a war with,” he said. “But we think beyond war, to the way people should live in peace.” Their faces were still blank, carefully hiding what they thought. Gird felt the day’s work heavy on his shoulders, and wanted a quiet place to sleep before anything else. “You take charge of him,” he said to the traders, waving at the one who had opened his eyes, but still lay flat. Then he turned and headed back for the town.
He would have fallen into bed without even cleaning the knife-gash if one of his men hadn’t insisted on washing it out. They had saved him a bed—a real bed—in the barracks. He was asleep as soon as his head went down. He woke in full day, with sunlight spearing through the high, narrow windows and all the other beds empty. Someone had pulled his boots off, and laid a blanket over him. He felt stiff and dirty; somehow it was worse to sleep clothed in a bed, inside.
Outside he could hear what sounded like normal town noises. No screams, no clash of weapons. He stretched, shoved his feet into his boots, folded the blanket, and looked around. Weaponracks on the walls, but no weapons: the soldiers had used them the day before, and his men had them now. He could smell cooked food. He followed the smell and came to a wide-hearthed kitchen. Someone at the hearth looked up and saw him.
“There he is. Bread? Cheese?”
“Both.” Gird looked around. “Where’s the jacks? And a well?” He followed gestures and found the jacks, then a long stone trough fed by a pipe in the wall of the barracks court. A thin trickle leaked under the wooden plug; when he pulled it out, a stream of cold clean water raced along and out the open drain at the far end of the trough.
“Clean shirts inside,” called someone from within. Gird pulled off his filthy one and used it to mop himself with water. Someone had left a chunk of soap—real soap—on the rim of the trough. He scrubbed, feeling more human by the moment. For that matter, he might as well be clean all over; he shucked his boots and trousers, and scrubbed himself all over. Yesterday’s gash on his arm reopened, stinging, but it looked clean, a healthy pink. When he was done, he replugged the pipe, and looked for somewhere to lay his wet clothes. Rahi was standing in the kitchen doorway, chuckling and holding out a blue shirt.
“You!” He could not have said why it bothered him then, but somehow being found wet and naked, alone in a walled yard after his bath, was not the same as bathing with others in a creek or pond. He dropped the wet clothes, snatched the shirt, and then held it away. “Blue? But I don’t have a blue shirt—
“You do now. Go on, put it on; they’re asking for you, a whole gaggle of them.” She had brought trousers as well, somewhat too large but clean and whole. As he dressed, she picked up his wet clothes, sniffed them, shook her head and dumped them back in the trough. “These’ll need more than rinsing.”
That day Gird found himself having to explain in more detail than he had yet devised just how he thought the law should work. He discovered men of law, who explained at great length why his simple measures would not do, and why the law had nothing to do with justice, and a great deal to do with precedent, custom, and the maintenance of commercial stability. Gird listened until he could not stand it, and then roared at them; they turned pale and disappeared, and he thought no more of them. He let each craft, each kind of merchant, present an appeal: Selamis sat beside him and wrote them all down. Brightwater had plenty of clerks who could read and write, but Gird trusted Selamis more than the strangers. He was not surprised to notice that Selamis talked easily to the merchants, even the richest, or that they seemed to prefer him to Gird.
Then he gave them all his plan, which combined (he thought) absolute common sense with absolute fairness and honesty. When everyone complained, he was sure he’d gotten it right: it pleased no one completely, but everyone slightly. Somewhat to his surprise, the grumbling died off, and the townsfolk and traders went back to their work. He had expected more trouble, not shrugs and winks and return to business as usual.
Many of his yeomen had never been in a town as large as Brightwater. Gird spent the next several days straightening them out, and insisting (until his voice nearly failed) that his rules applied to them, too. It was always possible that a townsman’s gift of a pear or meat pasty to the man patrolling the street was not intended—or taken— as a bribe, but Gird could see clearly where it might lead. If someone wanted to give supplies to the army as a whole, as the farm villages had done with their gifts of food and tools, then Gird insisted it had to be done openly. Selamis had to record the gift, and then Gird would distribute it among all the cohorts as needed. Only a few yeomen were obviously looking for bribes, or extorting gifts, whichever way it could be described. Gird shocked his followers and the townsfolk by discharging those few, publicly, and explaining why. After that, the problem seemed to disappear.
He himself had a chance to see inside a rich man’s home for the first time, when the surviving master merchants and craftsmen invited him to dine. He had never really thought about what would go into all those rooms, had envisioned even a king’s palace as a glorified peasant cottage, but with everything whole and in abundance. The guard barracks had reinforced that notion: it was larger than his cottage, but the furnishings were much the same. Now, when he stepped onto glazed tiles of blue and white, when he saw the tapestries hung from walls, the carved and inlaid chairs and tables, the shelves crowded with things whose purpose he could not even guess, he realized how wrong he had been. The dining hall lay at the back of the house, facing a walled garden—but a garden made more for viewing than using. No cabbages, no red-roots, no onions or ramps—but bright ruffles of color he did not even know. Two fruit trees were trained against opposite walls; their fruit gleamed like jewels among the leaves.
The meal itself surprised him as much as the house. He had assumed rich men ate more of the same food that he ate—what else was there? He peered suspiciously at a translucent yellow-green liquid in a glossy blue bowl, and waited until the others had dipped their spoons (their silver spoons) into it before trying it. It tasted like nothing he had ever imagined; he could have drunk a kettleful of it. That was followed by a stew of vegetables and fish, then a roast of lamb, rolled around a grain stuffing flavored with herbs. He had not known lamb could taste like that. Then came a dish of fruit with a honeyed sauce, then an array of cheeses, white, yellow and orange.
By this time, he had had more food than his belly would hold with comfort. The merchants nibbled on, watching him covertly. He wondered if they knew he was calculating how many of his yeomen just one such meal would feed. They might—and they might be worrying about it, too. He looked around the room, noticing the soft-footed servants who had brought an
d removed all those dishes. One of them met his gaze with an angry challenge; Gird gave him a slight nod. He refused the last three courses, explaining that he never ate so heavily in the midst of the day, and when he left he felt as if he should take a bath and wash it all off.
“And that’s an honest one, they say,” Gird reported to Selamis and several of the marshals that evening. “Not so rich as the one the mob killed, not cruel or unfair to his laborers and servants. I saw just that one part of the house, from the entrance to the dining hall—but if the rest is anything like it—”
“It would be,” said Selamis, the corners of his mouth twitching. Gird glared at him.
“You know all about it, I suppose; you may even know what that green stuff was that looked like ditch-water and tasted—oh, gods know how it tasted, but it was good. But men like that, they have a lot to lose. They’ve done well under the lords; they won’t stick with us if they don’t do well under us. But if we bend the rules for them, we’re betraying our own people.”
The marshals nodded seriously, but Selamis lounged in his seat, almost smirking. Gird wanted to clout him. It was hard enough making the marshals accept him when he was invisibly efficient; when he put on airs, it rubbed everyone’s hair backwards. Gird glowered at him.
“I suppose you think you should have gone to that dinner? You, who would know all the names for that kind of food, and which of those pesky things on the table were for what use? I see the way they talk to you first—maybe they should’ve asked you.” Gird paused for breath, puffed out his cheeks, and made a rude noise. “But they didn’t ask you, Selamis: they asked me. They know where they stand with me, even if they don’t like sharing table-space with a big stupid peasant who doesn’t know what to do with a silver spoon. You’re in between: not one nor’t’other, not true peasant nor true lord. We don’t care if you’re a bastard or not, but they do. Yet you push it in our face that you’re more like them.”
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