The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  Her trust was a beautiful and terrifying thing.

  “All right,” said Fallon. ‘Lidans were famous for torturing captives before slaying them. Perhaps he was thinking of that.

  There was a slim opening in the bushes lining the trail, and Jasmine, now in the lead, breasted them at my command. Silky followed. Fallon, his animal skittish, rode up on Silky’s horse, and her mount kicked out.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Then I heard the guards. The moon was casting deep shadows, and I motioned to the others until we were all huddled in the black penumbra of a large oak. Perhaps the moon was not malevolent after all.

  We waited, afraid to move, nervous that the horses would give us away by a shake of the head, the clink of a bridle.

  The guards came close to us. Very close.

  Silky lifted her crossbow. I made an abrupt motion, and she lowered it.

  Silky could have easily picked off one of them, maybe two, but we would still have to contend with the rest of the mounted guards, not to mention the foot soldiers. And Silky would be incurring more bloodguilt.

  The mounted troops passed us by. And still we waited, for fear more guards would follow them.

  None came.

  Finally I turned Jasmine off the trail in a direction that would lead us away from the soldiers. Silky and Fallon followed.

  We rode under the trees at first and then under the night sky and that ominous moon.

  “This is spooky,” said Silky.

  Fallon told her to be quiet. No “Lady Silky” this time.

  The going was easy now; we were on old pathways that skirted fields of hay. Bard Fallon took the lead. In the east, streaks of pink heralded the dawn.

  He stopped in front of a small farmhouse.

  “Niamh lives here with her son,” said Fallon. “Trust her.”

  “You’re leaving us,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Our journey forks here,” he said. “I’ll make sure to leave some visible tracks once I’m away from Niamh’s. Perhaps the soldiers will follow them for a while—­but I’m not going to stay to find out if they do.”

  He had put his life up for us, and all I could say was “Thank you.”

  “I saw you run at Garth,” he said to me. “Even if I put that act in bardsong, no one would believe it.”

  “If I’d been thinking,” I said, “I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

  He looked at me speculatively. Then he mentioned our Bard by name.

  “If you do see the Bard Renn again,” he said, “tell him the debt is paid. Although”—­he seemed to hesitate—­“although I would rescue you again, even if there were no debt. I don’t believe in pedigrees—­those that know anything of The Book of Forbidden Wisdom don’t—­but I believe in courage. Lady Angel. Lady Silky.” And his horse broke into a canter; he turned in the saddle once, and, like the freeman in the river, he put his hand over his heart; he bowed his head. He turned back to face the road, and was gone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Niamh

  A moment later, a woman came out of the farmhouse.

  “Get off the horses,” she said without preamble.

  We dismounted. She took the horses and began walking them to the back of the house. A young man, maybe a year older than I was, came out the front door after her with a broom.

  “Better get inside,” he said. And he began brushing away our tracks.

  Minutes later we were sitting in the garden of Niamh’s house, sipping icy water from the well and eating ripe summer figs. Niamh and the young man with the broom—­her son—­sat and listened to our story.

  Niamh had deep black hair and wide dark eyes. Although I saw no signs of a husband—­and she didn’t wear the Shibbeth gold marriage bracelets—­she was branded. I tried hard not to stare, but when I looked at her face, my eyes were drawn to the cat-­shaped scar. She was, perhaps, thirty-­five. Certainly no older, in spite of having an almost-­grown son.

  The son, Jesse, scrutinized us both carefully as we spoke, but I noticed, to my annoyance, that his eyes kept returning to Silky. I admit that she was looking particularly beautiful. She had unbraided her gold hair, and it tumbled, tousled, down her back and framed her delicate face. The excitement of the escape and the wind, which had been in our faces as we rode, had put extra color in her cheeks. There was a glow to her. No wonder he was staring. I saw, too, that she was looking at Jesse as much as he was looking at her.

  As Silky took a turn with our story, I reached for another fig, narrowed my eyes, and considered Jesse.

  Although he might be no more than seventeen, he was like a young giant; outside, he had towered over all of us. His hair was blond, but not golden, like Silky’s, and his eyes were the same peculiar deep shade of blue as his mother’s. His face still had the appealing softness of youth, and, despite his size, there was nothing at all about him that seemed dangerous.

  Except the way he looked at Silky.

  Silky reached the present moment in our narrative. She had been circumspect and had left out a great many details, including Garth’s death.

  “You don’t need to worry anymore,” Niamh said. “We’ve never refused to help a woman, and we’re not going to begin now. I’ll get you out.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “This is a way-­station,” said Niamh. “The last way-­station for ‘Lidan women escaping Shibbeth for Arcadia.”

  “We’re going to Parlay,” I said.

  Niamh continued as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “We can have you out of Shibbeth in three days,” she said. “Jesse and I will guide you. The backroads to Arcadia are narrow and steep, and we’ll have to go on foot. I’ll sell your horses on the black market—­with the money, you’ll be helping the next woman in need.”

  I was near panic. We had to get to Parlay. As for Jasmine, on the black market horses became horsemeat—­no dealer would leave a horse alive and risk having his merchandise recognized. Meat was anonymous.

  “We’re not going back to Arcadia,” I blurted. “We’re going to Parlay.”

  Niamh stood suddenly, but not at my words. There was a sound on the walk outside and then a loud knock on the door.

  Silky’s eyes widened. I picked up the crossbow. Silky reached over and took it from me.

  “Wait,” whispered Niamh. Jesse crossed the room and looked out the side of the window, where the curtain met the frame.

  “Two horses by the trees,” he said. “Troops, by the look of the tack. I can’t see who’s at the door.”

  The knock came again.

  “A moment,” Jesse called out. “I’m coming. My mother’s not fitly dressed.”

  “Come on,” said Niamh. She pulled us into the bedroom.

  “One soldier with the horses,” murmured Jesse to us over his shoulder. “There may only be one at the door.”

  Niamh didn’t appear to be listening. She closed the bedroom door behind us. A moment later she was tugging at the floorboards; Silky and I began to help her.

  There was a crawl space big enough for two. Just.

  Silky and I curled around each other so that we fit. Niamh threw our saddlebags on top of us and began to put the boards back.

  We could hear Jesse speaking, but we couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then there was a single angry raised voice. “I will search your house,” came the voice. “And I will do it now. ”

  Jesse mumbled something.

  As Niamh prepared to put down the last floorboard over us, I saw the crossbow on the floor, grabbed it and pulled it in, hitting Silky on the head in the process.

  “That hurt,” she said.

  “Silky,” I said as firmly as I could. “You have to be quiet.”

  Niamh, her lips now pressed firmly together, shut us in.

  At firs
t there was light from a thin crack in the floor. I had a brief glimpse of Niamh lifting a rug, and then Silky and I were in absolute darkness.

  I could hear Niamh rustling on the other side of the room, where the bed was.

  The guard was very loud.

  “There’s been a murder,” he said. “A great Lord. You’ve been thought to harbor fugitives before. It’s said you deal in women.”

  “Does this look like a brothel?” asked Jesse. “We abide by the law. You’ll find no murderers here.”

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  “Who’s the woman in the bed?” asked the soldier.

  “My mother,” said Jesse. “She’s ill.”

  The rustling must have been Niamh getting under the covers.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “The shuddering sickness.”

  “There’s no quarantine mark on this house.”

  “We’ve let no one in,” said Jesse. “I was going to seal the door within the hour.”

  Next to me, Silky moved suddenly and then was still.

  “Itch,” she said in my ear. “Nose.”

  Her arms were pinned to her sides, but my arm was around her shoulder. I scratched her nose.

  “I’m sick, sir,” said Niamh.

  The soldier didn’t answer.

  I could hear him move around the bedroom. His footsteps came closer. I thought he was going to walk right over us, but he stopped.

  There was silence.

  He lifted the rug.

  A beam of light fell across my eye. Silky gave a small gasp.

  For an instant, the soldier and I were looking directly into each other’s eyes.

  He lowered the rug back into place.

  “My comrade and I,” he said, “could tear this place apart if we wanted to. Just for the fun of it.”

  “I understand,” said Jesse.

  I didn’t.

  I heard the soldier walk out of the bedroom.

  An hour later, Silky and I were still brushing off dust and stretching.

  “That was scary,” said Silky.

  “A murdered Lord,” said Niamh. “We could do without that. They’ll be watching the trails for weeks—­our whole operation will have to be suspended until they catch the killers.”

  Silky looked anxious.

  “We didn’t mean to kill him,” she said. “I thought he was going to kill us.”

  “Silky,” I said.

  There was silence.

  “You?” asked Niamh. Jesse stared.

  “Well,” said Silky. “I helped. But it was mostly Angel.”

  In the end, I told her a more complete version of our story: how we had become separated from our friends and were supposed to meet them in Parlay.

  “I don’t like this,” said Niamh. “They’re very close on your trail.”

  “The roads to Arcadia will be closed now,” Jesse said to Niamh, glancing at Silky. “We might as well get them to Parlay.”

  “How long will your companions wait for you?” asked Niamh.

  “Some days more,” I said. “A week. Maybe.”

  “Oh, more than that,” said Silky. “Trey would never leave Angel.”

  “Silky.”

  “Just saying.”

  And Jesse smiled. At Silky.

  It took only a day to prepare for the journey. Jesse disappeared for a little while and came back with bread, dried meat, fruit and skins of water.

  “There were soldiers in the village,” he said. “We need to leave now.”

  I assumed we would take turns riding Jasmine and Silky’s horse, but in the afternoon a man rode up leading two sturdy ponies and a small goat. He tethered them to Niamh’s gatepost and then cantered away.

  “Many ­people are in debt to my mother,” Jesse explained to me. “For the lives of their friends, their sisters, their mothers. They would give her anything. I borrowed the horses, but the goat is a gift. We’ll slaughter it, and what we don’t eat tonight, we’ll take tomorrow.”

  The goat was small and white and stood out against the green grass. When Jesse cut its throat, red streamed down the white of its chest. It didn’t struggle.

  With Jesse’s guidance, I helped him cut it up, until both of us were soon in gore up to our elbows. Unlike most Great Ladies, I had seen animals butchered on my father’s estates, but I had never dreamed I would ever help in the dressing of a carcass.

  I had a handful of kidney, and Jesse was skinning the haunch, when he finally spoke of Silky.

  “Is your sister running from a contract?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “No contract. No pre-­contract. No attachments. She’s only fourteen.” I put emphasis on “fourteen.”

  “She’s old for her age,” he said.

  “You don’t even know her,” I said. “You’ll find that, if anything, she’s young for her age.”

  “I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “You wouldn’t approve of my knowing her better.”

  “Not even remotely; not even hypothetically.”

  “I see.”

  “She’ll never be ready for a pre-­contract with a ‘Lidan.”

  In one deft movement, Jesse removed the entire intestines of the goat without contaminating any of the surrounding meat.

  “Niamh raised me well,” he said. He began washing out the inside of the goat with water from a pail. “Lady Angel, I help her rescue women from the branding and the silence.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  Really. Silky. Marriage.

  Not a chance.

  I thought the subject was closed. Jesse cut out some goat chops. “I’m saving her the prime ones,” he said.

  “You won’t get Silky’s heart with a goat chop,” I said. “And you certainly don’t have my permission to court her.”

  “I worry a little about your heart, Lady Angel,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. There was nothing wrong with my heart. Nothing. It was healthy and strong and whole. It was safe. It was a fortress.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Walls of Parlay

  The roast goat was delicious.

  Jesse, I saw at once, had saved the prime chops not for Silky but for me. He knew where he needed to gain favor; he was more astute than I had given him credit for. And while a nice piece of goat wasn’t going to get him my permission to court Silky, I admired the effort—­and the juiciness of the chop too.

  We set out a few hours before dawn. I, in my veil, rode Jasmine, and Jesse rode Silky’s mount, the one we had stolen from Garth. Niamh and Silky wore veils and sat sedately on the stocky ponies that the man had left the day before.

  “Jesse will do the talking,” said Niamh. “He’s big and, more importantly, male.”

  Silky frowned.

  Niamh and Jesse were in the lead, but Niamh soon dropped back to be with me, and Silky, on her coarse little pony, left the two of us in conversation and rode up to Jesse. I watched as Jesse edged his horse closer to Silky’s. It was neatly done.

  “My son likes your sister,” said Niamh.

  “I’m going to have to chaperone if he rides any closer to her,” I said.

  Niamh sighed. “You know, Angel,” she said, “you can relax with me. My whole life is given over to making sure bad matches aren’t forced on anyone, especially the young.”

  “The young are quite capable of making bad choices on their own,” I said.

  Niamh laughed briefly. We rode in silence for a while. From time to time Niamh turned in her saddle and looked back.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

  “I’m expecting pursuit.”

  “If soldiers were after us on this road,” I said, “we’d have been taken by now.”

/>   “That’s what worries me,” she said. “That soldier said the house was under suspicion. Yet I saw no soldiers there this morning—­we rode out of there as easily as if we were innocents taking the country air.”

  “Maybe we were just lucky,” I said.

  “Oh, Angel,” said Niamh. “There is no such thing as luck.”

  We traveled two nights, sleeping roughly. When I made it clear that I expected Jesse to sleep at the perimeter, Niamh raised an eyebrow.

  “Jesse knows how to behave,” she said. “We’ve traveled with women a lot more afraid of men than you are.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I said. “He can eat with us if he chooses.” Silky’s eyes went wide, and I knew she was remembering Trey’s sleeping next to the fire and the Bard’s sharing of food with us.

  But she would never undermine anything I said.

  Five hours into the third day, I saw a shimmer on the horizon. Soon a city seemed to rise out of the plain.

  “The walls of Parlay,” said Niamh. “We’ll get as close as we can and then wait for dusk to approach the gates. There’s a big bustle to get in at night. We shouldn’t be noticed.”

  We stopped a good distance from the city walls and grazed the horses in the shadows cast by a small copse of trees. While Jesse groomed first his horse and then Niamh and Silky’s ponies, I brushed the sweat off Jasmine. In the process, I transferred a lot of horsehair to myself. As I was trying to pick it off, I caught Jesse staring.

  “I was going to groom your horse, Lady Angel,” he said.

  “No need,” I said. I wanted nothing from Jesse, not goat chops, not horse grooming. The truth was that he couldn’t possibly have groomed Jasmine even if I had asked him to. She wouldn’t have tolerated him.

  Jasmine hated men. She wouldn’t have let him near her. Trey was the only occasional exception.

  It seemed that evening would never come. I couldn’t help but wonder if Trey and the Bard might be waiting at the entrance to the city, and that thought filled me with anxiety even as it filled me with hope. Finally the afternoon waned and evening set in. We mounted our horses and rode up to the great gates of Parlay.