The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  They were enormous, taller than the gates of our House, and carved with intricate scenes of hunting, and gardens, and nobility with hawks on their hands, and scenes of battle and, at the bottom left of the door, a merry group of skeletons engaged in a dance of death.

  The guards on either side were watching. They ignored most of the ­people, although some of them they greeted by name; others were pulled aside and questioned. But no one was denied entrance, and the guards barely glanced at those departing. I took note of that. Eventually, after all, we were going to have to get out.

  It didn’t help, though, that one of the guards was a traditionalist.

  “Step it up, Lordling,” he called to Jesse. “You slow the crowd.”

  “My sisters aren’t used to riding,” Jesse said.

  “That’s a nice horse,” said the traditionalist guard as he looked over Jasmine with an experienced eye.

  “My sister rides one of my best,” said Jesse. “I’m taking her to her groom.”

  “I wish her happiness,” said the guard politely.

  “It will be a joyous day,” said Jesse steadily.

  Apparently I shouldn’t have worried about the traditionalist guard. It was a good cover story and well delivered.

  Jesse annoyed me.

  I focused on the city of Parlay as it opened up in front of us. The streets were full of ­people, of colors and scents and movement, and the horses, even the staid, coarse little ponies, became nervous. Luckily, the crowd split in front of us as we negotiated the main street. Horses clearly had right of way.

  Jesse eventually found an inn near the gate. It was set back from the main thoroughfare and built up against the wall surrounding the city. The innkeeper welcomed us and gave us two rooms—­one for Jesse, and a women’s room for the rest of us. Niamh and Silky and I went to our room in silence—­it would have looked strange if we had done anything else.

  “We’ll wait two days,” said Niamh as we began settling in. “If we haven’t found your traveling companions by then, I’ll take you to Arcadia. You’ll find a life in a corner of your country somewhere. It’s not safe to linger here.”

  “There’s nothing for me in Arcadia anymore,” I said.

  Niamh looked at me sadly.

  “You don’t know how much that ‘nothing’ is, Angel,” she said. “You have no idea.”

  Niamh had given us good used clothing when we were at her house, and now we pulled the excess out of the saddlebags and draped it on the bed to air. Then, careful to use the women’s staircase, we went down to the public room, where Jesse was waiting.

  “We’re family,” he told the innkeeper, and we were allowed to sit together in the small, airless room. At one of the other tables, a man and a branded woman wearing marriage bracelets sipped at tall glasses of water. We spoke of the weather until they left.

  When they did, we confronted a problem I hadn’t foreseen: neither Silky nor Niamh nor I had freedom of movement. Jesse, of course, could move around as he wished, but he had no idea what Trey or the Bard looked like.

  “Your companions may be hiding in places women can’t go,” said Jesse. “Let me ask around. Perhaps your Bard friend has been plying his trade.”

  “The Bard’s not my friend,” I said sharply. “He’s a bard.”

  “Go, Jesse,” said Niamh. “But be mindful.”

  Jesse went out into the streets. We had no choice but to return to the women’s bedroom, where Silky and I couldn’t stop fidgeting. Even Niamh couldn’t sit still.

  “We should rest,” she said. But none of us were resting.

  “Can’t we at least go downstairs?” asked Silky.

  “We could go and eat in the women’s public room,” said Niamh. “I’ll tell the innkeeper’s wife to let us know when Jesse returns.”

  It was, I suddenly thought, an excellent idea.

  I waited until we were all veiled up and impenetrable to the male view. As Niamh opened the door to leave, I sat down abruptly on the bed, pushed away the clothing we had set out and lay down.

  “I don’t feel well,” I said.

  “What is it?” asked Silky.

  “My shoulder.”

  “Your wound?” Silky asked. Her voice was subdued, and I was sorry to give her worry. Niamh knelt by the bed and looked closely at me.

  “It hurts,” I said. “And I feel so hot.”

  “That was sudden,” said Silky.

  Niamh’s face showed only concern, but Silky was giving me The Look. As children we had not infrequently faked fevers to get out of unwanted tasks.

  “Perhaps it’s my childhood sickness,” I said, and I saw understanding blossom on Silky’s face.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, but she wasn’t asking me how I felt. She was asking me if I needed assistance with my lie.

  “I’m sure, Silky,” I said.

  “Your wound could be infected,” she said helpfully.

  “Show me,” said Niamh. I bared my shoulder, and she probed it with skilled fingers. I flinched. The pain never really went away.

  “No oozing,” she said. “No infection or swelling. I’ve never seen a wound this large so smoothly and thoroughly healed. A hole this big should have killed you for a dozen reasons. Infection. Blood loss.”

  “Garth cauterized it,” said Silky.

  “Impossible,” said Niamh.

  “Angel was really brave,” said Silky. “When she passed out, she did it very quietly.”

  Niamh looked at me as if her perception of me had changed in some way.

  “I’m going to sleep,” I said. “I just need some rest.”

  “We’ll bring you food,” said Niamh. “You can’t go out of this room alone—­one wrong turn, and you might end up in the men’s section. It’s not safe.”

  “All right.”

  I lay there until they left. Silky turned back for a moment before they went out the door and looked at me with concern. She knew I was up to something.

  As soon as they were gone, I went to the door and opened it a crack.

  I saw Niamh and Silky at the end of the corridor about to take the stairs. Quickly I changed into riding clothes and braided my hair like a traditionalist. It was so unlikely that a Shibbeth woman would dress like a man that I was sure I could get away with it. I crept down the stairs and slipped outside.

  The bustle in the streets almost knocked me over. Earlier, as a woman on a horse, ­people had given me more room. Now I was hemmed in, and the bright sun, the number of ­people, the greens and blues and reds and purples of ‘Lidan garb confused me. It took me a moment to figure out the direction of the great gate.

  As I moved through the crowds toward the gate, a plump woman wearing a veil and carrying a basket of purple turnips knocked me off balance. I stepped in a horse pile and almost went down just as three or four horsemen rode by—­perilously close to me. A big man with a gruff voice pulled me out of the street by my arm.

  “Watch yourself,” he said, and was gone.

  So when I saw a lone horseman coming, my first thought was to back up to the wall—­but my way was blocked by an orange-­seller. The horseman came so close that the man’s stirrup was inches away from my head. I tried to step back, and, as I did, I looked up into his face.

  Our eyes met.

  And it didn’t matter that I was in man’s garb with my hair done in the ‘Lidan traditionalist way, or that I was darkened by the sun and by the dust and dirt and grime of our journey. It didn’t matter that the last place the horseman might have expected to see me in was Shibbeth. None of it mattered.

  He would have known me anywhere.

  “Angel,” he said. Then he reached down his arm, and I grabbed his wrist, and a moment later he had pulled me up and into the saddle.

  It was my father.

  My father urged the horse
to a trot, and the pedestrians in front of us scattered like geese, swearing, a few of them letting out screams, some shaking fists at us. Then my father took a narrow street that branched off to the left, and, when we were alone, he pulled up his horse.

  “I’m not going to have you executed,” he said. “Although given that you’ve come with me, I assume you’ve guessed that.”

  I had. With Kalo by his side, he was capable of almost anything, but alone with me, he was a different person.

  “Will you help me?” I asked.

  He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re certainly not safe here in Shibbeth, and especially not in Parlay. Kalo’s estates aren’t far from here, and he’s in the city now. Leth told him you took the Great North Way. And everyone seems to be looking for you regardless—­they say you killed a Lord of Shibbeth.”

  “It was mostly an accident,” I said.

  “Angel,” he said, “if anyone could find trouble, it would be you. I make you a perfectly nice marriage, and you run off with Trey, a man not even related to you by blood. If you’d only waited, I might have sorted out your contract to Leth.”

  “Sorted it out?” I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. “Father, you were allowing Kalo to dispose of me as he saw fit.”

  He avoided my challenge as if I hadn’t spoken.

  “Your will should have been subjugated for the family’s good.”

  I felt angry, and I felt confused, too. Nothing he wished was supposed to anger me, but the old protocol of a daughter’s absolute obedience to her father seemed like part of another life. I realized that I had begun, in very small ways, to live by other rules.

  “You never subjugated Mother’s wishes,” I said, touching on forbidden territory. “The village still speaks of it.”

  Pain twisted his face. But only for a moment.

  “We won’t speak of your mother.”

  “We never do,” I said. “Maybe we should. You mourn her endlessly, but you’re indifferent to her living daughters.”

  “You’ve changed, Angel,” he said. “You’re not speaking as an obedient child—­but I will answer you in this: I am not indifferent to you or to Silky.” He looked thoughtful. “Perhaps this can be mended, even now.”

  “After traveling with Trey?”

  “Someone might take you.”

  The words stung. And yet I felt exhilaration, too, because the conversation had veered completely away from formula. Normally fathers and daughters never—­never—­spoke truths to each other. There was only obedience and submission. Now I couldn’t back away from truth.

  “I’m not interested in ‘someone,’ ” I said. “And I might as well tell you that I never loved Leth.”

  “Of course you didn’t love Leth,” said my father. “You don’t love anybody—­I know enough to see that. And you were perfectly happy with the marriage before you ran off with Trey. The Nesson contract was a good one.” He sounded nostalgic. “All that land.”

  “Father,” I said. “We’ll never understand each other.”

  “Daughters aren’t meant to understand fathers.”

  With that, my father let me slip off the horse and then dismounted. We walked down the empty street together. He was leading the horse; it was almost, after his harsh words, as if we were walking companionably, and I felt sorry for this man who lived in eternal mourning. I took his arm.

  “Why are you in Parlay?” I asked.

  “I’m here with Kalo,” said my father. “I don’t have the troops to go against him. You picked a bad place to be.”

  “I’m going north.”

  “I suppose you’re going after The Book of Forbidden Wisdom. After all those years of denials and silence—­of lying to me. Of saying you didn’t know anything about it. Really, Angel. And I suppose you’re mixed up with that bard too,” said my father. “Kalo suspected it, but he couldn’t prove anything. And, of course, it’s bad luck to execute a bard.”

  “You know about the Bard?”

  “You are mixed up with him,” said my father. He frowned at me.

  I simply asked, “Where is he?”

  My father sighed.

  “He was taken up by Kalo’s men this morning, but he denied knowing anything about Trey or Silky. Or you.”

  “But where is he?”

  “Do you even have a real plan, Angel?”

  “If I find The Book, I’ll return to Arcadia.”

  “I see. But you’ll still be considered a harlot.”

  “I’ll marry Trey if I have to.”

  “If you have to?”

  “I’ll marry Trey. I want to.” I didn’t sound convincing even to myself.

  “You’ve gone too far down your own path, Angel,” said Father. “I’m going to leave you now. I have to meet Kalo—­he’s become demanding and peremptory. But I’ll say nothing about you to him. It’s the best I can do. If you’re caught, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Father—­“

  “I’m sorry, Angel,” he said. “I hope you find The Book and come home in triumph. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Mother told me a time like this would come.” I looked at my father’s eternal mourning clothes. “She would want me to do this.”

  “She would want you safe,” he said. “But now we need to speak of Kalo. Kalo likes public punishments. He probably put your bard in the stocks.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call him ‘my bard,’ Father.”

  “You’re not denying it, though.” He paused. “But, Angel, a bard?”

  “He’s a very good bard.”

  Suddenly Father laughed. “Of course you’re mocking me,” he said. “And perhaps I deserve it. Kalo’s thoughts about your association with a bard are ridiculous—­I realize that now that I see you. A Great Lady traveling with a bard! Really. You almost had me believing it, Angel.”

  And there we parted, I thought probably forever. My father rode away as I stood there. He looked back once. He was weak and fickle and strange. But he looked back once.

  The stocks.

  I didn’t know where the stocks were, so I went in the direction the great crowd was moving in—­men on foot, horses, litters with the insignias of Great Houses on them, scantily dressed peasants, freemen with their coarsely spun brown clothes. I listened.

  It was two freemen who, out of a hundred conversations, spoke words that meant something to me. I was yards from them, but they might as well have been speaking directly into my ears.

  “I prefer whipping,” said the one with a cap.

  “Over too soon,” said the other, who had a ginger beard. “And there’s only watching—­no perticerpating. Give me the stocks for throwing garbage and doing a little poking and teasing with water promises. Perticerpation is best.”

  “I like to see blood,” said Cap.

  “Then throw something hard,” said Beard. “Anyway, they have a bard in there now. I’ll bet we can make him sing.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “Vagrancy. Stealing. Corrupting women who should be at home instead of listening to bards. Singing out of tune. Who knows with a bard? He’s been in since yesterday, and he should be pretty prime about now.”

  “If he’s alive,” said Cap.

  “If that,” agreed Beard. “But they usually is. Even if they can only crawl for a while when they’re set free. It’s not like whipping. Whipping does them in, often as not, and I don’t much like the killing.”

  Beard went up in my esteem.

  I followed them, and they went in the direction of the general crowd, which seemed to be converging on some sort of marketplace.

  The stocks were in the center of the market square. There were two of them, and one was empty. The other held a man whose head was bowed with weariness.

  It was, of course, the Bar
d.

  I came to a dead stop; I was unable to move, and ­people streamed around me. A woman with a chicken in a cage bumped into me and almost knocked me over. I could see fragments of rotten vegetables and small stones around the base of the stocks. Then the Bard raised his head and looked out at the crowd with empty eyes. There was no intelligence in them; I could see that the life in him was ebbing away. As I watched him, all of the titles that caste demanded Arcadians use with one another—­titles that kept the castes distant from one another—­faded from my mind.

  “Oh, Renn,” I said.

  I had never before called him by his name.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Stocks

  I moved with the crowd until I could see Renn’s parched lips and his red-­rimmed, vacant eyes.

  The stocks were evil devices that did not allow for sleep or movement—­they pressed knees against the cobblestones for hours and hours and stiffened the legs and neck—­sometimes forever. Many of those who were put in the stocks were left crippled, most in body, some in mind. And a particularly raucous crowd could abruptly end the occupant’s life by throwing rocks instead of garbage.

  The two freemen, Cap and Beard, inspected Renn closely.

  “He don’t look good,” said Beard.

  “He gets out tonight,” said Cap.

  “If he lives.”

  “Don’t matter,” said Cap. “Dead or alive, they’ll leave him in till sunset. Want to throw something?”

  Beard considered. Finally he spoke. “No,” he said. “When I were a lad, I loved them bards, in tune or not. I could almost give him water myself.”

  “Don’t be soft,” said Cap.

  They moved away. I wanted to reward Beard. I wanted Cap to be struck down by lightning.

  Renn’s hair was matted with vegetable matter and blood. His face was ashen—­and there were hours to go until sunset.

  He raised his head.

  The crowd began to heckle him, and I realized that they perceived his raised head as a kind of rebellion. Maybe it was.