The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  “She’s my sister.”

  “She’s not happy. Be glad to see you is what I think. What I don’t think is you want that horse I got you. Seems you found one yourself.”

  “Yes. I need to get to the others.” And I rushed past him to the barn, leaving him to lead in the horse.

  Renn met me in the doorway. The odor of alfalfa wafted out of the barn and seemed to settle on him.

  “Angel.” He put his hands on my shoulders, and I was so surprised by the touch that I forgot to pull away. “I thought they would capture you,” he said. Still he didn’t release me. He looked into my eyes, and I didn’t think to look away or remove his hands or to step back.

  Yet I was very aware that he shouldn’t be touching me; he shouldn’t be looking at me that intensely.

  He leaned down. My heart was beating fast, and I was afraid. I was afraid of what I was feeling.

  He put his lips to mine. This was called a kiss, and I didn’t want it to end.

  I was a fool. I vaguely hoped that Silky wasn’t watching.

  After, as I gazed over his shoulder, wound up with desire and exhilaration and fear and the exultation of having escaped, I saw a crack in the barn wall that let in a pencil of light. I thought nothing of it—­until I followed the beam to the back of the barn, where it lighted Trey’s green eyes.

  Where he stood watching us, stunned.

  Chapter Twenty

  Disease of the Flesh

  I disentangled myself from Renn. Silky had been sitting with Jesse away from the door, and they had not witnessed my return. When Silky saw me, she ran into my arms.

  “I’m glad you’re all right, Angel,” Trey said, coming forward, and for just a second I hated him for his generous words. Then he turned his back on me.

  Feelings. I hated feelings. Trey had been right all along when he had said I loved the rules of Arcadia, and even some of those of Shibbeth. They kept me safe.

  Dirty-­Hair came in leading my newly stolen horse, which looked more unprepossessing than ever. I walked away from the others and took the lead rope. It looked as if nobody had taken a brush to the animal in months, and his hair was matted down with sweat. I took a handful of the dirty, wet mass and pulled it right out.

  “That’s a very ugly horse, Angel,” said Silky, coming up beside me. Jesse was with her.

  Considering what I had asked of him, the horse looked pretty good. And I realized that this was an animal that worked every day of his life, which meant he had muscle and stamina. I noticed that he was slightly knock-­kneed, but he couldn’t help his looks. Dirty-­Hair-­Cast-­Eye joined us.

  “So you want the one you stole?” asked Dirty-­Hair. “Or you want to buy one from me?”

  “We’ll take the one I stole,” I said. Then I caught myself. “We’ll take this one.”

  “You want a jumper, I got a good one,” he said—­with not much hope, I thought, of actually making a sale.

  “This fellow jumped well enough at the right moment,” I said. “It wouldn’t be luck to leave him.” With the word luck, I could see the discussion had ended. One did not take chances with luck in either Arcadia or Shibbeth.

  There was a piercing whistle from the direction of the market.

  “That be the signal,” said Dirty-­Hair. “There’re more troops coming. But there’s a trail under the trees, close to a mile from the back of the barn and to the north. The troops be not knowing it. If you have a care to avoid them.”

  He turned to me, and for a moment his cast eye moved in his head until he was looking at me directly. The effect was uncanny, and I thought again of the stories of those with a cast eye and the special vision it was supposed to lend them. Then I came down to earth. This man was a practical, fair (and unwashed) keeper of a livery, and he was probably going to say something about getting away, or our horses, or my choice of the big ugly chestnut.

  What he said was “You don’t know what you want, Great Lady. And you won’t take what you need.”

  I immediately forgave him his forward speech because I could tell he was Seeing. I felt no evil in his words but a kind of gentle sympathy that was at odds with his earlier manner.

  “What do I want?” I asked. “What do I need?”

  He leaned forward. “What be in front of you, Lady.”

  He smiled, showing his bad teeth, and I saw that the words were over; he was himself again.

  “I thank you for your speaking,” I said formally, although I wished he had said more. Seeing beyond was well and good, but it wasn’t, I knew from experience, always very specific.

  “I fed your horses well,” he said in his normal tone, and the cast eye was no longer fixed on me, and he seemed not to know anything about what he’d said.

  We spoke a little longer, and then he walked away and became one more person who passed through my life only to be gone forever.

  Silky named our new horse Shamble on the spot.

  “The perfect name,” said Jesse. Of course he did.

  We didn’t gallop away in a whirlwind of dust. We picked up our customary jog and, taking a narrow path that passed the barn, soon found ourselves under trees. When we didn’t hear any sounds of pursuit, we slowed to a walk. Single file, we wove in and out of the trees. A few soldiers might have been able to keep up with us, but not numbers.

  I cast a glance at Trey, who was behind me. His face was a patchy grey and red, and he looked unwell.

  We hadn’t spoken since I had kissed Renn. There was no privacy while we were riding. Of course, according to Arcadian customs, there wasn’t supposed to be any privacy to speak to a man. And there were no scripted public words for the kind of conversation I needed to have with Trey. In fact, I could think of no words at all to explain to him what had happened.

  My heart must, I realized, be coming alive. Because it ached for Trey.

  After all our time together, I had let Trey stand by while I kissed a man I barely knew—­kissed him, on thought, quite thoroughly, and on purpose.

  Dirty-­Hair had said that what I wanted and needed was in front of me.

  I wished he had narrowed things down a bit more.

  At that moment, the trail petered out.

  “What do we do, Angel?” asked Silky. She and Jesse were riding too closely together again. We would have to talk. I was glad she hadn’t seen the kiss.

  “We keep going,” I said.

  Renn gave way, and I took the lead. The underbrush grew thicker. And then, without warning, we stepped out of the tangle of vegetation and onto a road: an Old Road.

  This Old Road wasn’t as wide as the Great North Way, but it, too, went north, as if some force had been pushing us inexorably in that direction. As if The Book of Forbidden Wisdom had, at last, been ready to be found.

  We rode hard, and there were no sounds of pursuit. Late afternoon we stopped to give the horses a breather. I took the time to groom Shamble. Really it was Renn’s job—­he was riding the horse, and the job was far beneath me—­but I had a great affection for that creature. He made horsey groans of pleasure that were almost embarrassing. He purred. His hair came out in handfuls, revealing a short, dull coat and a protruding set of ribs.

  As I brushed, I remembered the day that Silky had counted all the rules we were breaking. We had started going down a slippery slope, and it had ended with my kissing a bard.

  Trey came over to me and took the brush. He didn’t look at me.

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  I was unprepared for this.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Am I still first in line for matrimony? If we get back to Arcadia.”

  “I’ll have no choice—­“

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean at all.”

  “No? Has Renn as
ked you?”

  “No.”

  “So that’s the problem.”

  “No. I don’t know. Help me, Trey.”

  “I can’t, Angel. But I will marry you if that’s still what you need for your honor to survive.”

  “We could lead separate lives, Trey,” I said finally. “And we could also still be friends. We would be happy enough. I ask nothing of you.”

  He gave me a strange half smile.

  “Well,” he said. “You’re right. That is nothing.”

  Silky woke me in the middle of the night.

  We had been keeping a watch, and my first thought was that the soldiers had come.

  “It’s Trey,” she said. “Hurry.”

  Her voice was low and urgent. I pulled a dress on over my nightclothes.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “He was making sounds in his sleep, so I went over to look—­to make sure he was all right. Then the fire flared up, and I saw his face.”

  Trey was feverish. By the time I got close to him, he was shivering with the chills. Before he could say anything, I pulled a green Alla leaf out of the herb bag and put it on his tongue. It turned black immediately. High fever.

  I reached out again to take the leaf back, but Trey recoiled sharply, as if my touch were snakebite.

  “Get away,” he said. “I know what this is.”

  The moon came out from behind a cloud. Trey’s face was misshapen, and there were open sores on his left cheek and forehead.

  “Steep the willow leaves,” I said to Silky. “I’m going to get him a cold compress.”

  “Don’t touch me,” he said. “You have to stand back.”

  I looked at his face again, and in that moment, I knew what was wrong with him. During the attack on our camp in the gully outside Parlay, the man without a face had spat on Trey.

  He had passed to Trey the disease of the flesh.

  Trey’s flesh would fall away; his face would be a scar—­if he lived.

  Trey tried to turn his head away from me, but once I knew what to look for, I could already see where the skin was pulling back from his eyes and mouth. His flesh looked ragged and raw.

  “I’m not going to let this happen to you,” I said.

  “The world doesn’t always do your bidding, Angel,” he said, not without bitterness.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said. And I thought, It has to be.

  By then Renn and Jesse were up, and I heard them whispering with Silky as she brewed the willow. The three of them came to us together.

  “It’s the flesh disease,” said Renn after taking one look at Trey.

  “Oh no,” said Silky.

  “You’re too close,” Jesse said to her. “Get back, Silky.” She didn’t move.

  “Get back right now,” I said to her, and she stepped back.

  “I’ll be delirious soon,” said Trey. “You can’t touch me. I’ll be too weak to protest then, but you have to stay away.”

  “I’m going to keep you alive,” I said. Silky brought over the willow brew; Jesse took it from her before she could get close, and he handed it to me. Sister expendable. Trey let me spoon some of the broth into his mouth.

  “Put the spoon in the fire,” I said to Silky afterwards.

  “I’ll help you, Angel,” said Renn.

  “No,” I said. “You won’t.”

  “I’ll get another compress,” said Jesse.

  “My face is on fire,” Trey said. “It’s all I can do to keep from tearing off the flesh.”

  “Oh, Trey,” cried Silky. I didn’t change my expression. Trey needed me, and he didn’t need to see shock, or dismay or revulsion.

  “Jesse,” I said. “Take Silky to the other side of the camp. I’m going to grind some herbs for a poultice.”

  “I can help,” said Jesse.

  “Just me,” I said.

  I finished the poultice and leaned down to apply it.

  “I’m obviously contagious,” Trey said. “You can’t possibly use your hand to spread that.”

  “Easy does it,” I said, as if I were talking to some sort of skittish animal. “I’ll use something else.”

  In the end, I used Renn’s knife to smooth the poultice onto Trey’s face. Very carefully. Renn put the knife in the fire afterwards.

  Finally Trey slept.

  “You care about him very much,” said Renn.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I sat by Trey as the night deepened. Renn did not leave my side. In his sleep, Trey began to scratch his face. I tried to bind up his hands with lengths of cloth so that he couldn’t mar his face further.

  “Don’t do that,” said Renn. “You can’t do that without touching him.”

  “I will do it,” I said.

  Renn got up and walked away as if I had somehow hurt him.

  “There now, Trey,” I said. And then I broke another rule. After Trey stopped trying to touch his face, I moved my bedding from Silky’s side. She and Jesse were standing together whispering.

  “What are you doing?” she asked me.

  “What I please,” I answered. “What I owe Trey. Both.” When I was very near Trey, I lay out my bedding. In case he needed me.

  I looked up to see Renn watching me closely, but when I met his eye, he turned away.

  I was up every hour to change the poultice on Trey’s face.

  I was tired in the morning. Renn was curt as he prepared food. Jesse helped him. Silky didn’t know enough about cooking to warm bread, and I, who had at least watched Cook work, had been too near to the contagion to touch food.

  When I approached Trey to examine his face by the light of day, he tried to move away from me.

  “That’s near enough, Angel,” he said. I had to hide my shock when I saw the soupy redness that had grown under and around the poultice. The herbs had done no good. He saw the bad news in my face.

  “Well, Angel,” he said. “I have no more than a sliver of land, and I’m going to have no face. The marriage is off, wouldn’t you say?”

  I ignored his words. “I’m going to try something else,” I said. “An infusion of Aman fungus.”

  “That’s poisonous,” said Trey.

  “It won’t be strong enough to kill,” I said. “Just strong enough to kill the disease.”

  I hoped.

  I tried the infusion in the afternoon after searching for the fungus at the base of trees. It burned Trey terribly as I put the plaster on his face. The flesh had been eaten away on the left side and under his right eye.

  Meanwhile, Silky went hunting and came back with two plump grommets. The birds were as large as turkeys and as fatty as ducks.

  I changed the infusion. Trey seemed no worse, but substantial damage had been done. Even if the Aman fungus held the disease at bay, even if he didn’t quite become a faceless one, he would be marred for life. I smeared the ointment liberally. If his nose and lips were eaten away, he would become the kind of horror that the Bards loved singing about.

  I went to search for more Aman fungus. The day passed slowly—­no one spoke of moving on. The disease moved over his cheeks, but it seemed to me that it was progressing more slowly.

  That night I still slept near him.

  In the morning he had improved. His fever was down. The lesions had ceased oozing.

  He wasn’t going to die.

  But most of his face was gone.

  PART III

  Chapter Twenty-­one

  Petro

  Trey pulled the hood of his coat up over his head after he mounted Bran, so that his face was in shadow. I had wanted to examine his face before we left, but he’d turned away from me. I caught Renn looking with pity at Trey—­which made me angry. I knew I was being land proud, but Renn’s good looks and dark attraction could
n’t keep out the thought: who was Renn to pity Trey?

  In a way, Silky was the worst. She couldn’t hide her fear, and she avoided Trey; she could not seem to bring herself to look at him. I knew she couldn’t help it, because I knew what was in her mind. There had been nights in the past when she had dreamt of beings like Trey—­when she would come to my room, fresh from nightmare. She would pad to my bed and, after crawling in, whisper to me her dreams of faceless men.

  Perhaps in those dreams she had been Seeing what would happen to Trey.

  Only Jesse behaved naturally. Only Jesse behaved well. He kept between Silky and Trey. He was solicitous, but he never peered into Trey’s face. He spoke naturally and easily. At one moment, something he said even made Trey give a short laugh.

  That was when I finally realized he was good enough to be allowed near Silky. To be, in fact—­and at a discreet distance—­her friend.

  In this crisis, he was the best of us.

  After we had all mounted, Jesse fell in with Trey as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Only I was close enough to hear Trey’s response.

  “I don’t need pity,” Trey said. I cringed. But Jesse replied simply.

  “I won’t give it to you then,” he said.

  “Why are you here?” asked Trey. “Do you want to see the monster?”

  Jesse looked around quickly. I pretended to be particularly interested in something Silky was saying, but in fact I could hear their every word.

  “To be truthful,” said Jesse, “I need advice.”

  “What kind of advice do you need?”

  “You’ve been friends with the Lady Angel since childhood.”

  “Yes.”

  Jesse paused.

  “How do I get her to like me?” he asked finally. “I need her to like me.”

  “You want the Lady Angel’s good opinion?” Trey sounded taken back.

  “Naturally,” Jesse said. “But especially because”—­he paused—­“because she won’t let me near the Lady Silky. Only to talk. That’s all.”

  And just like that Trey gave a real laugh.