Journey of the Pale Bear

by Susan Fletcher

  A din rose about us as we entered. The smell of ale wafted through the air, mingling with the aromas of meat and sweat, and a thick haze of smoke hung over all. Clearly, the drink had had its effect, for now there was singing, there was dancing, there was stomping in time to a foreign piper’s air. Two seamen carried on a mock-fight in the middle of the floor and, not far from that, two others out-and-out brawled—biting, poking at eyes, grabbing for hair and ears. The light was dim, and to my relief, no one seemed to recognize me as the rabbit thief. In fact, I didn’t think anyone even gave me a glance. The doctor threaded through gaps in the close-pressed crowd. At last he motioned me to sit at a far back table, where the clamor subsided to a dreary roar.

  He called for a meal—a trencher of barley bread topped with a thick venison stew—and pushed it across the table to me when it came. I shrugged off my knapsack, withdrew my knife and my spoon from its case, and tucked in forthwith, fearful that my supper might be taken away at any moment, and wanting to get as much inside me as I could. The meat was tough, with many chunks of gristle, but soon my belly began to feel warm and full. I drilled down to the last soggy bits of gravy-soaked bread, and then there was nothing for it but to look back up again, where I found the doctor gazing at me.

  He had a wide, squarish face—not plump, but a sturdy, big-boned kind of wide. His eyes, sharp and alert, reminded me of the eyes of the put-to-pasture warhorse my stepfather once had—ever vigilant against danger, yet still with the sad, weary wisdom of one who has seen too much of suffering and of death. By the light of the smoking candle stub on our table, I could see the tiny pits and scars that pocked the doctor’s cheeks, and the wrinkles that fanned out from the corners of his eyes and etched wavy lines in his brow. He neither smiled nor frowned, but regarded me as if I were a riddle to be solved.

  “How long since last you ate?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Where is your father?”

  The question conjured his voice—my father’s—the deep, warm gravel of it. It was six years since the fever had taken him, when I was six years old.

  I shrugged again.

  “Very well, your mother. Where is she?”

  Mother . . . She would be desperate with worry. She wouldn’t know if I was alive or dead.

  “So you’re a runaway, then?”

  I felt the familiar restless energy begin to build up in my legs, felt it thrumming in my blood. I braced one hand against the table and one foot on the rush-strewn floor. What did they do to runaways in this city? Cut off their toes? Keep them as slaves? Boil them in oil?

  But when I glanced at the doctor, something about the way he looked at me . . . held me. It was not as you would look at a too-small, worthless boy who had run away from home yet again, but as you might look at a hammer to see if it was well wrought before you laid down good coin for it.

  “Very well, then,” the doctor said after a moment, “I’ll ask you something else. Do you have a way with animals? With horses or dogs or cows or . . . whatever animals you’ve found yourself among?”

  The bear. This was about the bear.

  I quickly said “No,” as the fear surged up in a sour rush from the pit of my stomach. On the steading, we knew about ice bears. Hunters dropped by, telling stories . . . We feared ice bears above wolves and lynxes—above all other beasts.

  The doctor’s gaze did not leave my face. “Because,” he went on, as if I had said nothing at all, “it seemed to me that you did have a way with that bear. When I first came into the warehouse, she was only looking at you. Sniffing at you, it seemed. How long were you in there? She has attacked everyone who has tried to feed her or clean her cage . . . save for you.”

  She. I hadn’t thought of the bear as a she, and yet . . .

  “You can’t make me go back there. I won’t go back in that cage again—not ever!”

  “If someone has to go in there with her, it’ll be me, not you. But if your presence outside the cage could calm her, that would be a boon. She’s been pacing day and night, flinging herself against the bars. The men are afraid even to go near her, and she . . . Well. She’s not overly fond of me either.” He rolled up his sleeve to show a deep, ridged slash on his forearm, scabbed over but red at the edges. “I tried to stupefy her with sleeping herbs so I could work with her, but they didn’t take. And even if they did . . . She’s not eating enough to stay alive. So someone she tolerates, someone with a way with animals, might smooth the path for us all.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why do you care about a bear?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s shinbone for that bear!” The doctor cleared his throat and seemed to collect himself; when he spoke again, the anger had ebbed from his voice. “But I’m bound to keep her well, for reasons that are none of your concern. And so . . . Do you, boy? Do you have a way with animals? If you do, and if you can help, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  It was true that some of the farm animals were drawn to me. The byre cats rubbed against my legs and purred—even old Baldur, who only hissed at everybody else. Sheep came to graze near me when I was chinking the fence. Once, when the cows broke into the home fields, I called them and led them back where they belonged, easy as pie. My father had had a way with horses, and I too knew how to put them at their ease.

  But the bear . . .

  I remembered the running energy I had sensed on her, echoing the restlessness I often felt. I recalled the look she gave me when I threw the rabbit haunch, the look of reproach . . .

  “What will become of her?” I asked. “If you want her for her pelt . . .”

  “I don’t. We don’t.”

  “What, then?”

  “She is not mine. She is . . . a gift. From one very powerful man to another.”

  “Are you a powerful man?”

  “No. I serve a powerful man.”

  “But who would want a live bear?”

  “Listen . . . What did you say your name was?”

  I hadn’t. But I said it to him now. “Arthur.”

  “Listen, Arthur. The powerful do as they will; it’s fruitless for the likes of us to try to fathom their ways. But I have two questions for you: What do you want? What can I do for you in payment for your aid?”

  I gaped at him. No one had ever asked me such questions before.

  “Would you like me to find you a patron and a secure home? Would you like me to apprentice you in a trade? These are in my power. I could return you to your mother and father, if—”

  “My father’s dead.”

  Something flashed across the doctor’s face—a quick spasm. Behind me, I heard the clank of crockery, a sudden roar of laughter.

  “What do you want?” the doctor asked again, and his voice was softer than before.

  I felt a prickling behind my eyes. I frowned and clamped my jaws together.

  What did I want?

  Mother I want to go home.

  But no. I had run from the tyranny of my stepfather, from the constant, petty cruelties of my stepbrothers. In truth, I had been running from them for years. The familiar restlessness would build to a twitchy hum that jangled in my limbs until I couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, couldn’t keep to my chores—until I had no choice in the matter but to run, run away. To the boathouse on the fjord. To the caves high in the fells. I would hold out there for as long as I could, until hunger drove me back, or loneliness, or cold. Then I would drag myself home, defeated, for there was nowhere, in truth, for me to go.

  Until the letter came. The letter from my father’s kin.

  I drew in breath, sinking deep into memory, and found him there again—my father—smelling of sweat and leather and hay, setting me up before him on a shaggy pony, teaching me. Hold the reins like so, my son. Sit up tall and cling tight with your legs One day you and I will ride into battle with the prince. I could feel my father’s reassuring bulk behind me; I could feel the pony’s coarse mane beneath my fingers; I could feel both of them warm and breathing.

/>   “We leave on the morrow for London,” the doctor said. “If you come with us, and if you tend to the bear until we arrive, I’ll fetch you back to Bergen and give you what you want, if it’s in my power.”

  London. “You’re bound for London?”

  The creases eased from the doctor’s brow; he leaned in toward me. “Do you want to go to London?”

  I laid a hand on my knapsack, still on my lap, and felt the stiffness of parchment underneath. The letter. The letter from Wales. “Not to stay,” I said. “But to go on from there to Wales. My father’s kin are there, and they want me.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Letter

  IT WAS THE farrier who gave it into my mother’s hand. He had received it from the tinker, who had received it from a carter, who had received it from a ship’s captain, come all the way from England the previous fall.

  The farrier could read a little. He could make out my mother’s name on the outside of the letter, and the name of the nearest town, which had been written, he’d said, in two different hands.

  “I could try to parse it out,” he had suggested.

  My mother smoothed the letter with her fingers—thick, creamy-hued parchment, sealed with wax. She swept a lock of yellow hair from her eyes. I didn’t know what she would do. She tended to keep things to herself, and this was none of the farrier’s concern. But if she didn’t let him read it, I knew we would have to wait for the priest, who wouldn’t be by for at least another week. And my stepfather . . . He might take the letter from her, deeming it to be his by marital right, promising to have it read to him and to tell her what she needed to know.

  By now, the occasion had begun to draw a crowd. I couldn’t remember a letter ever having been brought to the steading before, though I knew that my stepfather kept two or three of them stowed in a small, locked chest. It was just after the midday meal, and though my stepfather was away buying a new brood mare, my three stepbrothers had gathered round, and a scattering of servants stood in a wider ring about us. Dogs milled about, sniffing, hoping for scraps; old Loki sat at my feet, leaning his grizzled head against my knee.

  At last my mother tore her gaze from the letter and looked at the farrier with an urgency I had seldom seen in her. “Yes,” she said, her voice low and tremulous. “Read it to me. Please.”

  “Let me see it,” my stepbrother Edvin said. My mother lifted her head to look at him, then scanned the throng, hesitating.

  Edvin leaned forward and reached for the letter, but my mother turned her shoulder to him, thrust the letter at the farrier, and repeated, “Read it.”

  Edvin’s face reddened; he scowled. The farrier broke the seal and, with a sense of ceremony, unfolded the stiff paper.

  He squinted. Brought the letter up close to his eyes. Held it out with arms straight. At last he turned to my mother. “What language this is, I cannot tell. Not ours, that’s certain. It may be French, or possibly Latin, though it doesn’t look right for those either. I’ve never seen the like.”

  He returned it to my mother. She studied it, one finger tracing its way down the parchment surface. The finger halted. “I know this word,” she whispered. She glanced at me, then back down at the letter. “I’ve seen it on . . . on a stone.”

  She put one arm around me and brought the letter close with her other hand for me to see. She pointed at the word. “Look, Arthur,” she said. “It’s your father’s name: Morcan. This letter harks from Wales.”

  The next day, before my stepfather returned, my mother and I had sat side-by-side near the hearth and pored over the letter together. From time to time my stepbrothers had appeared—Edvin, then Halvdan, then Soren—demanding a cup of ale, a bannock, a hunk of cheese. She satisfied them quickly and then returned to the letter and to me.

  Near the top of the parchment was the year, in numbers—1251—which both of us could read. And my mother showed me how to find Morcan, which appeared four more times. He had been a nobleman, my father—boon companion and master of the horse to Prince David. They had died of the selfsame illness, less than a week apart. My mother had never mastered the Welsh tongue, had never felt at home there. She was from a well-to-do Norwegian family, though not of noble blood. After my father died, my mother and I returned to Norway, and she remarried within the year.

  Now, she pointed to another group of letters that repeated a number of times. “I think this is you,” she said, hovering her finger over the word. “I think this must say ‘Arthur.’ ”

  “Why?” I asked her, stroking Baldur, who had come to purr on my lap. “Why would they write about me?”

  The first time I asked, she gave me a quick, sharp look and seemed about to respond, but then tightened her lips about her words and held them in. The second time I asked, she ventured, “There was some land. Your birthright. But who knows if they’ve kept it for you?” The third time, she folded the letter, pointed to the door, and ordered me off to my work in the fields.

  By the time my stepfather showed the letter to the priest, who said he couldn’t read it either, I had cobbled together my own story about what the letter said and why it had been sent. I didn’t know if someone had died in Wales, or if someone was about to die. I didn’t know if it was because I had newly turned twelve and come into manhood, or some other circumstance—a fresh outbreak of war between Wales and England, perhaps. But as the days passed, I had become more and more certain that they wanted me and needed me—that they had summoned me back to Wales to help train the royal horses and ride with the young princes, to claim my birthright as my father’s only son and heir.

  CHAPTER 7

  Treacherous Pot

  NOW THE DOCTOR stood, asking me to wait for him at the table. The captain, he said, was staying in a room upstairs; the doctor would confer with him and return forthwith to fetch me. If the captain said aye, I could lodge this very night on shipboard with the crew.

  And after that I would only have to feed and clean up after the bear on the way to London.

  Only!

  The doctor, maybe sensing my hesitation, hastened to reassure me. “You can do all of it from well outside the cage, using long-handled brooms and rakes. You’ll be safe. You have my word on it.” But I was harking back to the smell of the bear, and her great, dark claws, and the stir of her breath on my cheeks. I remembered her roar, and the savage crunch of bones as she ate, and the deep red slash on the doctor’s arm.

  The doctor took his leave, and not for the first time, I wondered if I should have stayed on the steading, where at least I was well-fed and had a roof over my head. But I was of no consequence there to anyone save for my mother—and never would be.

  I tucked my knife and spoon back into my knapsack and held it on my lap. The din of the tavern began to lose its sharp edges; it wove itself into a soft blanketing rumble that muffled all the sounds within it. The restlessness trickled out of me, leaving me heavy and limp and warm. My eyelids dragged shut; I blinked them open. I crossed my arms on the table, laid my head atop, and abandoned myself to a flood of uneasy memories.

  I couldn’t have said when it began, but for many years I had had the sense of being shipwrecked in life—of having fetched up on a strange shore among wrong, unfitting people. There was nowhere to hide from the wrestling games I always lost and the horse-fights I abhorred and the drowning games that nearly killed me. I would never win my stepbrothers’ good regard, nor that of my stepfather. I was smaller than they, and darker, favoring my Welsh father over my mother.

  I had asked my stepfather to let me help train his horses, but he’d said I was too small for such work, and besides, he had long ago reserved that job for Halvdan. I had asked to work with any animals at all, but my stepfather had grudged me even that. He’d sent me to cut rushes or fell timber or mend fences with his servants, who didn’t need my help either.

  And so I ran away, in the wee hours before dawn on a bitter-cold May morning in the year of Our Lord 1252. In a cloth knapsack, I put the letter from Wales, my
ashwood spoon and spooncase, and a small, sharp knife. I filched two pennies from under the board in the floor where my stepfather kept them, resolving to pay them back somehow. From the larder, I took a hunk of cheese, some strips of dried meat, and a bannock. Enough, I hoped, to sustain me on the journey to Bergen. From there, I hoped to find a ship bound for Wales . . . and a new life.

  I knew it would have eased my mother’s mind if I had told her my plans instead of stealing off into the night. But I had feared she would weep and try to dissuade me. And I longed to be of consequence—to ride with the princes, to find a valued place for myself in the world of men. I resolved to commission a letter for Mama later, when I was settled with my father’s family.

  I walked until sunrise, then climbed undetected into the back of a southbound tinker’s cart. When, late that morning, the cart slowed near an inn, I jumped off and soon stowed away in an apothecary’s wagon.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day—after many leagues afoot and nine different carts and wagons—I rode into the port of Bergen in a pony cart, hidden beneath a mound of skinned pelts of hares and foxes. My head throbbed from lack of sleep; my feet sprouted blisters; and my back ached from slipping and jouncing over muddy, rutted roads.

  I slipped off the back of the cart and made for the harbor.

  But none of the shipmasters wanted a small-for-his-age cabin boy with nary a lick of experience. Soon all my food was gone, and a cutpurse had made off with my pennies. I might have given up and dragged myself back to the steading in disgrace, except I knew I’d likely starve on the long way home.

  Now the sound of nearby voices roused me, and the scrape of boots on the floor. I looked up to see a band of seamen clambering onto the benches beside and across from me. “The table’s ours, boy,” one said. “If you want to sleep, go find yourself a bed.”