“Not now, I don’t. Not at this time, in this place. But I have, at other times and places in between, and so I think must you have.”
“Yes,” he said, all laughter gone from his face. Then he smiled again. “But, like you, not now. So I’ll be patient, if I must, and regain my strength, as you tell me to do. I’ll obey you in this, Birle.”
“Aye, and you’d be foolish not to,” she told him.
Oddly, it was when his body was healed that Orien’s sleep grew troubled. During the day he would do what work he could with the strength he had. He kept the fire, watched over the pungent broth, and went for walks into the woods, to find fuel and to train his legs to their former strength. During the day he kept busy. But at night, with only sleep to occupy him, he turned and muttered, sometimes whimpering, sometimes in anger, sometimes with sounds like the beggars in the marketplace.
His distress wakened Birle, who sat silent, to wait out the time of nightmare and be sure he slept quiet again. One night, however, he screamed—like a pig being slaughtered—and she rushed over to where he lay screaming, to shake his shoulders until he woke up.
He sat up, completely awake, and wiped at his face with his hands.
“What is it?” she asked him. Her heart drummed from the sound of his voice, screaming into the night, so she could imagine how much worse he felt. He had seen the dream; she had only heard its effect on him.
Orien shook his head. He wouldn’t answer her.
“Can you go back to sleep?”
He shook his head. His face looked pale, and he shivered in the warm summer night. If he had been a child, she would have gathered him into her arms and rocked him into restful sleep. But he was Orien, so she directed his attention to the stars that burned white in the sky beyond the black mass of boulder. “The Plough is there, four stars and then three for the handle, can you see it?” After a while, the voice in which he asked his questions grew thick and sleepy.
In the morning, he still refused to speak of his nightmares—as if he was ashamed. Neither would he speak of his life in the city, although he questioned her about hers, and about their escape, and about the Showman. Birle told him only part of the truth. “Yul chose to stay, with others of his own kind. Damall traded the horse for the man.”
They had some variety in their food—berries and nuts, and fat peas to cook in with the greens and roots—now that summer filled the forest with ripeness. They made a game out of that food they wished most to have, if they could have any food they wished. Would it be duck, chicken, or meat? Perhaps a cheese, but if so should it be toasted over the fire? Although there was much Orien would never speak of, it seemed to Birle they were always talking. His tongue healed to its full strength long before the rest of him, she complained. “How else would I talk with you?” he asked, as if that were a sensible question.
Orien walked longer, as his strength returned. He would be gone for the space of the morning, or the length of the afternoon. Then one afternoon he returned with two silver fish, one in each of his hands, his fingers hooked into their gills.
Birle didn’t know what to say. He was always surprising her. His smile was like the sun shining out of his thick brown beard, and if he hadn’t been Orien, returned to health, she would have thought he looked entirely too pleased with himself.
“I found a lake,” he announced. She tried to remember when she had last seen him look so proud, in the tall-standing way, or if she ever had. “Birle? It’s not so very far—will you let me show it to you? It’s filled with fish so eager to be eaten that I had only to stand in the water”—he lifted a wet leg to show her—“and explain how welcome one or two would be to us, if they could bring themselves to the sacrifice.”
Birle laughed out loud, at the fish they would eat and the gladness in his eyes.
“Lady,” Orien said, “I lay these at your feet.” He went onto his knees before her.
Birle understood his teasing game, as if they were puppets performing on a stage. “My Lord,” she answered, “I thank you for the gift.”
“And with them, I plight you my troth,” he said.
“Aye, my Lord, and there is no need for mockery.”
“Aye, my Lady, and I do not mock you.”
Birle knew she ought to look away from his eyes, for she saw in them the hunger she had learned to fear, and it was also longing. Or maybe what she saw was longing, which was also hunger. She ought to take her own eyes away, she knew, and look at the boulder, or the running stream, look away—but she didn’t. She couldn’t, and she didn’t want to.
“I would have you for my wife, Birle,” Orien said. “Will you have me for husband?”
She had no heart for this game of his. “Get up, Orien. I’ll teach you how to scale and gut a fish.”
He obeyed her but she didn’t know what it was he saw in her own face, and eyes, that made him look at her so. “There’s inequality between us, my Lord,” she reminded him, since he seemed to have forgotten.
“Aye, there is, and ever has been. You gave me your heart and I gave you nothing in return, so now I give you mine—and we are equal.”
He had deliberately misunderstood her.
“You will not say me no, Birle.”
The word was on her lips. She knew that no was what she ought to say. But she chose to obey his will. “No I will not,” she said. “I will say yes to you, and gladly.”
When he clasped her into his arms, she couldn’t tell if it was her own heart beating so fast that she heard, or his. He spoke above her head, and she couldn’t see his face. “I will be your husband, Birle.”
She answered in kind. “I will be your wife, Orien.”
Then he stepped back, to take her by the hand. “Do you know what a lake is, Birle? Come on, come with me. A lake is not merely where fish can be caught, it’s also a bath. Larger than we’re used to, and colder too than most, but still a bath. Would you like a bath, Birle?” he asked, laughing. “Did you ever think, Lady, my heart, how sweet the body is when it’s clean—like meadows washed by rain, and the sweet, clean earth. I would be so for you. You don’t need to fear me, Birle,” he promised her. But Birle was not afraid.
When he came to her as a man does to a woman, she was not surprised to find in herself a hunger that matched his.
NOTHING CHANGED BETWEEN THEM YET everything had changed. They lingered in the forest, neither one eager to leave. They slept on one pallet, as man and wife, and Orien didn’t often dream. When he did, Birle knew now how to comfort him, aye, and soothe him more than words could. She also had now the will to make him tell her what the dreams were. In the telling, the dreams began to return to the dark places from which his memory had dragged them.
She learned the chance of his escape, by the good luck of the brand infecting. Seeing this, the soldiers had kept him aside among others who were also too weak with sickness or infection to go back into the mines. If he lived, they would use him. If he died, they would bury him. The soldiers thought he was too weak to escape—and so he was, but he crawled away anyway, and crawled on in a shallow ditch that ran beside the cart track until he couldn’t remember what he had done. He couldn’t walk, but he braced himself up with a stick, and walked. He remembered walking so, but he thought it might have been a dream. “It was like being consumed by flames that froze,” Orien told her.
Birle didn’t wish to know these things. When he spoke them, he gave them to her in a way that made them her own, as if it were her own fingers that had been twisted in the carpenter’s vise for punishment. “I learned the craft quickly,” he said, his voice low at the memory. The memory, and the shame, were hers now too, as if she too had begged weeping to be fed, had sat sewing from sunup to sunset, her legs crossed beneath her until any movement was pain.
At the branding, two soldiers would hold the man down while the third stood above him—waiting, waiting—then slowly lowering an iron that shone red-hot—until the slave screamed and screamed—first in terror, then in pain. The b
randing lay in Birle’s memory now, as it lay in Orien’s. It seemed they must both carry it, otherwise the burden would be unbearable.
THERE CAME A DAY WHEN they both knew, without a word between them, that it was time to travel on. “The season is changing,” Orien said, and Birle agreed. “It would be wise to be in the Kingdom before winter.”
“If we can find it,” Birle said.
“I think we can, although I’ve no good reason for thinking that,” Orien told her. “And you think the same, for no better reason. Why do you smile, Birle?”
“Because,” she said. “Because—I’ve sympathy now for the goats in their season, billy and nanny—and for men and women too.” As he laughed she answered his question. “It would be better to have shelter over us, when winter comes. Shall we leave in the morning, Orien?”
PERHAPS BECAUSE THEY NEVER DOUBTED, their journey was easy, and they took it at ease. Sometimes Orien rode the horse with Birle walking beside, sometimes Birle rode while he walked, sometimes they rode together. That, however, they did seldom, because the sack was heavy for the horse, and it seemed harsh to add the weight of two people. They crossed a range of steep hills. When they came to a river they followed it north, until they found a ford. After that they went directly east for a few days, to correct their direction. Birle didn’t think they were in any danger of arriving unaware upon the port. Her guess was that they would come, at some time, to the great river that ran into the forest, where the Falcon’s Wing was. “How will we recogize the river?” Orien asked.
“I’ll know it,” Birle promised him.
As they traveled north and east, the year traveled on into autumn. Nights grew longer and colder. Even at midday, a chill lay in the forest shades. Then, one morning, they crested a hill to see a broad, grassy meadow spread down a hillside, with forest again at its foot.
Orien put his hand on Birle’s arm. “Look.” He pointed.
Birle looked. From the elevation, a thick forest spread out, rising and falling as the land beneath rose high, then fell. In the far distance, the horizon was a jagged line.
“The mountains,” Orien said. “Those are the mountains, and this will be the forest beyond Northgate’s city. We’re home, Birle.”
Standing beside him, Birle caught his excitement. The distant mountains shone white in the sunlight. She didn’t doubt his word, even though she’d never seen this part of the Kingdom.
“Let’s finish this journey, Lady,” Orien said to her.
Chapter 22
NOW IT WAS ORIEN WHO set the direction, without need of sun or stars to guide him. They traveled from the first light of day until darkness had settled heavily down over them. He gave little time to gathering food, and they went to sleep hungry. On the third day they stood at Northgate’s city. The stone walls were bathed in the golden light of the lowering sun.
Orien reached over to take her hand. “Shall I go in and buy some food? Bread, Birle, and meat, or chicken?”
“You’re bearded, and you’re poorly dressed,” she warned him.
His laughter rang out. “Poorly dressed? Birle, I’m the shabbiest man in the whole Kingdom. But, we have no coins to pay for food.”
“Aye, but we do.” It was good to be able to surprise him, for a change. “Sewn into my skirt.”
Birle used the time he was gone to take the remaining coins from their hiding place. Orien returned to spread a feast before her—a tall, round pastry, filled with meat and fowl, a jug of cider, and new apples. He told her the news. “The fair is recently over and the inns prepare now for Hearing Day, for the custom that brings. I hadn’t thought your coin would cause such talk.”
“What did you say, then?” Birle asked, reaching over to take the jug from his hand, and drink from it.
“I said I’d gotten it from one of the merchants, when I bought a piece of cloth from him. I described the cloth most carefully, do you want to hear what it was like?”
“No,” she said. “Did they believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“Because it isn’t true,” she pointed out. “Because you don’t look the kind of man to have coins to spend. I think I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“But you’ve grown doubtful. Before,”—he didn’t need to specify before what—“you would have believed me, if only because you wanted to. Aye, they didn’t entirely believe me either, although they lacked the courage to question me. The people are not fools. If it isn’t birth, Birle, that makes a man a Lord, to rule over the people, what is it? Here, in the Kingdom, I am a Lord—and because the eldest born I am the Earl, though Gladaegal is more fitted to the place. And if it is not to be birth, then not just a younger son but any man of the people might rule, and maybe rule better than the Lords. And if that might be, and maybe even should be, how do you determine what boys will become such men, and prepare them for the work? That’s if the Lords would ever give over their power, which I don’t think they ever will. Did you never wonder, Birle?”
“So you didn’t tell anyone who you are,” she asked.
He was a dark shape close beside her. She couldn’t see his face. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I couldn’t think. I wouldn’t know what to answer, were anyone to ask me who I am. Even if I wished to answer truly. Can you say who you are?” Orien asked her. “Now?”
She knew what he meant; he meant now, after everything that has happened to you. Birle thought she knew her answer—she was his Lady. His betrothed. His wife that would be. But even as she thought her answer, pictures rose in her mind. The place where that person stood—his Lady, his betrothed, his wife to be—was hidden in shadows. She couldn’t see herself there, giving shape to the place. Birle was glad of the darkness that hid her face from Orien.
“When you talk of the city, Birle, and the house, and of Joaquim, it always sounds to me as if—you could have been contented, there, for all of your days. The Philosopher’s amanuensis. I could be jealous.”
He was mocking, but there was something behind his mockery. “I was often contented, my Lord. Even though . . . There was work to be done and I was the one who did it. Who could do it,” she explained. “So to be a slave, and worse, to be Corbel’s slave in a world Corbel ruled, that was only part of it. There was you, too. I couldn’t rest easy—even contented I couldn’t be easy when I thought—”
“That at least was easy for me. Until that day I saw you—remember? Until that day I didn’t dare to think of you. Then when I saw you—you looked so proud, and clean, and fat with good food, and—you smiled as if all the world’s ill were just a mischief. I couldn’t wish you ill, Birle, but I wished you ill.”
“Aye,” she remembered, “and you spoke me ill too, and bitterly. But you made a good parting.”
She couldn’t see his face in the darkness.
“So you did well by me.”
“How could a man wish ill to the lady who has his heart? Unless it is because she holds it, and how can he then but do well by her?” He gave her no time for answer, and Birle had no answer to give. “I don’t know what has happened, at home,” he said. “Grandfather was ill, my brother was to wed—if we travel quickly, we can arrive on Hearing Day. If we can arrive then, I’ll see—something of how things are.”
“You’d better take these, then,” Birle said, putting the four silver coins into his hand. “Among the people, the man would carry the coins.”
“I’ve no purse to carry them in,” he protested.
“Aye, you slip them into your boots,” she told him.
THEY TRAVELED LONG DAYS AND long into the nights. They slept in inn yards or on the grass at the roadside. The horse grew lean again. The journey became, for Birle, a succession of days that flowed like a river. There were inns—the Ram’s Head, where the Innkeeper had hair the color of flames, and his wife’s apple pastry was so good Birle ate herself sick on it; the Running Bear, where the Innkeeper’s wife came to sit with them and look at Orien with hunger in her eyes so brazen that
her husband sent her to the kitchen; the Pig’s Ear, with its bitter ale; the King’s Arms, where a man lay drunk across the doorstep; the Priest and Soldier, which was famous for roasted duckling. There was the King’s city, which seemed small to her after the greater city where she had lived the last year and more. There were the people they met and passed every day, faces and questions, names, whole lives she touched, in the way that one wave touches another before both move on. They went always on foot now, she and Orien, with the sumpter beast behind them. Their story was that Orien was a groom, delivering himself and the horse to one of the southern Lords. Even with that story told, there were those who looked at the two strangers as if they might be other than they claimed.
On the ninth day of their journey, with the sun hovering overhead and a cold wind blowing down from the mountains, they came to a castle that had been built on a mound rising up from the broad plain. A narrow river wound beside them. The castle, with its city spread around it like a lady’s skirts, was the stronghold of the Earls of Sutherland.
Orien led her along the packed dirt streets of the city, then through the broad gateway into the castle yard, where a guard said only “You’re late, best hurry,” and to a building as long as three stables laid end-to-end. He tied the horse among the other horses at a railing there, leaving the sack on her back. Birle followed him through the doorway.
The high-ceilinged room was crowded with people. Orien stepped along the back wall, with Birle beside him. “Hearing Day,” Orien whispered, “was started in my great-grandfather’s time.”
The hall had a platform built at one end of it, taking up a quarter of the room. On the platform, lined up on benches, sat many Lords. On a carved chair at the front, a dark young man leaned forward. His clean-shaven face marked him as a Lord, his place marked him as the Earl. Below, with all of the Earl’s attention on him, stood a sturdy man of full years.
Tale of Birle Page 24
