Tale of Elske

by Jan Vermeer

  The merchants also spoke among themselves about wars and Wolfers, about the ambitious Counts who ruled over the cities of the south, about diseases and their cures, and about magic weaponry; there was always information they wished to keep to themselves, lest the Trastaders know and take advantage.

  “I don’t blame them,” Var Jerrol remarked to Elske. “I am the eyes and ears of Trastad and much of my wealth comes from information which—when I know it—also protects the city and its people.”

  Elske never made the mistake of keeping anything back from Var Jerrol. She knew that Var Jerrol trusted her reports and noticed that he smiled, with a private pleasure, whenever he saw her. But she believed that information was her true work for his house, for some of the merchants were more than merely greedy. Some had secrets.

  Once she reported to Var Jerrol what three merchants of Celindon had said to one another when he left them alone with glasses of wine, and Elske there to keep them filled. The merchants had spoken in lowered voices of something called black powder. When Elske repeated that name to the Var, he looked at her long and silent, dangerously, before asking, “What did they say about the black powder?”

  “They said that you were ignorant,” at which news Var Jerrol smiled, and she added, “Thus, they said, their supplies of lumber were assured.”

  “Did they say what lumber had to do with the black powder?” Var Jerrol asked, his eyes intent upon her face, as if he could read there more than the words she spoke, as if although she might not know more still he would find more there, in her face, in her eyes, and seize it to himself.

  “No. They spoke as of something they all already knew. Although they did observe,” Elske reported, remembering carefully, “that your stables were lined with saltpeter, and that in Trastad the waste from the copper smelters is dumped into the rivers.”

  Var Jerrol lowered his eyelids, to think about this. After a long time he looked at her again. “If you’re as clever as I think, Elske, you are also a danger to me. Are you so clever?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Well,” he said; then, “Was there anything more these merchants said?”

  “That was when you returned.”

  “Go back to my daughters now. But, Elske,” he ordered her, “this is no matter you need to remember. Unless, of course, you hear anyone else speak of black powder, and that you must report immediately.”

  Elske almost laughed to hear him instruct her thus; and he almost smiled as he watched her face.

  Var Jerrol smiled seldom now, for when the Varinne coughed, she coughed blood. The apothecary said she wouldn’t live to see another spring, and so he allowed her to open her windows on fine days to taste the warm salty air, and hear the voices of her daughters while they played in the gardens.

  On days when Elske accompanied Odile to the markets she saw more and more swollen bellies among the young wives of Trastad. Each market day she looked for Idelle. But when she found her—a manservant three paces behind—Idelle’s belly was as flat and empty as Elske’s. Idelle was glad at first to meet with Elske, but that gladness soon washed away and she said, “As you see, I will have no baby to welcome Taddus home.”

  “As I see,” Elske answered.

  Idelle sighed. “But it could happen that our second winter bears more fruit than our first. It often happens so, I’ve heard that. You’ve always been luck to me, Elske,” Idelle said. “Maybe meeting you will bring good fortune.”

  Odile called Elske away then, for the Emperor’s messengers had arrived to collect the tribute money and Odile was poaching a redfish whole, to be the centerpiece of their dinner. Var Jerrol would feast the messengers and then give to them the chest of tribute coins. It was to meet this expense that the grandfathers of the present Trastaders had first opened their houses and their city to those Adeliers; the profit from the Courting Winters made up most of the tribute. The tribute bought peace, safety in which they might continue their trading.

  The long, sun-filled summer days ran on. Sometimes the sky was clear and the sea blue. Sometimes storms whipped up white-headed waves that roared against the stone seawall. Sometimes the water ran grey between the mainland and Trastad, and all of the sea beyond was grey, too. The summer air blew warm over three-islanded Trastad, and the Trastaders kept out in the air as much as they could, because summer’s stay among them was only brief. As long as it wasn’t raining, the little girls in their light summer dresses stayed outside in the warmth and light, until they were sent inside to sleep.

  There came a day in full summer—but it was really a night; that was part of the wonder of this time, sunlight at night. In this golden evening the Var’s older daughters ran about barefooted, laughing, singing, dancing, delighted with themselves, delighted to be themselves with the light washing around them like water, and the baby sat upright in the grass, clapping her fat hands in admiration of her sisters.

  Elske and Odile sat beside the Var’s two young apple trees, watching. The air hung so sweet neither of them wanted to gather the little girls together and end the day. Mariel’s high laughter rolled along the grass behind the wooden ball she was chasing. Then Odile murmured something in her low woman’s voice. Magan fell sideways, fussing now. And Elske had a sudden sharp memory of Tamara, standing in the doorway of the Birth House, speaking in just such a low, rough voice, with just such sounds of laughter and misery coming from the room behind her. The memory sliced into Elske.

  “Whatever is it? Whyever are you weeping?”

  Elske shook her head, and wiped her eyes on her apron, and wept more tears, and didn’t answer. The babies and toddlers she and Tamara had left out for the wolves, after winter had drawn back, were just such children as these three. Those Volkaric girls would have grown fatter and more clever, just as Magan had over the spring and summer, and grown into small ladies like Mariel who danced like a flower in the wind. Miguette, not yet two winters, was already secretive and solemn like her father. To think what might happen to these three little girls in their helplessness, and to remember all those for whom the Volkaric had no use, and so she and Tamara had wheeled them by the cartload out to a stony place, and been able only to end their short lives quickly— Elske’s heart felt as if it were being ripped apart by wolves.

  She had not even noticed that great change in herself, to have a heart where before she had had none.

  Chapter 7

  NOT THAT ELSKE DECEIVED HERSELF into thinking she was a Trastader. She only knew what she no longer was.

  Fall was a short, fat season in Trastad, busy with preparing vats of salted and smoked fish, pots of fruit and jars of honey; busy with filling the pantries of Var Jerrol’s house for the long winter. Only those fish caught by ice fishermen, who spent winter mornings dangling baited hooks through holes they sawed in the ice, would be fresh food for Trastad in the winter; and it was the high price those fish brought that made the discomfort and danger a risk worth taking for the fishermen.

  The fall was busy and brief in Var Jerrol’s house, but it was not sweet, for the Varinne was dying. The household fell quiet around her, as she made her way into death. The air in every chamber was thick with sorrow, and the food they ate tasted bitter with loss, so that when the Varinne had at last breathed out the end of her life, even though it was the deep dark of winter something light came back into Var Jerrol’s house.

  Since it was not a Courting Winter, the Trastaders could go quietly about their own business. Elske went once to visit Idelle in Var Kenric’s house, accompanied by Red Piet. On this occasion, she had a mission for Var Jerrol, but she hoped to hear also that Idelle was with child. This hope was disappointed and Idelle could speak only of the sadness that stained her life. So now Elske saw two grieving women, Var Kenric’s wife and daughter, each inconsolable, gazing out from behind his windows. One wept for the past, one for the future, and when Elske found Taddus in the counting room she could see that he was eager for spring, to give him the reason to leave the gloom of his hom
e.

  Elske’s mission for Var Jerrol was to ask Taddus about a rumor that had reached Trastad. In his travels of the summer, had Taddus heard of an exploding ship? Yes, he had, but he didn’t credit the rumor. Could a ship, and its crew of eleven men, with its two tall masts and its long keel, simply fly apart up into the air? Taddus had heard tales but none of the tellers had been eyewitness to the event and when he asked in which city’s harbor the event had happened, none of the tellers agreed. Each had heard it from a friend; each friend had heard it from the sole survivor of the catastrophe.

  The tales told of the sky filled with charred pieces of wood, and parts of bodies, and the water of the harbor clotted with debris. The tales had a ship riding peacefully at anchor and then—without warning, with no sound as of galloping hooves to herald danger—a roar filled the air. Everyone agreed about the sound; it was thunder trebled. But nobody could agree about what they had seen—an explosion of fire, a sun burning in the harbor, the air darkened with evil-smelling smoke. Taddus shrugged, telling Elske this. “So the rumors go. And the rumors go farther, too, with talk of demon warriors risen in the south, come to lay everything waste and barren. The Wolfers are their slaves, and run before them, rumors say. But we are distant enough, here in islanded Trastad, Elske. You needn’t fear.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Elske answered him. “I was sent to ask.”

  “If I had married you, we’d have a child by now—do you think?” Taddus asked her suddenly. “But I will be named Var this spring, or the next, and that will give Idelle a new place among the ladies of the city. Maybe that will console her.”

  Elske joined in that hope, and left him there with his coins and his dreams and his books of cost and profit. She bid farewell to Idelle and called Red Piet from Ula’s kitchen to escort her back to Var Jerrol’s home.

  “I suspect this is no demon army, but some new weapon of war,” Var Jerrol said, “and I would not wish Trastad to be surprised by such a weapon. Such weapons give too much power to those who wield them, and cause dangerous fears in those who know of them. You are a girl and you may wrap your ignorance around you, but I am the eyes and ears of the Council.”

  “You think this is the black powder,” Elske decided.

  He wore the mourning band for his wife across his chest, but now he smiled at Elske. “Perhaps I should marry you. Other men have clever wives to work beside them.”

  “Why should everyone suddenly think of marrying me?” Elske demanded, and he smiled more broadly but did not tell her, so she could only laugh. Then he dismissed her, to return to the little girls. “And why should I marry again?” he asked as she turned to leave him.

  “You wish for a son,” Elske told him.

  “Go now,” Var Jerrol ordered, “before I change my mind.”

  VAR JERROL SENT A PARTY into the south, men willing to risk the hazards of winter travel for the sums Var Jerrol offered. When the survivors of the party returned, marked by blackened, frostbitten toes, fingers and ears, they brought with them a captive, a nervous, quick-eyed man, who asked question after question. Elske translated between the man and Var Jerrol. “What is he going to do with me? Why was I taken?” the man asked. “I’m not a wealthy man. How can they hope for ransom from a simple apothecary? Have you no pity for me? Can you not pity my wife, who must wonder what has befallen me? I’ll reward you, I promise, Elske, whatever you ask. A rich husband? If you’d just tell me what he wants. Jewels? In my own city, I have the ear of the Count. The Count will give you whatever I tell him, if you help me get away.”

  The apothecary grew bolder with food and drink and warmth and rest. Var Jerrol shared meals with his captive, but kept Elske always in the room, to translate. As the man looked around him more, he no longer asked Elske to help him escape. At last, one day, he inquired of Var Jerrol directly, “What do you desire of me?”

  Var Jerrol, who like all of the merchants spoke some Souther, answered this question himself. “The formula for black powder.”

  The apothecary laughed, then. “I thought it was something like that. Well, it’s simple enough—for a man who knows its secret.” He watched Elske, as she translated. “But I need some incentive to persuade my secret from me. For I’ll have broken faith with the Count, and his writ will be out on my life.”

  “I could make you glad to tell me anything I asked of you,” Var Jerrol said, but the man only laughed again, and suggested, “You prefer to have me tell you willingly, and truthfully.”

  Var Jerrol didn’t argue.

  “If I’m to lose everything, I’d be a fool to ask nothing in return. I’d need a new home, and large wealth,” the apothecary said. Var Jerrol nodded, eyelids lowered; he accepted the bargain. “I might want a new wife. Young, and unknown to any man, to get my sons upon. I might want Elske,” the apothecary said.

  “Elske doesn’t wish to marry you,” Var Jerrol said.

  “What do her wishes matter?”

  “In Trastad, no woman weds against her will,” Var Jerrol said. “Not even a servant. Besides, she is Wolfer bred and raised. And who would take such a woman into his bed, where he must sometimes lie helpless in sleep, when he has taken her against her will? You’re safer with the wife I find for you,” Var Jerrol said. “Now, tell me what you know.”

  The apothecary sighed, and then announced cheerfully, “I know everything.” As he spoke, Elske repeated the information to Var Jerrol.

  Mixed in proper proportions, the ingredients for black powder responded to flame by bursting apart. Like a pig’s bladder, when children fill it with air and then knot its neck; if the children drop it into a fire, it blows itself apart. Black powder explodes, the captive said.

  The evil smell that accompanied the explosion was burned sulfur, familiar to those who lived near where iron and copper were extracted from their ores. It was charcoal, ground fine, that gave the powder its black color. Charcoal was in short supply in the south, where the forests had been cleared to farmlands to feed the growing citizenry, and there was little wood to burn down to charcoal. Thus, unless the apothecary was mistaken, Trastad would find more and more ships come into its harbor, to be filled with lumber, for use by the southern manufacturies of black powder.

  Yes, a city could easily be taken with the black powder, its walls breached by the explosion. There was even talk that some of the Emperor’s armies had long tubes, out of the ends of which the black powder propelled sharp pellets, to kill a man before he could come close to you with his drawn sword. This was killing your enemy as soon as you could see him, and he could have no protection against you. But the apothecary doubted these stories, for why didn’t the long stick blow up in a man’s hands when the fire flashed through the black powder?

  Oh, yes, there was a third ingredient, to be ground in with the others, and the joke was it could be found in any cellar, on the wet walls, and it could be found growing atop any manure heap of every farm. This third ingredient was the pale saltpeter that, added in proper proportion—things must always be in the right proportions or the powder wouldn’t work, it was knowledge of proportion that made the apothecary’s information so valuable—made the black powder. Now, if the distinguished gentleman would give his word to the bargain—?

  Var Jerrol would, and offered his hand to seal it.

  Then the apothecary could easily write the formula down, if Elske would bring him paper and pen.

  She set them down before him, and watched as he wrote, and saw how simple it was.

  At this point, Var Jerrol sent Elske from the room, and she never saw the apothecary again. She never asked about him, either, for she had seen Var Jerrol’s eyes.

  WINTER’S END FINALLY CAME NEAR, the ice melting out into the sea, first, and then separating into chunks on the rivers. When the grass grew green and the apple trees threw lacy shawls of blossoms over their shoulders, Var Jerrol began talking to Elske about the proper education of his daughters, that they might attract husbands worthy of their father’s position. He w
ished them to learn not only letters and numbers, but also how to mount and ride a horse, and even sword skills, that they might defend themselves, and even to have some knowledge of trade, and banking.

  The long, honey-colored summer days flowed over Trastad. Piet of the brown hair asked for Elske’s hand in marriage and she declined him. Var Jerrol warned her that when he himself wed—for he had chosen his new wife—Elske must leave his house if she would not take Brown Piet. He warned her that she was approaching her fifteenth winter, entering her marrying years, so she should look about her for a man who pleased her most. He would give her a dowry, Var Jerrol said. But Elske had no desire to marry.

  She had chosen her future, he said. The city would give her as maidservant to an Adelinne, to serve the young woman during the Courting Winter, to companion her to the Assemblies and other entertainments and probably, since most of the Adeliers spoke that language, speak her familiar Souther. Elske would be sent to Var Vladislav, High Councillor of Trastad, the wealthiest of its citizens, master of many vessels and a large banking house, possessor of vast forest estates on the mainland, and farms and copper mines as well. She would be just one among many maidservants in his great villa on Logisle. This must be her future if she would not marry, Var Jerrol told her and waited again for her answer.

  Risking his displeasure—for she found herself unwilling to bend to his will—Elske again declined to take a husband. She had no desire for any man to husband her, she said, and while there would be an emptiness in her heart where the little girls had lived, still, her choice was to be sent away from them.

  “Do you think to overmaster me so easily?” he asked, and she laughed, partly for the pleasure of seizing her will from him.