Tale of Elske

by Jan Vermeer

  “The merchants say—” Win started, but then didn’t finish the thought.

  “What do they say?” Beriel demanded, so Win told her this, also. “When you hear their cry, your heart freezes within you. Men have gone mad with fear, from just the Wolfer cry.”

  “And such enemies have come into my Kingdom?” Beriel cried out, as if she had taken a wound. “How will the crops be put into the fields so there will be food next winter?”

  Win agreed. “Fear is plowed like salt into the farmlands of the north.”

  “And Sutherland?”

  “The south feels far from danger. Let the wild men feed off the north, they say, thinking that will guarantee their own safety, with the rivers running between them and danger.”

  “Wolfers do fear water,” Elske told her companions.

  “And so we have Northgate’s people for a Wolfguard of our own,” Beriel observed bitterly, then said, “I will sleep now.”

  THE LONG DAYS OF THE journey passed slowly, in sunshine, clouds or rain. Evenings were spent with whatever news from the Kingdom Win could remember, or guess at. Days held the steady thump of the horses’ hooves on the packed dirt pathway and more stories, more songs, more questions from Beriel.

  Elske did not need to be told when they had crossed the borders into the Kingdom. Beriel shone with it, like a sun, the Queen in her Kingdom. It was as if each breath she drew increased her pleasure, breathing that air. It was as if each hoof the chestnut planted onto that earth increased her strength. Beriel looked about her, to the broad slow-flowing river and the thick-trunked trees. She looked to the sky, less blue than her eyes.

  By midday they had come to an inn, the Falcon’s Wing, sleepy grey stone soaking up the spring sunlight. Beriel rode up to the doorway, and dismounted.

  “My Queen,” Win protested. “They will know you here.”

  “As they should. I must send messengers to the Earl Sutherland, my uncle, and to the King in his palace, to say when they may expect me.”

  “My Queen,” Win said. “Do you think how this forewarning places you in harm’s way?”

  “I do not fear the King,” Beriel said. “Rather, he should fear me.”

  “My Queen,” Win said, “I think he does.”

  Beriel smiled up at him then, and offered him a hand to aid in his dismounting. “So you are more than the country onion you pretend,” she said.

  The three stood together, looking at the blank stone face of the building before them, and Beriel gave the order. “Announce me, Win. Tell the innkeeper of the Falcon’s Wing that I have returned, and have need of messengers, and have need of fresh mounts. Tell him that we require also food for three, with his best ale. I will tell you, Win, since you concern yourself with my safety, that I will be safest riding openly to Sutherland’s castle. If all know that I have set off, then all must seek out treachery should I not arrive.”

  She looked around her then, at the grey stone inn backed up against the tree-clogged forest, at the green meadow stretched out before them and the blue curve of river beyond; all under a bowl of sky out of which a warm and generous sun poured its light. “Is it not beautiful, my Kingdom?” Beriel asked Elske.

  Chapter 16

  THE MESSENGERS RODE OFF AT the gallop, but Beriel’s party rested at the Falcon’s Wing. Elske and Beriel walked across the meadow, down to the river’s edge and out onto a dock, and when they returned, the innkeeper had set out a platter of baked fish for them, and bread, and onions, and tankards of his own ale. Win was fed in the inn kitchens.

  At Beriel’s command, Win brought their fresh mounts around. Elske, at Beriel’s command, changed her garments, wearing now a dress so that she also must sit her palfrey sideways. Her hair, like Beriel’s, hung loose, with only a broad ribbon to hold it back from her face. Win walked behind them until the inn was out of sight, and then once again Beriel took the pack while Win and Elske rode together at her side. As they traveled the King’s Way east, Win reported what he had learned in the kitchen and the stables:

  Beriel was rumored dead. Where the rumor had started, none could say, but all had heard it. A maidservant had declared that the soldiers would be bringing a dead body back for its burial, not a bride to her wedding day nor a Queen to her people. There was sadness in her telling, and in the hearing, too, for Beriel had been well-beloved.

  There were rumors of a terrible army attacking the north, Wolfers, wild men; but Sutherland’s domain was in no danger as long as Earl Northgate’s farms and villages satisfied their blood lust. The Wolfers were a destruction from which none escaped. Lands they crossed lay barren—choked with blood, blackened with fires. People lay slaughtered, and worse. Lest they lay hands on him, and his Kingdom founder, the King had taken his court and his soldiers into Arborford, where two armies would give him twice the might, rumor said.

  The King had fled for his own safety, the cook muttered over her pastry.

  Another rumor reported that the King had a weapon that could spit out fire like a dragon, and when he turned this against the Wolfers they would be driven back. This new weapon burned hotter than fire, and had teeth that could rip a soldier into pieces of flesh that even his own mother wouldn’t recognize. With this weapon, the King would preserve his Kingdom, and the people in it. Only King Guerric could save them, rumor said.

  Thus, a groom reasoned, if this Lady of Win’s was Beriel, Beriel alive, she would cause civil war. The Kingdom would be split over the question of King or Queen. Its men would be taken off into armies, and killed or crippled, the crops would suffer, all would go hungry—and the wonderful new weapon would be turned on its own people. Wolfers from without and the royal family from within: Destruction threatened at every turn of the wheel.

  But if this Lady was not Beriel, then there was hope. And how could this be the Princess, and her dead in that far city where she had gone to seek her husband, since none in the Kingdom could satisfy her proud heart? No, this was not the Princess.

  “What did you say to that?” Beriel asked Win.

  “I said only that I rode with my Queen, who would separate rumor from fact, and deal with these Wolfers.”

  “You promised much,” Beriel remarked, not displeased. She turned to Elske to ask, “Do you think Guerric has the black powder?” but it was Win who answered, “I think not. I think nobody in the Kingdom knows more of the black powder than— What is it? What? My Queen, what have I said to offend you?”

  “What do you know of this weapon?” Beriel demanded.

  He reminded her, “Merchants come to an inn. However quietly men may talk among themselves, he who serves them will overhear.”

  “You serve the inn’s tables? But you are a son of the house, not a servant,” Beriel protested.

  “Among the people, as among the Lords, however different the labors, a son does the work of the house.”

  Beriel accepted this, and now wanted to know, “What do you hear of the black powder?”

  “They say that in the cities of the south, there are those who possess it. They speak of a captain who has made himself a Prince over many cities by its power, and none dare oppose him, for the destruction he can visit upon them. He aims to give his son a royal bride—”

  “I have danced with this son, I think,” Beriel said. “I did not know he was to be such a King but if he rules as stupidly as he courts, he will lose all that his father has won. Do my people fear the black powder?”

  Win answered apologetically, “Your people fear everything, my Queen. If it is not the terror of the black powder, then it is dread of the consequences of Guerric’s crowning or the dread of the consequences of your return. Fear spreads like a plague, and especially in the north where the Wolfers have struck.” Then his face grew thoughtful, quiet, and he added, “Or perhaps fear is least in the north, for there they know what dangers they face. Imagined terrors are more fearsome than known, think you, my Queen?”

  “I think I will see what awaits us at Sutherland’s castle,” Beriel
decided, and urged her horse on, leading them.

  Elske followed her mistress. She knew little of the Kingdom and its ways and had not been sent among the women of the inn, to gather their rumors. She didn’t know how she might now help her mistress. There was that in Elske for which this was a gall, and she felt like a sail bereft of wind, a useless thing.

  They traveled quickly, not stopping except for what quick refreshment an inn might offer, for fresh horses, for a few hours of sleep out under the open sky, to awake damp with dew. A little more than a day from the Falcon’s Wing, they skirted a walled city, and then the King’s Way took them across gently rolling lands, through the occasional village. Everywhere, the fields were being tilled and household gardens were being dug over. People came to the roadside to see them pass, as they rode north to Earl Sutherland’s castle. None cried out in welcome, but their eyes were fixed on Beriel.

  Beriel looked neither to right nor to left, but she saw everything and later would ask Win if he drew the same conclusions from the same rows of brown earth—“Is it not late for the crops to be going in?”—and the same faces—“Were they not used to be more merry? When I was a child, I thought them carefree.”

  Elske’s impression was that nobody need go hungry here in the Kingdom, with its farms and herds, and Win told her that in his own northern lands there were lakes filled with fish, as well. There was room, and food, for all who might be born into this rich land.

  And Beriel, riding always ahead, always now at a canter, was born to be Queen in the Kingdom. Even the horses she rode, which neither tired nor stumbled, seemed to take from her the strength to travel on, day after day, until at last they rode between the high stone gateposts into Earl Sutherland’s castle.

  They were expected there, and escorted across the yards, and welcomed on the doorstep by the Earl himself, a tall, broad man, grey-haired, with a kindly expression. He looked with brief curiosity at Win and at Elske, then gave his full attention to his niece. He took her by the hand as she stood before him, to say, “Beriel, I give you greeting.”

  “Sir, I give you greeting,” she answered.

  They met as equals, not as Earl and niece, neither as Queen and vassal. There was no bowing of the head or bending of the knee from one to the other, although Beriel wore her travel-worn cloak and the Earl a green shirt with a golden falcon stitched onto it, on his breast a medallion like the one Beriel now carried in her pack.

  “Welcome to Sutherland’s castle,” he said. “You are welcome into my home. The servants will bring in your chests. Where are your chests?” he asked.

  “I travel in haste, for I have heard much to disturb me,” Beriel answered him.

  “Will you not rest a night under my care?” the Earl asked. “Will you not take a meal with us? For you look travel weary and travel stained, Niece. I promise you your safety, here in my castle,” he told her. “Also,” he said, and his face looked suddenly tired, “I would have your advice on some matters of importance. To the Kingdom, Niece, for the Kingdom. You are right to think that these are parlous times.”

  “More even than you might yet know, Uncle,” Beriel said, as if in warning, but gently.

  “May we not advise one another, Niece?”

  Beriel assented, and turned to Win, telling him to see to their horses and refresh himself against their continued journey. Then Beriel summoned Elske to her side. “My handmaiden,” she said. “Elske.”

  “I give you greeting,” Elske said, and curtseyed—as she would have to a Varinne—and the Earl answered her courteously, “I give you greeting, Elske.” She was close enough to see relief in his eyes, and she thought she could guess what need Beriel had for a handmaiden. Her spirits lifted, when Beriel had a use for her.

  “I am glad to see you decently attended, Niece,” the Earl said. “I had heard rumors that the situation was otherwise.”

  Beriel acknowledged neither the warning given, nor the offense offered. “My man will wait out here, after he is fed,” was her response. “I need fresh horses. Can you supply us?”

  “Of course,” the Earl answered. He summoned servants and sent them ahead, while he escorted Beriel through the arched doorway into the castle, with Elske at her mistress’s shoulder.

  BATHED, WEARING FRESH CLOTHING FROM shift to dress, they joined the Earl in a large dining hall. Chairs were set around three sides of the table, which had been drawn up close to the dying fire. Elske was seated beside Beriel, and next to Beriel sat a Lady who must be the Earl’s wife, for she, too, wore the medallion. The Earl was catty-corner to his wife, and down the length of the table from him sat a young man, his son. While the servants placed food and drink before them, nobody spoke.

  The Earl’s Lady, her faded hair held back from her face by golden combs, looked from Beriel to the Earl, as if she sensed trouble there; and the young man—tall and slim, with his mother’s fine face—watched only his own hands, which rested beside his plate. They ate of smoked pig meat and onions, carrots, a cold fowl and some bitter greens. When their plates had been cleared from the table, the Earl asked, “Well, Niece?” and drank from his goblet of wine.

  “Guerric is crowned,” Beriel began.

  After some thought the Earl remarked, “You ever were desirous to be the Queen.”

  “I am the firstborn, the eldest.”

  “But not male.”

  “In the history of Sutherland, as was made the law of the Kingdom, the firstborn inherited, be it woman or man. This was my own mother, your sister, who gave the Earldom into your inheritance when she chose instead to marry my father and be his Queen.”

  The Earl nodded, agreeing.

  “The Priests allowed my mother her inheritance of the Earldom, and gave her the power to name her successor.”

  The Earl pointed out, “You have not been named successor.”

  “I should have been,” Beriel argued. “Until my father lay dead, none ever dared name Guerric, for fear of the law.”

  The Earl nodded, but “Will you have a civil war?” he asked.

  “I will have my crown,” she answered.

  “To do that, you must turn traitor to the crowned King.”

  “A usurper is himself a traitor. It is no treason to take the crown from him.”

  The Earl considered. Elske, watching the faces around the table, thought that the Earl’s son was troubled, uneasy, although not about the question of King or Queen; and she guessed she knew what he had to trouble him. The Earl’s Lady listened, and often leaned forward, with her mouth moving as if to speak; but she uttered no words.

  At last the Earl said, “You want troops. But, Niece, I have bent the knee to Guerric and am his vassal. Even if I accept your claim, I cannot, in honor, send troops against him.”

  Beriel considered this. She decided, “I will not ask dishonor of you.”

  “I will gladly give you troops to go against the Wolfers,” the Earl offered.

  “Hasn’t the King already sent an army into the north?”

  “Guerric orders Northgate to defend his lands as best he can, and has left those royal villages unprotected that lie in the north. The soldiery Guerric has, he keeps close about him, and he has taken his army eastwards, to bring Arborford under his will.”

  Beriel asked, “Lord Arbor refuses the King soldiers?”

  “Arborford goes its own way, and ever has.”

  “Yet, is not Lord Arbor your vassal?” Beriel asked.

  “He is,” the Earl said.

  “You have not required him to give Guerric his soldiery?”

  “Arbor’s vow is to me, to protect me in need. I have no need,” the Earl pointed out.

  Beriel considered this. The room was still, except for the Earl’s Lady restless in her chair. Elske could not think what Beriel was planning, except there would be a revenge on this young man, with his shining pink cheeks, who could not look at his cousin’s face.

  Beriel changed the topic of conversation, then. “My brother plots my death, as I hear
.”

  At this the young man told his father, “This is what I reported to you.”

  The Earl nodded at him and told Beriel, “It is for this reason our Aymeric has been sent home in disgrace—sent by his own brother, who is now the King’s First Minister. Because Aymeric won’t conspire to your murder.”

  Beriel stared at the young man, then, until his whole face burned red. It seemed to Elske that shame sat on his shoulders like the Volkking on his throne; and it seemed to Elske just that Aymeric should carry that weight, for all that it crushed and crippled him.

  Beriel spoke boldly then to her uncle, “You will have heard rumors that I was with child, last fall, when I left the Kingdom.”

  “I see no child,” the Earl answered.

  “You would not have known whether to believe the rumors,” Beriel said. “Aunt?”

  The Earl’s Lady looked at her husband, who awaited her answer. She said nothing.

  “I ask you, Aunt,” Beriel repeated.

  “I must speak, when this—girl—requires?” the Lady asked her husband. “When I must keep silent about important matters, of Kingship and the promotion of my son into a rank higher than I had dreamed, of—”

  Beriel interrupted the complaint. “I have asked you.”

  “If I must speak, and speak truly, I did think you had the look. Last fall. I wondered. And you were—you were often angry, when you were a child, impatient, but last fall you were uncontrolled. I did wonder if you were with child. But who in this Kingdom cares for what a woman thinks, what a woman knows? So I held my tongue—and begged the maidservants to overlook your spitefulness. It was not too soon for me when you rode out of my gates, with your guard—although none asked me if your visit was to my taste, not before it happened, nor after.”

  The Earl looked as if he wished to silence his wife, and their son was almost smiling at this tirade; but Beriel remained courteous. “I thank you for your silence, Aunt. But I have a story to tell, and it is not a tale to lighten your hearts. May I speak of it?” she asked the Earl.