by Jan Vermeer
Eventually, Elske also wandered into the camps of Earl Sutherland’s men, and they also welcomed her. These southern men worried less than their northern counterparts about doing battle with the Wolfers; they spoke of it carelessly, jestingly, as confident and eager as Adels before a ball, as if the Wolfers were a game.
The soldiers looked out for Elske, and Dugald often brought their well-wishes back to her from his twice-daily inspection tours. Lord Dugald was a useful man, Elske thought; and she had never met with such a man before. He carried messages gladly, without any pride of place to interfere, whether the word traveled from captain to captain or soldier to soldier. He could deal with the stone caught in a horse’s shoe or set a broken bone as easily as he detailed men to gather fuel or encouraged them at the arduous march. The soldiers came to him with their quarrels and their desires, and he answered their needs. Elske had seen his dark brown head bent over a needle and thread, mending a tear in his own blue tunic—on the chest of which Northgate’s bear, standing, had been emblazoned. Like his soldiers, Elske came to trust the Earl’s heir in all things; and Sutherland’s soldiers, too, soon followed him confidently.
All this he achieved without—apparently—even thinking of it. He did not make his own cleverness known, or his strength, power or position. Those who served Lord Dugald did not so much follow him as find him at their shoulder, ready to assist or to give succor or just to hear them. Thus it was he listened to Elske, as if he wished to understand even that which she could not put into words. However, his thoughts did not always march with hers, as when he pointed out, “There will now be another Death Maiden, won’t there?” The grim sorrow in his voice caused her to turn her head so that she might see his face. But he was staring ahead, towards the hills they approached. So Elske, who had never thought of her, must remember this next, unknown Death Maiden, without Tamara to protect her, and must feel a sorrow that matched his own for this unmet child, and for herself, too, as she had not known herself to be.
Dugald was like a beryl glass, showing Elske herself. “You have been so many things,” he once exclaimed, “and seen so much of the world. Do you never think how wonderful it is, what you have seen and done, all that you know? And now you are here to make a lighter time of this strenuous march, and help us know what awaits us. For which I thank you, Elske. My soldiers are less fatigued of body and fearful of heart than they would have been were you not with us. Me, as well. You have shone in my days like the sun in the sky,” he said, and she laughed, then, at his courtly extravagance here in the rough life of a marching army, and at her pleasure in his good opinion.
They had forded the great river and were camped on its western banks the evening that Elske unknowingly risked the loss of that valued good opinion. It was a mild evening. They had just set up camp, the fires lit, refreshing water taken by men and animals; they had not yet eaten. Dugald was conferring with the captains and Elske walked to the riverbank, where the water rippled golden under a burnished sky. Some of Sutherland’s soldiers were about to wade into the water and she asked them if they knew how to swim.
“Aye, Lady,” they answered, so she asked them if they would teach her. “Nay, Lady, why should you know that?” they said, answering her neither yes nor no as they stood barefooted, wearing only shirts and trousers, halted in their undressing by her arrival, wary as foxes.
“I wish to know,” she said. “The Queen that will be, Beriel, was taught it by fishermen.”
They looked at one another, and thought to say, “What would you wear, Lady? If you try to swim in those skirts, you’ll drown for sure, and what Lord Dugald would do to us I don’t like to think. It would be a quick hanging, if we were lucky.”
“Can I not wear what you do?” Elske asked.
“Lady, we swim without clothing.”
“Naked?”
“How else?”
Elske could not answer, never having seen a man either unclothed or swimming.
“I’ll give her my shirt,” one of the soldiers volunteered.
“How can we watch over her, when we are naked? Not watching, how can we be sure of her safety?” they asked one another.
“And why should our Elskeling not learn to swim, or have anything else she wishes?”
So they took off only their shirts and stood in a circle around her, with their backs to her, while she removed her own clothing until she wore only a shift. She put on the soldier’s green shirt, which reached below her knees. Then she moved down into the water among her guard of soldiers.
This was a sandy-bottomed river and Elske stepped barefooted into the water, which rose steadily as she walked out into it, cool against her ankles, then calves, then knees. The green shirt grew heavy with water, and what was cool on her feet was cold enough on her belly to make her gasp.
They walked her out until the water reached her breasts and then told her, if she was not afraid to try, that she might lie down on it. “Lie on your belly. Lift your face,” they advised her.
Elske bent her knees, but could not persuade her feet to leave the river bottom.
“Push off,” her teachers advised her, laughter in their voices, and eagerness for her to learn. “Push yourself towards the shore where the water grows shallower.”
Elske filled her chest with air and pushed off. Almost, she stayed on top of the water, before she began to sink, and her feet scrabbled beneath her to stand on firm sand again. But her almost had given her a sense of it, and soon she floated easily, and even rolled over onto her back to look up into the sky while she floated on top of the water, swimming.
The soldiers were pleased with themselves, and with her. “Our Elskeling can do anything she sets her spirit on, can’t she?” they asked one another. “Now, Lady,” they told her. “You must learn how to paddle with your hands, and kick with your feet, so that—like a boat with its oars—you can steer yourself whither you will. And then you will know how to swim.”
“Yes,” Elske said, and smiled so widely, to know that she had thought she already knew what she did not, that her mouth filled with water, and she coughed so hard to get it out that she forgot to keep her chest filled with air, and she had to stand up, and stop swimming as she choked, chest-deep in the river, her wet hair plastered to her shoulders.
This was what Dugald saw, as he came searching for her. Seeing this, he rushed down to the water’s edge, bellowing orders to the soldiers, bellowing orders to Elske, his anger whipping out in all directions.
The soldiers scurried out of the river and gathered up their clothing. “We only—” “It wasn’t—” He would deal with them later, Dugald promised them, and would not hear their protests. “My Lord, you know we wouldn’t—” He sent them back to their captains, at a run.
When the soldiers had gone, he called again for Elske to get out of the water.
She, too, protested. “But I can swim.”
“Just obey me,” he commanded. He waited on the shore with his boots on and his cloak held out to wrap around her. He scolded her, even as she walked through the water towards him. “It isn’t decent for a Lady to be so undressed among men, and the soldiers bare-chested—”
“They told me, usually they swim naked but they didn’t today, because of my presence. They gave me a shirt so I wouldn’t be naked. They’ve done nothing wrong,” Elske said as she accepted his cloak. She picked up her own clothing from where it lay folded on the long riverside grasses. “And I’ve done nothing wrong.”
The man at her side was dark-faced. “I don’t know what is permitted in Trastad, how their women behave, but in the Kingdom no Lady would see men bare-chested, nor would she let them see her so unclothed—”
“I am neither a Lady nor a Trastader.” He had no reason to speak so to her, and she had no reason to be courteous to his anger.
“Neither would any woman of the people,” Dugald went on, ignoring her. “You are as blind and willful as Beriel.”
“Beriel is not blind,” Elske answered him. “Sh
e is no more willful than she must be.”
He escorted her back to their fire, and neither one of them spoke to the other. Elske withdrew into her tent, to change into dry clothing, but she did not remain there. Instead—being careful to tell one of the soldiers in which direction she would go, lest Dugald think she had been cowed by his anger—she walked away from the river, along a path out into the countryside, until she stood beside the dark furrows of a plowed field.
The sky was darkening from the east but still glowed blue gold in the west, where a horizon as uneven as the sea’s showed hills, rising up. The mountains, she knew, lay out of sight, beyond; if she could see them, they would be covered still with snow. It was as if Dugald’s troops were the army of spring, hurrying to catch up with her and escort her safely through the land from which winter’s troops were retreating.
He spoke behind her. “Lady, I give you greeting.”
Elske turned around, and found that her ill humor had left her. “I give you greeting, Lord Dugald,” she answered. When he stepped up beside her to look out over the fields, she saw how dark his eyes were, as dark as the deep rocks in the land of the Volkaric, as unchanging as earth.
“This is my father’s land,” he said to her. “It will be mine, in my time, if I live. The soldiers call you Elskeling. Does that offend you?”
“Why should it offend me?”
Dugald smiled at her then, and said, “And I, if I were to request it—with courtly flourishes, with songs and flowers—could I ask you to teach me to swim? Not now, but at some future time, when the men have forgotten how they trespassed against your dignity.”
“The soldiers would make better teachers,” Elske said, and with a teasing smile of her own reminded him, “You would all be men together as is proper.”
He shrugged.
“But,” she said, then stopped, then decided to speak, “Why should you ask me to teach you what I barely know myself?”
The steady eyes looked down into hers and he told her, “Because I am afraid to learn, afraid to drown learning it. But I think you are someone I would trust to show me how to enter the water and not die there. I think my fear and my life would be safe with you. Because I think that when Beriel left us last fall Guerric didn’t expect her to return. I think,” he said again, his eyes now on the distances of his land so that whatever was written on her face might go unread. “Perhaps, if there is any truth to the rumors of a man in her bed and a baby in her belly, that Beriel has trusted herself to you, and you have served her well. So I think that what we call proper doesn’t signify to you. Although this freedom could make you dangerous, especially to those whose secrets you keep, it is difficult for me to believe that you are a danger to me, or my land, or my Queen. On the other hand, it could make you a true heart. I can believe that your heart is true.”
“I think it is,” Elske agreed, accepting his arm and the apology of his request, and—most gladly—his good opinion.
WITH THE ARMY STRETCHED OUT behind, they left the river. The King’s Way ran north between low fences, through rough, brown fields. Dugald asked Elske about the Wolfers, telling her, “I’ve chased after one of the war bands, and raised my sword to its rear guard, and I have fought against those who buy the time for their fellows to escape. They don’t fear death as we do.”
She agreed. “They fear only the Volkking, and the shame of cowardice.”
“And what do you fear, Elske?”
Elske considered, to give him the true answer. “I fear for the safety of Beriel.”
“Not for your own safety? Not for mine?”
Elske considered. “No,” she answered.
His shout of laughter caused the nearby soldiers to fall silent, so he spoke more quietly to tell her, “When we are at Hildebrand’s city, there will be a council of war. I think, I would wish people to know you are Wolfer, so that we can hear your advice about our enemy. I give my pledge for your safety,” he promised.
The army traveled at some speed along the King’s Way, passing solitary cottages, farmhouses with their outbuildings, inns and villages. Sometimes, people gathered to watch them pass, and all their faces seemed stilled by fear. They feared even to hope, Elske thought. The green shirts of the soldiers from the south at least earned a look of surprise, and a man might whisper into his neighbor’s ear, or point out to a child Northgate’s heir.
At the Ram’s Head Inn, Elske slept under a roof, in her own chamber. She dined with Dugald, waited on by the redheaded innkeeper, Win’s brother.
Their host could not speak four words without putting in “my Lord” or “my honored Lord.” His wife bustled in and out, as he apologized for the simple fare—“Had we known, my honored Lord, that you would dine with us, my Lord”—but dared to hope that the inn’s wine, “made from the family vineyard, would please my noble Lord.” He offered clean napkins, his wife offered a chair to make Lord Dugald more comfortable, until finally Dugald tried to divert his hosts by saying, “I have news of your brother, if you would hear it.”
They stood with their hands folded in front of their aprons, to hear, and what they heard gave them unease. The innkeeper pulled ruminatively at his red beard, but his wife could not hold her tongue. “He ever did seek to serve that Princess,” she said, to her husband. “She magicked him that summer, over the hanging of your uncle, and you know how Win is. Stubborn-hearted.”
“He’s ever been too quick to pity,” the host agreed, sadly.
Elske spoke up. “Win is loyal to his Queen.”
“Aye, and it’ll be just that loyalty that will get him a traitor’s death,” Win’s brother said. “And if I know my brother, he’ll say she’s done him fair.”
“If that’s what he gets, I’ll be hanged beside him,” Dugald told them and their host asked uneasily, “What mean you, my Lord?”
Dugald answered plainly. “I mean that if a brother seizes the crown from his sister who is the firstborn, then he is the traitor, as are all who follow him.”
“Aye, and I know nothing of that,” the wife said. “But I know they’re cowards who follow Guerric into the safety of Arborford, and leave their own people undefended.”
Her husband tried to shush her. “Here is Northgate’s heir,” he pointed out, “and he brings soldiers from Sutherland to join his father’s army, to protect us.”
“Aye, and there’s no protection against these Wolfers,” she lamented. “They move secretly, and in packs, they never stand to fight. And it is the worse, now, for now they take revenge, too.” She turned to Dugald, “They eat the flesh of children!” she cried. “Women who fall into their hands go mad with pain, and shame, and fear, before they die. You must promise me, you’ll slay me, Husband—I’ll slay my daughters, I can do that—if those—”
“Hush,” he tried to soothe her frenzy. “I’ll not keep you here if they come close.”
“You fool! They give no warning. Do you think the pigman would not have sent his daughter away? You saw the bodies, Husband. It’s you who are the dreamer and fool, not Win. His enemy fights honestly—and speaks his language. Maybe he was the clever one, to leave you here without his arm at such a time—”
“She is afraid,” the host apologized. “My Lord, I ask you to remember that our children are young, and she is afraid for them. We’ll leave you, my honored Lord, to your dinner.”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing to fear!” his wife cried.
The host bowed to Lord Dugald, and bowed to Elske, too, as he drew his wife out of the long room, leaving them alone.
Dugald lifted his spoon and dipped it into his bowl of meat stew, but he didn’t eat. Elske did not even lift her spoon.
“I need a map,” Dugald said, but not to her. “Hildebrand will have one.”
He took a bite then, chewed and swallowed. He drank a swallow of the wine. “I’ve let myself make a pleasure journey, and my people in danger.”
He drank of the wine again, and poured more from the pitcher into his goblet. Then h
e did raise his face, his eyes as mute as boulders, to ask Elske, “How could you be as you are and have lived among Wolfers?”
Elske shook her head. She could not answer his question.
“Tell me,” Lord Dugald insisted.
If he wished to insist, then Elske wished to make the attempt. “I was a girl,” she said, “and among the Volkaric—” but he interrupted her, “Who are these Volkaric?”
“Those whom you call Wolfers. Among the Volkaric,” she began again, and this time he did not interrupt her, “women are nothing, useless in battle, useless to win treasure. They remain near their houses—as do the women of Trastad, both the great Varinnes and their servants—to sew and scrub and cook, to care for children. Among the Volkaric, the best of a woman is to bear sons. I lived among the Volkaric as women everywhere live,” Elske told Dugald. “Except Beriel,” she said. Then she added, “All women except Beriel, who would be Queen.”
As she spoke, Dugald looked into her face, and looked still into her face. “How could they ask your death of you, being who you are?” he asked, but it was a protest, not a question. “And how could they ask you to know what your death was to be?”
“If it were kept a secret,” Elske explained, “there would have been no revenge on my grandmother. I was their revenge on her. Whenever anyone saw me, they remembered how my death would come and so our life was better when all knew what my death would be.”
“It was ill done,” Dugald said plainly. He asked her then, “So you would have no secrets?”
“My Lord?”
“It is a simple question, a simple policy: Do you believe secrets should be kept, and that the people should be kept in ignorance?”
