The Book of Earth

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  But what finally kept her frozen to the sill was the sight of the chicken-crone sitting on the well-head in the middle of the storm, grinning up at her toothlessly and beckoning.

  Then there was a muffled thump outside her door and the scrape of a key in the lock. Erde stayed where she was. If it was her father or the priest come to make her watch Rainer hang, it would be all the excuse she’d need to throw herself from the windowsill.

  But it was Alla who eased open the door, stuck her head in, then ducked back, grunting and breathing hard, hauling on something heavy. Erde ran to help her.

  “Alla, Alla, thank God! Oh, Alla, what are we to do?”

  “Help me, child! Those white-robes of his are everywhere!” The heavy weight was the guard who’d been posted outside. Together, they dragged him into the room.

  “Alla, we have to help Rainer! We have to . . . !”

  “No time, I can’t . . . I’ve done what I can,” Alla panted. “Now it’s up to . . .” Her breath failed her briefly. Two bright spots blazed on her cheeks. Her white hair was loose and tangled. She unslung a leather satchel from her back and pressed it into Erde’s hands. “Hide this, quickly! Take the key and lock the door behind me!”

  “No!” Erde snatched at her sleeve. “You can’t leave me!”

  “Have to. They can’t know I’ve been here. Your father is . . .”

  “Still drunk? No! Is he still drunk? Alla, what’s the matter with him? He’s never been this bad before!”

  The old woman hugged Erde tightly, kissed her, then held her at arm’s length. “I know, child, but he’s never met his evil genius before. Now, listen, my dearest girl. It’s all out of hand. I can’t protect you anymore. That vicious priest . . . he’s after my skin. It’s gone way beyond just plying your father with drink and flattery. He and Josef . . . they encourage each other’s madness. You should have seen the two of them, hauling the tapestries from the great-hall onto the fire.”

  “Burned? The von Alte tapestries?” Erde felt a hole grow in her heart.

  Alla stroked her cheek. “Yes, kidling. As evil totems of dragon worship. Can you believe the folly of it? Built a raging pyre in the upper courtyard and tossed them in, all the time laughing like boys, while the foolish court all stood about like scared dumb sheep! There’s no telling what . . . the priest’s talking now about taking you ‘in hand’ . . . exactly what I fear he means to do, the lecherous bastard, even as he pours evil into Josef’s ear about you and the lad. You must get away. You must! Hide yourself in the villages until the priest is gone, or go to the king. No time to send word, just go!”

  Shouts from the courtyard blew up the stairwell with the icy drafts. Alla patted her pockets, glanced swiftly around. “Fare ye well, light of my heart.”

  “But what about Rainer?”

  “Don’t think of him, child.”

  “How can I not think of him?” Erde wailed.

  “You’re best to never think of him again.” Alla held their four hands together in a knot. “Be brave, hawkling! Your dragon awaits you!”

  “My . . . what dragon?”

  Alla ducked away. The clamor from below spread to the upper corridor, men running, boots and swords clanging against the stone. Erde swung the heavy door closed and locked it, then remembered the guard lying near the hearth and worried that he might wake up. Bending closer, she discovered he was not just unconscious. His jaw gaped, his eyes stared. A small stiletto puncture bled at his neck. Erde recoiled with a squeal, then hushed herself, feeling her world turn over. How serious some games became, and how suddenly. Your father’s evil genius, Alla had said. No one had understood how unstable his balance was until the coming of the priest had tipped it. By dawn, Rainer would be as dead as this poor man, because of her childishness, because she had insisted on an innocent stupid kiss.

  Erde cried out as guilt and grief and rage surged over her, spilling strength into her limbs. She grabbed the corpse by the heels and dragged it under her bed, then ran to stash the leather satchel behind her stinking chamber pot. Out in the hall, armor clanked. More men raced past. Someone tried her latch, then pounded on her door. Erde sat down by the dim hearth, easing her breath and her heart so that she could remain calm when the key arrived to let her father into the room.

  The baron stared at her from the doorway, weaving a bit, taking in her strange stillness. His hair was matted as if he’d just awakened, yet he was as richly dressed as he would be for a ceremony. He was pale and exhausted, with shadowed fragile eyes, as if his mad rage had held him unwilling prisoner and he was unsure of where it had left him, or when it might seize him again.

  “The priest insisted he ought to examine you himself, but I wouldn’t allow it. I have to let him have his way with lesser matters, or . . .” He trailed off. His narrowed glance seemed to demand thanks or congratulations. He moved toward her unsteadily and reached to stroke her hair just once, and smooth his finger across her cheek and down along the line of her jaw, like a worm crawling so slowly that Erde thought she would scream with revulsion. His voice was scratchy and weak, but his gaze fixed her intently. “I don’t care, you know, that he . . . it doesn’t matter, it’s nothing. He’s nothing, a boy. Not worthy of my little girl anyway, my soon-to-be young woman. A few hours, it will be over, we can forget him and move on. Everything will be as it was, no, it will be better. Matters are changing hereabouts. Tor Alte is not the end of the earth, or won’t be for long. Wealth and power lies before us . . . and so much more.” His hand was on her hair again, stroking. “But how could you understand such things? When the priest has proved his worth, you’ll see. You’ll see it was all for your own good.”

  He leaned over, hesitating for what seemed to Erde an eternity, poised above her, his breath sour with wine. Then he bent and kissed her roughly, his stiff tongue prying open her mouth.

  Erde jerked away, shuddering, and hid her face in her hands.

  “I know, I know, but you’ll see how it will be. I have so much to teach you.” He leaned his body against the curve of her back and was about to say something more when an urgent shout down the hall distracted him. He glanced vaguely around the empty room and turned away, closing the door, oh, so very gently as if Erde were still asleep.

  * * *

  Soon Fricca brought a tray with breakfast, and fresh water for the kettle on the hearth. When she spotted the bucket, Erde raced over to splash her face, rubbing her lips over and over until Fricca stared.

  A yard servant appeared with an armload of firewood. Bundled in her bed quilt, Erde watched silently, listening for the grim roll of drums in the courtyard. As the room warmed up again, she wondered if the dead soldier underneath her bed would begin to smell, thus giving Alla’s mortal deed away.

  “Oh, I haven’t ceased crying a minute since your grandmother’s funeral!” Fricca’s hands shook as she filled the kettle. “Who’d have thought we’d have harbored such witchery, right here in our very own nest! No wonder we have summer snow and ravens.”

  “Who is it, the chicken-crone?”

  “What? Lord, no, that’s a pure Christian woman. No, I’m not to mention the name, on peril of my immortal soul. But it’s that eastern blood of hers, surely, that gives her the power. Isn’t the holy Brother right about keeping ourselves ever vigilant? Came along just in time, when we sorely needed the strong right arm of Heaven to protect us!”

  Has the whole world gone insane, Erde wondered. Fricca swung the kettle over the fire and came to sit beside her on the bed. “And you, too, poor lamb! Such a time of it! It’s no good way to start out your life as a woman, but there’s plenty of men will have you for your other qualities, so you must try to put it behind you. It was none of the poor lad’s fault but his own weakness, and we’re all best just to move on, now he’s gone.”

  Erde knew her heart had stopped. “Gone?”

  Fricca sniffed, wiped her eyes. “Oh, yes, dear. Didn’t they tell you? Some of the men were trying to tend to his wounds, but he’d found h
imself a little knife somewhere and laid right into them. He was killed trying to escape.”

  Killed?

  What was that awful stillness? Had all the air been sucked out of the room? Erde tried to cry out Rainer’s name, but the sounds stalled in her throat. Surely she would choke on them.

  Fricca mistook her wide-eyed struggle to breathe, to speak. “Yes, and very nearly made it, so the men say. Saved himself from the disgrace of the scaffold and died like the brave lad he was. Oh, you’d be proud! There’s blood all over the stable yard.” Fricca daubed at her cheeks with her apron. “But there’s to be no funeral allowed. The baron’s in such a rage—taking it very hard, ’cause he trusted the boy so—wouldn’t let anyone near but his own Guard. Ordered the poor broken body hauled up the mountain and left for the wolves!”

  Killed? Erde stumbled to the washbasin and emptied herself of all the fresh bread and fruit she had just eaten.

  * * *

  Thinking he was going to die had been the worst pain Erde could have imagined. Hearing he was dead left her without any feeling at all.

  Frightened, Fricca brought the baron. “She won’t eat, my lord. Won’t say a word. Just sits there like a stone.”

  The baron approached her bedside. Erde noticed he was actually steady on his feet again, brushed and clean but wan, like a man recovering from an illness. He leaned over to look her in the face but did not come too close. “Daughter?”

  She let her eyes focus somewhere twenty miles beyond him.

  “This won’t do any good, you know.”

  She was on Glasswind, with Rainer beside her, flying in the service of the Mage-Queen.

  “I’ll not indulge this behavior! What’s done is done, and the boy’s dead for his treason. It’s fit punishment, better than he deserved, and sulking won’t bring him back again.”

  Sulking? Did he think it so minor as a sulk?

  Fricca fluttered about, keeping a fearful distance. “Let the holy brother come to her, my lord, to ease her soul with prayer.”

  “No!” The baron snapped upright. “None but you or I sets a foot in this room, do you hear?” He took a breath, as if shaken by his own vehemence. “A father can deal with his own child.”

  “Yes, my lord, but she won’t talk, I promise you.” Fricca wrung her hands. “I’ve been asking myself, what if she can’t? You know what they say about the Devil stealing your tongue!” She forgot herself and came near to grab the baron’s velvet sleeve. “Oh, my lord, with all else that’s gone on, what if Alla has witched her, too, like she did our poor dead Rainer?”

  And thus Erde heard the new gospel according to Brother Guillemo, how the unwitting guardsman took the baron’s daughter while under the vile influence of a witch’s spell, which made the girl forget the whole encounter, though the cries of her unwholesome pleasure had been overheard by the laundry-maid. Later, the witch made a glowing bloody sword appear in the prisoner’s hand, and sent demons to unman his guards. This time, the blessed faith of the priest and his brothers weakened the witch’s power. The escape failed, but Tor Alte was under dread attack by the forces of Satan. Their souls were in peril. The witch must be discovered and routed out. Invoking the authority of the Church, Guillemo interrogated Alla and declared her to be the very witch in question. He advised her immediate arrest, ordering his brothers to lock her in a cell and guard her closely.

  These lies were more than Erde could stand, and she fixed her father with her dark eyes and meant to tell him so, but nothing came out. Her mouth worked soundlessly. Fricca whimpered and cringed.

  The baron stepped back stiff-legged, like a dog with its hackles raised. “God’s holy angels! Fricca! Not a word of this to anyone! He’ll want to burn her, too!”

  “My lord, I beg you! Consider the holy brother’s offer! He’s our only salvation in this time of peril!” She slipped her hands around his arm and clung to him. “My dear, good lord! Give her into his keeping like he says, for her own sweet soul’s sake!”

  The baron’s face twisted. He gazed at Erde as if it were his own soul in torment. “No. Not with Guillemo, woman, I could never . . .”

  “Your pardon, lord baron . . .”

  The baron spun on the man in the open doorway, who clearly did not relish being the bearer of one more piece of bad news.

  “Well, man? Out with it!”

  “It’s the witch, my lord . . .”

  “What? . . . escaped? More spells and visions?”

  “Well, no, sir. Dead in her cell. Hanged herself, my lord.”

  The baron’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, brave woman,” he muttered.

  Erde stared straight ahead, rocking silently, and felt nothing.

  * * *

  Soon she was alone again, and forced to think about what was happening to her.

  She pondered the question of being unable to speak. Perhaps she was cursed. Perhaps by the chicken-crone, to her thinking the most obvious candidate for witchery. Certainly not by Alla.

  Alla.

  Rainer dead. Now Alla dead as well. How strange it felt to form those words in her mind. Erde knew she should feel grief but could not remember how to do it. She remembered feeling grief for her grandmother. Was it a skill one could forget? She discovered quickly that she could still grow bored of sitting still, and so considered her narrowing choices. She could lose herself in her fantasies, fly again with the Mage-Queen and her dragons, or . . . or she could do something. She stirred herself suddenly, raced across the room and pulled Alla’s satchel out from behind her chamber pot. She spread its contents on the floor.

  Several candles wrapped in a boy’s linen shirt. A sleeveless leather tunic, worn but serviceable. Loose woolen breeches and low, cuffed leather boots. A gray knitted prentice cap. A small tinderbox. A thin sharp dagger with leather sheath and belt. A loaf of bread, four apples, and a hunk of hard cheese wrapped in oilcloth. A dark carved box. The objects were real, material, comforting.

  Erde opened the box. Inside were a rolled strip of parchment covered with script in a language she could not read, and a large brooch such as one might use to fasten a cloak: a worn rust-colored stone set in silver. Cut into the stone was a tiny figure of a dragon. Erde turned it in the firelight, remembering. She’d often seen her grandmother wear this brooch. Here, then, was the dragon that Alla had said awaited her. She pressed it gently to her lips, surprised at how live and warm the red stone felt in the chill room. She replaced it carefully in the box. She devoured one of the apples, repacked everything into the satchel, and returned it to its malodorous hiding place. Alla had indeed meant her to leave Tor Alte, and had provided the means of escape.

  Erde sat down to think.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The dagger’s keen edge sliced through it easily. Erde gathered up the shorn dark mass of her hair and threw it on the dying embers. The sudden flare seared her eyes, and her nose wrinkled at the odor. The new lightness of her head, with the hair just short of her earlobes, made every motion feel unhinged.

  Well past midnight, and outside, the wind still howled. In the cooling room, she stripped to her shift by dim firelight, tucked the hem into the woolen men’s leggings. Rainer had let her try on his leggings once, when they were much younger, and Erde had never forgotten the sense of freedom and power such clothing provided. She was grateful that this first time of her bleeding had been short. She needed no womanly inconveniences now.

  The linen shirt, worn soft and patched at the elbows, went over her shift and hung past her knees. Erde cinched it up with the dagger belt and sheathed the knife. After all, any boy might wear his older brother’s cast-off shirt.

  She laced up the leather tunic, then slid on the boots and walked around in them a bit, amazed that Alla could have fit her so well simply by guesswork. She emptied Fricca’s latest hopeful offering of bread, cheese, and apples into the satchel, then added her own thick cloak. It made the pack uncomfortably bulky, but strapping it to her back the way Alla had always done on their herb-gathering
forays made the burden manageable.

  She thought of the nighttime forest, and felt only relief. She pulled the gray prentice cap over her shorn hair, settled the dagger more comfortably on her hip and stood gazing about the darkening room, at the old tapestries billowing in the draft, with their tales of dragons woven in faded hues, the minor cousins of those her father and the priest had burned. She’d no doubt these would be next. She peered into the shadows beneath her costly bed dressings, at the firelit marble mantle carved in the shapes of two trees meeting in an arch, into the recesses of the vaulting above her head where bats sometimes slept off the daylight hours.

  There was nothing here that she would miss. No one left that she cared about or did not fear.

  Erde took a quick breath and went to drag the dead guard out from under the bed. She was glad for darkness and tried to look at him as little as possible. He was beginning to smell a bit, and she hoped he would forgive her for postponing his last rites for so long. She prayed the poor man wouldn’t burn in hell as long as she probably would.

  She heard metal scrape as she yanked him by his boot heels, and saw a faint glimmer in the shadows beneath the bed. Reluctantly, she took a closer look. His jerkin was snagged with the blade of a sword.

  Rainer’s sword! The one her father had tossed away in the heat of his madness. Erde pounced on it, hugging it to her chest as if it were Rainer himself. If she’d had any tears left, she would have shed them then. Instead, she floated in numbness. Something inside her, some gear or mainspring, had broken. She could not feel, she could only act. But action at least offered some sense of forward motion, of being still alive. So she grasped the sword by its hilt and tried to level the blade in front of her. The strain of its weight pulled on her untrained wrist. She could not carry it, but she could not leave it behind. She tore one of her sheets into strips, bound up the sword to blunt its razor edge, and tied it to her own body with more of the sheeting, so that it nestled against her back like a steel spine.