“A gypsy prince!” crowed Raven, getting up to fill her mug.
“It’s been suggested. Or Frankish, if he’s really from the west. He’s said to be well spoken and handsome, of course. Not dark, not light. Everything about him seems to be the middle road.”
“Where’s his shining armor, and his golden helm that he never takes off?” Hal scoffed. “Clearly we’re dealing with fantasy here.”
Esther stared him down. “Perhaps. Anyway, an anonymous young knight of indeterminate breeding who travels about the countryside warning the farm folk against the evils of Fra Guill.”
Now Hal looked interested. “Hunh.”
Rose nodded. “He’s brave, if nothing else.”
“A rabble-rouser!” exclaimed Doritt appreciatively.
“A handsome gypsy rabble-rouser!” Raven twirled and stomped, her arms entwined to support a pitcher of ale above her head. “Better and better!”
Rose held out her goblet to be refilled. “They say Fra Guill flies into a mad rage at anyone who takes the Friend seriously because he has no place in the Prophecy. That’s enough to make him very interesting, as far as I’m concerned.”
“If he exists,” said Hal.
Esther planted both long palms on the tabletop. “Do I get to tell this story or not?”
Raven slunk back to her seat, gripping her mug to her chest in mock-contrition.
“Tell it, then!” Doritt whooped.
“Well, you haven’t left me much.” She continued over a chorus of sighs and groans. “Only that he’s supposedly gathering followers as he goes along, and that although his route is rambling and slow, in general he seems to be headed east, toward Erfurt.”
“And toward us,” Hal noted. “With his own little army behind him.”
“Around him, actually. And if they’re armed, it’s only with knives and pitchforks.” Esther folded her hands pensively beneath her chin, suddenly reminding Erde of the elderly monk who had taught her reading and writing much against his own better judgment. “This is where it gets interesting. There appears to be some confusion about the exact nature of this gathering. They’re not spoken of as an army.”
“Then they’re a mob.”
“Those who don’t like the idea call it a mob. Either way, the Friend apparently refuses the usual privileges of leadership. He sleeps among his followers—some even call them disciples, but for most this comes too close to blasphemy. He marches among them and defers to their counsel. He dresses as they do and shares their food, which is happily supplied from the countryside, the same food that people out east are hiding away from Fra Guill at great risk to their lives.”
“And he’s particularly outspoken against Fra Guill’s witch-hunting,” noted Rose quietly. Erde decided that each time she spoke, it was like a phrase of a song being dropped into the conversation.
“Well, no wonder you’re all so in love with this chimera,” Hal declared. “But have you thought this out? What if it’s some new kind of peasant rebellion? ‘Friend’ or not, the last thing His Majesty needs is a new enemy.”
“If you’d just let me finish.” Esther caught his eye and held it. “The name may not be coincidental. Those who claim to have seen him say he carries the King’s Banner.”
“The King’s Banner? Openly?”
Esther nodded. “And beside it, the emblem of a dragon.”
For the first time since the meal began, silence prevailed.
Then Rose said, “I hadn’t heard that part.”
“New, as of yesterday.” Esther preened, pleased by the stir she’d created.
Hal blew out a long breath between his teeth. “King and dragon together. The people actually favor that connection?”
“There’s a lot of debate, but mostly, they do.”
“Hmmm. And the barons?”
“As you’d expect. They’re denying he exists.”
“And he’s heading toward Erfurt.” Hal looked down at Rose. “What truth to it all, do you think?”
“I don’t get Out. I’d only be going on hearsay. Esther?”
Esther’s shrug was that of a skeptic still willing to be convinced. “We’ll know more when Lily and Margit get back, but in the markets, tales of the Friend are accepted as news, that is, as true as any word that comes from so far away.”
“So what are they really saying?” mused Hal.
“It could be the country folks’ way of expressing their dislike of Fra Guill, by inventing a hopefully invincible enemy for him.”
Raven sighed. “Or that the people dream of a hero to rescue them from bad harvests and early winters and rumors of war. Who can blame them? It feels like the end of the world.”
“But what if there really is some man on his way east with an army?” proposed Doritt reasonably.
“Indeed. What if? And carrying the King’s Banner . . .” Hal was slumped in thought. “I wonder . . . could it . . . ?” He sat up slowly. “What if it’s him, Rose? What if it’s Ludolf? It could be, you know . . . ?”
Rose gazed into her goblet as if she wished he wouldn’t get started on this matter. “There’s been no word, Heinrich.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “And you call us romantics!”
“But it could be. Why not?” Brightening, he faced Erde across the table. “This is going to sound like another tall tale, but it’s true, I was there at the beginning of it. The king had another son, Ludolf, two years younger than Prince Carl.”
Erde nodded. Everyone knew Prince Ludolf had died when just a boy. The king had produced no other children since then.
“I know what you’re thinking, but that’s just the story we gave out. Because His Majesty’s relations with the barons were becoming treacherous, the lad was fostered out in secret for his own protection, so secretly in fact that his whereabouts are unknown, even to the king.”
Hal had been right. It did sound like a tall tale, but Erde thought it very romantic indeed.
“Most of us assume he really did die,” Esther put in sadly. “Both of them in some accident or killed by brigands on the road or in some betrayal we never got wind of.”
“Only this one . . .” Doritt jerked her thumb at Hal. “. . . persists in the folly of believing the boy’s still alive.”
“A boy no longer. A young man now, nearly twenty. And I’m not alone in this so-called folly. The king himself agrees with me.”
“Of course. A father would,” said Esther.
“A leap of faith,” said Rose.
“Admittedly.”
Esther laughed. “Dear Hal. Your endless capacity for belief is one of your most endearing qualities. May you never lose your faith.”
“If I can maintain my faith while I’m in this household, nothing can shake it.” Hal leaned forward onto the table as if over a map, suddenly businesslike. “Now. How big is it supposed to be, this unarmed army?”
Esther flicked her hands pointedly, a comment either on her sources of information or on Hal’s shift of subject. “One story will say fifty, another will say a thousand. It depends on the teller.”
“No surprise in that. I fear he will get them all killed and himself hung in the bargain . . . if he exists.” Hal sucked his teeth, his characteristic gesture of doubt. “Come on, surely you have some feelings about this, Rosie.”
But Rose had noticed Erde’s abstracted gaze. “What is it, child?”
Slowly, Erde wrote: IS THE FRIEND EVER A KNIGHT?
Esther laughed. “Not this particular Friend.”
“Why, dear?” asked Rose.
EARTH DREAMED A KNIGHT. Erde passed her scrawl to Rose.
Hal read over Rose’s shoulder. “He did? You didn’t tell me that. It wasn’t . . . who was it?”
Erde met his eye sympathetically. She hadn’t mentioned it, to save his feelings. He’d want it to be him, and she knew it wasn’t.
HE WORE A CROWN.
At this, even Raven gave a small gasp of surprise.
Rose arched her brows. “What did
the knight do in his dream?”
NOTHING. HE WAS THERE AND THEN HE FADED AWAY.
“When was this?” asked Hal.
Erde erased and scribbled. THE NIGHT OF THE EARTHQUAKE.
The candles were burning low on the table. Raven snubbed two of them. Linden held Erde’s scrap of paper up to the nearest guttering flare and read it aloud. The women exchanged glances.
“Earthquake?” Rose asked. “Where?”
“That’s something you read about in the Bible,” scoffed Doritt.
“No,” said Esther, “I think they’ve actually happened. There are stories.”
“Well, they don’t happen around here.”
“One did,” said Hal. “Two nights ago, only a day’s travel north of here.”
EARTH DREAMED THE EARTHQUAKE, Erde wrote.
“Right. I forgot to mention that.” Hal scratched his beard uncomfortably. “Apparently, the Dragon dreamed that the earth moved, and it did. Woke us up out of a sound sleep.”
“Earthquakes!” Raven snatched up Erde’s paper and waved it triumphantly in front of Hal’s nose. “How can you be disappointed in this dragon?”
Rose nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of a dragon making earthquakes. That is a very rare and ancient skill. Of course there is the undeniable coincidence of his name.” She turned an approving eye on Erde. “And yours. Well. Earthquakes. An unknown knight. An undisclosed purpose. Is it time for us to take a Look?” She glanced around the table, inviting consensus.
Hal relaxed back into his chair, arms loosely folded but eyes watchful. One hand drummed a faint staccato on his elbow.
Linden nudged Erde. “This is what he’s come for, you see. But we must all agree to it, ’cause there’s always danger in a Seeing, especially to Rose.” She lowered her voice to the barest whisper. “And he knows some of us do not respond well to being pressured.”
Erde thought to ask who, but had already noted Esther’s jaw tightening and Doritt’s dubiously pursed lips. But Linden was hiding a girlish grin behind her hand.
“We’d do it anyway, for your sake, but it doesn’t do to let him know that.”
Covertly, Erde wrote: WHY?
Linden’s giggle was as soft as water over moss. “’Cause no matter how much you’d like to, you can’t give them everything they want just right off. They’re too spoiled with getting already.”
THEY? scrawled Erde.
Linden nudged her again, her cheeks crimson. “Men, of course.”
Erde nodded sagely. This was an interesting notion. Certainly all the women she’d known, except maybe Alla and her grandmother, spent their lives waiting for things to come to them—a meal, a new gown, a husband back from the hunt or from the wars—and by waiting, often did not get what they waited for. Men, however, just went out and took what they wanted. Like Fra Guill. Or her father. She remembered Alla complaining about how spoiled the baron was. Yet he had called his daughter spoiled for wanting something so simple as to walk in the woods by herself. She recalled his sudden dark scowl, his peremptory tone. Of course the alone part had bothered him. But not because he feared she was meeting some boy. He’d never let her meet any boys. What he really couldn’t stand was the idea of her managing on her own outside of the walls, outside his protective embrace. She decided that those unladylike walks were preparation for her escape, and was grateful for them. They’d kept her first act of real rebellion from becoming a total disaster.
She looked at Hal, an impatient man waiting with all the patience he could muster. She had no problem conjuring the tantrum her father would have thrown in such a situation, and she loved this good and earnest knight the more for not being so spoiled after all, no matter what the women of Deep Moor might think.
“Any discussion?” asked Rose. “Dissenting views?”
The women shook their heads, even Esther, and Doritt, last of all but emphatically, as if it had simply taken her that long to clear her mind of any lingering doubt.
“Then we’re agreed.” Rose brought her palms together soundlessly in front of her, then pushed them apart. The stilled table erupted into activity.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The meal was cleared and the dishes washed and stacked with dizzying speed. Erde sat with the old women to dry the plates and bowls. Even Hal was pressed into labor, hauling brimming buckets from well to kettle, then kettle to basin. The sight of a red-leathered King’s Knight, a baron at that, tipping a steaming kettle over the big tin washbasin was a memory Erde would treasure. Whatever this Seeing was, Hal wanted it very much indeed.
When the kitchen was tidied and all the candles snuffed but one, Raven took up the single flame and led them through the dim lamp-lit rooms of the farmhouse, out into the fresh and temperate night. The women grabbed lanterns from the stone porch, lighting them one by one from Raven’s candle. The young twins pulled a low, brightly painted dogcart out from under the branches beside the steps. They helped the two elderly ladies in, settled them comfortably, and stepped into the traces themselves.
“Treasures, those old ones,” murmured Hal in Erde’s ear. “Keepers of the knowledge, scholars, librarians. They collect the books and write down all the spoken traditions. I’ve spent many fruitful hours consulting them. They’re sure to have a useful notion or two about our dragon’s Purpose.”
Watching the lore ladies and the gentle attention the twins lavished on them, Erde mourned once more for Alla. Tor Alte had not shown that wise old woman the respect she’d deserved, not ever.
Then, lanterns in hand, the whole party set off along the meandering roadway through the farm, looping past the murmuring darkness of the sties and barns, raising the occasional sleeping duck or dog from the path. Several of the dogs decided to come along. Doritt’s flock of black geese discovered her and fell in behind, mere shadows bobbing through the grass, uncharacteristically mute. The cart rattled along and the twins began to sing softly to the rhythm of their stride. The other women laughed and chattered as if off to some midnight festivity. Their joy and energy was contagious. Erde felt it expand inside her chest, like the soap bubbles Alla had taught her to blow within the loop of her fingers, luminous and big and so fragile that it hurt her heart to think of not being with these women forever, on balmy moonlit nights like this, filled to bursting with laughter and singing and belonging.
The path forked beside the apple orchard. Raven led them over the stone bridge that crossed the narrowest waist of the stream, then up the hill among the fruit trees. Doritt and Linden joined the twins in the traces to draw the cart up the steeper incline.
Near the top of the hill, the trees thinned, leaving a grassy rounded crest exposed to the night like the dome of a man’s head left without a hat. The women gathered at the very apex of the curve, eased the two old women onto the grass, then joined them without ceremony in a circle that took the highest point of the hill as its center. Rose pressed Erde’s hand and sat her down between Linden and Esther. She seated Hal next to herself on the opposite side, so that Erde faced her directly across the crest of the hill. The black geese nested into the grass at Doritt’s back with a minimum of fuss, and over Hal’s rather self-consciously hunched shoulders, the moonlight drew a familiar silhouette, the mule with his head down to graze but his long ears flicking about, alert to the night. A rustling behind Erde announced the arrival of the she-goat and a spotted dog she’d taken up with. Their coats and coloring were so similar that Erde wondered if one knew the other was a goat, or a dog. Or perhaps it didn’t matter on such a night, when the very air vibrated with fellowship. Erde shivered deliciously. Only in the forests had she ever felt like this. Surely this was what the presence of magic felt like. She had heard no incantations and seen no casting of spells, and this was only a bunch of women and animals on top of a hill together. Even so, every nerve in her body thrilled with expectation.
Perhaps it was only the stillness that settled over the circle, waiting yet content. The women set their lanterns on the ground
in front of them. Erde noticed that the grass inside the circle was cropped short, as if grazed down to a velvet brush by very careful sheep. She thought suddenly of the Mage City. Wouldn’t it have lawns this soft and manicured? She became convinced that if anyone could tell her how to get there, it would be these women.
Rose rested her elbows on her knees, her hands making a nest for her chin. She spoke to the circle at large and formally, but her voice strummed inside Erde’s chest. Listening to her was like breathing in sound.
“Our sister Erde comes to us haunted with dragon dreams. If she will share them with us, perhaps we can offer some insight as to their meaning.”
Erde glanced at Hal for a clue to what to do next. She’d left behind her pen and paper. Besides, you couldn’t read out here in the darkness anyway. But Hal’s smile only encouraged. He was eager, nervous, like a young boy finally allowed to stay up late with the adults. He tipped his head toward Rose.
“We’ll need no words,” said Rose. “But understand, my child. I can only See what is, and of that, only what is open to me, and my sisters here like a lens provide the focus, with the hope that Seeing will bring enlightenment, about what is to be, about how to act. So now, gather up these dreams in your mind as if you were picking flowers. Hold them there until your memory is secure. Then think of offering them to us, to all of us, generously, as you would give a gift.”
It was not going to be like speaking with the dragon. With the dragon, he was just there, in her mind. This would apparently take some effort. Erde hadn’t given many gifts in her life. She was more used to receiving them. But she thought and then remembered a small silk pillow she had embroidered when she was six or seven, for her grandmother’s birthday. She’d always lacked patience for the fussy detail work of sewing, but this one task she worked at night after chilly night, head and hands gathered close in the candle’s dim light, long after Fricca had fallen asleep by the cooling hearth. And not just because it was a gift for her grandmother. For once, she’d been allowed to choose the design she was to embroider, and she’d rejected the usual ladylike basket of fruit or floral bouquet. Over Fricca’s protests, she had sewn a dragon for the baroness.
The Book of Earth Page 25
