As I made my way through the broken curtain wall, I looked out over the bandits’ camp, and I saw a woman who stood quite by herself on the sward near the lake, perhaps a hundred yards away. She wore a dark skirt that contrasted with the bright green grass, and a dark shawl over shining red hair.
She was staring at me with shadowed eyes in her pale face. A thrill ran along my nerves at that look, and I froze, staring back in astonishment. The women of the camp looked worn, or brazen, or vicious, but this woman seemed none of these, but a vision of freshness and beauty from out of a song.
We stood there, staring wordless at each other, and then one of my captors swore at me and shoved me along, and I stumbled on toward my captivity, my mind awhirl.
After the hours spent in the open air and sunshine, the miserable, fetid, dark cellar with its vermin and its stinking slop tub was all the more intolerable, and I had to steel myself to go down the steep stair. I found my blanket where I had left it, and prepared for another night of scratching and misery.
“This blanket’s soiled!” someone complained. “By the Pilgrim, I think it’s blood!”
I looked over my shoulder to see the two cavaliers, Fork-Beard and Slope-Shoulder, who had so signally failed to butcher the calf. One of them, the angry Fork-Beard, was holding up the blanket he’d just been given, and I saw that it was the same blanket in which I and the others had carried Gribbins’s body to his grave.
I was about to advise the man to go back up the stair and ask for another, but at that moment the cavalier looked at me and spoke. “You, there! Give me your blanket!”
I gave him a cold look. “I’m not your servant,” I said.
“Listen, Butcher-boy,” the cavalier said. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re a man who let himself be captured without a fight,” I said. “What more need I know?”
The man gave a roar and a stamp of fury. “Are you calling me a coward?” he said. “Why, if you were a gentleman, I’d—”
“Surrender?” I suggested.
The cavalier raised a hand—I knew not whether the man intended a blow or was merely making a gesture in aid of some rhetorical point—but I had suffered enough insult for the day. From Sir Basil, out of prudence, I was obliged to endure abuse, but from this fellow not at all.
I tossed my blanket over the other’s head, and while the cavalier struggled free, I punched the man full on the jaw, hard enough to send him unconscious to the floor.
“A foul blow!” said Slope-Shoulder. “That was—”
At that instant the door to the dungeon boomed shut, and complete darkness claimed the room. I ducked to pull my blanket free, and sensed the breeze of a fist passing over my head. I rose from the floor and jostled Slope-Shoulder back on his heels, then swung my own fist in a swooping backhand arc and caught the cavalier on the side of the head. Slope-Shoulder made a muffled noise and stumbled away, and I pursued, shoving and punching alternately, until I heard the cavalier’s boot come up against the slop tub, a sound that sparked an idea in my mind.
I ducked, seized an ankle, and jerked it from the floor. Slope-Shoulder gave a shout and fell with a great splash into the slop tub. We captives had been locked in the cellar for three days, the tub hadn’t been emptied in all that time, and it was very full.
I grabbed the other foot as it flailed near, and I turned the cavalier over and bore down with my weight, driving him face-first into the tub. The sounds of splashing, flailing, and bubbling filled the air, and a horrid stench rolled into the room. I endured the stink and bore down until I felt Slope-Shoulder weaken, and then I hauled the man out, coughing and sobbing.
I adjusted my blanket over my shoulders and stepped away from the horrid mess. My heart thundered in my chest, and hot fury raged in my veins. I felt I could thrash the whole room.
“Does anyone else want to learn how to breathe piss?” I said in a loud voice. There was no reply.
I went to a far wall and made my bed between two of Lord Utterback’s servants. As I wrapped myself in my blanket, one of the footmen reached out and touched my arm. “I shall bite thee by the ear, my brave!” he said with great approval. “That was well done, bawcock. Those robustious younkers needed a taking-down.”
Which, I thought, was the first pleasant thing any of my fellow servants had said to me.
I settled down to rest, my overcoat pillowed beneath my head, and once my fury faded, I remembered the woman by the sward, and the intent way she had looked at me, and I felt a quiet shimmer along my nerves, a memory of the thrill I had felt when first I saw her gazing at me. I wondered who she was, for if she was in the camp at all, and unmolested, she had to belong to some outlaw. Perhaps to Sir Basil himself, for she seemed so far above all the others that she might well be the consort of their chieftain.
Or, I thought, perhaps she was not Sir Basil’s wife or concubine, but his daughter. The protection of his swift dirk would account for her being alone, and unmolested, and so bold in the way she stared at strangers.
For a moment, before dreams took me, I invented a charming romance, that of the captive and the bandit’s daughter, and how that story might lead to love and freedom.
When I woke in the morning, I seemed to hear the singing of a mandola.
That day, I saw her again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
he fork-bearded one, I have discovered, is a baron, and his friend a knight, and Stayne their liege-lord. Neither have spoken in my hearing since the night, and no doubt they desire revenge, if they can only imagine how to accomplish it. They have no weapons but their wits, and their wits are dull indeed. I shift my bed every night, after we are locked in darkness, so they may not find me while I am sleeping. Yet even an attack in the darkness seems beyond their abilities.”
I adjusted myself in the marble trough, and raised a palmful of water to scrub my itching whiskers. More than anything but freedom, I would have delighted in a razor, to shave my week-old beard along with the vermin that lived in it. I leaned backward to duck my scalp, scrubbed at it, then sat up and shook the water from my hair. I turned to the rose-colored marble nymph and spoke again.
“It is droll to see the young gentlemen labor,” I said. “Cutting vegetables, churning butter, boiling laundry, hauling the slop tub up the stairs and emptying it into the stream. They are poor cottiers indeed, but the bandits take joy in whipping them about their tasks, and Dorinda is even more fierce with her ladle! Their fine clothes are going to ruin, they are overrun by an army of lice and fleas, and they know not how to dress their hair. Sad they seem, and much reduced. . . .
“Look you, mistress,” said I as I looked at the little goddess in earnest, “for here they set out, forty of them, to follow their lord in a great adventure, to overthrow a monarch and grow rich from the spoils of war, and they find themselves bested by a gang of low ruffians almost before they can set out. Half Stayne’s army ran away at the first shot, and the rest, now captive, make up a village of the worst workingmen in all Duisland!” I laughed. “The world turned upside down! The cavaliers labor while the robbers parade up and down in their finery! It would amuse you, should you ever peer out from your grotto to view the fine green world.”
The statue spoke no reply, but her playful smile seemed a reply to all possible questions.
It had been three days since I had first explored the old nymphaeum, and since then I’d returned every day. I’d cleaned weeds and ooze from the trough, and turned it into my own tub, where daily I bathed and rid myself of fleas. Daily I chatted with the rose-pink goddess as if she were my oldest playmate, and told her all the news of the camp, and all that occupied my mind. She was the most perfect audience imaginable, and listened to my talk and my complaints, my conceits and my jests, with all the tolerance in the world—and even approval, if the smile was anything to judge by.
I braced myself against the trough and pushed myself upright, the water cascading from my shoulders. I carefully sat on the edge o
f the trough, and clapped my thighs with my hands. “It is not Fork-Beard that concerns me, mistress,” I said, “but Sir Basil. Each day he has sought me out. He wishes to talk—talk about his services in King Stilwell’s wars, and his knighthood won on the field, and the injustices he has endured. He talks about war and women and poetry, about Mallio in its Rawlings translation, and about the plays that were seen in Selford in the days of his youth. He talks about his brave part in the Wars of the Ghouls, and all his quarrels with his neighbors, and the challenges he issued and on what grounds—for his knowledge of the common law comes from the fact that he was always being taken to court by his neighbors, or the other way around, usually for fighting.” I looked over my shoulder at the goddess. “I begin to believe the jury found him guilty not because they thought he’d committed the crime, but to rid themselves of a troublesome neighbor.”
I stood, shivered, and brushed cold water from my body. “A troublesome neighbor,” I repeated. “Will he even let me go, do you think? Or is he so lonely for conversation—for speech with an educated man rather than another brigand—that he will keep me here forever, half servant, half buffoon?”
I reached for my doublet and turned it inside out. I took up a coil of slow-match I’d found in the camp and lit the match on a piece of punk I’d set alight in the kitchen as I left, then kept alive in a bowl covered with a lid. I blew the match to ruby brilliance, then began using the match to burn the lice running freely in my clothing.
“He has sent the ransom demand to Kevin,” I continued. “But the letter must first find Kevin, who may be away, or at sea on a trading voyage. Kevin must find or borrow five royals in a city that has been looted of most of his money. And then the money must find its way here, to the Toppings, to Sir Basil’s rude little treasury with its guard of wyverns.” The scent of burning insects tainted the air. I looked up at the goddess. “Is it likely, do you suppose? And how long will it be before this happens? For Sir Basil plans to leave this place as soon as the two lords’ ransoms arrive, and find shelter in another wild place before an angry Lord Stayne raises an army to wipe him out. And if I leave this camp before my ransom arrives, the money may take some time to find him. . . .” I sighed. “If I am not murdered beforehand, by some arbitrary caprice of Sir Basil, or some other wanton brute in the camp who may shoot me for his own amusement.”
Water chuckled pleasantly from the trough. Wind sighed gently in the osiers. Golden leaves flashed in the air as they fell.
“I must escape,” I said to the little goddess. “That is all I can think. For it is intolerable in this camp, and I do not trust Sir Basil to keep his word, and I do not wish to be slaughtered.”
I pulled louse eggs from the seams of my doublet, then cast the doublet on the ground and picked up my shirt.
“Yet,” I said, “I cannot escape in the day, for the bandits are ever on guard. I need the fall of night to avoid the guards and make as many miles as I can before dawn, and for this I must somehow avoid being locked up at night. But the bandits are alert to this possibility, and make a head count as they send us down the stair. And therefore, I must go forth at night with permission. Which brings us to the figure of Dorinda.”
I let the name hang in the air for a moment as I burned a fat crab-louse. “She is rare in being a solitary woman in the camp,” I resumed. “Most of the women here are married or otherwise attached to one of the men, and the rest are public women bought for the price of silver or a trinket or a fine silk shirt. I cannot speak to the first for fear of angering their menfolk, and the latter despise me for having no money. But Dorinda—”
I looked up at the goddess, as if I sensed an interruption. “You laugh at me, mistress,” I said. “And truly, I laugh at myself. Dorinda, indeed!”
I cocked my head, as if listening to a reply, and then went on. “For you see, we eat well in the camp. The bandits no longer haunt the roads for fear of encountering armed parties searching for Lord Stayne, and so they amuse themselves with hunting. And since Sir Basil plans to shift his post, he plans to eat all the domestic animals we may not take with us. And I have become Butcher to the robber band, and daily prepare their meat. Because I have proved good at carving, I am even privileged to cut the collops that feed their lordships Utterback and Stayne. There is no apron, and the work can bespatter a man, so I work near naked.
“Now, I have seen Dorinda look at me as I dismember a deer or a hog, and despite the bruises she daily inflicts upon me with her ladle, I flatter myself that she thinks well of what she sees. And so, if I encourage her, and if she takes me for her paramour, and if I survive the encounter with my back unbroken—for she is a strong woman, and I have seen her hoist a side of beef with no more effort than Lord Stayne might employ to lift a box of comfits—if I survive, as I say, and if I please her well enough to send her into a sound slumber, and if I can then sneak from her lodging and away from the camp . . .” I laughed. “A long, pretty list of ifs! If I can run through the Toppings without falling and breaking my neck, and if I can avoid the dogs and hunting parties sent after me—I believe I am to run in a stream to lose my scent, am I not? So, another if presents itself—if I do not drown, and then if I can somehow escape the Toppings and beg my way to Selford, then I shall be a free man.” I laughed. “And if not, a corpse. Or the concubine of a savage, half-mad cook. Or a captive, growing ever more crepuscular, like Higgs.” I looked at the goddess and smiled. “Do you like crepuscular, by the way? I made it up. From the old Aekoi, crepusculum.”
I finished my shirt, put it on the grass, and picked up my riding breeches. As I searched the seams for lice, I gave the statue a wistful look. “But it is not Dorinda to whom I wish to address my attentions. Nor to you, mistress, begging your pardon. But rather another—a woman I have seen only twice.”
I looked up as a gust of wind rattled the autumn leaves over my head, and a golden whirlwind of leaves clattered through the grove. The tip of the slow-match flared brighter, then faded. I lifted my brows and looked at the goddess.
“Are you jealous, mistress?” I asked. “Do not fear; she is beyond my reach.
“Two days ago,” I continued, “I saw her walking on the sward, across the lake, while the camp was having its dinner. And last night, at twilight I saw her standing not fifty feet away, but I was being harangued by Sir Basil about some point of law, and could not get away. And again she stood looking at me, her green eyes gazing at me, and I felt that in her eyes I might be the only man in the world. . . .” My voice drifted away as I relived the memory. And then I shook myself, and laughed as I looked at the rose-pink goddess. “You laugh at me, mistress! And yet, and yet . . .” I touched myself just above the heart. “The gaze of those green eyes stirred me to my bones. A poet would compare her skin to ivory, and call her eyes ‘smaragds,’ I suppose, and then have to find a rhyme for the word!” I gave a bitter laugh. “And I—a prisoner, penniless, without smaragds or anything but the clothes on my back!” My tone turned wistful. “Yet I would dare, if I could.”
I had finished my task with the slow-match, ground the burnt end underfoot, and coiled the rest. I hastened to put on my clothes, and rubbed warmth into my arms and shoulders. “As your sole worshiper,” I told the statue, “may I beg a favor? Will you provide a little hot water tomorrow? My baths are too cold for the season.”
I offered the goddess a bow. “With your permission, I shall come again tomorrow to worship at your feet.” I threw the overcoat over my shoulder, and made my way into the grove, through a rain of slender golden leaves.
I walked beside the stream, my eyes on the ground, my mind occupied by memories of the ghostly red-headed woman. And then, from somewhere above me, I heard a sonorous chord.
I looked up in deep surprise, and saw the mysterious woman above me, perched on a limb of one of the largest osiers, her feet dangling just above my head. She was dressed simply, in a deep blue velvet skirt, a blouse of the dark red called cramoisie, and a long woolen shawl of deep greens and b
lues draped over her head, one end stylishly thrown over her shoulder. She wore soft boots of dark suede. Behind her, the bright gold of the leaves shimmered and surged like a sun-struck sea. She held a mandola in her lap, and strummed more chords while her green eyes glittered with amusement.
“Mistress!” My heart gave a leap, and I doffed my cap. “I count myself fortunate to encounter you.”
“Fortunate?” she asked. “Hardly so. I believe fortune’s wheel has cast you down, sir, and cast you hard upon stones.”
“Then may I rise again?” Without waiting for permission, I tossed my overcoat onto the grass, grasped a tree limb with both hands, then swung my legs up to embrace the bough. In a rattle of falling leaves I pulled myself upright, and soon sat on a bough adjacent to hers, our feet nearly touching.
Her eyes dropped modestly, and she played a short, bright phrase on the mandola. “I had thought,” she said, “that my practice was private.”
“You may play on, if you like,” said I. “And I will pretend that I’m not here.”
Her full lips quirked in a smile. She brushed at a strand of red hair that had escaped her shawl, and looked at me with her brilliant eyes. I felt my breath stop in my throat.
“May I know your name, mistress?” I asked.
Her eyes turned to a corner of the sky, as if she were making up a name on the spot. “I am Orlanda,” she said.
“I am Quillifer.”
She smiled. “I can see that you are.”
I laughed. “Fair Mistress Orlanda,” I said. “How come you to be here?”
Her answer was simple. “I climbed the tree.”
“I mean,” I said, “you seem to be free in the camp. You possess privilege of some kind.”
“If I possess privilege, I also possess caprice,” she said. “It is my caprice to stand on my privilege, and privilege not your question.”
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