Crown of Earth

by Hilari Bell

  He held to that thought, shyly returning some of the fisherfolk’s smiles as he took his place in the line—he might have to stay here for some days, after all.

  “Here’s what you do,” Togger told him. “Take a fish and get a good grip on it. No, you’ve got to hold it belly up, like this, for you open the belly to get at the guts.”

  Edoran corrected his grasp as Togger showed him. The fish was slippery, both stiff and limp at the same time, but he got a firm grip on it and took the small knife Togger handed him.

  “This is how you do it.” The fisherman took up another knife and a fish of his own. “You insert the tip of the knife, blade up, into this hole near the tail, then cut the skin all the way up to between its gills. Like this.”

  One smooth stroke laid open the dead fish’s belly. That wasn’t so bad. But then Togger thrust his thumbs into the incision and pushed out a mass of slimy, pulpy, bloody stuff….

  Edoran’s stomach heaved. He turned hastily toward one of the small barrels and saw that its bottom was covered with fish guts. He barely made it to the water’s edge before the contents of his stomach came up, splattering the sand.

  He heard the fisherfolk’s laughter over the roaring of the surf, and over the roar of blood in his ears.

  “Don’t feel badly, lad.” Togger had come up behind him. “It takes some that way at first. Indeed, some never take to gutting, which is why Moll’s making up supper for half a dozen families, instead of working down here picking up a better wage.”

  “I made a mess of it,” Edoran said bitterly. “I always make a mess of it.”

  “The gulls’ll clean that right up,” said Togger, misunderstanding. “And the tide’ll take what’s left.”

  Edoran’s stomach churned again at the thought of gulls picking over his vomit, but he suppressed the nausea and stood. “I’d prefer to assist Mistress… ah, Goodwife Moll in her cooking.”

  “Aye, that’s likely best. For today, at least,” said Togger.

  As far as Edoran was concerned, it would be forever before he returned to the gutting shed.

  Mistress Moll took the news of his weakness calmly and set him to peeling potatoes, yet another task performed with a small, sharp knife. Though the job didn’t trouble his stomach, Edoran’s peelings were thick, clumsy chunks, not the long, thin strips the fisherwife produced.

  Mouse, the hired boy, came in to get a bag of salt from the cellar stores. Instead of the mouselike boy Edoran had expected, he was a hulking youth of eighteen, taller than most men, his arms thick with muscle.

  Goodwife Moll started to introduce them, but Mouse shrugged her off. “Togger told us about him, down at the shed.” He glanced at the pile of peelings on the table in front of Edoran. “He says the sand man wants him to go out with the boats, but if he can’t use a knife better than that…”

  He shrugged again and departed, ignoring Edoran’s glare.

  “Don’t pay him any mind, Ron,” Moll told him. “He’s a young lout. They mostly are, at that age. You’re not doing badly, for a first try.”

  It took Edoran several seconds to remember who “Ron” was. “I was never taught this,” he said.

  “That’s clear enough.” Her pale eyes twinkled. “What are you trained for?”

  Edoran opened his mouth, remembered he was supposed to be a merchant’s son, and shut it again. “Ah, reading and writing out bills and invoices and things. And keeping account books.”

  He prayed that no one in the village would turn up with an account book and expect him to keep it. His father’s journals had taught him to read, but there’d been nothing to teach him math.

  “Hmm. Not much call for any of those things here,” said Moll, to Edoran’s great relief. “But we’ll find plenty you can do, never fear.”

  That was what Edoran was afraid of.

  The bath he’d been looking forward to turned out to be a basin of warm water and a cloth, with which he was expected to scrub himself all over. At least he could manage that without assistance, and he did feel cleaner when he climbed into the clothing Moll had borrowed from her neighbors.

  The canvas britches had been worn to softness, and the shirt, though rougher than he was accustomed to, was clean. If the bulky sweater made him feel like a sheep, well, blending into the flock was his goal. It fell almost to his knees, and after he’d worn it for a few minutes, he felt warm for the first time that day.

  The dinner he’d helped prepare was, of course, fish stew. Edoran suppressed a lingering memory of fish guts welling over Togger’s thumbs and ate several bowls.

  He was beginning to think he might survive Caerfalas after all when Moll told him, rather firmly, that washing the dinner dishes would be his job.

  “My… But… Isn’t there someone else who could do it?” Edoran asked.

  “Oh, aye.” Mouse snorted. “I’ll go get the invisible servants, who live in a barrel out back. No, you witheless loon, there’s no one to do it but you.”

  “No need to take that tone, Mouse,” said Moll. “Ron’s probably a bit tired—and no wonder!”

  But she didn’t offer to do the dishes for him.

  “He’s not tired,” said Mouse. “His Highness here just doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.”

  Edoran’s heart jolted in sudden fear, but Moll and Togger showed no reaction. Mouse hadn’t suddenly figured out who he really was; he was just trying to be insulting. And he’d succeeded.

  “I’ll wash the dishes,” Edoran told them stiffly. With the training Arisa had given him at the inn, he managed to do it with only a few corrections from Moll, who had relented enough to dry for him.

  Over the next few days Edoran discovered a host of chores he couldn’t do—or, at best, did badly.

  It turned out there was no one his own age among the villagers, though there were a handful of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds and a mob of younger children.

  The older ones, he soon learned, followed Mouse’s lead. Edoran was scornfully referred to as “Your Highness” whenever he botched a task. He didn’t care what Mouse thought of him, but the nickname still stung—he had thought he was getting better at dealing with common people.

  At least the children didn’t care what their older brothers and sisters thought; they accepted Edoran’s company so well that he often found himself assigned to keep an eye on them when their mothers were busy with their own work.

  At one point he was even set, under Moll’s supervision, to watching the babes. But he found their complex needs unnerving, and changing diapers was even more disgusting than gutting fish.

  Edoran preferred the ones who were old enough to take care of their own needs, but too young to regard him with the contempt of the teens—or the more distant reserve their parents displayed.

  It was the children who showed him the old keep. There wasn’t much left of it. Judging by the foundation, the tower that had once held some local chieftain and his family had never been large, even before it had collapsed in ruins. The outer walls had been built of blocks too large for the locals to tear down and reuse. A few stones had been dislodged by weather and time, but Edoran, walking the top of it all round the square, thought his father would have approved. It was both thicker and taller than the wall that surrounded the palace he now lived in.

  It was also deserted, except when the children played there, and Edoran went to the fortress whenever he had free time. There he could shelter from the cold sea wind and relax in his own company, with no critical eyes upon him.

  It seemed to him as if every time he drew a breath Moll found yet another dirty, demeaning task for him to muddle through. But he was glad that he was down on his hands and knees, scrubbing the floor of the meeting hall where the women had gathered to knit more sweaters, when the searchers arrived.

  One of the teens, a plump girl with long hair braided down her back, slipped into the room to announce that there was an army patrol “looking for some young nobleman who’s run away!”

  Edoran
froze, his hands wrapped in the filthy rag.

  One of the women said, “Well, we’ve no nobles here,” and several of them smiled.

  He thought that Moll cast him a curious glance, but none of the others appeared to give his presence a thought, even when a pair of soldiers appeared in the doorway.

  Edoran started to peek at them, then realized it would be less suspicious to stare openly. He didn’t know much about army rank markings, but he thought the young officer was a lieutenant and the other a common soldier. They both looked equally bored.

  “Fair morning, goodmen,” said Moll politely. “I hear you’re looking for a runaway.”

  “Yes, mistress.” The lieutenant’s accent proclaimed that he’d been born in the city—and not in its richer parts. It reminded Edoran, achingly, of Weasel, and he returned to mopping the floor to hide his suddenly stinging eyes.

  Sandeman had promised to find him, and everyone in the village said “Sandy” could be relied on.

  The lieutenant went on to describe Edoran fairly accurately, though he never even glanced at the boy in the ragged britches and shaggy sweater.

  Edoran wondered why they claimed to seek some anonymous young nobleman if the rumors of his disappearance were as widespread as Sandeman and Giles had claimed. Probably Holis and General Diccon were trying to keep that rumor from spreading out of the city.

  Edoran scrubbed industriously at the floor. None of the adults in Caerfalas had ever called him “Your Highness,” but it wouldn’t do for them to start while the soldiers were there.

  Fortunately, they soon left, and he could return to working at his usual pace—which involved spending as little time scrubbing as he could manage.

  Even doing his best to avoid the worst chores, as the days progressed Edoran’s hands roughened. He hated washing in cold water in the morning, and in only a basin at night. He hated work of all sorts. He would have hated sharing the loft with Mouse even if he hadn’t snored.

  He couldn’t avoid Mouse during the day, either, for the hulking lout was forever showing him how to do this thing or that—none of them anything Edoran had the least desire to learn.

  That morning, on his sixth day in Caerfalas, it was knots.

  “Pay attention to this one, Your Highness,” Mouse said. “Sandeman wants us to take you out with the boats, and if you muck this up it could cost us a net.”

  Edoran knew that there wasn’t a man in the village who’d take him out on a boat. Not even Togger.

  “You start with a loop, like this,” Mouse went on. “Then you wrap the short end around it twice.”

  Edoran tried, the rope resisting his fingers like it was alive and wanted to thwart him. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the fisherfolk despised him. But that was nothing new.

  “Then you pull a fold of the long end through here to form another loop, and the short end goes through it. Then give it a yank.” Mouse yanked, producing a tight, intricate knot with a loop at one end.

  Edoran forced a bit of the long rope through the only loose place he could find, then tucked the short end through it and pulled… producing an ugly, intricate mess.

  He sighed and let the rope fall to the floor. Maybe that would end the lesson, at least for—

  Mouse’s open palm cuffed the back of his head. The blow wasn’t hard, but it was so unexpected that Edoran staggered.

  “Pay attention!” Mouse snapped. “You’re not even trying!”

  Edoran stared at him, anger rising in his blood like steam from a kettle. He had been trying. He’d been shoving that rope around for what felt like hours, and this—this lout had dared to strike him! He could be flogged for that! Edoran could have the lot of them flogged, for the indignities they’d inflicted on him, for their lack of respect. If they’d known he was the prince…

  His thoughts stopped. Time seemed to stop, as he stared at the idea, dazzled by its simplicity.

  They didn’t know he was the prince.

  Not one person in this village, not even Togger and Moll, had any idea who he was. He’d always hated being Prince Edoran the incompetent, Prince Edoran the whiner… the prince that Pettibone had made.

  He’d known that Pettibone had set out to make him look stupid, to keep him from learning anything worth knowing, to keep people, even the servants, from liking him. He still hadn’t been able to avoid becoming that prince, even though he knew he was playing into his enemy’s hands.

  Now, for the first time, he had a chance to be someone else. He’d have to think about this some more, but right now he had a chance to be someone else… and he was failing.

  He took a deep breath, picked up the rope, and turned to Mouse.

  “Show me again.” He tried to make it a request instead of a command, and he didn’t think he succeeded, but Mouse showed him again. And again.

  The fifth time through, Edoran’s rope tightened into a loop. It wasn’t as neat as the one Mouse made, but it was a knot instead of a muddle.

  “Good, lad!” This time Mouse’s hand clapped him on the shoulder. Edoran still staggered, but he didn’t mind. A wide grin spread over his face.

  He retreated to the old fortress to think, but the idea that had seized him only became clearer. He didn’t know if he could be someone other than the Prince Edoran that Pettibone had created, but for the first time in his life he was facing people who knew nothing about him except what he showed them. He hadn’t made much of a showing so far, but at least he could try.

  He started really working at the tasks they set him. He hoped that trying to do them, instead of trying to avoid them, would make him good at what he did. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way, but he did do better when he tried. And his effort was sufficiently visible that the adults praised him for it, offering tips that often made the task a bit easier… though the disgusting chores were still disgusting.

  After a few days, even the teens stopped calling him “Your Highness.” Now that he was working with them, Edoran noticed that they called one another worse names than that, and no one seemed to take offense.

  During one of the women’s sessions he asked Moll about her knitting, hoping that was something he might do. It would be more pleasant than carrying slops to the village pigpen.

  “You throw the loop over the tip of this needle, then drag it under the other one, like so.” She demonstrated slowly. Now that the needles had stopped flashing, Edoran saw that knitting consisted of tying a whole series of tiny knots. Using sticks instead of fingers. So much for him being able to knit. He sighed.

  “That’s a simple backstitch,” Moll went on. “There are lots of other stitches, and shifting among them forms different patterns in the knitting. That’s how we make our village pattern. We knit in family and name patterns too, so every sweater our lads wear out to sea tells folk they came from Caerfalas. And if a sweater comes back to us, we’ll know whose it was.”

  “Whose it… You use those sweaters to identify the dead?”

  “Not much left of a man’s face, after he’s been in the water for a week,” Moll said matter-of-factly. “That’s why the fishing villages first came up with different patterns. It’s some comfort to know that your boy’s finally come ashore, and been buried with care and respect, even if it was a stranger who did it. But it’s not only that; our sweaters are our kin mark on friends and family. And we knit in luck symbols to draw the favor of the gods and keep our men from the sea.”

  “Favor of the God,” said one of the women firmly, and several laughed.

  “Or of the One God,” Moll conceded. “If you don’t want to spread your bets a bit.”

  “What’s the use of calling for the attention of gods who don’t care about man?” another woman asked, and a theological argument ensued.

  Edoran had heard several such debates in the past few weeks. In Caerfalas, and perhaps in other fishing villages, some folk followed the One God and some the Hidden faith… and no one cared. No Hidden priests were turned over to the authorities for hang
ing, and if a child wandered off, people turned out and found it, instead of accusing their neighbors of stealing it for sacrifice.

  This wouldn’t have been possible in the city, or any large town, and as for the farming villages… Edoran didn’t know enough about the inner life of the villages he’d passed through even to guess.

  He looked at the pattern on the front of his sweater, recognizing it for the first time as the same one that decorated all the sweaters around him.

  “Whose sweater am I wearing?” he asked Moll.

  “Oh, we never give someone’s sweater to anyone else. Especially at sea, but even on land that’s asking for bad luck. You’re wearing a stranger’s sweater, with the Caerfalas pattern, but no family or personal name in it. But it does hold luck signs for Luric and Rish, and the narrow god as well.”

  “The One God,” another woman corrected her.

  Moll grinned. “We don’t hand out many stranger’s sweaters,” she told Edoran. “If it should return to us empty… well, we’d know it was you we’d lost.”

  Edoran doubted he was about to be lost, but this sweater that held no family and no name… it felt as if he’d actually become no one. After a moment, he decided he liked that feeling.

  He gave up on trying to knit. His favorite task was still tending the children, but now he was learning their names, and those of their parents, and he sometimes joined their games.

  Many of them were spending more time with their fathers now, for the fishermen planned to set out to sea in less than a week. The children led Edoran down to where the beached boats were being scraped and rigged, and he saw that the luck signs he’d seen on the sweaters were also being painted onto their hulls.

  Togger set him to mending nets, which was at least less complex than knitting. Edoran learned that soon great schools of bluefish would be migrating through the straits. They always did so in the early spring, and the signs—though he never learned exactly what signs—indicated that they’d be earlier than usual this year.