A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  At one end of the room an entire wall is occupied by a vast stone fireplace, its arched opening surrounded by a half-dozen smaller openings: ovens, probably. Within the main fireplace a fire flickers and crackles, redly and friendlily, and within that is the bulbous black silhouette of a cooking-pot, puffing steam like an exasperated demon.

  The only living inhabitants of the cozy room, other than herself, are the chubby, red-cheeked man and woman. The former, his face still hovering over her like a ruddy eclipsed moon, is as kindly looking an individual as she has ever seen. The latter, approaching from the side of the room that evidently serves as kitchen, is virtually a female twin. She would have assumed they are twins in fact if it are not for their appellations of “Mother” and “Father”. In fact, the only pertinent differences she is able to discern is that one is almost totally bald and possesses a small, grey moustache with upturned ends, and the other has long hair coiled into tight buns on either side of her head and possesses less moustache. Both are shaped very much like teapots. The woman places a tray before Bronwyn on which sat a ceramic bowl, fancifully glazed, of course, filled with some sort of thick soup. The princess finds her mouth suddenly awash with saliva. She snatches up the wooden spoon.

  “Ho! Mother! Look at her!” laughs the man. “The poor thing’s starved!”

  “Don’t let her wolf her food down like that, Father! She’ll sicken!”

  She takes the spoon from Bronwyn’s fingers, which release it reluctantly.

  “Finish what you have now, then I’ll let you have another spoonful.”

  It took far longer than the hungry girl would have liked, but even in the rationed doses allotted by the woman the soup bowl seems to empty magically fast. Her hunger seems scarcely dented, though she acknowledges that a satisfying, warm fullness now occupies her abdomen.

  “I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks!” she says, her first words since awakening.

  “Well,” replies the man, “I don’t know about that, but I know you haven’t eaten in the week that you be here.”

  “Week? I’ve been here a week?”

  “Well, nearly so. Let’s see, Mother. I found the poor thing when I went to pay Porsgrunn for the eggs, isn’t it?”

  “No, it was when you took the charcoal to Wisbech.”

  “Ah! That’d be the day before, then. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the gun with me. Lucky thing, too! Hardly ever go out with it anymore. Don’t know why I did this time, come to think of it.”

  “I do: I told you to. It’s getting dangerous to go any distance from the house anymore.”

  “Yes, that’s true enough, sad to say. Old Wisbech was robbed only last month on his way to the Plibdols. Don’t know what’s come of the world. Simple prudence, that’s all it is. That’s why I took the gun along. Simple prudence.”

  “Lot of good it would’ve done you: you would’ve probably forgotten you had it with you.”

  “Well, I didn’t forget it when I saw the bear, did I?”

  “Oh, Musrum!” cries Bronwyn. “Yes! The bear!”

  “I heard your cries, but it was terrible hard to find you in that little grotto. I never even knew that hole was there. Can you believe that? There’s always something new to discover in the forest, no matter how long you’ve lived here. Fifty years I’ve walked past those rocks. Never knew that grotto is there. You just never know. Still, I got the beast in a single shot!”

  “You probably could’ve talked it to death faster,” adds the woman, “but I wouldn’t wish that fate even on a bear.”

  “Now, Mother!”

  “Well, I for one thank you! I thought I was dead!”

  “You’re getting some revenge on the beast now, though.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We made soup from his bones.”

  Bronwyn glances warily at the empty bowl, then laughes. When she does, a sharp pain lances her ribs.

  “Ow. How much did the bear hurt me? I remember so much blood and pain.”

  “You are hurt some,” answers the man, “but it is mostly blood.” ‘Small comfort there, Bronwyn thinks.) “Those heavy clothes you were wearing saved you, but I don’t think they’ll be of much use to you again.”

  “I’ve been working them into my braided rug,” says the woman. “I didn’t think you would mind.”

  “There might be some scars,” the man continues, “but I don’t think there will be any permanent injury.”

  “It still hurts.”

  “I’m sure it will for a while yet.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Oh, forgive us!” cries the woman. “We’ve been so rude! You’ve been with us so long, we’ve gotten quite used to you being here, but you’ve just arrived, so to speak, from your point of view.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “You’re in the house of Burgos the charcoal burner. I’m Burgos and this is my wife, Melfi.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you both!”

  “And we are pleased to meet you...”

  Bronwyn hesitated a moment before filling in that ellipsis. Should I identify myself? Will they believe me? And if they do, what would they do? What might they have already done? Are Guards even now on their way to...wherever I am?

  “My name is Bronwyn. Bronwyn Tedeschiiy.”

  “Ah! The lost princess! I was right! Doesn’t I tell you, Father?”

  “You know who I am?”

  “We had some notion.”

  “I knew for certain...it’s Burgos who’s been arguing just the opposite.”

  “They’re looking for me, then. Is that how you found out?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. Mother, do you still have that newspaper?”

  “I don’t know, let me see...it hasn’t been so very long...”

  She rummages through a pile of old papers and magazines heaps in a big box near the fireplace.

  “Ah! Here it is! See?”

  Bronwyn takes the crumpled sheet from her. It is an edition of the Blavek Intelligencer nearly two weeks old. There is a column set apart by a heavy black border. Its headline somberly announces the death of the late lamented Princess Bronwyn. It gives her a horribly chilly sense of unreality to read the details of her own demise, the unreality heightened by an account that is almost wholly fictional. She had died, she learns, after a prolonged decline following an accident with a fish delivery van. News of the event had been kept from the press in deference to the family’s wishes, her brother, it is rumored, had been almost prostrate with grief, sitting with his dying sister night and day, spooning soup into her slack lips one drop at a time. Unfortunately, the princess never recovered from her injuries and on the morning of the fourteenth slipped from her earthly bonds and into the hands of Musrum without ever regaining consciousness. The article concluded with a few heartfelt words from her brother expressing the inconsolable grief of the royal family...

  She crushes the brittle newsprint before finishing the column.

  “If you’d read this, why did you think I was the princess?”

  “Well,” replies Melfi, “that’s not too easy to explain.”

  “You see, Mother and I’ve been interested in our royal family for a very long time.”

  “Just years and years.”

  “We have albums full of things we’ve clipped from the magazines and papers.”

  “We even have the announcements of your birth.”

  “We were very proud that day, I can tell you. Mother baked a cake.”

  “We’ve only been fortunate enough once to actually see one of you in the flesh, so to speak. Not counting now, of course.”

  “We went all the way to Blavek to see your father’s coronation.”

  “We couldn’t actually see his face, but we could tell it was him.”

  “It was a great thrill, isn’t it, Mother?”

  “We must show her the postcards we collected.”

  “Wait a moment, please! I’ll take it for granted that you recognized me, at
least for the time being. But how long have I been here? What is the date?”

  “Let’s see,” says Melfi. “You made your last charcoal delivery on the nineteenth, didn’t you, Father?”

  “Either that or the twentieth.”

  “Well, then, that is only four or five days ago.”

  “That’d make today, oh, somewhere around the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth. Not too much sooner nor too much later.”

  Bronwyn lets her head fall back onto her pillow. The twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth! It is at least twelve days since I left my cousin’s encampment. The coronation had been scheduled for the twenty-first: Ferenc has been king for half a week! The country is now in the hands of Payne Roelt and his looters!

  “Oh! The poor thing!” cries Melfi. “Get the broth, Father...look how pale she’s gotten!”

  “I must get to Blavek,” says Bronwyn.

  “Blavek?” answers the man, incredulously. “That wouldn’t be possible, I’m afraid.”

  “Why? How far away are we?”

  “Well, that’s not really the point.”

  “Where am I anyway, now that I’m thinking of it?”

  “The nearest village is Hasselt-on-the-Dootlen, about fourteen miles down the river.”

  “Hasselt?”

  “It’s at the head of the fjord; mostly fishermen live there.”

  “Yes, I know where it is. Will you take me there?”

  “I don’t think you are really up to doing any traveling yet...” says Melfi.

  “But,” adds Burgos, “that isn’t the point, anyway.”

  “Well, what is the point, then?”

  Melfi goes to one of the curtained windows and draws back the heavy drapery. There is nothing beyond the window but a featureless white. It takes Bronwyn a long moment to interpret what she is seeing.

  “Snow!”

  Snow, indeed. It had begun in earnest the day after Burgos has found the princess. Nor had it in any way abated in the week that had since passed. It has ceaselessly snowed until the little cottage in which the charcoal-maker and his wife live is buried to its low-hanging eaves.

  Burgos had burrowed tunnels to the two or three outbuildings nearby, of course, needless to say, to the single most necessary of them. But those are only a dozen yards long, Hasselt is several miles away.

  She can see her hosts’ point now. Three or four feet of snow, drifting to ten feet or more, in a country where roads are little better than dirt paths where they existed at all, is an impediment of inarguable efficiency. But what to do? Spring is months away; even now she is probably too late to do anything about the villains in the capital, in three or four months they would be so well entrenched, their tentacles so well entwined around society’s neck, that they would be as impossible to extricate as an octopus from its den.

  She explains her urgency to Burgos and Melfi, but they are not very helpful. They have never before has any need to leave their home once it is snowbound, they therefore have no useful suggestions as to how Bronwyn could do so. Nor is what information they do have very encouraging.

  Hasselt-on-the-Dootlen is not far. Even in the worst weather, provided it is not actually the midst of a blizzard, it can be reached in just a few hours. It is only necessary to follow the river ‘which for the next several months would be frozen nearly solid and now is recognizable only as a broad, flat, meandering depression in the snow). But for a traveler on snowshoes and well bundled, it would provide a sure, level highway to the town. The fjord itself, she learns, is also frozen throughout the winter. Whether the town nevertheless maintains communication with the open sea beyond, her hosts are unable to say for certain.

  Bronwyn succeeds in convincing the elderly couple that she has to get at least as far as Hasselt. They feel strongly that she ought to remain in bed for at least another week or two, and indoors even longer, but the girl is adamant. She reluctantly compromises, however, by agreeing to stay two more days.

  Burgos and Melfi have friends in the town, as they seem to have friends everywhere. If the journey makes her ill, Bronwyn promises, she will stay with one of the people there. The couple will write a letter of introduction for her to take along. But, she insists, nowhere are they to reveal who she really is.

  Burgos, for his part, insists on accompanying the princess as far as the town, it would be impossible, he told her, for him to let her go on her own.

  Bronwyn admits that she enjoys the next two days, she has not felt so much at home in weeks. She carefully keeps from herself the further admission that much of her comfort comes from having two kindly people eagerly waiting upon her, a luxury she has not enjoyed in a very long time. She likes them very much, far more so than she had any palace servant, and would be very put out if someone were to suggest that she is simply allowing them to let her use them. But much of that anger would be engendered by the realization that it is in fact true, and that someone had the tactlessness to agree aloud with her own awakening conscience.

  On the evening of the second day, Bronwyn notices Melfi doing something that puzzles her.

  “What is the bowl of milk for?” she asks.

  “Pardon?” Melfi replies, rising from the hearth, dusting ashes from her knees. The princess points to the bowl of milk and plate of small cakes that the woman has just set on the stones.

  “I’ve noticed you do that nearly every night. Do you have a cat or something?”

  “Oh, no,” answers Melfi, pinking a little with embarrassment. “I suppose the princess will think us very silly.”

  “Of course not,” says Bronwyn earnestly, prepared for something quaint and homely.

  “Well, it’s for the Kobold...”

  “Kobold?”

  “Yes, Princess, a Kobold is a kind of big fairy that lives in the ground...”

  “I know what a Kobold is.”

  “You do?”

  “Believe me.”

  “Well, it’s just a silly superstition, I suppose. Every house has its Kobold, especially a house made from the earth, like this one is. It’s just a symbol, maybe, to remind us to thank the earth for what we’ve taken from it. I should have grown out of it years and years ago, but you get into the habit, you know? And, I’ll tell you, there are moonless nights and wet, misty mornings when you feel that you just don’t want to take any chances...”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “I was afraid you’d laugh at an old woman’s notions, Princess, you’re very kind.”

  “Don’t mention it. But what happens to the milk and cakes?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happens to them? What do you do with them in the morning?”

  “Why, nothing. They’re always gone.”

  Bronwyn has much to think about that night. She lays awake as long as she can, listening. Her mind filters out all the familiar sounds, one by one: Burgos’s rumbling snore and Melfi’s squeaking one, the faint hiss of the embers in the fireplace, the muffled ticking of the clock’s wooden gears, the murmur of her own heart. Nothing else.

  In the morning, the food is gone.

  Bronwyn surprises, and pleases, Burgos and Melfi by announcing that she will concede to their arguments and stay for another day or two. That night, after the couple had gone to bed, Bronwyn lays awake until she is certain they are soundly unconscious. Lighting her candle and shielding its light with the cup of her hand, she goes to the fireplace. The bowl of milk and plate of cakes are in their usual place. She slips a folded piece of paper between two of the latter, a paper she has surreptitiously prepared earlier. She creeps back to her nook, extinguishes the candle and tries to sleep. In spite of her efforts, she is soon dreaming, albeit fitfully and of terrible revenges.

  In the morning, she is up even before the early-rising couple. The bowl and plate on the hearth are empty. The paper is gone.

  That day and the following night are very long. She awakens when the clock softly chimes three times. She is puzzled for a moment, because that sound had never
before disturbed her. Then she realizes that the sound of the chime is only a coincidence, something else has roused her. Something standing over her bed.

  “Burgos?” she asks, for the round face, barely visible in the darkness, looks like his.

  “Come with me,” is the whispered reply, and Bronwyn knows this is the answer to her message.

  She rises from the bed silently. The big figure has retreated into the gloom, until it is only a darkness within the dark. It takes only a moment for her to dress in the homespun garments Melfi had given her, to which she adds gloves and a fleece-lined leather coat and hat. She still has her boots. She goes toward the hearth, which looks like the black mouth of a tunnel. The word “Hurry!” enters her ear, though she can’t see its source in the dark. She steps onto the flat, broad stones of the hearth. She still can not see the back wall of the fireplace, even though a bed of embers glows redly at her feet. She steps over them, and keeps on going. After two or three paces she stops. She realizes that she must, somehow, be beyond the fireplace yet she also knew that the thing was built of massive stones several feet thick, and that beyond is the outside, or in the present instance, a deep snowdrift. Here is neither, only a blackness that seems to press against her eyes, enveloping her as though she were imbedded within black marble, like a fly in amber, or, perhaps better, an antediluvian leaf in a chunk of coal. And she is not about to take another step without knowing what is in front of her.

  “Close your eyes,” instructs the whisperer.

  “Where am I?”

  There is no answer. She waits another moment, then follows the instruction. No sooner has she done so than the voice whispers, “Open your eyes.”

  She hasn’t realized they were closed. She opens them and cries out in alarm and pain. There is light, everywhere, and the surprise and shock of it is frightening and hurtful. She squeezes her eyes shut again, wringing tears from them. She reopens them, after a moment, in a careful squint, shading them with her fingers. Gradually, like a photographic plate developing its image, the enormous figure of a Kobold coalesces amid the pearly brightness. It is King Slagelse.