Then Krispos watched in dismay as a couple of farmers, plainly intended to be Idalkos and him, practiced wrestling. The embrace in which they ended was more obscene than athletic. The villagers whooped and cheered them on.
Krispos stamped away, head down. He was at an age where he could laugh at others, but could not bear to have them laugh at him. All he wanted to do was get away from the hateful noise.
Because he was not watching where he was going, he almost ran into someone coming back toward the center of the village. “Sorry,” he muttered and kept walking.
“What’s wrong, Krispos?” He looked up, startled. It was Zoranne’s voice. She’d changed back into her own long skirt and a coat, and looked a good deal warmer for it. “What’s wrong?” she said again.
“Those stupid jokers back there, that’s what,” he burst out, “making as if when Idalkos and I wrestle, we don’t just wrestle.” Half his rage evaporated as soon as he said out loud what was bothering him. He began to feel foolish instead.
Zoranne did not help by starting to laugh. “It’s Midwinter’s Day, Krispos,” she said. “It’s all in fun.” He knew that, which only made matters worse. She went on, “Anything can happen on Midwinter’s Day, and no one will pay any mind to it the day after. Am I right?”
“I suppose so.” He sounded surly, even to himself.
“Besides,” she said, “it’s not as if what they made out was true, is it?”
“Of course not,” he said, so indignantly that his changing voice left the last word a high-pitched squeak. As if from nowhere, the memory of Iakovitzes’ hand on his back stirred in his mind. Maybe that was part of why the skit had got under his skin so.
She did not seem to notice. “Well, then,” she said.
Back by the bonfires, most of the villagers erupted in laughter at some new skit. Krispos realized how quiet it was out here near the edge of the village, how alone he and Zoranne were. The memory of how she’d looked capering in that brief tunic rose again. Without his conscious mind willing it, he took a step toward her.
At the same moment, she was taking a step toward him. They almost bumped into each other. She laughed again. “Anything can happen on Midwinter’s Day,” she said softly.
When Krispos fled that embarrassing skit, he hadn’t worried about picking a direction. Perhaps not surprisingly, he’d ended up not far from his own house; as usual, his father had preferred one on the outskirts of the village. Suddenly that seemed like a blessing from Phos. Krispos gathered his courage, reached out, and took Zoranne’s arm. She pressed herself to his side.
His heart hammering, he led her to his doorway. They went inside together. He quickly shut the door behind them to keep the heat from the firepit in the middle of the floor from getting out.
“We’d better hurry,” he said anxiously.
Just then, more laughter came from the center of the village. Zoranne smiled. “We have some time, I think.” She shrugged off her coat, got out of her skirt. Krispos tried to undress and watch her at the same time, and almost fell over. Finally, after what seemed much too long, they sank to the straw bedding.
Krispos soon learned what everyone must: that knowing how man and woman join is not enough to keep that first joining from being one surprise after another. Nothing he thought he knew made him ready for the taste of Zoranne’s soft skin against his lips; the feel of her breast in his hand; the way the whole world seemed to disappear but for her body and his.
As it does, it returned all too quickly. “You’re squashing me,” Zoranne said. Brisk and practical, she sat up and picked bits of straw from her hair, then from his.
Given a little more time and a little less nervousness, he might have enjoyed that. As it was, her touch made him spring up and scramble into his clothes. She dressed, too—not with that frantic haste, but not taking her time, either.
Something else he did not know was whether he’d pleased her, or even how to find out. “Will we…?” he began. The rest of the question seemed stuck in his mouth.
Zoranne did not help much. “I don’t know. Will we?”
“I hope so,” Krispos blurted.
“Men always hope so—that’s what women always say, anyhow.” She unbent a bit then. “Well, maybe we will—but not now. Now we ought to get back to where everyone else is.”
He opened the door. The freezing air outside hit him like a blow. Zoranne said, “We should go back separately. The grandmothers have enough to gossip about already.”
“Oh.” Krispos had wanted to shout it from the housetops. If Zoranne didn’t…“All right.” He could not keep the disappointment out of his voice, though.
“Come on,” she said impatiently. “I told you this wouldn’t be the last time.” As a matter of fact, she hadn’t quite said that before. Thus encouraged, Krispos willingly shut the door again and watched Zoranne slip off into the night.
SHE KEPT HER WORD, IF NOT AS OFTEN AS KRISPOS WOULD HAVE liked. Every taste he had of her, every time the two of them managed not to be busy and to be able to find privacy, only made him want her more. Not knowing a better name, he thought of that as love.
Then, for a while, his own afternoons were occupied: Varades taught him and a couple of younger boys their letters. He learned them without too much trouble; being able to read and write his own name was almost as exciting, in its own way, as sporting with Zoranne.
He would have liked it even more had the village had anything much to read. “Why did you show us our letters if we can’t use them?” he complained to Varades.
“To give myself something to do, as much as any other reason,” the veteran answered frankly. He thought for a moment. “Tell you what. We might beg a copy of Phos’ scripture the next time a blue-robe comes around. I’ll go through it with you, best I can.”
When Varades asked him, a couple of weeks later, the priest nodded. “I’ll have one copied out for you straightaway,” he promised. Krispos, who was standing behind Varades, felt like cheering until the man went on, “You understand, it will take a few months. The monasteries’ scriptoria are always behind, I’m sorry to say.”
“Months!” Krispos said in dismay. He was sure he would forget everything before the book arrived.
But he did not. His father made him scratch letters in the dirt every day. “High time we had somebody in the family who can read,” Phostis said. “You’ll be able to keep the tax man from cheating us any worse than tax men always do.”
Krispos got another chance to use his skill that spring, before either the scripture or the tax collector arrived. Zoranne’s father Tzykalas had spent the winter months making half a dozen pairs of fancy boots. When the roads dried out enough to be passable, he took them to Imbros to sell. He came back with several goldpieces—and portentous news.
“The old Avtokrator, Phos guard his soul, has died,” he declared to the men he met in the village square.
Everyone made the sun-sign. The passing of an Emperor was never to be taken lightly. Phostis put into words what they were all thinking: “His son’s but a boy, not so?”
Tzykalas nodded. “Aye, about the age of Krispos here, I’d say, judging by his coin.” The cobbler dug it out of his pouch to show the other villagers the new portrait. “His name is—”
“Let me read it!” Krispos exclaimed. “Please!” He held out his hand for the goldpiece. Reluctantly Tzykalas passed it to him. It was only a little wider than his thumbnail. All he could make out from the image was that the new Avtokrator was, as Tzykalas had said, too young to have a beard. He put the coin close to his face so he could make out the tiny letters of its inscription. “His name is Anthimos.”
“So it is,” Tzykalas said grumpily. He snatched the goldpiece out of Kripsos’ hand. Too late, it occurred to the youth that he had just stolen a big part of Tzykalas’ news. Too bad, he thought. No matter how he felt about Zoranne, he’d never been fond of her father. That was one reason he hadn’t proposed to her: the idea of having the cobbler as a father-
in-law was anything but appealing.
What he wanted to do was go home and dig up the goldpiece he’d got from Omurtag so he could read it. He’d buried it beside the house for luck when his family came to this new village, and they’d never been desperate enough to make him dig it up and spend it. But no, he decided, not now; if he did leave, Tzykalas would only think him ruder yet.
“A boy for Avtokrator?” someone said. “That won’t be good—who’ll keep the plow’s furrow straight till he learns how to guide it?”
“That I can tell you,” Tzykalas said, sounding important again. “The talk in Imbros is that Rhaptes’ brother Petronas will be regent for his nephew until Anthimos comes of age.”
“Petronas, eh? Things won’t be too bad, then.” Drawn by the sight of several men standing around talking, Varades had come up in time to hear Tzykalas’ last bit of news. The veteran went on, “I fought under him against Makuran. He’s an able soldier, and no one’s fool, either.”
“What if he seizes the throne for himself, then?” Krispos’ father said.
“What if he does, Phostis?” Varades said. “Why would it matter to the likes of us, one way or the other?”
Krispos’ father thought about it for a moment. He spread his hands. “There you have me, Varades. Why indeed?”
ZORANNE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF TZYKALAS’ HOUSE. SHE shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?” Surprised and irritated, Krispos waved his hand to show how empty the village was. “Everyone’s in the farther fields for the rest of the day, and probably tomorrow, too. Even your father’s gone off to buy some new awls, you said. We’ve never had a better chance.”
“No,” she repeated.
“But why not?” He put a hand on her arm.
She didn’t pull away, not physically, but she might as well have. He let his hand fall. “I just don’t want to,” she said.
“Why?” he persisted.
“Do you really want to know?” She waited till she saw him nod. “All right, I’ll tell you why. Yphantes asked me to marry him the other day, and I told him yes.”
The last time Krispos had felt so stunned and breathless was when Idalkos kicked him in the pit of the stomach one day while they were wrestling. He’d never paid any particular attention to Yphantes before. Along with everyone else in the village, he’d been sad when the man’s wife died in childbirth a couple of years before, but…“He’s old,” Krispos blurted.
“He’s years away from thirty,” Zoranne said, “and he’s already well set up. If I had to wait for you, I’d be past twenty myself by the time you were even close to where Yphantes is now, and that’s too long a time.”
“But—but then you, but then you and he—” Krispos found he could not make his mouth work the way it was supposed to.
Zoranne understood anyway. “What if we were?” she said defiantly. “You never gave me any promise, Krispos, or asked for one from me.”
“I never thought I needed to,” he mumbled.
“Too bad for you, then. No woman wants to be taken for granted. Maybe you’ll remember that next time with someone else, and end up happier for it.” Her face softened. “Krispos, we’ll probably live here together in this village the rest of our lives. No point in us hating each other, is there? Please?”
For want of anything better to say, he said, “All right.” Then he turned and quickly walked away. If he had any tears, Zoranne was not going to see them. He owned too much pride for that.
That evening he was so quiet that his sister teased him about it, and then he was quiet through the teasing, too. “Are you feeling well, Krispos?” Evdokia asked, real worry in her voice; when she could not get a rise out of him, something had to be wrong.
“I’m all right,” he said. “I just want you to leave me alone, that’s all.”
“I know what it is,” she said suddenly. “It’s something to do with Zoranne, isn’t it?”
He very carefully put down the bowl of barley and turnip soup from which he had been eating; had he not been so deliberately careful with his hands, he might have thrown it at her. He got up and stamped out of the house, off into the woods.
He took longer than he should have to realize that sitting by himself among the trees wasn’t accomplishing anything, but after a while he did figure it out. It was quite dark when he finally came home. Then he almost turned around and went back; his father was waiting for him, a few steps outside the door.
He kept on. He would have to deal with his father sooner or later; better sooner, he thought. “I’m sorry,” he said.
His father nodded, the motion barely visible in the gloom. “You should be.” Phostis hesitated a moment before he said, “Evdokia was right, I gather—you’ve had some trouble with your girl?”
“She’s not my girl,” Krispos said sullenly. “She’s going to marry Yphantes.”
“Good,” his father said. “I hoped she would. I told Yphantes as much, earlier this year. In the long run, it’ll save you trouble, son, believe me.”
“When you what?” Krispos stared at him, appalled. That moment of shock also let him notice something he’d missed before: both his father and his sister knew about Zoranne. “How did you find out about us? We were so careful—”
“Maybe you think so,” Phostis said, “but I’d bet the only person in the village who doesn’t know is Tzykalas, and he would if he weren’t a fool who’d sooner talk than see. I’d be just as well pleased not to have a marriage connection with him, I can tell you.”
Krispos had been angry at his father often enough. Till now, he’d never imagined wanting to hate him. In a voice like ice, he asked, “Is that why you egged Yphantes on?”
“That’s part of the reason, aye,” Phostis answered calmly. Before Krispos’ rage could overflow, he went on, “But it’s not the biggest part. Yphantes needs to marry. He needs a wife to help him now and he needs to get an heir to carry on. And Zoranne needs to marry; at fourteen, a girl’s a woman, near enough. But you, son, you don’t need to marry. At fourteen, a man’s still a boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” Krispos snarled.
“No? Does a man pitch a tantrum when he’s teased? You were acting the way Kosta does when I tell her I won’t carry her piggyback anymore. Am I wrong or am I right? Think before you answer me.”
That last sentence kept Krispos from blowing up in fury. He did think; in cold—or at least cooler—blood, what he’d done seemed foolish. “Right, I suppose, Father, but—”
“But me no buts. Finding a girl who’ll say yes to you is wonderful; Phos knows I don’t deny it. Why, I remember—” His father stopped, laughed a small, self-conscious laugh. “But never mind me. Just because she says yes doesn’t mean you want to live with her the rest of your life. That should take more looking than just one girl, don’t you think?”
Krispos remembered his own misgivings about Tzykalas the day before. Without much wanting to, he found himself nodding. “I guess so.”
“Good.” His father put a hand on his shoulder, the way he’d been doing since Krispos was a little boy. “What you have to remember is, bad as you feel today, today’s not forever. Things’ll feel better inside you after a while. You just have to learn the patience to wait till they do.”
Krispos thought about that. It made sense. Even so, though…“It sounds like something that’s easier to tell someone else than to do,” he said.
“Doesn’t it just?” Phostis laughed that small laugh again. “And don’t I know it?”
Greatly daring, Krispos asked, “Father, what was she like?”
“She?”
“The one you talked about—sort of talked about—a few minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Phostis walked farther away from the house. He glanced back toward it before going on more quietly, “Her name was Sabellia. Your mother knows of her. Truly, I don’t think Tatze’d mind my speaking about her, save only that no woman ever really takes kindly to her man going on about times before he was with her. Ca
n’t say I blame her; I’m as glad she doesn’t chatter on about her old flames, too. But Sabellia? Well, I must have been right around your age when I met her…”
KRISPOS RUBBED HIS CHIN. WHISKERS RASPED UNDER HIS fingers, not the fuzz he’d had since his voice started changing but the beginnings of a real man’s crop. About time, he thought. A couple of fifteen-year-olds grew beards as good as his, though he’d had two more summers in which to raise his.
He rubbed again. A beard, even a thin one, was a useful thing to be thoughtful with. Last time out in the woods, somewhere not far from here, he’d spotted an elm branch that had exactly the right curve for a plow handle. He would have paid more attention to it had he not been with a girl.
That oak looked familiar, or so he thought till he got close to it. He walked on. He didn’t remember the hazel tree beyond the oak. Sighing, he kept walking. By now he was sure he had come too far, but he didn’t want to go back, either. It would have been too much like an admission of failure.
Faint in the distance, he heard noise ahead. He frowned. Few villagers came this far east of home. He’d brought Likinia out here precisely because he had felt sure they’d get to be alone. He supposed men from the next village over could be doing some lumbering, but they’d have to drag the wood a long way back if they were.
The noise didn’t sound like lumbering, anyhow. He heard no axes, no sounds of falling branches or toppling trees. As he moved closer, a horse neighed softly. That confused him worse than ever. A horse would have been handy for hauling timber, but there was no timber.
What did that leave? His frown deepened—the most obvious answer was bandits. He hadn’t thought the nearby road had enough traffic to support a robber band, but he could have been wrong. He kept moving toward the noise, but now with all the caution he could muster. He just wanted to see if these really were bandits and then, if they were, to get back to the village and bring as many armed men here as he could.
He was flat on his belly by the time he wriggled up to the last brush that screened him from the noisemakers, whoever they were. Slowly, slowly, he raised his head until he could peer between two leafy branches whose shadows helped hide his face.
The Tale of Krispos Page 5
