The Tale of Krispos

by Harry Turtledove

  “You were most fortunate to be treated by such a master of the art, excellent sir,” the healer-priest said. “As with most of my brethren, my power is over flesh, not bone, which I have neither the strength nor the knowledge to heal. Bone, you see, is partly dead, so it lacks the vitality upon which the healing gift draws. No one in Opsikion—perhaps no one in any city save Videssos—can heal a broken bone. I am sorry to have to be the one to tell you that.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” Iakovitzes howled, anger now overcoming pain.

  “Fear not, sir,” Sebellios said. “Ordanes is a skilled bone-setter, and I can abate any fever you might contract during the healing process. Surely in two or three months you will be walking again and, if you exercise your leg once the splints come off, you may not even limp.”

  “Two or three months?” Iakovitzes rolled his eyes like a trapped animal. “How long before I can ride?”

  Sebellios pursed his lips. “Somewhere near the same length of time, I should say. Controlling one’s horse puts considerable strain on the lower leg, as you must know.”

  “Two or three months?” Iakovitzes repeated it unbelievingly. “You’re saying it’ll be winter by the time I’m up and about?”

  “Well, yes, probably,” Sebellios said. “What of it?”

  “No ships in winter—too many storms. No good going overland, either, or not much—snowdrifts piled twice as high as a man.” Iakovitzes had been speaking softly, almost to himself. Now, suddenly, he screamed. “You mean to tell me I’m stuck in this backwoods Phos-forsaken shitpot pest-hole of an excuse for a town until spring?”

  “Hello, hello.” A fat bald man pushed through the crowd and grinned down at Iakovitzes. “My, you sound cheerful today. Nothing like breaking a leg to do that to a man, is there?”

  “I’d sooner break your neck,” Iakovitzes snarled. “Which icepit did Skotos let you out of?”

  “Name’s Ordanes,” the fat man answered calmly—he was, Krispos saw, one of the rare men Iakovitzes could not infuriate with a few ill-chosen words. “I’ll set that leg for you, if you like—I expect you’ll need it whole so as you can get back to cramming both feet into your face.” As Iakovitzes gaped and spluttered, the physician went on, “I’ll need a couple of stout souls here to help hold him down. He’ll like this even less than he likes anything else.”

  “I’m one,” Krispos said. “He’s my master.”

  “Lucky you.” Ordanes lowered his voice so Iakovitzes would not hear. “Hate to tell you this, young fellow, but you and your master are going to be stuck here a goodish while. That’s what I heard him yelling about before, isn’t it?”

  Krispos nodded.

  “If you’re his man, you’ll have to wait on him like he was a baby for a while, because for the first month or so he shouldn’t even be out of bed, not if he expects those bones to heal straight. Think you’re up to it? I don’t envy you, and that’s a fact.”

  The idea of waiting on Iakovitzes hand and foot for a solid month was more nearly appalling than appealing. All the same, Krispos said, “I’m up to it. He took me into his service from the streets of Videssos the city when I had nothing to my name but what I was wearing. I owe him more than a little for that; wouldn’t do to repay him by running off when he really needs me.”

  “Hmm.” Ordanes’ eyes were tracked with red, half hidden in folds of fat, and very knowing. “Seems to me he’s better served by his man than you are by your master, but that’s none of my affair.” The physician looked up at the crowd of spectators. “Come on, people, don’t just stand there. Lend a hand, will you? Wouldn’t you want somebody to help if it were your leg? You, there, and you there in the blue tunic.”

  As the men bent to hold Iakovitzes, Krispos realized one of his questions had just been answered for him. If he was not leaving Opsikion any time soon, he would see Tanilis again…. And again and again, he thought.

  Iakovitzes hissed and then groaned as Ordanes set to work. Despite the noble’s anguish, Krispos had all he could do to keep from giggling. Tanilis was a much more alluring prospect in bed than his master.

  Chapter VI

  THAT MONTH OF CONSTANT ATTENDANCE ON IAKOVITZES PROVED even more wearing than Ordanes had predicted. The physician had compared it to tending a baby. Babies only cried. Iakovitzes used his searing tongue to inform Krispos of all his whims and all Krispos’ short-comings.

  By the noble’s reckoning, Krispos had plenty of them. Iakovitzes blamed him when the water for sponge baths was too hot or too cold, when Bolkanes’ kitchen came up with a meal Iakovitzes found inadequate, when the bedpan was not perfectly placed, and even when his healing leg itched, which it seemed to do most of the time.

  As for that bedpan, sometimes Krispos felt like braining Iakovitzes with it. It was, however, his master’s one significant advantage over a baby: Iakovitzes, at least, did not foul the bed. In a time that held few large advantages, Krispos cherished the small one.

  One afternoon about three weeks after the noble got hurt, someone knocked on the door of his room. Krispos jumped. Few people had come to see Iakovitzes. Krispos opened the door with one hand on his knife. A good-looking youth stared at him with equal suspicion.

  “It’s all right, Krispos, Graptos,” Iakovitzes called from his bed. “In fact, Krispos, it’s better than all right. You can take the rest of the day off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Excellent sir?” Krispos said doubtfully.

  “Bolkanes arranged this for me,” Iakovitzes assured him. “After all, if I’m bedridden, I might as well be bed-ridden, if you see what I mean. And since you’re so tiresomely obstinate on the subject—”

  Krispos waited to hear no more. He closed the door behind him and hurried down to the stables. If Iakovitzes was going to sport, so would he. The sun was still an hour away from setting when he got to Tanilis’ villa.

  He had to wait some little time before he saw her; she was settling a dispute between two peasants who dwelt on her land. Neither seemed displeased as they walked past Krispos. He was unsurprised; Tanilis had more than enough sense to dispense justice.

  She smiled as Naues led Krispos into her study. “I wondered if I would see you again, after your master’s accident,” she said. In front of her steward, her voice was perfectly controlled.

  “I wondered, too.” Krispos also kept his tone casual. He was sure Tanilis would be able to find all the double meanings he put into his words and perhaps some he left out. He went on, “The excellent Iakovitzes seems to be in better spirits these days.” He explained who was taking care of the noble, and in what ways.

  Naues snorted; the tiny curl of Tanilis’ lip looked like less but spoke more. Aloud, she said, “You are welcome here regardless of the circumstances. Mavros may be back for the evening meal, but then again he may not. Now that he is sure he won’t be leaving for the city till spring, he gives all his time to one girl, knowing, I suppose, that afterward time and distance will fade the attachment.”

  Such cool, calculated good sense sounded more like Tanilis than young Mavros; for a moment Krispos was reminded of listening to his own father back in the days when Zoranne was all he’d thought of. He hoped Mavros was clever enough to recognize that his mother was cleverer still.

  “Naues, are there any more out there who need me?” Tanilis asked. When her man shook his head, she told him, “Go and warn Evtykhes, then, that Krispos certainly will stay for supper, and that I do have some hope my son will appear, as well.”

  Mavros did come back to the villa. When he found Krispos there, he condescended to stay for dinner. “How’d you get loose?” he asked. “I thought Iakovitzes wanted you there every minute?” Krispos explained again. Mavros burst out laughing. “Good for the old bugger! He’s feeling better, then?”

  “Aye, but he’s not up and about yet. And with the fall rains due any day now, it’s just as he feared. He won’t be riding back to the city till spring; he can’t even hobble yet, let alone sit a horse.
”

  “Too bad,” Mavros said dolefully. “Here I’ve been champing at the bit for weeks, and now I’ll have to wait for months. Such a long time.” With a moody sigh, he raised his wine cup to his lips.

  Tanilis said, “Be thankful you’re young enough that a few months seem a long time to you. To me, next spring feels like the day after tomorrow.”

  “Well, not to me,” Mavros said.

  For the most part, Krispos agreed with Mavros; at twenty-two, he thought the world passed too slowly to suit him. Still, even slowness could have its advantages. He said, “From what I’ve heard, you’ve got a girl now, so just think of it as having a longer-seeming time to spend with her.”

  “I wish it were that easy,” Mavros said, “but somehow when I’m with her the time flies by, so it never seems like enough no matter how long it is. Which reminds me.” He finished his wine, rose, and sketched bows to Tanilis and Krispos. “I promised I’d meet her before the moon came up.” Not quite trotting, he left the dining room.

  “My poor, bereft son,” Tanilis said dryly. “He hasn’t set eyes on his beloved for, oh, several hours now. In a way, I suppose, I should be jealous, but he just makes me smile instead.”

  Krispos thoughtfully ate one of Evtykhes’ lemon tarts. Tanilis hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know; her practiced sensuality was worlds apart from Mavros’ enthusiastic infatuation. Nevertheless, Krispos wished his lover had not made it so plain he was not her beloved.

  But no matter what she did, she came to him that night. If she found what they did together distasteful, she hid it marvelously well. Afterward, Krispos leaned up on one elbow. “Why me?” he asked. Tanilis made a questioning noise. “Why me?” Krispos repeated. “Who you are and what you are, you could pick any man within a hundred miles of Opsikion, and he’d come running. So why did you pick me?”

  “Because of your looks, your youth, your vigor. Because, having seen you, I could not help picking you.”

  The words were all Krispos could have hoped to hear. But he also heard the faintest questioning tone in Tanilis’ voice, as if she were offering him an explanation to see whether he’d accept it. Though he wanted to, he found he could not. He said, “You could find a dozen who outdo me on any of those at a glance—a hundred or a thousand with a little looking. I gather you haven’t, which means you haven’t answered me, either.”

  Now she sat up in bed. Krispos thought it was the first time she took him seriously for his own sake rather than as a cog in what she’d foreseen. After a short pause, she said slowly, “Because you don’t take the easy way, but look to see what may lie behind it. That is rare at any age, doubly so at yours.”

  This time he felt she’d touched truth, but not given him the whole of it. “Why else?” he persisted.

  He wondered if his drive to know would anger her, but soon saw it did not. If anything, it raised him in her estimation; when she replied, her voice had the no-nonsense tone of someone conducting serious business. “I’ll not deny that the power implied by this”—she reached out to touch the goldpiece on its chain—“has its own attraction. In and around Opsikion, I have done everything, become everything I could hope to do and become. To set up my own son in Videssos the city, to have a connection to one who may be…what he may be: that could tempt me almost to anything. But only almost. Reckon me hard if you like, and calculating, and cunning, but you reckon me a whore at your peril.” She did not sound businesslike then; she sounded dangerous.

  Krispos nodded soberly. As with Iakovitzes, his chief shield against her was stubborn refusal to acknowledge that she could daunt him. “And so?” he asked.

  The light from the single lamp in the bedchamber shifted shadows on her face to underscore her every change of expression. With that aid, Krispos saw he’d gained another point. “And so,” she said, “I have no interest in men who seek to bed not me but my estates; nor in those who would reckon me only a prize possession, as if I were a hound; nor again in those who care just for my body and would not mind if Skotos dwelt behind my eyes. Do you see yourself in any of those groups?”

  “No,” Krispos said. “But in a way don’t you fall into the first one, I mean with respect to me?”

  Tanilis stared at him. “You dare—” He admired her for the speed with which she checked herself. After a few seconds, she even laughed. “You have me, Krispos; by my own words I stand convicted. But here I am on the other end of the bargain; and I must say it looks different from how it seemed before.”

  To you, maybe, Krispos thought.

  Tanilis went on, “A final reason I chose you, Krispos, at least after the first time, is that you learn quickly. One of the things you still need to know, though, is that sometimes you can ask too many questions.”

  She reached up and drew his face down to hers. But even as he responded to her teaching, he remained sure there was no such thing as asking too many questions. Finding the right way and time to ask them might be something else again, he admitted to himself. And this, he thought before all thought left him, was probably not it.

  HE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING TO RAIN DRUMMING ON THE roof. He knew that sound, though he was more used to the softer plashing of raindrops against thatch than the racket they made on tile. He hoped Tanilis’ peasants were done with their harvest, then laughed at himself: they were done now, whether they wanted to be or not.

  Tanilis, as was her way, had slipped off during the night. Sometimes he woke when she slid out of bed; more often, as last night, he did not. He wondered, not for the first time, if her servants knew they were lovers. If so, the cooks and stewards and serving maids gave no sign of it. He had learned from Iakovitzes’ establishment, though, that being discreet was part of being a well-trained servant. And Tanilis tolerated no servant who was not.

  He also wondered if Mavros knew. That, he doubted. Mavros was a good many things and would likely grow to become a good many more, but Krispos had trouble seeing him as discreet.

  Her hair as perfectly in place as if he had never run his hands through it, Tanilis sat waiting for him in the small dining room. “You’ll have a wet ride back to Opsikion, I fear,” she said, waving him to the chair opposite her.

  He shrugged. “I’ve been wet before.”

  “A good plate of boiled bacon should help keep you warm on the journey, if not dry.”

  “My lady is generous in all things,” Krispos said. Tanilis’ eyes lit as he dug in.

  The road north had already begun to turn to glue. Krispos did not try to push his horse. If Iakovitzes could not figure out why he was late coming back to town, too bad for Iakovitzes.

  Krispos wrung out his cloak in Bolkanes’ front hall, then squelched up the stairs in wet boots to see how his master was doing. What he found in Iakovitzes’ room startled him: the noble was on his feet, trying to stump around with two sticks. The only sign of Graptos was a lingering trace of perfume in the air.

  “Hello, look what I can do!” Iakovitzes said, for once too pleased with himself to be snide.

  “I’ve looked,” Krispos said shortly. “Now will you please get back in bed where you belong? If you were a horse, excellent sir”—he’d learned the art of turning title to reproach—“they’d have cut your throat for a broken leg and let it go at that. If you go and break it again from falling because you’re on it too soon, do you think you deserve any better? Ordanes told you to stay flat at least another fortnight.”

  “Oh, bugger Ordanes,” Iakovitzes said.

  “Go ahead, but make him get on top.”

  The noble snorted. “No thank you.”

  Krispos went on more earnestly, “I can’t give you orders, excellent sir, but I can ask if you’d treat one of your animals the way you’re treating yourself. There’s no point to it, the more so since with the fall rains starting you’re not going anyplace anyhow.”

  “Mrmm,” Iakovitzes said—a noise a long way from any sort of agreement, but one that, when the noble changed the subject, showed Krispos he
had got through.

  Iakovitzes continued to mend. Eventually, as Ordanes had predicted, he was able to move about with his sticks, lifting and planting them and his splinted leg so heavily that once people in the taproom directly below his chamber complained to Bolkanes about the racket he made. Since the innkeeper was getting, if not rich, then at least highly prosperous from his noble guest’s protracted stay, he turned a deaf ear to the complaints.

  By the time Iakovitzes could stump about the inn, the rains made sure he did not travel much farther. Outside large towns, Videssos had few paved roads; dirt was kinder to horses’ hooves. The price of that kindness was several weeks of impassable soup each fall and spring. Iakovitzes cursed every day that dawned gray and wet, which meant he did a lot of cursing.

  Krispos tried to rebuke him. “The rain’s a blessing to farmers, excellent sir, and without farmers we’d all starve.” The words were several seconds out of his mouth before he realized they were his father’s.

  “If you like farmers so bloody well, why did you ever leave that pissant village you sprang from?” Iakovitzes retorted. Krispos gave up on changing his master’s attitude; trying to get Iakovitzes to stop cursing was like trying to fit the moon in a satchel. The noble’s bad temper seemed as constant as the ever-shifting phases of the moon.

  And soon enough, Krispos came to curse the fall rains, too. As Iakovitzes grew more able to care for himself, Krispos found himself with more free time. He wanted to spend as much time as he could with Tanilis, both for the sake of his body’s pleasure and, increasingly, to explore the boundaries of their odd relationship. Riding even as far as her villa, though, was not to be undertaken lightly, not in the fall.

  Thus he was overjoyed, one cold blustery day when the rain threatened to turn to sleet, to hear her say, “I think I will go into Opsikion soon, to spend the winter there. I have a house, you know, not far from Phos’ temple.”