Firethorn (19 page)

Mai said, “Sire Torosus says this war is what comes of letting a woman rule. She was regent, you know, for eight years before Prince Corvus came of age. But she's ruled longer than that, if what they say is true. While King Voltur had the kingdom of Incus in his fist, she led
him
by the dangle. She couldn't keep the same grip on her son.”

“I heard the prince's wife had bewitched him, and that's why Queenmother Caelum must war against him.”

Mai grinned. “Well, that's the tale they tell. But his wife is with child now after years of lying fallow. Once the queenmother was sent away, the girl quickened fast.” Mai tapped my knee and leaned closer. “So which one do you suppose is the cannywoman? Not the one who was cursed with barrenness. Now Caelum doesn't want the girl to have time to bear the prince's child. That's why she's in such haste, why she sews with a red-hot needle and a flaming thread. King Thyrse has summoned a small army, so she must be counting on half the Blood of Incus rising up with her. They'll not be so quick to follow if the prince has sired an heir.”

I gaped at Mai. “You call this a small army?”

She laughed at me. “If the king had need, he could call on ten times as many cataphracts, and better ones too. That's why I told Sire Torosus to stay home. This winter campaign is a fool's errand, I said, so leave it to young fools who don't know any better. We may end up stranded on the wrong side of the Inward Sea with no provisions and no ships to take us home. And suppose we win—you can be sure the queenmother will begrudge us plunder and lands for fear her own people will turn on her. But Sire Torosus says the king must have his reasons, and we'll find out soon enough—and maybe it's the queenmother who's a fool, for letting a man so far into her plans.”

It was remarkable to me that Mai gossiped about kings and queens as if they were neighbors in the next croft, and was as quick to find fault. Their doings had seemed far above me, the stuff of ballads, not gossip; but here in the Marchfield, those were one and the same.

Mai sighed. “Sire Torosus says he will go, as he's needed, and anyway he'd just as soon be as far from his dame as he can get. As for me, I'd rather be snug in my croft with that bitch looking down her long upper lip at me than on the road in the winter. But the man won't let me stay home. Says he needs a feather bed for his old bones.” She slapped her leg and made the flesh wobble.

I could see how a man might find her soft to lie upon. Her thigh was the size of both of mine.

We were silent for a moment. The baby suckled and Sunup scratched the hound's back until his tail thumped. There was a certain smell of milk and damp dog under the awning, which gave me comfort. The girl peered at me again and smiled.

“She's a rank vixen,” Mai said.

“Who is?”

“That Caelum. She should let him win. This is unseemly, to defeat the king before all his clans.”

I'd given the tourney barely a glance in my circuit around the field. Now I saw that there were less than two hands of fighters left, and most wore the queenmother's colors. One of the king's men toppled off his horse and lay still as the dead.

I sat up straight, staring at the field. “Is the king down there?”

“Of course he is—there in the gilded armor.”

His wooden sword was also leafed with gold, but in the dull light it shone without glittering. He was flanked by two of his clan, the only men of his left on the field. Together they battled twice as many of the queen's party. He lost one man but she lost two. Then his last cataphract fell, taking another with him. King Thyrse fought on alone. A thrust, and one man slumped over his saddle. The king clubbed another to the ground with the weighted hilt of his sword. He ducked, came up on the last man from below, and dispatched him too. Then he was alone on the field, and the sound from the crowd filled the bowl in the hills to overflowing.

I cheered too, but Mai said, “She left it too late. So he'd know she gave it to him.”

“But he fought well,” I said.

“No one fights that well. Look, here she comes.”

Queenmother Caelum rode out on the field to meet the king. Her horse was pure white, caparisoned in unmarked white leather. She wore a crimson gown. Yards of velvet spread over the horse's flanks and trailed to the ground. Her face, in all this crimson, looked pale as a blanched almond. She surrendered a sword, bowing deeply, and the king leaned from his horse to give her the kiss of peace.

The crowd roared, stamped, whistled.

Mai's boy had fallen asleep, oblivious to the noise. She settled him in the valley between her thighs and leaned back on her elbows with a groan. “This one coming is a boy for sure,” she said. “He's riding high and he kicks like a hare, right under my heart.”

That burden she carried in her great belly was not all fat. I must have been blind not to see it before.

“Every campaign, another baby. I lost the last one bearing it, and so much blood I thought I'd never get up again. I'm afraid this time will be worse, with winter coming and midwives scarce.”

“Then why did you quicken again?”

Mai snorted and looked at me in disbelief. She poked her right thumb through the hole in her left fist. “I thought even country girls knew about that. Didn't you watch the bulls and cows go at it?”

“Of course I know how it's done,” I said, “but why didn't you take childbane?”

Mai gripped my arm and whispered, “If you know something that stops a baby being planted, you'll be the most sought-after woman in the Marchfield. I thought I'd tried everything—I weaned my children late, I prayed, I put bungs in my bunghole—I did everything but keep the man from my bed, and that I'm unwilling to do! Once I drank a decoction a miscarrier gave me to get rid of a baby when I was three months along. It nearly killed me, but
she
lived.” She nodded her head toward Sunup, who was listening to every word. “I guess I'm good fat soil,” she added with a coarse laugh. “Plow me and the seed will come up every year. I never go fallow.”

I said, “I thought everyone had heard of childbane. All the women where I come from use it if they don't wish to bear. I have some here.” I took a leather packet from my belt and unfolded it to show her the gray powder. “I ground the berries so I could put a pinch in my wake-me-up in the morning. It hides the bitter taste. But you can eat them whole.”

“How much do you have?”

“Enough for me. Enough for a while.”

“Can you get more?”

Mai spoke in a whisper again, so I lowered my voice to match. “Maybe. I haven't seen it around here. It likes wet feet, so there might be some in these little bogs or in the marshes down by the river—I can't believe you don't know of this! Haven't you seen those little white berries with the black eyes? Squirrels won't eat them, nor bears. They cling to the shrub till the next year's leaves come. But they're not so potent after a few months, and you have to take more.”

Mai said, “Find some for me. I know plenty who'll pay dear for it. And then you shall be able to buy your own shoes, and with better coin than bruises.”

I told Mai I would look out for it, and furthermore that she should send for me when her time came; I was not a midwife, but I'd helped at childbirth and I knew an herb that would slow the bleeding and more than a few for pain. Then I told her I should be going. Our clans were forming their battle lines and I ought to be back with my own people.

“Or what?” she said. “Catch another bruise?”

I shook my head.

“Is it his habit to hit you?”

I said, “No, just the once. That night I met you—because I was off alone and he went looking for me.”

“Hmm,” said Mai, as if she didn't entirely believe me.

What a mooncalf I was, springing to Sire Galan's defense when he'd dealt me a blow far worse than a slap on the cheek. Her shrewdness—her kindness—touched where I was most sore. Tears began to fall, hot and shameful. I rubbed my face with my skirt, not wanting to sully my new headcloth. Before long my story spilled out too, all about Sire Galan and his wager.

Mai let me talk until I was out of words before she said, “Some would have sold your tale to a rumormonger before you'd finished the telling. I won't—but you're too trusting by far. I hope you haven't come to me for wisdom. I'm more cunning than wise. I know what the wise would say: don't be greedy. What you have is enough and more than you deserve.”

I looked at her, stricken.

She grinned back. “Didn't I say I
wasn't
wise? I know a few things, though, and some to the purpose. I know a hexwoman. She sells curses at tourneys—you know, those little men made of lead that you name after some fighter you're wagering against and throw into the fire. But I heard she had something more potent in her cat-skin bag—something like invisible wasps that sting your enemies and make them ill. She could send a curse to take the bloom off the maid.”

I made the ward sign. “Never. I don't hold with ill wishing. It's a foul thing—and besides, it comes back to you, they say.”

Mai shrugged. “Some say. Well, there is something else—but a curse would be cheaper.”

She said I should not try to stop Sire Galan from his course. He was bent on it, had staked more than a horse, more than his life on it—had staked his pride. He'd have the girl if she could be had, without reckoning the consequences. What I could do was to make sure that Sire Galan, whether he won the wager or lost it, would cleave to me and take no other (or if he did, not for long, she said). And she told me how I could bind him, what to do and when to do it.

Before I left Mai passed me a waterskin. “Wash your face, if you must go. You don't want the clods to know you've been crying, do you? It's plain as the dirt on your cheeks.”

She was there under a canopy, that maid of Ardor. She sat on a little stool of wood and leather with her skirts spread about her. The gown was of a fine iridescent silk—rose if you looked at it one way, blue another—that I'd only seen pictured in tapestries before. She was not quite as beautiful as I remembered: face as pale, yes, but aided by a little starchroot, which failed to hide the smudges under her eyes. Though she watched the warriors line up on the field below, her thoughts seemed far away. She yawned and lifted a hand over her mouth. There were rings on every finger, even the thumb. Weren't those jewels sufficient to buy her a husband? The neck of her bodice was cut low and bordered in ermine. The thin gauze of her underdress made a pretense of covering what her gown revealed. Egret plumes were braided into her hair. The sea wind ruffled the plumes, lifted locks of her hair, and set the banners flapping above the canvas roof. I didn't see her father, but there were other men of Ardor's Blood standing under the shelter, and jacks and foot soldiers on guard around it.

The maid leaned toward a dame sitting next to her whose garments were severe in comparison: an unmarried aunt, perhaps, kept like a farmyard dog to guard the hen coop. She said something and the woman nodded and beckoned one of the jacks to her.

She sent the jack over to us. He pushed Noggin and put a boot to his backside, saying, “Get, get, get!” as if he were chasing a goat out of a garden. Noggin squawked and dodged out of his way. The jack took a little more trouble with me. He unslung his baldric and struck me across the back with his leather scabbard—the sword still sheathed in it—saying, “And you! Keep your eyes off your betters. Mend your manners or your skull will need mending.”

I spat on the ground and he cuffed my ear.

She never turned our way.

I didn't presume to think the maiden had recognized me from the meeting in the marketplace, when I'd stood behind Sire Galan stealing glances at her while she stole glances at him. She had us chased away because we marred her view. We should not be allowed to occupy even the corner of her eye. Whereas I'd set out to fill my eyes with her, maybe in hopes she would prove older and uglier than I remembered. Now I knew she was fair. “Scratch an itch and catch a fever,” Na used to say when I was too curious for my own good.

Before I saw the maid again, I had pitied her. She was stalked from a blind and didn't know she was hunted for a foul wager. She was young and slight and I didn't see how she would bear up under a woman's sorrows, for she was bound to suffer—as I was suffering now—if Sire Galan hit his mark and stopped courting as quick as he'd started. I'd even had a little notion, which I'd kept in the back of my mind because it did not bear a closer look, that I might go to her on the sly and warn her about the wager. I'd fancied her grateful and Sire Galan the loser and no one else the wiser. But I quailed fast enough when I saw her in her finery with her guards about her. No warning would be welcome if it came from the likes of me.

To be sure she was well guarded—from the likes of me. Her jack had hit me just hard enough for show, but I smarted all the same.

And then I thought: even if she knew of the wager, she might still let Sire Galan come courting. She was gambling too, staking her reputation against his hard heart that a smooth brow and round cheeks and all the rest of her beauty, what I could see and what was hidden, would tangle him in such a net he could not escape. Who was quarry here, after all?