Tale of Birle (19 page)

“How long? Why, for your life.”

She was a slave, then. Orien was a slave.

“Unless Corbel sets you free. Sometimes, in return for extraordinary service, a man will do that. Or if it's a woman who has borne children, because a man doesn't want his own children to be slaves and they must be if their mother is, so he might in that instance give her freedom. Otherwise, no.” Her master hesitated, thought. “You mustn't mind, Birle.”

If she was a slave, then what was the reason to keep the house, to obey? At the Inn, at least, she served the Inn's prosperity, from which they all benefited. Here there was no reason, no necessity—except fear.

F
EAR WAS SUFFICIENT REASON, GIVEN
sufficient fear. Birle would have sat on by the fire all day, not for warmth but for lack of spirit; but fear of what Corbel might do—should he unexpectedly arrive, and arriving unexpected find her unoccupied—ran along her bones. Fear kept her on the move—hauling water to sweep clean wooden floors and scrub clean plates and tankards.

At midday the street door burst open and Corbel himself entered. A soldier followed, carrying a fowl by its neck; he bore also a round loaf and a stoppered jug. He dropped his burdens on the table and went back to the street, where the horses stamped their feet. Corbel stood in the center of the room, hands behind his back and feet wide apart, looking around him. If he was pleased with what he saw, Birle did not know it.

“Is your master out back?”

Birle nodded.

“The monster works with him?”

She nodded.

“I hope for your sake that you can cook.”

Birle nodded.

Although he had no more to say, Corbel kept looking at her. Then—abruptly—he left. Birle's legs were so weak that she would have sat down, except for the fear that Corbel might return, to catch her out. After a few moments, she tiptoed to the door he had left open, and closed it. How Nan would laugh to see her so meek, she thought, and the thought was bitter to her. Yet it was Nan who made her learn how to pluck and stew a fowl, or roast it. She had never thought she would be grateful to Nan.

Sorrow and fear were what Birle knew of that day—sorrow, fear, and toil. She singed and plucked the fowl, then set it in a large pot to stew. One fowl to feed three—and one of the three Yul—meant that the broth would be welcome. While the dinner cooked, she went up the narrow staircase and found a low attic room, where Joaquim had his bed. This room too she washed clean, and then the narrow staircase. By late afternoon the fowl was ready, so she called Joaquim and Yul to the table. Birle had little appetite. Fear and sorrow filled her stomach. As soon as the meal was done, she climbed into her cupboard bed and fell eagerly into sleep.

A pounding on the door awoke her. It sounded as if someone were beating on the door with two fists. Birle stood beside the door but didn't dare to open it. From behind her, Joaquim spoke, “Open it, Birle.”

He had come as far as the lowest step, wearing a long white shirt that fell around his ankles. In the dim light of the banked fire, he didn't look frightened. Neither did he sound alarmed. She obeyed him.

As soon as she had turned the key in the lock, the door pushed against her, and Corbel entered the room, from the dark, empty street. He took his place at the center of the room, looking past Birle as if she were invisible, speaking to his brother. “This place smells like a barnyard,” he said. The rich smell of wine came from him, and he swayed slightly as he stood. “You must bathe.”

“Yes. Yes of course,” Joaquim answered. “I'm sorry.”

“Have you a bath?” Corbel demanded.

Joaquim looked to Birle to answer. At the Inn, they bathed in a half-barrel, and she had seen nothing like that in the house. She didn't know if the building where Yul and Joaquim had spent the day contained such a barrel. She didn't know which would anger Corbel more, that they did not know or that they had none. “No, master.”

She had guessed correctly, she thought, since Corbel left the house at that answer. By the time she had shut the door, and turned the big key in the lock, Joaquim had gone back to his bed.

In the morning, after they had eaten the last of the bread and cheese, her master turned to her. “Clothing,” he said. “You'll want clothing. And I'm not as clean as I might be, nor are my clothes.”

“Aye,” she said. The morning was fine—the sky clear, the air warm. She could lay his washed clothing out to dry in the sunlight.

“Yul,” Joaquim said. “Upstairs, you'll find two trunks. Bring down the one that has a leather strap around it.”

He must be as simple as the monster, Birle thought, if he thought he'd be understood. She watched Yul's misshapen mouth twist, to form a word.

“Up?”

“The staircase is behind you.”

Yul turned, looked, turned back, nodded clumsily. “Up. D-runk.”

“It's the one with the leather strap I want, not the other.”

Yul shook his head, concentrating on his master's face.

“Ah. Let me see. Leather—what boots are made of. The strap is wrapped around the trunk. The other trunk has no leather strap.”

Yul understood. He waited.

“Could you bring that trunk, with the leather strap, down here, for Birle?” Joaquim asked. He didn't seem impatient.

“Yes!” Yul cried, and got up.

“He understands you,” Birle said.

“Of course. He's not deaf. Once I've made him understand what needs doing, he does it. It's simple, really—he won't do anything until he understands, that's all. I know learned men who haven't acquired that wisdom. The trunk has my wife's clothing in it. You can take what you need from it.”

A wife? But he had the small, narrow bed, and there was no evidence of a wife in the house. “She won't be angry?”

“No. She's dead—last fall, in another city. She took the summer fevers, and I couldn't find any physic to make her well. Her garments may do for you, but as to Yul I don't know.”

Yul came down the stairs, the trunk on his back, bent over not for its weight but for the low ceiling over the stairs. He set it in the middle of the room.

“Good,” Joaquim said. “Now, let's get to the morning's work.” Yul followed, as if he understood every word that his master spoke.

Without warning, sorrow rose up in Birle, and beat against her like waves against rocks. Her head fell down onto the table and she had no will to move. It was a dark, darkening, shapeless thing, this sorrow, and she knew its name.

Aye, it would be more bearable if Orien were dead.

But she couldn't sit there, weeping. If Corbel should come—and catch her out—and the soldiers would arrive with provisions and she had no idea how long she had sat there. . . . Birle got up, afraid.

She brushed crumbs from the table and rinsed the tankards clean. She swept the floor, then the stairs, and straightened the bedclothes upstairs. She remembered that she was to open the trunk.

When she lifted the wooden lid, a breath of sweet air came out. Not freshly sweet, as flowers, but old, dry, as if it were the memory of flowers, somehow caught in the dead air of the trunk. She lifted the clothing out carefully: three skirts, one red, one blue, one yellow; six shirts of the same colors; underskirts and chemises of some light fabric; a blue cloak with a worked-silver clasp; and a pair of boots, too narrow for her feet, the leather too dainty for use. Birle lifted the folded clothing out of the trunk and laid it gently on the floor beside her. His wife must have been a fine lady. There were bolts of uncut cloth, some in simple colors, some with several colors woven together, and at the bottom, tucked into a corner, a package wrapped around in a piece of old linen. The cloths, Birle saw, for a woman's monthly time—but these were softer than any she had ever before used, as soft as moss.

Birle held one of the skirts in front of her. She had been almost Birle's height, this wife, and only a little plumper. But Birle had never worn such colors. Her clothing had always been brown, dyed with the barks the weavers knew. In the Kingdom, only the Lords could spare the cost of such richly colored fabrics. She wouldn't dress in them until she had washed—and now that she thought of it, she would welcome a bath.

All that day, one after the other, three wagons drew up before the house. The horses waited patient hours while soldiers unloaded crates and tables. The tables, and some of the crates, were too large to carry through the doorways, so they lifted them over the wall, with Yul's help. He would stand, holding a long table as it rested against the top of the wall while three soldiers hurried through the house to take up the other end; then Yul would join them, to carry it to the building at the rear. Four such tables went into that building, and the afternoon was filled with the pounding sounds of shelves being set into the walls. The crates, too, went into that building, carried by two men, or by Yul alone. The soldiers sweated at their work, grunted and cursed. The last wagon brought also a chair, with back and arms, and the promised bath.

Birle stood staring at this when the soldiers had at last gone. A man might sit in this metal tub, to bathe at his ease. This was the kind of bath Orien had spoken of, in the Earl's house. She was still staring at it when Corbel himself entered, the door flung wide before him. He moved past her without a word. Birle busied herself drawing water from the well, to heat in the cooking pot over the fire. When he returned, Corbel had little to say, no more than, “You'll see that he bathes.”

“Yes,” Birle said.

“All three of you. There's soap, somewhere, he'll never have thought of it. But I did.”

He seemed to want some response to that, so Birle repeated herself. “Yes.”

“In two days' time I'll dine here. Unlike the rest of the world, I take my meal after sunset, not to waste the daylight hours. You can expect me then.” He reached out his hand and with just a gloved fingertip lifted her chin, until she had to look at him. His eyes frightened her, but she made herself keep looking at him, and it was like making herself hold her hand in fire. Whatever he saw—and he could have seen little more than fear, naked—satisfied him, and he was gone.

Birle closed the door, and leaned against it.

They bathed that evening, in the privacy of the walled yard behind the house. Joaquim washed first. When he reentered the house, his long hair damp, dressed in the clean leggings and shirt she had put out for him, Birle and Yul emptied the bath, then refilled it with fresh water that had been heating while Joaquim washed.

When Birle climbed into the bath, and sat down in the warm water, and the water rose up to cover her, tears as warm as the bath slid out of her eyes and down over her cheeks. The air had turned purple, changing to night darkness. A single star burned over the roof of the house. There was no purpose to thinking of Orien, yet he hung on in her mind, like the star hung in the night sky.

Yul was afraid to bathe. She had to comfort him like a child, with soothing noises over his whimpering wordlessness. She washed him as if he were a child, with soap and cloth. He had no clean clothes to put on, and she thought she might take the uncut cloth, to make him shirt and trousers. As Yul lifted the bath to empty it for the last time, Joaquim came out to join them. Many stars had come out in the darkening sky. Voices, laughing, singing, talking, came from beyond the wall.

“You don't resemble my wife, except for that look of sadness in your eyes. Look,” Joaquim said, pointing, “there's the Plough, just coming out.”

Birle didn't know what he was talking about, and she thought he wasn't really talking to her at all. In the morning, she thought, she would take their soiled clothes and wash them. Until the clothes had been washed, they could stay piled against the rear building, so that their odors wouldn't linger in the house, to offend Corbel.

She understood the true situation—she might keep Joaquim's house, but it was Corbel's displeasure she had need to fear.

When the time came to serve Corbel his meal, as guest, the house at least was ready, the meat the soldiers had brought was roasting on a spit over the fire, the little loaves of bread no bigger than her fist—which the soldiers had told her Corbel must have—were waiting in a basket, and the stew of parsnips and onions bubbled in the pot. Birle alone served the two men and then, as she did at the Inn, left them to their meal.

Corbel called her. “Where are you going, girl?” He wanted her to stand silent at the wall, ready to cut meat and fill his tankard. Corbel took the chair, and ate without speaking until all the food had been consumed. For a slight man he had a fierce appetite, Birle thought as she cut the last of the meat from the bone, and scraped the last of the stew from its pot.

“Now you can show me your work, Brother. But be brief; I'm a man with much to do.” Corbel seemed well-pleased as he left the room.

He was not so pleased when he returned. “That laboratory—how can my brother do his work in there? If you think I'm going to dress you out in finery . . . and feed you . . . so that you can laze by the fire—”

Birle had never thought that. She hadn't known, no one had told her, she didn't even know what a laboratory was.

“—do the marketing for you, wasting the time of soldiers—”

She hadn't asked for soldiers, nobody had told her anything.

“—and keeping my own cooks busy baking bread for this house too, when they've my own tables to see to—”

She hadn't known where the food was coming from. How was she to know?

“—too whey-faced to leave the house. I give you warning. Joaquim is here to work for me and I won't have your slovenliness interfering. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Birle said. “I didn't know—” she started to say. At her words, his eyes blazed in anger.

“You're not here to know.”