Tale of Birle (23 page)

“A land to the north and the east.”

“Has it a name?”

She knew now it was safe to tell him, in part because of the kind of man he was, and in part because he might not believe her. “No name that I know of. The people know it as the Kingdom. It lies far from the sea, hidden deep in the land, protected by forest and mountain.”

“Like the Kingdom in the stories?”

“Aye.” Birle waited to be asked about the snow dragon, whose breath froze any living thing below.

“Where the King rules the Lords,” Joaquim asked, “and the Lords rule the people, and the Law rules all?”

Birle didn't say anything. She didn't know if that was really true of the Kingdom, although she knew it was not entirely false.

“And war is unknown, so the land lives in peace,” Joaquim's voice went on. They were both gazing out at the distant stars. Yul was asleep in the laboratory, curled up on his pile of straw.

“Where the King has a library of all the books ever known, which a man may spend his life in reading and this is enough to earn his keep.”

Birle didn't think this was true, although she couldn't answer certainly. She said nothing. Joaquim was lost in his own thoughts again.

“A land so hidden, that even death has trouble finding it.”

“Aye, master,” Birle said, “if this is the Kingdom of the stories, there is death in it—sickness and age, accident. It is no magical kingdom.”

“What were you, in your own land?”

“The Innkeeper's daughter.”

“But how came you here?” he asked. “To this,” he added.

“Through fortune.”

“It was an evil fortune then, if you tell me true.”

Birle didn't know if it was evil or good, only that it was fortune. “I'm telling you true,” she said. “But you might not believe me.”

“Why should I disbelieve you?” he asked. “It may well be that the unmapped lands of the world are more numerous than we guess. In this world—where the son my father got upon my mother's serving maid has become a prince among princes—why shouldn't there be storied kingdoms, hidden away from the greed of the world?”

“Master, there is greed, and jealousy, and pride there—fear and misery, too.”

“Then I am the readier to believe it's real,” Joaquim answered. Birle heard a smile in his voice. “But meantime, in this land, we have our work to get done, you and I, before my brother returns.” Joaquim had shown Birle enough so that she could go ahead with the work of the Herbal, as he named it, even after Corbel had required him to return to alchemy. Birle drew the herbs, so that any who saw her pictures could identify the plants. She memorized all Joaquim told her of an herb's goodnesses, and at night she wrote it all down in carefully shaped letters, so that anyone who could read could understand.

Corbel returned on a day of autumn storm, when wind and rain drove the last leaves from the trees. Birle had just returned from the marketplace, from searching and purchasing. She had just set the two pairs of boots, hers and Yul's, to dry beside the fire when the door flew open, as if wind and rain demanded entrance. It was Corbel, returned. He pushed the door closed behind him.

Birle stood up but didn't speak. Corbel moved to his accustomed place at the center of the room, and gave the room his accustomed perusal. He wore a metal breastplate and his hair hung down wet under his helmet. Boots, leggings, the red shirt with gold circlets up to the elbow, gloves, and even his face were stained with travel; where he stood, water dripped, as if exhausted, onto the floor; but the man didn't seem tired. The smile on his face was greedy and glad, like a wolf with the blood of his prey running down his jowls. Joaquim rushed into the room.

“I'm here for your news,” Corbel said.

“Then come out to the laboratory. There's much for you to see.”

Corbel shook his head, and water sprayed around him. “Tell me the one thing: Have you succeeded?”

“Sadly, no.”

This didn't please Corbel.

“Not for lack of trying,” Joaquim said. “I can show you the records of every experiment I've performed.”

Corbel shook his head again. “Not this day, Brother. I'll go home instead—to bathe, and eat, and sleep. Maybe my wife has stopped her weeping by now, although my spies tell me not. I'll return, Brother, and soon.”

“I await you,” Joaquim said.

Leaving, Corbel took with him the summer-long ease of the house. Now there was danger wherever Birle was, in the city and in the house. As autumn turned colder, her sense of danger grew, and her urgency; her search seemed hopeless, futile, and for that reason the more desperate.

There were only two ways she could ease her spirits. The first way was to work. Work was one way of forgetting. The other was a way of escaping, for a while, the thoughts that troubled her. The puppets could give her this temporary escape.

Birle now lingered as eagerly as Yul did by the puppets. Only one puppeteer still performed in the sharper weather, before a smaller audience, for fewer coins. While the dolls acted out their stories, said their words, sang their songs, came to their sad ends or glad ends, Birle could forget her own fears and worries. She now stood as rapt as Yul while the miniature world went through its changes on the stage before them.

So it happened that one gray day, when the wind off the river had sharp teeth in it to bite at her face and hands, Birle looked away from the stage, where a puppet wife chased after a puppet husband, and saw him—his bellflower eyes—

—and his face was bearded now—

—and hunger had hollowed his cheeks—

It seemed that her heart leaped up into her throat and then fell back, to its accustomed place. It seemed that her heart stopped, to see him. He smiled, and bowed his head to her. Then the smile faded, leaving his face as empty as a sunless sky.

Her eyes took in everything and yet never left his face. He stood among others like himself—rough, ragged brown shirt, no cloak against the wind, feet wrapped round with cloths, an iron chain at his neck, and his face so thin that even the beard couldn't hide the pallor of hunger, his hair long, uncombed. Like the others, he looked unclean, unhealthy, wary and weak; she almost wished she hadn't seen him. She almost wondered why she had sought him. His hands rubbed at his arms for warmth, crossed over his chest as if to protect himself. His shoulders hunched forward. His eyes were the only living thing in his face and they stared at her as if she were the last hope he had in the world; but surprised, too, as if until he saw her he hadn't known there was hope for him in the world—his bellflower eyes—

Birle took two steps toward him. He didn't move. As she watched, a hand reached over from behind, to grab Orien by the nape of the neck as if he were a dog. The hand turned him around, to load the purchases from market into the woven basket Orien wore strapped at his back. The hand pushed at Orien's shoulders, to lead him away, like a dog at his master's heels.

Orien didn't look back at her, or up, or around; he kept his neck bent, his head bowed, like any other slave. She couldn't follow, or try to speak to him, without bringing danger to them both—and for a moment she didn't even want to. Around her the crowd laughed at the quarreling puppets.

Orien was alive, still alive, and she had just seen him, she told herself that. He was hungry, ragged, probably cold—and winter hadn't yet settled over the city. His spirit might have been broken. That too she told herself. Birle didn't know how to feel. The gladness to have him within her sight, however briefly, brought with it a pain to know his fortune, and to lose him again, and an anger to know that there was nothing she could do to ease his life, and the fear to know that she might not ever see him again.

T
HE JOY OF SEEING ORIEN
was a pain as sharp and bright as a knife. How could he have allowed himself to become what she had seen? It was all luck, she knew, and she knew also that her own luck had been good. But that didn't ease her. She wished she could forget the slave she had seen, and remember only the young Lord she had followed.

This thought troubled her, when she couldn't keep it at bay by work. Winter settled down over the city, a season of sunless days, cold winds, rains of ice, and an occasional dusting of snow. Even though winter kept them close inside, there was much work for the Philosopher's amanuensis. She copied the records of Joaquim's experiments in the Great Art. She wrote the pages of his Herbal. The neatly written pages, of formulae or of herbal lore, gave her pleasure. It was the same pleasure she felt when she and Yul had finished the house for the morning, and the rooms shone. It was the same pleasure she felt smelling the cleanness of clothing as it dried beside the fire. It was the pleasure of a task her own hands had done, and done well.

But always, at the back of her mind, like a rat gnawing to find food, was that image of Orien. She tried not to think of him.

Hadn't he, she asked herself angrily, run away rather than be what he must be? He might have stayed where he was, to be Earl. But he had abandoned the earldom and its people to a brother he knew would be a harsh master, like Corbel.

Winter and inactivity made Corbel a frequent visitor to the Philosopher's house. Birle wished she could hide away from him, as Yul did. His eyes followed her with the hunger she had learned to fear.

One winter evening, as she watched the two men eating bowls of stew, soaking up the rich gravy with the tiny loaves of white-flour bread Corbel required, Corbel spoke out. “I have to admit it, Brother, the girl was good value.”

Joaquim, his mind elsewhere, ate on.

“You didn't waste my coins on her. She keeps the house well, keeps you looking more respectable than I've ever seen you—better than that wife of yours did. She is herself clean. She cooks as a man likes to eat. . . . Doesn't complain. She's a treasure, Joaquim.”

The Philosopher seemed at last to sense the danger Birle had known from Corbel's first words. He raised his head from his food, to glance briefly at his brother. Birle knew the Philosopher wasn't a match for the Prince; that the knowledge of the one would always be overborne by the greed of the other. Corbel knew that too, and the knowledge pleased him.

“A king and five ladies, wasn't that her price? It seems to me now that I got a bargain.” Corbel watched Birle's face as he said this.

Birle was frozen in fear beside the warm hearthstone. The luck she had was not her own. With a word, Corbel could take it from her. How could she have forgotten that?

Joaquim put down his spoon to hear what his brother would demand.

“Celinde has her name day soon.” Corbel spoke as if the idea were just occurring to him. “I've been troubled over what I might give her, on her name day. The kind of gift a generous husband might give his young wife—so that her father's spies can't report her ill-treated, slighted, dishonored, to fuel his anger with that false rumor. Have you bedded the girl, Brother?”

“Why would I do that?” Joaquim asked.

Corbel threw back his head and laughed. He laughed until he coughed, and then he drowned both cough and laughter in wine. Birle hurried forward to refill his tankard when he put it back down on the table. She wished she had the courage to pretend to trip, and thus spill wine all over his finery, and thus earn his anger, and thus go free of his desire. It would be useless, she knew, pouring the wine in a red stream into the tankard, to throw herself on her knees before Joaquim.

But what would become of Yul if she was taken to Corbel's house? And Orien? The answers came quickly. Yul would be safe with Joaquim, she knew; he might be saddened at her going, but he would be safe. And Orien—nothing worse could happen to him. So what happened to her didn't matter, and she would be fooling herself to think that it did. Just as she had been deceiving herself that she had deserved her luck. Birle stood stiff. The fire crackled behind her.

Corbel smiled at his brother in just the way that the Steward smiled at the fishermen, come to pay their taxes into his hand.

“If you choose to take her, then you will do it,” Joaquim said. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the bowl. Putting the laden spoon into his mouth, he emptied its contents, and chewed on the chunks of meat and fowl in the thick gravy. “I'll have to find another amanuensis then, which I imagine I can do—by at least the end of the spring. The slave markets open up again in the spring, don't they, Brother?”

Corbel leaned forward and reached out his hand to stop Joaquim from taking another bite. “Amanuensis? Don't speak in riddles to me, keep it plain. What is she to you?” He was suspicious, and he was not pleased.

“The girl takes down the records of experiments, what matter I have used in what weight, the temperature, whether it is treated to fire, earth, water, air, what changes result—”

“She can write?”

“Yes, yes, and read of course. What use would she be to me as an amanuensis if she could not?”

Corbel thought about this, his face shadowed by his hand, his eyes flickering between Birle and her master. “I don't believe you.”

“Don't you wonder at how much I've accomplished?” Joaquim asked.

“No,” Corbel said.

“Which only reveals your lack of knowledge.” Joaquim spoke haughtily. “It is one thing to lead an army in battle, Corbel, but if you would discover the secrets Nature keeps locked in her treasure-house—you can't just fill your belly and rush forward. You must write down what you have tried, and what learned. You must keep records. Otherwise, you merely repeat the errors. Birle keeps my records, she is my amanuensis. Fetch in the book,” he said to Birle.

For a moment, outside, Birle thought she might go not into the laboratory but down the walled yard, past privy and garden, past bare trees, and over the steep, stony bank, to the river. But she didn't know what she could do then—except perhaps drown. The confusion of stars over her head reminded her of another choice, and she found the Plough at the sky's peak and, following the line from the end of the Plough, she saw the Northern Star in its fixed place. Birle went into the laboratory quietly, so as not to waken Yul. The book was so heavy it required both hands to carry it back inside.