Tale of Birle (24 page)

“All right, show me. If you can,” Corbel greeted her. His forefinger jabbed at the table. “Put it down here, girl, and show me.”

Birle opened the book. Using her own finger to point at each word, lest Corbel doubt her, she read. “The stone, which had rested four days in a quicksilver bath, to loosen the binding of the four elements within and give dominance to its volatile element, was placed in a sulfurous fire to discover its fixed element. There was no change over a red flame, none over a yellow flame, and none over a blue flame. The stone was ground to powder, in a mortar of agate, then mixed with salt in equal measure. This, with seven times its measure of water, was sealed in a flask. The salt dissolved in the water, but no change occurred in the stone.”

Corbel wasn't satisfied. “I hear nothing of lunar and solar presences, nor
materia prima
,” he complained to his brother. But he seemed to have forgotten about Birle, in this new quarrel.

“When you summoned me here, Brother, I told you I was no alchemist, with incantations and star-readings and talk of the black of blacks, the peacock's tail—I told you, I believed none of that. If you would like to send me away and have one of your magicians back—”

“No. Not yet. Not quite yet.” His eyes went from Birle to her master, measuring.

“If you must take her,” Joaquim said, “then you must. But it will hamper my progress.”

“This progress is no progress,” Corbel said.

“I told you, Brother, that if this thing can be done at all, it can only be done with great difficulty. If you wish to abandon the hope you have only to tell me.”

“When I've used so much gold to make your laboratory? To feed you and your slaves?” Corbel asked. “You don't know how many times I've been told by some fool that a battle was lost, that my army would be destroyed—if I'd listened to them, where would I be? Corbel doesn't turn aside from his chosen route. I don't leave things unfinished. But I should warn you, Brother, that the sooner the safer, for you. The mines give less every day and that at greater expense in slaves. I've a need for gold.”

“I know that,” Joaquim answered.

Corbel rose up, out of the chair he'd been sitting in. He leaned on the table to study Joaquim's face. “It can be dangerous, knowing things. Dangerous especially if you talk of what you know.” Then he relaxed, and stood erect. “But you don't talk—and who would you say anything to, anyway? And you would tell me that it can be equally dangerous not to know, perhaps especially dangerous not to know how widely a secret has spread, and with what effect. . . .” He turned and left the house.

“Thank you, Master Joaquim,” Birle said. Even her voice shook.

“I could not bear it if the Herbal were not to be completed,” he said to her. The smile on his face was bitter. “If in his pride and greed he . . . He thinks of nothing but victory, and princedoms. If he was displeased, he'd destroy a man's lifework—in his angers—even if he knew that preserving it would—I can't bear to think of it,” he said.

Joaquim had not protected her. If she had not been useful to him, he'd have let Corbel take her off without a word or even a thought. Birle remembered Orien, then, seeing him as clearly as if the room were the marketplace, and she wondered how many such moments had bowed him down. She had been thinking harshly of Orien, but now she thought it was a wonderful thing that he could still lift his head to smile at her, helpless across a crowd of people who had no care for either of them.

“Corbel is right to suspect what the city knows,” Birle said. As long as she was useful to her master, she had hope for safety. As long as she was safe, Orien was at the other end of a slender thread of hope.

“Right also to think that the city would rejoice at his fall,” Joaquim agreed. “Corbel knows it's only his soldiers that give him rule over the city, and open its purses to his hands. The guilds would rise against him—except that they know how quick and cruel his revenge would be. And, of course, they hope Celinde's father will rescue her.”

“Is Celinde his wife? Why would her father rescue her from a husband?”

“Because Corbel stole her, for his bride. He took her for the dowry, the city and the lands around it, the mines. He holds her prisoner.”

“I've never heard anyone speak of Corbel's Lady,” Birle remembered.

“Ah, well, that may be because she's a child, not a lady.”

“A child?”

“A child, of eight, although it's been a year, so she would be nine now. He did steal her, out of her father's castle, out from the care of her father's servants, although there must have been traitors among them, because she was roundly guarded. Her father had planned a proud marriage to a prince with ancient lands. Celinde's father doesn't like the idea of a mercenary for son-in-law, a man whose only claim to worthiness is his army's victories. So he plots her rescue, as every man knows. The city waits for his move. As does Corbel. It's her father who keeps Celinde safe from Corbel. Until she's of an age to be gotten with child, he won't bed her. As long as she hasn't been bedded, her father can hope to negotiate the marriage he wishes of her . . . and he'll move carefully, so as not to risk her safety at Corbel's hands. They're like two men at either end of a balancing scale.”

The girl in Corbel's stronghold, for all her high birth and riches, was no different from Birle. She too had her life determined by the desires of others, and she too stood at peril. Birth and riches were a burden to her, and a danger. This thought didn't comfort Birle. In fact, it made her fear Corbel more. “Why haven't I heard anything of this?”

“Didn't you wonder where the priests are? The bells ring, but not to call the people to worship. Didn't you wonder at bells with no priests?”

Birle never had.

“The priests fled the city. Corbel doesn't care about priests, but the guildsmen do, and the merchants, the citizens, and the poor. . . .”

“But what will happen?” Birle asked.

“There will be war. I think it will be the more cruel, because there are some in the city whose profits increase under Corbel. Crops burned, famine, looting, disease and death and men maimed—I'll go back south, whatever Corbel says. There is a community, of philosophers—I had to leave it when I wed—but she's dead now.”

“And me? And Yul?”

“That I can't say. You can't come with me. No women are permitted, nor servants. You might offer yourself to one of the guildmasters. The rich will usually survive times of peril and chaos. They will betray the city from within, if they can, the guilds will. If they think they are strong enough, that's what they'll do, to avoid destruction of property and goods. You're a young woman, attractive enough—especially when you smile. If you remember to smile, to look well, you might save yourself. Yul,” he continued, thinking aloud, “is strong, and he works willingly.”

Birle had thought that she was, at least in this house, safe. Whatever else, she had thought Corbel's power would provide protection. Now, suddenly, it felt to her as if the whole world were a dark and stormy sea, where danger was approaching fast upon her. “But, master, if you go to your philosophers, who will be your amanuensis?” she asked. “Could I not go, I could go as a boy—if I were careful, who would know I wasn't?” He was shaking his head. “It will take time to teach another all that you've taught me, and your Herbal will have to wait while you do that.” His head shook slowly. “Is Corbel certain to lose the city?”

“Nothing is certain,” Joaquim told her. “Not until it is past. Corbel is strengthening the fortifications, increasing his soldiery—which is why he has such urgent need for gold. But Celinde's father has friends, with dowried daughters of their own, who would have the world know a daughter cannot be taken so. They also amass an army. And Corbel is no fool. He fears the enmity of the city.”

Birle walked back and forth in front of the fire, trying to catch and hold her breath. “I've heard nothing of this in the city, at the market. Nobody even speaks of Corbel.”

“Would they, to you? You have his chain around your neck, and who's to say that a slave can't be a spy, even though she's a girl? You have eyes and ears, and a tongue to carry tales. The city cherishes its mistress Celinde and would have no harm come to her. Fear of what Corbel might do keeps it obedient. The city awaits war, and its outcome.”

“When will this happen?” Birle asked.

“Not until early summer, at the soonest. Troops and supplies take time to gather. Celinde's father might wait even longer, until he can destroy the crops in the fields—and starve Corbel out.”

“Isn't there anything Corbel can do?”

“You can be sure he has his plans, you can be sure of that.”

“What are they?” Birle would have liked to hear that Corbel had such strength, such cleverness, or such luck, that he would never be defeated.

“He doesn't tell me. All that I know is, whatever he does it will be bold.”

I
N TWO DAYS, NOTICES WENT
up on the spike at the center of the marketplace, and on the doors of the guildhalls; soldiers made the announcement at the fountains: The Prince would give to his city a feast, to mark the first year of his rule. The Prince invited the city to his castle grounds, for food and drink, entertainments and dancing, on the day of the second night of the next full moon but one.

Word spread quickly, like fire across a hayfield, until the talk of the market was only of the feast, and winter, winter and the feast. It would be spring then, and spring was cause for hope. Winter had no hope in it. Food was scarce, fuel was scarce, only sickness was plentiful. Disease spread in winter, not with the speed of summer fevers, but slowly, like a river rising.

Sometimes, during those days of waiting, Birle was awakened from sleep by a quiet knocking at the door that led to the walled yard. In dire need a wife, or mother, child, even friend, would creep up along the riverbank where no guards watched, under cover of darkness, to ask the Philosopher for comfrey to knit a bone; a plaster to spread over someone's chest; even a single spoonful of the ointment that, dropped into boiling water, made a healing vapor that eased a choking cough; or dwale to ease a death. Birle would rouse Joaquim, and together they would go out to the laboratory to gather what was needed, and explain how to use it.

Thus it became known in the city that Birle was the Philosopher's slave, not Corbel's. Speech was less guarded in her presence, and smiles more easy. If she was about to pay too much for something—candles, a piece of meat—there was a quick shake of the head to alert her. She learned to read the more subtle signals of eyes or mouths when she was about to pay too little. When Birle was asked a question she could answer about treatment of symptoms, she did so. When she could not answer the question, she carried it home with her and brought the Philosopher's advice back to market. The Philosopher's maid, they called her, and the name gave her protection.

At the market, much was said about the feast, and Birle began to understand that Corbel had been not only bold, but also clever. The fishmonger had heard that the Prince planned to slaughter an entire herd of goats, to be roasted in deep pits in his own gardens. “Imagine, he'll give us meat. Meat, children.” Other voices joined in.

“Bread, mountains of bread. And they say it'll be made from the finest flour, it'll be the same white bread that he himself eats.”

“Ale as plentiful as river water in the spring floods.”

“I heard it was wine.”

“He'd never spend his barrels of wine on us.”

“But I heard so, and I thought, hearing it, that the Little Mistress would want it for us, for such a feast.”

“We'll eat and drink and take our leisure—I've heard that the minstrel from his own hall will sing that day, for us.”

“—puppeteers from the great cities to the south—”

“A man can change, and our Little Mistress is so good she must make any man better.”

“The goldmaster's wife has ordered new dresses for each of her five daughters, but I'm thinking it'll take more than fine clothing to catch husbands proud enough for those girls.”

It was as if the promise of a feast to come made the winter days warmer and brighter than they were. It was as if, with a promise ahead of him, a man could bear his present miseries more easily.

The hope that she might see Orien at the feast, and might speak with him among the crowds—she didn't dare to think of it. Thinking of it slowed the moon's cycles, and kept spring at bay. Birle worked, and did not think. She awoke one morning to discover spring, unexpected.

In the Kingdom, spring drove winter off, with sharp winds and thunderstorms. In this southern city, with the sea at its feet, spring moved with soft, slow steps, like a girl at a dance. She held out her hand to the old man and he could do nothing else but take it, and be tamed to her will. In this southern city, spring danced winter out the door. Flowers slipped up from the ground, first the low-growing violets and then—just moments later, it seemed—the taller, brighter, prouder blooms. Little leaves came like tears out onto the branches of trees.

Birle felt like that old man, with her unwilling eagerness. Waking, at night, she would do the only work possible for her to do during the long hours of darkness, waiting for the next day to begin to run its course. She would light a candle and bring down from its shelf the Herbal, quills, and the pot of ink. As she sat at the table, carefully forming the letters and the lines of words, she could feel her spirit grow quiet. Aye, and why shouldn't she be proud of the pages she had written so flawlessly, and the drawings as much like life as she could make them? And of the house, too, gleaming in its cleanliness, and the laboratory, with its shelves of medicines, the herbs dried and hung from the rafters, the next day's experiments, which she had set out for her master to perform.