Tale of Birle (25 page)

How Nan would laugh to see her now, Birle thought. When that thought rose to her mind, she laughed softly in the darkness, to see herself.

At last the day came. The sun shone, as the city had known it must; the wind blew gentle, and warm. Yul was afraid to go so Birle left the house alone, to join the crowds going up the hilly street. Joaquim had been called to his brother's side early in the morning. Birle wore red for that day, the red skirt and shirt, and even a red ribbon she had purchased at market to braid into her hair.

Corbel's castle rose high atop a hill among hills. The wealthy approached the castle, to mount the carved stone steps and go within. Birle and the others moved around to the left, following the crowds before them. Hills sloped steeply down and then rose steeply. Everywhere, people milled around, going to the tables for food and drink, exploring the grassy hillsides, the orchards, and the woods beyond, drawn over to a raised wooden platform, where musicians played on instruments. The smell of roasting meat was in the air, and faint music, when Birle listened for it. Tables had been lined up, some with barrels beside them, others piled with loaves of bread. Each guest had brought his own tankard or bowl, to dip again and again into the barrels; each guest might eat and drink his fill, many times over.

Birle, standing still, was jostled from behind and from the sides. Many—and those the poorest—crowded around the food tables, too hungry to wait for roasted meat, so hungry they could see nothing of the occasion but the bread and ale spread out for them. Hands reached out over the platters, to grab bread and take it to mouths and reach out again for more. Servants in Corbel's livery poured ale from jugs into the cups that surrounded them.

Birle watched the throngs at the food tables, guessing that Orien would be among the hungry. Why, she wondered now, was she so certain he would be at the feast? A master could refuse his slave the day's pleasure.

One of the indistinguishable throng at the table turned around, and his eyes met hers as if he had known where to look for her. Birle couldn't be sure, at the distance, of the color of the eyes, but she knew. She hurried down the hillside, pushing past people, to where Orien was.

When she came there, he was gone. But she knew he had seen her. Why had he not waited? People pushed roughly at her, in their haste to get to bread and ale. The stench of unwashed bodies and clothing filled her nose. She fought her way free.

She looked back to where she had been standing, at the top of a rise of land. He was there, watching her, and she lifted her hand. She understood—he had gone to find her even as she was hurrying to find him. He didn't raise his hand in answer, but she kept her eyes on him as she hurried back. When she was sure he had seen what she was doing, she attended to making her way as fast as she could, against the flow of people. But when she got there, he was again gone.

Orien didn't wish to meet up with her.

If Birle hadn't needed to warn Orien, she would have left the feast right then, gone back to the Philosopher's house. But it was the poor of the city who would suffer most, if it came to war, their perils would be greatest. If she didn't warn him—

She went slowly down the hill to the entertainers' platform and became one among the many who watched. She kept herself to the rear of the crowd, and off to one side. Puppeteers had the stage.

These were puppets the likes of which Birle had never seen before, carved with so many joints that when they walked they seemed to be alive. When the puppets stood in a line upon their stage, and bowed, Birle stamped and clapped her approval with the rest of the audience.

A singer followed the puppeteers, a fine young man, handsome enough to set the women murmuring and the men grumbling. He looked into the crowd as he sang, his hands plucking melody from the gleaming lute. He sang about a mother whose three sons were lost at sea but came back ghosts to tell the sad news. He sang of two brothers in a field, from which only one brother came back alive, and was compelled to leave his lands forever, for his crime. Then he sang a song Birle had heard before, the song about the ravens and the dead knight. “As I was walking all alane,” his sweet voice sang, “I heard two corbies making a mane.” In this song also, only the hawks and hounds and lady fair knew where the knight lay, but the hound had gone hunting to fill his own belly, and the hawk had returned to his perch, and the lady—Birle listened, remembering—had taken another mate. So the corbies were going to pick clean the knight's body, like the heads on Corbel's spike—even his golden hair would be taken to line the nest. It was the same song, only everything was changed.

Birle would have wondered about that, but she saw, at last—Orien. He hadn't seen her, she was sure of it. If he had, he'd have gone elsewhere.

By the time she stood behind him, the singer was finished. He was letting the crowd praise him, a handkerchief held to his nose. Birle stood at Orien's back. Two festering boils stood out red and pus-filled on the side of his neck. Birle wished she could take him back to the Philosopher's house, and heat him a bath, and dress him in clean clothes, and make compresses to draw out the infection from the boils. But that was only a fleeting wish. She didn't know how long he would give her to speak with him, and she had a warning to deliver. She spoke into his ear, her voice quiet under the crowd's noise. “Orien, I would have only a few words with you.”

The head went up. It was a long moment before he turned around. When he did his face was not glad to see hers. He was afraid, she felt that. But why should he be afraid of her?

Orien grabbed her roughly by the arm. “Come on, then,” he said. He pulled her along a path. When they were alone among the trees, out of sight of the feast and beyond its noises, he sat down on a rock and looked up at her. “You know the danger you've put me in.”

Birle stood, uncertain. “I've put you in no danger.”

“It's little you know, Innkeeper's Daughter, living safe as you do in Corbel's service. For the others of us, anyone who deals with Corbel's house, except for profit, is suspected of spying.” He had tied his matted hair at the back of his neck with a leather thong. His beard was as matted and stained as his hair. His words were angry, but it wasn't anger she saw in his eyes. His eyes were too filled with hopeless sorrow to leave room for anger. There was a smell of city filth all over him.

“I'm not Corbel's slave. I'm the Philosopher's slave, and I live in the Philosopher's house.”

His hand reached out as if he would touch the chain at her neck. He didn't have to say anything.

Birle spoke more quietly. “You can ask, ask anyone at the market.”

“I don't go to the marketplace.”

Birle sat down on the ground. “I saw you there.”

“Sometimes, I go to the fountain to fetch water, but that's as far as I go. The one day was—my master had business with me.”

That reminded Birle. “Listen, Orien, Joaquim has told me—”

“Who is Joaquim?”

“The Philosopher.”

“You call him by name?”

“You've heard of the Little Mistress? Corbel stole her—and her father will come to take her back, and take the city back too. That means war. War means—”

He was shaking his head, slowly. “It doesn't concern me.”

“But it does, because a city in war—”

“I've been sold to the mines,” Orien said. At that, he smiled—his smile not even a ghost of the one she remembered, his smile a rotting corpse.

“When?”

He shrugged.

A terrible urgency fell down over her. “Then you have to escape.”

“How can I?”

“Go to the river.”

“I don't know what lies beyond the river, I'm too weak to go any distance, an escaped slave, when he is captured. . . .”

“Listen, the Philosopher's house backs onto the river. Orien? Yul is there, you remember him? We could hide you, I'm sure of it.” Orien didn't seem to be listening, but she went on talking. “The house is small, and it stands right up against the front wall, unlike all the others. You can recognize the house, easily, when you get there. This wood must go as far as the river.”

“You've forgotten the soldiers,” he reminded her, and she had. “The difference is, Birle, that you have no need to remember the soldiers, but I do. No matter how poor my master is, they will find me for him. Before the soldiers bring a slave back . . .” He swallowed, and didn't finish what he was saying. “Even if I could get as far as your Philosopher's house, what would I do then?”

Birle's spirits were being ensnared by his so that her own ideas seemed hopeless to her even before she gave them voice.

“I don't know,” she told him. “I could show you how to read the map of the skies, and we know we came south and west from the Kingdom—”

“I almost disbelieve in the Kingdom,” Orien said. “It has been four seasons now, a full year. Did you note that, Birle? No, you wouldn't, it wouldn't be needful for you to think back, to say, ‘Only a year ago, a year and a little more, I was such a man.' To think of what I was. The Earl that would be, and who would believe me if I tried to tell them? I should never have left, Birle. If I had it to do again . . .”

“Aye, but you don't.” There was nothing to be gained by this talk.

“Yes, but if I did. I sometimes think of it. I often think of it.”

“Why is your master selling you to the mines?” Birle asked.

“To pay his debts. The carpenter put himself into apprenticeship. He had to—otherwise he would always be poor, never have a wife. As an apprentice, he serves his seven years and then he can become a member, if they find him worthy.”

“You seem to envy him.”

“How can I not?”

“Because you're not a craftsman—you're an Earl.”

At that he gave her the smile she remembered. “No, Birle, I'm a slave, slave to a tailor whose work is so poor that his luck matches it.” He rose, as if to leave her.

“You have to escape,” she said.

“I can't.”

“You did it before, you escaped the Kingdom.”

“Yes, but then—you might have had your master whom you call by his name buy me, Birle.” His voice was bitter now. “You might have sought me out.”

Orien walked away. She was not going to follow him, to make explanation and excuse. If he thought that of her, and so bitterly. If he would just walk away from her that way. Aye, and hadn't he always turned his back on those things that weren't as he wished?

She walked on through the trees, away from the feasting, to be alone with her sorrow and her anger. He would let himself be led to his death in the mines, like a goat to the slaughter. He complained that she hadn't found him, but she had—what else had she done, this day? He complained that she hadn't helped him, but when she tried to talk of escape he would say only that it couldn't be done. He complained of his luck—

Aye, and he had the right to complain. She stood now at the river, which flowed far below her. Three soldiers stood guard, and she turned back into the trees. Orien had much to complain of in his luck; if complaining would do any good, she would have complained with him, and lamented.

When Birle came out of the shadowed woods into the sunlit grounds, she joined the crowd around the entertainers' platform yet again, because there she was least likely to be noticed. A tall, dark man strode over to the edge of the platform and stood there, waiting for the silence to grow ripe. “Today,” he spoke in a voice like the calling of horns, “you are privileged to see those things which—until this afternoon, until this very hour—only the great of this world have had set before their eyes.”

“Fine speech,” a man from the crowd called out. “But I never gave a kiddle for fine speech. And I'll wager Corbel didn't either.” The crowd laughed at the challenge.

The Showman wasn't upset. “Let my wonders speak for themselves, and so they will, without any speech at all.” He lifted an arm into the air and turned, his long red robe flowing around him. A wagon, with two horses, had been pulled up at the back of the platform, a bright yellow wagon with a yellow house built on top of it. “Wonders!” the Showman called, his voice ringing out, “Reveal yourselves.”

The door opened, outward.

Nothing happened.

The audience, which had been temporarily quelled by the showman's voice, hooted and cried out.

At last, a man crawled out of the door, on his hands and knees. Then slowly, like a seedling unfolding from the earth, he stood up. The crowd fell silent. The man was taller by far—taller by half the Showman's height—than the Showman, tall and as thin as a birch tree. Before the audience could respond, another figure ran onto the platform, to stand beside his fellow. This man came up no farther than the tall man's knees. The two were dressed alike, in red leggings and yellow shirts, which only emphasized their great differences. The little man had a head as large as a grown man, but all the rest of his body was no larger than a child's. He was no bigger than one of Birle's small sisters. A third man came to join them, a man as thick and strong-looking as the trunk of an ancient oak. He dragged a heavy chain from his hands. When he pulled on the chain, a snarling creature who moved on all fours like a wolf was dragged out at its end. Whether that was a man or a woman, Birle couldn't tell. Its long hair hung down over its face and its head moved like a wild animal's, back and forth. It leaped out to the end of its chain, snarling at the crowd, and the strong man jerked it sharply back.

The crowd moved backward, pushing against Birle. Even then, the Showman held his pose. “And now,” he called out, his voice like a bell over the silent, staring crowd, “the last and best.”

Through the low doorway stepped a woman, the likes of whom Birle had never seen before. She was a delicate thing, with her hands slipped up inside the broad sleeves of the green gown she wore, with gold-slippered feet that minced forward in tiny steps as she bowed up and down from the waist. Her costume had a wide sash at the waist, and fitted her legs closely as it fell to the floor. The material was intricately embroidered in gold and white, with flowers and clouds and a huge golden dragon with red flames coming out of its open mouth. The dainty woman had long, thick, straight black hair that reached almost down to the ground. Most wonderful was her face—the skin almost a golden color, the eyes slanting upward at their ends. She stood at the end of the line and the Showman—knowing how captivated his audience was—named his wonders. “The tallest man in the world, the shortest man in the world, the strongest man in the world, the wild man of the north, and—from lands so far to the east that you would have to journey a lifetime only to arrive there—the Emperor's Daughter.”