Tale of Birle (37 page)

FOR A FEW DAYS, NAN
stayed on with Birle and Lyss, to cook, to wash the baby's clouts, and to scold. “If you don't bubble her, she'll have colic,” Nan would say. “Aye, if you pick her up every time she cries it won't take her long to learn to weep and wail for what she wants.”

Birle didn't know why she had ever minded Nan's scolding. It was just the way Nan cared for things, and kept the empty air from being lonely. But she was not sad to stand in the doorway of the house, with Lyss in her arms, and watch Nan turn to wave for the last time before she stepped into the trees.

She stood in the doorway, with the weight of the babe in her arms—aye, and in her belly this same child had seemed heavier by far—and let the silence fall over her like rain. Orien must have given her back her heart, she thought, because she had it to give to the child: She didn't know whether to rejoice or weep over that. She wished she could ask someone—to ask if all of life was changes, like alchemy, transmutations from one thing into another, as she had been transmuted into two, herself and Lyss. She would know if alchemy rested on that truth, and she would know where it had degenerated into magic. She would know—aye, she would like to know everything, and give the knowledge to her child. She would give—

Her eyes rested on the meadow, where the cress-choked stream wound its way into the forest under a sun-filled sky. She would give Lyss, from Orien, his way of doubting, to ask questions when everyone said something must be so, and the courage that enabled him to endure without hope, that brought him to her from the mines. From herself she could give only her own heart. Aye, and she had already done that, given it completely and without warning. As with Orien, it had been wholly given in the blink of an eye, her heart gone into this babe's keeping without a thought. And once again, Birle's whole life had been changed by the gift.

T
HE WIND RUSHED ACROSS THE
meadow and on into the black branches of the trees. Dark clouds raced across the sky. Birle had been drawn out of her bed, but she wasn't alarmed once she had taken the measure of the night. This was fall, like an army on horseback, driving out the last of summer.

The wind caught at her cloak, whipping it around her. If she looked through the door she had left open behind her she would see Lyss's cradle in the shadows beside her own bed. Under her blanket, Lyss breathed softly in sleep, her hand curled up beside her mouth.

The wind couldn't trouble Birle any more than it could trouble the stream meandering across the meadow. The stream had its own source, and its own direction; it was too small a thing for the wind to waste its strength on. Birle also had her own source and her own direction.

In the spring, or next fall at the latest, Birle would go south again, to the cities of the coast. To find Yul. Since Birle had promised to return, she must. It might be that Yul wouldn't wish to return with her, but she had to give him the choice.

Birle stepped out along the path, to let the wind blow all around her. She had thought, at first, that she could take Lyss with her on the journey. She had told herself that she needn't leave her child behind. She could bind Lyss on her back, or carry the child in a sling across her chest. But Birle had always known that she couldn't take Lyss into the chances of the southern cities, helpless and innocent. The thought of Lyss at the slave market—even just imagining it—that, she couldn't bear. So she knew she would leave Lyss at the Inn, under Nan's care, when she traveled south with the merchants and entertainers from the fair, in the spring or next fall.

If she never returned, then Nan would raise the baby as one of her own. It pained Birle to think of that, but the pain was for her own loss, and hurt less than the thought of harm to Lyss.

Birle had argued with herself. She had tried to convince herself that she must forget Yul. She had tried to tell herself that the simpleminded giant would have long ago forgotten her. She had assured herself that Yul would be safe with Damall, safer than Birle would be while she searched for him. The hazards of the search far outweighed the chance of success. Birle knew that.

She also knew that when she wasn't there, there would be no one to give medicines to those who came asking. Word had spread, and now there was never a week that went by without someone coming to ask for a soothing ointment, or a cough-comforting infusion. The little house was hung with drying herbs; its shelves were lined with wooden bowls Birle had carved to hold the ointments. If she were to go away, and not return, who would answer the people's need?

But she had no choice. She couldn't give herself the choice because she had given her word, and because she wasn't the kind of person who could forget. Aye, and she wished she were, she wished she could.

Most of the time, as she worked, and tended Lyss, Birle didn't remember, for the time. Most nights she slept deeply, tired by the day's work. But sometimes, as on this windy night, her thoughts troubled her. Birle stared out into the night.

A shadow moved, at the edge of the meadow, like a landbound cloud among the trees. Birle backed away, into the darkness that surrounded the house. Her heart was racing with fear. She needed a dog. She would have a dog from the Inn's new litter, she would choose one. No, she would have two, for two would make twice the protection of one. Tomorrow, she would take Lyss and they would go to the Inn. Peering into the darkness, holding her cloak quiet around her, Birle thought that it was no shadow she had seen among the trees after all. It might have been a sapling bending with the wind, or just the movement of a low, leafy branch.

But it was a shadow, a shadowy figure that moved slowly onto the meadow, its own cloak blown by the wind. Birle reached down to pull the knife from her boot. He was alone. He would think she slept helpless within. She moved back until the stone wall stopped her, keeping well away from the faint light that tumbled out of the doorway onto the stoop. Her hand wrapped around the handle of the knife. She would surprise him, and that would give her the chance. She had never killed a man but she didn't doubt that she could.

Drawn by the faint light, he moved forward, his feet unsure on the dark path. The wind caught and pulled at his cloak, so she couldn't tell how large a man he was, or if he carried a weapon—knife, staff, or sword. She waited her time, watching. He would have heard them talking about the woman in the woods, and the coins people brought her for her medicines. They would have exaggerated, as they always did, so he would think she had riches buried under her hearthstone, his for the taking. She thought it might have been his thought that wakened her, as he crept toward the solitary holding; she thought that the danger in his thoughts had reached out to awaken her as surely as an alarm bell ringing out across the night.

Just beyond the light he halted, as if deciding what to do. Birle hoped he couldn't hear her thoughts, where she waited like a wolf ready to spring out of darkness.

He raised a hand and pushed his cloak back from his head, and stepped forward.

“Orien?” Birle asked.

She had surprised him, and alarmed him. His hand went to his sword, briefly, before he reached it out to her, and reached out his other hand too. Birle took them both and said his name again. “Orien.”

“What's that, a knife? That's a fine welcome, Lady, to have me bleed to death across your doorstep. My knees won't hold me, Birle,” he said, and sat down on the stone step. Because he held her hands, he pulled her down beside him.

Birle dropped the knife so that both of her hands could lie in both of his. “Why have you come here?” she asked. “How did you find me? Who told you?” she demanded, now trying to pull her hands free.

“Lady, I needed no one to tell me. You yourself told me, in your voice, when you talked of your grandparents and their holding. Where else would you go?”

“I neither am nor want to be a Lady,” Birle said. She had to tell him that, so he would know what was in her heart.

He let go of her hands, and turned his face to her. His eyes were dark, and his face as much shadowed as illuminated. “If that is what you wish,” he said. “But what about the child? What child did we have, Birle?”

Fear went to her heart, like a knife. Suddenly, she felt alone, as if she stood naked in a dark and windy world, with her naked child held against her chest, helpless, both of them. “They promised not to tell,” she cried. If he were to say that Lyss must go with him, what choice would she have?

“They kept their word, rest easy. The Earl could never tell now, even if he wished to. He died in the summer.”

“Then you're the Earl Sutherland.” Everything was changing. With each word Orien spoke he changed everything. Birle thought that she ought to stand up before him. She thought she didn't know how to address the man who had lain in her naked arms, sleeping and not sleeping, who was the Earl of Sutherland.

Orien said nothing.

Birle understood then. In the kindness of his heart for her, which she had never doubted, he had come to tell her he was to be wed. She had thought that she would hear this news, if she ever heard, from someone unconcerned, telling the tale at the Inn, or announcing the birth of the heir. Orien said nothing now because his honor troubled him, to tell her this. She could spare him that, she thought.

“Are you to be wed, then, my Lord.”

“No. I am already wed.”

Now Birle couldn't speak. Even though she had known this must happen, to know it had already happened stopped her throat. He had not, then, given her back her heart, as she had thought. The wind blew and she could find no words to speak.

“It is in the power of the Earls,” Orien explained, “to say the words over a couple who wish to wed. The law gives this power, to the Earl that is and the Earl that will be.”

Birle didn't know why he was telling her this.

“If the pair speak their will to wed, to be husband and wife to one another, in the presence of the Earl—or the Earl that will be—then under the law they are wed.”

Birle was remembering, and she understood now why he explained this to her.

“Does any of that remind you of anything, Lady?”

She nodded. She could have wept for the trap they had put themselves into. “You didn't tell me,” she said. And she could have laughed, for gladness. “The Earl knew, though, didn't he. Aye, and the Earl's Lady too.”

“You are the Earl's Lady,” he told her. “If you wish it. But you don't wish it, as you said. Has your heart changed?”

“No, my Lord,” she told him. She had thought her heart had been given back to her, to give to Lyss, but in fact she knew now it had merely become more to give. And when Orien smiled at her, as he did now, her heart pressed against her ribs, and up into her throat, as if it were too large for her body to contain it.

“Then it's simple,” Orien said. “If you will not be the Earl's Lady, I can't be the Earl.”

“But you are,” Birle pointed out.

“Give me your hands again, just—yes,” he said, holding both of her hands in both of his. “And I'll tell you a story. About the young Earl, who even when he was no more than a slave in the south won the heart of a maiden there. She was perhaps a wealthy merchant's daughter, or the only child of one of the great princes of the south, or an orphan with wide lands who was a ward of greedy priests. The slave who was an Earl won her heart, by his—well, however a man does win the heart of a woman, whatever his station may be. The lady rescued him, taking him out of slavery, leaving everything of her own behind. He took her to his glittering castle, high on the hills of his own country, to make her his wife. But the northern lands were cold and she was a delicate creature of the flowered south. Also, she had her own lands and people to care for, and thought of their need troubled her. So she chose to return to her own home, and her heart broke with every step of the long journey.”

“But they know better than that,” Birle said, wondering.

“They know what they wish to know. Except Gladaegal.”

“He gave his word never to speak. I would have trusted his word.”

“I say it again, Lady: Nobody told me anything. I needed no one to tell me what my heart guessed. Hoped. But you haven't heard the end of the story.”

Orien was enjoying himself, and Birle was content to sit beside him with his hands wrapped around hers, and hers around his.

“The young Earl had no peace without his Lady. No song lifted his heart, and his feet forgot how to dance. Flesh nor fowl nor sweetmeat could coax him to hunger. There was nothing anyone could do, except watch him weaken and fade toward his death.”

Birle laughed. “I don't believe it. I might believe the song and the dance, but never the food.”

“Let me tell the story,” Orien insisted. “So at last they understood that the young Earl would have to ride into the south again. He named his brother regent, and announced to all that—under the law—if he had not returned within the year, his brother must be Earl, and the brother's sons Earls after their father. The young Earl rode off with a troop of soldiers, the pennants waving above them in the early-summer breezes. They rode off with a thunder of hooves, away into the south.” Orien stopped speaking then.

Birle turned her hands in his until she could feel the narrow bones that ran down the backs of his hands to join with his wrists. It was the dead of night, she knew that, but the world seemed as bright as if it were full noon. This was Orien's way with her, to give her joy, as if he were himself the heart of her. “It's a pretty tale, my Lord,” she said, unable not to smile.

Orien bent his head forward, until their foreheads touched. “I would stay here with you, Lady. If you will have me.”

“I will have you,” Birle said. “If you would stay.” If this was the fortune he chose, then she would live it with him, and gladly.