Tale of Birle (38 page)

For a moment, her heart beat with happiness. Then she remembered, and all the brightness went out. She wished to forget, but having remembered, she had to speak. She had no choice. “But I must leave you here for a while—not until after the spring fair, Orien, but I have to go back to the cities. For Yul,” she explained.

Orien shook his head slowly, his forehead held against hers.

“Aye, and I gave my word. I lied to you about it, because you were sick. Yul didn't choose to stay with Damall—he was kept for ransom, until I would return with gold to buy him free.”

Orien's head moved back and forth.

“You can't say me no in this,” Birle told him, as gently as she could. But her mind was racing, considering. “Unless—if you think a man might travel more safely, would you go yourself? Would you do that? I can, and will, but if it would be better for a man—” She didn't know which would be hardest, to leave him behind—again—or to watch him go away without her, again. She thought that it would be cruel to ask him to go again into the land of his slavery, to risk again dangers whose faces he now knew, and knowing must find more terrible. “It's a pity the soldiers are only in a story.”

“But they aren't,” he said. “Or, they weren't. I knew you were lying, Birle, and I knew why you lied. Those were waking moments for me, in Damall's camp. So the story is true—or why would it be a whole summer's journey to find you? How could I do less for Yul than he had done for me? I did ride south with a troop of soldiers, and I wish you could have seen Damall's face as we came up upon him, on the highway between the cities, I wished you were there with me. I gave him three of the green stones, beryls—a great price, but Yul looked well, and it seemed right to give Damall beryls from you. Yul has come back north with us. He remembers you.”

There were no words to thank him for this. Orien had honored her promise for her, before she asked the gift of him.

“Where is he then? And the soldiers?”

“They're camped half a day south of the Inn. When I rejoin them, I'll send the soldiers back to Gladaegal by a roundabout way. Yul and I will come on alone, to ask at the Falcon's Wing for the daughter who lived in the cities of the south.”

“Won't the soldiers carry the tale?”

“They don't know where I've gone, and their guesses will be just another story.” Orien sounded certain of this.

“You've thought of everything, my Lord.”

“I've thought of everything because I've thought of little else, Birle, you and the child I guessed at. We'll be a couple from the south, in time, when the Innkeeper's daughter has been forgotten. Our ways will be strange because we will have come from the strange-customed south. I've no wish to go bearded, nor for you to grease your hair and wrap it around your ears. I like to see you wearing colors and I am myself vain, and care for softer clothing, and—in the cities of the south, remember? There were more than Lords and people, there were craftsmen, and guildsmen, entertainers, and even your Philosopher. And slaves,” he said, his voice falling with the memory.

“What will you be, then, Orien? If you are not the Earl and not one of the people. Since,” she reminded him, “there are no craftsmen, nor philosophers, nor slaves here in the Kingdom. If you've thought of everything, have you thought of that?”

“Of course I have. You know me better than to doubt that, Birle. I'll be—” Orien stood up. He threw back his cloak to assume the Showman's pose, with an arm outflung. “I'll be the puppeteer,” he announced. “Yul and I bring a cartload of goods—fabrics, and wood, string, and even a puppet, to study how it's made. I wouldn't be content to work a holding, Birle.”

Orien stood there, as if waiting for her answer. The wind blew around him, lifting his cloak, blowing his hair into his eyes. He had once again surprised her. He knew himself better than she thought he did, he knew himself better than she knew him—he was always surprising her, and now he had again. She didn't doubt that he could carve, join, and clothe puppets, and learn to pull their strings. His puppets would tell tales of castle and holding, slave and prince, pirates and ladies, merchant, soldier, craftsman—every kind of person. And the puppeteer would know, from his own heart, what kind each person was.

Orien stood before her with their life in his hands to give her, and Birle—as contrary as Nan said—could think only of herself. What of her own life? What of her own work? What of the years she had thought to live with her daughter, the two of them, on the little holding distant from all the rest of the world. Must she give that up?

Birle could have laughed at herself. She had gone beyond a place where the world could tell her
must
. Aye, and they both had. Whatever Orien's work, she would grow the herbs and prepare the medicines, she would be herself and his wife too, and the mother to Lyss and whatever other children they had. She would be each of these, in the same way that Orien would be each of his puppets. And maybe too, she would undertake the Philosopher's task: to write an Herbal. Not so that her name would live, but so that the knowledge would live. That would be work worth doing. Her life was in her own hands.

Orien had no idea of what she was thinking, and her silence worried him. “I've thought of it, Lady. I couldn't be content to live in hiding, working a holding—nor for my children to live so. Any more than you could live content as the Earl's Lady,” he said.

Birle rose to stand before him, and to reach her hands out to him. “Aye, my Lord, but I am the Earl's Lady. Just as you are the Earl, because you have been.” She thought she was beginning to understand the way of fortune, and change, in the world.

“Then I am also a slave.”

She knew the true answer to that. “The one slave who escaped from the mines.”

His face was shadowed, but she could see the smile growing there; she didn't need to see his face to see his heart. “Shall I make a story out of that too? Even that? Shall I turn it all into stories for the puppets to tell? A man could spend his life at that work, Birle.”

The wind blew around them, where they stood together. This night wind might blow in a storm, or it might blow in a clear morrow; there was no way for Birle to know. She could know only that a dark wind was blowing around them, and it was time to go into the safety of the house.

Orien seemed to think the same, for he took her hand and pulled her toward the open door. “You didn't tell me what kind of child we had.”

“I had,” she corrected him.

He ignored her, shutting the door behind them and—for all that he spoke of the baby—his bellflower eyes hungry only for her face.

“A girl,” she said. “We have a daughter. We've named her Lyss, after my mother.” She put her hand against his mouth, to quiet his laughter. “She has her father's eyes,” Birle told him, “but she's asleep for now.”

He held her hand and spoke softly against her fingers. “And should not be awakened, I think. But may I not waken her, Birle?”

“If you do that, she'll stay awake.”

“Then we'll watch the night through with her,” he argued, “all three together. There are worse fortunes to be had, and few better, as I think. What do you say, Birle, do you say yes? Lady, my heart, when you smile like that—let the child sleep, morning will come soon enough, all of the mornings to come will come in their time and for now—”

But Lyss stirred in her cradle, disturbed by the voices. Birle turned to pick the baby up, her heart glad to put Lyss into Orien's arms even while she wished Lyss might have slept on and left the two of them undisturbed. “When I've fed her she'll sleep again,” she promised Orien, giving his child into his hands. For just a moment, their arms encircled Lyss, as if they were dancers at the fair, or themselves the wheel that turned.

Also by Cynthia Voigt

The Tale of Gwyn

The Tale of Oriel

The Tale of Elske

T
HE
T
ILLERMAN
C
YCLE

Homecoming

Dicey's Song

A Solitary Blue

The Runner

Come a Stranger

Sons from Afar

Seventeen Against the Dealer

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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Text copyright © 1990 by Cynthia Voigt

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The text for this book is set in Dolly.

This Athenuem Books for Young Readers hardcover edition May 2015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Voigt, Cynthia, author.

[On fortune's wheel]

The tale of Birle / Cynthia Voigt.

pages cm. — (Tales of the kingdom ; 2)

Originally published as On fortune's wheel. New York : Atheneum, 1990.

ISBN 978-1-4424-8356-9 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2204-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4814-4566-5 (eBook)

1. Voyages and travels—Juvenile fiction. 2. Slavery—Juvenile fiction. 3. Adventure stories. [1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Slavery—Fiction. 3. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.V874Tal 2015

813.54—dc23

[Fic]         2014044151