Tale of Birle (6 page)

“I would be alone here, Innkeeper's Daughter,” he had said, dismissing her. She stood uncomfortably by the fire they hadn't yet put flint to. “I'm not going to take the boat and abandon you,” he said.

“I could get back safely if you did,” she told him, trying to think of how to frame her own request. “My Lord, I wonder—”

“I'm going to bathe, Birle,” he interrupted. “Wash myself. My whole body. That's what bathing is. Without any clothes on,” he added, when she didn't move.

“I know what bathing is,” Birle answered. “The people of the Inn keep themselves clean, even in winter.”

For a minute, he stared at her, as if deciding how to rebuke her. Then he decided that she meant no impertinence. “How could I know that?” he asked, a smile rising in his face. “You can go downstream and bathe. I'll stay here.”

Birle went obediently along the bank, to a place where tumbled boulders formed a quiet pool of water. She had no soap, nor fresh linen to put on, but she rubbed herself well in the water and felt clean when she emerged. By the time she returned, he had lit the fire and was watching the flames take the wood.

“How did you bathe in winter, at the Inn?” he asked.

He was a quick man to curosity. She told him how they stood in a wine barrel, brought up from the cellars, just as she had earlier that day showed him how the leather strap though which her knife slipped had been sewn onto the side of her boot. She couldn't ask him the questions she wondered about, but often he told her without asking. The Lords had metal tins, large enough to hold a seated man, which the servant carried into their bedrooms, then filled with heated water.

He tried slipping his dagger into the top of his boot, but returned it to its sheath at his belt. A knife carried so would not be deemed clean enough for use at table, he said. He said he himself didn't see much difference between boot leather and sheath leather, but he thought it had to do with the closeness to feet. “Feet,” he laughed, “offend the ladies. There is much that offends the ladies.”

He didn't expect her to say anything, she knew that. She wondered if it was a lady who had caused him to leave his home. The Lords, as it was said, married not for choice but for land, or dowry, or connection into a more powerful family—one closer to the King, perhaps—or to settle a quarrel between two families. The Lords married as their fathers or profit dictated. Perhaps then this Lord had been told to marry a woman not of his choice? To marry one when he would have chosen another—but it would be foolishness to throw away your inheritance for that, if you were a Lord. The Lords had much to inherit. The world was generous to the Lords.

But if a Lord were the youngest son, then he might be used to serve a father's or brother's ambitious plan, married for another's profit. Or he might be sent to serve in the King's household. They said that the King had Lords for servants. Aye, Birle thought, and he might come to the anger of hopelessness, enough to strike out against father, or brother, or even Earl. Any one of those might be reason for a young man to leave his own home, hoping to make his fortune elsewhere.

She looked at him, wondering if he was the kind of man whose angers might lead him to draw his sword. At the same moment, he raised his eyes from the water and looked at her. His bellflower eyes had a dark ring around their blue color, she saw, feeling lost in his eyes, as if they were a world in themselves, into which she had wandered and could not, even had she wanted to, find her way out, find her way back. “What are you thinking about, Innkeeper's Daughter?” he asked her. “What is there that a girl will think so intently about?”

“I was thinking of you, my Lord,” she said.

This pleased him, and amused him, and he gave her a smile as heady as wine. She put the oars into the water and pulled firmly upon them. The boat sped forward.

“Thinking what?” he wondered.

Birle concentrated on rowing. “Thinking why you might have left your home.” She didn't look at him, but over his shoulder to the trees, crowding a rocky bank, the roots of the pines bare to the air. She had no right to ask him questions.

After a time his voice told her, “I have broken no law.”

She wanted to tell him that if he had broken a law, then there must be that about the law which should be broken. She would always believe him. But that raised a question and she wondered what its answer was. “If a man takes back by force, or stealth, something that has been stolen from him, is he a thief?”

“Under the law, he is,” the Lord answered. “Under the law, he must bring his case to the Hearing Day.”

“But it is a long time between one Hearing Day and the next,” Birle argued. “Gold can be spent in that time. An animal may die.”

“Or a case might be unjustly decided,” he agreed. “The Lord who judges might never see the truth. And by what right—do you ever think, Innkeeper's Daughter, why the people must pay taxes to the Lords?”

“How can they not, when the Lords own the land?”

“And by what right do they own it, when it's the people whose sweat makes it fertile, while the Lord sits in his walled castle within his walled city. You say the Inn serves the Earl—have you ever seen this Earl?”

Birle shook her head. “They say in my Granda's day that he would sometimes ride into the forest, for the hunting.”

“But you never have, in your fourteen years. This is the man who takes gold coins from you, or silver, and if you don't pay it he can have you locked into a cell, even hanged, this man you've never even seen. Birle, you have no idea—I could be the Earl and you wouldn't know it.”

“If you were, you wouldn't be here, my Lord,” she reminded him. “Besides, the Earl is an old man.”

“So I can't be,” he said. He leaned back, satisfied with her answer. “What I keep wondering about is—why none of the people ever doubts.”

“Doubts what, my Lord?”

“Doubts—everything,” he answered. “Doubts the right of the Lords to rule and the necessity of the people to serve them.”

“In time of trouble, the people of Inn and forest can ask aid of the Earl,” she pointed out.

“And he can give it,” the Lord answered. “Can is not must, as anybody knows. But what if ”—he leaned forward again—“there is no Earl, and no King. What if it is all just stories—like the stories of dragons in the south, great winged worms that fly over the land, breathing fire from their nostrils. You've heard such stories?”

“Aye, my Lord.”

“Do you not doubt them?”

“I've never been where dragons might live.”

“Try to think, Birle,” he said. “Try to think about it. Here is a creature, a living creature, very long-lived I grant you, but still—it is hatched from an egg like a bird or snake, and it grows, like all living things. How can it carry fire within it, and not be burned?”

“There is much we don't understand,” Birle pointed out to him. “I've seen,” she said, remembering her grandparents' house, “a place where water just comes bubbling up out of the ground. Where does the water come from?”

“Underground,” he answered quickly.

“Aye, but what is this underground? If it is filled with water why is the whole world not afloat? And how comes that water also to fill the sky?”

“Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean there is no reason for it. You can't find the reason unless you think about it. The first step in such thinking is doubt,” he said. Then he looked at her, and smiled again. She had pleased him, Birle thought, glad of it.

“You think, then,” he said, “that I should try to find one of these dragons, before I doubt it.”

Birle had had no such thought, but she didn't tell him that.

“Even though there is nothing living that can withstand fire. Stones can, and metal can—although even metal can be made hot enough to melt, or how would we have knives and swords, or gold and silver coins. But if this beast is made of metal or stone, how can he lift his great weight off the ground?”

Birle didn't know how such a thing could be. Since there were no dragons in her world, she didn't see a need to wonder or worry about it. She had another question, and this seemed the time to ask it. “Do you go south, then, to know if there are dragons?”

At that, he laughed. “They say dragons have great hoards—of gold and jewels—which they sleep on as nests. Maybe I'm on my way to win such a treasure. Do you think that, Innkeeper's Daughter? I'm ill-armed to undertake a dragon's death, but if I have courage enough I could try it. If there are dragons to be found.” That was no answer to her question. He didn't want to answer her.

On the third morning a little light rain fell, in among the trees. The Lord didn't wish to go out onto the river in the rain, so they sheltered the day under the long branches of an ancient pine. Birle kept a small fire going, under the roof the branches made.

Sitting there, on opposite sides of the crackling fire, they toasted the staleness out of thick chunks of bread. The little rains drizzled down. The Lord said, “They make songs about high and noble things—the death of dragons, the love of beautiful women. But they should make songs about bread—and cheese—the way they fill an empty stomach. I wouldn't say no to a piece of cheese, would you?”

Birle shook her head. No, she wouldn't.

“Or a song about rain, as it falls. Do you ever wonder why they have never made a song about rain?”

Birle shook her head.

“What do you wonder about, then, Innkeeper's Daughter?” he asked her. “I know you are awake, behind your brown eyes.”

He knew the color of her eyes. Why should he know the color of her eyes? In her confusion, she answered him, “I wonder about my mother's father. At least, I used to wonder about that. Now, I don't. But I used to wonder what man he was.”

“What does that matter?” he asked. “I know my fathers, for generations past.” The bitterness in his voice silenced her. He was looking into the flames, lost in his own thoughts. The rain turned the branches behind him a dark silvery green.

Later they sat, not side by side, leaning back against the prickly trunk of the tree. Rain pattered down onto branches and ground. The smoke from the fire rose slowly.

“How could you not know your mother's father? You must know every man in the village, there can be few to choose among. What does it matter to the people who father and grandfather might be?”

She was ashamed for the answer she must give, so she gave it boldly. “My mother's mother, when she came from the north, was already with child. In those days, there wasn't even a village, only the Inn. She had no husband. There was no man to be father to her child.”

“She came alone?”

“Not alone. My Granda,” she turned her head to look at him, “Granda and Gran came from the north, when they were young, to keep the Inn for the Earl. When Granda wanted vines he returned to the land of his birth, for the sturdiness of the cuttings. He found my mother's mother at a Hiring Fair. He had known her when she was only a girl—unlucky in her father, a man who blamed his luck, not himself, for his misfortunes. At the Hiring Fair, she could find no master because she was sickly, and already swollen with the child, so he brought her back with him. She claimed Jackaroo for the father—as if that could be true.”

“If I were a girl, and no man to step forward to claim my child, I'd name Jackaroo. Who can say you nay?”

“She was mazed,” Birle said. “A loony. She died in birthing.”

“And it no longer mattered who, or what, the father was. And the child?”

“My mother. My grandparents took her, and when she was old enough my father married her, and then she died too. I don't remember her, but my brothers do. Nan, too, remembers her—because she came a servant to the Inn when my mother was alive—but I have no memories.”

“Nan is your father's second wife,” he guessed.

“No, as you know. He can't wed again. If a man could wed again, then the second wife would want her children to be named heir, and what would become of the children of the first wife?”

“What if,” he asked her, “a first wife dies childless? If there are no others, why shouldn't those children then be given the holding?”

“It's the law,” Birle reminded him. “The Lords give the holdings, and it's their law the people follow. Can a Lord marry again, under the law?”

“Of course. My father buried three wives. A Lord must marry. Without sons—his brothers will grab up his lands for their own, or the King will. If you want to hold the lands, you need sons. The more the merrier,” he said, but his voice was not merry. “And a daughter or two does no harm, either, especially if she has any beauty.”

If this Lord had sisters, Birle thought, they would have beauty.

“A pretty face takes a smaller settlement when she marries,” he explained. “What do you take for dowry to your huntsman, Birle?”

“Two gold pieces.”

“A small price for a woman's life.”

“Not small to the people, my Lord.” She wouldn't have him think she was without value.

“Do you never think that it is the man should bring a dowry to the woman?” he asked.

Birle had no way to answer such foolishness. She thought he might be mocking her, so she explained, “The man brings his holding, or his labor.” They spoke easily to each other. She hadn't guarded her tongue, and she hadn't needed to. So she asked him what she wondered. “Why did you run away, my Lord?”

At the words, his face closed to her. He turned his back. That was a question to which she should never have given voice. If Birle had dared, she would have asked his pardon. If she had dared, she would have apologized. Aye, but he wanted to hear nothing of her. His shoulders and silence made that clear.

Through the next two days of the journey, he spoke only to request her presence or absence, a fire, food, to be taken to shore or to set off on their way, to have his linen laundered. Birle was even more silent than he, because her response needed only to be actions. She wondered that her question had caused such a change. He wished to know no more of her. He wished her to know no more of him. The sun came out, and shone strongly, but its warmth fell down as sad as little rains.