The Kingdom on the Edge of Reality (19 page)

The distant sound of a horn in the woods had some significance to the girl, for her manner changed when she heard it. Getting to her feet, she held out her hand. "Come," she said, and helped me up. She slipped her dress over her head, and that was all the difference there was between being naked and dressed. "It's time I went home and fed my baby. Will you come with me? I'll give you a nice hot lunch."

There was certainly nothing else I needed to do, and I was curious about her. She seemed a little too good to be true, giving me all her favors and a hot lunch to top it off. And what better way to find out more about Albert's kingdom than to go along with her? That was the purpose of my quest, wasn't it?

"All right," I said, pulling on clothes. Untying Pollux, I mounted and gave her a hand and a stirrup to climb up behind me. "That way," she said, pointing, and off we went down the market road. Her arms around my waist felt warm and soft.

We crossed a bridge and continued downstream on the other side. Pretty soon my nose told me we were coming into another settlement. There were a lot of things to smell in Albert's kingdom, and what I was noticing now was a mixture of cow dung and cooking smoke. Sure enough there were cultivated fields around the next bend in the river; and when we came to the first cart track leading away from the market road, the girl said, "Here we are."

It was a nice farm with a river view, but it seemed a bit run-down. The gate had two leather hinges, but the lower one was rotted away so that you had to lift the gate to pass through. Part of the walk had been cobbled with stones, but there were patches where they had sunk into the mud and hadn't been replaced.

"Don't mind the way the place looks," she said, as if she knew what I was thinking. "We've had kind of a hard time of it, now that it's just Mom and me."

Again I heard the sound of the horn, not quite so far away as before; when the girl heard it, she paused and seemed to be weighing something in her mind. I had assumed it was a signal from her people, but it came from farther down the road.

"I'm home, Mother," she said as we entered the house. It was pretty dark inside even with the shutters open, for the windows were small, and it smelled of wood smoke, animals, and vegetables. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine, fine," said a voice that sounded anything but fine. All I could see was a dark shape wrapped in a blanket sitting hunched in front of the hearth. The girl went over to her.

"It's chilly in here, Mother," the girl said softly. "I'll make up the fire for you. How's my baby?"

"Fine, fine," said the weak old voice.

"Come here, sweetie," said the girl, lifting her baby out of a cradle that hung suspended from the roof beam. "Oh, my, you're all wet, and you didn't even cry, you sweet thing! You're so good!"

"She cried," said the old woman without much interest. "I tried to . . ." But the voice trailed away.

I stood in the shadows looking around while the girl changed the baby, made up the fire, and hung a pot over it. She seemed very practiced and efficient, moving gracefully around in the room.

Now the horn sounded very close. I was about to step out the door to satisfy my curiosity when I felt her hand on my shoulder.

"That's Lord Hawke, and I need to pay my respects," she said, a hint of anxiety in her voice. Lord Hawke! The rush of adrenaline was a painful twinge. "Could you just wait for me here? I won't be long." She had tied her hair back and put on a scarf. As I understood it, she was asking me not to show myself.

"Okay," I said. "I'll just make myself at home." Out the door she went with her baby.

Lord Hawke! No, I didn't want him to see me yet, but I badly wanted to have a look at him. One of the windows faced the road, and there was a nice, big crack beside the half open shutter. There he was. Ah, Guy, I never would have recognized you.

It was not far to the market road where Hawke had reined in his charger, and I could see him clearly. His beard was similar to Albert's except that it was black. I had to admit that it became him. Marya was right: he looked every inch a medieval nobleman, one of the proud and cruel variety. The pride was evident in the way he sat his horse, the way he held his reins, and particularly in the way he held his head. Seated on his charger, he had taken a pose that said:
I am so much better than everyone else that it isn't even funny!

The cruelty was reflected in his two bodyguards. They were dressed more or less like I was, and carried the same weapons—but these boys hadn't been recruited to rescue cats or damsels. They looked more like fierce dogs trained to run cats up trees, and people too. They sat low and hunched in their saddles like living reminders of what you could expect from Lord Hawke if you crossed him.

It made me angry to look at the three of them, all that pride wrapped up in the threat of violence. It made me feel like growling, as if I were a dog bred to snap back at dogs like that. As for Guy Hawke with that snotty look on his face, I wanted to sink my teeth in his butt and chase him down the road so people could see what he was really made of behind that mask of superiority.

The girl went down the path carrying the baby, stopped at the edge of the road, and dropped him a curtsy. But Hawke didn't respond with so much as a nod. His horse was facing straight up the road, and his head and eyes were turned barely enough to look down his nose at her.

She must have been saying something to him, though her back was turned to me. Then she held up the baby, as if for his inspection; but he continued to look down his nose, giving her no reaction of any kind. She lowered the baby, and rocked it in her arms.

They made quite a picture of medieval social order: she, small and barefoot and dressed in one layer of homespun cloth; he, tall and grand astride his charger, his face framed by a helm with a hawk for a device, its wings sweeping back over his ears. He wore a long surcoat, and the sword at his side looked to me like it might be a true broadsword. Even his charger had a horse-helm with a spike on its brow.

He produced a few coins, tossed them into the dirt in front of the girl, and nudged his charger to a walk. His two bodyguards followed immediately in his wake, but not without leering at the girl as they passed in a predatory way that made me want to charge out of the house on all fours.

The girl dropped another curtsy as the coins fell, bent to pick them up, and returned up the path. As far as I could understand it, she had hurried home at the sound of the horn to get a primitive welfare payment from the government which was making its rounds. Apparently that was why she didn't want me to be seen. I watched her face as she walked back to the house, and she didn't seem angry or upset to have coins tossed in the dirt by supercilious Guy Hawke and his leering henchmen. She seemed pleased to have them, and even had a sort of dreamy look as if she was thinking about what they could buy.

She smiled as she came in, gave the soup a stir, and sat down on a bench to nurse her baby. The coins had already disappeared into some secret cache, and I never saw them again.

"We had another chair when Dad was alive, but it's broken now. Would you like to sit here with me?" She had left room on the bench.

I had never had the opportunity to watch someone nurse a baby, and I was just about to cuddle up with her, when her mother spoke up. It took me by surprise because I had completely forgotten she was there.

"Mora," she said in a voice that seemed evenly balanced between this world and the next. "Who is that man?"

I suppose that is what a mother has to say to her young daughter. My heart went out to her because it seemed to take a lot of her energy just to ask the question.

"He's one of King Albert's men, Mom," said the girl. "He brought me home."

A silence followed, and there was so little energy coming from the spot where her mother was sitting, I wondered if she hadn't gone back to sleep. I went and sat down next to the girl, our hips touching on the little bench, and watched her feed her baby. They radiated an aura of peace and love so profound that it seemed to make its own light in the dark cottage. The longer I sat there, the more peaceful I felt; the whole universe seemed to be wrapped gently around the three of us.

"A soldier," said her mother. How long had it been since she spoke last? I had no idea. Time had stopped; and what is time anyway, that we pay so much attention to it?

"Not a soldier, Momma. He's a knight. One of King Albert's knights."

"A knight," said her mother. "Well, that's a fine thing." She tried to laugh a little ghost of a laugh, and that started her coughing; in between the coughs she was gasping in a way that was frightening to hear. Too much air was going out, and not enough was going back in.

"Oh, Momma," said the girl, putting the baby into its cradle, where it immediately set up a howl. She put her arms around her mother and held her tightly.

I didn't know what to do. Death with his scythe was standing in the doorway, and if he decided to go away, he would likely be back soon, the way it sounded to me. The old woman gradually began to fill her racked and starving lungs, and the crisis passed.

"You need to lie down now, Mother," said the girl. "Can you help?" she said to me, and together we got the woman out of her chair and into a bed which was like a big box full of straw with a bedspread over it. In moving her, I was surprised to discover that she was no older that I was, just very sick and very weak.

"She's a good girl," said the woman to me.

"Momma,
please
don't talk," said the girl. The woman gave in with a sigh, and then she fell asleep.

The woman was dying; that seemed pretty clear. There was no place to take her to, so she would die in her own home. There was no one to care for her except her own daughter, so her daughter would care for her as best she could. It seemed like a lot to be placed on the shoulders of such a young person. But as I continued to watch the girl, who had already gone to poke up the fire and stir the pot and take up her baby to nurse again, I didn't feel sorry for her. On the contrary, she was living in the richness of her youth, with her new baby and her dying mother, and there was nothing tragic about it. Life and death were working hand in hand in a cycle that supported everything there was.

When the baby had finished nursing, we sat together on the little bench to eat our dinner of potato and vegetable soup. It was tasty, but not very filling, so I went out to my horse and brought in the cheese and cooked meat that Hélène had put up for me. The girl cut the meat into chunks, and we heated it in the fire on sticks like marshmallows and ate it with our fingers.

"Your name's Mora."

"Yes," she smiled, "I'm Mora."

"I'm Jack," I said, and she smiled again.

I wasn't sure what to say to her now because I wasn't sure what I could do for her. Once again, I'd let myself drift, making love to her just because she smelled so good, and going home with her because I was curious. Now it was beginning to dawn on me that this girl had more than her share of problems and needed help.

"What happened to your dad?"

"He died last fall."

"What of?"

"We think it was something he ate. He woke up in a lot of pain the day after Harvest Home, and by nightfall he was dead."

Dead of some undiagnosed something or other, just like her mother was dying now. I glanced over toward the bed, and the girl seemed to know what I was thinking.

"I don't think she wants to go on living without Dad. But I think it's mean of her to leave me and the baby. She knows we need her." Two tears ran down her cheeks, and she brushed them away. "I can't run this farm all by myself. Would you be interested?"

"Me?"

"Well, you've got to have a farm. All the knights have farms. You need a home, don't you? You can't just stay at court."

"Wait a second now."

"I know you have other things to do for King Albert, but you wouldn't have to spend all your time farming. It's really cheap to get help when you need it, because lots of families want hard cash for wintertime, and I could see to that. I know everybody, and I know who's worth hiring, and who's not."

"Mora . . ."

"You'd love it here. This is one of the nicest farms in the whole valley. We don't have to haul water in barrels. We can irrigate right off the river. And when it's hot, and you want a swim, there it is. We're only two miles from market, and it's only four or five miles to the castle, which is ever so much closer than—"

I held up my hands. "Mora, slow down a little, will you? I haven't even been here a week, you know? And I hardly know you."

"Well, that's not true," she said, visibly hurt.

"Look, I'll do anything I can to help you, but I don't think we . . . I mean I'm way too old for you."

Nothing I said was coming out quite right. If I was so much older, I should have had the sense not to take advantage of her. But somehow that wasn't the point either. Ever since I had come to Albert's kingdom, the sands had been shifting under my feet; I was still too new to know how to act.

"Don't you like me?"

"Yes, I do, Mora. I like you a lot."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I think you're very sweet and pretty, and you smell like all the flowers in the Garden of Eden."

"Well?"

That made me laugh. Some kingdom! It didn't matter how old I was. To a near-orphan with a baby and a farm on her hands, it didn't matter. To this girl who had made a meal of her cat to get through the winter, it didn't matter. In a land where Death could take you off with a stomachache after a holiday dinner, it didn't matter in the least. And there, suddenly, was that wonderful feeling swelling up inside me, like a big reward just for being alive.

"Mora, wouldn't you rather find yourself a young man, somebody with his whole life in front of him?"

"A few boys have been coming around. They all have their eye on the farm, and that's okay, I guess. That's natural. They're nice boys, but they're just boys, and . . ." She paused, and there was a darkness in her face that I hadn't seen before. Going over to the hearth, she adjusted the fire and put another log on. Then she went over to the cradle and stood looking at the baby. "This is a sweet little girl," she said finally. "And I want someone who can protect us."