“A promise is not enough,” Birle said, to let him know that she didn’t hope for that but to suggest it to him, in case he hadn’t thought of it.
He shook his head. “A promise is made of air. That’s too light a matter to carry the weight of a guarantee, don’t you agree?”
He waited, but Birle had no other suggestion to make. She waited, to hear his terms.
“If, on the other hand, one of you stayed on with me . . . and the other two knew that he, or she, stood at hazard? Then, even a cautious man like myself might feel safe.”
Quick as a rabbit fleeing the fox, Birle’s mind considered the possibilities. “I can’t carry Orien, and he is too weak to walk. Yet he needs the medicine I know how to give him, if he is to live.”
“I can’t keep all three of you, that’s too risky, entirely too risky. Besides, I have no use for you.”
“Although you might for Yul,” Birle said.
“You follow me most precisely.” Damall smiled. “I can see it—a human tower, he’s quite strong enough—and Jacko on the very top, or perhaps Ling? That’s a show that would draw people to it, don’t you think?”
Birle didn’t think she could abandon Yul, just go away and leave him behind. She didn’t know why she shouldn’t—there was no argument to convine her she shouldn’t, and many to let her do what her mind told her was the only choice she had. Yul sat huge at her feet. He didn’t understand what was going on, the twin dangers that threatened them. How could she hesitate to save herself and Orien, two out of the three, just because Yul was the price to be paid?
“You have one more horse than you need,” she told Damall, who was growing restless with waiting for her decision. Birle knew that if all three stayed here, then he must get rid of them all.
“Horses are valuable, even a sorry nag like that one.”
“You have two gold chains in your hands, more than the price of a war-horse,” Birle pointed out. “Orien could be carried on horseback.” Even while she tried to think of some other way, Birle knew she had no other choice. “If it must be,” she said. “Yul will stay. You must promise—when I return for him, you must promise to give him up to me.”
She had surprised him, but he masked it quickly. “Of course, yes, of course, when you return for him. I agree.”
He didn’t think ever to see her again. “Are you a man of your word?” she asked him.
“When I can be, yes. I like to be.” His smile mocked her. “Of course gold, or jewels, or—profit always makes it easier to keep my word. On the other hand, you don’t have to doubt the care I’ll take of him. My wife, the one I go to now, not the one I left behind yesterday, keeps a rich farm. He’ll be quiet enough there, and well fed when we aren’t on the road. I take my wonders up and down the coast,” he added. “The three great cities of the coast keep me and my wonders. I can be found at any season in one or the other of the cities—once this war is finished, as it will be soon, one way or the other. I tell you that so you’ll know how to find Yul. When you come back for him.”
Birle didn’t think he would have agreed so readily if he’d thought she would return to claim his prize from him. She wondered at herself, to think that she was selling Yul into further slavery, and the price paid for her own freedom. She wondered that she could so quickly change from slave to slave trader.
And she hoped she had judged rightly. She judged it was all live or all die—at Damall’s pleasure. Her choice was based on that judgment.
“If you wait until he falls asleep, then you can leave quietly,” Damall suggested.
Now Birle was surprised. “Leave without telling him?”
“Don’t be a fool, girl.” Damall seemed at last out of patience with the game. “Ling, let’s unload the sumpter beast. If the girl is actually going to leave, she’ll want to do so at first light. If she doesn’t—we’ll need shovels to dig graves. Women,” he said, for Birle to hear, “girls. A man would rather sleep and they make him dig graves.”
Birle laughed. Then she turned to Yul, and stopped laughing. She didn’t know how to explain to the simple man what was going to happen, so that he might understand it and not be afraid. Yul stood, like a small hill, still as a hill. Even in sunlight his face couldn’t be read like that of an ordinary man. In firelight she had no hope to know what he was thinking. But Yul was smiling, and the sight of his shadowy, sweet smile almost made her turn around to tell Damall that he’d better dig his graves after all.
“Yul will stay. With the man,” Yul said.
Birle couldn’t speak.
“Birle will come back—if she lives,” Yul said, still smiling.
“The man’s name is Damall,” she told him.
“Dam-all,” Yul repeated obediently.
“He’s an entertainer, like the puppeteers, remember? Only Damall doesn’t show puppets, he shows people who are strange-looking, like you. If you will stay, there will be people staring at you. You’ll be up on a platform, with these others, and people will stare at you.”
Yul thought about that and at last he said, “Yes.”
“Because Orien is sick I have to take him with me.”
“To the Kingdom,” Yul said.
“Yes. Can you wait? A long time, maybe, many summers and winters.”
“Yul can wait.”
“Damall says he will treat you well, and I think he will. But Yul, hear me. If he doesn’t—if he is cruel, if you are hungry—then you must take your hands and crush his head. Do you understand?”
“Forewarned,” Damall spoke. She had forgotten he might hear. But he was amused, not alarmed. “Forewarned is forearmed,” he said, “but it won’t come to that, I think. I’m not a bad man, Birle. I care well for my investments, my wonders. And there’s no murder in your giant’s heart, I think.”
“There’s more in Yul’s heart than any of us guess, that’s my thought,” Birle told him.
“I’ll believe that, yes. The hearts of men—who would ever dare to guess at them. Now women, their hearts are easier to see,” Damall answered. “I’ve always been an admirer of women’s hearts.”
Birle understood why he was letting her go, with Orien. It would profit him, however it turned out, that was true; but she thought it also suited him to send the two of them off, into unknown perils, to fail or succeed together, like sweethearts. She didn’t disabuse him. And he wasn’t, after all, more than half wrong.
They slept what hours of the night were left and were up and about before daybreak. In the dim light before sunrise, the tiny clearing in the trees seemed crowded with people. There was no breakfast, so once she had given Orien the barley water—laced with a drop of dwale, that he might sleep the day away—and anointed his face, Birle and Yul hoisted him over the horse’s back, and tied him there so that he couldn’t tumble off.
Birle made her farewell to Damall, who bowed from the waist before her, causing her to laugh despite her sadness. At last she stood in front of Yul. “Pick me up, Yul,” she asked. His huge hands lifted her until her face was level with his own. Her feet hung useless, but it wasn’t her feet she thought of. She put a hand on the side of Yul’s face and made him her promise. “Friend,” she said. “You are my friend.”
“Yes,” Yul answered, with a smile that lingered, forgotten on his face long after he had put her down again.
She shouldered her sack, and Damall put the horse’s lead into her hand. “Maybe, after all, we’ll follow you to the Kingdom,” he said. “It would save you the long journey back.”
“The Kingdom has no employment for spies who serve two masters,” she answered. Damall did not fear her—aye, and why should he?—but it would benefit Yul if Damall knew what she understood, and that she might, at her choice, with luck, be a danger to him.
Damall welcomed the risk. “Then I’d have no livelihood,” he told her, laughing. “Go now, Birle, before I decide that I can’t bear to part with you.”
The sun, rising in the east, gave her direction. She led the horse o
ff to the north, stepping into the pathless forest without a backward glance, her sack heavy on her back.
Part Three
The Earl’s Lady
TWENTY-ONE
As long as the sun rode in the east, Birle could be sure of her direction, even through this trackless forest where the land underfoot rose and fell sharply. They made slow and twisting progress, she with her sack on her back and the horse’s lead rope in her hand, the horse with its limp burden. She kept the sun at her shoulder. Thus they moved always farther from the seacoast, and the cities of the coast.
At midmorning they halted. She dragged Orien down, to lay him on the ground with her cloak spread beneath him and his blanket over him. She poured water by drops into his mouth, then wiped clean the side of his face to cover it again with the ointment. At least he no longer smelled like rotting meat. Now he smelled sharply of garlic, which she hoped was an improvement for him. Certainly she preferred it.
All across the middle of the day, they rested. Orien slept fitfully. The horse, tied to a low tree branch, grazed the forest floor. Birle tried to sleep, but could not—for listening to the forest sounds, should any of them signal danger. She was listening not only for sounds she might hear, but also for the kind of silence through which they had gone yesterday, the silence that pooled out around a moving army.
Her plan was simple, and immediate: to go deep into the forest, deep enough so that no matter what happened in the world, they would be safe. There they would stay, for however long it took for Orien to heal, and regain his strength. That particular day, to care for Orien, and to remember that—however ill he was—he lived.
When the sun began to slide down the western part of the sky, she hefted and shoved Orien back over the horse’s back, shouldered her own sack, untied the horse, and they went on, with the sun at her left shoulder. They halted again at twilight, but only until the stars came out. Nighttime progress was even more slow than daytime, but always, Birle knew, they were moving away.
They stopped at last, high on a rocky hill. Once again, Birle gave Orien medicine and covered him with a blanket, tied the horse and thought of sleep. The distant sky glowed orange, like dawn. Except that dawn didn’t paint the western sky, midway through the night. For a minute Birle was too afraid—was the edge of the world aflame?—to understand that most likely the city was in flames. Whose army was burning it, she neither knew nor cared. Orien was safe away, Yul was under Damall’s care, if the city burned what was that to her?
But thinking of it, imagining the crowds of the city trapped between river and wall—the fishmonger and her children, the young woman who would have kept Orien from the mines if she’d had coins, the entertainers, and even the guildsmen, and even the soldiers—aye, if that was the city, and if it was going up into flames, all that would be left would be the spike in the marketplace, and the stone walls, and she did care.
The second night, when she climbed up a tree and looked back to the west and south, the horizon lay dark. Orien slept deeply, quietly; Birle hoped it was a healing sleep, not a continuation of the dwale-induced sleep into which she put him for travel. His head was not cool but it no longer heated her hand like a flame. For the first time since leaving the city, Birle felt hungry. She cut herself some bread and cheese, gave herself a little of the water from the bag she had filled at the well in the Philosopher’s faraway house, and slept.
They came the next morning to a small clearing where three huge boulders rose up from the earth, two side by side and the third facing. Between them, a little stream rolled down the hillside. There, Birle thought they might stay. The boulders stood like walls, to protect. The ground was soft with moss. Although no fish would live in so small a stream, the little clearing and the forest around would provide some food, when the bread and cheese gave out.
She pulled Orien down from the horse’s back. She hobbled the mare’s front legs and turned her free to graze. Then she looked around her. to determine what needed doing first. Sunlight spattered over the boulders and torode down the stream.
“Birle,” Orien said.
She crouched where he could see her, should his eyes open. “We’re going to rest here, until you’re well, my Lord,” she said. She didn’t know if he understood her.
“I keep—I’m her, and then I’m gone away elsewhere,” he said, but whether in apology or complaint she couldn’t tell.
“Sleep, my Lord,” she said. “Sleep.”
“But—” He struggled to raise his head. The eye on the blistered side of his face could now open fully, she noticed. Aye, and she didn’t know what she had to be smiling about. She pushed him gently down onto the soft ground. “Sleep, my Lord.”
He obeyed her.
The first thing Birle did was to lie on her stomach, and drink her fill of the icy waters. Then she set to work.
She built a circle of stones, for a fire, and gathered small branches to start it, then larger pieces of wood to keep it fed. She walked twenty paces into the trees behind the third boulder, and with a stick and her fingers she dug a trench for a privy. She spread out the contents of her sack, food and medicines, the cooking pot, the spoons she had taken from the Philosopher’s cupboard, and the mortar and pestle. The clothing, including the boots she’d purchased that last day at market, she left in the sack.
Birle didn’t have the skill to build a shelter, with roof and walls. But for the time, the season was favorable—warm days, and the chill of nights easily kept at bay by a fire. It was early summer, with warmer days and nights to come.
That night by the fire, Birle thought of Yul, and her thoughts troubled her. But she had made him her promise, which she would keep if she could. Yul trusted her. He was right to trust her, she knew. What she didn’t know was if she was right to trust Damall, and all she could do was hope the man’s sense of where his profit lay would keep him honest.
For the time, being able to do nothing about Yul, she dealt with Orien. She bathed him, warming the water in the cooking pot, gently removing all of his cothes, using the cloths for her woman’s times—aye, he’d never know so it wouldn’t embarrass him, and the cloths were soft and clean. She bathed him as if he were a baby, and could have wept to see how little flesh lay over his bones. But she didn’t weep. She dressed him in one of Joaquim’s fine, soft shirts and a pair of Yul’s trousers, which she had cut off short. Even drawn close at the waist, the trousers fit Orien like a skirt.
When she had done, and he was back on his cloth pallet, under the blanket, his eyes opened. “Where is Yul?” he asked. “I seem to remember—” He slept again before he could say what he remembered.
The fever left him gradually, as a fire burns itself out. Some mornings he was cool to the touch, and the fever seemed to have gone; but by midday it would have returned, although not so hot as before. Orien coughed sharply, and his breathing was harsh. Birle fed him what he would eat. She had found in the woods nearby an abundance of marshmallow, with the roots of last year’s growth thick beneath their dried stalks. These she brewed into a soup, into which she dipped crustless pieces of bread for Orien. the broth both nourished him and eased his cough. When he was well enough to sit up for part of the day, and to willfully walk alone to the privy, she knew that however long the healing took, he would be healed—even though he returned pale and shaking with weakness from the short walk into the trees.
Orien slept, days and nights, and Birle foraged for wood and food. She was glad of the weather. It rained seldom, and then gently. Most days the sun shone down warm. In woods and meadow food plants grew abundantly—early onion, the tall marshmallow, fat garlic bulbs beneath their slender shoots, and the piss-a-beds that sprang up wherever sunlight touched the ground, as if they would soon cover the whole floor of the world with their ragged long leaves and bright, hairy-headed yellow flowers. The horse grew fat with grazing.
+ + +
There came a day when Orien returned from the privy and did not immediately fall down exhausted on his pallet.
Instead, he sat back against the boulder. “Where are we, Birle?”
She was surprised at the question. For more days than she had counted, he had spoken only of thirst, and sleepiness, the need to visit the privy, and sometimes hunger. “My Lord?”
“Where are we?” he repeated. “Where is this place that you’ve brought me to?” Her surprise pleased him.
His question pleased her. “Three days north of the city. We’re safely away, in an uninhabited forest—if I can believe what I was told.”
“And where are we going?” he asked.
“North, and east,” she said.
“North and east?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand her words. His eyes shone in his face and his mouth twitched with laughter he wouldn’t let out.
“To the Kingdom,” she said.
“To the Kingdom,” he echoed.
“Aye, my Lord, with luck.”
“With luck.” Then he smiled, saying to her, “Birle, you have a smile like a girl with a glad secret at her breast, you have a smile that Spring must wear—I can see the lady Spring come creeping to the edge of winter, and looking over the landscape she’s about to take from winter—with that smile upon her face. A minx’s smile, Birle.”
“Aye, my Lord.” She laughed.
“You used to know my name,” he said. “Shall we be on our way?”
“On our way where?” It was as if Orien had left her a sick man and returned from the trees a well one.
“Why north, and east. To the Kingdom. Home,” Orien said.
“But you can’t, not yet. You can’t try the journey until you’ve regained your strength, because we don’t know what lies ahead.”
“There’s the horse. I could ride.”
“No, Orien,” Birle said.
The eyes danced like bellflowers under a summer breeze. “You didn’t used to be so cautious, Birle. You were—quite hasty, when we first met. So you’ve learned that hastiness leads to grief. Do you regret having been so hasty?”