Then Birle did laugh. “Yes, my Lord,” she said. “And is this your good parting? Is this memory going to make the time less long?”
“Lady, you know me too well,” Orien said.
“I hope so,” Birle answered. Later, when he thought of this parting, he would understand her meaning.
TWENTY-FOUR
Birle sat on the broad stone doorstep. Sunlight fell over her. The little spring bubbled quietly and the stream flowed out from it, across the grassy meadow. The house waited behind her, its door open and windows unshuttered. Birdsongs and the hum of insects were all the living voices the breeze carried.
Soon she would have to rise and go inside to change into the skirts and shirts chosen from the stores that clothed the castle’s servants. She would comb her hair and braid it again. But not, she thought, into the two braids to be wound around her ears. She wished neither the two thick braids crowding the sides of her head, nor the bother of hair hanging loose. The fashion she had made for herself, her slave’s fashion of a single braid, that was what suited her.
There was much to do—the cart that rested on its two long shafts beside the stone house must be unpacked, the house needed airing and cleaning before she stored away the supplies that had been packed for her at the castle. The horse, her own sumpter beast, grazed the meadow; her front legs were hobbled, but that seemed not to trouble her, not with the new grass and cold water. There was much for Birle to do, but for a long time she sat unmoving, after the long journey. Here at the southern edges of the Kingdom spring had settled in, and the air in her mouth tasted of all of spring’s remembered sweetness.
Longing and regret would return to her, Birle thought, and the longing was the worst. But for these few minutes, her heart was quiet. She listened to the spring, and didn’t know if the water wept or laughed.
What Nan would think of the summons Gladaegal brought, Birle didn’t know. The summons he carried asked the Innkeeper’s wife to go out to the holding, when she could spare the hours. It might be days before Nan had the hours to spare. Birle didn’t mind putting off the scolding Nan would give her. Aye, and she deserved this scolding—but she was glad to have many days in which to whet her appetite for the humble pie that Nan would serve her. She stood up, and stretched.
A woman came hurrying along the path out of the trees. She hadn’t even taken the time to remove her apron, or put on a cloak, or roll down her sleeves.
This would be a fine fury, then. Birle stood, waiting.
When Nan looked up and saw her, her feet hesitated. Nan had a face like a chipmunk, cheeky, with round brown eyes. “Lady?” she asked, and then shook her head briskly, as if to clear her sight, and scurried up the path. “Birle!” she cried, and her feet ran the last few steps.
Birle found herself wrapped around by Nan’s plump arms, and hugged tightly. “Aye,” Nan said. “Aye. Aye.” What she meant by that Birle had no idea, but her own arms were around Nan, holding her father’s wife close. When they drew apart Nan’s face was bright, her round cheeks pink. “Look at you,” she cried. “Just look at you. And me, I look a mess, I abandoned the pastry half-mixed, just look at me.”
Birle looked. Nan’s forehead was damp from the exercise of rushing along the forest path, and she was breathing hard, as if she’d run. “Here, sit down,” Birle said. “Don’t worry about how you look, you look fine, you look just the way I remember.”
Nan sat, and her fingers fussed at the lopsided braids.
“Only you’re shorter than I remember,” Birle said.
“It’s you that’s grown taller. It’s good to see you, Birle. I thought I’d never see you again, and never know that I never would.”
“I thought you’d scold me.” When Birle sat down, Nan’s fingers went out to feel the wool of the gown. “I thought you’d be angry at me.”
“Aye, well, maybe when I’ve got used to knowing that you’re safe I’ll have a thought to spare for anger. Are you a Lady now, Birle?”
“No.” Birle smiled.
Nan was studying her—her hair, dress, hands, boots—”You could be.”
“Aye, I could, but I’m not. So if you like the look of me you’d better look now, for I was about to fold this finery away in the cupboard.”
“I like the look of you,” Nan said. “Ouuf. Now I’ve my breath back, that feels better. Now I’ve my daughter back—don’t look at me like that, I was there at your birth. You were the first I ever birthed, mine or another’s, and your mother too weak to do much for you those first weeks. Will you be living here, then? Has the holding been given to you?”
“Yes,” Birle said.
“And the man?”
“What man?”
“For the holding.”
“Why does there have to be a man for the holding?”
“You’re as contrary as ever, aren’t you, lass.”
“But Nan, it’s a question worth asking. If a man dies, his widow keeps the holding. So all know that a woman can work a holding alone. A man doesn’t need a woman to have a holding, why should a woman need a man?”
“Why can’t you accept the way things are?” Nan scolded.
“I can,” Birle said. “I do.”
“Why do you always want to change your life?” Nan asked, not listening to Birle or, Birle thought, not believing her.
“I don’t,” Birle said. “Things happen, Nan. But why shouldn’t things change, why should things always stay exactly the way they always were? I have been given this holding, for myself,” she said proudly.
Nan looked over her shoulder and into the house. “Aye, it looks it.”
“Nan, I just arrived. I was resting after the journey. Thinking.”
“What’s there to think about with all the work that needs doing, I ask you that.”
Nan hadn’t changed. It made Birle smile, because she wouldn’t want Nan to change.
“Thinking,” Nan grumbled, “it just makes trouble. Like asking questions. It’s better to get things done.”
“Well then,” Birle said, “I’ll put these clothes away, and you sit here and rest from your walk, and then we’ll get done what needs doing. I’d welcome the extra hands.”
Nan’s chipmunk face was filled with little circles of surprise, and she had nothing to say.
As they worked—to carry the mattress outside, to wash floors, cupboards and walls, to unpack the household supplies and clothing—Birle told Nan her plans for the holding. A milking nanny; a hive of bees; chickens and ducks; a garden for turnips, onions, cabbages, parsnips. A garden for herbs that she would make into infusions and ointments.
“Who’d buy them?” Nan asked. They were shaking out the bed linen, filling it with spring air. “What do you know about the healing herbs?”
“I was a slave,” Birle began.
Nan’s arms stopped moving.
“It was in a faraway city, where—my master taught me about herbs, and how to prepare them, and how to use them.”
“I thought you were a Lady,” Nan protested.
“I was.” Birle thought she knew what Nan’s answer would be, but she asked the question anyway. “Do you want to hear about it, Nan?”
Nan’s arms moved again. “Aye, no, it’s enough that you’re back. Now you’re back, it doesn’t matter.”
Birle didn’t agree, but there was no purpose to a quarrel.
“I’ll send your brothers to dig the gardens for you.”
“There’s no need, I can turn the ground over. There’s a spade in the cart, and I know how to use it.”
“Aye, but that’s something you shouldn’t do, not unless you have to.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the child.” Nan gathered the sheet into her strong arms.
Birle followed her into the house and they spread the sheet over the mattress, tucking it firmly under. “How did you know?”
“How do I ever know? You’ve the look about you. When are you due?”
“Summer, I think. I think
early summer.”
“And there’s no man for the holding.” Poor Nan didn’t dare to make it a question. “You won’t come back to the Inn?” Nan asked.
“No.”
“Aye, then, I’ll come out here to be with you, when your time comes close,” Nan decided. “For I won’t have you giving birth alone.”
“I’d be grateful for that,” Birle said. “That’s more than I hoped for.”
“What you’ll tell your father, and brothers, and sisters,” Nan said, again not asking.
“There’s nothing to tell.” Birle had thought about this, and decided that she must say nothing. They would think whatever they would think, and she would have to let them do that. If she were to tell a story, there was danger that bits of the truth would be put into it. The truth—Orien’s name, for example—was a thing that must never be spoken.
“There’s three new families in the village.” Nan began telling her the news. “Your da has named Reid his heir. Ware will ask the Steward for a holding in the forest, where he can raise pigs. Muir’s not been seen since that spring fair when you weren’t there to marry him. Aye, at the first, I was afraid Muir had stolen you away in the night—he was like a wolf with his hunger for you. But when he came up to claim you, aye, slavering like a wolf—”
“You disliked him so much?”
“So much, and more. Your da had planned it out, we were going to tie you up in your bed and tell Muir you’d the spotty fever, anything to frighten him away and give you time to come to your senses. Da was going to give him the gold dowry coins, to leave you alone. Aye, we disliked him for your husband. You’d not have wed him, lass, not while we lived.”
“I didn’t know that. I had no idea.”
“If you’d had any idea, you’d have run off with him, just to have your way. So when you did run off—”
“I didn’t mean to,” Birle said. She wouldn’t say she was sorry, because she couldn’t be sorry for it. But she didn’t want Nan to think she had no care for the people of the Inn. Although, now that she thought of it, she hadn’t taken any thought for Nan or Da, and she should have. “I’m sorry, Nan.”
“Well, it’s done and behind us now, so we can forget about what might have happened—wolves, drownings, robbers taking you away for their pleasure, aye, we thought of everything that can happen to a girl alone.”
“All behind us now,” Birle reminded her. “Why are none of my brothers wed?” she asked, to distract Nan from remembered sorrow.
Nan had no questions and there were also no questions at the Inn, when she went there to greet Da, and her brothers, and the little girls. There were no questions because that was the way of the Inn. Birle had returned, she had the holding, she was with child—that was all they cared to know.
For company in her solitary life, Birle had the books and maps the Earl had given her; and for work she had her gardens, growing seeds from the Inn and tending the plants she transplanted from the forest. Spring swelled the land, and Birle’s belly swelled. The child moved within her and she didn’t feel alone. When longing, and hunger, for Orien threatened to weigh her down, she reminded herself that she had known from the first that they must part, and she reminded herself that she had held his heart for a time, which was more than she had had reason to hope for. The weight of the child she carried gladly.
The time for the spring fair came, but Birle didn’t make the journey. Everything was waiting, until the child was born, even the problem of Yul. But in the fall she would have ointments and infusions to sell, and it would be good to have some coins in her boot when she went south. In the meantime she tended her gardens and kept the house clean, she made pots of soup, and cut wood, for the cooking fire and for her winter woodpile.
At night the stars shone silently over the holding, the Plough and the Wings, the high Northern Star. Under the day’s sun her herbs grew strong in the rich soil of the meadow—knitbone and garlic, marshmallow, foxglove, spiremint, chamomile, henbane, each clustered with its own kind. Underground, turnips fattened and above ground the cabbages grew round. Carrots sent up ferny leaves.
Nan had been with her only a few days before the child’s time came. Nan had told Birle what to expect—rolling pains that grew ever closer each to the one before until there was no rest between them, and then the labor to bring the child out into the world. Even then, Birle must not rest, not until the afterbirth too had been expelled. Nan had told Birle what to expect, and Birle had seen cats, dogs, and goats at their birthings—but still she was surprised. For a whole day, from dawn until late afternoon—a day that seemed as if it would never come to its close—she lay on the bed while pain held her in its fist. There was only her body and its pain, a fist clenching and opening. Birle heard Nan’s voice and felt Nan’s hands on her forehead; she obeyed Nan, because Nan stood outside of the grip of the fist. When at last it was finished, and Nan had tied a knot in the cut cord, and placed the damp child on Birle’s breast, Birle didn’t even move her arms. Her eyes were fixed on Nan. When Nan went to the door, Birle called out in protest.
“Aye, Birle, I’m burying the afterbirth,” Nan said. “No fear, you’ve done the work, rest now. All’s well,” she promised.
Birle’s belly and arms were exhausted. Her mouth was dry as stone; the palms of her hands were raw from clenching the birthing straps. Her hair felt sodden with sweat. The naked babe lay across her chest like a fish. Birle looked at its back, where miniature ribs spread out and then contracted, in breathing as small as a bird’s. The babe lay bloody and as exhausted as Birle. Those little breaths were the cause of it all, Birle thought—they were in miniature the same clenching and unclenching of the labor. She put her hand down on the tiny back, to feel the rise and fall as it breathed. Her hand could wrap around the babe, encircling its delicate ribs.
Nan bustled back into the house, smiling. She took the babe up in her hands.
“What are you doing?” Birle protested, and struggled to sit up.
“I’ll wash her, and put cloths on her, and swaddle her. It’ll only be a moment, the water’s ready.”
“She’s a girl?”
“Aye, Birle, I told you that.”
Birle had never felt better. She felt terrible, but never better. “I didn’t hear you. That’s why they call it labor, isn’t it, Nan?”
“Aye, that’s why.”
“Nan, in the cupboard, under that gown I was wearing the first day, there’s a blanket to wrap her in.”
Birle watched Nan gently wash the baby clean, and listened to the howls of protest. The little arms waved meaninglessly in the air above Nan’s lap, the little feet kicked. Nan put the baby in Birle’s arm and went to the cupboard.
“Where did you get such a thing?”
Nan held the little blanket out in front of her, a thing as fine as lace, but thick and soft. It looked like floating snowflakes. Nan’s fingers stroked the wool. She stared at Birle.
“Her great-grandmother knitted it for her,” Birle said. Nan asked no more. “Why is her hair so dark?”
“It’ll fall out. That’s the way of babies.”
“Her eyes are blue.”
“All babies have that, that and those squeezed-up faces from the birthing. Your eyes were blue too. All babies look alike at first.”
“Her eyes will be blue,” Birle said, even though it was only a hope. “Shall we call her Lyss?”
“It’s a pretty name. Your da would be pleased.”
“And you?”
“Aye, your own mother was a happiness to everyone who knew her. To me as well, even if I was only the servant.”
Birle had never thought about Nan’s life, as Nan had lived it. Now, with her child in her arm, she did. “I think my mother would have been glad to know she left her children in your care, Nan,” she said.
Nan humphed, and her cheeks turned pink, but she didn’t say anything. Her response was practical. “You’ll bleed for a few days, as if it were your time of the month. But you’ll have n
o woman’s time while you nurse the child. That’s the way of it.”
Birle could not for long stop thinking of the wonder. “Yesterday there was only me, and today—just now—now there’s another. How can that be, Nan?” If Nan had asked her at that moment, Birle would have told her all about Orien, and the wonder of him.
But Nan didn’t ask. “A babe is what happens, when a man and woman lie together,” she said. “It’s time you gave her the breast, Birle—that closes the womb, you’ll feel it—aye, and you have to show her how to fill her belly.”
+ + +
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.