She wished she did not have to part from him.
“I’ll row you back upriver,” he told her. He picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulder.
“I can row,” Birle said. She could not keep her eyes from studying him, to lock all that she could see of him into her memory. “We might meet up with a fisherman,” she warned him.
“Why then I’ll push you into the water and he’ll be so busy rescuing you I can make my escape,” he answered. A quick man with a lie, and a story, and a plan; he was that, she thought, memorizing that about him too.
“My mother died of a chill she took from the river, in early spring,” Birle said, remembering.
“Ah,” he said. “Then I won’t serve you so. We’ll hope to meet no one. If hope fails, there will be some other way.”
Why did she have to part from him?
She didn’t, Birle thought, the idea entering her mind like an arrow finding its target. There was nobody here to bind her up and carry her back to the Inn, unless the Lord wished to. There was no law to rule her, here beyond the borders of the Kingdom. There was no one ever to know what became of her.
“I could travel with you. I could be your servant.” The Lords needed servants.
“I don’t even have enough food for one,” he said. She didn’t dare look at him, but she took hope at the laughter in his voice.
“I also know the river, as you don’t.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I can fish and I could teach you how. I could go with you only as far as where you enter the forest, and then I could bring the boat back. Don’t you see?”
If she could just not have to part from him, she didn’t care what happened after. Her family would punish her, for their shame, and the way she had shamed Muir; she would never wed, for no man would take the chance of such a girl, so she would spend her days in service at the Inn. Measured against the brightness of the present day, such gray forbodings meant little. A coward might find such threats for the future reason enough; but Birle thought it might be greater cowardice to throw away the bright treasure of the present hour.
The Lord was shaking his head. “Although I wouldn’t mind learning what you could teach me, and the truth is, I also wouldn’t mind the company. I’m not a man for solitude and silence.”
Birle didn’t expect him to desire her presence. If he didn’t mind it, that was enough for her, and more than enough.
“Besides,” he reminded her, “you’ve a husband awaiting you.”
The thought of Muir sent a chill out from Birle’s heart and she pulled her cloak closer around her. The thought of Muir as husband froze her tongue. There were songs about girls throwing themselves into the river because a man had spurned them, or had chosen another. She had always thought those girls fools, but now she understood what their choice was.
“Don’t you wish to marry?” his voice asked. Birle’s eyes were trapped at the toes of her boots and she couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t speak, as if her voice were trapped also, so she shook her head.
“I thought the people married from free choice,” the Lord said.
If he thought she was being forced to wed, then he might take her with him, for pity. That little hope warmed her and she raised her face to lie to him. But it was the truth she spoke. “So we do. I said yes to him.”
“It looks to me as if you’d be better off to tell him you’ve changed your mind,” the Lord advised her.
“That’s the man’s right. A girl who has given her word must keep it. What would the world come to if a promise made wasn’t kept?”
At that he laughed. Birle locked the golden sound of his laughter up in her memory. “Who is the fortunate man?” he asked.
“A hunstman who serves the Earl.”
His smile faded. “Didn’t they warn you?”
“Aye, my family tried to persuade me against him, because he’s older, because a huntsman’s wife has to live in the city while he serves his Lord. Because there is no holding to inherit, if there are children.”
“And did they tell you what happens to such wives, living poor and unprotected in the cities? Didn’t they tell you how many such women turn to drunkenness, and the protection of men who are not their husbands? The wives of huntsmen and soldiers are a disease of the cities, turned vicious by poverty and hopelessness. Did they not tell you?”
“Is that true?”
He nodded.
“Would Muir have known this? Would he have known, when he asked me to wed, what my life would be?”
The Lord made no response to that.
“Aye, then, what can I do?” Birle didn’t expect an answer.
“Not all huntsmen serve their wives so,” the Lord said. “There are good men among the huntsmen, although they are few. Is your Muir such a man?”
“I don’t know,” Birle said, her voice a whisper. She should know that before she wed, to put her life into a man’s hands. It had been enough for her to know that Muir wished to marry her, and thought her pretty. She had been more stupid than she had known, more stupid even than Nan had guessed.
“It may be that he is,” the Lord said, pity in his eyes and his voice. Now that he pitied her, Birle thought she didn’t wish him to.
“Muir is not a bad man,” she said, without confidence.
“It isn’t easy for a huntsman to find a bride—and especially a young one. He must have guessed that you were ignorant.”
Birle didn’t know what Muir thought.
“If you tell your father what I’ve told you,” the Lord suggested.
“I’ve given my word.” That was the unfortunate truth; she had given her word and there was nothing now she could do to ungive it. “Maybe he’ll turn his back to me, and say me nay, because I’ve spent this night who can say where.”
“If he does that, you’ll know he’s one of the few good ones,” the Lord said. “So I doubt he will.”
Birle, remembering the expression in Muir’s eyes when he asked her to wed, doubted it too. She had felt pity for the rough-mannered man, seeing how much he longed for her to say yes.
“So you had better come with me after all,” the Lord said.
Birle, wrapped round in fear and anger, almost didn’t understand the words. “With you?”
“Just as far as the path into the forest, but—if we travel slowly the fair will be come and gone, before you return. So the danger will be past, won’t it? I can’t see any other way, can you?”
Birle couldn’t see anything for the sudden gladness rising in her, that she need not part from him, and that she need not marry Muir.
“And I’m not in any particular hurry, now I’m clear of the Kingdom. You aren’t either. Are you?”
She would have to find her tongue, she knew, and answer him something. “Aye, my Lord,” she said. “I mean, no, my Lord. I mean—I thank you.”
“It’s what I’ve been bred to do, rescue maidens in distress. From fierce dragons,” he talked on, bending to pick up his bag, “or evil guardians, or wicked witches. I suppose an unwise wedding can be considered such a danger.”
He moved with the grace of a young tree in a high wind, Birle thought, dazed with joy. Aye, and he was straight and strong as a tree, standing there.
“If we’re going, let’s be on our way,” the Lord said.
FOUR
Two gentle days followed, days filled with watery sunshine. Sometimes Birle rowed, but more often she let the oars hang above the water, dripping them in only for a steering stroke to keep the boat to the center of the river, where the current ran most strongly. They traveled at the river’s lazy pace. The Lord seemed content with this, and for herself, the longer they took the happier she would be. She didn’t think of the journey’s end, and the parting. Why should she spoil whatever hours she had by counting up the days and years to come?
They moved past banks that grew steeper as the land rose into hills. The branched trees they floated by were putting out pale green leaves
. Frothy patches of wood violets appeared beneath boulders or atop grassy banks, as if the stars departing from the sky had left their scarves behind.
The two days passed slowly. The Lord could sit silent for hours at a time. Birle didn’t know what he thought of as he stared into the water or into the forest. She was content to take care that they kept to the center and content to watch the way the water reflected sunlight up onto his face, in little light-filled shadows that moved over his cheeks and forehead.
At the end of each day he shaved his face clean, using the narrow dagger he wore at his belt. His right hand would grasp the hilt, to pull the sharp steel down along his cheek. With the fingers of his left hand he would follow the path the dagger had cleared. He did this not only on his cheeks, but also on his upper lip, with choppy strokes, and around the curve of his chin. Birle watched, and thought she understood why the men of the people wore beards. Let the Lords and Ladies wear their faces and hair like decorations. The people, men in beards and women with their long braids curled around their ears, had no time to spend so.
The differences between the Lords and the people—she kept seeing them, in the supple leather of his boots, in the unmarked smoothness of his hands, in her memory of the Ladies moving through the crowds at spring fairs and fall fairs in brightly colored gowns of blue, yellow, red, their long hair shining down their backs like silken rivers or dressed high as crowns on their heads.
He mastered the fishing spear easily. Perhaps this too was a difference between Lords and people—the people must be cautious lest they lose the little they had, so the people thought and spoke slowly, acted without haste. From the first, this Lord had acted and spoken differently from anyone Birle knew; she could only guess at what he was thinking. Birle thought he was a quick man, quick to learn, quick to laugh, and quick to pride. The first evening, the boat safely tied, the air still warm with sunlight and the speared fish gutted and ready for the fire, she had stood before him wondering how to ask permission to draw aside to bathe in the river. She didn’t know if her request would again embarrass him.
“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?”