Elske Read online

  “I promise, my Lady,” Elske said, the words rolling up from her heart and out of her throat as heavy as stones.

  “THAT LAST COURTING WINTER, YOU would have been no older than I am now,” Elske said, on one long evening. She was still at the work of sewing her mistress’s gowns. “This is my fifteenth winter, and I am still young for marriage.”

  Beriel stood by the window, staring out into the darkness, and answered, “It has been days since I’ve seen boats on the river, and it feels cold enough for ice to form.”

  “But you had no choice but to return to Trastad, did you?” Elske asked.

  “What else could I do? At least, I am far from where I am known, and watched, and hated, and now betrayed by a brother. He has no thought for the people, their labors and well-being. He cares nothing for law, or honor. How can I give my land and people to such a King?”

  Elske could not answer this.

  “My grandparents wished me Queen,” Beriel said. “The Earl and his Lady, those two, and the people, my people: They have backed my claim. I know this, even though I was young when my grandmother died. That is when my grandfather gave me her golden medallion—”

  She stopped speaking and turned back to the night.

  Elske watched how the white needle slid into the heavy fabric, and came out again, joining skirt to bodice.

  “When we are in the city,” Beriel said, “as we go about in this Courting Winter, I promise you I’ll be watching for a woman. I will know her when I see her, for she took the medallion from me, and promised me help, and although I waited where she told me—waited through the whole night and the next day—she never came back. If I see her, I’ll have my medallion back—or she’ll wish she’d never gulled me.”

  Elske stitched.

  “The coins and the gold chains were nothing to lose,” Beriel said. “But the medallion was put into my hands that I might remember, always, that I am the Queen. And I gave all to that woman. I’ve been a fool, Elske,” Beriel said, turning around and in a fury.

  Elske said nothing until she thought to offer again, “I have coins, my Lady, which are yours if you want them.”

  “You are a fool, too.”

  “Why should you not take them?” Elske asked.

  “You are poor and a servant. It isn’t fitting that I should take your coins.”

  “How can I be poor, when I have coins and no need of them?”

  “It’s of no matter, anyway,” Beriel said. “No man will ask for me, and I wouldn’t have any of them anyway. We are all of us here in Trastad because no one in our own lands will have us. So we hope to find marriages where we are not known, except for our faces and our purses.” Beriel returned to the window, and said, “I have no purse and my face does not please.” She stared back out into darkness.

  Elske sewed, and thought about this baby Beriel would have, how it might be gotten rid of without discovery. Death was easiest, as is often the case, but with the river frozen over, the body presented difficulties. The land, too, would be frozen hard, and what did a people do with the bodies of its unwanted babies when there was no wolf pack to feed them to? A babe could be easily killed, by smothering, by a knife thrust, by drowning, strangling, exposure in a winter night, or its neck snapped like a kitten. If the baby must die, to save Beriel, the killing wasn’t the problem; but the body presented difficulties.

  Then Elske thought of the holes in the ice through which the fishermen pulled their catch, and her eyes filled with tears as she thought of thrusting a small body down into the icy black river.

  Elske could begin to understand why the Trastaders cared so much about a woman’s ruin; it had to do with these babies. For the Trastaders valued children. It was a deep grief when a child died, and a lasting sorrow when a woman proved barren, as Idelle feared.

  Elske sewed on, blindly. In one house a child was desired, in another unwanted; the world worked backwards. But if that was the way of it—and that was the way of it—why not move the child from the one place to the other?

  “When will your babe be born?” she asked Beriel.

  “I don’t wish to think of that,” Beriel answered.

  “Nay, but you must, my Lady. And you must think of bearing the pains silently. The women of the Volkaric give birth with no crying out,” Elske told her mistress.

  “What any woman can do, I can do,” Beriel declared. “Don’t doubt my courage. When the time comes—”

  “When will that be?” Elske persisted.

  “How should I know? I’ve never had a child before, and my mother would have no reason to tell me. I’ve heard the servants counting backwards say it takes ten moons to make a baby.”

  Elske sewed, the needle leading its trail of thread in and out, and the fabric lay heavy and warm as a cloak over her legs.

  “It has been eight moons since I had my woman’s bleeding,” Beriel told her reluctantly. “Or perhaps it’s only seven. How could I find time to count the moons, when— I will have those cousins under my heel,” she promised Elske, with another swift change in spirits. “I will take my brother by the hair and cut his throat open. My cousins I will drop into the lake, with stones tied to their feet, let them stand beside one another there, and have the skin eaten off of their hands and faces, the eyes eaten out of their skulls. Let them stand together as they stood by my bed.” Beriel overmastered her anger then, and rested in the law. “They plotted to bring me down, and that is treason.”

  Elske sewed, and made her own choice under her own law: The child who would be born she would choose not to kill unless she must.

  Chapter 10

  ON THE DAY OF THE first Assembly a fine, misty snow fell through grey air. Snow dusted the road, and the cloaked shoulders of the young men on horseback. The Adels rode to the Assembly, displaying their horsemanship and their fine trappings, as well as their high-stepping mounts. The Adelinnes rode in covered chairs, each chair carried by a pair of menservants, while the attendant maidservants walked alongside.

  Elske wore her wolfskin boots for the long walk from Logisle to the Council Hall; once there she would change them for soft indoor slippers. She wore her second finest dress, the red one, and a head scarf made from the cloth cut off to raise the hem. At this first Assembly, and throughout the Courting Winter, Elske would take her place among the other servants at the back of the hall, to watch over her mistress while Beriel took her pleasure.

  “Although what pleasure anyone could take in these . . . Assemblies,” Beriel said, spitting the last word out of her mouth as if she had bitten into a wormy apple. “We parade around the great hall saying nothing, although many words are spoken and there is much laughter. Everyone looks everyone else over—it’s a horse market, a pig fair, no different. And the Vars watch us, drinking their wine, their greedy eyes counting up all the profit we bring them.”

  Elske admitted, “I’m curious, to see everything.”

  “I’ve already seen everything and everybody—or no one and nothing very different—two years ago,” Beriel grumbled. Then she had a cheering thought. “Later, when they think they’ve got our measure, we’ll be allowed to visit the markets, and the shops—to look at furs and feathers, sweet cakes, anything that amuses us, anything they hope to sell to us. We’ll be allowed to wander,” Beriel remembered. “We’ll make our freedom out of that, shall we?”

  “If you wish it,” Elske agreed. She took a careful look at Beriel. The babe did not reveal its presence, beneath the high waist and full, heavy skirt. Beriel looked in fine health, fat and ripe. Elske had noticed this among the women of the Volkaric, too, towards the end of their child-carrying months; they would bloom out, not like flowers but like ripening foods, plump onions, swollen grains of wheat, and—now that Elske had seen them—round and reddened apples.

  Elske entered the hall four paces behind her mistress, who looked neither to left nor to right, but stepped into the midst of those Adeliers who had already gathered. Elske joined the servants.

  T
he wide hall was as tall as ten men standing on one another’s shoulders, and there was a railed balcony to which Adeliers hoping for privacy in conversation could retire. This balcony rested on spiraled wooden pillars, and it was in the cloistered area behind these pillars that the servants gathered. Fir garlands hung around the windows and long tables covered by bright woven cloths were set out with platters of dainties, both sweet and meaty, as well as jugs of mulled apple cider, which mingled its spicy smell with the sharp odor of the greens.

  The finely dressed Adeliers, smiling, looking about, talking, moved around the room in a promenade. From the balcony came the music of six lutes played by six men wearing the Council’s livery. The Adeliers paraded, and watched themselves parade. The leading merchants of the city took part in this opening promenade, black-garbed figures with the bright ribbons of office across their chests.

  A manservant standing close to Elske pointed out the wealthiest Adels and named the Trastader dignitaries; he instructed his fellow servants in their behavior. Servants kept to the background, but as long as they remained back they could move around freely, conversing with whomever they wished, and even—he said, and winked at Elske—make their own matches. He himself, he admitted with a smile for a yellow-haired maidservant standing at his elbow, had been married after the last Courting Winter.

  In the hall, Adels and Adelinnes kept arriving and arriving, Princes and Princesses, Counts and Barons, the heirs and heiresses of large fortunes, the distant cousins of great men, until the room grew crowded with the sounds of their voices, and the colors of their clothing.

  Elske saw that Beriel kept herself aloof. Sometimes, as they passed, an Adelier might speak to Beriel. She would answer, hold out a hand whether it was a young man or young woman who claimed her attention, then walk on. They would follow her with their eyes.

  Beriel walked by putting one foot in front of the other, her hands at her sides. She drank by raising a goblet to her lips, and ate by taking bites. She did nothing extraordinary. Other Adelinnes were more richly clothed, their hair more beautifully dressed, their faces more lovely. Even the Adels wore more jewelry than Beriel, and many of them moved with a more graceful step. And yet, watching, Elske could see how unlike her mistress was to the other Adeliers.

  When he spoke from behind her, Var Jerrol used a low voice to tell her, “Don’t be alarmed.” Then he drew her aside, so that it would be difficult for any of the other servants to hear what they said to one another.

  “May we be well met,” Var Jerrol said to her. Laughter lay behind his eyes, although his face expressed boredom. “So the Fiendly Princess doesn’t wear you down with her demands?”

  Elske waited silently to hear his purpose. Var Jerrol was not a man to spend his attentions without making a profit from them.

  “What does she tell you about her homeland?” he asked her. “Could you travel to it, and know how to make your way around in it? What are its riches, has she told you? Its weaknesses?”

  Elske chose her answer carefully, to tell nothing false, and answered him, “I know only that her homeland is beautiful to her, and precious.”

  “She will be Queen there?”

  “I think her parents wish her brother to be King,” Elske reported, “and so they hope to marry my mistress into a foreign country, whence she can’t claim the crown away from him.”

  “So her claim is good, and thus they fear her,” Var Jerrol said. “As I think they might well, now I’ve seen her for myself. Tell me, Elske, if you know, what she names this land.”

  “The Kingdom,” Elske said.

  “And can you also tell me, in the Kingdom, if they have black powder for their wars?”

  “She has told me of no wars,” Elske answered.

  Var Jerrol moved away then, motioning her to follow. He led her among servants and then among the overseeing Vars, keeping her beside him as if she were not a servant. “We’ll take cider, shall we? You haven’t answered me about the black powder.”

  They approached one of the food tables and Var Jerrol poured the drink from a jug into a silver goblet, which he gave to Elske, then took another goblet for himself. Elske again made her choice for plain truth. “She has heard talk of the black powder, rumors. She has no more experience of it than I do,” she said, and filled her mouth with the flavor of liquid apples.

  Var Jerrol’s hooded eyes studied Elske. “Do you enjoy life in the High Councillor’s villa?”

  “How could I not?” Elske asked, wondering what he wished to learn now.

  “The food, as I hear, is of rare delicacy.”

  This was nothing. “My mistress is locked into her chamber at night,” Elske said. “There is no need,” she said.

  “No need,” he agreed. “In exchange—for I think your Fiendly Princess will have seen us speaking. She doesn’t miss much, I think,” Var Jerrol said, as if he had not paraded Elske out for all to see. “If she asks, can you tell her we didn’t speak of her?”

  “Why should I lie to her?” Elske asked. She had Var Jerrol and he knew it. He opened his mouth as if to answer, then shut it. He looked out over the crowd of Adeliers in their brightly colored gowns and coats, their glittering rings and necklaces, the white arms and necks of the young women, the broad shoulders of the young men.

  Elske, easily locating her mistress, saw an Adel approach Beriel to offer her a goblet and gesture with his hand towards a table spread with food. Her mistress took the drink with a sternness of expression that the young man—himself in a fine brocaded jacket, his chest crowded with heavy gold chains—smiled his way through. Seeing the Lady halted, two more young men approached, and she gave them no warmer welcome.

  “No, you would not lie, not to your mistress, and not to me, either, would you?” Var Jerrol asked. He already knew the answer, so Elske did not need to say anything. “But I have something for your mistress,” he said, his lowered lids hiding his thoughts. Unnoticed in the crowd of Vars, he put a purse into her hand. What it held was round, and flat, much larger than a coin, heavy. Elske could guess what it was.

  Elske put the purse strings around one wrist. “The Lady will thank you.” She added, then, because she liked the chance to use Var Jerrol for her own purpose, “There were also gold necklaces, and some coins.”

  “She scattered them around freely, as I hear. As I hear it,” he warned Elske, “your mistress was on an urgent errand, her spirits as desperate as her need.”

  Elske understood him and chose to say, “All will be well.”

  “When she is in your care, I think it may,” he answered carefully, and bowed to the two Adels who approached Elske as the Var moved away from her. The two were bright-eyed with wine, and said to Elske, “We are brothers-in-arms, or we would be, Lady, if there were any enemy you would ask us to defend you from. We come to ask your name, so that when you send for us—”

  “Why would I send for you?” She thought they must know from her wrapped hair that she was no Lady. And Var Jerrol must have meant to discomfit her by leaving her with them.

  “In your need,” said the second merrily. They were both dark-haired, clean-shaven and richly attired. “We would be your knights, and slay your dragons. We would dance and duel for your amusement.”

  “We would, in short, know your name, Lady,” the first spoke again.

  “I am Elske, serving maid to the Lady Beriel,” Elske told them.

  Either the wine interfered with their ability to understand, or they were dumbfounded to hear her deny herself the higher birth. There was a silence, and then they laughed into one another’s faces, clapped one another on the shoulder, and stepped back from Elske. “You should be the Lady,” the second one said over his shoulder, “and she the serving maid.”

  Perhaps they didn’t recognize a Queen when she walked among them. Or perhaps they hoped that Elske might prove gullible and be lured by them into her own ruin. But Elske was in no danger from them. She moved back to the rear of the hall and stood among the servants again, he
r hands clasped behind her to hide the heavy purse.

  Before her, the scene spread itself out. The colors of gowns, tights, tunics and coats moved and mixed, like a school of small fishes darting through the water. Oil lamps washed everything with warm light, and the air was filled with music. The high, hopeful voices of the young women melded into the bold and hopeful voices of the young men; and like riverbanks containing and guiding the flow of water, the deeper voices of the Vars could be heard, speaking in their more guttural northern tongue.

  Elske stood back against the wall, watching. There was something of the beauty of spring wildflowers in the scene before her, as if the room were a meadow with winds blowing over it, and she followed her mistress’s slow journey around and around, among all the Adeliers but never one of them. She saw Beriel turn her head to listen to what one of the Adeliers said to her, courteously attentive. The young man spoke with a graceful gesturing of his hand. He was a pretty fellow, Elske noticed, although he wore no golden chain, nor rings on his fingers, so he was not rich. His light brown hair curled, shining clean, and a smile rested comfortably on his face. He said something that caused Beriel to shake her head at him, although with a slight smile of her own. At that he backed away, bowing; he was not disappointed.

  Too soon for Elske, the Assembly was over. Servants brought the cloaks to wrap around the shoulders of the milling Adeliers. The faces of their masters or mistresses—cheeks that were pink with excitement or pale with withheld tears or red with anger—told the servants how to greet them. Beriel’s face had no expression, and Elske greeted her with equal dignity.

  Outside, snow fell thick on the unswept stone steps, but Beriel didn’t hesitate. The steps would be where she wished them to be. Her dainty boots would not slip from under her. Her servant would follow.

  When they had returned to Beriel’s chambers and a meal of stewed rabbit, Beriel sighed. “There are so many more such occasions to be got through,” she said. “It seems forever before I will be done with them.”