Tale of Birle Read online

  Yul was afraid to bathe. She had to comfort him like a child, with soothing noises over his whimpering wordlessness. She washed him as if he were a child, with soap and cloth. He had no clean clothes to put on, and she thought she might take the uncut cloth, to make him shirt and trousers. As Yul lifted the bath to empty it for the last time, Joaquim came out to join them. Many stars had come out in the darkening sky. Voices, laughing, singing, talking, came from beyond the wall.

  “You don’t resemble my wife, except for that look of sadness in your eyes. Look,” Joaquim said, pointing, “there’s the Plough, just coming out.”

  Birle didn’t know what he was talking about, and she thought he wasn’t really talking to her at all. In the morning, she thought, she would take their soiled clothes and wash them. Until the clothes had been washed, they could stay piled against the rear building, so that their odors wouldn’t linger in the house, to offend Corbel.

  She understood the true situation—she might keep Joaquim’s house, but it was Corbel’s displeasure she had need to fear.

  When the time came to serve Corbel his meal, as guest, the house at least was ready, the meat the soldiers had brought was roasting on a spit over the fire, the little loaves of bread no bigger than her fist—which the soldiers had told her Corbel must have—were waiting in a basket, and the stew of parsnips and onions bubbled in the pot. Birle alone served the two men and then, as she did at the Inn, left them to their meal.

  Corbel called her. “Where are you going, girl?” He wanted her to stand silent at the wall, ready to cut meat and fill his tankard. Corbel took the chair, and ate without speaking until all the food had been consumed. For a slight man he had a fierce appetite, Birle thought as she cut the last of the meat from the bone, and scraped the last of the stew from its pot.

  “Now you can show me your work, Brother. But be brief; I’m a man with much to do.” Corbel seemed well-pleased as he left the room.

  He was not so pleased when he returned. “That laboratory—how can my brother do his work in there? If you think I’m going to dress you out in finery . . . and feed you . . . so that you can laze by the fire—”

  Birle had never thought that. She hadn’t known, no one had told her, she didn’t even know what a laboratory was.

  “—do the marketing for you, wasting the time of soldiers—”

  She hadn’t asked for soldiers, nobody had told her anything.

  “—and keeping my own cooks busy baking bread for this house too, when they’ve my own tables to see to—”

  She hadn’t known where the food was coming from. How was she to know?

  “—too whey-faced to leave the house. I give you warning. Joaquim is here to work for me and I won’t have your slovenliness interfering. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Birle said. “I didn’t know—” she started to say. At her words, his eyes blazed in anger.

  “You’re not here to know.”

  He wanted no excuses, and she wouldn’t offer him any. He chose to think she had been lazing through the days, and he didn’t care what the truth was. Corbel put no value on what she had done; he cared only for what she hadn’t done.

  “Joaquim isn’t fit to go out of doors unguarded, his head’s in the clouds and always has been—it’s up to you. I leave it to you.”

  “Yes, master,” she said, too frightened to think. A glance at his proud face told her she had answered as he wished.

  When she had closed the door behind the guest, and listened to the hoofbeats moving rapidly away, she turned back to the room. Joaquim came in then, carrying a lantern. Behind him, Yul carried a large book. “There’s little left to eat,” Joaquim said, apologizing. “Yul might have the bone to chew on, and there’s the rest of the day’s bread. Birle, come and eat something.”

  Birle shook her head. She needed to start cleaning up.

  “But you must. I’m to explain to you where to market, and give you a purse. The money for keeping the house. Please, sit down. You will have the husbandry of it, with Corbel to answer to.” He didn’t add “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have. “When we empty it, we’re to ask for more. He wouldn’t give us too little, that would defeat his own purpose. He wouldn’t want to defeat his own purpose, would he?”

  Joaquim waited, but Birle had nothing to say, or to ask.

  “Of course he might,” Joaquim said. “He might just do that. He might have a purpose I haven’t fathomed, and a use for me that isn’t at all what he told me, when he summoned me here. Corbel has always had his own plans, and purposes. . . . But this has nothing to do with you.”

  Birle wished she could believe her master.

  “The market square is”—he bent down to pick a piece of charcoal from the edge of the fire, to draw on the table as he spoke—“right against the river, but up from the harbor, so that goods can be brought downriver, as well as up from the ships, and there are roadways, of course. Now, look at this and tell me if it makes sense to you. The city lies on a peninsula of land, where the river goes into the ocean. The land rises, rather steeply on this part of the coast, and it’s an old city, which has always been fortified—there are the old walls around the inner section, and then the new walls. Do you follow me so far?”

  Birle nodded.

  “We are about here.” He drew an X near the riverside of the newer city. “The market is down there.” Another X. “It’s easy to recognize, because not only is it open space, with stones set out for a floor, and the notice post at the center, it couldn’t be anything else, but there are also the guildhalls around it. You’ll know it when you get there. All you have to do is keep going downhill, and you’ll find it. You can’t get lost, and if you do all you have to do is ask a soldier for directions. There’ll be no difficulty at the gates, not the gates of the inner wall. They aren’t ever locked, and they aren’t even really guarded, just soldiers on duty there. And nobody would dare to—only those of Corbel’s house wear the golden band, you see. You’ve nothing to fear, Birle.”

  Birle shook her head; she wasn’t afraid, not as he thought she was. She was looking at the rough map he’d drawn. “So that’s east,” she said, putting her finger down on the river, where it ran by the end of their walled property.

  “You can read a map?”

  Fear returned. She should have kept her knowledge a secret.

  “Birle.” He sounded excited now, and his whole face lit up with eagerness, which made him look a much younger man. “Can you read? I mean letters and words. Books. More specifically, can you write?”

  She didn’t know what her safe answer was to this. Everything was different in this world. Everything had changed from what she knew. What was a danger in the Kingdom might be safety here, and she had no way of knowing before she answered. “Yes,” she risked.

  “What a piece of luck,” Joaquim said. “How did you know which was east?”

  “Because the sun set over the house, when we were bathing, and the river was at my back.” Surely, he must know that.

  “Good, good,” he said. “That’s very good,” he said.

  Birle was memorizing the map. With a map in her head, she might make an escape. But there was much she didn’t know from it. “What lies beyond the outer wall?” she asked.

  “Farmlands in the river valley, and forest beyond, then steep, barren hills as the land continues to rise. That’s where the mines are. It’s the mines, as well as the harbor, that make the city such a prize.”

  “Does Corbel rule all of it?”

  “Yes. It came with his bride—her dowry.”

  So even if she could get out of the city she would still be in danger. She had no way of knowing how long a journey would take her beyond Corbel’s reach. And, now that she looked at it, she could see how much work there would be to get the thick charcoal marks off of the wooden tabletop.

  Joaquim took his book, and the candle, and settled himself at the table. He sent Yul out to bed, but before Birle could begin scraping the plates he a
sked her, “Can you read this?”

  It was the first page of the book. “ ‘The Nature of Disease,’ ” she read. “Do you know medicine?”

  “As much as any man. I would know more,” he said, then paid no further attention to her.

  Birle went about her chores. If escape was possible, it would be easier by sea; but she wasn’t eager to undertake the dangers of a sea journey, even if she could find a boat. If she could escape, she would be leaving Orien behind—wherever he was. At least now they were in the same place, she thought. “Master?” she asked, daring to interrupt. “Is there only the marketplace and guildhall there in the old city?”

  “No, no. Don’t you remember?” She didn’t. “It’s like a beehive down there, or an ant’s nest, narrow, dark streets twisting and turning, shops and houses, and the poor. All who can have built homes in the new city. In the old city, the night air off the water breeds diseases, hunger breeds cruelty and—but there’s no danger for you.”

  If she went to market, if she was free to leave the house and go through the gates into the old city—

  “I’ll send Yul with you, for protection,” Joaquim interrupted her thoughts. Then he went back to his book.

  —she could search for Orien. His masters hadn’t been wealthy men, so he was probably there, in the old city. If she could search for him, then she might find him. Her thoughts raced on. If she could find him, then she might see his face again. Her heart beat uncomfortably at the hope.

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE Birle was able to leave the house, three days of toil. She didn’t know what would satisfy Corbel, so she dared not leave anything undone. The house had accumulated years of dirt. She made the meals, both the morning meal and the large meal they ate at midafternoon. She scrubbed clothing clean, and stretched it out to dry in the sunlight. In the evenings she sewed a shirt for Yul, a yellow shirt with arms that were too short to cover his wrists, and sleeves unevenly joined, but a clean shirt he could wear. She didn’t know if it was because fear rode up on her from behind or because hope shone ahead, but she hurried from one task to the next, never resting.

  The laboratory too required cleaning. There, Yul helped, and Joaquim. She and Joaquim uncrated bowls, vials, flasks, wooden bowls with tight-fitting lids, oddly shaped instruments with long and short handles, little metal pots in which a fire could be burned, bellows to increase the heat, and more books. All had to have straw brushed from them, and then be washed, and then rubbed dry, and then set out on the shelves Yul had scrubbed. Birle couldn’t rest, unlike Yul, who would curl up like a dog whenever he had no task to do. Even when she lay in her bed at night, her mind roamed between memory and imagination. Hope gnawed at her like hunger.

  When at last Birle came out of the house and onto the street, it was midmorning of the fourth day after Corbel’s visit. Yul accompanied her to market, for her protection; he followed behind her, a basket in his hand. Birle turned to the right, following the descending street.

  Although the air was perfumed with the scent of flowers, and flowering trees, there was nothing to be seen but stone walls, lining the dirt road, and the sky shining blue above. The walls were as tall as Yul’s shoulder and ran continuously on both sides of the street, broken only for the occasional set of wooden doors. Birle didn’t, for all her hope, expect to find Orien that day. To find one person among the many dwellers in such a city wouldn’t be the work of one day. That day she hoped only to begin to learn her way about the city. She hurried on.

  As Joaquim had said, at the thick stone wall that enclosed the old city, soldiers stood on guard. They demanded to be told where she came from and where she was going, then they let her pass.

  On the other side of the wall, the street ran more steeply downhill, and the houses were small wooden buildings, with thatched roofs, crowded up next to one another. The air smelled not of flowers but of food and sweat and privies. Many smaller streets twisted off the one she walked down. Many people—men, women, and children—were on the street, and in the houses. Red-shirted soldiers rode down past her, and up past her, and the people pushed to the side to let them pass. There were also soldiers on foot, sometimes going somewhere, sometimes standing to talk and watch.

  Birle knew the marketplace when she found it. The narrow, dark street she was on came to a large open space, backed on three sides by two-storied buildings. Although streets were entered between these buildings, the effect was like walls. On the fourth side of the square lay the river. A tall pillar rose up out of the center of the marketplace, its top pointed like a spike. Three broad stone steps led up to the spike, and an odd shape, like a shelf, stuck out from it. Below it, all around, were lines of booths and tables among which crowds moved. Each of the buildings, too, had crowds moving in front of it, under a covered walkway.

  Birle hesitated, and Yul waited behind her. There was too much to see and hear, too many faces and voices, colors and sounds. How you would ever find one person, out of so many, so close together that they hid one another. . . . In a forest, crowded with trees and undergrowth, the one thing that moved was visible. Here in the moving crowds, unless something was still you couldn’t find it with your eye. Only the spike was stationary, dark against the bright sky.

  Yul pushed her from behind and she turned to scold him. But one look at his face stopped her words in her throat. His eyes, and his mouth gasping like a fish taken from the water—Yul was like a child crowding close to his mother’s skirt for safety. “B-irle?”

  She thought she could guess what worried him. She answered his question, speaking to him as Joaquim did, as if he were not a simple. “You won’t get lost, I can’t lose you—you’re too big.”

  He shook his head, frightened. People crowded past them, complaining.

  “If I get separated from you, if I lose you—”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “But if I do, if that happens, all you have to do is stand absolutely still. Do you understand what I mean? You’re so big, taller than anyone, I can always find you. Stay close to me so we won’t be separated.”

  “P-ra-ted?”

  “Apart,” she explained. She put her palms together, then moved them apart, to show him. “Separated,” she repeated. “Now, what will you do if that happens?”

  He searched for words. Birle waited. “Yul—will—stand,” he announced, adding with his sad, lopsided smile, “still.”

  “Good, that’s good. And if you stand still, you’ll be like the tallest tree, so I’ll see you.”

  “Birle—will—find—Yul,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Birle entered the market. She didn’t expect to see Orien, not really. The whole huge square was crowded with people and booths. It was like all the fairs she’d ever been to in her life, all being held at the same time. Once she stepped into it she could see only what was close around her, soldiers, people poorly clothed and well-clothed and some few richly clothed. Ladies with their hair mounted high on their heads were carried through the crowd in chairs; poles extended from beneath the chairs and rested on the shoulders of two servants or, in the case of the grandest Lady, four servants. Barefoot children dashed in among the moving crowd, crying out, the sellers called out their wares, the buyers bartered.

  Moving slowly up and down the long rows, Birle thought there was nothing you couldn’t buy here. Weavers had one whole row, tables piled high with colored cloths. Some were rough-woven, some smooth, some shimmered in the sunlight while others were as lacy as the froth on a bowl of ale. And that was just the weavers. It was the same with knives, bowls, boots, goblets, plates, soap, and candles. The foods had the same abundance, baskets of onions and turnips, parsnips and carrots, flesh and fowl and cheeses, bread and apples and—more of everything than Birle would have imagined, if she had thought to imagine how much the world could hold.

  The crowds led her over to the covered porches. There, the people stood to watch entert
ainers perform, a singer with his lute, jugglers, even puppets who hit at one another with soft clubs as they quarreled while the audience laughed and cheered them on. All along the side of the raised wooden walkway, beyond its slanting roof, the very old or very young hovered. “Me Ma is sick,” they begged, or “Help an old man.” Birle couldn’t bear to look at their misery, and turned back into the market.

  She was almost at the waterside. Looking downriver, she could see the masts of the ships moored in the harbor, around a bend of land. Fishing boats were tied up at the river’s edge. The sharp cries of fishmongers reminded Birle of her errands. She stopped before one woman, choosing her at random or perhaps because of a bright red scarf she had tied around her hair. This was a woman of Nan’s age, short and plump, with two little children silent at her side. Birle selected three silver fish from the basket, and held them up. “What do I pay you?” she asked the woman.

  The woman and her children paid no attention to Birle. They had been struck silent by the sight of Yul. Two little faces peered out from behind their mother’s skirt, fascinated and afraid. Their mother looked up at him, then down, then up, and she didn’t even hear Birle’s question, so Birle repeated it. “What do I pay you?”

  The woman opened her mouth to answer. Then she saw Birle’s neck. “Why, you pay what you think they’re worth,” she said.

  This wasn’t like any bartering Birle had ever done. How was she to know the value of three fresh fish? When the Inn purchased a fisherman’s catch—if, for some reason, the Inn’s morning haul wasn’t enough to feed its tables—her father traded cheeses, wine, ale, or sometimes labor for the catch. If the fisherman wanted coins, then he named how many. “Is three copper coins enough?” Birle asked.