Tale of Birle Read online

  As summer swelled, the air lay hot and damp on the marketplace. Tempers grew short, and the greens the farmers brought to market wilted in their baskets. The market became a dangerous place, although that didn’t keep anyone at home. The fear of plague that lay over the city made men foolhardy. If we are to die, they seemed to think, at least let it be with a full belly, whatever its price. Daily, new heads appeared on the spike: thieves, spies, slaves who had attempted insurrection or escape. Birle studied each head, hoping not to recognize it.

  Fights were frequent, for everyone simmered with anger ready to come to the boil. It was not unusual to mark blood on a man’s face—or on the chest of a man killed before the soldiers could get to him through the crowds—nor to hear women’s voices shrieking out, in quarrel or in grief. Birle moved warily through the volatile crowds.

  The large buildings, with their smooth pink facades, were the guildhalls, Birle learned, and she learned to stay well back from their carved wooden doorways. When a guildmaster strode out from his hall, surrounded by his servants and apprentices, he might be mobbed by angry craftsmen, demanding to be given work. First words, then fists, then cudgels and knives and swords—and as the fight spread over the marketplace Birle fled with the rest of the people into the narrow streets around it. She was protected by Corbel’s golden chain and by Yul’s size, but in the heat of his anger a man might not see her neckchain, or her companion. Birle feared all, but feared more than anything that she would not find Orien. Every day left her feeling more hopeless as she went doggedly through the streets and among the dangers, never finding him.

  The Philosopher’s house was a safe haven from the disease, hunger, and fears of the city, not only because the wall with its guarded gates kept the misery within, but also because Birle’s work there filled the hours with purpose; work of house, laboratory, and now also garden. Yul and Birle tended the plants, at first plucking those that didn’t survive the transplanting, then weeding and loosening the soil around those that grew strongly. Summer rains fell generously onto the garden, and hot sunlight. They harvested the leaves and spread them out to dry, under Joaquim’s direction. More grew to replace those that had been taken.

  In the long summer twilights, Joaquim would walk beside the rows, bending over to pinch a leaf and smell his fingers, or to break off a twig and chew it. He named them for Birle—lungwort, pennyroyal—and sometimes questioned her to know what she remembered. “This?” “Comfrey,” she might answer, or “Garlic,” or equally often, “I don’t know.” He spoke of ointments, infusions, emetics, and vermifuges, of which herbs were useful in root, flower, or leaf. Birle listened attentively, because her mind, like her body, welcomed the work. Work had the power to distract, and distraction eased her heart. Some of the plants were dangerous, in part or in whole, and those Joaqim made sure she knew: wolfsbane, dwale, poppy.

  Often, during that long summer, Joaquim left the house during the day, to take medicines to the ill or wounded of the city. How he heard of the need, Birle didn’t know, nor how those in need knew to ask him for help. Word of his knowledge seemed to have spread on the very breezes that blew from the sea and the river over the city, to the Philosopher’s house.

  There seemed to her nothing Joaquim didn’t know. He knew the map of the sky, and was teaching it to her. She could find the Plough now and follow its directions to the star that stayed fixed at the north, the only fixed star in the sky. She knew now, because Joaquim had shown it to her, that the stars did move, arcing overhead in the same fashion as sun and moon, although more slowly. Joaquim had shown her the Wings, which looked like the letter W spread out against the blackness, and the seven Flowers, clustered together in a sky bouquet. In the cold seasons, Joaquim told her, she would see the Hourglass, with its three stars marking the narrow passage of time from yesterday to tomorrow.

  In the night, while she copied pages of herbal lore, or read in the book of alchemy so she could write down the experiments for Corbel, Joaquim undertook to teach Yul to speak. Just as he knew which plants could soothe a sick body, and the temperature at which water would be transmuted into air, Joaquim knew the proper shape of bones under skin. He had looked into Yul’s mouth, and explored it with his fingers. It seemed that Yul’s mouth wasn’t shaped as other mouths were; even there, his bones had grown monstrously. Joaquim tried to learn how Yul might twist lips and tongue to shape more rightly what words he spoke. Patiently, Yul did as his master asked, repeating sounds over and over. Probably, Birle thought, Yul was happier than he’d ever been before in his life. He had food, shelter, work, and companionship. He was treated kindly.

  The summer lasted long, and the heat didn’t ease. The marketplace was a cauldron of rumor and quarrel, violence and fear, buying, selling, display, and entertainment. Frequently, the bells tolled to announce a death. The bells made no differentiation between one man or another, a man or a woman, adult or child; whoever the victim, the bells tolled.

  Birle knew that Orien might likely be one whom fever took, or one of those who bled to death in an alley, but she didn’t let herself believe it. She continued her search, until she grew familiar with the city streets. She even began to recognize some of the entertainers, and to have among them those whom she always stopped to watch; she didn’t know if they recognized her, and Yul, among their audience.

  The puppeteers, she thought, must know them, for Yul was never content to stand at the back of the crowd, but moved—as if drawn there by a string—up next to the little high stage where the dolls acted out their adventures. All the time he watched, Yul’s sweet smile stayed on his face. His eyes were filled with wonder. Birle didn’t hurry him away, but stayed close beside him lest some mischance befall him, or her.

  She too enjoyed the workings of the dolls at the end of their strings, and their voices that seemed to speak. Some master carpenter had carved the puppets. Their wooden parts fitted together so that their arms and legs, knees and necks, moved up and down when a string was pulled. They were dressed in bright scraps of cloth, to give them greater resemblance to living men and women. The stories the puppets acted out were of every kind, some to cause the audience to laugh and leave coins in the basket that was set out at the foot of the high stage, some to make the women weep and leave coins, some to cause all to gasp in fear and dread—and leave coins in the basket.

  Summer passed on into autumn, marked by a sun that rose later and set earlier. The city filled with rumors of Corbel’s return. Birle finally asked her master for true news, on a night when he had taken her outside to show her the Hourglass, spread out across the southern sky.

  “Any day now, yes, but I’m not uneasy. I’ve many papers to show him, so he’ll be satisfied with me. He’ll have been well paid, if—as I hear—his battles were victories, so he’ll not be disposed to be angry. I’ll not think of him now, this night, and neither need you, Birle. Show me what you know of the stars.

  Instead of answering his question, Birle told him, “My grandfather once told me there might be people who lived among the stars. Do you think it could be so?”

  “I can’t say no, can I? There are some who believe that the spirits of men rise at death, to become stars. I can’t say no to that either, being a living man. You have a grandfather, do you? A man who wonders at what might be. Where did you come from?”

  “A land to the north and the east.”

  “Has it a name?”

  She knew now it was safe to tell him, in part because of the kind of man he was, and in part because he might not believe her. “No name that I know of. The people know it as the Kingdom. It lies far from the sea, hidden deep in the land, protected by forest and mountain.”

  “Like the Kingdom in the stories?”

  “Aye.” Birle waited to be asked about the snow dragon, whose breath froze any living thing below.

  “Where the King rules the Lords,” Joaquim asked, “and the Lords rule the people, and the Law rules all?”

  Birle didn’t say anything. She did
n’t know if that was really true of the Kingdom, although she knew it was not entirely false.

  “And war is unknown, so the land lives in peace,” Joaquim’s voice went on. They were both gazing out at the distant stars. Yul was asleep in the laboratory, curled up on his pile of straw.

  “Where the King has a library of all the books ever known, which a man may spend his life in reading and this is enough to earn his keep.”

  Birle didn’t think this was true, although she couldn’t answer certainly. She said nothing. Joaquim was lost in his own thoughts again.

  “A land so hidden, that even death has trouble finding it.”

  “Aye, master,” Birle said, “if this is the Kingdom of the stories, there is death in it—sickness and age, accident. It is no magical kingdom.”

  “What were you, in your own land?”

  “The Innkeeper’s daughter.”

  “But how came you here?” he asked. “To this,” he added.

  “Through fortune.”

  “It was an evil fortune then, if you tell me true.”

  Birle didn’t know if it was evil or good, only that it was fortune. “I’m telling you true,” she said. “But you might not believe me.”

  “Why should I disbelieve you?” he asked. “It may well be that the unmapped lands of the world are more numerous than we guess. In this world—where the son my father got upon my mother’s serving maid has become a prince among princes—why shouldn’t there be storied kingdoms, hidden away from the greed of the world?”

  “Master, there is greed, and jealousy, and pride there—fear and misery, too.”

  “Then I am the readier to believe it’s real,” Joaquim answered. Birle heard a smile in his voice. “But meantime, in this land, we have our work to get done, you and I, before my brother returns.” Joaquim had shown Birle enough so that she could go ahead with the work of the Herbal, as he named it, even after Corbel had required him to return to alchemy. Birle drew the herbs, so that any who saw her pictures could identify the plants. She memorized all Joaquim told her of an herb’s goodnesses, and at night she wrote it all down in carefully shaped letters, so that anyone who could read could understand.

  Corbel returned on a day of autumn storm, when wind and rain drove the last leaves from the trees. Birle had just returned from the marketplace, from searching and purchasing. She had just set the two pairs of boots, hers and Yul’s, to dry beside the fire when the door flew open, as if wind and rain demanded entrance. It was Corbel, returned. He pushed the door closed behind him.

  Birle stood up but didn’t speak. Corbel moved to his accustomed place at the center of the room, and gave the room his accustomed perusal. He wore a metal breastplate and his hair hung down wet under his helmet. Boots, leggings, the red shirt with gold circlets up to the elbow, gloves, and even his face were stained with travel; where he stood, water dripped, as if exhausted, onto the floor; but the man didn’t seem tired. The smile on his face was greedy and glad, like a wolf with the blood of his prey running down his jowls. Joaquim rushed into the room.

  “I’m here for your news,” Corbel said.

  “Then come out to the laboratory. There’s much for you to see.”

  Corbel shook his head, and water sprayed around him. “Tell me the one thing: Have you succeeded?”

  “Sadly, no.”

  This didn’t please Corbel.

  “Not for lack of trying,” Joaquim said. “I can show you the records of every experiment I’ve performed.”

  Corbel shook his head again. “Not this day, Brother. I’ll go home instead—to bathe, and eat, and sleep. Maybe my wife has stopped her weeping by now, although my spies tell me not. I’ll return, Brother, and soon.”

  “I await you,” Joaquim said.

  Leaving, Corbel took with him the summer-long ease of the house. Now there was danger wherever Birle was, in the city and in the house. As autumn turned colder, her sense of danger grew, and her urgency; her search seemed hopeless, futile, and for that reason the more desperate.

  There were only two ways she could ease her spirits. The first way was to work. Work was one way of forgetting. The other was a way of escaping, for a while, the thoughts that troubled her. The puppets could give her this temporary escape.

  Birle now lingered as eagerly as Yul did by the puppets. Only one puppeteer still performed in the sharper weather, before a smaller audience, for fewer coins. While the dolls acted out their stories, said their words, sang their songs, came to their sad ends or glad ends, Birle could forget her own fears and worries. She now stood as rapt as Yul while the miniature world went through its changes on the stage before them.

  So it happened that one gray day, when the wind off the river had sharp teeth in it to bite at her face and hands, Birle looked away from the stage, where a puppet wife chased after a puppet husband, and saw him—his bellflower eyes—

  —and his face was bearded now—

  —and hunger had hollowed his cheeks—

  It seemed that her heart leaped up into her throat and then fell back, to its accustomed place. It seemed that her heart stopped, to see him. He smiled, and bowed his head to her. Then the smile faded, leaving his face as empty as a sunless sky.

  Her eyes took in everything and yet never left his face. He stood among others like himself—rough, ragged brown shirt, no cloak against the wind, feet wrapped round with cloths, an iron chain at his neck, and his face so thin that even the beard couldn’t hide the pallor of hunger, his hair long, uncombed. Like the others, he looked unclean, unhealthy, wary and weak; she almost wished she hadn’t seen him. She almost wondered why she had sought him. His hands rubbed at his arms for warmth, crossed over his chest as if to protect himself. His shoulders hunched forward. His eyes were the only living thing in his face and they stared at her as if she were the last hope he had in the world; but surprised, too, as if until he saw her he hadn’t known there was hope for him in the world—his bellflower eyes—

  Birle took two steps toward him. He didn’t move. As she watched, a hand reached over from behind, to grab Orien by the nape of the neck as if he were a dog. The hand turned him around, to load the purchases from market into the woven basket Orien wore strapped at his back. The hand pushed at Orien’s shoulders, to lead him away, like a dog at his master’s heels.

  Orien didn’t look back at her, or up, or around; he kept his neck bent, his head bowed, like any other slave. She couldn’t follow, or try to speak to him, without bringing danger to them both—and for a moment she didn’t even want to. Around her the crowd laughed at the quarreling puppets.

  Orien was alive, still alive, and she had just seen him, she told herself that. He was hungry, ragged, probably cold—and winter hadn’t yet settled over the city. His spirit might have been broken. That too she told herself. Birle didn’t know how to feel. The gladness to have him within her sight, however briefly, brought with it a pain to know his fortune, and to lose him again, and an anger to know that there was nothing she could do to ease his life, and the fear to know that she might not ever see him again.

  Chapter 16

  THE JOY OF SEEING ORIEN was a pain as sharp and bright as a knife. How could he have allowed himself to become what she had seen? It was all luck, she knew, and she knew also that her own luck had been good. But that didn’t ease her. She wished she could forget the slave she had seen, and remember only the young Lord she had followed.

  This thought troubled her, when she couldn’t keep it at bay by work. Winter settled down over the city, a season of sunless days, cold winds, rains of ice, and an occasional dusting of snow. Even though winter kept them close inside, there was much work for the Philosopher’s amanuensis. She copied the records of Joaquim’s experiments in the Great Art. She wrote the pages of his Herbal. The neatly written pages, of formulae or of herbal lore, gave her pleasure. It was the same pleasure she felt when she and Yul had finished the house for the morning, and the rooms shone. It was the same pleasure she felt smelling the cle
anness of clothing as it dried beside the fire. It was the pleasure of a task her own hands had done, and done well.

  But always, at the back of her mind, like a rat gnawing to find food, was that image of Orien. She tried not to think of him.

  Hadn’t he, she asked herself angrily, run away rather than be what he must be? He might have stayed where he was, to be Earl. But he had abandoned the earldom and its people to a brother he knew would be a harsh master, like Corbel.

  Winter and inactivity made Corbel a frequent visitor to the Philosopher’s house. Birle wished she could hide away from him, as Yul did. His eyes followed her with the hunger she had learned to fear.

  One winter evening, as she watched the two men eating bowls of stew, soaking up the rich gravy with the tiny loaves of white-flour bread Corbel required, Corbel spoke out. “I have to admit it, Brother, the girl was good value.”

  Joaquim, his mind elsewhere, ate on.

  “You didn’t waste my coins on her. She keeps the house well, keeps you looking more respectable than I’ve ever seen you—better than that wife of yours did. She is herself clean. She cooks as a man likes to eat. . . . Doesn’t complain. She’s a treasure, Joaquim.”

  The Philosopher seemed at last to sense the danger Birle had known from Corbel’s first words. He raised his head from his food, to glance briefly at his brother. Birle knew the Philosopher wasn’t a match for the Prince; that the knowledge of the one would always be overborne by the greed of the other. Corbel knew that too, and the knowledge pleased him.