Tale of Birle (11 page)

“Aye, that's true,” she said. The only boys in the village were six and ten, little boys who had yet no thought of asking a girl to wed.

“Have you sisters?” he asked her.

“Two, just little girls. Nan has had two daughters.”

“The woman your father cannot marry,” he remembered.

“Aye.”

“And your brothers are older than you.”

“Aye.”

“If we talk, Birle, then we need not think. Unless you would rather not talk?”

“No, my Lord.”

“What does that no mean?” he asked. “No, you would choose not to think, or no, you would choose not to talk?”

Birle thought she knew what it was he preferred not to think about. “Have you brothers, my Lord?” she asked. “Have you sisters?”

He took so long to answer, she thought she had offended him again. “One brother. My mother had two sons. There are other children, but not my mother's. I don't know how it is among the people, but a Lord wants as many children as he can get. So many children die, and the strength of the family is in men who can serve the King and thereby earn its right to the estates. My father married three wives, and outlived all of them, before he died himself. He was rich in wives. The house breeds men of strong passions—in earlier times, when they turned the passion against themselves, they were known as dangerous men. The difficulty is, of course, that it's such men who make the house strong. My brother will be a man like that, and my father might have been, if he'd outlived my grandfather. But my grandfather still lives, and he is honored, more than most Lords, by his people. They don't see the harm he does them. He sometimes sees it, I think. My father saw it, and often spoke of it, although never to my grandfather, before he died.”

That made too many times he had mentioned his father's death. Birle wondered why that death was so near the front of his mind.

“When did your father die, my Lord?”

“In the winter.”

Near enough for grief to be fresh, Birle knew, although he didn't sound grieved. “How did he die?”

“Hunting. There was an accident, while he was hunting with his men.”

“He was thrown by his horse,” Birle guessed. Such accidents were not uncommon among the Lords.

“No, not that way.” He told it like a story. “My father rode out, early, wrapped in furs against the cold. He had with him four Lords and a dozen huntsmen, and the snow muffled all sound of the horses' hooves. They made a line of color on the white landscape, and the twelve green cloaks of the huntsmen shone in the sunlight. It was deer they were after, meat, and they rode down a herd in the forest half a day north. My father and some others followed after a young buck until it turned, exhausted, to fight what it couldn't flee. They notched arrows to bows, my father at the front. There was a singing of arrows through the air—and one went through my father's neck. At nightfall, they brought him home, dead. No man could know whose arrow killed him—the huntsmen all fletch their arrows the same way.”

Birle could think of nothing to say.

“A huntsman loves gold as much as any other man,” the Lord said.

“You think the man was suborned? Who would do that?”

“At whose behest, I don't know, or if it was so. My grandfather is old, and ill, so there will soon be a new Earl. Which is, as you've probably guessed, why I had to leave.”

Birle had guessed nothing. She thought of what he had told her. If his brother became Earl, his own position would be safer. “Were you in danger? Why were you in danger? What danger was it?”

“The most perilous,” he said, and laughed. “You don't know? I was sure you did, but vanity blinds us.”

“Know what?”

“Who I am. I am Orien.”

The name meant nothing to Birle.

“The next Earl Sutherland. My father's eldest son. I may even be Earl now.” He was watching her carefully. “Or my brother will be, and I sometimes think that might be his desire. He would make a great Earl, an honor to the house.”

She didn't know what he watched for, or what he saw. In part, she was proud for him, that he should be a Lord even among the Lords, and she was not surprised to hear how great a Lord he was. And in part she was angry.

It was the anger that spoke. “Then why did you run away?” If he had not abandoned his rightful place, she would not be here, without hope.

“How else could I make my brother Earl? Over all the lands—as I often think he should be, for the man he is.”

Aye, and if this Lord—Orien, she named him to herself—had not run away, she would never have seen him skulking through the night, and followed him. Birle didn't know what she thought. “How could you give your rightful title over to your brother?” she asked him.

“Because—look at me. I can't even bend a girl of fourteen to my will, but must listen and give way to your wishes. I meant to send you back, the first morning, and look where I've brought you. How could I rule the land, and the people? You see what would come to them, under my hand.”

Birle didn't see anything. “Was it that you thought your brother would have you murdered too?” She turned her head to see his face. Orien, she thought. It was good to have a name for him.

“That, too, is my difficulty. I don't know that Gladaegal suborned the huntsmen, and I wouldn't have thought it of him; but I can't but wonder. And if he has been brought so low—I didn't like to think of his honor, lost so, his proud honor. Or do you mean because I am afraid?”

“I don't think you are afraid,” Birle answered. Watching his face, she wondered if—if she had many years to serve him—she would ever tire of seeing him smile. “If you doubted your brother—that would be a crime of treason upon him, wouldn't it?”

“Could I have my own brother taken for treason?”

“Didn't you wish to be Earl?”

“Yes. Like any other man, I wanted it. But I saw, when I lived as a page in the King's household, how men will say and do what they think will please him who has power over them. The King doesn't hear the truth. The Lords live in a net of lies. And the women are worse than the men, perhaps because they have only one way to get power over a Lord—and the women servants worst of all. Even knowing, and they do know, that the best they will get is a dowry to buy them one of the Lord's creatures—to give his child a father's name. There is so much to be done, and no one does it.”

“What would you do?” she asked him.

“I have such ideas,” he laughed. “Why must a Lady take land with her, for dowry, when often that means she will never marry, if her father and brothers don't wish to part with their land. And who can blame them? Or Stewards, did you never think that it would be better to have the Steward who collects taxes be one of the people? Chosen by the people? I'd have two Hearing Days in each year. One a year is not enough for justice, and I would have the man who speaks for the people be changed, each five years, I think. I think if a man holds power for too long, it—changes him, for the ill.”

What of the Lords, then, Birle wondered. But that was not a question to be asked of a Lord, and especially not of a man who might be an Earl.

“My brother,” he said softly, as if only to himself, “is First Captain, over all the soldiers.”

“You are proud of him,” Birle said. But why should she not ask it, since there were only the two of them in the world, and both doomed.

“I always thought he was the best man I would ever know,” Orien said, sad now.

“What about the Lords?” Birle asked.

Her question pulled him back from his own thoughts.

“Or the King?” she insisted. “Both have held power over the people for all the time in memory.”

“As if the people were cattle,” he said, and she thought he was pleased at her question. “You begin to understand my dilemma, Birle. What kind of a herdsman would spare his beast from the knife? Or the shears, that the creature might not feel the cold?”

“How could you run away? To leave behind you the safety of castle, servants, and food.”

“My father was not safe,” he pointed out. “And my own thoughts kept me uneasy.”

“You ran away from thoughts? Ideas? An idea is—nothing.”

“It's enough,” he told her.

“Aye, it's only the Lords, whose bellies are full, for whom ideas can be reason enough. And look where this idea has brought you.”

He looked. He stood up to take in everything—the steep cliffs and the jagged rocks, and the empty sea, out of which the sun had risen.

“We must wait for rescue,” he said.

Birle's mouth opened to tell him how long she thought the rescue he spoke of would take, but she closed it without saying a word. He must be used to living with hope.

The sun was up in the sky now, its light reflecting off the water. Birle lay back and let the sunlight fall over her, to finish drying her cloak and skirts. She had no hope. With her eyes closed, she could hear him clambering around on the rocks. The Earl of Sutherland—such a man wouldn't sit quiet until he had tried every way to find food. Such a man wouldn't give up easily. He would examine every inch of the barren trap they were caught in and then, even if he gave up hope of food, he wouldn't give up hope.

Hunger waited gently in Birle's stomach and she would have welcomed a mouthful of water, but she was not afraid. Orien's boots splashed now among the little rocks, as he moved away, exploring their prison. The warm sun poured down over her, and the sound of waves made a lullaby.

She would do well to be afraid, Birle thought, but she didn't have the heart for it. If they could know her situation, her family would shake their heads and say they could have foreseen it, and ask her if she was sorry now. As if she could hear their voices and they could know her answer, Birle shook her head. She was sad, but not sorry.

“Can you see any way up?” Orien asked. He had returned from his explorations. “I couldn't.”

Birle tipped her head back, to study the cliff face. It was a wall of stone, uneven and rough-faced, but without pathway. The ledges formed by bulging rock did not connect with one another; the clefts, up which a strong and patient man might work his way, came to abrupt conclusions; the whole tall cliff seemed to lean outward to its topmost height, as a neck leans outward to its chin. Birle could see no pathway up the cliff face, no way around the enclosing arms of the cliff, no way across the empty sea. She could see no way for them.

“Because,” Orien said, “if we are going to try to climb up, we ought to do so while we still have some strength.”

Birle had no strenth.

The bellflower eyes studied her face. He was standing, leaning against the rock. “Rest, Birle.”

“What will you do?” Without food or water, their strength could only fade; he was right to think now the time for the cliff. She didn't have the heart to tell him so, but he ought to make the attempt. She couldn't, but neither could she condemn him for going on alone. She made herself ready to hear him say it.

“I'll wait, think. I'll sing you a song, would you like me to sing you a song?”

Surprise made her smile. “Like the minstrels at the fairs.”

“I lack an instrument. I didn't think to bring an instrument with me, and I might well have, now I think of it. A minstrel is welcomed, wherever he goes, and fed—if he pleases his listeners. It would have been a good idea, if I'd only thought of it. Would you like a song?”

“Aye,” she said, lying back with eyes closed against the brightness of the sky, content.

“Then you shall have it.” The voice had laughter in it. As soon as he began to sing, Birle recognized the song. It was one she had heard at fairs, when the minstrels performed before the Lords and Ladies, and the people stood back to listen from the proper distance.

“There were three ravens on a tree,” he sang. “Down a down, hey down, hey down. There were three ravens on a tree, with a down.” His voice was deep, a little rough, and pleasing. “There were three ravens on a tree. They were black as black might be, with a down, down, derry, derry down.”

He sang on, to tell the story, as the ravens discussed where they might dine and hoped to dine off of a slain knight, whose body lay abandoned in a field. But the knight's hawks guarded him, and his dogs guarded him, and Birle understood that when the deer, “as great with young as she might go,” appeared to take the knight away for burial, it was his lady that deer was. “God send every gentleman,” Orien sang, “such hawks, such hounds, and such a leman, with a down, down, derry, derry down.”

This was a sad song—the knight slain, the lady dying that same day, and her babe within her. Even the downs and derry downs, which could have been so cheerful, became sorrowful.

“I could never earn my keep as a minstrel,” he said, after a few minutes. “My grandfather keeps a minstrel.”

Birle sat up. “You have music then, whenever you wish?”

“Unless the man can't be found.”

“Can he come and go as he pleases?” Birle asked. At each question Orien answered, she asked more. He had two personal servants, to keep his clothes and answer his needs. Food was brought to him before he arose from his bed in the morning; the tailor came to his chamber to measure him for clothing, when he needed clothing made, as did the cobbler for boots. He was schooled in swordplay, and in dance. The priests had taught him from books. Birle learned who sat down at the tables in the Earl's feasting hall, and who had seats at the high table.

She learned that from boyhood Orien had been taught to read the words and figures in the Stewards' long books, so that he might understand and safeguard the wealth of the house. He preferred books of stories, like Gran's, but ability with the figures of the long books was valued more.

Orien, she learned, stood behind the Earl on Hearing Days, and sometimes spoke advice into his grandfather's ear. He might go weeks without an exchange of words with his father. On high feast days, he ate with a spoon shaped out of silver. At the King's table, he told her, even the plates were silver.