Tale of Birle (9 page)

“I didn't hear nothing,” a second voice answered. “You, you're hearing things now.”

Birle heard the sound of oars. She peered into the fog, to see from which side danger approached, and how close it lay. She moved forward to take their oars in her hands, but “No,” the Lord whispered.

“There,” the first voice spoke out of the fog.

“You're drunk.”

“I wish I were. This hag's breath of a fog is poor company for a sober man. And you're no improvement. The only thing that smells worse than your clothes is your breath, and the only thing that stinks more than your breath is the words you puff up with it.”

Birle had her knife in her hand, and looked about her, right and left, back and front. The Lord had drawn his sword. The voices were drawing closer, but she couldn't see any boat, or man. She didn't know how long she could sit still, waiting for danger to attack. She didn't know how the Lord could be so at ease, as if he were waiting for his servant to bring him a goblet of wine.

“Watch your mouth,” the second voice said. Oars splashed, but the fog made sound seem to be where it was not. The sound of that other boat came from all around Birle. “Cap'n said if you was drunk I should slit your throat, and good riddance. That's his exact words.”

The first voice laughed. “And you believed him? If you did, you might as well try it. But I should point out that if you succeed at the attempt—which is not highly probable—you might find the captain not entirely grateful to you. He has uses for me. For myself, I've little use for the world, and the world has no use for me, so you're free to find out for yourself if I'm sober or drunk.”

Birle hoped the voices were drawing away now. She thought they were becoming fainter. But she was afraid she was deceiving herself.

“An' don't think I wouldn't,” the sullen voice said.

“Although you'd be wise to hold your hand at least until we've relieved these travelers of their burdens. As the captain knows, they'd prefer to be robbed by a gentleman.”

“Some gennlemun.”

The voices
were
moving away. Birle's shoulders sagged with relief. She tried to catch the Lord's eye, to nod at him so that he too should know all was well, but he stared into the fog over her shoulder.

“Just row. It's what you're good for,” the gentleman's voice said.

“I been rowing for two hours, I'll wager. And with the current running against me. And you too dainty to take a turn at the oars.”

“It won't be so hard returning downstream. You can cheer yourself up with that thought.” The voice was mocking now.

“Could be, I'll tell him you was drunk, anyway.”

“He wouldn't believe you.”

“Oh aye?”

“You have the mind and manners of a brute, and I can give him the word of a gentleman.”

“Hoo,” the second voice crowed, drifting away in the fog. “Hoo, hoo.”

As the immediate danger faded, Birle remembered the stories she'd heard, the voices rising up through the floors from the public room, creeping out through the crack of a closed door. The Lord signaled her to lean toward him. She could barely find the will to obey him. They were both on their knees in the little boat; they brought their faces so close that they could speak almost without sound.

“We must go back,” Birle said. “To the Kingdom.”

He shook his head, the deep blue eyes staring at her, as if he would see inside of her head, to see everything that was there. What should he fear in her? Birle knew what it was she feared. Fear made her bold. “My Lord, we're near the port. What they do to the prisoners they take—aye, the women especially, but men, men too—I heard a man say that the cries from the cells—it's those cries that make the skies weep. I heard—”

He put his hand over her mouth. “Birle. Hush. Hush now. I'll keep you safe,” he promised her.

She shook her head. He could not promise her that, if there were many to attack them. She had seen goats upon a nanny in her season.

“Birle,” the Lord said, “I could kill you, if it were your wish, if death seemed the better fortune. But I don't understand—I thought that the people took their pleasure as it came to them.”

“Why should you think that?” she asked him. “We are not animals.”

“I know. I know,” he said, sounding tired. “My grandfather told me that as well. It would be easier to be a Lord if the people were sheep.”

The wistful quality of his smile quelled her anger as effectively as a bucket of water on a fire. Aye, and he couldn't protect her, she knew that. But his promise to do so was genuinely given. How could he know, gently raised and living so easily, how cruel men could be? It was fine in him to make the promise, and to mean it.

He had never seen goats going after a nanny in her season, or dogs when a bitch was in heat.

“Can we not turn back?” Her low voice had ragged edges of fear.

“I cannot, Innkeeper's Daughter.”

“Or, let me take us to the opposite bank. To wait. Let the merchants return from the fairs, and whatever thieves they meet on their way, and then—then the way around the port would be safer.”

“I don't know. If we make any sound—sounds carry, even the sound of muffled oars. . . . I don't know how broad the river is, if— Do they guard the port? Have the merchants said?”

“I don't know. We can't see. What time is it, think you?”

“I don't know. If we can stay hidden until dark . . . How far is it from the port to the sea?”

“I don't know.” She looked at him, his face close to hers, waiting for him to decide what they should do.

“What have we gotten ourselves into, Birle?” He spoke as if it were a joke.

It was no joke. Birle would have liked to tell him that. But his smile, and his bellflower eyes close, his face so close to hers that his breath brushed her ears. The confusion of her feelings overwhelmed her. Fear and contentment, and the danger they were moving toward, and she didn't even know how close it lay, she couldn't even see where it might come from in the fog— “Please?” she said, her voice like a cry.

He clapped a hand across her mouth again, and this time held it there. She tried to push it away but he dug his fingers into her cheeks. “Hush. Listen. Hear it? There's something—get down, pull your cloak over you, stay down out of sight in the boat. In the fog—our only chance is not to be noticed, seen or heard. Hear it?”

She heard it, a creaking of wood like trees pulled by the wind, and a clanking of metal like a workhorse turning the plow on its chain. Too frightened to protest, or to think, Birle obeyed. She slid backward, to lie curled up on the floorboards. She pulled her cloak up over her until she lay in darkness, alone.

She heard the faint rustle that she thought was the Lord, arranging himself under his own cloak, and then—for minutes, or maybe an hour—she heard nothing but faraway sounds. She didn't know what those sounds were, or if it was distance, or fog, or the enveloping cloak that made them sound so far away. Her heart beat so loud in her ears she was sure it must be heard, like a drumbeat. She couldn't catch her breath and her whole body seemed to be quivering as she strained to hear.

A shriek filled the air, like lightning. Another came after it and then there was silence. The shriek echoed in her head. Who would shriek so, and what must be happening? It was as thin as a child's voice in terror. Birle strained her ears, and could hear nothing.

Something thumped against the side of the boat, rolling her sideways. She wanted to throw off the cloak and jump up, knife in hand, to face whatever danger awaited. She wanted to scream out aloud. She clamped her teeth shut. It could be another boat their boat had run into and at any moment they would be plucked up and out, like eggs taken out from under a hen.

But the boat seemed still to be moving. A log, then? Or a branch, torn from its trunk by the wind. Pilings, that held up a dock?

Fear pressed down heavy on her, her shoulders and legs, on her bent neck. In the blackness under the cloak fear was blind, a blind, groping thing struggling to get out, like a kitten taken to be drowned in a sack. Birle had never known how much fear she could feel, and she did not think she could endure it. She stared into the blackness, her hands clenched under her cheek. Fear lay down on top of her like a black cloud, trying to get into her mouth through her clenched teeth. There was nothing she could do but wait, and hope that the danger—a danger she couldn't even lift her head to meet—might not notice the little boat, drifting helpless through the fog. Birle shut her eyes, to shut out the imagined dangers. Without thought, or choice, she was asleep.

SHE WOKE TO THE SOUND
of her name, spoken over her head. The darkness as her eyes opened puzzled her, and the stale air, and the way the boat was rocking. Lifting her head, remembering, throwing off the cloak to sit up, Birle saw that the Lord was sitting in the rowing seat with the oars in his hands and that the fog had closed in around them. The little visible world had grown even smaller. She held on to the side of the boat with a hand, against the rough rocking. Water sprayed into her face, and she welcomed its sharp coldness. The water tasted of salt.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Did you faint? I thought only Ladies were given to fainting.” There was no fear, no caution, in his voice.

“I was asleep. How long has it been? Are we safe?”

“Safe?” He raised his eyebrows. “We passed the port—we must have—some time back. I think now we are on the sea. If my belly is to be believed, it's late into the day. Tell me, Innkeeper's Daughter, do you prefer the known danger or the unknown?” He gave her no chance to answer the question. “Are you sorry now?”

That question he did give her time to consider. Birle could wish herself at the Inn, in familiar surrounding, with the smell of a stew in the kitchen and the sounds of custom in the public room, and Nan bursting in to scold. But that life seemed no more than a dream remembered. She was about to answer him, no, not sorry; but he answered himself.

“I am. I am sorry. I should have overpowered you that first morning, it would have been easy—or left you behind while you slept at night. I haven't served you well.”

The kindness of his thought touched her even while the bitterness of his voice made her want to remind him that his way would be easy, now that the port lay behind him.

“Should we not be making toward the shore?” she asked him.

“Which way would that be?”

The fog drifted close, in sheets like rain, in long groping white fingers. Beyond the close, drifting fog a settled whiteness filled all the air.

“When the fog lifts we'll know which way to go,” Birle said.

“The sea, as I've heard, is endless and empty. You should be sorry.”

“Aye, maybe I should. And maybe I would be, if it would make any difference.” Although that last she would not promise, watching his mouth's corners turn up in a reluctant smile. “When the fog lifts, when we can see the sun, then we can know. The land lies to the east of the sea.”

“How do you know that?”

“It's on the map,” Birle reminded him. “If we go away from the setting sun, or toward the rising sun, we must come to land, sooner or later.”

“How are you so certain that's what the map says?”

Birle had not thought fear would bite him as hard as it had her. “North is marked on the map.” He still stared at her. “That's what the
N
means, my Lord, with the arrow beneath it to point north.”

“I thought you had recognized it.”

She had fallen into his trap.

“You know
N
, that it's a letter. Do you know other letters?” He sounded curious, not angry. Birle nodded her head. “You've seen other maps too, I warrant that.”

Birle nodded.

He thought about this. “And words? Can you read?”

“Aye, my Lord. And write.” Maybe she shouldn't have added the last, but she was proud to surprise him.

“Who would have taught you?” he asked. “There's no danger now in answering my curiosity.”

That reminded her of her own questions. “What did you do, that you must flee your own lands, your own home, your own family? There's no danger now in answering my curiosity either.”

She thought he would laugh aloud, but he didn't. “What I did was be myself, be the man I am. Let me ask you a question, Birle. How many just Lords can rule before the land goes to ruin?”

“Why should a Lord not be just?” she asked.

“Which is the greater good for the people, justice or safety? If the land goes to ruin, then there is no living for the people. They suffer first, and most. So that if a Lord cares feelingly for his people, he is the very one who will put them into danger. One such Lord, in several generations, might do good. But how many such Lords can the people bear?”