Tale of Elske (13 page)

“I don't know what to expect, my Lady.”

The dark blue eyes studied her suspiciously. “I can tell you to expect no coins of me. My purse is empty. Have you never served an Adelier before?”

“No, my Lady.”

“Eat, then, Elske, and trust me to instruct you how to serve me to my satisfaction. And I don't mind admitting that you have thus far proved satisfactory.”

Elske smiled to hear that, for if she had a choice of masters this Adelinne would be the one she chose.

“Of course,” her mistress went on, “good beginnings can lead to bad ends. But today, I will walk out and you will accompany me. While Adelinnes are usually taken out only for display, to flirt and attract, we
are
permitted exercise in good weather. When there are entertainments, Assemblies, and dances, you must accompany me.” She watched Elske's face, as if it were a page of words she was puzzling out. “As my maidservant, you eat what I eat, and when we dine, we dine alone. At feasts, you serve me and do not eat. You may have the bathwater when I am done. Now, you may sit on the stool, and eat your porridge,” her mistress told her, and Elske obeyed.

Her mistress remained lost in thought for some time.

Then, “When you return this tray to the kitchen, tell them: I will bathe this evening. Also tell them: I require wine with my midday meal, and tell them also that I have no coins in my purse.”

“Why should they know anything of your purse?” Elske wondered.

“Because those who serve the Adeliers expect coins for every service. But my gold is already spent, and much besides, too.”

Elske protested. “I don't wish to tell them that, my Lady, for your sake. These are proud servants, for this is the house of the High Councillor—”

“Servants too proud to take coins?” Her mistress was doubtful.

“Too proud to ask for coins,” Elske said, “and also ashamed not to be given them. It is better to tell them nothing of your purse; they will assume that your purse is fat and it will be only a matter of time before you fill theirs, when we come to the end of the Courting Winter.”

“You presume to advise me?”

“Why should you wish the house servants to neglect you?”

“You presume to know better than I how to deal with servants?”

“Yes, my Lady, since I know them a little and you know them not at all.”

The Adelinne stood up then. “I think I know now why they chose you for me. They think your disobedience will be their revenge on me. But understand this, Elske: I will be obeyed. I will not keep my pennilessness a secret, as if I were ashamed. Any person who serves me, and any man who courts me—which is unlikely, since they send me dowerless to Trastad—will take me for myself alone. I offer nothing more.”

“Yes, my Lady,” Elske said. The Volkaric would not wear their pride on that shoulder, but that didn't mean they went naked of pride. She picked up the tray.

“All the same,” her mistress said, now, “I will ask you
not
to tell them in the kitchen that my purse is empty.”

In the cook room, Elske delivered her Lady's instructions.

“She wants wine, is it? And a bath? She's realized how soft a bed she's sleeping in, and quickly, too, hasn't she? It didn't take long for her to show us her true colors, this Fiendly Princess. You'll soon be wishing yourself back in the peace and quiet of the laundry room, Elske.”

Elske did not think so, but said nothing. “Will more Adelinnes come to this house?” she asked, and they told her that for the High Councillor to take in even one was unusual. So Elske asked when the Assemblies would begin, and was told, “All in good time, tell her. Tell Lady Impatience that.”

“She will walk outside today.”

“You must be with her at all times, especially such a one as she. If we were to send her back ruined to her home, other fathers might keep their daughters from us, and there would be no Courting Winters in Trastad, and then where would we find the gold to pay the Emperor's tribute? She is in your keeping, Elske, and if harm comes to her, you are for the cells.”

“Why should harm come to her?” Elske asked, and the other servants exchanged knowing looks.

“She is the kind of Adelinne who puts herself in harm's way. She does not behave as a Princess ought.”

“Because she is a Queen,” Elske explained.

“And I am the Emperor's daughter,” they laughed.

Elske returned to her mistress's bedchamber, where she was told, “Fetch my cloak. I am restless.”

The proper way to the outside was through the dining chamber, a door that opened onto the lawns they saw from the windows. Outside, a wind blew, but not ungently, and her mistress instructed, “You will follow me.”

“Yes, my Lady,” Elske answered and fell into step behind her mistress, but the Adelinne said, “You must keep close enough that we can speak,” and Elske stepped obediently up to her mistress's shoulder, remaining just a little behind.

They walked towards the river, where on this morning two boats were tied up at the dock. The Adelinne asked, “Where are you from, Elske? What people? What land? You must be a foreigner, because the Trastaders do not speak Souther.”

“I am of the people of the Volkaric,” Elske answered, but seeing that the Norther word meant nothing to her mistress, she risked saying, “I am Wolfer.”

That halted the Adelinne. She turned to face Elske, placing them face-to-face where they stood between the villa and the river, and no one to overhear their words. The girl looked directly into Elske's face and her eyes shone with the blue of the sea.

“You're the one who split his face open, aren't you? Don't deny it. Not if it's the truth. It was you, wasn't it? They hid him away, they told tales, but we all knew—and he deserved it, and he was not the only one who needed his vile heart showing on his handsome face. I was but a child two years ago, but if I'd had the chance—and my weapon— Is it true, what he boasted? That he'd had many virgins of Trastad?”

Elske could not answer what the Adel had done except for the time of their meeting, when he had done nothing, she having forestalled him.

“
Was
it you?” her mistress demanded. “Rumor said, it was a man disguised as a maidservant, a Trastader trick to protect their women from the Adels. Rumor said, a girl's brothers had ambushed the Prince, to revenge her ruin, and there was a great skirmish that left many Trastaders wounded. Rumor said, the girl was a Wolfer and she ripped his face in half with her teeth.”

Elske could not still the laughter in her throat. “It was only a stone. He was only a coward.”

“It
was
you.”

“Yes, my Lady.” Elske didn't think this Adelinne, this Fiendly Princess, would fear her, or condemn her; and she was right, for at the acknowledgement the Adelinne smiled, a smile like the warmth of a fire on an icy winter's night, as heady as the wine-rich autumn air they breathed. “It was
you
. I never thought I'd meet you, and now I have. You gave me courage, two years ago, Elske, and since then, too. I wished to be you, when I didn't even know your name.”

The Adelinne reached her hands out from under the cloak she wore, and removed the gloves she wore. She held her right hand out to Elske, as if they were two merchants closing on a sale, and she bowed her head to Elske, as if they were two swordsmen ending a match, and she looked Elske in the eye, as if they were Wolfer captains, about to risk their lives in battle. The girl took Elske's naked hand in hers and said, “I give you greeting, Elske. I am Beriel, who will be Queen in the Kingdom.”

T
HE TWO WALKED ON, DOWN
to the river's edge, Elske once again at her mistress's shoulder, close enough for speech. In appearances, nothing had changed; but the Adelinne had given Elske her name, and so everything had changed.

“Beriel,” Elske said, “the Queen that will be.” There was no question about that. Every word the Lady Beriel uttered, and the manner of her speaking, every gesture of her hands and turning of her body, were those of a Queen. Elske knew this, although the Volkking like the rest of his people having no wife, the Volkaric had no Queen. In the Lady Beriel's high-shouldered way of standing and her refusal to give way, Elske could see what a Queen must be.

At the river's edge the soil was moist and the grass grew thick. A salty wind blew against their faces, from the south and the sea. These drew Beriel's thoughts in their direction, for next she said, “I
could
take one of these little boats, if I never ventured far from shore. Perhaps. If there were no storm. I'd know Pericol from the water and if I had coins in my purse, I could pay my way through Pericol. Although, it's never sure what gold will do, when you offer bribes to thieves and pirates,” she said.

“I have coins,” Elske offered, for she did. Var Kenric had given her some, in gratitude, and Var Jerrol had paid her a servant's wages; she kept them hidden in her Wolfer boots. “You might take them.”

“I will not give over my land,” Beriel said, not hearing Elske's words. “In the north of my Kingdom, the forests stretch up the mountainsides, like dark waves running up snowy sands. That country yields up not only timber but also iron, and there is silver, too, buried deep in the mountains. There are lakes in my northern lands, as full of fish as the sea. A great river runs through the Kingdom, with water as good as wine to drink, and to lie in that river, to swim through it, is as if sleeping through a dreamless night. Can you swim, Elske?”

“Swim?”

“I will show you. The fishermen taught me when I was a girl, before my nurse discovered us, and you also must know it. In the south, the soil is black and rich. In the south, all autumn long, apples sweeten on the trees—”

“I never had an apple until I left the Volkaric.”

“I am afraid I will never see my land again, Elske.”

“Why should you not? If you wed no Adel, and you are the Queen that will be?”

“You know nothing,” Beriel said then, swinging around to face Elske in a Queen's quick fury. “But I promise you this, I would fight to the death to keep my throne.”

Elske wondered, “Why should you not become Queen, if it is your throne?”

“Because they will bring me down, if they can. If they have not already. Speak no more of it,” Beriel commanded.

Now they walked along the river's edge, far from the broad front of the villa. Beriel seemed lost in thought from which she would sometimes emerge to ask a question. She asked about the wealth of Trastad and Elske told what she knew. Beriel asked about the tribute paid by Trastad to the Emperor, but Elske knew little of this. “Who is this Emperor?” she asked in return, so Beriel told her, “He rules the east. They say he is as tall as three men, and he never sleeps. They say he makes caskets of the bones of those his armies have slain, to hold his riches. The story goes that he traded his daughter to an alchemist in exchange for the formula for black powder. But nobody has seen this Emperor, and his lands lie so far away even the great ships of Trastad have never crossed the distance, so I don't lose sleep over him,” Beriel said.

“Could a man be as tall as three men together?” Elske asked, for if this were false, then all the rest was doubtful.

“Are you a simple after all?” Beriel asked, but gave no time for an answer.

This young mistress was like none of the women of Trastad, nor of the Volkaric, either, for all that she was as protected as the one and as fierce as the other. Elske thought, walking at Beriel's shoulder, that if she were a man, and there were battle, she would rather ride to her death for this Lady than for the Volkking, whose terrible revenges earned him obedience. She would rather face danger for Beriel than for Trastader coins.

Elske also thought it strange that Beriel could be forced to the Courting Winter, and a second time, too; and she wondered by what means her mistress had been made obedient.

That question was answered in the quiet evening, when the maidservants had brought in the copper tub for a bath, and given Elske the jug of scented oil to sweeten the hot water they carried in, one following the other, steam rising out of the top of their buckets. When Beriel—her brown hair loose for washing—stepped out of her shift and lifted a foot to step up onto the footstool, Elske saw that the Adelinne was belly-swollen with child.

Beriel, naked and proud, glared at Elske.

As she soaped the long, thick hair, and poured jugs of rinsing water through it, Elske understood that Beriel must find a husband to marry, and before the Longest Night, too, for she must be near four moons from her time; if this was the first child she carried, when a woman showed latest and least, she might be nearer. So perhaps she was three moons from the birth?

Beriel leaned forward and Elske poured rinsing water, which fell over her head and down her slim shoulders.

But Elske had never heard of marriages performed among the Adeliers while they were still in Trastad.

“I will wash myself,” Beriel said.

When Beriel sat in her chair by a stove so warm that the occasional drops of water sizzled on its tiles, she told Elske to bathe before calling the maidservants to empty and carry away the tub. Elske obeyed, slipping out of her dress and stockings and shift to climb into the tub, and sit there in its failing warmth before taking up the cloth and soap.

Beriel watched this, whether Elske permitted it or not.

“Is it a crime among the Wolfers when a girl has a child before she has a husband, then?” Beriel demanded. “Are such women punished?”

“No, for women—”

“Do they exile them? Execute them? In the Kingdom, a royal Princess is so punished. The people do not have so strict a law over them as do the Lords, and the Lords run with a lighter rein than do the members of the royal family. What are you going to do now, Elske?”