Tale of Elske (9 page)

AS THE DARK WINTER DAYS
went by, Elske was kept busy, with all she had to learn and all she had to do. Var Jerrol gave her a book of animal tales to read to his daughters, to begin the widening of their world. “With wealth, and knowledge gained from books, my daughters will make wives worthy of any man,” he told Elske. “And why should my daughters not marry as well as any Adelinne?” He also had Elske taught to serve at table, having her practice by serving him whenever he dined alone on the golden plates he brought out only for those occasions. All that long winter, Elske stayed within Var Jerrol's property, but she was not restless. The little girls gave Elske wild nursery games and wild nursery laughter, and that lightened the long darkness. Var Jerrol explained his importance to the Council, how his ships brought not only information and goods, but also rarities from foreign lands to introduce the Trastaders to the newest luxuries, embroidered silks, silver filigree, peppercorns. Odile gave her the gossip of the house and the city—how the Varinne had brought a good fortune to her husband but failed to give him a son, how his own housekeeper had named High Councillor Vladislav, the wealthiest Var in Trastad, father of her child, how a clever thief had emptied a merchant's strongbox in broad daylight.

Elske only saw the Varinne when she took the daughters to her. The Varinne didn't have the strength to have the girls linger, but she was always glad to see them. Once or twice, when Elske had wrapped the two older girls up warm and taken them outside to fall down in the snow, and make snowballs to throw at her, she saw the pale face at the window, looking down at her lively, healthy daughters.

Eventually, winter loosened its grip on the land. Then it rained as often as it snowed, but when the sun shone out of a clear sky, the sea shone back blue. Some few boats ventured out, fishermen hungry to end the winter shortages and eager for profits. As soon as it was safe to travel, the Adeliers returned to their homelands and whatever futures they had made or found during the Courting Winter.

When she no longer risked recognition, Elske could carry the basket for Odile, with Red Piet and Piet the Brown accompanying them to the shops and markets. She grew accustomed to the city, the many faces and crowded streets, and to its smells—a combination of offal and salt air and bakehouses, with their roasting meats, and yeasty breads and honey-nut cakes. The sea was now a familiar sight, jigging at the edges of the land.

Elske was growing out of her girlhood, and she started her woman's bleeding that winter; the little girls were growing, too, and so were the days which stretched now into one another, with only a shadowy darkness to act as night. Elske could bake a meat pie, now, or a fish pie, or an apple pastry, and the daily porridge and loaves of bread. She could prepare a meal, if Odile was taken with her women's pains, and she could stand beside Red Piet to wait at table when the Var entertained guests.

The serving at table, she discovered, was one of Var Jerrol's uses for her; for some of his guests were merchants from the south, come to Trastad to buy lumber, furs and ores. These merchants were cautious when Var Jerrol sat with them, but if he was called away they would speak unguardedly in Souther. Afterwards, the Var called Elske into his chamber and asked her to recite what the merchants had said when they were alone and, as they thought, unheard. She reported to him their disgust at the delicate whitefish the Trastaders ate pickled in vinegar and onions, their hopes that the Council would approve their offering price for a hundredweight of ore and their calculations of how much their profits would increase at that price. She reported when they schemed to mix fine ground grain in with a shipment of spices, assuring themselves that the simple Trastaders would not know the difference between the pure and the diluted.

The merchants also spoke among themselves about wars and Wolfers, about the ambitious Counts who ruled over the cities of the south, about diseases and their cures, and about magic weaponry; there was always information they wished to keep to themselves, lest the Trastaders know and take advantage.

“I don't blame them,” Var Jerrol remarked to Elske. “I am the eyes and ears of Trastad and much of my wealth comes from information which—when I know it—also protects the city and its people.”

Elske never made the mistake of keeping anything back from Var Jerrol. She knew that Var Jerrol trusted her reports and noticed that he smiled, with a private pleasure, whenever he saw her. But she believed that information was her true work for his house, for some of the merchants were more than merely greedy. Some had secrets.

Once she reported to Var Jerrol what three merchants of Celindon had said to one another when he left them alone with glasses of wine, and Elske there to keep them filled. The merchants had spoken in lowered voices of something called black powder. When Elske repeated that name to the Var, he looked at her long and silent, dangerously, before asking, “What did they say about the black powder?”

“They said that you were ignorant,” at which news Var Jerrol smiled, and she added, “Thus, they said, their supplies of lumber were assured.”

“Did they say what lumber had to do with the black powder?” Var Jerrol asked, his eyes intent upon her face, as if he could read there more than the words she spoke, as if although she might not know more still he would find more there, in her face, in her eyes, and seize it to himself.

“No. They spoke as of something they all already knew. Although they did observe,” Elske reported, remembering carefully, “that your stables were lined with saltpeter, and that in Trastad the waste from the copper smelters is dumped into the rivers.”

Var Jerrol lowered his eyelids, to think about this. After a long time he looked at her again. “If you're as clever as I think, Elske, you are also a danger to me. Are you so clever?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well,” he said; then, “Was there anything more these merchants said?”

“That was when you returned.”

“Go back to my daughters now. But, Elske,” he ordered her, “this is no matter you need to remember. Unless, of course, you hear anyone else speak of black powder, and that you must report immediately.”

Elske almost laughed to hear him instruct her thus; and he almost smiled as he watched her face.

Var Jerrol smiled seldom now, for when the Varinne coughed, she coughed blood. The apothecary said she wouldn't live to see another spring, and so he allowed her to open her windows on fine days to taste the warm salty air, and hear the voices of her daughters while they played in the gardens.

On days when Elske accompanied Odile to the markets she saw more and more swollen bellies among the young wives of Trastad. Each market day she looked for Idelle. But when she found her—a manservant three paces behind—Idelle's belly was as flat and empty as Elske's. Idelle was glad at first to meet with Elske, but that gladness soon washed away and she said, “As you see, I will have no baby to welcome Taddus home.”

“As I see,” Elske answered.

Idelle sighed. “But it could happen that our second winter bears more fruit than our first. It often happens so, I've heard that. You've always been luck to me, Elske,” Idelle said. “Maybe meeting you will bring good fortune.”

Odile called Elske away then, for the Emperor's messengers had arrived to collect the tribute money and Odile was poaching a redfish whole, to be the centerpiece of their dinner. Var Jerrol would feast the messengers and then give to them the chest of tribute coins. It was to meet this expense that the grandfathers of the present Trastaders had first opened their houses and their city to those Adeliers; the profit from the Courting Winters made up most of the tribute. The tribute bought peace, safety in which they might continue their trading.

The long, sun-filled summer days ran on. Sometimes the sky was clear and the sea blue. Sometimes storms whipped up white-headed waves that roared against the stone seawall. Sometimes the water ran grey between the mainland and Trastad, and all of the sea beyond was grey, too. The summer air blew warm over three-islanded Trastad, and the Trastaders kept out in the air as much as they could, because summer's stay among them was only brief. As long as it wasn't raining, the little girls in their light summer dresses stayed outside in the warmth and light, until they were sent inside to sleep.

There came a day in full summer—but it was really a night; that was part of the wonder of this time, sunlight at night. In this golden evening the Var's older daughters ran about barefooted, laughing, singing, dancing, delighted with themselves, delighted to be themselves with the light washing around them like water, and the baby sat upright in the grass, clapping her fat hands in admiration of her sisters.

Elske and Odile sat beside the Var's two young apple trees, watching. The air hung so sweet neither of them wanted to gather the little girls together and end the day. Mariel's high laughter rolled along the grass behind the wooden ball she was chasing. Then Odile murmured something in her low woman's voice. Magan fell sideways, fussing now. And Elske had a sudden sharp memory of Tamara, standing in the doorway of the Birth House, speaking in just such a low, rough voice, with just such sounds of laughter and misery coming from the room behind her. The memory sliced into Elske.

“Whatever is it? Whyever are you weeping?”

Elske shook her head, and wiped her eyes on her apron, and wept more tears, and didn't answer. The babies and toddlers she and Tamara had left out for the wolves, after winter had drawn back, were just such children as these three. Those Volkaric girls would have grown fatter and more clever, just as Magan had over the spring and summer, and grown into small ladies like Mariel who danced like a flower in the wind. Miguette, not yet two winters, was already secretive and solemn like her father. To think what might happen to these three little girls in their helplessness, and to remember all those for whom the Volkaric had no use, and so she and Tamara had wheeled them by the cartload out to a stony place, and been able only to end their short lives quickly— Elske's heart felt as if it were being ripped apart by wolves.

She had not even noticed that great change in herself, to have a heart where before she had had none.

N
OT THAT ELSKE DECEIVED HERSELF
into thinking she was a Trastader. She only knew what she no longer was.

Fall was a short, fat season in Trastad, busy with preparing vats of salted and smoked fish, pots of fruit and jars of honey; busy with filling the pantries of Var Jerrol's house for the long winter. Only those fish caught by ice fishermen, who spent winter mornings dangling baited hooks through holes they sawed in the ice, would be fresh food for Trastad in the winter; and it was the high price those fish brought that made the discomfort and danger a risk worth taking for the fishermen.

The fall was busy and brief in Var Jerrol's house, but it was not sweet, for the Varinne was dying. The household fell quiet around her, as she made her way into death. The air in every chamber was thick with sorrow, and the food they ate tasted bitter with loss, so that when the Varinne had at last breathed out the end of her life, even though it was the deep dark of winter something light came back into Var Jerrol's house.

Since it was not a Courting Winter, the Trastaders could go quietly about their own business. Elske went once to visit Idelle in Var Kenric's house, accompanied by Red Piet. On this occasion, she had a mission for Var Jerrol, but she hoped to hear also that Idelle was with child. This hope was disappointed and Idelle could speak only of the sadness that stained her life. So now Elske saw two grieving women, Var Kenric's wife and daughter, each inconsolable, gazing out from behind his windows. One wept for the past, one for the future, and when Elske found Taddus in the counting room she could see that he was eager for spring, to give him the reason to leave the gloom of his home.

Elske's mission for Var Jerrol was to ask Taddus about a rumor that had reached Trastad. In his travels of the summer, had Taddus heard of an exploding ship? Yes, he had, but he didn't credit the rumor. Could a ship, and its crew of eleven men, with its two tall masts and its long keel, simply fly apart up into the air? Taddus had heard tales but none of the tellers had been eyewitness to the event and when he asked in which city's harbor the event had happened, none of the tellers agreed. Each had heard it from a friend; each friend had heard it from the sole survivor of the catastrophe.

The tales told of the sky filled with charred pieces of wood, and parts of bodies, and the water of the harbor clotted with debris. The tales had a ship riding peacefully at anchor and then—without warning, with no sound as of galloping hooves to herald danger—a roar filled the air. Everyone agreed about the sound; it was thunder trebled. But nobody could agree about what they had seen—an explosion of fire, a sun burning in the harbor, the air darkened with evil-smelling smoke. Taddus shrugged, telling Elske this. “So the rumors go. And the rumors go farther, too, with talk of demon warriors risen in the south, come to lay everything waste and barren. The Wolfers are their slaves, and run before them, rumors say. But we are distant enough, here in islanded Trastad, Elske. You needn't fear.”

“I'm not afraid,” Elske answered him. “I was sent to ask.”

“If I had married you, we'd have a child by now—do you think?” Taddus asked her suddenly. “But I will be named Var this spring, or the next, and that will give Idelle a new place among the ladies of the city. Maybe that will console her.”

Elske joined in that hope, and left him there with his coins and his dreams and his books of cost and profit. She bid farewell to Idelle and called Red Piet from Ula's kitchen to escort her back to Var Jerrol's home.

“I suspect this is no demon army, but some new weapon of war,” Var Jerrol said, “and I would not wish Trastad to be surprised by such a weapon. Such weapons give too much power to those who wield them, and cause dangerous fears in those who know of them. You are a girl and you may wrap your ignorance around you, but I am the eyes and ears of the Council.”