Firethorn (20 page)

I had not hated her before this.

Whore. What was she but a high-priced harlot, and her father a pander?

It was just shy of dishonorable for a woman of the Blood to contract as a concubine if she did not have the dowry to get a husband. But such arrangements should be made quietly, not flaunted like this, paraded about the Marchfield. Her offspring would be bastards; they would carry her name, not her mate's, and if they inherited anything, it would be at their father's whim. But they could claim God's Blood; they'd be part of a clan. Unlike any children of mine.

Mai had told me how to bind Sire Galan, but it was not until that moment that I made up my mind to do it. The Dame had always scoffed at such arts. But she never had need of love charms, and I did.

There was no feast that night and no boasting. The clan had lost the tourney and captured but a single sword. The Crux was strangely full of gaiety, as if he did not care, or worse, was glad of it. He taunted his men, saying he'd expected no more from a herd of geldings.

Sire Galan had been unhorsed in the first charge and forced to yield; in the tent he was tight-lipped and grim. Divine Xyster, the priest of Crux Moon who served as the men's carnifex, pronounced one rib broken and nothing to be done but bleeding and binding. The priest left after drawing a bowlful of blood with a cut quill. I poulticed Sire Galan's bruises, both new and old, and Spiller wrapped him tightly round the ribs in a long sheet of coarse linen.

I was as glad as the Crux seemed to be, but didn't show it. That Sire Galan had lost was good: surely the maiden would scorn him now. That he was injured was better: perhaps he would not go roaming that night.

But he called for his best surcoat; he strapped on his sword. He left the tent, taking Sire Rodela and Spiller with him as if he expected trouble might lie in wait on his path. And he didn't return till sunrise.

The binding charm Mai had taught me would have to wait till dark-of-the Moon, when Crux Moon is somnolent and lazy. When he is full he's apt to turn spells and wishes topsy-turvy. But I was already preparing. I'd plucked three hairs from Sire Galan when I cleaned off the sticky poultice: one hair from his head, one from over his heart, and one from his groin. He'd yelped and cursed me for clumsiness, but I'm sure he suspected nothing. I'd saved the hollow quill the carnifex used to take his blood. Mai said these things, along with a few strands of my own hair, thread spun of lamb's wool, and a womandrake root, would be sufficient to plait a strong binding.

I knew well enough what the womandrake looked like and the kind of place it liked to grow. We named it bryony and used it several ways in season: the spring shoots for eating, the fall berries for a weak dye, the stinking fleshy root to cure gravel in the piss. When the root is forked, as it sometimes is, it's called womandrake because it resembles nothing so much as a naked waist and thighs, dirty yellow in color and wrinkled as if with folds of fat. I thought I might find it in the bottomlands by the river, if I could get there. Its vines had grown rampant by the river near the Dame's manor, sending out tendrils to strangle shrubs and saplings.

That night and the next were long. Of the day that passed between them there's little to tell. I waited upon the outcome of the wager. There was nothing to do but wait, until it occurred to me that it could do no harm to pray. I asked Sire Galan's leave to go to the public shrines that flanked the king's hall. I told Sire Galan I'd pray for him; if he was surprised by my piety, he showed no sign of it. Perhaps he thought my prayers were his due.

Each of the twelve gods had a shrine marked by a small standing stone set under the wide eaves of the circular hall. Before this stone another was laid flat for an altar. Each altar, tended by priests of the god's clan, held a brazier and bowl for sacrifices and carved images of the avatars. I visited them in turn and made obeisance, but at the shrines of Ardor, Hazard, and Crux I offered such sacrifices as I could afford, burning locks of my hair to ash and pricking my arm with thorns to let a few drops of blood fall into the bowl. It seemed to me that these three gods held sway over the wager and its outcome, and further, that they were at odds with one another and we were caught up in their rivalry. There could be no way to propitiate them all, if that were true. Still, I tried, and with my paltry offerings and poorer prayers, I asked for their favor, though all I truly desired of them was that we should be left out of their quarrels. I also sacrificed to Wend Weaver, for the Dame's sake, though I no longer felt her hand on the threads.

If the Blood need an oracle, they go to the priests. Drudges must rely on filthy god-bothered revelators who squat on their heels in the marketplace, killing songbirds or lizards and reading their entrails for a fine fee. Any man trying to catch his wife with a pricksman can scratch the itch of his suspicions there, and any maid can learn whether her swain-yet-to-be is dark or fair and what manner of clothes he wears, so she can recognize her good fortune when he walks by.

I stayed away. I had questions enough, but no trust in the answers and no coin to buy them. I tried the bones again, but they didn't speak to me; or if they spoke, I didn't know how to listen.

On the fourth and last night of the wager, I could not bear to stay in the tent with the stench of men and mildewed heather. I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay down before the door flap. Light rain fell on and off and low mists drifted over the ground, mixed with the smoke of banked fires. The air smelled of the sea and the turning of the year.

I kept thinking of what the Crux had said, how I was nothing but a bit of mud that Sire Galan could scrape from his boot any time he wished. I thought also of how the maid had looked in her ermine and her egret plumes. I slept a little, but it was no better than waking, for my dreams were addled and disquieting.

Sire Galan returned an hour or two before dawn, accompanied by Sire Rodela. He asked why I slept in front of the tent and I told him it was warmer outside since the bed had lately grown cold.

Sire Rodela gave me a look that spoke clearly, a smirking half smile that showed how he looked forward to my comeuppance. He stared at me long and boldly even after the lamp was lit in the tent. I could see he thought his master was ready to cast me off and that I would fall into his grip as a matter of course, like some hand-me-down mail shirt.

Spiller was awakened with a kick. He ministered to Sire Galan, unwinding the cloth from around his chest; his whole right side had gone livid with a plum-colored bruise over his cracked rib. Sire Galan sucked in his breath while Spiller rubbed on a salve he'd gotten from the priest. It smelled like horse liniment. Spiller wrapped him again, pulling the bandage as tight as he could.

The tent was quiet. Sire Galan said nothing much, his jaw being clamped against the pain. Sire Rodela told Spiller to fetch this and fetch that and scurry for it, you clod! and other orders so that the jack, brimming with questions, didn't dare spill any. And I kept my peace, if you can call it peace. I felt such a pain in my chest, such a shortness of wind, it was as if my own rib had broken. I could read the signs clear enough. Even if Sire Rodela had not smirked so, I would have known Sire Galan had won his wager by the disarrayed laces of his hose and by the very smell of another woman that rose from him when Spiller pulled off his clothes, a cloying scent of rose attar and lavender and also, I swear, the musk of her quim.

Sire Galan lay down on the cot like an old man, with a grimace and a groan and a sigh. It might have been a sigh of satisfaction. I took it for one.

I snuffed out the lamp and lay down beside him, thinking he'd leave me alone that night, bruised and sore as he was—and spent, no doubt, after his many exertions. He rested his head on my shoulder, as he often did, and his leg and arm lay across me and his breathing slowed. I thought he slept. His arm weighed heavily and I pushed it off. He put his hand on me again, on my belly and farther down. I could feel his prick against my thigh. I turned away, saying, “You should rest.”

He pulled me toward him and said, “It's not rest I want.”

When he hoisted himself over me, I saw him wince. I turned my face to the side and his shoulder pressed into my cheek. His flesh, his bone, the cords of his neck were wood, polished with sweat. If he was wood, he was a flail, and I was grain on the threshing floor.

I was a thousand grains, my thoughts flown like chaff. All that was left was the taste of salt.

After daybreak Sire Galan sent Spiller for Sire Alcoba's jack, Rowney. “And tell him to bring his belongings,” he called after, as Spiller hurried off with a grin about to split his face in two.

By the gods, they were smug, every man of Sire Galan's and the man himself, smug as cats. They went about their duties of the morning full of cheer and louder than usual. They had a new trophy to boast about and a new man to serve as the target of their jests, though they aimed old taunts at him, having no wit to think of new ones.

Sire Galan left the tent. I pulled the blanket up over my head and saw no reason to stir, ever. Someone sat down at the end of the bed. “Don't you want to know how it was done?” he said.

It was Sire Rodela. I uncovered my face and reached for my shift, but he was sitting on it. Noggin dozed on his pallet in the corner, so we were not alone; I was not much reassured by the sight. I tugged at the dress. Sire Rodela grinned instead of moving.

“I marvel at him,” he said. “I admire my cousin's stamina, though I fault his taste. He spends himself on high and low, makes one woman moan and the other whimper, and all in the same night. Any man with bollocks might do that, I suppose—but not with a broken rib. That makes him something of a wonder.”

“Your manners have grown worse,” I said. “Perhaps you need another trimming.”

In truth, the coarse brown hair that started below Sire Rodela's bald crown was more close-cropped now than after Sire Galan had shorn him, because he'd gone to a real barber in the marketplace to even out the patches. He'd made up for this lack of hair by growing a heavy beard that covered his cheeks and throat, shaving just enough to show the clan tattoos on his cheekbones.

He said, “I don't know why he wants to wallow with a sow like you, when he can find better so easily.”

“And you never
shall
know!” I said, and I pushed him off the cot with my foot while I yanked my dress out from under him.

He stood and looked down at me and started to talk. I pulled my dress on under the covers and stood up, the bed between us. I wrapped my head-cloth, pulling and knotting and tucking it tightly: I'd done it countless times without a thought, but never so clumsily.

He was saying the girl had been willing enough after the first tourney when she'd had another look at Sire Galan. The puzzle was how to do it, with her aunt on the pallet next to her and her handmaid on the other side and her father and a dozen men stretched out and snoring in the tent. During the day was no better. She was always under someone's eye.

So she feigned the squirts, which had her running to the privy tent all night. You know the privy tents?

I knew. Women of the Blood too delicate to use a chamber pot in a tentful of men or to squat over a ditch with their skirts hitched up would visit their own small tents, pitched for the purpose near the sea and away from the common dungheaps.

Back and forth she ran to the tent all night. First the aunt and handmaid went with her, and three men. By the fourth time the aunt was too tired, so just the handmaid went with the men. The fifth time there were only two men. The sixth time, past the middle of the night, only one—and the handmaid, of course, who'd do as she was told. The maiden stayed long in the privy and her guard dozed off, and Sire Galan started whispering to her from behind the tent.

I fumbled for my brogans. The cobbler had brought them the day before, and they fit me well, much better than the slippers. One lace had a knot I couldn't untangle.

Well, in the day she was much recovered, but by nightfall she felt the flux coming on again. The same thing happened except this time Sire Galan slipped inside the tent toward morning, still whispering, and he dandled her on his knee until she grew faint from the stench and fevered from the kisses, and he promised he'd come back. “And last night,” Sire Rodela went on, “he cured her!” I heard him laugh as I ran from the tent.

ow can a drudge be humbled? We should start humble; we can go no lower than to be what we are. But I was cursed with pride I should not have owned. I had misjudged twice, thinking the favor of one of the Blood had raised me up: first the Dame, then Sire Galan. I had step by step walked into this snare; I couldn't gnaw off my foot as badgers are said to do in order to get free of it.

Mai had warned me that the binding spell she gave me could not be undone, and furthermore it had a price: the tighter I bound Sire Galan to me, the more I myself would be bound. “If I knew a way to tie one without the other, I'd have more coffers of gold than the king. There are those who claim it can be done—but never believe it,” she said. “That's not the way of things.”

Now I understood her. I'd have given my right foot if he felt everything and I felt nothing, if I could snare him and set myself free.

Only three days till dark-of-the-Moon and I waned as the Moon did. Sire Galan never mentioned the maiden or the wager in my hearing. We were skin to skin in the bed and he gave off heat like a brazier, as always, but I stayed cold. I lay under him while he used me according to his mood: one night urgent and unsparing and the next coaxing, tender, breathing endearments into my ear, such as
my heart
and
my flame.
No doubt he'd said as much to the maid; his words were worthless coins, to be scattered anywhere. I minded his lies, but more I minded his lying kisses, how he could seem so fond and be so false.

I slept poorly, but hated to rise. By day I was sluggish and stinting of words. I was worn out from thinking the same few meager thoughts. One led to another, another, then back to the first, no room for anything else. Of these thoughts the only bright one was the binding Mai had taught me. If I couldn't get free, I'd make sure Sire Galan was caught with me. Despite Mai's warning I bound my hopes to this, hour by hour. Yet I feared dark-of-the-Moon would pass and I'd have no chance to plait the charm. In another month it might well be too late.

Flykiller said Sire Galan's horses would be catching glanders soon if something wasn't done. He lived next to the corral in a thatched lean-to with other horsemasters and horseboys, and kept one eye on the horses even as he slept. The mounts of the troop were crowded at night into a field the size of the Dame's kitchen garden, mules and nags mingling with warhorses. There had been many battles in the corral (and wagers on them) until Semental had won the title of First among the horses, a title he maintained against all challengers with nips and nudges and an occasional fierce charge. The warhorses, better treated than the others, had a ration of grain and daily exercise, but the crowding made them cross or listless according to their natures. Only a goat could live on what was left inside the fence: prickly furze, saw grass, and nettles. The pale soil underfoot was fetlock deep in mud after all the rain. Flykiller asked Sire Galan's leave to take his horses to the river to cut green fodder, a ride that would take the better part of a day there and back.

Sire Galan's rib was healing well; it hardly troubled him at all. A ride to the river was such a fine idea, he thought, that he'd come along and do a little hunting if the Crux would give him leave. And if he came his new friend must come—Sire Erizo dam Morada by Erne of Lynx, the same man whose ear he had partly removed—for he'd married into the clan of Carnal and had hunting privileges in their lands by the river. And if they hunted, they must try for boar, for it was the season when boars grow fat on beech mast and acorns. Sire Alcoba said he'd come too; he never could resist a hunt, however much it pained him to see Sire Galan ride on the gray stallion he'd lost to him in the wager. If Sire Alcoba was coming, Sire Erizo thought he might also bring his cousin, Sire Caulicle. And of course each man must have his armiger and jack, his horsemaster and horseboy and spare mounts.

And if Sire Galan took all his men, then I would go too. I didn't ask his leave. Sire Galan's horseboy, Uly, saddled Thole, and I tied my rolled-up cloak to the cantle, and I was ready.

By then the morning was nearly gone. We set out with eighteen men on horseback, Dogmaster and a pack of manhounds (also in need of exercise), twenty mounts on leads, and me on the mare. We took the south road out of the Marchfield, and the whores in the market called out to us with lewd words and gestures to bring them fresh meat.

Past the second hill south of the encampment, we came upon the king's works and had to ride out of our way around them. King Thyrse had ordered a road built to bring his army from the Marchfield to the sea. Quarrymen had cut away the cliff in giant steps down to the beach; now drudges were using pounded rubble and mud to smooth them into a great ramp. The gap in the cliff had been spanned with a gate of wood and iron guarded by two towers. Great wharves were moored out to sea. When the army moved, the wharves would form a roadway to the boats in the harbor.

We paused on the crest of the hill to watch the men toiling below us, breaking up rocks and moving them with barrows and sledges and ox teams. Most of the workers were foot soldiers; each clan sent a score of drudges to serve the king three days out of every tennight. The men grumbled, saying if the work didn't kill them the rock slides would.

I'd heard the talk, but it was only when I saw the great scar of muck and rubble that I understood that a mountain could be moved at a king's command. Sire Galan and the others looked upon this sight with satisfaction. Progress so swift meant that war was coming apace.

Past the king's works, the south road ran along the edge of the cliff. The cataphracts ignored the narrow track and rode abreast, talking of hunting; I heard Sire Galan say he missed his peregrine falcon more than anything—more, even, than his cook. Next time he wouldn't fail to bring both of them, the one to hunt and the other to prepare the game. Sire Alcoba asked if he didn't miss his wife; I couldn't hear the answer for the laughter.

All afternoon the Sun followed us on her slow drift toward the pewter-gray sea. Behind the constant mists, she looked more like the pale disk of the Moon. The shingle at the foot of the cliff was covered with streamers of black sea hay and drifts of shells. Tall rock sentinels stood in the breaking waves; tufts of pale grass grew from their summits like hair. Gulls stalked up and down or rode the swells past the foam. I saw one dive headfirst from the air, disappear into the sea, and come flying out with an eel twisting in its beak.

I remembered how happy I'd been on the road to the Marchfield—quite forgetting the troubles and pains we met on the way … and thought I should never be that glad again. But sorrow is tedious and even anger palls in time. When Sire Galan turned in his saddle and looked for me twice or thrice, as he used to do, I answered his smiles with my own.

It was good to leave the stink of the Marchfield, good to be on Thole's back again. She'd lost her chestnut gloss and her winter coat was coming in dull and patchy. I promised her I'd try to take her out of the corral more often. The confinement didn't agree with either of us. She snuffed the air as we went along, and reached for any patch of green. The trampled heather smelled sweet.

We reached the river before dusk and made our camp near a stretch of pebbled shore where shallow-drafted riverboats beached to unload their cargoes. The nearest ford was five leagues upstream; this close to the sea, the river was both wide and deep. It looked placid, but out beyond the swamp rush and the drifts of yellowing duckwort, swift currents moved under the surface. There was no one in sight save for a man fishing from a coracle midstream. When we hallooed to him, he paddled off and disappeared into the brush on the other bank.

It cheered me to see trees again, after looking so long at the barren hills around the Marchfield. Here were alders clinging to the riverbank, willows trailing tattered leaves in the water, dark stands of cedar, and thickets of red-twigged osier. We'd even left behind the foul weather of the heath. The Sun dropped her veils and sent a ruddy light slanting through the branches and across the brown water, kindling white tassels of swamp rush that flickered in the wind like flames. Horses stood patiently in the shallows while the horsemasters and boys poured water over them in silver streams and groomed them until they shone.

The cataphracts and armigers left on foot with the dogs to look for signs of a boar worth the chase. I went hunting too, alone. I hitched up my skirts and took off my shoes and set off west along the riverbank, toward the sea, for the men had gone east. In no time I was covered in mud to my knees. The earth underfoot was black and soft, held together by the roots of rush, reed, and bracken. Small muddy streams threaded through the tussocks.

I needed to find a womandrake by nightfall. While I looked I filled my gather sack with haws and rose hips, cloudberries and dewberries, and anything else that came to hand that was good to eat or use. I moved inland, for the ground near the river was too wet; there were bryony vines in plenty, but when I dug around the roots with a stick, none were forked.

I came upon a stand of childbane bushes by one of the many rivulets that come down from the highlands to feed the great river. I took handfuls of the white berries in haste, thinking of Mai, wishing I had time to take more. I marked the spot in hopes I could come back the next day.

By the time I found my womandrake, sunlight was coming straight at me, over the ground between the black trunks of the trees. The root grew so deep, it took till long after sundown to dig it out. It was heavy as an infant and its pale, wrinkled legs were as long as my forearm.

I did and said everything just as Mai had instructed me. The night under the trees was darker than night in the Marchfield with its fires and torches burning under open sky, but I saw enough from the corners of my eyes to do what needed to be done. I was filled with purpose, and when I invoked the gods who meddle in these matters, I felt their gaze turn to me. I didn't shrink under their attention, but was enlarged, stretching and leaping like a shadow when a torch is lit. At last I bound the womandrake in the cord plaited of lamb's wool and of Galan's hair and mine, and I buried her again in the damp earth and stamped the dirt down.

Then it fell quiet. For days my head had been filled with clamor, a constant gabble and hiss that had drowned out sense and goaded me on. That noise was gone. I found myself bereft, my purpose fled.

I heard wind sigh through the branches, saying
hush;
I heard the river running and the trickle of smaller waters making a way to it and the call of a curlew and the rustle of a mouse in the undergrowth.

I thought:
What have I done? I' ve done a foolish thing.

Later, Rowney claimed he'd heard the shade of a woman sobbing by the river. But that was me.

I made my way back to camp with the river on my right. I thought it likely I'd be missed, likely I'd get a slap or worse for staying away so long past dark. Yet Sire Galan hadn't missed me, for he was not in camp. The man in the boat on the river had reported to his master, and his master had sent his steward to find out who the travelers were, and when the steward found out that Sire Erizo was one of the party—the husband of his master's niece—why then the Blood must come to the manor for the night to eat and sleep in ease, and tomorrow they'd all hunt boar together. Before sundown they had sent a ferry for the cataphracts and armigers and their jacks to attend them, and left behind a cask of ale, a pig, and a quantity of moorhens: unlooked-for hospitality for the drudges, who'd been making merry ever since.

Rowney and Spiller had diced to see which would accompany Sire Galan, and Rowney had lost. He was singing by the fire. He had a sweet voice, but the song was foul; the horseboys joined him on the chorus. I offered cloudberries from my gather sack, so no one would question my muddy hem and the scratches on my skin. I was suddenly ravenous, and nothing—not pig cracklings and a moor hen baked in clay, not ale and roasted onions, nor even berries and cream … could fill me up.

The next day the boars were wary and the hunting party had to settle for a fox, run to ground by the dogs up by the ford on the other side of the river. I had better luck, coming back to the camp by midday with my sack tied in knots around handfuls of remedies for wounds and fevers and flux, and my old headcloth full of childbane.

I'd found time to sit for a moment on a fallen log, under two branches that clacked like a couple of old gossips, and ask myself why I'd given up my chance to wander like this, answerable to no one, beholden to no one. I remember looking down at my hand splayed on the log. There was black earth under my nails from digging. All around my fingers grew a forest of moss, tiny spruce trees on a mountain of rotting wood. A beetle bumbled through this forest, away from the shadow of my hand. One yellow leaf drifted down from the branches overhead. I began to wonder if I'd be able to tell from Galan's face or manner that the binding was working its way with him. Perhaps he was already caught. How would I be sure of it?