Into the Darkness (76 page)

Ealstan shoved him hard—hard enough to send a couple of yellow horseman’s mushrooms flying out of his basket. “No, because you say things like that,” Ealstan told him. “And if you say any more of them, I will pop you one, and it’ll curse well serve you right.”

Sidroc picked up the mushrooms. He looked ready to fight, too, and Ealstan, despite his hot words, wasn’t quite sure he’d come out on top if they did tangle. Then Sidroc pointed and started to laugh. “Go ahead, first-rank master of innocence, tell me that’s the basket your mother gave you when you set out this morning.”

Ealstan looked down. When he looked up again, he was glaring at his cousin. “She’s got mine, I guess. That’s because you couldn’t have done a better job of driving her away if you’d hunted her with hounds.”

Whatever Sidroc started to say in response to that, the look on Ealstan’s face persuaded him it would not be a good idea. Side by side, they walked on in grim silence. The Algarvian soldiers at the gate looked at their baskets of mushrooms, made disgusted faces, and waved them into Gromheort.

Once they were out of earshot of the guards, Sidroc said, “Suppose I told them you got that basket from a Kaunian hussy? How do you think they’d like that?”

“Suppose I told your father what you just said?” Ealstan answered, looking at his cousin as if he’d found him under a flat rock. “How do you think he’d like that?” Sidroc didn’t reply, but his expression was eloquent. They didn’t say another word to each other till they got back to Ealstan’s house. Silence seemed a better idea than anything they might have said.

“You’re back sooner than I thought you would be,” Conberge said when they brought their laden baskets into the kitchen. Neither Ealstan nor Sidroc said anything to that, either. Ealstan’s sister glanced from one to the other. She looked as if she might be on the point of asking some sharp questions, but the only one that came out was, “Well, what have you got for me?”

Sidroc set his basket on the counter. “I did pretty well,” he said.

“So did I,” Ealstan said, and set his basket beside his cousin’s. Only then did he remember that it wasn’t his basket—it was Vanai’s. Too late to do anything about that, too. He’d only look like a fool if he snatched the basket away now. He waited to see what would happen.

At first, Conberge noticed only the mushrooms. “I thought the two of you went out together. Except for some oyster mushrooms and a couple of others, it doesn’t look like you were within miles of each other.”

Sidroc didn’t say anything. Ealstan didn’t say anything, either. So much silence from them was out of the ordinary. Conberge eyed them both again, and let out a sniff before going back to her sorting.

Some things were almost too obvious to notice. She’d nearly finished the job before she stopped, a mushroom in her hand. “This isn’t the basket Mother gave you, Ealstan.” She set the mushrooms on the counter, frowning as she did so. “In fact, this isn’t any of our baskets, is it?”

“No.” Ealstan decided to put the best light on things he could: “I was trading mushrooms with a friend, and we ended up trading baskets, too. We didn’t even know we’d done it till we’d both headed for home. Do you think Mother will be angry? It’s as nice as any of our baskets.”

His innocent tones wouldn’t have passed muster even if Sidroc hadn’t been standing there like an egg about to burst. “Trading mushrooms with a friend, were you?” his sister said, raising an eyebrow. “Was she pretty?”

Ealstan’s mouth fell open. He felt himself flushing. Forthwegians were swarthy, but not, he was mournfully sure, swarthy enough to keep a blush like his from showing. Before he could say anything, Sidroc did it for him—or to him: “I saw her. She’s pretty enough—for a Kaunian.”

“Oh,” Conberge said, and went back to sorting through the last few mushrooms.

Her other eyebrow had risen at Sidroc’s announcement, but that wasn’t a big enough reaction to suit him. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said loudly. “She’s a Kaunian. She wears her trousers
very
tight, too.” He ran his tongue over his lips.

“She does not!” Ealstan exclaimed. He found himself explaining to his sister: “Her name’s Vanai. She lives over in Oyngestun. We swapped mushrooms last year, too.”

“She’s a Kaunian,” Sidroc repeated yet again.

“I heard you the first time,” Conberge told him, an edge to her voice. “Do you know what you sound like? You sound like an Algarvian.”

If that was supposed to quell Sidroc, it failed. “So what if I do?” he said, tossing his head. “Everybody in this house sounds like a Kaunian-lover. You ask me, the redheads are going down the right ley line there.”

“Nobody asked you,” Ealstan growled. He was about to point out that Kaunians had helped his brother escape from the captives’ camp. At the last instant, he didn’t. His cousin had already spoken of something that sounded like blackmail. Ealstan didn’t think Sidroc meant it seriously, but didn’t see the need to give him more charges for his stick, either.

It was Sidroc’s turn to go red. Whatever he might have said then, he didn’t, because someone pounded on the front door. “That will be Leofsig,” Ealstan said. “Why don’t you go let him in?”

Sidroc went, looking glad to escape. Ealstan was glad to see him go before things started blazing again. By her sigh, so was Conberge. She said, “Powers above, but I wish Uncle Hengist would find someplace else to stay. He’s not so bad—in fact, he’s not bad at all, but Sidroc …” She rolled her eyes.

“They’re family,” Ealstan said.

“I know,” Conberge said. “We could be staying with them as easily as the other way round. I know that, too.” She sighed again. “But he is such a …” Her right hand folded into a fist. She’d been able to thump Ealstan right up to the day, a few years before, she’d decided it was unladylike. He didn’t think she could now, but he wouldn’t have cared to make the experiment.

“He knows everything,” Ealstan said. “If you don’t believe me, ask him.”

“He
wants
to know everything.” His sister’s fist got harder and tighter. In a low, furious voice, she blurted, “I think he’s tried to peek at me when I’m getting dressed.” Ealstan whirled in the direction Sidroc had gone. Maybe he had murder, or something close to it, on his face, because Conberge caught him by the arm and held him back. “No, don’t do anything. I don’t know for sure. I can’t prove it. I just think so.”

“That’s disgusting,” Ealstan said, but he eased enough so that Conberge let him go. “Does Mother know?”

She shook her head. “No. I haven’t told anybody. I wish I hadn’t told you, but I was fed up with him.”

“I don’t blame you,” Ealstan said. “If Father knew, though, he’d wallop him. Powers above, if Uncle Hengist knew, he’d wallop him, too.” He didn’t say what Leofsig might do. He was afraid to think about that -it might be lethal. He took death and dying much more seriously than he had before the start of the war.

“Hush,” Conberge said now. “Here they come.” Ealstan nodded; he heard the approaching footsteps, too.

In Leofsig’s presence, Sidroc was more subdued than he was around Ealstan; Leofsig, visibly a man grown, intimidated him in ways Ealstan could not. At the moment, Leofsig was visibly a man grown tired. “Give me a cup of wine, Conberge,” he said, “something to cut the dust in my throat before I go down to the baths and get clean. The water will be cold, but I don’t care. Mother and Father won’t want me around smelling the way I do—I’m sure of that.”

As Conberge poured the wine, she said, “Mother and Father are glad to have you around no matter what—and so am I.”

Being Leofsig’s brother, Ealstan could say, “I’m not so sure I am,” and wrinkle his nose. Leofsig didn’t do anything but punch him in the upper arm, not too hard. But when Sidroc presumed to guffaw, both Ealstan and Leofsig gave him such stony stares, he took himself elsewhere in a hurry.

Leofsig drank down the rough red wine in three or four gulps. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic. It was already so filthy, a little wine would do it no further harm. “That’s good,” he said. “The only trouble with it is, it makes me want to go to sleep, and I do need to bathe first.”

“You’re wearing yourself out, working as a laborer,” Conberge said worriedly. “You know enough to be Father’s assistant. I don’t see why you wear yourself out with a pick and shovel instead.”

“Aye, I know enough to be his assistant—and I know enough not to be, too,” Leofsig answered. “For one thing, he doesn’t really have so much work that he needs an assistant. For another, he’s good at what he does; he even casts accounts for some of the Algarvians in Gromheort these days. Remember, a lot of people quietly know I’m home. I want to make sure it stays quiet. If he takes me along to help him in front of the Algarvian governor, say, it won’t.”

“Well, that’s so,” Conberge admitted with a sigh. “But I hate to watch you wasting away to a nub.”

“Plenty of me left, never fear,” Leofsig said. “Remember how I was when I first got out of the camp? Then I was a nub, not now. Now all I do is stink, and I can take care of that.” He kissed his sister on the cheek and headed out again.

Conberge sighed once more. “I wish he’d stay in more. No matter how well we’ve paid off the redheads, they
will
notice him if he makes them do it.”

“That’s what he just told you,” Ealstan answered. Conberge made a face at him. He didn’t feel too happy about it himself, because he knew his sister had a point. He said, “If he stayed in all the time, he’d feel like a bear in a cage at the zoological gardens.”

“I’d rather have him be a live bear in a cage than a bearskin rug in front of some Algarvian’s divan,” Conberge said. Ealstan stood there looking unhappy; she’d turned his own figure against him too neatly for him to do anything else.

The metaphorical bear came back about half an hour later, clean but looking thoroughly grim. Before Ealstan or Conberge could ask him what was wrong, he told them: “The Algarvians have hanged a Kaunian in the market square in front of the baths. He was one of the fellows who escaped with me.”

Leofsig reported to his labor gang the next morning wondering if he should be lying low instead. If the redheads had squeezed the Kaunian hard enough before they hanged him, or if the fellow had sung on his own, trying to save his own skin, the new masters of Gromheort would be able to scoop him up with the greatest of ease.

Had the escaped and recaptured captive sung, though, the Algarvians could have surrounded his house and dragged him away in irons the night before. He took that to mean the Kaunian had kept quiet, or maybe that the redheads hadn’t known the right questions to ask.

No kilted soldiers shouted his name and pointed sticks at him. A couple of them, the friendlier ones, nodded as he came up to report. The one who bossed his group gave forth with another of his two-words bursts of Forthwegian: “Working good!”

“Aye,” Leofsig said. He sounded unenthusiastic. The soldier laughed a laugh that said he wasn’t slamming down cobblestones himself.

But Leofsig, unlike a lot of his comrades, honestly did not mind the work. Before he’d gone into King Penda’s levy, he’d been a student and an apprentice bookkeeper: he’d worked with his head, not with his hands and back. In the Forthwegian army, though, he’d discovered, as some bright young men do, that work with the hands and back had satisfactions of its own. A job wasn’t right or wrong, only done or undone, and getting it from undone to done required only time and effort, not thought. He could think about other things or, if he chose to, about nothing at all.

And, in the army and on the labor gang, he’d hardened in a way he’d never imagined. Only muscle lay between skin and bone, but more muscle than he’d dreamt of carrying. He’d been on the plump side before going into the army. His service there and in the gang would have taken care of that even without the intervening months in the captives’ camp. He doubted he’d ever be plump again.

“All right!” the Algarvian straw boss shouted. “We go. Work hard. Plenty cobblestones.” Sure enough, he sounded perfectly happy. A lot of people got even more satisfaction from watching others do hard physical labor than from doing it themselves.

Under his two-word bursts of what he thought was enthusiasm, the labor gang tramped down a road leading northwest till they got to the point where the cobbles stopped. They’d worked on the road leading southwest till they’d gone too far for them to march out from Gromheort, do a decent day’s work, and then march back. Laborers—a lot of them probably Kaunian laborers—from towns and villages farther on down that road would be paving it now.

Mule-drawn wagons hauled the labor gang’s tools and the stones with which they would be paving this stretch of road. The wagons’ iron tires rattled and banged over the cobblestones already in the roadway. Leofsig’s comrade Burgred winced at the racket. “Shouldn’t have had so much wine last night,” he said. “My head wants to fall off, and I bloody well wish it would.”

“Wagons wouldn’t make so much noise on a dirt road, sure enough,” Leofsig said, showing more sympathy than he felt—nobody’d held a stick to Burgred’s head and made him get drunk, and if this was the first hangover he’d ever had, then Leofsig was a slant-eyed Kaunian. He went on, “Of course, they’d go hub-deep in mud when it rained. The redheads don’t want that.”

“I wish I’d go hub-deep in mud about now,” Burgred said—sure enough, he was much the worse for wear this morning.

Passing by some meadow mushrooms, Leofsig stepped out into the field in which they grew to pick them and store them in his belt pouch. “Meadow mushrooms are better than no mushrooms at all,” he said to Burgred. He had to repeat himself, because the noise from the wagons was particularly fierce. Burgred looked as if the only mushrooms he would have wanted then were some of the lethal variety, to put him out of his misery.

Like most Algarvians, the straw boss had a low opinion of what Forthwegians and Kaunians reckoned delicacies. “Mushrooms bad,” he said, sticking out his tongue and making a horrible face. “Mushrooms poisonous. Mushrooms disgusting.” He spat on a cobblestone.

“Powers above,” Leofsig said softly. “Even the yellow-hairs know better than that.” Kaunians and local delicacies were both on his mind; he’d heard rather different versions from Sidroc and from his own brother about the Kaunian girl Ealstan had met in the woods while out hunting mushrooms. Sidroc had them all but betrothed, but Sidroc’s mouth generally outran his wits.