Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (39 page)

What’s that supposed to mean?

An unconcerned shrug.
God-knowing. Mine, now.

Mariarta went to the marketplace. There was the pole, there was the hat and the bored soldiers. Even the peacock feather remained in the hat, which surprised Mariarta. She bowed to the damned thing, no more than she had to, and walked on by to a stall she knew, pausing to talk to old Andri the bell-saddler. His eyes got wide at the sight of her. “Mati!  We thought you were dead—”

“Not yet: hush!  Who’s ‘we?’”

“Why, Walter, and Theo and all—” Andri shook his head. “We thought
they’d
got you. Or something else had.”

“It did,” Mariarta said, smiling, “but I lived through it. How have things been?”

“Quiet enough. Everyone ignores that now, except to bow to it. Look, you wait—” He vanished behind another stall.

Mariarta leaned there, looking around. She let her eyes wander over the crowd, the people standing to one side or another, talking, gesticulating. Odd, and amusing in its way, how nearly every back in the place was turned on that pole. Mariarta glanced up the street past it, saw a bearded man with a child, looked away: and then back at the man, for here was a familiar face, though she couldn’t place it.
Where have I seen him before?
  she wondered.
Different clothes?  Maybe without the beard—

She swallowed, then. That face had been clean-shaven, much younger. Instead of hunter’s tunic and leggings of brown linen and leather, he had worn leggings and tunic and cloak all in student’s black. Though later still she had seen him in herdsman’s dress, leaning on the stall door, looking at the silver bullcalf—

Tel. Wilhelm Tel, striding into the market, looking around with the interested expression of a man who hasn’t  been to town for a while: a chamois skin on his shoulder, his crossbow slung over his shoulder on a leather belt, and holding a small boy by the hand.
His son,
  Mariarta thought. The child’s resemblance to the young man his father had been was striking. Behind Tel, a tall brown-haired woman, his wife almost certainly, came along carrying a basket with cloth-wrapped cheeses inside it, looking about her warily. Mariarta saw Tel look at the pole with an expression much like her own that first time: incomprehension, unconcern. He walked by it, heading for the tanner’s stall.

The soldiers’ eyes fixed on him, and came alive with happy malice.

Mariarta went hot and cold as she had when Diun had first entered her: froze with terror, blazed with helpless rage at something about to happen, something she couldn’t see— 
My rush to get here,
  Mariarta thought in anguish.  
All folly. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been slower, met him on the road—

Hush!
  Diun said forcefully.
This is god-knowing, as I said. Learn now how it works!  Whatever it is, this is meant to happen. Ride the moment, guide it, don’t stand there moaning!

A hand clamped on her arm. She shook it off angrily and turned—only to see it was Theo. Mariarta gripped his arm too, whispered his name. She had no time for more, for Theo was staring past her, seeing what Mariarta had seen, what everyone else in the place was watching, horrified. “Oh, no,” Theo whispered, “what’s he doing here, didn’t he get the message not to—”

The soldiers made for Tel. His son, swinging happily from his father’s hand, was oblivious. His wife, behind him, saw the soldiers coming, blanched, opened her mouth. Before she could speak, Tel turned, saw the soldiers coming toward him, their spears leveled. He pushed his son away, dropped the chamois skin, and reached out to the nearest spear, with which the leading, incautious soldier was almost prodding him. Tel slapped the spearblade aside open-handed, caught the spear by the socket and pulled it out of the soldier’s grip. The man went sprawling. The second one lunged: Tel sidestepped, kicked the spear out of his hands. Other hands had it instantly—for the people in the marketplace had started to gather around Tel within a breath of the trouble starting.

The man who picked up the second spear was leveling it at the soldier who had dropped it. “No,” Tel said loudly; and that man lowered the spear, passing it back through the sudden crowd, where it vanished. Tel handed someone the first spear: it vanished the same way. The soldiers were on their knees, frozen in the act of getting to their feet, as they realized they were in the middle of an unfriendly crowd getting bigger every minute, with their weapons gone. And Tel still had his bow.

“No,” Tel said to the crowd, and gazed at the two men. “Now what makes you attack a man going peacably about his business?”

 “That is the Governor’s hat,” one soldier said, sounding both sullen and frightened at the same time. “It’s his order that all men must bow to it, as symbol of his authority under the Emperor.”

Tel laughed, picked that soldier up by the collar, and set him on his feet. “Now listen,” he said. “I am a free man. I will kneel to God, and I’ll bow my head right enough to my liege lord the Emperor, or his legal representative, if I should see one of them go by. But I’m not bowing to an empty hat. You just tell your Governor that.”

The soldier, his head lowered, was about to turn away, when from northward, by the road that led to the lake, came an unusual sound: a merry call from a hunter’s horn. The soldier’s head came up, and a nasty grin spread across his face as he grabbed Tel by the arm. “Tell him yourself,” the soldier said.

His mate came and took Tel’s other arm. The crowd moved in.
“No,”
Tel said. People stared, shocked. Tel said, “If I wanted to get away from this, I would. Let be!”

Mariarta, standing to one side with Theo, let out a held breath, found she was shaking. “Theo—” she whispered.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ve got to go get Walter. It can’t happen now—!   But listen, Mati—did you—?”

“Yes,” she said. “Go on!”

He went. The horn-call came closer, and from the street leading north to the lake, horses’ hoofbeats could faintly be heard. Mariarta glanced at Tel’s wife, who stood to one side, the basket dropped at her feet, looking up the street in plain terror. Mariarta thought of Walter’s daughter telling her how they had been hiding out in some cabin in the mountains, where Gessler couldn’t find them, after Wilhelm had saved the man who was being chased by the bailiff’s people. The wind breathed through the marketplace, though, and Mariarta, looking at Tel’s wife, caught something else: a terror that had nothing to do with her husband, but was for herself, and which shamed her. A memory of someone looking at her under veiled eyes, desiring her, so that she fled—

Into the marketplace came the tramp of booted feet, sixteen men in mail and surcoats, on foot, carrying spears. Following them were five men on horseback, armed with swords and bows: and last, on a big chestnut destrier, armed in metal from throat to feet, a man who had to be the
landvogt
Gessler. He needed that huge horse to carry him, for he was tall and broad-shouldered, a big man. Had Mariarta known nothing about him, she would have liked him on first sight. Gessler was handsome in a broken-nosed sort of way, blond-haired, a man whose face had an easy-going look. He was riding along with insouciant ease, eating an apple from a bag that hung at his horse’s withers. Not a winter-stored apple, either, but a new season’s one, impossible except for a man rich enough to have early fruit shipped from Talia. On his head, Gessler wore a hat with a green peacock’s feather in it.

That made Mariarta wonder.
He doesn’t mind acting il Giavel’s part, or seeming to, if it serves his purpose—

Gessler took a last bite of his apple, pitched the core away. “Summer is here,” he said in a cheerful voice. “How good to come down the lake in this fine weather to see my town looking so prosperous. The marketplace full, people going about their business....”

He glanced around him, smiling. The townspeople turned their faces away, or simply stared at the effrontery of the man. Gessler was plainly enjoying their discomfiture. “And here are two of my trusty men,” he said, seeming to turn his attention to the soldiers, and the man they held, for the first time. The soldiers blanched. “He wouldn’t bow—!” one of them cried, panicked.

“Unarmed,” Gessler said. “Where are your spears?” The two men looked helplessly around. “Where are they?” Gessler demanded of the crowd. People looked blankly at one another, as if struck idiot.

Gessler smiled more broadly. “Take them away and have them whipped,” he said to one of the retainers riding with him. “Loss of expensive weapons, can’t countenance a thing like that. Have the town searched: I want them back.”

Armed men started fanning out through the crowd: the two soldiers were hustled off. “But now,” Gessler said, looking at Tel with interest: and ten spears were leveled at Tel for the two that were gone. “It’s Master Tel, indeed. A while now since we’ve seen or heard of you. It seems a winter on the mountainside hasn’t taught you any more respect for law.”

“It’s a law I never heard of until today. I was surprised—”

“Ignorance is no excuse,” Gessler said cheerfully. “The law is the law, and you have trespassed it. I can put you to death if I like—
that’s
the law too.”

Mariarta became aware of Theo behind her. Walter Furst came up beside her, staring in anguish at the scene in the middle of the marketplace. He started to push forward, but Theo caught him, muttering, “Don’t, Walter. He wants an excuse. For pity’s sake, master yourself—”

“Theo, he’s my
son
—!”

“Shut up, Walter. You know why. Keep still!”

The wind whipped the banners and awnings in the marketplace, and Mariarta knew ‘why’. The oath-confederates’ plans were ready. Soon they would move. But if revolt broke out prematurely, and the Austriacs moved against them before everything was in place—

Ride the moment,
  Diun whispered.
See what can be done.

Tel stood before the
landvogt
, and slowly hung his head. Mariarta saw how deliberately it was done: she wondered whether Gessler did. “Sir,” Tel said, “forgive me. But you cannot wish us to do reverence to an empty hat. We are free men.”

Gessler’s smile did not waver, but his eyes changed, and the character of that smile changed entirely as well, at the word
free
. “So you would seem to think,” he said. “For look at you, standing there armed. You Uri people have thought that privilege a right for too long...ignoring the fact that
I
have not confirmed you in it. Never mind what your fathers did or had. You have
me
to deal with now. I enforce the law, and the law says subjects do not go armed without their governor’s express permission. Hunters may hunt...but not in town. You’ve no excuse for carrying that except to make yourself look big in the townsmen’s eyes. Well, we’ll have no more of that.” He glanced at another of his armed retainers. “Go get that bow he’s so fond of,” Gessler said. “Put him—” He glanced around. “Oh, under that linden tree there. Then take his bow and shoot him with it.”

The crowd moaned. “It’s only justice,” Gessler said reasonably. “He who lives by the bow will die by the bow.”

Hard hands pulled Tel to the linden tree, pushed him against it. “No!” cried a woman’s voice, and all heads turned as Tel’s wife rushed to Gessler and knelt on the cobbles in front of his horse. “Please, Lord, I beg you—he won’t do it again—”

“Frau Hedwig,” Gessler said, his voice suddenly soft: and the smile softened too—but again, the eyes did not change, and the effect was horrible. “Or Duonna Edugia, as the old barbarous tongue would have it. Well, it has been awhile since I rode away from your father’s door with your words ringing in my ears.” He shot a sideways glance at Walter Furst. “You were going to marry someone better, nobler, than a bailiff, you said. But the world changed, and positions shifted. And now look at what you could have had, and look what you married instead.” Gessler shook his head in feigned sorrow. “A ragged beast-hunter, and a lawbreaker as well. Still...for the sake of old friendship, I should have mercy, I suppose. What will you offer me for mercy, Hedwig?”

Hedwig’s face was white: she opened her mouth, but no words came out. “But no,” Gessler said, still feigning sorrow: “the law must be enforced. That bow must be used to punish your husband one way or another.” Gessler considered. Tel, under the tree, stood with his face turned away.

“I know,” Gessler said. “Justice shall still be served. Take Tel out from under that tree. Put his faithful wife there instead.”

“No!” Tel cried as the soldiers pulled him away, as others laid hands on Hedwig and pushed her to stand where her husband had. The crowd stirred and muttered. Beside Mariarta, Walter Furst went white.

“What,” Gessler cried, “will you defy the Emperor’s representative to his face?  I thought you were all
loyal
folk, the Emperor’s liege people.” Mariarta saw how his eyes fixed on Walter Furst, and Werner Stauffacher, and Theo.
He knows,
  she thought, horrified.
But how much—?

The crowd quieted, stunned: they
were
loyal—but it had never occurred to them that their loyalty would bring them to this. “Now then,” Gessler said, “give Tel there back his prize bow.” He rummaged in the bag at his saddlebow, picked out a handsome rosy apple of the South, shiny and perfectly ripe. “There,” he said, tossing it to a soldier. “Put that on her head.”

Everyone stared in amazement. “We’ve heard about Tel’s marksmanship, even right up the lake,” Gessler said, sounding good-humored again. “That competition in Ursera, what was it, two years ago now?  No, three. Won every prize. Let’s see if a winter hiding on the mountainside makes any difference. What’s a good distance?  Eighty paces?  Meinhard, pace it out.”