Tale of Birle (31 page)

They came the next morning to a small clearing where three huge boulders rose up from the earth, two side by side and the third facing. Between them, a little stream rolled down the hillside. There, Birle thought they might stay. The boulders stood like walls, to protect. The ground was soft with moss. Although no fish would live in so small a stream, the little clearing and the forest around would provide some food, when the bread and cheese gave out.

She pulled Orien down from the horse's back. She hobbled the mare's front legs and turned her free to graze. Then she looked around her, to determine what needed doing first. Sunlight spattered over the boulders and rode down the stream.

“Birle,” Orien said.

She crouched where he could see her, should his eyes open. “We're going to rest here, until you're well, my Lord,” she said. She didn't know if he understood her.

“I keep—I'm here, and then I'm gone away elsewhere,” he said, but whether in apology or complaint she couldn't tell.

“Sleep, my Lord,” she said. “Sleep.”

“But—” He struggled to raise his head. The eye on the blistered side of his face could now open fully, she noticed. Aye, and she didn't know what she had to be smiling about. She pushed him gently down onto the soft ground. “Sleep, my Lord.”

He obeyed her.

The first thing Birle did was to lie on her stomach, and drink her fill of the icy waters. Then she set to work.

She built a circle of stones, for a fire, and gathered small branches to start it, then larger pieces of wood to keep it fed. She walked twenty paces into the trees behind the third boulder, and with a stick and her fingers she dug a trench for a privy. She spread out the contents of her sack, food and medicines, the cooking pot, the spoons she had taken from the Philosopher's cupboard, and the mortar and pestle. The clothing, including the boots she'd purchased that last day at market, she left in the sack.

Birle didn't have the skill to build a shelter, with roof and walls. But for the time, the season was favorable—warm days, and the chill of nights easily kept at bay by a fire. It was early summer, with warmer days and nights to come.

That night by the fire, Birle thought of Yul, and her thoughts troubled her. But she had made him her promise, which she would keep if she could. Yul trusted her. He was right to trust her, she knew. What she didn't know was if she was right to trust Damall, and all she could do was hope the man's sense of where his profit lay would keep him honest.

For the time, being able to do nothing about Yul, she dealt with Orien. She bathed him, warming the water in the cooking pot, gently removing all of his clothes, using the cloths for her woman's times—aye, he'd never know so it wouldn't embarrass him, and the cloths were soft and clean. She bathed him as if he were a baby, and could have wept to see how little flesh lay over his bones. But she didn't weep. She dressed him in one of Joaquim's fine, soft shirts and a pair of Yul's trousers, which she had cut off short. Even drawn close at the waist, the trousers fit Orien like a skirt.

When she had done, and he was back on his cloth pallet, under the blanket, his eyes opened. “Where is Yul?” he asked. “I seem to remember—” He slept again before he could say what he remembered.

The fever left him gradually, as a fire burns itself out. Some mornings he was cool to the touch, and the fever seemed to have gone; but by midday it would have returned, although not so hot as before. Orien coughed sharply, and his breathing was harsh. Birle fed him what he would eat. She had found in the woods nearby an abundance of marshmallow, with the roots of last year's growth thick beneath their dried stalks. These she brewed into a soup, into which she dipped crustless pieces of bread for Orien. The broth both nourished him and eased his cough. When he was well enough to sit up for part of the day, and to willfully walk alone to the privy, she knew that however long the healing took, he would be healed—even though he returned pale and shaking with weakness from the short walk into the trees.

Orien slept, days and nights, and Birle foraged for wood and food. She was glad of the weather. It rained seldom, and then gently. Most days the sun shone down warm. In woods and meadow food plants grew abundantly—early onion, the tall marshmallow, fat garlic bulbs beneath their slender shoots, and the piss-a-beds that sprang up wherever sunlight touched the ground, as if they would soon cover the whole floor of the world with their ragged long leaves and bright, hairy-headed yellow flowers. The horse grew fat with grazing.

THERE CAME A DAY WHEN
Orien returned from the privy and did not immediately fall down exhausted on his pallet. Instead, he sat back against the boulder. “Where are we, Birle?”

She was surprised at the question. For more days than she had counted, he had spoken only of thirst, and sleepiness, the need to visit the privy, and sometimes hunger. “My Lord?”

“Where are we?” he repeated. “Where is this place that you've brought me to?” Her surprise pleased him.

His question pleased her. “Three days north of the city. We're safely away, in an uninhabited forest—if I can believe what I was told.”

“And where are we going?” he asked.

“North, and east,” she said.

“North and east?”

It wasn't that he didn't understand her words. His eyes shone in his face and his mouth twitched with laughter he wouldn't let out.

“To the Kingdom,” she said.

“To the Kingdom,” he echoed.

“Aye, my Lord, with luck.”

“With luck.” Then he smiled, saying to her, “Birle, you have a smile like a girl with a glad secret at her breast, you have a smile that Spring must wear—I can see the lady Spring come creeping to the edge of winter, and looking over the landscape she's about to take from winter—with that smile upon her face. A minx's smile, Birle.”

“Aye, my Lord.” She laughed.

“You used to know my name,” he said. “Shall we be on our way?”

“On our way where?” It was as if Orien had left her a sick man and returned from the trees a well one.

“Why north, and east. To the Kingdom. Home,” Orien said.

“But you can't, not yet. You can't try the journey until you've regained your strength, because we don't know what lies ahead.”

“There's the horse. I could ride.”

“No, Orien,” Birle said.

The eyes danced like bellflowers under a summer breeze. “You didn't used to be so cautious, Birle. You were—quite hasty, when we first met. So you've learned that hastiness leads to grief. Do you regret having been so hasty?”

“Not now, I don't. Not at this time, in this place. But I have, at other times and places in between, and so I think must you have.”

“Yes,” he said, all laughter gone from his face. Then he smiled again. “But, like you, not now. So I'll be patient, if I must, and regain my strength, as you tell me to do. I'll obey you in this, Birle.”

“Aye, and you'd be foolish not to,” she told him.

Oddly, it was when his body was healed that Orien's sleep grew troubled. During the day he would do what work he could with the strength he had. He kept the fire, watched over the pungent broth, and went for walks into the woods, to find fuel and to train his legs to their former strength. During the day he kept busy. But at night, with only sleep to occupy him, he turned and muttered, sometimes whimpering, sometimes in anger, sometimes with sounds like the beggars in the marketplace.

His distress wakened Birle, who sat silent, to wait out the time of nightmare and be sure he slept quiet again. One night, however, he screamed—like a pig being slaughtered—and she rushed over to where he lay screaming, to shake his shoulders until he woke up.

He sat up, completely awake, and wiped at his face with his hands.

“What is it?” she asked him. Her heart drummed from the sound of his voice, screaming into the night, so she could imagine how much worse he felt. He had seen the dream; she had only heard its effect on him.

Orien shook his head. He wouldn't answer her.

“Can you go back to sleep?”

He shook his head. His face looked pale, and he shivered in the warm summer night. If he had been a child, she would have gathered him into her arms and rocked him into restful sleep. But he was Orien, so she directed his attention to the stars that burned white in the sky beyond the black mass of boulder. “The Plough is there, four stars and then three for the handle, can you see it?” After a while, the voice in which he asked his questions grew thick and sleepy.

In the morning, he still refused to speak of his nightmares—as if he was ashamed. Neither would he speak of his life in the city, although he questioned her about hers, and about their escape, and about the Showman. Birle told him only part of the truth. “Yul chose to stay, with others of his own kind. Damall traded the horse for the man.”

They had some variety in their food—berries and nuts, and fat peas to cook in with the greens and roots—now that summer filled the forest with ripeness. They made a game out of that food they wished most to have, if they could have any food they wished. Would it be duck, chicken, or meat? Perhaps a cheese, but if so should it be toasted over the fire? Although there was much Orien would never speak of, it seemed to Birle they were always talking. His tongue healed to its full strength long before the rest of him, she complained. “How else would I talk with you?” he asked, as if that were a sensible question.

Orien walked longer, as his strength returned. He would be gone for the space of the morning, or the length of the afternoon. Then one afternoon he returned with two silver fish, one in each of his hands, his fingers hooked into their gills.

Birle didn't know what to say. He was always surprising her. His smile was like the sun shining out of his thick brown beard, and if he hadn't been Orien, returned to health, she would have thought he looked entirely too pleased with himself.

“I found a lake,” he announced. She tried to remember when she had last seen him look so proud, in the tall-standing way, or if she ever had. “Birle? It's not so very far—will you let me show it to you? It's filled with fish so eager to be eaten that I had only to stand in the water”—he lifted a wet leg to show her—“and explain how welcome one or two would be to us, if they could bring themselves to the sacrifice.”

Birle laughed out loud, at the fish they would eat and the gladness in his eyes.

“Lady,” Orien said, “I lay these at your feet.” He went onto his knees before her.

Birle understood his teasing game, as if they were puppets performing on a stage. “My Lord,” she answered, “I thank you for the gift.”

“And with them, I plight you my troth,” he said.

“Aye, my Lord, and there is no need for mockery.”

“Aye, my Lady, and I do not mock you.”

Birle knew she ought to look away from his eyes, for she saw in them the hunger she had learned to fear, and it was also longing. Or maybe what she saw was longing, which was also hunger. She ought to take her own eyes away, she knew, and look at the boulder, or the running stream, look away—but she didn't. She couldn't, and she didn't want to.

“I would have you for my wife, Birle,” Orien said. “Will you have me for husband?”

She had no heart for this game of his. “Get up, Orien. I'll teach you how to scale and gut a fish.”

He obeyed her but she didn't know what it was he saw in her own face, and eyes, that made him look at her so. “There's inequality between us, my Lord,” she reminded him, since he seemed to have forgotten.

“Aye, there is, and ever has been. You gave me your heart and I gave you nothing in return, so now I give you mine—and we are equal.”

He had deliberately misunderstood her.

“You will not say me no, Birle.”

The word was on her lips. She knew that no was what she ought to say. But she chose to obey his will. “No I will not,” she said. “I will say yes to you, and gladly.”

When he clasped her into his arms, she couldn't tell if it was her own heart beating so fast that she heard, or his. He spoke above her head, and she couldn't see his face. “I will be your husband, Birle.”

She answered in kind. “I will be your wife, Orien.”

Then he stepped back, to take her by the hand. “Do you know what a lake is, Birle? Come on, come with me. A lake is not merely where fish can be caught, it's also a bath. Larger than we're used to, and colder too than most, but still a bath. Would you like a bath, Birle?” he asked, laughing. “Did you ever think, Lady, my heart, how sweet the body is when it's clean—like meadows washed by rain, and the sweet, clean earth. I would be so for you. You don't need to fear me, Birle,” he promised her. But Birle was not afraid.

When he came to her as a man does to a woman, she was not surprised to find in herself a hunger that matched his.