Tale of Elske (21 page)

“None,” Elske answered, truthfully.

As it happened, however, after she had exchanged baubles for coins, she ran into Nido as she walked along the docks to see what ships were being readied for embarkation, to see what goods they were to carry and hear what destination they sailed for. Elske kept her head low to hide her face and her hands hidden under the short cloak to conceal the heavy purse she carried, but Nido had no difficulty in recognizing her. He insisted on walking with her, at least as far as the bridge that joined Harboring to Logisle. He hadn't seen her for so long a time and there was much he wished to tell her. Was it that she didn't want his company? he asked. He wouldn't give her disguise away, he assured her of that, and besides, wouldn't the disguise be improved when they were two young men, walking about together?

Nido had grown taller, and had the shadow of a beard. The labors of apprenticeship hadn't dampened his spirits. His great news was that he was to be sent out as the assistant to a ship's carpenter, on one of Var Kenric's vessels. “We are fitted and stocked, and the ice has broken up. Var Kenric wants to be the first to offer goods in Celindon—I'll see Celindon again, Elske. The other time I was just a boy, the time we met you, Taddus and Father and I, when we were returning. He's ill, did you know?”

“Taddus?”

“Not Taddus, Father. Taddus counts himself the luckiest man in Trastad, now that Idelle has given him an heir. They named the girl after you, did you know that? If Taddus were not Var Kenric's heir, now, Father and Mother would worry where they might find stock, for Father will not be strong enough to travel out this summer. But Taddus supplies their shelves, and I am now placed on one of Var Kenric's ships. In only two days, or perhaps three, I'll be gone. So it is good fortune that I saw you here. What do you think of that chance, after all this time, Elske?”

Elske thought it was a fair chance, and she decided to risk Beriel's anger and spend some of these coins taking that chance. “Will your ship take passengers?” she asked.

“Ships that will bear the Adeliers back to their own lands, and carry our merchants south, will await the fairer weather.”

“What if I knew of two travelers who desire to commence their journey now and don't fear foul weather?”

“My ship has a stateroom, next to the captain's quarters. But the sea is still rough, they say—and storms not unlikely. Although, less likely as we move south,” Nido told her.

“I do know of two such,” Elske said. “What would the charge be, for your captain?”

“I'd have to ask him, and he would have to know he wasn't setting himself or Var Kenric against the will of the Council.” Nido looked like a man grown now.

“These are two the Council will not object over,” Elske promised him. “There is no criminal, no traitor, no one Trastad wishes to keep within its own territory. I give you my word.”

Nido studied her face. They had arrived at the bridge, and stood talking there. “Have they the Council's permission to leave the city?”

“Can two women, neither of them Trastaders, one of them impatient to be back in her own land, endanger Trastad by leaving it betimes?”

Nido thought. “And the second is you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you give me the fare now, to convince my captain?”

Elske opened the purse and took out four gold coins. She put them into Nido's hands.

“It's too much,” he said.

“You can return to me what you don't need.”

“Or it maybe will not be enough, if you cannot show the captain your permissions,” Nido said thoughtfully.

Elske gave him four more coins, and so she had spent half of Beriel's purse.

“How will I find you?” Nido asked.

“I'll be here, in this place, at this time, every day until I hear from you,” Elske said.

“You'll hear from me tomorrow,” Nido promised her.

SO IT WAS THAT TWO
days from that time, Beriel strode up the wooden gangplank and onto the deck of the ship. Elske followed behind, wearing her warm Wolfer boots, carrying the pack in which whatever clothing they brought with them was folded.

Nido led them down a steep ladder into the belly of the ship, then through a low doorway into a low-ceilinged, narrow, short room where two high, shuttered portholes let in light. With the three of them in the room, there was barely space to move, but Nido squeezed out past them, saying hurriedly, “The captain will send me when we're far enough from land.” And he was gone.

The boat moved gently under Elske. The sound of feet came from overhead. When she opened the portholes, she could see the open sky, with a few wispy clouds hurrying across it.

Beriel sat down on the bunk, to wait. Her first fury, when Elske had reported to her of the meeting with Nido, and the coins spent, and the plan laid, had faded away under her desire to return to the Kingdom. She had left behind her a letter for the High Councillor, an elaborate apology for her hasty departure, citing unease about her father who had been in poor health when she had left him, thanking Var Vladislav for his hospitality, hoping that he had intended her to take Elske with her, for that was her will. “I take with me the maidservant, Elske,” Beriel had written, and then offered a guileful compliment, “Your wisdom and good judgement in choosing me this girl for servant reveals how it is that Trastad has come to such well-deserved prosperity.” So Beriel completed her affairs in Trastad, and Elske—who had no affairs of her own—now sat beside her mistress on the narrow bunk, listening to the sounds of a ship being readied to sail.

Eventually, the ship drew heavily away from the dock. Unable to see, listening, Elske heard the sails being raised and knew they were on their way even before the ship came alive all around them. Elske felt the quickening and asked, “Can we go up on deck, my Lady?”

“Now you're the impatient one,” Beriel observed, refusing. “Remember, your little Nido will come to tell us when that is permitted.”

“He is not little anymore.”

“Will you marry him?”

“Why should I marry Nido?”

“Why should you marry any man?” Beriel answered. “But you will. You are like a flower for them, and they come around like bees to suck the honey of you, the happiness. But perhaps you will not marry.”

“Why should I not marry?” Elske asked her. “When I choose. Who I choose, if he chooses me. When it's a good time for marriage, then if it is good to do, why should I not do it? Yours is the dangerous case, as I think, my Lady.”

“I know that, Elske. I don't know why you trouble me with it now.”

Elske fell silent.

The ship rocked beneath them, like a cradle, and they swayed on the bunk. The lamp which hung down into the center of the room stayed still. Elske's skin felt cold and her mouth dry, but when Nido opened the door to call them out she stood eagerly.

The floor underfoot—moving—made her stumble clumsily. Beriel promised, “You'll get your sea legs soon, Elske, but until then, be careful. Hold on.”

Elske hung on, climbing up the ladder, and scurried to the side of the boat where she could hold on to the railing. The sharp wind blew away her own chills; the taste of salt water on the air moistened her mouth and cheeks. Beriel went off with Nido to look at the section of the stern deck the captain had set aside for her particular use, but Elske stayed where she was and saw the city falling away behind them as the river emptied its waters into the open sea. They sailed out into this open water, until the islands that hugged the shore blended into the mainland, and all together they lay like a flat grey cloud along one horizon. Off to the west the sea moved empty, endless, as the boat sailed southwards. But by the time the sun was lowering itself behind the shelter of land, they had come back close to land, and they dropped anchor in a small cove on one of the islands.

After eating they went below, to sleep. Beriel's bunk had a thin straw mattress, but Elske wrapped herself around in a blanket and climbed into a hammock. This bed swayed with the waters that rocked the boat, and Elske woke many times, and slept again, until at last she could see lightening in the sky outside. Then she rolled herself quietly out of the hammock and let herself quietly out of their small room, and climbed in quiet stockinged feet up the ladder.

The ship was getting under way. Long slow waves rolled under her, lifting her bow and lowering it. The ship was like some snared bird, struggling to rise, but falling.

Elske leaned against the railing as the ship rose and fell under her. The cook had a steaming cauldron set out on his stone hob, but her stomach disliked the smell of food. She would have liked fresh water, though. She walked off-balance over to the helmsman to ask if there was any water. “Are ye blind?” he asked, laughing at his wit.

Elske could only smile, and he relented. He pointed to a barrel at the boat's midsection. A wooden ladle was tied at its side, and she thanked him.

Water cooled her mouth, and moistened it. The wind blew from behind her, lazily, and clouds covered the sky. The deck rolled under her feet, and her legs felt weak.

Elske had just seated herself on cushions provided in their section of the stern, had just closed her eyes, when she was called to answer Beriel's summons. She went slowly down the ladder, feeling that if her feet slipped on the rungs her arms would lack the strength to catch and hold her. In the dark companionway the air was close, and in their cabin, too. Beriel wanted the chamber pot emptied. “Unbolt the shutter,” she instructed, “and empty it out of the porthole.”

The swaying rolling surging of the ship was stronger, below, and also slower. Elske felt sick, but not with fever; it was as if she had swallowed into her stomach something which it did not wish to keep. A cold sweat misted her face. She turned around to return the chamber pot to its hook under Beriel's bunk—but brought her stomach up into it, instead.

She knew she was vomiting. She had seen men at the Volkking's feast empty their bellies of honey mead and meat. But she did not remember ever having done so herself.

“Elske! Don't—! What—?” and then Beriel laughed. “You're seasick. I never was, not even in storms. Come, you have to get into fresh air. There will be no getting over it if you stay here below. Come,” and she lifted Elske onto her feet, then pushed her out the door.

Elske hauled herself back up the ladder.

It was the same clouded sky overhead and the same wood decking underfoot, and Elske fell back onto the same cushions from which she had arisen when summoned. There she spent the long day. Sometimes Beriel was nearby, and sometimes Elske dozed uneasily, and sometimes she stumbled to the barrel for a mouthful of water, and often she leaned over the railing to vomit. In the afternoon, Nido came to sit with her. He had none of his customary liveliness and she knew that he, too, had caught the seasickness. When the ship rode at anchor in protected waters that evening, Elske felt more herself, although she did not eat. Beriel offered consolation. “Seasickness only lasts a day or two in this gentle weather.”

Elske waited for the named time to pass. Nido was his usual self again after only a day, and in two days had forgotten that he ever shared Elske's misery. Elske, who had never before had any such misery, had enough now to share with any who asked. She lived on deck, in the fresh air, and refused to go below, even in rain. She slept out on the deck, also, because even at anchor the ship swayed with the movement of the water. After a few days, she found she could keep some of the evening meal down. “That's a good thing, or you'd starve. The captain says there's some, the sea always brings up their stomachs,” Beriel reported, scraping clean her own bowl of stewed fish.

Elske waited three days, then four, five.

Eight days, then nine, ten—

“Do you never complain?” Nido asked her. “You look like you're dying, all pale and greeny. How can you stand it?”

Elske endured. Beriel grew impatient with her, and restless, too. “This ship is twenty paces long, and I've walked it a hundred times. More than a hundred. I've explored into every cabin—although the captain was none too pleased to show me his, and he doesn't know I could find his strongbox where he thinks it's so well-concealed. I've counted every piece of cargo. Don't you want to know what we're carrying, Elske?”

“No,” Elske said, but at the sight of Beriel's bored displeasure she found words in her throat to add, “Later, perhaps. Perhaps tonight.”

“Tonight I'll be tired, sleepy not restless. I need to tell you now. There are a dozen barrels—hidden away under the stacks of furs. Barrels the same size as they store ale in but marked by dustings of fine, dark powder. Do you know what I think we are carrying?”

“Later,” Elske answered, and Beriel went off to join Nido at his work of repairing one of the chairs from the captain's cabin.

“You look terrible,” everyone said to her, and Elske smiled weakly, and nodded her agreement, unable to speak. The times she felt well enough for company, most of the others were asleep, except for whichever sailors stood the watch; those men made her companions of the journey. The ship rode quietly at night, and by dawn Elske often felt entirely well. Now that she knew sickness, she could recognize and name this well-feeling, and take pleasure in it, too. Until the ship raised anchor and set sail again.