Tale of Elske (26 page)

Beriel accepted this, and now wanted to know, “What do you hear of the black powder?”

“They say that in the cities of the south, there are those who possess it. They speak of a captain who has made himself a Prince over many cities by its power, and none dare oppose him, for the destruction he can visit upon them. He aims to give his son a royal bride—”

“I have danced with this son, I think,” Beriel said. “I did not know he was to be such a King but if he rules as stupidly as he courts, he will lose all that his father has won. Do my people fear the black powder?”

Win answered apologetically, “Your people fear everything, my Queen. If it is not the terror of the black powder, then it is dread of the consequences of Guerric's crowning or the dread of the consequences of your return. Fear spreads like a plague, and especially in the north where the Wolfers have struck.” Then his face grew thoughtful, quiet, and he added, “Or perhaps fear is least in the north, for there they know what dangers they face. Imagined terrors are more fearsome than known, think you, my Queen?”

“I think I will see what awaits us at Sutherland's castle,” Beriel decided, and urged her horse on, leading them.

Elske followed her mistress. She knew little of the Kingdom and its ways and had not been sent among the women of the inn, to gather their rumors. She didn't know how she might now help her mistress. There was that in Elske for which this was a gall, and she felt like a sail bereft of wind, a useless thing.

They traveled quickly, not stopping except for what quick refreshment an inn might offer, for fresh horses, for a few hours of sleep out under the open sky, to awake damp with dew. A little more than a day from the Falcon's Wing, they skirted a walled city, and then the King's Way took them across gently rolling lands, through the occasional village. Everywhere, the fields were being tilled and household gardens were being dug over. People came to the roadside to see them pass, as they rode north to Earl Sutherland's castle. None cried out in welcome, but their eyes were fixed on Beriel.

Beriel looked neither to right nor to left, but she saw everything and later would ask Win if he drew the same conclusions from the same rows of brown earth—“Is it not late for the crops to be going in?”—and the same faces—“Were they not used to be more merry? When I was a child, I thought them carefree.”

Elske's impression was that nobody need go hungry here in the Kingdom, with its farms and herds, and Win told her that in his own northern lands there were lakes filled with fish, as well. There was room, and food, for all who might be born into this rich land.

And Beriel, riding always ahead, always now at a canter, was born to be Queen in the Kingdom. Even the horses she rode, which neither tired nor stumbled, seemed to take from her the strength to travel on, day after day, until at last they rode between the high stone gateposts into Earl Sutherland's castle.

They were expected there, and escorted across the yards, and welcomed on the doorstep by the Earl himself, a tall, broad man, grey-haired, with a kindly expression. He looked with brief curiosity at Win and at Elske, then gave his full attention to his niece. He took her by the hand as she stood before him, to say, “Beriel, I give you greeting.”

“Sir, I give you greeting,” she answered.

They met as equals, not as Earl and niece, neither as Queen and vassal. There was no bowing of the head or bending of the knee from one to the other, although Beriel wore her travel-worn cloak and the Earl a green shirt with a golden falcon stitched onto it, on his breast a medallion like the one Beriel now carried in her pack.

“Welcome to Sutherland's castle,” he said. “You are welcome into my home. The servants will bring in your chests. Where are your chests?” he asked.

“I travel in haste, for I have heard much to disturb me,” Beriel answered him.

“Will you not rest a night under my care?” the Earl asked. “Will you not take a meal with us? For you look travel weary and travel stained, Niece. I promise you your safety, here in my castle,” he told her. “Also,” he said, and his face looked suddenly tired, “I would have your advice on some matters of importance. To the Kingdom, Niece, for the Kingdom. You are right to think that these are parlous times.”

“More even than you might yet know, Uncle,” Beriel said, as if in warning, but gently.

“May we not advise one another, Niece?”

Beriel assented, and turned to Win, telling him to see to their horses and refresh himself against their continued journey. Then Beriel summoned Elske to her side. “My handmaiden,” she said. “Elske.”

“I give you greeting,” Elske said, and curtseyed—as she would have to a Varinne—and the Earl answered her courteously, “I give you greeting, Elske.” She was close enough to see relief in his eyes, and she thought she could guess what need Beriel had for a handmaiden. Her spirits lifted, when Beriel had a use for her.

“I am glad to see you decently attended, Niece,” the Earl said. “I had heard rumors that the situation was otherwise.”

Beriel acknowledged neither the warning given, nor the offense offered. “My man will wait out here, after he is fed,” was her response. “I need fresh horses. Can you supply us?”

“Of course,” the Earl answered. He summoned servants and sent them ahead, while he escorted Beriel through the arched doorway into the castle, with Elske at her mistress's shoulder.

BATHED, WEARING FRESH CLOTHING FROM
shift to dress, they joined the Earl in a large dining hall. Chairs were set around three sides of the table, which had been drawn up close to the dying fire. Elske was seated beside Beriel, and next to Beriel sat a Lady who must be the Earl's wife, for she, too, wore the medallion. The Earl was catty-corner to his wife, and down the length of the table from him sat a young man, his son. While the servants placed food and drink before them, nobody spoke.

The Earl's Lady, her faded hair held back from her face by golden combs, looked from Beriel to the Earl, as if she sensed trouble there; and the young man—tall and slim, with his mother's fine face—watched only his own hands, which rested beside his plate. They ate of smoked pig meat and onions, carrots, a cold fowl and some bitter greens. When their plates had been cleared from the table, the Earl asked, “Well, Niece?” and drank from his goblet of wine.

“Guerric is crowned,” Beriel began.

After some thought the Earl remarked, “You ever were desirous to be the Queen.”

“I am the firstborn, the eldest.”

“But not male.”

“In the history of Sutherland, as was made the law of the Kingdom, the firstborn inherited, be it woman or man. This was my own mother, your sister, who gave the Earldom into your inheritance when she chose instead to marry my father and be his Queen.”

The Earl nodded, agreeing.

“The Priests allowed my mother her inheritance of the Earldom, and gave her the power to name her successor.”

The Earl pointed out, “You have not been named successor.”

“I should have been,” Beriel argued. “Until my father lay dead, none ever dared name Guerric, for fear of the law.”

The Earl nodded, but “Will you have a civil war?” he asked.

“I will have my crown,” she answered.

“To do that, you must turn traitor to the crowned King.”

“A usurper is himself a traitor. It is no treason to take the crown from him.”

The Earl considered. Elske, watching the faces around the table, thought that the Earl's son was troubled, uneasy, although not about the question of King or Queen; and she guessed she knew what he had to trouble him. The Earl's Lady listened, and often leaned forward, with her mouth moving as if to speak; but she uttered no words.

At last the Earl said, “You want troops. But, Niece, I have bent the knee to Guerric and am his vassal. Even if I accept your claim, I cannot, in honor, send troops against him.”

Beriel considered this. She decided, “I will not ask dishonor of you.”

“I will gladly give you troops to go against the Wolfers,” the Earl offered.

“Hasn't the King already sent an army into the north?”

“Guerric orders Northgate to defend his lands as best he can, and has left those royal villages unprotected that lie in the north. The soldiery Guerric has, he keeps close about him, and he has taken his army eastwards, to bring Arborford under his will.”

Beriel asked, “Lord Arbor refuses the King soldiers?”

“Arborford goes its own way, and ever has.”

“Yet, is not Lord Arbor your vassal?” Beriel asked.

“He is,” the Earl said.

“You have not required him to give Guerric his soldiery?”

“Arbor's vow is to me, to protect me in need. I have no need,” the Earl pointed out.

Beriel considered this. The room was still, except for the Earl's Lady restless in her chair. Elske could not think what Beriel was planning, except there would be a revenge on this young man, with his shining pink cheeks, who could not look at his cousin's face.

Beriel changed the topic of conversation, then. “My brother plots my death, as I hear.”

At this the young man told his father, “This is what I reported to you.”

The Earl nodded at him and told Beriel, “It is for this reason our Aymeric has been sent home in disgrace—sent by his own brother, who is now the King's First Minister. Because Aymeric won't conspire to your murder.”

Beriel stared at the young man, then, until his whole face burned red. It seemed to Elske that shame sat on his shoulders like the Volkking on his throne; and it seemed to Elske just that Aymeric should carry that weight, for all that it crushed and crippled him.

Beriel spoke boldly then to her uncle, “You will have heard rumors that I was with child, last fall, when I left the Kingdom.”

“I see no child,” the Earl answered.

“You would not have known whether to believe the rumors,” Beriel said. “Aunt?”

The Earl's Lady looked at her husband, who awaited her answer. She said nothing.

“I ask you, Aunt,” Beriel repeated.

“I must speak, when this—girl—requires?” the Lady asked her husband. “When I must keep silent about important matters, of Kingship and the promotion of my son into a rank higher than I had dreamed, of—”

Beriel interrupted the complaint. “I have asked you.”

“If I must speak, and speak truly, I did think you had the look. Last fall. I wondered. And you were—you were often angry, when you were a child, impatient, but last fall you were uncontrolled. I did wonder if you were with child. But who in this Kingdom cares for what a woman thinks, what a woman knows? So I held my tongue—and begged the maidservants to overlook your spitefulness. It was not too soon for me when you rode out of my gates, with your guard—although none asked me if your visit was to my taste, not before it happened, nor after.”

The Earl looked as if he wished to silence his wife, and their son was almost smiling at this tirade; but Beriel remained courteous. “I thank you for your silence, Aunt. But I have a story to tell, and it is not a tale to lighten your hearts. May I speak of it?” she asked the Earl.

“You may,” the Earl answered.

His wife said, “No.” His son's chair scraped on the stone floor.

Beriel addressed her uncle. “In the spring of last year, a year ago—or perhaps a little more than a year— In the spring,” Beriel said, pale but keeping her eyes fixed on her uncle's face, “there were men let into my apartments. At the palace, and the door was locked behind them. So that I couldn't escape them. Night after night, they came. And raped me.” She kept her eyes on the Earl when she asked, “Is this so, Aymeric?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

Silence settled over the table.

Beriel watched her uncle. Elske, that she might report what she observed, watched the other two, both as still as deer, startled into fear. The fire whispered to itself.

“I don't—” the Earl's Lady started to say but her husband interrupted her again to inquire, “Who would have wished such disgrace on you?”

“My brother,” Beriel said. “Guerric,” she said. “The King.”

“She accuses our son, our Aymeric, of this—vileness,” the Earl's Lady said, and warned Beriel, “I will hate you forever if you accuse my son.”

Beriel gave Elske a troubled glance.

“I would not wish your hatred, Aunt,” Beriel said.

But it was not the hatred that troubled her, Elske knew.

“Then that's an end on it,” the Earl's Lady declared. “I will forget what you have said.”

Elske saw what troubled Beriel: The Earldom would be divided by the hatred of the Earl's Lady for Beriel, if Beriel were Queen and had accused the Lady's sons of rape. Beriel could not speak openly without risking a necessary ally; and that was what troubled her.

“I will accuse Aymeric,” Elske said.