Tale of Elske (33 page)

“On Guerric?” Dugald asked.

Beriel told Elske, “I was too late to be the man who slew Ditrik. But I watched him fight, and lose, and lie open-eyed as the sword came down into his throat. He knew I watched. He died bravely, which I will be able to tell my uncle, the Earl Sutherland, that harmony may grow between our houses. And I return Aymeric to his father, his honor restored as much as it can be, earned back to him by his sword. So that is finished.”

“What of Guerric, the crowned King?” Dugald asked again.

“The usurper,” Beriel corrected him, then told him, “Guerric surrendered his sword to one of my captains. Of course, when he saw he could neither defeat me nor escape me. He was ever a coward—what was the word, Elske? The Wolfer word, like spitting.”

“Fruhckman,”
Elske said, and could wait no longer for her own question. “But where is Win? I would have thought to find him here. Is he dead?”

“Not dead,” Beriel answered. “Win was at my side throughout the battle, and took wounds—although none deep. He was at my side afterwards, when I visited the wounded and walked among the dead of both armies. And Win was at my side when they brought Guerric to me, my wounds freshly bound and my cheeks still wet with grief. Guerric offered me the ring, and the throne, and asked in exchange for his life. He asked only for his own life. The lives of all the others he gave into my hands. He offered me only what was mine by right, and my lands still wet with the blood of our soldiers.”

“Where will you send him for his exile?” Dugald asked.

“I took our father's ring. I had already won the throne. What need to treat with him? Guerric ever hated me as much as I learned to hate him, and he knew I wished him dead.” She stood up from her chair and went to the window, leaning heavily on the stick, to look out over her city before she turned to tell them, “So then he thought to make my men doubt me. He accused me of being possessed by insatiable appetites for the men around me. To have them in my bed— Why do you smile in that insolent way, my Lord?” Beriel demanded.

“Anyone who knows you must know the falseness of that charge,” Dugald answered. “I know you from childhood, and you have ever been more quick to quarrel than to kiss—and if ever you did kiss any man, even as a willful girl, it was not me. And yet,” he said, “I'd swear you were my fond cousin.”

“As I am,” Beriel smiled. “As you are mine, I hope. But Guerric claimed to know of his own experience men I had called to my chamber, and claimed to be one of those himself, and he said he could prove by his knowledge of my private body that he spoke the truth. He called me unworthy, and would have said worse, except that Win cut his throat and silenced him forever.”

Nobody spoke in the little room. Almost, they might not have been breathing.

“Knowingly,” Beriel said slowly, as if they could not understand it spoken otherwise, “Win slew the anointed King.”

“High treason,” Dugald said.

Elske didn't understand them. “Can it be treason to defend the honor of your Queen?” she asked. “Can it be treason to slay a traitor? Guerric was the usurper, wasn't he? And he had sought your life, Beriel, in battle and before, also, as Win told us.”

Dugald and Beriel spoke as if Elske were not present. “The Priests will have to read the law over him. My Queen, will you lose your throne?”

“I gave no order for Guerric's death,” Beriel answered.

Elske cried, “Will Win die for taking your revenge?”

Beriel told Dugald, “Guerric's death Win's own loyal heart offered to me.”

“You will speak to the Priests for him?” Dugald asked.

“Can your Kingdom's law condemn the man who defends his Queen?” Elske protested.

“I cannot speak. The Queen cannot. The Queen must not attempt to influence the Priests, as they apply the law.”

“What will happen to Win?” Elske demanded, and at last they looked at her.

“She wouldn't let him be hanged,” Dugald said.

Beriel answered precisely. “If I could lawfully save him, I would. He has given me the only cheer I have found in all of this bloody claiming of my throne. If I can lawfully save him, trust me, I will.”

“You must,” Elske told her.

“There is no must for a Queen,” Beriel answered sharply, and this silenced them all. After a time, Beriel rose. “You may leave me, now.”

Disregarding the command, Dugald said, “My Queen, I ask your blessing on my marriage.”

Beriel asked, with royal displeasure, “You are wed?”

“Not wed. Promised,” he answered, and looked her steadily in the eye.

“Promised,” Beriel echoed him. “To whom promised?”

“I have offered and I have been accepted,” Dugald said, with unconcealed happiness.

Beriel lost patience. “Name her.”

“My Queen, she is Elske.”

“Elske? Of course it is Elske.” Beriel sounded apologetic when she said, “But, Dugald, you are to marry my sister—whichever sister you prefer—and thus join Northgate's house as close to the throne as is Sutherland's,” she said. “Elske will go with my brother Aidenil to Trastad. There you must help Aidenil, Elske, to establish a merchant bank so that he can trade, as the Trastaders do, and accumulate wealth for our royal house as well as make commercial connections in whatever cities and lands the bank does business. Var Jerrol will aid in this, Elske, for your sake. Undoubtedly, he will offer hospitality to my princely brother. You will be there to help Aidenil make our way in this new world, with your connections to the Council, and to Var Kenric's family. You will be my Ambassador to Trastad, Elske,” Beriel announced, then turned to Dugald. “So you see, Elske cannot be your wife. I have need of her.”

Dugald warned her, “I know you, Beriel. We have been children together, and I know how your heart is.”

“Do you contravene my will? Do you seek to rule me?” she demanded.

Dugald did not shrink from her anger. “I seek to remind you to rule yourself. If you will make your two truest supporters into a meal for your pride, then your reign promises ill.”

“You count yourself one of my truest men?”

“I speak of Win,” Dugald said. “You have nothing to fear from Elske, Beriel.”

“Have you forgotten that she is Wolfer?”

At that, Dugald laughed, then at the look on Beriel's face, answered more diplomatically, “Let us add her wild blood to our own, then, to give ours new strength.”

“Dugald, you know my house. We have had new blood, my grandfathers both gave new blood to the house, and my grandmother, too, and look what it has brought—”

“Beriel, it has brought us you. I have known you from a child, and you were ever worthy to be my Queen,” Dugald answered her, and she turned from him.

She said to Elske, “I had thought you would be my voice in Trastad, and my watchdog over all of my many interests there. I thought to honor you.”

Once again they kept silence, until Beriel broke it. “Leave us, Lord Dugald,” she ordered. He hesitated, with a glance at Elske, but obeyed.

Beriel sat down again. Into the quiet she spoke as if her heart wept. “How can you betray me so?”

Elske knew that it was fear that dug long fingers into her neck. “My Queen, how have I done that?” she asked.

“You have allowed my Earl to give you his heart.”

“How is that betrayal?” Elske asked.

“You have been a servant in Trastad, and you would marry my Earl? You have gone naked before soldiers, and all have seen you naked, and you would marry my Earl? You are a Wolfer, and you would marry my Earl?”

All of this was true. But it was not the whole truth of her, as Beriel must remember.

Beriel said now, more quietly, “Why will you not go to Trastad, where honors will be showered upon you?”

There were no words in Elske's throat waiting to be spoken.

“I know Dugald,” Beriel said. “We were children together, and I know his nature. It must be you who refuses him, for he will not give you up. If you were my sister, and I forbade the match, you must obey me. If you marry him, his mother—I know her—will hate you.”

Elske said, “I'm not afraid of the hatred of women.”

“The men, too, his Lords, they will despise you and pity him for having such a wife. What will you do, Elske, when people do not smile upon you? For people have ever smiled on you, and been glad of you.”

Elske did not speak her thoughts aloud, for she did not wish to quarrel.

Now Beriel warned her, “You'll always be a stranger where you live. In my Kingdom.”

They sat across from one another at the table, like two merchants negotiating a trade. Elske answered plainly. “I have never been other than an outsider where I have lived. But my children will be born in the Kingdom.”

“Your children also will be outsiders,” Beriel announced.

“Are the people of the Kingdom as blind, and foolish, as the people of the Volkaric? I cannot believe that,” Elske said, no longer concealing anger; and then she reminded the Queen, “I have given Dugald my word.”

“Your word? What is your word next to my will?” Beriel demanded. Then she lowered her forehead down onto her folded hands, and rested there a long time. When she raised her face, she was resolute, but to what, Elske could not guess. “So you are determined to take from me the most worthy man of the Kingdom?”

“How do I take him from you by marrying him?” Elske argued, reminding Beriel, “It was one of your sisters you spoke of for his wife, not yourself.”

“You cannot be such an innocent!” Beriel cried out angrily. “I know my debt to you, Elske, but you go too far with me in this. Oh, I won't forbid you. If you will marry against my will, so be it. So. You will be Northgate's Lady, and I will be sorry for it all the days of my life,” Beriel promised. “And sometimes,” she promised, “you will be sorry, too. For we will be parted now.”

Elske had feared Beriel's death, but she did not fear to be parted from her now. Her young mistress she would have grieved for, and revenged, but this imperious and jealous Queen had no need of such service as Elske could give her.

“You have been my servant and now you will be my Earl's Lady,” Beriel said, as if this thought gave her unwelcome amusement. “And who knows what you might be next, when fortune's wheel has already raised you so high.”

Elske promised what she could. “You will always be my Queen. Your child and heir will always be my royal sovereign.”

“And what husband must I marry to bear his children, that there will be an heir for the Kingdom?” Beriel cried.

“Why not Win?” Elske asked.

Beriel had her answer ready. “Win is one of the people and not even the firstborn son. He has nothing to give me.”

Beriel had desired the throne, and been born to it, and she had earned it, too, but in the matter of her own husbanding she seemed as foolish as any other girl. “Win has no ambition more than to serve you; he will never ask more honors than those you choose to give him. He would never let himself shame you. And he has given you your brother's tongue, silenced.”

Beriel listened closely to Elske's words, but still she made protest. “If he hangs? Would you wish me wed to a traitor, and a dead man?”

“No,” Elske smiled. “Not if he hangs.” But why should Win hang, when he was no traitor? Elske would not stand by, to watch Win die; there would be a way to save him, and she would find it.

Beriel acknowledged then, “I have spoken of marriage to Win. You should know that he refused me, for the dishonor his birth would bring to me. He will be my servant, and he will die if I need his life from him, but he refuses to be my husband and bed partner, even though he says his heart is mine, forever, and swears that he will never wed another. So, you see, even if the Priests find him innocent under the law, I may not marry Win.”

Beriel rose now to return to the window where she looked out again to whatever she could see. “Even as we speak here, the Priests argue his life,” she said. “I think they will decide for me. But until that question is settled, I require you with me.”

“I will obey you, my Queen,” Elske said.

“In that, but not in the other,” Beriel said bitterly. She gave Elske no time to answer, but turned on her stick to sweep out of the room.

ELSKE SAT FOR A TIME
alone, to understand that if she wished, she might renounce Dugald and regain the Queen's favor; and to understand that she did not wish it. Also, she thought of Win. When she re-entered the hall, it was crowded with courtiers, both Lords and Ladies, several captains still wearing their light armor, and a few Priests. Servants stood along the walls. People spoke in low voices, waiting, watching the Queen. Beriel sat enthroned, lost in thought.

Elske searched for Dugald in the crowd but could not see him. She heard a woman whisper that Beriel would be crowned now, today, that there were none left to keep her from the throne, for her mother was already sent into exile in the care of Earl Sutherland. Another woman's voice answered that since this young Queen had rid the land of two evils—civil war and Wolfers—she herself was ready to bend the knee to her. And hope for the best, a third woman added, as we did when the usurper was crowned, only hope, as we must always do who are only observers in the events, we who are women. The first voice whispered that she counted that her good fortune, and the other two laughed softly.