The Legend of Broken (26 page)

“Not so quickly, little man,” Anje says, heightening Dalin’s mortification. “
I’ll
see who’s there, lest you start telling strangers that your family is acting like ‘pagans’ …” Having pulled Dalin back, Anje completes his humiliation by slinging him into Dagobert’s strong grip.

“You just keep quiet, brother,” Dagobert says, not cruelly, but with authority against which Dalin cannot rebel.

Anje unbolts the garden door, but only after loudly demanding through the banded wooden planks that the caller identify herself, for a weak woman’s voice is the only answer she receives. Opening the entrance to permit a quiet, brief exchange, Anje holds up a hand, asking the woman to wait, and then bolts the door once again.

“Mother,” she says, returning uneasily. “There is a woman outside. She’s with child, and claims to live off the end of the Path, by—”

“By the southwestern wall of the city,” Isadora says, nodding; for she has recognized the voice that came through the seams of the doorway. “Her name is Berthe. I have consulted her about the birth—the child was badly positioned, but I thought we had attended to it. Is that why she—”

“No, Mother,” Anje interrupts. “She’s come about her husband.”

Isadora sighs, exasperation and impatience blending to form the sound. “
Hak
. Another useless drunkard—Emalrec,
†
he’s called. Dagobert?” She turns to her eldest son, indicating that she wishes him to accompany her. “As for the rest of you …” Isadora glances about, then asks, “Anje—will you take the others in to Nuen, and ask her to get them ready to sup?” Anje nods obediently, and herds her younger siblings to the house as her mother walks toward the garden door. “Let’s see what evil foolishness the poor girl has been subjected to, now …”

Having quit the garden, mother and son join the waiting woman, who has withdrawn some dozen paces from the Arnems’ doorway. Her dress is shabby, even by the standards of the Fifth District, just as her body is sorely in need of a scrubbing. But she is pretty enough that she must have been truly desperate to have braved the Path, on a night such as this one: for there are few drunkards on the avenue who would scruple at marriage or motherhood, once they had determined to ravish a comely young woman.

Isadora approaches the woman, whose face bears the expression of fear common to nearly all honest (or at least sober) women in the Fifth—women who can never be certain whether they face greater danger in the streets or in the homes that they share with drunken, cruel husbands. Berthe’s body is covered by a simple piece of sackcloth gathered at the waist, which serves as both tunic and skirt, and is poorly stitched, with no smock beneath it to ease the perpetual chafing of such rough material.
‡

“Berthe?” Isadora asks, touching the woman’s shoulder. “Is it the baby? Or has that husband of yours been at you again—”

“No, Lady Arnem,” Berthe says quickly. “The baby has calmed, at last, thanks to your help. No, it
is
Emalrec, my lady, just as you say, but—not in the way that you suppose.”

“Is it the drink? Has he brought no food for you and the children? You must eat properly, we have spoken of this—”

Berthe shakes her head. “No, Lady Arnem. He is ill—very ill. I thought it was the drink, at first—he took such a fever, and his head was near to bursting. But he could bear no wine—he spat it up right away, and continued to vomit through the night. Then, this morning, his belly began to swell, and—” Berthe looks about, afraid to finish her tale.

Indicating to Dagobert that he should keep watch, Isadora urges Berthe toward the shadowy garden doorway. “Tell me,” Isadora asks more gently. “What worries you so much that you cannot speak of it on the street?”

Berthe swallows hard. “This afternoon, with the fever still on him, he began to show—sores, my lady. On his chest, and soon on his back.”

Isadora’s face betrays alarm: “Do you suspect plague,
†
Berthe?”

“No, my lady!” the young woman whispers desperately. “I
did
suspect it, until tonight—but the spots haven’t spread, and they remain red. Painful, and terrible to look at, but—there is no blackness to them.”

Isadora considers, recalling the sores upon the salamanders. “You think it the rose fever, then.”
‡
Berthe nods, saying nothing—for the rose fever can spread through a city as quickly as the plague (even if it is not so deadly) and create panic that transforms all too quickly into violence against those afflicted. “Then we must have a look at this husband of yours.” Isadora takes Berthe’s hand. “For if it is the rose fever, or any of the tens of diseases that resemble it …” She signals to Dagobert with just a nod, and he joins them. “Dagobert,” Isadora says, taking him a few steps aside and speaking urgently. “Tell Nuen to get some of my old robes out—a few light woolen things, soft and warm, and a smock. Then get some of the clothing that you all wore when you were younger. It’s stored below my bridal chest. Also blankets, strong soap—and have cook put aside a pot of the venison stew that I saw her preparing for supper, and wrap it with the lid on tight so that I may take it to Berthe’s home.”

“Mother—?” Dagobert replies. “What are you planning to do?”

But Isadora’s attention has drifted. “If my suspicions about this business are correct, it may offer the chance to bargain from a position of greater strength—or, at least
some
strength …” She shakes herself back to immediate concerns. “I will go and see what is taking place in Berthe’s home and neighborhood, and try to determine just what it is that ails her husband. It’s not so very far from here, although it will plainly be a perilous trip. Still, I
must
be certain of the nature of the sickness, before I attempt the more uncertain venture that will follow. And so—have Bohemer and Jerej
†
bring the litter here.” Isadora speaks of the family’s two male servants, who are guards as much as anything else. Massive, bearded
bulger
‡
warriors, originally from the tribes far to the southeast of Broken, the men do perform heavy tasks as required about the house and its grounds; but far more often, they accompany Sixt and Isadora Arnem, and often their children, into the city, the various straps that gird their bodies holding small armories of weapons. “They are to guard Berthe and wait while I pack my healing kit and change my clothing. Tell them that I am going abroad in the city and that they should prepare themselves.”

This command brings what is left of Dagobert’s patience to its end: “Mother!” he says, sharply enough to finally make Isadora meet his gaze. “
Where
is it that you propose to go? It’s already past sunset, and in a few minutes it will be dark—what madness can you be thinking of?”

“As I say, I will go to Berthe’s home, first,” Isadora answers, as though that notion did not entail entering the most dangerous neighborhood in the city. “And then, assuming all is as it should be—or, rather, as it should
not
be—I will continue on.”

Lady Arnem then explains to Berthe that she must wait in the doorway for her, and not be frightened by the admittedly unsettling men that will shortly appear with the family’s litter; but Dagobert is not yet satisfied with her explanation, and as he opens the garden door, he asks:

“And where will you ‘continue on’
to
?”

“Why, Dagobert,” Isadora says blithely, as she walks swiftly into the garden, “I had thought you’d be clever enough to have determined that. I will continue on to the home of the Merchant Lord himself.”

Dagobert’s mouth falls open, and he slams the garden door from within, bolting it in astonishment. “To the
Kastelgerd
Baster-kin?” he says. “But—”

Isadora, however, has turned and put an urgent finger to her mouth, ordering silence. “Not in front of the others, Dagobert—I will explain it all later. For now—do as I have told you …”

Dagobert enters the house close behind his mother and searching for another member of his family: Anje, who stands at the foot of the central staircase, awaiting them. The maiden begins to move toward her mother and brother, explaining that she has attended to her various tasks, and that Nuen is now feeding the other children—yet she has scarcely got the words out before Isadora takes her arm, issuing new requests for assistance:

“Come and help me change my gown, Anje,” Lady Arnem says, climbing the stairs quickly. “And I’ll need rose water, as well as galena for my eyes and red poppy lip paint …”
†
Manly youth though he may be, Dagobert recognizes all such commands as parts of an effort by his mother to ready herself, not for the ugliness of the neighborhood she has said she will visit initially, but for the splendor of her ultimate goal, the First District, and in particular the Way of the Faithful, the finest street in the city, at the far end of which stands the most awe-inspiring residence in Broken: the
Kastelgerd
Baster-kin, that ancient home which, in its complexity of design, is often said to rival or even exceed the royal palace itself.

Dagobert attempts to somehow convey this understanding to his sister by calling after Anje and Isadora, as they continue up the stairs, “I must change my clothing, too, Mother, if
we
are to visit the
Kastelgerd
of the Merchant Lord!” Anje’s expression as she glances back shows that she has taken his meaning, and will attempt to learn more of what is at hand as she helps her mother dress. Isadora, meanwhile, sees none of this, and does no more than clarify to Dagobert that she will make the second part of her journey alone; she then reminds him to make sure that the family’s litter is readied, along with the men who will carry it, after which she disappears into her bedroom with Anje.

When mother and daughter have finished transforming Lady Arnem’s dress and appearance into a powerful echo of the considerable beauty with which Isadora was graced during her own maidenhood, and have returned to the stairway, they learn of Dagobert’s full intentions: a seemingly strange man stands at the base of the stairs in leather armor worn over a full shirt of bronze mail, a gently curved marauder sword within a wood and hide sheath hanging from a broad belt at his waist and one hand resting rather imperiously upon the pommel of the sword. A stunned silence ensues, interrupted only by the sounds of the three younger Arnem children’s laughing and arguing as they consume their evening meal farther away in the house. After what seems a very long moment, it is Isadora who declares:

“
Dagobert!
And just what do you suppose you’re doing?”

But Dagobert has been preparing for just such a reaction, and is not in the least unnerved by his mother’s angry astonishment. He steps forward deliberately, holding a scrap of parchment out to her.

“Nothing more than I was instructed to do, Mother,” he states.

The parchment that her son holds causes an uneasy quivering in Isadora’s gut: she knows that collecting such bits of the valuable writing material, to be used to issue brief written orders during his campaigns, is a habit of her husband’s. But only when both she and Anje, who remains beside her, look up from the small missive do they realize that Dagobert has donned not just any armor, such as he might have bought for a small sum in the Fourth District, or traded for in the stalls of the Third, but an old suit of his father’s, complete with a faded cotton surcoat
†
emblazoned with the rampant bear of Broken: mother and daughter both know that Dagobert would never have dared put on such a costume, much less have taken hold of the sword at his side (one of many in Sixt’s collection), without his father’s permission.

As Isadora descends the stairs and takes the parchment note from her son, she further realizes—of a sudden, just as she earlier noticed the fullness of Anje’s womanly maturity—how tall and strong Dagobert has become: for his arms and chest fill the shirt of mail that he wears below his leather armor, while his broadening shoulders support the panels of layered leather that cover them in a most handsome manner. Left with no other course, Isadora unfolds the scrap of parchment slowly and reads the message written upon it, in Sixt’s simple hand:

For a moment, Isadora does not move her eyes from the message; but just then, the younger children, with Nuen pursuing them, run in from the room off of the kitchen in which they have been eating. Nuen, despite moving with haste, carries a small iron pot covered with a wooden lid and wrapped in thick white cloth; and it is a demonstration of the small, round woman’s remarkable agility that she keeps the hot stew within from spilling, even when she abruptly comes to a halt behind Golo, Gelie, and Dalin. They, like Isadora and Anje, are stunned by the sight of Dagobert dressed as a seasoned campaigner, enough so that they forget their games for the moment.

“Dagobert!” Golo cries out merrily. “Are you going to join Father, and fight the Bane?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gelie adds, with a short laugh that brings a sour look from Dagobert. Realizing that mocking her brother so openly was unwise, Gelie adds: “Although you look very impressive in Father’s old armor, Dagobert—where
are
you going, if not to the Wood?”

“Those are matters between Father and me,” Dagobert replies, moving his hand further down to grip the hilt of his marauder sword in what he hopes is a meaningful fashion. “Keep your nose in your own affairs, Gelie—little as it is, someone might still cut it off!”