The Testament of Yves Gundron (15 page)

Out on the road, Elizaveta played peaceably with Pudge, and I enjoyed the familiar rush of the sweet, fresh wind. All the fields were greening, the work of my neighbors, their beasts, and the great mysteries of Nature. Soon enough, before I could catch my breath or take a full night's sleep, it would be time to harvest all this and take it to market. A stranger among us, what would it matter then, when the real work was to be accomplished and the rewards of my labor to be reaped with the corn? Would that I had been a plain farmer like the rest of my countrymen, not always seeking after things and ideas, content to brood about my soil—for then how much more time would I have had for the work. Or would that my brothers had lived and taken charge of this land, that I had been a younger brother, with no inheritance, and free to wander about, inventing.

“What's that?” Elizaveta asked. When I turned to look, she was grasping out the back of the cart to the open air, her mouth agape.

My wife gathered in Elizaveta's small arms, but the child continued to grasp.

“Leave the wind be,” I chided her.

“That's not wind,” she said.

Adelaïda said, “I hope she's not like your brother, hearing voices.”

But Elizaveta was right—it was something beyond the wind. For out of the distance came the high tinkling of myriad bells, crisp as the voices of angels, and the warbling of a flute. They approached out of the east and hung like dewdrops on the warm spring air.

“More trouble,” Adelaïda said, pulling the child farther down into the cart.

“Anyway,” Ruth said, “music.”

We passed my brother's hut, where I saw him sitting in meditation beneath a plum tree, oblivious. The music was sweet, teasing at the edges of my hearing, fading under the rumble of the wheels and the calls of the birds in the fields, then sailing forth on the next gust of wind.

As we neared the top of the rise at Ydlbert's house, I clicked my tongue to Hammadi, and she slowed her gait without the cart hugging up behind her. (Downhill, of course, it was a more dangerous proposition.) Off in the distance, below the rise and halfway to Nnms, the music approached—five players in red livery, so far away as to seem smaller than Elizaveta's doll. Between them walked eight men more, all of a height and dressed in a yellow so deep and so vibrant of hue that I had never before seen its like. On their shoulders they bore aloft a stretcher with a tent, all red and gold, its silken draperies glinting in the sun. As if it would toss its contents headlong into the ditch, the tent lumbered from side to side as the men walked and the minstrels played. The lot of them were as bright as the brightest field of poppies I had ever beheld—which Mandrik showed me once on a day-long walk, which is quite another story.
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We remained spellbound until
Hammadi, her tail aswitch, grew tired of idling and began to draw us home. The sweet refrain of the music was quieter as we drove, but from time to time it gained strength and washed over us. When we arrived at our house, I put the horse to pasture and the cart away, and continued to listen as the unfamiliar sound drew nigh.

“Do you have a song for this, wife?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could, opening our door to the music.

“Nay,” she replied, “though you might try me again later.”

It drew closer as we ate a quick bite of soup and Ruth washed the bowls. The fear of the Lord came upon me, for what was this, in addition to the arrival of a stranger? Was the world this interesting, this complex, when my grandmother washed up from the sea? What had happened to the years and years of undifferentiated time in which our fathers' fathers had quietly lived out their days? Alongside the fear sprouted the conviction that, whatever this apparition, it was, like all the others, for my own benefit. And the bright litter and its attendants made their stately way into my yard, preceded by a smell so pungent and sweet that it filled my whole skull with desire.

Ruth, sticking her head outdoors, wrinkled her nose and said, “I smell oranges.”

The tent listed to one side and the other as its bearers brought it to the ground, and its sides, shot through with gold, quivered like a child's translucent eyelids in sleep. The musicians ceased playing mid-phrase,
and of a sudden there were no sounds beyond the wind and the grubbing and snorting of the barnyard. Then the dread bugler lifted to his lips his accursed brass, though this time he blurted forth a catchier, syncopated tune. Two of the bearers parted the curtains and bound them up with golden cords. From the tent's interior (which glowed as deep as the night's last embers) emerged the portly figure of a man draped in a fiery cassock not unlike Mandrik's in shape, though quite otherwise in splendor. He wore a broad smile on his broad face, which was otherwise engaged in the eating of the intoxicating fire-colored fruit. All the village children had scampered in the wake of the strange conveyance, but they kept their distance. Only fowl, his dark hair in his eyes, would venture a comment, and that only a long-drawn-out, utterly amazed “Yo.”

“All hail,” said the trumpet boy, “our Archduke, Urbis of Nnms.”

The barnyard replied with its characteristic snuffling unconcern, but I made a bow, feeling rather shabby.

“Welcome, your—”

“Urbanity,” he prompted with a graceful nod. “The same Yves Gundron, I presume, directly responsible for the Di Hammadi and indirectly responsible for the feats of modern road-building which bear my and my esteemed father's names?”

“That is I,” said I, wondering that so great a personage took note of my existence, and ready to prostrate myself before the delicate odor emanating from his mouth.

He must have seen the division of my attention, for he snapped his fingers and one of the red boys brought forth a net filled to bursting with the dimpled fruits. “A gift for your family,” said the Archduke, and I held his bounty to my face with sheer delight.

“Oranges,” Ruth said quietly. “I've been craving them.”
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With hungry eyes did he regard her slender form in her soft blue trousers. We should have found her a dress. “This must be the stranger rumored to live among you.”

“It's no rumor, sir,” I told him, bowing once more, “and thank you.”

“What great sadness in this life, to have had no oranges. But allow me to make this stranger's acquaintance.”

I bowed again, the fruit clasped to my chest.

“I'm Ruth Blum,” she said, introducing herself as ever with that fatally peculiar grasp of the hand.

The Archduke recoiled before extending his own stubby palm to her. “Charmed. I presume you know who I am, strange though you be.”

“You're the Archduke.”

“Urbis, son of Mappamondo, of Nnms,” he said, and bowed. “Hail.”

Elizaveta, whose eyes had gone wider than eggs, ran to meet him, but her string pulled taut and dragged her to the ground, whereupon she commenced caterwauling.

“Hush!” Adelaïda cried, running to loose the string.

“No no, little one,” the Archduke addressed her, squatting down beside her like a wife in her garden, “don't cry.” And from out the sleeve of his cassock he produced a chunk of dark sugar as large as the child's fist. “Take this to ease the pain, yes?”

Her eyes lit up like twin stars, and to my delight, she remembered to thank him before retreating to the house with her booty. My home and yard looked dim against the dazzling Orange—for the color was exactly like that of the new fruit—of the Archduke's robe. Even his sandals, much like Mandrik's in design, seemed made of spun gold.

“It's a great honor for you to come visit,” Ruth said.

“Yes,” he said, nodding curtly. “We have never had a stranger in this lifetime. Tell me, Ruth Blum, of whom are you descended, and of what city are you a native?”

Her grin dimpled her sunburned cheeks. “Daughter of Aaron and Esther Blum, of Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

“These are common names in your country?”

“Common enough.”

“Perhaps it is only your accent that makes them seem strange. Massachusetts is—”

“On the other side of the Atlantic. But from my conversations with Mandrik, I gather the ocean doesn't figure on your maps.”

His brow darkened. “Have you come from the Highlands, or farther overseas like our ancestors?”

“About a hundred times farther, in the other direction—to the west. Some of the boys, Ydlbert's boys, took my map, but if I can get it back, I'll show you.”

My mind stirred in its attempt to understand—she had come, quite literally, from the other end of the world, farther, perhaps, than even my brother had traveled. The Archduke's blue eyes—like any other man's, I was surprised to see, if somewhat smaller and heavier-lidded—fixed on her pretty face with rapt interest.

“I have not seen any Massachusetts,” he told her, “on any map of the world.”

“Despite which, your father must have been a great mapmaker, to earn his name.”

He nodded approval. All this, and literate, too.

“I will try to get my map back,” she continued, “and if not, perhaps I can draw you a rough approximation of where I'm from.”

“Shh,” Adelaïda scolded, as if Ruth were our child (and in some ways, she was). “Don't take up his time.” Then, because the Archduke was watching her with somewhat less tolerance than he showed to Ruth, she said, “We didn't know quite when you were coming, but we made up a feast anyway. That is, as much of a feast as we could muster.”

We had not counted on so many attendants, and could not sit them down around our single, rough table. We were saved from certain embarrassment, however, by the snap of his fingers, which occurred in so complex a rhythm that my feet of their own volition began to dance. “Men,” he said, “can you amuse yourselves without disturbance to myself and these fine farm folk while we dine on their representative cuisine?”

The blond trumpeter gave a two-handed, intricately fingered salute, and we led his Urbanity, still redolent of oranges, into our home.

If my father, who loved nothing so much as his farm, could have seen and heard the sparkling, jingling entrance of such nobility into his home, he would have fainted dead away. The furniture he had built—to replace the barrels he grew up sitting on—would now hold up the blessed bottom of an Archduke. And my house, for all my pride in it, looked impossibly shabby and dark, the smoke from the fire thicker than the tissues of the great man's robes.

“A rustic cottage,” said he.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Ruth asked.

Adelaïda brought forth a roast of ham—but lately our she-pig, Ragan—fresh cheese, wheat bread, sweet cider, and an apple tart Mandrik had contributed to the festivities.

“Where can a man find beauty,” he asked, “when he has lived in such splendor as have I?”

Ruth set wooden bowls around the table. “Anywhere he looks, I imagine.”

“Ruth,” I whispered, “don't sass the Archduke.”

“Nonsense.” He sat his weight down upon our creakiest stool. “She may speak as she sees fit, especially if, as at present, she is probably right. I shall commission better maps, that she may show me where she comes from, in the event that I find it beautiful.” He smacked his lips together, which Adelaïda took as a sign to cut the ham.

He did not comment upon our delicacies, but grunted in approval, and took great hunks of food upon his spoon. My stomach was so wild with worry that I dared hardly eat, but watched him and his tankard with the utmost care. We heard not a sound from the attendants outside, and Elizaveta hunkered down under the table and noisily sucked her sweet.

“I think,” Ruth said, “this is the most beautiful house I've ever been in, certainly the happiest. Yves and Adelaïda have made me feel perfectly at home. Of course, it doesn't have all the conveniences of the house I grew up in—”

“Conveniences?” the Archduke questioned.

Ruth looked toward her lap. “Excuse me.”

“What for? I command you to tell me what you mean.”

Her voice dropped to a guilty mumble. “Washer and dryer, dishwasher—”

“Servants,” he corrected.

Ruth shrugged her shoulders. “I guess you could put it that way. What I meant to say was, none of those things seems to matter. The people here live differently from my own people, but their lives are in most ways the same. I find them kinder and more intelligent than many of the people at home—and that without all the leisure we have to devote to philanthropy.”

The Archduke turned to me as if we were the only two people at table. “If it weren't for that damned harsh accent, I'd say she sounded book-learned.”

“I think she is,” I whispered, as if it were confidential. “I think she's a learner by profession.”

“A woman with a profession, and not a wet nurse or scullery maid?” The Archduke opened his eyes wide and wiped his mouth
upon his broad sleeve. “You cook as well as any in my own house,” he said to Adelaïda, who blushed with pride. “God only knows how you've lived this long without oranges. I must ask you now, however, good farmer, to leave me alone with this stranger, that unobstructed I might learn some of the history of her land.”

Adelaïda looked stung—Ruth, after all, had cooked nothing—-and Elizaveta shrieked, brown goo dripping from her mouth, when I retrieved her from under the table. Here, at last, was the Archduke in my home, where I might show him my south-pointer, or simply learn who he was, and he dismissed me like a common servant. But, of course, compared to Ruth and her spectacular arrival, and her brilliant teeth, I was as lowly as the soil I tilled. I grabbed a jigger of ale on my way out the door, and deposited my family on a fragrant clump of grass at the edge of the yard, quite near the bearers, who were all napping or cleaning their nails, and the children of the town, whose parents by now had followed them to witness this strange occurrence. Adelaïda, her pale eyes rimmed red, stretched her hands out on the grass behind her, lifted her solid chin toward Heaven, and began, thus, to sing: