Quillifer

CHAPTER EIGHT

he fork-bearded one, I have discovered, is a baron, and his friend a knight, and Stayne their liege-lord. Neither have spoken in my hearing since the night, and no doubt they desire revenge, if they can only imagine how to accomplish it. They have no weapons but their wits, and their wits are dull indeed. I shift my bed every night, after we are locked in darkness, so they may not find me while I am sleeping. Yet even an attack in the darkness seems beyond their abilities.”

I adjusted myself in the marble trough, and raised a palmful of water to scrub my itching whiskers. More than anything but freedom, I would have delighted in a razor, to shave my week-old beard along with the vermin that lived in it. I leaned backward to duck my scalp, scrubbed at it, then sat up and shook the water from my hair. I turned to the rose-colored marble nymph and spoke again.

“It is droll to see the young gentlemen labor,” I said. “Cutting vegetables, churning butter, boiling laundry, hauling the slop tub up the stairs and emptying it into the stream. They are poor cottiers indeed, but the bandits take joy in whipping them about their tasks, and Dorinda is even more fierce with her ladle! Their fine clothes are going to ruin, they are overrun by an army of lice and fleas, and they know not how to dress their hair. Sad they seem, and much reduced. . . .

“Look you, mistress,” said I as I looked at the little goddess in earnest, “for here they set out, forty of them, to follow their lord in a great adventure, to overthrow a monarch and grow rich from the spoils of war, and they find themselves bested by a gang of low ruffians almost before they can set out. Half Stayne’s army ran away at the first shot, and the rest, now captive, make up a village of the worst workingmen in all Duisland!” I laughed. “The world turned upside down! The cavaliers labor while the robbers parade up and down in their finery! It would amuse you, should you ever peer out from your grotto to view the fine green world.”

The statue spoke no reply, but her playful smile seemed a reply to all possible questions.

It had been three days since I had first explored the old nymphaeum, and since then I’d returned every day. I’d cleaned weeds and ooze from the trough, and turned it into my own tub, where daily I bathed and rid myself of fleas. Daily I chatted with the rose-pink goddess as if she were my oldest playmate, and told her all the news of the camp, and all that occupied my mind. She was the most perfect audience imaginable, and listened to my talk and my complaints, my conceits and my jests, with all the tolerance in the world—and even approval, if the smile was anything to judge by.

I braced myself against the trough and pushed myself upright, the water cascading from my shoulders. I carefully sat on the edge of the trough, and clapped my thighs with my hands. “It is not Fork-Beard that concerns me, mistress,” I said, “but Sir Basil. Each day he has sought me out. He wishes to talk—talk about his services in King Stilwell’s wars, and his knighthood won on the field, and the injustices he has endured. He talks about war and women and poetry, about Mallio in its Rawlings translation, and about the plays that were seen in Selford in the days of his youth. He talks about his brave part in the Wars of the Ghouls, and all his quarrels with his neighbors, and the challenges he issued and on what grounds—for his knowledge of the common law comes from the fact that he was always being taken to court by his neighbors, or the other way around, usually for fighting.” I looked over my shoulder at the goddess. “I begin to believe the jury found him guilty not because they thought he’d committed the crime, but to rid themselves of a troublesome neighbor.”

I stood, shivered, and brushed cold water from my body. “A troublesome neighbor,” I repeated. “Will he even let me go, do you think? Or is he so lonely for conversation—for speech with an educated man rather than another brigand—that he will keep me here forever, half servant, half buffoon?”

I reached for my doublet and turned it inside out. I took up a coil of slow-match I’d found in the camp and lit the match on a piece of punk I’d set alight in the kitchen as I left, then kept alive in a bowl covered with a lid. I blew the match to ruby brilliance, then began using the match to burn the lice running freely in my clothing.

“He has sent the ransom demand to Kevin,” I continued. “But the letter must first find Kevin, who may be away, or at sea on a trading voyage. Kevin must find or borrow five royals in a city that has been looted of most of his money. And then the money must find its way here, to the Toppings, to Sir Basil’s rude little treasury with its guard of wyverns.” The scent of burning insects tainted the air. I looked up at the goddess. “Is it likely, do you suppose? And how long will it be before this happens? For Sir Basil plans to leave this place as soon as the two lords’ ransoms arrive, and find shelter in another wild place before an angry Lord Stayne raises an army to wipe him out. And if I leave this camp before my ransom arrives, the money may take some time to find him. . . .” I sighed. “If I am not murdered beforehand, by some arbitrary caprice of Sir Basil, or some other wanton brute in the camp who may shoot me for his own amusement.”

Water chuckled pleasantly from the trough. Wind sighed gently in the osiers. Golden leaves flashed in the air as they fell.

“I must escape,” I said to the little goddess. “That is all I can think. For it is intolerable in this camp, and I do not trust Sir Basil to keep his word, and I do not wish to be slaughtered.”

I pulled louse eggs from the seams of my doublet, then cast the doublet on the ground and picked up my shirt.

“Yet,” I said, “I cannot escape in the day, for the bandits are ever on guard. I need the fall of night to avoid the guards and make as many miles as I can before dawn, and for this I must somehow avoid being locked up at night. But the bandits are alert to this possibility, and make a head count as they send us down the stair. And therefore, I must go forth at night with permission. Which brings us to the figure of Dorinda.”

I let the name hang in the air for a moment as I burned a fat crab-louse. “She is rare in being a solitary woman in the camp,” I resumed. “Most of the women here are married or otherwise attached to one of the men, and the rest are public women bought for the price of silver or a trinket or a fine silk shirt. I cannot speak to the first for fear of angering their menfolk, and the latter despise me for having no money. But Dorinda—”

I looked up at the goddess, as if I sensed an interruption. “You laugh at me, mistress,” I said. “And truly, I laugh at myself. Dorinda, indeed!”

I cocked my head, as if listening to a reply, and then went on. “For you see, we eat well in the camp. The bandits no longer haunt the roads for fear of encountering armed parties searching for Lord Stayne, and so they amuse themselves with hunting. And since Sir Basil plans to shift his post, he plans to eat all the domestic animals we may not take with us. And I have become Butcher to the robber band, and daily prepare their meat. Because I have proved good at carving, I am even privileged to cut the collops that feed their lordships Utterback and Stayne. There is no apron, and the work can bespatter a man, so I work near naked.

“Now, I have seen Dorinda look at me as I dismember a deer or a hog, and despite the bruises she daily inflicts upon me with her ladle, I flatter myself that she thinks well of what she sees. And so, if I encourage her, and if she takes me for her paramour, and if I survive the encounter with my back unbroken—for she is a strong woman, and I have seen her hoist a side of beef with no more effort than Lord Stayne might employ to lift a box of comfits—if I survive, as I say, and if I please her well enough to send her into a sound slumber, and if I can then sneak from her lodging and away from the camp . . .” I laughed. “A long, pretty list of ifs! If I can run through the Toppings without falling and breaking my neck, and if I can avoid the dogs and hunting parties sent after me—I believe I am to run in a stream to lose my scent, am I not? So, another if presents itself—if I do not drown, and then if I can somehow escape the Toppings and beg my way to Selford, then I shall be a free man.” I laughed. “And if not, a corpse. Or the concubine of a savage, half-mad cook. Or a captive, growing ever more crepuscular, like Higgs.” I looked at the goddess and smiled. “Do you like crepuscular, by the way? I made it up. From the old Aekoi, crepusculum.”

I finished my shirt, put it on the grass, and picked up my riding breeches. As I searched the seams for lice, I gave the statue a wistful look. “But it is not Dorinda to whom I wish to address my attentions. Nor to you, mistress, begging your pardon. But rather another—a woman I have seen only twice.”

I looked up as a gust of wind rattled the autumn leaves over my head, and a golden whirlwind of leaves clattered through the grove. The tip of the slow-match flared brighter, then faded. I lifted my brows and looked at the goddess.

“Are you jealous, mistress?” I asked. “Do not fear; she is beyond my reach.

“Two days ago,” I continued, “I saw her walking on the sward, across the lake, while the camp was having its dinner. And last night, at twilight I saw her standing not fifty feet away, but I was being harangued by Sir Basil about some point of law, and could not get away. And again she stood looking at me, her green eyes gazing at me, and I felt that in her eyes I might be the only man in the world. . . .” My voice drifted away as I relived the memory. And then I shook myself, and laughed as I looked at the rose-pink goddess. “You laugh at me, mistress! And yet, and yet . . .” I touched myself just above the heart. “The gaze of those green eyes stirred me to my bones. A poet would compare her skin to ivory, and call her eyes ‘smaragds,’ I suppose, and then have to find a rhyme for the word!” I gave a bitter laugh. “And I—a prisoner, penniless, without smaragds or anything but the clothes on my back!” My tone turned wistful. “Yet I would dare, if I could.”

I had finished my task with the slow-match, ground the burnt end underfoot, and coiled the rest. I hastened to put on my clothes, and rubbed warmth into my arms and shoulders. “As your sole worshiper,” I told the statue, “may I beg a favor? Will you provide a little hot water tomorrow? My baths are too cold for the season.”

I offered the goddess a bow. “With your permission, I shall come again tomorrow to worship at your feet.” I threw the overcoat over my shoulder, and made my way into the grove, through a rain of slender golden leaves.

I walked beside the stream, my eyes on the ground, my mind occupied by memories of the ghostly red-headed woman. And then, from somewhere above me, I heard a sonorous chord.

I looked up in deep surprise, and saw the mysterious woman above me, perched on a limb of one of the largest osiers, her feet dangling just above my head. She was dressed simply, in a deep blue velvet skirt, a blouse of the dark red called cramoisie, and a long woolen shawl of deep greens and blues draped over her head, one end stylishly thrown over her shoulder. She wore soft boots of dark suede. Behind her, the bright gold of the leaves shimmered and surged like a sun-struck sea. She held a mandola in her lap, and strummed more chords while her green eyes glittered with amusement.

“Mistress!” My heart gave a leap, and I doffed my cap. “I count myself fortunate to encounter you.”

“Fortunate?” she asked. “Hardly so. I believe fortune’s wheel has cast you down, sir, and cast you hard upon stones.”

“Then may I rise again?” Without waiting for permission, I tossed my overcoat onto the grass, grasped a tree limb with both hands, then swung my legs up to embrace the bough. In a rattle of falling leaves I pulled myself upright, and soon sat on a bough adjacent to hers, our feet nearly touching.

Her eyes dropped modestly, and she played a short, bright phrase on the mandola. “I had thought,” she said, “that my practice was private.”

“You may play on, if you like,” said I. “And I will pretend that I’m not here.”

Her full lips quirked in a smile. She brushed at a strand of red hair that had escaped her shawl, and looked at me with her brilliant eyes. I felt my breath stop in my throat.

“May I know your name, mistress?” I asked.

Her eyes turned to a corner of the sky, as if she were making up a name on the spot. “I am Orlanda,” she said.

“I am Quillifer.”

She smiled. “I can see that you are.”

I laughed. “Fair Mistress Orlanda,” I said. “How come you to be here?”

Her answer was simple. “I climbed the tree.”

“I mean,” I said, “you seem to be free in the camp. You possess privilege of some kind.”

“If I possess privilege, I also possess caprice,” she said. “It is my caprice to stand on my privilege, and privilege not your question.”

She returned my every volley, the most enticing tennis player I had ever met. I tried again. “You have looked at me, I think.”

“I look at many things.” She played a low trill on her instrument, four strings singing as one. I found the sound strangely melancholy for an instrument celebrated for its joyous voice.

“Are you sad, mistress?” I asked. In answer, she began to sing.

Ah me! as thus I look before me

Along the course of time

Steals tides of pensive musing o’er me

Like sound of sad knell chime

Now many a gentle flower, its race

All run, its sweet breath sped

Its beauty wasted, hides its face

And slumbers with the dead.

The dead of many generations

Of its own frail kindred

The countless dead of tribes and nations

Who once with open lid

Like it looked on the morning’s grace

And saw the noontide glory

And drank life’s joy, but went apace

Ah me! the endless story.

The last chord died away; the grove was still. Orlanda gazed at me in pensive silence. I wondered how old she was, and decided she was a few years older than I.

“A song for autumn,” I said. “But see, we are young, and can kindle summer in our hearts.”

“Do you offer up my heart for kindling?” she asked. “As if it were straw, or twigs?” She gave me a doubtful look. “I hope you don’t mistake me for lightwood.”

“I offer to fill your heart with fire. A fire like that in my own.” I reached for her hand. She struck a dissonant chord on her mandola, and I drew the hand back. She offered an approving smile, and a soft melody rang from the instrument.

“Many summers were kindled in this place,” she said. “And yet all ended. Many were the hopes engendered in the town that was builded here, but all hopes failed when failed the silver.”

“Silver?” I was surprised.

“There was a mine—” Orlanda glanced up at the cliffs, but the limbs and leaves of the trees kept me from seeing where her gaze lighted. “The mine was why the town was built, and the castle. There was a great wooden gallery that carried the ore down to the valley.”

Her fingers drew forth the melody, and somehow the strings sounded like coins ringing. “The silver pennies of the Morcants were famous, and they paid for the war that drove out the Sea-Kings. But the silver ran out centuries ago, and the Morcants faded, and it was the sons of the Sea-Kings who united Fornland, not the Morcants. When the silver failed, local lords remained in the castle, great oppressors of the people, till they too died out.”

The dynasty of the Morcants, I thought, had been eleven hundred years before, great warriors and poets and builders. According to all the histories, they had been rich, and now I know why.

“Is the mine still there?”

“Dark tunnels half-collapsed—no silver.”

“I had thought I might hide there, until the bandits ceased to hunt me.”

Orlanda looked at me for a long moment, and the melody died on the strings. “You wish to flee.”

I looked at her. “I wish to flee with you. We can go to the capital. I have an urgent message to carry to the Queen—my city was plundered and blockaded and is in sore need of aid. I must urge the court to send relief. And once in Selford, I can take up the law, I can make my way in the world. Become a judge, or a courtier, or a Member of the Burgesses. I’ll put my mark on the world! My ambition is enough for the both of us.”

Sorrow touched her face. Her fingers drew out a little refrain: Ah me! The endless story.

“The mine is no refuge, nor the court,” she said, and turned away for a moment. “Speak of fire again,” she said. “The day grows chill.”

“I would set a fire in every part of you,” I said. I reached for her hand again, and this time she allowed me to take it. “The fingers so clever,” I said, “coaxing melody from wood and ivory,” and kissed them, and then I turned the hand over and kissed the palm. I leaned close and brushed the hair back from her face. I slipped the shawl to her shoulders, and inhaled the scent of her hair, rich and earthy as a spring glade. “Your hair,” I said, “on fire already. Your cheeks”—kissing—“smooth as cream.” She looked at me, and I could feel her warmth on my skin. “Your eyes,” I said, “so like—”

“Smaragds?” she said. “Or is that too poetastical?”

I stared at her, words frozen in my throat.

“Do you like ‘poetastical’?” she said. “I just made it up.”

I threw my head back and laughed. “You overheard!” I said in joy.

Answering delight danced in her emerald eyes.

I stared at her. “You saw me naked!” I said.

“I saw nothing,” she said demurely. “I pretended I wasn’t there.”

I laughed again, and pressed her hand. “Mistress, we must flee this place together! Nothing can stop us, an we are together! The world will lie vanquished before us, and offer us sweet wine and Orient pearls.”

“I should want such trifles?” Orlanda asked. “I am caprice and privilege, remember. What is Selford, or the world, to me?”

“A setting for your beauty. A choice audience for your wit. A playground for your caprice. And besides, mistress, will you stay here? In this camp, till Sir Basil chooses to move his band to some other desolate country?”

A cloud crossed her face. “I was content,” she said, “till you came.”

I raised her hand and kissed it. “Content is valued only by those who have already grappled with life, and earned their victory. Content is for old men with their mulled wine, and old women with their grandchildren, and old fat dogs who lie before the fire. Content is not for the young and dauntless, those who wish to brand the world with their mark. Fly with me! You know the country; you must know a way to evade pursuit.”

“You paint a persuasive picture,” Orlanda said.

I kissed her cheek. “Let me entice you further.” I kissed again, and she turned to me, and was about to kiss again, but the horn blew in the camp, and she put two fingers on my lips and gently pushed me away.

“You’re called to supper,” she said. “Don’t be late.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow? So I can collect my kiss?”

A smile crossed her lips. “I promise that I will see you.”

I laughed. “We’ll meet at the fountain of the little goddess. Perhaps we can bathe, and to preserve our modesty each can pretend the other isn’t there.”

I dropped to the ground, picked up my overcoat, and walked with a light heart along the stream, turning every so often to wave, until she disappeared behind the golden screen of the osiers. Dorinda growled at me for my tardy arrival, and beat me thoroughly with her ladle as I served stew to the bandits, and then cut up the lords’ meat and handed it to the outlaw wife who carried the platter to the Oak House. I barely felt the blows.

After my own hurried meal, and the cleaning of the bowls and spoons, I shuffled down into the dungeon with the rest, and made a pillow of my overcoat. The rich scent of her hair still floated in my memory.

Smaragds, I thought ridiculously, and was soon asleep.

I awoke to the fragrance of her hair, and a soft kiss on my lips.