Firethorn Read online

  The First’s men knew what they were about, and raised his great pavilion quickly at the point nearest the king’s hall, and the priests’ green tent next to it to serve as both shrine and shelter. This left them free to offer advice (much of it unwanted) to the other varlets as they puzzled and cursed and fussed with ropes and poles and canvas. Sire Pava had bought a round tent of painted leather in Ramus, but he’d left the poles behind; it had never occurred to him that there could be a land without trees. I hid a sneer behind my hands to see him mocked for this by the other cataphracts, until the Crux’s bagboy came back with a mule laden with kindling and told Sire Pava’s jack, Gaunt, where he could buy wood.

  Sire Galan’s tent was wider than Az’s hut and so high that a tall man could easily stand inside. It was made of canvas patterned with light green and yellow fletches, coated with wax against the damp. The wind plucked at the walls and made the poles and ropes creak. It was more pleasant to me than a house of stone or mud because its walls barred neither light nor air, and yet it was wonderfully dry inside, but for a leak or two at the seams when one of the clouds scurrying by overhead spattered us with rain.

  Toward evening I carried two iron pots and a waterskin down the west path, toward the sea. It was Noggin’s duty to fetch water, but I was in need of a reason to look at the sea again. Among so many tents, I could only glimpse it.

  The narrow path gleamed where feet had worn through the turf to the chalky ground. It twisted around hummocks, through gaps in stone walls, and behind the backs of the tents, before leading me to the edge of a cliff. White seabirds hovered before me in the gulf of air, making small gestures to hold themselves steady, disdaining to overtax their wings. Far below, the sea began.

  The path went over the cliff’s edge. It was steep, but I was used to scrambling on rocks in the mountains. I left the pots behind, for I needed both my hands, and followed it down, holding on to tufts of sedge and outcroppings of crumbling stone. I hitched up my kirtle and squatted at the water’s edge. The sea had a strong smell, not unpleasant. I took a taste and spat it out: saltier than tears. So I learned what everybody knows—that the sea is brine—and was reminded of my ignorance of the world beyond the Kingswood.

  I walked north along the shore, and the sea wind pushed at me as if it meant to slip my shadow loose and fling it as high as those white birds. Cold waves splashed over my feet and tumbled the pebbles and shells on the strand. The Sun was low and swaddled in clouds, but she sent a little red light skipping over the water toward me.

  Hundreds of ships rode the swells, bare masts as close as dead trees in a flooded forest. I’d never seen sails, so the masts puzzled me. We had boats of bent willow and leather in the village, as clumsy as a barrel unless you had the knack; these ships were bigger than houses, with smooth sides painted with godsigns. Big as the vessels were, it was hard to believe that so many men and horses and wagons could be poured into them and transported over waters so wide you couldn’t even see the other shore, much less be assured of finding it.

  I’d not been alone for more than a moment since starting this journey. Always in sight, everything I did or did not do remarked on. Not that I was so remarkable, but soldiers are often idle and always looking for diversion. So every man in the troop had a taste of me, my name on his tongue. I hadn’t felt how much it pressed upon me, the weight of their speculations, until I set the burden down by the shore.

  I dug my feet into the sand and took root there until the Sun had been quenched in the sea. Once I’d known every face in my world. Now I was among strangers, too many to count. I had tied the thread of my life to one of those strangers, and I wasn’t sure whether, twisted together, we would make a stronger cord. I felt more myself when we were not together. But Wend Weaver was at work. Sire Galan and I were between her finger and her thumb as she spun, and I feared that if we snagged or tangled, she might get out her shears.

  I scrambled up the cliff. The sea was luminous, brighter than the sky and land, as if it held the last light of the Sun. Somehow I’d mislaid the two pots—or they’d been stolen. I feared Spiller would complain of me, and I cast back and forth along the cliff’s edge looking for them. After a while I gave it up and made my way on another path toward the campfires and torches, small puddles of light and sound.

  Behind the tents a gray shadow detached itself from the other shadows and stood in my way. “What’s this?” he said, and he pulled off my headcloth so that my hair came down. He called out, “Come see what I’ve found! A stray skinsheath!”

  I snatched at the cloth, but he held the other end of it. “I’m no stray. I’m of Crux’s company.”

  “You’ re not,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

  When one farmyard dog starts barking, the rest join in. Soon I had a pack around me, yammering. I reached for my knife and my hand brushed the bag of finger bones hanging from my belt. I didn’t need to cast the bones to know the counsel Na and the Dame would have given, for I had them to heart. Na would have said, “All you can do with that little blade is scratch, and scratching will worsen the itch,” and the Dame would have advised another use for it, if other means failed—the only sure escape being to turn it on myself. I palmed the knife and tucked my hands into my sleeves. I said again (but my voice was smaller than I’d hoped), “I’m of Crux’s company. My cataphract will come looking for me.”

  The first man mocked me. “Her cataphract will come looking for her—she thinks a cataphract will come looking for his laundress! I suppose she’s the only one can keep his dirties clean. Well, will you wash my linens too?” His teeth flashed, and the whites of his eyes. He said to the others, “Aren’t I a woman dowser, you laggards? My rod can find quim in a desert!”

  I took a step to the side, and he stepped in front of me again.

  Another said, from behind my shoulder, “Maybe, but it’s such a little stick.” A third said, “Trave dowses women all right, but his rod hangs down as soon as he finds one, so what’s the use?” They hooted.

  Trave replied, “Oh, no. It stands up and quivers; it points right at her. Shall I show you?” He lifted his tunic and began to unlace his prickguard.

  The others laughed and shoved each other, waiting to see how far he’d go with this game. I was not about to wait, and pushed between them, toward the king’s hall. As if that were a signal, they closed in. So many hands, I couldn’t twist free. “She’s a slippery one,” someone said. “So much the better,” said another. Trave was hobbled by his leggings, around his ankles, and he was hopping up and down and shouting, “Wait! Wait!”

  The worst of it was that they were still laughing. I stabbed at one man but the blade turned on his thick leather jack. I don’t think he noticed the knife before it was struck out of my hand and my arms were bent behind my back. I should have gone for his eyes.

  “Get off, you runts, and let me have a look at her!” I heard someone bellow, and then came the thwack of blows landing on skulls and backsides and yelps from the men. I was hauled by my scruff into the circle of tents, into the light of the cook fire and a few torches.

  My rescuer was a woman, and an immense one by any measure, up, down, and sideways. Her gown was cut low, perilously close to her nipples, exposing a vast pale bosom sprinkled with moles. The cleft between her breasts was deep enough to swallow a purseful of coins. Her bosom rested on the jutting shelf of an equally vast belly; her dress strained to cover her. She had one hand on her hip; the other held a stout stick of firewood. She looked from me to the men and laughed a derisive laugh.

  “Go find yourselves a striped skirt,” she told the men. “This little thing isn’t big enough to go around the lot of you. You know where the whores are. Go and pay for it. I know Pinch is a cursed skinflint, but what about the rest of you? And if you haven’t any coin, you know what you can do? Find a ewe’s arse, she won’t even notice. Your little dangles won’t do more than tickle her. But no, here’s better advice—use your hands. It’t the soldiers’ way, runts:
no coin, no cankers. Quick and clean. Have you forgotten how? Come, I’ll teach you.” She held up the firewood. “Fancy this is your prick,” she said. She held up her left hand: “Hand,” she said. “You just marry the two like this, see? What a trifling lot of numskulls, forgot what you learned before you were weaned!”

  The woman made them laugh, and the air changed, the way it does when a breeze drives away a storm. It made me wonder if I’d been in such danger after all, if she could leash them with a jest. In the torchlight I could see they were but five or six ordinary men. One had the grace to hang his head, but the rest stared at me boldly. I marked Trave at once because his leggings were askew and he still had my headcloth. With my hair uncovered I looked a wanton, so I snatched back the cloth and bound it up again. The blood rose to my face for shame.

  The woman hung her fleshy arm over my shoulder and walked us away from the men and the firelight. Her nose and cheeks were broad, with large black pores. Her eyes were kind. “Just come today, I’d guess.”

  I nodded, finding it hard to speak.

  “Don’t go anywhere by yourself—take a man with you or you’ re fair hunting. Otherwise they don’t know they’ re poaching, understand? Even the whores do it, or they won’t get paid. I can see you’ re a country girl, and know no better.” With a groan she stooped and plucked something out of the grass. “Is this yours?”

  She handed me my little bone-handled knife. She said, “You’re lucky these are good boys—they have to work themselves up to do harm, they aren’t bred to it like some of the vermin you’ll find around here.

  I muttered, “I’m lucky you were here.”

  “That too, dear, that too.”

  I wiped my nose and eyes on the loose end of my headcloth and gave her a hug. My arms didn’t meet around her. When the men jeered I paid them no mind. She was soft, but there was something hard about her under the fat. No wonder they’d scattered at her blows.

  I was shaking. She sat me down by the fire and told me her name was Mai, and the runts were not such bad fellows as I might think. I looked at them and thought they might be good lads inside the tents’ circle, but behind the tents was another matter entirely.

  Mai put on a shawl to cover her bosom and walked me home, with the sheepish man as an escort; our encampments were not far apart. I stepped into Sire Galan’s tent without a word to anyone, and found it empty.

  Sire Galan had his men out looking for me, without their supper. He rode in after most of them had straggled back to camp, and held up a lantern on a pole. Without getting off his horse, he called, “Have you found her?”

  I ran to him, and he slid out of the saddle, handed his lantern to someone, and slapped me hard. I stepped back and he stepped forward, shouting at me in front of everyone. Sire Galan jabbed me with his finger at each step: I was never to go off without leave, never to go alone, never to vex and trouble him again. Was I witless or something worse? Where had I been? In whose tent, whose bed? The Crux watched for a few moments and went into his pavilion. The others stayed to be amused.

  I said I was sorry, keeping my voice low. I backed up until I was against the canvas of his tent and could go no farther. When I looked at the ground, he bent and put his face in front of mine and glared, as if he’d turn me to stone. I met his eyes but it was hard to do, hard to stand face-to-face with him. He demanded to know where I had gone, his voice still raised. I mumbled an answer, though I had no good answer to give: I stayed awhile by the sea—the Sun went down and I lost my way (lost, where all roads led to the king’s hall, and we were camped in sight of it)—I was sorry I’d troubled him—I’d never seen the sea before.

  If I’d said more there would have been blood spilt.

  Sire Galan became silent, and that was worse. He turned his face aside and stood there, his jaw clamped shut, his arms crossed, his hands in fists. Then he turned his back on me and walked away.

  He saw to it that his men had a good supper and treated them to his private store of wine. His voice was curt, but I heard him laugh when Sire Alcoba said, “High time you broke her to saddle and bridle.”

  Sire Galan was quick to say, “Oh, but I favor riding bareback.”

  I went into the tent and lit the lamp set at hand by the door. While I’d been gone his varlets had been working; there were sacks stuffed with heather as pallets for the men and a folding cot of wood and rope and leather in one corner for Sire Galan. This bed had never appeared when we were on the road; it had been folded small in the baggage, so small a mule could carry it. We’d not be sleeping rough. The bed had feet carved like talons, and there was a feather mattress on it, and linens and Sire Galan’s quilt besides, which was embroidered all over with bright featherstitching. Perhaps his wife had sewn it. I lay down and pulled the covers over me, wondering if he’d want me in his bed, angry as he was. My face was sore from his blow. I’d have a fine bruise by morning.

  I could hear the men by the campfire all too well.

  “I don’t know why you brought her,” Sire Pava said. “I had her once and she was nothing much. I wouldn’t have taken the trouble, but she traipsed around with her hair down, pretending she was a maiden when she wasn’t.”

  Sire Galan was silent. Sire Rodela said, “He thinks she’s lucky, on account of her red hair.”

  “Lucky! She’s a bit of rubbish picked up on the road. The man who found her—that was Sire Scindo dam Quiesco by Infero of Lynx, my old aunt’s husband—didn’t find her to be lucky. He got killed on campaign and she came home with the baggage.”

  It angered me that Sire Pava knew something of my past that I did not, and bandied it about. But his tale made sense of much that had puzzled me, even of the Dame’s silences. I’d been sent home with her husband’s arms, his armor, horses, bagboy, jack and all, when I was too old for swaddling clothes and too young to be useful. The Dame no doubt thought it a shameful thing to be baggage, loot from some war somewhere. But Na could have told me.

  I’d proved more of a bane than a charm, if what Sire Pava said was true. They called me Luck anyway, in the Low tongue. Perhaps some jack had named me, or Na herself. Maybe Sire Scindo’s misfortune was fortunate for others; I never heard he was much missed.

  Yet to know so much was still to know—nothing: not whether my parents were alive or dead, not where we’d lived. The dream of my father had told me more. I thought I’d recognize those mountains, that valley, if I ever saw them. I remembered how my father had slouched easy in the saddle until he saw the soldiers. Banners of black; what clan bore that color? None I knew.

  Sire Galan spoke up. “I suppose you’d call Sire Scindo fortunate if he died in his old age, maundering and sweating and stinking of some fever, so long as he died in his bed. He died as a man should—at war. Maybe you had no luck with the girl because you asked the wrong favors of Chance.”

  “I wasn’t unlucky with her,” said Sire Pava. “She’s a contrary, hard-mouthed nag.”

  Sire Galan laughed. “You found her too spirited, did you? Well, I can ride when others are bucked off—isn’t that true, Pava?”

  It was a long while before Sire Galan came to the tent, but when he came, he was alone. He flung the men’s pallets out of the tent and bade them sleep outside, even Sire Rodela, saying it would do them no harm to stay another night out of doors.

  He snuffed out the lamp. He didn’t turn me out of bed but crawled in beside me. The wood groaned when it took his weight and I slid toward the hollow he made. The bed was not so wide that two people could lie in it without touching. He lay on his back looking at nothing, his body in a rigor like the one that follows death. He didn’t utter a word.

  His anger had been hot; now it was cold. And I, being both scorched and chilled, could find no anger to match his, though he’d struck me and, what smarted more, traded jests about me with Sire Pava. For he’d ridden out looking for me, he’d searched the Marchfield high and low. I was humbled by him, and afraid. I feared his silence might go on and on.

 
; I didn’t know whether to cajole or excuse or beseech or say he’d injured me with his mistrust, so I did all of these, haltingly, with long silences of my own: small words, but an army of them. I even thought to find a chink in his silence by using the keenest weapon at hand, to tell him some men had set upon me, and where they lived. That would have stirred him; his anger would have found another target. But I forbore. I held my tongue for Mai’s sake, and because men should not die over me being a fool. Though I wouldn’t have been altogether sorry to see it.

  When I gave up and turned my back on him, and tears began to leak and I sobbed, muffling the sound in the quilt, then he softened. His body unclenched, and he rolled on his side, toward me, and I turned to face him.

  I was grateful that he’d relented enough to look at me, and I wept some more, covering my face for shame. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a shake.

  “Where did you go, hmm?” He gave a mirthless laugh. “You made me look a buffoon, riding around the Marchfield whistling for my sheath. This isn’t your village. You can’t go strolling about wherever you please.”

  “I never meant to be gone so long, or to cause you worry,” I said, as I’d said many times already.

  “Mind you don’t stray again.” He stared at me. The lamps were out, but his face was touched with a wavering red light from the fire in the brazier. I was uneasy under his scrutiny. He said, “Who was before Pava?”

  “No one.”

  “He was not your first, so he says.”

  “There have been no others.”

  “Why lie about it?” Sire Galan said. “It doesn’t matter to me if there have been two or twenty.”

  I saw it did matter. I thought it strange that he was jealous of what might or might not have happened before he met me. And then, not strange at all. For to think of those he bedded before me was to wonder if they were fair, bold, sweet, graceful—was to feel plain, shy, sour, awkward. Surely he had no such misgivings.