The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  “See that she has what she needs. Keeper Gilchrist will allot a stipend for her upkeep and supplies.”

  “Thank you, Master.”

  “Dagmar?”

  “Yes, Master?”

  “Is she beautiful?”

  Dagmar frowned, startled.

  “I don’t know, Master. She is . . . frightening. And dirty. And sad. But . . . she could be beautiful if . . . someone . . . loved her.” Heat rose to Dagmar’s cheeks. He wasn’t sure where his answer had come from, but Ivo studied him as though the answer had not surprised him in the least.

  “Just as long as . . . you . . . don’t love her, Keeper.”

  Dagmar flushed again. He had no intention of loving her.

  10

  Bayr came awake with the melody of his mother in his head. Or mayhaps it was not his mother at all, but the queen, who sang lullabies to Alba the way his mother never had. And this melody was discordant and shrill; the queen’s voice was lovely and sweet. He lay in his bed, trying to imagine the woman who had wielded a shield and a sword as well as any man, yet had died giving life to him. Dagmar said she was beautiful and brave, and he tried to imagine how such a woman would look.

  The sound came again, but this time Bayr sat up in his bed. It was not a song but a cry, and not a woman’s cry or an infant’s, but the wail of surprise and the muffled thump of attack. He leaped from his bed, climbing up to the window without thought of weapons or even shoes. Nothing moved in the gardens beneath the queen’s tower, and no lights flickered from the windows. There was always light shining from the gable between the nursery and the queen’s quarters. Something was wrong.

  He flitted over rooftops and danced from the ramparts to the ground, scaling the wall between the temple and the palace in a matter of seconds. Another cry and a sudden shout, and he was sprinting to the tower where Alba slept. He’d climbed the tower walls before, when the world slept, simply to see if he could. A toehold here, a swinging clasp of a ledge there, up the side with fingers curled and toes clinging, his eyes on the stones above his head and the window he needed to reach.

  The queen cried out, Alba wailed, and Bayr’s fingers tightened even as his left foot slipped and regripped. Then he was up and through the window, hurtling himself toward men who would make a woman scream in the night. Once inside, he felt the first man before he saw him, and crouched to miss his slicing blade. Bayr swung his arm upward and slammed his small fist into the thundering heart of the sword-wielding assailant. The man gurgled and Bayr grasped, filling his hands with the man’s clothes and hurtling him over his head out the open window he’d just entered.

  The man had dropped his blade. Bayr felt the cool bite of the metal against his bare toes as he slunk forward, trying to see who else crept down the corridor toward him. The sword was too long, too awkward for the length of Bayr’s arms, and he simply stepped over it. He needed his hands free.

  Alba cried, and the queen called for help, and he rushed toward their voices. Through the door to the right were the queen’s chambers. To the left, the nursery, an ornate wooden cradle the centerpiece of the room. He’d seen it in his explorations. He could see it now, gilded, a bed fit for a princess. That’s why they were here, the men who crept in the darkness. He’d known they would come. She was too precious to leave alone. She was the jewel of Saylok, the treasure of the clans, and someone had come for her.

  Two men rushed him at once, slinking black shapes in the unlit corridor. He brought their heads together, a satisfying thunk that broke their noses and made their legs wobble, lowering them to his height. He did not think or mourn or even cringe at the crunch of bone or the spray of their blood over his face. Fisting his hands in their braids, he swung them around, dragging them across the floor and propelling them out the window to follow the flight of their recently departed companion. And then there were three more, spilling out of the queen’s chamber. One dragged the queen by her hair, a knife at her throat, another held Alba by her feet like a chicken being prepared for slaughter.

  The men laughed when they saw him, a blood-spattered child without a sword. The man without a hostage strode toward him, his hand clawed to grasp Bayr by his hair. Bayr simply crouched and gripped the sword still lying at his feet. With a bellow and a thrust, he ran the man through, the tip of the blade pointing to the man next in line.

  The queen reached for Alba, who still dangled from the meaty fist of the third man. He moved toward the stairs, and the queen screamed and fought to follow. The man dragging the queen released her and came at Bayr wielding the same blade he’d held to her throat. Bayr shoved the man he’d just impaled forward even as he extracted the bloodied sword. He hurled it like a javelin, and it pierced the oncoming man’s shoulder, causing his blade to skitter across the floor. Then Bayr was past him, throwing himself on the back of Alba’s abductor as the queen lunged for the child.

  Grasping the man by his ears, he wrenched his head to the right. He watched the man’s eyes, now facing him, flicker out. The man crumpled as Bayr released him, and the queen sobbed Alba’s name.

  “She is not harmed. Only frightened . . . and angry,” the queen reassured herself, running her palms over the squalling infant whose little arms and legs were flailing in outrage. Bayr stepped around her, his eyes on the remaining attacker, who clutched at the sword piercing his shoulder and staggered back, his eyes round with pain and disbelief. He raised one bloody hand in surrender, and Bayr stood guard over the queen, not sure of how to proceed now that the man was no longer a threat. A light bloomed in the stairwell, and the pounding of boots on stone echoed up the shaft. The king’s guard had arrived, but the saving was done.

  “You are covered with blood, Bayr,” the queen whimpered, but she reached for him, one arm clamped around the baby, one hand gripping his.

  Bayr looked down at the ill-shaped nightshirt he’d gone to bed in, his limbs sticking out from the hem and the bell-shaped sleeves. His bare feet were splattered in gore, the pale fabric striped in crimson. His eyelids were sticky, and he knew his face must have fared even worse.

  Then the vestibule was filled with torchlight and warriors, their swords drawn, ready for a battle that had already been won. King Banruud brought up the rear, his face terrible in the flickering light.

  “Who did this?” Banruud demanded, his eyes on the dead and the dying. His warriors seemed equally stunned.

  Bayr tried to explain but his tongue weighed more than the stone altar, and he could not make it move. He gurgled impotently and hung his head in humiliation.

  “Bayr saved us,” the queen said, and clutched little Alba, who had already stopped crying, her dark, wet eyes clinging to the circle of big men and gleaming swords.

  “Three men, Banruud. And he is just a boy,” one warrior observed, disbelief twisting his lips. He had come with the king from Berne and was not accustomed to Bayr’s abilities.

  “There were more,” Queen Alannah insisted.

  “Where?” Banruud barked.

  Bayr pointed at the window and the man who still cowered beside it, bleeding and begging for mercy. The doubtful warrior walked to the opening and looked down.

  “There are three men piled below, Sire,” the warrior exclaimed. The king moved to his side, peering into the gardens below.

  “What is your clan?” King Banruud turned to the wounded man. The would-be captor tried to shrink away, but the motion made him sway.

  “I have no clan,” the man groaned.

  “Who sent you?” Banruud roared.

  “We came for the child. There are people who will pay well for a girl.” His companions were dead, and he soon would be. There was no one left to protect. Bayr knew the man’s only hope was to die quickly.

  “You had help,” Banruud hissed, wrapping his hand around the hilt of the sword that still protruded from the man’s shoulder. “You knew the lay of the castle.”

  “His name was Biel,” the man panted. “It was his plan.”

  “Biel of Berne
is one of ours, Sire,” a guard confessed. Outrage shivered through the ranks, and the babe whimpered.

  “Where is he?” the king ground out.

  The wounded man pointed toward the window, clearly indicating the pile below. “There.”

  “And the boy?” Banruud hissed.

  The man grimaced in confusion. “He is not ours.”

  “Did he assist you?” Banruud pressed, and the guards shifted in dismay.

  The queen gasped, shaking her head, but Banruud silenced her with an upraised palm. Bayr twisted his nightclothes with nervous fingers but didn’t attempt to defend himself.

  “No,” the man moaned, eyeing Bayr with fear. “He killed them all.”

  The king, gripping the hilt of the bloody sword, dragged it from the man’s shoulder. The man screamed in pain and relief before his shout was silenced with another thrust. The king withdrew the blade once more, and the dead man paid homage to his boots.

  Banruud turned, freeing his feet, and pointed his blade at Bayr’s head. Bayr did not flinch; the weight in his mouth had moved to his limbs.

  “You must not hurt him, Banruud,” the queen implored, and the guards shifted in quiet agreement.

  The king studied him, eyes flat, sword steady, ignoring the distress of his queen and his men. When he spoke, his voice brooked no argument.

  “You will sleep here from now on, Temple Boy.”

  The keeper didn’t come back for days, nor did the boy, Bayr, and each morning Ghost told herself she would leave the cottage beneath the cliff. There was a weariness in her limbs and in her head that made her shrink at the thought. Her mind would tiptoe across the green slopes and climb to the wall that circled the castle where her daughter breathed, where she lived and slept and gazed up into the face of a woman who was not her mother. And though Ghost was not within those walls, she was under the same sky, she breathed the same air and was warmed by the same sun, and she could not make herself leave.

  It was a week before the keeper came again. She’d eaten all the supplies and had caught several fish from the cold stream. She hadn’t retrieved her gold, but she didn’t worry someone else would find it. The keeper wore a brown robe tied at his waist with a simple rope, the same clothes he’d worn when he’d carried her out of the woods. She supposed his purple robes were for ceremony or worship and wondered if the one he’d sent with the boy had once been his. It was worn on the edges—frayed like grass—but she could fashion something from it if she took the time. Mayhaps a dress that wasn’t gray. Along with his simple robe he wore violet circles beneath his eyes, and the shadow on his jaw and across his pate seemed especially dark against his pale face.

  “Are you unwell?” she asked quietly. The thought worried her.

  “No. Only weary,” he replied, equally subdued. “Forgive me for staying away so long. There was trouble, and I’ve been unable to get away.”

  In a few words, he told her of an attempt to take the princess and the queen.

  “She was not harmed?”

  “No . . . neither of them was hurt. Only frightened.”

  Ghost discovered her legs would not hold her, and she sat abruptly, making the stool beneath her tip precariously. The keeper steadied her with a gentle hand but lowered himself onto the other stool as if he too were feeling faint. He folded his hands between his knees, his wide shoulders hunched, his head bowed.

  “The danger has passed?” she asked, hesitant.

  “I don’t know if the danger will ever pass,” he answered, and grief rippled in his voice.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head as though it was difficult to explain, and she waited, wishing he would talk to her a little more.

  “She will always be a girl,” he said at last. “She is of great value. Those that are of great value are also at great risk.”

  He did not have to explain further.

  “Will the boy come again?” she asked, wanting to turn her thoughts from Alba’s safety.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know.” Again the odd grief. “He is . . . he is no longer . . . in my charge.”

  “Has he gone?” She didn’t understand.

  “No. He has been . . . he is now . . . in the employ . . . of the king.”

  Ghost frowned. “A servant?” she pressed.

  “A guard. He is to remain with the princess at all times.”

  “But he is a child,” Ghost whispered.

  “He is . . . a warrior.”

  “Can you never see him again?”

  He smiled ruefully. “Of course I will see him. It is not as terrible as I am making it seem.”

  “The king took your child,” Ghost murmured, and her heart bled. He had taken her child too.

  “No,” the keeper whispered, but she didn’t believe him. He stood and walked to the door, though he made no move to leave.

  “I have brought you your gold.” From the sack he withdrew the little box stained with soot. “I was praying. I visit that tree often. I looked up and saw your box cradled between the boughs.”

  “You could have kept it,” she whispered, stunned.

  “It was not mine.” He met her gaze and then looked away, color staining his dusky skin. “You offered me gold to leave you alone. I knew it must belong to you.”

  Ghost could think of nothing to say. She considered opening the box and offering him a handful of coins but thought he might think she was telling him to go.

  “Why did you choose that tree?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It was easy to climb.”

  He laughed, the sudden eruption making her start.

  “Now that you have your gold, you can go, if you wish. But . . . you can also stay if you like. Bayr can no longer tend the sheep. If you would like to live here in this cottage, the keepers could pay you to watch and move the herd.”

  “I could stay?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, though the thought seemed to trouble him. “You will be a woman alone . . . and not terribly safe.”

  “There is no such thing as safety. But I would welcome the work and the peace. However long both last.”

  “I moved the herd to the meadow down below. Brother Johan is watching them. There is an enclosure. You would not need to stay with them through the night. The herds of the king graze on the north and east sides of the hill. The meadows are larger, and the herds are far greater. The grazing here and on the south side, directly below the temple, will sustain them through the summer and fall. When the cold comes we will move them within the walls of Temple Hill. Many will be slaughtered, and you can remain here until spring . . . if you wish. I will come every week—or send someone in my stead—to give you a day of rest.”

  “I don’t wish to be seen,” she whispered. She felt his eyes, compassion in his gaze. He would think she was ashamed of her skin. Of her colorless face. He would think she didn’t like the stares and the fear of those who lived within the Temple Hill walls. But that was not what she feared.

  “You need never enter the temple mount if you do not wish. In the winter months, we will move the sheep inside the walls, as we always do, and you can remain here,” Dagmar reassured her.

  Ghost nodded, relieved. It was foolish to stay. The king might see her or hear of her presence and know his henchman had failed. People loved to discuss her strangeness. If he saw her, he would have her killed. But leaving Alba behind forever would be harder than death. Maybe, if she kept her distance, she could keep her life and keep an eye on her child.

  PART TWO

  THE TEMPLE GIRLS

  11

  For three years, Ghost moved the sheep through the seasons and slept in her cottage on the western slope when the sun dipped below the edge of Saylok. The keeper came as he promised he would. She rarely called him Dagmar. She called him Keeper, and he called her Ghost, and they spoke carefully of small things—the thickness of the sheep’s wool, the heat, the rain, the village, the sky. They would watch the herd and discuss the grass, the gulls, an
d the joyful bounding of the lambs. But the lambs made them both sad, reflective, and silence would well up between them and around them, and the small things would become huge and heavy.

  Then Ghost would make herself ask after his boy, even though she knew it pained him. His boy looked after her girl, and when the keeper spoke of them, she saw the days of Alba’s life and the passing of time. Sometimes the keeper would drop details like shiny pearls, and she would pick each one up, stringing them into precious stories that she told herself when he had gone, and she was alone.

  “He is tall for a boy of ten,” the keeper would say, and Ghost would see a girl of three and wonder how much Alba had grown.

  “He looks like a boy of fifteen, but his voice has not changed,” Dagmar would report, and Ghost would wonder how well her daughter spoke.

  “Bayr is afraid Alba will not learn to speak properly because he stutters. The king forbade him from speaking to her any more than necessary, but she is a little girl, and she doesn’t understand when Bayr is silent. Alba is never silent,” the keeper commented once, and for weeks Ghost tried to imagine what the child’s voice must sound like. Sometimes she would forget herself and ask questions.

  “Is she happy?” Ghost asked once.

  “Yes. She is joyful like the little lambs,” he had replied, and then the heavy things had settled back around them, forcing quiet and contemplation.

  Days became weeks and weeks, months. Two more years passed, until one day Dagmar offered something Ghost would never have asked. Something she wanted more than all the gold in her box and all the precious pearls the keeper inadvertently left behind.

  “When you move the sheep down to the temple meadow, I will see if Bayr and Alba can visit you. Alba would love the sheep,” he murmured, his eyes on the woolly beasts. It was spring, and soon they would take the animals’ coats and move the herd to the meadows below the walls. “Alba has a gift with animals. They follow her and bow at her feet. Even the rodents. She has only to sing and they come to her. Bayr is constantly chasing them from the castle.”