The First Girl Child

by Harmon, Amy

  “Would the queen allow them to come?” Ghost asked, guarding her hope.

  “The queen trusts Bayr, mothers him, and she would allow it. Bayr will not let anything happen to Alba. He sleeps on the floor beside her bed. He knows her schedule, her tempers, her favorite things, her favorite colors, and the foods she won’t eat, regardless of her mother’s insistence. Alba smiles at the world and makes everyone believe they are being obeyed while doing exactly as she wishes. Bayr watches silently, learning how to communicate with winks and smirks and frowns and nods. Alba knows what Bayr is saying, though he hardly opens his mouth—at least not when the king or his men are around.”

  “And the queen?” Ghost thought about the queen almost as often as she thought about Alba.

  “She is kind to him. Kind to us all.” Dagmar’s countenance darkened. “We pray for her.”

  Ghost tipped her head to the side. What would it be like to be loved enough to be prayed over, to have a temple of keepers advocating with the gods in your behalf?

  “Why do you pray for her?” she asked, her voice curious but quiet.

  “She is heavy with child. She has not fared well in the past. Alba is her only living offspring. All the rest, all sons, have died in her womb. She’s lost two more babies since coming to live on the temple mount. She has spent time with Master Ivo, and we’ve drawn runes into her skin. She doesn’t want to lose another child.”

  “Then you must pray often,” she choked, and the keeper studied her, his gaze morose. “I would pray too, if I knew how,” she added.

  “Do you feel the sun on your shoulders?” Dagmar asked.

  Ghost wore a scarf over her head, the front deeply cowled to keep the sun from her face. She loved its warmth on her cheeks, but her skin blistered easily and never deepened in color to protect itself. Dagmar’s skin had grown brown through the warm season, though he spent less time out of doors than she. He should be pasty and pocked, like the moon, but he wasn’t. She’d seen some of the other keepers, but only a few. Many stayed inside the temple walls, guarded by the king’s forces on the ramparts and at the gates. The few she’d seen were almost as fair as she.

  “Of course I feel the sun,” she answered, lifting her eyes to his.

  “Do you feel the hum in the air?” Dagmar pressed.

  “Yes. I feel it.”

  “That’s God—Odin or Father Saylok or the Christ God. If he has a name, I’m not sure we know it. But I feel him . . . or her . . . like a presence at my back, guarding me and guiding me, and pushing me onward. It is easy for me to imagine God’s love. I have only to think about Bayr. About how deeply I love him, how much I would give to keep him from harm or pain, how my thoughts are never far from him, and how his happiness is my own.”

  Ghost understood that. If she understood nothing else, she understood that.

  “Mayhaps we each have our own god, like our own mother, someone who gave birth to our soul and watches over us until our soul returns,” she mused.

  “Mayhaps,” he said, gentle. “Did you know your mother?”

  “No. She must have . . . been afraid of me. I was found in the woods, wrapped in a blanket, left to die. But I didn’t. An old woman found me—she was almost blind and didn’t realize I looked as I do. She was lonely, and her children were all grown. I stayed with her until I was five. When she died, her son made me a servant in his house. I’ve been in many houses since then. These last years are the first time I’ve ever lived alone.”

  Compassion shone from his face, but the keeper did not dwell on her past.

  “I remember my mother. But only briefly. She died young,” he murmured.

  “Life is not kind to women,” Ghost sighed.

  “My sister said the same thing. But life is not especially kind to men either. Life is suffering, and we all suffer.”

  “Mayhaps God did not love your sister as much as his other children?” Ghost heard her bitterness and met his gaze with defiance.

  “Or mayhaps he loved her more and could not be without her.”

  “You see good where there is none,” Ghost whispered, moved.

  “Even amid the suffering, the good is not hard to find,” he said, his eyes soft on her colorless face.

  “Will life be kind to Alba?” Ghost knew her wistfulness caught him off guard, and she looked away. She always tried not to ask after the girl, but she sometimes couldn’t help herself. She thought the keeper took her interest as general, the interest anyone might have in a princess, in the only girl child, as so many in the village referred to her.

  “If Bayr has any say in the matter, life will not dare harm her.” Dagmar smiled. He rose and prepared to go. She was never ready for him to leave.

  “How do I pray, Keeper?” she called after him.

  “Just speak. Talk to the sky as though you talk to a friend.”

  Ghost frowned as she watched Dagmar lope away. Then she turned her eyes to the hills and the sheep, her thoughts heavy and her heart light. She would talk to her god the way she talked to Dagmar. After all, he was her only friend.

  The boy had grown considerably. He was only twelve but looked like a man. He was not yet as tall as Dagmar, but his hands and feet were huge, his shoulders broad. From a distance, Ghost thought it was the keeper, come to visit. Bayr moved like his uncle, his back straight and his stride fluid, but his hair was not shorn and his clothes were different—a tunic of gray and hose a few shades darker. Still, it was the child he carried on his shoulders that had Ghost clutching her chest and leaning heavily on the staff she carried when she tended the herd. Ghost knew the infant she had pushed from her body—she visited the infant in her memories every day—but in five years, Alba had changed so much she was unrecognizable. The baby had disappeared. She’d taken on a new form and become someone else.

  “We’ve . . . come . . . t-to . . . visit.” Bayr’s smile was open, his eyes full of light, and Ghost nodded, a jerking nod that must have made her look like an old woman having a fit. His duties at Alba’s side had kept him from visiting her all these long years.

  “Th-this is Alba,” he said carefully, pulling the girl from his shoulders and setting her on the ground. She was slight for a girl of five, but taller than Ghost had expected. Alba clung to Bayr’s hand and peered up at Ghost, her eyes as dark as her hair was light. The contrast was beautiful, and Ghost bowed so their faces were level and she could study her closer.

  “Hello, Alba,” she greeted the girl, finding her voice and steeling her heart. She would not weep and scare the children. She wanted them to come back.

  “And Dagmar? Is he coming too?” she asked, needing something to say, needing his steady presence.

  “No. The k-keepers are g-gathered in . . . s-supplication,” Bayr spit out, and flushed at the difficulty the word represented. “The queen . . . is l-laboring.”

  “Mother is having a baby,” Alba added, the words flowing from her mouth without hitch or hiccup. Clearly, spending time with the boy had not harmed her language skills.

  “N-n-no one will m-m-miss us,” Bayr murmured. “And the q-queen is suffering. Her pain is . . . our p-pain.”

  Ghost nodded once, understanding. Bayr did not want Alba to hear the queen’s cries. She turned to the sheep, wanting to distract Bayr and Alba from their worries, and introduced many of the woolly beasts by name, telling the little girl and her looming protector about their antics and their moods, their personalities and their peculiarities, even pointing out the colors in their coats.

  Alba liked the little lambs and made friends with them immediately, her hand outstretched, her voice soft.

  “All th-the animals l-l-love h-her,” Bayr said.

  Ghost nodded, overcome with quiet joy as she watched the child who moved among the sheep as though she’d spent her whole life tending herds. Ghost had given her something of herself after all. One hour stretched into two, but instead of leaving, Bayr called to Alba and announced they would have lessons in the sunshine.

  “Alb
a has lessons?” Ghost asked.

  The boy nodded and gripped two handfuls of grass. He yanked it from the ground, bringing dark, damp soil up with the roots. He removed several more clumps, clearing a circular space, and then he tamped it down with his feet. Alba mimicked him, stomping and tangling herself around his legs, and he swooped her out of the way with a practiced swing.

  “Let’s draw,” Alba cried, clapping.

  “She is v-very smart,” Bayr said. There was pride in his tone, and he glanced at Ghost with a glimmer of a smile. “Watch.” He took her staff and, using the end, created a shape in the soft dirt.

  Alba promptly named the figure, though Ghost wasn’t certain she was correct. Bayr nodded and stomped the letter into oblivion. Ghost tried to capture the image in her mind’s eye for later study. Bayr drew another shape, and Alba threw her hands in the air and shouted its name.

  Bayr held a finger to his lips, quieting her, and pointed at the sheep. The little girl seemed to understand, and her next responses were considerably more subdued.

  “Only five years old, and she knows more than I,” Ghost murmured, smiling. “You have taught her well.”

  He shook his head and tossed it toward the palace that loomed in the distance. “Q-queen,” he corrected. The queen had taught Alba to read.

  “The queen is as intelligent as she is beautiful,” Ghost whispered, and the knowledge made her glad, not envious.

  A melodious chanting soared like a bird on the breeze, and Alba ceased her skipping and turned toward it, bringing her palm to her ear.

  “Listen,” she demanded. “The keepers are singing!”

  The song was deep and resonant, mournful and mounting, and Ghost lifted her face to the sound. It was her favorite time of day, when the Keepers of Saylok sang their prayers. She missed it when she moved the herd too far away to hear. Increasingly, the song became heavy and the melody morose, a dirge instead of a delight. There was no praise in the tones, and the hair on Ghost’s neck began to stand. The sheep, sensing her fear, began to bleat and trot in circles.

  “W-we m-must go back,” Bayr stuttered, hoisting Alba over his head and settling her back on his shoulders. With a farewell tip of his head, he was running back to the walls, his hands gripping Alba’s ankles as she bounced above him, her pale hair floating out behind them like a stream of white light.

  Bayr ran through the Temple Hill gates, Alba clinging to his head, her arms circling his brow like a crown of flesh. She was accustomed to riding on his shoulders; it was how he kept her close when he needed his arms and legs free, and she liked seeing the world from above him. She’d been riding on his shoulders all her young life. She didn’t squeal in delight at his pace the way she usually did. She sensed the fear in the keepers’ song, just as he did, and her grip was so tight his scalp grew numb above her hold.

  The keepers were still in the sanctum, and the sound of their chanting rose from the rafters and spilled out of the bell tower like a death knell. The keepers were so loud, beseeching the gods with open throats. Or maybe it was Bayr’s fear, his dread, thrumming between his ears and echoing their pleading. The queen was in trouble.

  A voice yelled his name, but he ran through the gate, running toward uncertainty the way he’d run toward the bear in the woods, hoping that courage in the face of terror would send death fleeing.

  Inside the palace, the servants were huddled at the base of the stairs, their faces lifted as though they waited for news to descend. They scattered before him, clearing the way, startled by his presence.

  “Don’t go up there, boy,” a guard bellowed.

  “Leave the princess here, Bayr,” another voice begged, but he was sprinting up the wide stairway, his eyes fixed on the high window spilling light over the steps, his hands wrapped around Alba’s skinny legs, holding her steady on his shoulders. He couldn’t leave her behind, and he had to see the queen, had to reassure them both that all was well.

  “Wait ’til the king has gone,” the same guard bellowed, standing at the base of the stairs, but Bayr ignored him, and the guard didn’t climb the stairs to stop him.

  “Go!” he heard King Banruud roar from somewhere above him, and for a moment, Bayr faltered in his swift climb, thinking the king was speaking to him. Ice trickled from his head to his feet, and Alba’s hands tightened in his hair. Seconds later, a maid rushed down the stairs past him and then another, tears streaking down their cheeks. One turned back to grasp Bayr’s arm, urging him to retreat with them, but he twisted away from her and climbed the last few stairs to the wide foyer between Alba’s nursery and the queen’s chamber. The heavy wooden doors to the queen’s room stood ajar, and he could see Queen Alannah in the enormous bed that faced the door, her eyes closed, her hands resting on the bright blue coverlet that matched the color of her eyes.

  Relief filled his chest before he realized the queen was far too still, far too pale, and when Alba cried out for her she didn’t lift her face or smile in response. The king stood over her, his hair spilling around his shoulders as though he’d run his hands through the length so often his braid had come loose. He turned his head, meeting Bayr’s gaze through the open door, and his eyes flickered over Alba, perched on Bayr’s shoulders. It was not sorrow Bayr saw in the king’s face. Not loss. Not even shock or rage. It was frustration and cold calculation, as though the king were contemplating a battle from atop a hill, a battle he was losing. Bayr dared not take another step. He dared not open his mouth.

  Alba was braver than he.

  “Mama,” she called, her sweet voice demanding her mother wake and acknowledge her. She wiggled her legs and yanked at Bayr’s braid, demanding to be let down. Bayr took a step back, his hands tightening around her pummeling feet. He pulled her from his shoulders but kept her locked in his arms, her face pressed to his throat.

  “No, Alba,” he murmured. “No.”

  Banruud, his eyes still locked on Bayr and Alba, pulled the quilt from beneath the queen’s folded hands and draped it over her lovely face and her tumble of golden hair. The coverlet became a shroud.

  A wail rose and echoed like a howling wind, and for a moment, Bayr thought the sound emanated from Alba. But the girl grew still and the sound was all wrong. Bayr trembled, trying to place the source of the screaming, and the king turned, his eyes fixing on something—someone—Bayr could not see.

  “She is gone, woman. Cease,” the king snapped, but the wailing increased. “Her suffering is over,” Banruud ground out. Then Bayr saw Agnes, the midwife, the woman who never strayed far from Alannah’s side. She stumbled to the bedside and yanked the blanket from the queen, as though she couldn’t bear to see her covered. Agnes’s veil was gone, and gray strands fell about her face and stuck to her tear-soaked cheeks.

  She screamed again, her grief terrible to watch. She pulled at her hair and ripped at her gown, and when she looked at the king, her eyes were crazed.

  “You could not leave her alone,” she shrieked. “You could not keep your filthy, evil hands from our queen. And she is gone. You have killed her.”

  “Silence!” Banruud hissed.

  “Your belly is filled with snakes, your crown is paper, and your queen is dead. I was silent once. I will not be silent anymore!” Agnes raged. She lunged for the knife on the king’s belt as if she wished to run him through.

  Banruud, his eyes flashing and his teeth bared, pulled the dirk from the sheath at his waist. With a slash of the knife, he silenced the midwife’s accusations. The scarlet spilled down her chest, too thick for wine, too red for tears. Her head fell forward, her nose touching her heaving bosom, as though her blood, the color of roses, smelled just as sweet. Then her legs buckled and her body bowed, and she lay prostrate at the king’s feet.

  Banruud wiped his blade across his tunic before sheathing it with a grimace of distaste. Her blood stained his right hand.

  Bayr held Alba, his hand palming her head, keeping her eyes pressed to his chest. She thrashed and demanded release, beating him w
ith small fists and feet. His eyes met the king’s, horror clashing with spent rage, and Banruud’s jaw jutted forward as his brows lowered over his black eyes.

  “She forgot herself. Don’t make the same mistake, Temple Boy,” he warned.

  Bayr turned and staggered down the stairs, through the corridors and the halls and out into the gardens where he’d fallen in love with the queen. Where she’d sung and walked beside him. And he soothed her motherless child.

  12

  “There are still no daughters, King Banruud.” The statement was soft but it hissed like a snake through the assembled chieftains, and Banruud turned black eyes on his brother-in-law, the young Chieftain of Adyar, the only one who dared challenge him. They were all assembled in the king’s hall, Banruud at the head of a table so long twenty of his warriors could sit around it. The chieftains were seated on one side, the high Keepers of Saylok on the other. Dagmar of Dolphys had taken a seat among the high keepers when David, the old keeper from Dolphys, had passed away, and he sat as far away from Banruud as he could, his eyes on the scars in the burnished oak surface. Banruud knew that Dagmar despised him, yet he never said a word. Banruud wished Aidan would hold his damn tongue as well, but he never did.

  “My sister gave birth to a daughter five years ago, and yet the daughters of Saylok have not returned. Now she is dead,” Aidan continued. “There will be no more daughters from Alannah.” A wave of grief passed over his face and rippled through the assembly, and Banruud stifled a derisive snort. They all grieved for a queen who had not birthed a single, live child, thinking she was the mother of the princess. A dead slave girl was Alba’s mother. Alannah had done nothing for Saylok. Neither had the keepers.

  The queen’s death had prompted a council of the clans. Master Ivo had wanted them to meet in the sanctum, but Banruud had insisted on assembling in the palace instead. In the sanctum, Banruud was not lord. In the sanctum, it was Master Ivo who sat on the throne. Banruud had no intention of standing before Ivo like a lowly supplicant, even in council. Past kings had lowered themselves before the Keepers of Saylok, but Banruud would not. If he had his way, Saylok would blame them for the dearth of girl children, and the keepers would become a thing of the past.