Tale of Elske

by Jan Vermeer

  Then Elske asked, “The Adeliers, the young men especially, what did they say to you, and what did you answer?”

  “It was nothing. There was nothing said.”

  “There were words spoken,” Elske argued patiently. “I was watching.”

  Beriel told her, “They praised my beauty, as if I wished to hear my beauty praised, as if there were nothing but her beauty a woman might wish to speak of. Such words are nothing.”

  “And you responded . . .?”

  “Oh, I asked, If they thought beauty a thing of substance, If they thought men also had beauty, If they believed that beauty of face predicted beauty of character.” Beriel smiled then, as she had not during the Assembly, with pleasure and mischief.

  “And they said?” Elske smiled, also.

  “They praised my skin, or my hands. My eyes,” Beriel added, and then her smile faded. “I, too, was watching. I saw you in conversation with two Adels. This was after the tall Var brought you out among us, and gave you a silver cup. I saw everything,” Beriel said, as if she was not pleased to have seen this.

  Elske answered with her own mischief, “They might well praise your eyes.”

  “Yes,” Beriel agreed impatiently. “But they might better speak of more germane matters, of their own lands, for example, and how they guard against droughts, famines, fierce winters. If my eyes are blue tonight, they were blue yesterday and it is an old story.”

  Beriel did not command, so Elske volunteered, “Var Jerrol, the tall Var—”

  “He has a snake’s eyes.”

  “He returns this to you, my Lady.”

  When Elske put the purse into Beriel’s hands, her mistress breathed out a long, soft breath. Unaware or unconscious of Elske, she opened the neck of the purse to slide out onto her palm a thick, golden disk, emblazoned with a wide-winged bird.

  Beriel folded her two hands around the disk and brought it up to her heart. She closed her eyes. When she opened them, and looked at Elske, they were as bright and blue as if it were midday in summer, and the sun flecked the dancing sea with gold.

  After a time, Beriel returned the disk to its purse. Then Elske told her mistress, “I asked about the chains, and mentioned the coins.”

  Beriel waved a hand in front of her face, as if waving away a cloud of gnats, to show how little the coins and chains mattered. “He is the eyes and ears of the Council,” Beriel said. “What was it he wanted to know from you?”

  “He asked if I knew the location of your Kingdom. He asked if you have the black powder there, or know of it.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Why should I not tell him what I know?”

  This was the same answer Elske had given to Var Jerrol, but Beriel heard it crossly, although, like him, she made no response. After a while, she asked Elske if Var Jerrol knew of her child that was to be born, and Elske answered, “I believe he does.”

  “Will I be punished? Can you guess his mind? Will he betray my secret to shame me?”

  “I told him all would be well and he seemed satisfied,” Elske reported. “The door will no longer be locked,” she said, seeking to give her mistress some good news.

  Beriel rose, then, and went to the window, and looked out. She stood there, with her back to Elske, as if listening to the snow falling; and when she spoke again her voice was low with anger. “I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help. All I ask from you is to be served as befits my station. Am I making myself clear?” she asked, in deliberate, slow Norther.

  “No, my Lady,” Elske protested, which displeased Beriel further.

  “I don’t know why I must put up with such a maidservant,” Beriel remarked to the falling snow. “It must be that there are only stupid servants among the Wolfers.”

  “The Volkaric have no servants,” Elske reminded her mistress, not hiding her own displeasure.

  “Leave me now,” Beriel said.

  THEY HAD TO GO TOGETHER to the next evening’s entertainment, a dance given by one of the Vars at his villa on Logisle. Before leaving her chambers, Beriel ordered Elske to remain that evening among the servants, and reminded her of the impropriety of any servant responding as an equal to any Adelier. “How these Vars of Trastad behave is up to them, but my maidservant must act as I would, and I do not engage servants in idle talk, as if we were equals.”

  “But you have no equal, even among the Adeliers,” Elske said.

  “I won’t be flattered!” Beriel cried, openly angry now.

  “It’s not flattery but truth,” Elske argued. “It was what all saw at the Assembly.”

  For the first time since the previous evening, Beriel looked at Elske with interest. She asked, “What is it that all saw?”

  “A Queen,” Elske said, “who must stand apart from all others. You might talk with servants, as you do with me—when it suits you—and remain a royal Queen. You might dine at your ease with the Emperor, because you are a Queen.”

  “Yet you don’t fear me.”

  “Why should I fear you?” Elske asked. “Is it my fear that makes you Queen?”

  And Beriel laughed then, but still she maintained, “As my maidservant, you must behave as would the highest servants in the greatest of palaces. Remember your place,” she instructed Elske, and Elske agreed to do so. “And do not speak openly to your Var Jerrol,” Beriel instructed, but Elske answered, “I like to know his purposes for you, my Lady,” and Beriel agreed that she, too, would prefer knowledge to ignorance. “But if you would not discredit me, you must remember your place,” she warned Elske.

  Elske’s place that evening was back against the wall that ran the length of a ballroom. She stood with the other servants while the Adeliers danced, in lines and circles, to the music of lutes. Hanging cloths covered the darkness beyond the long, frosty windows. Chandeliers dangled over the dancers, their many candles giving a warm light; candles also burned in their holders in the wall and in many-branched silver candelabra on tables. The polished wood floor gleamed, two large fires burned warmly, and the servants of the villa set out silver goblets of mulled wine and silver trays of sweet pastries for the refreshment of the Adeliers.

  Elske spoke to those who stood near her, and watched the Adeliers turn in answer to the music’s turns. Beriel never lacked for partners. Adels who joked with other Adelinnes became dignified for Beriel, stood straighter and performed the steps of the dance with more studied grace. Beriel looked about her and was looked at by those about her, unless what her partner said caught her attention; and then she looked into his face so closely that he stepped back, as if in alarm, although he was flushed, too, with the honor of her attention.

  A message passed down the line of servants summoned Elske out to the villa’s broad entry hall. There, Var Jerrol greeted her. “May we be well met,” he said, and handed her a purse lighter than that which he’d brought the previous day. “And what more can you tell me of this Kingdom tonight?”

  “Nothing,” Elske said. “How should I tell you of the Kingdom, where I’ve never been?”

  “You told her I inquired.” He did not ask this but still waited for her answer.

  “Of course.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “She was angry.”

  Satisfied, Var Jerrol sent her back.

  As Elske watched, Beriel moved through the measures of the dance, her hand held by her partner as she crossed places with him in the line. She did not dance like a girl with her shame bellied out in front of her. She danced in her pride like a boat under sail, straight-backed and stately.

  A manservant moved along until he pushed between Elske and the maidservant standing next to her. He spoke softly into Elske’s ear. “Which is your Adelinne?” he asked, and added, “That’s mine.” He pointed to a young man with dark, curly hair and bright brown eyes. “Var Jerrol,” the manservant said, his voice like a breeze as it crossed her ear, “watches my Adel as he does your Adelinne. Mine he watches because of his father’s armies, whic
h have won him rule over five great cities in the south.”

  “The father is a King?” Elske asked. The Adel’s face was delicately boned and he danced as if music came from within him to join the flowing sounds of the lutes.

  “To be a King, a man must have royal blood in his veins, which is why the son comes to our Courting Winter. The father looks for a royal bride, that the son’s sons may be royal, as their warrior grandfather can never be.”

  “Did not those five cities defend themselves?” Elske wondered.

  “No army can win without the black powder,” the man whispered into her ear. “No city can build walls thick enough to withstand that weapon.”

  “Where does the father get black powder?” Elske wondered.

  “I wouldn’t want to speak aloud my thoughts about that,” the manservant answered. “But our Trastader merchants—Vars and Councillors, the banking houses, aye, and the shipbuilders, too—they’re as eager as a man with a new wife. Lively as crickets. Your mistress is much improved since the last Courting Winter. Is it you who have taught her manners?”

  Elske laughed then, and shook her head. She knew nothing of manners and, even if she did, she didn’t imagine Beriel could be taught.

  “What use has Var Jerrol for her?” the manservant asked. “What does he use you for?”

  Elske shook her head again. Ignorance, she decided, was the wisest gown to dress herself in, when this fellow questioned her. She wondered what his uses for her were, and then wondered if he was in Var Jerrol’s employ. That last thought she chose not to reveal.

  “Unless it is your face,” he suggested, looking at her with a smile that hinted at some private understanding, and promised that she would enjoy it were he to share it with her. “With your eyes the color of a wolf’s pelt. Do you know, it is not only the Adeliers who are betrothed at the end of a Courting Winter. And I might marry you myself, Var Jerrol permitting.”

  Elske laughed, as if this was all a mischief. And it was a mischief, or at least misprision, if he thought he would gain something by having her for wife. “I do not choose to marry,” she answered him. “Not you, nor any other man.”

  “You will,” he promised her.

  Perhaps she would, but first must come the business of the babe. When that was accomplished, then everything might change, but until that was finished, Elske—like Beriel—could only wait.

  Chapter 11

  ELSKE THOUGHT THAT SHE HAD guarded against every danger the child presented, but Beriel had a more cunning and suspecting mind. One evening, she called Elske into the bedchamber and gave her servant the dagger. “I can’t do this, so you must,” she said, and held out her left hand, palm upwards. “Take the dagger and make a cut, here—where the blood flows freely. Along the soft pads of my fingers, Elske.”

  Elske took the weapon, willing to obey, but she first asked, “Why, my Lady?”

  Beriel lifted a soft cloth from beside her. “Do you know nothing of how servants gossip? If I never once have my woman’s bleedings, do you think they won’t notice, those washerwomen? And haven’t you sent in your bloody cloths, and haven’t they been washed and folded and returned to you?”

  So Elske held Beriel’s hand firm in hers and sliced deep across the fingertips, ignoring her mistress’s quick hissing intake of breath. Then she took up a cloth, to catch the bright blood. They both watched red drops soak into the white cloth.

  Beriel voiced their opinion. “It’s not enough, it’s not—”

  Elske agreed. “If we were to mix it with some wine?”

  “Or snow, we can get snow by the window, and melt—?” Beriel suggested.

  In the end they did both. Elske sent to the kitchen for a second goblet of wine, and Beriel set her first goblet on the stove to melt the snow she’d filled it with. Also, Beriel cut across the tips of Elske’s fingers, and they gained more blood that way, and shared the same pain, and took the same comfort from thrusting their fingertips into the snow. And in the end the results were satisfactory. Melted snow thinned out the liquorish smell of the wine and blood brightened the color of the stain.

  “Now we have a few more weeks,” Beriel announced, satisfied.

  “And there will be blood in plenty at the birth,” Elske promised. But that did not cheer her mistress.

  “It has been too long,” Beriel spoke in a low voice, “since I knew how things are for my land. I remember this from the last Courting Winter, how I am imprisoned in ignorance. Northgate gives generously from the storerooms when his people need, and Arborford, too, cares for his, but there are royal lands that can be gripped hard by winter, and my father is too sick and greedy to remember how the people starve, and die of cold on their holdings.”

  “These Trastaders know how to prepare against winter’s siege,” Elske observed, but Beriel was lost in her own thoughts and memories: “The people of the Kingdom fear the royal house, and fear not our strengths but our weaknesses. But they do not fear me. They long to have me for their Queen,” Beriel said, proud and sure. “If I claim my rightful place.”

  “And your brother?”

  “Guerric is like my father, greedy, and his appetites will not learn patience. His advisors use him for their own gains—”

  “These are they who raped you?”

  “No, those were—”

  Beriel ceased speaking, studied her hands where they were clasped together now to halt their bleeding. “I will not think of that,” Beriel said. “When the time comes for my revenges, then I will think of those cousins. And that brother. Leave me now,” she ordered.

  Elske withdrew to the antechamber. There, she added the bloodied cloths to the accumulated shifts and nightdresses left for washing, and considered her own plans.

  At the next Assembly, Elske left the hall while the Adeliers, the overseeing Vars, and all the servants watched the antics of little dolls on strings, who moved and spoke like people, quarreling, fighting, playing tricks upon one another, and stealing one another’s prizes and women. She took her cloak and slipped out into the marketplace, where snowflakes floated down through the windless air.

  She hurried down towards the docks and Var Kenric’s storehouse, where she hoped to find Taddus, or at least leave word that she had need to meet with him. As it happened, Taddus was there that afternoon, walking about the shadowy warehouse with a long book in his hands as he counted up stacked bolts of cloth and recorded their number. He was surprised to see her. “Alone?” he asked, welcoming, but she answered him without pleasantries. “Is Idelle with child?” She could spare no time for niceties.

  “No,” Taddus said. “I’ve a barren wife. Barren, and grief-filled. If I’d known—”

  Elske interrupted him. “If I were to bring you a babe?”

  “Who has done this to you?” Taddus asked, and Elske shook her head, impatient.

  “If I were to bring a babe, a newborn, would Idelle take it? Would you accept such a child, if I could give you my word that the blood in its veins was as good as yours?”

  Now Taddus hesitated. This Elske gave time, however little time she had to spare here. Behind her, in the shop-front, people moved about and sometimes spoke, buying and selling.

  “Yes,” Taddus decided.

  “Idelle will need to prepare for a babe, as if she approached its birthing,” Elske told him. “It must seem to be your own child you raise. You will want a cow, for milk, or a goat.”

  “Not a wet nurse?”

  “The fewer who suspect, the safer is your secret. If I can, I will bring the babe to you before the end of winter. I have heard,” Elske told him now, “how a barren woman’s womb may open up with the joy of a child to raise, not her own but as good as her own. I have seen her womb now welcoming to the man’s seed where before it was stony ground.”

  That hope eased the last of Taddus’s doubts. “My house will be ready,” he told Elske. He asked, “And when—?”

  “I can’t be certain,” she said. “I think between the next full moon and
the moon after. I must return now, before I’m missed.”

  “Alone?” he asked again.

  “I am safe, alone. For the brief distance, safe enough.”

  Elske had already decided to go out in man’s clothing, when she went out alone, if she went out alone again, even in daylight. She would make herself a set of trousers, and that would be all the disguise she would need under her winter cloak, a shirt and trousers. She could tie back her hair, as many men did. Nobody would notice a solitary cloaked boy on the winter streets. But what if the child were wailing at the time?

  How could she keep the child from wailing, when she carried it out of the villa on Logisle and across the bridge to Var Kenric’s house on Harboring?

  If it were night, Elske thought, there would be none to hear a wailing child, muffled as the cries would be beneath her cloak, against her breast. These winter days were mostly night, and that was in her favor. But if there were danger of discovery, then she must strangle or smother it. Lest Beriel be betrayed.

  All of this went through her mind in a flash as brief as sunlight on water, as she wished Taddus farewell and he thanked her, and she returned to the Council Hall and the assembled Adeliers, and to her mistress’s service.

  DAY FOLLOWED DAY, EACH DAY growing longer in such small steps that it was impossible to be sure that there was any difference between them. Like them, Beriel’s belly grew imperceptibly.

  Beriel was impatient for the birth to be completed. Once the child was gone, done with, and the afterbirth burned away in the stove, “then I can think of my return,” she said. “If I live.” Anger burned in Beriel more brightly, and shone out of her eyes, too, the closer the babe came to its birth. The Adels stood back from her anger, asking her, “Why so imperious, Lady?” And their menservants sought out Elske to ask, “Little lovely, can’t you sweeten your mistress’s disposition?”

  Neither Beriel nor Elske cared to answer such questions.