by Diane Duane
Mariarta turned back to her writing. Shortly her father lifted his head. “I’ve been silent a long while,” he said, “trying to hear whether anything you’ve been trying for your problems might bear on ours in Tschamut. I’ve heard nothing new. Now I have to ask: who might have some idea that hasn’t been tried?”
The men around the table glanced at one another, drank their wine, shook their heads and began the old discussion again. Mariarta sighed and wrote more or less what she had written at the last meeting. Churchmen, from bishops downward—useless. Councillors chuckled, and were angry, at her father’s tale of the false Bab Vintgegn: some looked approvingly at Mariarta.
Her father told the councilors his thought about moving the village. Heads were shaken. All saw the difficulty of it, and the way the landlord would see it—not kindly. No, no...there must be some other way...
“What, then?” Mariarta’s father said softly. “In God’s name, what?” The despair broke out naked in his voice.
“Since you ask,” said a quiet voice from by the fireplace. All heads turned at that but Mariarta’s—she suddenly had no desire to look. “There is an answer.”
“Who are you to be listening to our counsels?” Konrad Hunn said angrily.
“A traveler,” said the voice. “Two turns of the glass, I’ve been here, and no one said a word. You all saw me come, surely?”
No one wanted to admit they had not. “So then,” the stranger said, “I might know a thing or two. There are more books to read in than the priests’ mass-book, or the books of hunting and weapons and war.”
At that Mariarta’s heart clenched. She put down her quill, turned to look at the man. He leaned forward, now, so that the fire was no longer a barrier to seeing him. His hood was thrown back to show, under long dark hair, a face sharp-nosed and thin-mouthed, with small black bright eyes: in his lap lay a black-bound book. The stranger fingered the cup of wine that rested on the arm of the seat. He said, “This part of your talk at least is no secret—the story has gone all about the south these past three years. But it was written that some would now come here seeking a remedy to the curse. So I came as well, for I have one.”
“‘Written’ where?” said Konrad von Yberg.
The stranger stroked the cover of his book. “I won’t ask you for your secrets, master, if you won’t ask me for mine. But I can tell you what to do about the black Bull.”
“What are you going to charge me for this remedy?” Mariarta’s father said.
The stranger laughed. “You’re wise to ask, master mistral: ‘ill the advice that has no price,’ they say. Not too much.” He stroked the book. “Seven fills of this cup with red wine of the South, and seven gold solidi of the Pope, or other coin to the same value. My needs are small.”
Mariarta watched her father. “I will pay your price,” he said. “Theo, get the innkeeper to bring a skin of wine for the man.”
Theo called the innkeeper. When Amadeo was gone, Mariarta’s father found his moneypouch, counted the named sum out of it. “Odd,” he said, handing over the coins, “that you knew just what was in my purse except for what will pay for our way home.”
The stranger smiled and put the money away. Amadeo came with the wineskin, frowned at the stranger. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“So busy a man will doubtless not see me go out, either,” the stranger said. Amadeo left, muttering.
Silence fell for a while as the stranger drank, with relish. “The sun of Talia,” he said, lowering the cup at last: “it lies calmer in the cup than on the poor torn fields there, now that Urseren men and northerners from the Lakes march over the Bridge to the King’s and the Pope’s wars. Ah, well.” He drank again.
“The remedy,” Mariarta’s father said.
“Indeed, master mistral, to business.” The stranger opened his book. Mariarta swallowed, finding herself doing as the others did, leaning forward to see: but without volition—as if the book pulled them close to read them. The stranger glanced down the pages. The writing was none that Mariarta had ever seen, a strange writing half curls, half strangely-marked circles. “Your curse is not one easily undone by Church-magic. The power in water is old—it was there long before the poor frightened Church started taming water by blessing it—”
“Heresy,” Konrad Hunn whispered.
“More than likely,” the stranger said, paging through the book, “but orthodoxy has done the mistral’s town no good.” He smoothed a page toward the center of the book. “Here it is writ plain. Master mistral, you must search the valleys until you find a white bullcalf, born this spring. No other will do. You must take this calf home and rear it on milk only. One cow at first, then three cows it will need, then six, finally nine. It will grow great. You will be fortunate,” and the stranger smiled maliciously, “that it will not be interested in grass. —You must raise this calf until it is ready. Then you must lead it to the alp, when the black Bull is there. The white Bull will vanquish the black one, the curse will be broken, and the alp will be healed.”
Mariarta’s father swallowed. “It seems simple enough...”
“These things always do,” said the stranger. “But a moment. For it says here that a pure maiden dressed in white must lead the Bull up the hill to its battle. It will obey none other.”
Mariarta’s heart clenched.
“What will happen to the maiden?” Mariarta’s father whispered.
The stranger peered at the book. “The book does not say what will happen: only what must.” And he closed the book, smiled that malicious smile again. “It all depends on what you do.”
“I suppose,” Theo said, “that if this doesn’t work, we can meet you back here and demand the money back.”
The stranger laughed out loud. “Ah, master dil Cardinas, who doesn’t know your wit? If it does not, of course you might do that. —But it will work.” He smiled, sat back, drained his cup.
“If you can find the right bullcalf in time,” the man added. “And the right maiden.”
“Where is the bullcalf?” asked Konrad von Yberg.
The stranger laughed again. “Ah now, master, that needs another price, a much higher one.” He closed his book. “You must decide what to do now. For your sake and your people’s, mistral of Tschamut, I hope you choose rightly.”
The right maiden. Mariarta swallowed.
The wind gusted again, blowing the fire flat, blowing smoke out into the room so that fits of coughing broke out. Mariarta’s parchment and quill went flying. She bent to grope after them, then glanced around.
The chimney seat was empty.
Several of the councilors crossed themselves. “Never mind that,” Mariarta’s father said, “it’s striadura that this man spoke of: scolar or whatever he was, he seemed to know what he was talking about. I’m willing enough. Will all of you take word home? We’ll pay well when the creature’s found. But it had better be quick—everyone will be weaning their spring calves shortly.”
“Money will be needed for messengers, if speed is wanted,” Konrad Hunn said.
“I’ll provide that,” Mariarta’s father said, heavy-voiced. She knew why: the town’s ready cash was already low enough. “What you pay, I’ll reimburse you.”
Mariarta put the fallen pen aside, found another one, and started to write as the councilors turned gradually from the uncanny to the gratefully normal, from Brunnen’s trouble with the fish dying in its river, to the troubles of Zug by the lake, where two whole streets had fallen into the depths one night because of a man’s love affair with a mermaid. All the time she wrote, though, Mariarta could not get the stranger’s eyes out of her mind—and the feeling of someone else looking out of them.
***
The meetings went on for two days before they left Altdorf in company with Theo. Messengers had already gone out southward into the valleys reaching out to either side of the Reuss. The other councilors took the news home. On the day Mariarta, her father and Theo were to leave, a man in dusty clothes
and a long brown cloak awaited them in the courtyard of the inn. The Knight of Attinghausen handed Theo a bag of boar sausage, saying, “Don’t let me hear you jeering at my hunting any more! When you live on the Schweinburg, you do what you can to keep from being overrun by pigs!”
He turned to Mariarta’s father. “I am sending word to my people, east and west. There are some good cattle breeders in the Schachental; we’ll see what can be found.”
Mariarta’s father bowed deep. Mariarta curtseyed low. The Knight raised her, saying, “Good luck to you, maiden. Take care of your father.” He eyed the bow on her back. “And take care what you shoot at!”
They made their way up the valley and parted from Theo at Ursera, staying there only a night. Two days later they rode into Tschamut, and the whole town came to meet them in the street. Mariarta’s mother was there first; as her bab swung down to hold her, she wept and scolded them for not coming back sooner. The town council gathered around, and Mariarta’s mamli turned on them. “Fools, would you have the poor man faint from hunger on his own doorstep while you press him for news?! Were you raised in barns? Go away and come back later!”
It was an odd meeting that evening, half the village hanging about in the street to hear the news from the council, the councilors themselves intrigued and outraged by turns at everything that had happened, especially the buttatsch. About the stranger in the inn, and his remedy, they exchanged thoughtful looks. “It sounds like something out of an old story,” Paol said.
“It sounds like something that would work,” Flurin added.
Heads were shaken—a lot of calves had already been weaned, and white stock weren’t that common. But it had to be tried. Tschamuts people got used to the sight of messengers from south or east or west—though they also got used to the messengers’ news. No white bull calves...
A week after they came home, Mariarta’s father took to his bed. The hard-stretched hope that he had been holding on to during their trip now failed him, and his body showed it. He looked pale and thin, had no energy for walking, and the news, or lack of it, from the messengers depressed him—more so each time he paid one of them from Tschamut’s sinking store of coin.
It came time for a town meeting then. Her father called Mariarta to his bedroom, and said, “You know what I would say to them. You say it.” When the town council arrived at the house the day after Massday that week, it was Mariarta they found waiting for them, in the big carved chair behind her father’s worktable. Seeing her there, they laughed, but kindly, as they had when she was small and they called her misterlessa. Mariarta told them to go upstairs and have a word with her father. When they came down, they sat down around the table, looking chastened, and got on with it.
After that there was little trouble. Mariarta knew the town’s finances even better than her father did, and from watching the councilors in Uri these two years, she had gotten many a hint on how to bring even such stubborn countrymen’s minds around to compromise, if not agreement. She also had a weapon her father did not—for men don’t like to look cheap before a woman. Within a short time Mariarta had them vying to seem the most generous; shortly the village was good enough shape to last the winter. Spring... she thought uneasily, that will be another story. We’ll see...
Mariarta was standing outside the front door, the morning she thought this, and felt like laughing at herself. I’m beginning to sound like him. She glanced at her father’s window, still shuttered. In the old days, he would never have slept past dawn. And his legs had been losing their strength. Mamli is right: we may need to call in a barber from Mustér....
Hoofs sounded down the street. The wind muttered in Mariarta’s ear, a warning note. Mariarta brushed her apron off and walked out to see who it was. Any news would be welcome, for no messenger had come for a tenday—
Mariarta swore softly. The horseman turning the bend in the road by the pine trees was large and round, dressed fine in vest and linen; his horse panted under him.
Mariarta moved not another step. After a few moments Reiskeipf rode up, smiling on her with his acquisitive grin. “Duonna Mariarta,” he said, bowing in the saddle. “I hear you were in Ursera. My desolation to have missed you.”
Mariarta smiled. “A busy time,” she said, not bothering to give Reiskeipf name or title, “and soon to be busier.”
“Ah, your curse-remedy,” he said, puffing as he dismounted. “You are expecting news then?”
He knows we’ve had none. Foul man— “I expect it momentarily,” Mariarta said. Dreadful lie that it is, there will be penance for that later—
“I would have thought,” Reiskeipf said, leaning conspiratorially close, “that a woman with higher hopes of life would be busy devoting herself to taking herself out of such troubles, rather than staying in them.”
He smelled of sweat and unscoured laundry: even Urs would have scorned to smell so— “But there we mountain-bred differ from lowland folk, maybe,” Mariarta said. “The familiar trouble is better than the unfamiliar relief.”
“Ah, well,” Reiskeipf said, “perhaps not now. I have come just now from Swabia. I fear the noble Rudolf’s patience about your trouble is at an end. The house-tax in Tschamut must now be doubled to compensate for the lost grass-fee.”
“Which we have been paying anyway,” Mariarta said, losing her smile.
“True, all true,” Reiskeipf said. “I have talked to the noble Lord, but—” He shrugged. “It seems there’s nothing to be done.”
He eyed Mariarta sidelong. She saw in Reiskeipf’s eyes, one more time, what he thought could be done. Mariarta simply raised her eyebrows and gave him a cool look.
Put off his stride, Reiskeipf said, “It is a great shame. Your worthy father will be distressed, and he on his sickbed—”
Mariarta stepped toward Reiskeipf. “That would be a shame indeed, since the last man who distressed my father, I killed. One shot it took, right about here—”
Reiskeipf backed away from Mariarta and her pointing finger, his face flushed with fear and anger. Mariarta gave him no time to go into one of his blusters. “Beware your ambitions, master bailiff,” she said.
“My ambitions—!”
Mariarta smiled, and hearing the sound of hooves in the street, concealed her surprise and turned. Around the bend the rider came, a slender young man on a big dun horse. The man wore a tabard with a sow and four piglets, a crossbow at his shoulder, a sword at his side. He rode to Mariarta. “Maiden, I was told to seek the lady Mariarta Agnete dil Alicg in Tschamut—”
Mariarta bowed. “You have found her, young sir.”
“Then the Knight of Attinghausen greets you by me,” he said, “and sends to tell you the white bullcalf is found, in the Schachental. It was lateborn, almost at the end of the season, and is still on milk. The farmer keeps it for you, waiting your word.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Mariarta saw the shock on Reiskeipf’s face. The wind brought her his frightened thought. The Lord of Attinghausen-Schweinburg sends messages to her person! Can it be that she—
Mariarta smiled. “And you, young sir, have your father’s face. Which of the noble Knight’s sons are you?”
That young face broke into a great smile. “Arnulf I am. Ludwig and Johann are on their way south to Talia; I came with them, but will be returning north on my father’s business.”
“I hope you’ll stay the night and eat something,” Mariarta said. The young man started to say no, but she smiled at him. After a moment he said, “Well—”
“In with you, young sir,” Mariarta said. “A cup of wine first. But you have brought us the best news of the whole spring.” He swung off his horse, and Mariarta opened the front door that led to the inside stables, taking the horse’s headstall with one hand, the young man’s arm with the other. She had just time to glance at Reiskeipf. He bowed and took himself away in a hurry.
***
That night the whole village stood around in the street, trying to get a glimpse of the guest. Finall
y they all had to be invited in, one by one, to gaze at him and admire his sword. The Knight’s son of Attinghausen took it all well, munching his cheese and bread solemnly while his blade was passed from hand to hand. Though the vogten, the landlords, admitted that the uplanders needed bows and boar-spears to hunt with, and to protect them from wild beasts, swords were forbidden. So now the Tschamuts councilors passed the sword around, commenting on its balance and the temper of its steel, for all the world as if they had seen or touched one before. Mariarta saw the merriment behind Arnulf’s own gravity, and kept her smiles small.
When dinner itself was ready, Mariarta’s mother threw the council and everyone else out of the house, and served forth an astonishing loin of pork stewed with dried prunes, fragrant in a dark sauce. Where has she been hiding that? Mariarta thought. It seems she’s impressed with him. And so she might have been, for the Knight’s son was an easy, cheerful talker, full of tales of the places his father had taken him and his two brothers—Talia twice, now, once on the last Emperor’s Romagirada while Arnulf was quite young, and again this last time: but since Conrad sat arguing with the Pope to no purpose, the Knight and his sons, like many others, had gone home. “But Conrad and the Pope will now solve their differences in the field,” Arnulf said, “so my brothers have gone with some of our people to discharge our obligation to the King.”
The talk of strange places went on a good while, but finally the Knight’s son said he needed an early start, and offered to bed down in the hay. Mariarta and her mother and father were all shocked in unison: it was her mother’s and father’s bed he would have. When Arnulf downright refused, they compromised and gave him Mariarta’s. He protested that too, but Mariarta took him to the door, ostensibly to show him how well housed she would be for the one night. Out in the darkness of the hall, she took him by the elbow again. “Arnulf, I will ride with you in the morning. As far as the Schachental, at least.”