Homegoing (The Tall Ships of Saradena Book 1)

by Michelle Markey Butler

  I had to close my eyes against the surge of possibilities. Such a system would create a stable, continuing timeline, a way to track events consistently, making the recording of history more reliable. If I could find more about this defeat, I could use surviving records to determine when each king had reigned according to this external measure of time. I could reconstruct the history of Bruster. Our full history, in its proper order and place. Bruster could know its own story.

  It would be work. Profound work. A lifetime’s work. But worth the effort—

  Bitter truth returned, dry in the back of my throat. This was not my task. Could not be mine. Even if the Saradenian threat was resolved and the Three Lands survived. Even if I taught my students and we filled the Roth’s library with all the books we could borrow to copy. Even if I learned enough Gwyntl to ride throughout Elbany and collect unique stories and Elbish history. All of which were undertakings enough for more than one life span. But were I to finish them and be free to choose where next to turn my feet, it could not be to return to Bruster to work on its history. Bruster would not welcome my hand in anything.

  My gaze returned at last to the words, dutifully at first. But at last I succumbed to the lure of my birth tongue, which I never heard now in any voice but my own, and read in earnest, in pleasure—and in haste.

  ***

  Late in the evening I heard the door open. I looked up. I was in the midst of my second reading. The book was more intriguing, yet worrisome, the closer I studied it. The walls seemed strange, as if I had not seen them for years.

  Mistress Baynor stepped through the doorway, carrying a basket. “Hal told me you would be staying a bit longer. You must be hungry.”

  I blinked, trying to shift my mind to Valenian. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  She jerked her head towards the outer room. I stood, a bit stiffly, and followed her. She laid out the meal on Domon’s empty table. It smelled wonderful, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since that morning. Only that morning? It seemed strange, after spending the day steeped in the golden book.

  She nibbled a roll while I ate, a smile playing over her lips. Like all good cooks, she was pleased to see the food she’d prepared enjoyed.

  “Hal told me about the book he brought from Verdun,” she said. “What is in it?”

  “Nothing new, not in what it says,” I said. “It’s a copy of a book I read in Vere. The vita of Cynan Maccus.”

  “The Founder of Vere?”

  I sighed. “Was there anything Domon didn’t tell you?”

  She ignored the question. “What have you learned?”

  “Well...” I doubted she would be interested in the book’s intriguing dating system, nor was I enthusiastic about telling anyone not Brusterian about our humiliation of having been conquered, no matter how ancient and forgotten. What I had just found might be intriguing to her, but it wasn’t relevant to Saradena.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I’ll show you.” She followed me back to the second room. This time, she came close enough to see the manuscript. Her lips made a surprised circle.

  “Purple? How did they...?”

  “I don’t know. It’s old.”

  She stared. “Even I could tell that.”

  “No. Really old. I think the version I read in Vere...” I paused before voicing the suspicion that had been growing in my mind all afternoon, “is copied from this one. This is older than Vere’s.”

  Her hand crept forward to brush the parchment. “How could you possibly tell?”

  “There are minor differences between this text and the Vere version. Information that isn’t in the other. Then there’s the scribal errors. Or more precisely, lack of errors.” I took a deep breath, ready to explain, but she was nodding.

  “Of course. That makes sense. The more a book is copied, the more little mistakes would slip in.”

  “Just so,” I said, slightly miffed.

  Marking my place with a finger, she closed the book to admire the cover. “Oh! It’s even more beautiful than Hal described. And—Vere. The device of Vere.” Her fingertips touched it. “The book must have been made there. That makes sense. How did it end up in Valenna?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to shake off my annoyance at having her guess everything I’d meant to tell her. “Some of the older scholars told me the city was sacked once, long ago, and many manuscripts stolen. I’ve never seen written evidence of it. It might be true. It might not. Sometimes we remember rightly—”

  “Like the Cynric,” she said.

  “Yes.” I did not shudder but I felt the inside of my nose contract. The very name smelled of blood and cold, like when the bull is slaughtered for the midwinter feast. “Sometimes we don’t.”

  “Like Saradena,” she said.

  I touched the jeweled cover. “If we cherished books half as well as Philip does his horses, we would not have had to rely upon memory.”

  Her hand brushed mine. “They did. Our forebears. You’ll find the right one of theirs.” She eased the book open again. “This is gorgeous. But why did Hal think it would help with Saradena?”

  I leaned closer, perking up at a new chance to show her something she had not already caught herself. “There’s—”

  “I see it! Above the Brusterian writing. Is that...?”

  “Yes,” I said glumly. “Old Valenian.”

  “Hal thought you’d stand a better chance with the Old Valenian comparing it to Brusterian?”

  “Yes.” I heard the sulkiness in my voice.

  Her fingers stroked the parchment. “Purple. Amazing.” She swallowed. “I am content in the life I have. But...seeing this...I wish...” She paused. “Are all the books at Vere so fine?”

  “No,” I said shortly, uncomfortable with her heartfelt yearning when I was half-annoyed with her.

  “Domon found it.” Her voice was flat and heavy with the injustice. “At least his time at Vere was not entirely wasted.” She drew back her hand. “Will it prove an aid, or merely a beautiful distraction, I wonder?”

  The same worry had slithered in oily coils in my gut all day. “I don’t know.” My hands fisted. “I just started comparing the Old Valenian to Brusterian. But I see no answer to the problem I had before. The small words are not there.”

  Her brows angled. “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t find the Old Valenian versions of small but important words like ‘on,’ ‘of,’ and ‘at’. It’s as if they don’t exist. But they must. It’s impossible to determine how words relate to another without them.”

  “Yes, I can see that. They must be there.” She rubbed one thumb. I noticed a short, half-healed nick, as if the knife had slipped while she was slicing something “Or something must be.”

  My irritation returned. “If not words, what? Words are how we give form to our thoughts.”

  She shook her head. “See? The gesture conveyed my meaning, without words.”

  I waved a hand impatiently. “In speech, yes, our bodies can be part of the message. In books all we have are words.”

  “And the books in which they are written,” she persisted. “What about marks in the margin? Or above the word?”

  “No. Not there. I would have noticed.”

  “I don’t know.” She flung out a hand, her arm stretched full length. “But they must be there, in some guise. Look, when I put onions in soup, I can see them but I also know they are there because I can taste them. If I put salt in, I can’t see it, but I can taste it and know it is there. Perhaps,” she folded one hand over the other in a gesture that mimicked patience more than demonstrated it, “in Old Valenian, these words are salt rather than onions.”

  Annoyance flared, stoked by weeks of frustration, the seeming hope offered by the new book, my dread of failing. Again. “They’re not there. I looked. For days. For weeks. There’s a secret in this language I cannot get my hands around.” I closed the book. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. Go back to your pots.”

>   Her eyes widened, then narrowed, surprise and rage crackling from her. Without a word she rose.

  I heard the door shut. The cook’s—and she was just the cook—analysis was far too simplistic to be useful. I had combed Old Valenian. It was easy to insist the small words must be there. They weren’t. Had they been, I’d have found them long ago. Books and languages were not soup. Onions and salt, indeed!

  A snippet of Old Valenian flitted through my mind, like a bird startled from one thicket hastening towards another.

  Salt...in the soup, unseen, but tasted...

  Could that be it?

  I began pacing the room, unable to stay still. Could it?That? How?

  Chapter XXIX

  Evening stretched into night, night passed, but I had no thought for anything beyond the book. I turned its leaves with solicitous fingers as I read for the fourth, then fifth, times. I slowed my reading, taking in each word, each letter. Only my quickened breathing betrayed growing excitement.

  Just before dawn I finally looked up. There were no windows, of course, to tell the time. Since Mistress Baynor left, I’d marked its passage only when a candle guttered and I hurriedly replaced it. Now my body told me night had peeled away, leaving a raw new day.

  As I’d studied the book, mulling my improbable thought of the night before, conviction had budded. Hesitant, afraid to believe too soon, I’d read, and read again. But the branch had grown, green and straight, and did not break when I leaned on it. It was time for the next test. I rose, ignoring the cramp in my left leg from sitting so long. I wasn’t ready to try Davin’s vita, so I took down two other Old Valenian vitae I knew had modern copies.

  There I paused, wondering where to put the golden book while I consulted the other manuscripts. My fingers itched when I considered putting it out of sight, or even much beyond my immediate reach. But I didn’t want it close to enough to risk bumping with an elbow. I shuddered at a vision of the golden book falling, falling, falling and the stone floor waiting below. Nor did I want it in open view should anyone unexpected come to the library. This had never happened, but it could. It was worrisome enough that two of Philip’s men had seen it. Sooner or later, word would get back to him. But later was better.

  At last I moved the golden book to my left and back, beyond reach of a wayward elbow but away from the damp wall. I fetched two of the ugliest vitae and placed one beside the golden book, the second atop. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement; the air couldn’t flow freely around the book, but for the moment keeping it concealed and near at hand was most important.

  That problem solved, I settled back into my chair, turning my attention to the paired vitae. Moving one set aside I opened the other, the Old Valenian on the left and its modern copy on the right, and kept my attention on the Old Valenian.

  If I were correct, I’d be able to read it.

  Halfway through the first leaf, I thrust my hands into my hair, tugging more strands free from my unraveling braid, but my gaze stayed on the page.

  It worked!

  With considerable effort, maddeningly slowly, but reading nonetheless. My fingers tightened until I felt hair pulled loose not just from braid but scalp. It was too soon to be sure. Something might yet go wrong. But the book was speaking. Many years—probably hundreds of years—had passed since it was last read. Now its words trickled into my ear.

  In the mountains of Bruster we had a saying: sometimes the slowest-running spring is the sweetest.

  ***

  I had struggled through ten leaves when I heard the outer door open, dimly, as if from another land instead of another room. One corner of my mind recalled that with Domon gone, I need not fear him sneaking up on me. I doubted I could have looked up even if he’d still been in Peran. I was reading, reading and understanding, the Old Valenian vita. My mind was too full to be troubled by mundane worries such as whose knife might be gliding towards my back.

  “Doctora Bann?” someone said. “Have you been here all night? Are you well?”

  The words were faint, as the sound of the door had been. The voice was familiar but I could not place it, or focus enough to care that I couldn’t.

  “Doctora Bann?”

  I blinked again. Hal. But forming and speaking modern Valenian required more effort than I could spare. “Later,” I choked out.

  There was a pause. “I’ll come back this evening.”

  Only after he had gone did I realize I’d spoken in Brusterian.

  ***

  That evening, a light rapping on the door startled me from my work. Hal opened it a sliver. “Doctora Bann?” His voice was muffled, calling through the slight opening.

  “Come in.” My voice sounded odd, as if speaking aloud were ungainly.

  He stepped gingerly to the doorway of the second room. “Are you all right?”

  I forced my thoughts into the paths of modern Valenian. “Yes.” Exultation steeped my voice but I would never have been able to keep it out.

  His eyebrows flew up. “What has happened?”

  “I can read them.”

  His gaze slid, following the shelves of books, confusion in his face.

  “Not those.” I turned my eyes to shelf of Old Valenian books. “Them.”

  “Truly? How?”

  “I found them. At last.”

  His brows folded, like a hawk’s wings as it dives at an unsuspecting rabbit. “What? Domon found—”

  “Not the books. The little words.” Then I remembered he had left with Domon before I had found Martin’s Old Valenian vita and first attempted to read the older language. “Let me tell you what happened while you were gone.”

  He lifted his hands and I saw he carried a basket. “Would you like something to eat while you do?”

  I needed no further coaxing. We settled ourselves at the table in the outer room and were soon buttering bread. Between bites, I explained how I’d found Martin’s vita and the trouble I’d had with the small words.

  “So where were they?” he leaned towards me.

  “They’re not there.” I smiled at his blank look. “But the meaning they carry is, as it must be. I thought there were multiple spellings for words. There’s always variation, even within a single scribe’s work. But the meaning of the little words, showing the relationship among the other words, is there in the multiple spellings. Take the word for ‘sword’—”

  I brushed crumbs from my skirt and stood. “It’ll be easier to show you.”

  He followed me into the second room. I opened the Old Valenian vita I’d been reading, turning the leaves carefully until I found the one I wanted. “An account of a battle,” I said. He edged forward to see, so close my sleeve brushed his as I tapped the page. “‘sword’ is spelled eight different ways: swyrde, swyrdes, bronden, bronde, swurd, sweordas, brondes, and swurde.” I pointed to each as I spoke. “Obviously bronden, bronde, and brondes are related. The others are clearly a group as well. I’d supposed the varied spelling was scribal preference. More than usual, certainly, but I thought perhaps the ancients enjoyed this variety and encouraged it in their books.

  “But that’s not what’s here.” I felt tiredness slipping away as the thrill of discovery ran across my shoulders again. “The last one or two letters is a marker of the word’s role in the sentence.” I tapped swyrde once more. “This form, for instance, is used when a sword belonging to someone is meant. Other forms indicate other possibilities.”

  “Fascinating,” he breathed. “Well done.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.” My fingers stroked the soft vellum. “No language now spoken, at least none I know, varies its words according to their role.” I thought of Gwyntl, which I did not know and few did. What might it be like? Then another thought struck. What of the language of Saradena? How might it work? The handful of words we had learned gave no hint.

  After a moment I blinked and my gaze focused again on the manuscript beneath my hand. “This certainly explains why the older manuscripts became incomprehensib
le. Many words remained recognizable. But the key to understanding how the words relate to one another disappeared.” My gaze shifted upward as I thought. “I wonder why. Brusterian did not change so much.”

  He tsked. “King Philip will be disappointed.”

  I drew a sharp breath.

  “He may not get his war after all.” He released the smile he’d been holding in.

  I let out the air. “We’ll see. I still have to read Martin’s vita. It may contain something of use. Or it may not.” I yawned. “There’s a great deal of work to do—and real information to find—before Philip’s attack is in any danger.” But how exquisite it would be to present such evidence to him.

  “But not now.” His eyes glinted. “Even Vere-trained scholars must sleep.”

  I didn’t want to stop, but I knew he was right. I yawned again and turned to go. Then I wheeled back, gathered up the golden book from its concealment, and, hugging it to me, moved again towards the outer door.

  He walked with me. “Shall I come again tomorrow? In the evening, of course.”

  I nodded, weariness settling upon me too solidly to reply, and opened the door to my room. I slept, the first deep, restful sleep I’d had in weeks.

  ***

  After a respite the last two days, the heat returned the next morning but once I was at the table I didn’t feel it.

  I got out three pairs of vitae in ancient and modern versions, reading the first few leaves of the Old Valenian unaided, then comparing my understanding with the copy. When I was satisfied that I could really read Old Valenian, I returned to the golden book. Perhaps I was stalling, not ready to face the real test—Martin’s vita. I told myself I needed to understand Old Valenian better first, as a tongue that had been spoken and sung as well as written, in which commands had been given, battles fought, love declared. It had to become, for me, a living language again.

  Hours slid by. After frustrated and fearful weeks, productive reading was a relief and a reward. The time passed so swiftly that I was startled when a knock sounded on the outer door. It was surely too early for Hal.

  But it wasn’t. “Doctora Bann?” he called as he stepped through the doorway.