Homegoing (The Tall Ships of Saradena Book 1)

by Michelle Markey Butler

  “Vele.” I replied without thinking, a rapid burst of further speech following.

  His brows shot up. I blinked, astonished, the flood of words slowing as I heard them. They were not Valenian. Nor Brusterian.

  “What...?” He stopped. “Was that...?”

  “Old Valenian,” I breathed after a moment, and with effort. Modern Valenian felt strange on my tongue, as it hadn’t since I was a child, first learning the language of the mainland. My mind brimmed with the concise beauty of the ancient language. The descendant Valenian seemed scattered and wordy by comparison.

  “That was wondrous.” He bowed, his head nearly level with his knees. “I stand before a true scholar.” He paused. “What did you say?”

  I replayed the words in my head to find out. “‘Welcome, friend. The books are speaking. They have secrets to share. Would you like to learn to hear them?’,” I said, unable to keep the pleasure from my voice. His approbation was, of course, an agreeable change from public and widespread humiliation, but more savory still was the celerity with which the language had built a nest in my mind, a friendly bird settling to brood and hatch its young.

  I had learned Valenian with relative ease, but like all Brusterian nobility I had been tutored in it since childhood. A language acquired when grown was different. Finding I had a dexterity for it was a thrill almost as electric as discovering the marked endings. “I wish I knew how the ancient words sounded,” I said, rubbing at an elbow numbed from leaning on the table. “There’s no way to recover that. Books speak silently.” I cocked my head. “No, wait. If there’s verse...if it uses rhyme or alliteration...”

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  I glared at him.

  “Your pardon,” he gasped, laughter still filling his voice. “The notion is sound.” He shook a hand, as if urging himself back to seriousness. “Indeed, it shows what I said: you are a true scholar. But...” He paused, choosing his words. “Do we need to know how the language sounded, to learn what it can tell about Saradena?”

  “I want to know. Because no one does.”

  “You do realize,” he said, leaning forward and bouncing lightly on his toes, almost like he was preparing to flee if I reacted badly to what he meant to say, “that if nothing had been lost of what the ancients knew, you could not ken it all? It was the knowledge of many, gathered over generations, more than any pair of eyes could read, or one mind could compass.”

  I sat rigid for a long moment, then sighed. “Yes. But I want to.”

  He leaned back on his heels. “Scholars long to fill their minds the way most of us ache to fill our bellies.”

  I objected to the category in which he’d placed himself, but decided arguing would sound like soliciting praise, which he’d already lavished. “Are you ready to begin? Learn to read Old Valenian?”

  “Certainly,” he said. “But would you like supper first?” His eyes crinkled. “Even book-fed scholars need real food some time.”

  ***

  We did not talk of the ancient books as we ate. They had waited long years. They would wait a few moments more.

  “Where have you been placed?” I dug my spoon into the flaky crust of a pork pie.

  “The Fields.” His own spoon was already busy. “I think Mistress Baynor had a hand there. She asked me to be alert for wary looks or suspicious glances.”

  I nodded, my thoughts skittering away from the cook. “What do you do there? Besides watch Oliver’s back?”

  “The first day, cleaning the stables. Then they found the horses liked me and I was given brushing and saddling to do. Today I brought horses to and from the palace for the king’s household, and helped exercise others.”

  “You like horses?”

  He raised one shoulder, jostling a drop of gravy from his spoon. “Who doesn’t?”

  I’d met many who didn’t, among them the fancy ladies of Ferrant, but it was as inexplicable to me as it apparently was to him. Among Francis’ petty cruelties had been denying me a regular mount. But I’d not forgotten the black mare that had been mine in Bruster, unimaginatively named Midnight, with butter-smooth gaits and silky mane, unusual in a mountain horse.

  He chewed a bit of bread. “My lord Philip asked about your work today.”

  My thoughts were clouded with memory and work. “Who?”

  “The king.” His voice was amused. “Of Ragonne.”

  “Oh. What did he want?”

  He wiped his knife. “To know how much longer you’ll be staying.”

  I scowled. “He wants nothing to imperil his war.”

  “‘Only a fool seeks war when peace is possible, but only a fool seeks peace when war is inevitable.’”

  “That’s nicely put.” I scraped up the last of the superb pork pie.

  “The one who taught me to read instructed me in other areas as well.”

  Which reminded me of how much I would have liked to know more about that. My teaching had made liberal use of maxims as well. But I didn’t ask. It wasn’t my place, I was already itching to get back to the Old Valenian books, and I suspected Hal would not answer. Wiping my own knife, I returned it to the sheath. “Ready to learn a language no one has spoken or understood for years—centuries, maybe?”

  “Except you.” He slid his knife home. “I would be honored.”

  Chapter XXX

  It was still night but not by much when Hal departed. I leaned back in my chair, hands clasped behind my head. I’d be tired soon, I knew, but right now exhilaration suppressed exhaustion.

  He had learned quickly, proving deft beyond my expectations, sparking a hope I’d only dreamed of before. Between us, perhaps we could read all the Old Valenian books. Not just Martin’s vita. All.

  It had to be fast. I wanted to get the golden book away from Philip. But my gut said the Old Valenian books were our best chance of finding information about Saradena. I could not depart in good conscience, leaving them unread, if it was in my power to do otherwise. We would read them, and go.

  Both of us. I stretched my legs, toes curling in my boots, waking muscles that had gone numb. Another realization I’d arrived at during the night was that Hal was too useful to my search to leave in Ragonne. I didn’t yet know how I would persuade Philip to part with him, but when I left, I was taking Hal with me.

  ***

  I returned later than I’d intended, having slept three hours past first light. My bag hung at my side, my left hand resting on it protectively. I’d decided that carrying the golden book with me everywhere was the simplest way to keep it safe from Philip, but concealing it was prudent. I’d dumped my belongings onto the floor, wrapped the book in my spare shift, and tucked it carefully into the bag. I set the bag on the table, beyond elbow reach, and fetched Martin’s vita.

  Martin’s vita.

  Time to find out if I had learned enough to sift meaning from an Old Valenian book for which I had no copy, and from which meaning was most needed.

  My fingers hovered over the cover. I closed my eyes, reaching for Old Valenian, wanting to bathe my mind in it, to think in the lost language.

  A sudden burst of Brusterian shot through my thoughts instead. Sabidur gerva eng protege. I blinked, wondering why the charge of Vere, the words that curved beneath the crest, had flashed into my mind. Preserve and protect knowledge.

  Then I understood. Vere had taught me reluctantly, refused to keep me, and been relieved to be rid of me. Nonetheless it had taught me. Patterns learned there had etched themselves into the workings of my soul. Preserve and protect knowledge. That was, of course, the work of my life. How strange to recognize it, on the cusp of opening this critical codex. After baring my teeth at Vere for so long, denying kinship with the scholars because they denied me, I was, in essence, one of their number. A scholar. As Hal had said. But now I believed it as well.

  I breathed in, deeply and slowly, and opened the cover, turning leaves until I found a legible page. The first half dozen were too damaged by moist and mold.
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  I couldn’t read it.

  Panic tightened my throat. After all this time, all I’d done...

  I couldn’t read it. I stared at the page, disbelief wrestling dismay for dominance.

  The moment passed. Words resolved themselves from the muddle of script. It was simply coming to a manuscript for the first time, exacerbated by the Old Valenian and the sloppiness of the script, one of the worst I’d seen in the Ragoni library, quite unlike the tidy hand that had copied the vitae into modern Valenian.

  I began parsing sentences in earnest. After several minutes I glanced up, feeling a smile spreading. I could read it. Not easily, as I would Brusterian or modern Valenian, or even one of the other, more neatly written, Old Valenian books. I read laboriously, like a novicio. But it was Martin’s vita, and I was reading it. My skin shivered as I unraveled tangles of script and language, and wove sense from the straightened threads.

  ***

  After several hours, meaning came more easily. Rivulets of thought in Old Valenian trickled through my mind, as they had the day before. I worked through about a tenth of the vita before Hal arrived. As before, he brought a basket.

  “Where would you like me to begin?” he asked as we ate.

  “You know enough to begin muscling through one of the other Old Valenian books. Which one...?” I shrugged, scooping one hand to catch the crumbs dislodged by the movement from the bread I held in the other. “It probably doesn’t matter.”

  After piling the dishes back into the basket we headed into the second room. “There’s only one book I have reason to believe might contain information about Saradena.” I swirled a presentation gesture over Martin’s vita. “Just pick another.” I tapped the open leaf. “I’d recommend one with a clearer hand.”

  He leaned over. “That looks like someone inked a spider and let it crawl on the parchment.” He frowned at the snarled script. “May I ask if you’ve found anything yet?”

  I felt the tug of the book but resisted. For the moment. “Nothing about Saradena. The first leaves are too damaged to make out anything but a few isolated words. It picks up in his childhood, during which he exhibited unusual wits and courage. When he was twelve he saved a younger cousin from drowning.”

  “How does he go from hero to disgrace?”

  “And what’s his connection to Saradena? Why does Domon’s song call him ‘the Holy Founder’?” I realized the sound of my fingers rapping the tabletop dominated the room. I tried to still them and succeeded in drumming more softly. “I don’t know. Yet.”

  He turned away to select a volume, and I let the book draw me in.

  ***

  Someone touched my arm. I started.

  It was Hal, I realized in the next heartbeat, and he’d said my name twice already. I shook my head. I was picking through a wickedly difficult passage, the sentences long and complex, filled with words I’d not seen before. Terms for weapons and armor, I suspected, given the context, but that seemed strange. I was familiar with many such words, in both Brusterian and Valenian, and these were unlike the nomenclature of battle in either language. Had I misunderstood the passage? Or could weapons have changed so much—

  “Doctora Bann?”

  I put both hands over the leaf, forcing my gaze up.

  “It’s very late. I’m sorry, but I need to go. I have to be at the stables at dawn.”

  “What?” I blinked as he came into focus. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”

  He closed a codex gently and returned it to the shelf.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Not to the purpose. But the book was interesting. It—” A gigantic yawn stopped him.

  I quelled the answering one that rose within me. My own weariness clung like the clay-infused mud of Ferrant. My boots had never been free of it, for five endless years. “Tomorrow.”

  He picked up the dinner basket on his way to the door. “No one will be there now but I’ll return this to the kitchen.” He stopped, his hand on the latch. “Mistress Baynor sends her regards. She hopes you are well, and that you have not visited the kitchen in recent days because of the demands of your work rather than that you have wearied of their company.”

  “Of course,” I said, my thoughts shying away from Mistress Baynor like fingers pulling back from a bruise.

  He did not yet open the door. “Are you well?”

  His face held nothing but kindness, so I bit back my first, snappish response. Why was he asking? What had Mistress Baynor told him? It was possible I didn’t look particularly well. When had I last combed and braided my hair? I couldn’t remember. Not to mention how I might smell, with my spare smock swaddling the golden book. “I’m fine.”

  ***

  I went to bed soon after, and slept quickly but not restfully. For the first time I dreamt of what would come if I failed. Rothbury falling by fire and sword, the Roth overcome, Lady Elsbeth taken. Or more likely, killed at his side; she was a staunch warrior herself. Mistress Baynor, trapped in her kitchen as flames took the palais.

  Still weary, I returned to the library the next morning. It was early but it felt as if it were already afternoon. The air was heavy, so thick I could taste the stale wetness. It had to rain soon, or the walls would drip outright.

  ***

  That evening Hal brought a pear tart in addition to our supper basket. “From Mistress Ruth,” he said, setting it on the table.

  The basket produced a bean and kidney pie, a small loaf, and butter. I broke off a piece of bread. It was wheat, white and soft, still warm, melting the butter as I pulled a thin layer over the slice. Hal spooned pasty into two bowls and handed me one. It’d been a long time since breakfast, apparently, for both of us. A bowl of lentil stew had been left for me at noon-tide but I hadn’t noticed until I joined Hal and found it cold and congealed on the outer table. We did not speak until we turned to the pear tart.

  “The Horsemaster and his wife send their greetings.” Hal’s spoon dug into the tart. “They hope your search is going well and they are grateful you allow me to help during my free hours. The Horsemaster says also he is sorry he cannot send me during the day but he does not desire to attract the attention, or incur the anger, of the king.”

  “Of course. Please tell Oliver I understand, and give my thanks to Ruth for the tart.” I took a bite. “Oh! That’s exquisite. If Ruth and Mistress Baynor are to judge from, Ragoni cookery must be the envy of the world. Including Saradena.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so,” Hal smiled. He pulled a parchment roll from his belt-pouch. “Mistress Baynor asked me to give this to you.”

  I stiffened at her name, then recognized Orlo’s seal, which merely changed the source of my anxiety. Hal, wisely, said nothing as he handed me the letter, his face blank as the best tutored prince’s. I tucked it into my belt pouch. Hal’s attention turned to his bowl as if a map to Saradena were inscribed on the bottom.

  ***

  I waited to open the letter until Hal had gone.

  You asked me not to write again. If that is what you truly wish, ask it again and I will cease. But I beg leave to be heard. Do you not wonder why I wanted to offer for you, and why I renew the offer now?

  I set the parchment down, cursing both Orlo’s foolhardiness at continuing to write and mine in answering. But my annoyance was halfhearted. If in truth I wanted him to cease, I could simply not respond, or I could request once more that he leave off. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to make that request twice. Which must mean I didn’t want him to cease. More fool I than he, then. Had I learned nothing from Francis?

  And yet more the fool, for I took a clean piece of parchment, sharpened my quill, and wrote:

  I confess the question has been in my thoughts.

  ***

  The next day was perhaps the hottest since I’d arrived. My shift clung to my back like a second skin, and reading Martin’s vita was like trying to sort seed from sand. And something in the library had begun to stink. When Hal arrived, his presence, usually
agreeable, was an irritant. Every scrape as he turned a leaf, every sound as he shifted in his chair, grated my sensibility. I was shamefully grateful when he left.

  But I did not forget to send my letter for Orlo with him.

  Chapter XXXI

  My mastery of Old Valenian grew. But I read more than half of Martin’s vita and found nothing about Saradena. Worry as much as heat made the sweat drip between my shoulder blades.

  So far it had been a standard vita. I’d read about Martin’s life as young man. His efforts on behalf of his brother the king, Ragonne being beset with border skirmishes with Avice and the occasional raid from Logan. His willingness to work for his brother despite having to leave Kolon governed by his brother’s nephew Halden in his absence.

  The vita’s tone was judicious, praising Martin’s victories but emphasizing that his deeds were in the king’s service, that Martin was to be remembered only for his connection to the king. The writer commented that it was just as well Halden had experience governing Kolon since after Martin’s disgrace, Halden, the son of the sister of Davin’s queen, was chosen by the king to rule Kolon.

  All of which was moderately interesting but told me nothing about Saradena.

  ***

  All the next day my anxiety continued to deepen. I was only a few dozen leaves from the end of the vita. Nothing about Saradena. Not even an indication of the cause of Martin’s disgrace.

  I heard the outer door open, and realized with a guilty start that I’d been staring at the same page for long minutes, seeing nothing. Wasting time, of which I had too little. But I didn’t push my attention back to the words. I welcomed Hal’s arrival and the interruption it provided. Maybe I’d be able to think more clearly after supper.

  ***

  “How’s Martin’s vita coming along?” Hal pitted a cherry neatly with his belt knife.

  I cut a sliver of cheese and wrapped bread around it. “How about your reading?”

  “Ah. That well?” His wrist twisted and another pit dropped. “Yesterday I began the vita of a King Grindor.”