The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  “Oh! I don’t—” Andrea began searching through the pockets in her skirt, shirt and jacket.

  “One of my mays has her cramps, and she’s too shy to ask thee, such a sheep’s-head she is. Oh good!”

  Andrea had produced, from her jacket, a paper of aspirins, and had torn two off. Isobel didn’t ask for any more. The Sterkarms, almost always tactful and well-mannered on their own ground, understood that the Elf-May would not want to give out her wee white pills by the handful. She was always quick to give them to anyone who asked while she had them.

  “Poor may will be grateful,” Isobel said. “And Entraya, will I make up a bed for Elf-Man?”

  “There’s no need, Isobel. Elf-Windsor will no stay for night.”

  That was plainly not what Isobel wanted to hear. She had obviously decided to make up a bed, to show that she had a spare bed and the linen to furnish it. She’d come to ask Andrea’s advice only as a ploy to stir up and involve as many in her plans as possible, from her husband, Toorkild, to the skivvies in the kitchen, and the very hens and goats in the yard.

  “I’d better make up a bed,” she said. “Then he can stay if he should choose. Or if something should happen. I’d die if I had no bed to offer him. I’ll put my mother’s wolfskin cover on it.” She looked at Andrea again and poked her in the arm. “Same one I shall spread on thy bed.”

  Sweet Milk grinned. Andrea affected to look coolly around the hall, pretending that she hadn’t even noticed he was amused, though she knew as well as he did that Isobel was referring to her and Per’s wedding bed. Isobel was looking forward to inviting many guests to the wedding feast, and bossing people about for weeks beforehand. Even more eagerly she was looking forward to the fun of being a mother-in-law and granny, because, of course, Per and Andrea would continue to live at the tower. It would have been cruel to spoil her anticipation by telling her none of it was going to happen. She wouldn’t have listened anyway.

  One of Andrea’s cool glances fell on Isobel’s hand where it rested on the boards. There on Isobel’s wrist was a watch, with an expandable bracelet. Twenty-first-century machine work, there was no mistaking it. On a sixteenth-century wrist.

  Before Andrea could ask where the watch had come from, Isobel had turned away and, calling to some of her women, hurried off. Probably to set scores of people hunting through the storehouses for the pieces of a particular bed, and then to set others to putting it together, and still others to finding out linen and blankets and sweet herbs to strew it, all in honor of “Elf-Windsor,” who would never see it.

  Andrea stood. “Dost know where Per be?” she asked Sweet Milk.

  “Which one?” It was the answer you invariably got if you were stupid enough to ask for someone by their name instead of their nickname. Even more stupidly, she said, “My Per.”

  Sweet Milk laughed. “Which be your Per? Dog’s-Breath? Wanton?”

  Answering “The May” would just have given him more material to work with. “Oh, never mind!” Leaving the shelter of the high table, she pushed her way through the crowd of people beyond, craning her neck to see over shoulders, or ducking to peer between bodies. It would be easy to miss Per in the crush and smoky half-dark.

  Isobel’s watch had to have come from the wrist of some twenty-first-century incomer—it didn’t take a lot of thought to work that out. She would have suspected the security guards of trading with the Sterkarms, except that it had been a woman’s watch. That suggested another, more immediate source. There were several women geologists and mapmakers among the researchers sent out from the Tube. They’ve robbed another survey team, Andrea thought. And they promised they wouldn’t!

  What made her feel worse was the suspicion that Per could, if he chose, give a very full account of how the watch had come to be on his mother’s wrist. She doubted if he would so choose, but she was interested to hear what he would say.

  Through the shifting gaps in the crowd she caught a glimpse of a big hound’s flank silhouetted against the fire and knew she’d found Per. The hound was Cuddy, and unless dragged away from him by force and locked up, she was always close by Per.

  The firelight became more brilliant and golden as Andrea pushed her way closer to the hearth. Showers of red sparks and black smuts flew from the crackling, spitting fire. Her heart beat faster, with odd little skips and jumps, because she was going to be with Per again, even though she’d been separated from him less than an hour. They were possibly going to quarrel, too, and that brought up the frightening prospect that they might fall out forever, and the pleasing one of making up.

  Oh, see you my tall love, with his cheeks like roses?

  Why will he break my heart, gathering him posies?

  The Sterkarms had taught her scores of songs. No matter what you wanted to say, the Sterkarms knew a song that said it.

  Oh, his hair it shines like gold,

  And his eyes like crystal stones—

  She reached the front of the crowd and had to raise her hand to shield her face from the full force of its heat and brilliance. The harsh reek of a gust of smoke almost choked her. From the smoke emerged the fireplace’s wide stone hood, with its carved and painted badge: a black shield displaying, in red, an upraised arm holding a dagger. The badge showed its full colors and then sank into darkness as the light of the fire washed over it and then faded. It was the family name in picture form—“Sterkarm” meant “strong arm.” Not being noble, the Sterkarms had no more right to the badge than they had to keep hunting hounds like Cuddy, but much they cared. Who was going to come into their country and tell them their rights?

  To the left of the fire was a settle—a bench with a tall back and sides and a top. A sort of box with a seat in it, designed to keep away the drafts that blew in at the hall door and through the narrow, unglazed windows. Cuddy now lay before the settle, at Per’s feet. Per was with his father. The Sterkarms, father and son, made—for Andrea—a rather startling picture that she paused to memorize for her notes.

  Despite being known as “Old Toorkild,” Per’s father wasn’t much more than forty. He was bothered by aching joints and rheumatic pains but was still a strong, active man, his hair and beard only just beginning to turn gray. He was darker than his wife and son, but the big, pretty, pale-blue eyes that looked out from his thickets of hair and beard were exactly like theirs. If his beard had ever been shaved, perhaps the likeness would have been stronger still, since Toorkild and Isobel were cousins.

  Toorkild sat nearest the fire, baking his aches and pains. Per was pressed so close against him that, to be comfortable, he’d slung one leg over his father’s lap. His head rested on Toorkild’s shoulder, his face turned up to watch Toorkild as he spoke. Toorkild looked down at him, and they gazed steadily into each other’s eyes. They were holding hands. Of all the people crowding around them to share the fire’s heat, only Andrea thought this at all odd.

  After all, Andrea thought, wrenching her prejudices out of their frame, what was odd about it? Everyone knew that Isobel and Toorkild doted on their only son. To raise a laugh at the tower, you only had to imitate Isobel by saying, “Where be Per? When will he be back? Has he had something to eat? Has he a cloak? Who be with him?” And, it was said, if you wanted the eyes out of Toorkild’s head, your only difficulty was in persuading Per to ask him for them.

  Nobody had told the Sterkarms that, when a child was six, they were “too big” to be kissed and cuddled anymore. The Sterkarms blithely went on kissing and cuddling their children even when they were forty-six—and older. Nobody had ever even hinted to Per that it was unmanly to hold his father’s hand or to kiss him, because no one at the tower thought it was. So Per went on doing it, as unself-consciously as when he’d been three. Toorkild didn’t have to struggle to show his affection for his son by coughing and shaking his hand at the full stretch of their arms. Andrea realized that she was really quite jealous. How long was it sinc
e she’d leaned her head on her father’s shoulder like that?

  “It be no for one year, or for two,” Toorkild was saying, wagging his finger. “Mind, when a man weds, he gives to his wife keeping of his home, of all he owns, his good name, even his life. And making of thy bairns. Now, wouldst give all that to a careless woman?”

  Per had never taken his eyes from his father’s. His head moved against Toorkild’s shoulder as he shook it slightly.

  “A woman o’ good family, who’s been well raised and who’ll breed true, that be what’s wanted. Tha want her strong and clever—”

  “Like Mammy,” Per said with a sigh, nodding.

  “Aye, aye, like tha mammy. I’m glad thee mind it! Dost think running household tha mammy does be easy? Honest and trustworthy, that be how tha want a wife. And when tha’s found her, and wed her, never forget what thee owe her, and never grudge her what be her due. Mays, women …” Toorkild waved his hand. “Tha’ll fancy this one, tha’ll fancy that one, they’ll come, they’ll go, but thy wife …” Toorkild tapped Per on the nose, making him smile and draw back his head. “Choose one like tha mammy. There be no man alive can say he’s got a better wife than me.” Toorkild patted Per’s cheek. “Look what a son she made me.”

  And there on Toorkild’s wrist, as he raised it to touch Per’s face, was a big wristwatch. Andrea forgot that Toorkild, it seemed, didn’t think her a suitable wife for his son, but only one of the mays—even though an Elf-May—who came and went. She stepped forward and said, “Master Toorkild—”

  “Entraya!” Toorkild said. “Me little Elf! Give me a kiss!” It was always hard to embarrass Toorkild.

  Per kicked his leg from his father’s lap and jumped up, as tall as Toorkild, if half his girth. In the bright red-gold light of the fire he looked extraordinarily handsome, so handsome that Andrea was almost ready to forget about the wristwatches—was the quarrel worth it?

  He wore a tight-fitting and rather showy jacket of green suede, the sleeves cut into ribbons to show the loose sleeves of the linen shirt he wore underneath. The front of the jacket was decorated with scarlet embroidery and large silver buttons. The Sumptuary Laws of England—if you considered the Sterkarms to be English—made it illegal for the likes of Per to wear such expensive buttons, but then, the jacket probably hadn’t been acquired legally either.

  On his legs Per wore close-fitting breeches and, instead of his usual long riding boots, buckled shoes and black woolen stockings pulled over his breeches and fastened above his knee with red garters. They made his legs look very long and helped Andrea understand why men in her own world had always been so keen on black stockings and garters. The firelight made his roughly cut mop of fair hair shine copper and gold, lit his eyes like silver and burnished the pretty face that gave him his nickname.

  He pressed close to her, embracing her and enveloping her in his blunt, musky smell, as undeniably intriguing as it was unpleasant. She pushed against his chest before he could kiss her, holding him off.

  “One eye’s blink!” she said. “Master Toorkild—may I ask, what be that on your wrist?”

  “Entraya, Sweeting, we be ‘thou’ to each other.” Toorkild came to stand at her other side, making her feel, as she stood between the two men, that she was at the bottom of a deep well. Stooping, Toorkild pressed his springy, prickly mass of beard against her face in a kiss. His smell, a mixture of sweat, sheep, horse, dog and the fur of his robe, was even thicker than Per’s. It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by them, but Andrea refused to be.

  “What be this on thy wrist?” Though speaking to Toorkild, she looked at Per.

  Per stared right back at her, smiling, amused but not even slightly abashed. As his father was stuck for an answer, he said, “I gave it Daddy.”

  “And one thy mammy’s wearing? Was that from thee an’ all?”

  He grinned, slipped his arm closer around her, and tried to kiss her again.

  “Per! They be Elf-Work! How didst come by ’em?”

  “I found ’em,” he said, so seriously, and opening his beautiful eyes wide in such a parody of innocence, that she knew he was both lying and laughing at her. “Beside a trail. Elven must have dropped ’em as they went by.” He smiled, plainly not caring whether she believed him or not.

  It made her angry, but at the same time she wanted to laugh. And he knew it. “Per! Wristwatches do no fall off like that.”

  “Maybe they put ’em there for me to find.” His smile reminded her that, when FUP had first come into the Sterkarms’ country, they had deliberately left out small gifts of forged gold coin, bolts of cloth and food, as a way of making friends. Prove me wrong! his smile said.

  “Per, tell me truth. Didst rob Elven?”

  “Nay!” he said, with a shocked indignation that again bordered on parody. “I should not rob Elven! They’ve been so good to us!”

  Andrea folded her arms and studied the two of them, the father and son, and she swung between belief and disbelief and half laughed. Was that remark about the goodness of the Elves ironical? Did the Sterkarms understand, and resent, why the Elves handed out their magical pills so grudgingly?

  She looked at Toorkild, who at once turned from her to kiss his son’s head. He ran his hand over Per’s hair, neck and shoulders with exactly the same air—though with more smugness—that he used when stroking his horses or cattle. Careful breeding, good feeding and good care had produced an animal of whose health, strength and beauty he had every reason to be proud. He turned to look at Andrea again, and she was faced with the almost identical pairs of eyes: Per’s daring her to disbelieve him, and Toorkild’s asking, Would such a good boy lie?

  She said, “Oh!” and turned her back on them.

  Per at once put his arms around her from behind and began rocking her and nuzzling her neck. “Ah, be kind, Sweet! Be not angry!”

  She felt herself becoming all giggly and gooey and fond—proof that all those silly songs she’d always despised had more than a grain of truth in them—and she was furious with herself for feeling ridiculously swoony and such a pushover. She tried to unclasp his hands, which were joined in front of her, but his grip was so strong, she hadn’t a hope. She said sharply, “Art lying to me?”

  He licked the tip of his tongue up her neck, making her shudder, and pulled her tight against him. “I lie about all but this.” His nose and his breath stirred her hair and the down on her skin, like a shock of static electricity. Kissing her ear, Per whispered, “Will I hunt tonight, if moon be bright? Will I shoot at bonny black hare?”

  Another song came to her mind:

  Higher on its wing it climbs,

  Sweeter sings a lark:

  And sweeter that a young man speaks,

  Falser is his heart.

  He’ll kiss thee and embrace thee,

  Until he has thee won:

  Then he’ll turn him round and leave thee,

  All for some other one.

  She turned to face him. “I don’t believe thee.” Then she put her arms around his neck and they kissed. He’s too beautiful for me, she thought, and he’s already got two children running around the tower yard, and FUP are going to sack me if they ever find out I’m fraternizing with the natives, and it’s all just—

  Come all you pretty young maids,

  A warning take from me,

  Never try to build your nests

  At top of a tall tree:

  For green leaves they will wither

  And branches all decay,

  And beauty of your young man

  It soon will fade away.

  But while it lasts, she thought, I’m so lucky.

  And later, sitting on the settle beside Isobel and Toorkild, with Per sitting on the floor beside her with his head leaning against her thigh, she still felt lucky. Per’s head was heavy and hot where it lay against her leg, but his hair
was cool, smooth and soft as she moved her fingers through it. She was doing what Isobel said every girl should do for her young man—searching his hair for lice, though she hoped that she wouldn’t find any. But this was sixteenth-century life! She had to learn to be less squeamish. Every now and again Per would tilt up his face, smiling, asking for a kiss, and she would bend down and oblige him. So lucky.

  And one of the tower women was telling a story. She was really listening to people making their own entertainment, in the days before television and radio. She wondered when she would find time to write down an account of it—Isobel didn’t like anyone wasting more candles than necessary, and Per hated her writing even more than her reading, because she was so much harder to distract from it—“Let me just finish this sentence.” He didn’t know what a sentence was …

  So she’d have to remember until she got a chance to write it down. Somebody had said, “How about a story?” and enough others had agreed for Isobel to be asked to tell one. But she’d said no, she had too much on her mind. Then, by general agreement, Yanet had been named, and pressed until she asked, “What story?”

  Several voices had called out the story they wanted, disagreeing and trying to shout each other down. Some had ignored the whole business and carried on their own talk as well as they could under the noise.

  The shouting had become a contest between those who wanted the story of Guthrun and those who didn’t. Per didn’t, and had stood, the better to make himself heard. Guthrun, in the story, was a woman whose lover had been murdered by her brothers, who then married her to another man, by whom she had two sons. To be revenged on her brothers, she murdered these children herself and had them casseroled and served to her husband. She laid the blame for this meal on her brothers, and rejoiced as they were executed by her husband. The twenty-first century had nothing to teach the Sterkarms about soap opera or melodrama.

  It was a well-known story, and the name “Guthrun” was, to the Sterkarms, a byword for a treacherous, faithless woman. Her great crime, to their way of thinking, was to betray her own blood. Her brothers had merely been doing their duty, saving their family honor by killing her lover, who was of little consequence. But she had, unthinkably, killed her own blood.