Firethorn

by Sarah Micklem

  I ground barley: another handful of grain, grit between the rough, shallow mortar and the round stone of the pestle. I thought of Az and that led me to Fleetfoot and how I’d seen less of him of late, having no need for a messenger. I had but one patient now, and her malady was beyond me.

  Sire Rodela ducked under the door flap. He looked down at me with that smile of his that was close kin to a sneer.

  I was amazed he’d come on his own shanks. I thought we might not see him again until he was carried from the priests’ tent headfirst on a bier. His cheeks were sallow under dark whiskers. His hair was thin on top of his pate and thick everywhere else; it had grown past his ears and nearly to his shoulders, and by the length of it I measured the time passed since Galan had shorn him. When he took off his cloak, I saw his bandaged forearm was near its right size again. He sat down in the accustomed spot on his pallet and stretched out his legs and propped his back against his saddle. He didn’t speak for a while and I went on grinding under his regard, my head low as I knelt before the mortar. He’d been in the priests’ tent a hand of days, half a tennight, and I’d grown used to his absence. Now that he was back I recalled too well the sullen weight of his presence, the affliction of his gaze.

  “I thought you’d be gone,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “Does Galan still have a use for you? You’ll do as a nursemaid, I suppose, for him and his new bedmate too, until she’s better. I saw her when she was brought in—it will be some while before she’s fit for a pricking again.”

  Yesterday, before Galan took me back into his bed, this taunt might have found its mark; today I was proof against it. I kept on grinding and said, “She can hear you, Sire.”

  “Ah, then it’s true she’s roused from her long faint. Shall I go beg her pardon?”

  “Leave her be, Sire. She has no strength to spare for visitors.”

  He’d spoken his gibes lazily, as if amused, showing his teeth in his beard. Now his voice grew harsh. “That’s not for you to say. Go and ask if she’ll receive me.”

  I never could tell what his fancy would fix on, and was relieved it had passed over me for the moment. I went behind the curtain. Sunup was plaiting green thread into Consort Vulpeja’s hair, many little plaits around the crown of her head. The concubine’s eyes were closed.

  “Does she sleep?” I whispered to Sunup. Sunup nodded yes just as the concubine opened her eyes and squinted at me.

  “Sire Rodela is here, Consort,” I said. “He begs leave to come and visit you.”

  “Who is Sire Rodela?” she asked.

  “Sire Galan’s armiger.” Likely they’d met before, but not so she’d remember his name.

  “No,” she said, frowning.

  I waited awhile, but no more was forthcoming. “You don’t wish to see him?”

  When she answered, her voice shook and began to rise in pitch. “Tell him he has no cause to ask such a thing. Does he think I’m some wanton who would see a man alone? Let him ask his master for leave when he gets home. Then I might receive him, in company with Sire Galan—or I might not, for he has put my modesty to the question. And if you were any better than a two-copper harlot yourself, you’d know better than to sully my ears with such a message!”

  This stung, for I was indeed too ignorant of the courtesies of the Blood; I suspected Sire Rodela had sent me in on purpose to collect just such a rebuke.

  I thought he’d mock me when I came out. Instead his brows came down and he roared, “Does she think I don’t know what her modesty is worth? I stood guard outside the privy tent while she bared her buttocks and bent over for a tupping, and now she pretends she’s a maid still? A curse on all her stiff-necked clan. Look at her father—how he covered his infamy with silver gilt. She’d do the same if she could. But it will not be enough to cozen me.”

  She shrieked from behind the curtain. “I’ll tell Sire Galan of your insolence. He’ll see to you. He’ll cut off your sacs and stop up your mouth with them!”

  He rose to his feet and went to stand just outside her chamber, jeering. “If she doesn’t learn—and soon—manners to befit her new station, if she goes on looking for insults behind every courtesy, she’ll get Galan killed dueling over an honor she’s already squandered. A concubine cannot be so mincing about every little thing. I merely wished to pay my respects, nothing more, and see how she rails at me!”

  “I know my place, but you don’t know yours,” she cried. “The bitch who whelped you must have got loose from the kennel to breed such a mongrel. Whoreson jack! Mudborn!

  I hid a smile behind my hands to hear her berate someone else for once, but when I looked to Sire Rodela’s face, I stopped smiling.

  “The concubine should know,” he said, speaking clearly, “that my Blood runs cleaner than hers, for I’ve never tainted it with a drop of dishonor.

  He waited for an answer with his hand gripping the curtain. It was well for her that she curbed her tongue at last, and made none, else I’m sure he’d have gone into her chamber without leave and what he might have done then I couldn’t guess. Instead he put on his sneer and turned away. “She has a sweet disposition, doesn’t she? Sire Galan must be pleased. Now he has two shrews in his tent, gnawing at his sacs, eating his grain. I wish him joy of the both of you.

  I went in to Consort Vulpeja and found her weeping into her bedclothes. The sight of me didn’t improve her temper. It was too much a reminder that she’d gambled away her place in her house and clan for a man who didn’t welcome her. I left her with Sunup, who lay down beside her on the cot and clasped her tightly. The concubine did not push her away; neither did she seem to take the comfort offered.

  I hoped that by the time I left her chamber, Sire Rodela would have gone to seek better company elsewhere. But there he was, sitting by his strongbox. He’d opened it to find his purse was empty, save for his coins and a few hairs from Sire Bizco’s scalp that had tangled in the laces. I stood dead still when he looked up at me, as afraid as if I’d just come upon a viper underfoot and didn’t know which way to step.

  He barked, “Where is it?”

  I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Burnt, Sire,” I said, and took a step sideways, toward the door.

  “Who did it? Was it you?”

  “It was done to save your life, Sire, to placate the armiger’s shade. He was giving you the fever.” We should never have done it. Spiller was right, we should have let him die.

  He got to his feet. “To save my life? It was maggots saved my life, nothing but maggots. Do you see this?” He pulled the bandage from his forearm and bared his wound. The blackened crust was gone, and in its place was the pink of a new scar growing between the lips of the cut. “The priests put blowflies to breed on me and left the worms to work. They’re very clever, the priests. And the maggots are clever too, to eat what’s dead and leave the rest.” He turned his hard laugh on himself. “Nibble and gnaw all night and all day. I could feel them from time to time, tickling.”

  I sidled toward the door but he saw me and was there in two strides.

  “Do you know what comforted me while I lay in the priests’ tent? It was the thought that Sire Bizco was miserable too, that he had time to count over and over those he had wronged and those who’d wronged him. That I’d be the chief amongst them all, a stone in his craw. That he was not quit of me yet nor I of him. So who was it robbed me of this? Was it my cousin, my fortunate cousin? Was it you who told Galan?”

  I opened my mouth and not a word came out. Even if I lied and claimed Galan had burnt the scrap of skin and I’d had nothing to do with it, Sire Rodela would find a way to blame me. It pleased him to blame me.

  He smiled to see me so afraid. “I warned you what would happen if you prattled to Sire Galan. Did you forget what I said I’d do? Let no man—nor woman, either—say I don’t keep my word.”

  He stepped back to his pallet, and when he stooped to pick up his dagger, I ran. Instead of trying for the door, I pushed aside the c
urtain and dashed through Consort Vulpeja’s chamber to the slit I’d cut in the tent wall the night of the dwale smoke. I’d never stitched it up again, leaving it open most days for light and air; today it was tied shut with laces against the cold wind. I cut the knot with my little knife. The hole was big enough for me and not for Sire Rodela. I clambered through headfirst, but he caught up to me before I was halfway out and dragged me back into the tent by my ankles. As I lay on the ground, he kicked me in the belly and I couldn’t breathe. He pulled me to my feet with his arm around my neck, squeezing my throat in the crook of his elbow, and he put the point of his dagger under my ribs. He was behind me and I couldn’t see his face. “Don’t fret,” he said in my ear, “I shan’t kill you.” I didn’t believe him. He hauled me across the chamber, and I saw Sunup sitting on the cot and I wanted to call to her to run for help, but neither sound nor breath could get past the grip around my windpipe. Consort Vulpeja stared.

  He took me to his pallet. The knife pricked through my dress. I went where he dragged me and didn’t have the strength to hinder him. He pushed me down facefirst and I lay there gasping, thinking if I could only fill my bellows, I could move, I could beg. I would have begged. But I had no chance, for he kicked me again in the side, under my ribs, and I choked out a scream and curled up, and as I did I saw his face. Only a skull could wear a wider grin.

  He was calling me a tattling bitch and a skinsheath and a mudhole and other things, but what he said didn’t matter. His rage was huge and famished. And what was I to this rage? Not even its cause. It needed no cause. But it had an appetite for my terror.

  Sire Rodela turned me over with his boot and lay on top of me—not as a man who wants to couple would lie, but backward, with his bent knee under my chin, jammed against my throat, and his heavy thigh across my rib cage. His green leggings were coarse and wrinkled and patched over one buttock. His boots were clotted with dried mud. My world had shrunk to this, to Sire Rodela, and I saw every minute particular with clarity.

  He pulled my skirt up to my waist and grasped some of the short coppery hairs at my crotch to pull the skin taut, and he laid the edge of his blade against me and began to saw. He meant to skin me, as he’d said he would. He meant to take my woman’s beard for a trophy. I heaved, I kicked, but he outweighed me and I couldn’t shift him off. He said, “Be still! You wouldn’t want the dagger to slip, would you?” And he pressed his knee harder against my windpipe.

  There was this mercy, that pain and fear became distant, along with my body. What was left of me calculated how I might stay alive one moment to the next. If he didn’t stab me, he’d choke me to death soon. I had no wind left and blood roared in my ears and there were black swarms like flies crawling over my eyes. I discovered my left arm was pinned under him but my right was free, and I found my knife in that hand; I’d used it to cut my way out of the tent. Now I stabbed where I could reach him, leg and haunch and flank.

  His body might have been ironwood, for all I could carve it. He was cursing and telling me if I’d only lie still, it would be sooner done.

  Then I did lie still. I relinquished possession of my limbs. I had but one thought, a coward’s thought, the hope that he would leave me alive when he was done.

  And I could do nothing else, because he choked the breath out of me and blackness brimmed over.

  When I came to myself, I was on Galan’s pallet. Sunup had a cloth pressed to my wound. It hurt to breathe; the air scraped down my windpipe with a sound like an armorer’s file across steel.

  Sunup had run for help and fetched the Crux’s cook. He had come with the great bone cleaver, because he was cutting up a sheep’s carcass when she found him, but he never had cause to use it. She said that when they came in Sire Rodela was still lying backward across me. Cook called his name from the doorway and he got up with a deliberate carelessness and straightened his jerkin and put his dagger in his sheath and something else into his pouch, and with his foot pushed the skirt down over my thighs. It was soon wet with blood. He was bleeding too, from many little holes—five, the priests counted when they tended to him—but both Sunup and Cook marked that his leather prickguard was still laced tight.

  Now Cook was sitting cross-legged beside me with the cleaver resting across his thighs. It lay there as if he’d forgotten it, but I felt safer in the company of both cleaver and Cook anyway. Cook had the same grizzle to his beard as his master, the Crux, and the same lines graved beside his mouth, the same set to his jaw; they were as like as brothers born on opposite sides of the bedsheet. He ruled his kitchenboys with scorn and a hammer fist and a pinch of praise for the sauce, and in that he also resembled his master.

  I tried to ask him if Sire Rodela was there, and discovered it hurt even more to talk than to breathe. The sound I made was not much like speech.

  He understood enough to answer, “Gone. I doubt he’ll be back.

  I sat up and my arms trembled under my weight and my eyes swam with dark motes and tears. After a moment I pushed away Sunup’s hand to see what Sire Rodela had done. A rabbit’s skin is loose and comes off clean, and underneath the body is whole and neat, the muscles bound with tendon. I was not skinned so tidily. There was a raw stripe in the thicket of wiry hair at my groin, a red and white furrow about the length of my thumb. The flesh wasn’t thick there and he’d gouged down to the girdle bone. There was a puncture in my thigh; perhaps the knife had slipped after all. I didn’t even feel the holes he’d pricked in my back, not till later. I took the rag from Sunup and pressed on the wound. The bleeding was already stanched, except for a trickle. I must have been insensible for a long while. I wished I still was, for the pain of the cut clamored at me now.

  Dread came again and I was shaking. I thought how Sire Rodela would have crushed my windpipe if he’d leaned just a little harder.

  I would make him rue that he’d left me alive.

  Sire Galan came home after dark and went straight to his tent without greeting anyone on the way. When I showed him what his armiger had done, fury turned him white-faced. The first thing he asked was whether Sire Rodela had taken me, whether he’d pricked me. I said, “Only with his knife,” in a voice so rough he flinched at the sound. He demanded to know why I hadn’t sent for him at once. I began to weep, saying I had no idea where he was—did he think we could find one ant in a wheat field? Then he chastised Noggin for leaving the women alone in the tent, even though I was the one who’d sent him on an errand. He struck him with a gauntlet and shouted while Noggin begged for mercy with his arms over his head and Spiller and Rowney and horsemaster Flykiller stood by without a word.

  At that moment Consort Vulpeja began to laugh. It chilled us all, I think, to hear her laughing alone in her dark chamber. Sunup ran in to see to her and after a while she subsided.

  Galan looked stunned; the fury had ebbed and left him aground. He dropped his gauntlets and tugged off his helmet and cap and wiped his face with his hands.

  He squatted next to me and asked, “Do you know where he went?”

  I shook my head. My throat was closed tight, between the swelling and the crying.

  “Why did he do this? Because you refused to lie with him?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Why then? Tell me why.”

  The words had to be forced out, one by one, against the pain of speaking. “He came back. Opened his strongbox, his pouch. Gone.” I looked to Spiller for help but he shied away from my eyes.

  “He thought you’d robbed him?”

  “Not coin,” I said. I stopped to wheeze, helpless for a time to do more.

  It was Rowney who stepped forward to finish the tale. But before he could finish it, he had to start at the beginning, when Sire Rodela had killed Sire Bizco. Galan did not show so much as a flicker of surprise at this. He’d given us all a beating for hiding Sire Rodela’s wound without once asking how his armiger had come by it; no doubt he’d guessed the next day, when the body was found.

  Rowney seemed to find
the words slow in coming and, once they were said, very bald, a poor disguise for shirking our duty toward our master. Galan fixed him with a stare and bid him spur on his laggard tongue. He listened in pitiless silence as Rowney told how Sire Rodela had threatened us with harm if we told Sire Galan, or anyone else, and how he’d waved a piece of Sire Bizco’s scalp like a banner. “Though I wasn’t there when he came home,” Rowney added, “I couldn’t help but see he was wounded. So he threatened me too.” Here the skin tightened around Galan’s eyes at the reminder: he’d not seen it, after all, though it was plain to see.

  Galan said to me, “Were you so afraid of him?”

  I looked down. He hadn’t asked before why I had failed him, but the question had lain between us. Fear was only part of the answer. I couldn’t explain the rest to him, for shame of it. I couldn’t say that in this I had been more his drudge than his woman. When Galan and I had quarreled, the night Sire Rodela was wounded, then I was his woman. By morning I was his drudge and nothing more, the distance to him impassable for days and days—had he forgotten so soon?

  Drudges keep many secrets from their masters.

  Now he was angry with me, with my silence. “You should have brought this trouble to me. Did you think I couldn’t guard you from my own armiger?”

  I gestured, refusing the question, for the answer was right before him. I saw him wince, as if he’d heard his own words too late. “But if you’d told me,” he said, “if I’d had forewarning…”

  Spiller spoke up then, and under Galan’s eye he stuttered and stammered, saying it was not only that Sire Rodela had frightened us—after all, it was his way, we were used to it: one day he’d offer to fry us, the next roast us on a spit—but we’d all thought the wound was just a scratch, it would heal quickly, and there’d be no need to tell about such a little thing. No need to worry Sire Galan about it. But Sire Rodela had caught the fever and still he’d refused the carnifex and we’d thought the dead man was at fault for his worsening. “And so we burned it—the scalp—and we were just about to tell you about it, Sire, when you came in that day and gave us a whipping.”