Yorath the Wolf

by Wilder, Cherry;

  The day was divided into periods of hectic shouting, steaming activity and times when everyone lay about exhausted, waiting to prepare the next meal for the family. There were frightful accidents: burns, scalds, knife wounds. The servants had one regular meal in the evening, the rest of the time they ate on the run, snatching bites and sups from the ends and crusts and leftovers on a certain table. I spent most of the time hiding in the shadows until the cook shouted for “That boy . . . the sweeper . . . where’s he?” if she needed an extra hand.

  At supper I sat at the foot of the trestle table on a pickle barrel. The warmest places at the hearth and in the chimney corner were taken for sleeping purposes by the maid, poor creature, who had a built in bed in a sort of cupboard, and two scullions who slept on a long settle before the hearth. The cook had a room near the locked pantry; the manservant and the nurserymaid slept above stairs. I was glad to have a choice of warm sleeping places: under a table, among the meal sacks, or best of all, on bread days, I had a place in an outer room, between the woodpile and the warm plaster wall of the baker’s oven.

  On some special day the servants dressed in their best to receive the swordmaker and his family. The cook and the little maid perceived at last that I was filthy and neglected. I was given a bath in the laundry copper, for the washerwoman had been in, and my clothes were put to rights.

  Bülarn and his goodwife appeared; gifts were exchanged, glasses of spirit were drunk. The two girl children came in with Arn, all fancily dressed. I hardly recognised my old companion from Nightwood and the marsh. I recalled Forbian’s notion that Bülarn wished, perhaps, to adopt Arn and make him his heir. Yet Arn himself did not seem to have changed very much; he found me out in my shadow and gave me a box of sweetmeats. We laughed and elbowed each other as we always did. Suddenly Bülarn called me out into the light. He had had many glasses of schnapps that day, and when, for the first time, he tried to fix his attention on me he could not focus perfectly.

  “You there, boy,” he said, “you’re speaking with my nephew, Arn.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You know him,” he said. “Do we know you?”

  “I came out of Nightwood with Arn,” I said. “My name is Yorath Nilson.”

  “Out of Nightwood,” he said. “Do you work? Do you work in my yard? We give no charity here!”

  “My guardian is the Healer of Nightwood,” I said. “Roke gave you his letter when we came here, Master Bülarn . . .”

  “Master Bülarn . . .” he said, mimicking my speech. “A letter was it? And what should we do with a letter?”

  “My guardian asked you to take me in,” I said. “He put a gold piece under the seal of the letter for my keep.”

  Bülarn goggled at me. His drunkenness vanished away in one belch.

  “Under the seal!” he said.

  He gave a curse, shouted for the family and bustled them out of the kitchen. Everyone stood in silence, and into the silence came the sound of cupboards being ransacked, boxes thrown aside. Bülarn was in his counting-house looking for that unopened letter. Suddenly all the servants burst out laughing; they wheezed and shrieked and roared. The cook’s eyes streamed with tears, the stiff serving man clapped me on the back and gave me a glass of hot punch.

  I learned a fact of life: servants do not love their masters. I had made a fool of the swordmaker, and for that they loved me. I asked the cook, later, how Bülarn could be a master swordmaker in Krail and not know how to read.

  “No trouble,” she said. “He can count and reckon pretty well, be sure of that. He has a hired scribe who comes in.”

  “I could have read the letter for him,” I said in all innocence.

  “To tell the truth, Yorath, so could I,” said Mistress Trok, her raisin-brown eyes beaming shrewdly, “but he wouldn’t thank us for the offer.”

  To give Bülarn his due, he tried to make up for his neglect a little. I was given a second settle before the kitchen fire and permitted to go with Arn to see the New Year bonfires lit. A horde of beggars danced about the square below the citadel allowing themselves to be touched or even kissed to ward off ill-fortune in the coming year. I spoke with Forbian Flink, and we exchanged gifts. I gave him my small knife to sharpen his pens, and he gave me a small leather pouch stamped with a wolf’s head.

  “Come back,” he said. “Go to the Plantation, Valko’s longhouse, and train for the guard. Over the fence the Sword Lilies grow . . .”

  He was gone, with an appalling wink.

  When the spring came, I kept my eye open. The moment Roke’s wagon trundled into the yard I was aboard, with my bundle.

  “As bad as that?” he asked.

  II

  I went back thankfully to Nightwood and the marsh. Arn stayed at the swordmakers for almost another half year and continued to make visits there. I was reunited with Hagnild and Caco; I continued to live and more especially to grow, in Nightwood. Hagnild provided diversions and training for me. I learned to ride on the retired chargers kept by the tinker woman; I was taught the rudiments of sword play by Finn and Roke.

  Hagnild was still putting off the evil day. He knew that I must one day go out into the world. He tried to make up for my lack of experience of any places outside the forest and the marsh with travellers’ tales, with book-learning. He taught me a good deal of recent history of the continent of Hylor and of the ruling houses of its lands. I became familiar with the Vauguens, the ruling house of Lien; the Firn and the Zor who ruled the Chameln lands; and the Menvirs of Athron. I already knew the Duarings of Mel’Nir and their life in the Palace Fortress. With the aid of his scrying stones, Hagnild and I looked together into its somber halls, bright bowers and lofty chambers. I saw the Great King upon his throne, I saw Prince Gol and his second wife, the Princess Artetha, from the distant Southland. I saw the Princess Merse and her husband, Kirris Hanran, Kirris the Lynx, and the Princess Fadola, married to Baudril Sholt, the vizier of the kingdom, whom Hagnild found intolerably stupid. Sholt the Dolt was his kindest name for the man.

  Then, unexpectedly, in my fifteenth year, the great world came to us. One summer’s night as I came in late from hunting I saw the mare, Selmis, tethered in the clearing; I ran the last hundred yards and bent down to enter the house. Hagnild, contained and pale as ever in his plain dark robe, sat reading in his favorite chair. The beloved room sprang up before me in the warm light of a forest summer. It was rough hewn and comfortable, the round table groaning with books and scrolls. Caco began to dish up game stew: venison and wild boar with boiled greens and dumplings. Hagnild raised his eyes from his book and stared at me so keenly that I wondered what it was he saw.

  “We will have company,” he said softly.

  “Someone coming here? To this house?”

  I saw that he was moved in his own way and that Caco was full of excitement, her black eyes twinkling.

  “My brother,” said Hagnild. “My brother Jalmar has had a falling out with Kelen, the Markgraf of Lien.”

  “He is coming to Nightwood?”

  “He is sending his two sons to me. My nephews Pinga and Raff Raiz.”

  “Two boys!” I said. “But that is fine . . .”

  “Psst!” he said. “Remember what I have told you. Raff must be about nineteen years old; his mother, Caria Masur was a lady of Balufir. Poor Pinga, the elder, is a greddle . . .”

  “What is the cause of that?” I asked. “Why is he dwarfish?”

  “The changes in the body I cannot understand,” said Hagnild, “but I was about to say that this dwarfishness is hereditary.”

  He leaned over and plucked leaves from my shoulders as I sat on the sheepskin rug before the hearth.

  “It is hereditary in the family of Jalmar’s first young wife, who was a Cather of Nesbath.”

  “Two boys from Lien!” burst out Caco. “Oh bless the Goddess . . . what I must do to prepare for them. Yorath, you must go beyond the marsh to Beck village and buy salt and salad in the market there.”

  �
�Hush, old woman,” said Hagnild. “You with your salt and salad. Find a honey tree, Yorath. That is what they will like.”

  “When will they come? How were you called?”

  “Tomorrow night,” said Hagnild. “Jalmar used an old family scrying stone. I have not seen its light or felt its soft influence for many years.”

  “Master,” I said, “surely he is not so well versed in magic as you are . . .”

  “In some ways more so,” said Hagnild. “He had great gifts. He belonged to the world; he was and is a worldly man. He would have made an excellent vizier or chancellor to some monarch. I do not think he will ever attain this now.”

  Next day I scoured Nightwood and the surrounding districts for provisions and found myself hanging back, deliberately returning late to our house so that the visitors would be there when I returned. The nightly chill that settled on the forest even in summer had come down. I came in and there they were, settled by Caco’s fire. I do not know what they thought of me, poor monster, but I had never met anyone to compare with them.

  Pinga, clad in a fine child-sized tunic and hose of grey figured stuff, perched on our settle, his tiny feet in their green boots swinging merrily. The contrast between this greddle, well-proportioned, though marked with the scaly skin and thin hair of his kind, and the awful deformity I recalled in my poor friend Forbian, was enough to make him seem good to look upon. His wide, bright brown eyes were those of a very intelligent child, for in spite of his years and his quick wits Pinga remained childlike. I never had the feeling, as I had with Forbian and with the Kelshin, that I was speaking to a small adult.

  Raff Raiz lounged on the settle in the outlandish clothes of Lien, with slashed sleeves and a short grey cloak lined with apricot silk. He straightened up and smiled at me. His thick, fine golden hair hung about his ears in a round cut; he had a player’s face, long and mobile, with a wide, humorous mouth and fine eyes of a distinctive dark blue. He was one of the most attractive human beings who ever lived. He had a physical charm, a gaiety, wit and gentleness that captivated all who knew him. This was Raff Raiz, who went on to love a queen and to lose her love because he played the king, the False Sharn, who raised the Chameln against Mel’Nir and held the city of Dechar. This was Raff Raiz, who sailed to the lands below the world and, so it was said, returned in another guise altogether. Already he had Caco eating out of his hand with tales of Lien, of the fashions and follies of Balufir, of the extravagances of the royal house.

  I sat down with them at the fireside, after I had set down my pack, and listened to the tales told by our visitors.

  “Truly,” said Raff, “the Markgraf Kelen would put aside his lovely Zaramund for she is barren, but he dare not do so. Her mother was a Denwick, her father is the Lord of Grays. The poor lady Markgrafin is thirty years old; she has a few years of potions and pilgrimages to look forward to, before hope is gone. Last spring it was believed suddenly that larks might be the answer. The court, the whole city dined on larks. The woods and fields were scoured for the poor little birds, there was hardly a lark to be had for gold the length and breadth of Lien. And there was an awful dearth of sparrows and finches and other lark-sized birds . . .”

  “Alas poor child, poor Zaramund,” said Caco with a sigh. “Tell me, young Master Raiz, are the rose gardens still so beautiful?”

  “Lovelier than ever. They are wonders of the world. In summer they perfume the whole city. Besides the wheels and rounds with red roses and white and yellow, they have bred pink and white, apricot, flame and orange roses. There is a special park called the Wilderness for climbing roses of every kind from the sweet briars of the hedgerow to ramblers, creepers, strange roselike plants from the lands below the world. They grow upon fake ruins, crumbling towers and portals made of brick and plaster, with pleasant grottos and groves in between.”

  “A place for picnics,” said Pinga. “At the gates there are candy booths where you can buy roses of sugar and marzipan.”

  “I can promise you some fine picnics here in Nightwood and the marsh,” I said, “but our sweetmeats are not sugar roses!”

  “Mother Caco can make dainties just as fine!” piped the greddle, taking another hot cake spread with honey.

  “Oh my brave boys!” cried Caco. “What a joy to cook for those with good appetite. What a summer this will be . . .”

  The old woman was right. It was a summer never to be forgotten, and it lives in memory the more keenly because it was the last peaceful summer that I spent in Nightwood. We roamed the forest and the marsh and hunted a little. Arn was home again from his uncle’s house in Krail; it was his last summer before he became the swordmaker’s heir and his apprentice. Childhood’s end. A boy of Mel’Nir is brought abruptly from childhood to manhood; indeed those lads in the training schools or longhouses have less childhood than we did. We went about with Raff Raiz, slightly older, much more experienced. We spoke of many things, but women and soldiering loomed large. I had found no middle ground between the love, the sweetness, the gallantry of some of the books I had read and the appalling coarseness of the swordmaker’s yard and the kitchens. Raff Raiz was a model of tact and kindness; his bawdy stories were not cruel; he never boasted.

  Pinga and Raff and I had a favorite game or fantasy that we were a troupe of strolling players. In a certain glade where the Kelshin hung about overhead in the trees to watch, we practised our tricks. Raff and his brother tumbled and danced, and I was, naturally enough, the strong man, the base of the pyramid. Pinga stood on my head, gripping on with his little scaly bare feet, then dove off into Raff’s arms. I spread my arms wide, and Pinga walked across from one hand to the other. Now, I suppose, I could do the trick with Raff himself, but I guess he has put on weight, too, though he is one person it is hard to think of as an older man. In all our play there was the hint of longing to be free. The brothers would be free of their father and his intrigues; I wanted to be free of Nightwood, to be about in the great world with two good companions such as these.

  The only road through the marsh is an ancient causeway that runs past Finn’s smithy; there is a track leading off into the forest to a certain twisted thorn tree with a pool at its base that is known to grant wishes. We went there towards the end of our summer and made our wishes in a complicated ritual that Raff had borrowed from his father. We all wished twice, once secretly, once out loud. Then one by one we looked into the pool for a sign and told what we saw.

  Pinga wished first, and his second wish was simple: he wished that we might all three meet again and speak of our forest summer.

  Then I wished and secretly I wished to come to some kin, to find my family, and aloud I wished, “I wish to meet again the one who gave me this token!”

  I held in my clenched fist over the pool the two brown feathers of the Owlwife, a proof that I was growing up and also that I could keep a secret, for I had told no one in the world of this encounter.

  Then Raff Raiz wished, and aloud he said, “I wish that my father would find his heart’s desire!”

  So then we looked for signs, in the same order, and Pinga cried out:

  “I see a tall ship, a merchant ship, with sun and stars upon its mainsail!”

  We puzzled at this, wondering if we might all go sailing together. When I gazed into the pool, I saw nothing for a moment and was disappointed. Then the clear water glowed, as if a beam of light had fallen upon it, and I saw green fields and two wooded hills and between the hills a building between a keep or fortress and a manor house. It had a distinctive round tower with a cone roof, at one corner, and two, three little turrets, decorated with plaster and wood, like a half-timbered house. Tall, old trees grew up to the sides of the little keep, and the whole scene was very peaceful, bathed in sunlight. I could hardly convey what I had seen, but said, “I see a small keep with a tower, in green fields . . .”

  Raff Raiz asked if it answered any of my wishes, but I could not tell. I wondered if the Owlwife lived in such a place, or if some of my kin lived there.
Already Raff was looking into the pool for his sign, and he said at last, “A white horse! I see a white horse drinking at a pool!”

  Then before we could speak further, Arn came to join us. I did not want him to feel left out, and Raff Raiz understood this. He explained the game to Arn, and my milk brother, a broad-shouldered, dark-haired youth, with a look of his uncle, Bülarn, the Swordmaker, grinned and did as he was told. His spoken wish was as follows: “I wish that the gods of the Farfarers would protect my family while I am absent.”

  Then he gazed into the pool, obviously not expecting too much, and he gave a cry: “I see a man, a mighty warrior in armor, mounted upon a black horse!”

  When Raff questioned him a little, he shook his head shyly and could not tell us any more.

  The summer came to an end. There were a few days when poor Pinga stayed indoors with a head cold and Caco spoiled him with honey-cakes. Raff Raiz changed a little at this time, he was not quite so carefree, and I thought it must be anxiety for his brother’s health. At last they sailed away to meet Jalmar Raiz again in the Chameln land across the Dannermere, and at the very last, as I helped them into their boat, Raff Raiz shook me by the hand and clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Long life, Yorath,” he said, “and death to all your foes!”

  It was a bluff farewell of the sort we had used, but it struck home to me and so did the expression of mingled fear and curiosity in his blue eyes. At night, when Hagnild came to our house in the wood, I had been thinking back most carefully about Raff and his strange silences in the last days.