Errant

by Armas, Florian

  “Aron is for me what you are for Jara. He saved my life and made me Seigneur. Trust is important; when you become a Knight in your own right you will understand. And you will become a Knight. Let’s go on to more pleasant things,” Mohor finished our discussion, which was going nowhere – each remained unmoved with his own understanding, but he was the Seigneur. Slowly, he unfolded a paper carrying his seal, and handed it to me. “Thank you,” he said simply, a now familiar reaction for me. There were fifty hectares written in my name, in Severin lands, in the south-east, on the border with Mehadia and Histria. “After we sort things out here,” he gestured around, “the other fifty we promised will come to you and the half-Knight anointment. And this is a scrip for three hundred galbeni. You may need the money to maintain your new status until the land ownership produces some revenue.”

  “Thank you,” I answered in the same way, bowing slightly.

  “We want to give you the governorate of Corabia,” Mohor handed another paper with his seal to me. Corabia was the second most important city in Mehadin’s land after Mehadia, a moderately rich place that could give me some influence and revenue. It was a good offer, I had to recognize, and it was close to the land I had been given. “If everything goes well, Corabia would become Vio’s dowry.”

  This move was surprising, and I was not able to anticipate it in any way. They were promising me Vio, in a veiled way of course, unbounded by any agreement, and prone to unforeseen changes. It should come from Jara. And for the first time, I realized that if I was to lose Saliné, for whatever reason – her forced marriage with the young Devan or her new attachment to Bucur – the other girl I could love was indeed Vio. My feelings were still for a young sister, but Saliné was the same for me at her age. In a mysterious way, after a month of avoiding it, for my own self-preservation, the slightest thought related to Saliné, Mohor’s decision to sort out my future according to their political needs, brought my mind back to her. What if Jara’s message was true? She came to my house to deliver it.

  They want to keep me away from Severin with the governorate. It may have some other implications too. “I need to think about it,” I answered Mohor, more an involuntary reaction than logical thinking. A moment later, the best reason to refuse came into my mind: becoming his governor would end my autonomous game and all the things I planned for the next year. Sometimes, your sub-consciousness is your best ally.

  “You have two months to think about it,” he answered coldly, almost repeating my words. “The gold from Mehadin’s vault will leave tomorrow for Severin,” Mohor moved things in the direction he wanted. “I am counting on you to make sure it arrives safely. You know our soldiers well enough now, so pick ten of them.” This was also a polite way to tell me that I had to leave, not that I would have stayed under Big Mouth’s command. It also carried the pleasant thought that one of them, if not both, was worried about the bonds I had forged with the soldiers, but of course, I could be wrong in my assumption.

  “I don’t plan to return to Severin right now,” I said, knowing that he would be annoyed, even when it was not in my intention.

  “Plans are made and changed,” he said in a neutral tone that contradicted his words, and which I knew was just a mask.

  “I can lead the caravan until the turning for Histria,” I took a step back; up to that point the road would match my own route toward the place Calin had given me in temporary possession, which by chance was also near the land I had received from Mohor. Two roads of approximate equal length linked Mehadia to Histria, both passing through Orhei, so going through Severin was not a problem. “It’s in your lands and close enough to Severin to be safe from there.” It was just a day and half travel at a caravan’s pace.

  Mohor stared at me with some displeasure in his eyes, but nodded slowly; in the end, he had no way to coerce me, apart from throwing me in jail again, and that for sure would have solved nothing, he knew at least that about me. “Your payment should be accordingly with the importance of the charge.”

  “I don’t work for money with you,” I said, and Mohor glanced at me, surprised, then his eyes moved to the paper money he had given me. “That’s not an agreed payment by contract, it’s a reward.”

  “As you wish,” he shrugged. “We are done now, go and arrange the gold shipment.”

  “I don’t think we are done,” I said.

  “Calin is free to leave the city,” Mohor said after a while, staring at me, and now we were done indeed. There was a long pause. He could not think of anything more to say. Neither could I.

  In the evening, Mara joined me again in Calin’s office, a thing I found unusual again, as he was feeling well now, but I could not comment; all our concealed interactions went through her as part of his strategy to make Mara useful to me. She opened the vault, revealing the little treasure it was hiding. There were four bags of money, some papers and three small boxes – the elegance of their decorations suggested valuable jewels. I took out the papers – there were not many – and I looked at Mara, inviting her to speak.

  “Some personal letters belonging to my father,” she shrugged without claiming them directly, and it could be true, so I gave them to her without checking if she was right. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I opened the first box, and as expected, it contained jewelry: necklace, earrings and ring, and as usual for the rich families it was crafted in Tomis, their beauty rivaling the necklace I returned to Jara, just that instead of sculpted gold, the medallion was a gem, an emerald with many facets shining in the light coming from the window. The green reflection brought me a flash of Saliné’s eyes from a better past. We were in the garden, and she was staring amused at me, in my arms. I tried to remember the joke I had made, but my memory failed, and I did not realize the silence flowing between me and Mara.

  “A girl’s green eyes?” she supposed, an amused tone filling her voice, pointing to the emerald I was still staring at, and I nodded absently. “It belonged to Mehadin’s wife. She died four years ago from despair, after losing her daughter in an accident, the girl who owned the other box,” she pointed to the bluish one, “so why not take it for the girl you love?”

  Ignoring her words, I opened the other two boxes, trying to hide my irritation, and they revealed turquoise gems and black pearl sets. Vio, and… “This should be yours,” I stared into Mara’s black eyes, and gave her the box with the pearls.

  “That was my wedding gift, but I will keep nothing from a Mehadin to remind me of the nightmare that was my marriage.” Her voice was suddenly edgy, voicing her lost pregnancies because of her violent husband.

  “Mara, I understand you, but you have a daughter with beautiful black eyes,” I insisted. “She will grow, and she deserves something that belonged to her family.”

  “No,” Mara rejected the box with a shaky gesture, and I no longer insisted. “I want nothing from him. Nothing. My children will take my father’s name, and me too.”

  “Things may change when the bad memories fade away.” I intended to give the box to Calin without letting her know, so he could keep it in his family. The other two would go to Saliné and Vio; the vault was my Winner’s Right.

  One by one, I took out the four heavy bags with galbeni that were half mine, and carried them to the coffers waiting outside the office. I now have enough money to buy a hundred mercenaries for almost three months, I thought, after closing the coffers. The small army I needed to become a player in the war next year, the real one for which the fight between Mohor and Mehadin was just an overture, was taking shape.

  The next morning, Calin’s large carriage, which in fact belonged to Mehadin and could carry eight persons, and his own wagon, followed the five wagons hauling Mohor’s gold and whatever else he thought of value in the castle through the gates. There was also a package containing the fifty or so books I had found. In the coffers storing my books there were the most significant diplomatic papers received by Mehadin – Mohor and Big Mouth did not bother to consider them
important. Mara’s children were looking, thrilled, from the carriage’s window, and I guessed that it was their first trip outside the city. Ban led the ten soldiers I had picked – this time I could not take Vlaicu with me, as I wished. A young family joined Calin, the woman and her two-year-old girl climbing into the carriage. The man, a soldier from the guards, had his own horse, of good quality, and he tied another two to the wagon – they belonged to Calin and Mara. Calin was better prepared than I thought to leave Mehadia.

  With the books, I found two purses, each filled with fifty galbeni, and out in the field I asked for Vlaicu. “Ten for you, five for Ban and the rest for your guards,” I threw a heavy purse to him, knowing that thirty-five guards had survived the battles. “Do it now, before I leave.” All the soldiers I took with me were his guards.

  When he left, I went to the mercenaries’ camp, and threw the second purse to Valer. “For your good work.” This time, I said nothing about sharing the money, the mercenaries’ world was not mine to handle.

  “Thank you.” Valer bowed slightly. “And if you need us, you know where to find me.” He remembered our discussion from the past.

  “Next year,” I said, and left him alone.

  Nothing happened until we arrived at the junction from which the way to Histria split off, and from that point I traveled south with Calin and Mara, and let Ban take over the caravan, and my locked coffers. It took us four days to arrive at their house that formally was mine. One perk derived from Lead Protector status is the benefit of not doing night watches. That was true on the road from Mehadia up to the turning for Histria, when there were enough soldiers to keep an eye out during the night, and I spent the evenings with Mara and Calin, both of them people who knew how to make conversation. Not that we shared important things; it was not the right time and place, but gossip still gives you information, makes for a pleasant evening, and help in forging bonds – from all the journeys I had experienced, this was the most entertaining one.

  Chapter 23 - Codrin

  Calin’s house was inhabited by a couple with three children. You must be a soldier, I guessed, checking the sturdy forty-year-old man walking in front of us. With two soldiers to guard the house, their safety was no longer a concern, as much as one could say that in troubled times. The hunting house was almost as large as the one I knew so well in Severin, and there was a barn for horses, too.

  “Petre, Lena, I am glad to see you again. Codrin is now the owner of the house,” Calin gestured toward me, and if they were surprised, they did not show it.

  Dinner passed almost in silence; everybody was tired, and the bath that followed was marvelous.

  “You look much better,” I laughed at Calin in the morning, after breakfast.

  “You know,” he smiled, “at each turn of the road, I looked back to see if Aron’s soldiers were coming upon us. That man is a mule, obstinate and stubborn. What was that funny name you gifted him with? No, don’t tell me. I am not so old as to forget such things. Big Mouth,” he said, with evident satisfaction, both because he remembered and because the nickname pleased him. I could not remember anyone apart from Mohor, Cernat and Saliné, for different reasons of course, who refused to use the name once they’d heard it – it described the man so well.

  “Today, I must go to register the house and land in Orhei,” I said. Time was pressing on me; I wanted to leave in one week. Jara’s words about Saliné were playing now and then in my mind, and I wanted to see Cantemir, too. “You should come with me, to arrange the bogus sale of the land,” I gestured to both Mara and Cernat.

  “Thank you, Codrin,” Cernat said, staring at me, and I observed Mara’s gaze, fixed on me too, even more intense, like she did not know about my pledge to give the land back, or she did not believe I would fulfill my promise to Cernat. “You are very kind to give half of the land back to us. Mara will go with you; there is no need for an old man.”

  “Should I ask for the carriage?” I glanced at Mara.

  “Such a weak woman you think I am,” she protested. “It is less than a half-turn ride to Orhei. Let’s have a race,” she laughed, going out to tell Petre to prepare the horses, which provoked some self-important feelings in me – after a long time, somebody else had taken over that mundane task.

  We left a turn later than expected; it took Mara more time to dress herself than for Petre to prepare both horses. When the road down to the valley became straight and level, Mara had the race she wanted, and while her mare was of good quality, she could not compare to Zor, but I took care to be only a horse’s length in front when we finished, close to the city’s gates.

  “It’s not fair,” Mara complained, pushing me with her shoulder, after we dismounted in front of the gates. She was a tall woman, even taller than Jara; she took after Calin, who was taller than me.

  “Someone seems to be a bad loser,” I smiled, involuntarily leaving my left hand on her shoulder, in appeasement. Staring at her, it came to me that the sadness I observed in her face and eyes when we first met was almost gone, and she looked younger. From Calin I had heard that she was twenty-seven years old, not the thirty-something I thought in the beginning, and now her looks matched her real age. You are a beautiful woman.

  “Men,” she laughed. “They never know how to treat a woman properly.” She pushed my hand from her shoulder, then passed her arm around mine, so we walked arm in arm. “The soldiers at the gates are staring at us. Let’s pretend we are a nice couple.”

  We passed unchallenged through the gates; while unusual, a horse race between a woman and a man was in no way dangerous for the city, and the soldiers were kind enough to guide us toward the administrative building we were looking for.

  “Good morning, sir, I have come to register a house and some land,” I told the bald functionary, who raised his left eye to acknowledge me, frowning as if I had disturbed him. His office was quite elegant; the sign of a wealthy position, and that explained his self-importance.

  “Well, I am the Vistier, and I am always ready to take your money,” he said, staring with both eyes this time; it seemed that I had passed some kind of test that I was not aware of. It was unusual for a Vistier to be directly in charge of taxes and property registration, but it could be just because Orhei was a small city. “Give me your papers. Mehadin’s hunting house. He is too old to use it anymore,” he said, after reading my document.

  He doesn’t know that Mehadin is dead. I felt no need to enhance his knowledge, and neither did Mara.

  “Big house, a lot of land,” he scratched his chin. “How did you get it?”

  “Some services to Sir Mehadin, in the past,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could.

  “Quite a good service it must have been. The old man is a scrooge,” he shrugged as I frowned at him. “It will cost you five galbeni.”

  “Your services are not cheap,” I said, taking out my purse to pay.

  “Cheap men don’t stay in the job for too long.”

  “You must be here for a long time, then” I said, weighing the coins in my palm.

  “Fifteen years,” he laughed, “And I want another fifteen, at least. Thank you for helping me,” he mocked, taking the coins from me, lining them up on table, one by one, for his own pleasure; it was not so difficult to count up to five. Once satisfied, it took him a while to write things in the large register. “I know what you want to say,” he sighed. “I might not live those fifteen years, let alone keep my job, but there is always hope. My job is boring enough to wail about what I might lose or not, and hope is a potent tool. It keeps you young in your mind,” he gestured to my head, giving me the feeling that the benefits did not extend to the body. ”The registration papers should be ready tomorrow. Anything else?” he asked, seeing that we were not ready to leave.

  “I am now too poor to keep all that land. This lady,” I pointed to Mara, “wants to buy fifty hectares from me.”

  “Excellent,” he rubbed his palms. “You have made my day, that will bring another twenty-fi
ve galbeni in taxes from your pockets into mine. Well, that is to say, most of it goes to Sir Histrian. It’s half a galben per hectare,” he reacted to some negative reactions on our faces. “The regular tax. I want your money, but not more than the law says. The buyer has to pay,” he glanced at Mara, evaluating her status, but he continued to record the sale in his register.

  “A lot of money,” Mara said, surprised.

  “The official tax list is on that wall,” the bald man pointed, and this time some irritation passed through his voice, even though he was still smiling.

  “Please, sir,” Mara added quickly, “don’t misunderstand me. I had no intention to claim otherwise, just that my lack of knowledge means that I came unprepared.” She opened her purse and lined up all her money on the table: twelve galbeni; then she glanced furtively at me, but unfortunately, I was able to add just four more coins.

  “I have already written the entry,” he pointed to the register, and I remembered that all entries were supposed to be closed or cancelled by the end of the day.

  “We will have to come again tomorrow. I hope we are not inconveniencing you too much,” Mara said, with a warm smile.

  “Lady … Mara,” the bald man said, after looking into the papers to find her name. “For another smile like that I am ready to help you any time. I will keep the entry open until tomorrow. Of course your money will still fill my pockets, and Sir Histrian’s as I said before, but,” he pointed at her, “you will be half a galbeni better off from our small arrangement; the cost of opening an entry in the register. I know, once you have that half galben, it’s no longer important to you. Is that not true? The same amount feels different when you lose it than when you win it. It is my fault, I should say. I should have told at first that you had lost something and then given you the good news, and earned another smile from you. Such a fool I am. Perhaps your smile emptied my mind of all the skills I possess. Young man,” he stared at me. “Take notice of what I said, it was a free lesson for you.”