The Baron's Ring

by Mary C. Findley

  “So it appears the people have wanted a good ruler a long time,” Thomas said. “Perhaps God sent you away to prepare you to change things later.”

  “I prayed to God so many times not to put Dunstan on the throne,” Tristan exploded. “He gave me no answer. I ought to be there, but when I was there I couldn’t do anything. It’s like I was always in that river, helpless, floundering, beaten half to death, powerless to do anything but be carried along. Maybe Dunstan was right. Maybe there is a river god, and I have no power against him.”

  “You had no power to do anything, before,” Thomas smiled. “Did God bring you here to change that?”

  “What do you mean?” Tristan asked.

  “Perhaps God has other work for you to do for now than fret about what a bad king your brother will be,” Thomas said. “For now it isn’t your problem. You have other concerns, such as how you’re going to earn a living. You learned your book lessons well, I suppose, learned them twice, for yourself and Dunstan, probably became quite a scholar. I have wished for a long time that this village had a school, but there’s no teacher. Perhaps you could be that teacher.”

  “I tried to teach Dunstan, tried to make him learn what he wouldn’t learn from our tutor. It was impossible. I’m sure I’m not meant to be a teacher.”

  “Oh, well, then perhaps you’re not,” Thomas conceded lightly, but Tristan was sure he was greatly disappointed. “In any case, in a short while the rains will stop and everyone will be busy clearing away from the winter and doing the spring planting. You’d have no students.”

  “I’m willing to do anything I can,” Tristan said.

  “You said you didn’t want to continue to be a burden to me and my family,” Thomas reminded him. “And it’s true, you can’t continue to do so. My wife and I have two other children who’ve been staying with their grandparents while you’ve been here, and my wife’s parents have to be relieved of that burden immediately. By God’s great mercy, you lived through the punishing your body took at your brother’s hand and in the river and the woods. You were seriously injured, but I believe now you’re growing stronger, and you must start earning your bed and your bread.”

  “How – how am I to do that?” Tristan faltered.

  “We have a lean-to enclosed at the back of our church.” Thomas indicated the small building which stood next to Thomas’s home. “You can stay there, and I’ll let you help my wife Ilesa with the chores while I’m traveling to the outlying farms and homes. For the next two weeks I’ll be gone a great deal, and I’ve always hated for my wife to have to care for everything alone while I make these trips.

  “Our children are still small and not able to help much yet. For whatever help you can give Ilesa we’ll continue to feed you as much as we’re able to spare. I have to make this circuit of the valley right away, because I’ve heard there are many needs. Some of our congregation seldom get into the village through the winter but they are my flock and the Lord’s faithful all the same.”

  “I’ll be glad to help your wife. It’ll be small repayment for all you have sacrificed.”

  “God bids us to care for the sick,” Thomas shrugged. “So tomorrow I’ll get on my way, and Ilesa will put you to work.”

  When they re-entered the hut, Ilesa gave them mugs of tea. Tristan returned to his pallet in the corner, seeing that there were only two adult chairs and the two small stools in the room.

  “Are you in pain?” Ilesa asked as Tristan lowered himself stiffly down. “Jerez left medicine – “

  “Not really pain,” Tristan responded. “These wrappings are very tight.”

  “The wife of the family who brought you here was a skilled healer,” Thomas said. “She said you’d broken your rib, and also with the beating you took in the river and your wanderings in the woods you’d done a good deal more damage to it. She wrapped it when they first found you, and showed me how to do it. I’ll show you in the morning how to do it yourself. I’m sure it will need more time to heal, and you shouldn’t do too much tomorrow. Just do what you can hereabouts and try to build up your strength.”

  Tristan lay staring at the flickering of the fire against the ceiling after Thomas and Ilesa had crossed into the other room of their hut to sleep.

  “God sent me here,” he mused to himself. “There can’t be much doubt about that. I can’t escape the fact that I can’t go back home, not now, at least. But I’m like a stray dog. God sent me here penniless, physically spent, injured, dependent on everyone for everything. How can I begin to earn my living? What does being raised as a prince prepare you for? These people are praying to be freed of the burden of this useless stranger tomorrow. Just walking outside exhausted me, and my rib hurts.”

  Tristan closed his eyes. His mind tumbled like the river, and he felt sick and weak at the remembrance of that hopelessness, that helplessness, that relentless battering. He realized that he had felt sure of dying in the river, and he had been relieved at the thought of being free of Dunstan, free of a future that held no hope. Immediately afterward a face appeared in his mind, a young girl with shining black hair and blue eyes. He had to think hard to remember that her family had been his rescuers. He could see their faces, and understood that the wife had tended him, was the healer Thomas had spoken about. But he didn’t even know their names or where they had gone. He recalled the comforting sound of their singing and reciting of Scriptures.

  “God kept me alive, helped me, put me here,” Tristan said softly. “River god or no river god, I’m here because there’s hope.”

  The next morning before light Tristan dressed in his heavily patched and mended clothes. He regretted the hours Ilesa had no doubt spent over the clothes. He also knew that even in a king’s household clothing was difficult to come by and princes wore patches and hand-me-downs and were grateful to have them. He followed Thomas outside in a drizzle working itself into a full rain. Ilesa appeared beside them wrapped in a heavy, coarse cloak, Kiri all but invisible. She handed something to Thomas and trudged off into the thick mist of rain to fetch her other children.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Thomas said, and produced a heavy bundle of something that appeared to be leather. “You were wrapped in this when you were found. I think it was a fine cloak once, but it seems much the worse for wear after that trip down the river. We tried to dry it out a bit, but that silk lining is ruined.”

  Tristan stared in disbelief at what Dunstan had called his coronation cloak. He bade Thomas farewell and carried it into the church along with the stubs of candles Thomas had given him. Giving himself a bit of light, Tristan quickly discovered a hole in the wall of the lean-to storage room. He set some cases blackened by the dampness out of the path of the small river that poured in from what had become a downpour outside. It would be impossible to properly mend the crack until the rain stopped. The dirt floor was soggy from end to end.

  Tristan heard Ilesa and the sounds of children’s voices outside. He appeared at the door of the church and waved. Ilesa carried the baby, led a toddler who seemed to be another girl, and released the hand of a strapping boy of no more than four who came straight up to him and looked him over critically.

  “Are you the prince who got in the river?” he asked, staring with large gray eyes so much like his mother’s. “We had to go stay with Grampa because papa said you were sick. Are you better now?”

  “I’m much better, thank you,” Tristan replied, squatting down to look the boy in the eye.

  “There’s straw behind the house when you’re ready to make up your bed,” Ilesa called out as she went into the house.

  “Thank you,” Tristan called back. He had no heart to tell Ilesa the state of the room he was supposed to live in. “Tell me about the chores that need doing, and I’ll take care of those first.”

  Chapter Four

  And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.

  Isaiah 32:17

  Tristan was no ha
nd at milking. Lito, the oldest boy, laughed out loud and said they couldn’t be scraping the milk off the ceiling. Ilesa milked the cow and Lito helped Tristan feed the chickens and put hay in the manger. The little girl, whose name was Lara, never said a word, but followed Tristan about and stared fixedly at him. She held a basket while Tristan cleaned out the chicken coop, dropping eggs into the basket amid fruitless apologies to the outraged hens. He also mucked out the cow’s stall and spread dry straw, which was becoming a rare commodity. He tried to check the cow’s feet, as Gladring had taught him to do with the horses, but the cow wasn’t having any of that. He had to content himself with making sure she had a dry place to stand. He chopped wood for the fire, something Gladring had made sure he knew how to do as soon as Tristan began hanging around the stables as a young boy. His side seemed perfectly fine, and he chopped up all the wood he could find about.

  Time spent with the Master of Horse was paradise to Tristan, an escape from his brutal brother and careless father. He never thought of it as work to learn the arts of the farrier and to take care of the forge and the horses. Even to chop the wood for the fire was not labor. It was a way of working up a good sweat and it cleared his head like nothing else did. Ilesa looked in astonishment at the pile of firewood, then thanked him for his help and said she would probably not have any more chores until near suppertime. They had bread and milk together and Tristan went back to the church with an armload of straw.

  He shoved straw and mud into the crack in the wall until it seemed that very little rain was coming in. Then he fell to examining Dunstan’s cloak carefully. It would take some work, but the leather could certainly be oiled and stretched back into shape, and it would not look so bad, even though it was now a mossy greenish-brownish color rather than the vibrant emerald it once had been. Ilesa willingly gave him leather-cleaning soap and some lanolin. Tristan set to work, checking his straw patching from time to time to ensure that it was holding. The leather slowly began to resume its original shape. The former beautiful colors of the silk lining, the image of Dunstan’s river god painstakingly embroidered over almost two years in a dozen brilliant colors, however, had turned into a dried-up muddle like spilled watercolors, the fabric itself matted and useless. No more river god there, Tristan observed with a grin. Tristan painstakingly tore it out of the cloak, using the little blade which had been his table knife, another survivor of the river adventure, saving the leather unharmed but tossing the lining aside.

  “Yah, stupid, lazy beast. Get on! Get on! Please, God, help me get this pony to move.” Tristan shrugged into the cloak and stepped out of the church, discovering a sodden man with a two-wheeled cart loaded with kegs trying to get a shaggy pony to pull the load. The pony shuddered and lowered its head as the fellow raised a stick but did not move except to lift its left hind foot out of the mud.

  “Wait, wait,” Tristan said, catching the fellow’s arm. “Here, old fellow, what’s wrong with your foot?” Tristan talked softly to the pony while running his hand down its leg. He lifted the foot and wiped his fingers into the frog. A black, stinking discharge oozed from inside the hoof.

  “What – what is that?” the man with the cart asked.

  “Thrush,” Tristan grunted. “This pony isn’t doing any work today.”

  “How’m I gonna to move these kegs?’ the man asked. “Mickle give me the pony and cart and told me he’s got at least five loads of these t’ git over t’ th’ tavern. I need th’ money he promised me. Wife’s sick, an’ the herb man says he c’n gi’ me a jar o’ that chest salve that helps her cough.” Tristan pulled the pony out of the cart shafts and under the bit of cover in front of the church.

  “Who’s Mickle?” Tristan asked as he fetched his jar of lanolin. Carefully he cleaned out the pony’s hoof with his knife, patting and talking gently to the animal.

  “Mickle’s the blacksmith. His shop’s over there,” the fellow said. “I didn’t know the pony was lame.”

  “Well, if it’s his pony and cart, he’ll have to give you another animal,” Tristan grunted as he cleaned and spread a little of the grease into the pony’s hooves. They were all filthy but once he cleaned them out he saw no other evidence of thrush. “Go and tell him. No, I’ll go with you and show him. He ought to be the one getting whipped for letting this beast get in such a state.”

  “You don’t know Mickle,” snorted the man. “He’ll say I’m to blame and try to get me to pay him because his pony’s lame.”

  Tristan picked up a shaft of the cart. The man pulled the other and Tristan led the pony along. His side ached a little by the time they had covered the short distance to the blacksmith shop, where a filthy, thickset man sat smoking a pipe in the doorway, his feet on an iron cage-like structure containing hot coals. Tristan had to force his eyes away from the foot-warmer. It bore the image of a crudely-wrought manlike figure scantily clothed in iron flames, made to look as if the fire visible inside came from its distended belly and shone through the gaping mouth with its long, dagger-like teeth.

  “Won’t get anything done if you don’t get started, Janos,” mocked the man, whom Tristan took to be Mickle.

  “Your pony’s got a lot of thrush in his off hind foot,” Tristan told him. “I’d say it’ll be three days before he can work. Give this fellow another beast, and from now on take better care of your animals so they can work when you need them.”

  “Got no other beast,” Mickle said complacently. “That’ll come out of your pay, Janos, lamin’ my pony.”

  The man called Janos glared at Tristan with “I told you so” written deeply in his expression. “This didn’t happen in a day, or even a week,” Tristan cried in disgust. “He probably stood in a muddy stall all winter and no one looked twice at his feet. If it’s your pony, you’re responsible. How’s this fellow to work for you without any way of pulling the cart?”

  “That’s his problem,” growled the blacksmith. “You ain’t gonna use the pony, make sure that worthless apprentice of mine puts him up. Go around back.” Mickle disappeared from sight and the bellows began to blow. Tristan and Janos looked at each other for a moment.

  “Wait here,” Tristan told Janos. Janos shuffled under Mickle’s awning and hugged himself, shivering. Tristan hesitated a moment, then shrugged out of the cloak and handed it to Janos.

  “You’re already wet through,” he said when the man backed away in disbelief. “I’ve just started to get wet. And I’ve got good boots.” He thanked God that he had at least had his best and most serviceable boots on when he went into the river. He glanced at the man’s bare feet. “You’ll need chest salve for yourself as well as your wife before this day’s over, I’m afraid. Get up there by Mickle’s footwarmer but stay out of sight. Try to get dried off some if you can.”

  Tristan led the pony around the back and found the lean-to structure he was getting used to seeing behind everyone’s home. This one leaked worse than the back room at the church, in several places. Broken tools, ragged horse blankets and worn-out harness parts had been gathered into piles. Tristan quickly identified a trough of manure and urine-laced mud with a rope tied to the wall as the pony’s home. Then he saw a thin, pale boy with his right leg dragging, his face twisted with pain, hobbling on a crude crutch, trying to scrape out the muck with a wooden shovel. He looked up with frightened blue eyes and then relaxed a little, apparently as he realized Tristan wasn’t Mickle. Tristan saw a dirty pile of straw and a neatly-folded blanket in one corner.

  “You’re the apprentice?” Tristan asked doubtfully. The boy nodded.

  “Alex is my name, sir,” he said. “Pony not wanted after all?”

  “How long has your leg been hurt like that?” Tristan demanded.

  “This morning,” the boy said reluctantly. “A horse kicked me right after I came. Master laughed when it happened. He says I’m just a baby, but it hurts so bad. I don’t care if my pa squalls. As soon as I can walk I’m going back home. He doesn’t want me to clean, or take care of the pony – I
knew there was something wrong with that hind foot, but he cursed at me when I told him. I’m trying to clean this out, but there’s only this straw he gave me for my bed, and everything’s so wet – “

  Chapter Five

  Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: seek out his wickedness till thou find no more.

  Psalm 10:15

  Tristan turned on his heel and took three steps into the forge. Mickle was making too much noise to hear him. Tristan stared at the broad, barrel-shaped back, the stringy hair spilling over the collar, the thick, bowed legs spread wide. An image of Dunstan at fifteen standing over his thirteen-year-old self, who lay on the ground already bleeding from the mouth, flashed into his mind. Tristan had lain there and taken the beating without thought of resistance. Then Tristan remembered their last brotherly encounter, at the river, and that he had actually tried to fight back. The results had at least been more satisfying than doing nothing. He grabbed up a pair of tongs. He tripped the blacksmith, tried to ignore the flash of pain in his side, and allowed Mickle one second to land flat on his back. Then Tristan grabbed the man’s ear with the tongs.

  Mickle shrieked. “That’s nothing to what the boy has suffered,” Tristan spat. “Shall I twist it off for you? You’ve let him go about with a dislocated hip! It’s bad enough to neglect an animal, but that’s a human being!”

  “I didn’t know it was anything like that!” howled Mickle. “I thought he was just a crybaby!”

  “You didn’t look at it!” Tristan snarled. “How could you not know if you had?” He looked around the forge area. It was filthier than the lean-to. Obviously Alex was responsible for the difference, and he had been at work for some time in spite of his pain. “Get busy cleaning this place and build up that fire in the fireplace. If you haven’t got any clean straw here go get some. The boy needs a good bed and a warm, dry place to rest. I’m going to get Janos, and we’re going to try to get his hip back in place.”