She said, “He will be a lord and a great man. Although he has no knowledge of it, I saved his life when he was nearly two years old and murdered his mother when he was six. The lord paid well for both services and will be highly suspicious of what you might let slip to the son.”
I never dared go to the manor, but despite my mother’s frowns, Jak came often to my house at my invitation, to collect me or to visit, and laughing, to help nurse the animals we cured and kept safe. My mother treated him most formally but was surprisingly ready to touch his cheek or pat his hand as though impressed by his young masculinity, delighting in his appearance, or was perhaps even awed by his title and lineage, although such matters had never awed her before. Although scolding me afterwards for what she called my encouragements, she always made him welcome.
But I kept a close eye on whatever she gave him to drink.
Chapter Two
More than a year had passed since Jak became my special friend, and in that time the world had gone quite mad, had paused in its madness, and had then settled, turning sane again. Battles, death, invasion and misery reigned as our king fled, and in his absence, crops were ravaged, and livestock was stolen and slaughtered to feed trudging troops who did not even curse in our language. Now battles were won instead of lost, and lost instead of won, while for the people it made no difference either way. Ruin encompassed us all. There was barely a family across the land which did not cry for the loss of a father, a son or a brother. The invasion and the second great war with Shamm were over, and the peace was signed and settled. But troops had been left wandering, and lords who had lost everything upholding their king, now wanted everything back.
The first invasion had ended fifty five years ago, but the Westerners, or Shamms as they called themselves, accused our king of cheating them. He had wed their king’s little sister, promising that her first-born would inherit the throne.
Queen Chorda had birthed a son, but he did not inherit. Indeed it was the king’s bastard son who took the throne, and the Shamms were furious. When our king ordered his queen’s death, it was not exactly a call to peace. Once again, they attempted to invade, they crossed the great ocean and the Cornucopia above the Falls, tried to kill our king and everyone else. Luckily, they did not succeed, but many were slaughtered.
I had neither father nor brother, and neither cried nor cheered. My Jak did not go to war for his father said he was too young, while calling himself too old. Our sad and sweet king sat placidly spooning his broth to a lullaby of lute and rebec. When crowned, they said he’d been a great man, but now more than thirty years older, he had become a glass-eyed, still kind natured his lords told us, but without much understanding. The country was ruled by a secret council of ten lords, who would not give their names. Or so said rumour. Indeed, rumour said this had begun right back during the siege when King Dain ruled. And after all, rumour was all we had. Rumour and gossip said the enemy had been sent wailing back into the east. I didn’t really care. All leaders were scoundrels. Except, eventually, Jak of course. At that time, I knew Jak to be perfect, but since I mixed with no other lords, I had no idea whether rumour lied.
Nor, I must admit, did I have much idea of what being perfect entailed, although I understood a little more concerning cruelty, death and selfish brutality.
He had grown tall, my Jak, whereas I, although more than two years younger, had stopped growing altogether. I just tipped his shoulder and could peep up at him as we walked together. With the threat of war still clouding our horizons, he should have been practising his archery and swordsmanship, but instead, he taught me to ride his beautiful grey horse with muscles like the ripple of the brook over pebbles, walked with me through the forest and sat with me in the oak shade, telling stories. A young knight in training cannot too often indulge his own whims, nor those of a skinny girl child he should never have called friend. But I saw him when he found time for me, and that was not so infrequent.
“I’m more proficient with a sword than my father ever was,” said Jak. “He sweeps the damned thing around his body as if he hopes to disembowel the neighbourhood. He has no finesse and no skill.”
“You should still practise,” I said, sitting prim.
“Hush, you sound like my step-mother,” said Jak. “Have you seen her lately? Valeria’s a wretched eel of a woman, always whining about draughts and smoke from the fires and my dogs under her feet. Which reminds me, my favourite bitch is about to whelp. You can have one of the pups after it’s weaned if you like.”
He loved his dogs, so the offer was an important one. “No,” I said. “They’re hunting dogs. I save squirrels and burrowing Maddleops too. But the dogs eat them.”
Jak nodded, remembering the fox. “But there are still wild pigs in the forest. You ought to have protection. A dog to walk beside you when you walk alone.”
“I nurse sick piglets too,” I said.
He insisted. “But have you ever seen one of the great white Eden wolves? No one touches them, but they hunt us when they get a chance.”
I had never seen one. They were rare. “I love dogs,” I told him, “and if you ever have one that’s sick, I’ll take it and nurse it. But I don’t want one of my own. I’d willingly nurse a white wolf if I ever saw one sick. Indeed,” after a quick pause, “I’d nurse a lacine if there any left, although I suppose there aren’t any still alive.”
“You’re a brave girl,” he said, smiling. And then he surprised me even more. “Courage is a blue word, and it shines. It has a blue light,” said Jak. “You have the same light. It sits around your face and comes through your eyes. So I know you have courage. I hope I have a little of the same, but even in mirrors, I can’t see my own colours.”
“Silly.” I stared at Jak. “People don’t have colours except in their clothes.
Jak chuckled at me as if I was one of his puppies. “I mean coloured lights. They shine around us. My best friend while I was training was Mereck, the Eden-Lord of Gradgemount. He always claimed he was a natural coward at heart, but he was joking, and I knew that because of his blue light. His colour is more a soft kindly pink, the colour of cherry blossom, but there’s blue courage over his head. Your eyes are green as spring leaf, but you have the same blue light.”
“And courage is a blue word?” It made little sense.
Jak nodded. “Just as battle is a black word and shame is very dark red. Regret is yellow. Love is blue too, but such a pale, rosy blue, it’s hard to describe. It floats very high and the light can be hard to look at.”
“I don’t see colours around words,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily.
“People don’t,” said Jak. “I don’t know why they don’t. They’re missing a lot of pleasure. I always have. There’s colour everywhere. My father’s deep crimson, but there are cadmium darts, like arrows around his head. My stupid step-mother is smeary grey and dull, as if she needs to wash. You’re blue, my sweet Freia, such a pretty blue.”
“I think it all sounds lovely,” I agreed. “What do the colours mean?”
“Not all things have to mean something,” said Jak. I honestly don’t know. “But you could ask your mother. She’s green. Emerald, a rich, rich green like the tops of the trees when the sun shines.”
“I’ll tell her tonight,” I said. “She’ll be interested to know she’s green.”
“Well, maybe,” smiled Jak. “She doesn’t trust me. Probably she doesn’t like me much.”
“I think she likes you a lot, but she’s old fashioned. She says you shouldn’t condescend to be friends with me. The local gentry think it’s improper and it makes them envious and disapproving.”
“Now that’s a word that hurts my teeth,” said Jak. “It’s a purple word.”
“Disapproving?” I asked, in surprise.
“No, the other one. Envious. Now you’ve made me say it, and all my teeth are on edge. We’ll have to walk by the river, to calm it all down again.”
“You like purple,” I pointed out. “You h
ave a beautiful purple cloak with a white furry lining.”
“That purple cloak is the most expensive thing in my robe chest,” grinned Jak. “My father spent a fortune on that silk and the ermine lining. trying to impress the merchants. Sometimes I see myself as purple. It’s not the colour I don’t like, it’s only the word.”
I was now fourteen and in love and thought Jak uniquely glorious, whatever his peculiarities. So I said, “Tell me a pink word.”
He laughed. “Stream,” he said. “Now you’ll think I’m quite picklebrained. How can water be pink? But stream is a pink word and river is bright white. I’ve never yet travelled the River Cornucopia, but it must be as bright and white to dazzle the eyes and the ears too.”
The river became our favourite place of secrets. This was our local Moragh River, that joined the great Cornucopia that carved Eden and all its lands, but the Moragh was a pretty place, and that’s where we were sitting peacefully one day when the soldiers came.
Under the cool green shade of the dipping willows and upstream from the mill, Jak was teaching me to fish, our toes in the shallows, my head on his shoulder. He concentrated on knotting the hook he had made to the fine line of blonde horsehair, while I concentrated on his own hair that curled in glistening black sheen around his ear lobe and the sharp line of his cheekbone above. His lashes dipped long and curved like the willow leaves, woman’s lashes, but his jaw was strong and square and lean. Of course I was staring, and he sensed it.
With a frown of uninterrupted focus, he murmured, apparently to the grub between his fingers, “Remains of last night’s supper on cheek? Pimple on chin? Hair in nostrils? Wax in ear? Which is it?”
“Not this time,” I said, smiling into his neck muscles. “I was just admiring your eyelashes.”
Now the maggot was on the hook, fat and wriggling. “Poor seduction technique,” he told me absently, shaking his head. “Far too obvious. I’ll teach you a more subtle approach one day.” Finally, he turned towards me, so that I had to shift my head a little from his shoulder. “Hold out your hand,” he ordered. I did, and he tipped his fistful of maggots onto my palm. “Now bait your line and forget the wearisome sins of my profile.”
I was reeling tomorrow’s breakfast in from its shining pebbled bed when the soldiers came tramping up through the forest with the clank of steel and the squeak of wet leather, swearing about the weather and their blisters, boots too small and no pay for three months past, with only mouldy bread and a spit in your eye as thanks for risking your worthless life in the cause.
“Up in the tree,” said Jak quickly, taking my line. “Just in case. I’m unarmed, and you’re too pretty by half.” I had been climbing trees since I could walk. Now I sat among oak leaves and watched from above. I could see the shadows of the fish, slender silver shifting through the river water below. I could see down on to the thick dark gloss of Jak’s head and the width of his shoulders.
There were eight men, dirty, unshaved and hungry. They wore a hotchpotch of armour, hauberks hanging awry and unravelling, one with a cuirass thick with mud and rust. Two had bows and all eight carried swords, but none wore the badge of their lord or captain. Jak sat and fished, smile quietly in place. The soldiers stood on the opposite bank and watched him for some minutes. His brocades and his placid confidence made his station clear. “You’d be one of Lydiard’s men, then?” said the taller bowman eventually.
Jak looked up as though he had noticed them for the first time. “And you’d be deserters, then?” he said pleasantly.
The bowman sniffed, one of them laughed. “We ain’t deserting no one, not as how the fighting’s stopped. We fought under old Jowchat’s colours, but when he stopped paying, we stopped following.”
“And we ain’t no Westers, neither,” said a third. “Fought for our rightful king, that’s all, for all he’s a nut-brain they say. We’re not aiming to cause trouble. Just passing through, hoping for food, ale and a warm bed.”
“You might find all three,” smiled Jak, his attention back on his fishing line, “if you’re lucky, but this is loyal Eden country.”
One of them sat heavily on the shallow bank, hauled off his boots and sank red, bleeding feet into the cool water. The black glue of old congealed blood and the pink ooze around his toes spiralled off into the current. The man was bald and from above, I could see the silvered maze of scars across his skull. “It’s true Jowchat supported the different sides, one after the other, but we fought for coin, not for the cause,” said the man, squinting one-eyed into the sun. “I’ve no interest, either side. But more often, Jowchat led us to follow King Chas, and even when he turned traitor, he came back eventually.”
The tall bowman frowned. “Speak fer yourself, Cheseman. Maybe with the Eden-King back in power, I’d have changed allegiance, but Shamm’s Eastern spider said your king’s a bastard.”
Jak was now just sixteen and looked younger, but he continued to smile and re-baited his hook, flicking it back into the deeper water. “The king’s business is his own,” said Jak. “And his lords aren’t short of good honest men, with no need to recruit deserters and scandalmongers. So those only interested in gossip and rumour aren’t likely to be welcome around here. I have no purse or coin on me, and nothing worth stealing except a freshly caught pike, a small roach, and the maggots for catching more. Go down to the village if you wish, where there’s a tavern and a church and half a dozen widows looking for husbands. But I warn you, these people are loyal to the king, bastard or not.”
“And who might you be, tongue so glib, and little more than a child?” demanded the tall bowman.
Jak looked up at the man and seemed to consider. Then he stretched out his legs and returned to his fishing. The silence eddied in the breeze, and the river ripples caught the sun. Finally Jak said, soft voiced, “I give my name to those I respect and to those who respect me. None other.” I was frightened to breathe. The challenge of eight heavily armed men, outlawed and hungry, seemed not to worry Jak in the least. So much for my courage compared to his.
“Well,” said one of the soldiers at last, scratching his nose with the point of his bow, “no doubt your name is your own business, and not mine. But perhaps we’ll just be taking that big fat fish for half a breakfast each, and the little un’ for an extra bite. Then we’ll be going.”
“Take them,” said Jak. The fish lay beside him on the bank. I had just caught the roach myself, and it was still flapping on the grass. The pike was a huge ugly thing with teeth like knife points. It had already gasped its last and the lustre was fading from its scales. “You’re welcome to them. I have the patience and the skill to catch more. Don’t choke on fish bones.”
The bald man reluctantly thrust his sore feet back into his boots. “You’ll be the local lord’s son, I imagine. Well, we said we wanted no trouble, and we’ll cause none. We’ll light a fire back through the forest, cook this and be gone before you know it. Later p’raps we’ll see what these welcoming widows of yours are like.”
Jak looked up, the small cold smile still in place. “I doubt they’ll be welcoming men in armour, not after these past months’ memories. Nor welcome talk of bastards and war.”
The bald man sniggered. “Without our armour, we’d be walking well-nigh on bare arse nekkid. Would please them womenfolk even more, you reckon? And it’s little bastards we aim on making, not chatting over. Just don’t go sending the Law-Fister after us.”
“He’s a busy man,” smiled Jak. “I wouldn’t trouble him for so little.”
They stomped through the bracken like a herd of wild cattle across the moors, and it was some time before the forest lay bathed in clean nature once again. Jak came to help me down from the tree. I intended dropping into his arms, but he stepped back and I landed on my knees in the mud. “I thought they were going to fight you,” I complained.
“Not worth their time,” said Jak, “since it’s friends that hungry men need, not corpses left under the bushes and the Law-Fister on their trai
l. Besides, I have my dagger in my short-coat.”
“A dagger against eight swords,” I sniffed.
“A skilled and fit man against eight starving cowards,” grinned Jak.
“But those men,” I mumbled, “would have fought at Strakken and probably other places before that. They must at least be experienced. You’ve never fought anywhere except the practice lists.”
“But I should have, and at Strakken too, and been part of the glorious victory.” Jak scowled, which was an expression I rarely saw. “Yes, I’m untried, thanks to my father. There are boys of fourteen expected to fight for their king, and those even younger who follow with the supply wagons and deliver arrows on the battlefield. But at sixteen, my fool of a father still hides me from harm as if I’m some frightened simpleton.”
“Then I thank your father for it.” I stuck my chin out, “and thank my mother too, for her lucky charms.”
He softened into smiles once more, and the golden haloes spun around his eyes again. “It’s kind of you Freia, to care for me. But those widows have lost their men, and they rightly stare me out when they see me riding by.”
“Little Lizzie was widowed and lost her eldest son at Strakken too. Both grown men of her family slaughtered, and the only male left is a babe in arms. So it’s a tragedy of course, but she’s never been so happy, with not a bruise on her face ever since.”
Jak shook his head, picking up his hat and his fishing line. “But even widows who hated their husbands can starve without them.”
“Lizzie’s sister-in-law feeds her and her family sometimes, and my mother feeds them the rest of the time,” I said at once. “There’s always the community will step in and help. And now her eldest daughter works at the big house. Your house. She’s been taken on as a maid-servant for your mother and can send her wages back home every ten-day.”
Jak grinned at me. “Step-mother. But yes, I know the community helps in times of need. And your mother’s a good woman, though I’m not sure I believe in lucky charms and nor does the church. But Strakken field’s well over, thank the Lord. No more war, no more widows. The north lies in peace again. It’s as if the sunshine has come out. We have to think of the orphans, the widows, and the out of work soldiers – but there’s no more need to clean up the miserable filth of the battlefield.”
The Corn Page 2