Firethorn (21 page)

Maybe at that moment, even after the binding, I was free to choose another way. If so, the chance passed unrecognized. I gave no more thought to being alone.

Was it a sign when Galan slowed to ride abreast of me on the journey back to the Marchfield? All he said at first was that it was a shame the fine weather had not lasted.

I agreed, and he looked sidelong at me and asked if I'd slept well without him.

“Oh, very soundly,” I said. He frowned and cantered ahead; I smiled to myself.

My tides started to flow the evening we returned. Usually I don't bleed until a few days after the Moon begins to wax, but I was glad to find the bloodstain, glad to know the childbane was working. That night I wrapped myself in my cloak and lay down on the floor beside Galan's cot, explaining that I was unclean.

After an hour or so he said, in a whisper, “I can't sleep,” and I said, “Hush! Now you've awakened me,” though I was not asleep either. I was well satisfied he should go as sleepless as I had gone during the long nights of the wager. If he didn't stray for the next five nights, during my tides, I'd be sure of him.

I'd learned deceit in a good school, under Sire Pava and Dame Lyra and their steward, and now it was ready to hand when I needed it. Early in the morning, while Galan still lay abed, I sent Noggin with a message to Mai: a twist of cloth marked with Hazard's godsign, wrapped around a few berries of childbane. I didn't trust him with any words that he might forget or repeat to the wrong person, trusting Mai instead to understand that she should meet me at the shrine of Hazard by the king's hall.

I brewed Galan some wake-me-up. While he was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, I asked leave to pray at the shrines that morning. It was raining again, a hard rain that pelted the canvas of the tent and seeped under the walls to soak the heather-stuffed pallets. Spiller and Rowney sat polishing Galan's armor with grit, scritch-scratching the rust off the iron.

Galan said he'd give me leave so long as I'd sacrifice a dove to Hazard for him; he rolled over in his blanket to fish a copper coin from the sack he kept under the bed. He said, “Keep what's left over to buy yourself a trinket.”

I tossed it back to him, saying, “You owe Hazard more than this for all her favors to you. Too slight an offering will slight her.”

Galan sighed and got up, pulling on his hose. He took the key to his strongbox from its hiding place in the scabbard of his dagger and unlocked the box. He pulled out a coin of silver and I shook my head.”

Even an old ewe fetches gold in this marketplace,” I said. “And a jenny ass costs as much as a fine warhorse at home. Prices climb day to day. This morning the water and wood cost a silverhead—didn't Spiller tell you?”

Spiller looked up and pursed his lips. Nowadays the vendors came to us; I knew as well as he did that he'd paid three-quarters of a silver piece and pocketed the three coppers left over. But I wasn't going to say so.

“Do you take me for a fool?” asked Galan. “It's raining casks and noggins out there. Water is free for the taking.”

“It's tainted,” Spiller said, glaring at me. “It tastes like gull droppings.“ The roof flaps were devised to catch the rain and direct it to barrels, but rain wasn't all they caught.

“It will do well enough,” said Galan. He grumbled about knavish jacks and spendthrift drudges. But the truth was, he spent coins as if his strongbox was bottomless.

He pulled out a gold coin from the box and dropped it into my palm. He said, “Is this what you' re looking for? Go to the market and pick out a fine goat for Hazard—for I suppose it's wise counsel never to stint the gods. But while you' re about it, I don't doubt a little gold will stick to your fingers. The milkmaid skims the cream.”

I bristled at this. “I've never asked for a gift from you, nor taken anything but what you wanted to give. If you don't trust me, make the sacrifice yourself. It would be more welcome to the god if you did.”

I tried to give the coin back but he wouldn't take it. He pulled me toward him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why not what?”

“Why not ask for a dress, a coin, a bauble? Every woman expects such tokens.”

Now he mocked me. I looked down, flushing. I could think of no reason why I hadn't asked for what I needed. Like one of his men, or his horses, my needs were in his care.

“You could use a dress. This one is a rag.”

I looked him in the eye. “It's nearly new.”

“Then it began as a rag.” He picked up the copper coin and the silver coin and opened my palm to put them next to the gold. “Is it so hard to ask? Indulge me, then. I'd like to see you better clad.”

I closed my hand on the coins and he wrapped his hand around mine and stroked his thumb over my wrist and I knew my pulse was jumping under his touch. He smiled and let me go. I tucked the coins into one of the pockets hidden in my belt. I didn't need to be told the cloth for the dress should be green.

“See if you can find Hazard a goat with a rusty beard,” he said. “Chance favors that kind.”

Galan insisted I take Rowney as well as Noggin, since I was going to the market. I liked Rowney well enough: he was shy and soft-spoken, and stumbled over his words so much, except when he sang, that he chose to keep silent most of the time. For all his stumbling, he'd made few missteps since Galan had won him from Sire Alcoba, showing just enough deference to Spiller, staying well away from Sire Rodela, and thinking of what Sire Galan might need before he thought of it himself. He'd been courteous to me. But Rowney might winkle out my business; therefore I didn't welcome his company. Not that I had a say in the matter.

Mai found me near Hazard's shrine, standing under the roof of the king's hall, out of the rain. Some of the ox-hide flaps that made the walls were rolled up, opening the pavilion to those who had business with the king as well as those who came to gawk. Tapestries figured with battle scenes hid the king's private quarters. I wondered if the Dame had woven any of them.

Mai had two escorts, Trave and Pinch. They walked on either side, holding up a canopy to keep her dry. The rain, blown by the wind, had nevertheless doused her. The wet wool of her dress clung to her buttocks, and men turned to watch her go by, gaping at her heft shifting from side to side. Tall as she was, she was taller still that day, standing a head above me on thick wooden pattens that kept her above the ankle-deep mud as if she were one of the Blood.

Mai embraced me, called me Coz, and asked if all was well.

“Well enough,” I answered.

The goat bleated before his throat was cut. When the sacrifice was properly done, I gave the priest two costly lumps of myrrh, the resin bled from amber trees, precious for its scent, healing properties, and because—it is said—there's only one grove of amber trees in all the world, and it's guarded by quarrelsome three-headed serpents. I saved one last lump for Ardor. And so the gold piece was spent.

Mai and I stood together under the eaves. She sent Trave and Pinch off with two copperheads to fetch fried bread; I sent Rowney after them with my copper so we could snatch a chance to talk. That left Noggin with us; he gaped so wide at the passersby I wondered his mouth didn't fill with rain.

I gave Mai the childbane wrapped in my old headcloth. Some of the berries had been crushed, and though they were white, they left a dark stain on the linen. I told her they ought to be properly dried if they were to last for a few months, but I couldn't do that for her, not in Galan's tent. It would be noticed.

When I said there was enough in the bundle to last three women a whole winter, or one woman until childbane ripened again next autumn, she embraced me. With my face against her bosom, I could feel the great laugh rolling up out of her belly. “Coz, we'll be queens among the whores—especially the whores who go by the title of Dame,” she said.

“I don't know if I'll be able to find more,” I said.

“No matter: the scarcer it is, the more it's desired. And it needn't last the winter. A tennight or two will do. When the army moves, most of the women will stay behind and have no use for childbane for a while. The whores will have earned enough to roll up their blankets for a year. And you, do you go with the army or stay?”

“I'll go.”

“I'll be glad of your company,” she said. Then she asked, “How goes that other matter? Did Sire Galan win his wager?”

“He did,” I said.

“But you' re still in his bed.”

“I have my tides just now.”

“A pity,” said Mai.

I smiled at her. “He hasn't strayed from the tent at night.”

“So you did as I told you?”

I nodded. “This morning he gave me this without my asking.” I showed her the silver coin. It was something I could hold in my hand. How could I speak of his other tokens—a look, a touch—that I counted the greater treasure, when they were so fleeting, so easy to counterfeit?

She plucked the silverhead from my fingers and dropped it into a purse she had hidden between her breasts. “Never show coin in a crowd of cutpurses,“ she said. “I'll care for this awhile, and just you watch—it will breed in my little pouch.”

The men came back with the fried bread and we ate together, watching the rain drip from the leather roof and run over the sodden ground. I pulled my cloak tight around me, grateful for its shelter, as I had been many times before. I tried to ignore Trave and Pinch, for I couldn't forget how they'd laid hands on me behind the tents. Trave had not forgotten either; he leaned forward now and then to leer at me.

Mai said, “That maid you told me about—the one who's a maid no longer—I hear she's fallen ill.”

“Are we talking of the same maiden? From the clan of Ardor—I don't know her name. Rumor said she had the squirts, but she was cured.”

“No, she's getting worse. She has the wasting sickness.”

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “Even today she's sick?”

“Oh, yes. They say she's like to die.”

“How do you know this?”

Mai popped the last morsel of bread into her mouth. Still chewing, she grinned and said, “I know this one who knows that one. I've never paid a rumormonger yet—they pay me!” And she laughed.

I didn't believe the maiden was sick. I thought she was feigning, as she had before, so she could go to the privy tent and wait for Sire Galan. And when I thought of her waiting and Galan keeping to his own bed, I was well pleased.

Mai insisted on taking me to the market to spend my silver, swearing that without her help every rogue, diddler, and gouger in the place would descend on me like flies on a stink. I was vexed she thought me so easy to cheat, yet soon I was glad of her help. She knew all the clothiers, if only by reputation, and they knew of her as well. Much of the cloth was no better than I could weave myself, but at last I found a length of fine wool, green and soft as moss, with the nap raised for warmth. The merchant asked three silverheads for it. Mai chaffered him down to two, but I objected that I had only one and couldn't afford it. I turned to leave, my eyes stinging. I'd denied I wanted a new dress, but once I saw the cloth, I wanted it badly.

“Tut,” she said. “Such a fuss.” She pulled the purse from its hiding place between her breasts and took out Sire Galan's silverhead, and sure enough, the coin came back with two offspring, also of silver. Those were the first coins I ever called my own.

I took the wool in my arms, could not resist the touch of it.

“And the thread too,” Mai told the merchant.

When we parted she told me she visited Delve's shrine daily, just after sunrise. “Perhaps we'll chance upon each other again,” she said. She winked at Rowney and pinched Noggin's cheek and swayed away.

The very next day was Summons Day, come at last. We'd been in the Marchfield for twelve days, and more had happened in those few days than in a twelvemonth when I'd lived with the Dame.

The clans assembled under a gray sky and the eyes of the king and Queenmother Caelum. Each clan strove to outdo the others in the magnificence of their armor, weapons, and horseflesh. Every soldier, down to the least kitchenboy, was mustered out and given clan banners to bear on poles, and their colors spread over the tourney field and the hills around it like a great gaudy shawl.

Galan made his bagboy accompany me. Noggin and I stood in the crowd of onlookers: farmers, harlots, peddlers, and thieves, mostly. I craned to look between heads and shoulders, eager to see everything. I thought back to my first glimpse of Galan's company, how we'd all been bedazzled. It was far more splendid and more fearsome to see the denizens of the Marchfield, high and low, armed and massed in their ranks so tightly a child couldn't slip between them, to see them transformed from so many gamblers, gossips, fops, brawlers, rowdies, swordsmen, prickmasters, catcallers, idlers, and drudges—that is to say, so many men—into an army. Mai had called it a small army, but I thought surely that once it began to march it could overrun the world—having, at the time, but a small idea of how big the world is.