Tale of Gwyn (12 page)

His eyelids flew open and the watery eyes stared up at her, unseeing. He hunched up in the bed, his mouth working.

What must he be dreaming, Gwyn wondered as his mouth opened. He looked as if he were screaming, but no sound came from his lips. She sat down beside him. He was only a boy, after all, caught in a nightmare. She put her hands on his shoulders. He was shaking.

“Osh aye,” she said, her voice gentle, as if she were talking to a nervous animal. “It's quiet you want now, my honey, my lamb. Quiet now, quiet.” She remembered from long ago her mother's voice saying those same words in that same tone into her own ears when she was frightened.

The Lordling's eyes poured tears and stared over her shoulder, at nothing in the room. His mouth moved, making no sound.

“Quiet now, there's no harm to you, no harm here, no harm while I watch,” Gwyn crooned at him. “Quiet now and wake, my honey, my lamb. Time to wake up.” She put her hands against his wet ears and rubbed his cheeks with her thumbs, watching his eyes. “A bad dream,” she said, “naught but a bad dream, wake up, lad, naught but a dream. Wake up, lad, so you can sleep again.”

The eyes saw her. The body was stilled. He stared at her, and Gwyn removed her hands. He slid back under the covers and closed his eyes.

Gwyn returned to her place by the fire, troubled. What could a boy dream of that would sorrow him so? Tad dreamed and woke quickly, and when he woke the dream slipped away so that he could smile at you and turn back to sleep. Although this boy's eyes saw her, the dream did not slip away. She knew now, as surely as if she lay beside him, that he was awake still.

Fear for his father, she guessed. She would try to reassure him in the morning. She would tell him how close they were to the Inn, again, in case he had forgotten that. If he chose not to hear her, there was little she could do about that.

When she woke in the morning, her first thought was for the Lordling. She turned her head and saw him sitting straight up in bed, looking at her. Clumsily, she rose up. He turned his face away.

Gwyn built up the fire, then went outside to clear paths to their privy areas. The wind was down, but the snow still fell thickly. Over the night it had piled up again on the paths, as high as her hips. Using her legs and heavy skirt as a plow, she walked through it. As soon as she went back into the house, he went out.

Gwyn started a pot of porridge, her sympathy of the night faded. Young or old, child or grown, the Lords were the same. They would have just such a day as they had had the day before, long and silent. They would stay trapped here until the snow settled, or melted, perhaps until winter left the land, stay trapped as Lord and servant. That day, she decided, she would clean out the house entirely, do the job she should have done on the day she took the goat. What she would do the next day, she did not know. Many days like this and she would go mad from inactivity.

The snow outside was piled as high as her chest where the storm had blown it up against the house. They could not walk safely through it, even the short distance to the village, or the Inn. She formed a loaf of bread and had it rising beside the fire before the Lordling returned to the room.

She served him his food, watched him as he ate, then had her own. The only sound was the snow sweeping around the house. She scraped the bowls clean and went outside to refill their water bowl. He sat at the table. She set the bowl of snow by the fire to melt.

“You woke me,” he said behind her, in his high boy's voice. Gwyn stood up and faced him, careful to keep all expression from her face.

“Nobody has ever woken me before,” he continued. She wondered if he expected her to apologize, but she wouldn't do that. If she had erred, it was an honest mistake. She wouldn't repeat it, but she wouldn't apologize for it either.

“I am in your debt,” he said.

Gwyn lowered her eyes, trying to control her face. The dignity with which he spoke was so odd in a boy that she wanted to smile.

“I know that I am young,” he told her.

It was this that opened her heart to him. She curtseyed and answered him as if he were his father. “Yes, my Lord.”

“We are very near to the Inn,” she told him then. “I would think the stallion could have made the journey easily.”

“He was carrying two grown men,” the Lordling reminded her. She couldn't gainsay that. “But the mare may well have arrived safely, don't you think?” When he asked that he looked like any little boy, seeking reassurance.

“A good chance, my Lord.”

He sat down again and she busied herself with the tasks of the day. She shook out the bedclothes and replaced them neatly. She set more meat stewing in the pot and added one of the last withered turnips. She placed the risen bread within a covered iron pot among the ashes under the logs. She wiped off the shelves, which did not really need cleaning. Then she turned her attention to the cupboards built into the walls next to the fireplace.

The Lordling sat at the table, turning the pages of the long book. Gwyn took up an armload of folded cloths to lay them out on the bed while she wiped down the inside of the first cupboard. Each cupboard had one shelf in it, so there was not much to carry. Moving behind the Lordling, she glanced over her shoulder. On the top of the page was a picture of three faces. Before she thought to stop herself, she spoke: “Those are the three men. From the hut.”

“Had they murdered us, this might have identified them, when they went to sell the book. My father wrote it down underneath the pictures.” His fingers pointed to a line of shapes.

Underneath the faces and the shapes, other lines waved and curved. Gwyn stared at them until suddenly she saw what they were. She did this by a trick of mind, as if she were a bird seeing a flat landscape from above.

“It really is a map,” she said. She could identify the hills now, and a pathway among them; when she looked down on it as if from the sky, she could see what it pictured. There was the dot where the men's hut was, and forests spreading back over the hills. Then she realized that she shouldn't be standing so close, gawking. She moved quickly away.

“I don't mind, Innkeeper's daughter.”

Curiosity brought Gwyn back to stand behind him. On the top of the map a cross was drawn, with shapes at each end. It wasn't part of the map, at least not that Gwyn could remember. “What is that?” She pointed.

“The directions of the compass.
N
means north,
S
south,
E
east, and
W
west.”

Gwyn stared at the signs. “The river runs to the south of us, so I can see why it's the curved shape, but that one for the west should be the north, because even if it's upside down it looks more like mountains.”

It took him a minute to understand her. “No, they're letters, they're initials. I just named the letters. Listen: The letter
N
comes first in the word north, and
E
in east. Hear it? That's
S
for south, and
W
for west. They're just the initial letters.”

“
W
doesn't sound like west,” Gwyn pointed out. It didn't look like west either, where the sun went down. It looked like upside-down mountains. She wondered if he was mocking her.

“Sometimes the names of the letters don't match their sounds, but mostly they do,” he told her. “I have to go outside.”

Gwyn turned the pages of the long book while he was gone, but was careful to have it open to the page with the faces when he returned. He hung up his cloak and brushed snow from his head before sitting down again.

“Look,” he said. He took out a thin piece of charcoal, no broader than the twig of an apple tree, and made marks on the table. “North,” he announced proudly.

“That's an
N
,” Gwyn pointed.

“As I said.” He wrote three other names underneath, in a line. “East, south, west.”

Gwyn looked at them. “East and west have that letter,
S
, in the middle,” she said, thinking aloud. “I have an
N
in my name,” she said. “And a
W
too.”

That reminded him, and he hastily rubbed out the words. “You're very quick, Innkeeper's daughter.”

“Aye, that I am.”

He looked uneasy, and she took pity on him. But she didn't know how to tell him she'd keep quiet, without making him feel worse. “My mother tells me my tongue wags,” she said. That was the wrong thing to say. “But it doesn't wag over serious matters,” she said.

“I don't know why the people must not learn to read,” he answered.

“Well, my Lord, maybe the people need all their time for their labors.” She couldn't see what use the knowledge would be to the people, how it could help them fill their bellies and protect themselves.

He retreated into silence, turning the pages of the book. Gwyn went back to the cupboard, carrying piles of cloth and then, with a rag dampened in the melted snow, wiping out the deep inside of the cupboard. She had to reach in the length of her arm to clean the back walls, above and below the shelf. She left it with the door open, to dry out while the Lordling ate his midday stew and she had hers, after him, crouched by the fire. Then she replaced the piles of cloth. At that, she stopped. With many days to fill, it wouldn't do not to have tasks waiting. Tomorrow she would do the other cupboard. There was no hurry. She sat beside the fire, her back to the warm stones, her mind empty. The Lordling sat at the table, turning the pages of the long book. She wondered again at his ability to spend long hours so quietly.

Gwyn was beginning to feel painfully restless. The bread was baked, and she could no longer sit quietly by the fire. She crossed to the bed and pulled the shutter aside, to see that snow still fell, straight down now but still thick. She would, she thought, go outside and clear their paths once again. At least, it would be good to get fresh air. At least, it would be something to do.

The Lordling was watching her. His pale face revealed nothing. He had his hands spread on another page of the long book, another map. “We could be kept here until spring, Innkeeper's daughter.”

Gwyn nodded her agreement.

“He'll think me dead,” the Lordling said. “If they made their way to safety.”

“The stallion is a big, strong beast,” Gwyn reassured him, climbing down from the bed and straightening the blankets.

“As I think him dead,” the boy said, his voice barely above a whisper.

He was a brave lad, no question of it, Gwyn thought. Uncomplaining although this misadventure was nothing like what he must be accustomed to. Tad would not have borne it so well.

“I put my faith in the stallion,” she repeated.

Unexpectedly the pale face smiled at her. “And your brother too, he is strong and big.”

“Burl's not my brother.” Gwyn was surprised into normal speech by the error. “He works for my father.”

“He has an odd way of serving, then,” the Lordling said.

Gwyn could not answer what she thought, so she answered nothing. Instead, she looked at the map under his hands. She saw the cross, with its initials. The marks that indicated mountains looked small at the top of the page. This map spread across two pages and showed dark lines at the south. “What is that?” she asked him.

“It's the Kingdom,” he told her. For a minute, she thought he would be able to keep quiet against his desire to show off his knowledge, but then he gave in. He was not so very different from Tad after all, she thought, as he explained to her where the cities were and which was the King's High City, built on rich land where two rivers came together. These two rivers formed a third, which wound off across the kingdom to the west and south. This river ran along until it left the Kingdom, cutting through the forests to the southwest. Gwyn recognized the sign of the bear by a city up against the western mountains and asked, “Is that Earl Northgate's city?”

“It is.”

That, then, was where she had gone to the Doling Room. “Where is the Ram's Head?” she asked.

He pointed his finger to a dark line running away to the east from Earl Northgate's city. “This is the King's Way and this Hildebrand's city. Your father's Inn is just about here.” His finger stopped about halfway between the two cities.

Gwyn pointed to a little mark just north of where the Inn would be. “That's the village then.”

He nodded.

“So we're about here.”

“Closer, I think,” he said, studying the map.

She stared at it. The whole Kingdom lay before her. The river, which ran from the northeast to the southwest, divided the country almost in half. In the southern half, the sign of the falcon was marked in by a city nestled up against the endless forest. “Is this Earl Sutherland's city?” she asked.

“Yes.” He hesitated. “The Kingdom is divided between those two Earls and the King. He awards land to the Earls. The Earls give their lands into the care of three Lords, each in his own city. Only the four border cities have fortifications, one for each Earl and one held for the Earl by his most trusted Lord. The Lords serve the Earls, the Earls serve the King. The King's private lands lie between the two rivers that come down from the north. Those he keeps for his own revenues. The rest he gives to the Earls.”

“So the two Earls have equal strength,” Gwyn said.

“That is the way the King wants it,” the Lordling said.

“To keep the kingdom from war.”

He didn't answer.

“I would ask you a question, my Lord,” Gwyn said, thinking of the rumors from the south.

“Yes, Innkeeper's daughter?”

“If the Lords who serve the Earl grow strong—or if the Earl's house is weakened—then who keeps the Lords from war?” The two horses had the King's mark on them, the lion. This Lordling might have heard.