The Book of Forbidden Wisdom (15 page)

“After traveling with Trey?”

“Someone might take you.”

The words stung. And yet I felt exhilaration, too, because the conversation had veered completely away from formula. Normally fathers and daughters never—­never—­spoke truths to each other. There was only obedience and submission. Now I couldn't back away from truth.

“I'm not interested in ‘someone,' ” I said. “And I might as well tell you that I never loved Leth.”

“Of course you didn't love Leth,” said my father. “You don't love anybody—­I know enough to see that. And you were perfectly happy with the marriage before you ran off with Trey. The Nesson contract was a good one.” He sounded nostalgic. “All that land.”

“Father,” I said. “We'll never understand each other.”

“Daughters aren't meant to understand fathers.”

With that, my father let me slip off the horse and then dismounted. We walked down the empty street together. He was leading the horse; it was almost, after his harsh words, as if we were walking companionably, and I felt sorry for this man who lived in eternal mourning. I took his arm.

“Why are you in Parlay?” I asked.

“I'm here with Kalo,” said my father. “I don't have the troops to go against him. You picked a bad place to be.”

“I'm going north.”

“I suppose you're going after
The Book of Forbidden Wisdom
. After all those years of denials and silence—­of lying to me. Of saying you didn't know anything about it. Really, Angel. And I suppose you're mixed up with that bard too,” said my father. “Kalo suspected it, but he couldn't prove anything. And, of course, it's bad luck to execute a bard.”

“You know about the Bard?”

“You
are
mixed up with him,” said my father. He frowned at me.

I simply asked, “Where is he?”

My father sighed.

“He was taken up by Kalo's men this morning, but he denied knowing anything about Trey or Silky. Or you.”

“But where is he?”

“Do you even have a real plan, Angel?”

“If I find
The
Book,
I'll return to Arcadia
.
”

“I see. But you'll still be considered a harlot.”

“I'll marry Trey if I have to.”

“If you have to?”

“I'll marry Trey. I want to.” I didn't sound convincing even to myself.

“You've gone too far down your own path, Angel,” said Father. “I'm going to leave you now. I have to meet Kalo—­he's become demanding and peremptory. But I'll say nothing about you to him. It's the best I can do. If you're caught, there's nothing I can do.”

“Father—­“

“I'm sorry, Angel,” he said. “I hope you find
The
Book
and come home in triumph. But I wouldn't count on it.”

“Mother told me a time like this would come.” I looked at my father's eternal mourning clothes. “She would want me to do this.”

“She would want you safe,” he said. “But now we need to speak of Kalo. Kalo likes public punishments. He probably put your bard in the stocks.”

“I wish you wouldn't call him ‘my bard,' Father.”

“You're not denying it, though.” He paused. “But, Angel, a bard?”

“He's a very good bard.”

Suddenly Father laughed. “Of course you're mocking me,” he said. “And perhaps I deserve it. Kalo's thoughts about your association with a bard are ridiculous—­I realize that now that I see you. A Great Lady traveling with a bard! Really. You almost had me believing it, Angel.”

And there we parted, I thought probably forever. My father rode away as I stood there. He looked back once. He was weak and fickle and strange. But he looked back once.

T
he stocks.

I didn't know where the stocks were, so I went in the direction the great crowd was moving in—­men on foot, horses, litters with the insignias of Great Houses on them, scantily dressed peasants, freemen with their coarsely spun brown clothes. I listened.

It was two freemen who, out of a hundred conversations, spoke words that meant something to me. I was yards from them, but they might as well have been speaking directly into my ears.

“I prefer whipping,” said the one with a cap.

“Over too soon,” said the other, who had a ginger beard. “And there's only watching—­no perticerpating. Give me the stocks for throwing garbage and doing a little poking and teasing with water promises. Perticerpation is best.”

“I like to see blood,” said Cap.

“Then throw something hard,” said Beard. “Anyway, they have a bard in there now. I'll bet we can make him sing.”

“What's he in for?”

“Vagrancy. Stealing. Corrupting women who should be at home instead of listening to bards. Singing out of tune. Who knows with a bard? He's been in since yesterday, and he should be pretty prime about now.”

“If he's alive,” said Cap.

“If that,” agreed Beard. “But they usually is. Even if they can only crawl for a while when they're set free. It's not like whipping. Whipping does them in, often as not, and I don't much like the killing.”

Beard went up in my esteem.

I followed them, and they went in the direction of the general crowd, which seemed to be converging on some sort of marketplace.

The stocks were in the center of the market square. There were two of them, and one was empty. The other held a man whose head was bowed with weariness.

It was, of course, the Bard.

I came to a dead stop; I was unable to move, and ­people streamed around me. A woman with a chicken in a cage bumped into me and almost knocked me over. I could see fragments of rotten vegetables and small stones around the base of the stocks. Then the Bard raised his head and looked out at the crowd with empty eyes. There was no intelligence in them; I could see that the life in him was ebbing away. As I watched him, all of the titles that caste demanded Arcadians use with one another—­titles that kept the castes distant from one another—­faded from my mind.

“Oh, Renn,” I said.

I had never before called him by his name.

 

I
moved with the crowd until I could see Renn's parched lips and his red-­rimmed, vacant eyes.

The stocks were evil devices that did not allow for sleep or movement—­they pressed knees against the cobblestones for hours and hours and stiffened the legs and neck—­sometimes forever. Many of those who were put in the stocks were left crippled, most in body, some in mind. And a particularly raucous crowd could abruptly end the occupant's life by throwing rocks instead of garbage.

The two freemen, Cap and Beard, inspected Renn closely.

“He don't look good,” said Beard.

“He gets out tonight,” said Cap.

“If he lives.”

“Don't matter,” said Cap. “Dead or alive, they'll leave him in till sunset. Want to throw something?”

Beard considered. Finally he spoke. “No,” he said. “When I were a lad, I loved them bards, in tune or not. I could almost give him water myself.”

“Don't be soft,” said Cap.

They moved away. I wanted to reward Beard. I wanted Cap to be struck down by lightning.

Renn's hair was matted with vegetable matter and blood. His face was ashen—­and there were hours to go until sunset.

He raised his head.

The crowd began to heckle him, and I realized that they perceived his raised head as a kind of rebellion. Maybe it was.

A potato flew toward Renn's head but missed and hit the stocks. Laughter and jeers from the crowd.

Put your head down,
I thought.
Put your head down
.

He put his head down, and the crowd soon lost interest once more. The market was next to the stocks, and there were vegetables and chickens and ducks to buy and cloth to look at and more interesting things to do than harass an obviously broken man.

I went to the village water pump. I soaked my outer shirt so I could clean his face. I had no jug or jar to put water in, but I found I could cup water tightly in my hands.

Then I crossed what seemed to be a forbidden zone—­although there were no guards—­and knelt down next to Renn. He jerked as if to move from a threat. I couldn't say anything; I lifted my cupped hands to his mouth. His eyes were now on mine, and I saw to my relief that there was no madness in them, although there was no recognition either.

He licked the water out of my hands as best he could with his swollen tongue. I had never been that intimate with a man. I squeezed the water from my shirt onto his lips and wiped the blood and refuse from his face. He was trying to say something, but it was hard to make out what. I pushed his hair back out of his eyes, and I put my ear next to his mouth.

“Go away,” he said.

The members of the crowd had moved in closer now. They were disgruntled.

“That man gave him water,” a boy called out.

“Better leave it,” said the woman with him. “He's a traditionalist.”

I made my face expressionless as I walked into the thick of the crowd. Most of them looked afraid of me, and I wondered at a place like Shibbeth, where ­people feared mercy more than torment.

I
saw him in the shadow of the column that marked the center of the market square.

Trey.

I made my way to him. Trey looked down at my small form with alarm.

“Trey,” I said. “It's Angel.”

His response surprised me. He touched my chin, tilted up my face and looked into my eyes. His touch was really no more improper than any of the dozens of rules he and I had already broken, but a shock ran through my body. I felt it all: sorrow and anxiety and suddenly both exhilaration and joy. I felt, too, Trey's longing. I had been afraid of that longing for so long; I had tried to deny it even after the rescue. Finally, now, I began to understand what he felt for me.

But there was no time to think. No time to feel.

“Angel?” said Trey.

“I found Silky,” I said. “We're safe. We need to free Renn.”

He raised his eyebrows at my use of the Bard's name, but all he said was, “They won't release him until sunset.”

“We'll need a horse to get him away from the square when the time comes, then,” I said.

“Squab and Bran are in the wide gully outside the gate,” said Trey. “We can use Squab to carry Renn. Angel, I—­”

“We have a sturdy animal,” I said. “Easier to use him. Even Squab has a little too much breeding for this job. He'll call attention.”

“I didn't know if you and Silky were alive,” said Trey. “I thought they might have taken you—­branded you.”

“But you waited for us,” I said.

“I'll always wait for you, Angel.” He was upset. “No one hurt you?”

I thought of my shoulder.

“No.”

I
told Trey more before I went back to the inn to face the fury of Niamh and Jesse and, what I dreaded most, the wrath of Silky.

“I was
sick
with worry,” Silky said.

“I'm sorry.”

“I really mean I was
sick
. I threw up on Niamh. Next time, take me. Where you go,
I
go.”

The sun was low in the sky when I returned to the square with Jesse. Trey looked Jesse over carefully; apparently he passed inspection.

Renn's face was once more bloody, and, as the time came close for his release, the crowd seemed to become interested again. They threw rotting vegetables from the market's refuse pit and yelled obscenities.

But they didn't kill him.

At sunset, the soldiers unlocked the stocks. When they released Renn, he crawled forward into the garbage ­people had thrown at him all day and then fell on his side.

Before I could move, a man from across the square went toward Renn. I tensed, but Trey put a warning hand on my arm. The man carried a water skin, which he held to Renn's lips. Renn tried to gulp down the water, and I could see that the stranger was trying to slow him down.

I couldn't wait any longer. I left Jesse and Trey holding the pony, and I hurried over to Renn.

“Thanks, friend,” I said to the man and gently disentangled his arm. “We'll take him now.”

“He be a bard,” said the man. “Renn of Arcadia. I seen and heard him before.”

“I'll take care of him,” I said.

“I thought traditionalists be not liking bards.”

“We just don't like it when they sing out of tune,” I said. “Why are you helping?”

The man looked almost ashamed. “I heard this one right here sing the Tree ballads once. He made me weep.” He leaned forward confidentially. “Shame to hurt a bard.”

“You're a good man,” I said.

It was impossible for Renn to sit a horse, so we ended up hoisting him onto the animal's back like a bag of flour. The stranger helped. Renn made no sound.

“Good luck to you then,” the stranger said. “I hope someday I hear him sing again. Maybe The Taken. I never heard a real good bard sing The Taken.” And with that, the man blended back into the crowd.

Renn's head, since he was slung across the pony, was even with my neck. I looked at him now and saw that he was watching me.

“Angel,” he said.

“You're going to be all right,” I said. Trey was looking at us, and I felt myself flush.

“You should,” Renn said to me, “have gone away.” His voice was hoarse.

“I did. Now I'm back.” And my heart opened a little.

“Angel,” he said. “Lovely name. Mustn't say so. The Lady Angel.”

“Renn,” I said. “It's Angel. Just Angel. I've been stupid.”

“Angel.”

The light was dimming fast. A woman from the market came close and pressed some bread into Jesse's hand. An herbalist from the market left his stall to pass Lorsum leaves and Calla powder to me. Lorsum dulled pain so that stiff muscles and tendons could be stretched out. Calla was a stimulant.

I had been ready to dismiss all ‘Lidans, but I had been wrong.

“Angel?” Renn's voice surprised me.

“Yes,” I said. “I'm here.”

“All right,” he said.

Together we moved down the street.