chapter III
I LEARNED THE SWORD FROM HIM, BUT I LEARNED more. I learned to be quiet in the wood, and how to breathe so no deer could hear me. I learned how to gut a fresh-caught fish, and how to rob a beehive of its honeycomb. I learned to know where my feet were at all times, and how to make the sword I wore a part of myself, so that when my teacher took a sudden swipe at me, my hand was no longer empty, and I was not defenseless.
I rediscovered skills I’d had as a child: climbing trees, knocking down nuts, skipping stones across a pond.
And I learned him well enough that it became harder for him to surprise me with a sudden attack. I could sense the stillness of his impending motion, and I was ready.
I raided the great house’s kitchen gardens for herbs, and made a little plot by our door so that I would not have to go so far to make our food taste like something. As the harvest came in, the house staff left us baskets of good ripe squash and tomatoes and leeks and chard. I was going to miss the sweet green peas I ate by the handful that were already gone by. I dried bunches of thyme and sage, and brought indoors a little pot of rosemary I hoped would last out the winter.
There was always enough butter and cream and cheese, since there were more than enough cows. And suddenly, as the night air turned cold and the day sky burned a bright and gallant blue, the world was full of apples. The air smelt of them, sharp and crisp, then underlaid with the sweet rot of groundfall. One day the orchard was infested with children, filling their baskets with them for cider. The next week, pigs were rootling for what was left.
On one of the last warmish nights of autumn we sat by the stream, grilling trout stuffed with fennel over a fire of apple wood. The stars were thick as spilled salt above us.
He pulled his cloak around him and poked the fire with his staff. “There were apple trees where I grew up. I used to collect fallen wood for my mother. And steal the lord’s apples, with his sons.”
“Were you caught?”
“Chased, not caught. He was a nice man. He understood boys get hungry. He liked my mother; used to lend her books and things.”
“Did your father die?”
“I never had one, not in the usual way of things. My mother ran away with him when she was young, but she decided she didn’t like him after all. By then she was stuck with me, but I guess she didn’t mind. She used to show me bat skeletons and teach me the names of plants.”
My mother seemed so far away she hardly seemed worth mentioning. And mine never had any bat skeletons. “She sounds a bit…unusual.”
“Yes, I figured that out later.”
“Did she teach you to fight?”
“Oh, no. I learnt from a swordsman. No, she couldn’t do anything practical, really.”
We’d eaten all we wanted to eat, but were in no mood to leave the fire.
“It’s too bad neither of us can sing,” my teacher said. “The nights are getting longer. Can you recite anything?”
Poetry? I thought in panic. “Just schoolroom things: ‘The Maid Forlorn,’ ‘The King’s Run,’ that sort of thing.”
“Can I hear them?”
He was always amazing me by not knowing the most common things. “Well, if you like.”
But he stopped me halfway through “The Maid Forlorn.” “Do you think that could really happen?”
I sucked fish off my fingers. “A girl believing everything a man tells her? Probably. Some people are very gullible.”
I heard him smile. “True. But—are you supposed to admire her as well as feel sorry for her? Or just to think, I’ll never do anything that stupid?”
I’d never considered it. “You know,” I said, “I think the point is she’s in love with him, even though she isn’t supposed to be. That’s what makes her stupid, really. It’s not to say she isn’t clever with other things. She might have been very good at sums or geography or something, beforehand.”
“So they made you learn this as a lesson not to fall in love with unsuitable men?”
I drew myself up. I did not like having my upbringing criticized, even by him. “I learnt this,” I said, “because it is poetry. Girls are supposed to know poetry. It is the inner beauty of the soul made art.”
“I take it she dies at the end.”
“She wants to die. She’s been betrayed. She’s lost her honor.” He made a dismissive noise. “Well, what do you want her to do?” I demanded. “Go off somewhere and open a shop?”
“Well, why not?”
“Because then it wouldn’t be poetry.”
“How’s ‘The King’s Run’?”
“It’s heroic. The young king dies, but it’s for the land.”
“I thought nobles hated the kings.”
“We overthrew the bad ones,” I explained, drawing on my schoolroom lessons of a lifetime ago. “There used to be better ones, before, in the really olden days. Those are the poetry ones.”
He leaned forward. “Look, I’ve been wondering about that. People have written books of history, haven’t they? We might find a few in the library here.”
“I could read to you.”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
I thought, and then said, “Your mother, she never taught you to read, did she?”
“It didn’t seem important, then. You know how it is.”
Well, I did know. Learning things was hard, and people were always trying to teach you things you didn’t want to know. If I had a daughter, I’d never make her sew or cook if she didn’t want to. But she’d have to learn to read and keep accounts. “History books?” I asked. I suspected they’d be dull. But maybe I’d find other books in the Highcombe library, good ones, like travel or adventure. “Could we send for more from the city?”
“I’ll tell them, next time someone comes. Do you know how long you’ll be staying?”
It was the first time he had asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Maybe he has forgotten about me.”
“I don’t think so. He’ll forget you for a few days, ignore you for a month, but he won’t forget forever.”
I had stopped thinking that the duke might send for me and drag me off to yet another life. I did not want to go.
I smothered the fire, while my master waited under the stars. He wouldn’t let me touch him to guide him in, but walked straight over the field, his staff before him to intercept surprises.
In the dark, my teacher saw almost nothing. But he liked the night. He would go out for walks, and return at dawn to sleep. Sometimes I’d wake to hear him practicing, stomps and shuffles and whipcracks of steel, broken rhythms in the night. The first time it happened I crept, frightened, to the top of the stairs with a candle. My master was below, in the dark empty room. He was nearly naked, sweating, spinning and dodging with blade in hand, like someone battling a nightmare. My little flame flung his shadow wild against the wall.
If he heard me he did nothing, just kept on with the attack, high and low, behind and before. I watched him do things I did not know a swordsman could do. I began to see the design, the opponent’s moves that his were counter to. I could never give him a fight like that. Neither, I was sure now, could the swordsmen I’d seen at the duke’s party.
I knew when the death came, a blow straight through the heart. In the pale rays of my candleflame, finally he turned to look up to where I sat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking about you. I’ll try to be more quiet when you’re asleep.”
“Can you see in the dark?”
“Not at all. But night sounds completely different.”
He was quiet and I was quiet, listening. There was no birdsong, only the distant calls of hunting owls, and skitterings of small things in the brush. I almost felt I could hear the daytime creatures breathing their slow sleep in the night.
“May I practice with you?”
“I have the advantage.”
“I know. But you do anyway. It would be interesting.”
He wiped his chest with a towel. “Not tonight, I think. Another time, without a candle, yes.”
And I did that, once the days grew so short there was no light left after supper; standing so still, in the shadowed dark, waiting for him to move out of shadow or for one of the shadows to become him. We practiced with sticks. I never felt him move until he struck. Over and over, until I wanted to cry. My every attack beat off by one of his.
“Listen,” he’d say. “Be still.”
I closed my eyes. I stood still until my arms and legs ached. Then I heard him move.
I cracked him right in the head, and then I had to be sorry and get a cold cloth to put on it.
“Next time,” he grinned, “you’ll find the target. Although…in a street fight you’d be fine.”
“No one,” I said, “stands like a block of ice in the middle of the street after dark.”
“You’ll be surprised, when you get to the city, just what people will do.”
“Tell me about the city, then.”
The master shrugged. “It’s crowded. It smells. There are lots of things to buy.”
I snorted. “I’ve been there,” I said. “I know all that.” But I didn’t know the city, not really. I’d only passed through in a carriage, and spent my days in the duke’s house on the Hill. “Did you like it?” I asked.
“It was interesting.” He always said that about things another person would have strong feelings about. I knew there was a long story in him about the city and that he was hiding it from me.
“I expect I will have a house there someday,” I said breezily. “Perhaps you will come visit.”
“No. I would not like to go there now.” But his calm, sure voice was quiet; he sounded as though perhaps he would.
I repented of my relentlessness. “Does your head hurt very much?”
“Not very much. Help me roll out the bedding.”
The master staggered as he bent over to pull the pallet out. I had to make him sit down. “Oof!” he said, as I spread his bed on the floor. “It wasn’t such a bad knock. It’s funny; I was always sure I’d never live to be twenty-five. This all comes as a surprise, this business of after.”
I had lit a candle, being unable to find things in the dark as he could. In the rich light he looked pale, fine-drawn, neither young nor old. I wanted to give him a strong dose of poppy and make him tell me things before he fell asleep.
I heated some wine on the hearth instead. Twenty-five seemed terrifically old to me. I couldn’t imagine the time it would take to get there, let alone get past it. When I was twenty-five, my whole life would be decided. I’d probably be married, with children; at least, I hoped so. Unless I was killed by a sword, the way he had planned to be.
I put the wine into his hands. He drank it all, but did not ask for more. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. I should have known.