The Storyteller and Other Tales Read online

  “She ... Barley?”

  “They took her right away from judging in the White Room this morning, Hounds and priests and the chamberlain. Down to the river. It was a betrayal of the household, they say the mistress decreed, like an adulterous wife’s betrayal, and so that end for her.”

  “Barley’s dead?”

  The old woman’s grip on his hands tightened. “You do your weeping in private, boy, as I do. The Daughter can still change her mind about your so-innocent and devoted soul.”

  “But Barley ...”

  “It’s a better death than burning, I imagine. I tell myself. I pray. Now, get out of here, and don’t come back.”

  He-Redeems got slowly to his feet, moving like an old man, and turned away.

  “And I will pray for your eyes to be opened,” she muttered behind him. “Because First-Son thought you were worth loving. Poor fool. And so did my sweet Barley.”

  He took the wrong stairs, climbed to the courtyard and stood dully beneath the pillars, looking across the yard. Not even a man, from here, not First-Son. Just a shape, and the crows ripping at it. And the flies seething. Never First-Son.

  He bit his lip and swallowed hard, blinking, but the tears came anyway. Wrong to weep for ... that. He forced his mind to holiness, to the greatest peace he knew, the Daughter’s three holy babies in their cradles, asleep, serene ... divine, the presence of the god in the world.

  If his unborn child was evil because of Barley, who only listened, surely only listened, who called on Skarritha at the end, if the child was not saved for He-Redeems’ innocence or its own, for his devoted worship ... could even the Daughter’s virtue redeem her babies, fathered not by mere heresy but by the very blood of the Nine?

  So those babies you think so beautiful and holy are evil and outcast far more than Barley’s would have been. Or if they’re innocent babies, yours must be innocent too. Which is it? First-Son’s thoughts in his mind; he would never think such things on his own, never.

  First-Son was dead, and they would never lie close together in the slaves’ hall again, whispering. He swallowed again against the choking in his throat. Heretic. Cast him out of his mind.

  There’s no justice in Skarritha. No mercy, if even a baby can’t be forgiven. First-Son’s thoughts. But they weren’t. They were He-Redeems’ own, and he could not pretend otherwise.

  He felt in memory an arm over him, warm, hard-muscled body close. Whispering breath on his ear. Priest’s boy. So that’s great Skarritha’s mercy? Tell Barley it’s justice, then. Look me in the eyes and tell me it was justice for Barley. Tell our son. Your son. He gagged at the smell and staggered on his way to the barracks, walking near without looking up, to see what was not left of the face.

  He-Redeems sat in his Hand’s hall, hemming a new gown. It was easy work, mindless. Merciful Skarritha, merciful Skarritha, merciful Skarritha ... the words grew empty in his mind. The evening sun shone in through the open door, staining the far wall red.

  The Hand wouldn’t be coming back from the tavern that evening, his fellow slave told him, and maybe not till morning. Hounds did not have to worry about the city curfew.

  Tamarind brought food up for their evening meal. “Spare you facing the slaves’ hall till tomorrow,” he said.

  He-Redeems knew he ought to thank the man, couldn’t make himself speak, and didn’t touch the food.

  “A quick death, anyway,” Tamarind said then, and he knew he had been watched, leaving the barracks. Tamarind had known why he was going. “Better than burning.”

  “Yes.”

  Quick? Less pain, maybe. He prayed so.

  Who to? Skarritha who ordered it, with the voice of his Divine Daughter?

  Go away, he told his own thoughts. And imagined that First-Son smiled, angry, taunting. Priest’s boy.

  Eventually Tamarind ordered him to bed, closing the door but leaving a lamp burning in a niche in case their masters should return. He-Redeems lay stiffly at the edge of the mat, listening to Tamarind breathing. He was too aware of the man, a presence too close, too ... not First-Son. It was too quiet, not the great crowd breathing and muttering, the slow breaths and fast, the lonely whimpers and the furtive joinings of the slaves’ hall. He wanted to weep, now, and could not, not with Tamarind there to hear. He could not jerk his mind away from Barley. Barley warm and sharp-boned, pressed against him, turning from him to First-Son and back again, the three of them one tangled urgent knot. Barley struggling to breathe in the dark water, fighting the heavy cloth. Barley gasping and nothing but water entering her lungs, burning, and the weight of the water over her and stones, pulling her down ....

  But some time in the night he remembered, Such innocence. Such devotion. Only the gods deserve such, boy, and he thought, the gods? Not something First-Son had ever said, and not that voice of his own in his head that he lied in calling First-Son, either. His mind jerked away from Barley.

  The old woman in the kitchens talked of the gods? He had spoken with an apostate in the Divine Daughter’s own kitchen.

  The Great Lady must be warned.

  The voice he was calling First-Son laughed at him.

  He felt water burning in his lungs, saw the old woman’s dark eyes, sharp and knowing as youth, Barley’s eyes. The old kitchen-woman was not some dodderer betrayed by a wandering mind. She gave him those words.

  First-Son thought you were worth loving. And so did my sweet Barley.

  He rolled over, staring towards the dim lamp. His heart felt swollen, closing off his throat, an ache he could not swallow. But his eyes were dry, all weeping burned away.

  It had been all he thought he needed, Skarritha’s love. And First-Son and Barley, the baby, only pieces of it, lamp-lights to the god’s great sun of love.

  The lamps remained real, hot in his heart. The other was ... a distant mirror, only reflecting, not burning.

  They were gone, and the world was empty, and he would not be with them, ever. All the family he ever had, all the love he had ever given and received. He would never be with them, not even in the great union with Skarritha to come in the end of days, since the god granted them no mercy, rejected them, condemned by the Divine Daughter’s word.

  Did the outcast Nine take in Skarritha’s outcasts? Was that son of an outcast goddess who still eluded all the hunting thonor, that golden-eyed monster for whom the Great Lady had turned him from her bed, that unholy father of the three holy babies, a sign of the Nine’s return to Korthan?

  Tamarind rested an arm over him, a body warm and close against his back. An attempt at comfort, maybe; maybe, from the looks the man had given him, the closest to the Divine Daughter he would ever come. He-Redeems did not bother to edge away as the man pressed nearer. It did not seem to matter.

  Great Nine gods, he tried, shaping words with no breath, as First-Son had always prayed. Great Nine. Are you there?

  The Inexorable Tide

  I am an old woman now, and my granddaughter’s children play at battles through my orchard, but I hear other voices in the murmur of the leaves, in the hum of the bees and the whisper of the waves along the shore. I see other forms, so beloved, so familiar, in the mists of the lake that hides our last refuge. I remember.

  If Livy and Plutarch teach us anything, it is that time is relentless. It presses on, heavy with the weight of peoples, with Fate and Fortune, and in the end it rolls over us, swamps even the best.

  We were far from the best. I was not my father; Amhar had no chance to be his; Mordred was ... simply Mordred. Though valiant in battle, he was not the fiery hero his brother Gawain was, and he was not his uncle; he could have been an Arthur in a different style, a builder and restorer, if Arthur had given us a lasting peace.

  It seemed at the time as though he had. The Saxon heathen were driven from Britain, the warring kings and dukes swept into Arthur’s
orbit. Merlin was gone, sleeping in his cave, or so the songs already said, and I, his daughter, said nothing to deny it. Now the songs say other things of me, of all of us, and I smile and say nothing.

  But Merlin was gone, and the Ladies on their island sent me to the King in his place, which a mere girl could not fill, not in that council of warriors. Arthur listened to me with the respect due my father and my training, but my words lacked the force of my father’s prophecy, the strength of his vision.

  The King was restless. He was not a lord for peace, though peace was ever his driving dream. When Hoel in Brittany begged aid against the heretic Visigoths on his borders, Arthur’s answer was shaped as much by desire to be doing as by kinship’s right.

  Britain armed. The old heroes, Bedwyr and Cai, Gawain and even Mordred, felt their blood wake again. The young who dreamed of heroism, finding no beauty in the quiet farmstead, the green valley and the cattle grazing, could not be held back. The maids talked of champions, and sighed. Only the old mothers sat by the fire with shadows in their eyes, remembering what could be lost.

  And I, I, Nimiane, went to the King.

  He was a big man, and Roman-dark. In his presence lesser men dwindled, like candles held against the hearth. I found him with Bedwyr, as was usually the case.

  “Cousin,” I said, once we had exchanged the usual courtesies — “cousin” was always the style between us, as it had been between Arthur and my father. “Are you set on going to war for Hoel?”

  “Hoel has always been a true friend to Britain,” Arthur said, by which he meant, to himself as well. “He gave me aid when I most needed it. You would not counsel me to turn my back on him now?”

  “No,” I said. “I would never advise you to turn your back on your kinsman. But neither should you turn your back on Britain. Send a host to Hoel, by all means, but remain at home yourself.”

  “You’ll make me old before my time,” he said, laughing.

  “As my father grew old before his, helping you to carry the burden of a kingdom, and suffering the spite of your enemies,” I returned. “Your sword is needed here, cousin.”

  “Britain is at peace. The Saxons fear our very name.”

  “They fear your name. Lord, I beg you, send a host to Hoel, send Gawain and Mordred to show him honour, but don’t go to Less Britain yourself.”

  “What do you fear, Nimiane?” Bedwyr asked.

  “The King’s enemies,” I said. “Britain’s enemies. If you go to Less Britain and take the greater part of Britain’s armies with you, who defends us here?”

  “I’ll not leave Britain undefended,” Arthur said.

  “No? Does Bedwyr go with you?”

  “Yes,” Bedwyr answered.

  “And Cai?”

  Bedwyr snorted, and Arthur said, “Try to leave him behind.”

  “Gawain?”

  “Of course. Mordred will stay,” said the King. “That should please you, little cousin.” He grinned, and I flushed. “Mordred and Guenevere will rule in my name,” Arthur went on. “And you will remain, Nimiane, to advise them as your father advised me. In what better hands could I leave my kingdom?”

  “Guenevere ...” I said. But what could I say of Guenevere, to her lord? What would my father have said? That she was growing old, and bitter, time slipping through her fingers? Her youth had faded in uncertainty and war, in waiting, without even a baby for comfort, to see Arthur carried home on a bier. Now she played games of courtship with the young warriors to fill her empty days, while Arthur’s bastard Amhar admiringly trailed the heroes of the Saxon wars. Would Merlin have cautioned that power given as a sop now was either insult, or worse, excess, as wine after abstinence? I said nothing. I was not my father, to speak so to my King.

  The ships carried the warriors of Britain away.

  We were not left undefended, but those remaining behind were not the best, and they were not the greater part of the warbands. They were youths like Amhar, untried in war, or the old who had lost their taste for glory — who had learned sense, some might say.

  All was well enough at first. From Brittany we heard report of battles and victories. Several more shiploads of warriors made the crossing, without Mordred’s leave but with Guenevere’s blessing. Her champions, she called them, sent to the King’s banner, where she would be herself if she could. That led to bitter words in the hall.

  “You must be reconciled,” I told Mordred, after the worst of these exchanges with the Queen. “And now, before any rumour of quarrelling spreads.”

  Mordred sat slouched in a chair by my fire, legs stretched to the hearth, his cup of wine barely tasted on the table between us. He was fair as a Saxon changeling, with his uncle’s black Roman eyes. He looked to me like a brooding angel, but I never claimed to be free of girlish fancies. Amhar sprawled at his feet, a dark youth, beginning to near Arthur’s height and breadth of shoulder. Both spent more time in my small house than in the King’s, now that Guenevere ruled it.

  “She tried to send Amhar with the last band,” Mordred said. “She as good as called him coward, when he refused to go.”

  “My father told me to look after Nimiane,” Amhar remarked to the fire. “I didn’t tell her that. I smiled, and walked out. She wants me dead, but it isn’t as if she has any sons for me to threaten.”

  “And here I thought you adored me for my own sake.” I poked Amhar with a bare toe. He rolled over, grinning, and grabbed my ankle.

  “And what if I do?”

  “Don’t be foolish. And don’t provoke the Queen.” I withdrew my foot beneath my skirt, more disconcerted than I wanted to admit at the touch of skin on skin.

  “Lecture Mordred, not me, cousin.” Amhar sat up, leaning his shoulder against my knee, his gaze fixed on Mordred. “The men are taking sides. And you know, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.”

  I shivered, and the fire seemed dark.

  “We’ll be brought to desolation for certain if the Queen sends many more troops to Arthur,” Mordred grumbled. “There was a report of longships off Rutupiae last month. Guenevere laughs and says they won’t dare land for fear of the King, and it’s an old man’s timidity to keep men home for such a remote threat.”

  “The wolves circle.” I spoke without thought, and paused to consider what the words might mean. “The King’s name is great, but the King is not here. They will try us. Tell the queen — I’ll tell the Queen, no more men must leave.”

  “Mordred should tell her,” said Amhar. “She’ll take it better from him.”

  “She will not,” said Mordred. “She did not. You were there, Amhar.”

  “She will, if you charm her. She likes to be charmed.”

  “I don’t want to charm her,” Mordred snapped. He shoved himself upright in the chair with such force that the table beside it rocked. “She’s a vain, spoilt child turned to a petulant harridan.”

  “But she is beautiful, and clever in a shallow way, and she likes to be told she is as wise as she is beautiful. Put it to her that way. Apologize for your temper. Smile sweetly. Say you know she is anxious for the King’s return, but that perhaps her love for the King makes her incautious of the kingdom. Say Arthur trusts her to do what is best, to put Britain’s good before his own. Say the warriors are eager to join Arthur, and only her words will keep them home to defend us. Make it her power that keeps men home, and so lead her into doing what must be done.”

  “You’re a dangerous child,” I said, and Amhar sat away from me.

  “I’m hardly a child,” he said coldly. “Guenevere is simple. She won’t take your advice, Nimiane, because you’re another woman, younger, beautiful, respected by the King. She thinks you have what she wants. But she’ll do whatever Mordred tells her, if he only has the sense to court her a little.”

  “What do I have that she w
ants?” I asked.

  Amhar snorted, and Mordred flung the wine, cup and all, into the fire.

  “Court the hungry bitch yourself, Amhar,” he said. “Nimiane, good night.”

  He came back later that evening, once Amhar had gone, so close on the heels of his young cousin’s going that I knew he had been watching for it.

  The fire had settled to a mound of glowing coals, shaping visions in the night — men fighting, men dying, but I could not see who they might be. Mordred stood between me and the hearth, a shadow limned in fire, like a saint or an emperor.

  “Tell me what to do, Nimiane,” he said. “Do I play the Queen’s games to stop her sending the men away? Am I worrying over nothing, to fear a Saxon landing?”

  “No,” I said, speaking from the fleeting shapes in the flames, thinking of wolves, circling the flock, edging in to try if the shepherd and his dogs were wakeful. “No. The Saxons will come again, and the Picts from the north. The Queen must send no more men to Brittany. Do what you must, to persuade her of that.”

  Mordred stood in silence.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “I will charm her.”

  “Flatter her.”

  “Oh,” he said, “she needs no flattery.” His voice was heavy, defeated.

  My father did not teach me to understand men, not in that way, and so I did not see Mordred’s distaste for the fear and self-distrust it was, did not understand that a man might despise and still desire. I did not realize, until too late, that my concern to keep my own heart secret kept me from recognizing the very thing it desired. I said nothing, and sent him to Guenevere.

  All I saw were longships, and the yellow-haired heathen wading ashore, and the farmsteads burning.

  Guenevere hated Bedwyr, who held more of Arthur’s love than she ever could, and she had almost as strong a jealousy of Cai and Gawain and Mordred. They all shared something with Arthur, a past, a fellowship, that she thought she could not. She had always played at winning the love of Arthur’s dearest comrades as a way of claiming a part in the glory, and in later years, I think, of assuring herself she still had beauty and the power it gives the powerless over men. But I do not believe she ever intended to betray the King in fact, until in his absence Mordred began to play her courting games.