Strands of Starlight (24 page)

Miriam was changing into a gown. They would be on well-traveled roads now, and she had to appear as human as possible. Terrill had himself donned human dress, and but for the fact that his face was so fair and young, he appeared to be a common countryman bound for Belroi on some ordinary errand.

“Belroi is probably better, then,” Miriam agreed, tying her bodice.

But she looked across the fields to Furze, remembering a small house and a woman who lived there . . . alone.

The Elf nodded. “Better. Providing, of course, that we do not run straight into the arms of the Inquisition.”

She shuddered. Her legs ached, but she knew it was her imagination. “Do you think there's a chance of that?”

“There is always a chance, Mirya—” He caught himself and stared off at the town as though to avoid looking at her.

They reached Belroi in the late afternoon and entered through the town gates. Terrill's sword was in his pack, hidden, but within easy reach. The Elf received a number of admiring looks from passing women, and the men appreciated Miriam, but otherwise their presence went unnoticed.

Miriam felt ill at ease. This city was much like any other in Adria, like many she had lived in before. There were the same people pressing together in crowds or walking alone and bent under a heavy burden. The cats and dogs were the same, watching lazily from atop a warm wall or running alongside a wagon and barking. Mud. Noise. Shouting. A pot of cold-withered flowers forlorn on a balcony high above the street. A man chiding a woman in an upper room of a squalid house. A woman chiding a man in the dirty market square. A bunch of brown leaves tumbling along the cobbles in a chill wind, turning sodden in the melting snow.

Sadness . . .

She took Terrill's arm. “Courage,” he said, laying his hand on hers. “This place has no power over you.”

But her awareness insisted on reaching out to the pulse of the town. Sadness. People, young and old, carrying out day-to-day tasks of survival, their exertions mandated by fear: fear of starvation, fear of penury, fear of damnation, fear of arrest, fear of love or the lack of it . . .

Sadness.

“How do you stand it, Terrill?”

He sighed. “They are human,” he said simply, as if that explained it all. “They could, maybe, learn to see as do we, but they turned away from that choice.”

“But Saint Brigid? Andrew and Elizabeth and Kay and Charity?”

“They made a different choice,” he said. They came in sight of the river. “Their way is easier, or perhaps harder. It is difficult to judge sometimes. But Saint Brigid is not Belroi.”

“I've noticed.” She felt foreign, and it would not have been much stranger to her had there been—instead of the brightly painted guildhall and the spired cathedral—a cluster of nomad tents, or the onion-domed bulk of a mosque, its minaret pointing toward the sky and loud with the chant of a muezzin—

“Good evening to you, sir,” Terrill called suddenly to a burly man leaning against a post by the river. “God bless you.”

“Aye, give ye peace,” said the man.

“Can you tell me if any ships are to be sailing for Maris tomorrow or the next day?”

“I can,” he said. “Tomorrow mornin' early old
Bird of the River
casts off with a last load o' Bergren cheese. Be ye a merchant, sir?”

“That I am not,” replied Terrill. “But I would speak with the captain.”

The sailor pointed to a rough-looking inn by the riverside. “The Saracen's Head, old Gregory calls it, though if ye ask me he's never been within a stone's throw of a church, much less the Holy Land. Abraham is the captain: he's round as a barrel, with a black beard and an eye for pretty women. He'll be at a table in the common room. Mind your wife, sir.”

Miriam colored. “I'm—”

“Thank you, sir,” said Terrill, squeezing her hand. “Give you peace.”

“Aye, sir. And ye also.”

They went toward the inn. “Am I so helpless that you have to take care of me?” she sputtered.

“Was it not Augustine of Hippo who said that one can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?:”

“I'm the one who has to deliver the letters.”

“Maybe. But I am your teacher,” he said, unruffled. “Did you learn anything just now?”

“The captain is glutton and a wencher.”

“That is all?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “That is unfortunate. I had meant the lesson to be one in courtesy.”

The interior of the inn was dark with the approaching evening, but not to the eyes of the two gray-cloaked figures that entered. Miriam saw Abraham immediately, for he did not so much sit at table as dominate the room.

“Well?” said Terrill.

“Well what?”

“As you so forcefully reminded me, you have the letters,” he said. “Go and talk to Abraham. I will have a cup of wine.” And with that, he wandered over to an isolated corner and sat down, his back against the wall and his feet up on a stool. Miriam saw him sign to the tapster, but felt his eyes on her. What lesson was this?

She looked at Abraham. The big man was watching her. An eye for pretty women. Staring down att he floor with her jaw set in annoyance, she found her stars and let their energies settle her. Abraham's size reminded her too much of the man in the forest, and she hoped that this was not another human bear who would try to—

The stars glittered at her. She was used to being small, weak, and at the mercy of those around her, but that did not mean she had to remain that way. With a mental jerk, she pulled her awareness into the present. She could see the stars. She knew the fighting dance. And with a constancy and instinct that still baffled her, she was beginning to sense the Greater Dance that went on about her, that encompassed this city of sadness and the ways of tis people, that enfolded in its intricacy even this large riverman who was just now stuffing a large piece of black bread into his large mouth.

With a glance at Terrill, she walked calmly over to the captain of
Bird of the River
, stood before him, and in her soft contralto said with great courtesy:

“God bless you, sir.”

In the name of God, Amen.

I, Augustine delAzri, by the grace of Our Lord now bishop of Maris and the lands around it, being of sound mind and wishing to b e at peace with my God and my people, on the twenty-fifth day of October in the Year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and fifty and in the three hundred fifty-eighth year of the Baronage of Adria, do make my testament in the following manner. In the first place, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God and to the blessed Mary His mother and to all the saints, and my body to b e buried in the Church of Saint Giles in the city of Onella, where I was born. And because of a certain form I have arranged for my lands and household goods to be sold and the profits from them to be distributed to the poor of Maris and its surrounding towns and villages, I will that first of all my debts shall be paid, and that to whomsoever I have done any injury, just and due recompense shall be made.

I will that a black cloth shall be arrayed on my body and that five wax candles be burned on the day of my decease, in honor of Our Most Blessed Lady, and that a branch of evergreen be placed in my hands when my body is given unto the earth.

I give and bequeath to the Church of Saint Giles in Onella ten florins of gold so that masses may be said for my soul, that my imperfections may not weigh too heavily in the eyes of my God, and that He look with mercy upon me. I ask that my place of burial not be marked in any special or extraordinary way, and that my body be laid to rest among the poor of the community.

And I will that—

So dictated to me, Efram Bougiers, clerk, until the strength of the good bishop failed him, and his spirit departed his body this twenty-fifth day of October, in the year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and fifty.

***

The night was dark, very dark. The wind was bitter. The snows of late November were always harsh, but these were the worst that George Darci could remember. He could almost fancy the bolts of the shutters straining with the gusts of the storm, and he instinctively curled up against his sleeping wife and pulled the down comforter tightly about them both.

But it was not the wind that kept him awake: it was the letter that lay on the table at the far side of the room. The messenger had come that afternoon from the town of Alm, having fought his way north through five leagues of blizzard to deliver the sealed parchment into the hands of the mayor of Saint Blaise. Somehow, the aldermen of Alm had heard about the threat of a crusade and were asking for a statement of policy and intent from Saint Blaise. Tomorrow George would have to stand before the council and ask for a reply. He wondered what he would get.

It appeared that the Free Towns had been prodded into action, but the reaction of Saint Blaise, the wealthiest of them all, was the determining factor. If the burghers decided to fear for their souls, the Free Towns were lost. If they decided to fight, then . . .

George lay on his back, staring at a ceiling that he could not see. Even if they fought, the Towns might never be the same. There was something precious in the Free Towns, something worth fighting for, but something that fighting could destroy.

But he had decided, nonetheless, to ask the council to prepare for war. If what the Towns had was to be lost, then it was better lost in defense rather than in capitulation.

Anne stirred, cried out, her hands clawing at empty space. “Janet!” she screamed hoarsely.

George held her. “Anne, you're dreaming. It's all right.”

Shaking, she started to weep softly. She buried her face in his chest. “Oh, God . . .”

“Just a dream he said soothingly, stroking her hair.

“It was too real,” she said. “I saw the town burning. I was watching from the upper window, and the smoke was all about. Then I remembered that I didn't know where Janet was, and I ran down the stairs to her room. She wasn't there. I looked all over.”

“Shhh . . .” George rocked her gently. “Remember, it was a dream.”

“It seemed so real. . . .”

She wept for a while, and then sleep took her again. Absently, George continued to stroke her hair. Anne did not usually have nightmares, be he supposed that the strain in the town this winter could be affecting her. Still . . .

He wondered, as he often did when he awoke in the dead of night and gazed at her sleeping form, whether he were seeing a faint light about her, an almost subliminal luminescence that allowed him to make out, dimly, the features of his beloved wife.

He had never spoken of it, and he knew that no one else had ever noticed, not even her father and mother. In fact, he normally dismissed it as mere fancy on his part. But now, with the threat of crusade hanging over the town, he recalled certain stories that were told in marketplaces, and at hearthsides, and by wandering musicians. They were stories of liaisons between mortal and immortal, between human and Elf. And he had heard about a woman to the south, in Saint Brigid, who had taken an Elf for a lover and who was now spending the winter in the forest to bear their child among his people.

How much elven blood was there in the land? In whose veins did it run?

He stroked Anne's head. “Oh, my dearest,” he said, knowing that she did not hear, “I was honored when you took my hand in marriage. But if what I suspect is true,, then I am doubly, trebly honored.” He kissed her. “Hail, Fair One.”

She stirred, nuzzled at him, and was, one again, asleep.

***

. . . and so, Your Excellency, as far as I am able to tell, Roderick of Onella, resident of Belroi, is innocent of any connection with the Free Towns. He has, of course, been expelled from the guard because of the bribe. The whore, Denise, has been handed over to the civil authorities for punishment.

But Roderick's story raises some questions. Who were the two women in the cart? Could Miriam of Maris, the witch, have been the “nasty-looking little girl” of whom Roderick spoke? If so, then it is obvious that the elven heresy has spread beyond the Free Towns, for when last seen, the older woman was driving the cart south, toward Furze.

I will make some inquiry in Furze, but will return to Hypprux before Christmas. I am entrusting this letter to an able river captain named Abraham. I pray you, Excellency, reward him well, for my supply of ready money grows short.

Dated this twenty-fifth day of October, in the year of Our Lord one thousand three hundred and fifty.

***

Saint Brigid prepared for Christmas, but it also prepared for war. Word came down from Saint Blaise that the wealthiest of the Free Towns had decided to take up arms if a crusade were declared, and the other towns joined with it to defy both secular and ecclesiastical power.

And so, as the Yuletide decorations appeared in the village—bunches of elder, mistletoe, and birch hanging from door and wall—a sense of expectancy settled about the town as thick as the snows. Farmers talked about the spring plowing as usual, but they sounded unconvinced, as though spring might provide, along with green shoots and buds, the tramp of soldiers and the clang of weapons. Would there be a harvest next year? Would there be a town?

Near the beginning of the third week of Advent, David balanced his carvings on an old cart and brought them to the church. With the help of Andrew and a number of other men, he set the panels up behind the altar with the canvas still on. He wanted the unveiling saved for Christmas.

Miriam watched them work as she stood on the snowy common, her gray cloak wrapped about her and her hood up to keep the cold from her ears. It had been David's panels that had brought her surety enough to pressure Varden into giving her exactly what she wanted.

She nearly laughed out loud at the thought. What had she ever really wanted beyond a dry place to sleep and some assurance that the morning would not find her in some dungeon, or at the stake?

She turned away from the church, her soft boots noiseless on the carpet of snow. She wore elven garb habitually now. Gowns and skirts lay in the past, along with a good deal more. The clothing was merely an outward sign that signified the profundity of the inward change.