Tale of Elske (14 page)

“Soap my hair, my Lady.”

“No, about me. What will you do about me? My shame is yours, when you serve me and I carry shame with the child, for all that the real shame is someone else's.”

When Elske had finished, she climbed out and dried herself on her underskirts. Beriel by then had covered herself with her night shift. “Then there must be no child,” Elske said. It seemed simple enough.

“You know how to rid me of it?” Beriel's face was transformed by relief. “Have I wasted all of my coins, and two gold chains and a silver bracelet, too, and the medallion of my mother's house, given to me by my grandfather—? Have I gone skulking around this islanded city, looking to rid myself of this burden in my belly, have I slept cold and hungry and unguarded—? And all the time you were waiting here for me? What do I do? Drink something? Is it a potion? Is there danger it will kill me? Don't worry, I'll drink it, but I'd rather know those dangers I face. Or do you reach inside me, to—?”

Elske understood. “Ah, no, my Lady—”

“I should have guessed that the Wolfers—”

“My Lady, I mean when you have birthed it.”

Beriel withdrew back into a cold pride. “You said, ‘There must be no child.' And I believed you, and now I am betrayed.”

“My Lady, I don't betray you. A woman can give birth and still have no child on her breast.”

“Ah.” Beriel nodded her head several times. “I see. But how will you do this, Elske?”

Elske had no answer ready. “Give me time to consider,” she asked.

“Take all the time you like,” Beriel granted it, almost gaily, “so long as you are ready when I need you.” But then she covered her face with her hands, as if to hide from her own thoughts. “But if I must birth it, where will I go to hide until it comes? I think I
am
lost.”

Elske asked, “Why should you hide yourself away? It is winter and your gowns are heavy. When I have altered the waists, the child will be hidden under the high, full skirts.”

Beriel uncovered her face, to consider this. She looked down at her belly under the heavy nightgown, and nodded. “Perhaps. Perhaps I may go undiscovered. If I do, and if I live, I'll have revenge,” she said then. “My brother, who led them to me, my cousins, who raped me, again and again, until they had filled my belly—”

“Why should they wish to ruin you?” Elske wondered.

If the sea could hold flame, that would have been the color of Beriel's eyes. “Because I am the Queen that will be. And my brother—he is the King that wishes to be, although I am the firstborn, and thus named royal heir, by law. But I am also the first female to claim my inheritance through this law. Years before, with my mother's birth, came a new law that a female might inherit her father's domain if she were firstborn. But my mother gave up her own claim to her Earldom to marry my father, the King. Neither she nor my father now wish me crowned—despite the law, despite the word of the Priests and the will of my people, despite my own worth and my brother Guerric's base nature. If they have their way, I will be wed into another country; and now if I do not cooperate in that, then I will be driven from my rightful place by the shame my brother has placed on me. If I live, whatever else, I will return to take these cousins, and this brother, too, if I can lay hands on him, and I will feed them black powder until their bellies are swollen with it, and I will put their heads into the fire so they breathe in flame.”

She stared at the dark window.

“I'll have them screaming, swearing they never meant me ill, begging for mercy. As I never did, when they came at me.”

Beriel caught her breath and looked back at Elske, as much like a wolf as a woman. “If I do not die in childbirth.” As she said that, Beriel's voice sank.

“Why should you die in childbirth?” Elske asked.

“That is the fortune of women,” Beriel announced.

Elske was puzzled. “I have been at many births and but few deaths.”

“You know midwifery?” Beriel stared at her, wordless, shook her head as if amazed, and then laughed, as if she were a girl again and not a ruined woman, her belly filled with the child her rapists left in her. Laughter flowed out of her, until she could ask, “Who are you, Elske? What were you, among the Wolfers?”

“I was the Death Maiden,” Elske said.

“Which is?” Beriel asked, her voice now quiet, dangerous.

Elske explained how the Volkking journeyed into the land of the dead with his treasures around him and the Death Maiden to answer his needs. “That is a terrible custom,” Beriel said, but Elske answered that it was the feeding of infant girls to the wolves that she had learned to think terrible. “The Death Maiden was given food when others went hungry. I was kept clothed and sheltered, for I was good fortune to the Volkking.”

“You are ignorant,” Beriel told her angrily. “These Wolfers are brutes—albeit straightforward brutes, unlike more civilized men. Oh, but Elske,” Beriel said. “Where would I be if Tamara had not saved you?”

RAIN FELL HARD THE NEXT
morning so they remained in Beriel's apartments, and Beriel called for needles and threads; for her gowns, she told the housekeeper, had been ill prepared. Elske worked at altering her mistress's clothing and this occupied them until the midday meal. After that, because the rains had stopped, they walked again, following the tall stone wall that hid the High Councillor's villa from the road. Eventually, this wall ran in among a woods and became no higher than Elske's knees. That was what Beriel had been looking for. “That is our way out,” she said quietly. “A way out and back in, if we wish it. So we have the road, now, as well as the river, and the window always ready to be opened. Let them think they have me prisoner, when I am not.”

That evening, Beriel turned to the matter of Elske's dress. “You must alter, I think, two of my gowns to fit yourself. I'm taller than you are, and you're rounder—except now, of course.”

“But I have my own dresses and the Var supplies aprons.”

“You don't understand,” Beriel told her. “Don't be stupid, Elske, not now. The menservants and maidservants display the wealth of their Adeliers, so a poorly dressed servant bespeaks a poorly filled purse. If I wish to answer any doubts, then my servant must be richly outfitted.”

So Elske and Beriel took out her several gowns, one after the other, and selected two for Elske to wear when she waited upon her mistress at the feasts and Assemblies. One of the dresses given to Elske was as red as groundberries, the other as green as the leaves of crawling ivy; the fabric cut off from the hems, to shorten them, would make scarves to wrap her hair. The gowns Beriel kept were blue and golden and wine red; some of them were sewn over with golden threads, so that they glittered in the lamplight. “You'll set me off well,” Beriel told Elske, pleased. “My last maidservant was chap-faced and clumsy and I wished to murder her, at least once each day.”

Elske was cutting out the stitches that held a skirt to a bodice.

“I have no use for a stupid servant,” Beriel said. “Although if I had been more clever myself, I might not be in this predicament. Elske, you must not tell anyone about the child,” Beriel said, then. “Whatever I choose to do you must not speak of it. Although I can't even think about what to do. Other than find some boy stupid enough to take me for bride, and take him for my husband. And that will make him King, to gainsay my will, to share my high position, to keep me tamed. What other ways have you thought of, Elske? Have you thought of another way than marriage? Another way than death?”

“I can see two or three,” Elske answered.

“You can see,” Beriel echoed her. “You are one of those who can always see another way, aren't you? And that's a gift, Elske. Do you know what a great gift it is to see a way through, or past? Although, when it's not your belly or your crown, vision comes easier. But if I am ignorant, must I not also be innocent? Yes, I think I must, and if innocent then guiltless. So can I give the matter over into your hands, Elske?” Beriel asked.

“Yes, my Lady. Of course.” Let Beriel choose which way and Elske would then work out a plan of events. “The ways are—”

“Tell me nothing. I wish to know nothing of it,” Beriel said. “You must never tell me what you do, Elske. Give me your word on that.”

“I give you my word,” Elske said, surprised. She had never been asked for her word before. Before, she had not had a word of her own to give.

“No, Elske, this is not so light a thing, your word,” Beriel said and stood before Elske, where she sat on the low stool, sewing. Beriel crouched down until their heads were level and reached to put her hand on Elske's shoulder.

“
Swear
to me that, no matter what, you never will reveal to me what has happened to this baby. Swear it,” Beriel insisted.

“I swear,” said Elske, who had sworn to nothing before in her life.

“Give me your hand on it,” Beriel insisted, as she stood up again, and held out her right hand. Elske reached up to put her own hand into her mistress's. “For I know myself,” Beriel said. “Whatever I feel now, I know that I will ask you. I will try to persuade you, order you to obey, force you. You must give me your word, for I trust you more than myself in this.”

“I promise, my Lady,” Elske said, the words rolling up from her heart and out of her throat as heavy as stones.

“THAT LAST COURTING WINTER, YOU
would have been no older than I am now,” Elske said, on one long evening. She was still at the work of sewing her mistress's gowns. “This is my fifteenth winter, and I am still young for marriage.”

Beriel stood by the window, staring out into the darkness, and answered, “It has been days since I've seen boats on the river, and it feels cold enough for ice to form.”

“But you had no choice but to return to Trastad, did you?” Elske asked.

“What else could I do? At least, I am far from where I am known, and watched, and hated, and now betrayed by a brother. He has no thought for the people, their labors and well-being. He cares nothing for law, or honor. How can I give my land and people to such a King?”

Elske could not answer this.

“My grandparents wished me Queen,” Beriel said. “The Earl and his Lady, those two, and the people, my people: They have backed my claim. I know this, even though I was young when my grandmother died. That is when my grandfather gave me her golden medallion—”

She stopped speaking and turned back to the night.

Elske watched how the white needle slid into the heavy fabric, and came out again, joining skirt to bodice.

“When we are in the city,” Beriel said, “as we go about in this Courting Winter, I promise you I'll be watching for a woman. I will know her when I see her, for she took the medallion from me, and promised me help, and although I waited where she told me—waited through the whole night and the next day—she never came back. If I see her, I'll have my medallion back—or she'll wish she'd never gulled me.”

Elske stitched.

“The coins and the gold chains were nothing to lose,” Beriel said. “But the medallion was put into my hands that I might remember, always, that I am the Queen. And I gave all to that woman. I've been a fool, Elske,” Beriel said, turning around and in a fury.

Elske said nothing until she thought to offer again, “I have coins, my Lady, which are yours if you want them.”

“You are a fool, too.”

“Why should you not take them?” Elske asked.

“You are poor and a servant. It isn't fitting that I should take your coins.”

“How can I be poor, when I have coins and no need of them?”

“It's of no matter, anyway,” Beriel said. “No man will ask for me, and I wouldn't have any of them anyway. We are all of us here in Trastad because no one in our own lands will have us. So we hope to find marriages where we are not known, except for our faces and our purses.” Beriel returned to the window, and said, “I have no purse and my face does not please.” She stared back out into darkness.