The Book of Earth (33 page)

“What else?” Rose prodded. “Any other detail?”

Erde reviewed the previous evening moment by moment: the cat screeching and the attack, Earth struggling to turn around within the walls of rock, then the goat streaking in over his back and the dark blood on Hal’s hands. Then what? Then . . .

She grabbed for her quill and paper, and wrote carefully: EARTH WASHED HER.

She was amazed that the ink did not sink deeply into the
thin pliant sheet and bleed her letters out of recognition. Apparently, Raven made very fine paper as well as candles.

Linden peered at her message, then read it aloud. The women murmured thoughtfully. The two elderly women at the far end of the table put their heads together in lively muttered discussion.

Then Hal swore softly and slapped his head. “Of course! Where is my mind? It’s very common in the lore to claim that a dragon’s tongue has healing properties!”

The two old women nodded approvingly, though one of them frowned when Doritt said, “I thought their jaws dripped acid and stuff.”

“No, no, that’s just fairy tales . . . or if you listen to what the Church says. The
lore
says . . . ah, why didn’t I think of it sooner?”

“It will be just so lovely to have a real dragon to study,” ventured one of the old ladies. Her voice reminded Erde of butterfly wings.

Hal bent his head to her. “I plan many hours in your excellent library, Helena, while you’re off dragon-watching.” He offered Erde a crooked apologetic smile. “Won’t he be relieved to know there’s something else he can do.”

“That’s a fine way to talk about a dragon,” Doritt snorted.

Gentle laughter rippled around the table.

“But isn’t it typical?” chided Rose. “A man finds what he’s been searching for all his life, and right away he’s complaining that it doesn’t fulfill his expectations.”

“Well, he doesn’t,” Hal retorted. “Does he yours?”

“I’ve not yet met him,” replied Rose sweetly.

“Don’t worry, he won’t. Maybe someday, but now . . .”

“I think he’s a very nice sort of dragon,” said Raven.

“Nice?” Hal was peevish. “He’s not meant to be
nice
.”

“Why not?”

“He’s meant to be powerful, magnificent, omnipotent, and . . .”

Rose smiled. “Perhaps he could be all those, and nice, too.”

“What a concept,” remarked Doritt.

HE IS STILL LEARNING, Erde wrote, in a broad admonitory hand. Briskly, Linden passed the paper to Hal.

“True,” he conceded. “I only hope he can discover himself in time.”

“In time for what?” asked Rose.

Hal drained his mug and pushed his plate away with a definitive gesture. “In time to save us from the apocalypse according to Guillemo Gotti. I can’t imagine what else he would have been sent for. Have you heard the priest is raising an army?”

“Oh, yes. To cleanse the world of the likes of us. That’s why we sent Lily and Margit to Erfurt, to find out all they could.” Leaning into his shoulder, Rose turned the thin wooden stem of her goblet between two fingers. “But what if Fra Guill is not the dragon’s purpose?”

“Not? What do you mean?” He sat up straighter in order to gaze down at her sternly. “Are you saying it isn’t? Do you know what his Purpose is?”

“Without talking to him? Of course not. What am I, a fortune-teller?”

Brighter laughter drifted around the table. Raven snapped her fingers rhythmically and hissed, “Gypsies!” Erde wondered what was so amusing.

Hal caught her eye over his shoulder. “This is my punishment, you see. Rank mockery, because I don’t show up to pay homage often enough.”

This drew hoots and catcalls, echoing about the warm candlelit room. Erde had never heard such raucous laughter from women.

“Oh. Homage, is it?” laughed Raven.

“Well?” he challenged. “That is what you want. Isn’t that what you all want?”

“We want a lot more than that.” She ran her finger around Hal’s ear and pinched his earlobe. Hal brushed her hand away, glancing self-consciously at Erde.

Across the table, Linden was giggling, and blushing furiously. The older woman Esther paused behind her with an armload of empty platters, her grin expectant. Rose tickled Hal’s arm. “Don’t get them started, my dear. You know you’ll only be sorry.”

Raven leaned in, her lips soft against his temple. “Sorry? Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t remember you ever being sorry.” Hal’s breath caught as her tongue snaked out and licked his ear.

“Raven,” Doritt murmured. “We have a guest.”

“Oh, pooh,” said Raven, but she eased away from Hal to gather up a final stack of dishes.

A guest. Erde had heard the singular and knew it meant her. Heinrich Engle was no guest here, that much was clear. But neither was he a member of the household. Erde was confused. She did not understand these women’s behavior. She knew her grandmother would have had a name for it, and it would not have been flattering. And yet, Erde could see nothing overtly wrong with it . . . only if you thought about what you’d been
told
was right and proper.

Hal cleared his throat, then went on as if nothing had happened. “But why do you question the dragon’s Purpose?”

“Not that he has one,” Rose replied, equally unfazed. “Only that it might be other than what you expect.”

“Some Larger Purpose, you mean. Beyond my ken.”

The knight’s deeply humble expression made Rose smile. “Not necessarily
beyond
, my dear. Just different.”

“Well, Gerrasch said the Purpose was ‘to fix what’s broken.’ A bit cryptic, I thought.”

“No more than you’d expect.”

“From a badger,” muttered Doritt.

Rose smothered a grin. “But what I was referring to is that another candidate has arisen for the job you have in mind.”

“What?” Hal came bolt upright. He looked almost frightened. “Another dragon?”

Raven laughed loudly from the sink. “Well, that got to him!”

“Of course not another dragon!” said Rose.

“Hal, Hal, where have you been?” Doritt leaned forward on her elbows. “Haven’t you heard about the Friend?”

“Whose friend?”

“That’s what people call him.”

“Just . . . the Friend?” He glanced at Rose. “Interesting coincidence. What about him?”

Doritt noted Erde’s puzzlement. “Loyalist code,” she explained. Then Erde recalled Griff’s response to the word.

“Delicious rumors.” Raven waltzed back to her seat beside Hal. She twirled one finger in his bristly hair. “You know how women are.”

Hal scowled and batted her hand away, causing another trill of general laughter.

“They come in from the west,” Linden put in kindly, without looking at him. “The rumors. If you’ve come from the east, they may not have reached you yet.”

“From widespread parts of the west,” Raven added more seriously. “Even as far as Köln. Some claim that’s where he’s from.”

“City boy,” noted Doritt.

“No, that can’t be right.”

“Why not?” asked Linden.

Raven smiled and shrugged. “He just doesn’t sound like a city boy to me.”

Doritt frowned. “What does it matter? You don’t believe in him anyway!”

Erde recalled her grandmother talking of Köln. Köln was a true city. It was said to contain at least twenty thousand people. She had no image of it except that it must be very crowded, but then, she had no image of any city at all besides her fantasy one.

Hal asked, “So why do they call him the Friend, if not . . . ?”

“Supposedly, it’s because he does all kinds of reckless acts of goodness.”

“Reckless and random,” added Raven. “So they say.”

“Remember that random is in the eye of the beholder,” murmured Linden. “I mean, random is simply whatever you weren’t expecting.”

Raven wagged a playful finger at her. “Oh-oh, Linnie, you’d like to meet this Friend, wouldn’t you?”

“Leave her alone.” Esther came back from depositing her pile of platters in a corner washtub. “It’s me bringing these tales in, mostly. I hear them when I go Outside to the markets.”

“Ah.” Hal sat back. Erde thought he seemed relieved. “The idle gossip of farmwives.”

Esther raised a sharply pointed brow. “And farm men as well, and traveling merchants and big, bully convoy men. The best I had was from a troupe of actors. Their leader said he liked the tale so much and heard it so often, he was working up a play about it.”

“Lily and Margit were to look into it,” said Rose. “Perhaps
even try to contact him if such a thing seemed possible.”

Hal grunted, crossed his arms. “But who, if he even exists, is this so-called Friend supposed to be?”

Raven giggled and nuzzled his shoulder. “Poor Heinrich. You’d really prefer to save the world single-handedly, wouldn’t you?”

Hal ignored her, leaning forward to hear Esther’s tale.

“Well.” Esther shoved back her sleeves. She found room on the bench between Linden and Erde, and prepared herself self-consciously, much like the actor she had just spoken of. “The stories tell of a mysterious young man—he is always young and always nameless . . .”

“Because they don’t know his name, or he won’t tell it?”

“Sometimes one, sometimes the other. But nameless any-how, and thus always referred to as the Friend or simply “he,” and in the markets these days, they know who you’re talking about.” Esther’s long slender hands illustrated her words as gracefully as a dancer’s. “Sometimes he’s a poor farm lad, sometimes, yes, a city boy. Sometimes he’s even a prince. Last week, he was a
foreign
prince!”

“A
gypsy
prince!” crowed Raven, getting up to fill her mug.

“It’s been suggested. Or Frankish, if he’s really from the west. He’s said to be well spoken and handsome, of course. Not dark, not light. Everything about him seems to be the middle road.”

“Where’s his shining armor, and his golden helm that he never takes off?” Hal scoffed. “Clearly we’re dealing with fantasy here.”

Esther stared him down. “Perhaps. Anyway, an anonymous young knight of indeterminate breeding who travels about the countryside warning the farm folk against the evils of Fra Guill.”

Now Hal looked interested. “Hunh.”

Rose nodded. “He’s brave, if nothing else.”

“A rabble-rouser!” exclaimed Doritt appreciatively.

“A handsome gypsy rabble-rouser!” Raven twirled and stomped, her arms entwined to support a pitcher of ale above her head. “Better and better!”

Rose held out her goblet to be refilled. “They say Fra Guill flies into a mad rage at anyone who takes the Friend
seriously because he has no place in the Prophecy. That’s enough to make him very interesting, as far as I’m concerned.”

“If he exists,” said Hal.

Esther planted both long palms on the tabletop. “Do I get to tell this story or not?”

Raven slunk back to her seat, gripping her mug to her chest in mock-contrition.

“Tell it, then!” Doritt whooped.

“Well, you haven’t left me much.” She continued over a chorus of sighs and groans. “Only that he’s supposedly gathering followers as he goes along, and that although his route is rambling and slow, in general he seems to be headed east, toward Erfurt.”

“And toward us,” Hal noted. “With his own little army behind him.”

“Around him, actually. And if they’re armed, it’s only with knives and pitchforks.” Esther folded her hands pensively beneath her chin, suddenly reminding Erde of the elderly monk who had taught her reading and writing much against his own better judgment. “This is where it gets interesting. There appears to be some confusion about the exact nature of this gathering. They’re not spoken of as an army.”

“Then they’re a mob.”

“Those who don’t like the idea call it a mob. Either way, the Friend apparently refuses the usual privileges of leadership. He sleeps among his followers—some even call them disciples, but for most this comes too close to blasphemy. He marches among them and defers to their counsel. He dresses as they do and shares their food, which is happily supplied from the countryside, the same food that people out east are hiding away from Fra Guill at great risk to their lives.”

“And he’s particularly outspoken against Fra Guill’s witch-hunting,” noted Rose quietly. Erde decided that each time she spoke, it was like a phrase of a song being dropped into the conversation.

“Well, no wonder you’re all so in love with this chimera,” Hal declared. “But have you thought this out? What if it’s some new kind of peasant rebellion? ‘Friend’ or not, the last thing His Majesty needs is a new enemy.”

“If you’d just let me finish.” Esther caught his eye and held it. “The name may not be coincidental. Those who claim to have seen him say he carries the King’s Banner.”

“The King’s Banner? Openly?”

Esther nodded. “And beside it, the emblem of a dragon.”

For the first time since the meal began, silence prevailed.

Then Rose said, “I hadn’t heard that part.”

“New, as of yesterday.” Esther preened, pleased by the stir she’d created.

Hal blew out a long breath between his teeth. “King and dragon together. The people actually favor that connection?”

“There’s a lot of debate, but mostly, they do.”

“Hmmm. And the barons?”

“As you’d expect. They’re denying he exists.”

“And he’s heading toward Erfurt.” Hal looked down at Rose. “What truth to it all, do you think?”

“I don’t get Out. I’d only be going on hearsay. Esther?”

Esther’s shrug was that of a skeptic still willing to be convinced. “We’ll know more when Lily and Margit get back, but in the markets, tales of the Friend are accepted as news, that is, as true as any word that comes from so far away.”

“So what are they really saying?” mused Hal.

“It could be the country folks’ way of expressing their dislike of Fra Guill, by inventing a hopefully invincible enemy for him.”

Raven sighed. “Or that the people dream of a hero to rescue them from bad harvests and early winters and rumors of war. Who can blame them? It feels like the end of the world.”

“But what if there really is some man on his way east with an army?” proposed Doritt reasonably.

“Indeed. What if? And carrying the King’s Banner . . .” Hal was slumped in thought. “I wonder . . . could it . . . ?” He sat up slowly. “What if it’s
him
, Rose? What if it’s Ludolf? It could be, you know . . . ?”