The Book of Earth (9 page)

The next evening, someone came at last, an older guardsman she did not recognize. He admitted Fricca with a pail of cold water and orders to make Erde presentable.

“It’s cold!” Erde complained, “Doesn’t he think I’ve been punished enough?”

Fricca said nothing. The guard stood by the open door and watched until Fricca insisted he turn his back. Erde was outraged. Did the man not know his place? She begged for news, for something to eat.

Fricca shook her head, weeping as she sponged Erde’s shivering arms. “Oh, such goings on, my lady!” Her pale murmur was nearly drowned out by the splash of the water into the pail. “Your father is in a mad drunken fury like I’ve never seen! Who knows where we’d be if the Holy Brother’d not been there to soothe him and read Scripture to him and be responsible until he’s himself again.”

The notion of Guillemo in charge made Erde shiver all the more. “My father needs a healer, not a priest. Where’s Alla?”

Fricca laid a finger to her lips. “They’ll not let her see him, for fear she’ll enrage him further.”

“Then what of Rainer?” Erde whispered. “How’s Rainer?”

“Locked away, my lady. Oh, the poor foolish lad!”

“Foolish?” Erde pulled away. “Don’t tell me now you believe these lies? You know better than that!”

“Oh, my dearest lady-child, I know what
seems
, but in black times like these . . . I mean, what can we know about such things?”

“What things?”

“Well, the holy brother says . . .”

“The holy brother knows nothing!” Erde yelled. But she could see he did, that he was in fact fiendishly clever, for he was keeping her father from the very people who might coax him back to sanity. What she didn’t understand was why.

At her yell, the guard snapped around and ordered them to silence, bidding Fricca to hurry. She wept and wept, but would not speak another word.

When she was done and had departed, still weeping, the guard took Erde to the great-hall, where her father sat on the baronial throne in near-darkness. The assembled court stood grimly silent. Erde thought they looked frightened, a bit confused. Guillemo’s robed entourage lined the walls, where Rainer’s men should have been. Torches flared here
and there, and a few people carried lanterns, but the great twin hearths were still and cold, and no candles burned. When her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Erde understood the courtiers’ dismay. The baron, always so concerned with protocol and a pristine public image, was unshaven, slumped carelessly in his chair, and still wearing his feast robe, which a day later was badly wrinkled and wine-stained. One hand balanced a goblet on his knee. In the shadows behind the throne stood Brother Guillemo.

Erde awaited the stern, perhaps even slightly raving lecture about her behavior, a humiliation she could probably live through. But her father did not even seem to notice her. The guard pushed her to her knees before him, and the Baron glanced unsteadily aside and raised his goblet. A white-robe hurried to fill it. Erde was hauled up and led to a stool to one side of the dais. Her guard stood near. Erde’s eyes sought the carved dragon capitals for comfort.

Two of the white-robes dragged Rainer in. His wounds had not been washed or dressed, and his torn black tunic was gray and slick with mud. When Erde rose to her feet in shocked protest, her guard shoved her back down again. Now the court murmured covertly. She could hear a few of the women praying. Rainer could hardly stand, but he shrugged off his escort to face the throne alone, where the baron had now drawn himself up with a drunken glare of hatred. Rainer did not look Erde’s way, and she resolved to avoid even a glance, lest it harm his cause.

Brother Guillemo stepped forward to present the charges. Rainer was not allowed to speak in his own defense. Erde tried several times and was silenced, first by Guillemo’s command, finally by the callused palm of her guard. Both were made to sit and listen while Guillemo detailed his own twisted version of the events, to listen while the sniveling laundry-maid described what she’d seen in even more lurid detail, to listen while silly helpless Fricca admitted, yes, she had found the baron’s daughter weeping and distraught after the captain had left her. It wasn’t until the priest had nearly completed his case that Erde understood that only Rainer was on trial. An actual trial, no mere public scolding or wrist-slapping. Sitting rigid on her stool, Erde felt real fear creep into her heart. She noticed that the von Alte dragon tapestries, which had hung on
these walls for a hundred years, had been taken down, exposing the pale cold stone. Surely if her father was sober, he would not let all this go on. She sought again the dragons in the upper shadows, but they could offer only silent comfort.

The only voice raised on Rainer’s behalf was Alla’s, blunt and indignant, and so very sane. Guillemo heard her out without comment, did not even question her testimony, and Erde wondered why he had let her speak at all. His motive surfaced when Alla had said her piece and limped proudly from the hall. Then the priest shook his head warningly. “Satan’s wings have brushed us, oh my people. Clearly what this old witch-woman says can never be taken as truth. My lord, she must be looked into. I fear some deeper plot here.”

Not long thereafter, Brother Guillemo asked for a verdict, and Erde heard her father slur even the few words required to condemn Rainer to death by hanging, sentence to be carried out the next morning.

She began to scream and did not stop, even when one of Guillemo’s white-robes clamped a fist over her mouth and dragged her from the hall.

E
rde knew now what caused a caged animal to go mad and gnaw at its own flesh. Mere tears were not desperate enough for such a catastrophe.

She stood all night on the high sill of her window. She began in the chill silence of thought. After a while, thought became fantasy, and she called on the Mage-Queen to appear and carry Rainer and herself far away to safety. But the fantasy did not sustain her and the early hours of dawn found her rocking and moaning. She had determined that there was no conceivable way she could free Rainer from his cell, and so she went to work on building up the courage to fling herself onto the cobblestones sixty feet below. Maybe then the baron would set Rainer free out of remorse. In truth, her life experience thus far did not include a world in which, when the time came, her father would actually execute his favorite guardsman.

But what finally kept her frozen to the sill was the sight of the chicken-crone sitting on the well-head in the middle of the storm, grinning up at her toothlessly and beckoning.

Then there was a muffled thump outside her door and the scrape of a key in the lock. Erde stayed where she was. If it was her father or the priest come to make her watch Rainer hang, it would be all the excuse she’d need to throw herself from the windowsill.

But it was Alla who eased open the door, stuck her head in, then ducked back, grunting and breathing hard, hauling on something heavy. Erde ran to help her.

“Alla, Alla, thank God! Oh, Alla, what are we to do?”

“Help me, child! Those white-robes of his are everywhere!”
The heavy weight was the guard who’d been posted outside. Together, they dragged him into the room.

“Alla, we have to help Rainer! We have to . . . !”

“No time, I can’t . . . I’ve done what I can,” Alla panted. “Now it’s up to . . .” Her breath failed her briefly. Two bright spots blazed on her cheeks. Her white hair was loose and tangled. She unslung a leather satchel from her back and pressed it into Erde’s hands. “Hide this, quickly! Take the key and lock the door behind me!”

“No!” Erde snatched at her sleeve. “You can’t leave me!”

“Have to. They can’t know I’ve been here. Your father is . . .”

“Still drunk? No! Is he still drunk? Alla, what’s the matter with him? He’s never been this bad before!”

The old woman hugged Erde tightly, kissed her, then held her at arm’s length. “I know, child, but he’s never met his evil genius before. Now, listen, my dearest girl. It’s all out of hand. I can’t protect you anymore. That vicious priest . . . he’s after my skin. It’s gone way beyond just plying your father with drink and flattery. He and Josef . . . they encourage each other’s madness. You should have seen the two of them, hauling the tapestries from the great-hall onto the fire.”

“Burned? The von Alte tapestries?” Erde felt a hole grow in her heart.

Alla stroked her cheek. “Yes, kidling. As evil totems of dragon worship. Can you believe the folly of it? Built a raging pyre in the upper courtyard and tossed them in, all the time laughing like boys, while the foolish court all stood about like scared dumb sheep! There’s no telling what . . . the priest’s talking now about taking you ‘in hand’ . . . exactly what I fear he means to do, the lecherous bastard, even as he pours evil into Josef’s ear about you and the lad. You must get away. You must! Hide yourself in the villages until the priest is gone, or go to the king. No time to send word, just go!”

Shouts from the courtyard blew up the stairwell with the icy drafts. Alla patted her pockets, glanced swiftly around. “Fare ye well, light of my heart.”

“But what about Rainer?”

“Don’t think of him, child.”

“How can I not think of him?” Erde wailed.

“You’re best to never think of him again.” Alla held their four hands together in a knot. “Be brave, hawkling! Your dragon awaits you!”

“My . . . what dragon?”

Alla ducked away. The clamor from below spread to the upper corridor, men running, boots and swords clanging against the stone. Erde swung the heavy door closed and locked it, then remembered the guard lying near the hearth and worried that he might wake up. Bending closer, she discovered he was not just unconscious. His jaw gaped, his eyes stared. A small stiletto puncture bled at his neck. Erde recoiled with a squeal, then hushed herself, feeling her world turn over. How serious some games became, and how suddenly.
Your father’s evil genius
, Alla had said. No one had understood how unstable his balance was until the coming of the priest had tipped it. By dawn, Rainer would be as dead as this poor man, because of her childishness, because she had insisted on an innocent stupid kiss.

Erde cried out as guilt and grief and rage surged over her, spilling strength into her limbs. She grabbed the corpse by the heels and dragged it under her bed, then ran to stash the leather satchel behind her stinking chamber pot. Out in the hall, armor clanked. More men raced past. Someone tried her latch, then pounded on her door. Erde sat down by the dim hearth, easing her breath and her heart so that she could remain calm when the key arrived to let her father into the room.

The baron stared at her from the doorway, weaving a bit, taking in her strange stillness. His hair was matted as if he’d just awakened, yet he was as richly dressed as he would be for a ceremony. He was pale and exhausted, with shadowed fragile eyes, as if his mad rage had held him unwilling prisoner and he was unsure of where it had left him, or when it might seize him again.

“The priest insisted he ought to examine you himself, but I wouldn’t allow it. I have to let him have his way with lesser matters, or . . .” He trailed off. His narrowed glance seemed to demand thanks or congratulations. He moved toward her unsteadily and reached to stroke her hair just once, and smooth his finger across her cheek and down along the line of her jaw, like a worm crawling so slowly
that Erde thought she would scream with revulsion. His voice was scratchy and weak, but his gaze fixed her intently. “I don’t care, you know, that he . . . it doesn’t matter, it’s nothing. He’s nothing, a boy. Not worthy of my little girl anyway, my soon-to-be young woman. A few hours, it will be over, we can forget him and move on. Everything will be as it was, no, it will be better. Matters are changing hereabouts. Tor Alte is not the end of the earth, or won’t be for long. Wealth and power lies before us . . . and so much more.” His hand was on her hair again, stroking. “But how could you understand such things? When the priest has proved his worth, you’ll see. You’ll see it was all for your own good.”

He leaned over, hesitating for what seemed to Erde an eternity, poised above her, his breath sour with wine. Then he bent and kissed her roughly, his stiff tongue prying open her mouth.

Erde jerked away, shuddering, and hid her face in her hands.

“I know, I know, but you’ll see how it will be. I have so much to teach you.” He leaned his body against the curve of her back and was about to say something more when an urgent shout down the hall distracted him. He glanced vaguely around the empty room and turned away, closing the door, oh, so very gently as if Erde were still asleep.

*   *   *

Soon Fricca brought a tray with breakfast, and fresh water for the kettle on the hearth. When she spotted the bucket, Erde raced over to splash her face, rubbing her lips over and over until Fricca stared.

A yard servant appeared with an armload of firewood. Bundled in her bed quilt, Erde watched silently, listening for the grim roll of drums in the courtyard. As the room warmed up again, she wondered if the dead soldier underneath her bed would begin to smell, thus giving Alla’s mortal deed away.