On Fortune's Wheel

  Birle was frozen in fear beside the warm hearthstone. The luck she had was not her own. With a word, Corbel could take it from her. How could she have forgotten that?

  Joaquim put down his spoon to hear what his brother would demand.

  “Celinde has her name day soon.” Corbel spoke as if the idea were just occurring to him. “I’ve been troubled over what I might give her, on her name day. The kind of gift a generous husband might give his young wife—so that her father’s spies can’t report her ill-treated, slighted, dishonored, to fuel his anger with that false rumor. Have you bedded the girl, Brother?”

  “Why would I do that?” Joaquim asked.

  Corbel threw back his head and laughed. He laughed until he coughed, and then he drowned both cough and laughter in wine. Birle hurried forward to refill his tankard when he put it back down on the table. She wished she had the courage to pretend to trip, and thus spill wine all over his finery, and thus earn his anger, and thus go free of his desire. It would be useless, she knew, pouring the wine in a red stream into the tankard, to throw herself on her knees before Joaquim.

  But what would become of Yul if she was taken to Corbel’s house? And Orien? The answers came quickly. Yul would be safe with Joaquim, she knew; he might be saddened at her going, but he would be safe. And Orien—nothing worse could happen to him. So what happened to her didn’t matter, and she would be fooling herself to think that it did. Just as she had been deceiving herself that she had deserved her luck. Birle stood stiff. The fire crackled behind her.

  Corbel smiled at his brother in just the way that the Steward smiled at the fishermen, come to pay their taxes into his hand.

  “If you choose to take her, then you will do it,” Joaquim said. He picked up his spoon and dipped it into the bowl. Putting the laden spoon into his mouth, he emptied its contents, and chewed on the chunks of meat and fowl in the thick gravy. “I’ll have to find another amanuensis then, which I imagine I can do—by at least the end of the spring. The slave markets open up again in the spring, don’t they, Brother?”

  Corbel leaned forward and reached out his hand to stop Joaquim from taking another bite. “Amanuensis? Don’t speak in riddles to me, keep it plain. What is she to you?” He was suspicious, and he was not pleased.

  “The girl takes down the records of experiments, what matter I have used in what weight, the temperature, whether it is treated to fire, earth, water, air, what changes result—”

  “She can write?”

  “Yes, yes, and read of course. What use would she be to me as an amanuensis if she could not?”

  Corbel thought about this, his face shadowed by his hand, his eyes flickering between Birle and her master. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t you wonder at how much I’ve accomplished?” Joaquim asked.

  “No,” Corbel said.

  “Which only reveals your lack of knowledge.” Joaquim spoke haughtily. “It is one thing to lead an army in battle, Corbel, but if you would discover the secrets Nature keeps locked in her treasure-house—you can’t just fill your belly and rush forward. You must write down what you have tried, and what learned. You must keep records. Otherwise, you merely repeat the errors. Birle keeps my records, she is my amanuensis. Fetch in the book,” he said to Birle.

  For a moment, outside, Birle thought she might go not into the laboratory but down the walled yard, past privy and garden, past bare trees, and over the steep, stony bank, to the river. But she didn’t know what she could do then—except perhaps drown. The confusion of stars over her head reminded her of another choice, and she found the Plough at the sky’s peak and, following the line from the end of the Plough, she saw the Northern Star in its fixed place. Birle went into the laboratory quietly, so as not to waken Yul. The book was so heavy it required both hands to carry it back inside.

  “All right, show me. If you can,” Corbel greeted her. His forefinger jabbed at the table. “Put it down here, girl, and show me.”

  Birle opened the book. Using her own finger to point at each word, lest Corbel doubt her, she read. “The stone, which had rested four days in a quicksilver bath, to loosen the binding of the four elements within and give dominance to its volatile element, was placed in a sulfurous fire to discover its fixed element. There was no change over a red flame, none over a yellow flame, and none over a blue flame. The stone was ground to powder, in a mortar of agate, then mixed with salt in equal measure. This, with seven times its measure of water, was sealed in a flask. The salt dissolved in the water, but no change occurred in the stone.”

  Corbel wasn’t satisfied. “I hear nothing of lunar and solar presences, nor materia prima,” he complained to his brother. But he seemed to have forgotten about Birle, in this new quarrel.

  “When you summoned me here, Brother, I told you I was no alchemist, with incantations and star-readings and talk of the black of blacks, the peacock’s tail—I told you, I believed none of that. If you would like to send me away and have one of your magicians back—”

  “No. Not yet. Not quite yet.” His eyes went from Birle to her master, measuring.

  “If you must take her,” Joaquim said, “then you must. But it will hamper my progress.”

  “This progress is no progress,” Corbel said.

  “I told you, Brother, that if this thing can be done at all, it can only be done with great difficulty. If you wish to abandon the hope you have only to tell me.”

  “When I’ve used so much gold to make your laboratory? To feed you and your slaves?” Corbel asked. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been told by some fool that a battle was lost, that my army would be destroyed—if I’d listened to them, where would I be? Corbel doesn’t turn aside from his chosen route. I don’t leave things unfinished. But I should warn you, Brother, that the sooner the safer, for you. The mines give less every day and that at greater expense in slaves. I’ve a need for gold.”

  “I know that,” Joaquim answered.

  Corbel rose up, out of the chair he’d been sitting in. He leaned on the table to study Joaquim’s face. “It can be dangerous, knowing things. Dangerous especially if you talk of what you know.” Then he relaxed, and stood erect. “But you don’t talk—and who would you say anything to, anyway? And you would tell me that it can be equally dangerous not to know, perhaps especially dangerous not to know how widely a secret has spread, and with what effect. . . . ” He turned and left the house.

  “Thank you, Master Joaquim,” Birle said. Even her voice shook.

  “I could not bear it if the Herbal were not to be completed,” he said to her. The smile on his face was bitter. “If in his pride and greed he . . . He thinks of nothing but victory, and princedoms. If he was displeased, he’d destroy a man’s lifework—in his angers—even if he knew that preserving it would—I can’t bear to think of it,” he said.

  Joaquim had not protected her. If she had not been useful to him, he’d have let Corbel take her off without a word or even a thought. Birle remembered Orien, then, seeing him as clearly as if the room were the marketplace, and she wondered how many such moments had bowed him down. She had been thinking harshly of Orien, but now she thought it was a wonderful thing that he could still lift his head to smile at her, helpless across a crowd of people who had no care for either of them.

  “Corbel is right to suspect what the city knows,” Birle said. As long as she was useful to her master, she had hope for safety. As long as she was safe, Orien was at the other end of a slender thread of hope.

  “Right also to think that the city would rejoice at his fall,” Joaquim agreed. “Corbel knows it’s only his soldiers that give him rule over the city, and open its purses to his hands. The guilds would rise against him—except that they know how quick and cruel his revenge would be. And, of course, they hope Celinde’s father will rescue her.”

  “Is Celinde his wife? Why would her father rescue her from a husband?”

  “Because Corbel stole her, for his bride. He took her for the
dowry, the city and the lands around it, the mines. He holds her prisoner.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone speak of Corbel’s Lady,” Birle remembered.

  “Ah, well, that may be because she’s a child, not a lady.”

  “A child?”

  “A child, of eight, although it’s been a year, so she would be nine now. He did steal her, out of her father’s castle, out from the care of her father’s servants, although there must have been traitors among them, because she was roundly guarded. Her father had planned a proud marriage to a prince with ancient lands. Celinde’s father doesn’t like the idea of a mercenary for son-in-law, a man whose only claim to worthiness is his army’s victories. So he plots her rescue, as every man knows. The city waits for his move. As does Corbel. It’s her father who keeps Celinde safe from Corbel. Until she’s of an age to be gotten with child, he won’t bed her. As long as she hasn’t been bedded, her father can hope to negotiate the marriage he wishes of her . . . and he’ll move carefully, so as not to risk her safety at Corbel’s hands. They’re like two men at either end of a balancing scale.”

  The girl in Corbel’s stronghold, for all her high birth and riches, was no different from Birle. She too had her life determined by the desires of others, and she too stood at peril. Birth and riches were a burden to her, and a danger. This thought didn’t comfort Birle. In fact, it made her fear Corbel more. “Why haven’t I heard anything of this?”

  “Didn’t you wonder where the priests are? The bells ring, but not to call the people to worship. Didn’t you wonder at bells with no priests?”

  Birle never had.

  “The priests fled the city. Corbel doesn’t care about priests, but the guildsmen do, and the merchants, the citizens, and the poor. . . . ”

  “But what will happen?” Birle asked.

  “There will be war. I think it will be the more cruel, because there are some in the city whose profits increase under Corbel. Crops burned, famine, looting, disease and death and men maimed—I’ll go back south, whatever Corbel says. There is a community, of philosophers—I had to leave it when I wed—but she’s dead now.”

  “And me? And Yul?”

  “That I can’t say. You can’t come with me. No women are permitted, nor servants. You might offer yourself to one of the guildmasters. The rich will usually survive times of peril and chaos. They will betray the city from within, if they can, the guilds will. If they think they are strong enough, that’s what they’ll do, to avoid destruction of property and goods. You’re a young woman, attractive enough—especially when you smile. If you remember to smile, to look well, you might save yourself. Yul,” he continued, thinking aloud, “is strong, and he works willingly.”

  Birle had thought that she was, at least in this house, safe. Whatever else, she had thought Corbel’s power would provide protection. Now, suddenly, it felt to her as if the whole world were a dark and stormy sea, where danger was approaching fast upon her. “But, master, if you go to your philosophers, who will be your amanuensis?” she asked. “Could I not go, I could go as a boy—if I were careful, who would know I wasn’t?” He was shaking his head. “It will take time to teach another all that you’ve taught me, and your Herbal will have to wait while you do that.” His head shook slowly. “Is Corbel certain to lose the city?”

  “Nothing is certain,” Joaquim told her. “Not until it is past. Corbel is strengthening the fortifications, increasing his soldiery—which is why he has such urgent need for gold. But Celinde’s father has friends, with dowried daughters of their own, who would have the world know a daughter cannot be taken so. They also amass an army. And Corbel is no fool. He fears the enmity of the city.”

  Birle walked back and forth in front of the fire, trying to catch and hold her breath. “I’ve heard nothing of this in the city, at the market. Nobody even speaks of Corbel.”

  “Would they, to you? You have his chain around your neck, and who’s to say that a slave can’t be a spy, even though she’s a girl? You have eyes and ears, and a tongue to carry tales. The city cherishes its mistress Celinde and would have no harm come to her. Fear of what Corbel might do keeps it obedient. The city awaits war, and its outcome.”

  “When will this happen?” Birle asked.

  “Not until early summer, at the soonest. Troops and supplies take time to gather. Celinde’s father might wait even longer, until he can destroy the crops in the fields—and starve Corbel out.”

  “Isn’t there anything Corbel can do?”

  “You can be sure he has his plans, you can be sure of that.”

  “What are they?” Birle would have liked to hear that Corbel had such strength, such cleverness, or such luck, that he would never be defeated.

  “He doesn’t tell me. All that I know is, whatever he does it will be bold.”

  SEVENTEEN

  In two days, notices went up on the spike at the center of the marketplace, and on the doors of the guildhalls; soldiers made the announcement at the fountains: The Prince would give to his city a feast, to mark the first year of his rule. The Prince invited the city to his castle grounds, for food and drink, entertainments and dancing, on the day of the second night of the next full moon but one.

  Word spread quickly, like fire across a hayfield, until the talk of the market was only of the feast, and winter, winter and the feast. It would be spring then, and spring was cause for hope. Winter had no hope in it. Food was scarce, fuel was scarce, only sickness was plentiful. Disease spread in winter, not with the speed of summer fevers, but slowly, like a river rising.

  Sometimes, during those days of waiting, Birle was awakened from sleep by a quiet knocking at the door that led to the walled yard. In dire need a wife, or mother, child, even friend, would creep up along the riverbank where no guards watched, under cover of darkness, to ask the Philosopher for comfrey to knit a bone; a plaster to spread over someone’s chest; even a single spoonful of the ointment that, dropped into boiling water, made a healing vapor that eased a choking cough; or dwale to ease a death. Birle would rouse Joaquim, and together they would go out to the laboratory to gather what was needed, and explain how to use it.

  Thus it became known in the city that Birle was the Philosopher’s slave, not Corbel’s. Speech was less guarded in her presence, and smiles more easy. If she was about to pay too much for something—candles, a piece of meat—there was a quick shake of the head to alert her. She learned to read the more subtle signals of eyes or mouths when she was about to pay too little. When Birle was asked a question she could answer about treatment of symptoms, she did so. When she could not answer the question, she carried it home with her and brought the Philosopher’s advice back to market. The Philosopher’s maid, they called her, and the name gave her protection.

  At the market, much was said about the feast, and Birle began to understand that Corbel had been not only bold, but also clever. The fishmonger had heard that the Prince planned to slaughter an entire herd of goats, to be roasted in deep pits in his own gardens. “Imagine, he’ll give us meat. Meat, children.” Other voices joined in.

  “Bread, mountains of bread. And they say it’ll be made from the finest flour, it’ll be the same white bread that he himself eats.”

  “Ale as plentiful as river water in the spring floods.”

  “I heard it was wine.”

  “He’d never spend his barrels of wine on us.”

  “But I heard so, and I thought, hearing it, that the Little Mistress would want it for us, for such a feast.”

  “We’ll eat and drink and take our leisure—I’ve heard that the minstrel from his own hall will sing that day, for us.”

  “—puppeteers from the great cities to the south—”

  “A man can change, and our Little Mistress is so good she must make any man better.”

  “The goldmaster’s wife has ordered new dresses for each of her five daughters, but I’m thinking it’ll take more than fine clothing to catch husbands proud enough for those girls.”


  It was as if the promise of a feast to come made the winter days warmer and brighter than they were. It was as if, with a promise ahead of him, a man could bear his present miseries more easily.

  The hope that she might see Orien at the forest, and might speak with him among the crowds—she didn’t dare to think of it. Thinking of it slowed the moon’s cycles, and kept spring at bay. Birle worked, and did not think. She awoke one morning to discover spring, unexpected.

  In the Kingdom, spring drove winter off, with sharp winds and thunderstorms. In this southern city, with the sea at its feet, spring moved with soft, slow steps, like a girl at a dance. She held out her hand to the old man and he could do nothing else but take it, and be tamed to her will. In this southern city, spring danced winter out the door. Flowers slipped up from the ground, first the low-growing violets and then—just moments later, it seemed—the taller, brighter, prouder blooms. Little leaves came like tears out onto the branches of trees.

  Birle felt like that old man, with her unwilling eagerness. Waking, at night, she would do the only work possible for her to do during the long hours of darkness, waiting for the next day to begin to run its course. She would light a candle and bring down from its shelf the Herbal, quills, and the pot of ink. As she sat at the table, carefully forming the letters and the lines of words, she could feel her spirit grow quiet. Aye, and why shouldn’t she be proud of the pages she had written so flawlessly, and the drawings as much like life as she could make them? And of the house, too, gleaming in its cleanliness, and the laboratory, with its shelves of medicines, the herbs dried and hung from the rafters, the next day’s experiments, which she had set out for her master to perform.

  How Nan would laugh to see her now, Birle thought. When that thought rose to her mind, she laughed softly in the darkness, to see herself.

  At last the day came. The sun shone, as the city had known it must; the wind blew gentle, and warm. Yul was afraid to go so Birle left the house alone, to join the crowds going up the hilly street. Joaquim had been called to his brother’s side early in the morning. Birle wore red for that day, the red skirt and shirt, and even a red ribbon she had purchased at market to braid into her hair.