At first I couldn't see her face. She wore a heavy robe, deep red in color, with a hood that covered her hair, and she was speaking with someone at the far end of the table, so that her face was turned away from me. I was about to try to work my way over to a place where I could see her better, when a servant beside me dropped a platter that shattered on the stone floor. The noise made me jump, but no one else paid much attention. Perhaps dropped platters were a common occurrence here, or perhaps few had heard it over the din.
Elen had heard it. When I glanced back at the high table, her eyes met mine and lingered for a moment before they went on to search for the source of the disturbance. How can I describe her? It would not be enough to call her merely beautiful. Wide-open eyes of startling blue gazed at me from a face whose every feature was at the same time both delicate and strong. Under her dark hood lay a crown of golden hair, gleaming in the lamplight. No crown of gold could have become her more.
Two adversaries contended with each other in my heart -- admiration and despair. It was impossible not to admire her. Her delicate beauty and the strength it could not conceal, the intelligence in her bright eyes, her calm demeanor, the charm of her attention, would have appeased a demon bent on her destruction. Her brief gaze worked its charm on me. Her smile of forgiveness to the servant who dropped the platter made me long to have been the one who'd dropped it. The despair I didn't understand until I faced my growing fear that this woman was worth loving, so that love once given could not easily be taken back. Maara must love her still.
A sharp rap on the back of my head sent my thoughts flying.
"Impudent boy!"
A stout servant took me by the collar and pushed me before him out of the great hall. When we were back in the kitchen, he turned me around, took me by the shoulders, and gave me a shake that made me bite my tongue.
"I catch you more look that way," he said, in a strange combination of Finn's language and my own, and drew his finger across his throat in a gesture universally understood. Then he dragged me to the back door and with his boot shoved me out of it.
When I sat down again beside my companions, Finn handed me what was left of my supper.
"I see you made a good impression," he said.
"Did you misbehave yourself?" asked the armorer.
As I gathered up the shards of my dignity, I tried to think of a reply that would conceal my wounded pride. Nothing occurred to me. I only shrugged, to show how little I cared for the opinion of the servants of the mighty.
"Did you see your friend?"
I shook my head. "I saw nothing but warriors, hundreds there must be, and Elen in the midst of them."
"You saw the queen herself?"
"I did."
"How did you know her?"
"By her chair," I said, "and by her face."
The armorer nodded solemnly, then glanced around to see if anyone was listening before he leaned toward me and whispered, "She is a beauty, isn't she?"
I couldn't disagree.
"While you were inside disgracing yourself," said Finn, "we've been keeping an ear out for news of your friend."
"Maara," I whispered. "Her name is Maara."
As if it were a word of power, Maara's name on my tongue broke the spell that bound me. I had left the great hall enveloped in a cloak of shame and rapture, enthralled by Elen's beauty, ashamed of having been caught gaping at it. Now I shrugged that cloak from my shoulders and remembered why I had come to Elen's house.
"What have you heard?" I asked. "Has anyone spoken of her?"
"They speak of nothing else," said Finn, "though no one speaks her name. They seem to care nothing for her fate, one way or the other. They're thinking of themselves. They speak of what will happen next. The mighty have sent for the kinsmen of the murdered king. Many have arrived already, and his brother is expected in the morning. How many more will come, they wonder? Will more help be needed? Will the mighty be in want of game? Will there be profit in it? Will they be entertained?"
A servant carrying a platter was going from group to group, offering to those who lingered in the yard what looked like plate scrapings from the tables of the mighty. The platter also held a joint of mutton with some meat left on it. I was still hungry, and rather than take the leftover pieces, which were mostly gristle, I took my knife from my belt and cut a bit of meat from the bone.
For a time nothing happened. The servant returned to the kitchen, and I gave my attention to finishing my supper while I tried to think of a way to get back inside.
"There!" someone said, quite loudly. It was a voice I recognized, the voice of the man who had scolded me for staring at the queen.
Someone took hold of me from behind, took hold of the back of my shirt so forcefully that if it had been cloth he would have torn it, and dragged me to my feet. I dropped my plate. My knife fell with it. The stout servant snatched it up.
"Did you pilfer this, eh boy?"
Finn was on his feet. The armorer stepped between him and the man who held me.
"No harm done," he said. "Just a boy. He meant no harm."
The armorer stood between Finn and me. People surrounded us, then came between and parted us, and the man who had kicked me out of Elen's house dragged me back into it again.
77. Thief!
Pretending a fear I didn't feel, I stood dumb before my accuser. I knew better than to speak until I understood what was happening. The man still held my knife. He shook it in my face and shouted questions at me. From whom did I steal it? One of the warriors of the household? One of their guests? Easy enough to do, he said. Someone jostles you, you fall against someone, you beg his pardon while you filch his knife.
He didn't wait for a reply to any of his accusations. He gave me time to think, time to remember. How Maara got the knife I never thought to ask, but where else could it have come from? Once I understood, I knew why the man accused me. As everyone in Merin's house knows the work of Merin's armorer, so anyone in Elen's house would know a knife made there. How would a serving boy, one of the common folk, come honestly by such a fine bronze knife? I must have stolen it. There was no other explanation.
The servant dragged me down the passageway that led to the great hall. I stumbled along behind him, trying to keep my balance and resisting just a little, while I wondered how to turn the situation to my advantage. First I had to convince them of my innocence. I had just come from the armorer's house. I could say I had brought the knife from there. Surely no one would claim it. No person of honor would claim what wasn't theirs. If there was no victim of the theft I was accused of, I must be innocent.
Perhaps I could gain their sympathy as the victim of an unjust accusation. I might even ask a boon to soothe my wounded pride. They would expect a request for some thing of value. Sometimes it's best to do the unexpected. I would ask to serve the queen's household for as long as help was needed. Such a request would flatter them, these mighty folk who thought themselves deserving of my envy. They would believe they understood my desire to remain among them, that I would consider it an honor to be allowed to serve them. But nothing happened the way I thought it would.
The noise of the great hall drowned out the servant's accusations. Still he kept shouting, "Thief! Thief!" until we stood before the high table.
"He stole this!" said the man, with such self-satisfaction in his voice and such an air of expectation that I thought he must be anticipating a reward. He held up the knife and turned to the assembled company. "This pretty knife. Who belongs?"
We stood not twenty paces from Elen's chair. When she rose, everyone fell silent.
"Let me see it," she said.
The stout servant had to let go of me while he approached her and handed her the knife. I stood where he left me, hemmed in by the warriors of the household, but held there by Elen's eyes. Instead of examining the knife, she kept her gaze on me.
"Who is this?" she asked.
I would have blurted out my name if my accuser hadn't answered for
me.
"Him? No one," the man said. "No name. Thief! Nobody."
Elen looked long at me, until it seemed that all my thoughts must have revealed themselves to her inner eye.
"Is he a servant here?" she asked.
The man turned to look at me, as if seeing me for the first time. "Maybe so. Don't know it. Silly face."
He was speaking with great difficulty a language not his own. To me he had spoken mostly the language of Finn's people. Now he spoke, barely well enough to be understood, the tongue spoken by the mighty.
"What is your name?" Elen asked me.
I had the good sense this time not to answer truthfully, but I could think of no other name to give her. She must have thought I hadn't understood her. She repeated the question in the language of Finn's people, speaking it as easily as she spoke her own.
I remembered that the forest people would sometimes call a child Little So-and-so, using his father's name until he earned a name for himself.
"You may call me Little Finn," I said.
"Well, Little Finn, how do you answer your accuser?"
"If I stole this knife, then someone must be missing it. If no one claims it, it must be mine."
"Proof of nothing," said the servant. "Man drunk maybe. Or gone pissing."
"Perhaps," said Elen. "Keep this boy in the kitchen until supper is over. Then bring him to my chamber."
The stout servant, disappointed in his hope for a reward, shoved me ahead of him back into the kitchen. There he made me sit down on the floor in an out-of-the-way corner. To keep me there he tied a piece of strong twine around my ankle and fastened the other end to a table leg. After a quarter of an hour he had forgotten me.
More than once a careless cook left a knife within my reach, so that I could have quickly cut the cord and run away. In fact the cooks and kitchen servants paid so little attention to me that I could have worked openly to untie the knot. I had no intention of trying to free myself. I would never have a better opportunity to discover what Elen meant to do with Maara and perhaps to find out where she was keeping her.
I learned nothing from the kitchen talk, which consisted mostly of shouted orders and shrill scoldings. With so many guests to see to, there was no time for gossip in the kitchen.
Instead of eavesdropping I made my plans.
It occurred to me that if I admitted to the theft, they might lock me up in whatever place they had put Maara, but I quickly abandoned that idea. If we were both locked up, how would we escape? I would do better to convince Elen of my harmlessness. Then she might allow me to remain within the household.
First I had to refute the accusation made against me. As I was innocent, the truth would be my best defense, if the truth were not so complicated. A partial truth might do. If I claimed to have brought the knife from the armorer's house, well, so I had. I need say no more than that. With such a simple explanation and without an injured party, how could she convict me?
Next, in order to stay within the house, I would have to ingratiate myself with Elen. Although she must be accustomed to adoration, even jaded by it, a young boy smitten by her beauty might slip past her defenses. Flattery she would recognize at once, but my admiration was genuine enough.
I had already, without guile, given a false impression that would work to my advantage. Elen had spoken to me first in her own tongue and thought I hadn't understood it. I had said very little to anyone in the household, and to my best recollection I had spoken not a word in the language of the mighty. People of importance speak carelessly before those they consider beneath their notice, before children, before servants, both of which they thought I was. How much more freely would they speak if they believed me ignorant of their language.
When careful thought gave way to useless worry, I allowed myself to fall asleep. It must have been past midnight when the stout servant woke me. He turned me over to a warrior of the household, who took me to the queen by a back way that I would have mistaken for a passage to the servants' quarters. It wound through a maze of narrow corridors and up several flights of stairs until we reached a tower room. A guard posted by the door rapped on it with the hilt of his sword. I heard the bar slide back. The door swung open. A woman in a plain apron stood back to let me enter. Then she went out the door and pulled it shut behind her.
It was a spacious room. Unshuttered windows on every side would in daylight reveal a view of the entire village, as well as much of the countryside beyond the palisade. There was no fire, only the light of one small lamp.
At first I didn't see her. When I shielded my eyes from the lamplight, I could just make her out, standing by a window, a dark form against a deeper darkness.
"Come here," she said, in her own tongue.
I was glad I couldn't see her eyes. They had a charm in them that might have robbed me of my self-possession. I think that by speaking from the darkness she meant to confuse me or take me by surprise, to spy first upon her adversary before she set her strategy and deployed her strongest weapon, but by doing so she allowed me to collect myself and prepare my own defenses.
"Please," I said, in the language of Finn's people. "Please, ma'am, I've done nothing wrong."
Slowly she approached me. Her back was to the lamp, her face in shadow. The lamplight was shining in my eyes.
"Did you fool them all?" she said.
It was fortunate for me that she had spoken in the language of Finn's people, because I could not have hidden my surprise.
She reached out her hand and with her fingertips lightly brushed my cheek. "No beardless boy, I think."
Weak-kneed with relief that she had discovered only my sex, not my intentions, I didn't try to conceal the blush that warmed my face. With so much else to hide, I gave her the satisfaction of believing she had found me out. Denial was pointless. Small-breasted as I was, I would not have put it past her to touch me there too or to strip away my clothing until no denial was possible.
"You see, I am frank with you," she said. "Will you not be open with me? Why do you pretend to be what you are not?"
It was a question I had not prepared an answer for. Unpracticed in deceit, I could do no less than tell the truth.
"I am told," I said, "that in Elen's house a woman of the common folk cannot go about as freely as a man."
"And are you not a woman of the common folk?"
"I am not."
"Who are your people, then?"
I almost said I had none, but I couldn't deny those I still felt a part of, though so many of them had denied me.
"Lady," I said, "I am an exile."
"You would have done better to admit the theft of the knife," she said. A chill had crept into her voice. "For that we might have given you a sound thrashing and sent you home. Now you must convince me that you haven't come to do me harm."
It seemed an odd conclusion for her to leap to until I remembered her precautions -- the warriors surrounding her in the great hall, the tower room, the barred door, the guard outside. With good reason or without, she must always feel herself in peril.
So I touched the only place in her where I had seen a sign of weakness.
"What cause have I given you to doubt my good will?" I asked her. "I find it strange that someone so powerful should be so fearful. Am I so threatening?"
I gestured to my small and humble self. "Is this enough to make the mighty tremble?"
I caught a flash of anger in her eyes before her smile masked it.
"Threats come in many guises," she said. "What you see is not fear but prudence. Power comes from understanding, and I understand the world. It is full of ill will, while all good will has self-interest behind it. Shall I tell you what I see?"
I waited.
"I see someone who has proven her own guilt already. At the very least, you are guilty of deception, and for what harmless purpose would you come into my house wearing a false face?"
"Indeed, ma'am," I said, "this is my true face. I have only the one."
E
len laughed, a kinder sound than any I had heard since I first entered her house.
"All right," she said. "If you've come with good intentions, then tell me, what is your purpose here?"
Nothing occurred to me to say. Nothing I had planned would be of any use. She had seen through my disguise, and she seemed to have no interest in asking me about the knife.
Elen made an impatient gesture. "Speak," she said, "and speak quickly, before you can perfect a lie."
Indignant at her accusation, I almost spat back at her that I was not a liar, until I saw the reason for my indignation. Was I not at that moment trying to deceive her? And of course a lie was just what she expected.
"Lady," I said. "I would not insult you with a lie. My business here is my own concern, and I will keep it to myself, but I mean you no harm."
Elen was silent for a moment. Then she turned toward the light. "You must forgive me if I cannot simply take you at your word. Come sit with me a while and tell me of your misfortunes. Perhaps that will help me to form an opinion of your character."
She seated herself on a chair beside the table that held the lamp, so that I could see her very well, and gestured to me to sit down on a stool opposite her.
"First," she said, "tell me where you've come from."
In her eyes I saw nothing to alarm me. It seemed a harmless question, yet I was cautious.
"I doubt you've heard of the place," I said. "Where I come from no one has heard of Elen's house."
"A careful answer," she said. "You will not quiet my suspicions with such careful answers. Tell me at least in which direction your home lies."
I saw no harm in saying, "My home lies south of here."
"Is it far?"
"Yes, very far."
"Is it a lovely place?"
"It is," I said, and blinked back sudden tears as my mind filled with images of Merin's land.
"I understand," she said. "It is a longing mixed with regret. One does not value something justly until it is lost beyond recall."