4
I’d left the trail an hour before. Now I walked quietly among the trees, meandering. Sounds came and went: The hum of a beehive, high in an old oak. The rapids, a whisper at the edge of hearing when the wind was just right. The yipping of fox kits, chasing each other somewhere off among the bushes. A hawk’s cry, cutting and rough.
For a week they’d shouldered their way around. Demanded locks and nails and hinges for their barracks from the smiths, and bread each day from the bakers, none of it yet paid for. Taken stalls in the common stables for their own, and told the ostler and the smith who did the shoeing that they could look after other horses only once the emissary and his captains’ mounts were tended. Reminded shopkeepers time and again that soldiers would pay only part of the price for whatever they bought. And always with that same expression on their faces, wherever they went: A look of power, bored and wanting something to do. An insult. A challenge. A threat.
Everyone complained, and cursed them, and said we should do something.
Quietly, once they were gone.
I came to a pool by a stream, and looked at the tracks in the soft bank: deer, chough, wolf, rabbit, crane. The cranes would fly from the valley by autumn; the others would leave their prints in the snow. I watched minnows flitting through the riffles by the shore, then jumped across, and kept walking.
The shade was soft, and where the canopy broke, light stood in pillars, its glow spilling out over the stones and deep needles. I swung my hand through flowers in seed, little tufts floating into the underbrush like leaves drifting on the river. Birds sang in the distance. The wind was in the branches.
And then there were the visits. Everywhere they went it was the same—sometimes Alrik, sometimes one of the captains, but always flanked by four or five soldiers, and with Stepan at the rear, dragging his feet and looking every day like he had fallen deeper and deeper down a hole. They’d knock, and let themselves in if there was no answer, and tell whoever ran the workshop, or tilled the farm, or lived in the house they’d come to exactly what their new tribute had been calculated at, and, for most of the trades, what merchant from far off they’d be taking orders from now. People kept their faces still, or they scowled; and they grumbled, or were silent; and they pleaded for a lower tribute, or they accepted what they were told the first time.
But no one did anything.
I climbed a tall pine till I found a branch with a clear view of the open sky. Far above, a great flock of starlings whirled, making their way down the valley. The shape twisted and stretched, like a handful of water flung high in the air, before it scatters into drops. Lower, nearer, a hawk coasted on the wind, paying the flock no mind, watching the forest.
In the sunny rooms at the back of the town hall, where we had lessons, one of the captains had walked in when our teacher was halfway through a story.
For a moment Master Hugh had stood, surprised, mouth still open. Then, “May I help you with something? Perhaps you’re looking for the back stair?”
The captain shook her head. “I’m here to see your books.”
He closed the one in his hand. “Our books?”
He showed her to the crooked shelves in the corner, heavy with worn old volumes of tales, and history, and the legends of the valley, in the hands of scribes who had set the stories down while they were fresh. We all sat silent on the benches, watching, as she looked quickly through the books, opening some, making notes on a scrap of paper.
She handed Master Hugh a new title, and left as abruptly as she’d come.
He looked it over. “A new history of the barony. And made on a press. Well, we’ve got room for one more.” He snugged it in at the end of a shelf, and smiled. “Now—where were we?”
The next day, the shelves were nearly empty. The books of arithmetic, and for teaching small children their letters, were still there, and the new history book, and a few others. But the stories had all gone.
Master Hugh had smiled tightly. “It’s all right; not to worry. We’ll make do—I’ve got what we need right here,” he said, tapping his temple. But he laughed like cracking glass, and he couldn’t get through more than a few thoughts in a row without losing track. Finally he stopped, mid-sentence, and stared at us. Then he sent us out early. He stood by the window, eyes pinched tight shut as we left.
In the days since, lessons had been short, and dull.
I squinted up again as the flock made its way southwest, a swirl of pinpricks against the bright sky. It was nearly noon. I should go home.
I climbed down, and followed a deer path, the sun warm in the clearings. Purple curly bells swayed on the breeze, and a finch sang its fluttering song. The trees fell away to bushes and clover, and those gave on to a field lying fallow. I crossed the broad bridge over the near arm of the river, and wound among the houses on the northern edge of town: timber, plaster, stone. The mill, with its quiet pond and its creaking wheel, was just around the next curve of the lane.
The same hawk I’d watched before swooped at something I couldn’t see, then climbed again, beating its wings.
I stopped. There were raised voices ahead.
Moving slowly, I rounded the bend.
The emissary and a handful of soldiers, standing stiffly in the street. Stepan, hanging back, looking sick. And before them, shoulders squared, face red, and eyes hard, Ellia, her finger like a brand in the emissary’s face.
“. . . and if you dream for a moment that this can go on, your dreams have led you a long way off the road!”
The door to the mill stood open behind her, one of her sons peeking out around the frame. Scattered down the lane, a handful of neighbors, frozen halfway through whatever tasks they’d been at, watching.
I had never seen her lose her temper before.
I pressed myself in among the branches of the high hedge, and stood still.
Alrik breathed in slow, like a cloud that had rehearsed how to storm. “Miller, all your life you’ve lived here. All your life you’ve been a subject. First of one baroness, now another. What you do, you’ve always done at their pleasure.” He leaned closer. “The fact that Freja won’t tolerate your backward behavior is no—”
“I’ve had enough.” She pushed him hard in the chest, and he stumbled, tipping back into the arms of the soldier behind him.
There was a quiet ringing. The soldiers were circled tight around the emissary, swords drawn. Gardens rustled and doors snapped shut as the curious watchers disappeared.
One soldier was holding Ellia back. No, not back—holding her up. Or—
Ellia coughed. There was blood on the soldier’s armor.
He stepped back.
And pulled the sword out of her belly.
Someone cried out, wordless.
Curled hard into my palms, my fingers were cold.
Ellia staggered, and groaned. She fell to the ground.
Her son ran to her, falling next to her, holding her close, screaming.
The emissary straightened his jacket. He looked down at Ellia, and the screaming boy, frantically brushing the dust from his mother’s face, blood spreading on the earth. Frowning, Alrik looked up and down the lane, and nodded to his troops.
“Finish this.”
One soldier grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him up and away. Ellia clutched his hand, weakly, and then it was gone. The first soldier rolled her onto her back with his boot, and lined up his sword over her heart.
She reached up, and mouthed, “No—”
The street was still. Stepan trembled, as pale as bones, and vomited in the ditch, and turned and ran. The emissary looked once more at Ellia’s body, her son sobbing over her, begging for her to get up, and led the soldiers away.
Neighbors came back out, halting, uncertain, calling out to each other in harsh voices, and picked up the weeping boy and carried him away, and laid Ellia’s body on a board, and carried her somewhere else, and someone said they should go and find her wife, and after a while, the lane stood empty except for Ellia’s blood, soaking into the earth.
The hawk wheeled slowly in the sky overhead. It turned toward the forest, and drifted out of sight.
I stood there for a long, long time.