Orsinian Tales Read online

  “You pray too,” said Freyga, looking at the stranger. He ducked his head and began to mumble, glancing at Freyga now and then from the corner of his eye.

  There was little warmth in the Keep except at the hearth, and dawn found most of them still there: Father Egius curled up like an aged dormouse in the rushes, the stranger slumped in his chimney corner, hands clasped across his belly, Freyga sprawled out on his back like a man cut down in battle. His men snored around him, started in their sleep, made unfinished gestures. Freyga woke first. He stepped over the sleeping bodies and climbed the stone stairs to the floor above. Ranni the midwife met him in the anteroom, where several girls and dogs were sleeping in a heap on a pile of sheepskins. “Not yet, count.”

  “But it’s been two nights now—”

  “Ah, she’s hardly begun,” the midwife said with contempt. “Has to rest, hasn’t she?”

  Freyga turned and went heavily down the twisted stairs. The woman’s contempt weighed upon him. All the women, all yesterday; their faces were stern, preoccupied; they paid no attention to him. He was outside, out in the cold, insignificant. He could not do anything. He sat down at the oaken table and put his head in his hands, trying to think of Galla, his wife. She was seventeen; they had been married ten months. He thought of her round white belly. He tried to think of her face but there was nothing but the taste of bronze on his tongue. “Get me something to eat!” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the board, and the Tower Keep of Vermare woke with a jump from the grey paralysis of dawn. Boys ran about, dogs yelped, bellows roared in the kitchen, men stretched and spat by the fire. Freyga sat with his head buried in his hands.

  The women came down, one or two at a time, to rest by the great hearth and have a bite of food. Their faces were stern. They spoke to each other, not to the men.

  The snow had ceased and a wind blew from the mountains, piling snowdrifts against the walls and byres, a wind so cold it cut off breath in the throat like a knife.

  “Why has God’s word not been brought to these mountain folk of yours, these sacrificers of sheep?” That was the potbellied priest, speaking to Father Egius and the man with sores around his eyes, Stefan.

  They hesitated, not sure what “sacrificers” meant.

  “It’s not just sheep they kill,” said Father Egius, tentatively.

  Stefan smiled. “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?” The stranger’s voice was sharp, and Father Egius, cowering slightly, said, “They—they kill goats, too.”

  “Sheep or goats, what’s that to me? Where do they come from, these pagans? Why are they permitted to live in a Christian land?”

  “They’ve always lived here,” the old priest said, puzzled.

  “And you’ve never tried to bring the Holy Church among them?”

  “Me?”

  It was a good joke, the idea of the little old priest going up into the mountains; there was a good deal of laughter for quite a while. Father Egius, though without vanity, was perhaps a little hurt, for he finally said in a rather stiff tone, “They have their gods, sir.”

  “Their idols, their devils, their what do you call it—Odne!”

  “Be quiet, priest,” Freyga said suddenly. “Must you say that name? Do you know no prayers?”

  After that the stranger was less haughty. Since the count had spoken harshly to him the charm of hospitality was broken, the faces that looked at him were hard. That night he was again given the corner seat by the fire, but he sat huddled up there, not spreading his knees to the warmth.

  There was no singing at the hearth that night. The men talked low, silenced by Freyga’s silence. The darkness waited at their shoulders. There was no sound but the howling of the wind outside the walls and the howling of the woman upstairs. She had been still all day, but now the hoarse, dull yell came again and again. It seemed impossible to Freyga that she could still cry out. She was thin and small, a girl, she could not carry so much pain in her. “What good are they, up there!” he broke out. His men looked at him, saying nothing. “Father Egius! There is some evil in this house.”

  “I can only pray, my son,” the old man said, frightened.

  “Then pray! At the altar!” He hurried Father Egius before him out into the black cold, across the courtyard where dry snow whirled invisible on the wind, to the chapel. After some while he returned alone. The old priest had promised to spend the night on his knees by the fire in his little cell behind the chapel. At the great hearth only the foreign priest was still awake. Freyga sat down on the hearthstone and for a long time said nothing.

  The stranger looked up and winced, seeing the count’s blue eyes staring straight at him.

  “Why don’t you sleep?”

  “I’m not sleepy, count.”

  “It would be better if you slept.”

  The stranger blinked nervously, then closed his eyes and tried to look asleep. He peered now and then under half-closed lids at Freyga and tried to repeat, without moving his lips, a prayer to his patron saint.

  To Freyga he looked like a fat black spider. Rays of darkness spread out from his body, enwebbing the room.

  The wind was sinking, leaving silence, in which Freyga heard his wife moaning, a dry, weak sound.

  The fire died down. Ropes and webs of darkness tangled thicker and thicker around the man-spider in the corner of the hearth. A tiny glitter showed under his brows. The lower part of his face moved a little. He was casting his spells deeper, deeper. The wind had fallen. There was no sound at all.

  Freyga stood up. The priest looked up at the broad golden figure looming against darkness, and when Freyga said, “Come with me,” he was too frightened to move. Freyga took his arm and pulled him up. “Count, count, what do you want?” he whispered, trying to free himself.

  “Come with me,” Freyga said, and led him over the stone floor, through darkness, to the door.

  Freyga wore a sheepskin tunic; the priest only a woollen gown. “Count,” he gasped, trotting beside Freyga across the court, “it’s cold, a man could freeze to death, there might be wolves—”

  Freyga shot the arm-thick bolts of the outer gates of the Keep and swung one portal open. “Go on,” he said, gesturing with his sheathed sword.

  The priest stopped short. “No,” he said.

  Freyga unsheathed his sword, a short, thick blade. Jabbing its point at the rump beneath the woollen gown, he drove the priest before him out the gate, down the village street, out onto the rising road that led to the mountains. They went slowly, for the snow was deep and their feet broke through its crust at each step. The air was perfectly still now, as if frozen. Freyga looked up at the sky. Overhead between high faint clouds stood the star-shape with a swordbelt of three bright stars. Some called the figure the Warrior, others called it the Silent One, Odne the Silent.

  The priest muttered one prayer after another, a steady pattering mumble, drawing breath with a whistling sound. Once he stumbled and fell face down in the snow. Freyga pulled him to his feet. He looked up at the young man’s face in the starlight, but said nothing. He shambled on, praying softly and steadily.

  The tower and village of Vermare were dark behind them; around them were empty hills and plains of snow, pale in the starlight. Beside the road was a hillock, less than a man’s height, grave-shaped. Beside it, bared of snow by the wind, stood a short thick pillar or altar built of uncut stones. Freyga took the priest’s shoulder, forcing him off the road and to the altar beside the Barrow. “Count, count—” the priest gasped when Freyga seized his head and forced it back. His eyes looked white in the starlight, his mouth was open to scream, but the scream was only a bubbling wheeze as Freyga slit his throat.

  Freyga forced the corpse to bend over the altar, and cut and tore the thick gown away till he could slash the belly open. Blood and entrails gushed out over the dry stones of the altar and smoked on the dry snow. The gutted corpse fell forward over the stones like an empty coat, the arms dangling.
<
br />   The living man sank down on the thin, wind-scoured snow beside the Barrow, sword still in hand. The earth rocked and heaved, and voices went crying past him in the darkness.

  When he lifted his head and looked about him everything had changed. The sky, starless, rose in a high pale vault. Hills and far mountains stood distinct, unshadowed. The shapeless corpse slumped over the altar was black, the snow at the foot of the Barrow was black, Freyga’s hands and sword-blade were black. He tried to wash his hands with snow, and the sting of it woke him. He got up, his head swimming, and stumbled back to Vermare on numb legs. As he went he felt the west wind, soft and damp, rising with the day around him, bringing the thaw.

  Ranni was standing by the great hearth while the boy Gilbert built up the fire. Her face was puffy and grey. She spoke to Freyga with a sneer: “Well, count, high time you’re back!”

  He stood breathing heavily, slack-faced, and did not speak.

  “Come along, then,” said the midwife. He followed her up the twisting stairs. The straw that had covered the floor was swept aside into the fireplace. Galla lay again in the wide box-like bed, the marriage bed. Her closed eyes were deep-sunken. She was snoring faintly. “Shh!” the midwife said, as he started to her. “Be quiet! Look here.”

  She was holding up a tightly wrapped bundle.

  After some while, as he still said nothing, she whispered sharply, “A boy. Fine, big.”

  Freyga put out one hand towards the bundle. His fingernails were caked and checked with brown.

  The midwife drew the bundle closer to herself. “You’re cold,” she said in the sharp, contemptuous whisper. “Here.” She drew back a fold to show for a moment a very tiny, purplish human face in the bundle, then rewrapped it.

  Freyga went to the foot of the bed and knelt on the floor there, bending till his head was on the stones of the floor. He murmured, “Lord Christ, be praised, be thanked…”

  The Bishop of Solariy never found out what had become of his envoy to the northwest. Probably, being a zealous man, he had ventured too far into the mountains where heathen folk still lived, and had suffered martyrdom.

  Count Freyga’s name lived long in the history of his province. During his lifetime the Benedictine monastery on the mountain above Lake Malafrena was established. Count Freyga’s flocks and Count Freyga’s sword fed and defended the monks in their first hard winters there. In the bad Latin of their chronicles, in black ink on the lasting vellum, he and his son after him are named with gratitude, staunch defenders of the Church of God.

  1150

  ILE

  FOREST

  “SURELY,” said the young doctor, “there are unpardonable crimes! Murder can’t go unpunished.”

  The senior partner shook his head. “There are unpardonable people, perhaps; but crimes…they depend…”

  “On what? To take a human life—that’s absolute. Self-defense aside, of course. The sacredness of human life—”

  “Is nothing the law can judge of,” the older man said drily. “I have a murder in the family, as a matter of fact. Two murders.” And, gazing mostly at the fire, he told his story.

  My first practice was up north in the Valone. I went there with my sister in 1902. Even then it was a drab place. The old estates had sold out to the beetroot plantations, and collieries spread a murk on the hills to the south and west. It was just a big, dull plain; only at the east end of it, Valone Alte, did you get any sense of being in the mountains. On the first day I drove to Valone Alte I noticed a grove of trees; the trees in the valley had all been cut down. There were birches turning gold, and a house behind them, and behind it a stand of huge old oaks, turning dim red and brown; it was October. It was beautiful. When my sister and I drove out on Sunday I went that way, and she said in her drowsy way that it was like the castle in the fairy tale, the castle of silver in a forest of gold. I had several patients in Valone Alte, and always drove that road. In winter when the leaves were down you could see the old house; in spring you could hear the cuckoos calling, and in summer the mourning-doves. I didn’t know if anyone lived there. I never asked.

  The year went round; I didn’t have all the practice I’d hoped for, but Poma, my sister Pomona, was good at making ends meet, for all she looked so sleepy and serene. So we got on. One evening I came in and found a call had been left from a place called He on the Valone Alte road. I asked Minna, the housekeeper, where it was.

  “Why, in Ile Forest,” she said, as if there was a forest the size of Siberia there. “Past the old mill.”

  “The castle of silver,” Poma said, smiling. I set right off. I was curious. You know how it is, when you’ve built up your fancies about a place, and then suddenly are called to go into it. The old trees stood round, the windows of the house reflected the last red of the west. As I tied up my horse, a man came out to meet me.

  He didn’t come out of any fairy tale. He was about forty and had that hatchet face you see up north, hard as flint. He took me straight in. The house was unlit; he carried a kerosene lamp. What I could see of the rooms looked bare, empty. No carpets, nothing. The upstairs room we came to had no rug either; bed, table, a few chairs; but a roaring hot fire in the hearth. It helps to have a forest, when you need firewood.

  The patient was the owner of the forest, Ileskar. Pneumonia. And he was a fighter. I was there on and off for seventy hours, and he never drew a breath in all that time that wasn’t an act of pure willpower. The third night, I had a woman in labor in Mesoval, but I left her to the midwife. I was young, you know, and I said to myself that babies come into the world every day, but it’s not every day a brave man leaves it. He fought; and I tried to help him. At dawn the fever went down abruptly, the way it does now with these new drugs, but it wasn’t any drug; he’d fought, and won. I drove home in a kind of exaltation, in a white windy sunrise.

  And I dropped in daily while he convalesced. He drew me, the place drew me. That last night, it had been one of those nights you have only when you’re young—whole nights, from sunset to sunrise, when life and death are present with you, and outside the windows there’s the forest, and the winter, and the dark.

  I say “forest” just as Minna did, meaning that stand of a few hundred trees. It had been a forest once. It had covered all Valone Alte, and so had the Ileskar properties. For a century and a half it had all gone down and down; nothing left now but the grove, and the house, and a share in the Kravay plantations, enough to keep one Ileskar alive. And Martin, the hatchet-faced fellow, his servant technically, though they shared the work and ate together. Martin was a strange fellow, jealous, devoted to Ileskar. I felt that devotion as an actual force, not sexual, but possessive, defensive. It did not puzzle me too much. There was something about Galven Ileskar that made it seem quite natural. Natural to admire him, and to protect him.

  I got his story from Minna, mostly, her mother had worked for his mother. The father had spent what was left to spend, and then died of the pleurisy. Galven went into the army at twenty; at thirty he married, retired as a captain, and came back to Ile. After about three years his wife deserted him, ran away with a man from Brailava. And about that I learned a little from Galven himself. He was grateful to me for my visits; I suppose it was plain that I wanted his friendship. He felt he should not withhold himself. I’d rambled on about Poma and myself, so he felt obliged to tell me about his marriage. “She was very weak,” he said. He had a gentle, husky voice. “I took her weakness for sweetness. A mistake. But it wasn’t her fault. A mistake. You know she left me, with another man.”

  I nodded, very embarrassed.

  “I saw him whip a horse blind once,” Galven said, in the same thoughtful, painful way. “Stand and whip its eyes till they were open sores. When I got there he’d just finished. He gave a big sigh of satisfaction, as if he’d just gotten up from dinner. It was his own horse. I didn’t do anything. Told him to get off the place, clear out. Not enough…”

  “You and your—wife are divorced, then?”
/>   “Yes,” he said, and then he looked across the room at Martin, who was building up the fire. Martin nodded, and Galven said, “Yes,” again. He was only a week or so convalescent, he looked tired; it was a bit strange, but I already knew he was a strange fellow. He said, “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten how to talk to civilised people.”

  It was really painful to have him apologising to me, and so I just went on with the first thing that came to mind about Poma and myself and old Minna and my patients, and presently I wound up asking if I might bring Poma sometime when I came out to He. “She’s admired the place so much when we drive past.”

  “It would be a great pleasure to me,” Galven said. “But you’ll let me get on my feet again, first? And it is a bit of a wolf’s den, you know…”

  I was deaf. “She wouldn’t notice that,” I said. “Her own room’s like a thicket, scarves and shawls and little bottles and books and hairpins, she never puts anything away. She never gets her buttons into the right buttonholes, and she leaves everything around behind her, sort of like a ship’s wake.” I wasn’t exaggerating. Poma loved soft clothes and gauzy things, and wherever she’d been there was a veil dripping off a chair-arm, or a scarf fluttering on a rose bush, or some creamy fluffy thing dropped by the door, as if she were some sort of little animal that left bits of its fur around, the way rabbits leave white plumes on the briars in the early morning in the fields. When she’d lost a scarf and left her neck bare she’d catch up any sort of kerchief, and I’d ask her what she had on her shoulders now, the hearth-rug? and she’d smile her sweet, embarrassed, lazy smile. She was a sweet one, my little sister. I got a bit of a shock when I told her I’d take her out to He one of these days. “No,” she said, like that.

  “Why not?” I was chagrined. I’d talked a lot about Ileskar, and she had seemed interested.

  “He doesn’t want women and strangers around,” she said. “Let the poor fellow be.”

  “Nonsense. He’s very lonely, and doesn’t know how to break out of it.”