Freyas Saga Ch. 21

"She must have been thrown," he said. "Poor lass." He knelt by her and brushed her blonde hair out of her face.

She was a pretty, apple-cheeked girl with dark circles under her eyes, perhaps no thundering beauty but very pleasant-looking. Her dress was cut low and tight across her breasts. She was breathing. Boris quickly looked for signs of blood or broken limbs, but there were none. He took out his flask and put it to her lips, and she rocked her head from side to side and her eyelids fluttered.

"There, there," said Boris. "Think you've had a bit of a fall."

"My horse," she murmured. "Bonnechance ... He bolted suddenly. Where ..."

"He's over there," said Boris, pointing. The girl put a hand to her head and blinked.

"Oh, my goodness," she said. "I'm so sorry. I've held you up." She was very well-spoken, a true lady, but Norbert couldn't help noticing that her fingernails were bitten right down to the quick, and her hands were surprisingly large, rough-looking, scarred and in one or two places, burned.

"Are you all right?" Boris said. "Do you think you can stand?"

"I can try," said the girl with a brave smile, and he helped her to her feet. She stepped onto the road and brushed herself off.

"What a blunderer," she said. "I cannot even keep control of my steed. I do apologise."

"You've not been riding long, then?" Boris took a step back from the girl and Norbert noted that the knight was discreetly eyeing her figure.

"Only a few months," she said. "Forgive my manners. I am Amber de Haverley, lady-in-waiting to Lady Rosaline Fitzjohn."

A lady in waiting. Which sort of explained the condition of her hands. A bit. Norbert realised he was staring at the girl and made himself look at her feet instead, then he decided that that too wasn't a good idea and he looked at her horse.

"I am Sir Boris of Coulomb," said Sir Boris, "and this young rascal is my squire, Norbert."

"Very pleased to meet you," said Amber breathlessly, and she curtseyed. "I was riding to Tour de Mont-Supplice, and my horse decided to ..." She looked at them and laughed.

"Dear me," she said, "I've told you that already, have I not? I'm sorry. I'm still a little dizzy."

"My dear girl," said Boris, "it's quite possible you have a concussion. Do you feel ill?"

"Not at all," she said, "I just, um."

She put her hand to her forehead, swayed for a moment and then sank to a sitting position on the road. Boris picked her up and offered her his flask again, but she declined with a smile.

"A little rest and I shall be as right as rain, I think," she said. "But what a pity, for now my message will be delayed."

"Well," said Boris, "could you not ride with us? Young Norbert's steed is big enough for the two of you, I think."

Norbert experienced a brief moment of panic and thrill at the thought of sharing a horse with her. He suppressed it. He didn't want her to think he was as excited by the idea as he really was. She looked anxious.

"Would that be all right? I don't want to inconvenience you."

"I'm sure it won't be inconvenient," said Boris, and Norbert shook his head.

Five minutes later, they were riding along the road in single file, Boris at the head, Norbert with Amber behind him in the middle, and a rope from Norbert's saddle tied to the muzzle of Amber's horse, which plodded peacefully enough behind them."

"You are kind," Amber said. "If you hadn't come along, I'd still be lying in that ditch."

"Ditches," said Norbert, "contain some of the richest variety of creature in the wild."

There was a pause.

"Is that so," she said.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Voles, shrews, rodents of all kind, spiders, worms, centipedes. Things that like dark and damp."

"Oooh, I can't bear spiders," she said cheerfully. "Creepy crawly things. They bite."

"It is not true that spiders bite humans," said Norbert, "or at least their bite is far from harmful. They bite flies to keep them still. It used to be thought that the spider's bite killed the spirit of the fly and enslaved it because the spider was of a higher order of being, but I prefer the explanation that the spider's bite injects some kind of venom into the fly and immobilises it. It is possible that in other lands, spiders exist that have bites that can harm humans. I have heard tales of spiders in the eastern kingdoms that can kill with a bite, but not having seen one, and without having had credible report of one, I think we should treat such tales with scepticism."

He waited for her to compliment him on his expert knowledge of spiders' eating habits.

When she did not, he turned around and looked at her.

"Can you not hear my voice," he said.

"Yes," she said, staring past him at the road ahead. "I can hear you perfectly well."

"Oh," he said, and turned around to face forwards again.

It took him a moment to understand what she meant and when he did so, he wanted to thump himself.

You're being boring, he thought. Nobody except you is interested in the eating habits of spiders. He rode on for a while in silence, quietly cursing his own tongue-tied-ness. At the same time, he was very conscious of the fact that what for want of a better word he thought of as her chest was pressing against his shoulder blades.

"You're very clever," she said, and he was startled.

"You are kind," he mumbled.

"Oh, come," she said, "you are. I wonder how such a young boy came to be so learned."

"I am not as young as I appear to be," he said. "I am fifteen."

"Really? I would have thought you younger. You look about ten."

"So I have often been told."

"So how did you come by all that knowledge?"

He looked over his shoulder at her, to see if she was mocking him, but she looked merely friendly and curious.

"I read a lot," he said, "and my grandmother taught me not to believe everything I read."

"She sounds wise," said Amber, "but surely you didn't learn all that from books."

"I went to the Academy of Alchemy," he said. "Only for one year."

"My goodness," she said. "That is impressive. Why only for one year?"

He hesitated, but Boris was up ahead.

"I was not very happy there," he said. "A lot of the things that they taught I had already read, and I had already come to think them false, for in other books I had read arguments against them."

"Such as what sort of thing?"

"Well," said Norbert, "the Academy teaches that the world is at the centre of the universe, and that all the celestial objects, such as the sun and the moon and the planets and the constellations, are attached to spheres that revolve around the world."

"Everyone knows that."

"Yes," he said, "but some thinkers believe that the world goes around the sun."

"But that's ridiculous. It's obvious that the sun goes around the world."

"Why?"

"Because it looks like it does."

"Yes," he said, "but supposing the world went around the sun. How would it look then?"

She thought for a second.

"It would look different," she said. "The sun would hang high in the sky, and it would

neither rise nor set. The same way if I walk around a candle I can always see it."

"Ah yes," he said, feeling immensely pleased, "but what if the world were spinning around all the time?"

"Why would it do that?"

She just looked puzzled.

"If it did do that," he said, "the sun would appear to rise and fall, just like it does now."

"But if the world were spinning around," she said, "we would fly off. Like when you shake drops off wet fingers."

"And yet," he said, "we do not."

"Yes," she said, "because we are not spinning."

"But we must be," he said, beginning to feel mildly desperate.

"Why must we be?"

"Because otherwise, as you said," he said, fumbling, "the sun would not have the appearance, as it does now, of rising and falling in the sky."

"So how is it that we do not fly off the spinning world?"

"Perhaps," he said, "um, the ... the ... we, like, like water on hands, we cling to the world thus."

"Then how is it possible that we can walk about and jump in the air?"

He couldn't think of anything.

"It seems to me," Amber said mildly, "that this world-goes-around-the-sun idea of yours requires me to accept an awful lot of other ideas, whereas if I think that the sun goes around the world, then everything is a good deal simpler."

"It does seem like that," he said, sweating.

"But it is interesting to speculate," she said. "You would enjoy some of the conversations at Lady Rosaline's. She delights to entertain thinkers and wise men. So how came you to leave the Academy after just one year?"

"I fell into bad company," he said, feeling annoyed and embarrassed.

"Oooh," she said, wriggling behind him. "What kind of bad company?"

"I am forbidden to talk about it," he said.

"Really? It sounds thrilling."

He thought, she thinks I'm thrilling.

"Well," he said, "it was certainly a ticklish situation to find oneself in."

"I'm sure it must have been. What possible reason could the Academy have had to throw you out?"

"I was not thrown out," he said. "I was asked to leave."

"Oh?"

"I understand why they did what they did," he said, trying to sound wise. "They were in an impossible position."

"What in the twelve kingdoms did you and your bad company get up to?" She was laughing. "Did you find the philosopher's stone and tell everyone about it?"

"The philosopher's stone is a fairy tale," he said.

"Did you and your bad company find that out?"

"Yes," he said, and caught himself, and thought, Damn. "Truly, miss, I should not be talking about it."

"But you haven't told me a thing," she said. "I am utterly in the dark. Except that you and your bad company were clearly very much smarter than the Academy, which a dunce could take away from the little you have let slip. I assure you, you have been most discreet."

"Really?" He was sweating, with her pressed up against his back, her arms around his waist, her chest pressing into his shoulders.

"To be frank," she said, "I have met some members of the Academy at Lady Rosaline's, and they have not struck me as being overly endowed with brain power."

"They are idiots," he exclaimed. "They pore over their old books and seek to bend the world to fit what men wrote centuries back, but they have not the wit to open their eyes to what is in front of them. The world is far more interesting than they teach in the Academy, but they are so old and everyone looks up to them so, and they get the tithes and they consult with kings and queens and everyone bows the knee before their so-called wisdom. It is a scandal."

"Dreadful," she said. "You'll be telling me next that they think the world goes around the sun."

"The world does go around the sun!"

"Yes," she said, with a smile in her voice, "but you yourself admitted that it looks as though it doesn't. 'Open your eyes! See what is before you!'"

He opened his mouth, faltered, and looked over his shoulder at her. She was grinning at him.

"I am serious!" He was annoyed. She laughed.

"I can see that. Don't be. The world is much funnier than you think it is."

He tried to think of a comeback and could not, and finally he laughed.

"All right," he said, "I'm sorry. I get carried away."

"Is that why you were asked to leave the Academy?"

"I cannot ..."

"I know, I know, you can't talk about it. So it is just as well that you have not told me that you and another student were asked to leave for pursuing your own course of study and in the process, I assume, learning secrets that man was not meant to know and possibly awakening some form of hideous nether-life that went on the rampage and killed several people before it could be stopped?"

"No," he said, "no, no. No."

They rode in silence for a moment or two.

"Well," he said, "yes. The first part. But we did not awaken anything. We simply proved that the Academy's teaching was questionable."

"Goodness."

"And we did destroy a building."

She burst out laughing.

"It is not funny," he said. "Someone could have been killed."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Fortunately not. It happened at night and everyone had gone to bed. But it was a valuable lesson in ..."

He caught himself once again.

"No," he said. "I had -"

"You had better not," she said. "I understand. I will stop talking about it. Tell me about something else. Tell me about ditches."

"You do not want to hear about ditches," said Norbert, smiling despite himself. "Even I do not want to hear myself talking about ditches."

She laughed, and he felt much more relaxed, and they soon talked of other things; the trees, the animals in the field, the history of Sir Boris, the legends they had heard.

By the time they halted for the night, Norbert had what was for him a rare feeling: he had made a friend.

***

Norbert made them supper of bread and cold sausage and wine, and the girl ate with appetite. Norbert found it difficult to stop himself from too openly admiring her person. Her low-cut dress drew attention to her bust, and the more wine she drank, the merrier she became, laughing freely at every quip of Sir Boris and every one of of Norbert's dry interjections. Sir Boris had the saddlebags chained to a tree as an anti-theft measure.

When the fire died down, they rolled themselves in their bedrolls, Boris contributing a heavy coat to Amber, and they slept.

They awoke the next morning and as Norbert was boiling water for their porridge and Amber was making her toilet, he saw Boris discreetly weighing the saddlebags with his hands.

He must have had his suspicions, Norbert thought, but he saw the knight smile quietly.

Then Boris looked up and saw him, and came over.

"Well?" Boris said. "You think me an old cynic?"

"Are you satisfied?"

"They have not been touched. In any case, the lock is strong, and the seals are unbroken. It seems our guest is as honest as she seems to be."

Norbert nodded.

"I think you've taken a bit of a shine to her, no?" Boris said.

"Her conversation is very stimulating," said Norbert, feeling himself go red. Boris chuckled.

"Maybe in a couple of years ..." Boris said, and then Amber came out of the bushes and

Boris walked off, laughing to himself.

"What were you talking about?" Amber said, smiling.

"Nothing," Norbert said.

"You are a terrible liar," she said. "But I will not push you. Mmmm, porridge."

They rode all that day, and once again she sat behind him on his horse, and Norbert listened to the sound of her voice and heard her tell about the doings of the family she worked for, and all he knew was that he'd never been so happy. To watch her eat a piece of bread seemed to him like entertainment fit for a king. The angle of her jaw, even the redness of her chapped hands, filled him with joy. By the time they stopped to rest again that evening, Norbert felt that he knew what people felt like when they believed in god. For himself, he could see in her and her slightly travelstained dress all the beauty and majesty of creation.

It was hard not to make a complete fool of oneself around her; he made a conscious effort to listen to Sir Boris as well, and occasionally even smile at his terrible jokes. But after only a day and a half, the small part of his brain that always stood back and watched the rest of him was despairingly admitting to himself that he had fallen in love with Amber.

Once again they dined on bread and sausage and wine, augmented a bit by some herbs and mushrooms Norbert had found; the study of mushrooms had been one of the few things in Academy life that he'd enjoyed, feeling like it amounted to some sort of mastery of the world, however insignificant.

They were having a most enjoyable evening when Amber stopped in mid-sentence and cocked her head to one side.

"Are those hooves I hear?" she said with interest.

Norbert got up and stepped over to the road, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he made out two figures riding from the north. They slowed as they drew nearer, and he stood in silence, waiting.

Finally the riders drew level, and Norbert decided that they hadn't seen him, and waited for them to pass. But then a brusque voice said "Make yourself known, boy."

Norbert recognised it immediately: it was Falco.

"I am Norbert, squire of Sir Boris of Coulomb, and we expected to meet you further down the road."

"Norbert," said the other rider in a hearty voice, after a tiny pause. It was Allon. "Well met indeed, lad. We rode to meet you, for there are rumours of thieves on the road."

"There are always rumours of thieves on this road," said Norbert.

"All the better that we came to meet you, then. Have you the bags from the city elders?"

"Safe and sound."

"Excellent. Perhaps we might join you for food and drink. We've ridden hard and without rest since leaving Venceborn."

They dismounted in the darkness, and walked the horses over towards the fire.

"We have a guest," said Norbert.

"So I see," said Allon. "We shall have fine company, then. Who is the lady?"

"A lady in waiting of a local house. We found her thrown from her horse, and Sir Boris insisted she accompany us."

"Sir Boris is as gallant as he is hospitable," said Allon. As they approached the fire, Boris stood up and beamed at them.

"Why, friends! This is a fine chance meeting. We did not expect to see you until tomorrow at the earliest."

"We rode out to meet you," said Falco. Amber rose and smiled.

"May I present Amber de Havely? She is lady in waiting to Lady Rosaline Fitzjohn."

Amber curtsied and blushed.

"Delighted," said Allon, bowing and taking her hand and lowering his face over it, but not, Norbert noticed with relief, actually kissing her fingers.

"I shall feel safe indeed," she said, "with four fine men to guard me from the terrors of the night."

"It is the duty of a gentleman to protect the fairer sex," said Allon. "It shall be an honour." He smiled warmly at her.

Norbert helped Allon and Falco to secure their horses. Then he cut more bread and sausage and poured more wine, and they sat down around the fire again.

"And how is the Lady Rosaline," said Allon to Amber. "Tell us her news."

"In the pink of health," said Amber. "May I ask how the gentleman knows her?"

"I was billeted in her house, briefly, in the late war," he said. "I know her to be a woman of great honour and fine judgement."

"That she is," said Amber.

"Is she quite recovered from the ague that had been tormenting her?" Allon said. Amber wrinkled her brow and smiled, puzzled.

"I think the gentleman may be confusing my lady with her sister Selmaline," she said. "Lady Rosaline's only health concerns lately have been a twisted ankle gained in hunting. But my lady Selmaline is wracked with ague, and the surgeons can do nothing. It is a torment to her, but her good spirits in distress are an inspiration to us."

"Selmaline," he said. "Of course. But tell me more - does Lady Rosaline still convene with the wisest and most skilled? The last I heard she would have nobody to dine with her except bookmen."

Allon laughed. Boris smiled. Amber smiled as well.

"Thankfully," she said, "the lady's taste for conversation ranges in a less eccentric sphere, at the moment. Between ourselves, I did not enjoy constantly having bookmen staying with us. Their dietary requirements were peculiarly vexing. Not to mention their beards; we were always finding hairs in the soup."

"Does her house fare as it used to?"

"Her fortunes have been mixed," said Amber, "as have all our fortunes, in the late war. You know of course of the death of her second son."

"Alas, yes," said Allon. "Indeed, I was there, although I did not witness his last hours."