Reave the Just and Other Tales (36 page)

She surrendered to his bidding scant moments before a tentative scratching at her door curtain announced a visitor.

Held by his gaze, she spoke the first of his new words.

“Enter.”

Expecting children, she was filled with chagrin when she saw Meglan come into her hovel. Only the strength of her love for her pig—or the strength of his presence in her mind—enabled her to rise to her feet instead of cowering against the wall.

Meglan herself appeared full of chagrin. Fern could look at the farmwife because Meglan was unable to look at Fern. Her gaze limped aimlessly across the floor, lost among her pallid features, and her voice also limped as she murmured, “I know not what to say. I can hardly face you. My husband is saved. You saved him—you, who speaks when none of us knew you could—you gave no hint— You, whom I have treated with little concern and no courtesy. You, who came in rags to offer your help. You, whom I have considered at worst a beggar and at best a half-wit. You and no other saved my husband.

“I cannot— I do not know how to bear it. You deserve honor, and you have been given only scorn.

“Fern, I must make amends. You have saved Wall, who is as dear to me as my own flesh. Because of you, he smiles, and lifts his head, and will soon be able to rise from his bed. I must make amends.” Now she looked into Fern’s eyes, and her need was so great—as great as Titus’—that Fern could not look away. “I will tell the tale. That I can do. I will teach Sarendel to honor you. But it is not enough.

“I have brought—” Meglan opened her hands as if she were ashamed of what they held, and Fern saw a thick, woolen robe, woven to stand hard use and keep out cold. “It is plain—too plain for my heart—but it is what I have, and it is not rags. And still it is not enough.

“If you can speak—if you are truly able to speak—please tell me how to thank you for my husband’s life.”

Fern, who had never owned a garment so rich and useful, might have fallen to her knees and wept in gratitude. To be given such a gift, without begging or dishonesty—! But Titus’ need was as great as Meglan’s. He did not let her go.

Instead of bowing or crying, she answered, “Thank you.” The words stumbled in her mouth; they were barely articulate. Yet she said them—and as she said them she felt an excitement which seemed like terror. “I helped Wall because I could. I do not need tales.”

That is safe
,
Titus commented.
She will talk in any case.

“Or gifts,” Fern went on. Belying the words, she gripped the robe tightly. “Yet it would be a kindness if I were given an iron cookpot and a few mixing bowls.”

Damnation!
Titus grunted.
That came out crudely. I must be more cautious.

Ashamed to be begging again, Fern could no longer face the farmwife. Because Titus required it, however, she gestured at her fire and her few bowls. “My knowledge of herbs is more than I can use with what implements I have. If I could cook better, I could help others as I have helped your husband.”

Tears welled in Meglan’s eyes. “Thank you. You will have what you need.” Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed Fern’s cheek. Then she turned and hurried from the hovel as though she were grieving—or fleeing.

There.
Titus sounded like Jessup rubbing his hands together over an auspicious bargain.
Was that not easier? Did I not promise that it would be less arduous? Soon we will be ready.

For the second time, Fern felt her own tears reply to Meglan’s. “No.” She had no recollection that she had ever been kissed before. Her surprise at Meglan’s gesture startled another surprise out of her—an unfamiliar anger. “No,” she repeated. Almost in words, almost using language for herself, she faced the pig’s strange gaze and showed him her shame.

Titus shook his head.
You did not beg.
Now he sounded condescending and desirous, like Horrik the tanner.
You answered her question
—
a small act of courtesy and self-respect. Consider this.
He showed Fern an image of Meglan coming to the hovel to offer gratitude, carrying not a robe but a cookpot and some bowls.
Would you have felt shame then?
he asked.
No. You were not shamed by the gift she chose to give you. It is only because you named your own need that you think you have done wrong.

But it was not wrong. It was my bidding.

Perhaps we will have enough time. Perhaps you will be able to save me. Take comfort in that, if you cannot forget your shame. Perhaps you will be able to save me.

As I saved Wall? she almost asked. Was that not also your doing?

But she lacked the language for such questions. And the pig distracted her, nuzzling her hand to express his affection and gratitude, wrapping her mind in azure and comfortable emerald; and so the connection was lost.

After that, her life changed again. The roaming and scavenging which had measured out her days came to a complete end. Feeling at once grand and unworthy in her new robe, she sat in her hovel while Titus went out alone and came back; while children supplied her with food and water and firewood and herbs; while first one or two and then several and finally all of Sarendel’s good people came to visit her. Some scratched at her curtain and poked their heads inside simply to satisfy their curiosity or resolve their doubt. But others brought their needs and pains to her attention. Meglan’s tale had inspired them to hope that Fern could help them.

Red-eyed from sleeplessness, and strangely abashed in the presence of a woman whom she had scarcely noticed before, Salla farmwife brought her infant son, who squalled incessantly with colic. Had the boy been a pig, Fern would have known what to do. However, he was a boy, and so it was fortunate that Titus stood at her side to instruct her.
(A bit of the paste, diluted four times. Mint and sage to moderate the effect. There.)
When Salla left the hovel, she added her son’s smiles and his sweet sleep to Meglan’s tale.

And later Salla brought Fern the gift which Titus had told Fern to request—a mortar and pestle, and a set of sturdy wooden spoons.

Horrik came, bearing an abscessed thumb. After Fern had treated it with a poultice which she had never made before, he lingered to stare and talk like a man whose mind drooled at what he saw. Yet he did not take it unkindly when at last Titus succeeded at urging her to dismiss him. Smiling and bowing, the tanner left; still smiling, he brought to her the gift she had requested, a keen flensing knife.

Karay’s daughter had been afflicted with palsy from birth. The weaver was so accustomed to her daughter’s infirmity that she would not have thought to seek aid, were it not for the strange fact that Fern could now speak. Perhaps if a mute half-wit could learn language and healing, a palsy could be cured. So Karay set her forlorn child in the dirt beside Fern’s fire and asked bluntly, “Can you help her?”

In response, Fern prepared a broth not unlike the one she ate herself, a paste not unlike the one she had given Salla’s infant. “And ale,” she added. “Mix it in ale. Let her drink at her own pace until she has drunk it all.”

Once Karay had seen that this rank brew indeed put an end to her daughter’s palsy, she gave Fern a curtain of embroidered velvet to replace the hovel’s burlap door. And also, because she was asked, she delivered to Fern a cupful each of all the dyes she used in her weaving.

Herded by his angry wife and four angry daughters, Sarendel’s blacksmith entered her hovel, carrying so much pain that he could hardly move. He had fallen against his forge and burned away most of the flesh on one side of his chest; his wife and daughters were angry because they feared that he would die. Fern gave him a salve for healing, herbs to soften the hurt, and other herbs to resist infection.

When her husband began to mend, the blacksmith’s wife at last allowed herself to weep. She cried ceaselessly as she brought Fern several small flakes of silver.

A farmer was given a cure for gout; he expressed his thanks with a lump of ambergris which he had treasured for years without knowing why. Over her father-in-law’s vociferous objections, Jessup’s eldest son’s wife asked for and received an herb to ease the severity of her monthly cramps; her gratitude took the form of two pints of refined lard. One of the blacksmith’s daughters believed that she was unwed because her beauty was marred by a large wen beside her nose; when Fern supplied her with a poultice which caused the wen to shrink and fall away, she—and her father—gave Fern an iron grill to hold Meglan’s cookpot.

In the course of a fortnight, Fern seemed to become the center of all Sarendel-on-Gentle, the hub on which the village turned. Children cared for her needs, and adults visited her at any hour. Resplendent in her new robe—of all the gifts she had been given, this one alone warmed her heart—she sat in state to receive all who came to her. With Titus at her side, as well fed and well tended as herself, she made new concoctions and spoke new words as though those separate actions were one and the same, bound to each other in ways she could not see. She no longer cowered against her walls in fright or chagrin. Instead she gave her help with the same unstinting openheartedness which she had formerly shown only to pigs. Helping people made her love them. She disliked only the gifts she was given in thanks, never the efforts she made to earn that thanks.

Her life had indeed changed. This time, however, she recognized the change for what it was. She neither chose it nor resisted it, but she saw it. And when she watched the change, comparing it to what her life had once been, she made new connections.

She understood why she could speak, why she could understand the people around her and reply, why she could prepare complex salves and balms, why she could look her fellow villagers in their faces. It was because of the broth and paste which Titus caused her to eat three times daily. Those herbs had wrought a change within her as profound as the change in her life.

One thing will lead to another because it must.

And she understood that she did not deserve Sarendel’s gratitude for her cures and comforts. That was why gifts gave her no pleasure, but only sorrow. She healed nothing, earned nothing. Like her new ability to speak, all the benefits she worked for others came from Titus: the credit for them was his, not hers.

She did not resent this. The pig had come to her in his extremity, and she loved him. Nor could she wish the lessons he had taught her unlearned. Nevertheless she grieved over her unworth.

In addition, she understood without knowing she understood that Titus himself caused a certain number of the hurts she treated. Too frequently to be unconnected, his forays away from her hovel coincided with the onset of injuries and illnesses in the village. The same powers with which he had raised her from her familiar destitution, he used to create the conditions under which Sarendel needed her.

He was trying to speed the process by which she accumulated gifts.

This troubled her. It offended her honesty more than begging; it seemed a kind of theft. But she did not protest against it. Other, similar connections crouched at the edges of her understanding, waiting for clarity. When she grasped one, she would grasp them all.

Ready, she thought to herself, using words instead of images. We must be ready. We are becoming ready.

We are,
Titus assented. She could hear pride and hope in his voice, as well as anger and more than a little fear.

Before the end of another fortnight, Sarendel had learned to accept Fern in her changed state; the village had begun to live as though she had always been a healer rather than a half-wit. And Titus had finished accumulating the gifts he required.

Now she noted the passing of time. Around her the seasons had moved along the Gentle’s Rift, turning high summer to crisp fall. Hints of gold and crimson appeared among the verdure; at their fringes the leaves of the bracken took on rust. Slowly the labor of tending fields and beasts eased. Soon would come a time she dreaded, a time she now knew she had always dreaded—the time when porkers were slaughtered for food and hide and tallow. She did not fear for Titus in that way: because he was hers, no villager would harm him. And yet she feared for him now, just as she had always feared for the porkers.

True, she could hear his own fear in the way he spoke. But she also saw it in the tension of his movements, in the staring of his flawed eyes; she smelled it in his sweat. It confirmed her apprehension for him when she might have been able to persuade herself that she had no reason for alarm.

One sharp fall morning, he poked his snout past her hovel’s velvet curtain, scented the air—and recoiled as though he had been stung.

Hell’s blood!
he panted.
Damn and blast them!

An unnamed panic came over her. She surged up from her pallet to throw her arms about his neck as though she believed that she could ward him somehow. He shivered feverishly, hot with dread.

“Titus?” She needed words for her fear, but only his name came to her. “Titus?”

He appeared to take comfort from her embrace. After a moment, his tremors eased. The confused moil of images and hues which he cast into her sharpened toward concentration.

Now we must hurry in earnest,
he breathed.
There is a stink of princes and warlocks in the air. That damnable Roadman has betrayed me, and I have little time. As I am, I can neither flee nor fight.

Oh, Fern, my Fern, if you love me, help me. Give me your willingness. Without it, I am lost.

“Who?” she asked with her face pressed to his neck. “Who comes to threaten you?”

Princes, warlocks, does it matter?
he snapped back.
They are frightened, even more than I—therefore they will be enough. They would not come if they were not enough. I tell you, we must
hurry!

She could not refuse him. She gave him a last hug, as though she were saying farewell. After that, she dropped her arms and seated herself by the fire.

“Then tell me what to do.”

She seemed to take his fear from him; he seemed to leach all calm and quiet out of her. The words and images which he supplied to instruct her were precise and unmistakable, as clear as sunlight on green leaves; yet her hands shook, and her whole heart trembled, while she obeyed. She was Fern of Sarendel-on-Gentle, a half-wit who loved pigs. What did she know of language or time, of magic or warlocks? Nevertheless Titus needed her, as he had needed her once before, and she did not mean to fail him.