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Debt Price 2

HARVEST

Dusk Peterson

Illustrated by H. Rose Melenche

 
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

—Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night

CHAPTER FOUR

The darkness was warm. It enfolded him like a blanket on a chill winter's eve, and he snuggled more deeply into it, seeking the heart of its comfort. It was soft around him, like the breast of a mother; he gave a sigh of contentment. The only irritant in this warm, dark womb was a slight nagging, a slight feeling of something being amiss, something he should correct.

He scratched his elbow.

The shock of what he had done sent him scrambling out of the warmth, sitting bolt upright. For a moment all he could see was light, harsh upon his eyes; then he felt white pain follow, striking at his chest with fierce repetition.

He closed his eyes, wrapped his shaking arms about his chest, and tried to make sense of it all. He was not dead – he couldn't be, not with the pain of his broken rib piercing at him, though in a more muted fashion than before. He was alive, but he was in a place with warmth, and his hands were unbound. He was sitting on something soft, and brightness pressed upon his eyelids. He tried to make sense of it all, and felt his shivering increase.

Finally he opened his eyes cautiously. He was within a crystal.

Or so it seemed at first, so sharp were the reflections of light from the glass walls around him. On three sides they surrounded him: facetted panes of light, showering rainbows upon every object in the chamber: a series of shelves holding books, a desk and chair, a wardrobe and chest, and the soft bed upon which the youth sat.

Beyond the sparkling cut-glass windows was a fragmented image of the world outside: a tall green-and-cream hedge rising above a man's height, with a single wooden gate providing the only break in the leafy arms that surrounded the chamber. Above the hedge rose the sky, blue and white like a robin's egg, with rays of sunlight falling unimpeded from somewhere above the solid ceiling over the youth's head.

Under his fingers was a silk blanket, fine and soft; he felt its texture with his toes, looking this way and that in hopes of a clue that would make plain this mystery. Finally it occurred to him to look down at himself.

His hands were indeed unbound; bandages had been lightly placed over where he still felt the ache of the bonds' chafing. Someone had washed him and cut his hair short – he could guess why from the lack of movement on his scalp. A second bandage was wound tightly around his ribs, constricting his breath.

Suddenly all was clear. The prison physician, arriving to minister grudgingly to his patient, had discovered that his patient was dying. Apparently he was unable to overlook so large an injury as that, so he had administered a purge for the dry-leaf – he must have arrived soon after the poison was administered, the youth thought, or the purge would not have worked – and had then taken his patient to the infirmary for care.

The youth's head felt light; there was no other sign of the dry-leaf except for a slight sickness remaining in his stomach. The youth found that he was staring at the door before him, the one that led through the only solid wall in this place: the door that led back into the prison. At any moment the physician would walk through the door and learn that his patient had recovered. And when he did . . .

His ribs were aching more now, as his breath struggled against the bandage; he was battling the impulse to scream. He hugged himself tighter and looked around the chamber again, as though it might provide him with a second clue.

It was then that he saw the second door. It was glass-paned from head to foot, like the wall into which it was set; it had a long, gold handle.

He crawled out of the blanket slowly, his gaze fixed upon the glass door. A moment of dizziness swept over him as he rose to his feet, then vanished, to be replaced by the dull throb of pain in various parts of his body. He took a step toward the door, then stopped, looking down at himself.

A moment later he was pawing his way through the wardrobe, fumbling with his maladroit hands as he pulled out whichever clothes looked as though they might fit him. They were all made of the same fine cloth as the sheets, and one of the shirts was embroidered with what appeared to be gold thread. He hesitated, looking at the expensive material, then resolutely clambered into the clothes; they fit him, though they had obviously been made for a taller person.

Pairs of shoes lay at the bottom of the wardrobe; he tried to grab a pair of sandals, failed, and managed to slide his hands through the straps, scooping the shoes up by his wrists. Then, not wishing to waste more time, he ran to the glass door.

He could not open the handle. The problem lay, not with the handle, but with his hands, which were still as numb as they had been when his wrists were bound. He dropped the sandals, then stood paralyzed as the sound of the shoes falling onto the tiled floor resounded through the chamber.

No footsteps came to investigate. With his elbow, the youth lifted the handle; there was a click, and the door swung open.

Sweet air greeted him, fresh with the smell of spring boughs. He breathed it into his body for a moment, ignoring the pain he still received when his chest lifted. Then carefully, slowly, he stepped into the outside world.

Though it was noonday, a slight shadow jutted from the chamber behind him; he pressed himself against the glass wall, cloaking himself in the shadow's safety. He dared not look up at the prison to see whether anyone was watching him from the windows above; instead, he began the arduous task of sliding sideways so that he would be directly across from the hedge-gate.

He still could not hear any sound from the streets outside the prison; he must be in some part of the prison that faced the back. The terrible possibility that he was trapped in an inner courtyard clenched his heart for a moment; he swallowed and continued sliding forward. The grass was warm and soft under his feet; he had forgotten the sandals within the crystal chamber, but he dared not return for them. He was very close now to the gate, and already his mind was seeking alternatives if the gate should prove to be locked. Could he climb through the close-leaved hedge, or climb over the gate? And how much time did he have before somebody would learn that he was missing and send out the search for him? With his chest heaving once more, he darted across the dangerous gap between the infirmary and the gate.

The gate had a light wooden bar holding it closed; he did not bother with his hands this time but pushed the bar up with his elbow. He stepped back to let the gate swing open, then stepped through to freedom.

And stood motionless, the wind taken from his body as effectively as the first time a guard had punched him in the stomach.

He was no longer in the city. He was in the countryside: under his feet lay an enormous marble pavement that extended up to the point where it turned into a gravel driveway; beyond that were crop-fields – circles of level earth dotting the landscape. In the distance, trees shaded a huddle of houses; to the left of him, many yards away, stood another hedge, which appeared to lead to a body of water, for he could hear the quacking of ducks. Behind him – he turned slowly to look – were not the grim, dark walls of the prison, but the neat stone walls of an estate house, glinting with dozens of windows and capped with a bell tower.

To the right of him, sitting in a chair with his back to the youth, was a man. Slowly, like a shy beast creeping forward into danger, the youth walked toward the man. His heart was pounding so hard now that it was difficult to breathe. He could not see the man's face, but he could see the man's hand lying upon the arm of the wooden chair, and on that hand was a crystal ring.

He reached the chair finally, hesitated for a moment, then swiftly made his way round to the front and knelt before the man. After a moment he dared to look up.

The lord with the light hand was as he had been a fortnight ago: young and stern of face. He had over his lap a writing board and paper, and his left hand held a lead stylus. He was silent, looking down upon the youth.

"Lord master," the youth said softly, "I will do my best to repay to you my debt in any way I can." He placed his hand softly upon the inner part of the lord's thigh.

The lord recoiled as though a dung-beetle had run across his privates. He stood up, causing the chair to scream across the marble; the stylus broke in his hand and fell to the ground. His hand upon the writing board had turned white.

The youth, unaware that he was pressing his wrists together as though this might help, resisted the impulse to flee. Staring down at the ground, he whispered, "I thank you for paying my debt, lord master."

"Give your thanks to Hilder." The lord's voice was harsh. "He was the one who found the money for you."

The youth dared to raise his eyes to the crystal chain rising and falling upon the lord's heaving chest. The lord had moved several paces backwards, in the direction of the short flight of stone steps leading to the main door of the estate house. Still gripping his writing board, the lord said, "Hilder will take care of you."

And then he was gone, leaving the youth staring at where he had been, wondering who his new master was who would "take care of" him.

His new master was the lord, as it turned out. Hilder was the estate caretaker, an elderly, hawk-nosed man with a fierce loyalty to his lord. From overhearing the gossip of servants, the youth learned that Hilder had been placed in charge of raising the lord and his brother after their mother died when they were young. He still protected the lord like a snarling mother lion.

There was always a caretaker in the songs about Erik the Commoners' Soldier: the caretaker bore a whip, and he helped the lords to carry out their evil deeds. Hilder bore no whip. He had no need to – at the slightest look of his strict, remorseless face, servants would scurry to his bidding. The result was an estate run with an efficiency that would have impressed the matrons of the boys' cottage.

The youth's first encounter with this efficiency came on the day of his awakening; when he arrived back at the crystal chamber after his encounter with the lord, he found that, in his absence, someone had laid out a pitcher and glass for drinking, as well as a large basin, cloths, and soap-balls for cleaning.

The water in the basin was steaming. Someone had already poured out a glass of drinking water from the pitcher; it was crystal clear and cold to the touch.

Suddenly the youth's mouth was trembling. In the next moment, he was sitting huddled on the floor, pressing his mouth upon his knees, stifling his sounds. He stayed there for several minutes before he rose again.

He had just finished washing his hands and face – which were already clean – when he heard a bell ringing from the estate house's bell tower. Going cautiously to the gate in the hedge, he saw that streams of men, women, and children were heading toward a side entrance to the house. After a moment's thought, he struggled his way into the sandals and joined the streams.

The streams collected at last in a large, sunlit hall where dozens of benches and tables were set out to accommodate the servants of the estate. The youth sat down at one of them, mainly to be out of the way of the kitchen-servants scurrying back and forth with platters of food in hand; someone immediately placed before him a bowl of stew, a round of bread, and a cup of beer.

He chewed on his lip for a moment, then picked up the bread, using his teeth to tear it apart piece by piece in an automatic manner to see what lay within. He had not gone far before he looked up to see the servant across from him – a copper-haired girl a little younger than himself – staring at him with astonishment. Her companion at the table leaned over and said something that made the copper-haired girl giggle; blushing to his collarbone, the youth dropped the bread to his plate.

The stew was plain but hearty; looking around him, the youth saw that all of the servants received the same fare. What their lord ate, the youth could not see, for there was no lord's table placed on a high dais at the head of the hall, as in the songs about Erik. The youth supposed that the lord must dislike being around the commoners so much that he took his meals in his private quarters.

Other than the copper-haired girl and her companion, no one took notice of the youth; the servants showed more notice of the dogs, who wandered in, expecting – and receiving – the leftover bones from the stew-making. There was much laughter as a kitchen-maid poured out a bucketful of bones to the eagerly yelping dogs, and there was much singing as the meal progressed. At one point, Hilder walked past the table; from listening to the other servants speak, the youth knew by now who the old man was, and he held his breath, waiting for Hilder to bring his lash down upon a servant who was making a good-humored but somewhat raucous joke concerning the lord. Hilder glanced at the servant in question, but passed on without comment.

The meal ended; the servants returned to their work, inside and outside the house; they chatted cheerfully as they went, apparently unconcerned that their leisure time was over. The youth, unable to think of anything else to do, returned to the crystal chamber, and there he found the physician awaiting him.

Later, from overhearing the servants' gossip, the youth would learn that the lord had been furious after he paid a large debt price for a prisoner, then was delivered what appeared to be a corpse. The lord had sent word to the nearest physician, who lived in the town, and then had awaited impatiently the six hours it took for the messenger to deliver the summons and for the physician to arrive.

The physician had smelled the youth's breath, then remarked dryly that, if the lord was planning to have any more cases of dry-leaf ingestion in his household, he would be best off moving to the town, for any purge, to be effective, would have had to have taken place within half of an hour of the swallowing. All that the lord could do, the physician said, was wait and see whether less than four drops had been administered at the prison.

The physician's examination of the youth on the day of his awakening was equally dry; the youth gathered that the physician regarded the body's inclusion of a talking mouth to be an encumbrance that was much to be deplored. The youth stayed quiet as the physician studied him at length; judging from his expression, the only fact that seemed to disconcert the physician was the casual manner in which the youth allowed his privates to be handled.

The physician finally departed, leaving a formidable number of balms to be applied and drugs to be swallowed. He was no sooner gone than Hilder arrived. The youth leapt eagerly to his feet, but the visit proved to be a remarkably uninformative one. The caretaker told him of the estate house's routine – the times for meals and sleeping and full-body bathing – but when the youth diffidently asked what his new duties would be, Hilder seemed not to hear. The youth dared not press the matter; he still expected Hilder to bring out a whip at any moment.

Perhaps the caretaker assumed the youth would know his duties without being told. But the youth had been born long after slavery was abolished in his land; the only slaves that existed now were debt-slaves, and the youth had never met one. There was only one task he could think of that he would be asked to do, and his services there had already been rejected.

He spent the remainder of the first day exploring his surroundings. It took him only a short time to realize what he would have recognized if he had not been in such haste earlier: the door upon the solid wall of the crystal chamber led, not to the estate house, but to a series of chambers within a detached cottage: a kitchen and cold-pantry, a dining area, and a second small bedchamber and study that was presumably used in the winter, when the crystal chamber would be too cold to live in. An arched walkway led from the cottage to the nearby estate house, but the cottage was sufficient unto itself, provided that it was stocked with food. It was in fact stocked with food, but the youth did not touch this, fearing that he was prying into matters he ought to be letting alone.

He was already afraid because a second inspection of the crystal chamber had revealed to him books, unfinished letters, and other evidence of the previous inhabitant of this cottage. What had the lord thought, seeing the youth in his dead brother's clothing? The youth was fortunate not to have been beaten on the spot. When he saw Hilder next, he must beg him for a change of clothing . . .

But Hilder did not come, nor was the youth able to catch his eye during the mealtimes. After two days of sitting in the crystal chamber, reading the books and letters, the youth decided that he must give himself his own orders.

He made his way to the gold-handled door, fumbling once more as he pushed the long handle down. From overhearing the physician speak to Hilder, the youth had learned what he might have guessed by now in any case: the numbness in his hands would last forever. Something had been pressed that should not have been pressed for so long a period, or so the physician had said. The physician had looked more pleased than concerned; the youth gathered that his dreams of crumbling hands had not been far from the truth, and that he was lucky to have use of his hands at all.

The news terrified him, as nothing else in his new life had. He had always known that he did not have the strength of body to be a laborer; as a child, he had immersed himself in his schoolwork in hopes that one day he could become a scribe or bookkeeper. But never again would he be able to do that type of work; experimenting with a lead stylus he found in the crystal chamber, he determined that he could do no more than scrawl his signature in a wild fashion.

Even if he were to escape the lord, he could not earn a living for himself now: he would die in the streets, and no one would wish to rescue him.

It did not occur to him to try to escape. He had a debt to pay – two debts now, since the lord had paid his debt price. As in the prison, it was for him to find a way to make payment.

He stepped out into the sweet scent of hedge-leaf, smoothing down his shirt. Rummaging in the chest of his chamber the previous day, he had found a folded shirt and breeches of plain design, the type a lord-kin might wear if it amused him to take on a commoner's task, such as gardening. The youth had laid these out, planning to wear them later, but they had disappeared while he was at his meals, only to reappear during the following mealtime, hemmed for a youth of his height and with sandals of an accompanying size. The youth never saw the servants who came and went from the crystal cottage, bringing water and fresh chamberpots; they operated with a skillfulness that worried the youth, since he doubted he could match it.

The hedge-gate was wide open; after the first night, the youth had decided he felt easier with it open, even though this allowed any passing servant to stare into his chamber. He had never lived alone until his time in the prison; the idea of being completely cut off from the other estate folk bothered him. Servants had passed his cottage and glanced his way but not lingered, nor had anyone yet spoken to him at mealtimes. He was not surprised, but he wondered, with a little desperation, whether it would be this way for the remainder of his life.

Outside the hedge, the youth found that his gaze turned first toward another hedge: toward the green bushes in the distance from which the quacking arose, But he realized quickly that the ducks had spilled out from their sanctuary: they were scattered upon the marble pavement which extended for several yards beyond the estate house, scurrying in pairs and threesomes and foursomes. The youth, who had watched this sort of yearly dance take place amongst the squirrels who played in the yard of the boys' cottage, realized at once that what he witnessed was not a game, but a pursuit: a pursuit by the scarlet-feathered ducks of the smaller grey ducks trying to outrace them.

A couple of scarlets were so intent on their hunt that they did not notice the youth until they had nearly scurried under his legs; then they squawked back out of reach, startled. The grey duck seemed to be of sterner stuff, though her feathers were tousled in such a manner that the youth guessed she had already been pursued and caught several times that day. She stared up at him, her eyes unblinking, her left wing trailing upon the hard stone. She reached down with her bill and began to nibble at his toes.

He realized suddenly what she must want; it sent a thrill through him, and also a tingle of fear; he looked back to ensure that no one was watching. Then he carefully crouched down, his right hand opened as wide as it could.

She dipped her bill into the hand enquiringly, then looked up. He said softly, "I'm sorry, I don't have any food."

She received this ill news with an unwavering gaze, then turned and began to waddle slowly away. Her wing dragged upon the pavement, and the youth saw that her left foot was likewise lame, causing her to move more slowly than the other ducks.

She was a quarter of the way back to the hedge when, like hounds on the loose, a couple of scarlet males launched themselves upon her. She gave a piping scream, but could not move away in time; one of them caught the back of her neck with his bill and climbed atop her as she struggled beneath him.

The youth, his stomach churning as he watched, tried to tell himself that he was misreading what was taking place. This happened every year among animals; no doubt it was less painful for the females than it looked. But his stomach continued to sicken as he watched the scarlet duck sate himself upon the lame grey duck, then walk off, leaving her lying upon the ground, motionless.

The youth longed to go to her, and had to forcefully remind himself that he was a slave; if he moved that far from the estate house, someone might think that he was trying to escape. After a while, the lame duck rose heavily to her feet, ruffled her wings a bit, and then began the long, slow hobble back to the hedged area where she lived.

The youth watched until she had slid under the gate that kept out humans but not ducks; then he turned to look toward the rest of the estate lands. The estate was aflicker with movement.

A commoner with a wicker basket hung round his neck was walking in a circle about one of the round crop-fields, scattering something from the basket with each step. Close behind him, a second commoner was seated upon a horse that plodded patiently along, dragging behind it what appeared to be an elaborate rake on a frame; the rake was tossing the earth, covering what had been scattered.

The first man finished his task and stepped off the field into the meadowgrass nearby, knocking square into a commoner who was bent over, chopping at an overgrown hedge. The hedger catapulted neatly into the bush, prompting the sound of startled bleating from the sheep that were on the other side of the hedge enclosure. The man extracted himself from the hedge hastily; he was bleeding where the branches had cut his face.

The youth held his breath, expecting fists to be used to settle this matter, but the hedger accepted the first man's solicitous hand that pulled him upright, and a moment later the men were sharing laughter. The first man turned in time to raise a hand in greeting to a young woman who was carrying a bucket of water that she had fetched from a well nearby, and who was politely waiting for the two men to move out of her way. Already a second female servant was hurrying forward from the estate house to assist the young woman.

The youth walked slowly toward the house, his head moving from side to side. Before the attack of the Commoners' Army on the spring-coming children, the youth had never visited the countryside; he had only the vaguest notion of how food appeared on the plates at the boys' cottage. "Through the harsh labor of commoners who are little more than slaves," Keven had told him once when he asked. Looking around him, the youth could see that the general was right: the work taking place was causing the field-servants to press their hands against aching backs and to wipe great quantities of sweat from their brows. It was just like the songs, and the youth half expected to see Erik ride over the hill at any moment, to free the commoners from their oppression. Frowning a little, the youth started up the stone steps to the house, passing as he did so the stone balcony that wrapped its way around the house.

Inside, the work was no less hard: the annual spring refreshening was taking place as floors were scrubbed down to their cracks, fireplaces were scraped clean of the tiniest ash, servants climbed ladders to wipe the corners of the ceiling free of cobwebs, the last remaining pussywillow branches from the spring-coming were tossed in a pile. . . . This final act made the youth's breath catch in his throat.

He walked from chamber to chamber, trying to select a task at which he could be helpful. At the boys' cottage, the older boys took turns carrying heavy loads such as firewood, but the matrons did all of the scrubbing and dusting and polishing. Looking about, the youth realized what a lot of work that required. He thought again of the matrons, with their harsh voices and their tendency to shove him out of the way peremptorily. He had forgotten about the heavy buckets they usually carried at such moments, and he felt his face grow warm.

A bucket stood near him, filled with dirty water, evidently waiting to be taken outside and dumped away. He reached down and scooped up the bucket by its handle. But he had forgotten about his hands. He could not feel the bucket handle, and his hands still had trouble closing completely; the bucket fell from his hands, sending mucky water shooting forth onto the clean walls, an expensive rug, and the dress of the copper-haired girl kneeling nearby, who squealed as she jumped to her feet.

The servants in the chamber had been chatting brightly with each other, but there was a sudden silence as all looked to see what had happened. Glances were exchanged and then, as though a council decision had been reached, all of the servants looked away and returned to their bright chatter, but for a few who came forward to help the copper-haired girl, who was now crying over the loss of her dress.

Suddenly the youth felt hot tears pricking at his own eyes. With his ribs beginning to send sharp notes of pain again as his chest heaved, the youth turned on his heel and fled.

He passed three hours curled in a ball in the crystal chamber before he was able to find the courage to seek out Hilder and tell the caretaker what he had done. Hilder acknowledged his words with a curt nod but seemed uninterested; the youth gathered that the caretaker had more important matters on his mind, and judging from the papers he held in his hand, the matters involved money. The youth decided that the caretaker must be making a list of the lord's copious goods, the way caretakers always did in the songs; he slipped away before he should see whether he had been added to the list of the lord's wealth.

By the end of the fortnight, the youth had concluded that he was the least valuable of the lord's goods. He could not manage to hold a bucket by grasping its handle; he could not chop vegetables with a cooking knife for more than a few seconds before the knife fell from his benumbed hands; he could not make his hands close well enough around a rag to wipe dust from a shelf; and he could not hold the long hooks that the field-servants used to weed the crop-fields. Indeed, the youth knew of only one task he could do without use of his hands, and the lord still had not called for that service from him.

He could guess why. The physician continued to make his weekly visits, looking cheerful at every bruise and sore he treated – the youth gathered that the physician considered him a challenge. Some of the sores in the youth's groin area were beginning to disappear, but slowly, and the youth supposed that the lord was waiting until they were all gone before he made use of his new slave.

He thought about his future duties sometimes, when he lay in the crystal chamber at night, turning his head to stare at the stars wheeling slowly in the sky. The lord would be gentle, he was sure, and perhaps he would stroke the youth's hair again. . . . He would go to sleep with this peaceful image in mind and wake before long, choking with sobs and stifled screams.

No one ever came to investigate the sounds. The youth supposed that no one ever heard his cries – he had guessed by now that he had been given the privilege of staying in the crystal cottage because the lord did not want him near the other servants, who apparently resented the murderer of their lord's brother so much that they would not communicate with him even when he sat with them at mealtimes. Fearing that any approach by him would be greeted with scornful words, the youth stayed as far away as possible from the other folk of the estate, particularly the children of the servants and tenants.

He remained uncertain as to what was expected of him during this transitional period before his lord master made use of him, and he worried that he was breaking rules unknowing. It made him hesitant to dare chances, but after several days of visits from the lame duck, he could withhold himself no longer.

Watching the servants carefully at mealtime, the youth saw that some of the field-servants would carry off their bread or meat to finish outdoors. With his heart thrumming in his throat, the youth stood up at the end of the meal, picked up his round of bread, and carried it past Hilder in an obvious manner.

Hilder's gaze flickered toward him, then away. The caretaker was absorbed in conversation with the lord, who did not hide away in his private quarters at mealtimes, as the youth had initially thought, but sat down at whatever empty space was available at the tables, usually with his writing board in hand. The youth noticed, however, that the lord never chose a place at the youth's end of the hall, and the youth took care not to come near his lord master. He supposed that the remaining illnesses of his body still made him an ugly sight.

He found the lame duck awaiting him in their usual meeting place, near the crystal cottage; the youth fed the bread to her piece by piece, thinking about the writing board and the list in Hilder's hand. The youth knew enough about the estate by now that he could be sure that the lord was not tallying up his wealth. More likely he was thinking about sheep.

For three years, the black-tongue sheep disease had spread from village to village, bringing death to flocks wherever it touched. Many a commoner had starved to death after his small flock of sheep was slaughtered by death's hand, and Keven had often spoken of these starvings as evidence of the lords' cruelties.

It had not occurred to the youth, during his days with the Commoners' Army, to ask why the lords' sheep were immune from the disease. Now he learned that they were not. The lord planned to sell many of his sheep after the shearing, but already reports were drifting in from the lord's tenants that the sheep in the tenants' holds were dying.

The shearing was still a month away. If the sheep were sold before the shearing, the lord's household would be deprived of a year's worth of wool, but by the time the shearing came, the sheep might be lost.

For a week, the estatehold held its collective breath, awaiting the lord's decision. Down in the tenantholds, the disease had finally been brought to an end through the simple solution of killing all of the diseased sheep. The youth thought about the starving commoners that Keven had spoken of, and he found himself staring toward the tenant houses, where the families marked for death lived on without hope.

Finally the decision was made. Still three weeks short of the shearing, the sheep were packed one day into long waggons, bleating with protest as they were separated from the small flock that would remain behind. The youth watched the departing sheep loaded as the grim-faced lord stood by, giving instructions to the drivers. The drivers nodded; the waggons, creaking with their heavy load, made their way down the gravel driveway toward the dirt road into town, which began at the village.

And halted there. As the youth watched, the sheep were carefully unloaded and distributed to the crowd of waiting tenants, who proceeded to lead the sheep home to their little sheep-pens.

When the youth turned to look at the lord, he found that his master had already turned away and was walking slowly back to the estate house with Hilder. The list in the caretaker's hand had grown longer.

CHAPTER FIVE

Summer-coming coincided with haymaking that year, so the festival was put off until after the vital work of scything the meadow-grass that would be dried into fodder. The youth still understood little about how the estate was run, but he was able to make the connection between the tall grass growing in the meadows and the estate horses that did all the work of harrowing, carting, and even providing hair for the weaving of mats. The estate did not grow enough grain to spare for the horses, and the pastures were often snowbound during the cold months. Without hay, the horses would not survive the winter; that was clear enough.

It took the youth longer to understand why the storm clouds passing overhead caused so much concern amongst the estate folk, or why the servants and tenants clustered in huddles on the day that the rain began. Scythes were standing at the eaves of the estate house, ready to be used in the mowing, but they remained untouched. The rain continued down and down and down, creating rivers of water through the tall wheat that enticed the ducks, who emerged en masse from their hedged sanctuary and whimsically floated down the new streams. The ducks were happy; the lord looked grimmer than before, and Hilder had begun adding new pages to the list.

On the third morning of the rain, the youth emerged with a jerk from screams coming from dark cells. He had awoken to the sound of loud thumps against the panes of his bedchamber.

It was hail, slicing through the sky and attacking the glass like miniature cannonballs. The youth retreated into the solid portion of the cottage; when he finally re-emerged, he found that the crystal chamber was unscathed, but a crowd had gathered on the edge of the meadow.

He could see this from his gate; he hesitated before coming closer to the still crowd. No one looked at him or spoke to him as he came forward – he had grown used to that, though not reconciled to it. What was odd on this occasion was that none of the estate folk were talking to each other either.

He understood why when he saw what lay in the meadow: a soggy mess of mud, melting hailstones, and the remains of grass that had been cut down and pounded, as though with a flail.

The youth's stomach roiled. He illness arose, not from the thought of the horses, but because he had been present at times like this when the Commoners' Army suffered from disaster. There would be angry voices, recriminations, threats of punishment upon outlaws who had failed to do their duty, and above all, hateful words directed at the lords and their kin.

Standing near the crystal cottage of the murdered lord-kin, the youth was suddenly sure he did not wish to hear those words.

A low murmur was beginning to pass through the crowd; the words, as undefined as vapor, began to take shape and then solidify, until they were strong and resolute. They came in the form, not of statements, but of questions, and the questions were firmly asked: What food should the estate folk serve at the summer-coming? What games should they play? And who should serve as the Summer Master in the Dance?

The youth listened with growing wonder, his gaze fixed upon the lord, who was standing nearby with Hilder, listening to the caretaker say something. The lord nodded; he beckoned to a couple of the horse drivers, and a short time later, most of the horses of the estate were led onto the gravel driveway. This time they did not pause at the village; they disappeared down the road to the town and did not return.

Some of the money from their sales, the youth later learned, went to pay for the summer-coming festivities. The youth did not see who was picked to be the Summer Master, though; nor did he take part in the Dance. For his time at the prison had finally made its mark: the illness he had felt in his stomach on the day of the hail-storm had spread to fever, and before long he lay burning upon the bed in the crystal chamber.

His mind could take in little of what was happening. He heard quacks in the distance and worried that no one was feeding the lame duck. He heard bells call the estate folk to form the Dance around the Summer Master, the person selected by the commoners to serve as the symbol of life and growth amidst plenty. He heard the physician speaking, as well as Hilder, and once he thought he heard the lord's voice raised in passion, but he could not be sure. Then he began to hear screams, and he could not pull away from those screams.

He woke finally on a scorching evening to discover that the crystal chamber was on fire.

He tried to pull himself from the bed, but he was still weak; he stumbled to his knees. He had been stripped of his clothes while he was asleep, and he could feel the harsh bite of the fire's heat upon his skin. The flames leapt up all around the clear walls, sending rainbows of odd shapes upon the objects in the chamber.

The fire had started at the outside corners to the cottage and had not yet reached the door of glass. Sobbing as he pulled himself across the floor, scraping his knees raw, he reached up to lift the door handle. But his hands were too numb; he could not raise the handle.

A crash screamed in the air. It was followed by a shower of fine crystals: the fire had broken through at the head of the cottage. He reached up again to the handle: the gold slipped through his hands, as slippery as a fish. He tried tugging at it with his teeth, but it was too large for his mouth. He could see the flames approaching him.

And then, sure and strong, a hand slid around his back and pulled him to his feet. When he turned to look, he saw a youth no older than himself standing next to him, smiling; on his chest lay a crystal chain. It sparkled in the light of the fire, unmarred by soot.

Still smiling, the new arrival pushed down the gold handle and opened the door. The youth stumbled into the cool air of the evening, feeling the heat of the fire recede. The hedge-gate was wide open, and from beyond it came the quiet quack of ducks.

But when the youth turned, he saw that the other young man was still standing in the fiery chamber, and the door had closed. The crystal chain held soot upon it now, and the young man's face had turned into the face of the lord.

He emerged from his fever-dreams soon afterwards, as well as from his illness. As soon as the physician gave him permission to rise (with a gesture, not words), he went to the spot where he was accustomed to meet the lame duck. He waited long past her usual visiting time, but she did not arrive. Only as he was turning aside, his head bent in sorrow, did he hear the faint sound of peeping arising from the ducks' sanctuary, and he realized the cause. Mating season was over; now was the time for mother ducks to raise their families. With lightened heart, he walked toward the estate house.

He was there in time to see series of carriages roll up to the steps; from each emerged a finely dressed man accompanied by a servant. The youth watched them, entranced; meetings of the lords appeared in nearly every song about Erik. The lords would gather together and speak angrily about the commoners: of their laziness, their greediness, their indifference to their appointed duties. And then, once the meeting was accomplished, the lords would ride home in their carriages and execute several score of innocent commoners.

The youth heard much of the meeting, but not with intention. The balcony that wrapped its way around the estate house could be reached by a gate from the steps to the house's main entrance. No one had ever told the youth whether he was permitted to visit the balcony, but the chamber immediately to the left of the steps was curtained and seemed always to be still. And so the youth had taken to visiting the balcony each day to rub clean the broad railing with his sleeve.

He had just finished doing so and was about to pass the curtained chamber when he heard a loud thump from within the house, followed by a jumble of voices. The youth turned to see that the curtain had been pulled back, and the chamber was now filled with his master, the other lords, and – horror upon horror – Hilder, who was serving the lords himself on this special occasion.

Hilder's eyes scanned the chamber with cool efficiency, seeking anything out of place; feeling his heart pound his body like a fist, the youth pressed himself against the short space of wall between the curtained chamber and the busy servants' quarters next to it. To reach the gate of the balcony he must cross the gap, and he dare not do that until he was sure that Hilder was gone.

The rumble of voices steadied into a series of hard, angry denunciations. Everything that had been in the songs about Erik was here: the lords flung accusations of laziness, greediness, indifference to appointed duties. It was some time before the youth realized that the lords were not speaking of the commoners.

"Corruption!" cried one of the lords. "There is corruption at the heart of the lords' council."

"You state the obvious." The youth recognized the dry voice that spoke; it belonged to his master's cousin, the only kinsman who had visited the estate during the youth's time there. "The question is, how do we stop it?"

"We bring the matter into public," suggested another voice.

"Where the accusations will die unaddressed," said the harsh voice of his master. "The lords' High Councillor-– Forgive me, Dermott."

"I trust I know the ill deeds of my brother as well as any," the dry voice said. "If slavery still existed, he would be whipping his tenants daily."

"The magistrates abolished slavery," pointed out another lord. "They have power over the lords' council, though it is limited. If we brought the matter to them—"

"We would need proof," said his master. "And what proof do we have? Remarks we have heard our kinsmen make late at night, when the wine flowed freely and their tongues were loose? That is not evidence which will be accepted in a judging room."

"There is evidence aplenty in the world about us of what the lords' council and their sympathizers have done," said the first voice that had spoken. "We need only look at what they control. The moneylenders. The market licenses. The fair fees. The taxes, that grind to dust not only the commoners but any lord who refuses to let his tenants take the brunt of the suffering—"

"You make a fair speaker," said another lord, with a hint of laughter in his voice. "You should join the Commoners' Army."

Chuckles skittered across the chamber, though the youth thought the lords' amusement sounded forced. The laughter was cut off as his master said, "Keven and the Commoners' Army may be misguided in their methods, but they sense rightly the stench of corruption. The question is, how do we make the magistrates sniff this for themselves?"

"The magistrates are forever lenient in pursuing investigations of the rich and powerful," said another lord. "One can hardly blame them, since they receive their appointments from the lords."

"Yet another sign of corruption," said the dry voice of his master's cousin. "The magistrates ought to receive their appointments from the commoners' councils."

This sparked an excited discussion of ways to bring this change about, until the tired voice of his master said, "We talk in circles. No great change will take place in the appointment of the magistrates until the rottenness at the core of the lords is dug out. And that cannot be done without the help of the magistrates."

"If the stench were strong enough, the magistrates could not fail to take notice," said one of the earlier voices. "We need only find an institution where abuse is blatant, because the commoners there are too weak and powerless to protest. The healing centers, for example, or the prisons—"

"The prisons," broke in a voice eagerly. "There have been rumors that the guards there dole out punishment not required by the law."

"The guards are commoners," pointed out the previous voice.

"But the prisons are supervised by the lords."

"Supervised." The first speaker in the conversation gave a snort. "I know what lords' supervisions are like – my father used to take me with him when he paid calls on the boys' cottages. He would listen to the matrons' reports in silence, pat a few boys on the head, and that would be all. I always left the cottages wondering what they were like when the lords weren't there."

"If the lords are neglecting their duties as superintendents of the prison, and if the abuse is great enough, then we would be able to persuade the magistrates to punish any lords involved in the matter." The dry voice had taken on a keener tone. "Cousin, what do you think of this as a path to pursue? You have a former prisoner in your estatehold."

There was a sudden, pregnant silence, but for a rumble coming from all corners of the chamber, which did not sound like approval. After a moment, his master said, "It is a matter worth pursuing later, I think. For now, I would like to return to the topic of the boys' cottages."

Using his legs alone and teetering dangerously, the youth had managed to seat himself upon the balcony railing; now he swung his legs around and let himself drop to the marble pavement, where he held his breath while waiting to see whether Hilder would investigate the sound. When no one appeared, he dashed off to the crystal cottage to ponder what he had learned. He had no desire to hear about the boys' cottages, nor to hear his master turn aside with indifference from the topic of his debt-slave.

As summer deepened, the youth began to feel that something was tremendously odd about the lord's estate. The oddness arose from more than a meeting of lords discussing how to strip themselves of power. It arose from the servants and tenants.

Of course the youth had heard songs about commoners who were oblivious to the fact that they were being oppressed; usually all it took was an influx of death to make them realize that they must rise out of their life of suffering and build a new world where peace and prosperity would reign. The youth had thought much about that world during his months in prison.

So it was with a certain tension that he waited to see what would happen as the commoners of the lord's estate began to die.

The fever the youth had undergone after the haymaking was not, as it turned out, directly due to his prison time. Instead, his illness was part of a summer pestilence that had first arisen the previous year, when the youth had been imprisoned. The youth had undergone the pestilence before anyone else this year because of his weakened body, but now others on the estate began to grow ill as well. All who survived the pestilence were immune from it thereafter, or so said the town physician, who came every day to care for the sick. But many of the estate folk died from the pestilence, especially the young and elderly.

As soon as the lord learned that the pestilence had reached his estate, he sent as many of the young and elderly away from the estate as possible, carting them over to the estate of his cousin, who agreed to take them, despite the added danger to his own estate folk. But most of the lord's commoners chose to stay, and soon body-burnings were daily events on the estate.

The youth went to one of the burnings: it was of the younger sister of the copper-haired girl. He watched the younger girl being burnt, and thought of the children he had killed, and watched the copper-haired servant weeping. It was all part of paying his debt. He knew that Keven would say, "The children you killed were different – they were lords' children." He tried to recapture that knowledge in his mind, but he could not – not while the lord stood nearby, his face drawn with grief, and upon his breast the soot-covered chain that his brother had once worn.

The commoners of the lord's estate did not arise in revolt against death. They spoke in hushed tones of death, but as though it were part of the passing seasons, something they expected and had grown to know, like a guest who pays calls at regular intervals and must be suitably hosted, no matter how unwelcome he is.

Looking around the estate, the youth thought to himself that nothing could be further than the paradise that Keven had promised him. The work was hard enough to break the body, suffering scourged the estate at regular intervals . . . and yet when the commoners of the estate passed each other, they smiled, and when one of them had need of help, another was always at hand. How was it possible that, amidst this bleakness, joy should live? It was like seeing a bright flower blooming atop a dung hill.

He thought about this one day, as the sun scorched fire upon his arms and face while he knelt to scoop up an armful of wheat. Pestilence or not, the wheat must be harvested, and so the estate folk, lessened by the absent and the sick and the dead, went out into the fields and struggled from dawn till dusk to bring in the harvest in the time permitted before the crop should die.

There was no rain this time, nor even any clouds – only the fierce lash of the sun's rays upon the bodies of all who worked. Sweat collected upon the youth, making his skin itch; so hot was the air that he scorched his lungs each time he took a breath. Whenever he placed the wheat stalks in his arms, his body shivered with pain, for his skin had grown red and swollen.

All around him it was the same. Yet the commoners sang as they worked – sang with lust the songs of Eric, the youth realized with incredulity – and even as they offered brief complaints about the work, the commoners were ready to laugh at the next joke made.

Having deposited the long sheaf of wheat where it would be tied, the youth looked around the crop-field. The servants and tenants, harvesting side by side, had worked their way in spirals from the outside of this circular field to the inside; now they were working their way back, checking carefully to see that no grain had been missed. Watching the widening circle, the youth was reminded suddenly of the Summer and Winter Dances.

He had participated in Dances before, in the boys' cottage and in the Commoners' Army, though none as complex as the ones that the lord's estate held. Here, the Dances would begin when the Master of the Dance – the Summer Master or the Winter Master – took hold of the hand of a passing man or woman and danced forward, leading a winding way through the estate house. In each chamber they passed, the last person on the line would snatch the next person to join the Dance, until the long line included every person in the estatehold, save the musicians and the lord. Then the Dance would reach the hall, and the line would begin to form into a circle. At the last moment, as the line became a circle, the Master would break free and twirl into the middle of the circle, his spinning body continuing to set the pace for the whirling dancers. The Dance was hard-paced, and some folk always fell out of it, but the rush of wind and the tug of hands and the joining together of all in a common task was a pleasure that could be found in few other activities in a commoner's life.

Now the youth looked upon the harvesting taking place before him. An elderly man stooped low to cut the wheat at ground level; he tossed the wheat into a sheaf-pile, which was promptly lifted by the copper-haired girl, who carried it off; on the way, she passed a young child sitting upon the ground, twisting a blade of long grass into a binding band; the child placed the band upon the ground in time for the copper-haired girl to toss the stalks of wheat upon it; this was fairly pounced upon by a young man who knotted the band around the wheat, then stood the sheaf upright, ready to be taken away and stored in the barn.

It was a Dance, the youth realized – a long, snaking Dance that would ultimately curl into a circle when the wheat had been threshed and winnowed and milled and mashed and boiled and stored again and finally turned into the beer that the elderly man was now swallowing.

It was a circle twirling fast and hard, seemingly without effort. But if the harvest and other work on the estate was a Dance, who was its Master?

The youth looked instinctively toward the lord. He was there, as he had been every day during the harvest, sitting at his chair and scribbling upon his writing board; from the lingering looks he had given to the harvesters, the youth guessed that lord would far rather have been working in the fields than sitting hour by hour in the chair, trying to make the numbers before him work out to the estate's advantage. Periodically he would be interrupted by Hilder or one of the other commoners, wishing his command or advice on some matter, and he was always listened to with respect and interest, but not, the youth thought, with intense excitement. The lord was too stern and reserved to stir up love in his servants and tenants; they valued and honored him, but he did not lead the estate's Dance.

Hilder was sitting nearby on the stone steps; he had been working earlier, assigning the harvesters' positions and arranging for food to be delivered to the fields, so that the harvesters need not leave their work in order to break their fast. Now he was taking a much-deserved break himself, sketching something upon a piece of stiff writing card with a lead stylus. The youth went into the center of the field-circle and looked at all of the commoners, but none of them appeared to be taking any notice of Hilder. They would follow his orders obediently when he gave them, but he was not the Master of their Dance.

The youth's eye strayed over to an elderly woman directing the dispersal of beer to the harvesters. It had startled the youth when he learned that the estate held not one but two commoners' councils: the tenants' council and the servants' council. He had always thought that commoners' councils were reserved for the city, where the commoners were less enslaved by the lords. Yet his lord master seemed eager to allow the councils on his estate to make decisions on their own behalf; the more that the youth saw the lord sitting at his writing chair day by day, even into moonlit evenings, the more the youth understood why. The lord could not possibly have made all of the decisions needed to run the estate, so the commoners were in charge of the daily task of running the estate, while the lord did his best to figure out how to keep the estate from being made the property of the moneylenders from whom he had borrowed the previous spring, when an unexpected expense occurred.

The woman raised her hand and cried out the end of the morning's work; she was the head of the servants' council, placed in charge of the harvest since the head of the tenants' council was afflicted with the pestilence this year. All around the youth – in the field where he worked and in the other fields nearby – sighs and groans of relief resounded. Men dropped sickles, women dropped sheaves, and children dropped bands; on the field where he stood, twenty other commoners made their way to their rest. Yet no one looked again at the woman, who had disappeared without further word into the crowd of estate folk heading toward the pallets laid out for them on the nearby meadow.

The Master of the Dance was not here. This the youth was sure of as he looked about the fields. No one on this estate had the strength and power to inspire the hard-gained joy that could keep the estate folk working cheerfully through illness and loss and death. Yet the Dance went on, spinning around an invisible Master.

He knew who the Master must be. The youth knelt motionless, still stooped to carry a final sheaf over to the bands. His body was shaking, and he bowed his head to hide both his weariness and his grief. He knew now why no one on the estate had ever spoken to him, but for the brief instructions Hilder had given him at the beginning. He knew why no one would ever speak to him again.

He had murdered the Master of the Dance. He imagined the lord's brother, standing in the middle of the circle, his face alight with the love and generosity that had kept the Dance twirling furiously. Then he imagined the lord's brother gone, and the Dance slowly dying away until all of the life of the estate dwindled into despair.

Tears were trailing down his face now, mingled with the sweat. Angry with himself for his self-pity, he jerked his hand over his face, leaving a trail of dirt and grain-dust. All around him, the songs of harvesting were dying as the men and women began to settle onto their pallets for the midday sleep.

A group of men sat nearby, talking in low tones so as not to disturb the sleepers; the men had a bucket beside them, but it was dry of water. The youth went over to the well by the hedge and found a bucket of fresh water there, awaiting the next comer. He scooped up the bucket into his arms – he had long since learned to use his arms and legs and feet where his hands failed him – and took the bucket over to the men, placing it beside them and using his wrists to transfer the dipper from the empty bucket to the full one.

None of the men took notice of him; he backed away and looked around to see what other work he could do. It was stupid, he knew – he was a burden upon the estate, with his crippled hands. He would never be able to pay back even a small part of the debts he owed to the lord and his estate. Yet the same agonizing compulsion that had driven him to try to pay his debt in the prison also led him to look here for tiny, unfulfilled tasks. He might be the slowest dancer in this Dance, but he was determined to take part.

The lord and his caretaker had disappeared into the house; on the steps to the house lay Hilder's writing card, abandoned. It could be trampled where it lay; the youth stepped forward to place it aside the step-railing, where it would be safer.

He was doing so when he found himself staring at the paper, eating it with his eyes. The picture before him was in the same style as the sketch that the lord had shown the youth in the prison – the youth wasn't surprised at this, for he had seen the caretaker sketching at odd moments and had long ago guessed who the artist of the estate must be. What surprised the youth was that here, in the rough sketch, was the scene he had envisioned: the circle of the crop-field edged by the circle of workers. They had all paused in their work – in their Dance – and appeared to be looking at something in the center of the circle. Some of the harvesters were pointing; others were smiling or nodding approvingly; one appeared to be laughing with joy.

The center of the circle was empty. No one stood there, though the blankness at the middle of the field suggested that Hilder had imagined someone standing there: someone who was the focus of the estate's life.

The youth began to put the sketch carefully down; he was biting his lip as he did so, trying to control his shaking chin. And then, despite himself, he heard a sob escape his throat, and he turned and began to run to the crystal cottage, as though there, at least, he could escape from what he had seen in the sketch.

Hundreds of harvesters were scattered about the estate's fields, but twenty-one of them had worked in the circle Hilder had depicted. Twenty harvesters were shown in the sketch. Nowhere in the picture could the youth be found.
 

CHAPTER SIX

Fall-coming brought rebirth to the air: brightly colored leaves spilling from the chimneypieces and carpeting the floor of the hall, and renewed hope spilling from the hearts of the estate folk. Fair-time had arrived, the period in the year when lords and commoners who had suffered losses during the year could adjust their fortunes by buying or trading for the goods they needed. The youth's master remained at his estate, supervising the tender nursing of the crops for the leaf-fall season, but a goodly number of servants and tenants set off for the town fair.

They returned three days later with anger in their faces. The lords' council had raised the fees for participation in the fairs. Any men and women who bought substantial goods at the fair – lords and rich commoners – were exempt from the fee, but those who could not afford to buy many goods – most commoners and a few of the poorest lords – were required to pay twice over the amount they spent. The servants and tenants arrived home with virtually no goods to see them through the winter, and they brought the news that many commoners were now saying that the Commoners' Army was justified in its killings of the lord-kin.

The youth was standing in the hall within sight of his master when the lord heard this news; the lord's lips went thin, but he said nothing, nor did he look in the youth's direction. The youth dared not turn his head to see what the other estate folk thought of this news. Since the wheat harvest, he had avoided listening to the servants' gossip, fearing no longer that he would hear his name mentioned with scorn – what he feared was that he would not hear his name at all.

Mealtime continued; Hilder sat down with the lord and began preparing a new list, that of the goods the estate lacked to survive the winter. Listening to the low murmur of their voices, the youth wondered why the lord did not simply raise his rents. It happened in all of the songs: the lords raised their rents, the tenants were unable to pay the higher fees, and the lords threw the tenants out of their homes, usually in time for them to die during the first snowfall.

The rents were not raised. Instead, a scouring of the estate house took place: tapestries were pulled from walls, rugs were removed from tables and floors, silver and brass items were taken out of cupboards, and even the medical storeroom was searched for the more valuable drugs. The youth joined the crowd of servants silently watching the hillock of belongings rising in the entranceway to the estate house; Hilder stood nearby, writing down each item as it arrived, and beyond him stood the lord, as silent as the servants. He was fingering the chain at his neck, and the youth suddenly knew, as though the lord had spoken, that he was wondering whether to sell the chain as well.

No one saw the youth leave, or if they did, they did not remark upon it. If anyone watched him return, he could not have known it, for in his arms was a small mountain rising above his head: a mountain made of fine clothes, books, and a soft silk blanket.

It was all that he had been able to find in the crystal cottage; the lord's brother had not been one to collect wealth. The youth placed the pile carefully with the other goods, then looked nervously at the lord, fearing he would be chastised for his presumption.

Hilder was looking at the lord too, and after a moment the lord gave a short nod. His gaze drifted away from the pile of belongings, and the youth wondered, with a hard beat of the heart, whether now, finally, he would be called upon to pay his debt. But after a brief moment, the lord turned away and left the hall, still wearing the crystal chain about his neck.

The leaf-fall harvest was brought in without trouble, the fruit was felled from the trees over the tenants' homes, and the animals that would not be kept over the winter were slaughtered for meat. Life slowed on the estate. There had been a period of worry after the fair which even the golden ghost of the lord's brother had been unable to lift, but the sale of the lords' belongings had brought in enough money to buy the needed winter goods, and now the servants and tenants spoke cheerfully of the coming season's ease.

The youth had been listening more carefully to the conversations in the hall between Hilder and the lord; he knew that matters did not lie that simple, for the lord continued to owe money for his unexpected spring debt, and there was always the danger that the moneylenders of the lord's council would collect on his debt, taking what little the lord still owned.

In the midst of one such dark conference, the youth left the mealtime. Hilder's gaze flicked toward him as he walked out of the hall; none of the servants noted his departure, nor did the lord, frowning with creased brow over Hilder's latest list. The youth made his way into the sharp shock of the outside chill.

The fields lay fallow now; what few of the lord's animals remained on the farm had been brought into the barn stalls, so all was quiet, but for the sound of quacking from the ducks' hedged home. The youth had carried between his wrists, as always, the round of bread, but he let the bread fall to the ground as he regarded the emptiness before him. The lame duck had not returned; by the time she had finished raising her family, she must have forgotten about the youth – forgotten even about the free food she had received from him, the only reason she had ever come to see him. The youth thought about this a long while, his wrists pressed tight together in his old manner. He thought also of the servants who had not watched him go, and of the lord, oblivious to his departure.

The lord had forgotten him. That was the only explanation. He had forgotten that his slave was the reason for his high debt to the moneylenders – had forgotten the slave, even though the youth represented the answer to his financial troubles.

The youth had waited all through the leaf-fall for the lord to realize this and send for him. At first he thought that the lord was too gentle to order his slave upon this path; then he realized that the idea had probably not even occurred to the lord. After all, why should it? He was not like the guards.

But he could make use of the youth, as the guards had.

Though the youth could not be sold, he could be rented; his body could be given to others – lords or commoners – who wished to make use of him in that way, and who would pay for the privilege. The youth tried to calculate how much he could earn for the lord. He could not be sure, for he did not know what rent could be placed upon him, but he knew the number of men he could serve daily, and he thought the money from them would help to pay at least part of the lord's debt.

And part of his own debt. He had not forgotten that.

He stood there, watching the hard hand of winter's wind stir the hedge where the ducks hid, and he imagined it all beginning again: the blows, the angry voices, the bleeding throat. Almost, he though, it would be better than the exile he lived in now. Perhaps the lord would even speak to him on occasion.

He realized that his thoughts were becoming centered upon his own grief, and he turned them aside quickly to remembering the young lord, made old before his time by the weight of the burdens he carried. If the youth could ease those burdens . . . He turned abruptly away, leaving the abandoned bread to the birds as he walked in the direction of the hedge that surrounded his crystal cottage. He ought to wash himself before he asked permission to see the lord, he decided. He must try to persuade the lord that he was no longer as ugly as he had been in prison.

The land outside the estate house was still quiet; mealtime continued within the house, while further away, smoke rose peacefully from the houses of the tenants. The youth opened the gate leading through the hedged wall around the crystal cottage, and then, as he passed beyond it, let the gate fall shut again without looking back at it.

He could not have looked back to save his life. Standing before him was Keven.

Continue to
Part Three

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Illustration copyright © 2002 H. Rose Melenche. All rights reserved.

This text was originally published at duskpeterson.com as part of the series Master/Other. Copyright © 2002-2003, 2008 Dusk Peterson. Some rights reserved. The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). You may freely print, post, e-mail, share, or otherwise distribute the text for noncommercial purposes, provided that you include this paragraph. The author's policies on derivative works and fan works are available online (duskpeterson.com/copyright.htm).