The Book of Earth (7 page)

He glanced down at her quizzically, made a turn, took a breath, and started up the next flight of stairs. “That depends. Why?”

“Would you kiss me even though I’m not beautiful?”

The guardsman caught himself just before he sent them tumbling on the stone. “Shhh! What are you saying! Damn, Erde, you are drunk, after all!”

Erde looked up at him earnestly. “No. It’s my new idea. If there’s something I’m shy about, I learn it from a friend.”

“If there’s anything you’re shy about, I sure don’t know what it is.”

“But doesn’t it make sense?”

“It’d make more sense to be thinking about what your father would say.”

Erde frowned. “My father hates me.”

“Of course he doesn’t.”

“He hates me because I’m alive and my mother isn’t.”

“He loved her,” said Rainer simply.

“I miss her as much as he does!”

“Perhaps. But in a different way.”

She relaxed against him. “Please, Rainer . . . would you?”

“What? What?”

“Kiss me.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Please! Just once, so I know what it’s like. I’ll never make you do it ever again, I promise.”

Rainer made his voice deep and serious. “This is unseemly, my lady.”

Erde laughed and wriggled in his arms. She closed her eyes and puckered up her mouth until it was a tiny hill above her chin. “Please, please, pleeease . . . ?”

Rainer sighed. He slowed at a landing, glanced around, then dipped his head and brushed her lips lightly, the barest feather touch with a dry tense mouth. “There.” He raised his head and continued upward resolutely.

Erde opened her eyes to the firm smooth line of his jaw and the bronze glint of his hair as it curled around his earlobe. The sculpture of his lower lip was so finely wrought, so like a statue, that she felt the urge to slide her fingertip, just the very tip, slowly along beneath its shadow. A surge of her father’s quicksilver envy seized her, sharp as a knife in her befuddled heart. She couldn’t quite keep back the tears. “It’s because I’m not beautiful, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“You won’t really kiss me because I’m not beautiful, like you are.”

“Like . . . ?” Rainer stopped and gazed down at her. “What’s going on here?”

Erde was suddenly nervous. She had pushed and pushed at something she didn’t quite understand until an unseen
boundary had been crossed. “Oh, Rainer, I didn’t mean to . . .”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, I mean . . .” She twisted her face into his chest. “I’m so confused.”

“Erde . . .”

She glanced up, and he tightened his arms around her, gathering her unsuspecting mouth into his, quickly, hungrily, running his tongue along the inside of her lip before letting go abruptly with a soft groan and a shake of his head, like a man coming up through water. “Who says you’re not beautiful? Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not beautiful!”

Erde stared at him in wonder. “Oh.”

He gulped a breath, let it out, then laughed harshly. “Holy God, I’ve surely lost my mind.” He resettled her more formally, as if he could hold her at a distance from him, hurrying along in silence until they had reached the door to her room. “I’m going to put you down now. Can you stand? Can you manage until I find Fricca?”

She nodded, tongue-tied, wanting him to go, wanting to cling to him. He let her slide gently to the floor, supporting her still with one arm. As he reached for the door latch, Erde heard him gasp softly. There was bright blood on his hand.

Erde was mystified. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Rainer stared at his hand a moment more, then at her, craning his neck to look her over. “Oh, Princess,” he whispered. “It’s yours.”

“What? Mine?” Then Erde understood. “Oh no!”

“Fricca!” Rainer shouted, no longer equal to the situation. He shoved open the door. “Fricca! Damn! Where are you, woman?”

Thoroughly awake at last and mortified beyond imagining, Erde slipped out of his encircling arm and pushed him away from the door. “No! I’m, uh, all right! I’m . . . oh, God, just leave me alone!”

She darted behind the door and shut it in his face.

E
rde recalled her chamber-woman finding her in the middle of the floor, but not much else until she was bathed and in bed by firelight with Fricca patting her hand and telling her not to worry, that was how it was being a woman. For all her voluble advice-giving, Fricca had neglected to warn her that when this much awaited time arrived, she would feel so completely awful.

“Oh, that’ll pass.” Fricca was plainly delighted by the turn of events, though she did cast the occasional troubled glance at the ruined white gown now discarded in the corner. She pressed her giggles back into her mouth. “Poor Rainer! Oh, such a face on him! You’d think these young soldiers would be used to the sight of a bit of blood!”

Erde relaxed into the feather bed and let her breathing slow. Perhaps if she feigned sleep, Fricca would go away and leave her alone with the thousand new thoughts raging in her head. She didn’t think of Rainer. She couldn’t without squirming. He would never speak to her again, and surely she would never dare speak to him. Yet his face filled her vision when she closed her eyes. She had not expected his lips to be so soft.

In the breaks in Fricca’s monologue, Erde could hear the sleet ticking at the window glass. In the forest, the deer would be seeking out their winter shelter, the young ones too slight yet to withstand the early weather. Shouts from the feasting echoed up the stairwell. Brassy music and the distant clash of steel.

“Listen to them still going on!” exclaimed Fricca. “You’d think it was a battle won, not a poor good woman laid in the holy ground.”

Erde pictured her father, well into his cups with the slimy priest. She wondered if Rainer had returned downstairs as well, to drink too much and joke with the rest of the Guard and make fun of the baron’s daughter, the silly skinny child who couldn’t hold her wine. She knew Rainer was always a moderate drinker, but she wouldn’t blame him for wanting to lose himself in drink tonight. She turned over with a groan and curled tighter around the source of her unfamiliar ache. “Is Alla asleep already?”

“Nay, the captain went to fetch her. She’ll be making up something special for you, that’s all that keeps her.” Fricca rose to stir the fire and pile on several unnecessary logs, then came to close the bed curtains. “Go to sleep if you can. I’ll sit till she comes.”

The warm bed soothed, and the flame-flicker on the sheer linen drapes was mesmerizing. Erde dozed but it could only have been a while, for the firelight was still bright on the curtains when sudden noises woke her, loud voices in the outer hall, her door opening.

“Where is my daughter? Is she well?”

Her father, and fully drunk by the sound of him. Erde did not move.

Fricca sputtered out of her nap by the hearth. “Oh, fast asleep, my lord.” She gave a small womanly laugh. “After her ordeal.”

“What? What ordeal?”

“Ummm . . .” Fricca faltered. Erde guessed there was someone else in the room.

“Out with it, woman,” her father ordered.

“Shhh, shhh, my lord!” There was whispering, and Fricca’s maddening giggle.

“What? When?”

“Just now! I found the poor child fainted dead away in the middle of the floor.” Fricca sobered. “But I fear your fine gift is ruined, my lord. And my dear lady’s gown as well.”

“Pfft,” said the baron. “Just a dress. Her mother would be delighted. Let’s see this trophy!”

“Surely not, my lord, with . . .”

“Bring it!”

Fricca reluctantly retrieved the stained garment. The baron snatched it from her and shook it out. He was silent
for a long time. Erde heard him walking about in the staccato way of a drunk determined to appear sober.

“Well, Brother,” he declared finally. “What do you think of that? My daughter is a woman at last.”

“Cause for joy indeed, my lord.”

The priest. In her own bedchamber. Erde thought of the deer again and tried to be as still as they were when hiding from the hunters.

“My only daughter,” mused the baron thickly. Then he roused himself. “We must announce it. We must have a celebration!”

But Erde detected no celebration in his voice. She heard the scrape of the priest’s sandal, his light-footed careful step, as he moved toward the heat of the fireplace. “Certainly you should, my lord, once the usual rituals have been observed.” He lowered his voice, which made him sound threatening. “I assume, my good woman, that you’ve taken appropriate steps, in order to be able assure his lordship that he’s hearing the truth of the matter?”

“Steps?” Fricca replied blankly.

“I mean, woman, have you properly examined the girl?”

“Oh, oh, she’s fine, your reverence, I mean, she will be, just tuckered out, you know.”

“Don’t play with me, woman!” the priest growled.

Fricca made inarticulate noises, then fell silent.

The baron snorted. “She hasn’t a clue what you mean, Brother. We are a bit less formal here in the benighted provinces. But rest your mind.” The gown rustled as he tossed it to the floor. “Truth is in the evidence.”

“But evidence can mislead, my lord.”

The baron hardly seemed to hear him. “A celebration, then! Fricca! Let’s have some wine here!”

“There’s a tray already laid in your chamber, my lord . . .”

“But none here. I see none here! Now, woman! Here and now!”

Fricca rustled away. The baron lowered himself with an explosive sigh into the chair by the hearth. The leather creaked and for a while, Erde heard only the snap of the fire and her father’s wine-heavy breathing. Then the priest stirred.

“May I speak, my lord?”

“Aye, speak, Brother. You’ve shown no reluctance so far. In fact, I’ve been impressed, yes, even moved by your knowledge and concern for the minor political details of a fiefdom that could hardly be of importance to a great man from Rome.” He shifted and the leather groaned again. “What’s on your mind?”

“Concern for your own interests, my lord, now that I have come to know you personally. And for God’s holy commandments.”

The baron chuckled. “Are they all under attack?”

“You may mock, my lord, but the Devil lurks behind every door.”

“Enough simpering behind priest’s rhetoric, Guillemo! We’ve done with that, you and I, have we not? Leave it to your army of subordinates. If something’s bothering you, spit it out!”

“With your permission then, my lord . . . in cases like this, the ritual examination is no mere formality. It . . .”

“Cases like this?”

The priest was silent a moment, offering a reluctance to continue so obviously a ploy that Erde could barely keep silent. She wanted to shout at her father that if he weren’t so drunk, he’d see how this man was manipulating him. At length, Guillemo cleared his throat politely. “My lord baron, I sense something irregular here. Could the servant be protecting the girl?”

“Protecting?”

“Well, for instance, you said she never informed you of the girl’s unseemly gamboling in the woods.”

“Protecting her for what?”

“For your daughter’s reputation,” the priest prodded silkily, “and for yours. The woman clearly, well . . . favors you, my lord. It’s only natural that she’d . . .”

Erde thought she would stop breathing altogether. She could almost hear suspicion clicking into place in her father’s wine-sodden brain, like the gears of a clock readying itself to strike.

“For what
reason
, I mean!”

Guillemo’s sandals slapped softly against the stone, back and forth in front of the hearth. “Before my, ah, Calling, lord baron, I had in Rome some training in matters of the law. Those old habits compel me yet to review events until
my heart is satisfied that they are as they appear to be, or as they have been presented.”

A rattle of cups announced Fricca’s return. “Wine, my lord.”

“What kept you? Give it here!” The baron poured and drank. “So. What of it, man? Go on.”

Guillemo resumed his pacing. “A young girl drinks too much, is escorted from the hall by a handsome captain. A while later, she is found by her chambermaid, sprawled on the floor, her garment a ruin.”

“Only stained, my lord,” Fricca ventured. “A good soaking might save it. And she wasn’t sprawled. She’d fainted, poor lamb.”

“Go on, Brother,” said the baron tightly.

“Well, my lord, as a protector of God’s Laws and as your friend, this is the thing I must ask: what about this boy-soldier of yours? Do you trust him?”

“With my life,” the baron growled.

“Ah, well, perhaps. But with your daughter?”

Erde heard Fricca’s soft gasp, then nothing but the flames and the sound of her father drinking.

Finally the baron said, “They were raised together. He’s like a brother to her.”

“Reassuring, I agree, though that could put her more at ease with such men than might be proper for a young girl.”

“She’s an innocent, Guillemo. She knows nothing of men. She walks alone in the forest without thinking what might happen. She . . .” The baron cut himself short. “She’s an innocent.”