A Brightness Long Ago, page 33
She had no idea if the letters she’d sent with her Kindath friend had reached their destinations. Bischio had sent a messenger with encouraging words—but no soldiers. If Dondi was attacked it would fall. It was that simple, and very likely that deadly—if they didn’t surrender. They would have to surrender, and hope.
She ought to have gone with the Kindath family and their carts. She hadn’t been here long enough to feel intense loyalty to Dondi. She wasn’t certain why she’d stayed.
She didn’t like running away, she’d decided. She liked moving on by choice. Choice, again, that word in her life, but she knew the distinction could be hazy. People drew sharp lines in the world, Jelena thought, even when there was no justification for them.
There was an abandoned sanctuary a little to the south of the farmers’ track. It dated back to when Dondi had been just a village, two hundred years, at least. The last clerics living beside it had moved to the city—or gone away. It was a ruin now, empty and quiet. Jelena liked being there. There were animals sometimes, a threat of wolves, but not this time of year, and not until twilight in any case. She’d seen a very large boar once, from a distance. She knew enough to stay away from them.
There was a cemetery behind the sanctuary, with a crumbling, low stone wall around the graves and headstones, some still upright, some fallen. Jelena walked that way. It was a mild day, though with a wind, and there were wildflowers by now. The pale blue flowers of flax plants were all around her, brightening the world. She carried a basket, looked for herbs as she left the path and cut through a field. A healer knew what to look for. It was a large part of what she did.
She didn’t see anything useful today, but she picked anemones for her house. A favourite, that flower, associations going a long way back. It was linked with boars, in fact, and a goddess and her lover dying. There had been Jaddites once who’d linked the flower to Heladikos—the son of Jad who’d fallen in his father’s sun-chariot to his death. The red of some anemones was his blood.
Heladikos was a heresy now. She was a heretic herself, if it came to that. At risk. Who was ever not at risk?
There were said to be sanctuaries in the east, across the water, towards Sarantium, that had images of the god’s son on their domes or walls. She wondered if she’d ever see one of those. It was a large world and most of it she would never know. That was the way it was in a life. You could only experience so much.
She saw a falcon hunting with the sun behind it. She watched it for a while, then walked around the broken walls of the sanctuary. The roof was long since gone; it lay open to the sky. The stone altar still stood, exposed to the sun.
She went into the graveyard through an opening where a gate would once have been. It was cooler now, late in the day, though not twilight yet—she’d need to be back in Dondi before dark. The wind had died down a little. There was a stone bench she liked to sit on, look out over hills and fields, west and south. She went that way and she saw, with real surprise, another woman there already. She’d never encountered anyone here before.
This woman had long brown hair which she wore loose, as Jelena did. She was tall, older than Jelena but not old. She wore a hooded robe of the same colour, more or less, as her hair. Sandals, a silver necklace, large silver earrings. It was foolish to wear jewellery outside the city, Jelena thought, but it was reckless even to be out here, so . . .
She said, “Greetings. I see you like the same bench I do.”
The woman turned her head and smiled briefly. She had a long face, pale-coloured eyes, long fingers, too. Three rings. More jewellery to tempt an outlaw.
“I do,” the other woman said. “Especially this time of day, this season.”
“I haven’t seen you before. I’ve been coming often.”
“I’ve seen you. Left you to your thoughts.”
“I don’t mind a conversation.”
“I think I do. Always have. Why I like it here.”
Jelena kept her eyebrows level. That sounded like a dismissal. “I should leave you, then. Enjoy the quiet.”
The other woman looked at her again, more closely. “There is,” she said, “someone who has died. I see her ghost above you.”
Jelena froze. After a moment she said, “You can see such things?”
The woman nodded. “Can’t you? As a healer?”
Jelena cleared her throat. She felt afraid suddenly. This was a long-kept secret, casually voiced by a stranger.
She nodded. “Sometimes.” Then, “Can you tell me what she looks like?”
She was thinking of her mother and sisters and her heart was beating fast. She never, for a moment, did not believe what the woman had just said. How could she? She did see spirits herself. Sometimes.
The other woman looked above Jelena and a little to one side. “Young, tall. Too young to be dead, but it happens. She doesn’t look like you.”
Jelena bit her lip. She was trying to think who might have been in her life who could—
“Her name was Adria,” said the woman on the stone bench. “I suppose it still is. We don’t lose our name, only our life.”
Jelena sat down abruptly. There was room on the bench. The other woman wore a scent, violets and something else, fainter.
“Adria Ripoli,” she said. “Oh, my.”
And still she never doubted. Adria was dead and this woman had seen her ghost. The world was not to be understood in simple ways, however much one might wish to make that so. Someone encountered outside the walls of a small city—in a graveyard, even—could know a death, see a spirit, name it.
The other woman shrugged, indifferent. “Was she kin? A lover?”
Jelena shook her head. “Someone I healed.”
A first hint of surprise. “That is all? Why would she be here? With you?”
“I don’t know.”
Which was true. Although she dreamed of Adria often. She dreamed of many people, however, on nights when she’d have preferred not to be alone.
The other woman turned so she could look directly at Jelena. Her long fingers were laced in her lap. One of her rings had a dark red stone.
“I was a healer, too,” she said.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“And . . . ?”
The other shook her head. She was looking overhead now. Into the blue sky where white clouds were moving quickly and the falcon was still hunting. She said, “You will be leaving soon. A longer journey than most ever take. You are meant to conceive a child with a man you meet at journey’s end.”
“What?”
Another shrug, as if the woman was bored. “Surely you can see these things, too?”
“No,” said Jelena, shaken. “No, I can’t.”
“That will come. You’re young.”
“Where . . . where am I to go?”
“East. Somewhere. Carry the child to term. She will comfort you later.”
A girl. She was to have a girl. Somewhere.
“What did you mean meant to? How is it . . . ?”
A smile this time. “I’m sorry. I speak that way. Habit. You will conceive one. You could choose not to birth her. I am telling you that you should.”
“And that I am . . . meant to be there?”
“You will be there.”
Finality. A future seen and known, at least a part of it.
“And . . . and the man?”
“I see nothing of him. He will have a name.”
“Everyone has—”
“A name that matters. He will not stay. That is why you should have the child, to not be alone. Also, there is an old god nearby. Be careful.”
Jelena stood up. Her hands, she saw, were shaking. “If everyone has a name, will you tell me yours?”
“Of course. I’m Niora. Baschi is my family name.” She looked at Jelena. The sun was behind her. “I did not ask for my gifts, as you never asked for yours, I am certain. We are children before our power, however little we have.” She looked back over her shoulder. “You should leave, before the sun gets too low. I saw three wolves yesterday.”
“Walk back with me?”
“I left Dondi some time ago. I’ll be all right. I don’t have far to go. Your journey is longer. Be careful, be blessed.” She made a gesture, not that of the sun disk, using the hand with the red ring.
“Will I . . . may I see you again? I have much I think I could learn from—”
“No,” said Niora Baschi. But she smiled again. “I told you, I don’t like conversations. I’m sorry about the one who died.”
Jelena stared at her. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but the other woman had turned her head and was looking west again, towards a wood in the late-day light.
Jelena left. Walked back through the open space where a gate had been, past the roofless ruin of the sanctuary, across a field. She was in time to come back into Dondi through the still-open gate. The guards there smiled at her. She was a healer, a city needed those, questions were not asked about faith and beliefs as long as you helped people, and Jelena did.
She managed to smile at them as she went past. Then she stopped and turned.
“Do either of you know a woman named Niora? Niora Baschi?”
“Of course,” said the taller of the two. “She was a healer here before you came.”
“And she left? Moved outside the walls?”
“Is that how you say it?”
“What do you mean?”
“That she left?”
“How would you say it?”
A chill now, and it wasn’t the breeze.
“She died ten years ago, at least,” the tall guard said. “She’s buried by the ruined sanctuary, people still use the cemetery there.”
Jelena stared at him for so long his expression became worried. “Thank you,” she said, eventually. Then she turned again and walked through the streets to her home and entered her house and closed the door.
* * *
• • •
SHE SLEPT BADLY that night. It was hard to come to terms with the death of Adria Ripoli and with the idea that a woman, an aristocrat seen only twice, and only briefly the second time, would be one of her own ghosts hovering, to be observed by someone who knew how to see the spirit world.
She didn’t know why Adria’s ghost had been with her. She wrestled for understanding through the dark hours. But why should she know the way these things worked? And then there was the other thing the dead woman had said among the headstones and the flowers, about Jelena’s journey to come, and a child born far away.
A girl, she’d said. Perhaps the two things together were about being a woman and making dangerous choices. Your decisions in life could kill you, however brave you were? A woman couldn’t force the world to fit her needs and strengths?
Could try, though. You could try.
She lay in bed remembering Adria Ripoli with more clarity and sorrow than she’d have expected. Courage there, to have done what she’d done in Mylasia. And the Bischio race. Almost no one knew that had been her, Jelena thought. Things done in the world, affecting the world, but kept close, secret, private.
She’d had arrogance, too, that one, born to power, but the fierce, reckless nature had been her own. How did people, men or women, become that way? How, Jelena thought, had she become what she was, herself?
She wondered how Adria had died.
In the morning, when she saw the light through the shutters that meant sunrise, she got out of bed and prepared herself to address the needs of the day.
It never occurred to her, then or after, to doubt what she’d been told by Niora Baschi. She had seen ghosts herself. Why would there never be one above her—or speaking to her on a stone bench wearing silver earrings and a red stone in a ring?
It was, Jelena thought, another kind of arrogance to believe you could understand the way the world was made. It could not be done, there was too much. You needed to be open to it, though, to what your life gave you and demanded. She’d had thoughts about travelling east for years! What the other woman had said to her was a confirmation, not a revelation. Jelena told herself that as she dressed and ate.
She unbolted and opened her front door and stepped out to see what the morning had brought.
Firentine soldiers, it turned out.
They were at the eastern gate. But it was not just that. Jelena saw a guard approaching quickly, purposefully, pushing through people in the street, as she stepped out into the fear and chaos there.
“My lady,” he said, coming to a halt, breathing hard. “Someone has asked after you. You must come to the gate! It is very important.”
The demands of the world. And so Jelena learned, following that man through the streets, that it was Antenami Sardi who was here.
No one else from their army, it seemed. Just him and a small escort. Which was why the gate was open, a little, for her to walk through. Two of their own men, armed, stood by the wall outside but Jelena went forward alone. She felt as if she was still just waking up. Antenami? It was so improbable. He was wearing a soldier’s breastplate, she saw, no helmet. One man stood behind him holding the reins of a superb horse.
Antenami Sardi, whom she had healed of wounds at an inn south of here a year ago, and had made love to many times when he was recovered (enough), smiled at her. He seemed a different man. In a year? But that calm smile, the soldier’s armour, the way he was standing. His being here at all!
In a sense, she thought, looking back afterwards, this meeting by the walls surprised her more than speaking with a dead woman in a graveyard the day before. Which could be amusing, of course, considered a certain way.
The sun rising behind him, he said, “There you are. Good. I wanted to be sure you were still here and all right, before moving on to the next thing. Are you all right?”
She managed to nod. She cleared her throat. “You look different,” she said.
His brow knit. “Is that good?”
A hint of remembered hesitance. He’d been confident about horses, his knowledge of them, about his family’s status and wealth. Food and wine. Not a great deal more.
She nodded again. “Yes. It is . . . you look very well.”
He said, “You started it. I wanted to be better. After. Even my father noticed. Or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Why are you here?”
“He named me supervisor of this part of our army. And the . . . our commander isn’t someone I trusted to leave you alone here. So I came myself first. He’ll probably be here soon, when he discovers I’ve gone.”
He smiled, she saw. He didn’t seem uneasy, saying these things.
This was, Jelena thought, Piero Sardi’s son, after all. Maybe he had realized that, grown into it.
He added, “I did send your other letter north, to Macera.”
She looked at him. “Do you know . . . has anything happened there?” She felt tentative, hesitation in her, too.
“In Macera? Not that I’ve heard. What do you know?”
It was easiest to shake her head and say, “Nothing. What are . . . Antenami, what are you here to do?”
“I need an agreement from the city leaders, the commune, to give us a great deal of food, and ten thousand gold serales.”
“What?” she exclaimed. Ten thousand was a fortune for a small city.
He didn’t look dismayed. He even shrugged. “I am going to propose that if we capture Bischio and the tax money comes to us going forward, to Firenta, you will be given credit for this sum. I’ll sign for that. If we fail at Bischio, it will be a sum you’ve paid an army to leave you alone. I think I can make our commander do that, but the food and money have to come first. Armies,” he said earnestly, “need to be kept happy.”
“You know this now?”
He blushed a little. “I think I do. I also think Ariberti Boriforte would like nothing more than to sack Dondi. Jelena, I can order him not to, and he’s likely to listen, because of who I am. But I need the food and the gold. You have to give them. To survive.”
“Are you negotiating with me?”
He smiled again. This smile was new to her. “No. I wanted to see you. And to ask if you wish to leave. I can give you an escort anywhere you like. You said . . . you said last year this was a new place for you. Do you feel it is home now?”
“Not truly. But neither will I leave if danger comes.”
“But that is when people should leave,” he said.
Which was, she thought, sensible.
She said, “I’m not certain I know this man you’ve become.”
He looked shy. “I’m not, either. I think I like him.”
She smiled this time. “I do, too.”
The sun was above the trees along the east-west road behind him now. It occurred to her, and it was strange how sudden the thought was, that this would be a foolish, unnecessary place to die.
She’d leave it for later to think about what places might be wise or necessary ones for dying.
She said, disliking the words a little, but saying them, “If you fail to get them to agree to what you require, let me know. I’ll leave with your escort. You’re right, ’Nami. I can be too stubborn.”
“You’ve had to be,” he said. Which was a little bit astonishing as well. “Go back in and have someone with authority come out to me. I’d like this decided before Boriforte shows up with however many men he brings.”
“You’ve really changed,” she said again.
She wasn’t used to repeating herself so much.
He nodded. “Will you consider staying with me? If you think I have?”
She shook her head. “You’re a Sardi. I’m not a mistress. And I’m going east, across the water.”
“What? Now?”
She hadn’t expected to say it. To make it a thing in the world so quickly.
