Heritage of Fire Read online

  Like now. She was trying it again as Gerd entered, and this time her face showed satisfaction. She was just removing a tapered rod of metal from its trying frame.

  Gerd watched for a moment. Then: "You got it right, it seems."

  The grin disappeared, and then broke out again. "Seems so. I've had it bent under twice my weight for a whole hour. It hasn't bent any further, and it springs straight again." She weighed it in her hand. "I think this'll do."

  "Twice your weight?" Gerd whistled. "That's more than any man could pull." He grinned. Hard work in the forge had put solid muscle on Alissa's stocky frame.

  "I hope so," said Alissa. She spoke absently, running her hands over the rod. "The fittings, now. The string's going to be the hard part. Horsehair, mane or tail, I suppose." She was talking to herself.

  Gerd shook his head. "You can't do that tonight. The light's going. Come on."

  She nodded, reluctantly, and put the piece aside. Gerd waited while she doffed her apron. They walked down to the village. They talked.

  People had always either ignored Gerd or talked at him, not to him. Most people. Jenny, at the inn, had been kind, but she was kind to everyone. The Squire had been polite, but even he had not been a friend. A good master, a fine man and a gentleman, but not a friend. Master Hawken? Gerd had known him barely two days.

  The evenings were drawing out, that day when Gerd looked in at the smithy, expecting Alissa to be banking her fire and racking her tools. But now he found the forge burning low, untended, and Alissa sitting on her stool at her bench, her hands resting idle between her knees. She was staring out of the open front of the stall, and she didn't notice Gerd at first.

  "Hello," said Gerd. "Lost in dreams of riches, I see."

  Alissa looked up, startled. She nodded in an embarrassed sort of way and stood up. As she did, Gerd could see a paper in her hand. It was large and square, with a red blob of wax on the bottom. A seal had been impressed there, and a ribbon dangled from it.

  "What's that?" Gerd asked.

  Alissa looked down at it, as if surprised to see such a thing. "It's nothing. Just a … matter of business," she said. She rolled it up and tied its ribbon around it again. "I'll be with you in a moment." She pulled a square iron strongbox from under her counter, opened it and put the paper in it.

  But Gerd had been watching her. He knew what he saw. "Nothing, eh? That's why your face would sour milk, I suppose. Come on. Tell."

  "No, truly," began Alissa, but Gerd knew that when someone says 'truly' like that, they mean just the opposite. He leaned against the corner-post, in the space between it and the counter, and folded his arms. Alissa closed and locked the box. She began to rake out her fire, and Gerd simply watched and waited.

  Alissa dumped ashes into a sack. She raked the remaining live coals together, stood her fire-rake in a corner and began putting the tools away. Gerd didn't move. Sooner or later Alissa would tell him what had happened.

  At last, after several tries at finding words, she did. She was cleaning her files and racking them when she looked up. "Oh, well. I always said I'd have to go to the mainland to follow the trade, anyway. It'll just be sooner rather than later, it seems."

  Gerd found his eyebrows rising. "Is that what that letter says?" he asked.

  Alissa made a half-gesture towards the strongbox with the wire brush in her hand. "More or less. It says that the island council has decided that leases can't be for two lifetimes, because one man can't sign a lease agreement binding another person without his - or her - consent. Huh! I wasn't even born when my Dad signed the lease here, for his lifetime and mine. Now they're telling me that there is no lease on this smithy any more. I'll have to quit. They've remitted part of the lease and given me a month or two. I'll have to be out by midsummer."

  "Can't you sign a lease of your own?" Gerd frowned. It was clear that Alissa didn't want to leave.

  "Oh, sure. If Captain Mannon - who also sits on the Council - is prepared to agree to it." Alissa snorted, and brushed harder. "Fat chance. He's the one who put them up to it."

  Gerd added a slow shake of the head to his frown. "I noticed he doesn't like your work," he said. "But really …"

  "Oh, that's not the reason. I've a notion that it goes back to my father's time in the Company. Dad was a corporal when Mannon was a recruit, and they didn't like each other much. I don't really know what that was about, but I do know that on the morning after Dad died, with my mother weeping like a lost soul, Mannon turns up on our doorstep with his hand out. He wanted to be paid to send customers to me. I was in no mood to contribute to his pension fund just then, as you can imagine, and we had words. I still won't pay, and now he's finally got his way with the council." Alissa sighed. "I suppose he's made himself too useful. He's a good tax-collector, is Captain Mannon. A good collector all around. And he certainly keeps the peace."

  Gerd pursed his lips, remembering his records of the cookhouse supplies. "He seems to keep quite a few things, not just the peace."

  He looked around at the smithy. It was really only a three-sided shed, but the forge and the racks of tools and the anvil would be heavy and awkward to move. Alissa saw his assessing stare. "I'll have to sell up," she said. "They need a smithy here, for the Company and the castle. There's quite a lot of trade." She considered. "There's Harald Torson, who's working as a journeyman for the smith up at Wolcombe. He'd be interested." She racked her file and put the brush away. "So that's that. I never did my wandering year, not only because nobody'd apprentice a woman, but because there was the smithy to look after and my mother and two younger sisters to keep, but Ma's gone now and Margery and Kate are both married and moved away. It looks as if I do it now."

  "What, move into the town?" There's a smithy there already. Can't be enough trade for...

  "No. I'd have to go off the island. Find a workshop in Lameth, or Tamar, or even Walse. Learn the swordsmithing end of the trade properly, maybe."

  Gerd blinked. He had come to look forward to the ends of the days, spent here. "It's not right," he said, more or less automatically. "You shouldn't have to leave."

  Alissa shrugged, saying nothing. Then: "I don't know. Perhaps it's for the best, really. Without something like this, I would never have had the gumption to get away and try something new. I'd have still been here when I was old and grey, whittling handles for knives and wondering what I'd missed out on." She stood up, untied her leather apron, and hung it on its peg. "Come on. A plague on it."

  No, it wasn't right, Gerd thought afterwards. Oh, it might be good for Alissa in the long run, but it still wasn't right. Alissa had been forced out of her place. Well, Gerd thought, so had I been. How would I have answered Squire Penrose, if Dan Miller had not chosen that night for his fit of rage? Wouldn't I have shuffled and thought that the inn was what I knew, and the village was home, and that I had a place there? But... that's all to the side. I don't want her to move away!

  He shook his head. He didn't know what he would have done, and he didn't know what he felt now. But all the same, whatever his own feelings, he knew this was wrong. At least he had known what to do about Dan Miller. Did he know what to do now? Thinking back, he felt the weight of the broom in his hands and saw the glittering point of Miller's knife making patterns in the air, and then he realised with a shock that Dan Miller was wearing the face of Captain Mannon.

  Monday morning, first thing, was section fatigues parade. Gerd expected the usual - cookhouse duty. His list of supplies and their prices was getting longer. Only two days before, he had found that the cook seemed to be paying fresh beef prices for salt meat that had been in cask since last year. Somebody was making a pile on this. But he still hadn't caught them at it. He'd have to watch continually to get that.

  So he expected to hear Sankey saying the usual: Gerd, cookhouse. But he didn't. What he heard was, "Gerd, Company office."

  "Corp?" he asked, startled.

  Sankey grinned. "You heard me. There's a man wanted there, and it has to be s
omebody who can read." He saw Gerd's face. "None of your lip, son. It's easier than scouring out pots. Hanson, what are you sniggering at, you useless idle trollop? That means there's an extra man needed for the cookhouse, and you're it, my son." He made a check-mark on a list, then raised his voice to a bellow. "Section, section 'shun! Turning right, dismiss!"

  It had the usual effect. Gerd found himself falling out and marching off towards the company office with no further thought.

  The company office was a room in the gatehouse tower, two floors above the one where Gerd had first spoken to Captain Mannon. He climbed a stair to the battlement of the ring wall, exchanged the time of day with the sentry who stood there leaning on his spear, looked briefly out over the harbour in the bright spring morning, and rapped on the door that led directly into the third floor of the tower.

  The door opened, and the company clerk peered out, squinting. Gerd reflected that he still didn't know the man's name, since he answered well enough to 'Clerk' or 'Inky'. He tried not to remember how the clerk had helped to cheat him - after all, he had just been following Captain Mannon's lead.

  "Fatigues detail," said Gerd.

  The clerk grunted and turned on his heel, receding into the gloom. Gerd took that for an invitation and followed him in.

  The room was dim, with only arrow-slits in the wall. The main source of light was the open trap in the flat roof. Sunshine streamed down through it. In the centre of the room stood a table, and behind it, on the wall, a shelf held a dozen or so ledgers - loose leaves pressed between board covers, tied with narrow ribbons.

  "Shut the door," said the clerk, without turning around. "Now. I've nearly run out of parchment, and there's still this month's accounts to write up. So I need you to clean some for me."

  "Clean some?" Gerd was surprised, and it showed in his voice.

  "Yes. You don't suppose we use parchment only once, do you? It's expensive stuff." The clerk looked around the room with satisfaction. "But the records are only kept for five years. So, what you do is, you take the file of older papers - that's that folder there on the shelf - get some vinegar and a clean cloth, and start cleaning the old sheets off so I can re-use them. Both sides, please. When you've finished, bring them back here." He turned away, clearly thinking he had said everything needed.

  "Bring them back?" asked Gerd. "Where do I clean them, then?"

  "Outside," said the clerk, off-handedly. "Not in here. Place stinks of vinegar for days. Now get along. I've got work to do."

  Gerd took the indicated folder, turned around, and walked out without another word. Vinegar he could get at the cookhouse, and he had rags in his cleaning kit. Now, where to do it?

  He settled for a sunny corner of the castle yard, out of the wind. There was a bench there, and he found a couple of stones to weigh down the sheets. He undid the ribbon, pulled the cover off, and began.

  The sheets were crackling, stiff, and all different sizes. They varied in colour from off-white to old bone to grey, almost grey-green. The clerk had said nothing about how fast he had to work, so he took his time, glancing over each one before he started rubbing the surface with the vinegar-damp rag. It smeared the letters and figures, then dissolved them, leaving faint reverse-shadows behind on the pages, spidery shapes a shade or two lighter than the parchment.

  They were records of payment. For food, mostly, but Gerd had never realised how many other things the company needed. Cloth and leather, nails, candles, soap, tallow, rope, fuel, barrels, staves, masonry work, salt, tools - on and on and on. The papers showed the payments for it all.

  Most of it was just lists of figures, but there were other odd notes here and there. Some were interesting. Here was one: To Mistress Simons, for sewing a new flag, three crowns. Gerd squinted up at the faded flag that flew from the pole on the keep. The record was for eight years ago. It might have been the same one. And here: Funeral expenses for three unknown drowned seamen, washed ashore, seven crowns. Gerd shook his head. What sad tale's behind that? he wondered, cleaning the writing off, reluctant to do it. Perhaps this entry is the last record of their lives.

  He held a new sheet up to the light, to make out a faded date, and saw, with surprise, that there was other writing on it, just ghosts of letters. This was not the first time the page had been cleaned. But the older layer was not just columns of figures, like the present one. It was words, written across the page. In places they were difficult to see, but Gerd found himself spelling them out.

  Resolved, it said, The Brothers in council agree to amend Article Two of the Charter of the Order to read: A meeting of all Brothers shall be held at Midsummer each year to attend to business arising from the last meeting, to consider the report of the Brother Captain, and to hear all matters of concern to any of them …

  Council? Meeting? Gerd frowned. There had been nothing about any meetings in any of the regulations he had listened to. They were all about obeying orders and showing proper respect to officers, reporting for duty on time and not falling asleep on watch, things like that.

  He was still frowning as he cleaned the new writing off the sheet. The older letters were still there when he held it up to the sun, ghosts among other ghosts, but quite distinct, for the lines ran at right angles. He put the sheet with the others he'd cleaned, then picked it up again. He looked about at the people in the castle yard, a squad drilling, some carrying water and firewood, sentries on the walls, looking outward. Then he folded the sheet and stuffed it into his belt-pouch.

  He found three others like it before he finished the pile, all in the same hand. All spoke of a meeting of the Brothers, as if it was something that made decisions and gave orders, even to the Captain. As if they were all equal partners in the Company, not parts of a machine that simply obeyed. Each one Gerd carefully cleaned and put away in his pouch.

  When he finished, he took the completed pile back to the office. The clerk didn't raise his eyes from the page he was working on. He twitched his pen at a box on the corner of his desk. Gerd dumped the clean parchment in that and stood back.

  "That's all," said the clerk, absently. "You're finished."

  Gerd almost sniffed. Then he turned and left. There was drill that afternoon, and he had one of the night watches. But the rest of the morning was free, and he knew what he wanted to do with it. Alissa had space on her counter and a spare stool, and the light streamed in through the front of her shop. Gerd had taken to carrying writing materials with him. He entered the shop, nodded a greeting, and began copying the writing on the pieces he had saved, holding each one up to the light. Alissa, working on a ploughshare, shot glances at him under her brows, but asked no questions.

  The four sheets took some time to make out and copy. Even then, it was clear that there were other sheets that were still missing. But when Gerd had finished, he held in his hands a copy of most of the Charter of the Order of the Western Knights. The real one.

  He began to read it. It made interesting reading.

  9

  Gerd was still thinking about it when he went on the patrol, three days later. The patrol, the special one.

  It started normally enough, except that the Captain rode out with them. That's to say, he rode a horse and they marched. Gerd had walked behind his master's horse before, he reminded himself, and he had done it without knowing what his errand was, just as now. But this was different. Captain Mannon was not Squire Penrose.

  Gerd tramped along with the others, two sections of them, forty men – twice the usual strength of a patrol. He supposed that was because they were going further than usual. The corporal said they'd march all the way to Subbay, on the other side of the island, a full day's journey. They'd come back by the other road the following day.

  The outward path led over the western face of the long, gradual mountain. It was a cart-track that climbed, curving among the fields, avoiding the patches of good soil. Plough-land, land that could grow grain, was too precious to use simply for walking on, so the track bent around it, cr
ossing stony meadows where sheep grazed, looping and curving upwards with short, sharp climbs and long slopes that pulled at the thighs.

  Slowly, as they climbed, more and more of the disc of the sea came into sight. To their right hand the green fields of the Islanders rose up, narrow bands across the slope, ribbed with walls and carefully-tended stands of trees to hold the soil. On slopes too steep to plough men were using the ard, a tool somewhere between a heavy hoe and a ploughshare, and women followed them, spring-sowing rye and oats. To the left the slope fell away, and above it stretched a wind-filled gulf, endless, blue. Below, flecked with light, lay the sea.

  Gerd had known the sea as a fickle, moody thing, constantly shifting, furrowed with unpredictable waves. But as he climbed, the air became clearer and sharper, the sky a more intense blue, and the sea became an enamelled disc in which the green island was set like a gem. The individual waves were lost. What remained was a sort of subtle patterning, like the steel of his sword, but done in light on water. Every time the track rose a new expanse was revealed, and after a while Gerd found that he was impatient to see the next one. It was as if the world was intended to be seen like this, a work like a jewel, and he was seeing it properly for the first time. He actually found himself looking forward to the next steep little climb, for that would bring the effect to a still greater stage of perfection. The rest of the company tramped on, silent except for the grumbling - mostly good-natured, still - about the weight of their packs and the soreness of their feet.