JESSAN -- A TALE OF WIZARDRY Chapter 7
Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved
To learn more about me and the genesis of this tale, visit my website http://www.cronnex.com/ .
I hope to post a new chapter every Saturday from now on. If you're enjoying the story, do let me know!
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Chapter 7
WHEN I AWOKE A FEW HOURS LATER, I found myself entirely alone. The bedroom felt empy without Alfrund, and I thought of calling out his name. Instead, I propped myself up on one elbow and reached over for the bowl of broth. It was still half full and, setting aside the spoon, I drank it all straight down. This time all it did was whet my appetite.
Cautiously, I eased my legs over the side of the bed. I wasn't sure that I could get to my feet. Using the bedside table as an aid, I pushed myself up. My legs were a little shaky, but still I could stand, even pull on my shirt. I took the bowl, stepped out into the small corridor, and went down the stairs at the end of it, taking the steps one at a time.
There were two doorways at the bottom of the stairwell. One opened onto Grysta's dispensatory. Inside, four small windows let in the bright sunlight, which spilled onto a large table covered with various items of her trade--a large stone mortar and pestle, iron instruments of a use unknown to me, bottles of potions and jars full of dried herbs, roots, and mushrooms. All this perfumed the air with a pleasant spicy and herbal scent, the very aroma, I realized, that Grysta had carried with her when she had come into my sickroom.
At the far end of the table was a carved wooden stand holding a large, leather-bound tome; several other smaller books were piled up on a shelf affixed to the wall. Large bunches of drying herbs hung from the ceiling beams, as did the skeletons of several beasts, including a fox, a rabbit, and a seal. Finally, a small, waist-high fireplace had been built into the far wall. In it stood several iron pots formed in various shapes, but all standing on short legs so that they could be set directly onto the burning coals.
There was no one in the room, however, so I stepped through the second doorway into the kitchen. It was also empty, but a fire burned gently in its large fireplace. I pulled a stool over to the hearth, sat down, and, too tired from my trip to hunt for the ladle, looked with helpless longing at the contents of the cooking pot that hung over the coals.
As I did so, a door on the other side of the room swung open, and a comely girl, fair of complexion and clearly possessing a spirited temper, came in, bearing a load of laundry.
"Oh!" she said, surprised.
"You must be Onna," I said. She had Grysta's eyes and determined chin, so I knew that she was something other than just a helper. "From your looks, I would also guess that you're Grysta's granddaughter," I said.
"Yes, I am," she said, laughing. "I hope you mean that as a compliment."
"Oh, I do," I said. "After all, I'm..." I was going to say "her grandson," but realized, a little too late, that I was doing exactly what Grysta had warned me not to.
"Jessan, Alfrund's assistant, who was bitten by that awful snake," she said, helpfully finishing my sentence for me. "Alfrund said that he then killed it with a stick, which was brave of him. But then he left it where it died, which was foolish, since it would have been of much value to us. But, then, he is only an herbalist, and so knows pathetically little of the healing arts."
"Nor do I," I answered, a little nettled, despite the fact that all this was a fiction. "I see you share Grysta's low opinion of him."
"Alfrund?" she said, surprised. "No, I like him very much, little as we see of him. Since his return, he's spent most of his time with you, or with Fendal, his lover."
I stared at her in astonishment, speechless. Onna saw my shock but misread it.
"Well," she said, "you're his assistant, surely you know that he prefers men to women." She looked at me more closely. "As, if you will forgive the impertinence, I think you do, also."
"Really, Onna, you're a dangerous person to be near, if one wishes to keep things to oneself," I answered, my voice breaking. "Yes, what you say is true. But Alfrund has told me nothing about this, this...Fendal."
"Well, then, you haven't asked him," she answered, oblivious to the quaver in my voice, "because, given the least encouragement, he speaks of nothing else." She emptied the laundry basket onto the table, asking as she did, "What do you two talk about then, wandering the wild land together?"
"Mostly, we were busy warning each other to watch out for snakes," I answered, and she laughed again.
"Well," she said, "it was seemly that he didn't." For all Onna's perception, the obvious reason that Alfrund might not have told me about Fendal didn't seen to have occurred to her. Like many girls, she looked upon boys of her own age as little more than children. "Seemly, indeed!" I muttered, but her mind had gone on to other things.
"Jessan!" she exclaimed, "I totally forgot! The fact that you've been delirious for days means you've missed all the exciting news!"
"So, tell me, then," I answered, happy to change the subject.
"Well," she said, "I'm really the last to hear anything, because Grysta keeps me close by here. But it seems that a fierce demon warrior has appeared out of nowhere, singlehandedly killing a whole pack of war dogs and somehow sinking a battle galley, with a Summoner on board."
"Did the Summoner drown?" I asked.
"No," she answered. "Although I don't believe that such can walk on water, as some say. But as he has been seen since, I imagine they just fished him from the sea."
"And is everyone in a state of terror?" I asked.
It was her turn to look at me in surprise. "Where do you come from?" she asked. "Everyone in Gedd except for those well paid by the Lord of the Fort to love him are thrilled. Demon warrior?" She lowered her voice. "If such as that truly appeared here, the Lord of the Fort would welcome him like a brother, not hunt him like a stag."
"Do they say what he looks like?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I imagine him as looking much like Fendal, large and strong and brave. It bothers me not that Alfrund prefers men, but it grieves me that Fendal does. I would marry him in an instant, given the chance."
May your wish soon turn true, I thought to myself. Onna, however, turned red at the boldness of her statement and turned her head aside. "Here I am gabbing like an old crone," she said, "and you just out of your sick bed. In fact, I'll get a good scolding from Grysta for letting you out of it-- although how I could've prevented it I don't know."
"I'll scurry back up before she returns," I promised. "I just came down for some company and some more of that wonderful soup."
"Oh! I am blind," Onna cried. She hurried over to where the ladle was kept, came and took the bowl from me, and filled it to the brim.
"Grysta calls it `the broth from the never-emptying pot,'" Onna said, as I began to gingerly spoon the steaming liquid down. "Of course it's never-emptying because she keeps putting more good things into it, but the pot has been there, simmering away, always full, ever since I was a babe. And welcome it is to many who come here in need of healing."
"You may see me empty the whole thing today," I said, "for I surely mean to." And, indeed, my hunger had returned in full force. Seeing this, Onna went and tore me a good chunk of soft, newly baked bread, something I'd rarely eaten, since in my village, bread was baked not to eat but to last. I pulled off chunks of the piece Onna had given me and dipped them into the broth while she companionably folded up the laundry. In such a manner I finished this first bowl and then a second one after it.
Sated for the moment, I began to feel tired again, or perhaps the import of what Onna had said had been slowly sinking in, for I felt deeply sick at heart. "I think I'll return to my sick bed for a bit," I said, "although I'm glad to have met you and hope we can talk alone together soon again."
She gave me a sweet smile. "That would make me very happy," she said. "Alfrund is very stingy in sharing his herbal lore. Perhaps I can wheedle answers to some of my questions from you."
Onna's company, I could see, enjoyable as it was, had pitfalls at every side. I stood up and made my way slowly across the room. Despite the warming broth, I felt as though all my strength had ebbed. I waved away Onna's offer of help, but had there not been a bannister affixed to the stairs, I might've had to accept it. I half dragged myself, half climbed up the steps, and fell into my bed. I wrapped myself in the blankets, and, again, fell instantly asleep.
This time I didn't wake until night had come. Even so, the room wasn't dark--a candle had been set burning on the table beside my bed. I could hear the sound of voices downstairs, Grysta and Alfrund mostly, with an occasional comment from Onna. There was also the enticing smell of cooking fowl.
I lay there and listened, although I couldn't often make out the words. Once again, I didn't want to think, because every thought only brought me pain. But not only pain--that was what made it so difficult. In the past several days I'd had the happiest moments of my life and the absolute worst ones, and they all seemed entangled together, with no way to free the one from the other.
Onna's matter-of-fact way of speaking of Fendal had done more than hurt me. It had flung open a door into a wider world that I knew nothing about, the one where Grysta and Alfrund went about their ordinary lives, completely detached from me. I hadn't known even that Grysta was still alive, let alone hale and obviously a person of some presence in this place.
And Alfrund--I'd foolishly been thinking he and I were lovers in all but name, while in reality, he was a complete stranger. I didn't know even the simplest things about him. Fate had thrust us together--and there again I still didn't know why or how. I'd clung to him, and he, it seemed, to me. But now that the wild storm had abated and the life raft had floated safely to shore, what then? What now? Tears began to stream down my face, and soon I was sobbing uncontrollably, my face buried in the blankets.
There were footsteps on the stairs and someone came in the door, but I was powerless to control my sobs. Alfrund, for it was he, set something down on the small table by the candle, and then lay down beside me on the bed. It's true that I felt a stab of anger against him but my need for him was greater, and I wrapped my arms around him.
He said nothing for a while but caressed my head and neck. Eventually, my sobs subsided and the tears, although they still filled my eyes, no longer streamed down to wet my pillow.
Alfrund reached over me to a small pile of cloths that Grysta had used to wipe my face when I lay unconscious. "Here," he said. "Blow your nose."
I took the cloth, held it up, and did so, with a loud honking noise that set us both giggling. I wiped my face and dropped the cloth to the floor beside the bed.
"I'm so miserable," I said.
"So I've guessed," Alfrund said. "And no doubt in part because of Onna's innocent prattle. The existence of Fendal must have come as something of a shock, after our time together."
I nodded dumbly. "I blame only myself," I said. "I've been so foolish." I began sobbing again. "And it hurts so much."
Alfrund reached over and took another clean cloth. "Take this, wipe your face, and listen to me. I've come to give you the second answer to your question, having received Grysta's permission to do so."
"My question?" I asked, blinking the tears from eyes. "Which one? I've so many of them."
"Well, you'll get answers to them all, but only one at a time. This afternoon you asked me why Grysta called me a scoundrel. And I said there were two answers, and that the first was that I'd gotten you to use powers that you didn't know you had and couldn't control."
"And," I responded bitterly, "the second was that you were cheating on Fendal?"
Alfrund gave me a gentle shake. "Hush," he said. "It's true that Grysta's quite fond of Fendal, but she's also quite aware that he can take of himself. In fact, he knows all about you and has only sympathy for you."
"If that's meant to make me feel better," I said, "it's only making me feel worse."
"Do you want to go on playing the jilted schoolboy?" Alfrund asked, "or do you want to understand where we are right now and where together we might continue?"
I squeezed his arm. "I'm sorry, Alfrund," I said. "Strangely, I think I'm actually saying these things because I'm beginning to feel better, talking to you."
Alfrund squeezed me back. "Good," he said. "What I'm about to tell you may not cheer you up but it may at least set your heart at rest."
He turned on his back so that he could look up at the ceiling and gather his thoughts. "If Grysta had spoken her thoughts to me, which she hasn't, she would think that it would be dangerously frivolous of me to entertain thoughts of becoming your lover, and certainly of any declaration of intended wedlock--a state, by the way, which for somewhat similar reasons doesn't exist between Fendal and myself.
"But, as it happens, I've been only lightly tempted by such thoughts. Because the truth is that what you find in me, a feeling of great comfort and security in the arms of someone stronger, I feel with Fendal. And while he can always provide that for me, it will only be a short time that I can provide it for you--a time that may already be coming to a close."
I began to protest, but he hushed me. "Hear me out, Jessan," he said. "Even so, in the short time that we've known each other, I've come to love you deeply and with all my heart. But you, and mostly for reasons you don't yet understand, can't offer me what I need from a lover. Fortunately, there is an alternative, one that allows me to be a lover of Fendal and yet remain true to you."
"Twerë," I groaned.
"Twerë," he agreed. "The word means a connection between two people of any sex that has the strength of love but binds neither to the other. It's often used merely to mean `more than friends,' but, in truth, it marks out a very different thing. It means an attachment that fate, nature, circumstance has kept from ultimate consummation, but that can't be ignored. If you pledge to be my twerë, it means you accept with all your heart that fate forbids us to be lovers but, at the same time, that fate hasn't the power to stand in the way of our feelings for each other. And that's what I can offer you. Do you care to offer it to me?"
I lay there in silence, holding Alfrund's hand tightly, to let him know I wasn't rejecting his offer. But I needed time to think. What he was saying, which is what I'd feared in my heart all along, was that we were never destined for each other, that my life would not be his life, that my image of us, herbalists and lovers together, was not to be.
I couldn't even argue that in time I'd grow to be the lover he needed and wanted--not because I felt I would fail to convince him, but that in my heart I suspected that what he had just said was true. Clearly, fate was pushing me somewhere, and doing so fast and hard, and it wasn't into Alfrund's arms.
So what I was offered instead was the promise that those same arms would be there when I needed them. To be twerën was to be in a state of absolute fealty to another. Spouses could be unfaithful to each other because marriage was a fact as well as a promise. Between twerëi, the bond was purely an acknowledged statement of the heart.
Twerëi could sleep together without guilt, it's true, but that was the least the relationship had to offer. Really, it didn't lie somewhere between friend and lover, but between brother and lover. It made a bond as strong as blood, one that demanded respect, not censure, from others.
When I'd become Faryn's twerë, I was innocent of all this. For me, then, it was a way for us to say that we loved each other while allowing Faryn to still be one who was attracted to girls and me one who was attracted to boys. It set us away from all that, so that we could share a tenderness without it constantly clouding our lives. But it also meant a bonding far deeper than I'd then seen, and I felt a sudden pang. Here, Faryn had been way ahead of me.
Needless to say, my thoughts were not nearly as articulate as I have made them here, writing in recollection, but I have conveyed, I think, their progress and shape.
"Yes," I said finally, "I will be your twerë. Wherever fate may take us, I promise in this always to be true."
Alfrund heaved a great sigh and took me in his arms. "And I promise it to you. For now and forever, under the sign of Gesryma, the Great Mother of Blessed Name." And so it would prove to be.
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IN MY OWN VILLAGE, a declaration of twerën was a private matter although it was always publicly acknowledged. But in Gedd, as apparently elsewhere, it was a matter of some ceremony. Grysta, to my surprise, showed nothing but happiness for me, and she and Onna at once began planning for the event, which was to happen as soon as I had gained back my strength.
In this intervening time, I also met Alfrund's lover. From Onna's description, I'd imagined a warrior prince in plain clothing, but this wasn't really so. Fendal's solidity was as much a matter of presence as physique; he had an imperturbable solidity about him, strong, quiet, and kind. When they stood together, Alfrund suddenly appeared much more like me--young, even skittish, with his emotions worn plain for all to see.
His simple happiness in the presence of Fendal couldn't fail to move me, and it also made me fond of Fendal. He, in turn, was completely unfazed by me, and embraced me warmly when we met. He was a sailmaker by trade, and he spent his days sewing seams in huge sheets of canvas, with the help of several assistants, who bustled about in the large sail yard, where the cloth was spread for tempering by the sun and rain.
The ceremony finally took place about two weeks after Alfrund and I had made our private vows. No one, of course, attended besides ourselves, Grysta, Onna, and Fendal, along with two of his apprentices with whom I'd become friendly, Wendma and Hestal.
The night before the ceremony, Grysta had presented me with a tunic woven of soft fabric from many colors, in which I felt unbelievably handsome. Even so, I was quite nervous when we gathered together. This was partly because it is, I had learned, customary for each twerë to present the other with something for wearing and remembrance. Of course, I had no such object and neither the money nor the opportunity to obtain one. And Alfrund would hardly embarrass me by giving me something when I couldn't receive something in return.
To my surprise, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Fendal presented us each with a narrow bracelet of beaten gold, with Alfrund+Jessan engraved on the inside of each, so that the names would always touch our skin. This gift brought tears to my eyes, which began to stream down my face when Alfrund and I faced each other and repeated the same vows we had made to each other in bed. I spoke softly; he spoke firmly, and then we kissed.
Grysta and Onna had prepared a small feast, and we sat and ate roast pig and honeycake and drank dark ale until late into the night. Since this wasn't a marriage, Alfrund didn't lift me up and carry me up the stairs to my bedroom--but he did stay after the others left and went to bed with me, where we made love gently and long and slept in each other's arms. It was a day of great happiness with only the smallest edge of regret to limn it round.
After that, Alfrund did spend some nights with me, but he spent many more with Fendal--which, as Onna would no doubt have said, if asked, was but seemly. On the nights I slept alone, I did so with one hand clutching the bracelet around my other wrist. On those nights, I had strange, dark dreams of which, usually, I remembered nothing when I woke the next morning, but sometimes the bedding would be drenched in sweat.