Chapter Three
Behind the main mass of the lord’s hall lay the walled gardens. To the east, the fruit orchard, with its neatly trimmed plums and pears, its rare peach trained against a southern wall. To the west, the long rows of the vegetable garden, mounds of cabbage like a row of balls, the spiky blue-green stalks of onions and ramps, the sprawling vine-bushes of redroot. Ten-foot stone walls surrounded each garden, proof against the casual thief and straying herdbeast. But not, of course, against the daring of an occasional boy who would brag the rest of his life about a theft of plum or pear from the lord’s own garden.
Meris, son of Aric, now the tanner’s apprentice, had taken a plum the year before, but it was partly green. This year, he determined to take a sackful, and share them out, and they would be ripe ones, too. The lord’s best plum tree, as Meris knew well (for his uncle was a skilled pruner of trees, and worked on them), was the old one in the middle of the garden, the only survivor of a row of plums grafted from scions of the king’s garden in Finyatha. Its fruit ripened early, just before Summereve, medium-sized reddish egg-shaped plums with a silver bloom and yellow flesh.
It seemed to him that the young lord’s arrival would be an excellent time to make his raid. The lord and his retinue would be busy, and nearly everyone else would be watching the excitement in the forecourt. So as soon as the first horns blew across the field, signaling the approaching cavalcade, Meris left off scraping the hair from the wet hide he was working on, and begged his master to let him go.
“Oh, aye, and if I don’t you’ll be so excited you’ll likely scrape a hole in it. Very well . . . put it back to soak, and begone with you. But you’ll finish that hide before supper, Meris, if it takes until midnight.”
With the prospect of a belly full of his lord’s best plums, a delayed supper was the last thing Meris needed to worry about. He grinned his thanks and darted from the tannery. He had hidden what he needed behind a clump of bushes on the east side of the lord’s wall . . . a braided rawhide rope with a sliding loop. Other boys used borrowed ladders, and he’d heard of the smith’s boy using some sort of hook tied to rope, but he had found that the looped rope could nearly always find a limb to fasten on. With a little support from the rope, and the skill of his bare feet on the rough-cut stone walls, he had always managed to get over. And the rawhide rope, without a hook or other contrivance, never attracted the suspicious attention of the guard. Once they’d found it, and he watched from the bushes as they shrugged and left it in place. A herdsman’s noose, they’d said, dropped by some careless apprentice. Let the lad take his master’s punishment, and braid another.
He waited, now, in the same clump of bushes, watching people stream by from the eastern fields. Soon no one passed. He heard a commotion around the wall’s corner, from the village itself. Let it peak, he thought. Let the lord arrive. He waited a little longer, then glanced around. No one in sight, not even a distant flock. He swung the noose wide, as he’d practiced, and tossed it over the fence. He heard the thrashing of leaves as he pulled, and it tightened. He tugged. Firm enough.
Standing back a bit from the base of the wall, he threw himself upward, finding a toehold, and another. Whenever he found nothing, he used the rope, but most of it was skill and scrambling. At the wall’s top, he flattened himself along it and gave a careful look at the hall’s rear windows. Once he’d been seen by a servant, and nearly caught. But, as he’d expected, nothing moved in those windows. Everyone must be watching the forecourt, and the young lord’s arrival. He pulled up his rope, and coiled it on the top of the wall. He could gain the wall from the inside by climbing one of the pears trained along it; he needed the rope only for getting in. This time, though, he planned to use it to lower the sack of stolen fruit on his way out. He checked his sack, took another cautious look around, and climbed quickly down a pear tree to the soft grass under the trees.
He heard a blast of trumpets from the forecourt, and grinned. Just as he’d planned: complete silence in the gardens, and everyone out front gaping at the lord. Silly. He was going to be there long enough for all to see, so why bother? Meris glanced around, still careful. No sign of anyone. One of the gates between the fruit orchard and the vegetable garden was open; he could see the glistening cabbage heads, the spikes of onion.
He moved forward. None of the pear trees had ripe fruit, but all were heavy with green pears. One of the golden plums was ripe; a single fruit lay on the grass beneath. Meris snatched it up and bit into it. Sun-warm and sweet, the juice slid down his throat. He spat the pit into the grass and plucked several of the golden plums for his sack. He took a few red plums from another tree, and then found himself at the old one, the “king tree” as his uncle called it.
It was loaded with ripe and overripe plums; clearly the steward had decided to leave it for the young lord’s pleasure. Ordinarily, Meris knew, the trees were picked over every day to prevent loss to bird and wasp. But here the limbs drooped, heavy with plums, and the grass beneath was littered with fallen fruit. Wasps buzzed around these; the air was heavy with the scent of plum. Meris stepped forward, careful of the wasps beneath, and started picking.
He had nearly filled his sack, when he heard a door slam at the far end of the garden. He looked over his shoulder. Surely the welcoming ceremonies would have taken longer than this! He could see nothing between the trees, but he heard voices coming nearer. To go back, he would have to cross the central walk, in clear view of whatever busybody gardener had come back to work. But on this side, only a few steps away, was the open door to the vegetable gardens. He could outrun any gardener, he was sure, but he might be recognized. If he could hide for a little . . .
Quietly, he eased through the garden door, still without seeing whose were the oncoming voices, and found himself in unknown territory. To his left, rows of cabbage and onion stretched to the rear of the stable walls. Ahead were the beanrows, tall pole frames with bean vines tangling in them, only waist-high at this season. In a few weeks the beanrows would have been tall enough, but right now he’d have to crawl in between the poles. Scant cover, and once he was among them, a long way to any of the walls. On his right, the low matted redroots, with gourds beyond them, and some feathery-leaved plants he’d never seen before. The wall he’d come through was covered with some sort of vine; it had orange flowers and was trimmed off a foot or so below the wall-height. He saw no one, in the whole huge garden, but he saw no place to hide quickly if someone came, in.
He flattened himself against the wall by the open door, and listened. Guards, they sounded like, rough voices. Perhaps the lord had sent them to check on everything—though Meris thought he should have trusted his local sergeant. The voices had passed beyond, and then he heard them coming back, heard the steady stride, the faint chink of metal on metal. Guards, sure enough. He dared a look, saw a broad back in the orange and black striped tunic, no one he recognized. Guards who had come with the young lord, then. They were through; they passed by, and kept going. He listened to their heavy step all the way down the main walk.
He grinned to himself. His luck was holding. In a mad impulse, he darted forward and yanked two onions out of the ground and stuffed them in his sack. And a ramp. Ramps, the onion cousin that none of the peasants was allowed to grow, brought from the old south, so they’d always heard, and sold sometimes on market days for high prices—he would have a ramp of his own, the whole thing. He might even plant it, under the forest edge, and grow more. Then he stood up.
“Hey—you there!” In the time it had taken him to pull a ramp, one of the gardeners had entered by the stable doors. Meris did not wait to see what would happen; he bolted straight for the door into the orchard. Behind him, the gardener’s yell had started others yelling. He slammed the door behind him and threw the latch; it might slow them an instant. Then he was off, running between the trees as hard as he could pelt, the sack of stolen fruit banging his thigh.