Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

for a barony, like living for anything else, involved money, commerce, labor: the greasy and sweat-soaked components of mortal life.

Jerome was old and dry, a Franciscan who had fled a schism-torn monastery. True to the old ways, he kept his vows without equivocation, and his brown robe looked as shabby and worn as his face. “I was just finishing up, Pytor,” he said, looking up from his accounting tables. “Is there something you want?”

Pytor stumped over to the bench on the other side of the desk, sat down heavily. “Food,” he said.

Jerome's eyes crinkled up in what passed for laughter. “The kitchen, I think, would be more appropriate.”

Pytor was used to Jerome's gentle teases. “Not for me,” he said. “For our people. You are chief bailiff. You have the accounts. Will there be enough to eat this winter?”

Jerome cast a look at the window. The clouds were still massing, overspreading Aurverelle. “You've been out looking at the fields, haven't you?”

“I've been looking at them for weeks, Jerome. This has been the worst harvest since I took service with the master's grandfather. The fields are wretched, the rains are already washing out the seeds, and . . . well?”

“Messire Christopher's people are loyal,” said Jerome. He pulled a roll of parchment from the rack of pigeon holes behind him. “The taxes have come in on schedule, the laggards are few. I can tell you about taxes.”

“I don't want to know about what they have paid. I want to know what they have left.”

Jerome spread the parchment out to reveal rows of neat columns painstakingly added and totaled and summed into tables with monkish diligence. Here, inked onto the scraped skin of a sheep, were the lives of the commoners of the Aurverelle estate—merchant and farmer, peasant and artisan—their economic existence reduced to a set of figures.

But Pytor found himself thinking that perhaps all of life had become like that: figures, tables, money. The war between France and England had collapsed into a temporary truce not because of any new-found pacifism on the part of either party, but as a result of simple financial exhaustion. And the mercenaries who were no longer paid from belligerent coffers had—simple economics, really—turned to brigandage, plundering a comfortable living from fields and towns already gutted by taxes and tithes. Even the Church had mired itself in questions of profit and loss.

Pytor watched as Jerome passed a finger down a column of figures, mumbling to himself. Was God like that, too? Grace counted out in florins and ducats? Salvation measured by the kilderkin, diker, and cartload?

Item: one Pytor of Medno, escaped stradnik, now seneschal of Aurverelle. Devout enough, but payments seriously in arrears. Recommended action . . .

Pytor shuddered. Few saved, many damned, the saying went. Who could afford salvation these days?

“What is left?” said Jerome at last. “Probably just enough to squeak through. I've seen a season or two like this in my time. It was just like this two years before the big drought, if you recall, and . . .” He looked up, stared at Pytor, blinked, stared again. “You have bits of apple all over your hair, Pytor.”

Pytor drew a hand across his head. The fruit was wet and mealy, and he scraped it off and threw it into the rushes on the floor. “It was the monkey again.”

Jerome chuckled. “It got me the other day. Ranulf's boys are still trying to catch it.”

“They have been trying for two years now and they still haven't got it.”

“Well . . . yes. It's a clever one.”

Pytor half turned towards the window. The gathering darkness had dimmed the light. “I wish that the beast had followed its bitch of a mistress into the grave.”

Jerome pursed his lips and was silent. No one in the castle disputed Pytor's opinion of the late baroness.

“If it were not for her, the master would not have gone away.”

“Yes . . . yes,” said Jerome softly. “I know. But Anna was pious, and Christopher was looking for . . .” He lifted his hand, and the parchment rolled up with a dry rustle. He shrugged. “Looking for something. I don't know what.”

Pytor ruminated. Then finally: “Food,” he said.

Jerome nodded. “Enough. Just.”

“Thank you,” said Pytor. He stood up.

“I'll have the provosts make inquiries in the villages, Pytor,” said the friar. “If there is any distress this winter, we'll hear about it.”

“Will we be able to do anything about it?”

Jerome shrugged. “Well, there are no tourneys to finance, no squires to knight, no grand progresses to equip, no wars to be fought.” He turned reflective at this last. “At least not at present,” he added. “If there is insufficient food to be had from our fields, I daresay food can be bought.”

Pytor bowed and turned to go, but stopped at the door. “Have you . . . have you heard anything . . .?”

Jerome shook his gray head. “No, Pytor. Nothing.”

Pytor bent his head. “You know, I have stopped praying for master's return.”

Jerome looked startled. “Indeed? But, Pytor, you—”

“I pray now only that he is happy.” Pytor lifted his head. “One can be happy in death, you know.”

“A doubtful proposition,” said Jerome somberly. “You must recall Raymond Diocrès.”

“I am an unlearned peasant and a runaway slave,” said Pytor stiffly. “I believe my master can do no wrong.”

Jerome nodded silently. Pytor left the office and went back into the hall, his eyes aching. It was hard to have hope, harder still to give it up.

About him, Castle Aurverelle was quiet. Gone were the parties, the dancing, the troupes of tumblers who had, once upon a time, come down from the passes across the Aleser to find themselves given a warm place by the fire and a chance to perform before the haughty but gracious baron of Aurverelle. The squires sent for nurturing and training had departed months ago, likewise the girls sent to Lady Anna: those who had survived the outbreak of plague that had taken the baroness and much of the town