Free Tale of Birle by Cynthia Voigt Page A

my throat out. I was so frightened—afraid for my life. And with reason. I didn’t know how fear tastes.” He laughed then. “I’ve hunted with dogs, and thought I was a brave man doing it, and rode proudly back with the game carried behind me. It brought me down, that dog, like running game. I’ve seen deer brought down so.” He seemed to be staring at her, but Birle could see only the whiteness of his face, not what his eyes saw. After a long time, the Lord said, “As if I were an animal. I’ve never been in battle, never killed a man. My brother is the soldier.”
    So it couldn’t be a murder that he ran from.
    â€œWe might go to the shore now, my Lord,” she said. “It’s not safe to travel in darkness. I don’t know how far downriver the port lies,” she added. Without waiting for his order, she headed the boat to shore. She had forgotten the danger ahead.
    He didn’t protest. He didn’t say anything, not until the bank loomed up close overhead. Then he told her. “I cut the rope.”
    He sounded so sorry, like one of her sisters, like little Moll caught with jam on her face saying “I was hungry,” that Birle couldn’t be angry. That sound of his words, with the darkness shadowing his features so that she was no longer sure of his face, led her to ask him, “How old are you, my Lord?” Immediately, she regretted the question. “Never mind the rope, we’ll stay close to the bank where the current isn’t strong. In the morning, when we can see, we’ll see what’s to be done for a rope.”
    â€œWith my sword,” he said, going on with his own thoughts as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “I’ve been nineteen years in the world, Birle, and you’d think I’d have learned better sense, wouldn’t you?”
    â€œI wasn’t thinking that, my Lord.” He was quick to despise himself, she thought, and wondered why that should be so.
    â€œWe’ll sleep in the boat,” he said. Without another word, he turned to lie down on the short seat, his knees rising up like a tent.
    Birle left the oars raised out of the water and moved off the rowing seat to the narrow bow. There, she arranged his sack like a pillow behind her. Somewhere ahead lay the port, but she didn’t know how far. Now she knew his age. And she had saved his life, so she had given him something he would remember.
    His voice floated out of the darkness, like the boat floating at the river’s edge. “I have a bed with a feather mattress, and hangings to keep the cold out. So what am I doing here, with blood drying all over my cloak and my shirt.” He didn’t expect her to answer. Birle imagined what a mattress filled with feathers might feel like. Her own was stuffed with straw, but feathers must be soft, softer than grass. “It’s too bad, really,” he said, laughter rising in his voice. “I would have enjoyed a rabbit. Why did we leave it behind, Birle?” he asked, laughing.

Chapter Six
    D URING THE NIGHT, A FOG settled over them. Waking, Birle peered into the moist air, but could see no riverbank, on any side. The boat moved gently along, like a basket set adrift. But this was like no fog she had even seen on the river. Fogs lay down along the river like ribbons lifted on air, or the unbound hair of drowned women; river fog floated, soft and fine, until the morning brushed it away. This fog crowded gray-white around their boat. Birle knew it must be day, because it was daylight that caused fog to shine white, but how far into the day they had traveled, she had no idea.
    It should have been frightening, this blindness, this ignorance, but it wasn’t. She could see the Lord, where he slept, with his long legs hanging out over the flat water. She could see a little way around them. Such isolation was safety. The thickness of the fog made them invisible. At any time,