The White Rose

Chapter Three: STORY FROM YESTERYEAR

Croaker:

The woman was bitching again. Bomanz massaged his temples. The throbbing did not slacken. He covered his eyes. "Saita, sayta, suta," he murmured, his sibilants angry and ophidian.

He bit his tongue. One did not make a sending upon one's wife. One endured with humbled dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Ah, but what temptation! What provocation!

Enough, fool! Study the damned chart.

Neither Jasmine nor the headache relented.

"Bloody hell!" He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. "Besand would spot it in a minute," he grumbled.

He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.

Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman's axe.

"Jasmine," he muttered. "And call a sow Beauty." He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, "What is it now?"

It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.

He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of-gold. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar's life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.

Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I'll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I'll tell you what it's like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreams…

"Stop it, Bomanz," he muttered. "She's the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn't betrayed you." If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.

The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. "Tokar." He bowed slightly. "I didn't expect you so soon."

Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz's son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.

"Didn't plan to be back so soon. Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension."

"You want another lot? Already? You'll clean me out." Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.

"The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken."

"They're not… Maybe I'm getting too old, Tokar. I don't enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I'm used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by." While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers' amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient, heads mounted on replica shafts.

"I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I'll pay you commission. You won't have to do anything. That's a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry."

"UchiTelle, actually." A twinge from his ulcer. "No No helpers." That was all he needed. A bunch of young hotshots hanging over his shoulder while he made his field calculations.

"Just a suggestion."

"Sorry. Don't mind me. Jasmine was on me this morning."

Softly, Tokar asked, "Found anything connected with the Taken?"

With the ease of decades, Bomanz dissembled, feigning horror. "The Taken? Am I a fool? I wouldn't touch it if I could get it past the Monitor."

Tokar smiled conspiratorily. "Sure. We don't want to offend the Eternal Guard. Nevertheless… There's one man in Oar who would pay well for something that could be ascribed to one of the Taken. He'd sell his soul for something that belonged to the Lady. He's in love with her."

"She was known for that." Bomanz avoided the younger man's gaze. How much had Stance revealed? Was this one of Besand's fishing expeditions? The older Bomanz became, the less he enjoyed the game. His nerves could not take this double life. He was tempted to confess just for the relief.

No, damnit! He had too much invested. Thirty-seven years. Digging and scratching every minute. Sneaking and pretending. The most abject poverty. No. He would not give up. Not now. Not when he was this close.

"In my way, I love her, too," he admitted. "But I haven't abandoned good sense. I'd scream for Besand if I found anything. So loud you'd hear me in Oar."

"All right. Whatever you say." Tokar grinned. "Enough suspense." He produced a leather wallet. "Letters from Stancil."

Bomanz seized the wallet. "Haven't heard from him since last time you were here."

"Can I start loading, Bo?"

"Sure. Go ahead." Absently, Bomanz took his current inventory list from a pigeonhole. "Mark off whatever you take."

Tokar laughed gently. "All of it this time, Bo. Just quote me a price."

"Everything? Half is junk."

"I told you, the Domination is hot."

"You saw Stance? How is he?" He was halfway through the first letter. His son had nothing substantial to relate. His missives were filled with daily trivia. Duty letters. Letters from a son to his parents, unable to span the timeless chasm.

"Sickeningly healthy. Bored with the university. Read on. There's a surprise."

"Tokar was here," Bomanz said. He grinned, danced from foot to foot.

"That thief?" Jasmine scowled. "Did you remember to get paid?" Her fat, sagging face was set in perpetual disapproval. Generally her mouth was open in the same vein.

"He brought letters from Stance. Here." He offered the packet. He could not contain himself. "Stance is coming home."

"Home? He can't. He has his position at the university." "He's taking a sabbatical. He's coming for the summer." "Why?"

"To see us. To help with the shop. To get away so he can finish a thesis."

Jasmine grumbled. She did not read the letters. She had not forgiven her son for sharing his father's interest in the Domination. "What he's doing is coming here to help you poke around where you're not supposed to poke, isn't he?"

Bomanz darted furtive glances at the shop's windows. His was an existence of justifiable paranoia. "It's the Year of the Comet. The ghosts of the Taken will rise to mourn the passing of the Domination."

This summer would mark the tenth return of the comet which had appeared at the hour of the Dominator's fall. The Ten Who Were Taken would manifest strongly.

Bomanz had witnessed one passage the summer he had come to the Old Forest, long before Stancil's birth. The Barrowland had been impressive with ghosts walking.

Excitement tightened his belly. Jasmine would not appreciate it, but this was the summer. End of the long quest. He lacked only one key. Find it and he could make contact, could begin drawing out instead of putting in.

Jasmine sneered. "Why did I get into this? My mother warned me."

"It's Stancil we're talking about, woman. Our only."

"Ah, Bo, don't call me a cruel old lady. Of course I'll welcome him. Don't I cherish him, too?"

"Wouldn't hurt to show it." Bomanz examined the remnants of his inventory. "Nothing left but the worst junk. These old bones ache just thinking of the digging I'll have to do."

His bones ached, but his spirit was eager. Restocking was a plausible excuse for wandering the edges of the Barrowland.

"No time like now to start."

"You trying to get me out of the house?"

"That wouldn't hurt my feelings."

Sighing, Bomanz surveyed his shop. A few pieces of time-rotted gear, broken weapons, a skull that could not be attributed because it lacked the triangular inset characteristic of Domination officers. Collectors were not interested in the bones of kerns or in those of followers of the White Rose.

Curious, he thought. Why are we so intrigued by evil? The White Rose was more heroic than the Dominator or Taken. She has been forgotten by everybody but the Monitor's men. Any peasant can name half the Taken. The Barrowland, where evil lies restless, is guarded, and the grave of the White Rose is lost.

"Neither here nor there," Bomanz grumbled. "Time to hit the field. Here. Here. Spade. Divining wand. Bags… Maybe Tokar was right. Maybe I should get a helper. Brushes.

Help carry that stuff around. Transit. Maps. Can't forget those. What else? Claim ribbons. Of course. That wretched Men fu."

He stuffed things into a pack and hung equipment all about himself. He gathered spade and rake and transit. "Jasmine. Jasmine! Open the damned door."

She peeped through the curtains masking their living quarters.

"Should've opened it first, dimwit." She stalked across the shop. "One of these days, Bo, you're going to get organized.

Probably the day after my funeral." He stumbled down the street grumbling, "I'll get organized the day you die. Damned well better believe. I want you in the ground before you change your mind."