Harry Turtledove: Out of the Darkness

“When I walked onto your farm five years ago, I didn’t know a sickle from a scythe,” Skarnu reminded her.

“No, but you learned, and you worked,” Merkela said. “I’m not working now, and I wish I were.”

“You’d make a lot of farmers nervous if you did,” Skarnu said.

“I know,” Merkela said unhappily. “I’ve seen that. All the fairy tales talk about how wonderful it is for the peasant girl to marry the prince and turn into a noblewoman. And most of it is, but not all of it, because I can’t do what I’ve been doing all my life, and I miss it.”

Skarnu had never worked so hard in his life as when bringing in the harvest. He didn’t miss it at all. Saying that would only annoy Merkela, so he kept quiet. She probably knew him well enough to understand it was in his thoughts. Valmiru came up on the battlements just then. Skarnu turned to the butler with something like relief. “Aye? What is it?”

“A woman with a petition to present to you, your Excellency,” Valmiru replied.

“A petition? Really? A written one?” Skarnu asked, and Valmiru nodded. Skarnu scratched his head. “Isn’t that interesting? Most of the time, people here just tell me what they’ve got in mind. They don’t go to the trouble of writing it out.” If nothing else had, that by itself would have told him he was in the country.

He went down the spiral staircase. The woman, plainly a peasant, waited nervously. She dropped him an awkward curtsy. “Good day, your Excellency,” she said, and thrust a leaf of paper at him.

She would have retreated then, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Wait,” he added. Wait she did, fright and weariness warring on her sun-roughened face. He read through the petition, which was written in a semiliterate scrawl and phrased as a peasant imagined a solicitor would put things: full of fancy curlicues that added nothing to the meaning and sometimes took away. “Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said when he was done. “You’re the widow named Latsisa?”

She nodded. “That’s me, your Excellency.” She bit her lip, looking as if she regretted ever coming to him.

“And you have a bastard boy you want me to declare legitimate?” Skarnu went on.

“That’s right,” Latsisa said, looking down at her scuffed shoes and flushing.

“How old is this boy?” Skarnu asked. “You don’t say here.”

Latsisa stared down at her shoes once more. In a low voice, she answered, “He’s almost three, your Excellency.”

“Is he?” Skarnu said, and the peasant woman nodded miserably. Skarnu sighed. Sometimes being a marquis wasn’t much fun. He asked the question he had to ask: “And does he have hair that’s as much red as it is blond?” Latsisa nodded again, her face a mask of pain. As gently as he could, Skarnu said, “Then why do you think I would be willing to make him legitimate?”

“Because he’s all I have,” Latsisa blurted. She seemed to take courage from that, for she continued, “It’s not his fault what color his hair is, is it? He didn’t do anything wrong. And I didn’t do anything against the law, either. All right-I slept with an Algarvian. He was nicer to me than any Valmieran man ever was. I’m not even sorry, except that he had to go. But it wasn’t against the law, not then. And it’s not like I was the only one, either- is it, your Excellency?”

She knows about Krasta, Skarnu thought, and had to work to hold his face steady. But her other arguments weren’t to be despised, either. He asked, “Didn’t you care that you were sleeping with an enemy, an invader?”

Latsisa shook her head. “All I cared about was that we loved each other.” Her chin came up in defiance. “We did, by the powers above. And if he ever came back here, I’d marry him in a minute. So that’s why I want the boy made legitimate, your Excellency. He’s what I’ve got.”

“Even if he were made legitimate, he won’t have an easy time growing up, not looking the way he does,” Skarnu said.

“I know that,” Latsisa answered. “But he’ll have a harder time yet if he’s a bastard. And you still haven’t told me why it’d be against the law to make him all proper just on account of his father had red hair.” Skarnu knew why he didn’t want to do it. But the peasant woman was right; that was different from finding a reason in law why an Algarvian’s bastard should be treated differently from any other. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Latsisa said, “Besides, the war’s supposed to be over and done with now, isn’t it?”

She was doing her best not to make things easy. Skarnu tried another tack: “What would your neighbors think?”

“One of my neighbors is Count Enkuru’s bastard,” Latsisa replied. “The count forced his mother, too, powers below eat him. He looks just like Enkuru, my neighbor does, but the count never gave his mother a copper for what he’d done. He was a noble, and his shit didn’t stink-begging your pardon, your Excellency.”

“That’s all right,” Skarnu said abstractedly. Aye, there were times when this job wasn’t easy at all.

Latsisa went on, “So my neighbors don’t get so up in arms about bastards as a lot of people would, maybe. Sometimes they happen, that’s all, and a person who’s a bastard doesn’t usually act any different than anybody else.”

Finding that ley line blocked, Skarnu went down another. He hardened his voice and said, “You do know that I was a Valmieran officer, don’t you? And that my wife and I were both in the underground after the kingdom surrendered?”

“Aye, I know that. Everybody knows that-and what happened to your wife’s first husband,” Latsisa said. “But I thought I’d come and ask you anyways, on account of you’d got a name for judging fair.” Her mouth twisted. “Maybe I heard that last wrong. Sure seems like I did.”

Skarnu’s cheeks and ears heated. “If you’re going to ask me to set aside the whole war, you’re asking a lot.”

“War shouldn’t have anything to do with it,” Latsisa said. “I just want to make my little boy legitimate. Wouldn’t have any trouble doing that if he was a blond like me, would I?”

I tried to get Merkela not to hate little Gainibu. I didn‘t have any luck, even though he’s my nephew - maybe especially because he’s my nephew, Skarnu thought. Now here’s a half-Algarvian bastard I’ve never even seen, and I’m ready to hate him, or at least to treat him differently from the way I would if he were all Valmieran.

How many bastards had Valmieran women borne to Algarvian soldiers during the occupation? Thousands, surely-tens of thousands. Right now, he supposed, Algarvian women were lying down with occupying soldiers; they’d raise up another crop of bastards before long.

But that had nothing to do with the questions at hand. Would Latsisa have had any trouble legitimating a blond bastard boy? Skarnu knew she wouldn’t; it would be a routine procedure, unless she had legitimate children who raised a fuss. Should her son’s case be any different in law just because he had sandy hair? Try as he would, Skarnu could see no legal justification for denying the petition.

He ground his teeth; there was nothing he more wanted to see. But he couldn’t find it. The peasant woman had argued him down. And why not? he gibed at himself. Merkela does it all the time. Thinking about Merkela made him wonder how he would explain himself to her. He didn’t care to contemplate that right now. He took the petition, scrawled I approve on it, and signed his name. Then he thrust it at Latsisa. “Here.”

Her jaw fell. Her eyes widened. “Thank you, your Excellency,” she whispered. “I didn’t think you would.”