Part 12

It was still early in the night; she lay back among the covers to consult with the book again, but after her good cheer in the company, found the volume mere gloominess and dull as could be. Wondering what her manner of life in Mancherei would be like if all were ordered by such a volume, and feeling the despair of a bird bruising its wings against a cage of circumstance, she found happiness forever elusive. This escape and that slid across her mind, but all was either dream or half-dream; and as the rising wind began to rock the ship, she fell asleep.

Waking was blended with wonder that one creak among the many from the straining vessel should have roused her; then she became fully sentient, catching the reason. That single sound had come from her own door. Her lamp had gone out. “What do you wish?” she called on a rising note, and in the black heard three waves slap the ship before there was an indrawn breath and an answer not higher than a whisper; “Dearest Lalette, I have come to be your lover.”

Tegval. “No,” she said. “I do not wish it.”

He was close. “But you must; to refuse the gift of love is to lose all. You are of the Myonessae.” (Oh, God of gods, again, she thought; do men want nothing but my body? The temptation flashed and passed to give him this and live within the confines of her mind.)

“No, I say. I will cry out.” She writhed away from his touch, but he found her in the narrow space, the arm pinned her close and his head came down on her breast as he said, thickly; “But you must, you must. I am a diaconal and I have chosen you. I will tell them in Mancherei.”

His grip was so strong that it paralyzed, but he did not for the moment attempt to go further. Scream? Would she be heard above the rocking wind? “No,” she said, “no. Ser Brog will hear. The Captain.”

“It is the watch to daybreak. No one aboard will ever know.”

“No, no, I will not,” replied Lalette, (feeling all her strength melting), though he did not try to hold her hands or to put any compulsion upon her but that of the half-sobbing warm close contact, (somehow sweet, so that she could hardly bear it, and anything, anything, was better than this silent struggle). No water; she let a little moisture dribble out of her averted lips into the palm of one hand, and with the forefinger of the other traced the pattern above one ear in his hair, she did not know whether well or badly. “Go!” she said fierce and low (noting, as though it were something in which she had no part how the green fire seemed to run through his hair and to be absorbed into his head). “Go, and return no more.”

The breathing relaxed, the pressure ceased. She heard his feet shamble toward the door and the tiny creak again before realizing; then leaped like a bird to the heaving deck, night-robed as she was. Too late: even from the door of the cabin, she could see the faint lantern-gleam on Tegval’s back as he took the last stumbling steps to the rail and over into a white curl of foam.

A whistle blew; someone cried: “A man lost!” and Lalette was instantly and horribly seasick.

II

“I will tell you plainly, demoiselle,” said Captain Mülvedo, “that if it were not for Ser Brog saying how he saw with his own eyes that this young man moved to the rail without your urging, I should have been most skeptic. As things stand, I must acquit you of acts direct. As for others, as employment of the Art, they are a matter for a court of Deacons, and since you are bound to Mancherei, you’ll be beyond such jurisdiction.” He stared at her gloomily. “As captain of this ship, and therefore judge in instruction, I must ask you to keep your cabin until we reach port.”

Lalette looked at the moving gullet of the first mate as he stood by the Captain beside the bed, and even this sight seemed to make her the more ill. Said Brog’s voice, dry as a ratchet; “Aye. You have my word for it. The little demoiselle never touched a hand to him as he went over. But he came from her cabin.”

“No more rehearsing of things known. We know all except what she will not tell us,” said Mülvedo. (Her body ached all over from lying in the one position.)

“Aye.” It was Brog again. “Yesterday he was all quick with life, maybe a little hasty, but a kindly, helpful young man, and now the fishes are tearing pieces of his guts out.” Brog’s face wrinkled in what might have been a smile, had there been any mirth in it.

She turned her face away and began to retch, but nothing came up beyond a few drops of spittle, bitter and sour.

“Not nice to think on, no,” said Brog. “But nicer than the mind that would bring such a death to the lad; there’s the real, black, stinking hell.”

(The bird of Lalette’s mind felt the bars shift in tighter, she wanted to cry and beat with her hands.) Said Captain Mülvedo; “Ser Brog, I have acquit this demoiselle of direct acts. You will oblige me by not questioning as though the matter were still to decide. If this were the Art, no jurisdiction lies in us.”

“You are my captain, and I am therefore even under your orders, even as to this court of the ship,” said Brog, his thin lips closing sharply. “But I am master of the cargo, of which she forms a part, and it is my province to know what kind of goods I deliver.”

(Lalette had a sense without seeing it directly that the chandelier swung twice as she looked at the three and thought—the truth? But how to explain about the trip, what Tegval had done, how he had demanded the deepest fruit of love as a casual thing like a cup of water, dragging her down?) “Ah, no,” she said in her dying voice, and swallowed again, turning eyes of misery toward the Captain.

He frowned (and she knew it for a frown in her favor, and knew the reason for it and hated him and herself). “Ser Brog,” he said, “I now declare the court shut. This demoiselle is not cargo but a person.”

Brog’s wrinkles ran deeper; the three passed out, the Captain remaining till latest, to pat her hand on the coverlet. Revolt ran through her veins at kindness for the wrong reason, which was worse than hate or anger; there was no understanding in this seaman who only wanted to change bed-partners now and again, she was afloat on a sea of desires.

The daylight swung from powder to deep dusk. One knocked, and it was the gnome-like creature who stewarded for the Captain, who offered her a bowl of broth. The motion of the ship being a trifle easier, she was able to eat a little and hold it, in spite of the shadow that lay across her mind. (But I will not regret, she cried inwardly, and then one-half her mind played critic to the other and cried—no, no. Is there no surcease?) The hours slid by along a silent stream, and she was alone.

III

All movement ceased. Sickness dropped from her like a veil, and from beneath burst such a joy of spirit as Lalette had rarely known, so that she could have sung herself a song, as she almost leaped from her place to put on the new dress. There was no mirror and she had to feel the strands of her hair into the demoiselle’s knot, hoping the result would not look too recklessly wild. Outside the deckhouse, shouts and confused, orderly trampings were toward, but no one came to call for her until long after she had packed everything into the small trunk, with the book Tegval had given her at the bottom. The door was tapped; Brog, followed by a man with a red peaked hat and a fur of sidewhisker, who held an annotation-roll in his hand.

“This is the Demoiselle Issensteg,” said Brog (and Lalette reflected incontinently that it was hard to distinguish an appearance of melancholy in a face from one of dissipation). “I transmit her to you. She is recommended from Ser Kimred, the residentialist at Netznegon.” He handed the man in the hat a folded letter. “It is my duty to warn you that in this ship she has been confined on suspicion of man-murder through witchery. In the home country, I would have brought her before a Court of Deacons.”

The dunnier bowed, as unsmiling as Brog himself, then with his annotation-roll as a wand, touched Lalette on the arm and her little trunk. “This is not Dossola, but Mancherei,” he said. “Subject to the regulations of the realm of Mancherei, and the association of the Myonessae, we accept her charge and her possessions.” Then, turning to Lalette; “In the name of the God of Love, come with me.”

(Knowing barely the name of these Myonessae, unwilling to ask more lest she somehow tip over the razor-narrow bridge of safety) Lalette only smiled and turned to the door. A plank-way led to the dock; the sun shone yellowly upon a row of wharfside houses, whose brick looked as though streaked with wet, while at many windows there was bunting as though for a festival, but much of it faded, miscolored or torn. As she watched, she brushed against a hand which had been held out to her and was beginning to fall in disappointment. Captain Mülvedo.

“I am sorry,” she said, and took the hand.

“Farewell, demoiselle. I do not believe it. If you are not accepted here, I—that is—”

He seemed at the edge of tears, a droll thing.

“Thank you. I will remember your kindness.” Brog was in the rear, looking right past her (and she had the dreadful feeling that when she was gone, he would have no trouble in bringing the Captain to his own point of view on her. This was goodbye to all yesterdays.). She mounted the plank for the shore.

There was a great press of people about, the men in loose pantaloons hanging over their shoes, and all walking about and yammering as fast as they could. They seemed reasonlessly excited, as though this were a day of crisis; Lalette could hardly make out a sign of that calm assurance that seemed to be the mark of the Amorosians in her own country. They stared at Lalette, the more when two of the guards who waited at the plank with short bills in their hands and the small “city” arbalests strapped to their backs, placed themselves on either side of her at a word from the dunnier, leading across to a building with a low door, over which was a shield painted thickly with something that might be a pair of clasped hands on a field of blue.

There was a door down the hallway rightward, with a little man at a desk behind it, writing laboriously, his tongue in his cheek, as the light struck over his shoulder. The guards led Lalette in; he jumped up and threw down his quill so rapidly that a blot was left on the paper. She noticed food-stains on his jacket.

“You must not interrupt, really you must not interrupt me unannounced,” he said. “You are not authorized. I am a protostylarion.”

His big pop-eyes with blue white seemed to swell as they fell on Lalette; one of the guards laid a paper before him saying; “A candidate for the Myonessae, on the incoming ship from Dossola. Orders of the dunnier.”

“Ah, ah.” The protostylarion was no taller than she herself as he came fussing importantly around the desk to move a chair two fingerlengths for her convenience, then diddled back to his place. The paper made him frown. “Ah, ah, suspicion of the Art. This does not happen often these days, but you are very fortunate to be here, demoiselle, instead of in Dossola. Ah—you have read the First Book of our great leader and Prophet? Answer me now, the misfortune of the loss of patrimony, why do you think that came upon him?”

(Not quite sure whether he meant the character in the book, or the Prophet’s own ejection from the heirship of Dossola), Lalette said hesitantly; “Why, sir, I—I suppose it would be because he tried so arrogantly to increase it.”

“Admirable, admirable. Whereas if he had given of it freely to the old aunt, it had been returned to him in high measure. From which we learn, demoiselle?”

(The jargon was distasteful, but) “That we must lovingly give all we have,” said Lalette, remembering.

The protostylarion bounced up and down behind his desk as he went on, prompting her replies in his eagerness, so that it hardly mattered how little she had read of the famous First Book. A porter came blundering into the midst of the colloquy with her trunk on a hook over his shoulder. This placed a period to the examination, for now the protostylarion fussed with his hands, said “Ah, ah,” two or three times more, then to the guards; “You are released.”

As the pair filed out, he drew from his desk a large ledger and a sheet of blue-colored paper, pointed his quill and said; “You—swear—that—whatever—of—the—Art—you—have—practiced—in —the—past—you—will—abandon—with—all—worldly—vanities —on—reception—into—the—high—order—of—the—Myonessae,” all in one breath. Then, more judicially:

“Your name is—”

“Lalette—” (should she say “Issensteg?”)

“Ah, you made an evasion! The God of love demands all truth from those who come to him.”

She felt a cheek-spot heat at this nagging. “Asterhax. I have given you nothing but truth. If you doubt it I will return to the ship that brought me.”

“Oh no, oh no, my dear demoiselle, you must not mistake. All pasts are buried in the world of love.”

“Well, I have done that.”

“And they will welcome you, I am sure, my dear demoiselle. Oh, the perfect peace.” His pen went scratch, scratch, skipping from ledger to paper, the head cocked on one side as he surveyed the result from one angle, then another, as an artist might look at a drawing, and his smile approved. A fly buzzed in the room.

“So. Demoiselle Lalette, you are now registered of the honorable estate of the Myonessae in the service of the God of love.” He trotted around the desk to hand her the paper, with a red seal on it. “Rest here, rest here, I will seek a porter to lead you to the couvertine.”

(What would he say if he knew I am a murderess? she thought, and followed this with a quickly-suppressed flash of anger at Tegval for having made her one.) The protostylarion came back with a porter who grinned at her fine new dress and picked up the trunk. “Farewell, farewell,” said the little man, waving from where he sat. “You will hardly need a carriage, it is not far.” He was writing again as Lalette followed the porter through the door.

A little recovered from her chagrins, she turned eyes about the street to see what this strange law of the Prophet had made of the country that was to be her new home. The streets seemed wider than those in most of the cities of the ancient motherland, but the new life would have little to do with that, nor with the height of the buildings, which mostly gave red brick for Netznegon’s gloomy dark stone. The shop-windows were full of goods; Lalette could hardly pause to inspect, but from the distance, they had an air of meretriciousness and false luxury. All the people seemed to be in a great hurry; Lalette began to wonder what they would do if she put a small witchery on one of these urgent passengers to make him stand like a post—then shuddered away from the thought.

The porter turned a corner and they were at the gate of what had evidently been at one time a very handsome villa, set back deeply from the street, with a low wall in front of it. One of the trees in the foreyard was dead and another so yellow among the spring-green leaves that it must soon go as well. There was no gate-tender; the porter pushed his way in and led up to the tall oaken double door, which showed scars where an earlier knocker had been taken off and replaced by one in the form of a sun with spreading rays. He knocked; after a long minute an old woman opened on a darkish hall with a pronounced odor of javelle, and asked what was wanted.

“I am registered of the Myonessae,” said Lalette, extending her paper.

“You must give it to the mattern,” said the beldame. “Set the box there.”

“Two obulas,” said the porter, and as Lalette produced her purse, shot a swift, suspicious glance at the old woman. “No. Not in Dossolan money. Do you want me to be thrown into a dungeon?”

Lalette flushed. “It is all I have; I only arrived from there today. Can someone change it for me?” She appealed to the woman who had admitted her.

“Certainly not. It is contrary to the regulation.”

The porter rather surprisingly lost his temper. “Why, you cheap whore, you cheat, you pig-sucker!” he shouted. “I should have known better than to carry for one of you Myonessae.” He stamped his foot. “I’d take your dirty box and throw it in the street, if I didn’t know the smell would kill half the people in town when it burst open.”

A door opened on a sound of feminine background voices. There appeared a woman in black, with hair piled severely close to her head. “What is this, Mircella?” she asked.

“Demoiselle is new. She came without two obulas to pay her porter.”

The dark woman reached to the purse at her belt, drew forth coins and placed them in the porter’s hand. “Here. You are never to appear at this couvertine again.” She turned to Lalette. “You may come in and show me your paper. It is evident that you are in need of instruction.”

As they passed into the side room, light fell on the woman’s face, and Lalette saw that, although it was both strong and stern, it bore the same expression of distant peace she had seen in the widow Domijaiek.

16 THE EASTERN SEA: SYSTOLE

The queasiness had gone from Rodvard’s stomach and the illness from his head, but all his senses were more alive than jets of flame. Every rut gave him agony in the jolting mule-cart, he could not draw away from pain long enough for anger or fear. Yet shortly the very keenness of his hurt anaesthetized all down to no more than an aching tooth; and now the senses, oversharpened by witchery, began to report the world around him. They were passing two people afoot, then another cart, to none of which the driver made salutation.

They must be out of the village, for right overhead, branches began to go past against a sky where horses’ tails slid across tender blue. A bird lit on one of the branches and tipped its head to look down. It seemed to Rodvard as he gazed into the single revealed eye that he could, with his Blue Star, read the avian thought—of food and sex, confused, and not unlike a human’s. This might only be another effect of the witchery, but it set him thinking about his own confusion of mind and what the butler Tuolén had said about Star-bearers and their women; so he considered what species of joy or completeness was to be had from these skirted creatures, who for a spiritless complaisance would exact a slave’s devotion.

Lalette. He wondered whether her witchcraft would give her knowledge of his infidelity of thought with the Countess Aiella, and of deed with the maid Damaris; and if so, what penalty would be demanded of him. Ah, no; why should penalty be due? This was not marriage, he had taken no oath nor meant any. Give back the Blue Star, let us pronounce a bill of farewell, and be damned to Mathurin and his menaces, or even to Remigorius and the cause for which all was done.

The mule’s feet klopped on a bridge, the clouds were thickening toward grey above and birds chirping as they will when a storm is toward. No, no, friend Rodvard, he answered himself; be honorable as you hope to receive honor. Acquiescence she gave you, aye, beneath the trees; but you half forced her then. The night in the widow Domijaiek’s bed was no unwilling gift, but for both of them the end of life and its beginning. A new life with Lalette the witch, holding the sweetness of peril, not that of repose, something beyond any connection that might have been formed with Maritzl of Stojenrosek. Had she laid some witchery upon him to make it so, not being herself affected? Seek her out, anywhere; discover if that enchantment were forever.

Could such things be? Witchery was something which, like death, he had no more than heard of from the world beyond his world. When he was a lad in the village among the spurs of the Shining Mountains, there was the fat old woman who had grown so dreadfully thin, all in a week, and people saying it was witchery on her. The priest came with his oils, but it was too late, and she died the next day, and no one ever found the witch, if there were one. Oh, aye, there were prosecutions of witchery in town, and now the mule-driver’s wife, Lalette, the Blue Star, and he himself caught into something he did not understand and which made him afraid . . . and because he had done no more than cherish high ideals and obey orders.

The pains were less, but all his muscles so immobile that they afforded no yielding to the throw of the cart, and thus piled bruise on bruise. A long ride; it must be after the meridian of the sun, though even heightened perception would not tell him if this were so, since he had lost all sense of direction in the intricacy of the turnings. The mule’s feet and cart’s tires struck paving stones, the movement became uneven, voices were audible and they were entering a town, so that Rodvard began to hope of a rescue—and with that hope, a fear of what would happen if there were no rescue. What did the man mean to do with him? He found no visible answer, for though it was evident that though the repulsive spouses were minded for murders, and himself not the first to fall into their clutches, it hardly seemed they would have fixed the mechanician’s badge on his breast in mere anticipation of disposing of a body.

Droll to think of oneself as a body—an idea he did not remember having held before, ever. His mind achieved a wedding between this line of thought and the earlier one, or how it was when that urge toward the Countess Aiella had slipped out of merely playing a part into deep desire, it was the voice of body speaking to body. But it was not that way on the widow’s bed; that night it was as though a flame sprang up, to which their bodies responded last of all. Ah, Maritzl (he thought), with you also there might have been such a union of flames, to last forever and ever, only I did not know, I did not dare, before the Blue Star had bound me to this other.

Now a certain brightening of the diffused light reflected into the cart told him they were passing houses with snow-white walls; by this, with the time and distance, they must be in Sedad Vix city. Odors floated to him—salt water, fish, the spicy products of the south, not unpleasantly blended. The docks. Was the man going to make him a body by heaving him into the sea? To his futile angers was added that of not being able to see the old rascal’s eye—now the Blue Star had recovered its virtue under the witch-wife’s ministration—but there was time for little more of thinking, for the cart drew up with a cry to the mule, the driver got down heavily, his feet sounding on stones and then on plank.

He was gone briefly; Rodvard felt the covering taken from him, and with a grunt, he was hoisted to a shoulder, stiff as a log. A whirling view of pallid dockside houses, the masts of a tall ship with her sails hanging in disorderly loops; he came down with a jar that shook every bone onto what appeared to be some structure projecting from the deck, where a red face surrounded by whisker looked into his own. One eye in the face was only a globule of spoiled milk; (the cold Blue Star on Rodvard’s heart told him the good eye held both cruelty and greed).

“Yah,” said Redface. “The fish is cold.”

“I tell you now, live as an eel. Fetch a mirror.”

Redface reached out a dirty-nailed hand and pinched Rodvard’s cheek, hard. “Mmmmb. A spada’s worth of life. To save argument, I’ll give you two.”

“Ey, look at him, a proved mechanician with a badge and all. I say to you, my old woman she has done with him so he’ll work like a clock, pick, pick, never mind time nor nothing. A gold scuderius; you should give me two.”