Part 13

They chaffered horribly over his body, while Rodvard lay moveless as a statue (thinking of how he was one, alas not cradled in light and speed like the Wingèd Man to whom he had compared Count Cleudi when Cleudi marked the resemblance between them; not upborne by spirit like the figure of the archer-hero; but a stiff corpse, subject of a sale, a carcass, a beef). He heard the chink of money passing; the one-eyed man gave an order that Rodvard was to be taken below, and someone carried him awkwardly with many bumpings down a ladder to a tight room smelling of dirty humans. He was tossed high onto a kind of shelf and left alone for a long time (thinking all the while of what the mule-driver had said about his being witched to work like a clock, and wondering whether it were true).

After a while, a doze came upon him, for which there was no emergence till the round hole in the ship’s wall had ceased to give light. The place filled suddenly then with feet and words, many of the latter with a Kjermanash accent, or in that language itself. One of these persons pointed to him and there was a laugh. Rodvard tried to turn his head, and to his surprise found it would move a tiny arc, though by an effort that redoubled the agony throughout the bruised mass of his body. Yet the stirring was a joy as great as any he had ever experienced, and he lay repeating it, as the assemblage below—garrulous as all Kjermanash—came and went with pannikins from which floated an appetizing perfume of stew. Rodvard found other movements beside his head, and lay repeating them through the twinge of pain. A whistle blew, some of the men went out and up, while the others undressed noisily, put out the light and composed themselves for sleep on shelves like that which bore the young man.

For him there was little sleep, and as life flowed along ankylosed muscles, he was invaded by a sense of irrevocable disgrace, so poignant that it drowned fear. Damaris the maid . . . he had sold his soul for a copper there . . . not that he felt to the girl any profound debt as to Lalette, or that such a debt were just—but whether from the priests’ teaching at the academy, or the words of Remigorius, he had somehow grown into a pattern of life which, being violated, one was cast down into a sea of life by merest impulse . . . ah, no, should it not be rather that each event must be judged by itself? . . . and no, again—for by what standard shall one judge? Impulse or an absolute, there is no third choice.

So thinking, so seeking to find a clue to conduct (or to justify his own, merely, Rodvard told himself in a moment of bitterness), he lay on his comfortless couch, aware that the ship had begun to move with uneasy tremors; and presently dawn began to flower. At the room’s entrance a lantern showed a bearded face, into which a whistle was thrust to blow piercingly. All the men leaped from their shelves with a gabble like a common growl and began dressing in the greatest haste. The bearded man shoved through them and shook Rodvard so rudely that he was jerked from his shelf, coming down thump on the deck, with feet that would not hold him.

“Rouse out!” said the bearded man, catching him a clout across the headbone. “You lazy scum of shore mechanicians must learn to leap when the mate sounds.”

Rodvard staggered amid coarse laughter, but having no means of protest, followed the Kjermanash, who were scrambling rapidly up the ladder. They were in open sea; the breeze was light, the day clear and the air fine, but even so, the slight motion gave him a frightful qualm. His first steps were across the deck to the rail, where he retched up all that lay on his stomach, which was very little.

“You, what’s your name?” said the bearded mate.

“Rodvard—Berg-elin.”

“I call you Puke-face. Go forward to the mainmast, Puke-face, eat your breakfast if you can, and then repair the iron fitting that holds the drop-gear repetend. The carpenter’s cabinet under the break of the prowhouse will give you tools.”

“I—I cannot use tools. I am—a clerk, not a mechanician.”

“Death and dragons! Come aft with me, you cunilingous bastard!” The mate’s hand missed Rodvard’s neck, but caught a clutch of jacket at the shoulder, and dragged him along the deck to where a flight of steps went up, and the one-eyed captain stood, an ocular under his arm. “Captain Betzensteg! This lump of excrement says it knows nothing of mechanic.”

Sick though he was, Rodvard felt the Blue Star burn cold and looked up into an eye (brimming with something more than mere fury, something strange from which his mind turned). “Diddled, by the Service!” said the voice, between heavy lips. “When next—ah, throw your can of piss up here.”

Rodvard was jerked against the steps, striking his shin, and stumbled up by using his hands. The one-eyed captain reached out and ripped the badge from his breast, tearing the cloth. “Go below, stink-pot,” said he, “and tell my boy he’s promoted to seaman. You shall serve my table.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rodvard and looked around for his route, since all the architecture of a ship was stranger to him than that of a cathedral.

“Go!” said the captain, and lifted an arm as though to strike him with the ocular, but changed his mind. “What held you from telling your status?”

“Nothing,” said Rodvard, and gripped the rail of the stair-head, for his gorge began rising within.

“If you puke on my deck you shall lick it up.” The captain turned his back and shouted; “Lift the topper peak-ropes!”

Down the stairs again there were not so many ways to choose from, so he took to the door to the right (hoping under his mind that this would be an omen) along a passage and into a room, where a sullen-faced lad of maybe eighteen was folding a cloth from a table. “You are Captain Betzensteg’s boy?” asked Rodvard, trying to keep from looking through the window, where the sea-edge rocked slowly up and down. “I am to say you are promoted seaman.”

The lad’s mouth popped open as though driven by a spring, he dropped the napery and ran around the table to seize Rodvard by both arms. “Truly? If you trick me—” For one instant pale eyes flashed fury and the small down before first shaving trembled. But he must have seen honesty before him (“Born for the sea and freedom!” his thought read), and quickly thrust past to make for the door.

“Stay,” said Rodvard, holding him by the jacket. “Will you not show me—?” The spasm caught him and he retched, mouth full of sour spittle.

The lad turned laughing, but without malice, and clapped him on the back. “Heave hearty!” he said. “It will come better when you come to learn the free way of the ocean; grow to love it and care nothing for landlouts. Here are the linens.” He opened the midmost of a set of drawers built into the wall. “The old man takes no napkins save when there are guests aboard—a real dog of the brine, with fish-blood in his veins, that one! I am called Krotz; what’s your name?”

Rodvard’s telling, he hardly seemed to notice, but continued his flood of instructions. “In these racks are the silvers; he uses only the best, and be careful at dinner to set his silver bear on the table, it was given him by the syndics at the time of the Tritulaccan war for his seamanlike skill. The bed-bunk you must carefully fold in at the base, but he likes the top loose, so. Wine always with the early meals, it is here. If the weather’s fair he sometimes takes fired-wine in the evening. If he orders it so—”

The lad Krotz halted, looked sidewise out of his eyes and leaned close. “Hark, Bergelin, I am not what you would call jealous. Have you ever—that is, when he has fired-wine, he may desire to treat you as his lover.”

“I—” Rodvard recoiled, and retched again.

“Ah, do not be so dainty. It is something that every true seaman must learn, and keeps us from being like the landlouts. You do not know how it can be, and he gives you silver spadas after. But if you will not, listen, all the better, when the old man calls for his fired-wine, set the bottle on the table, take away the silver bear, and call me.”

Said Rodvard (no little astonished, that the emotion of which The Blue Star spoke was indeed jealousy); “No. I’ll have none of it, ever.”

A smile of delight so pure that Rodvard wondered how he had thought the lad’s look sullen. “The cook will give you breakfast. I must go—to be a seaman.”

Captain Betzensteg ate by himself. Rodvard was glad that he remembered the silver bear, but when he tried to hold forward the platter of meat as he remembered seeing Mathurin do it for Cleudi, he got things wrong, of course, and the one-eyed man growled; “Not there, you fool. The other side.” The meat itself was something with much grease, pork probably, which it sickened Rodvard even to look at as the captain chewed liquidly, pointing with his fork to a corner of the cabin and declaring he would barber someone of his ears unless it were kept cleaner. That night there was no call for fired-wine; Rodvard felt a surge of gratitude for preservation as he cleared up after the meal, and made his way forward to the crew quarters in what he now had learned to be the peak-jowl.

Sickness sent him to his shelf at once, for the movement of the ship was becoming more vivid as twilight fell, but sleep had not yet reached him when there was a change of duty, as in the morning, and of those who came tumbling down the ladder, Krotz was one. He was much less the lord of the earth than earlier; no sooner was the lad in place than all the Kjermanash were after him unmercifully, with hoots and ribald remarks, pinching his cheeks and his behind, till at the last the lad, crying; “Let me alone!” flung his arms out so wildly that he caught one of the sailors a clip on the nose and sent him staggering. The fellow snarled like a tiger, all his rough humor dissolved in black bile, and recovering, whipped out a tongue of steel. But Rodvard, without knowing how or why he did so, rolled from his shelf onto the shoulder and arm that held the knife, bearing the man to the floor.

The Kjermanash fought upward; Rodvard took two or three nasty blows on the side of the head, as he clung with both his hands to the dagger, and knew with more interest than fear that he must lose in the end to the overbearing strength of the man. But just as he was giving way, a pair of hands beneath the armpits wrenched him clear and flung him against the shelves, while a big foot kicked the knife.

“What’s here?” demanded the voice of the bearded mate. “Puke-face, you’ll have a dozen lashes for this, damme if you don’t! You to attack a full-grade seaman!”

Said Rodvard, feeling of his head; “He would have knifed Ser Krotz.”

“Ser!” The mate barked derision, and his head darted round like a snake’s. “Is this veritable?”

All the Kjermanash began cawing together; the mate appeared to comprehend their babble, for after a minute or two of it, he held up his hand with; “Shut up. I see it. This is the sentence—Vetehikko, three days’ pay stopped for knifing. As for you, Puke-face, your punishment’s remitted, but in the future, you’ll sleep in the lazarette to teach you your true status aboard this basket.”

He turned to the ladder, and not a word from the Kjermanash for once, but as they glowered among themselves, young Krotz came to throw his arms around Rodvard. “I owe you a life,” he said, at the edge of tears.

Said Rodvard; “But I will pay for it.”

“Ah, no. I—will surely buy you free.”

“I did not know there was status aboard a sea-ship; you said the life on one was free as a bird.”

“Why, so it is, indeed, but not for lack of status, which is the natural order of things. Are you an Amorosian?”

It nearly slipped off Rodvard’s lips that he was rather of the Sons of the New Day, but Krotz’ words showed how little he would find such a confession acceptable, and he did not trust the Kjermanash; and by another morning, the ship’s motion told on him somewhat less heavily.

17 CHARALKIS: THE DEPTH AND RISE

It would be maybe on the fourth day out (for time had little meaning on that wide blue field) when Rodvard remarked how at the evening meal Captain Betzensteg took more than usual wine, glowering sullenly at his plate while he jabbed a piece of bread into gravies as though they had done him a harm. The last mouthful vanished, he sucked fingers undaintily and without looking up, said; “Set out the fired-wine.”

Rodvard felt a cold sweat of peril. The silver bear leaped from his fingers, and it was his fortune that he caught it before it reached the floor. The captain sat with eyes down, not appearing to notice. Bottle clacked on table; the one-eyed man poured himself a deep draught, and at the sound of the door opening, said; “Stay.”

Rodvard turned. Both the captain’s hands were on the table, gripping the winecup and he was staring into it as though it were a miniature of his beloved. “Come here.”

(Fear: but what could one do or say?) Rodvard glided to his post in serving-position behind the chair. For a long breathless moment no sound but the steady pace of someone on the deck above, muted slap of waves and clatter of ship’s gear. Then the head came up, Rodvard saw how the rich lips were working (and in that single eye read not only the horrible lust he had expected, but that which gave him something akin to pity, a ghastly agony of spirit, a question that read; “Shall I never be free?”) Captain Betzensteg lifted the cup in his two hands and tossed off the contents at a gulp, gagged, gave a growl of “Arrgh!” and, reaching up his left hand, ran it pattingly over Rodvard’s buttocks.

“No,” said the young man under his breath, pulling away. The captain jerked to his feet, violently oversetting his chair, and with distorted face, drove his fist against the table. “Idiot!” he cried. “Do you not know your benefit?” and reaching to his purse, tossed clanking against the bottle a handful of coins. Rodvard shrunk away, and giving a kind of mewing cry as the one-eyed creature leaped, tried for the door. His foot caught something, he took three desperate lunges, gripped the handle as the huge fist caught the side of his head and spilled him through onto the deck, senseless.

II

When next he knew, there was a sour smell of wine, it was dark and dripping sounded. He could not think through the curtain of headache; the scampering was undoubtedly rat, but why? Where was added to why with slowly gathering memory—still on the ship certainly, since the bare boards on which he lay heaved with a slow and even beat.

The right side of his neck was sore, and the opposite soreness was on his head. He thought: ah, for why am I so punished? and heaved himself upon an elbow to find a pannikin of water by his side, which he drank greedily. It was dark, a kind of velvet twilight; yet not so dark that he failed to make out that he lay prisoned in a narrow passage between tall casks that rose on either hand, groaning in their lashings. The quantity of light must mean day was outside, and he had lain a long time. Now he came afoot and wondered whether he should seek the deck, but decided contrary, since someone for some reason had brought him here, and there might be perils abroad. Sleep? Ah, no. He sat down to think out his situation, but could make no sense of any part, therefore abandoned the effort, and with a tinge of regret over his lost books, let his mind run along the line of Iren Dostal’s sweet rhymes until tears reached his eyes.

This could not occupy him forever, either; a profound and trembling ennui came on him, so his fingers made small motions tracing out an imaginary design. A long time; a step sounded, coming down from somewhere and then along among the casks. Krotz. He said:

“You must be careful. Oh, do not make a noise. He would hurt me if he knew I helped you. Here.”

In the gloom something was thrust against Rodvard’s hand which, by the touch, he knew for a dish of congealing food. “What is it?” he asked. “I was struck and lost remembrance.”

“You truly do not know? I thought it was feigned when you failed to speak as he said you were to be thrown overside, and he took the young Kjermanash—.” A shout sounded flatly from above. “Oh, I could hurt him. I must go.” The last words went dim as Krotz disappeared among the tall columns of casks and Rodvard was left to his meditations. The food was a stew of lamb, and it tasted like candle-grease.

Dark had come before the lad did again, with a meal even worse than its foregoer; trembling and unwilling to talk. Rodvard found himself fingering round the great casks from one curve to another, counting the planks in them and thinking whether there might not be some mathematical relation in the figures he counted. A futile thing to do, he told himself, wishing he had Dr. Remigorius’ philosophy, who often spoke of how a man should be complete in himself, since each one lives in a self-built cell of pellucid glass and may touch another only with, not through, that veil. Ah, bah! It is not true (he thought); I have been touched sharply enough by this very Remigorius, but for whom I’d not be in such a coil, with Lalette and Damaris, ideals thrown down, and on a mad voyage to nowhere. . . . There was something wrong with this, on which he could not put the finger—so now he fell to counting the planks again, or try to make a poem, ending the effort with an inward twitter, as though mice were running under his skin, as he waited, not with patience, for the next arrival of Krotz with his purloined food.

The lad was faithful, but always looking over his shoulder; trembling so that it was nearly impossible to get two consecutive words from him, by which it came about that there was no plan for Rodvard’s escape when the word was that Charalkis Head had come in sight. The ship would lie that night in the harbor of Mancherei’s brick-built capital, and what counsel now? Shifting his feet like a dancer, Krotz said he thought Rodvard might easily slip past the deck-guard into the water; but this scheme split on the fact that he lacked the skill of swimming. All was still undecided that night; a sharp sword of apprehension pricked his fitful sleep, nor were matters amended when he was fully roused by hammerings over the doors of his prison.

Kjermanash voices sounded their customary cackle. A shaft of light struck down, so brilliant that Rodvard’s dark-hooded eyes could scarcely bear it, and he shrank back along the cask-alley, hands over face. It was not the best means of hiding; down swung one of the Kjermanash to fix the tackle for lifting out the cargo, gave a whoop and pounced, being presently joined by other sailors. There was much laughter and excited talk in their own language; they patted Rodvard and tweaked the long-grown hair on his face, then urged him up the ladder deckward, with “Key-yip! Kee-yup!” and a sheath-knife that banged him in the crotch from behind as he climbed, blinking.

At the top he stumbled out on a deck where the mate stood, wrinkling eyes against the sun. “Puke-face, by the Service! I thought you had been fish-farts long ago. Ohé, captain! Here’s your cheating mechanician!”

Now Rodvard noticed that Captain Betzensteg was a few paces beyond, talking to a man in a decent grey jacket and a red-peaked hat, but wearing no badge of status. The one-eyed monster turned, and his full lips twisted. “Put him in the lazarette with chains, since he’s so slippery. Well have the trial at sea.”

The single eye looked on Rodvard (and it said one thing only—“Death.”)

The young man staggered; he cried desperately: “I appeal.”

“A captain’s judge on his own ship. I reject your appeal. Take him away.”

Said the man in grey; “A moment, Ser Captain. This is not good law for the dominion of Mancherei, in whose authority you now stand. We have one judge that stands above every mortal protestation, that is, the God of love, whose law was set forward by our Prophet.”

The captain snarled, black and sour; “This is my ship. I order you to leave it.”

The man in the grey jacket had a thin, ascetic face. One eyebrow jagged upward; “This is our port. I order you to leave it without discharging a single item of your cargo.”

“You dare not. Our Queen—”

“Has no rule in Mancherei. That was tried out at the time of the Tritulaccan war. Young ser, what is the ground of your appeal to our law?”

(The Blue Star was cold as cold on Rodvard’s heart, but there seemed a bright shimmer like a haze in the eyes that met his, and not a thought could he make out through it.) He said; “Because the captain of this ship would be both jury and accuser.”

“He lies,” growled Betzensteg. “My underofficer is the accuser, for that this man refused to repair a drop-gear.”

“That is a question of fact, to be decided by a court which can gain nothing from the decision,” said the man in grey, calmly. He swung to Rodvard. “Young man, do you place yourself in the justice of Mancherei, to accept the rule and decision of its authority?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Rodvard (willing to do anything to escape the terror of that baneful optic).

The man in grey produced a small paper scroll and touched Rodvard lightly on the arm. “Then I do declare you under the law of the Prophet of Mancherei; and you, Ser Captain, will interfere at your gravest peril. Young man, take your place in my boat.”

III

Rodvard was motioned to the bow of the craft, from which floated a banner with a device much resembling a dove, but it was in the false heraldry of grey on white, and hard to make out. Spray was salt on his face; as they reached a stone dock a ladder was lowered down, and he would have waited for the grey man, but the latter motioned him imperiously to go up first.

The pierside street hummed with an activity that to Rodvard seemed far more purposeful than that of languid Netznegon, with horses and drays, porters bearing packages, men on horseback or in little two-wheeled caleches, pausing to talk to each other under the striped shadows thrown across the wharfs by a forest of tall masts. Their clothes were different. From a tavern came a sound of song, though it was early in the morning. (It seemed to Rodvard that most of the people were more cheerful than those of his homeland; and he thought it might be that the Prophet’s rule had something to do with it.)

“This way,” said one of the barge-rowers, and touched him on the arm. He was guided across the dock and up to a pillared door where persons hurried in and out. “What is your name?” asked the grey man, pausing on the step; made an annotation, then said to the rower guide; “Take him to the Hawkhead Tavern and see that he has breakfast. Here is your warrant. I will send archers for the complaining mate, but I do not think the court will hear the case before the tenth glass of the afternoon.”

“I am a prisoner?” asked Rodvard.

The other’s face showed no break. “No; but you will find it hard to run far. Be warned; if you are not condemned unheard, no more are you released because the accuser overrode his right. The doctrine of our Prophet gives every grace, but not until every debt is paid and the learner finds by what it was he has been deceived.”

He made a perfunctory salutation and turned on his heel. Rodvard went with the rower, a burly man in a shirt with no jacket over it, asking as he strode along; “What was it he meant by saying I’d find it hard to run far?”

The face composed in wrinkles of astonishment. “Why, he’s an Initiate! You’d no more than think on an evasion when the guards would be at your heels.”

Rodvard looked at him in counter-surprise (and a shiver ran through him at the thought that these people of the Prophet might somehow have learned to read minds without the intervention of any Blue Star, a thing he had heard before only as a rumor). “What!” he said to change the subject. “I see no badges of status anywhere. Is it true that you have none in Mancherei?”