Hardly had the receding footsteps left the first flight when Rodvard, burning inwardly with anxiety, suspense and the thought of another do-nothing day, which combined to translate themselves into desire, swung the girl off her feet in his arms and bore her toward the bed without a word. She struggled a little and the Blue Star told him she was not very willing, but the contact of their bodies soon caught her, she only asked to be careful of her dress as she pulled it off—and Mme. Kaja’s voice said; “Oh.”
Rodvard rolled over, blood running hot through his cheeks. “I am so-o-o sorry,” the older woman said. “I was going to the Service and found I had forgot my Book of Days. But you must not mind, really you must not, when I was in the opera, His Majesty used to make three of us attend him together and when the heart speaks . . .” rattling like a broken music-box in terms that Rodvard scarcely heard, as she crossed the room to take the Book of Days and left again without looking at them directly.
Lalette (feeling as though she had bathed in a sewer and never wanted to touch anything clean again) took her dress to put it on. When Rodvard touched her shoulder, she shook his hand away and said, simply; “No.”
“It was my fault,” he said, “and I regret—”
“No. I am the one most to blame. It does not matter now for any reason.” Her mouth moved and she looked down, tieing laces. “Dear God, what your fine friends will think of me! I should have accepted Count Cleudi’s offer; at least I would have been well paid for the name I’ll have.”
He felt himself flush again. “Well, if they call you any name you do not wish to have, it will be your own fault,” he said. “I have offered you marriage—”
“Ah, yes, indeed, with me furnishing the priest’s spada for the ceremony.”
“—and I will hold to the offer. Demoiselle, you are not just.”
She turned and sat down, (feeling suddenly weary, bitten with the edge of concern about her mother, so that it was not worth while to quarrel). He made one or two beginnings of speech, but could settle on nothing worth saying; moved about the room, clanking the coppers in his pocket, and looked out the window; picked at one or two keys of the music in a manner that showed he had no training with it; found a book of Mme. Kaja’s and standing, skimmed a few pages, then set it down; resumed his pacing; abandoned it; walked to where he had placed his few belongings on a chair, took his own book and settled himself purposefully to read, in a position where his face was mostly in shadow from her.
(The angry shame had run off Lalette now, she could only see that he was truly unhappy.) After a little while she ran across the room, put her arms around his shoulder and kissed the side of his face. “Rodvard,” she said, “I really meant it all. If you want me, you may have me any time you wish.”
He swung her down to his lap, but (now afraid of interruption) would go no farther than kissing her and holding her close, so for a long time they remained thus lip to lip, speaking a little to exchange memories of things pleasant in their few meetings and not noticing they had missed a meal, until they heard Mme. Kaja’s step outside the door, which this time she made firm enough to give them warning. The singer began to talk at once about the Service and how as the chanters intoned the celestial melody and the violet vestments fluttered among the flowers that fell from the galleries to crush fragrantly beneath the worshipers’ knees, she could feel every power of evil roll from her mind—“though the second baritone was flat in themusanna. Oh, if only the court would have religion in its heart, as the poor people do, who sat with tears in their eyes.” She smiled suddenly on Lalette:
“I spoke to my own priest, too, for you. I know you must have a confession to make by now—” she held up outspread fingers before her face and tittered through them “—so I made up a story for you, about a jealous husband, and he will hear you after dark, when all’s safe, and you won’t have to pay but a copper or two.”
Lalette looked up. “But there’s no confession to make. . . . Did you find out about my mother?”
Rodvard saw Mme. Kaja’s eyes open wide, and felt the cold stone (she was not believing Lalette at all, and for some reason was desperately frightened that the girl should lie). “Oh, you poooor child,” she said. “It was so unthinking of me to forget to tell you. I did not find out much, but I know the provosts have not taken her, and Count Cleudi is not as ill as pretended, that is only a story.”
She set down packages of food, a dish of lentils with bread and wine; began to make ready the table, keeping her eyes averted, so Rodvard could not read her thinking (it came to him that he would not be the first Star-bearer she had met) as she talked rapidly, about the Service once more. The priest had said that when anyone admitted evil to his heart, peril lay upon all persons approaching the lost one. “For these powers of evil increase like mice in a granary, running from one soul to another, and as farmers will often burn an old grain-bin to keep the vermin from spreading, so it is lawful and even necessary to destroy the body of one infected by the powers of evil. He was talking about this poor child here, it was easy to see.”
Rodvard (to whom this was interesting, if somewhat questionable discourse) would have inquired more as she paused for breath, but Lalette (who found it more than tiresome) broke in to ask what of the city? what of the hunt for her?
“Oh, they have opened the gates again, though I did not go to see, and put guards everywhere. But it will be all right. Have I ever recounted to you, friend Rodvard, that I was in arrest once myself? It was because of that Oronari, who was so jealous because I could carry the high note in ‘The Mayern Lovers’ while she could not, and had me accused of stealing some of the jewels that were loaned for the spring festival performance. I felt very badly about it, because she was a friend of mine, but it’s just as the priest said, the power of evil had gained control over her, and there was nothing I could do but complain to the Baron Coespel, who was my protector then, and he had her banished the . . .”
She stuffed food into her mouth, masticating noisily as she babbled. Rodvard caught a flash of Lalette’s eye (and knew she was thinking how thin the veneer of half a lifetime around the court was over someone with a peasant’s background). To change things he asked; “Madame, is there any word of the doctor?”
“He did not send the fruiterer from his street?” She sighed and turned to Lalette. “Then it is likely that he has no money as yet. He is so good and kind and works for so little that it is often so. Dear child, have you no funds at all?”
Said Lalette; “Only two spadas. But I took all the money in the house when I left, and my mother—”
“Dear child, of course we all love our parents and do all we can for them, but after all, they are only our relatives by accident and not the choice of the heart—” she smote her breast in the gesture Rodvard remembered “—and when the heart speaks, God dwells in us to drive out the powers of evil. Then we are grateful to those who speak to us through the heart, and if we have anything we give it to them. I denied the heart once—”
“Your pardon,” said Lalette, and stood up to leave the table. Her face was a little white.
Mme. Kaja finished the last of the wine and wiped her mouth. “I know it is hard for you, being of the witch-families, dear child,” she said. “But Uncle Tutul, who is the priest we are going to see tonight, says that even a witch may save herself if she gives up everything to those she loves, and oh, my dear, I really do not mind missing my pupils, but—”
Lalette’s mouth strained. She stood up and plucked from her waist the tiny purse. “Here,” she cried, “are the spadas,” and flung them ringing silvernly against the plates. “Take them; I am going to the provosts myself. To be seduced, I will, it was my fault. But I will owe no obligation for it.” She turned to the door so fast that Rodvard barely barred the way before her.
“No,” said he, as she tried to push him from the way. “You shall not go like this.” Their hands caught and she struggled for a moment. “Or if you’ll say you do not love and never will, go; and I will join you before the Deacons’ court. But it was another tale that you told lately.”
Said Mme. Kaja; “Oh, dear child, you must not resist such love.” She tittered (and the nerves of both the others jangled).
Lalette sat down. “I am at the mercy of you two,” she said.
“Mercy? Mercy?” The singer’s bracelets clanked. “Ah, no, we are at yours, and seek to help you at our own risk. Not so, friend Rodvard?” She swung to face him for an unguarded moment (and he was staggered till he must grip the table-edge at the blast of hate for Lalette behind her eyes. There was a strange mother-thought in it too, he could not make out the detail.) Kaja’s glance went restlessly on across the room. She stood up in her turn, saving; “I do not know the hour, my watch is being repaired, but I am sure by the dimness outside it must be late, and Uncle Tutul is waiting. Demoiselle Asterhax—no, I shall call you Lalette, it is so much more friendly—will you come?”
(Rodvard thought; if I let her go, everything will arrange itself to my utmost advantage.) “Maritzl,” he said, “do not go out this evening. There’s no—”
Mme. Kaja tittered once more. “Ah, friend Rodvard,” she said, “if you’d have women kind to you, you must remember their names. Will you come, Demoiselle Lalette? Even if there’s no confession, it will be a joy to hear Uncle Tutul’s discourse.”
Rodvard; “Lalette, I beg you, by all you have said this day and all we hope for in the future, do not go out now. I have a reason.” He reached one hand and took hers, as she looked at him (wondering why he was so vehement in such a small matter); a child’s look, with trust in it.
“Well, then,” and she sat down again. A glassy smile appeared on Mme. Kaja’s face, and she shook one finger at Lalette as she hurried to the door. “You naughty Rodvard; she will certainly have a confession to make before I return,” and her steps were audible, going down.
Lalette’s hands lay listless in her lap. For a minute there was silence, in which she rose, walking slowly to the window to gaze out and down, not turning around. “What is your reason and who is Maritzl?”
He had begun to make up his bundle with quick fingers, the volume of Iren Dostal inside. “We must leave here forthwith. The Blue Star—she will do you a terrible harm if she can.”
“You have told me nothing I did not know without that bit of witchery. A pattern would be useless against her, though, she is too close to the Church. . . . Rodvard.”
“What will you have?” He pulled the edge of the cloak tight.
“I am sorry I said what lately I did . . . about being seduced. Will you forgive? I do not wish to be a shrew, as my mother said, and I will say that I do not regret—what we did.”
He dropped the knot half-made and ran over to her, but she shifted in his grasp, pointing. “Rodvard!”
Down the line of her finger he saw hurrying figures pass the lantern at the gate of the Street Cossao. Impossible to miss Mme. Kaja or the priest, or the provost with bare alerted sword. Said Rodvard; “I did not think her so quick in her grimness. Is there another stair?”
“Not that I know. I am sure not. No escape. Oh—”
“That cannot be true. Life is to those who struggle for it, says Dr. Remigorius.” He threw the latch and pushed the window outward; not a foot down lay a broad rain-gutter, which being proved solid by foot-weight test, he went three rapid steps across the room to sling his bundle over one shoulder, stepped out cautiously, caught a grip at the edge of the dormer with his right hand (not daring to look down into the dizzy dark), and stretched the other to Lalette. “Come.”
“Oh, I—”
“Come!”
He could feel her shiver dreadfully as she took the step, she almost tripped over her dress on the sill, but once out, it was she who stretched to the limit of his restraining hand to swing the window closed. By good fortune it was a suave spring night; Rodvard could see stars past the rim of the house as they edged rightward, free hands pressed against the slates of the mansard, until contact was made with the second dormer, the one in the dressing room. He gripped at that edge, sliding foot against foot, the bundle almost pulling him off balance where he came against the projection. “Hurry,” whispered Lalette. “I can hear them.”
Ahead and beyond the roof turned; one might work round that backslope but it would only lead to the opposite side of Mme. Kaja’s garret. Rodvard halted his sliding progress and looked over his shoulder to see the loom of the house at the back of the court, fortunately of the same height. A glance down showed another gutter, with something more than a thigh-length of black space in separation. He turned again, face brushing slates, to make out that Lalette had seen it, too.
“Shall we try it?” he whispered, and then, incontinently, “I love you” (which was for that enchanted moment true). For answer she disengaged her hand from his and began to tuck up her skirt, leaning with cheek against the roofslope. He swung and tossed the bundle to the other gutter; set foot on the edge where they were, teetered, and with perspiring palms, pushed himself into the long step, almost going down when the lip of the opposite gutter proved higher. But it was wider as well, it held, he was able to reach a hand out and pull her across.
There were no windows on this side of the other house, they found it easy to slide along leftward to the corner, and by the especial grace of heaven, there was a drain at the angle, in which Rodvard’s foot caught to keep them from tumbling where the gutter ended suddenly, with the back of the building going down sheer. They both stood breathless as a window in the building they had just left cracked open, a voice said; “No, not along the gutter there. Perhaps they jumped.” Mme. Kaja’s titter was raised. “We must get more men and search—”
Lalette pressed Rodvard’s hand; the window closed, and they stood mute on the roof-edge, finger laced in finger, for it seemed a long time. From below in the court, voices floated up, clear as though they were only a few feet away, except that one could not make out words, only that Kaja’s tone was among the rest. Lalette drew him to her and whispered; “We must go back through before she returns,” and began to lead to where they had crossed the gap. She was clearly right, they had no future there, the roof where they were had no break, was only the side of the building, which went to its peak at the front as well as the back.
The return, with its repetition of peril already overcome, was worse than the passage. Rodvard had to stand on the very edge of the gutter to swing back. Lalette followed lightly. By the time he had reached the window of the dressing-room, worked it open with one hand, and had a leg across the sill, he dared look down—and saw what might have made them earlier hesitate about making a return, namely a blue provost standing watchfully under the lamp at the street entrance, while two or three figures more were moving about. But like most searchers, they never looked aloft.
“Where?” whispered Lalette as they stood in the room, and he:
“We dare not leave the building now. Even if they were not below, the doorman will be awake. Have you seen anyone else here?”
“I have been a prisoner.”
“Then we must try at random whether it is true, as the priests say, that not all men are evil.”
Crossing the outer room, hand in hand in the dark, Rodvard stumbled against a chair, swore softly, and they both laughed under breath. A board creaked, so did the hinges of the outer door, and they were going down, each in turn tripping a little at the short end of the steps where the stairway turned. By unspoken mutual agreement, they tiptoed past the door of the outer apartment of the fifth and to that at the rear of the house. Rodvard gathered his breath and knocked.
No step sounded, but as they stood close to catch any stir, a clear, childish treble came muffled through the wood:
“What is it?”
Rodvard squeezed Lalette’s hand. “I cannot tell you from here,” she said with her mouth close to the door, “but we need help. Will you let us in?”
Pause, in which a chain rattled. “In the name and protection of the God of Love, enter,” and the door melted before them into a darkness different because it held shapes. “Stand there till I make a light,” said the young voice. “You must be careful not to break things.”
There was a small sound of fumbling, flint and steel clicked and the candle came slowly into light on a scene that made Rodvard and Lalette both almost cry out, for the small room seemed crowded with people; princes and queens with coronets, richly and gaily dressed, beggars in rags of silk, yellow warriors with ram-horn helmets, Zigraners with want-chins and sliding eyes and all other fantasies of human shape, so life-like in the uncertain gleam that it was an eye-flick before they could be recognized as festival masquerades. In the midst of them a smooth-haired boy of it might be anywhere from twelve to sixteen stood bowing gravely in his night-hose, candle held at arm’s length.
“I am glad to see you,” he said. “My name is Laduis Domijaiek.”
It was a good name for them, from the northwestern provinces, where Queen and Florestan were least popular. Said Rodvard; “We are pursued by the city provosts because a court lord wishes harm to this lady. Will you help her get away?”
The boy looked at Lalette, cocking his head on one side, as though listening to a distant voice. “Yes,” he said. “My heart says it is right and we must always listen to the heart. Besides, we don’t like the provosts.”
“Thank you,” said Lalette. “Where are your parents?”
“Father is in another world, and mother’s at the Marquis of Palm’s palace to make the costumes for the spring festival. She’s going to stay all night and she told me I must go to bed. But this is more fun.” He looked at Lalette again, and his eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, are you the witch? Witch something for me.”
In spite of her situation, Lalette smiled. “Aren’t you afraid it would hurt you?”
“Oh, no. We are Amorosians, and so witches can’t hurt anything but our outsides. I’m not supposed to tell anybody that, only the provosts are after you, too, so it’s all right.”
From outside came the sound of feet, tramp, tramp, on the stair, and distant voices. “They are going to search,” said Rodvard. “Laduis, the lady will come back and witch something for you another day, but just now we must get her away from the provosts. Is there any way out of this house except by the main stair?”
The boy was all seriousness. “Not from this floor, Ser. I used to go down the drain-pipe from Ser Tetteran’s quarter, but that was when I was thirteen and it isn’t dignified.”
“Then we must hide her.” Rodvard’s eye darted round the small room, took in the door to that still smaller, where beds must be. “The masks; can you help us into some of these?”
Laduis Domijaiek clapped his hands, and they set to work—for Lalette a Kjermanash princess, whose billowing imitation furs would hide the trimness of her figure; a hunchback Zigraner moneylender for Rodvard, with a bag of brass-plated scudi. Her dress had to come off, but the boy took it to hang with his mother’s and came back to help Rodvard adjust the face-mask as furniture was moved overhead. The thumping came to an end, there was the sound of feet on the stairs once more, Rodvard and Lalette squeezed past the ghostly figures at the front of the assembled masks, and the boy blew out the candle.
Bang! “The Queen’s warrant!” said a voice outside. “Open!”
Rodvard could hear the boy’s feet go pad, pad, on the floor from the bedroom, acting his part in all detail. “What is it?”
“Queen’s warrant; we’re looking for an assassin.”
Chain rattled. Through the eye-peeps of the mask, Rodvard could see the priest in the light of the provost’s lantern, and held his breath.
“My mother is not here.”
“We don’t need her. Stand aside.” Rodvard stood rigid, cursing himself for a fool to have put on this Zigraner guise with its bag of false coins that might jingle. “By the Service, the whole assembly’s here.” The priest held high his amulet; this was the moment of test, but it passed so lightly there might have been no test at all. The provost raised his lantern; “Anybody call on you tonight, sprout?”
“I was asleep, ser provost.”
The man grunted, light flickered as he went into the bedroom, there was a thud as though he might be kicking something, and he came back into the sweep of sight, a naked shortsword showing in his hand. “Not there,” he said. “Ah, bah, she’s a witch and has spirited herself to the Green Islands. But I’ll have my revenge.” He swung his sword at the neck of a yellow-armored Mayern fighting man, and Rodvard heard the head crack to the floor as the boy cried; “Oh, no.” The provost; “Three scudi reward for a foeman down. Tell your mother I saved you from a villain. Hark, now; open your door this night to none more; an order in Her Majesty’s name.”
The door banged to leave it dark for those within and feet retreated beyond. Rodvard stirred cramped muscles. “Will they come back?” Lalette’s voice whispered.
The candle lifted slowly into light. Laduis Domijaiek was on one knee beside the fallen head, whose nose was broken off. The eyes that looked up held tears.
“That man killed Baron Mondaifer,” he said, fiercely, “and I would like to kill him, too.”
Lalette slipped off her head-mask and ran a hand across her hair, looking very princess with her dark head against the white Kjermanash fur. “A true sorrow and it is our fault,” she said. “Do you have names for them all?”
“Oh, yes. You are the Princess Sunimaa, and she’s always getting into trouble because it’s cold where she comes from, and her heart is all ice, and the others don’t like her except for Bonsteg the beggar, who is really a prince in disguise, only she doesn’t know it yet. But Baron Mondaifer was one of my favorites. He’s from Mayern, you see, and he’s always lived in the forest, even if he is in favor of Prince Pavinius, and thinks he’s still a good prophet.”
Said Rodvard, undoing laces to get out of his Zigraner dress; “Your mother will get someone to fix him and bring him back to life.”
“No. His spirit’s gone away to another body, like father’s and now there isn’t anything left but dust. If mother has a new head made, I shall have to give it a different name.”
The boy looked at Rodvard solemnly, and though the Blue Star was cold as cold upon his breast, he could not somehow draw quite clear the thought behind those young candid eyes—something about a place shrouded in clouds, an old house somewhere, with a diffused golden light. Weariness slit his jaws into a yawn. “There is a place where we can sleep?”
They had to take his mother’s bed, not meant for more than one, so that for the first time they lay close wrapped in each other’s arms with a night before them; and this, with the sharp memory of the peril shared on the rooftops hand in hand, was a little more than either could quite bear unmoved, even though the boy was in a corner of the room. They began kissing and holding each other very tight; presently deep breaths said Laduis was asleep. She did not resist (nor desire to). Afterward, Rodvard lay for a long time wakeful (thinking that this had been the sobbing, true union, not an arranged accident like that under the tree; they had pledged each other and were somehow one forever. Now he was committed, and there was a deep harsh sweetness in the thought of devotion and change, live and love, forgetting all ambition, high destiny and even the Sons of the New Day that had brought him to this.)
Of course lark and Laduis rose before them in the morn; the first the pair heard was a double rap at the outer door and the boy’s voice saying; “Mother, we have guests.”
Rodvard rolled out to make the best bow he could with half his laces still undone, and saw a small woman of careworn aspect and maybe thirty-five years, who had just set a heavy basket on the floor. “Madame Domijaiek, I am your humble servant, Rodvard Bergelin. Your son took my—sweetheart and myself in last night to save us from distress.”
“Mother, I listened to the voice of the heart, as you said,” piped the boy. “They are good. Besides a provost came and broke Baron Mondaifer.”
“It is well done, son.” She placed a hand protectingly on his shoulder. “Ser, I am glad that Laduis could help you. Have you breakfasted?”
“I left some of my bread and cheese for them, mother. The lady is a witch.”
Rodvard saw the woman’s face alter, and her eyes, which had held only a mild questioning, were taken away from him. She fumbled in her belt-purse. “Laduis,” she said, “will you get another piotr-weight of millet from the shop at the market-square?”
Lalette came from the bedroom, looking only by the half as delightful as Rodvard’s night memory painted her; curtsied and said straightly; “Madame, I am in your benevolence and honor, so now no concealments. I am Lalette Asterhax, the veritable witch on whom the provosts have set a price, and if my being here will trouble you, I’ll leave on the instant. But I swear I have done nothing for which I might truly fear from a just God.”
Doubt melted from Dame Domijaiek’s face; she reached out both hands to take the two of the girl’s, saying; “My dear, I could not let you go from here into danger, for that would not be love. But as for your witchery, we are also told that if one live in the true world, the outer appearance of evil on all of us, shall have no force. Each must find his own way to love. Now you shall tell me the whole story, while I set forth something to eat.”
The girl gave it all fairly, hiding nothing, as they munched on bread and cheese and pickled onions. When she had finished on the note of Mme. Kaja’s treachery, Dame Domijaiek said; “Ill done, but the poor woman’s fault is partly your own.”
Said Rodvard, surprised; “How can that be, Madame?”
“It takes more than one to make a murder. If you had been wholly ruled by the God of love, the good will you bore her could not but have been reflected back toward you. Was there not something, perhaps seeming of slight importance, on which you felt almost in fury with her?”
Rodvard flushed (recalling the moment when Mme. Kaja had burst in to find them on the bed), but Lalette said simply; “Yes, and on a question that most sharply brings angers; to wit, money. Speaking of which, have you the spadas, Rodvard?”
“Why, no. I reached for them where they were on the table as we went through the window, but they were not there, and I thought you had taken them.”
Lalette’s nostrils moved. “A victory for Mme. Kaja. She has left us penniless.”
“Believe me, an evident result of the fact that you quarrelled with her on pennies,” said Dame Domijaiek.
Rodvard; “I will not say I disbelieve you, madame; yet I cannot see how this is valuable in our present necessity. The thing’s done. Now we have to ask how matters can be bettered, and how to carry word to my good friend, Dr. Remigorius, so that we can elude the body of this pursuit.”
The widow looked at him steadily and though he was new to this Blue Star, he felt surprise that he could make out nothing at all behind her eyes, no thought whatever. “Ser Bergelin,” she said, “you will one day learn that before you can escape the world’s despairs, you must first escape the world’s self. But now you have been sent to me for help, and helped you shall be. With what I know of mask-making, I can so alter your appearance that it will not be hard to pass a relaxed watch. But will your doctor provide security?”
“Assuredly,” said Rodvard, (too quickly, Lalette thought), (and it was so, for he remembered the moment when he surprised the doctor’s mind, his carelessness of what happened to Lalette.)
Dame Domijaiek gave a trifling sigh. “You will be safe here for the time. But there is a condition to my aid. I believe in a rule more certain than yours of witchcraft, demoiselle; and will ask that while you are under my roof, you will banish from your mind every thought of evil and horror and revenge, even toward those who have wronged you. It is a protection I ask for me and my son, though you will not believe it.”
By this time it was clear to both Rodvard and Lalette that as the boy had said, they were certainly in the house of a follower of the Prophet of Mancherei. Though they did not speak of it, the thought gave them both an inner qualm, not over being found there, but at the thought of what might be done to their inner selves by one of these insidious probers in secret thoughts, who had so misused their own Prophet. But a mouse cannot choose the smell of the hole he hides in; they glanced at each other, and gave the widow their word, as she had asked. The boy Laduis returned. It was thought better that the pair be somewhat disguised again, in case of visitors. Lalette kept the Kjermanash furs; Rodvard at first donned the garb of an executioner, but the girl not liking him in that, took the gear of a hunter-guide from the Ragged Mountains instead.
It was a morning of nervous attent, through which they heard feet come and go in the apartment overhead. Between the promise to the widow and their own feelings, there was hardly anything that could be said of what they wished to say, so they spent the time listening to the lad, who told them tales of his imagined people behind the masks. It would be about the noon-glass when a man knocked, who said he was the butler of the Baroness Stampalia to look at a costume; coming so quickly to the door that Rodvard and Lalette were without time to don head-masks, and sought refuge in the bedroom. This was as well; the butler examined attentively everything in the outer room.
Not long later the widow returned, narrowing her eyes over the tale of the Stampalia butler. “She has her own dressmaker. Could he have been a spy?” Then to the couple; “You see, you obeyed my injunction as to thought, and were protected.”
Rodvard would have made a point of this, but Dame Domijaiek gave him no time, turning to Lalette, with; “Touching your mother, my dear, I think you have not to be troubled. I have not seen her myself, but the gossip is that Count Cleudi has most generously sent her a present of money, which is an evidence of the working of the God of love, though the instrument may not be what we would desire.”
Rodvard, whom this style of discourse filled with a discomfort he could not readily assay, asked about Remigorius. The dame had visited his shop; she produced a chit from the doctor which confirmed all Rodvard’s discomforts on the matter of Lalette, for it commanded him in guarded words to come at once, and without her. Lalette did not understand when he showed her the paper, but she said he must clearly go. Dame Domijaiek added her voice to the same purport, saying that if Rodvard were needed to go elsewhere, Lalette would be the safer there for hiding alone.
From a cabinet she brought some of the false hair used on masks and skillfully affixed a fur of it to Rodvard’s face, while Lalette, suddenly gay, changed the dress of his head and added a ribbon that make him quite a different person. He kissed her farewell; the widow simpered as though it were she who had been saluted, and said she would offer an answerable prayer to the God of love for the success of his going.
The doorman did not glance from his cachet—a lazy doorman—and the provost on guard at the street entrance was equally indifferent as Rodvard went past, feeling a trifle unreal after so long close indoors. Remigorius was compounding a philter with mortar and pestle; he hailed Rodvard almost boisterously, laughing over the figure he made in his false facial hair. “What! Will you have a career as a ladies’ lap-cat, now that you’ve turned seducer by profession? Well, I have summoned you here because things mount to a crisis. The court’s finance is utterly broke, and the High Center holds that we must move fast, for though there are stirrings in the west, it seems they move in the direction of Pavinius.”
Said Rodvard; “We are likely to be broke ourselves. Mme. Kaja’s a traitor.”
Pestle stopped in mortar; the doctor’s face seemed to narrow over the midnight thicket of his beard and a soft pink tongue came out to run a circlet round his lips. “I’ll mix that bitch a draft will burn her guts out. Give me the tale.”
Rodvard told it all plainly, with the hiding on the rooftop and the household of the Amorosian woman, over which last Remigorius’ eye held some anxiety. “The one who came here? You did not tell her of our fellowship? These people of the Prophet’s rule lie as close together as so many snowflakes, and though they’re as deep against the court as we, I would not trust them. But touching your affair of the old singer—” he placed one finger to his cheek and held his eyes averted, so that Rodvard could not see where his true thought lay “—you’re too censorious. I see no real treason there; she’s deep in double intrigues and must keep up an appearance, beside which, no doubt, there is something of an old woman’s green-sickness for a younger man. It may all have been by order of the High Center, indeed; you’d certainly have been saved yourself by some tale, for you are now too valuable. Now for our affair; you are to take the stage at dawning for Sedad Vix, where you are to be writer for Count Cleudi at the conference of court.”
Rodvard’s eyes sprang open wide. “The court? Will I not be known?”
“Ah, nya, you’re not involved now in this pursuit of the provosts. The only one that could establish your communion with the witch is cared for.”
“What—who would that be?”
“Your pensionnario doorman. An accident happened to him last night but one; was found in the river this morning, thoroughly dead and green as a smelt.” Remigorius waved a hand goodbye to Udo the Crab and whipped to his main theme, the conference of court. Florestan the Chancellor, the army restive for want of pay, the revenues hypothecated, the question of a great assembly, Cleudi intriguing, the time come for all terrible measures.
“But Mathurin can discover all this as clearly as I,” said Rodvard (a little quickfire of suspicion running through him).
“Better in the open, but we’d know the secret purposes, and whom to trust. Mathurin takes Cleudi to be a spy for the regent of Tritulacca, despite his ejection from the councils there. Is it true? You’ll find the hiding place of his mind. Then there’s Baron Brunivar, the peoples’ friend, as they call him. A reputation too exalted for credit. He’s from the West—is he not by chance in Prince Pavinius’ service, seeking to place that worm-bitten saint on the throne, as prince and Prophet, both together? A thousand such questions; you’ll play in high politics, young man, and earn yourself a name.”
Rodvard (heart beating) said; “Well—”
“Well, what do you ask more?”
(His mind made up with a snap, and as though the words came from someone else;) “Two things. To write a letter to Demoiselle Asterhax, who will be expecting my return, and to know how I am to reach Sedad Vix without a spada.”
Remigorius shot him a glance, hit and past (in which there was annoyance and something like a drop of ink about Lalette). “What, you grasshopper? Always without money. To Sedad Vix is a spada and two coppers.” He drew from his pouch this exact amount. “As for the letter, write. Here’s paper, I’ll charge myself with the delivery.”
Rodvard wrote his letter; discussed through a falling light what persons might be watched at the villa by the sea, and how to give the news to Mathurin; dined miserably with the doctor on a stew that had the sharp taste of meat kept beyond its time, and lay down exhausted on the floor, with a couple of cushions and his cloak.
Sleep withheld its hand; his mind kept running in a circle round the thought of being a controller of destinies, until he made up a land of play-show in his head, of being accuser before a court of the people, with some man who bore a great name as the accused, and himself making a speech—“But you, your lordship, are a liar and a traitor. What of your secret adhesion to the Prophet? . . .” The scene he could fix clearly, with the accused’s face, and the members of the court looking grim as the accusation was driven home, but somehow the people of his drama would not move around or change expression beyond this one point, and each time he reached it, the whole thing ended in a white flash, and he drifted for a while between sleeping and waking, wondering whether his Blue Star might not be driving him foolish, until the imagined play began again, without any will of his own. Toward day, he must have slept a little, for Remigorius was laying a cold hand on his face, and it was time to look toward the new day and new life.
From the city to Sedad Vix by the shore is a fair twelve leagues, through the most fertile fields in all Dossola, now jumping with new green, orchards blooming in a row and pale yellow jonquils. Another time Rodvard had found the trip after they crossed the high bridge pure pleasure; but now he felt having missed his sleep, and the travel-mate in the opposite seat was a good-looking pregnant woman, who said she was going to join her husband, and babbled on about his position in the royal orchestra till one could not even doze. The Blue Star said coldly that she was a liar and talking to hide the true fact, namely that she hated her husband and pregnancy and the love of any man, and as soon as she was free of her condition, hoped to catch the eye of some wealthy lady and to be maintained for pleasures impermissible—so vile a thought that Rodvard closed his eyes. The man next to him was a merchant of some kind by the badge in his cap; he kept addressing heavy-handed compliments to the dame, saying that he would dance with her at the spring festival and the like. Rodvard, turning, could see he thought her licentious, and was determined to profit by it at some future time. At Masjon, where they stopped for lunch, the merchant-man bought a whole roasted chicken and a bottle of that fine white Tritulaccan wine which is called The Honey of the Hills.
Rodvard himself was a little faint from lack of food when he reached the royal villa after a solid half-league of trudging beyond the stage-post, nor did the under-butler who received him offer food, but took him at once to a cabinet looking out over a terraced flower-garden, at the back of the rambling building. This guide said to wait for the arrival of Ser Tuolén, the butler-in-chief. The name had a Kjermanash sound; and sure enough, the tall man who came after perhaps half an hour’s retard, had the high-bridged nose and curling hair of that northern land. Rodvard stood to greet him with extended hand, and as he looked into the eyes, received a shock that ran through him like poison-fire, with its indubitable message that he was facing another wearer of the Blue Star.
“You are Ser Bergelin?” The eyes looked at him fixedly though the lips did not cease smiling. “What is your function to be?”
“Writer to the Count Cleudi for the conference,” Rodvard managed to say. (One almost seemed to drown in those eyes, liquid and northern blue, but he could not read a single thought behind them.)
The smile expanded. “You will find it easier to meet others whoknowwhen you have borne that stone for a time. I perceive it is a novelty to you. There are not many of us. Hmmm—I suppose it is little use asking you why Count Cleudi wishes a Blue Star with him. No matter; I have watched him before, and it is no secret that he wishes to be Chancellor; even Lord Florestan knows that. I trust you are not an Amorosian or one of that band of assassins who call themselves Sons of the New Day?”
“No,” said Rodvard (and thought with the back of his mind that this was why all plans to deal directly with the court had broken, and others of the brotherhood been laid in the toils of the provosts, this Star-bearer here.) With the front of his thought he concentrated on looking at the detail in the painting of a milkmaid just beyond Tuolén’s ear.
The butler-in-chief turned. “It is by Raubasco. He was not satisfied with the highlights in the middle distance, as I discovered by a means you will understand, so it was easy to persuade the painting away from him. Do you intend to bring your wife?”
“No,” said Rodvard, (thinking quickly on Lalette and as quickly away).
“Oh, there is something wrong with the personal relation. Perhaps it is just as well if you do not; Her Majesty is not prudish, but she does not approve of witches at the court. Your room will be at the depth of the west wing, beyond the hall of conference. I will have one of the under-butlers show you.” He stood up, then paused with one hand holding the bell-rope.
“One last word. A Bearer finds himself in a strange position here without his witch. I suppose your wife has given you the usual warning about infidelity, but you are clearly new to the jewel and young, and there are not a few ladies who might make the loss seem worth the gain—since you can read their desires. In particular I warn you to stand clear of the Countess Aiella of Arjen, in whom I have noted something of the kind. She is involved with the Duke of Aggermans, a man who’ll protect his own dangerously. . . . Drop in tomorrow night after Cleudi releases you; it will be a pleasure to compare things seen with another Bearer. I have not met one for long.”
In the room was a tray of food on the table, ample and well selected, with a bottle of wine; three or four books also, but they were all gesling-romances, and of a kind Rodvard found it difficult to bear even when well written, as these hardly were. He glanced at each in turn, then tossed them aside, and was only rescued from boredom by Mathurin’s coming, who pressed his hands, and said he would come the next evening again, but for the now, he must hurry.
Rodvard replied that the high butler Tuolén was the bearer of a Star, and Mathurin must either avoid his eye or keep his own thought on innocuous subjects.
“And his witch? Wait, no, that explains much.”
“I do not see,” said Rodvard.
“Why, fool, the hold the court party has. No sooner a man turns up that’s in opposition than your Tuolén knows his most secret purpose, and I do not doubt that his wife witches the man. This is something for the High Center of the New Day.”
A pretty maid brought him breakfast in bed. She gave him a cheerful morning greeting but embarrassed him by hoping in her thought that he would not make love to her. Her mind held some memory of how the last man in this room had done so, but she shied from the thought of the outcome so much that instead of decently avoiding her look Rodvard was tempted to pry deeper, but there was hardly time.