He wondered if he dared take a second draft and decided against, he would need clear wits to play his part. A slice from the ham made him realize hunger, but again he forebore to go further, it would be ungentle to disarrange the meal before the arrival of his guest. He walked slowly across and seated himself in one of the chairs, looking outward toward the blank paneling, twisting his back into the comfort of the seat, but without finding rest. From below the high note of a violin in crescendo pierced the hangings; one might be one of those gods of antique legend, who sit on the Shining Mountains, with heads above the clouds, and control mortal destinies to whom all below would be what he heard now, a babble with an occasional note of agony. Ah, but to be the controller instead of the controlled—
The door was tapped.
So rapidly that the chair was overset, Rodvard leaped to his feet, picked it up, cursing his clumsiness, strode swiftly to the door and threw it open. On the threshold stood the Prophet of Mancherei, who had teased him with the rouge-ball. He bowed over her hand, drawing her in, and as the door closed, declaimed:
“Now that winter’s gone, the earth has lostHer snow-white robes, and now no more the frostCandies the grass or casts an icy creamUpon the silver lake or crystal stream;Now do the choir of chirping minstrels bringIn triumph to the world the youthful spring:The valleys, woods and hills in rich arrayWelcome the coming of the longed-for May.Now all things smile, only my love doth lowerNor hath the scalding noon-day sun the powerTo melt that marble ice, which still doth holdHer heart congealed and makes her pity cold.How shall we call it spring when she doth carryJune in her eyes, in her heart January?”
“Now that winter’s gone, the earth has lost
Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost
Candies the grass or casts an icy cream
Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;
Now do the choir of chirping minstrels bring
In triumph to the world the youthful spring:
The valleys, woods and hills in rich array
Welcome the coming of the longed-for May.
Now all things smile, only my love doth lower
Nor hath the scalding noon-day sun the power
To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold
Her heart congealed and makes her pity cold.
How shall we call it spring when she doth carry
June in her eyes, in her heart January?”
—in a half-whisper, yet joyously, with laughing lips, as Cleudi might have done it, passing one hand around her shoulders, with the other holding tight to her hand.
“A northern lord to complain of the cold? And to instruct the Prophet of Love in love?” she said, in Countess Aiella’s thrilling voice. (If it were only this one.) “I will not grant your right to sue until you have proved love your prophet.”
“Ah, that would be epicene,” said Rodvard (the fired-wine working in him; but it was too dim to wring truth from her eyes). “You must convert yourself to a woman before you can convert me to your sacred love.”
“Oh, love does not remain true love when its longings are satisfied; therefore the sacred, which can never be satisfied, is above the profane,” she said, stepping to one of the chairs at the table with a graceful play of ankle. Her hands went up to slip off the head-mask, and she sat back, hair falling round her shoulders. “I am a little weary, my lord of Kjermanash; give me something to drink that will warm your wintry wit.”
Her fingers toyed with a goblet, but he took one of the festival-cups from his belt, poured it full, then as she drank, disengaged it from her fingers and finished it himself, lips carefully at the place where hers had touched the edge.
“Not worthy of you, my lord. Is this the promised originality? Go catch servant-girls with such tricks.”
“Alas,” he said, using the same half-whisper (the voice was the danger-point). “True love and longing has no tricks, only the expression by every means of its desire. Let us contest your heresy that satisfied longing is the end of love; for in love, the momentary assuagement only leads to further longings.”
He poured her more from the bottle, and this time took the other cup himself. (The glint of her eye, momentarily caught, held some slight anticipation of pleasure, but there was more in it of weariness with the world.)
“Ah, if it only would,” she said, and turned her lovely head aside. “I am hungry, my lord.”
He leaped up at once and began to serve her from the sideboard, while the joyous tumult from below and along the corridor became louder, and someone in the next box was making high festival, with squeals of women laughing and the rumble of men. They ate, talking a little more of the nature of love and whether it lives by satisfaction or by the lack of it. She drank more than he. There were springcakes; he set one before her, but she only tasted it and pushed it away, whereupon he left his own untouched and ran around the table to gather her in his arms. “You are the only sweet I need,” he whispered, feeling at once strong and weak, but she avoided her head from his kiss, and when he essayed to hold her, shook herself free, with: “No. Ah, let us not spoil it.”
“Lovely Aiella, do not say that, I implore,” he cried, slipping down with one arm around her waist, his face close to the sweet hair of her turned head (and now with the fired-wine and nearness it was not of Maritzl of Stojenrosek he thought of, Maritzl lost, or of Lalette, or of the interruption that would come, but only of desire), and he slipped farther to one knee, not saying anything any more, only drawing her hands to him and kissing them again and again.
She took them from him and lifted his face gently to look him straight in the eyes, for one long breath in which the sound of the twittering recorders came from the floor beneath; then the Countess Aiella rose a trifle unsteadily to her feet, and as Rodvard rose also, holding her in the circle of his arms, said; “Shall we kiss?”
Her face was in shadow as the full lips met his, but as he swung her from her feet toward the divan, her eyes came open (and he saw in those deep pools that she would resist no longer, only hope that it would be better than the others). He half fell across her, with fingers and lips they devoured each other—
The creak of the opening door shivered through every muscle. “Be careful, my lord,” said Cleudi’s voice, strongly. “By the Service! What’s here?”
Rodvard rolled himself afoot (the thought of that other union unconsummated in Mme. Kaja’s garret shouting a trumpet through his mind and making him now glad, glad of this failure) and around to see Cleudi, all in his purple costume, with the pudgy Duke of Aggermans, and between the two a masque dressed as a bear. The man was very drunk; as the lolling white head came upright in its swing, Rodvard found himself looking into the eyes of the people’s friend, Baron Brunivar, and even in the dim light, was appalled by what he saw there, for the man was not only drunk, he had a witchery upon him.
The mouth opened. “Sh’ my always darling,” said Brunivar thickly, and disengaging his arm from Cleudi’s, swung it in a round gesture. “Glad you foun’ her for me.” Aggermans released the other arm; the Baron took three stumbling steps toward Aiella, and as she slipped his clutch, stumbled onto the divan, pushed himself around, focussed his eyes with difficulty, and cried; “Now I foun’ her. Festival night. You go leave us, and I do anything you want tomorrow, my lor’.”
Aggermans’ round face had gone cherry-red. “That I can credit, my lord,” he said, looking steadily not at Brunivar but at the Countess Aiella. “The more since I once would have done the same. But it is too high a price for the temporary favors of a bona roba.”
The Countess laughed. “The pleasure of your Grace’s company has been so small that you must not blame me if I seek elsewhere.” She turned to Cleudi with a certain dignity. “As for you, my lord, I know whom I have to thank for this shame, and believe me, I will not forget it.”
He bowed. “If the memory lasts until the next time when you laugh over having given a rendezvous you never meant to keep, I shall feel myself repaid for my troubles,” he said.
“Ah, she has been deceiving you, too?” said Aggermans, and turned toward Rodvard as Brunivar made one more pawing effort to grasp the girl. “And who is this? I think I should like to remember him.” (Concentrated venom streamed from his eyes.)
“Why, since this is another costume of mine, I think this will be my writer,” said Cleudi. “Take off your mask, Bergelin.”
Rodvard drew it off slowly, not knowing what to say, but the Countess Aiella spared him the trouble. “I see,” she said. “It was all planned, not a part only. At least he has a heart, and so the advantage over any of you.” She stepped over to take the young man’s arm. “Ser, will you escort me as far as my pavilion?”
Cleudi stepped aside to let them pass through the door and down the stairs. “What, unmasked already, my lady?” cried someone in the gay crowd round the door, but she did not turn her head until they were out in the shadow, when she released his arm with; “Now, go.”
From within the hall came the moan of violins.
He woke with scaly tongue, head spinning in the fumes of the fired-wine and body burning with unfulfilled desires, to the clink of silver on porcelain, as the maid Damaris bore in his breakfast tray. She was already in costume, a milkmaid and not badly done; her eyes and feet were dancing. “Oh, where did you get the lovely Kjermanash mask?” she asked as he propped himself up among the pillows, and giving him the tray, went to run her fingers lovingly over the white silk where it hung across the chair. “It’s just the most beautiful thing ever. I’ll be so happy to be with you in it.”
“Count Cleudi lent it to me . . . Damaris.”
“What is it?”
“Sit down a minute. On the chair, no matter.”
“I’ll ruffle your beautiful costume. Was it made in Kjermanash?” She sat facing him on the bed as he moved over to make room. The neck of her milkmaid’s dress was cut low enough to show the upper round of her breasts with a little in between (and the Blue Star told him that she noticed, and wanted him to notice; that it was festival day, when all’s forgotten in the new spring).
“Damaris—about this ball . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you after all.”
Rather than angry, her face was woebegone to the edge of tears. (A world was crashing in her thoughts.) “You don’t want to be with servant-class people?”
He reached out and patted her hand conciliatingly. “Of course I do, with you. But Damaris . . . you said it cost three spadas and I haven’t hardly any coppers, even.”
“Oh.” She perched her head on one side and looked at him birdlike under prettily arched brows. “I can let you have that much.” Then, seeing the expression on his face; “You can give it back to me when you get it from your master.”
(He did not really want to go at all, headache and the thought of his position with Cleudi and the Duke of Aggermans gnawed at him, he could not think clearly.) “I—I—”
“I don’t mind, really.”
“But I don’t want to take your money. I may—may not get any.”
She considered, looking at him sharply, with eyes narrowing. Then; “I know. You don’t want to go with me because I’m not your friend.” She tipped suddenly forward, one arm round his neck, and kissed him hard, then drew her head back, and with a long breath, said; “Will you go with me now?”
“I—”
She kissed him again, tonguewise, and as her lips clung, shifted her body, and with her free hand, guided his to the V of her dress. Her eyes said she did not want him to stop, and he did not. Near the end it came to him that the Blue Star was dead, he could not fathom a single thought in her mind.
Mathurin entered on his almost soundless feet and let the door close behind him in the dark before saying, “Rodvard,” softly. Rodvard, who had been letting his mind drift along endless alleys rather than thinking, swung himself up. “I will make a light.”
“Do not. There is danger enough, and its point would so be sharpened. Do not even speak aloud.”
“What is it?”
“The Duke of Aggermans. His bravoes are let loose. No time. I only just now learned it from the Count.” Outside there was the soft sighing of rain.
“I am to go?”
“At once. Make your way south, to the Center of Sedad Mir. The contact is a wool-dealer named Stündert, in the second dock street. Can you remember? Change clothes with me quickly. Do not even take the door, which is watched, but go by the window, across the road, and south into the country.”
The serving-man began to undress in the dark; Rodvard recognized the sound. “Is there any money?” he asked.
The rustling stopped. “You to need money, who have the Blue Star?”
Even under the dark, Rodvard felt himself flush (did he dare tell what had happened? No.). “Still, I will need some small amount. I have nothing.”
Even under his breath Rodvard could catch the fury in the other’s tone; “Ah, you deserve to have your bones broken.”
“I know; but is there any money?” Rodvard fumbled for the unfamiliar lace-points.
The man snarled, but pressed a few coins into his grasp. “You are to regard this as a loan. Cleudi sends it.”
“Oh. You did not tell me he was aiding this escape.”
“He wants you to go south to Tritulacca, and gave me a letter for you to carry—which I will transmit to the High Center.”
It might be a girl’s light tap at the door. “Go,” whispered Mathurin, fiercely.
The window swung wide; Rodvard felt rain on his face, and the mud of the flower-bed squished round Mathurin’s soft shoes as he took the leap down. A light flamed up in the room behind him; he began to run, stumbling up the terraces with branches snatching at his body, zigzagging to avoid the pennon of light. A voice shouted across the rain after him (and he thought Mathurin was a mighty bold fellow to face the Duke of Aggermans’ assassins back there). He came against a hedge; there was another shout and the sound of crashing footsteps from the left, in which direction the hedge ran, no way to turn, and he stumbled over a root, prone, to roll beneath the lip of the shrubbery, thinking concealment might be a better resource than speed.
So it was; shout echoed shout with an accent of lost, footsteps went past, but apparently no one had a light and before one could be brought, Rodvard rolled out, and began to work cautiously toward the end of the hedge, bending double. The bushes turned back to enclose a square of garden, but there was a locked gate, low enough to be climbed. Over; the gravel path beyond, for a wonder, did not run circular like most, from which he deduced that it must be the one leading down from the main road. It offered the only real clue to direction, for the lights had winked out back there, the villa’s mass and the trees cut off the night-shine from the bay, and the slope was no help at all with everything so gardened. Rodvard pushed forward cautiously; presently the feel of ruts under his feet told him his reasoning was sound, and he paused to consider whether along the road or across it. The second alternative won; if Aggermans were so in earnest, his people would not give up easily, and they would likely spread along the road.
There was no hedge at the opposite side, but a narrow ditch, in which Rodvard got one leg well wetted to the knee and almost fell. Beyond a slope pitched upward into what, as nearly as he could make out by feeling, would be a sapling grove with low underbrush. Having no cloak, he was by this time so wet that it did not matter when he stumbled against small trunks and the leaves just bursting above deluged him with big drops, but the sensation was so unpleasant that it tipped him into a despairing mood, where his fatigues of the night and day rolled in (and he began to ask himself whether all pleasures must end in an escape of some kind). So he followed the pent of the hill blindly, not thinking at all of where he was going (but only of how he was trapped by unfairnesses somewhere; and that it could not be altogether a matter of man’s justice, which was the plainder of the Sons of the New Day, since no justice of man’s would hold men from fiery passion).
Beyond an easy crest there was a dip, and Rodvard hurt his knee against a wall of piled stone. In the field beyond, he could sense under his feet the stumps of last year’s corn, he was sick with weariness and fear and had begun to sneeze; there was no light or life in the world. What direction? With no reason for any, he followed the line of the stone wall for a little time, and it brought him ultimately to a sodden straw-stack, whose hard surface yielded just enough to the persistence of his fingers so that he could get the upper half of his body in and slide down into unhappy sleep.
He woke with a headache at the top of his spine, which ran around inside his head to the place over his eyes; nose feeling as though driven with a wooden plug. Mathurin’s decent black clothes were horribly stained and scratched. Down the way he had come—not at all far from where he had crossed the wall, now that one could see by the light of morning—the footprints lay, a fingerlength deep into the soft ground. At once he was oppressed by the thought that only too easily could his path from the villa be traced, there was Tuolén’s witch behind as well, and fear mounting over the illness, he climbed to the wall itself and tried to walk along its top to hide his marks. After the rain, sky and air had become clear, and there were violets visible on the grove-side of the wall, not that they did him any joy in his misery. The stones quickly tore a hole in shoes made for indoor walking, so he had to jump down again and consider.
Right across his direction, at a little distance, there jutted out from the stone wall a hedge which lack of care had let grow into a screen of low, sprawling trees. It slanted down leftward to where a gap would mark a field entrance; beyond, a slow trickle of smoke ran up the blue to signal breakfast. Rodvard, deciding what he would do if he were hunter instead of hunted, found more than good the argument against harborage so near the villa. He climbed over the wall again to wipe his streaming nose with a burdock leaf, whose bitter juice stung his lips, and perceiving that he left less marked traces in the ground on that side, stayed. The overgrown hedge proved to line a deep-cut track that in one direction wound down toward the main road past the villa. Beyond that track was true forest of old trunks and heavy underbrush. It was surely a good place to seek concealment, but Rodvard was ignorant of how far it might run or what it led to, and with illness galloping through his veins, felt he must have shelter early, so murmuring half aloud to himself that he might as well die in hot blood as in cold rheum, he turned up the track toward the cottage-smoke.
The building was more prosperous than most in the country, with a barn outside, and two complete windows under the thatch-edge. No one answered his knock; as he pushed open the door, a child’s squall was sounding with irritable monotony from a trundle-bed on the right, and a woman who had been doing something at a table before the fireplace on the left turned to face him. She was bent and dirty; her face was older than her figure. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“A place to rest, if I can,” said Rodvard, “and perhaps something to eat.” He crossed the room and came down weak-kneed on a stool by the fireplace corner.
The lined face held no sympathy as her eyes swept down the detail of his torn, mudstained clothes and lingered for a tick at the servant’s badge on his breast. “This is not an inn,” she said sourly.
“Madame, I am unwell. I can pay.” He fumbled at the waist-pouch.
“This is not an inn,” she repeated, then spun on her heel, took rapid steps to where the child in its bed still bawled, and administered it a severe clout on the side of the head. “Will you be quiet?” The cries sank to whimpers. She came to stand looking down at Rodvard.
“I know about your kind,” she said. “You’re too lazy to work, so you run away from a good master down there at the villa and probably rob him, too, on festival day when he’s drunk, and then expect honest country-people like us, who have to labor for everything we get, to hide you from the provosts. My husband and me, we have to get up at dawn and work all day as hard as we can, and we’re never through till the sun goes down, winter or summer, while you servant-people are drinking and stealing behind your master’s back.” All this was delivered in a torrent as though it were a single sentence, ending as she uplifted one arm to brandish an imaginary weapon. “Now you leave here.”
Too weary and ill for a reply, a trickle he did not try to disguise running from his nostril, Rodvard did so, out into the bright spring day and along the track. Where it turned round a boss of hill that thrust in from the westward, a sense of being watched made him look back. The farm-wife had come out to the end of the house to look after him, and the sound of the child’s petulant wail was on the air. (Rodvard felt a surge of bitter anger; there was an unfairness in life, every pennyweight of pleasure is paid with double its measure in pain, and only those who grubbed at the ground were entitled to call themselves honest. Why, if this be so, then joy must be wrong, and God himself must be evil, in spite of what the priests say.) But his head was too muzzy to follow any rabbit of reasoning to its hole, so he trudged along for a while without thinking anything at all, until he heard the creak of a cart, and here was a mule coming out from the Sedad Vix direction. The driver somewhat surlily gave him the time of the day.
Rodvard asked to go with him, and when the man said he was bound for Kazmerga, declared that was his destination, though he had never heard of the place and possessed not the least idea in what direction it lay. The fellow grunted and let him climb in; sat silent for a while as Rodvard sneezed and drizzled, then was moved to remark that this was a heavy case of the phlegm, but it could be cured by an infusion of dandelion root with certain drugs, such as his old woman made, and so well that they often accused her of being a witch. “—But the drugs are costly now.” He evidently wanted conversation in payment for his favor, and when this beginning failed on Rodvard’s merely remarking that he would pay for any quantity of drugs to get rid of this rheum, fell silent for a couple of minutes; then leaned over, touched the servant’s badge, and struck out again with:
“Running away, ey? What happened, ey? Lying with wrong woman on festival night, perhaps? Ah, there’s many and many a high family has daughters born nine months from festival night that shouldn’t rightly inherit, but lord, young man, don’t you run away because of that. I say to you that ladies can forgive and be forgive for everything they do that night, when all’s free, and I say to you, you ought to go back to your master.”
He chuckled and waved his mule-goad. “I do recall, I do, when I was a sprout no older than yourself how one night I went all the way to Masjon for spring festival and at the dancing in the square there, I found a little cat as hot as ever could be, so we slipped away for some conversation, ey? And when I got back to where I was staying with a friend, what do you think I found? Why, in my bed there was his sister—Phidera, that was her name—and she was saying she had thought the bed her own, and no more clothes on her than a fish. So there were two of them in one night, all I could do, he, he, he, and that’s the way it always is at spring festival, and maybe it would be with you.”
He looked at Rodvard, and the latter was glad for once that the Blue Star had gone dumb over his heart, for there was a drop of moisture on the lip above the ill-shaven chin, which the gaffer did not bother to suck in or to wipe away.
“It was nothing like that,” said he (and to keep from being drawn deeper into the morass of the old fellow’s thinking); “Have you heard that Baron Brunivar is like to be decreed in accusation?”
“Ey, ey. Those westerners, half Mayerns they are. It will be a sad day when the snow melts from Her Majesty’s head, with only the regents between that crazy Pavinius and the throne, and no female heirs. Ey, ey. Here we are in the Marquis of Deschera’s seignory. For you servant-class it is no matter; you lay out the plates on the table and you have a scuderius in your hand, but for us farm-people with all the taxes . . .”
(“I am not a servant,” Rodvard wanted to cry, “but a clerk who makes his gain as hard as you; and it is you we most wish to help.” But he forebore), saying only; “Is there an inn at Kazmerga? I need something to eat, being without breakfast, and a place to lie down for the cure of my fluxions.”
“No tavern—” the man stopped, and the expression above the uncut whisker became crafty (so that now Rodvard longed for the Blue Star); “Would you pay an innkeeper?”
“Why, yes. I have a little money.”
“You be letting me take you to my home. The old woman will arrange your fluxions in less than a minute with her specific if you pay for it, and give all else you need for less than half what an innkeeper would ask, and no questions if the provosts come nosing, ey. Go, Mironelle.” He leaned forward and rammed the goad into the mule’s rump, which shook its ears, danced a little with the hind feet, and began to trot, so that Rodvard’s aching head jounced agonizingly. There was a turn, the track was broadening, fields showed, pigs rooted contentedly in a ditch, and the trees gave back to show a church with its half-moon symbol at the peak, and around it, like the spoke of a wheel, houses.
“Kazmerga,” said the mule-man. “I live on the other side.”
She was fat and one eye looked off at the wrong angle, but Rodvard was in a state not to care if she had worn on her brow the mark of evil. He flopped on the straw-bed. There was only one window, at the other end; the couple whispered under it, after which the housewife set a pot on the fire. Rodvard saw a big striped cat that marched back and forth, back and forth, beside the straw-bed, and it gave him a sense of nameless unease. The woman paid no attention, only stirring the pot as she cast in an herb or two, and muttering to herself.
Curtains came down his eyes, though not that precisely, neither; he lay in a kind of suspension of life, while the steam of the pot seemed to spread toward filling the room. Time hung; then the potion must be ready, for through half-closed lids Rodvard could see her lurch toward him in a manner somewhat odd. Yet it was not till she reached the very side of the bed and lifted his head in the crook of one arm, while pressing toward his lips the small earthen bowl, that a tired mind realized he should not from his position have been able to see her at all. A mystery; the pendulous face opened on gapped teeth; “Take it now my prettyboy, take it.”
The liquid was hot and very bitter on the lips, but as the first drops touched Rodvard’s tongue, the cat in the background emitted a scream that cut like a rusty saw. The woman jerked violently, spilling the stuff so it scalded him all down chin and chest as she let go. She swung round, squawking something that sounded like “Pozekshus!” at the animal. Rodvard struggled desperately as in a nightmare, unable to move a muscle no more than if he had been carved out of stone, realizing horribly that he had been bewitched. He wanted to vomit and could not; the cottage-wife turned back toward him with an expression little beautiful.
Her grubby hands were shaking a little. She grumbled under her breath as he felt her detach the belt-pouch with all his money and then slip off his shoes. The jacket came next; but as she undid the laces at the top, grunting and puffing, her hand touched the chain that held the Blue Star, and she jerked out the jewel. In all his immobility Rodvard’s every perception had become as painfully sharp as an edge of broken ice. He thought she was going to have a fit, her features seemed to twist and melt into each other, her hand came away from the stone as though it had been a red coal. “Oh, nonononono,” she squealed, backing away. “No. No. No. Ah, you were right, Tigrette; you were right to stop me.”
The cat arched against her. As though the small act had released some spring in herself, the woman bustled to the invisible end of the room, where Rodvard could hear wood click on earthenware, then some kind of a dumb low-toned chant she raised, then became aware of a different and aromatic odor. He was wide awake now and hardly sick at all any more; could see how the mist in the room was clearing a little, then heard the door creak open and the mule-driver’s voice, saying:
“Did you get it done, ey?”
“Not I, you old fool, you rat-pudding, you dog-bait.”
“Old fool yourself.” Rodvard heard the sound of a slap. “Call me old fool. You weren’t so dainty with the last one. Taken with the pretty lad, are you? Now go do it, or I’ll slice his throat myself and never mind mess. What’s one runaway servant more or less, ey? This is real money, hard money, more nor you ever seen.”
Now she was whimpering. “I tell you you’re a fool. He has a Blue Star, a Blue Star, and his witch will know what’s put on him and recoil it back to us, double, triple. Worms that never die crawling under your skin till you perish of it. All the hard money there is is not worth it.”
A sound of steps. The scratchy face looked down at Rodvard, he felt the man palm the jewel. “Blue Star, ey? Ah, fritzess, this is some piece of glass.” But the tone was little sure.
“It is a Blue Star and nothing else, the second one I see. They are wedded with the great wedding.”
The man turned, and though his own head did not, Rodvard could see how the expression of craftiness had come on back to him. “Blue Star? Now you witch it for him, wife, witch it for him, so it will be no longer good. You can witch anything. Then I’ll take him away from here.”
The whimper became a sniffle. “I’ll witch, ah, I’ll witch, mumble, mumble, mumble.” Rodvard heard her tottering shuffle go and come, the fat face was over his again, all filled now with oily kinks that held little beads of sweat. She looked at him closely and then flung over her shoulder; “Go out, old man, and leave us. There’s something not healthy for you to see,” and began plucking at her garments to undo them, at the last moment pausing to throw an edge of stinking blanket over Rodvard’s face. His heightened senses caught the stiff rustle of clothes sinking to the floor; the aromatic smell declared itself over all others, her fingers sought his burned chin beneath the blanket and applied a relieving unguent.
“Mumble, mumble,” came her voice, and he understanding not a word. “Meowrrr-row!” shouted the cat, as it raced through the narrow cot from end to end. He could have melted with relief as the fingers soothed his chest, but then his mind went off on a picture of Lalette become old in the manner of this one and he would have shuddered if he could have stirred. The crooning mumble ended, the witch-wife’s ministrations at the same time. There was a silence set with small sounds, over which the continued mewling of the cat. He heard the woman at the door summon her husband, then the two of them speaking in voiceless sibilants, a contention going on, which terminated with the man’s strong arms around Rodvard, heaving him up like a sack of meal.
Exterior air came through the edge of the blanket; step, step, he was borne, and with a grunt, dumped in what must be the mule-cart. A pause; the blanket was twitched from his face and he was looking up into the disparate eyes of the woman.
“Nice boy, nice boy,” said her voice. “You tell your witch now how I do good. You tell her I respect the great wedding. Not him; he keeps your hard money.”
She patted his still unmoving cheek, a touch that made his senses creep; and the Blue Star was suddenly, shockingly cold over his heart, (he could see beyond any question that there was in the woman’s mind a great fear, but also the great longing kindness of two joined against an armèd world).
From where he was leading the mule to hitching, the man’s voice came; “Wife, get that badge we took from the last one, the mechanician. I say to you, you hurry now.”
After he had gone, Lalette cried a little, but the widow pretended not to notice, busying herself with sewing on one of the festival masks, a task at which the girl was presently helping, so far as she could, for she was no great artist with the needle, nor wished to be. When they began talking again it was about the robe they were working on, grey silk velvet which had been artfully torn here and there to a pretense of raggedness, through which the slashes were being backed with flame-color. Lalette passed her hands across the lovely fabric (longing to be gay and courted in such a gown, though it left so much of the leg bare that she would have felt a little shame to wear it). Who was it made for?
“The Countess Aiella of Arjen, for the festival ball at Sedad Vix. The younger Countess, that is, the unmarried one. I designed it especially for her. The mask is there.” She nodded.
It hung on one of the standards, empty of eye and mouth, but no one could mistake the provenance of the high-bridged nose and the cheekbones from which the full rumpled beard flowed down. “Why,” said Lalette, “it is Prince Pavinius when he was Prophet of Mancherei; I thought you were—” and stopped.
“Amorosians?” The widow Domijaiek smiled. “I am a follower of that doctrine, though not yet perfected in it. But in spite of what you have been told, it is not one of gloomy reverence. It does not prohibit joy, nor even keep us away from the world, only declares that the joys of the world are false beside those that come to us when we learn how we have been deceived by the flesh. You, who are newly married, have the other kind of love now, and will not know what I mean, but in the end you will come to see that kind of love as sin.”
“I am not married,” said Lalette, letting her needle fall (but doubting that her feeling toward Rodvard were indeed the love the poets carolled, and of which Dame Domijaiek spoke), “except in what we who have the Art call the great marriage.”
“I would as soon not speak as to that,” said the widow, “but in our church we are taught that to love a person is to love the world, which is a deception due to the God of evil.”
Rodvard did not come back that evening, nor the next, and no word from him of any kind. Lalette felt unhappy and listless after so long indoors; above her she could hear from time to time Mme. Kaja’s footsteps come and go, and when the door was opened, often one of her pupils in song, flatted usually and more frequently than not, off key. The boy Laduis soon held little more for her, and in any case with the spring festival now rushing on so fast, had to be taken from his academy to run errands for his mother, who now worked late every night. The widow said the court had gone down to Sedad Vix, the doubled guards at the city gates were withdrawn, and the provosts somewhat relaxing in vigilance as to their search for the girl.
It might be safe to leave her refuge, if she had any place to go. Surely, not to her mother’s, who would still be watched by Uncle Bontembi the priest if by no other, and it seemed to Lalette there was no friend of her own age near enough to be trusted, now that all the world knew her for a witch. It was a box. For the present, one was able to pay in some sort for food and shelter by labor on the festival costumes, but that would soon be done. Ah, Rodvard, are you detained or faithless—which? She wished him there before her for an explanation that would also be the clue to her new life; and asked herself why a partnership of half an hour and not altogether of her own will, should bind her for life. Hold him she thought she could, and though hating the dependency into which she was thrown, hating the bond that made dependency her only resort, there was nothing to do but go see Dr. Remigorius, knowing that man hated her, and through him, try to find her lover. Oh, if I could ever be my own, not my mother’s nor any his, she wished desperately, and though not a word of this was put into voice, the widow seemed to know her whole mind when Lalette said she thought it might be worth going forth on festival eve to seek tidings.
“Of course. You will want the mask of the Kjermanash princess, the one that Laduis calls Sunimaa. I will let you take it.”
Nothing more was said at this time, nor until the afternoon of the festival eve itself, with horns and whistles already blowing in the street, though the sun had not yet touched the arm of spring, when the widow helped her into the fur-tipped robe, surveyed her all round, and bade farewell with a smile (which Lalette thought a trifle sad). “If all does not go as you would wish, return here. You may at all times come in the name of the God of love.”
It was just falling twilight when Lalette felt stones under her feet again and breathed deep the fine air of spring. Someone had hung a pair of colored lanterns at the gate of the Street Cossao, one of them with a broken pane in its side, through which the candle within shed its beam on a group of three or four premature revellers gathered round a bottle. They hallooed to Lalette and began to follow her along the boulevard on uneasy legs, but gave it up when she saw a hired carriage come past empty and hailed it as if to mount. When she did not after all enter his vehicle, the carriage-master swore at her, but want of money to pay left her without choice.
At the market-place tables had been set out and musicians on a stand surrounded with flowers and green branches were already intoning the volalelle, but only three or four couples were dancing. There were some murmurs of appreciation for her costume from those sitting; none called nor gave her any sign. It was a poor district; she knew she must look by the half too lordly, and that was as well.
Some way farther along, a group all masked was holding a procession from a side-street behind a hand-drum, and laughingly begged her to join, but she pulled loose. The sound of bells began to hang over the gay din that rose from the city, and Lalette hurried, feeling more than ever out of protection and alone. The street where Remigorius had his shop was wider than her memory of it. Someone had affixed an absurd green paper ribbon to the neck of the stuffed lizard over the door, but all seemed dark within.
There was no answer when Lalette pulled at the bell. Her heart plunged down into dreadful syncope—Oh, what will I do without money if he is not there nor anyone? Not go back to that woman of strange gods, no. She rang again, twice, to make her insistence clear, and as someone down the street greeted guests with a glad shout of welcome, the door cracked open and a voice said that the doctor was abroad, not even in Netznegon City, but there was another medic around the corner and two stories aloft.
“Oh,” said Lalette, “it is not for the curative that I wished him. I desire to find a friend of his and mine—Rodvard Bergelin.”
Door came fully open. In the rapidly fading light the girl found herself looking at a young man whose chin and slanting eyes betrayed Zigraner origin. As always with that race, the smile was an effort to ingratiate, but there was something unpleasant about it. “Are you—?”
“Lalette Asterhax. Yes.”
“Demoiselle, will you come in? The doctor has left me to keep his place for all that concerns the Sons of the New Day, since matters have reached such a crisis with what has been discovered at the conference of court.”
Lalette followed him (with dreadful certainty clutching at her heart that this was the key, then, of so much she had failed to understand; Rodvard was an intimate of that gang of murderous conspirators and so must these others be.) The Zigraner indicated a stool in the shop and struck a light. “You permit that I introduce myself? I am Gaidu Pyax. Of Rodvard you should not be concerned. He is doing good work, and the High Center has forwarded to ours its praise of him.”
(I am planets and centuries away from the man who has chosen me, she thought. How can I say it? What shall I ask?) “There was no word.”
The Zigraner frowned. “The sub-leader of your center doubtless told you of the plot against Baron Brunivar, the regent prospective? It was Rodvard who uncovered it.”
“Oh.” (The conversation was going to stop.) She cried desperately; “I thought he would be back with me for the festival.”
“And you have so lovely a costume, demoiselle. Duty bears hard on us.” His smile changed to a little bark of a laugh. “But be tranquil for him; he will sport high with the court at Sedad Vix.” The tongue of Gaidu Pyax came out and made a circle round his lips; he glanced where the clock ticked against the wall and darted his eye around quickly. “I will see you home, or if you will—it is only—that is—would you care to see how we Zigraners keep festival?”
Outside the dark was almost full; the bells were all chiming in chorus and Rodvard at Sedad Vix. (I have no home, she thought, and he has sent no word.) “It would be pleasant.” (For one must do something.)
Pyax leaped to his feet, his mouth all twisted with joy. “Come, let us go at once. I do not wish to be late for the light.” He ran into the rear room with blundering, skipping steps, tripping at the doorsill. Lalette heard him stumble and then, in a break of the street-noises, how a voice in that rear room growled at him heavily. (Remigorius is there after all, she thought, and maybe Rodvard; they are lying to me.) Pyax’ high-pitched voice said; “I don’t care if she is a witch. She’s going to—” and was cut off by the long bellow of a horn blown nearby, and he was back, his face somewhat abashed.
He did not lock the door. In the street the festival was now full-met, with lights tossing along and the horns blown from every window under the steady bells. Gaidu Pyax wore only a simple eye-mask and his voice had a lilt of excitement. Lalette (knew it was because how all his family would boast of having a true Dossolan girl to keep festival with, but she) said;
“I thought you told me that Doctor Remigorius was abroad.”
In the flickering light, his eyes were sidelong. “He is; he truly is, demoiselle.”
“Was that not his voice I heard in the rear room?”
“Oh, no, that was one of our people for whom the provosts are searching, and it is your fault in a way, because he had to eliminate the doorman at Rodvard’s house, who recognized you—” How much further he would have carried the useless lie she did not know or care, for at that moment a girl in a passing group threw a scent-ball that struck him in the face.
There was a high hall of entry with upholstered chairs, whose members were tortured spirals of wood; and a pair of gigantic silver candlesticks from the floor, rhinanthus plants in form. A respectful doorman came to take her furs, but they were only festival imitations without weight, and she kept them. Pyax said; “At our festival we do not wear masks indoors,” so she removed her headdress, and drew a glance of admiration when he saw the dark hair flowing across the white. The inner door opened and a middle-aged man with a grave, kindly face, came out, somewhat ridiculously caparisoned in the red under-jacket of a general. Pyax bowed low before him.
“Father, this is the Demoiselle Asterhax, who has come to keep spring festival with us.”
A little uncertain where the line of politeness lay in a Zigraner house, she would have curtsied, but he, without showing whether he recognized her name, took her by the hand, with; “The friend of my son is welcome,” and led her in. Beyond the inner door was a narrow hall hung with glyptics, in which he turned rightward through a second door, and releasing her, clapped both his hands together. “This is the Demoiselle Asterhax.”
A dozen or more people, who had been sitting in a room so dim they were visible only as forms, stood up and chorused, “You are welcome!” then sat down again with a rustling of silks. The senior Pyax took Lalette’s hand again and led her round through the gloom to a chair, where he bowed and placed a finger on his lips. Gaidu Pyax took the next seat to her own; no one spoke. The whole place had the strange, almost musty odor that forever hangs round Zigraners; the sound of the rejoicing city could not penetrate.