Shardik (65 page)

The Tuginda was about to speak to him when suddenly he turned his head and uttered a sharp cry, at which other men began to appear from among the huts. The tattooed man shouted ‘Woman sick,’ in
Bekla
n, and then broke into some other language, at which they n
odded, responding ‘Ay! Ay!
‘ After a few moments the Tuginda, relinquishing
Kelderek
‘s arm, turned and began walking slowly back up
the
track. He followed. As he reached her side a stone struck her on the shoulder, so that she staggered and fell against him. A second stone pitched into the dust at their feet and the next struck him on the heel. Shouting had broken out behind them. Without looking round, he bowed his head against the falling stones, put his arm round the Tuginda’s shoulders and half-dragged, half-carried her back in the direction from which they had come.

Helping her to a patch of grass, he sat down beside her. She was trembling, her breath coming in gasps, but after a few moments she opened her eyes and half-rose to her feet, looking back down the road.

‘Damn and blast the bastards!’ whispered the Tuginda. Then, meeting his stare, she laughed. ‘Didn’t you know,
Kelderek
, that
there
are
times when everyone swears? And I had brothers once, long ago.’ She put her hand over her eyes and swayed
a
moment. ‘That brute was right, though - I’m not well.’

‘You’ve eaten nothing all day, saiyett-‘

‘Never mind. If we can find somewhere to lie d
own and sleep, we shall reach Ze
ray tomorrow. And there I believe we may find help.’

Wandering over
the
ground near by, he came upon
a
stack of turves, and of these made
a
kind of shelter in which
they
huddled side by side
for warmth. The Tuginda was restl
ess and feverish, talking in her sleep of Rantzay and Sheldra and of autumn leaves to be swept from the Ledges.
Kelderek
lay awake, tormented by hunger and the pain in his heel. Soon, now, he thought, the change would be complete and as an animal he would suffer less. The stars moved on and at length, watching them, he also fell asleep.

Soon after dawn, for fear of the villagers, he roused the Tuginda and led her away through
a
ground-mist as white and chill as that through which
Elleroth
had been brought to execution. To sec her reduced to infirmity, catching her breath as she leaned upon him and compelled to rest after every stone’s throw walked at the pace of
a
blind beggar, not only wrung his heart but filled him also with misgiving - the misgiving of one who observes some portent in the sky, and fears its boding. The Tuginda, like any other woman of flesh and blood, was not equal to
the
hardship and danger of this land; like any
other
woman, she could sicken; and perhaps
the
. Contemplating this possibility, he realized
that
always, even in
Bekla
, he had unconsciously felt her to be standing, compassionate and impervious, between himself and the consuming truth of God. He, the impostor, had stolen from her everything of Shardik - his bodily presence, hi
s ceremony, the power and adulati
on - all
that
was of men: everything but the invisible burden of responsibility borne by Shardik’s rightful mediator, the inward knowledge that if she failed there was none other. She it was and not he who for more than five years had borne a spiritual load made doubly heavy by his own abuse of Shardik. If now she were to die, so that none remained between him and the truth of God, then he, lacking the necessary wisdom and humility, would not be fit to step into her place. He was found out in h
is pretensions, and the last acti
on of the fraudulent priest-king should be, not to seek death from Shardik, of which he was unworthy, but rather to creep, like a cockroach from the light, into some crevice of
this
country of perdition, there to await whatever
death
might befall him from sickness or violence. Meanwhile the fate of Shardik would remain unknown: he would vanish unwatched and unattended, like a great rock dislodged from a mountainside that smashes its way downward, coming to rest at last in trackless forests far below.

Afterwards, of all that took place during that day, he could recall only one incident. A few miles beyond the village they came upon a group of men and women working in a field. A
little
distance away from
the
others
, two girls were resting. One had a baby at the breast and both, as they laughed and talked, were eating from a wicker basket. Half a mile
further
on he persuaded the Tuginda to lie down and rest, told her he would return soon and hastened back to the field. Approaching unseen, he crept close to the two girls, sprang suddenly upon them, snatched their basket and ran. They screamed but, as he had calculated, their friends were slow to reach them and there was no pursuit. He was out of sight, had wolfed half
the
food, thrown away the basket and rejoined the Tuginda almost before
they
had decided that a silly girl’s few handfuls of bread and dried fruit were not worth the loss of an hour’s work. As he limped away on his bruised heel, coaxing
the
Tuginda to swallow
the
crusts and raisins he had brought back, he reflected that starvation and misery made an apt pupil. Ruvit himself could hardly have done better, unless indeed he had silenced the girls with his knife.

Evening was falling once more when he realized that they must at last be approaching Zeray. They had seen few people all day and none had spoken to or molested
them
, due no doubt
partly
to
their
destitution, which showed
them
, clearly enough, to be not worth robbing, and
partly
to the evident sickness of the Tuginda. There had been no more woodland and
Kelderek
had simply gone
south
-east by
the
sun
through
an open wilderness, broken here and
there
by sorry pastures and small patches of ploughed land. Finally they had come once more to reeds and sedges, and so to
the
shore of a creek which he guessed to be an inlet of the
Telthearna
itself. They followed it a
little
way inland, rounded the head and so came to the southern bank, along which they made their way. As it grew broader he could see, beyond the creek’s mouth, the
Telthearna
itself, narrower here than at Ortelga and running very strongly,
the
eastern shore rocky in
the
distance across the water. Even
through
his despair a kind of dull, involuntary echo of pleasure stole upon him, a subdued lightening of the spirit, faint as a nimbus of
the
moon behind white clouds. That water had flowed past
Ortelga
‘s reeds; had rippled over
Ortelga
‘s broken causeway. He tried to point it out to the Tuginda, but she only shook her head wearily, scarcel
y able to follow even the directi
on of his arm. If she were to
the
in
Zeray
, he
thought
, his last duty would be to ensure that somehow
the
news was carried upstream to Quiso. Despite what she had said, there seemed little hope of
their
finding
help in a remote, squalid settle
ment, peopled almost entirely (or so he had always understood) by fugitives from
the
justice of half-a-dozen lands. He could see the outskirts now, much like
those
of
Ortelga
- huts and wood-smoke, circling birds and in
the
evening air, from which
the
sunlight was beginning to fade, the glitter of
the
Telthearna
.

‘Where
are
we, Kelderek?’ whispered the Tuginda. Almost her whole weight was upon his arm and she was grey-faced and sweating. He helped her to drink from a clear pool and then supported her to a
little
, grassy mound near by.

‘This is Ze
ray, saiyett, as I suppose.’

‘But here - this place?’

He looked about him. They were in what seemed a kind of wild, untended garden, where spring flowers were growin
g and trees stood in bloom. A me
likon hung over the water, the peasants’ False Lasses, covered with the blossoms which would later turn to golden berries dropping in the still, summer air. Everywhere were low banks and mounds like the one on which they were sitting; and now he saw that several of these had been roughly marked with stones or pieces of wood stuck in
the
ground. Some looked new, others old and dilapidated. At a
little
distance were four or five mounds of newly-turned earth, ungrasscd and strewn
with
a few flowers and black beads.

‘This is a graveyard, saiyett. It
must be the burial ground of Ze
ray.’

She nodded. ‘Sometimes in these places they have a watchman to keep off animals at night. He might -‘ She broke off, coughing, but then resumed, with an
effort, ‘He might tell us someth
ing of Zeray.*

‘Rest
here, saiyett I will go and see
’

He set off among the graves and had not gone far when he saw at a
little
distance the figure of a woman standing in prayer. Her back was towards him and both she and the raised grave-pile beside wh
ich she was standing were outline
d against
the
sky. The sides of the grave had been faced with boards, carved and painted, giving it something of the appearance of a large, decorated chest; and, by contrast with the neglected humps all around, it possessed a kind of grandeur. At one end a pennant had been thrust upright in the soil, but the cloth hung limp, unstirred by the least wind, and he could not see the device. The woman, dressed in black and bare-headed like a mourner, appeared to be young. He wondered whether the grave to which she had come alone w
as that of her husband and wheth
er he had died a natural or a violent death. Slim and graceful against the pale sky, her arms extended and hands raised palm forward, she was standing motionless, as though for her the beauty and dignity of this traditional posture constituted in themselves a prayer as devout as any words or thoughts that could proceed from her mind.

‘This’, he thought, ‘is a woman to whom it is natural to express her feelings - even grief - through her body as well as
through
her lips. If Zeray contains even one woman of such grace, perhaps it cannot be altogether vile.’

He was about to go up to her when the sudden thought of how he must appear made
him
hesitate and turn away. Since leaving Bekla he had not once seen his own reflection, but he remembered Ruvit, like some shambling, red-eyed animal, and the ragged, stinking men who had first searched and
then
befriended him. Why this woman was here alone he could not tell. Perhaps young women in Zeray commonly went about alone, though from all that he had ever heard of the place this seemed unlikely. Could she perhaps be some courtesan mourning a favourite lover? Whatever the reason, the sight of himself would probably alarm her and might even put her to flight. But she would feel no fear of
the
Tuginda and might even take pity on her.

He retraced his steps to the water.

‘Saiyett, there is a woman praying not far away - a young woman. For me to approach her alone would only frighten her. If I help you, and we go slowly, can you come with me?’

She nodded, licking her dry lips and stretching out both hands for his. Helping her to her feet, he supported her faltering steps among the graves. The young woman was still standing motionless, her arms raised as
though
to draw down peace and blessing upon the dead friend or lover earth-wrapped at her feet. The posture, as well he knew, became a strained one in no long while, yet she seemed heedless of discomfort, of tormenting flies and the loneliness of the place, absorbed in her self-contained, silent sorrow.

‘She needs neither to weep nor to utter words,’ he thought.