Shardik (72 page)

What had taken place, he knew, involved a contradiction. After all she had suffered, she no doubt felt impatient of conventional ideas of modesty. Nevertheless, what she had done sprang from sensitivity and not from shamelessness. Carried away by her delight in the kynat, she had yet known well enough
that
he would understand
that
this was no invitation, in
the
sense that Thrild or Ruvit would receive it. She had been sure that he would accept what he saw simply as part of their common delight in the moment
.
She would not have behaved before another man in this way. So in fact there was an invitation - to a deeper level of confidence, where formality and even propriety could be used or set aside entirely as they might be felt to help or hinder mutual understanding. In such a framework, desire could wait to find its allotted place.

So much, though it was new to him and outside any experience that he had had of the dealings between men and women,
Kelderek
understood. His excitement grew intense. He longed for
Melathys
, her voice, her company, her mere presence, to the exclusion of all else. He became determined to save her life and his own, to take her away from Zeray, to leave behind for ever the wars of Ikat and
Bekla, the sour vocation that had fallen
upon him unsought and the fruitl
ess hope which he had once entertained of discovering the great secret to be imparted through Shardik. To reach Lak and from there, somehow, to escape with this girl who had restored to him the desire to live - if it could be done, he would do it. If it were possible for her to love a man, he would win her with a fervour and constancy beyond any in the world. He stood up, stretched out his hands and began to pray with passionate earnestness.

A sti
ck tapped g
ently
upon the courtyard paving and he turned with a start to see Ankray standing outside the window, cloaked and hooded, carrying a sack over his shoulder and armed with a sword at his belt and a kind of rough javelin or short spear. He was holding one finger to his lips, and Kelderek went over to him.

‘Are you off to Lak?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir. The priestess has given me some money and I’ll make it go far enough. You’ll be wanting to bolt
the
gate behind me. I just thought I’d tell you without letting the priestess know - there’s a dead man lying in the road - a stranger, I reckon - some newcomer, maybe:
they
‘re the ones that catch it soonest here, as often as not You’ll want to be very careful while I’m gone. I wouldn’t go out, sir, or leave the women at all, not if I was you. Anything could happen in the town just now.’

‘But aren’t you the one that needs to be careful?’ replied Kelderek. ‘Do you
think
you ought to go? ‘

Ankray laughed. ‘Oh,
they
‘re no match for me, sir,’ he said. ‘Now
the
Baron, he always used to say, “Ankray,” he used to say, “you knock ‘em down, I’ll pick ‘em up.” Well, after all, you don’t have to pick ‘em up, sir, now do you? So if I just go on knocking ‘em down, it’ll all be
the
same, you see.’

Appar
ently
highly satisfied with
this
piece of incontrovertible logic, Ankray leant comfortably against the wall. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘the Baron always used to say, “Ankray, you knock ‘em down -”’

‘I’ll come and see you off,’ said
Kelderek
, leaving the window. At the courtyard gate he drew the bolts and stepped out first into the empty lane. The dead man was lying on his back about thirty yards away, eyes open and arms spread wide. The flesh of his face and hands had a fixed, pale, waxen look. His sprawling, untidy posture, together with the few torn clothes left on the body, made him look less like a corpse than like rubbish, something broken and thrown away. One finger had been severed, no doubt to remove a ring, and the stump showed as a dull red circle against
the
pallid hand.

‘Well, you see how it is, sir,’ said Ankray. ‘I’ll just be getting along now.
If
you take my advice you’ll leave it alone. There’s others will take it away - you can be sure of that. If by any chance I shouldn’t be back before dark, perhaps you’d be so kind as to wait in the courtyard, same as I did for you last night. But I shan’t be loitering-‘

He swung up his sack and set off, looking sharply about him as he went.

Kelderek bolted the door and returned to the house. Ankray had cleared and swept the kitchen hearth but lit no fire, and he was washing in cold water when
Melathys
came in, carrying a dark-red robe and some other garments. Kelderek, head bent over the pail, smiled up at her, shaking
the
water out of his eyes and cars.

‘These were the Baron’s,’ she said, ‘but that’s no reason to leave them folded away for ever. They’ll fit quite as well as your soldier’s clothes and be far more comfortable.’ She laid them down, filled a pitcher for
the
Tuginda and took it away.

As he dressed, he wondered whether this might be the very robe which Bel-ka-Trazet had been wearing when he fled from Ortelga. If it were not, he could only have taken it from some enemy killed since, for it was inconceivable that such a garment could have been traded in
Zeray
. Elleroth himself, he thought wryly, might have sported it with confidence. It was of excellent cloth, evenly dyed a clear, dark red, and the workmanship was so fine that the seams were almost invisible. It was, as Melathys had said, very comfortable, being yielding and smooth, and the very act of wearing it seemed to remove him a step further from his dismal wanderings and the sufferings he had undergone.

The Tuginda, thinner and hollow-eyed, was sitting up, propped against the wall behind the bed while Melathys combed her hair. Kelderek, taking one of her hands between his own, asked whether she would like him to bring her some food. She shook her head.

‘Later,’ she answered. Then, after a little, ‘Kelderek, thank you for helping me to reach Zeray: and I must ask your forgiveness for deceiving you in one matter.’

‘For deceiving me, saiyett? How?’

‘I knew, of course, what had become of the Baron. All news reaches Quiso. I expected to find him here, but I did not tell you. I could see that you were badly shocked and exhausted, and I thought it better not to trouble you further. But he would not have harmed you; neither you nor me.’

‘You don’t need to ask forgiveness of me, saiyett, but since you have, it’s given very willingly.’

‘Melathys has told me that now that the Baron is gone there’s no possibility of our finding help in Zeray/

She sighed deeply, staring down at her sunlit hands on the blanket with a look so disappointed and hopeless that he was moved, as people are apt to be by pity, to say more than he could be sure of.

‘Don’t distress yourself, saiyett. It’s true enough that
this
is
a
place of rogues and worse, but as soon as you’re well enough
we
shall leave - Melathys, you and I and the Baron’s man. There’s a village not far to the north where I hope we may find safety.’

‘
Melathys
told me. The servant has set out to go
there
today. Will the poor man be safe?’

Kelderek laughed. ‘There’s one person who’s sure of it and that’s himself.’

The Tuginda closed her eyes wearily and
Melathys
put down the comb.

‘You should rest again now, saiyett,’ she said, ‘and then try to eat something. I’ll be off to the kitchen, for there’s a fire to be lit before I can cook.’

The Tuginda nodded without opening her eyes.
Kelderek
followed
Melathys
out of the room. When he had laid the fire, she lit it with a fragment of curved glass held in a sunbeam. He was content to stand and watch as she busied herself with
the
food, only speaking a word occasionally or trying to anticipate her need of this or that. The room seemed as full of calm and reassurance as of sunlight, and for the time being the future caused no more anxiety to him than to the joyous insects darting in the brightness outside.

Later, as the day, moving towards noon, filled the courtyard with
a
heat like that of summer, Melathys drew water from the
well, washed the household cloth
es and laid them in
the
sun to drv. Coming back into the shade of the house, she sat down in the narrow window-scat, wiping her neck and forehead with a rough cloth in place of a towel.

‘Elsewhere, women can go and wash clothes in the river and take it for granted,’ she said. ‘That’s what rivers
are
for - laundry and gossip: but not in
Zeray
.’

‘On Quiso?’

‘On Quiso we were often less solemn than you may suppose. But I was thinking of any town or village where ordinary, decent people can go about the business of life without fear: yes, and without dragging shame behind them like a chain. Wouldn’t it be fine -wouldn’t it seem like a miracle - just to go to a market, to bargain with a stall-keeper, to loiter in the road eating something
that you’d bought fair and honestl
y, to give some of it away to a friend while you gossiped by
the river? I remember those th
ings - the Quiso girls came and went a good deal on the island’s business, you know: in some ways we were freer than other women. To be deprived of
little
, common pleasures that honest people take for granted - that’s imprisonment, that’s retribution, that’s grief and loss. If people valued such things at their worth, they’d give themselves more credit for
the
common trust and honesty on which those things depend.’

‘You’ve got some compensation. Most women can’t use words like that,’ answered
Kelderek
. ‘It’s a narrow life for a village girl -cooking, weaving, children, pounding clothes on the stones.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘Perhaps. Birds sing in the trees, find their food, mate, build nests. They don’t know anything else.’ She looked up at him, smiling and drawing the cloth slowly from side to side across the back of her neck. ‘It’s a narrow life for birds. But you catch one and put it in a cage and you’ll soon find out whether it values what it’s lost.’

He longed to take her in his arms so strongly
that
for a few moments his head swam. To conceal his feelings he bent over his knife and half-finished fish-hook.

‘You sing, too,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard you.’

‘Yes. I’ll sing now, if you like. I sometimes used to sing for the Baron. He liked to hear old songs he remembered, but really it was all the same to him who sang them - Ankray would do. By the Ledges, you should hear him!’

‘No - you. I can wait to hear Ankray.’

She rose, peeped in at the Tuginda, left the room and returned with a plain, unornamented
hinnari
of light-coloured
sesttiaga
wood, much battered along the finger-board. She put it into his hands. It was warped and more than a
little
out of true.

‘Don’t you say a word against it,’ she said. ‘As far as I know, it’s the only one in
Zeray
. It was found floating down the river and the Baron put his pride in his pocket and begged the strings from Lak. If they break there aren’t any more.’

Sitting down again in the window-se
at, she plucked the strings softl
y for a while, adjusting and coaxing the hard-toned hinnari into such tune as it possessed. Then, looking into her lap as though singing to herself alone, she sang the old ballad of U-Deparioth and the Silver Flower of Sarkid. Kelderek remembered the tale - still told as true in that country - how Deparioth, abandoned by traitors in the terrible Blue Forest, left to wander till he died and long given up for lost by friends and servants, had been roused from his despair by a mysterious and beautiful girl, dressed like a queen in that desolate wilderness. She tended his hurts, found him fruits, fungus and roots fit to cat, restored his courage and guided his limping steps day by day through the maze of the woods, until at last they came to a place that he knew. But as he turned to lead her towards the friends running to meet them, she vanished and he saw only a tall, silver lily blooming where she had been standing in the long grass. Heart-broken, he sank weeping to the ground, and ever after longed only to recover those days of hardship that he had spent with her in the forest.

Give back the miry solitude,

The thorns and briars outstretched to bless.

There lay my kingdom, past compare:

This court’s the desert wilderness.