Mara and Dann (55 page)

‘A princess,' said Mara. ‘A princess in a brothel.'

He made a gesture – don't. And his face was miserable, all apology and anxiety. Seeing him thus she thought much less of him: he even seemed smaller, less impressive.

‘So,' said Mara, ‘she told the girls and the girls have told customers.'

‘I have the money to buy you out. It is partly mine and partly Shabis's money. But now some Council members want to buy you…'

‘A princess prostitute?' said Mara.

‘A Mahondi princess. It would be a feather in their caps. And they are going to offer Dalide double the price I settled on with her. I haven't got that much.'

Mara thought, I've got it, here, on my body, but I'm not going to tell him. I might need it later even more than I do now.

‘Luckily Mother Dalide is away. She wouldn't be able to resist, although she agreed on the price. I think you would soon find yourself in a much more unpleasant captivity than this one. And so we are going to move fast. I have made a statement before the chief magistrate, who is a good friend of mine, luckily, that the price was agreed between me and Dalide. It is legally binding, but I am sure Dalide and those crooks would find a way around it. I propose to take you up north with me to Kanaz immediately. And then when you have met up with Dann, we'll go on.'

‘Who controls the exit lines north from here?'

‘The Council, of course. I am one of them. We have to leave before the others find out.'

‘And who is so keen to get this princess safely out of Bilma? Where am I supposed to be?'

He hesitated. ‘You'll soon know, Mara. I promise. You'll understand it all. Meanwhile, we must hurry.'

She began putting her clothes into the sack, sad that these so beautifully washed and pressed dresses would be crushed up again.

Outside there were loud, arguing voices. Senghor and Leta. She came in, trying to shut the door on Senghor. He would not be shut out. Daulis had to push him back.

Leta said, ‘Daulis, why wouldn't you listen to me? I was trying to tell you. I've just been with the Chief of the Council, and he said that they are putting a guard on the north station.'

Daulis sat down heavily on the bottom of the bed and put his head in his hands.

‘But if you listen to me,' said Leta, ‘Just listen. I know a way. You must marry Mara and then they can't stop you – well, you aren't married, are you?'

Daulis was silent, but a quick, almost furtive look at Mara said that he did not want to marry her.

‘The marriage would not be legal outside the country of Bilma.'

‘Wouldn't it? How do you know?'

Leta laughed, angrily. ‘I know. I have spent years trying to think of ways to get out. I know about the laws. There isn't a man in Bilma with any kind of expertise who has been in my bed, that I haven't used. Information. I have been in this place ten years,' she said. ‘Ten years.' And Mara could hear the horror of it, in her voice, full of hate. ‘Take me out with you,' she said. ‘I have saved some money. Mother Dalide lets us keep a little. I have had my price ready for two years now. I could buy myself free, here, but when I walked around Bilma I'd be looking into the faces of men I've had sex with. In Kanaz no one will know me.'

‘Surely if I took anyone it should be Crethis?' said Daulis.

Leta, Mara could see, was only just controlling impatience.

‘I know you are fond of her,' she said.

‘Yes, I am,' he insisted.

‘Have you thought what you'd do with her? She's not like me, she's not independent. You'd have her on your hands.'

‘A pleasure,' he said. But it was only to keep his end up – he was looking doubtful.

‘There are women who hate this life,' said Leta. ‘Like me. And there are some who like it. And Crethis is one.' Daulis shook his head – shaking away the thought. ‘Crethis can have six men in a night and she often does, she's popular. And she will enjoy every minute of it.' Daulis had got up and was staring out of the window where sparks from the watchmen's fire fled up into the dark. ‘If you took her out of this house she'd be back. It's her home. And if you took her to Kanaz she'd be back into the brothels in no time.'

Silence from Daulis. He had his face turned well away but there were tears on his face.

‘Yes, you love her. But she's a little girl. She was six years old when she came here – and began her life as a whore. She has never spent a night alone, except when she was ill last year with the lung disease.'

‘I promised her,' said Daulis.

‘What did you promise? A member of the Council couldn't have promised marriage to a whore out of Mother Dalide's brothel?'

‘I promised her safety in my house.'

‘You're not the only one. Your friend the Chief of the Council took her out to his home, and she was back here six days later. This house is her home and Mother Dalide is her mother.'

‘All right, get your things,' said Daulis.

Leta ran out, and as they heard her quick, light feet on the stairs, Senghor came in.

‘Yes, I know,' said Daulis. ‘It is not allowed; but I am Councillor Daulis of the Supreme Council and I am ordering you to stand aside.' Senghor stood aside.

Mara and Daulis went downstairs, Mara carrying her sack, while the women not at work came out into the hall to watch. A few blew kisses, whether to Daulis or Mara it was hard to say.

Leta came with a little bag of her things in her hand, and then the three were out in the night streets of Bilma. They walked fast along side streets until they came to a big gate. The guard on it recognised Daulis and let them in. Daulis left the two women in a downstairs room while he went up to confer with his colleague and friend, the magistrate, and then they were summoned upstairs. In a few minutes Mara was married to Daulis, with Leta as the witness, by expedient law. It was a question
of saying that they were both unmarried, and not promised to anybody else. Then Mara wrote her name beside Daulis's name in a great parchment book. She had not written, except for practising letters in the dust with a stick, since she was with Shabis. She was given a leather disc, on a thong, to hang around her neck, so the world would know she was married and the property of a man. And for this time she was pleased to have the protection.

Daulis asked the magistrate to send a message to the Council saying that Mara from Dalide's house was married and legally free to leave Bilma.

As they left, the magistrate asked Mara, ‘Are you the woman whose brother is wanted for treasonable desertion in Charad?'

‘My brother has gone North. He is safe.'

‘With that price on his head he'd better shift himself. He's not going to be safe anywhere this side of Tundra.'

And then she and Daulis and Leta were moving fast and secretly, always through lanes and side streets, to the hill overlooking the station where she had been with Dann, but skirted it, and were near the platform where a line of coaches stood waiting for the morning. They did not dare board a coach, in case there was a search for them, but saw a small shack or shed a little way off and went there. Soon they saw, in a dim moonlight, a couple of soldiers come around the hill, and then look through the coaches. They were going back, then one of them came towards the shack, peered through a cracked window, and came in.

Daulis stepped forward and said, ‘Do you know me?'

The soldier hesitated, and said, ‘I was told to arrest you.'

‘Where's your order?'

‘There wasn't time for an order. The Chief of the Council sent us.'

‘Well I am giving you an order. I am Daulis, you know that, and I am going to Kanaz with my wife Mara. You have no legal right to stop me.'

The soldier looked around the dusty interior of this old shed and was wondering: If it is legal, why are you hiding? But he was undecided, did not dare arrest Daulis. He went out, without saluting, and they could see the two soldiers conferring, by the coaches. They went off, slowly.

By now it was well after midnight. Leta produced some bread – she had snatched it from the kitchen as she left. They ate, hastily, wished there was water, and went out and found a fallen tree, with a lot of branches, and behind them they crouched, watching the coaches and the shack they had left, expecting a return of the soldiers. And just
before dawn someone did come, but it was a tramp, and he might be more dangerous, because if he saw they were hiding, and therefore afraid of the law, he might go and report them hoping for a reward.

The sun rose. The station platform was filling. The three ran towards it, and then Mara saw the tramp standing staring at her. She knew him, could not think who it was…went to him and with difficulty recognised Kulik, because he was so thin and in rags.

She was about to retreat when he came forward and grasped her arm, bringing that hated, scarred face close to hers, dirty teeth bared in a threat.

‘Give me some money, Mara,' he said.

‘No.'

‘I'll take it.'

The last thing she wanted was a fracas, a noisy incident, even loud voices. She gave him a handful of small coins, and as she turned away saw his triumphant face, and heard his low, ‘Where's your brother? Are you going to hide him?'

She joined the other two on the platform and they got on just as the coach began to move, pulled by the young men in front, pushed by the young men behind. And as the coach was already getting up speed, a couple of officers, not soldiers, came running on to the platform, looking after them.

‘When will we be safe?' asked Mara.

‘Not in Kanaz,' said Leta. ‘But it is a big town, I hear, so we can hide.'

And the two looked at her with respect, and believed her. Leta, now she was out of that place which so demeaned her, was an impressive woman, authoritative because of her knowledge of life, and handsome too. She wore a dark green garment which made her pale skin gleam, and her green eyes shine. Her pale hair was in a big knot. And who is the princess now? thought Mara, fascinated by this strange female who was like nothing she had ever known.

The three of them were clutching each other and clinging on where they could. This ‘coach' was a contraption of wood slats and lattices, like a cage, and it rattled and bounced and swayed – surely in danger of toppling? And quite soon a mess of splintered wood beside the track showed that these coaches indeed fell over, although they did not move very fast. A good runner could easily have kept up; runners were: the youths who pulled were loping along, and had plenty of breath to shout at each other as they ran. The youths who had pushed, had leaped on to
the coach at the last minute and were waiting to replace the others, when they tired. But from their talk, it was apparent that there was a place ahead where the lines had fractured. That these breaks were not uncommon could be seen by the piles of rail sections at intervals along the tracks, pieces of the heaviest wood in the forests. Soon the coach was pulled to a halt by the ropes, and ahead workmen were replacing broken rails. The three did not have to confess their unease that they were stationary not more than a couple of hours from Bilma, and that a fast horse could easily catch up with them.

At first they had travelled through a light forest; but here was a grassy valley, rather like the ones Mara had seen so often in her journey north, across the wide, dry savannahs; but the grasses were different, and the trees too: lower, more compact and dense, not the airy, wide-branched trees of the forest south of Bilma. Beneath them, to the depth of – it was believed – twenty feet, still lay the old sands of the desert ancient people had called the Sahara. And Mara thought that in her sack were two striped robes called Sahar. While the sands far beneath them had been flooded – so they said – and pushed up forests, been swept by fire, and again and again, by floods, had been sands again…While all this was going on, for thousands of years, one little word stubbornly kept an old sound, and people who did not know the names of their ancestors, or even that they had had them, could walk into a shop and say, ‘I want to see your Sahar robes.'

On a parallel track to the lines appeared a stately procession of horses, donkeys, light carts, litters carried by – but they didn't have slaves in Bilma – and men and women walking. The people in the coach watched this caravan go by for a good half hour. Mara asked, ‘Then why the need for coaches?'

‘A good question,' said Daulis. ‘Some people want to end the coach service. But it takes one of those caravans a week to reach Kanaz, and it is a couple of days by coach. This is really used for urgent council work.'

‘And other things,' said Leta, smiling at him, and he actually blushed.

‘And other things,' he agreed.

‘This is also called the Love Trail,' said Leta to Mara. ‘There are inns all along the route used for holidays and love.' The word ‘love' when she used it sounded like a curse.

Daulis said to her, ‘Poor Leta. But soon it will all be different for you.'

Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face to look away from them. ‘Perhaps it will,' she said at last. And then, ‘You are a good man,
Daulis. We all of us know that.' She was using the
we
of the brothel. ‘We know who are the swines.' And again her voice shook.

Mara, sitting so close to Daulis, thought that she had not yet had a close look at him, and she did now, in the bright morning light. Yes, he was a good man. His face was one to trust – well, she had trusted him. But when she compared his face with another in her mind's eye, then he had to suffer from the comparison. Shabis was finer, and both stronger and more sensitive.

Mara asked, as the idea popped into her on some kind of prompting or instinct, ‘Do the Three Generals want me too, as well as Dann?'

‘I wasn't going to tell you yet. But yes, they do.'

‘Are they offering money for me?'