The Island Under the Earth (8 page)

The problem of barley much exercised the merchant Tabnath Lo. Usually the amount required for malting and the amount required for baking didn’t vary by more than a six of sacks in the course of a year from one year to another. Beer barley and cake barley were doing as usual at this season, he had enough on hand until the new grains came in, and had given out, also as usual, contracts for the crop after that one: and, as usual, had supplied seed and allowed advances — some farmers were still coming in and counting their cords to the click of the tally-stones as they gave their orders against their advances. But a new problem had come up and Lo was closeted in his inmost office, alone with his mute, pacing the flagged floor, and pondering what he might do about it.

So his wife explained it to the wife of one of the farmers, who, being a cousin’s cousin, and hence near kin, had come to visit a while in the kitchen while the man was in the warehouse. “It’s all about the pudding barley,” said Banna, a well-formed and well-nourished woman, as she sat mixing honey and soft cheese for a cake.

The farmwife, who was so exceedingly well-nourished that one was obliged to accept on faith that she had ever had a form at all, dandled her fat child and said, “Pudding barley. We didn’t raise none this year. What we need, we can all a ways trade for.”

Banna murmured, “That is what everyone says. It seems that this year hardly anyone raised any. Or plans to. And” — she tried to keep vexation out of her voice to avoid possibly offending the kinswoman — “yet, all so suddenly, that’s just what everybody seems to want. And why? Well, my dear,
you
know how to make a barley pudding better than I — ”

Her cousin’s cousin nodded gravely. “Wash your pudding barley and wash your beans and soak them a good while and get a good piece of fat meat, not lean, Banna,
fat
, for fat gives it half the flavor; brown your meat, then pour off the soak water and add fresh and put your fat meat well into the middle and add your seasoning and seal your pot with paste and put it on your fire and keep it going all of a night and all of a next morning.” She gave her head and treble chins a shake of satisfaction at having been able to impart this exceedingly arcane and exceedingly important information.

“Just as I would want it made myself,” said Banna. “Well. Haven’t you put your finger on the whole problem!” (The fat woman beamed, looked modestly down at her fat fingers, as though privately wondering which one it was and which the problem.) “Oh, yes, you have. ‘And keep the fire going all night and all of a next morning.’ Well, it’s one thing to bank a fire so it will have hot coals to start a fresh one, come dawnlight. And it’s another to keep a fire going all night so as to cook a good barley pudding, without having someone staying up to feed it.”

Her cousin’s cousin said she’d heard it told, by the blacksmith’s daughter who had the wen on her temple and lived past the Old Queen’s Tower, that town folks took their puddings and roasts and such to the bakers’. Didn’t bake their own bread and cake, sometimes, town folks didn’t: got it from one special person called a baker: and took their barley pudding there, too.

Banna sampled the honey and cheese, offered it to be sampled by the fat wife, who courteously licked her finger clean before thrusting it in to the mixture and tasting. She approved it. And she listened to Banna telling her that a new, new bake-shop and cook-shop had been opened in town, with a new great oven, so huge that it could accommodate rows and rows of pudding-pots instead of just a few. “And now everybody wants barley pudding, it’s cheap and it’s tasty, and they can have it without the bother of staying up a night or staying in all of a morning. The difficulty is, you see, that Lo hadn’t anticipated it, he hadn’t stored up pudding barley, nor given contracts for it. He tells them that cake barley is just as good — ”

“It ain’t,” said the farmwife, serenely. And serenely listened to the problem of risking loss of trade not only in barley but in all other sorts of ware and goods which disappointed buyers might buy elsewhere. And where elsewhere? Why, at any of the mercantile houses using the services of that wicked comprador, Dellatindílla, who had the pudding barley market cornered, and evidently would continue to for at least two crops to come. “And that is why Lo is so worried,” Banna said, putting cheese and honey into dough. “Because he and Dellatindílla — ”

The farmwoman carefully deposited her child in her enormous lap and then raised her hands and rolled her eyes and let her jaw drop. “That one! He’s no good for a woman, you know. Is it to be believed? Like an ox or a wether, Banna!
And
all a them wicked things he does! How do you call his name a right? Del-la-tin-
dil
-la? Well no wonder. Haves to be a foreigner.”

• • •

In his innermost chamber, closeted with his mute, Tabnath Lo was not worrying about which syllable of his rival’s name to stress. “But in the long run,” he said to his mute, “the money he bids fair to cost me in this matter of the barley — and I haven’t any doubt that he’s behind the new bake-shop — is a trifle, a trifle … in comparison.”

The mute, who could hear as well as any man, and understand better than many, gave a sympathetic hiss. He was thin and brown and bald and wrinkled and his ears stuck out like large, coarse shells; some found him unnatural and even a bit fearsome, but Tabnath Lo could not do without him. Every man had the need to unburden himself, and there were limits to what he could tell Banna. When, after all, was he able to be for long alone with her? At night, in their bedchamber, and if they weren’t tired and ready for simple slumber when they got there, they soon would be: well, that was well enough, no ground for grumbling about
that
. But sometimes Lo had problems which weighed upon his chest like the heavy air which only the Helm Wind can (among other things) sweep away. And at such times he would beckon to his mute and walk with him into his innermost office, deep within the warehouse walls, and talk it all out and tell him everything. What better confidant could any man have than a trusted servitor who could hear, listen, understand … and yet could never betray? And what is worse than betrayal? For, generally speaking, before betrayal can take place there must first have been trust, and is trust not a sixth part of love? Tabnath Lo had trusted so much to the receptive and seclusive mind of this maimed old man that it seemed to him more than once that he must by now totally love him.

With a deep sigh, the merchant threw up his hands, and the mute made a consolatory hiss. Abruptly his master turned from him and drew a scroll from its hole on a shelf, unrolled it part way … with an exclamation of annoyance, let it roll up shut again; pulled out another and another until he found the right one, spread it on his desk and inclined his head for the mute to come see. “Look,” he said. “Here is Allitu, once the home of fisher-folk and fruitgrowers. They tended their nets and pruning-hooks and gathered their produce and dried it in the sun and sent it to the Main for trading. None of it came here, it being so far off and its stuff of no vast value, but that’s beside the point. Now and for some while since, it’s become the haunt of pirates and corsairs and boat-wreckers from the Main….” He flicked his finger as though in that gesture he had flicked the island from the map.

The finger hovered over the chart, came to rest, darted here and there, came to rest again. “Here
we
are,
thither
went my partner and his woman and his man. They were seen coming, they were seen going, and although I’ve a plan to have the ass-man stopped before he returns to town again and sent off on another trip which should keep his dirty face and bound-to-babble tongue away for a goodly while, still…. You understand, mute?”

“
Sssss
…” said the mute.

“Why came he here direct? If he was minded to hide, why not at some secluded cove, messages sent me by dimlight or dawn? Did he think he’d profit by the principle that hidden things are the first found, that those lying out open may be overlooked? No, I doubt it. Such subtle tangents are not his way. Probably it was as he said, that the idea of heading for the Lonelands came into his mind only after he’d gotten here. It wasn’t in
my
mind at all to persuade him to settle for the half-hills, instead — no, that is not why, I mean, I mean that it was not in my mind to persuade him to settle
in
the half-hills, but it was a position in which I found myself. Better there than that half-mad trip to the Lonelands which was his first thought. Grrrrhh — ” He shivered and he shuddered, and his mute grimaced and followed his movements.

“He’s young and he’s brave and he’s proud and he’s bought himself a proud woman, for all that she was bought as a beast is bought, and he thinks or at least he’s thought that he can make his way anywhere against anything. Well … Well … I have been younger than I am and once I had some similar thoughts…. Not the same, but similar….” A thin shaft of light like an elongated quill came in through one of the airholes, brightening the merchant’s face; it seemed far more tired here, where he could most relax, than in warehouse or countinghouse; there were pouches and pockets on the still smooth skin. “But I never was rash enough to make light of such as lay along the way to the Lonelands and sometimes prowl the shallow reaches of the Lonelands Sea: sheydeem and golemmeem, the dreadful shadows of the satherwoods — and all the rest,” he summed up, abruptly.

The map had curled on release from his pressing fingers. He walked slowly back and forth past the desk on which it lay. “I fear me for them,” he muttered. “Though no such perils lie along their present way, still … still … still … They were seen to come. They were seen to go. The best of men may have enviers and enemies, and I am not the best of men. The Syndics suspect my plans and would prevent them, for all that they are full lawful — in fact, I daresay because they
are
full lawful, and hence harder to oppose! I have rivals who hate me no more than I hate them, but who would be glad enough to drop baulks in my way, if they could. And then there is that serpent’s egg, that cold and codless creature, Dellatindílla — ”

The mute’s breath hissed against his teeth, he mimicked the eunuch’s walk and his hands, palms down, two feet from the ground, indicated the eunuch’s dwarfs; and the mute’s face displayed his loathing, his loathing and his fear.

The merchant nodded and the merchant sighed. And he paced and muttered and talked to himself and then, quite suddenly, he stopped. He beckoned to his mute, who came and looked into his face, consolingly. “Go and bring food,” said Tabnath Lo. Swiftly his fingers knotted the cords which would authorize the actions, and he passed them to his servant. “Let them know that we won’t come out for some days.”

The mute nodded his perfect comprehension, closed the door behind him. The merchant heard the other doors closing, one by one. He stood silent a while. Then he heard and felt the soft concussion of the doors again. In a moment the mute stood before him, the package of rations neatly-bound in his hands.

There was a bed in one corner of the room, and two quilts upon it. A gesture sufficed to have them rolled up. Tabnath Lo watched this as he leaned against the wall. He seemed very tired. He leaned a shade more heavily. And so, slowly, slowly, the wall yielded, and turned upon a pivot and he and the mute entered into the darkness beyond it. Slowly, slowly, the wall returned to be as it had been. In the quill-thin shaft of light in the office-room dustmotes danced a moment. Then gradually they stopped their dance, and once again swam slowly, slowly, slowly.

When one knows the way and knows it to be unchanging, one may travel almost as swiftly in the darkness as in the daytime, and sometimes more swiftly: for there are fewer distractions.

An old, hunchbacked beggarman in a cowled cloak moved slowly through the town. He nattered to himself, and now and then he thrust out a palm which was seamed with dirty lines. It was at a quiet hour of the day and not many were about and none engaged his company or his thanks. Leaning on his staff, he made his way through the town walls and the slumped and yawning guards didn’t even bother to look up. Through the roads where villas and market gardens alternated he mumbled as he passed along, but he took a sidepath as though deliberately avoiding the tumbling huts where the outcasts lived: eaters of carrion and rats, descendants of lepers and whores and criminals: given to such seemly sports as the stoning of beggars: and among whom incest was merely the expression of not so much forgetfulness as family ties.

By and by the beggarman found himself in the woods, and there, for he stooped upon his staff as one fatigued, he sat himself down and whispered and nodded. He could see the quasi-ruin of the Old Queen’s Tower and he could see in the rocks of a hill the cleft which led into a shallow cave. He could see, but, sprawling as he was, could not be seen.

Something moved upon the roof of the cave. Perhaps a cluster of sleeping bats, disturbed in their batty slumbers by the sound of a creaking tumbril laden with spoiled hay for the market gardens. There was no further movement till the wagon had quite gone away. Then the shadow moved again, descended from the roof to the floor. A second one followed it. By and by a man emerged from the cave. Then another. They moved off into the woods. Each had a bundle and each had a staff. Presently they were gone.

After an interval the beggarman stood up and stretched. He moved in the same direction. His face was thin and he muttered and he rubbed his finger against the somewhat splayed tip of his nose. His cowl fell back a moment and for that moment he seemed to have two heads: the first one still stooped and whispered, the other nodded and winked and mimed and mowed, and, it seemed, or perhaps it was a trick of the light, that another finger of another hand was laid alongside the nose of the other head’s face, and that another eye glittered. Did the beggar reach and pull down the cowl? … or did the cowl somehow move down of itself? … down, down, hiding the hunchback’s head? Or was it only a trick of the light?