“Dearest,” said Senia thoughtfully in the middle of the lesson, “is it really true that you are completely innocent?”
Bertina pricked herself with a needle and put her finger in her mouth.
“Don’t be embarrassed.” Senia smiled. “It seems to me that we can be completely open with each other. So are you really, well, you know what I mean?”
Bertina raised her gray eyes to Senia, who saw with amazement that those eyes were unimaginably sorrowful. “Ah, Senia, that is such a sad tale.”
“I thought as much!” the wife of Vapa exclaimed. “He seduced you and then dropped you, didn’t he?”
Bertina shook her head and again sighed heavily.
The room was silent for a short time and then from the street came the sound of friendly laughter from two dozen young throats.
“The guards,” Senia muttered, going to the window. “They are laughing again. What are they always laughing for?”
Bertina let out a sob.
Senia turned away from the window and sat next to her. “I see. Was he, your beloved, was he a guard?”
“If only,” whispered Bertina. “The guards are tender and honorable, the guards are faithful and manly, the guards…”
Senia pursed her lips incredulously. “I highly doubt the guards are faithful. I think it is more likely that your beloved is called Egert Soll, isn’t that so?”
Bertina jumped slightly on the cushions. The room again became quiet.
“Dear one,” began Senia in a whisper, “you know you can tell me. Have you ever experienced, well, you know, they say that women can also experience, um, pleasure. Do you understand what I mean?” Senia blushed; such candor made her uneasy.
Bertina again raised her eyes, but this time they were astonished. “But, my dear, you’re married!”
“Yes, that’s just it!” Senia abruptly stood up, entirely out of humor. Forcing the words out between her teeth, she said, “I am married. So I am.”
Her guest slowly set aside her embroidery.
Their conversation went on for about an hour. Bertina talked and talked, but her voice never gave out: on the contrary, it discovered an almost musical quality as she progressed. She closed her eyes and tenderly stroked the back of the chair; she practically cooed at one point. Senia, unable to move, stared at her with widened eyes; she could only breathe and from time to time lick her parched lips.
“And all that really happens?” she asked finally in a shaking, choked-up voice.
Bertina slowly, solemnly nodded.
“And I’ll never experience it?” Senia murmured, paralyzed by distress.
Bertina stood up. She took a deep breath as if she were planning to plunge into cold water. She tugged at the front of her dress, and two round, padded sacks fell, one after the other, onto the floor.
Senia’s breath caught in her throat, and she could not scream.
The dress slid from Bertina like skin from a snake. Muscular shoulders, a wide chest covered in curly hair, and a stomach with well-defined ridges of muscle were revealed from beneath the dress.
When the dress slipped even lower, Senia covered her eyes with her hands.
“If you scream,” whispered the voice of the man who had been Bertina, “your very own husband will…”
Senia did not hear the rest; she simply fainted.
* * *
Of course, Egert would not take advantage of the helplessness of a languishing woman. Of course, he quickly managed to bring Senia back to consciousness. And of course, their confidential conversation quickly resumed, though it was now of a decidedly different quality.
“You promise?” asked Senia, shaking from head to toe.
“Upon my word as a guard.”
“You! You’re a guard?”
“How can you ask! I’m Egert Soll!”
“But—”
“Only with your consent.”
“But—”
“One word, and I’ll go.”
“But—”
“Should I go?”
“No!”
On the first floor, the merchant Vapa was frowning angrily; his accounts just would not add up. The two dozen guards standing below the windows of his home got bored and decided to wander off.
The needlework basket had long since tumbled to the floor, spilling colorful tangles of thread. The caged canary was silent, astonished.
“Oh. Glorious Heaven!” gasped Senia, embracing Egert’s neck with her arms. He was silent; he no longer had the ability to speak.
The poor little bird was beginning to get frightened. Its cage, which hung over the bed, was swaying, rhythmically and vigorously. An ancient clock emitted a majestic series of chimes, and then it did so yet again, and again.
“Oh! Good Spirits! Glorious Heaven!” Senia did not know to whom else to pray; she was almost ready to burst from trying not to cry out at the top of her lungs.
The merchant Vapa rubbed his hands contentedly: the mistakes had been corrected, and a careless scribe would soon lose his position. And how good it was that Senia had become friends with the sister of Lord Karver! For a whole day she had been neither seen nor heard; she did not fidget in front of him, or pester him, or ask to go out walking. The merchant smirked suddenly, thinking he might even have time to go out and visit his mistress.
He raised himself up, intending to escape the confines of his armchair, but he winced at a pain in his back and remained seated.
Lurching slightly, Egert Soll peered out the window toward the embankment. Naked and enervated, he stood in the window aperture and regarded his comrades with scorn. The merchant Vapa jumped and winced. Cursed guards! What did they have to laugh about so?
A few minutes later, Senia and Bertina came downstairs. It seemed to Vapa that his wife was not herself, as if the lesson in embroidery had exhausted her. Saying good-bye, she looked into Bertina’s eyes with special tenderness.
“You’ll come again, yes?”
“Without fail,” breathed the girl, “I have not yet mastered this … stitch, dearest Senia.”
The merchant sneered contemptuously. These women are so sentimental.
“I’ll cut out the tongue,” Egert told his friends in the pub, “of anyone who gossips. Is that clear?”
There was no doubt to anyone that he would do so if the secret of the merchant’s wife Senia became gossip in the town. They all remembered their hereditary blades and their family honor, and they held their tongues.
They winked at Karver and shook his hand because it was clear to them that he had played a significant role in this whole affair. The congratulations, it seemed, afforded him little joy; heedless of the reflection of Egert’s glory that fell to him, his “brother,” Karver first got extremely drunk and then silently slipped away.
* * *
Spring broke forth with driving rains; muddy currents coursed through the steep, cobbled alleyways, and the children of cooks and shopkeepers launched wooden shoes with canvas sails attached to them off to sea while the young aristocrats peered at them from high, oriel windows with quiet envy.
One morning, a simple highway coach drove up to the inn the Noble Sword, which was located near the center of Kavarren. The coachman, going against the usual habit of his kind, did not rush to open the door of the coach, but instead sat indifferently on the driver’s box; apparently, the passengers were not his masters, but nothing more than renters. The carriage door swung open on its own and a young man, slight and lean, kicked open the running board so he could step down.
Outsiders were not all that rare in Kavarren, and it is possible that the arrival of the coach would have gone unnoticed had not Egert Soll and his friends been whiling away the hours at the Faithful Shield, a tavern opposite the inn.
“Take a look at that one!” said Karver, who was sitting by the window of the tavern.
Two or three heads turned in the direction he was looking; the other gentlemen were far too engrossed in their conversation or their wine.
“I say, check it out!” Karver nudged Egert, who was sitting next to him, in the side.
Egert glanced over. By this time, the young man had already jumped down onto the wet cobblestones and was offering his hand to someone unseen, someone still inside the coach. The youth was dressed all in dark colors, and Egert instantly felt that there was some sort of oddity in the figure of the young stranger, but he was not sure what.
“He’s not carrying a sword,” said Karver.
Only then did Egert see that the stranger was unarmed, that he was not even wearing any empty baldrics, and that on his thin belt there was no sign of a dagger, not even a kitchen knife. Egert looked at him more intently; the stranger’s clothes seemed extremely formal, but if they made up a uniform, it was in no way military.
“He’s a student,” explained Karver. “Definitely a student.”
In the meantime, the student, having conferred with the person who still remained inside the coach, went to pay the coachman, who still did not display a single sign of obeisance; obviously, in addition to not being the coach’s owner, the student was not wealthy.
“I suppose,” drawled Egert through his teeth, “students, like women, don’t wear swords?”
Karver snickered.
Egert smirked disdainfully and was about to turn his back on the window when a girl, leaning on the arm of the student, emerged from the carriage. All sound in the tavern immediately ceased.
Her face was anxious, pale from exhaustion, and doleful from the rain, but even this could not spoil it. It was a perfect face, almost as if it were finely cut from marble; only, whereas a marble statue’s white, dead eyes would have stared dully, this girl’s dark, tranquil eyes gleamed lustrously without the slightest shade of coyness.
Like her companion, the newly arrived girl was dressed simply. However, her simple traveling dress was unable to hide either her elegant figure or the lightness and suppleness of her movements. The girl jumped down onto the cobblestones next to the youth. He said something, causing the soft lips of his tired companion to quirk in a small smile and her eyes to become even more penetrating and vivid.
“That’s beyond belief,” murmured Egert.
The driver touched the reins. The two arrivals leapt back to escape from being splattered with the watery mud thrown up by the wheels. Then the young man hauled a large bundle up onto his shoulder, and the visitors entered the premises of the Noble Sword hand in hand. The door, carved with entwined monograms, closed behind them.
In the tavern, everyone started talking at once; for a moment Egert held his peace, unresponsive to the questioning glances of his friends. Then he pulled Karver to the side. “I need to know who they are.”
He stood up, prepared, as usual, to do a service for his friend. Egert watched as Karver, hopping over puddles, rushed across the street to the Noble Sword; the carved door slammed shut yet again, and nearly a quarter of an hour passed before Egert’s sidekick returned.
“Yes, he’s a student. Evidently, they’re staying for about a week.” Karver fell silent, waiting with satisfaction for his friend’s questions.
“And the girl?” Egert nearly spit the words out.
Karver smirked strangely. “She is neither his sister nor his aunt, as I had hoped. She is the fiancée of that boy and, it seems, the wedding is not far off!”
Egert was silent; Karver’s report, although not completely unexpected, piqued and almost outraged him.
“It goes against nature,” said one of the guards. “A complete misalliance.”
They all boisterously agreed.
“Do you know what I’ve heard?” interjected Karver as if in wonder. “I’ve heard that all students are castrated so they can’t be distracted by earthly pleasures, and so they fully consign themselves to their studies. Was that all a lie?”
“It seems it is a lie,” muttered Lieutenant Dron, sounding disappointed. He knocked over his forgotten wineglass.
“If he doesn’t carry a sword, he might as well be a eunuch,” said Egert quietly. They all turned in his direction. A predatory and insolent sneer stalked over Egert’s face. “What use does a eunuch have for a woman, anyway? Especially a woman like that!”
He stood up, and all his friends respectfully made way for him. Having tossed a few gold coins at the innkeeper, enough to pay for the entire company, Lieutenant Egert Soll walked out into the rain.
* * *
That very same evening, the young man and his companion were dining on the first floor of the Noble Sword; their meal was quite modest until the innkeeper, grinning widely, came over and placed a wicker basket bristling with bottle necks on the table in front of them.
“Master and mistress, compliments of Lord Soll!”
With these words, and with a meaningful smile, the innkeeper bowed himself away.
Egert, who had made himself comfortable in a far corner of the dining room, saw how the student and the lovely young woman glanced at each other in surprise. After a long deliberation, the cloth covering the basket was whipped away and joyful wonder blossomed on the faces of the pair leaning over the gifts, which was no real surprise, as the viands and wines had been selected with impeccable taste.
However, bewilderment soon replaced joy; after saying something heated to his companion, the student hopped up and ran off after the innkeeper to find out who exactly this generous benefactor, this Lord Soll, was.
Egert drained his mug to the dregs, stood up leisurely, and made his way through the room to the girl, who had been left alone. As he walked, he purposefully avoided looking at her, fearing disenchantment. For what if this beauty, when seen too close, turned out not to be as beautiful?
The dining room was half-empty. A few guests were eating and a well-behaved group of townsfolk were whiling away their time in amiable drunkenness. The Noble Sword had the reputation for being a calm, decorous establishment; the innkeeper carefully guarded against boisterous carousals and brawls. Delaying the moment of meeting the beautiful lady, Egert noticed a new face among the guests. Apparently, this tall, middle-aged traveler had arrived very recently because Egert did not know him by sight.
Having finally come to within a hairsbreadth of his goal, Egert mentally prepared himself to gaze upon the fiancée of the student.