The Testament of Yves Gundron (22 page)

“Hullo, Gundron. Make yourselves at home. Prugne?”

His eldest daughter, so rosy with health as to be nearly obscene, offered us mugs of ale. Both of the new arrivals took notice of her bosom. With so many bodies in the small house, it was extremely hot, and I accepted my ration with gratitude, and my brother's as well.

The ambassadors put down the gray device in favor of a smaller one that rested on the table like a loaf of bread, and emitted a gentle whir like a distant mill wheel.

Ruth settled her leg with some difficulty onto the long bench. “I'd like to keep this as brief as possible.”

“Our sentiments exactly,” said Bradley, still standing. “This is serious business, Ms. Blum. The citizens of this—”

“Subjects, I'd say,” she interjected. “Excuse me.”

“Thank you. The subjects of this hamlet, then,” Bradley continued, “have unlawfully seized the remains of two American pilots who were transporting sensitive cargo. When they turn over the bodies, we can investigate the cause of the crash—which we're assuming was caused by mechanical malfunction—and be done with it.” He cleared his throat.

“But as the priest told them,” Mandrik said without pause, apparently unconcerned that the man used so many unfamiliar words, “we have given these men burial, and freed their souls to the great Beyond. Do they wish to call them back by removing the bodies from their resting places?”

“Mr. Mandrik—”

“The title is unnecessary.”

“—there are two grieving families waiting.”

“And how will you manage the souls, Mr. Fiske?”

Fiske looked up from the gray box, and the one who'd been arguing said, “I'm Lieutenant Commander Bradley.”

“The soul,” Mandrik said quietly, “falls not under your governance.”

The two youths, their short hair on end, regarded one another. Bradley turned to Ruth with a show of pride. “You see, Ms. Blum, what we've been up against with the authorities in this town.”

Mandrik's face unmistakably brightened that they thought him an authority.

“Perhaps,” said Bradley, “I have not made myself a hundred percent clear. The cargo of that plane poses a grave threat to the people of this village. The sooner—”

“A threat of what kind?”

“I am not at liberty to say.”

She nodded slowly. “A chemical threat? A biological threat?”

“Ms. Blum—”

“Please,” Fiske interjected quietly.

“—the sooner you retrieve us our bodies, the sooner we get our cargo out of your town. It's that simple.”

Ruth stared blankly at my brother, but I could not see that his face gave her any sign. After a long, thick silence, she turned to Bradley and said, simply, “I'll see that this is taken care of.”

“Ruth,” Mandrik said.

“Please.”

“Then, for the present, we can adjourn,” Bradley said, and walked toward the door.

“Is it too much to ask that while you're here you keep your contact with people to a minimum? I'm afraid of what they'd think of a cell phone.”

Fiske said, “We'll do our best.”

Ruth nodded. “Then we'll be on our way.”

Both of them rose to help her up, and the kind one steadied her crutches. My brother deserved praise for their craftsmanship. Mandrik and I helped Ruth back to the cart, beneath the shade of which Adelaïda and Elizaveta were playing a game with stones. Ydlbert had wandered off to relieve himself.

“Call a meeting,” she told Mandrik, “for this evening. In the barn.”

“Nay, it's too hot to meet indoors,” I said.

Adelaïda said, “They do nothing anymore but sit around and talk. I wonder we won't starve, come winter.”

Mandrik took the crutches and settled Ruth gently into the cart. “We'll call it in the grove, where we were feasting when you arrived.”

“After sundown, when it'll be cooler.”

“It'll take that long to gather everyone anyway,” I said.

Mandrik nodded and stepped off the wheel, and dispersed Ydlbert's sons to tell the village of the plan. Ydlbert drove us home under a blazing June sun, both of us standing behind the reins. “Don't you think,” Ruth said, before she drifted into a feverish slumber, “you'd be happier if there were a seat there—a board so you could rest your feet on the edge of the cart and not have to stand in here with the cabbages and hay?”

“Hang it with my cart, woman.”

“Only a suggestion. I'm sorry.”

But like the brakes and the double axle before, it bit into my mind
like a hungry dog, and by the time we were home, I had forgotten my lack of need for new inventions, and made me a full-blown image.

There was no second way about it: I needed a horse. Ydlbert was my closest neighbor and dearest friend, but I could not keep asking him to drive me hither and yon; that was my own burden. I took my savings from beneath the bed. “Can you watch our sickling?” I asked my wife, once we had deposited her, slick with sweat, back onto the mattress.

Adelaïda's brow was furrowed. “If you promise she won't die before evening. She doesn't look hale.”

Ruth's whole body shone, and her face was drawn in tight as she slept. “She cannot die, she's got a meeting to run.” I kissed Adelaïda's cheek and might as well have kissed a fence post.

Ydlbert nudged me in the shoulder as we settled in again behind the reins. “You won't get an heir that way,” he said.

“No.” I laughed, but truly Adelaïda's unhappiness pained me. She had lasted a great while longer than my first wife, but who knew how long I would keep her? I wanted her time on this earth to be glad; I could not bear to think that I might be the reason otherwise.

In days past, it took half a day to reach Andras Drck's, clear at the north end of Nnms, past innumerable alleyways and two foul creeks. Now we had but to drive the Via Urbis to the church square—a much quieter place than on Market Days—and turn northward onto the Via Mappamondo, which brought us to our destination before the sun could make a moment's move in the sky. The road stopped a few paces shy of Drck's, and his horses, bred heavy for work, frolicked in their enclosure between the last row of houses and the pinkish city wall. The man himself, dark-bearded and with his trousers rolled up to his knees, sat barefoot on his doorstep, eating a hunk of pale bread.

“Gundron,” he called out, nodding. “Been wondering when we'd see you, what after the calamity with that last one.”

None of the horses, I could see, would ever be the equal of my Hammadi; none was so fine or proud. “She was a good horse,” I said.

“Plenty of others hereabouts. I'll show you a good workhorse.” He stood and left his bread behind him, where his dirty white dog promptly hunted it down. “How about you, von Iggislau? Perhaps you're thinking about buying a second?”

Ydlbert guffawed. “What would a man do with two horses?”

Drck shook his head. “Twice as much work, for one thing. Or breed.”

Ydlbert shook his head. “I don't know, brother. Perhaps in my dotage I'll have money to spare for such as that.”

Many of his horses were too expensive for a working man; a few lame of leg or long of tooth; a few I simply disliked. At last he brought forth a two-year-old roan mare, her blond mane and tail slightly kinked, like Ruth's hair, her pink lips drawn back in what almost looked to be a smile. “That's a fine one,” I said.

“And strong,” added Drck. “She'll be an excellent plow horse. Come greet her.”

I walked a circuit around her. Her neck was short, giving her quite the peasant's appearance, but her shoulders seemed strong. She was heartier than Hammadi, sure. Still, when I held my hand out to her sweet-looking mouth, she skittered and ducked her head. “What's her trouble?” I asked. “I never met a horse that didn't like me.”

“She's a bit shy of strangers, but she'll show her true colors soon enough. And already trained to the harness. A fine sight of a mare.”

She was pretty down to the golden feathering over her hooves, and her eyes were sharp and black—but what did pretty matter against the kindness and intelligence of my Hammadi? I walked around and around her, but could not make her look at me. “This horse won't look me in the eye, man,” I told him, my throat tight with dismay.

“She's shy, I tell you. She doesn't know you. But she'll be an excellent beast. You can strap her in the harness as soon as you get her home.”

“Take her,” Ydlbert counseled. “She's strong as the hills.”

“She is not Hammadi.”

“No horse ever will be. She's a good horse in her own right.”

I parted with a great sum of money for the right to walk this creature back through town with me by her bridle. I would use her to drive my family to the meeting that night, though I was not sure I liked or trusted her, and to bring in the fruits of the harvest. “Are you pleased, man?” Ydlbert called down from the cart beside me as we cleared the city gates.

“She has not Hammadi's spirit.” She glared at me for a moment before turning away.

“How could she? She hasn't yet got a name.”

I regarded long and close her unhurried gait, her short, yellow tail like a broom behind her. If I had chosen badly, this mistake would, if Heaven be merciful, be with me a long, long time. “I'll call her Enyadatta.”

Ydlbert laughed, and Thea blew air to second his opinion. “It'll be a mouthful when you want to call her in.”

“Nevertheless, it's her name.” I clicked my tongue to her. “Enyadatta?”

She continued to look at the road. But what did it matter, I had my horse. She could not be expected to be so humble or giving as Hammadi; she was too young, and did not remember the old days, in which ordinary labor so often led to a beast's death, and gave her humility before her Maker.

“I'll have to fashion that new harness,” I said wearily, though deep down it gave me a feeling of some exultation.

“You can't get it done before tonight.”

“I've already cut the leather.”

“I can help, if you desire.”

“Thank you, Ydlbert. But I won't need help.”

Adelaïda and Elizaveta came out to greet the new member of our family, my daughter approaching the horse with the full petting surface of her hands extended, as if she could not get enough of herself on the animal. Enyadatta watched these ministrations, and allowed herself to be subjected to them, but did not ripple with pleasure under them as Hammadi would have done; and Adelaïda did not, therefore, show the same enthusiasm she had shown when I brought the last horse home. Perhaps, too, it was because we were older now, and had more cares, but when I placed Enyadatta into Hammadi's stall, I felt lonely and sick.

¹
I had always loved how Nurit smiled—as if she truly meant to do it but were constitutionally unable to feel happy. Looking at her then, with her pale skin and her crooked black glasses, gave me a terrible attack of homesickness, and made everything and everyone around me look gloomy and dull by contrast.

²
If you think I'm not embarrassed that I couldn't explain the simplest mechanisms of modern technology to him, think again.

³
“Listen,” Bradley told me, popping his jaw as if he chewed too much gum. “We've been having some trouble with the authorities in this town, with the priest, Father Stanislaus.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Apparently it's a religious community. They won't budge on returning the bodies.”

I said, “I told them to wait before they buried then. What are you going to do with the plane?”

“We've removed the cargo from it—sensitive cargo. As for the machine itself, we need to investigate the cause of the crash, and then we can leave it.” Bradley let out a sharp, quick sigh. “Ms. Blum, you'll excuse me for asking this question, but are you being held in this community against your will?”

I tried not to stare—they looked so impossibly clean to me after over a month in the village, and half menacing and half ridiculous in their flight suits “I'm an anthropologist. I'm here making a study of their way of life. They're completely pre-industrial. It's a special situation.”

“You're sure? Because we can help you if you need help.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I'm doing very well here. As I said, I'll try to get this matter cleared up for you as soon as possible.”

Bradley nodded. “Thank you, Ms. Blum. Any help you can offer in expediting this matter will be much appreciated. I don't think I'm revealing too much when I say that Boogaerts and Ulyanov were transporting some highly sensitive materials, highly sensitive, and that the sooner we can clear this up, and the more quietly, the better.”

I said, “Of course. Probably, if it's okay, we should do our talking in front of the villagers. So they don't become suspicious.”