‘My name is Daulis. I am one of the Council of Bilma.’
‘You don’t look like the others.’
‘Thank you, Mara. I hope I am not like them – but not all are like the ones who spend their evenings here.’
‘I wish you spent all your evenings here,’ Crethis said, and pouted. This pout and the accompanying dimples were not something put on for work, but were how Crethis was, always – little smiles, and pats and pouts, and snuggles and strokes.
‘Your brother is in danger, Mara. There is a big reward for bringing him back to Charad. And for Darian, too.’
‘I don’t understand why Shabis couldn’t – just bend the rules.’
‘Shabis is very much the odd man out among the Generals. Dann was his protégé. Darian was going to replace Dann. The other Generals criticised Shabis: they said Dann and Darian were too young. Shabis said they were both as competent as men twice their age. It is only a question of time before they are caught and taken back to Shari and a big show trial.’
The tears were running down Mara’s face. Little Crethis, from Daulis’s lap, leaned forward to stroke them away.
‘So, Dann and Darian have gone up to Kanaz.’
‘How?’ But she knew.
‘They were employed as coachmen. Pushing the coaches to Kanaz.’
She could not prevent a despairing wail of laughter. ‘We joked that this might happen. But we said I would be riding in the coach.’
‘He will wait for you in Kanaz.’
‘And how am I going to get to Kanaz?’ she said bitterly. ‘I am to be sold here.’
He looked gently at her, and smiled, and she knew that this was the man to whom she would be sold. Meanwhile Crethis was smiling up at him and her hand was down inside the pocket of his robe. Mara knew that she had to leave. She got up, and saw how he looked at her, humorously, and like a friend. She went out, shut the door, and there was Senghor.
‘I am sure it is all right,’ she said. ‘It seems that Daulis is a special friend of Mother Dalide’s.’
‘Yes, they are friends. But it is forbidden, what has happened.’
Back in her room, she sat down to think. Daulis was going to buy her, but meanwhile he was making love with Crethis. This made her sad. She hoped it wasn’t jealousy, and knew she was foolish.
To be sold to Daulis, when she had seen what kind of man she might have been sold to – surely this was reason enough to be happy. And she was, if not happy, relieved, and realised that her breathing had been oppressed and shallow for days. She was breathing deeply again, from her diaphragm, and she did not feel as if there were knives in her eyes.
This man knew about Dann, knew about her, and wanted to help them. Why did he? He was a Mahondi, yes. There was something here, she knew, that should have been explained. Would it be explained? When Dalide came back, he would pay the old woman the sum of money for Mara and then – she would be out of here. But Dalide might be gone for days, for weeks …
18
Mara was falling asleep, and she was thinking, not of Daulis but of Shabis. He loved her, so Dann had said, and she had never seen it or thought about it. Now she did think, seeing him standing there in her past, smiling at her, tall, kind, generous, but like a father, not a lover. Her heart was warm, thinking of him, but not as when she thought of Meryx, poor Meryx, who would never know he had fathered a child.
Mara’s arms were full of a sweet warmth, small arms clung, and she felt a wet baby mouth open on her cheek and heard baby laughter…She woke, grieving, in the early morning. She had not allowed herself to think of the child disposed of by the wise women of Goidel, and she was not going to remember it now. Up she got, and washed and dressed and sat at the window, while the watchmen kicked aside the smoking logs of their night fire and went off yawning to their beds. Sunlight everywhere. A clear, cool sunlight, and she saw a little animal, a pet like her Shera, long ago, and it was frisking in some fallen leaves. It was so quiet here, in Mother Dalide’s house. When Senghor brought her breakfast she thought he looked at her differently, but did not know what that meant. She sat at the window all morning, and nothing happened in that garden; and the guard yawning, and a small wind shaking a scarlet wall plant so that its shadows moved in patterns on the stone, were big events. Below her the women slept in their soiled beds. She knew they did not enjoy waking, often made themselves go back to sleep again, woke and slept, and got up only when they had to. At midday she heard their scolding, petulant voices, no laughter, and the big room was slowly filling, for there were sometimes afternoon customers, and the women lay around yawning and nibbling sweets and cakes, drinking juices. The weight of their sadness dragged the house down into it. The afternoons were always the worst time. Long, heavy, dragging afternoons, and the occasional customer was a diversion, and the quarrelling about who he – or they – would choose, was exaggerated to give them something to feel other than their griefs and grievances. Mara knew that in all her adventures, all her dangers, she had never known anything as bad as the hopeless dreaming that those poor women downstairs lived inside, like a poisonous air…She was thinking of herself as apart from them, different, yet she was a house woman, with them, as Senghor reminded her. She could smell the cold, sweet, slow poppy smoke. Downstairs they were lighting their little stubby pipes, or the girls who did not were leaning closer to the ones who did, drawing in great breaths that had been in companion lungs. Second-poppy, they called this practice.
A knock. What was this? No one knocked, not Senghor; but it was Senghor, and he said, ‘The women want you to go down and tell them stories.’
His manner was different. And when she went into the big room, she thought the girls looked at her differently, while they called, ‘Mara, talk to us,’ and the little one, Crethis, from Leta’s lap, said, ‘Mara, start from the beginning again.’
Now Mara began earlier than she had, which was the moment of running away from her parents’ house into the dark, and started with her life as a small child – that wonderful, friendly, easy, indulged life where she woke every morning to the adventure of a child’s discoveries, and to the expectation of What did you see, Mara, what did you see? And, as she talked, she remembered even more details, little things half forgotten: how the water in a stream ran over a shallow stone and made patterns; the soft flower smell of her mother when she came to say goodnight…Mara talking, her mind a long way in her past, was looking at plump Crethis, with her baby face and wet pink lips, and she knew who was the infant she had been dreaming about. Crethis, lying inside a sheltering arm and looking out at Mara, was like a little girl. She was a little girl, even a baby, with her wandering hands, touching this, poking at the face just above her, and laughing. The face that was unlike all the others, with its heavy, green eyes and pale lashes, white, glistening white, and the heavy, pale hair that fell over Crethis’s face so that she pulled it and laughed. But because Leta was so different, she never lacked customers, and a man came in and pointed at her, and she had to get up and go off into one of the little rooms with him. Crethis crawled to Mara and climbed inside her arms. Mara talked on, hearing in her voice undertones of longing, like a song, and thought, Yes, but I’m not telling them about how the dust piled up in the courtyards and the fountains were dry and the trees stood pining for water.
And now Crethis reached forward to touch Mara’s face and said, ‘Princess Mara, and you lived in a palace.’
Mara understood the new respect she was getting from Senghor, and the curiosity of the girls, and she said, ‘If I was a princess I didn’t know it, and I’m not a princess now.’
The evening’s customers were coming in, and the girls got themselves out of their lazy poses, and sat about attractively and talking coquettishly to each other, with an eye on the door to see who would appear.
Daulis arrived. He looked worried, hurried, and at once signalled to Mara. Crethis got up but he shook his head – no. At this moment Leta came back and, seeing Daulis, went to him and talked urgentl
y, in a low voice, holding his arm.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait, Leta. Wait.’
He and Mara went up to her room. Mara had time to see how Crethis cuddled up to another girl, not Leta, who was standing staring after Daulis. They did not sit down.
Daulis said, ‘Something bad. It is my fault. I am afraid I said something to Crethis about you…’
‘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.
Mara and Dann Page 43