by Joan Aiken
Dido and Tylo enjoyed a sustaining meal, then she persuaded him to lie down and sleep on Ruiz’ bed – a straw-filled mattress on a wooden frame.
“I’ll call you, right off, Tylo, if there’s any trouble,” she whispered, “but I reckon you’re in the right of it, the longer those fellers play, the better it’ll be for ’em. You sleep now, and I’ll get a bit of kip later.”
Tylo, who had suffered for at least five excruciating hours, standing in the well, slowly sinking, and not expecting to be rescued, was very glad of the chance to sleep, and nodded gratefully. Dido lit a teaberry candle, sat on a treestump stool, and peacefully watched the two men, wondering how many hours the game would last.
It lasted until dawn. Finally Ruiz shook his last dice, slapped down his last card, and swept all the counters off the board.
“I win, senhor! But, Mother of Light, what a game! The best I ever played! You are a champion player, my friend. I wish you might remain with me for a year.”
“Alas!” said Herodsfoot. “There is nothing I would like better, my dear host, but I must return to my own land. The king there lies grievously sick, all for want of a game such as this, to raise his spirits and make the blood run more quickly through his veins.”
“Then you must take him this one!” cried Ruiz enthusiastically, pushing cards, counters and dice into a leather bag. “Take it as my gift to the king of your land.”
“No, no, I must not do that,” said Herodsfoot, though he looked extremely tempted. “You are here alone in the forest, you need your game. I remember it, I will have a copy made.”
At this, Ruiz seemed mortally offended. His weathered face darkened to a dusky plum colour.
“If you do not take my gift, senhor, I am dishonoured!”
Oh heavens, now what, Dido thought. Is Herodsfoot saying no to his offer going to knock the cove off his perch again? Surreptitiously she nudged Tylo and wished she was near enough to Herodsfoot to kick his ankle.
She caught his eye and mouthed the words; Take it!
Ruiz glanced angrily about him, all the good effects of the game apparently wiped from his mind. Dido tensed her knees under her, preparing to spring across the room and grab his arm if he suddenly assaulted Herodsfoot.
Then, just at that moment, there came a knock at the door and a voice – two voices – cried: “Hello, there! Is anybody at home?”
Chapter Eight
RUIZ, INSTANTLY DIVERTED FROM HIS ANGER, walked to the door and opened it. Outside, to Dido’s huge joy and relief, were the three people that, out of all the world, she could most have wished to see: Talisman, Yorka, and Captain Sanderson.
“My stars! Are you a sight for sore eyes!” Dido whispered to Yorka, hugging her, while, with a deep bow, Ruiz ceremonially welcomed Captain Sanderson, assuring the new arrival that everything in the establishment was entirely at his disposal. Yorka and Talisman he appeared not to notice.
Tylo quietly led the two horses of the new visitors off to the stable. Then Ruiz turned to inspect Talisman and his eyes dilated.
The sun was hot by now, and Talisman had adopted the Angrian style of women’s head-gear, wrapping a huge green ukka leaf over her hair and fastening it with a thong of grass. Despite her men’s clothes, this made her look unmistakably female, and the sight of her did something drastic to Ruiz’ fitful temperament: his eyes flashed, he flushed a dark angry red again, snatched up a sharp knife from a shelf, bounded with tigerish speed to where Talisman stood just inside the doorway, and hurled her to the ground. There he held her with one hand clamped around her throat, and the other, grasping the knife, less than half an inch from her left eye.
“Now!” he said, between heavy gasps of breath, “this woman – I can tell – is an accursed sorceress – as was my wife – as was my mother – I can see that, very plainly – so, give me one good reason why I should not kill her at once and rid the world of a pest?”
Talisman, perfectly calm, lay looking up into the face of the madman.
“Keep still,” she said softly to Herodsfoot and Sanderson, who, transfixed with horror, stood out of reach on the other side of the room.
Then Talisman addressed Ruiz. “Tell me about your wife?” she inquired in an interested conversational manner. “Did she often play games with you? I see that you have many games in your house.”
“Games? No, indeed she did not! Games are not for women! She cooked and cleaned and took care of my house. We lived in Regina, peaceably. Then one day a neighbour said to me, ‘Thy wife is a witch.’ I laughed at him. I did not believe him. ‘I will prove it,’ he said. ‘Come with me at the next full moon.’ I went with him at the full moon and saw my wife, with others, picking melanthus pods – which, all know, are mostly used by witches. When she came home I accused her and we had bitter words. She told me she picked the pods to make a cure for the ague. I told her she must never do so again. She said nothing. Next day I found a spider in my shoe. Its bite would have been my death. She had planned to kill me.”
“So, what did you do?” Talisman asked.
“I threw her off the harbour wall,” said Ruiz.
“The spider might have crawled into your shoe by accident.”
Ruiz gave a short, wild laugh. “Do you not think I have asked myself that question a thousand thousand times? But no—” he gripped the knife more tightly – “my mother said I had acted rightly, my wife was a witch, and it was well that she should perish, as it would be well that all witches should be wiped out. They practise accursed arts. Their slaughter is a worthy deed.”
“In our country,” observed Herodsfoot, in an amiable, argumentative tone, “we have no witches.”
Talisman grinned up at Herodsfoot encouragingly. Croopus, thought Dido, she’s a well-plucked ’un.
“A fortunate country, yours!” said Ruiz in evident disbelief. “What afflictions have you, if not witchcraft?” He glanced up at Herodsfoot, and the knife-point moved away, fractionally, from Talisman’s eye.
“Scientists,” said Herodsfoot after a pause for thought. “We have scientists.”
“What crimes do they commit?”
“They seek for knowledge – without stopping to consider what harmful purpose that knowledge may be put to. They make weapons to kill men at long range – instead of fighting hand-to-hand as men were intended to. They make medicines that will send men mad. They make carriages that are powered to run, using the heat of steam, faster than a horse can gallop – needless and dangerous.”
“That is witchcraft!” said Ruiz triumphantly. “Witchcraft without doubt. Are not such people persecuted and burned?”
“On the contrary, they are highly acclaimed and paid much money,” said Herodsfoot. “And now I beg you to let Doctor Talisman go. What harm has she done you? She is not – she is not a witch, but a healer, who lakes care of sick people and cures illness—”
Ruiz reflected. Then he said, “Tell me more about your country. What other evils do you have?”
“Oh,” said Herodsfoot rather desperately, “we have – we have people called lawyers who, for pay, aggravate other men’s quarrels—”
“How can that be? Who would pay for such a service?”
“Oh, plenty do. You’d be surprised—”
“And nobody persecutes them, nobody burns them?”
“By no means. They are well paid and respected.”
“What folly. I would not pay someone to make bad blood between me and a neighbour.”
“No,” said Herodsfoot, “but you believed a neighbour when he told you that your wife was a witch.”
Ruiz meditated a while. “If he told me again, perhaps, the next time I would not believe him.”
Quite casually he stood up, dropped the knife – it fell within three inches of Talisman’s eye – and moved to put a pot of water on the fire. Happening to notice a bamboo flutelike instrument on a shelf among jars of dice and counters, he picked it up and asked, “Can you play music on this, senhor?”
Speech
less, Herodsfoot shook his head. Tylo, who had returned from seeing to the horses, volunteered: “I play that, Shaki-lord. Very good.”
“Play then,” said Ruiz, who did not seem to remember Tylo at all.
Tylo began to play – a quick, monotonous tune on about five notes.
Talisman unobtrusively stood up and dusted herself off. Herodsfoot moved towards the door, giving her an inquiring look, but she shook her head.
“He will be better now,” she said quietly.
Ruiz was busying himself making coffee in an earthenware pot. When it was ready he courteously handed cups to Herodsfoot and Sanderson, but ignored Talisman, Tylo, Yorka and Dido as if they did not exist.
“Let’s go and take a gander at the hot spring,” whispered Dido. “I wouldn’t say no to a good wash.”
“I know where,” nodded Tylo. “You come.”
“Where did you come up with Cap Sanderson?” Dido asked Talisman.
“His guide brought him to me.”
Tylo led them past the fruit trees to the place Dido had noticed earlier where the long grasses grew. A muddy path led between these to a curious steamy grotto in the hillside, where a hot spring burst out of a cleft in the rock. If he has this, I wonder Ruiz bothered to sink a well, Dido thought, but guessed the answer immediately: the water had a disgusting smell, like bad fish; nobody would drink it if they could get anything better. Despite this, the hot water banished their aches like magic and had a soothing effect on cuts and bruises.
“But watch for snakes,” warned Tylo. “Many come here for warm—” and indeed, Dido saw several.
“Holy fish, Tylo!” she said, as they dried themselves on their shirts, “isn’t there a better place to stay in the forest than with that feller? He’s as crazy as a sting-monkey – he nearly had Tally’s eye out; and before that he was all set to fly at poor Lordy for not taking his game to King Jamie – and look what he did to you – I’d rather sleep in the Place of Stones than spend another night with him.”
“Poor man,” said Talisman, “little Oynat’s mother told me about him. His mother, not his wife, was a witch – a woman called Modreda in Regina town – she hated the girl he married, and brought neighbours in to tell false tales about her; in the end Modreda so poisoned his mind that he killed his wife and then he went mad . . . The mother, they say, is out of her wits also as a result, and wanders all over the town looking for him . . .”
Dido remembered the woman they had met as the stretcher-bearers climbed the hill to the hospital.
“There’s a heap of trouble in this island,” she said.
“It is all the result of the curse the Forest People put on the Angrians.”
“There must be a better way of dealing with folk than by putting curses on them,” Dido argued.
Now Herodsfoot and Sanderson came out of the house, saying polite farewells to their host. He, yawning profoundly, was obviously about to throw himself on his bed for a long sleep.
Sanderson noticed the rest of the party drying themselves and combing hair with fingers.
“By George!” he said. “I wouldna say no to a good wash and brush-up. Wait just another five minutes – if you please – fetch out the ponies – I’ll not keep ye more than that—” and he strode off towards the hot spring, and vanished among the waving grasses. They heard the sound of splashing, then a sudden yell.
“Oh, confound it! One of those skellums has bitten me!”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Talisman in dismay.
She raced towards the grass-clump, pulling a tiny flask from her pocket as she ran, and encountered the Captain, staggering towards her, shirtless, shaking his right fist, from which dangled a pearl-snake.
“Got his perditioned fangs sunk right in my finger!” he roared.
“Don’t pull, Captain-Shaki!” cried Tylo, but it was too late – Sanderson had dragged the snake loose from its grip on his finger, thrown it to the ground and stamped on it. “That’s done for him, at all events,” he panted.
“Yes, but now he has left his venom-fang in you,” said Talisman, “and I shall be obliged to cut it out. It will be very painful – I shall have to do it directly – Yorka!” she called. “Can you bring my bag here as fast as you can run?”
Yorka came running with the doctor’s bag, from which Talisman snatched out a surgical blade.
“Turn your eyes away – don’t look,” she ordered the Captain. “I shall have to cut off quite a slice of your finger,”
“Oh, deuce take it, ma’am, I have seen worse things than that in sea-battles!”
He bore her surgery without wincing, but did let out a loud gasp when she poured liquid on to the cut from her little flask.
“It is kandu oil – very concentrated. Counters the effect of the snake venom. Aunt Tala’aa gave it to me. Nonetheless I am afraid that for a day you are going to be a very sick man, Captain. We shall have to leave you here – you will not be able to ride.”
“May the devil fly away with me if I submit to stay here in the company of that blankety-blank madman!” the Captain swore – but he was forced to give in to the doctor’s edict, for in ten minutes his arm was swollen to the size of a bolster and he was half delirious.
“Now what are we to do?” pondered the doctor, half to herself.
Ruiz, as they had expected, was fast asleep on his cot. But they found a spare palliasse for Sanderson and placed it on a chest; and Talisman rendered him almost insensible by a powerful dose of poppy syrup. “That should keep him quiet for a number of hours,” she said. “But who is going to tend him when he wakes?”
“I better,” said Yorka.
“You, little one? Can you manage him?”
“Often do so.” Yorka described how she had looked after her grandfather and grandmother when they were bitten by snakes, and both had recovered.
“But how about the man Ruiz? Won’t you be scared of him?”
Ruiz would not see her, Yorka said. She went into a quick, low-voiced explanation, which Talisman listened to, nodding.
“Yes. I see. Just so. Very well – excellent. I shall come here, tomorrow, if I can. Before that, if the Captain is well enough to ride, I think you should take him straight back to the town. Yes, I know he wants to go down to his ship in the harbour, but by then the ship will probably have sailed, it would be a wasted journey. If I cannot come I will send a message to you. Goodbye, my dear!”
Talisman touched her palms to Yorka’s cheeks for a moment, in the Forest salutation, then the party left, and trotted off along the glade.
Herodsfoot, however, was deeply troubled about leaving Yorka to tend a sick man in the company of crazy Ruiz.
“Is it right? Can it be right?”
“No, no, do not fret yourself, she will do very well,” said the doctor absently. “Yorka is very capable. She will look after Sanderson just as she ought, and when Ruiz wakes – which he may not do for at least a day, perhaps two – she will make herself taku.”
“Taku? What is that?” asked Herodsfoot.
“Well – has it never occurred to you to wonder – here we are, travelling through the forest, hour after hour – yet we see little or nothing of the people who live here – although there may be many of them, all around us? Yorka has explained that to me. They have a gift of making themselves invisible, or nearly so. Inconspicuous. Ruiz simply will not notice Yorka. She will be taku.”
“Oh, come now—” began Herodsfoot. Then he appeared to have second thoughts and rode along in dejected silence.
Dido asked Talisman if she had managed to cure the little boy whose mother had come to them near the Place of Stones. “He saw devils, didn’t he? What ailed him?”
“Little Oynat? Oh, it was very simple.” Talisman laughed. “He had eaten a whole bagful of those toadstools – the purple-and-white ones. His mother had told him not to, so he went right away and did it. Forest children are not often so disobedient. They can’t afford to be, or they would all be dead.”
“Could
you cure him?”
“I gave him a great dose of khajri and water. It is like mustard. It made him vomit. Now he is very sorry for himself, but he is not seeing any devils.”
Dido asked the doctor about Ruiz.
“Couldn’t you cure him of his crazy ways?”
Talisman sighed. “It would be difficult. He has this poisoned view of witches so deep in his mind . . . it would be a long and toilsome task.”
Herodsfoot rode for a long way in silence, then said to Talisman in a low voice, “You have learned so much about this island in so short a time. I have been here longer than you, yet I seem to know so much less.”
“Well,” Talisman pointed out, “you must remember that I was born here and lived here until the age of five. Things that I had wholly forgotten now begin to come back to me more and more – snatches of language, facts I learned then, songs, stories, scents, tastes – it is all returning, like a tide. You know how last night’s dream suddenly flashes back to you, just before you fall asleep? – sometimes it seems to me that all our dreams are joined together in one continuous chain. It is the daytime life that is a queer, interrupted illusion.”
“Oh, yes!” cried Dido excitedly. “I’ve had that feeling – often! Sometimes you look about and think: Am I really here? In Aratu? Where is here? Who is Dido? And then the feeling goes away again – till next time.”
Herodsfoot looked at them both – first one, then the other – and shook his head in a kind of despair.
“Where are we going?” he asked after a while.
“We are going to Limbo Lodge, John King’s house, which we hope to reach tomorrow. But as we have been told that the bridge over the gorge of the Kai river has been demolished, we are going first to Manati harbour, down below, where the Kai river runs across the beach into the sea, because Captain Sanderson’s ship is there and he wants to know about it – who borrowed it, and why, and when they will return it to Regina port and what compensation they will pay him. And there is a way to Limbo Lodge up from Manati beach, but I am told that it is very steep.”