Confusion, anger, alarm — now incredulity between the two males.
“Drogorógos? Drogorógos does be dead!”
“Maid, thee couldn’t know Drogorógos, were he to bite thee in the fetlock — ”
“Twas he, twas he, twas Drogorógos! — with his pelt all silvery and with his scars a-here and a-here and a-here — and his voice all so — ” She forced her own down to a note it could not long carry, and she imitated.
This seemed to strike the males amazed more than the other news. Drogorógos! Still he lived? Drogorógos! Where had he been? The fierce, the canny, the clever and the brave, the mighty, the ancient: Drogorógos domineering, Drogorógos overbearing, Drogorógos —
“Enough for now. Drogorógos alive and Fourlimbs in the land? Follow as thee can, maid Ananarusa, an’ we go to rouse the herd!”
Chapter Thirty-One
The next thing that Castegor did after delivering to Rary a good day’s supplies of food, gathered at no small labor, from around the mesial vicinity of the house, was to retire with his excuses and ascend to that same small chamber under the eaves of Stonehouse Hobar. He had no wine, but he had his thoughts and he had his view. A bough of the great lilac tree which a wife of Hennan Hobar had planted as a shrub waved close outside; the air in the tiny room was gratefully heavy with its scent. Past the full blossoms he could see for many a league of dark green and light green, and the gray line which marked the gaunt escarpment of a nameless ridge; slate-blue riverine system snaked and forked like veins, and the distance was the color of smoke. He scanned, watched, saw nothing to cause an alarm of either joy or terror or of uncertainty, which is the major portion of man.
Down below the two women had heated water and bathed. Rary let out her breath and drew it in, a slow-then-swift sighing sound, her fingers tracing but not touching the marks on Spahana’s white skin. Then, “It was never him that did this to you….”
“No…. Oh, no….” Her face moved briefly. “It was before. It was not just once.” She took up a dry cloth. She shook her hair. “He has never hurt me,” she said.
Rary had to speak. “You have had children, dear, haven’t you?”
For a moment, Spahana was not only silent, she was immobile, black hair glistening, breasts bare, arm arrested. “I have had a husband,” she said, “and a child. They are dead.” She stood up, held out her arms. Rary helped her into her robe. Spahana went over to a bench by a window. The scene she saw was almost the same as the one Gortecas was seeing. But her thoughts were not his. She watched yellow walls and yellow towers burning on a nearby hill and scanned empty casements for faces she knew she would never see again, heard voices she could only hope never to hear again. Voices, noises, faces, flames. Hands, fists, shackles, whips. Caryavas destroyed. Captivity. One word. How many hells embraced in a single word. Captured, sold, lost, taken, beaten, bartered, gambled. The jealous fury of a purchaser’s wife. Scenes as though graven upon the rim of a platter which turned slowly, slowly, slowly, red, black, yellow, red, image, picture, posture, scene, turn, turn, red —
They had given her a red robe to wear that last time she was sold. Then they had stripped it from her. They had fastened it by cunning ways so that one tug at the hem as she stood on the block had brought it tumbling in a heap at her feet. It was a common trick. Some girls would shriek and stoop and clutch and some would simply step out of the folds and others with a jest and a cackle would kick it into the audience. Spahana had done none of these. She had not even flinched. She was not a girl. It had happened to her times before. Worse by far than this and that had happened to her.
Eager faces, leering faces, bored faces, faces old and young, fresh and jaded, evil, indifferent, there below all and all around her. “Never mind the marks,” the auctioneer said, as he pointed. It would have been useless for him to have ignored them. “They’ll fade. Not her fault, you can see she knows how to behave herself. These things happen … people can’t control themselves … Well. You can all see she’s of a good age and in good shape and holds herself well.” They could all see. They did all see. Clear eyes and bloodshot eyes and cold eyes and hot eyes. Smooth faces and rough faces and bearded faces. Gray beards and black beards, dandy beards and careless beards. Pale cheeks and veined cheeks and ruddy cheeks. Here and there rings glinted on a finger or in an ear. “You don’t often see such a fine woman,” the auctioneer said, even-voiced. No need for a song and a dance; he had a prime article here and one which needed no trickery — the bit with the dress was the only piece of showmanship he bothered with. “Neither free nor bound, you don’t. What’s your name, dear? ‘Spahana’ — has a pleasant voice, ‘s had at least one child, so not like to shame your manhood by being barren. Now — let’s not diddle around with any low bids, very well? This is not a scullion we’re offering, and anybody who tries any jokes, he can kindly stay away from the next sale. What’ll you give, Master Craftsman Drinnid?”
Drinnid stroked his snowy beard and shook his head. “My begetting days are past. I came to find a seamstress. Can be old, can be ugly, long’s she comes cheap and sews a seam.”
There was a slight chuckle, a slight movement in the crowd. Real bidding would begin any moment. Any moment, the pimps with their hair curled and scented would begin to hold up their fingers. Any moment, the satyrs who had tired of the women bought at the last sale would begin to loosen their pouches. Any moment … She had said to herself that she would not look. That she would just stand. To look would be either to hope or to lose hope. She had, between the destruction of her city and this present sale, she had wept and she had begged, had escaped and been caught, had hanged herself and been cut down, had … Nothing mattered (she told herself). She had endured everything, she would endure anything. She would not look.
She looked.
There was nothing in the way he was looking at her. It was not cruel, it was not kind, it was not desirous, it was not rejecting. It was not even, for all the way his eyes slid up and down her naked length and pausing here and there, it was not even with calculated appraisal. He seemed to be in the same decade of age as she was, he had a thick blacktangled beard. His cheeks were ruddy and he had a gold ring in one ear. Their eyes met. The auctioneer said, for his eyes saw everything, “What will you give, Captain Stag?”
The man said, “I’ll give my ship.”
The roar of laughter broke upon the tenseness of the moment, ebbed away. The auctioneer said, “We’ll take it.” There was a hush, then a babble, then swift protests here and there. The auctioneer said, “Silver buys gold and gold buys silver, but neither silver nor gold has been able to buy Captain Stag’s boat. Women come and women go, but a boat like that doesn’t come once in a lifetime. Hand up her tiller, Captain Stag.” He had it under his arm, as most ship’s captains had theirs; not that no other tiller could steer her, but it was a symbol, a symbol of ownership and control. He handed it over. The auctioneer stooped and drew up the red robe with his other hand.
“Go down, now, woman,” he said. “She’s yours now,” he said. He turned and gestured. “Bring up the next one,” he said.
Since then he had never said, “You’re mine.” He had not said, “I gave my ship for you.” He hadn’t said, “You’re worth it,” nor had he said, “You aren’t worth it.” Not once had he referred to the ship or to the manner of their coming together. He’d asked her no questions about her past. Nor had she ever said anything like, “Are you sorry?” or “You are not sorry, are you?” or “I am glad that you did.” Indeed, they spoke but little to each other. He gave her orders as he gave the bosun orders, though he gave her fewer; she never refused them; almost never did she speak unless she was spoken to. In her unhaughty pride, in her dignity of carriage, her anticipation of his words and her silent fulfilment of them, in her beauty, her graces, in her mere silent presence in the day times, in the admiration and the often envy of all the world, he seemed (insofar as he seemed anything, insofar as it might be possible to know him) to derive at least s
ufficient satisfaction to keep him from complaint, to restrain him from abuse, or from excess of tempers. As for what passed between them in the night times, it passed quickly; his needs were simple, his complaints nil. Women, waves, and lands …
From that moment when the gates of Caryavas were breached and its walls were scaled, there had been for her no times as undemanding as this present time, here in old Stonehouse Hobar. Time had wracked and raved, time had tormented, time had gone taut and tense, time had quivered, had threatened, had hid its face. Now time stood still. Time had not changed the face of the landscape she looked out on. Insofar as it was possible, she was at rest.
“They’ll soon be back,” Rary said. “All of them.”
The other woman did not say anything. She refused to consider anything but the unchanging moment.
And, at that moment, everything changed.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Spahana’s litter had been battered to bits in the mad stampede of the onagers that first day, and only a few pieces of harness survived to tell it had ever existed. The two children rode quietly along on the back of the oldest, stoutest, and staidest beast, with Stag and Bosun on either side. The children had insisted that they hadn’t been lost at all, that they were just around the next hill from home, that they had only been gone a few moments or so. Although hill succeeded hill and still no home, they were quiet, clearly enjoying their ride. After all, the men had known their name and had known their mother’s name; they didn’t know why their mother was somewhere else, but the absence of any familiar landscape gave no cause for a desire to leave. The men had come to an explanation of what had happened, though they were not equally content with the explanation.
“If they were, well, moved — transferred, you might say — by the gathering up of the way and the day, as we were … when we were … how did it happen that we met their mother before it happened, not after?” This was Bosun’s question.
Stag had been thinking the same thing, and his answer was immediate. “When something like this happens,” he said, “it connects a day with the day before. We think, It happened today. That’s right. But it didn’t only happen today. It happened yesterday as well. It doesn’t only go from Now to Then, from Here to There. It goes at the same time from There to Here and from Then to Now, don’t you see?”
“Well …”
Stag glanced up, as though to find help along the overhanging branches of the massy forest trees, glanced away and tried again. “Every day is a today, isn’t it? And at the same time, every day is a yesterday, isn’t it? And every day is also a tomorrow, isn’t it? We weren’t with Rary when it first happened. We don’t know how much time or how much space that gathering up affected. Suppose it struck what was her Today and knocked her children back in time so that … or … no … and then we …”
Bosun gave his head a rapid shake and struck himself upon each cheek alternately. The children giggled. He said, “Leave it be, Master. I see enough of a glimmer. If I try harder, I’ll be perhaps dazzled, and not able to see at all.”
They went along in what seemed like a long, long quietness. Stag spoke only twice, and his man was not certain afterwards which it was that he had heard first; Stag had spoken in a low voice as though speaking to himself, and he had said, “I will be glad to see her,” and he had said, “I wish that I had never gone there.” But which had he said first? And did it matter?
They went on, and they went on, and they met the woman crying for her children.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The children, certainly, could not have been as startled as the men were, for the men heard the voice a second before they recognized it, but the children recognized it the second they heard it. “There’s Mam, her,” said the girl, Darda, and she slipped off the onager. “It’s Mam, her,” the boy said. He lifted out his arms. “Help us adown, Dardy,” he said. To the children it seemed the most natural thing in the world. But to the men it meant something else, but what that something was —
“What is she doing here?”
In another moment there she was, almost as they had first seen her, coming not so fast this time, coming with more uncertainty and less resolution this time. Her voice seemed now not so much demented as disorganized. “Trenny …? Darda …?”
“Mam, Mam, here’s us here!” the children called, running up to her. “What’s up, woman?” Bosun shouted. “Where are the others?”
Stag said nothing, but he walked very fast. Her clothes were dirty and her hair half-loose, and she looked at them so very anxiously, and she waved her hands as though to attract their attention and to keep them from passing by her.
“Have you seen my children?” she quavered. “Have you seen two young children, a boy and a girl — ”
“Here’s us here, Mam!” the children called, running up and putting their arms around her and laying their heads against her. She looked at them, at first astonished, then she said, half with a sort of assumed amusement and half in a kind of restrained reproach, “Oh … now … no … children … Why … you are great big things … and mine are but bitty bairns, you know … Have you seen them?”
The bosun looked at her, and went close to her, and he looked from her to Stag and he touched the side of his head and he inclined his head towards her. On her forehead near the temple was an ugly bruise and clotted blood. He looked at his master as though prepared for an outburst, his muscles tensed as though prepared to resist a blow or to start off on a run. But Stag nodded, he only nodded. He said, “You’d better come with us, Rary. Up you go, on this beast here — up you go, children. Hold on to them, now.”
She made some feeble protest. She looked at him, confused. She wondered aloud how he knew her name. She mounted. She held the children. She mumbled, sometimes to herself, and sometimes to them. She looked from side to side. She said two names, over and over. The boy babbled on: he and Dardy had gone for a walk and they had done this and done that and seen that and seen this, “Us’s has, Mam” — but his sister, who was older, looked at the men in bepuzzlement and alarm.
“We’d go dozens faster without them,” the bosun suggested.
“We’re going that fast as will be fast enough,” said Stag. “I don’t suppose that minutes matter.” He nodded at the girl Darda and he gave her shoulder a few pats. She seemed to relax, rather. She held the woman’s hand, but her eyes did not part from Stag.
They were quite near the house when the onagers seemed to grow restless and uneasy. Rary’s crooning had come to a sudden stop, she looked about as though in her perplexity she shared the beasts’ unease. Stag’s hand on the bridle of the leader-ass tightened, and the whole stride of them came to a halt. “Now, mother,” he said, in conversational tone, “we’re going to tether the animals here just a short time whilst I and this fellow go on ahead to have a look. You must stay here with the children, you know, for there’s none other to.”
She frowned, slightly. “Why, wherever is their mother?” she murmured. But it was concern, not complaint. In a moment she had them picking flowers, which her fingers deftly wove into chains. As the men moved out they heard the boy say, “What’s that called, up there, Mam?” and her abstracted answer, that it was just the island, just part of the sky; and him saying, contented, “That’s what Dardy, she says, too.” Automatically, the men looked up. There seemed the beginnings of an overcast. The wind seemed damp. Then it shifted. The wind reeked.
“Sixies!” they exclaimed. “Sixies!”
Wordlessly, they left the trail and began, furtively, to proceed towards the house through the thicket and the wood. They saw the door half-open. They saw the window-shutters swinging ponderously. They abode a good while in concealment, before they finally came out. Signs of the sixlimbs were all about, on the hoof-scarred turf, in the piles of dung, the wads of part-chewed herbiage, the still-flattened places where they had lain them down. The bosun pointed. The door must have been at least partly opened at the moment of the attack, for an arrow had scor
ed the wood of the post as it could not have done had the door been closed. And the bosun pointed again. Glints of blue in the grass. Stag bent and picked at them. Beads. One by one he picked them up, one larger than the other, placed them in his scrip.
There had not been much in the house which could have been disturbed. Remnants of a meal. Heavy furniture all in place. Rags hung up to dry. Nothing to tell them anything. And nothing on the upper floor, and nothing in the tiny room under the eave. Stag said, low, “I thought this would have to be the best place for a look-out. They’d have to pass by in view, because of the hill. Thought I, ‘I’ll see you at least as soon as you see me.’
“Not knowing I’d not be here to see….”
He looked at his bosun, asked, “Wouldn’t you say that we’ve had enough troubles? And that the sensible thing would be to cut our losses, head back to town, and make other arrangements?”
The man rubbed his bristled cheeks. “I would, I would. It’s too bad, she was a well-behaved and well-moving woman; for that matter, that was a well-behaved and well-moving ship you traded off. But you can build and find. There’ll be, I expect, others just as good — ”
Stag gripped his wrist. “But I don’t want another just as good. I want that one. I want her. I want her so much I’d give everything I have for her.” He moved so swiftly that he was gone before the bosun could blink.
He was in the yard, striding fast, before the bosun could catch up with him. “You’re daft, Master,” he said. “These troubles have turned your mind. You’d best come back quick to town and seek a healer or a priest — ” He stopped, aghast. Stag was smiling at him.
“If I’m mad, that’s the way I want to be. What will you say when I tell you that I’m glad she was taken? If she’d not been taken I’d mayhap never have learned how much I want her! I’d begun missing her since we turned back, I believe, but it wasn’t till just now that I realized how much — Now — ” He stopped and frowned, but it was in thought alone. “Somehow I’m confident that the sixies won’t hurt her. Don’t know why they did take her, or that doctor-priest — yes, I know the old wife’s been hurt, but who knows how? My thought is that they’ll ask a ransom for her. Well, they shall have it. Every sixy in the world could swim in the wine I’d give for her. But it may not come to that. Meanwhile — Ah. Ay yes….” His voice sank. “I’d forgotten. The old wife and her twain children. What’s to be done about them?”
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