Preparations completed, Marguerite, Oryx, and I, tired but exhilarated by the challenge ahead of us, lounged in the grass beside my hyacinth pool and awaited our guests. (I had ordered Phlebas to bathe and Melissa to rest and eat another rocket.) I tried to prepare the cousins for their meeting with Chiron.
“Above all, if he quotes an aphorism, pretend you think it’s his own. Never confess that you’ve heard it before, though of course you will have several hundred times. He has a way of appropriating and claiming to be the author. He tries to act both learned and wise, but truthfully he’s—”
“Dumb,” said Oryx.
“Let’s put it more tactfully. Slow. A Great Centaur has always ruled the Country, but Chiron sort of toppled into his position when his father and older brothers were killed by wolves. He’s forgotten the circumstances, though. He thinks he was born to rule. As long as you make him feel strong, knowledgeable, handsome—a great lover—you’re all right. Otherwise—well, I made him angry once when I temporarily broke off my dalliance with his cousin, Moschus, and he punished me by imposing chastity for a month! Can you imagine? You would have taken me for a pinched little virgin. I lost my color as well as my appetite, and I grew my first gray hairs. Of course, at the end of the time, he compensated in generous measure. And then I reconciled with Moschus.”
“I wonder,” said Marguerite. “Can I help? I do have my trade.” She appeared both earnest and touching; with me, she had dropped her airs and, though garbed in a torn and colorless tunic, her only garment, she somehow managed to look like a gold-haired Alyssum. But such a crude suggestion!
“Sell your favors?” I cried. “Charge the Great Centaur?”
“Oh, no, you misunderstand!”
“I suppose you will ask for copper ingots. Or gewgaws perhaps?”
“I intended to give. At the moment, it’s all I have, you see.”
Chastened, I said, “I’m sorry, my dear, but he has no truck with Humans. I have already chosen the proper dessert.” (Really, how could there be any question?)
We heard a silvery tremble of bells at the gate (if I were more of a poet and less of a realist, I would claim a similar tremble in my heart. More accurately, there was a thump.)
Silver Bells was always punctual. To him, Cockroost time did not mean Owlhoot time. He arrived in a splendor of mane and hooves and tail, but his good-humored kiss could not conceal his concern for the fate of my guests.
“Zoe,” he said. “Things will go well, I promise. You arrange such congenial orgies.” He squeezed my hand in a brotherly fashion.
“Thank you, my dear. And I see you’ve brought Eunostos.” I gave my goddess-child a kiss on his pointed ear. “I’ve made some plans for the young. Eunostos and Melissa”—she had left her couch—“and Phlebas”—fresh from a bath, he looked of an age to draw a bow and even read a scroll, but his mind had lingered at six. “My Incubation Hall is empty of patients now. I’ve arranged exciting games—knucklebones, toss-the-toad, what-have-you. And yes, there are honey cakes. Then you can roast the meat for the older folk. Melissa will be in charge. (Eunostos could not roast a woodpecker, much less a pheasant. Like his uncle, he tended to ruminate and burn the meat.)
“Honey cakes! I think I’ll join Eunostos,” grinned Silver Bells. (Zeus, what a Beast! Little did he know that I secretly quivered whenever he smiled at me.)
“You’ll stay right here. You must help me to soften Chiron. Get him to like our visitors. Don’t you want them to stay?”
“Don’t you want us to stay?” said a honeyed voice. It was Marguerite. She had disappeared from the group when Silver Bells knocked at the gate and reappeared in a tunic which I had loaned to her for the evening. Since I am considerably more voluptuous, I had never meant her to look her best (I had meant her to look like a sack). But slyly she had contrived to find the time in which to alter the garment until it clung to her like a tunic to Artemis. It revealed both arms and legs and one of her ivory shoulders, and what I saw was what men like. She had failed to fillet her hair. Carelessness? Calculation! It tumbled over her shoulders like a rain of crocuses.
Silver Bells smiled at her with suitable admiration but not with desire. Alyssum was rarely out of his thoughts. “I want you to stay very much,” he said. “You’ve won Eunostos’ heart; you know. He’s brought you a gift. And one for our hostess too.”
Eunostos, wearing a bulla or hollow, frog-shaped amulet around his neck, and little more—that is to say, like his uncle, whose more was an agate ring to restrain his hair—presented his gifts to Marguerite and me with one simultaneous motion (his uncle had taught him impeccable manners): for me, a Centaur carved from cedar wood, for Marguerite, a wreath of the daisies which had inspired her name, and hidden among them, a delicate pendant, a silver butterfly with filigree wings.
“I thought of Zoe’s gift by myself,” Eunostos said, “but Uncle Silver Bells thought of the pendant for Marguerite. He said he had named her for Marguerite Daisies, but she might not like them. They might be, too simple for a city girl.”
“Too simple?” she cried. “I love them. More than blue lotuses from the Pharaoh’s pool!” (I thought I saw a tear on her cheek.) She hugged Eunostos against her breast, and just for a selfish moment I wished the Great Centaur to put her adrift in a boat and a Siren to carve her for lunch! (I never claimed that all of my thoughts were kind—not about courtesans with an eye for Silver Bells.)
“I’m here,” said Oryx, joining Marguerite. He wore a garland of columbine. His hair, like that of his cousin, rioted gold. He looked like a prince of the woods. Except for the color, he looked like one of us (I forgave his pointless ears).
“We’ve been here,” said Melissa and Phlebas in unison, clearly wanting attention. Her tail was immaculate, her violets fresh; and Phlebas smelled of clover instead of goat. I heard him muttering to himself, “An orgy. Wait till I tell my friends!”
Someone . . . something . . . it seemed. . . had come with Silver Bells. A butterfly, saffron and delicate as a snowflake with wings, hovered above his head. There are those who claim that she is the soul of the Lady, returned from the land of the Shades to rejoin her husband; or at least that Silver Bells thinks her to be his wife. Whatever the truth, he turned and lifted his head and looked at the butterfly, and I could swear that she was sending him thoughts. . . .
Nectar and daffodils, sunlight and dragonflies. . . . Do not grieve for me, love, for wings have made us one . . . Foolish Zoe! Such thoughts should be left to poets. She was probably a simple butterfly, after my flowers.
We entered my Asklepion, which I had walled with tall and bristling timbers in the time of the wolves. A low, mossy hill (not ill-tempered like Bumpers) rises along my trees, and tonight she held the tables for my feast. I had heaped them with the rarest delicacies of the forest—dog-berries mixed with horse-gentians; spitted pheasants ready for roasting; wines of every description, from grape to gooseberry, and of course beer, horse-sugar beer, the favorite of Centaurs and especially Chiron, in great bulging pigskins. A Centaur could lift a skin, remove a cork from the snout, and aim a luscious stream unerringly toward his mouth. For light, I had hung the trees with lanterns (a gift from the East, brought to me by a younger Moschus when he sought my hand in marriage). They were made of an Eastern substance known as paper, a sort of thinner papyrus, which revealed the candles and yet enclosed their light, and they were shaped like the sunbird of the East: small, but yellowly bright with feathers and crest. In effect, I had illumined the night with paper birds of day, since Chiron professes a keen aesthetic sense and claims to appreciate innovation in every area (I can only vouch for one).
He arrived in a cavalry-burst of clattering hooves and jangling bells, replete with a royal escort and his cousin and drinking companion, Moschus. Of course he had a wife; six, I believe; but when the Great Centaur attended an orgy, he left his wives in the stall. We pride ourselves on equality between the sexes in the Country, but the Centaurs acquired some customs, along with a
rtifacts, on their wanderings through the East.
“And how is my esteemed friend Zoe,” he asked, courteous, even affable, but not forgetting his dignity, his royal station and attendant power, and peering over my shoulder at the beer and the meat. He wore a green blanket of spider-silk, edged with murex-purple, across his back. His crown of jade, much too broad for his narrow head, was a gift from an Eastern king.
“In excellent spirits, my Lord, and much improved by your coming.” (He dotes on formality when others are watching. Moschus was watching and restraining a neigh; I thought him a trifle unsteady on his hooves. Perhaps he had nipped before he left his stall or managed a snort en route from one of his tree stumps or caves.)
Chiron dapped his hands and his escort of four brawny males, brandishing wooden spears above their heads and wearing leather jerkins around their shoulders, vanished noisily into the woods. Their manes were turbulent; their pectorals glittered garishly even in lantern light and jangled instead of sang. The usual Centaur prides himself on his dress, but these were the toughs of the wood, the so-called Whinnies, chosen no doubt because they liked to fight.
“And these are my—p-prisoners,” I stumbled introducing Oryx and Marguerite. I would have liked to call them my guests, but Chiron could only see them as interlopers. At this point, I did not want to endanger their case.
“Not bad for Humans,” he said, as he straightened his crown. “Boy’s a swift runner, that’s for sure. Woman must be good for a dozen or so colts—uh, what is the Human word?—babies.”
Moschus mumbled under his breath, “Don’t you mind, Marguerite. He describes everybody that way. You’re good for much more than colt-bearing. Anybody can see that.”
I stooped and bathed Chiron’s hooves with a cloth dipped in myrrh and then I led him into the Asklepion. He observed Eunostos, Melissa, and Phlebas and said, “I’m sure you youngsters have plans of your own. Games or something. You’re dismissed.”
“I’ve composed a poem in honor of your visit, my lord,” Eunostos said.
“Oh, a panagyric perhaps? On with it then.”
The moose
Is loose.
“Yes, yes, finish the poem, my boy.”
“I have finished, your honor. But I have another.”
“One was enough.”
Beware
The bear.
“Dismissed!”
Eunostos, bowing with childish dignity, led his friends into the Incubation Hall. (“I want to stay and watch,” said Melissa. “Hush,” said Eunostos, polite but firm.)
“Aunt Zoe,” he called to me over his shoulder. “Give a shout when you want us to roast the meat.”
“Burn it, you mean,” snorted Moschus, who supped from time to time—all of the time, I should say—with his forest friends and had suffered a meal prepared by Eunostos and Silver Bells.
Silver Bells looked displeased at such an abrupt dismissal of the children, but what can you say to a king?
Leave it to him to find the words. “My Lord, they would have entertained us with their games.”
“Poems, more likely.”
I settled the Great Centaur against a tree, a sapling with foliage like a Dryad’s hair, and he rubbed his back and sighed and promptly announced.
“I should like a flagon of beer. And a pheasant. Skip the salad. And bring me a flagon of beer.”
“You’ve already ordered a flagon,” reminded Moschus. Drink had loosened his tongue.
I gave him a warning look.
“And how is my old friend Silver Bells?” asked Chiron. Even the Great Centaur did not condescend to him. They sometimes engaged in a wrestling match or a game of draughts, and Silver Bells wisely allowed the King to win; however, in other ways he refused to play the courtier and remained unalterably a Minotaur (and the best of his race since the Golden Age). Chiron in fact had performed the wedding rites for Silver Bells and Alyssum (after innumerable attempts to win her for his own seventh wife).
I looked at Silver Bells in the light of the sunbird lanterns, the last adult Minotaur, and my heart, itself a bird, flew out to him in his grief and loneliness (and also because, quite frankly, I would like to get that Beast into my couch). His mane was caught with a malachite ring; hair rippled fierily down his chest and loins; modesty kept him from guessing his own magnificence. True, he had his vanities—he was proud of his poems—but they made him all the more Beastly and lovable.
He smiled at me and must have guessed my apprehensions for Oryx and Marguerite.
“Zoe, will you honor us with a song?”
“Why, I don’t know if I can—what do you think, Chiron?” Actually, I have a more than passable voice and an extensive repertoire, but I did not know if the Great Centaur wanted a song with his beer. (I knew what he wanted after his beer.)
“Oh, very well,” he sighed, handing an empty gourd to Oryx to refill.
“A drinking song, my Lord?”
“I shall leave it to your discretion. But make it brief.” His look was aphoristic.
I sang a drinking song of his own composition (for once he had failed to steal, a mistake at best). I sang less to please his ear than arouse his appetite:
See what the Beasts in the back room will have
And bring them more of the same:
Horse-sugar beer
And me, my dear,
And mine is the liveliest game.
Chiron revealed a flicker of interest at the word “game” and then stared aphoristically into his beer.
I pranced into a whirling dance (I am told that in spite of my geographical splendors, I dance like a temple maiden); I flung my arms as if to bestow a bounty (or promise a bounty to conclude the evening); my hair was a living garland aswirl above my head, and the lantern light concealed the streaks of gray.
“More, Zoe, more!” shouted Oryx.
(Appreciative boy!)
I awaited acclamation from Moschus, but the beer had gone to his head and he leaned with beatific oblivion against a tree.
“Everybody now!” I cried.
See what the Beasts in the back room will have
And bring them more of the same. . . .
“You sang that nicely, Zoe. Now shall we wax philosophic?” asked Chiron. “It’s rather expected at orgies.” A perfect chance to plead for my prisoner-guests.
“I’m no philosopher,” I began.
“No, you’re not.”
“But it seems to me that the Goddess didn’t create this island and set it aback a bull and, for all we know, the world, and set it aback a turtle, without a pattern.”
“An excellent discourse,” said Chiron. “Shall we hear from the Guest of Honor?” Silence. “The Great Centaur?”
“Opposites,” I repeated. “Everywhere. Obvious ones like night and day, life and death, good and evil. Geographical ones like earth and water. Living ones, like a Sphinx and a Minotaur.”
“You’ve made your point, my dear.”
“My point is that Humans, like Beasts, are sometimes good, sometimes bad. My point is that Oryx and Marguerite—”
“More beer if you please.” The request was a command. “Spirituous beverages increase desire but limit performance,” he continued. “However, such is not the case with the Great Centaur.” He often spoke of himself in the third person.
Oryx had disappeared in the midst of my song. Silver Bells was consoling Marguerite, who looked both small and timorous in so sublime a presence, and not her usual blithe and confident self. (Unlike me, she was not a girl to appreciate Chiron’s compliment, “good for colt-bearing.”) I must forget the Muse and fetch the beer, though the second verse was about dessert.
“A whole skin if you please,” he added. “‘Tis not the beer but the content/ That makes the Centaur’s merriment.’ However, the beer helps.”
“Hisst!”
It was Oryx, calling to me from behind a tree (Melissa’s tree), an elm with a knobby, concealing trunk.
“Do you think he will let us st
ay?”
“He hasn’t made up his mind yet,” I said.
“He hasn’t much to make up.”
“Nevertheless, he requires further diversions.”
“Oh,” said Oryx sadly. “Zoe, I don’t want to go.”
“You’ll have to if he gives the command.”
“But I shall miss you too much!” He looked like a little child who has lost his goat cart or suffered his father’s whip.
“And I shall miss you, my dear. But you must forget your thievish ways.”
“There’s something big I wish I could steal.” I cast a rapid eye around my Asklepion and over his person. His loin cloth was not designed for concealment. Still, an admitted thief—!
“What do you mean, Oryx?” I asked, not without trepidation. My lovers had brought me a pharaoh’s fortune in hammered silver goblets, ivory elephants from Nubia, incense burners of beaten gold. . . . I cherished them not for their value but for the memories which they evoked of the Golden Age, and a young girl receiving her first caress, and a young woman receiving a kiss, a caress, and. . . .
“Your heart.”
Roguish Oryx! He had lured me into a trap. Little boy was mischievous young man. He seized me in his arms and planted a clumsy but conclusive kiss on my mouth.
Carefully, not wishing to hurt his feelings, I extricated myself from his embrace.
“Oryx”—I omitted the “dear” to prevent a repetition—“I’m a trifle old for you, don’t you think?”
“What are a few hundred years between lovers?”
“Oryx, how can you say such a thing? Why, you’ve only just kissed me!”
Cry Silver Bells Page 5