“But they’ll capture us too!” A Goat Girl wailed, and winced when Melissa bit her scraggly tail.
“Let Aunt Zoe finish. I’m sure she has a plan.”
I seemed to hear the tinkling of faraway bells. The kind, grave face appeared in the eye of my mind. (I seemed to hear, “I love you, Zoe, friend, rescuer, woman to make me forget my lost Alyssum.” Ah, foolish, foolish . . . Even the hopeful must limit hope.)
“Yes, I have a plan.”
Disguise.
Chapter Eight
Zoe
In the late afternoon, when the sun seemed an ox-cart instead of a fiery chariot, we beached our boat beside a murky stream. (Nobody sails at night except a fool or a seasoned mariner and even be avoids the winter seas.) I had carefully chosen the stream because its darkness suggested the presence of umber in its banks. Behind us, sea-grapes rose into uplands where carob tree mingled with palm; before us, the water stretched shipless and calm and islandless; above us, strange, funnel-shaped clouds shifted and intermingled but spilled no rain.
Before the falling of dusk, I fastened a pennant from the bow: murex purples inscribed with a golden lion; a gift from my Nubian lover. (He bad given me further gifts: a knowledge of his language, his customs, his kind. The amount one can learn in the couch is limitless. I have bad less success with scrolls, which give me a headache or redden my eyes.)
“Dig where?” asked Melissa, ready to pout. “I don’t want to soil my fur.”
“The stream,” I said. “There’s umber above the beach. Shovel it into a pigskin—see, I have taken the skins from which we have drunk our wine and split them down the top—and bring it aboard the Nilus. Here. Use this lantern. It’s getting dark. Otherwise, you can’t tell umber from earth.”
“You won’t tell us your plan, Aunt Zoe?” asked Eunostos. Sadness had left him when we had started our mission; he trusted in me to find his uncle. Now, he mingled a man’s gravity with a child’s curiosity.
“Not yet,” I said, assuming the look of a mother who knows a secret. For the sake of the children, I wanted to lessen the fear in a fearful voyage. And to a child, a secret is likely to tantalize instead of terrify. “If I can surprise you, I can surprise the Cretans.”
“Kid games,” the Goat Girls snickered. They still looked identical except in height, though Silver Bells claimed to have noticed variations in the contours of a hoof, the length of a tail (minute at best), even in manners and mood. The speaker, I judged from her tone, was that inveterate troublemaker, Hénsbane, one of the band who had waylaid Oryx and Marguerite on Bumpers, the hill.
“Deadly games,” I corrected. “Continual jeopardy.” It seemed, after all, that I must emphasize fear.
“Deadly games,” murmured Phlebas, savoring both of the words as if they were morsels of cuttle-fish. It was his first adventure. Imagination, it seemed, had proved at best a tolerable substitute. Reality intoxicated him like dogberry beer. If only he were as slender and short as Eunostos! Because of his size, he complicated my plan. “Jeopardy. Does that mean danger, Zoe?”
“Of the worst kind.”
“I expect we shall all be captured but make a daring escape from jeopardy and—”
“Enough, Phlebas. You don’t have to pretend. You’re here.”
(“. . . and rescue Silver Bells and win immortal renown and. . . .”)
“Umber,” groaned Melissa, thinking no doubt of soiling her fur. “I think I hear a bear in the woods.”
“Nonsense. There are no bears in these parts.” (For all I knew, there might be a wolf or a Cyclops.) “Now do as I say and you shall hear a part of my plan” (the only part I had planned, I will have to confess). “Nubian ladies wear voluminous gowns against the heat. Only your face and feet and Melissa’s paws will show. Tomorrow, when the umber has dried, you shall stain them a dusky brown—not your fur—and pass for my attendants. A Nubian princess is attended by pygmies, you know.” (I was going to have a problem with Phlebas. Fat, taller than most of his race, he looked like an adolescent Satyr, not a pygmy. Perhaps my royal jester?) “And cover your ears with one of those hoods they wear. En route, I have stitched one for all of us.”
“Do men wear hoods?” asked Eunostos. “They’ll make us look like mourners.”
“For you a hat.” I had made him a rounded cap and fastened an ostrich feather in the brim. Except for hiding the tips of his pointed ears, it was like the cap which his uncle had made for him (with help from me). He thanked me with more than usual courtesy and looked in the stream to straighten the feather to its jauntiest angle. In so many ways he was wise beyond his years that I needed such reminders of his youth.
“What about our ‘ooves?” a Goat Girl asked (Bindweed, I think).
“Pigskin boots. The pygmies of Nubia use the antelope’s hide, but no one will notice the texture through the dye. Besides, it isn’t often that Nubians visit Crete. One can always claim a change in style.”
“And what about paws?” Melissa demanded, as if she had posed the insoluble problem. (I think she resented the umber on her fur.)
“Nothing. You’ll be an ally from a neighboring tribe. The paws will make you exotic. I expect a Cretan may want to marry you.”
“I’m saving myself for Oryx.”
“Zoe, your secret is out,” blurted Phlebas. “We’re going to Phaistos disguised as Nubians. Killers from the south, I suppose?” Nubia is a divided land; the northern area of the merchant princes; the southern jungles of lions and spear-throwing savages.
“Our pygmies are from the south. The Queen and her royal jester from the north.”
“Merchants then.” Disappointment muffled his voice.
“Merchants, my dear? Queens may engage in trade, but merchants they are not, and you in my retinue will attend to my person and not my figures.”
“But the boat is Egyptian,” remarked Eunostos. “No keel. Bundled papyrus reeds for the deck. . . .”
“Since Nubians don’t build seaworthy boats of their own, they buy or steal from Egypt. I have already changed the pennant.”
“Aunt Zoe, you think of everything. And thus we’ll make our way into—why, into the palace itself, where else? And learn what we need to know about Uncle Silver Bells.”
“Clever Eunostos. Now we must work on our plan. I hardly need tell you how to attend. But the Girls will need some practice. Line up now.”
“Cor!”
“Hush, you chattering magpie.” (Hensbane, who else?) “Need I remind you that three lives are at stake, and one of them his?”
I might have invoked the secret name of the Goddess. A stillness fell upon them like a net; as if coerced by its strands, they moved into place and looked to me, the fisherman, to dispose of them.
“There now, you are reasonably straight. If a Cretan minister approaches to greet me, bow. In unison. Practice now. Hand to your tummy, shoulders straight. Remember a bow is not a stoop or a slouch. It must be executed with dignity.”
“Don’t bow to nobody, lady.” Hensbane.
“Call me ‘Zoe’ in private. ‘Mistress’ once we reach Phaistos. Ladies have no fun.”
“Nobody,” echoed Bindweed, another girl from the original gang.
“Bow as I say or find yourself left on the beach. Or thrown to the Tritons. Of course they will do their worst.”
“Wouldn’t mind if they done their best.”
“Who said that?”
Silence.
“They are also cannibals once they have had their way.”
The girls began to practice without demur; Hensbane fell to the ground and rose and mastered a graceful bow.
“Learn fast, eh,” she boasted. “All right, girls. ‘Ere’s ‘ow it’s done. Bindweed, ‘ear what I said.”
“Aye.”
“Keep it up until you are perfect,” I said. “Phlebas, you too.” Unfortunately, his stomach intervened in his bow. “A tilt will have to do. But mind you, do it with style. And Melissa, you shall walk on my left, a little behind me
, and carry my parasol. Eunostos, you shall carry a spear and clear the way for me.”
“Perhaps a bow?”
“A spear. The Nubians haven’t mastered the bow.”
“Uncle Silver Bells never taught me to use a spear.”
“Then you must teach yourself and make him proud of you.” I had no doubt of his abilities: he would learn to march and hold a spear and never lower the tip except in an exercise. Given time, he would learn to throw with speed and accuracy.
“And what about me?” asked Phlebas.
“I’ve already designated you my court jester.”
“But what do I do?”
“Jest.”
“Just what?”
Of course! He did not know the word. He probably thought that he was a Grand Vizier. I must think of a way to make him my jester without wounding his pride and without taxing his modest abilities. “You know. Sing. A royal jester is also a royal bard. I shall make you a pointed cap from a tiger’s tail, with a bell on the end.”
“Like Silver Bells!”
“Exactly.”
“And a tiger’s tail too.” (The gown I had made for myself would have to forego an extremity.)
“And you shall tell stories as well as sing. Of epic events.”
“I know one now. There was this Cyclops, see, and—”
“Once we assume disguise and reach our goal.”
The night was silent and chilly; the air was sweet with ripening carob pods. In spite of flintstones aboard the ship, we did not dare a fire, for fear of attracting whatever Humans or Beasts might live in the woods. Bears I doubted, but wolves? Harpies? Sphinxes returned from Libya to Crete; their original home? Civilization on Crete adheres to the coast, or thrives in pockets, as in the Country, divided by ridges and forests.
The cabin was much too small for the whole of the crew, and I did not think it fitting for me to leave my companions and seek a private nest, in spite of my royal estate. Better to stay with them, a queen with her subjects, and see to their courage for the coming trials. Dissatisfaction, it seemed, had come with the dark.
“Wisht I had me a broiled mullet.” Hensbane. “What do we get? Curds.”
“And dogberry beer,” I added, “and carob pods, fresh from the trees.”
“Too many seeds.”
“If you must have a mullet, throw a line in the water and see what you catch. You’ll have to eat him raw, of course.”
“Wisht I hadn’t come.”
“Not even for him?”
“Not for that boy and ‘is cousin. Snobby ‘e was, wasn’t ‘e, Bindweed?”
“Aye.”
“‘Er too. ‘Orrible ‘air she ‘ad. Silver Bells? Like him right well, I do, but—” A Goat Girl’s devotion, it seemed, had definite limitations.
“Look,” I said. “The star birds are climbing the sky. Silver Bells wrote a poem about them. He always said that Alyssum was more like a bird than a flower.”
“Sing us a song, Aunt Zoe,” asked Eunostos. “You’ll bring us cheer.”
Wise little chap, he hoped that a song would enspirit the wavering Girls and remind them of their purpose to rescue Silver Bells, Oryx, and Marguerite.
“I wonder if I can remember—” (I remembered every word, but Eunostos needed distraction as well as the Girls.)
“I’ll help,” he volunteered.
“Splendid.”
“I helped him compose it, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.” (Perhaps I should choose a different poem.)
“In fact, the second line is mine. Some at least. The owl part.”
“Very well, but we must watch our voices. I’m used to drinking songs, and we mustn’t be overheard.” I sang as quietly as the breeze in the mast of our boat, leaving deliberate gaps, and Eunostos filled them with his sweet, child’s voice:
The Star Birds
Among the fierce black opals of the dark,
That horned and snowy-feather owl, the moon,
Blue Rigel, fisher in a sky lagoon,
Aldebaran, the stellar meadowlark,
And orange Arcturus, oriole of night
(Fluting what, songs to what celestial ears?)
Ascend and in their incandescent flight
Provoke the shaken music of the spheres.
“‘E wrote it, did, ‘e?” asked Hensbane. After digging the umber, she had washed in the stream and killed her smell of goat. A mischievous girl, she had always seemed to possess only half of a heart, hut half, which is more than a Triton or Sphinx can claim, may grow into a whole. (Children, except for rarities like Eunostos, are born without any hearts. They grow them along with their bodies. Some of them grow an acorn, some a coconut.)
“Yes. For Alyssum.”
“Never liked pomes. Don’t un’erstand ‘em. Right takin’, though, this one. Think we’ll find him, Zoe?”
“At least we shall get into the palace and find out where he is.”
“What if they already held them games?”
“Unlikely, so soon.” Immediate rescue, nevertheless, was vital for all of us. Our umber stains, applied in the morning before we sailed for Phaistos, would eventually start to run, and I had a further reason to fear delay. I had already started to miss my father tree; I wanted to touch his bark, embrace him as if he were a Beast, bury my face among his feathery leaves; and I knew that my longing reflected a physical need, hardly perceptible, but sure to worsen, soon to kill.
“Sleep now, Girls, and you too, Eunostos and Phlebas. We shall need all our wiles and strength tomorrow.”
“Aunt Zoe,” said Eunostos. “If we don’t find him, the Country will have lost its soul, won’t it? It can never become a butterfly or a snake.” Then, a little boy, who inevitably sees things small and personal.
“And I shall have lost my uncle. Who will teach me to draw a stouter bow? Or write a longer poem?”
“I know what you mean,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. “Silver Bells has protected all of us. But if anything happens to him, I promise you this—he will return as a snake.”
“And still be my uncle?”
“Of course.”
“I like snakes.”
I held him against me and felt him sink into sleep.
“Zoe,” said Phlebas. “May I have a kiss?”
The city of Phaistos, set on a hill perhaps a mile from the sea, seemed one twinkling, rainbow-shell facade. The inevitable blues and reds were intermingled with saffron from the crocuses of Egypt. The many-storied palace rose above, the law court and other buildings, like a crown on the head of a king who walks fearlessly among his people. Thoroughfares ran to the port, and two-wheeled wagons, drawn by oxen and driven by rustics in loin cloths, carried the produce between the port and the city. From the port came local products like squids and cuttlefish and murex dye; imports like the exquisite linens from Egyptian looms, headbands, alabaster, Nubian gold, papyrus, saffron dye, silver, ostrich eggs, and a new animal called a “horse,” a sort of Centaur with only four limbs and a muzzle instead of a face (ugly thing! A caricature of Moschus); from city to port went images carved of ivory, faience cups as breakable as the shell of a peahen egg, daggers with hilts of hammered gold, blue monkeys raised in captivity for export to the ladies of Egypt.
The port was little more than a manifold berth for ships. No fortress withheld it from foreign invasion (for who would risk the wrath of the Cretan fleet?). No pharos beaconed to ships in the dark (for they, were beached by dusk or, if caught at sea, they did not need to avoid any shoals on this particular coast.) No vast warehouses—only buildings of brick—stored the merchandise unloaded from deck or hold on the backs of slaves. But what an aviary of ships! Some sat in the water like resting, pelicans. Others occupied narrow’ channels cut into the beach and lined with stones, where a ship might shelter against the severest storm, since the mouths of the channels could quickly be closed with swinging, wooden gates. Sailors were almost the same in every port (or so I was told by a sailor, once my love
r), and these, Egyptian, Achaean, Cretan, were sunburned young men with broad, naked shoulders (slender if Cretan) who laughed and joked and exchanged some choice oaths which seemed to be instantly recognizable in any tongue. Nothing shocks me—I can swear with the best of men—but I feared for Melissa’s ears. However, she did not appear to understand the oaths. The Bears of Artemis never reach the point where the facts of life are more than a mere abstraction to them. The Goat Girls, however, though equally ignorant, chaffed with the sailors and even swore with them. Many Nubians speak the Cretan tongue, but with an unmistakable intonation, like the rustle of rain in a baobob tree, and I had to hush them before they revealed their disguise.
“We’ve arrived,” I said. “Begun our adventure at last. Don’t give us away. Now then.”
I ensconced myself in a couch which the Goat Girls had set on the deck and assumed my role as a queen of the South. Eunostos fanned me with an ostrich feather which tickled my nose (but southern queens are not expected to sneeze). Wearing a loin cloth of leopard skin, his reddish chest and limbs disguised with umber, he made a perfect pygmy from the jungles of Nubia. He managed to imitate the savage look of the race and glared at sailors who leered or beckoned at me (not that I minded a decorous leer). Melissa and the Goat Girls, similarly dressed and stained, could also pass for pygmies, and, if I carried my part, who could deny that I was a Nubian queen with my retinue, come to consider trade with the merchant princes of Phaistos?
If I carried my part, along with Phlebas, rehearsing a story under his breath.
“Ho, there, my good man,” I called to a nautical sort who squatted on one of the wharves and peered at the sea, as if he would rather squat than work. Young but weathered and brown, he had seen the world, so it seemed, and the sight had left him langorous and tired. “Is this berth occupied?”
“Depends.” His massive knuckled resembled a sailor’s knots. He had worked in his day; now he wanted to rest.
“Well then, give us a hand.”
“Cost you.”
Cry Silver Bells Page 9