The Wilful Eye

by Isobelle Carmody

  Gulligan squatted down and nudged him. ‘Okay friend, you gotta run. Can you run? You gotta jump out where the ladder is. It’s close and once you get in the lane, you go like the wind, if you can, till you see the city gate, then you hide where you can. Go now.’

  Gulligan lifted the sack and helped Soldier stand.

  ‘You! Come here. We need to see your papers.’

  ‘Jump!’ yelled Gulligan. Soldier jumped onto the thin rusted ladder that climbed the sewer wall. He could hear all kinds of yelling, the inspector, the father, the bell clanging, the water slapping at the walls, his own breath pushing through his chest, as he ran his wobbly run. He knew he had to hide fast because once they crossed the sewer they would easily outrun him. The path ran alongside a curved wall on one side and a road lined with tall, thin, grey-brick houses all butted up against each other, their red roofs prodding at the blue sky. Nowhere to hide there. But along the wall there was a ridge of stones that stuck out, about three-quarters of the way up. Soldier ran alongside the wall, close, looking for a foothold for his one good foot. He stopped, pried away a brick where it had come loose, jammed his good foot in the hole and levered his body up, grabbing at the ridge with his other hand. He pulled himself up, just as he had at his window every day for as long as he could remember, scrambled up and heaved himself to the top of the wall and without pausing to gauge the drop, he swung over the other side and let himself down, crouching a while to catch his breath and make sure no one had seen him.

  He was now in the centre of the town. His foot hurt but he quickly hobbled down a narrow lane, taking every turn he could, until he was sure he had lost them.

  People, all sorts of people, flooded down the street. They walked in twos or threes, sometimes alone, or with a basket, sometimes stopping, yelling up at a window above. A young woman ran to catch up with her small son who had wandered ahead. She caught him in her arms, swept him up in a bundle and covered his face with kisses. The little boy squirmed, he wanted to be put down, the kisses he bore as if it were his duty to endure kisses. She put him down and he tottered off again, intent on making his own way. Soldier wondered what it must feel like not to have to fight, to have someone steer you down the street. He had so few memories of women. Meegey had talked to him a bit. And the others. Of their hair and their voices. Meegey had said, ‘Women, they’re softer than men,’ and Soldier nodded because he thought he knew it.

  ‘My mother smelled nice and she wept when they took me away.’ He had said it even thought he wasn’t sure it was the truth. It was how he’d viewed it in his memory. He saw her in a long dark skirt and her hair was long and black too, and sorrowful and silky as the river at night, but piled up and fastened with a comb, and she had a shawl, the berry-coloured one, and she wrapped him in the shawl and he could still smell her when they took him. She was whispering fast and kissing him but she didn’t cry out, she didn’t hold him to her, she let them take him and later they tried to take away the shawl from Soldier and it was he who cried and held on tightly, but they were stronger.

  He was strong now. He looked down at his foot. It was bleeding. His clothes were wet. He was beginning to shiver again. Remembering the keys, he suddenly clamped his hand to his pocket to see if he had them still. They were there. He pulled them out and dangling them in front of his eyes, he grinned and felt a great warm rush of joy as he thought of how it felt to have won them from Gollub. And then he remembered how he’d leapt like a monkey round the heaving raging mass of Gollub and what a pleasure it had been to yield to the wild and reckless rage and not to care where it led him.

  And where indeed? Had his life finally begun?

  He leaned back and watched. It was a narrow street and lined with stalls, full of vegetables, grains, cheeses, breads. People walked up and down with baskets on arms, the women often tugging at children or carrying them on their hips. He watched how they greeted each other, the easy embraces, hands touching, how they stood in the sun talking, leaning on one hip then the other, how the children ran in circles round them, chasing each other. He watched a boy take an apple from his mother’s basket. He bit into it and reached for his mother’s hand and stood there in the crowd, eating the apple and swinging her hand. Soldier remembered the taste of an apple. He wondered if he had ever stood holding his mother’s hand, not being afraid of what might happen, but just eating an apple in the sun, surrounded by people who would not hurt him. He gazed at the crowd and pictured himself walking with it, in the slow ambling way they seemed to move. He watched two men who stood at the cheese stall talking together with great enthusiasm, their voices rising, hands flying about. What were they planning? Plans could be made after all. Anything could happen. A young woman lazily twirled the beads at her neck while she gazed at the window of a shop. She looked about the same age as he was and there she stood wondering about something in a shop window. That they could choose or consider or wander made them move and talk and touch with an idle easy grace. It was as if they floated, as sticks would, on a stream, pushed along by the current, twirling this way and that, stopping at the bend, and then breaking free again in a rush. It made him sad to think of life in the tower, all of them so busy surviving, their minds wound up so tight with fear that their bodies seemed constrained, hungry, shrinking. In the tower, life was against you instead of in you.

  Soldier found himself watching a white cat that sat licking its paws, so delicately. He wanted to sense the life inside him coming back. He wanted to get up and walk down the street, and buy an apple. Suddenly everything was so large and possible and close. His heart sang and wept with joy. His head swirled. He stood up. Were people looking at him, at his wet old clothes, his bleeding bare feet, the wonder in his eye? He spied a large crate and climbed in. To be quiet.

  It was full of rotting food. The smell was bad, and he didn’t feel right. He closed his eyes and thought, but there was a knock on the crate. Soldier jumped. A woman stuck her head in.

  ‘You all right, boy? I saw you climb in there. Come out. Not good for you in there.’

  Soldier just looked at her. He knew it was not good to sit in rubbish, but he was suddenly too tired to move.

  ‘You’re a fleed boy aren’t you? It’s all right. I’m not going to trade on you.’

  Soldier stared at her, blinking. She seemed kind, but he couldn’t understand why she would want to help him.

  ‘Look, I got a cart over there, full of fruit. If you’re hungry you can have some. If you need money, you can help me unload.’ She was small. Soldier could tell this by the way she had pulled herself up to peep into the bin. She looked down on him with two pale grey eyes, which stared with a blank weariness, a sort of hard look, not like Meegey’s. She spoke gruffly and wore a ragged frown. Her hair was hidden under a scarf. She reached her arm towards him. It was a small arm, thin wrist, pale skin covered in freckles. Soldier looked at the arm but hauled himself out.

  ‘Don’t worry about my foot. I can still work,’ he said.

  She glanced at his foot. ‘Well first you’re going to need some clean dry clothes or you’ll catch a cold. Here, I’ll give you four groats in advance and you go get some clothes and then come back here to work.’ She shoved the silver coins into his hand and closed his fingers around them. Her own clothes were simple but clean, not ragged like her frown. Her voice had a plain steady sound, not soothing or leaping, no place for lies to be hiding in it. But why would she be giving him her money? How could she know to trust him? Soldier began to shake again. He said, ‘I don’t know where to get clothes.’

  ‘Over at Apple Annie’s. Just down the road, where the red sign is. She has all sorts and they don’t cost much. Used already. Go on then, before you get a chill.’

  Soldier turned and walked away. Now he had coins and the keys and someone to work for. He’d never had so much. He almost sauntered as he walked, pretended that for a minute there was nothing else to think about, nothing he had just done, nowhere he had escaped from and no one coming after him.<
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  Soldier showed his coins to the woman who stood behind the counter.

  ‘Is this enough for some new clothes?’

  She was a shrivelled sort of a woman, draped in layers of colours and tied with ribbons and fastened with flowers and jewels. She glanced at him shrewdly, chewed over her thoughts, and walked across to where a large square basket sat in a corner.

  ‘You stink, you know. You better be quick. Don’t want you scaring away the customers. Here, these are our slip-ups. You can choose some pants and a vest here. They are only one brass coin each.’

  She pointed to a curtain. ‘You can change in there.’

  Once he was dressed she gave him a sly smile and whistled, showing him a mirror.

  ‘Go on then. You look better, have a look.’

  Soldier had never seen his own reflection. He stood face to face with a stranger, a young man in fine clothes. It was hard to make this reflection feel as if it was the person Soldier knew from inside. He felt like a stranger to himself. He saw he was slight and full of hollows and bones, there was no natural ruddiness or vigour, only the darkness of the room like a veil over all his features, his skin not dissimilar to a turnip in colour, a thing that has grown underground, eyes sunk like dark bruises in the skin. But, despite all that, he was not ugly, and his eyes were green and had a look in them, a floating far-away softness. Soldier tried to change it. He squinted. He smiled. But it was still there. It was him. Glazed with hope and weariness, stung with the force of this freedom and still lank with the filth of captivity, there he was, as good and fine as anyone now that he had some fine clothes. He smiled again, and then he turned sideways and saw that she was watching him and he felt ashamed of himself, admiring his own face like that. He turned away and mumbled his thanks and she laughed at his embarrassment.

  As he made his way back, he felt there was a heat in his body. There were aches too. A fever. Did he have the phoidus? If he did, he thought, he had to hurry. There were two things he wanted to do first, before it came upon him. He wanted to make sure Meegey and the rest were free and then he wanted to find the girl in the green dress. He remembered when Gollub had entered, and how he had seen the light shimmering behind him, but he could not remember if Gollub had locked the door or just slammed it, for if he had locked it, they would all be trapped in there together. What would have happened then? Gollub facing all of them and the way they hated him, the way he had used them for his own sport, as if their lives were worth nothing, as if they were as dispensable as a stale loaf of bread. They would have buried him in their fury of fear and rage. But they would need to be set free. He had to go soon. And then to the castle. First, though, he owed the woman her work.

  She was not surprised that he had returned and she didn’t seem to mind that he was quiet. She led him to her cart and showed him the fruit.

  ‘You hungry? I bet you are. Here, have a peach. Or d’you want an apricot?’

  ‘Do you have cherries?’

  She laughed and when she did, the ragged frown disappeared and her face showed the beauty that the frown had hidden. It was as if she was too tired now to shine at all, but had once, and there were traces of it still in her features. ‘It isn’t cherry season. Not yet. Here, the peaches are good.’ She tossed him one. ‘You like cherries, do you?’

  ‘I never tried one.’ Soldier held the peach in his hand, admired the soft fuzzy skin and put it first to his nose and then to his mouth. His first mouthful he chewed slowly, so he could savour the sweetness, bending his head so she would not see on his face how good it was for him and how he had never tasted anything like it.

  ‘Never?’ She shook her head. He didn’t tell her that he’d never tried any fruits, not peaches or apricots or pears or anything. He knew about them, the same way he knew about women, from the talk in the tower. Sometimes there was a conversation about what you would eat if you ever got out. What would be the first thing? Meegey said he’d have an ale, Finney said watermelon, Hinto said pecan pie. Soldier always said cherries. It used to be what Rasser wanted and when he didn’t come back, Soldier took his thing to want. He never had his own thing ’cause he couldn’t remember anything to want, except his mother’s shawl. Though now he remembered he also had the girl in the green dress.

  ‘Do you know a castle round here? Near the sewer?’ The woman had lifted the shafts of the cart and they were walking up the street. She said, rather quickly, ‘I know the castle.’ She drew a quick breath. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Soldier.’

  ‘Well, I’m Satcho.’ She didn’t talk about the castle, just stopped and put the cart down and gave him a crate of peaches. It seemed she didn’t want to talk about it, she wanted to skip over it in a great hurry and turn in another direction. They went into the shop, each carrying a crate of peaches. The woman who ran it had a big bosom and a booming voice.

  ‘Got a new boy?’ she said, nodding at Soldier. Then she put her hand to her mouth and whispered at him, ‘Satcho’s a good woman. You’re a lucky boy.’

  Meegey always said he’d be lucky. And now he was. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and his face felt hot.

  ‘He needs a bath and a good supper. Skinny little tyke, he is. Does he speak?’

  ‘He speaks but he never tasted a cherry,’ declared Satcho.

  ‘Bless him, where’s he been then? Where have you been pet?’ Satcho went out to the cart. The woman winked at Soldier; she didn’t seem to care whether he answered her or not. ‘You should keep with her; she’ll treat you better than any of the other carters would. She’s the only woman who does it. The rest are men, but Satcho works hard as any man. She has to.’

  ‘Why?’

  The woman’s eyes bulged. She folded her arms across her large bosom. ‘Why? Because her husband and her son were taken.’

  ‘Taken where?’

  She put her hand to her mouth to whisper again and Soldier could tell she enjoyed spreading bad news, but she stopped and gulped it down as Satcho came back in and Soldier had to leave without finding out. The world was full of secrets, he thought. Sad secrets.

  It was true that Satcho worked hard. As they went about their business, she seemed as curious about him as he was about her. She asked him where his parents were. He told her he had a father and his name was Meegey and he was away on some business. He asked her if she had children and she blinked and her face went blank and then she said, ‘I have a daughter.’

  Soldier wondered if she knew that he was not quite telling the truth just as he knew she wasn’t quite telling the truth, yet neither of them was telling a bad lie, they were just holding close what was theirs. When did you trust someone to hold a truth as carefully as you did? As the day wore on he felt worse and worse. He was sweating with the fever and began to think he would have to go soon, yet he also felt he wanted to help Satcho. She seemed so small and worn out by her secrets, as if the only thing she had left was a little nut of determination, which showed in her frowning solemn eyes. Still, soon he would have little strength left and he had to get to the tower and the castle before . . . Before what? he thought, and then he stopped. He did not want to think about what was coming, what sort of sickness was in him.

  ‘Satcho, I have to go to the castle soon. Do you know the one I mean? Can you tell me the way?’

  She stopped and put down the cart with a sigh. ‘There’s only one castle here, Soldier. Look up there and see that red flag with the eagle on it. That’s the top of the castle.’

  He could see it.

  ‘And listen, Soldier. I know something about that castle. There are two guards there. One of them is a bad man. You’ll know him ’cause he’s big and he’ll talk to you in a friendly way. He’ll seem friendly enough, offer to help you even, whereas the other won’t be friendly at all. Don’t trust the big one. Talk only to the one who doesn’t want to talk to you. Otherwise you’ll be in danger.’

  ‘How do you know so much?’

  She frowned and seemed suddenly sad.
/>   ‘Same way you do.’ Her eyes locked on his. Soldier didn’t know what she meant since he knew nothing of the world; he’d never even tasted a peach before. And why did she seem frightened? He frowned. He felt unsettled and unsure and almost cross that she should be looking at him with a mysterious urgency, as if she expected him to tell her something, too.

  ‘I never even tasted a peach. I know nothing,’ he said lightly and stepped away from her gaze. ‘I’m looking for a princess. Do you know one who lives in the castle?’

  Now Satcho frowned and turned to go. She muttered, ‘There is a princess but I have heard she is vain and cruel. Rid your heart of her, if she is what draws you.’ She threw her arm out in a gesture of riddance, then she bade him goodbye and good luck and seemed suddenly eager to leave. Soldier watched her walk away.

  It was not far to the castle, and it was easy to find, being so much taller than the other houses with the red flag on the top flapping its point in the air. Soldier looked up to the west side of the castle where the sewer ran and he could see on the other side the tower, which must once have been part of the castle. He recognised the window on it. He stopped and gazed up at it, to see it as everyone else saw it, from the outside. But he couldn’t see it like everyone else, he could not look at it without his gut turning and tears coming to his eyes. He walked closer, he walked fast, wiping his tears and tramping over everyone and everything. He tramped Gollub into the dust, and the unjust gods and the dirty fighting guards, the traders and owners, the filthy river with its muddy poison and the dimly lit room with its thick stone walls and then even the townsfolk in their fine clothes, eating their plump red cherries and holding their own children close.

  And then he was tired. His joints ached and he was thirsty. He stopped his tramping. As he got closer he slipped his hand into his pocket and fingered the key. He heard someone crying. It was a sound he knew. A familiar tired convulsive sobbing.