by John Brunner
Oh, Lord God Almighty. We’ve woken Anastasia, and I can see her coming out of the hut, and—
The world spun. He had tripped on a loose pebble and been clubbed on the right shoulder, both at once. The shock ran like a lightning bolt clear to the tips of his fingers, and while he was struggling to recover he heard a shout so close behind him he felt convinced he was about to die. Somehow they had lured him away from the rock that had protected his back at the beginning, so as to give the fourth of them an opening…
“Stand aside!”
And he was rudely thrust off balance. He went sprawling in dirt churned up to mud, his nose and lungs full of the stench of warm sour wine, as harsh as vomit. Moaning in terror, he rolled over, clinging to his club, and discovered that all his latest guesses had been wrong. This newcomer was not bent on the same errand as the others. Moreover he had a sword and shield, and he knew Greek, though he was speaking another language now, and furiously.
It was the one-eyed knight.
For a space the three soldiers seemed minded to defy him, but he clouted the foremost of them soundly with the flat of his sword and then presented its point under the man’s chin, still uttering a torrent of obvious abuse. The spirit went out of them. Sullenly they obeyed his command to wend their way back to the village, although they kept muttering complaints until they were out of earshot.
“Sir!” Evgenos dropped to one knee. “Sir, I owe you my life! And as for Anastasia—” She had come to join him, realizing the danger was past, and he caught her hand.
But the right words refused to pass his lips.
Kicking aside fragments of the wine jar as he sheathed his sword, the one-eyed man said, “It was my duty as a Christian to frustrate de Belmaison’s intentions. Oh, get up, man! You’re no liege of mine.”
“But I owe you my life!” Evgenos repeated.
The knight’s lip curled into a cynical grin, half-concealed by his scruffy beard. “I’m not so sure of that, even. You seemed to be giving a pretty good account of yourself. As a matter of fact, there have been times on the field of battle when I’d have been glad of a squire as stout as you!”
Anastasia flinched, thinking for a second he meant to enlist Evgenos. The knight noticed, and interpreted her reaction accurately.
“Ah, don’t worry. I have my own retainers, and they are better disciplined than de Belmaison’s.”
“It was he who sent those three to?…”
“Yes indeed. He has no control over his baser appetites. That’s why I set out after them, as soon as I discovered the sort of errand they were on. He’d told them to locate ‘the blackamoor’s woman’”—a nod at Anastasia—“and drag you back for his enjoyment. It was indicated that if they took advantage of you on the way, he’d not object.”
In horror Anastasia whispered, “And these are the folk who plan to liberate the Holy Land?”
“I think they won’t,” the knight replied, his voice betraying sudden weariness. He dropped the point of his shield to the ground and leaned on it. “But you must not judge us all by the actions of a few: particularly not by de Belmaison’s. He belongs to no knightly Order, he has taken no oaths except an oath of fealty to his king, and there is little to choose between him and his crude peasant followers. Myself, on the other hand… Ah, but it’s enough to have done the proper thing. I’ll bid you good night.”
“Wait, sir, if you please!” Anastasia darted forward. “I wish to know who you are and why you helped us, if only to remember you forever in my prayers!”
“Yes! Yes!” exclaimed Evgenos fervently, regaining his feet at last.
The knight gave a sad and cynical chuckle. “Well, here’s a change in the wind! At noon you were prepared to imagine I had cast the Evil Eye upon your child—is that not so?”
“I beg your honor’s forgiveness!” Anastasia cried.
“Don’t let your soul be troubled by it. I was unaware of the beliefs that rule your people, or I’d not have made so bold… I’ll answer you as honestly as I can, then, although my name’s of no account. I lost my lands and family long ago. There was a plague. Still, for the sake of my Order, I’ll say this.
“The Order of the Knights Hospitalers was founded to tend those injured in the service of the Cross. It is no longer what it used to be, and there are many who profane its binding oath. You can identify me in your prayers as one—and possibly the only one—who absolutely won’t!”
On which he caught up his shield and strode away. Evgenos made to run after, but Anastasia checked him.
“You heard what he said! It shames him to admit what depths his comrades can descend to. Don’t force him to think of them again. Praise God, rather, that some few righteous men are still alive!”
Later:
“Gene?” she whispered into the dark.
“Oh, I’m not asleep, Stacy. Even though it must be midnight. I don’t imagine I shall sleep. I can’t rid my mind of the image of de Belmaison—smug, self-righteous, prepared to condone the worst excesses because he’s so totally convinced his cause is just!”
“No, you should think rather of the one-eyed man, and Hedwig too.”
“Him, yes of course—but why her, for pity’s sake?”
“Because he got it right, she got it wrong.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“Oh, you know Hedwig… I don’t mean that; I mean: you know about her.”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me explain, then. She was self-sacrificing, wasn’t she? She was the self-sacrificial type par excellence, and viewed herself as an embodiment of altruism. However, this wasn’t quite the way she struck other people, caught up as they were in the fulfillment of her ambition like leaves being whirled along in the wake of a fast car.”
He found the resources for a laugh. “Oh, yes! Oh, very yes! But what became of her? Tell me!”
“The world she found her way to was a compendium of the wrongs she sought to right. Where there was not a brutal overlord enslaving the innocent, there was a plague; where not a famine, then greedy tax collectors; where not a drought, then war and all its countless victims, specially children. She was in her element, and she reveled in it!
“Promptly she began to organize reforms, and hordes of people flocked to support her projects. Naturally, being a visitor from far away, she enjoyed an automatic cachet. Think of any artist immigrating from abroad as a parallel; think, for instance, how many composers and musicians had to seek their fame in foreign countries.
“And in a sense she was an artist—a specialist, at all events—and here she was supplied with more material to work on than she’d ever dared to dream of. For a long while she was happy. She was deliriously happy.”
“But what became of her in the end?” Gene murmured sleepily.
“I think you might well guess. Come on! You said you weren’t likely to fall asleep tonight.”
He rolled over, eyes closed. “I may well have been wrong about that… Uh—yes! Hedwig! Like you said, she reached the sort of world she’d always dreamed of.”
“And—?” She prompted him with a nudge.
“Oh! It could never run short of causes for her to dedicate herself to. There were always going to be worse things in the news tomorrow than the ones she had set out to cure today. Is that how you see her fate?”
“It turned out worse,” Stacy countered. “In fact she won, insofar as she cleansed the world of the evils that she found on her arrival. But ultimately she found herself obliged to organize yet one more project on top of all the rest: a campaign to provide charity for the people she’d inspired, those who, as a result of copying her example, found they had lost everything they cared about—their homes, their families, their loved ones, their heirlooms and their other prized possessions… To this end, of course, she had to recruit still further helpers, or perhaps one might better term them worshipers, who in turn complained about what they’d had to abandon at her behest. Finally it dawned on her that here was one campa
ign without an end. She who had so consistently sacrificed herself had paid no heed to the other people she was spending as the price of her achievements. Her conscience rebelled, but the fact remained: she had incurred one debt she never could repay… Gene? Gene?”
But he was asleep. A moment later, so was she.
PART SEVEN
THE EXHIBIT
consists in the fragments of a jar that once held wine.
It can never be made whole again
THE MONTH
is October
THE NAME
is Pedro
Nikodemos, nicknamed Chrysocheiros “of the golden hand” owing to the success that usually attended his business ventures, was furious with himself, and even angrier with God. His usual combination of luck and good judgment had utterly deserted him. What should have been the most profitable voyage even he had ever undertaken risked turning out to be an unqualified disaster.
Taking advantage of the exceptionally early advent of the west-to-east trade winds this year—they had shifted exactly at the Equinox, instead of lagging—a handful of bold or greedy Indian traders had set sail weeks ahead of their normal schedule, determined to beat their rivals to Egypt. Their gold and pearls and precious stones could be sold at leisure, but whoever arrived first with seasonal and perishable goods, such as perfumes, incense, spices and dyestuffs, was sure of commanding the highest prices. That was a principle which Nikodemos understood well. His agents on the Red Sea had standing instructions to buy as soon as the traders showed up each year, provided their merchandise was of sound quality, and forward the goods overland to Alexandria as fast as possible. To bring the winter’s first shipload of Indian luxuries to Constantinople, in addition to the regular Egyptian exports of linen, pottery, glassware and papyrus—not that papyrus was so much in demand anymore—implied a huge commercial killing. Declining though that city’s fortunes were, its inhabitants were determined to make the most of this life rather than rely on the promise of a paradise to come.
But this year the early arrival of Indian goods had taken even Nikodemos by surprise. On the day when a warning message was brought to him from the south, his best ship was still in dock, being recaulked and rerigged, and apart from his African shipmaster, known as Porias because only a barbarian could pronounce his proper name, most of the crew who regularly signed with him were still making ends meet in the tourist trade. Those few wealthy families who could afford a summer visit to relatives on Crete or Cyprus preferred, as did Nikodemos himself, seamen with plenty of experience.
Frantic orders, messages dispatched with small hope of reaching their recipients, and the squandering of far too much ready cash, had resulted in him putting his ship to sea well ahead of his chief rival and sworn personal enemy, Kranes. But the latter had stood on the quay and shouted insults as she was being readied for departure.
“What a bunch of water rats you’ve had to make do with! They’ll eat your cargo before you get to any port where you can sell it! If you reach port, and I’m inclined to doubt it—look at your sheets, look at your sails! Hah! You’ll founder before you’re out of sight of land!”
Enraged beyond bearing, Nikodemos had retorted, “I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you!”
“You’re in the mood to wager? Very well, I’ll match you! I have a sounder ship that’s being loaded right now with richer cargo, and I have a better crew as well. Even if we leave a day—no, make that three days—later than you, I’d still expect to beat you to Constantinople!”
“Never!”
“I’ll stake my entire cargo, and the ship into the bargain, and these people on the dockside are my witnesses! Will you do the same?”
Recklessly Nikodemos bellowed, “Yes, of course!”
Then Kranes sprang his trap. “Very well! I brought my clerk along, and he’s been writing down our words, yours as well as mine. As soon as you’re at sea, I’ll have copies posted all over Alexandria. Either you’ll be a poor man when you return, or you won’t dare to, and you’ll have to eke out the rest of your miserable life as a bankrupt exile!”
Chortling with glee, he turned away, and Nikodemos gave the order to cast off.
Fuming!
It was because of Kranes’s arrogance, and not because of the profit he stood to lose—or so he was now insisting to Porias—that, after making the usual landfall on the eastern cape of Crete, he had insisted on an unfamiliar route among the treacherous islands north of there. Their periplus advised against it, but he scoffed, and with a heavy heart Porias obeyed him. Was it his fault—Nikodemos was now demanding of heaven—was it his fault that a gale sprang up an hour after they left Crete astern? Did he command the weather, or did God? In the latter case God must be on the side of Kranes, and that was absurd! He was a drunkard, a lecher, and a notorious cheat!
All of which most signally failed to impress Porias or any other of the crew when, around the middle of a moonless night, they found themselves being driven even with their sail furled toward an island that showed on the horizon as a featureless black outline. Sometimes its silhouette seemed to resemble a crouching beast, but the impression never lasted long enough for them to figure out what kind.
Seasick—he who was so proud of never having thrown up in the worst of storms—and terrified of losing not just the ship and her cargo, but even his chance of paying off a lost bet with aplomb—he who boasted of never having defaulted on a business deal—Nikodemos clung to the rigging in wild wet darkness and blasphemed.
A rock loomed up. There were screams and near panic, but Porias tongue-lashed his men into action and they fended it off with poles. One broke, and the man wielding it vanished overboard with a howl. Yet the ship survived, and a moment later sank her bow safely into a sandbank. Her hull, miraculously, remained intact.
But the shock was too great for her already weakened rigging, and ropes began to snap with a noise like cracking whips. Snaking down to deck level, they caught two of the crewmen, one around the body and the other around the leg, and flung them off their feet. The mast tilted; the wind tore loose one end of the sail and the yard canted down far enough on the port side to strike another man violently on the head. Porias bellowed more orders, and the crew sullenly obeyed them. But when a semblance of normality had been restored, and they had a chance to take stock, they found that one man had a wrenched knee and another a dislocated arm, while the one who had been cracked on the pate was out of his wits; all he could do was clutch his neck and moan, his mouth hideously ajar.
“What are you going to do?” Nikodemos whimpered.
“Wait for daylight—what else?” said Porias with African contempt, and lay down where he was and fell asleep.
Something strange and terrifying was happening to Anastasia. Evgenos was bewildered by it, and wished he could appeal to the wise women of Oragalia for information—but for the most part they refused to have anything to do with him. Had they not watched Anastasia grow up they would have rejected her just as completely. However, a trace of sympathy lingered for the girl who had been orphaned at so early an age, and now and then one of them left a gift anonymously at the peak of the path leading down to the cove and cave where they eked out their existence: a loaf, some figs, a fish or a head of garlic—bribes intended to make her reject him so she could be welcomed into the respectable company of widowhood. There were many widows on the island younger than she was.
There would be no gift tonight, not with the wind howling across the sea and chasing giant waves up the beach. Why had she chosen now—now of all times, and in her condition—to go clambering around the headland in search of mussels, which she ate raw, forcing their shells apart with her teeth regardless of the way it chipped them. Lately she had complained so often of toothache!
And small wonder. Was there not a saying that women paid with teeth for babies’ bones?
Now he must go out again in the pitch blackness, coax her back, comfort her as best he could against the terrible demands of the new life growin
g in her womb…
Resignedly, thankful that it was not actually raining, he fought his way against the gale to where she sat cramming her belly. Dropping to his knees at her side, he demanded, “What’s amiss?”
“I’m hungry,” was her sullen reply. Then, apologetically, she added, “It isn’t just hunger. I’m hungry for something special—something that isn’t bread, that isn’t fruit, that isn’t eggs… Oh, I don’t know what it is!”
His heart sank. Last time she had demanded goat cheese, and they had no goat of their own, so he had had to spend a day working for a master who hated him, and in the evening taken home his pay: two big handfuls of feta. And she had tasted and refused it, saying it was wrong.
Wrong? How could cheese be wrong? It had tasted all right to him. But pregnant women were notorious for their weird behavior…
Abruptly she broke down crying, and had to spit out the last mussel she had taken into her mouth. He led her back up to the cave, muttering vague words of reassurance, and tasted sea salt on her lips before she fell asleep despite the roaring and yelling of the wind, sprawled on the moist and rotten softness of the seaweed he had gathered to make them a bed.
He, however, lay wakeful for a good while yet, wondering what devil had condemned him to this foreign shore. But even though he desperately wanted to, he knew he could no longer leave it. He had created a responsibility for himself. Of course, giving birth was a dangerous event. Anastasia and the child might die. Then he could choose to starve or flee. However, he was ashamed of himself for hoping that might come to pass.
Eventually he too drowsed.
And was awoken by a shout from the cave’s entrance.
Rousing all of a piece, on his feet almost before his eyes were open, registering that the storm had died down, he found himself confronted by a stranger as dark as himself: certainly no Oragalian. Short and stocky, he was clad in a linen tunic stiff with salt, belted and bordered with leather bands; also his feet were shod with leather. A stir of envy was the first thing Evgenos felt when he came to himself.