by Gene Wolfe
Page 10
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts. "
"But he did not give up. Once more he set off for the capital to complain. "
"Those who fight for the populace fight with a thousand hearts. Those who fight against them with none. "
"Now the bad men were afraid. "
"Let no one oppose the decisions of the Group of Seventeen. "
"They said to themselves, He has gone to the palace again and again, and each time he must have told the rulers there that we did not obey their earlier commands. Surely, this time they will send soldiers to kill us. "
"If their wounds are in their backs, who shall stanch their blood?"
"The bad men ran away. "
"Where are those who in times past have opposed the decisions of the Group of Seventeen?"
"They were never seen again. "
"Let there be clean water for those who toil. Let there be hot food for them, and a clean bed. Then they will sing at their work, and their work will be light to them. Then they will sing at the harvest, and the harvest will be heavy. "
"The just man returned home and lived happily ever after. "
Everyone applauded this story, moved by the story itself, by the ingenuity of the Ascian prisoner, by the glimpse it had afforded us of life in Ascia, and most of all, I think, by the graciousness and wit Foila had brought to her translation.
I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own - hard for me, at least.
From this story, though it was the shortest and the most simple too of all those I have recorded in this book, I feel that I learned several things of some importance. First of all, how much of our speech, which we think freshly minted in our own mouths, consists of set locutions. The Ascian seemed to speak only in sentences he had learned by rote, though until he used each for the first time we had never heard them. Foila seemed to speak as women commonly do, and if I had been asked whether she employed such tags, I would have said that she did not - but how often one might have predicted the ends of her sentences from their beginnings.
Second, I learned how difficult it is to eliminate the urge for expression. The people of Ascia were reduced to speaking only with their masters voice; but they had made of it a new tongue, and I had no doubt, after hearing the Ascian, that by it he could express whatever thought he wished.
And third, I learned once again what a many-sided thing is the telling of any tale. None, surely, could be plainer than the Ascians, yet what did it mean? Was it intended to praise the Group of Seventeen? The mere terror of their name had routed the evildoers. Was it intended to condemn them?
They had heard the complaints of the just man, and yet they had done nothing for him beyond giving him their verbal support. There had been no indication they would ever do more.
But I had not learned those things I had most wished to learn as I listened to the Ascian and to Foila. What had been her motive in agreeing to allow the Ascian to compete? Mere mischief? From her laughing eyes I could easily believe it. Was she perhaps in truth attracted to him? I found that more difficult to credit, but it was surely not impossible. Who has not seen women attracted to men lacking every attractive quality? She had clearly had much to do with Ascians, and he was clearly no ordinary soldier, since he had been taught our language. Did she hope to wring some secret from him?
And what of him? Melito and Hallvard had accused each other of telling tales with an ulterior purpose. Had he done so as well? If he had, it had surely been to tell Foila - and the rest of us too - that he would never give up.
Chapter Twelve
Winnoc
That evening I had yet another visitor: one of the shaven-headed male slaves. I had been sitting up and attempting to talk with the Ascian, and he seated himself beside me. "Do you remember me, Lictor?" he asked. "My name is Winnoc. "
I shook my head.
"It was I who bathed you and cared for you on the night you arrived," he told me. "I have been waiting until you were well enough to speak. I would have come last night, but you were deep in talk already with one of our postulants. "
I asked what he wished to speak to me about.
"A moment ago I called you Lictor, and you did not deny it. Are you indeed a lictor? You were dressed as one that night. "
"I have been a lictor," I said. "Those are the only clothes I own. "
"But you are a lictor no longer?"
I shook my head. "I came north to enter the army. "
"Ah," he said. For a moment he looked away.
"Surely others do the same. "
"A few, yes. Most join in the south, or are made to join. A few come north like you, because they want some special unit where a friend or relation is already. A soldiers life. . . "
I waited for him to continue.
"Its a lot like a slaves, I think. Ive never been a soldier myself, but Ive talked to a lot of them. "
"Is your life so miserable? I would have thought the Pelerines kind mistresses. Do they beat you?"
He smiled at that and turned until I could see his back. "Youve been a lictor. What do you think of my scars?"
In the fading light I could scarcely make them out. I ran my fingers across them. "Only that they are very old and were made with the lash," I said.
"I got them before I was twenty, and Im nearly fifty now. A man with black clothes like yours made them. Were you a lictor for long?"
"No, not long. "
"Then you dont know much of the business?"
"Enough to practice it. "
"And thats all? The man who whipped me told me he was from the guild of torturers. I thought maybe you might have heard of them. "
"I have. "
"Are they real? Some people have told me they died out a long time ago, but that isnt what the man who whipped me said. "
I told him, "They still exist, so far as Im aware. Do you happen to recall the name of the torturer who scourged you?"
"He called himself Journeyman Palaemon - ah, you know him!"
"Yes. He was my teacher for a time. Hes an old man now. "
"Hes still alive, then? Will you ever see him again?"
"I dont think so. "
"Id like to see him myself. Maybe sometime I will. The Increate, after all, orders all things. You young men, you live wild lives - I know I did, at your age. Do you know yet that he shapes everything we do?"
"Perhaps. "
"Believe me, its so. Ive seen much more than you. Since it is so, it may be that Ill never see Journeyman Palaemon again, and youve been brought here to be my messenger. "
Just at that point, when I expected him to convey to me whatever message he had, he fell silent. The patients who had listened so attentively to the Ascians story were talking among themselves now; but somewhere in the stack of soiled dishes the old slave had collected, one shifted its position with a faint clink, and I heard it.
"What do you know of the laws of slavery?" he asked me at last. "I mean, of the ways a man or a woman can become a slave under the law?"
"Very little," I said. "A certain friend of mine" (I was thinking of the green man) "was called a slave, but he was only an unlucky foreigner whod been seized by some unscrupulous people. I knew that wasnt legal. "
He nodded agreement. "Was he dark of skin?"
"You might say that, yes. "
"In the olden times, or so Ive heard, slavery was by skin color. The darker a man was, the more a slave they made him. Thats hard to believe, I know. But we used to have a cha
telaine in the order who knew a lot about history, and she told me. She was a truthful woman. "
"No doubt it originated because slaves must often toil in the sun," I observed. "Many of the usages of the past now seem merely capricious to us. "
At that he became a trifle angry. "Believe me, young man, Ive lived in the old days and Ive lived now, and I know a lot better than you which was the best. "
"So Master Palaemon used to say. "
As I had hoped it would, that restored him to the principal topic of his thought. "Theres only three ways a man can be a slave," he said. "Though for a woman its different, what with marriage and the like.
"If a mans brought - him being a slave - into the Commonwealth from foreign parts, a slave he remains, and the master that brought him here can sell him if he wants. Thats one. Prisoners of war - like this Ascian here - are the slaves of the Autarch, the Master of Masters and the Slave of Slaves. The Autarch can sell them if he wants to. Often he does, and because most of these Ascians arent much use except for tedious work, you often find them rowing on the upper rivers.
Thats two.
"Number three is that a man can sell himself into somebodys service, because a free man is the master of his own body - hes his own slave already, as it were. "
"Slaves," I remarked, "are seldom beaten by torturers. What need of it, when they can be beaten by their own masters?"
"I wasnt a slave then. Thats part of what I wanted to ask Journeyman Palaemon about. I was just a young fellow that had been caught stealing. Journeyman Palaemon came in to talk to me on the morning I was going to get my whipping. I thought it was a kindly thing for him to do, although it was then that he told me he was from the guild of torturers. "
"We always prepare a client, if we can," I said.
"He told me not to try to keep from yelling - it doesnt hurt quite so bad, is what he told me, if you yell out just as the whip comes down. He promised me there wouldnt be any hitting more than the number the judge said, so I could count them if I wanted to, and that way Id know when it was about over. And he said he wouldnt hit harder than he had to, to cut the skin, and he wouldnt break any bones. "
I nodded.
"I asked him then if hed do me a favor, and he said he would if he could. I wanted for him to come back afterward and talk to me again, and he said he would try to when I was a little recovered. Then a caloyer came in to read the prayer.
"They tied me to a post, with my hands over my head and the indictment tacked up above my hands. Probably youve done it yourself many times. "
"Often enough," I told him.
"I doubt the way they did me was any different. Ive got the scars of it still, but theyve faded, just like you say. Ive seen many a man with worse ones. The jailers, they dragged me back to my cell as the custom is, but I think I could have walked. It didnt hurt as much as losing an arm or a leg. Here Ive helped the surgeons take off a good many. "
"Were you thin in those days?" I asked him.
"Very thin. I think you could have counted every rib I had. "
"That was much to your advantage, then. The lash cuts deep in a fat mans back, and he bleeds like a pig. People say the traders arent punished enough for short weighing and the like, but those who speak so dont know how they suffer when they are. "
Winnoc nodded to that. "The next day I felt almost as strong as ever, and Journeyman Palaemon came like hed promised. I told him how it was with me - how I lived and all - and asked him a bit about himself. I guess it seems queer to you that Id talk so to a man that had whipped me?"
"No. Ive heard of similar things many times. "
"He told me hed done something against his guild. He wouldnt tell me what it was, but because of it he was exiled for a while. He told me how he felt about it and how lonesome he was. He said hed tried to feel better by thinking how other people lived, by knowing they had no more guild than he did. But he could only feel sorry for them, and pretty soon he felt sorry for himself too. He told me that if I wanted to be happy, and not go through this kind of thing again, to find some sort of brotherhood for myself and join. "
"Yes?" I asked.
"And I decided to do what hes said. When I was let out, I spoke to the masters of a lot of guilds, picking and choosing them at first, then talking to any I thought might take me, like the butchers and the candlemakers. None of them would take on an apprentice as old as I was, or somebody that didnt have the fee, or somebody with a bad character - they looked at my back, you see, and decided I was a troublemaker.
"I thought about signing on a ship or joining the army, and since then Ive often wished Id gone ahead with one or the other, although maybe if I had Id wish now I hadnt, or maybe not be living to wish at all. Then I got the notion of joining some religious order, I dont know why. I talked to a bunch of them, and two offered to take me, even when I told them I didnt have any money and showed them my back. But the more I heard about the way they were supposed to live in there, the less I felt like I could do it. I had been drunk a lot, and I liked the girls, and I didnt really want to change.
"Then one day when I was standing around on a corner I saw a man I took to belong to some order I hadnt talked to yet. By that time I was planning to sign aboard a certain ship, but it wasnt going to sail for almost a week, and a sailor had told me a lot of the hardest work came while they were getting ready, and Id miss it if I waited until they were about to get up the anchor. That was all a lie, but I didnt know it then.
"Anyway, I followed this man Id seen, and when he stopped - hed been sent to buy vegetables, you see - I went up to him and asked him about his order. He told me he was a slave of the Pelerines and it was about the same as being in an order, but better. A man could have a drink or two and nobodyd object so long as he was sober when he came to his work. He could lie with the girls too, and there were good chances for that because the girls thought they were holy men, more or less, and they traveled all around.