by Robin Hobb
“And you brought it here, much of the marble facing. Without you and him . . . oh, I see. It is almost like my windows. Light shines through them to illuminate the labor of my hands. Through your work, Sa's light shines in this beauty . . . ”
He was breathing the words, a sub-vocal whisper she could barely hear. Yet more mystifying than his words was the feeling he shared with her. A moving toward unity that he seemed to value above all else was what he appreciated here. He did not see the elaborately carved facades of the buildings as works of art to enjoy. Instead, they were an expression of something she could not grasp, a coming together of ship and merchant and trading folk that had resulted not just in physical beauty but . . . arcforia-Sa. She did not know the word, she could only reach after the concept. Joy embodied . . . the best of men and nature coming together in a permanent expression . . . justification of all Sa had bequeathed so lavishly upon the world. She felt a soaring euphoria in him she had never experienced in any of his other kin, and suddenly recognized that this was what he missed so hungrily. The priests had taught him to see the world with these eyes, had gently awakened in him a hunger for unadulterated beauty and goodness. He believed his destiny was to pursue goodness, to find and exult it in all its forms. To believe in goodness.
She had sought to share and teach. Instead, she had been given and taught. She surprised herself by drawing back from him, breaking the fullness of the contact she had sought. This was a thing she needed to consider, and perhaps she needed to be alone to consider it fully. And in that thought she recognized yet again the full impact Wintrow was having on her.
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He was given shore time. He knew it did not come from his father, nor from Torg. His father had gone ashore hours ago, to begin the negotiations for trade. He had taken Torg with him. So the decision to grant him shore time with the others seemed to come from Gantry, the first mate. It puzzled Wintrow. He knew the mate had full charge of all the men on board the ship, and that only the captain's word was higher. Yet he did not think Gantry had even been fully cognizant of his existence. The man had scarcely spoken to him directly in all the time he had been aboard. Yet his name was called out for the first group of men allowed time ashore, and he found his heart soaring with anticipation. It was too good a piece of luck to question. Each time they had anchored or docked in Chalced, he had stared longingly at the shore, but had never been allowed to leave the ship. The thought of solid ground underfoot, of looking at something he had not seen before, was ecstatically dizzying. Like the others fortunate enough to be in the first party he dashed below, to don his shore clothes and run a brush through his hair and re-plait his queue. Clothes gave him one moment of indecision.
Torg had been given charge of purchasing Wintrow's kit before they left Bingtown. His father had not trusted Wintrow with money and time in which to buy the clothes and supplies he would need for the voyage. Wintrow had found himself with two suits of canvas shirts and trousers for his crew work, both cheaply made. He suspected that Torg had made more than a bit of profit between what coin his father had given him and what he had actually spent. He had also supplied Wintrow with a typical sailor's shore clothes: a loudly striped woven shirt and a pair of coarse black trousers, as cheaply made as his deck clothes. They did not even fit him well, as Torg had not been too particular about size. The shirt especially hung long and full on him. His alternative was his brown priest's robe. It was stained and worn now, darned in many places, and hemmed shorter to solve the fraying and provide material for patches. If he put it on, he would once more be proclaiming to all that this was what he was, a priest, not a sailor. He would lose what ground he had gained with his fellows.
As he donned the striped shirt and black trousers, he told himself that it was not a denial of his priesthood, but instead a practical choice. If he had gone among the folk of this strange town dressed as a priest of Sa, he would likely have been offered the largesse due a wandering priest. It would have been dishonest to seek or accept such gifts of hospitality, when he was not truly come among them as a priest but only as a visiting sailor. Resolutely he set aside the niggling discomfort that perhaps he was making too many compromises lately, that perhaps his morality was becoming too flexible. He hurried to join those going ashore.
There were five of them going ashore, including Wintrow and Mild. One of them was Comfrey, and Wintrow found that he could neither keep his eyes off the man nor meet his gaze squarely. There he sat, the man who had perpetrated the coffee-cup obscenity on his father, and Wintrow could not decide whether to be horrified by him or amused. He seemed a fellow of great good cheer, making one jest after another to the rest of the crew as they leaned on the oars. He wore a ragged red cap adorned with cheap brass charms, and his grin was missing a tooth. When he caught Wintrow stealing glances at him, he tipped the boy a wink and asked him loudly if he'd like to tag along to the brothel. “Likely the girls'll do you for half price. Little men like you sort of tickle their fancy is what I hear. ” And despite his embarrassment, Wintrow found himself grinning as the other men laughed. He suddenly grasped the good nature behind a great deal of the teasing.
They hauled the small boat up on the beach and pulled her well above the tide line. Their liberty would only last until sundown, and two of the men were already complaining that the best of the wine and women would not be found on the streets until after that. “Don't you believe them, Wintrow,” Comfrey said comfortingly. “There's plenty to be had at any hour in Cress; those two just prefer the darkness for their pleasures. With faces like those, they need a bit of shadow even to persuade a whore to take them on. You come with me, and I'll see you have a good time before we have to be back to the ship. ”
“I've a few errands of my own before sundown,” Wintrow excused himself. “I want to see the carvings on the Idishi Hall, and the friezes on the Heroes' Wall. ”
All the men looked at him curiously, but only Mild asked, “How do you know about that stuff? You been to Cress before?”
He shook his head, feeling both shy and proud. “No. But the ship has. Vivacia told me about them, and that my grandfather had found them beautiful I thought I'd go see for myself. ”
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A total silence fell, and one of the deckhands made a tiny gesture with his left little finger that might have been an invocation of Sa's protection against evil magic. Again Mild was the one to speak. “Does the ship really know everything that Cap'n Vestrit knew?”
Win trow gave a small shrug. “I don't know. I only know that what she chooses to share with me is very . . . vivid. Almost as if it became my memory. ” He halted, suddenly uncomfortable. He found that he did not want to speak about it at all. It was private, he discovered, that link between himself and the Vivacia. No, more than private. An intimacy. The silence became uncomfortable again. This time Comfrey rescued them. “Well, fellows, I don't know about you but I don't get beach time all that often. I'm for town and a certain street where both the flowers and the women bloom sweet. ” He glanced at Mild. “See that both you and Wintrow are back to the boat on time. I don't want to have to come looking for you. ”
“I wasn't going with Wintrow!” Mild protested. “I've got a lot more in mind than looking at walls. ”
“I don't need a guardian,” Wintrow added. He spoke aloud what he thought might be troubling them. “I won't try to run away. I give you my word I'll come back to the boat well before sundown. ”
The surprised looks on their faces told him they had never even considered this. “Well, course not,” Comfrey observed drily. “No place on Claw Island to run to, and the Caymarans ain't exactly friendly to strangers. We weren't worrying about you running off, Wintrow. Cress can be dangerous for a sailor out and about on his lonesome. Not just a ship's boy, but any sailor. You ought to go with him, Mild. How long can it take for him to look at a wall anyway?”
Mild looked extremely unhappy. Comfrey
's words were not an order; he did not have the power to give him an order. But if he ignored his suggestion and Wintrow got into some kind of trouble . . .
“I'll be fine,” Wintrow said insistently. “It won't be the first time I've been in a strange city. I know how to take care of myself. And our time is wasted just standing here arguing. I'll meet you all back here at the boat, well before sundown. I promise. ”
“You'd better,” Comfrey said ominously, but there was an immediate lightening of spirit. “You come find us at the Sailors' Walk as soon as you've seen this wall of yours. Be there ahead of time. Now that you're starting to act like a sailor on board, it's time we marked you as one of our own. ” Comfrey tapped the elaborate tattoo on his arm while Wintrow grinned and shook his head emphatically. The older sailor thumbed his nose at him. “Well. Be on time, anyway. ”
Wintrow knew that if anything did happen to him now, they could all agree that he'd insisted on going off by himself, that there had been nothing they could do about it. It was a bit disconcerting to see how quickly they abandoned him. He was still part of the group as they walked down the beach, but when they reached the commerce docks, the men veered like a flock of birds, heading for the waterfront bars and brothels. Wintrow hesitated a moment, watching them go with an odd sort of longing. They laughed loudly, a bunch of sailors out on the town, exchanging friendly shoves and gestures suggestive of their afternoon plans. Mild bounced along at their heels almost like a friendly dog, and Wintrow was suddenly certain that he was newly accepted to that brotherhood, that he had only been promoted to it because Wintrow had come to take his place on the bottom rung of the ship's hierarchy.
Well, it didn't bother him. Not really, he told himself. He knew enough of men's ways to realize that it was natural for him to want to be a part of the group, to do whatever he must do to belong. And, he told himself sternly, he knew enough of Sa's ways to know that there were times when a man had to set himself apart from the group, for his own good. Bad enough, really, that he had not so much as muttered a single word against their afternoon's plans for whoring and drunkeness. He tried to find reasons for that but knew they were only excuses, and set the whole question aside in his mind. He had done what he had done, and tonight he would meditate on it and try to find perspective on it. For now, he had a whole city to see in the space of a few hours.
He had his grandfather's memory of the city's layout to guide him. In an odd way, it was almost as if the old captain walked with him, for he could see the changes that had occurred since the last time Ephron had visited this port. Once, when a shopkeeper came out to adjust the awning over his heaped baskets of fruit, Wintrow recognized him and nearly greeted him by name. Instead he just found himself grinning at the man, thinking that his belly had done a bit of rounding out in the last few years. The man glared at him in turn, looking the boy up and down as if he were affronted. Wintrow decided his smile had been too familiar and hastened on past him, heading into the heart of the city.
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He came to Well Square and stopped to stare in awe. Cress had an artesian spring for its water supply. It surged up in the center of a great stone basin, with enough force to mound the water in the center as if a great bubble were trying to rise from the depths. From the main basin it had been channeled into others, some for the washing of clothes, some for potable water and still others for watering of animals. Each basin had been fancifully decorated with images of its purpose so that there could be no mistake in its utility. The overflow too was gathered and funneled off out of sight into a drainage system that no doubt ended in the bay. Interspersed among the various basins were plantings of flowers and shrubs.
A number of young women, some with small children playing beside them, were taking advantage of the clear and warm afternoon to wash clothing. Wintrow halted and stood looking at the scene they made. Some of the younger women stood in the washing basin, skirts looped up and tied about their thighs as they pounded and rubbed the laundry clean and then wrung it out against their legs. They laughed and called to one another as they worked. Young mothers sat on the basin's edge, washing clothes and keeping a watchful eye on babes and toddlers that played at the fountain's edge. Baskets were scattered about, holding laundry both wet and dry. There was something so simple and yet so profound about the scene that it nearly brought tears to Wintrow's eyes. Not since he had left the monastery had he seen folk so harmoniously engaged in work and life. The sun shone on the water and the Caymaran women's smooth hair gleamed on the wet skin of their arms and legs. He gazed avidly, taking it all in as balm that soothed his roughened spirit.
“Are you lost?”
He turned quickly to the words. They could have been spoken kindly, but had not been. One look at the eyes of the two city guardsmen left him no doubt of their hostility. The one who had spoken was a bearded veteran, with a white stripe tracing an old scar through his i dark hair and down his cheek. The other was a younger man, brawny in a professional way. Before Wintrow could reply to the query, the I second guard spoke. “The waterfront's down that way. That's where you'll find what you're looking for. ” He pointed with a truncheon back the way Wintrow had come.
“What I'm looking for . . . ?” Wintrow repeated blankly. He looked from one tall man to the other, trying to fathom their hard faces and cold eyes. What had he done to cause offense? “I wanted to see the Heroes' Frieze and the carvings on the Idishi Hall. ”
“And on the way,” the first guard observed with ponderous humor, “you thought you might stop off to watch some young women getting wet in a fountain. ”
There seemed nothing he could say. “The fountains themselves are objects of beauty,” he attempted.
“And we all know how interested sailors are in objects of beauty. ” The guard put the emphasis on the last three words with heavy sarcasm. “Why don't you go buy some 'objects of beauty' down at the Blowing Scarf? Tell them Kentel sent you. Maybe I'll get a commission. ”
Wintrow looked down, flustered. “That isn't what I meant. I do, seriously, wish to take time to see the friezes and carvings. ” When neither man replied, he added defensively, “I promise, I'll be no trouble to anyone. I have to be back to my ship by sundown anyway. I just wanted to look about the town a bit. ”
The older man sucked his teeth briefly. For a moment, Wintrow thought he was reconsidering. “Well, we 'seriously' think you ought to get back down where you belong. Down by the docks is where sailors 'look about our town. ' The street for your kind is easy to find; we call it the Sailors' Walk. Plenty there to amuse you. And if you don't head back that way now, young fellow, I promise you that you will have trouble. With us. ”
He could hear his heart beating, a muffled thunder in his ears. He couldn't decide which emotion was stronger, but when he spoke, it was the anger he heard, not the fear. “I'm leaving,” he said brusquely. But even if the anger was stronger, it was still hard to turn his back on the men as he walked past them. The skin on his back crawled, half expecting to feel the blow of a truncheon. He listened for footsteps behind him. What he did hear was worse. A derisive snort of laughter, and a quietly mocking comment from the younger man. He neither turned to it nor walked faster, but he could feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders knotting with his fury. My clothing, he told himself. It isn't me they've judged, but my clothing. I should not take their insults to heart. Let it go by, let it go by, let it go by, he breathed to himself, and after a time, he found that he could. He turned at the next corner and chose a different path up the hill. He would let their words go by, but he would not be defeated by their attitude. He intended to see the Idishi Hall.
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He wandered for a time, bereft of his grandfather's guidance, for he had never taken this route through the city. He was stopped twice, once by a young boy who offered to sell him some smoking herbs and, more distressingly, by a woman who wished to sell herself to him. Wintrow had
never been so approached before, and it was worse that the tell-tale sores of a flesh disease were plain around her mouth. He forced himself to refuse her courteously twice. When she refused to be put off, only lowering her price and offering him “any way you like, anything you fancy at all,” he finally spoke plainly. “I have no wish to share your body or your disease,” he told her, and heard with a pang how cruel his honesty sounded. He would have apologized but she did not give him time, spitting at him before she turned and flounced away. He continued walking, but found that she had frightened him more than the city guards had.
Finally he gained the heart of the city proper. Here the streets were paved and every building that fronted on the street had some decoration or design to recommend it. These were obviously the public structures of Cress, where laws were made and judgments passed and the higher business of the city conducted. He walked slowly, letting his eyes linger, and often stopping to step back into the street to try to see a structure as a whole. The stone arches were some of the most amazing work he had ever seen.
He came to a small temple of Odava, the serpent-god, with the traditional rounded doors and windows of the sect. He had never especially cared for this particular manifestation of Sa, and had never met a follower of Odava who would admit that the serpent-deity was but another facet of Sa's jewel face. Nonetheless, the graceful structure still spoke to him of the divine and the many paths folk trod in seeking it out. So finely was the stone of this building worked that when he set his hand to it, he could scarcely feel the seam of the builders' joining. He stood thus for a time, reaching out as he had been trained to do to sense structure and stresses in the building. What he discovered was a powerful unity, almost organic in its harmony. He shook his head in amazement, scarcely noticing the group of men in white robes banded with green and gray who had emerged from a door behind him and now walked past and around him with annoyed glances.