On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  ‘I have no work for you, though,’ he said, almost straight away. ‘I said I’d take you on as a favour to your Grandhe. He thinks you should learn a trade and you’re plenty old enough. But people don’t buy fancy cloth at a time like this, so I’ve no call for another pair of hands to help me weave. I don’t need you and I certainly won’t feed you.’

  Tighe had nodded, looking at the floor. But Tohomhe was a jovial man, even if his face had been sucked in a little by hunger. He laughed.

  ‘Don’t look so mournful, boy-boy!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not as if the world ends because I’ve no work for you. When I am weaving, I’ll call you up and you can watch, which is as good as learning. Why, it’s as if your heart was set on this weaving and I’ve crushed it!’

  He came over and put his arm around Tighe’s shoulder.

  ‘But of course,’ he said, ‘it’s not the working. You have lost your pas. That’s a terrible thing. I lost my pas.’

  Tighe looked up into the saggy face of the taller man. ‘How?’

  ‘Years ago, now. My pashe died trying to birth a sister to me, such that the baby and the woman died together. My pahe never really recovered. He slipped off one of the upper ledges gathering weed for weaving. There was a party of people and they saw him. They say he was plucking the longer stems from the edge of the crag – that’s where the longer stems tend to grow, you’ll need to know such things if you’re to be a weaver – and slipped. Simple as that. Just went over.’

  Tighe was silent, absorbing this information.

  ‘It’s never talked of,’ Tighe said in a soft voice, ‘yet it sometimes seems to me that people fall off the world all the time.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tohomhe, taking his arm away and going over to sit on a tied-up bale of woven cloth in the corner of the room, ‘life is precarious. God has made it that way for us, it’s not our business to query Him, now is it?’ He fished a clay pipe from a baggy pocket at the side of his trousers and lit it with a flint box. ‘But I think you’re right, my boy. People don’t like to talk of it, it reminds them of their closeness to the edge of everything.’

  Tighe squatted down on the floor, his thighs resting on his calves and his back against the wall of Tohomhe’s main space. ‘My family lost a goat over the edge.’

  ‘I heard. People talk more about that. It’s a loss, in money terms, of course it is. But a goat is, well, a goat.’

  He puffed in silence.

  ‘I was sorry to hear of your pas,’ he said, ruminatively.

  ‘Do you think they fell off the world?’ Tighe asked.

  Tohomhe shrugged. ‘They’re not around. Nobody saw them leave the village. And why would they leave the village anyway?’

  ‘Times are hard now.’

  ‘Not for a goatmonger. Times can never get that hard for a goatmonger.’ He puffed some more. ‘And your pahe was Prince of the whole village, of the whole Princedom. A Prince shouldn’t leave his people. No, I’m sorry to say it, but I think they went over the edge.’

  A lump materialised in some place in Tighe’s chest. He could feel tears trying to come to life in his eyes, but he said, ‘But why? Why would they go over the edge?’

  ‘Like I said,’ Tohomhe sighed. ‘People do fall.’

  ‘But both together?’

  ‘Well,’ conceded the older man. ‘That’s true. Did they go out in the dawn gale? Believe me, I’ve been out at that time, caught in the night somewhere in my travelling days when I was young. Those winds get pretty fierce. They can pull a person clean off the broadest shelf

  ‘They were still in the house when I left to fetch the candle,’ said Tighe. ‘That wasn’t it.’

  ‘You went to get a candle?’

  ‘Late morning and my pashe sent me to collect a candle. And when I came back they were gone.’ Tighe was crying again, little tears squirming from the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Well,’ said Tohomhe, flushing a little, ‘I’m sorry to say this boy, but they wouldn’t be the first people simply to step off the world because things were hard. They had lost a goat, after all.’

  That thought had occurred to Tighe too; but just having it spoken aloud was enough to set him off crying properly. He wailed. Tohomhe was flustered. He put his pipe out, humming, and then came over and embraced Tighe as if he were only a tiny child. Tighe cried; the words from the old man, ‘There there, now now,’ washed over his head.

  When the sobs had dried up enough to speak, Tighe said, ‘I know it’s true, but it’s hard. It’s hard.’

  ‘It is that,’ said Tohomhe, disentangling himself. He seemed extremely flushed.

  ‘It’s a sin, though, is it not? Just stepping off the world like that. Everybody knows that it is a sin.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tohomhe. ‘Well.’

  Tighe took several deep breaths. ‘I’m sorry, Master Tohomhe, to come in here bawling like a boy-boy barely weaned.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Tohomhe looking away. ‘No, no.’

  ‘And I’m sorry I can be of no use with your work. You have been kind to me and I would have liked to be of use to you.’ The words sounded pompous in his own ears, but for some reason his crying had been followed by an acute sense of his own dignity. Maybe it was because Tohomhe had taken his grief seriously. He was a Princeling, after all.

  ‘Well well,’ said Tohomhe, dismissively.

  ‘I’m also afraid that my Grandhe will beat me if I go back saying there is no work for me here.’

  ‘Is that it?’ said Tohomhe hurriedly. ‘Well, well. Your Grandhe is a powerful man; a forceful man. There’s no call to tell him that you can’t come. You can come, if you like, and we can talk. Maybe you could bring a little food and we could share it?’

  ‘Food,’ said Tighe shyly.

  ‘If your Grandhe could spare it. I have some stuff stored, but I don’t like to eat it too quickly, so I go hungry many days.’

  But Tighe had already completed the unconscious transaction in his mind. He would steal Grandhe’s food and give it to this man. It would be a kind of trade. He would transfer from anger to tenderness, from rage to this softness. It made a perfect sense.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he said.

  The rest of the day passed pleasantly. Tohomhe showed Tighe round his store, unbinding and holding up some of his finest cloths; and Tighe was suitably impressed by the softness and flexibility of the weave. Then Tohomhe led him through to the room he had dug out at the back of the house where a weaving harp was propped against the wall. Its shuttles were plastic and several of its cords were genuine old-cord too, although most of the original cords had broken and had been replaced with gut. Later, hungry, Tighe crept back to Grandhe’s house and grabbed some bread and one of Grandhe’s special apples, wrinkled and dried since the summer. The feeling of creeping away from the empty house with food hidden under his clothes was intensely exciting. Tighe fairly ran over the market shelf and up to Tohomhe’s place.

  That afternoon Tohomhe and Tighe ate and Tohomhe hugged the boy again. Tighe felt a sweet feeling in his belly. Tighe left after the meal and spent the rest of the day roaming the upper pastures, watching the goat-boys and goat-girls with their little herds. He came back late, with the sun already vanishing over the top of the wall. The itinerants on market shelf were starting to huddle together. They spent the night that way, for warmth; and then again for protection against the fierce winds that accompanied dawn. One of their number had died, starved entirely away, and a small pyre had been prepared. Two of the village’s farmers, a fruiterer and a pulse-grower, were arguing over who had the rights to the ashes. It was nearing spring and the rich dirt could bring out an early crop – very valuable indeed in times of hardship.

  Tighe passed by, barely noticing. In his head he was starting to plan how he might petition the Doge to have Tohomhe adopt him as legal heir. Maybe Grandhe would be happy to surrender him if he agreed to give away all the goats and the house.

  Through the dawn-door there was a candle burning in Grandh
e’s main space; a surprising luxury. The old man was sitting in his chair, the staff between his legs. Tighe knew, as he came through the dawn-door, that the night was going to be troubling. The smell of freshly baked bread gave the interior an incongruously homely feel.

  ‘How was your day of work, my child?’ Grandhe demanded.

  ‘Gu-good,’ said Tighe, slinking a little towards the wall. ‘It wh-was good.’

  ‘Don’t stammer; snapped Grandhe, twirling his staff. ‘Now, I will speak of how my enemies have persecuted me.’

  There was a pause, so Tighe filled it with a tentative ‘Yes, Grandhe?’

  ‘Theft is an abomination before God on the Top of the Wall,’ Grandhe declared in clear tones. ‘Do you understand?’

  Tighe nodded, waiting for the blow.

  ‘Today one of your friends – one of those itinerants you have such compassion for – stole into my house, into my house, and robbed me of food. They took winter apples and the rest of the loaf

  Tighe said nothing, but he thought to himself, It was only one apple you lying old man. But he said, ‘Yes,’ in a dull tone.

  ‘They are nothing. My enemies put one of them up to it. The Doge and I have agreed. Tomorrow they will be sent away from the village. We have tolerated them too long. They are a sickness in the village. My deputies will attend me tonight and we shall prepare for the morning. They are sick, but they have numbers. You are a strong boy and you will also help.’

  ‘Yes, Grandhe,’ said Tighe.

  The deputies slept that night in Grandhe’s main space and come morning they huddled round the old man. Tighe loitered, but Grandhe shooed him away. ‘You have work to go to now, don’t mope around.’

  As he passed the itinerants on market shelf, he stopped, as if there were some way he could warn them. But there was nothing he could do. He tried to pick out the itinerant he had spoken to the other day, but the bony faces all looked much the same.

  He made his way up to Tohomhe’s, but the weaver didn’t seem to be in. So he wandered a little, along the higher ledges. The sun was higher and the air was luminous with light.

  He slumped down on a ledge, back against the wall, staring straight out at the sky.

  Sky, air, light. Birds cooing and falling through the air. A stray piglet, branded with the mark of Lipshe, from one of the richer families higher up the wall, snuffled along the ledge, rifling through the short grass with its snout looking for edibles. The piglet ambled over to him, sniffed at his crossed legs, snuffled at his left foot and then moved on. The thought, as random as a dice throw, came into Tighe’s head to kick the beast off the crag. Let it fall off the world as his pas’ goat had done – as (and this thought brought a choking sensation back into his throat) his own pas had done. Why should Lipshe keep her pig when his own pas had fallen to nothingness? But by the time he had got to his feet the piglet was a dozen arms’ lengths away and the impulse had passed.

  There was some commotion from below. A crowd gathered on main-street shelf. Tighe started along the crag and down the slant to the public ladder. By the time he got to main-street shelf it was mostly over.

  The crowd was jeering as the beggars were sent away. The more able-bodied of the itinerants were being shoved and spat at as they shuffled their way to the Doge’s stairway. The Doge herself was standing there, waving them on. Clearly she had decided to waive the usual fee, happy to be ridding the village of all strangers. The crowd was unusually animated: gestures and words. Tighe dodged and hid at the back, but stole glances through the shaking shoulders and raised fists at his Grandhe, standing next to the Doge and looking holy and impassive. Two of his deputies were standing half an arm behind him, flanking him.

  The itinerants shuffled slowly, exhausted and ashamed, their heads down. But the villagers were finding their own release in abuse.

  ‘I had to pay to go up that stairway only last month,’ yelled one, ‘and now you go up it for free, you bastard!’

  ‘Bastard!’

  ‘We should throw you off the wall, that’s my counsel!’ yelled another.

  A third voice, a woman’s, shrieked, ‘You’ve brought ill luck on our village! You’ve brought ill luck on our village!’ This was taken up as a chant. ‘Ill luck! Ill luck!’ A few people plucked out pebbles from the trodden mud of main-street shelf and threw them, without particular conviction, at the retreating line of men and women. Tighe saw a pebble strike one of the itinerants on the back of the head, but the victim barely even flinched.

  It did not last long. Soon the crowd lost its focus and milled about. Some people went off, talking animatedly, a few others clustered excitedly about Grandhe and the Doge. Only then did Tighe realise that three of the itinerants had not gone up the ladder with the rest of the group. They were in their old positions, backs to the wall, bone-narrow faces staring out in utter exhaustion.

  Grandhe strode over to these three, his deputies a pace behind him. With a gesture, he ordered his men to take the body nearest to the stair. ‘You’ll pollute our village no longer,’ he said to the man in a ringing voice. A few of the remaining villagers standing about cheered.

  The itinerant was clearly too exhausted to stand. The deputies lifted him and shoved him towards the Doge’s stair, but he fell straight back to the floor, face down. They picked him up again and tried to force him on, but he sagged like cloth between their hands. It was clear that, unless they carried him physically up every step of the stairway, he wasn’t going anywhere. The two remaining itinerants stared with unearthly, passionless gazes at this action.

  With an exasperated expression, Grandhe barked at his deputies, and the two men carried the unresisting stranger back to his place at the wall. They dumped him like a bundle of bamboo sticks in at the coign of wall and shelf. He lay exactly where he fell.

  ‘Perhaps’, Grandhe declared in a loud voice, standing over him, ‘God will judge you. Perhaps the dawn gale, or the evening winds, will pluck you from the world and rid our Village of your curse.’

  He turned and strode away. The last of the villagers went their ways. Tighe stayed in the inset where the public ladder began and watched for a while.

  The scene became still as stone. None of the three remaining itinerants moved. Two were sat, backs to the wall, staring ahead. The third lay where he had been dumped.

  12

  Tighe himself didn’t sleep well that night. Grandhe kept moving through his house, coming and going. To begin with it woke Tighe up, but Grandhe hissed at him to lie still and return to sleep or he’d feel the sharp force of his staff, so he said nothing. For a while he lay completely still. Grandhe walked through the room and a little while later came back. Tighe drifted off to sleep, and woke again to the hushed sounds of conversation. Grandhe was in the other room with both of his deputies. Tighe thought about getting up and creeping over to try and overhear more clearly what they were saying, but thought better of it. If his Grandhe discovered him it would mean a beating. So instead he tried to listen in from where he was lying. That was hopeless, though: the words warbled and burred, mere music without sense. The men were deliberately talking in low tones. There was the occasional clink of baked clay beakers and Tighe wondered if Grandhe had opened one of his precious bottles of grass gin. Perhaps the men were celebrating something.

  Tighe drifted to sleep again and woke with a jolt. He had been dreaming of his pashe, but it was a strange, jumbled dream. It had been his pashe that Grandhe’s deputies had been lugging across the shelf, although she was as thin and scrawny as a vagrant. And, somehow, at the same time, it had been inside his pas’ house, and Grandhe was his own pahe. Then he had looked again at his pashe’s face and, horror, it had been a bird’s face, with a great white beak.

  Awake, Tighe shook his head and rubbed at his eyes with both hands. Everything in Grandhe’s house was quiet now. It was perfectly dark.

  Tighe was awake for a long time, trying to rid his mind of the savour of the nightmare. He would force himself to think of happier
memories, concentrate on good thoughts. It was like trying to rinse away the taste of a poisonous insect from your mouth with water; each rinse and the foul taste would recede, but when you stopped it would reassert itself.

  Eventually he slept again and then woke again. Then he woke at the noise of the sunrise gale rattling the dawn-door outside. It was starting to get lighter. He lay for a while listening to the music of wind and rattle, and then fell asleep again. When he woke properly it was because Grandhe was kicking him, none too gently. ‘Still asleep, slugabed? God loves no sluggard. Up! Up!’

  He breakfasted and then cleaned the house, as was his routine now. Some of Grandhe’s deputies arrived at the house shortly after and Tighe was sent to sit in the corner of the main space. He felt, for some reason he could not put a finger on, immensely sad. Sadness filled him.

  By contrast, Grandhe Jaffiahe seemed unusually cheerful. He even laughed, briefly and startlingly, at something one of his deputies said. Tighe skulked out of Grandhe’s way for a little under an hour before he was noticed. ‘Will you loiter here all the bright day?’ Grandhe demanded, gesticulating with his stick. ‘Away, my grandchild, and to your work. Go to the weaver’s, and learn a trade that will benefit you.’

  Tighe slunk out of the house.

  Outside it was a glorious day. The sunshine was bright and sharp, and all the colours of grass and clothing shone brightly. Flints embedded in the worldwall shone like carbuncles, looking as valuable as perspex. The shadow thrown up by the breadth of main-street shelf ended crisply a quarter-way up the Doge’s house, up the two largest monger-shops in the village. People moved back and forth, busy, their top halves in sunshine and their hair gleaming, their bottom halves still in morning shadow. Carashe, looking thin but happy enough and whistling as she moved, was driving a single goat-he with a crumpled horn towards the Doge’s house. Tighe hadn’t seen her in ages. A cluster of villagers was standing outside the Doge’s main door and the Doge was there herself, smoking her clay pipe and nodding at something being said. Tighe put his head back and could see some of the higher ledges, set back in the wall over the main street. A pig’s face peered down over a crag’s edge forty arms up.