by C. S. Lewis
Scudamour’s next remark failed. He had meant to say ‘Thank God you don’t,’ but presumably there are no words for this in the language he was using. At this time he did not, of course, understand the linguistic situation which I have just described, and was astonished to find himself stammering. But his mind was racing on to other aspects of the situation.
‘You know me, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Of course I know you,’ said the girl. ‘You are the Lord of the Dark Tower and the Unicorn of the Eastern Plain.’
‘But you know I have not always been this. You know who I am really. Camilla, don’t you know me? You are Camilla still, aren’t you, whatever they have done to us both?’
‘I am Camilla,’ said the girl.
Here I must interrupt again. It is not in the least likely that Scudamour really uttered the word Camilla or that the girl uttered it in replying to him. Doubtless, he used whatever sound was associated with that woman in Othertime and got the same sound back from her. It would, of course, appear to him as the familiar name when he remembered the conversation after he got back to us, having recovered his English-trained ears, brain, and tongue. But all this he did not understand at the time. Her reply confirmed him in his belief that the woman before him was the real Camilla Bembridge, caught like himself into the Othertime world.
‘And who am I?’ he asked.
‘Why are you trying to entrap me?’ said the girl. ‘You know it is unlawful to speak to any unicorn as he was before—when he was only a common man.’
‘I know nothing about their laws, Camilla. How can their laws change what is between you and me?’
She said nothing.
Scudamour came a step nearer. He was greatly bewildered and Camilla’s replies seemed to be taking away the one thing that had been left him, for his sanity, in the wreck of his known world.
‘Camilla,’ he said, ‘don’t look at me like that! I have no idea what has happened to us both; but it can’t mean that you no longer love me.’
The girl looked at him in amazement.
‘You are mocking me,’ she said. ‘How can you love me now that you are what you are?’
‘I don’t want to be—this,’ said Scudamour. ‘I only want us both to get back, to be as we were. And if I stayed like this for a hundred years it would make no difference to my love for you—though I haven’t much right to expect you to love me while I am . . . a unicorn. But can you not endure it for a time, till we get back? There must be a way back. We must be able to get across somehow.’
‘Do you mean into the forest?’ said the girl. ‘You mean you would run away? Oh, but it is impossible. And the White Riders would kill us. But you are trying to entrap me. Leave me alone. I never said I would go. I never spoke your old name. I never said I still loved you. Why should you want me to be thrown into the fire?’
‘I cannot understand a thing you are saying,’ answered Scudamour. ‘You seem to think I am your enemy. And you seem to know so much more than I do. Have you been here longer than I?’
‘I have been here all my life.’
Scudamour groaned and put his hand to his head. A second later he drew it away with a scream of agony. If any doubt had lingered in his mind as to whether he bore a sting on his forehead, here was proof positive. Only a tiny drop of blood appeared on his hand, but he was dizzy with the pain and he felt the poison tingling under his skin. The terrible expectation that he would become a Jerky arose in his mind; but apparently the body of a Stingingman is immune from the full effects of its own virus. His hand was sore and swollen for several days but he was otherwise unharmed. In the meantime the accident had one result which he counted cheap at the price of the pain. The tension in his head was relaxed, the throbbing grew less, and the desire to sting disappeared. He felt once more master of himself.
‘Camilla, dear,’ he said, ‘something horrible has happened to us both. I’ll tell you what it seems like to me, and then you must tell me what it has been like to you. But I am afraid they have done something to your memory which they haven’t done to mine. Don’t you remember any other world—any other country—than this? Because I do. It seems to me that until today you and I lived in a quite different place where we wore different clothes and lived in houses not at all like this. And we were lovers there and were happy together. We had plenty of friends and everyone was kind to us and wished us well. There were no Stingingmen there and no Jerkies, and I had not got this horrible thing in my head. Do you not remember all this?’
Camilla shook her head sadly.
‘What do you remember?’ he asked.
‘I remember being here always,’ she said. ‘I remember being a child, and I remember the day we first met, by the broken bridge out there where the forest begins, and you were only a boy and I was a little girl. And I remember when Mother died and what you said to me the day after. And then how happy we were, and all we thought we were going to do, until the day when you changed.’
‘But you remember me in all this, the real ME. You know who I am?’
The girl rose at this and looked him straight in the face.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You are Michael.’
Once again, I do not suppose that the syllables she pronounced were really those I have written; but it seemed to Scudamour that he heard his own name. And it seemed to him that she spoke with the steadiness of a martyr, that she was putting her life in his hands. He partly understood then, and understood fully before he left that world, that if he had been the real Stingingman her mention of his name would have meant death to her. I gather that it was these words and her look while she spoke them that first raised in him any serious suspicion that she was not the real Camilla. He himself, as a loyal lover, could not explain why. The nearest he ever got to it was to say that the real Camilla was ‘so sensible’. The rest of us, who had opportunities during his absence of getting to know the real Camilla pretty well, would put it more bluntly. She was not the sort of young woman who was likely to risk her life, or even her comfort, for the sake of truth in love or in anything else.
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘You are Camilla and I am Michael, for ever and ever, whatever they do to us and however they confuse our minds. Hold fast to that. Can you believe what I have been telling you—that we don’t belong here, we come from a better world and have got to go back there if we can?’
‘It is very hard,’ said the girl. ‘But I will believe it if you tell me.’
‘Good,’ said Scudamour. ‘Now tell me what you know about this world. You didn’t seem to know why you had been brought here.’
‘What do you mean? Of course I knew. I was coming here to drink of the fuller life, to be made a servant of the Big Brain. I was coming because my name had been called, and now that I had lost you I was glad enough.’
Scudamour hesitated. ‘But, Camilla,’ he said, ‘when I told you I wasn’t going to . . . to sting you—you didn’t seem to understand.’
She started at his words and then stared at him with a face full of troubled wonder. You could see that the conceptions of a whole lifetime had been overturned. At last she spoke, almost in a whisper.
‘So that is how it is really done!’ she said.
‘Do you mean to say they don’t know?’ he asked.
‘None of us knew. No one sees a Stingingman when once he has been given his robe, or at least none of us common people. We do not know even where he is, though many stories are told. I did not know when I came into this room that I should find you here. We are told to come in never looking behind us and to make our prayer to . . . Him.’ Here Camilla pointed over Scudamour’s shoulder, and looking back he found himself face to face with the many-bodied idol which he had almost forgotten. Glancing at Camilla, he saw that she was bowing to it and moving her lips.
‘Camilla, don’t, don’t,’ said Scudamour hastily, moved by an impulse which he supposed to be irrational. She stopped and looked at him. Then gradually a blush came over her face and she dropp
ed her eyes. Neither of them, perhaps, understood why.
‘Go on,’ said Scudamour presently.
‘We are told,’ said Camilla, ‘to pray to his image, and then he himself will come from behind us and lay his hundred hands upon our heads and breathe into us the greater life so that we shall live no longer with our own life but with his. No one has ever dreamed it was the Unicorn-man. We were told you bore stings not for us but for our enemies.’
‘But do those who have been through it never tell?’
‘How could they tell?’
‘Why not?’
‘But they don’t speak.’
‘You mean they are dumb?’ said Scudamour.
‘They are—I don’t know how it is with them,’ said the girl. ‘They go about their business needing no words because they live with a single life higher than their own. They are above speech.’
‘Poor creatures,’ said Scudamour half to himself.
‘Do you mean they are not happy?’ said the girl. ‘Is that a lie too?’
‘Happy?’ said Scudamour. ‘I don’t know. Not with any kind of happiness that concerns you and me.’
‘We are told that one moment of their life is such bliss that it surpasses all the best and sweetest that we others could experience in a thousand years.’
‘You don’t believe that?’
‘I don’t want it.’
She looked at him with eyes full of love. He thought to himself that Camilla had not loved him so well in the old world. He did not dare to draw near and kiss her, his sting forbade him. No doubt he could turn his head aside—the thing could be managed, but he felt a certain horror at the idea of bringing his face, as it now was, close to hers.
There was silence between them for a minute or so. He saw that he must learn much more of this strange country and that they must make plans; but the very depth of this ignorance and the number of questions he wanted to ask kept him from beginning. As he stood thus he gradually became aware that there was a great deal of noise going on outside the Dark Tower and that it was rapidly increasing. Ever since he had entered Othertime there had, indeed, been a good deal of distant noise—noises of hammering and workmen’s calls, as he now realised, though he had not hitherto attended to them. But these had disappeared. What he now heard was more like confusion and riot. There were shouts and cheers mixed with sudden silences and then the tread of many feet moving in haste.
‘Do you know what is happening?’ he said, at the same time glancing quickly round the room and noticing that the windows—unglazed, oblong windows—were high above his head and gave him no chance of seeing out.
Before Camilla could reply the door was suddenly flung open—not one of the doors on the dais, but the door at the far end where the stone seats were. A man dashed into the room, and sinking on one knee with such haste that he seemed to have fallen, cried out, ‘The White Riders, Lord! The White Riders are upon us!’
VI
Scudamour had no time to consider his reply, and that was what saved him. Almost without the co-operation of his will he found himself answering in the firm, cold voice of one accustomed to command, ‘Well. Do you not know your duties?’
His body was repeating some lesson that its nerves and muscles had learned before he had entered it; and it was a complete success. The newcomer flinched a little like a scolded dog and said in a humbler voice, ‘Yes, Lord. There are now new orders?’
‘There are no new orders,’ answered Scudamour with perfect outward composure, and the man, bowing low, instantly disappeared. For the first time since he had passed through the chronoscope Scudamour felt inclined to laugh; he was beginning to enjoy the gigantic game of bluff which would apparently be forced on him. At the same time he was greatly puzzled by the appearance of this man, who did not seem to fall into any of the categories of the Othertime society which he already knew. Scudamour could only describe him as a stingless Stingingman. He had all the appearances of the stinging caste except the sting—black robes, black hair, and pallid face.
He would have asked Camilla who and what the man was, but the sounds from without were such as now claimed all his attention. He heard more cheering, angry voices, cries of pain, tinkling of steel on steel, and, above all, the thunder of hoofs. ‘I must see this,’ he said. ‘Perhaps if I stood on the chair—’, but the chair was either fixed to the floor or else too heavy to move and he could not drag it under the windows. He went to the far end of the room and stood on the stone seat; then back to the dais and stood on it. He stood on tiptoes and craned his neck, but could see nothing but the sky. The noise was increasing. Clearly something like a full battle was in progress. There were great thudding shocks now as if the enemy were battering the door of the Dark Tower itself.
‘Who are these White Riders?’ he said.
‘Oh, Michael,’ said Camilla with a gesture of despair, ‘have you forgotten even that? They are the savages, the man-eaters, who have destroyed nearly all the world.’
‘Nearly all the world?’
‘Of course. And now they have come here too—half the island is in their hands. But you must know that. That is why more and more of us must give ourselves to the Big Brain, and why we must work longer and live harder—we are only a remnant. Our backs are to a wall. When they have killed us they will have destroyed the whole world of man.’
‘I see,’ said Scudamour. ‘I see. I knew nothing about this.’ It was indeed a wholly new light to him. In studying Othertime through the chronoscope he had been absorbed in the sheer evil, as it seemed to him, of what he saw; it had not occurred to him to inquire into its origins—perhaps, its excuses.
‘But, Camilla,’ he said, ‘if they are only savages why have we not defeated them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They are so many, and so big. They are harder to kill than we are. And they grow so fast. We have few children, they have many. I do not understand much about it.’
‘The noise seems to be dying down. Do you think our men are all killed?’ He was horrified to find that he had called the Othertimers ‘our men.’
‘There would be more noise if the Riders had got into the Tower,’ said Camilla.
‘That’s true,’ said Scudamour. ‘Perhaps they are beaten.’
‘Perhaps they were not very many. This is the first time they have come here. Next time there will be more of them.’
‘Listen!’ said Scudamour suddenly. There seemed to be almost complete silence in the outer world now, and in the silence a single voice, crying out very loud and somewhat monotonously as if a proclamation were being made. He could not catch what it was saying. Then came again the noise of trampling hoofs, this time gradually diminishing.
‘They have gone,’ said Camilla.
‘It sounds like it,’ said Scudamour, ‘and that may be as bad for you and me, dear, as if they had won. That man will be back any minute. Now what am I to do about you? Will they let me keep you here now that I haven’t stung you?’
‘If you tell them I am not fit to be made a servant of the Big Brain they will put me into the fire.’
The words recalled Scudamour sharply to reality. He would not call such creatures ‘our men’ a second time.
‘But what if I say you are to be kept here—just as you are?’
She looked at him wonderingly.
[Here folio 49 of the manuscript is missing.]
be a sad people.’
‘I dare say, I dare say. And perhaps a jealous, envious, malicious people too.’
‘You are teaching me all the time to say things that we do not dare to think.’
‘Listen!’ said Scudamour. The door opened again and the same black-robed attendant appeared.
‘Hail, Lord,’ he began, sinking on his knee. ‘As no one doubted, you have overcome the barbarians and spread the terror of your name among them.’
‘Tell your story,’ said Scudamour.
‘They came out of the wood from the north,’ said the man, ‘galloping so fast
that your scouts were hardly here before them, and they were on us before the troops could well be ordered. They came straight to the north door and some of them dismounted; they had a felled tree for a battering-ram. They seemed to take no notice of the workmen who caught up what they could for weapons and came at them. The Riders were more ready to threaten them than to fight, and when the workmen would not be kept back by threats they struck feebly and like fools—even using the butts of their lances. They killed very few. When the troops came, it was another matter. The Riders charged them with lances and drove them back twice. Then they seemed to lose heart and would not charge a third time. They left off battering the door and drew together and then their leader shouted out a message. Then they fled.’
Scudamour gathered from the appearance of the messenger that he had not been in the engagement himself. He also began to think that the Othertimers had odd ideas of what constituted a victory.
‘What was the message?’ he asked.
The man appeared embarrassed. ‘It is not fit . . .’ he began. ‘It was full of vile blasphemies.’
‘What was the message?’ Scudamour repeated in the same tone.
‘The Lord of the Dark Tower would doubtless like to hear it in secret,’ said the man, who had already glanced several times at Camilla. Then, as if taking his courage in both hands, he added, ‘And this woman, Lord? She has not yet drunk of the fuller life? Doubtless the Lord was interrupted by the coming of the Riders.’
‘She is not going to taste of that life at present,’ said Scudamour boldly.
‘She goes to the fire, then?’ said the man carelessly.
‘No,’ replied Scudamour, carefully keeping all emotion out of his voice. ‘I have other work for her to do. She must be lodged here in my apartments, and, listen, she is to be treated no worse than myself.’
He regretted the last words as soon as he said them—it would have been wiser, he thought, to show no particular solicitude. He could not read the man’s face. He supposed it would be thought he intended Camilla for his mistress, and had little fear lest her wishes in the matter might count for anything in the Othertime social system; but he did not know whether such things were in the character of a Stingingman.