Still trying to convince himself of this, he slipped at last into a shallow and uneasy sleep.
* * *
The next morning’s routine began in the usual way. Paoul and the others awoke to the sound of a wooden gong. In the early twilight they sluiced themselves with cold water and dressed in the black leggings and tunics which denoted their lowly rank. After participating in the dawn litany at the temple – attended by nearly all the priests and pupils and conducted today by the Prime – they went back to their quarters for breathing exercise and meditation. Then came breakfast, of milk, steaming oatmeal porridge, ryebread, raw fish, fruit, and the soft cheese for which Hohe was renowned.
This was one of the mornings set aside each week for handicraft. In theory a part of the taug – for they belonged in the region where art and science merged – these lessons were not normally given by kars, but, depending on their exact nature, by ilvens or phedes, or sometimes by ilvens and phedes working together. The projects undertaken by their pupils ranged from minute carvings on ivory to the construction of full scale buildings. The buoys, raft, and changing shed at the lake had all been made by the school, as had various structures in the citadel at large.
In the lower school the pupils were brought to a certain level of skill; once in the higher school, the teaching became less formal and there was more scope for self-expression. Paoul, who was both musical and had an aptitude for fine work in wood, was planning to try his hand at a scharan, a big-bellied stringed instrument with a sweetly melancholy tone of which he was especially fond.
Before starting on this, though, he was required, as were his classmates, to make a set piece commemorating their arrival in the higher school. The set piece was always the same: a circular plaque with an inlaid pentacle in contrasting wood, made to the highest standards of accuracy and finish.
The geometry of polygons formed part of the simple mathematics taught in the lower school, but the precise technique of constructing the pentagon and its derivative pentacle was shown to the novice only when he had reached the higher school. The secret was imparted by the chief phede at the confirmation ceremony. The confirmation plaque, as it was called, had a special significance in a novice’s career. If good enough, the plaque would be sanctified as a talisman. If not, it would be burned and the novice would have to try again.
For his plaque, Paoul had chosen applewood and yew. On previous mornings he had selected seasoned logs from the lumber-sheds and, with axe, adze, scraper, and finally with sandstones of decreasing coarseness, had produced two smooth, knot-free blanks. These he now took from his locker and carried to his place in the workshop, where he shared a bench with Enco.
The morning was already quite hot. The sun, beating on the timber walls and sloping roof of the workshop, seemed to heighten the smell of the bubbling gluepots and the agreeable odour of freshly worked wood. Except for the quietly authoritative voice of Ilven Gars, and the occasional comments one to the other of the boys, the room was silent but for the sound of tools.
“Ready?” Enco said. He was halfway through marking out his own plaque, and now it was time for him to help with Paoul’s.
The diameter of the plaque, excluding the frame, was to equal the span of the maker’s left hand at full stretch. The size of the pentacle was determined by the size of the notional pentagon at its heart: the sum of the five sides of this pentagon was also to equal the span of the maker’s left hand.
Aware that he was about to take part in a symbolic tradition almost as old as the Red Order itself, Paoul laid his left hand on the clean beechwood surface of the bench and spread his thumb and fingers to their utmost extent. Enco opened a pair of callipers and meticulously measured the span. Paoul, craning over, confirmed that the measurement was correct, and Enco’s part in the proceedings was over.
Using a large tablet of geometry clay, Paoul ascertained the dimensions corresponding to one half and one fifth of his span. Locking first one and then the other blank in the bench holdfast, he took his best and sharpest flint scribe, his boxwood compass and hornbeam straight-edge and, remembering what he had been told by the chief phede, marked on each blank the seven arcs and nine lines that generated the sacred figure.
When he had finished he painstakingly checked all the measurements against the original setting of the callipers and, satisfied, stood upright. The two pentacles – that on the applewood enclosed by a faintly scribed circle – lay side by side, waiting to be cut and worked and transformed by a mystical fusion of art and science into the finished piece. If Paoul had heeded his teachers, if he performed well, if he used his mind and body to control the difficult and fragile flint chisels, the yew would eventually slot precisely into the applewood, male into female, a fit so snug that Ilven Gars would be able to invert the plaque without it parting. And, having passed that test, Paoul would smear the merest trace of fish-glue on the jointing surfaces, fix the frame, treat the whole to four coats of thin varnish, then to a final, somewhat thicker, coat, and lastly to extended polishing. And if, after all this, the Prime judged his work true, if the shine, like the surface of a still pool, made an uninterrupted and undistorted reflection, then Paoul would know that his entry to the higher school had been justified.
At Paoul’s request, Ilven Gars came over to inspect his setting-out.
“You’ll have to watch the grain here, Paoul. And here.”
Ilven Gars was silver-haired, of middle height, one of the senior teachers of joinery as well as an accomplished sculptor. He was also in charge of much of the ceremonial organized by the vansery. It was to Ilven Gars that Paoul was to report later today, to start rehearsals for the ceremony at the Crale.
Ilven Gars did not mention the fact. “Yes,” he said, nodding at the blanks in approval. “Begin.”
When he had gone, Paoul selected a chisel. As he made the first cut, some quirk of sensation or feeling put him in mind of a half-forgotten scene from his early childhood and he remembered standing with Kar Houle on the quayside at Apuldram, watching the Veisdrach turn. Like a herald from the mainland, the dragon of the figurehead had given him notice of what was to come. He had watched it with a mixture of awe and fear: awe that mere men could make something so splendid, and fear of the knowledge that enabled them to do it.
Paoul now possessed some of that knowledge. In outline, at least, he would know how to set about building another Veisdrach. And more: his learning went far beyond the simple skills of a shipwright. He could no longer count himself a part of the ignorant, amorphous mass of ordinary people from whose ranks he had risen. He had become more priest than layman. By their rite of confirmation, by bringing him into the higher school, his teachers had in effect told him this already.
On the eve of his confirmation, Paoul had been warned to consider the consequences very carefully. Once in the higher school, he would have learned too many secrets and there could be no turning back. But he had no doubts: he believed in the faith, in the ethos, with all his heart. More than anything he wanted to prove himself worthy of his training. He desperately wanted to continue on the arduous journey towards his initiation, towards the day when he finally became a real priest. The pentacle of his talisman would then be not of yew, but of crimson pigment tattooed into his flesh.
A corner snapped off the chisel and Paoul checked his hand. In his enthusiasm he was forgetting the most elementary rule of all. He was letting his thoughts race ahead, failing to maintain the single point of concentration where all success lay.
Pausing to take breath, he discarded the broken chisel and chose another from the rack.
4
Three weeks later, just before the Crale, the fine weather came to an end. Crale Day itself, the day of the ceremony, was cloudy, with sporadic drizzle and a noticeable chill in the air; the autumn equinox was only a month away.
The Crale was a festival of the agrestic calendar of the farmers, and thus was not officially recognized by the Red Order, which divided the year into four seasons and not
six. There was nothing unseemly, however, in the choice of the Crale for the consecration of Bohod Thosk’s new hall, and the celebrations afterwards would be in tune with those taking place in the township and throughout the countryside. The festival marked the end of High Summer and the beginning of Harvest. It also happened to be the day, seventeen years ago, on which Paoul had been born.
It seemed to Paoul, standing alone and apparently unnoticed by a window, that dusk was falling quickly, prematurely, draining the outside world of colour. The tall trees, the evergreen shrubs and topiary of the formal gardens had become so many fantastic and sinister black shapes; the lawns and terraces, the stone ornaments, the lily pads on the carp pool, were now a uniform grey and becoming gloomier by the minute.
Inside, though, all was brilliance. The half hour after the ceremony and before the banquet was giving the guests a chance to admire in detail the splendour and workmanship of the new hall. Individually and in groups they were congratulating their host. Those of inferior rank were surreptitiously trying to get closer to the Prime, to Lord Heite or to members of his family. Of the Lady Atane, Paoul had noted, there was no sign. He had not seen her since that day at the lake. Instead Lord Heite this evening was accompanied by his wife, two sons, three daughters, one of his brothers, and a concubine whose name Paoul did not know.
Slaves in the red and black livery of the Thosk clan were passing to and fro with trays of wine. Alcohol was eschewed by practitioners of the taug; abstemious as ever, the Prime had even refused fruit juice. Paoul was also empty-handed, mainly because no one had thought to offer him anything. It was not his place to ask, or to do more than remain on the sidelines of such a glittering gathering. The other lamp-bearer, the boy of twelve who had represented the lower school, had already returned to the citadel, but Ilven Gars had allowed Paoul to stay and, as part of his education, had secured him an invitation to the banquet. Ilven Gars was elsewhere at the moment, however, and Paoul had been left to his own devices.
“Excuse me. Would you like something to drink?”
Paoul looked round to see a girl in an embroidered robe, the same rather pretty girl he had noticed at yesterday’s dress rehearsal, the same girl whose presence he had been conscious of during the ceremony itself. She was about his age or a little younger, with dark blonde hair tied back, a creamy skin, and brown eyes. She seemed shy, which he found hard to understand, because she was Bohod Thosk’s daughter and must have been exposed to court life from an early age. Last night he had caught himself thinking about her and wondering whether she would be here again today. Then he had heard Starrad stealthily leaving and had angrily dismissed the matter from his mind.
“The slaves seem to have forgotten you,” she said. “They’re very busy, I’m afraid. I know you can’t have wine or anything, but would you like some grape juice?”
“No. Not for me.”
She shrank back and Paoul realized he had spoken curtly. It had cost her an effort to approach him; her motives had sprung simply from kindness, and now he had let down the good name of the school. “Really, I’m not at all thirsty,” he went on, untruthfully, trying to rescue the situation. “Besides, there’ll be plenty to drink at the banquet.” He smiled and engaged her eyes.
She certainly was pretty: not like the Lady Atane, of course, but attractive in a more lasting and less obvious way. In other circumstances, in another life, perhaps, he might have let himself admire the colour of her eyes, the shape of her mouth, or the whiteness of the enamel on her small, neatly formed teeth. Drawn there by the tiny pink and blue flowers of embroidered forget-me-nots, he might have allowed his gaze to stray briefly over the youthful swell of her bodice. He might have noticed her femininity, the softness of her voice, the delicate make of her hands; and he might have acknowledged to himself just how gentle and graceful she was. Instead he made himself smile again and said, “My name is Paoul. I have the honour to address the daughter of Bohod Thosk, I believe.”
“Yseld. That’s my name.”
Her name was modest, yet also the sort of name that a hopeless suitor might breathe to himself in unrequited passion. It fitted her perfectly. Paoul wanted to tell her so, or, at least, to say something else, but, despite what he still imagined to be the composure bestowed on him by the taug, he found himself lost for words. He had never conducted such a conversation before.
“Was that lamp as heavy as it looked?”
He was about to say “Not really,” but that would have been another lie. “Heavier.”
“It made a horrible smell.”
“I know.”
“Almost as bad as the Prime’s censer.”
“If the incense is disagreeable to you, my lady, please speak to your father, for it he who imports it.”
Paoul had qualified these words with a smile; he was expecting one in return. It did not come, and for the first time he realized, with alarm, how disconcerting he found her. And more: he realized that his feelings were reciprocated.
“I’m … I’m so sorry,” she said, still speaking, he supposed, about the incense. “I didn’t mean —”
She was unable to finish. Her father’s voice sounded close behind Paoul’s back. “There you are, Yseld.”
Disturbed beyond measure, Paoul tried to calm himself, to pretend that nothing had happened. It was as if he had been struck a physical blow, taken the full impact of one of the heavy sandbags swinging from the ceiling of the taug school. What had just happened was impossible. A moment ago, before meeting her, he had been in possession of his will. Now he had lost it, surrendered it, and, it seemed, she had done the same.
He knew that on no account must he betray himself or give her cause to imagine that he saw her as anything more than the daughter of his host. And so he moved aside, as though intimidated by Bohod Thosk’s importance. Bohod Thosk was, indeed, on close terms with Lord Heite. But most of all he was father to the Lady Yseld, her proprietor and controller. For a moment he turned his smoky brown eyes on Paoul and it seemed as if he had guessed everything. But his expression remained utterly bland, concealing all emotion, all opinion, all thought and feeling. “Ah. One of the lamp-bearers. Paoul, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Had it not been for Yseld, Paoul would have taken this as it had probably been intended, as a cue to depart. He would also have felt amazed and flattered to think that Bohod Thosk should have known or remembered his name: they had not met until now.
“Forgive me for interrupting your conversation.” There was no trace of irony in Bohod Thosk’s tone. He turned to his daughter. “Yseld, it is nearly time to go in. Do you forget that Lord Mond is here?”
This was the younger of the two sons Lord Heite had brought to the ceremony, a well-favoured youth of eighteen who had inherited his father’s looks and manner. Immediately Paoul scented the odour of a marriage contract, of politics and intrigue. For the daughter of a rich and ambitious merchant, what could be more likely than a union with the ruling clan? Paoul wondered at last whether he was expected to slip away: his conversation with the Lady Yseld had, after all, hardly warranted the name. But he stayed where he was, reluctant to leave her, and fascinated, too, by the opportunity of studying at close quarters one of the most famous and influential men in the empire – in the known world.
His study was short-lived. Even before another word was spoken there came, from the great doorway of the dining hall, a flourish of pipes and horns, followed by a measured beating of the drums. Bohod Thosk took his daughter’s elbow. “You will excuse us,” he told Paoul.
As her father drew her away, Yseld half turned her head and gave Paoul a parting look.
This look, all the more eloquent because she had yielded it involuntarily, quite unlike the Lady Atane, haunted him until the guests had almost finished taking their places for the banquet. Walking behind Ilven Gars and three other priests, Paoul entered at the end of the procession and was shown to a lowly position near the door, a long way from Yseld and the main dais
.
Ilven Gars was standing beside him, waiting, like all the guests, for the Prime to enter and bless the meal. As the guests waited they marvelled at the blue and white opulence of the dining hall, gazing up in wonder at the intricate carvings of dragons, storks, and eagles on the ceiling. None of it registered with Paoul. He could think only of the Lady Yseld. So little had been spoken, but so much said in the language of the eyes. It was irrational, illogical, mad, contrary to all his past experience, to base such certainty on such slight apparent cause. They had been together for no more than a minute; he knew nothing about her, nothing except one undeniable fact: that, in his excitement, he was sure he must meet her again, touch her, stay with her, and confirm beyond all doubt that she felt just as he did.
The Prime entered, larger than life in his cream and scarlet brocade, his voluminous train dragging the floor as he mounted a podium near the main dais. The hall became silent. The Prime’s grey eyes surveyed the gathering with a benign yet distant expression. Grasping the rail with his lean, supple hands, he inclined his head deeply, revealing the close-cropped, whorled denseness of the pure white hair of his crown. This was a moment for individual contemplation: the guests also bent their heads, raising them only when the Prime began to speak.
“Great Gauhm.” His voice did not seem loud, but penetrated with astonishing clarity every corner of the hall. “From the fruits of your womb we accept now this bounteous harvest.”
The Earth Goddess Page 11