Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  Tymon chewed his lip in a reverie. To him the arc of the air-harbour seemed full of hazy promise; the dirigibles that lined its quays bore all his hopes and dreams. Bulky freights and farm barges, sleek government vessels and imposing merchant ships creaked on their moorings, ether sacks billowing in the wind. He searched out the space reserved for the largest merchant craft. There, tethered on its own quay in magnificent isolation from the other dirigibles, hovered a triple-masted greatship, the word Stargazer painted in bright blue letters on its hull. It had just returned from a season voyage to the Eastern Canopy. He could see the small figures of the crew climbing high in the rigging, tying up the sails. His heart soared. A dirigible was the key to freedom as far as he was concerned. His ambition was to one day possess such an instrument of liberty, to study the fine art of navigation and make his name as an adventurer in foreign parts. His understanding of what that work might entail was limited and highly romantic. He watched the activity on the quays for a few minutes, a wistful expression on his face. Then, roused by the sound of voices overhead and the tug of hunger, he slid down the remaining rungs of the ladder and dropped into the cloistered courtyard below.

  The last bell notes were tolling out over the seminary. Priests in their dark green robes herded younger students up the back stairs to the temple in time for morning prayers, winding up the side of the steep buttress of bark that divided the seminary in two. On one side lay the monastery, student dormitories and classrooms: on the other, the Priests’ College, library and main doors to the outside world. The temple Hall with its bell-tower stood high on the central ridge, presiding in pomp over the entire city. The young truant gave both the stairs and the hurrying figures a wide berth and darted down a dark corridor through the heart of the buttress, emerging a few moments later in the sunny College quadrangle. He made for the main doors on the east side. Halfway across the quadrangle, however, he abruptly changed his mind and turned to his right, entering a small compound under the shadow of the seminary walls. From the low building at its heart came the sound of laughter and the smell of pancakes.

  The kitchens were the only section of the College that employed women. The din of breakfast preparations had already invaded the compound and as the boy drew near the building a tight-knit group of cooks and serving girls spilled out of the doorway to meet him. They had brought lentils and beans into the courtyard to sort for chaff, and bore their trays and folding stools like ammunition, setting them down with a clatter and clash of finality. One of them, a large, kindly-looking matron in a red headscarf, nodded to Tymon with a customary blessing.

  ‘In the beauty, my sprout.’

  ‘In the beauty, Amu Masha,’ he replied. He gallantly offered her his arm, helping to install her bulk on one of the precarious folding seats; he called her ‘Amu’, or ‘mother’, as much out of affection as respect. ‘Feeling well this morning, I hope?’ he asked.

  Masha beamed. ‘Better than usual. The Dean is leaving on his retreat.’

  ‘Which means he won’t miss you at first prayers,’ put in a young brown-haired woman, sitting nearby. She did not look at Tymon or mark his dashing pose, picking diligently through her lentils. ‘Hurry and you might still get there on time.’

  ‘Charity doesn’t wait for prayer, Nell. I have to visit Galliano,’ he said airily.

  ‘He has to visit Galliano,’ echoed several of the kitchen sisterhood, exchanging knowing glances.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to take the poor lost soul some charitable gifts,’ observed Masha. ‘See what you can find in the pantry, Nell.’

  Though a novice in his Green Year had no right to associate with females outside the bonds of kin, some customary leeway did exist in Tymon’s case. The kitchen matriarchy was his adoptive family. It was Masha, the head cook, who had found the little babe lying in a woven basket by the seminary gates some fifteen summers ago; he had grown up among the pots and pans, by turns petted or scolded by a fleet of serving maids. His kitchen sisters may have been limited in their sphere, but they ruled their small realm completely. The brown-haired woman laid aside her tray with pursed lips. She did not bother to motion to Tymon to follow her: she knew he would. A novice’s only alternative to the lack of female presence in the seminary was an active imagination and Nell, the youngest and prettiest of the maids, was the subject of much energetic discussion among the boys. Tymon experienced a distinct sense of gratification as he pursued her through the kitchen door. He wished his dormitory mates could see him now, Guild Fair or no Guild Fair. The position of bound-boy had its own advantages.

  Inside the kitchen, trestles had been brought out in preparation for breakfast and the air was sweet with the smell of pancakes and frogapple sauce. Three serving apprentices were busy at the grill, turning the golden pancakes and filling a stack of plates. Tymon’s belly grumbled. His attention wandered from Nell to the plates, then back to Nell again. He tried a winning smile and the formula the older boys at the seminary had assured him worked miracles.

  ‘You’re looking beautiful today, Nell. Did you change your hair?’

  The serving girl was evidently less impressed with the lad than he was with himself. She fetched a cold roast bird from the pantry and slapped it down on a counter without ceremony, along with a stick of barley-bread.

  ‘That’s all you’re getting,’ she announced.

  ‘Ah, come on. Have a bit of mercy. Just one kiss.’

  ‘Green Mother, give me patience.’ She pushed past him and out towards the door. ‘Mind your Rites, Tymon. And wipe that look off your face.’

  Tymon grabbed the victuals and pursued her, dancing between tables. ‘Alright. How about a pancake?’ he called.

  Without waiting for an answer, he lifted one neatly off a plate and stuffed it into his mouth. She shrieked in indignation, but he was past her and into the garden in an instant, his cheeks bulging, choking with laughter. He was about to quit the compound when Masha’s voice rang out across the garden.

  ‘Young sprout.’

  He hung back, an edge of impatience in his answer. ‘Yes, Amu?’

  The older woman beckoned to him from the other side of the compound. ‘Give me just a moment of your precious time. I have something to show you.’

  He followed the old cook’s round and homely form with far less alacrity than he had Nell’s. He suspected she was going to give him a moral lecture, to remind him to complete his Rites-duties in time for the Festival. Tymon resented the seemingly endless requirements heaped on him by the seminary in order to be eligible for the ceremony; he had put off carrying out the least palatable of the duties until now, and consequently faced several weeks of grinding tedium.

  Masha led him to a small shed at the far end of the kitchen building, a linen press stacked with drying laundry. From one of the shelves she took down a package wrapped in rough strawpaper which she turned over lovingly in her large hands.

  ‘You’ll be going to your Rites soon,’ she sighed. ‘It’s a special time. Oh, I know all you fine young things don’t give a gnat’s tooth for the Green Rites. But they’re very important. Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Amu.’

  ‘You’ll be a man. Better still, you’ll be an educated man, a superior man, and you’ll have options. I want you to do well for yourself, my sprout.’

  ‘I know. Thank you, Amu.’ He fidgeted with impatience.

  ‘Remember,’ she continued, fixing him with an earnest eye, ‘that you’re an indentured orphan. It won’t be as easy for you as for the others. You must take the Purity laws seriously. Don’t give those tight-nailed priests a scrap of a reason to bar you, understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  She raised an eyebrow at his glib answer.

  ‘Really, I do,’ he protested. ‘There’s no reason to worry.’

  She maintained an eloquent silence, opened the package and shook out a length of fine cloth the colour of new leaves. Tymon leaned closer, his interest piqued.

  �
�These were my son’s Green robes,’ she said, softly. ‘I made them myself, a good many years ago. I’ve decided they will be yours. I’m not going to give them to you now—you’ll only drag them through the dust, heaven knows where. But I wanted you to know.’

  The boy reached out involuntarily to touch the soft folds. ‘Thank you, Amu,’ he mumbled, unable to think of what else to say. Masha’s son was long dead, taken by fly-fever at a youthful age. Dimly, Tymon realised that he was, to all intents and purposes, the old cook’s only surviving family.

  She held the cloth protectively against her bosom. ‘Promise me,’ she pleaded. ‘Do your duties. Keep the laws. Be good for just a little while. They’ll be watching you. Remember you have privy duty every day next week, as you haven’t done it for a month. And you’re assigned to help out at the Bread-Giving this year. Don’t miss it.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  ‘Get on with you then.’ She folded the green robes into their package again. ‘Remember these will be waiting for you on the day of the Festival. I know you’ll have earned them.’

  He turned to leave, but she had not finished with him. ‘And don’t keep fussing around Nell,’ she chided. ‘You’re like a shillee-pup in heat. It’s ridiculous.’

  Tymon ducked away from her fond embrace, waving his farewell. Masha’s expression as she watched him hurry out of the compound hovered somewhere between a laugh and a worried frown. She spoiled him out of pity, for to be indentured to the College was hardly an enviable fate. An orphan’s lack of family or patronage meant he owed his livelihood to the Priests’ Council. The debt would be collected promptly at the end of his schooling through a period of service, unless by dint of good fortune and diligence he was apprenticed to a Guild Master who would pay off the bill. Masha had tempered this chilly arrangement with real mother’s love. She gave Tymon his moment in the sun before life caught up with him. Even Nell had a soft spot for the boy. He would have been mortified to learn that she thought of him as no more than an endearing, if tiresome, younger brother.

  Tymon, however, was largely unaware of the thoughts and feelings of those around him. Outside the compound he tucked the bread and meat under his arm and made straight for the doors on the east wall of the quadrangle. They were open, their carved façades inscribed with the seminary motto: Knowledge is All. An old man sat on a stool just under the shadow of the archway, preoccupied by a large, convoluted jar-pipe. The boy halted at his side.

  ‘In the beauty, warden. I’m on charity duty.’

  The warden wrestled with the snarled tubes of his pipe. When he had finally untangled the mouthpiece, he took a deep draw and wheezed, ‘Pass, please.’

  Tymon proffered a disc of bark from the pocket of his tunic. The warden’s cataract-filled eyes could hardly see the marker, but he rubbed the disc through expert fingers before handing it back.

  ‘Do you have permission to leave the seminary this morning, boy?’ he asked, breathing a cloud of blue smoke through his nostrils.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Tymon banished the twinge of worry that accompanied this half-truth. He had no specific mandate to leave the seminary at that hour, and was stretching the definition of charity duty to its limit. But he calculated that the priests might overlook his absence at first prayers. The Dean, after all, was on holiday.

  The warden nodded and waved him on, blinking with milky eyes. As Tymon passed him by he took the pipe out of his mouth and observed: ‘I see them hanging over your head in a cloud, child.’

  ‘Who, Apu?’

  ‘The little demons. They buzz about like flies.’

  ‘Yes, Apu.’ Tymon smiled at the old man’s madness, and set off down the steep ramp away from the College.

  ‘You grow backwards,’ shrilled the warden. ‘Roots over branches. Beware fire!’

  He peered blearily at the receding figure of the novice, then hunched his bony shoulders, and clamped the pipe firmly between his teeth.

  Argos city was a wonderful sight in spring. The night rains had made the leaf-thatch sparkle, and the creamy lightwood and russet bark-brick of the houses seemed scrubbed clean in the morning sun. The five tiers of the town were a shining tumult of platforms, narrow causeways, alleys and courtyards, with more stairwells than boulevards and more ramps and ladders than arcades. Flat space was at a premium in the city. Tymon took the main causeway that zigzagged down to the docks, weaving through a maze of shop-fronts and street stalls, past bleating herds of shillees being driven to market, vendors burdened with crates of vegetables and floridly cursing cart-drivers. The causeway was crammed with people. Some smiled at the sight of Tymon’s white tunic. But the faces that turned in his direction were not always kind. A novice was supposed to be in the temple at this hour, and not everyone took an indulgent view of missing prayers.

  The thoroughfare came to a congested end in the lowest tier. The boy elbowed his way through the crowded market towards the city gates. Access to the docks and the principal road out of the town was by means of a tunnel through a fortified tower, closed off at one end by a pair of massive hardwood doors. The great portals were thrown wide on special occasions to permit large gatherings on the quays, but the usual method of exit and entry was a small postern gate cut into one side. Today this was open, a rectangle of light at the far end of the vaulted passage. He hurried into the cool gloom of the tunnel. The contrast with the sunlight outside was blinding. He was so intent on reaching the gate that in his headlong rush, he collided with someone in the vault.

  A white face loomed out of the darkness.

  O Ever-Green, o giver of life…

  Tymon recoiled from the man in front of him. The sound of chanting rose in the tunnel, a ghostly echo. In his haste he had not seen the white foreigners filing in the opposite direction through the gatehouse. He had forgotten that the Stargazer, vessel of his dreams, also transported Nurian tithe-pilgrims to the city. This year’s consignment had arrived that very morning, and they were singing psalms.

  Green Thy heart, green Thy face.

  The faces of the easterners were wan and grimy from their long journey. Dirty Nurries, the townsfolk called their annual visitors contemptuously. White lice. The logic was explained to every Argosian child at an early age. If the Nurians were forced to live in drought and misery, to barter away their freedom for simple necessities, it was entirely their own fault. God had passed Her judgment on the heathen. They were Impure as a race. The spectacle of the submissive convoy triggered emotions Tymon found hard to untangle. Recovering from his shock, he drew back stiffly to the tunnel wall and allowed the foreigners to pass. He cursed his luck under his breath. Association with pilgrims was forbidden to novices in their Green Year. Even touching their ugly white skin might incur a penalty, a special rite of cleansing or an added duty on the service roster. But it was not only fear of censure, or even a squeamish dislike of what was different that caused the boy to scowl at his toes and avoid looking at the strangers as they shuffled by. He was reminded uncomfortably of the taunts in the dormitory. The step between indenture and slavery was a crucial one: Tymon’s whole future hinged on that definition. The presence of the tithe-pilgrims stirred up a lurking fear that the all-important step was not wide enough.

  All things in their proper place, sang the pilgrims.

  The foreigners’ piety was unfathomable to Tymon. They appeared to accept their fate with dismal composure. They filed obediently off towards the city jail, where they would be confined, apart from specific outings, until the Rites. After that they would be sent off to work on a vine plantation. As each one set foot on the main causeway he bowed devoutly in the direction of the Mouth. Tymon felt a vague sense of disgust.

  ‘Watch out!’

  The command had an unquestionable authority and brought his steps to a halt. He had been about to turn away from the miserable spectacle, to continue on to the postern gate, when the voice rang out. The last of the foreigners had left the tunnel. There was no one else nearby. T
he only object in the vicinity was a covered wagon of particular design, stationed at the market end of the vault, near a small door leading to the guards’ quarters. The canvas awning pinned over its roof had been pushed aside, showing the sturdy hardwood bars within. The Purity laws extended to cleaning the streets of vagrants and undesirables before the festival, all those who could neither claim an occupation in the city, nor consented to go to the poorhouse. A pair of mournful packbeasts stood yoked in front of the prison cart, pestered by flies. But no one sat in the cage. Tymon glanced anxiously back towards the guards who accompanied the pilgrims. Had one of them shouted the order?

  And then he saw it. It was no more than a fleeting image, a brief glimpse in the milling crowd. One of the pilgrims was different. One of the foreigners neither bowed nor prayed, and seemed in no way intimidated by his surroundings. A slight youth walked at the rear of the procession, gazing fearlessly about him. Wisps of reddish hair strayed out from under his grey skullcap. He surveyed the people in the market with a calm smile, unconcerned with rules of Purity or propriety—or even, apparently, his own safety. The vision lasted an instant. A guard burst through the crowd and laid hold of the youth’s shoulder with a loud curse, thrusting him after the others. The pilgrims moved on and the red-haired youth was gone.

  ‘They aren’t all the same, you know.’

  The hairs prickled on Tymon’s neck. The mysterious voice had spoken again. He searched the gloom of the tunnel; the darkness seemed to be articulating his own, unspoken thoughts. This time he pinpointed the source of the remark. The prison transport was occupied, after all. In a corner of the cage, shadowed by the canvas covering, sat a beggar. The man’s weather-beaten face was hidden beneath a battered, wide-brimmed hat; he was draped in an ancient travelling cloak of indeterminate hue. Only his eyes gleamed brightly under the hat. They were an unusual, clear green and fixed Tymon with piercing intensity.