Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  ‘You did me proud, boy,’ he had repeated several times on their way to the infirmary. ‘I’ve always said you would come out right in the end. Don’t you worry about your Green Rites. I’ll make sure you get through.’

  Tymon could not help feeling gratified. Although he was still determined to leave the seminary, he permitted himself the luxury of hope. Organising his getaway would be that much easier if he had Mossing’s good word and was free of the endless scrutiny of his professors. But after he left the priest on his hospital bed, he found himself brooding over the red-haired youth, and thinking of the attack that had not occurred rather than the one that had. He had meant to tell Mossing of the pilgrim’s knife. Somehow, as the afternoon wore on, it became more difficult to do so, particularly since it was pleasant for once simply to be the object of praise. It was better to receive credit for an actual rescue rather than raise suspicions about one that had not taken place. Besides, how could he be sure that the red-haired youth had really been contemplating murder? How was he to know if he had been about to stab Mossing or use the knife in self-defence? Tymon had gone to bed that evening unsure of what he had actually seen, and uncertain of what, if anything, he should do about it.

  The next day the question of a hypothetical attack seemed even more remote. The morning of the Festival dawned fine and warm. The boy could not resist sharing in the general excitement, the happy expectation that fired his schoolmates. His anxiety was forgotten, the problem of the pilgrim receded to the background and his own plans occupied all his attention. There were still many hours left until the College banquet: the last thing he wanted was to be thwarted by some petty runin with authority and barred from the Rites, despite Mossing’s assurances. He concentrated on getting through the Festival without incident.

  The themes of his dream were easy enough to explain, in any case. Novices in their Green Year were required to spend the morning of the holy day preparing for the Rites ceremony, undergoing lengthy ablutions at the city bathhouse. Soon after breakfast Tymon and eighteen other students left the College in the company of two of the Fathers, bound for a large domed building in the second tier. They carried their official green robes folded neatly over their arms. Everywhere in the town preparations for the Festival were in evidence. Garlands of flowers decorated the house-fronts and woven cages filled with songbirds hung in the windows and doorways. The captives called through the bars with sweet, plaintive voices. It was considered good luck to buy a caged bird and set it free during the holiday; in a complete reversal of the object of the custom, more wild birds were caught, caged and killed at that time of year in Argos than any other. This irony was lost on the boys, however, and many of them stopped on the way to the bathhouse to buy the little cages from street peddlers. Once the vendors had pocketed the money, the birds were set free and the novices marched on, feeling grand, generous and kind.

  Puffs of steam billowed out of the bathhouse as they pushed their way into the building. The air smelt of soap-fruit and wet wood. They jostled through the front lobby, craning their necks to see past a second set of double doors into the main bathing hall and deaf to the admonitions of the priests. The public section of the bathhouse, a domed vault partly sunk into the branch beneath the city, was equipped with a single long and murky pool divided into male and female halves, the slowly circulating water fed by sluices from the roof cistern. The hall rang with the shouts and laughter of the townsfolk readying themselves for the evening festivities. The novices were not permitted in the pool with the common dross of the city. The priests swept their charges on, continuing down the lobby until they reached a latticed door at the far end. Once a guard had opened the lock they passed into a private gallery, a covered walkway that ran along the north and west sides of the main pool hall. Many smaller rooms opened into the corridor, each one boasting two rainwater tubs and individual, heated cisterns. The seminary had rented out five of these private chambers for the use of the novices. The walkway was sheltered from outside eyes by a latticed partition, though those in the gallery could spy on the main pool with impunity.

  The cleansing ceremony for the Rites followed a precise sequence that took the better part of the morning. The students removed their old clothing by cutting it off to mark the end of their childhood years. They bathed first in cold, then in hot water, with soap and without, to symbolise the ritual change of state. They chanted the Liturgy of Purity and chafed the skin on their backs, arms and legs with bundles of fireflax, the traditional symbol of spring, until their bodies were raw and tingling. As they rubbed off their old lives with their old skin, the priests lectured them, exhorting them to be honourable citizens, to be grateful for their privileges, to be men. They emerged from the vapour of the bathhouse three hours later arrayed in proud green and walked back to the seminary in silence, overtaken by a sense of solemnity. Dressed in their Festival finery, they were acutely conscious of the expectations hanging on their shoulders. The young men in green were the city’s brightest hope. Not all the students were sons of rich merchants and plantation owners. Some, like Bolas, had families who had scrimped and saved a lifetime’s earnings to give their boy a seminary education. It was the prefect who gave voice to this thought as they mounted the College ramp.

  ‘Well, it looks like we actually came through,’ he remarked. ‘My old man would be proud to see it.’ He grinned at Tymon. ‘I lost money on you, bound-boy. I bet Wick you wouldn’t finish your Rites-duties in time for the Festival. Happy to be proven wrong.’

  Tymon adjusted the collar on the robe Masha had given him, enjoying the smooth pull of the material between his fingers. He was secretly pleased to have foiled the general assumption that he would not qualify for the Rites—all the more so because it appeared that Wick had taken his part. He told himself that he was only playing along, biding his time until he was able to escape. But he could not help feeling gratified.

  ‘Glad to have cost you something,’ he quipped.

  As he spoke his gaze alighted on the old warden, sitting on his stool by the gates and beaming. At the sight of the blind man he stopped short and breathed a curse, allowing the others to push past him up the ramp.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Bolas waited impatiently for him. ‘Come on. It’s almost lunchtime.’

  ‘My pass. I left it behind,’ moaned Tymon. He had remembered that the treasured disc of bark, his ticket to freedom of movement, remained in the bathhouse among the shreds of his old novices’ tunic. ‘I have to get it before the Rites.’

  ‘Green grace. Do you want me to come back with you?’

  Tymon hesitated. It was a generous offer on the part of the other boy and one that he had not been expecting. Bolas would risk serious sanctions along with him if he did not return to the seminary in time for the midday meal. Tymon drew himself up: he wished to show that he needed no-one’s help today.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I can get there and back quicker on my own.’

  ‘Well, go on then,’ Bolas laughed. ‘And hurry. I should have held on to my money; there’s life in the old wager yet.’

  The remark was closer to being true than Tymon would have liked. When he begged his tutors to be allowed to return to the bathhouse, the priests greeted the news without surprise, as if they had been expecting an escapade of this sort. A certain skepticism coloured their response. It was clear they did not believe his story but had no reason to stop him, to keep him from making his final blunder. He was sent skidding down the ramp with the ultimatum that if he did not return to the seminary in time for the noonday meal, he would forfeit his place at the Rites and spend the remainder of the Festival sitting in the student dorms.

  He ran back through the streets of the city with Bolas’ shout of encouragement ringing in his ears. It was a humiliating retreat, a sharp contrast to the dignified march moments before. The idea that his whole plan might be spoiled by such a trivial mistake was intolerable. He arrived at the bathhouse out of breath and out of sorts, and barrelled
down the damp lobby in a huff. After he waited for several excruciating minutes at the latticed door, a guard shambled up, yawning, to open it for him. At last he was through. The door to the gallery clicked shut behind him. The bathhouse was quiet; the rooms the boy hurried past were empty and even the main pool beyond the partition seemed unusually still, voided of its laughing crowds. He found his clothes piled on a bench and retrieved his pass with a sigh of relief. But just as he was about to leave the room, a slight movement, no more than a flitting shadow in the covered gallery outside, caught his eye. There was a faint scrape as someone lifted a loose section of the partition. A figure stepped noiselessly out of the pool hall and slipped across the walkway to one of the private rooms. Whoever he was, the person appeared not to have noticed anyone else in the corridor.

  Tymon wavered. Part of his mind hammered, insisted, that he had no time for this. He had to return to the seminary before the noonday meal. But the shadowy figure roused his curiosity. The act of crossing from one side of the bathhouse to the other was so flagrantly illegal that he had to know more. He crept down the gallery after the intruder, peering cautiously around the open doorway into the room. The person had his back turned and was undressing with brisk efficiency. With a jolt, Tymon recognised the grey cast of the cloak on the floor, the slim form before him, the wisps of red hair under the trespasser’s cap.

  The tithe-pilgrims had been given time to bathe in deference to the holy day. The desertion of the public hall was explained: no one wanted to share a bath with the dirty foreigners. But no pilgrim should ever have ventured into the private section of the bathhouse. Tymon could not understand why the red-haired youth risked harsh punishment to bathe in the deserted room. Questions buzzed through his mind, multiplied and swelled as he watched the intruder take off his tight skullcap. One by one the youth removed the hairpins that had been holding a thick braid of hair in place, under the cap and out of sight. To Tymon’s astonishment long, flame-coloured locks tumbled down on the stranger’s shoulders. The youth undid the buttons on his tunic, his hands trembling with haste. The grey garment fell to the floor and revealed a length of cloth bound closely around his chest. The ‘he’ was a ‘she.’ A foreign girl had passed herself off as a man, as a pilgrim!

  She was hardly older than a Green Year novice. Tymon caught sight of her delicate profile in the dim, filtered radiance from the skylight as she fumbled with the tie on her chest binding. He must have made an involuntary noise then, allowed a hiss of breath to escape his lips as he stood in the doorway, for she suddenly dropped what she was doing and spun around, gathering up the half-undone cloth to her chest. They glared at each other through the vapours of the bathhouse. Neither said a word.

  After a while Tymon felt that he must speak or burst. The silence stretched between them unbearably. She simply looked at him, an indecipherable expression on her thin face, water droplets forming on her forehead and upper lip. The moisture in the air stuck strands of fiery hair to her cheek. Her body had a sharp scent, even from where he stood—the pilgrims could not have been allowed many baths—but the odour was not entirely unpleasant. She smelled of dust and spice and sweat. She was beautiful in her own way, he thought irrelevantly. Then he banished the notion. Slaves were not beautiful. The foreigners were ugly, white and ugly. He noticed with distaste that she had freckles on the skin of her shoulders. She was in the wrong place and in the wrong body: a woman’s body. She had put him in an impossible position.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he blurted, with an attempt at severity, though his voice broke embarrassingly as he said it, and the rebuke sounded more like a complaint. ‘Don’t you know this is a private room?’ He could not bring himself to touch on the more conspicuous crime, the fact that she had been dressed up as a man.

  Her stance relaxed as if she saw through his bluster. Deliberately, she waited a moment before answering. She tucked the cloth back around her waist. He noticed the hilt of the hardwood dagger she had concealed the day before poking out from beneath her belt. She obviously felt no need to use it now. She levelled her gaze at him.

  ‘You’re missing the point, novice.’ Her voice was cool, almost cutting. Only a slight inflection gave her accent away as foreign. ‘Or don’t you find me feminine enough to attract attention in a public pool?’

  Her mocking tone, her assurance, made him feel like a fool. It was clear that she had realised he was harmless and was not the least bit intimidated by him.

  ‘Well, I was being polite,’ he mumbled. Then he pulled himself together and retrieved a semblance of dignity. ‘You’d better get out of here,’ he warned her. ‘I don’t care what you do. But the guard may not be as understanding as I am.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about your understanding.’ Her manner was now openly sarcastic. ‘I saw how much you understood yesterday when you struck down poor Juno at the temple.’

  Tymon was indignant. ‘Your Juno attacked a priest,’ he retorted, irritated by the suggestion that he had acted without cause. ‘What was I supposed to do, let a lunatic kill my tutor?’

  ‘A lunatic?’ She rounded on him, her eyes flashing. ‘The man you beat off like an animal was an old friend of mine and a noble soul. He was no more a lunatic than you or I, a few weeks ago. Since we came here—your priests—your accursed tutors—have driven him mad. Ever since we set foot in your city he has become a stranger to us. Now he talks of nothing but the Mouth and sits in a trance. The priests have already eaten his mind. All that’s left is a shell.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Tymon snorted. He was furious at himself for being dragged into such a discussion, for arguing the point against his will. The circumstances were hardly conducive to a debate. ‘Why would they do that? And how? You’re talking nonsense.’

  A smile twisted her thin lips. ‘Don’t you see? Are you blind and foolish, as well as cruel? They need a madman for their Sacrifice. Who else but a lunatic would throw himself into a Tree-rift? You don’t think a pilgrim would volunteer for the job every year without being forced, do you, novice?’

  Tymon was stung. Her question stirred up unpleasant echoes of the conversation in the students’ refectory, the night of Fletch’s wager. The coincidence disturbed him, undermined his confidence, and a niggling doubt that had remained after hearing Piri’s claim resurfaced at her words. Something in the accusation rang true. He gave an angry shrug and nodded towards the dagger. It was the only way he could retaliate.

  ‘Is that why you wanted to attack Father Mossing?’ he rejoined. ‘Because you think he’s responsible for what happened to your friend?’

  ‘I had no intention of attacking. I only wanted to defend myself!’ she protested. ‘Do you think those soldiers would have allowed me to say anything to the priest without beating me down first? No, we can’t have a dirty Nurry spewing filth on one of the Fathers and spouting lies about the seminary. Heaven forbid! After all, what’s one foreigner against the good of the whole canopy? Next you’ll be telling me not to worry, the rest of the pilgrims get a chance at a better life—and it all balances out in the end!’

  Her voice was a whiplash. She was the most extraordinary sight the boy had ever seen, standing there half-dressed, her form as taut as a bowstring, hurling out her contempt for him and his kind. Her taunt was a mocking echo of the truisms spouted by the students.

  ‘So. What if I were to say I might believe you about the Sacrifice?’ he growled after a pause. ‘How do the Fathers do it? Do they drug the food? Do you have proof?’

  She frowned and looked away, her voice low, as if she was speaking to herself rather than to him. ‘It isn’t the food. We all eat the same food, when we get it. It’s something else. A shadow on the heart…No proof, no. That’s partly why I—’ She broke off, and stared at him in annoyance. ‘Anyway, I don’t see why I’m talking to you about it. Proof? You’d probably just shrug it off, even if you saw the whole thing happening under your nose. After all, you shrug off everything else. Tithes, slaves, colonies. What’s a
stranger’s life to you? You prefer your…your bottle of precious oil.’

  She turned her back on him with that, and stalked over to one of the large round tubs in the room, her gait awkward and angry as she clasped the cloth to her chest.

  ‘I had no idea this was going on,’ grumbled Tymon. ‘I’m not on their side, you know. I’m a bound student. I don’t like the priests and I don’t agree with them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they lied about the Rites.’

  It was a relief to admit the fact at last. His heart lightened even as he said it. She still had her back to him, however, and made no response to his explanations. He decided that a further concession was in order.

  ‘And I’ll have no part in it,’ he added extravagantly. ‘I’m leaving Argos soon. No dirty citizenship for me. I have a place on a dirigible—I’ll seek my fortune elsewhere.’

  He felt unable to tell the girl that he was simply running away. But the embroidered story of adventure seemed to make no impression on her either: she only retrieved a bucket of hot water from the floor by the side of the bath and added it to the contents of the tub. The recollection of his own plans made him realise that he had lingered far too long in the bathhouse already. He had to return to the seminary, to keep his privileges for one more day in order to pull off his escape. It was embarrassing to leave just as he was making his grand gesture of solidarity, but he had no choice. He moved towards the door.

  ‘I have to go now,’ he announced lamely. ‘Good luck to you.’

  She continued to ignore him, bent over the side of the tub, dipping her arm into the water to test its temperature. Her bony shoulders spoke volumes; her disapproving silence was deafening. He hung anxiously in the doorway, wishing that she would say something.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked at last. ‘You should go back to the pool hall now, before someone finds you.’

  Her answer was muffled, as if it came through clamped teeth. ‘I meant to have a bath, and I will,’ she said. Her back tensed. ‘Are you going or not? Or do you feel like staying here and spying on me? That would be just like a priest.’