“But is it a genuine Blue Star?” asked Pyax. He turned toward Dr.
Remigorius, who should know if anyone.
“Ah! Of that I cannot say. We have been deceived before. It is certain
that the old woman has practised veritable witcheries; the Center of
Veierelden found a record of a conviction against her in the church
there. The only surety is in the test; and that is a test that only
Friend Rodvard here can make. If it should be genuine, our game’s won.”
The lower lip of Pyax hung open among his pimples and Mme. Kaja’s
ravaged face changed line. “It would be wo-onderful to have it,” she
said, drawing out the long sound, and Rodvard felt the blood run warm
beneath his skin as they all looked at him. “But I do not think her
mother would permit a marriage,” he said. “How will you have me do?”
“Do? Do?” said the doctor, the little white planes at the corners of his
mouth shining against the black fantastic cut of his beard. “Shall we
school hens to lay eggs or rats to suck them for you? Do what is most
natural for a lad with a willing girl in his arms, and the Blue Star is
ours. Will you have Mme. Kaja to teach you?”
The flush warmed Rodvard, and he said; “I—will you—”
Mathurin in the background opened his thin, tight lips. “Our friend is
lapped in the obligation of the Church. Hey, Rodvard Yes-and-No, what
moral do you follow? If it’s to be that of the priests, you have no
place with us. You are engaged as a soldier to the overthrow of all they
stand for.”
“O-o-oh, you are so wrong, friend Mathurin,” said Mme. Kaja. “I
understand. There is the heart—” she pressed a hand to a pendulous right
breast “—but as my old friend, the Baroness Blenau used to say, hearts
do not guide but to sorrow. Ah, friend Rodvard, believe me, if one is to
have the great peace, one must deny the heart’s message and seek the
good of all beyond what gives pain at the moment.” She slapped her
breast again and turned to the others; “I know; he is in love with
another.”
Without reason, Mathurin said suddenly; “When I went to the court
service with Cleudi last night, the old hog was drunk again. Fell on the
floor at her royal prayers and had to be helped—”
Dr. Remigorius; “Will you still distract us, Mathurin? There is but one
present question before this Center—the bidding of the High Center that
friend Rodvard here obtain the Blue Star from Lalette Asterhax. Can we
report to them that the task is undertaken?”
Pyax spoke, running his tongue across lips; “If he will not, I can offer
through marriage and lawful lease. My father would be willing to give a
dower—”
Rodvard burst into laughter with the rest, over the thought there could
be enough money in the world to buy a Dossolan bedding for one of Pyax’
Zigraner birth. (But the laugh ended bitterly for the young man at the
thought that because they could see no better way he must give up his
ideal of honor and true love. He tried to imagine how it would be to
live with someone who did not love one again, but whom for honor’s sake
he must have married, and for a moment the intent candle-lit faces
dissolved away; he felt a momentary strange sweet painful thrill before
the picture in his mind changed to that of his father and mother
quarreling about money, and she began to scream until his father, with
contorted face, reached down the cane from the mantel . . . Oh, if one
gives in love, it should be forever, ever, love and death—)
“—still place him,” Dr. Remigorius was saying, “but that will be a
matter for the High Center. No, there’s only the one thing, and we’ll
have the answer now. Rodvard Bergelin, we summon you by your oath to the
Sons of the New Day and your desire to overthrow the wicked rule of the
Laughing Chancellor and the old Queen, to take your part.”
Pyax smiled nastily. “Remember Peribert? We know how to deal with those
who fall away.”
“It is not good to be hard on those from whom you seek help,” said Mme.
Kaja.
“Be still,” said Remigorius. “Young man, your word.”
(One more effort.) “Is it so vital that we have this jewel?” said
Rodvard.
“Yes,” said Remigorius, simply; but Mathurin; “This is the only true
Blue Star of which we have record, and even this one may not be true.
But if you will not make the effort to win it, as ordered, there’s still
an escape. You are a clerk to the Office of Pedigree; find another Blue
Star that we can have, and you’re excused. But with matters so
approaching a crisis at the court, we must have one; for we are the
weaker party.”
Rodvard saw Pyax touch his knife-hilt and once more wetly run out his
tongue, so like a lizard’s. Beaten; had he not himself in those long
conversations until daybreak, maintained that among free men the more
voices must make the decisions? With a sense that he was assuming an
obligation to baseness, he said:
“I will do as you desire.”
Dr. Remigorius’ face cracked into a red-and-black smile. “Pfo, young
man, you’ll make a witch of her and she will gain her fortune.”
Mme. Kaja came over to take both his hands as he left. “The heart will
follow,” she said.
2
APRIL NIGHT
Lalette looked up through branches to the purpling sky, then down from
the little crest and across the long flat fertile fields, reaching out
toward the Eastern Sea, where night was rising. “I must go,” she said.
“My mother will be back from the service.” Her voice was flat.
“Not yet,” said Rodvard, lifting his head from arms wrapped around his
knees. “You said she would stay to talk with the fat priest. . . . In
this light, your eyes are green.”
“It is the sign of a bad temper, my mother tells me. She looked in the
waters for me once, and says that when I am married, I will be a
frightful shrew.” (It was almost too much trouble to move, she was glad
even to make a slender line of conversation that would hold her immobile
in the calm twilight.)
“Then you must be fated to marry a bad man. I do not see—if you really
loved someone, how could you be shrewish with them?”
“Oh, the girls of our heritage cannot marry for love. It is the
tradition of the witch-families.” She sat up suddenly. “Now I must
absolutely go.”
He placed his hand over hers, where it rested on the long green moss
under the cedars. “Absolutely, I will not let you go. I will bind you
with hard bonds, till you tell me more about your family. Do you really
have a Blue Star?”
“My mother does. . . . I do not know. My father would never use it, that
is why we are so poor. He said it was wrong and dangerous. My mother’s
father used it though, she says, before she got it from him. It was he
who told her to choose my father. He was a Capellan in the army, you
know, and was killed in the war at the siege of Sedad Mir. My mother’s
father could read through the Star that my father wanted my mother for
herself and not for her heritage. It was a love-match, but now there is
no one that can use the Star.” (Lalette thought: I really must not tell
stories like that that are not true, it only slipped out because I do
not wish to go back and hear her talking about Count Cleudi again.)
“Could not you sell it?” asked Rodvard.
“Who would buy it? It would be a confession that someone wanted to
practice witchery, and then the priests would come down and there’d be a
church trial. It is a very strange thing and a burden to have witchery
in one’s blood.” She shuddered a little (attracted and yet depressed, as
always when it was a question of That). “I do not want to be a witch,
ever—”
“Why, I would think—” began Rodvard, (really thinking that in spite of
her beauty, this was the reason she more than a little repelled).
“—and have people hating me, and those who want to like me not sure
whether they really do, or whether it is only another witchery. The only
real friend my mother has is Uncle Bontembi, and that’s because he’s a
priest, and I don’t think he’s a real friend either, but keeps watch of
her so that when she makes a witchery he can collect another fine for
the Church.” Rodvard felt the small hand clench beneath his own. “I’ll
never marry, and stay a virgin, and will not be a witch!”
“What would happen to the Blue Star then? You have no sisters, have
you?”
“Only a brother, and he went overseas to Mancherei when the Prophet
began to preach there. Somebody said he went beyond to the Green Isles
afterward, when the Prophet left. We do not hear from him any
more. . . . But he couldn’t use the Blue Star anyway, unless he were
bound with a girl from one of the other families, who could witch it for
him.”
Overhead the sky was deepening, with one faint easterly star agleam, a
long slow smoke rose in convolutions from the chimney of a cot down
there, (and Rodvard thought desperately of the lovely light-haired girl
who had come so many times to search witch-family records at his clerk’s
cabinet in the Office of Pedigree, but she was a baron’s daughter by her
badge, and even if he did obtain the Blue Star from this one, and used
it to win the light-haired girl, then Lalette would be a witch and put a
spell on him—oh tangle!). The hand within his stirred.
“I must go,” said Lalette again. (He looks something like Cleudi, she
was thinking, but not so old and hard and a little romantic, and he had
eye enough to catch the wonderful tiny flash of green among the blue
when the sun dipped under.)
“Ah, no. You shall not go, not yet. This is a magic evening and we will
keep it forever till all’s dark.”
Her face softened a trifle in the fading light, but she pulled to
withdraw her hand. “Truly.”
He clung the tighter, feeling heart-beat, vein-beat in the momentary
small struggle. “What if I will not let you go till lantern-glass and
the gates are closed?”
”Then Uncle Bontembi will expect me to make a confession and if I do
not, he will put a fine on me, and it will be bad for my mother because
we are so poor.”
“But if I kept you, it would be to run away with you, ah, far beyond the
Shining Mountains, and live with you forever.”
Her hand went passive again, she leaned toward him a trifle, as though
to see more surely the expression on his face. “Do you mean that,
Rodvard Bergelin?”
He caught breath. “Why—why should I say it else?”
“You do not. Let me go, let me go, or I’ll make you.” She half turned,
trying to rise, bringing the other hand to help pull loose his fingers.
“Will you witch me, witch?” he cried, struggling, and his grasp slipped
to her wrist.
“No—.” She snatched at the held hand with the other, catching the thumb
and crying fiercely; “I’ll break my own finger, I swear it, if you do
not let go.”
“No. . . .” He flung her two hands apart. Lithe as a serpent, she wrung
one and then the other from his grasp, but it was with an effort that
carried her off balance and supine asprawl. He rolled on his hip to pin
her down, hands on her elbows, breast to breast, and was kissing her
half-opened mouth till she stopped trying, turning her face from his and
whispering: “Let me go. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.”
“I will not,” and he released one hand to feel where the maddening
sensation of her breast came against him and the laces began. (The
thought was fleetingly seen in the _camera obscura_ of his inner mind
that he did not love her and would have to pay for this somehow.)
“Let me go!” she cried again in a strangled voice, and convulsing,
struck him on the side of the head with her free hand. At that moment
the laces gave, her hand came round his head instead of against it,
drawing his face down in a long sobbing kiss, through which a murmur,
softer than a whisper; “All right, oh, all right, go on.” (There was one
little flash of triumph across her mind, one trouble solved, Cleudi
would never want her now.)
Afterward, he knelt to kiss her skirt-hem. Her lips were compressed at
the center, a little raised at the corners. “Now I understand,” said
she; but he did not, and all the way home was eaten by the most dreadful
cold fear that she would revenge herself on him with a witchery that
would leave him stark idiot or smitten with dreadful disease. And the
other, the other; his mind would not form her name, and there was a cry
within him.