The conventicle was held at the back of a warehouse; people sat on bales
of wool, or leaned against them. Guards against the provosts had been
set at the door. One, who was addressed as “Initiate” pronounced a
discourse of which Lalette hardly understood a word, it was so abstract.
She could hardly keep her eyes open; the descent into doze and the jerk
back were agonizing. A desiccated woman who breathed through her nose
was seated on the next bale. At the end of the discourse, she took
Lalette’s hands in both her own, with a gesture astonishing until one
observed that all the people in the gathering were similarly greeting
neighbors. To Lalette’s surprise most of them seemed to be well-to-do
people with an expression of almost dogged cheerfulness, but there
seemed about them something lacking, as though they had bought this good
cheer with the sacrifice of some quality.
The thin woman was still talking when a man with an engraved smile
touched Lalette’s arm and said that the Initiate would like to see her.
The man’s face was calm as though carved in stone; he asked her whether
she was married? Had read the First Book of the Prophet? Drank fortified
alcohols? Practiced the Art? He looked at her as though his glance would
bore straight through when she answered the last honestly that she had
done so, but would practice it no more. Then he pronounced a discourse
as incomprehensible as that he had given to the company, ending by
saying she must be reborn into purest love.
At the close of this he told her that he had looked into her heart and
believed her honest, but that she must carefully study the Prophet’s
First Book. He gave her a letter for the cargo-overseer of a vessel even
then at the wharf; the book, he said, would be furnished to her aboard
by the third mate of the vessel. Dame Domijaiek had been her guarantee;
love would be her protector. She was kissed on the forehead and they all
went out into a spring twilight with drizzles of rain.
At the wharf someone was trying to lead a protesting horse into the
ship, among stampings and confused shouts. Lalette huddled in the
shadow, as close as she could get to the widow Domijaiek and regarded
the masts running up into the grey, with their climbing triangles of
rope tracery. A wide plank led through a gap in the bulwarks before
them, but now the horse was disposed of, the ship’s people were engaged
in some bargle at one end of the vessel; no one paid any attention to
the two women who tripped to the deck and stood uncertain. At last a man
detached himself from the group with a cheerful farewell and came along
the deck toward them, cap on head and munching a piece of bread. He
would have passed with a brief stare in the assembling gloom, but the
widow halted him with outstretched hand and asked where was the overseer
of cargo?
He halted with mouth open and cheek puffed out with food. “By the
lazarette,” and before either could put another question, disappeared
round a wooden structure that rose from the planking. A few spurts of
rain fell. Lalette shivered more snugly into her cloak (wondering
whether “witch” might not be written on her forehead to make all shun
her save those whom others shunned, as Amorosians and Zigraners). Now
the chatter broke up and three or four men together came toward the head
of the plank, porters mainly with their iron hooks in their belts. The
exception had broad but stooped shoulders, a close grey mat of beard and
an unlighted lantern in his hand. To him Dame Domijaiek addressed
herself, inquiring where the lazarette might be.
He waved a hand. “Aft of the tri-mast, leftward”; then glanced at
Lalette, stepped close and peered at her so directly that she shrank
away. “For Ser Brog, mother?” he said, and turned to the older woman.
“Looky here, mother, I ha’n’t seen you before along Netznegon dock, eh?
You come to see me when you finish with Ser Brog, and maybe we do
business, eh? At Casaldo’s.” The porters laughed and one of them bubbled
a derisive sound through his lips (Lalette was already repenting her
undertaking).
A voice behind a door told them to enter. It belonged to a tall man with
white hair, whose black fuzzy eyebrows leaped up a long face when he saw
that his visitors were women. He did not rise, but cast a half-regretful
glance at the sheet of computations on a leaf let down from the wall
before him. The letter he at first held far away as though it were an
affiction of proclamation; when he grasped its purport and had seen the
signature, he rose, all courtesy. “Aye, hands must wash face,” he said.
“I trust you left Ser Kimred well? Will you be having a little wine?”
Dame Domijaiek excused herself, since she must return to her child, but
as she embraced Lalette farewell, the girl felt thrust into her hand a
little cloth pouch with coins in it, and was suddenly at the edge of
weeping. When she turned, Ser Brog had set out a pair of pewter cups and
was drawing the cork from a bottle of wine. He bowed her to the single
chair, himself taking the edge of the built-in bed, which was so hedged
about by cabinets that he must bend.
He said; “So you are seeking a sea-voyage, Demoiselle Issensteg?” (This
was the name the letter had given her.) “Are you one of the inland
Issenstegs from Veierelden? I hear there have been troubles in that
region.”
(Was he trying to draw her into indiscretion, and how much did he really
know of her origin and purpose?) She said that she was not of the
Veierelden branch and waited. He asked her politely whether she had had
a joyous festival and were a good sailor. When she said that she had not
been at sea before, his face took on some concern, and he regretted that
the captain’s wife, who usually sailed with them, would not do so this
voyage. There were no other women aboard. He would provide her with a
bell for summoning someone when needed—“not that you will be molested,
demoiselle, but I will say the third mate is as strange—as a dog with
two heads.”
With this, Ser Brog finished his wine and rose to light her to a
duplicate of his own tiny cabin. She decided she had been mistaken about
the question, he was only expressing interest in the friend of a friend.
It was nice not to have to be afraid. An hour or so later, as she sat
curled up on the bed, but not yet disrobed, came a demonstration of how
well the Amorosians cared for their own. A knock on the door turned into
a porter with a neatly-strapped small trunk, painted with her assumed
name. It held an assortment of body-linens, shoes and a dress in her
size, new and of good quality.