All movement ceased. Sickness dropped from her like a veil, and from
beneath burst such a joy of spirit as Lalette had rarely known, so that
she could have sung herself a song, as she almost leaped from her place
to put on the new dress. There was no mirror and she had to feel the
strands of her hair into the demoiselle’s knot, hoping the result would
not look too recklessly wild. Outside the deckhouse, shouts and
confused, orderly trampings were toward, but no one came to call for her
until long after she had packed everything into the small trunk, with
the book Tegval had given her at the bottom. The door was tapped; Brog,
followed by a man with a red peaked hat and a fur of sidewhisker, who
held an annotation-roll in his hand.
“This is the Demoiselle Issensteg,” said Brog (and Lalette reflected
incontinently that it was hard to distinguish an appearance of
melancholy in a face from one of dissipation). “I transmit her to you.
She is recommended from Ser Kimred, the residentialist at Netznegon.” He
handed the man in the hat a folded letter. “It is my duty to warn you
that in this ship she has been confined on suspicion of man-murder
through witchery. In the home country, I would have brought her before a
Court of Deacons.”
The dunnier bowed, as unsmiling as Brog himself, then with his
annotation-roll as a wand, touched Lalette on the arm and her little
trunk. “This is not Dossola, but Mancherei,” he said. “Subject to the
regulations of the realm of Mancherei, and the association of the
Myonessae, we accept her charge and her possessions.” Then, turning to
Lalette; “In the name of the God of Love, come with me.”
(Knowing barely the name of these Myonessae, unwilling to ask more lest
she somehow tip over the razor-narrow bridge of safety) Lalette only
smiled and turned to the door. A plank-way led to the dock; the sun
shone yellowly upon a row of wharfside houses, whose brick looked as
though streaked with wet, while at many windows there was bunting as
though for a festival, but much of it faded, miscolored or torn. As she
watched, she brushed against a hand which had been held out to her and
was beginning to fall in disappointment. Captain Mülvedo.
“I am sorry,” she said, and took the hand.
“Farewell, demoiselle. I do not believe it. If you are not accepted
here, I—that is—”
He seemed at the edge of tears, a droll thing.
“Thank you. I will remember your kindness.” Brog was in the rear,
looking right past her (and she had the dreadful feeling that when she
was gone, he would have no trouble in bringing the Captain to his own
point of view on her. This was goodbye to all yesterdays.). She mounted
the plank for the shore.
There was a great press of people about, the men in loose pantaloons
hanging over their shoes, and all walking about and yammering as fast as
they could. They seemed reasonlessly excited, as though this were a day
of crisis; Lalette could hardly make out a sign of that calm assurance
that seemed to be the mark of the Amorosians in her own country. They
stared at Lalette, the more when two of the guards who waited at the
plank with short bills in their hands and the small “city” arbalests
strapped to their backs, placed themselves on either side of her at a
word from the dunnier, leading across to a building with a low door,
over which was a shield painted thickly with something that might be a
pair of clasped hands on a field of blue.
There was a door down the hallway rightward, with a little man at a desk
behind it, writing laboriously, his tongue in his cheek, as the light
struck over his shoulder. The guards led Lalette in; he jumped up and
threw down his quill so rapidly that a blot was left on the paper. She
noticed food-stains on his jacket.
“You must not interrupt, really you must not interrupt me unannounced,”
he said. “You are not authorized. I am a protostylarion.”
His big pop-eyes with blue white seemed to swell as they fell on
Lalette; one of the guards laid a paper before him saying; “A candidate
for the Myonessae, on the incoming ship from Dossola. Orders of the
dunnier.”
“Ah, ah.” The protostylarion was no taller than she herself as he came
fussing importantly around the desk to move a chair two fingerlengths
for her convenience, then diddled back to his place. The paper made him
frown. “Ah, ah, suspicion of the Art. This does not happen often these
days, but you are very fortunate to be here, demoiselle, instead of in
Dossola. Ah—you have read the First Book of our great leader and
Prophet? Answer me now, the misfortune of the loss of patrimony, why do
you think that came upon him?”
(Not quite sure whether he meant the character in the book, or the
Prophet’s own ejection from the heirship of Dossola), Lalette said
hesitantly; “Why, sir, I—I suppose it would be because he tried so
arrogantly to increase it.”
“Admirable, admirable. Whereas if he had given of it freely to the old
aunt, it had been returned to him in high measure. From which we learn,
demoiselle?”
(The jargon was distasteful, but) “That we must lovingly give all we
have,” said Lalette, remembering.
The protostylarion bounced up and down behind his desk as he went on,
prompting her replies in his eagerness, so that it hardly mattered how
little she had read of the famous First Book. A porter came blundering
into the midst of the colloquy with her trunk on a hook over his
shoulder. This placed a period to the examination, for now the
protostylarion fussed with his hands, said “Ah, ah,” two or three times
more, then to the guards; “You are released.”
As the pair filed out, he drew from his desk a large ledger and a sheet
of blue-colored paper, pointed his quill and said;
“You—swear—that—whatever—of—the—Art—you—have—practiced—in
—the—past—you—will—abandon—with—all—worldly—vanities
—on—reception—into—the—high—order—of—the—Myonessae,” all in one breath.
Then, more judicially:
“Your name is—”
“Lalette—” (should she say “Issensteg?”)
“Ah, you made an evasion! The God of love demands all truth from those
who come to him.”
She felt a cheek-spot heat at this nagging. “Asterhax. I have given you
nothing but truth. If you doubt it I will return to the ship that
brought me.”
“Oh no, oh no, my dear demoiselle, you must not mistake. All pasts are
buried in the world of love.”
“Well, I have done that.”
“And they will welcome you, I am sure, my dear demoiselle. Oh, the
perfect peace.” His pen went scratch, scratch, skipping from ledger to
paper, the head cocked on one side as he surveyed the result from one
angle, then another, as an artist might look at a drawing, and his smile
approved. A fly buzzed in the room.
“So. Demoiselle Lalette, you are now registered of the honorable estate
of the Myonessae in the service of the God of love.” He trotted around
the desk to hand her the paper, with a red seal on it. “Rest here, rest
here, I will seek a porter to lead you to the couvertine.”
(What would he say if he knew I am a murderess? she thought, and
followed this with a quickly-suppressed flash of anger at Tegval for
having made her one.) The protostylarion came back with a porter who
grinned at her fine new dress and picked up the trunk. “Farewell,
farewell,” said the little man, waving from where he sat. “You will
hardly need a carriage, it is not far.” He was writing again as Lalette
followed the porter through the door.
A little recovered from her chagrins, she turned eyes about the street
to see what this strange law of the Prophet had made of the country that
was to be her new home. The streets seemed wider than those in most of
the cities of the ancient motherland, but the new life would have little
to do with that, nor with the height of the buildings, which mostly gave
red brick for Netznegon’s gloomy dark stone. The shop-windows were full
of goods; Lalette could hardly pause to inspect, but from the distance,
they had an air of meretriciousness and false luxury. All the people
seemed to be in a great hurry; Lalette began to wonder what they would
do if she put a small witchery on one of these urgent passengers to make
him stand like a post—then shuddered away from the thought.
The porter turned a corner and they were at the gate of what had
evidently been at one time a very handsome villa, set back deeply from
the street, with a low wall in front of it. One of the trees in the
foreyard was dead and another so yellow among the spring-green leaves
that it must soon go as well. There was no gate-tender; the porter
pushed his way in and led up to the tall oaken double door, which showed
scars where an earlier knocker had been taken off and replaced by one in
the form of a sun with spreading rays. He knocked; after a long minute
an old woman opened on a darkish hall with a pronounced odor of javelle,
and asked what was wanted.
“I am registered of the Myonessae,” said Lalette, extending her paper.
“You must give it to the mattern,” said the beldame. “Set the box
there.”
“Two obulas,” said the porter, and as Lalette produced her purse, shot a
swift, suspicious glance at the old woman. “No. Not in Dossolan money.
Do you want me to be thrown into a dungeon?”
Lalette flushed. “It is all I have; I only arrived from there today. Can
someone change it for me?” She appealed to the woman who had admitted
her.
“Certainly not. It is contrary to the regulation.”
The porter rather surprisingly lost his temper. “Why, you cheap whore,
you cheat, you pig-sucker!” he shouted. “I should have known better than
to carry for one of you Myonessae.” He stamped his foot. “I’d take your
dirty box and throw it in the street, if I didn’t know the smell would
kill half the people in town when it burst open.”
A door opened on a sound of feminine background voices. There appeared a
woman in black, with hair piled severely close to her head. “What is
this, Mircella?” she asked.
“Demoiselle is new. She came without two obulas to pay her porter.”
The dark woman reached to the purse at her belt, drew forth coins and
placed them in the porter’s hand. “Here. You are never to appear at this
couvertine again.” She turned to Lalette. “You may come in and show me
your paper. It is evident that you are in need of instruction.”
As they passed into the side room, light fell on the woman’s face, and
Lalette saw that, although it was both strong and stern, it bore the
same expression of distant peace she had seen in the widow Domijaiek.
16
THE EASTERN SEA: SYSTOLE
The queasiness had gone from Rodvard’s stomach and the illness from his
head, but all his senses were more alive than jets of flame. Every rut
gave him agony in the jolting mule-cart, he could not draw away from
pain long enough for anger or fear. Yet shortly the very keenness of his
hurt anaesthetized all down to no more than an aching tooth; and now the
senses, oversharpened by witchery, began to report the world around him.
They were passing two people afoot, then another cart, to none of which
the driver made salutation.
They must be out of the village, for right overhead, branches began to
go past against a sky where horses’ tails slid across tender blue. A
bird lit on one of the branches and tipped its head to look down. It
seemed to Rodvard as he gazed into the single revealed eye that he
could, with his Blue Star, read the avian thought—of food and sex,
confused, and not unlike a human’s. This might only be another effect of
the witchery, but it set him thinking about his own confusion of mind
and what the butler Tuolén had said about Star-bearers and their women;
so he considered what species of joy or completeness was to be had from
these skirted creatures, who for a spiritless complaisance would exact a
slave’s devotion.
Lalette. He wondered whether her witchcraft would give her knowledge of
his infidelity of thought with the Countess Aiella, and of deed with the
maid Damaris; and if so, what penalty would be demanded of him. Ah, no;
why should penalty be due? This was not marriage, he had taken no oath
nor meant any. Give back the Blue Star, let us pronounce a bill of
farewell, and be damned to Mathurin and his menaces, or even to
Remigorius and the cause for which all was done.
The mule’s feet klopped on a bridge, the clouds were thickening toward
grey above and birds chirping as they will when a storm is toward. No,
no, friend Rodvard, he answered himself; be honorable as you hope to
receive honor. Acquiescence she gave you, aye, beneath the trees; but
you half forced her then. The night in the widow Domijaiek’s bed was no
unwilling gift, but for both of them the end of life and its beginning.
A new life with Lalette the witch, holding the sweetness of peril, not
that of repose, something beyond any connection that might have been
formed with Maritzl of Stojenrosek. Had she laid some witchery upon him
to make it so, not being herself affected? Seek her out, anywhere;
discover if that enchantment were forever.
Could such things be? Witchery was something which, like death, he had
no more than heard of from the world beyond his world. When he was a lad
in the village among the spurs of the Shining Mountains, there was the
fat old woman who had grown so dreadfully thin, all in a week, and
people saying it was witchery on her. The priest came with his oils, but
it was too late, and she died the next day, and no one ever found the
witch, if there were one. Oh, aye, there were prosecutions of witchery
in town, and now the mule-driver’s wife, Lalette, the Blue Star, and he
himself caught into something he did not understand and which made him
afraid . . . and because he had done no more than cherish high ideals
and obey orders.
The pains were less, but all his muscles so immobile that they afforded
no yielding to the throw of the cart, and thus piled bruise on bruise. A
long ride; it must be after the meridian of the sun, though even
heightened perception would not tell him if this were so, since he had
lost all sense of direction in the intricacy of the turnings. The mule’s
feet and cart’s tires struck paving stones, the movement became uneven,
voices were audible and they were entering a town, so that Rodvard began
to hope of a rescue—and with that hope, a fear of what would happen if
there were no rescue. What did the man mean to do with him? He found no
visible answer, for though it was evident that though the repulsive
spouses were minded for murders, and himself not the first to fall into
their clutches, it hardly seemed they would have fixed the mechanician’s
badge on his breast in mere anticipation of disposing of a body.
Droll to think of oneself as a body—an idea he did not remember having
held before, ever. His mind achieved a wedding between this line of
thought and the earlier one, or how it was when that urge toward the
Countess Aiella had slipped out of merely playing a part into deep
desire, it was the voice of body speaking to body. But it was not that
way on the widow’s bed; that night it was as though a flame sprang up,
to which their bodies responded last of all. Ah, Maritzl (he thought),
with you also there might have been such a union of flames, to last
forever and ever, only I did not know, I did not dare, before the Blue
Star had bound me to this other.
Now a certain brightening of the diffused light reflected into the cart
told him they were passing houses with snow-white walls; by this, with
the time and distance, they must be in Sedad Vix city. Odors floated to
him—salt water, fish, the spicy products of the south, not unpleasantly
blended. The docks. Was the man going to make him a body by heaving him
into the sea? To his futile angers was added that of not being able to
see the old rascal’s eye—now the Blue Star had recovered its virtue
under the witch-wife’s ministration—but there was time for little more
of thinking, for the cart drew up with a cry to the mule, the driver got
down heavily, his feet sounding on stones and then on plank.
He was gone briefly; Rodvard felt the covering taken from him, and with
a grunt, he was hoisted to a shoulder, stiff as a log. A whirling view
of pallid dockside houses, the masts of a tall ship with her sails
hanging in disorderly loops; he came down with a jar that shook every
bone onto what appeared to be some structure projecting from the deck,
where a red face surrounded by whisker looked into his own. One eye in
the face was only a globule of spoiled milk; (the cold Blue Star on
Rodvard’s heart told him the good eye held both cruelty and greed).
“Yah,” said Redface. “The fish is cold.”
“I tell you now, live as an eel. Fetch a mirror.”
Redface reached out a dirty-nailed hand and pinched Rodvard’s cheek,
hard. “Mmmmb. A spada’s worth of life. To save argument, I’ll give you
two.”
“Ey, look at him, a proved mechanician with a badge and all. I say to
you, my old woman she has done with him so he’ll work like a clock,
pick, pick, never mind time nor nothing. A gold scuderius; you should
give me two.”
They chaffered horribly over his body, while Rodvard lay moveless as a
statue (thinking of how he was one, alas not cradled in light and speed
like the Wingèd Man to whom he had compared Count Cleudi when Cleudi
marked the resemblance between them; not upborne by spirit like the
figure of the archer-hero; but a stiff corpse, subject of a sale, a
carcass, a beef). He heard the chink of money passing; the one-eyed man
gave an order that Rodvard was to be taken below, and someone carried
him awkwardly with many bumpings down a ladder to a tight room smelling
of dirty humans. He was tossed high onto a kind of shelf and left alone
for a long time (thinking all the while of what the mule-driver had said
about his being witched to work like a clock, and wondering whether it
were true).
After a while, a doze came upon him, for which there was no emergence
till the round hole in the ship’s wall had ceased to give light. The
place filled suddenly then with feet and words, many of the latter with
a Kjermanash accent, or in that language itself. One of these persons
pointed to him and there was a laugh. Rodvard tried to turn his head,
and to his surprise found it would move a tiny arc, though by an effort
that redoubled the agony throughout the bruised mass of his body. Yet
the stirring was a joy as great as any he had ever experienced, and he
lay repeating it, as the assemblage below—garrulous as all
Kjermanash—came and went with pannikins from which floated an appetizing
perfume of stew. Rodvard found other movements beside his head, and lay
repeating them through the twinge of pain. A whistle blew, some of the
men went out and up, while the others undressed noisily, put out the
light and composed themselves for sleep on shelves like that which bore
the young man.
For him there was little sleep, and as life flowed along ankylosed
muscles, he was invaded by a sense of irrevocable disgrace, so poignant
that it drowned fear. Damaris the maid . . . he had sold his soul for a
copper there . . . not that he felt to the girl any profound debt as to
Lalette, or that such a debt were just—but whether from the priests’
teaching at the academy, or the words of Remigorius, he had somehow
grown into a pattern of life which, being violated, one was cast down
into a sea of life by merest impulse . . . ah, no, should it not be
rather that each event must be judged by itself? . . . and no, again—for
by what standard shall one judge? Impulse or an absolute, there is no
third choice.
So thinking, so seeking to find a clue to conduct (or to justify his
own, merely, Rodvard told himself in a moment of bitterness), he lay on
his comfortless couch, aware that the ship had begun to move with uneasy
tremors; and presently dawn began to flower. At the room’s entrance a
lantern showed a bearded face, into which a whistle was thrust to blow
piercingly. All the men leaped from their shelves with a gabble like a
common growl and began dressing in the greatest haste. The bearded man
shoved through them and shook Rodvard so rudely that he was jerked from
his shelf, coming down thump on the deck, with feet that would not hold
him.
“Rouse out!” said the bearded man, catching him a clout across the
headbone. “You lazy scum of shore mechanicians must learn to leap when
the mate sounds.”
Rodvard staggered amid coarse laughter, but having no means of protest,
followed the Kjermanash, who were scrambling rapidly up the ladder. They
were in open sea; the breeze was light, the day clear and the air fine,
but even so, the slight motion gave him a frightful qualm. His first
steps were across the deck to the rail, where he retched up all that lay
on his stomach, which was very little.
“You, what’s your name?” said the bearded mate.
“Rodvard—Berg-elin.”
“I call you Puke-face. Go forward to the mainmast, Puke-face, eat your
breakfast if you can, and then repair the iron fitting that holds the
drop-gear repetend. The carpenter’s cabinet under the break of the
prowhouse will give you tools.”
“I—I cannot use tools. I am—a clerk, not a mechanician.”
“Death and dragons! Come aft with me, you cunilingous bastard!” The
mate’s hand missed Rodvard’s neck, but caught a clutch of jacket at the
shoulder, and dragged him along the deck to where a flight of steps went
up, and the one-eyed captain stood, an ocular under his arm. “Captain
Betzensteg! This lump of excrement says it knows nothing of mechanic.”
Sick though he was, Rodvard felt the Blue Star burn cold and looked up
into an eye (brimming with something more than mere fury, something
strange from which his mind turned). “Diddled, by the Service!” said the
voice, between heavy lips. “When next—ah, throw your can of piss up
here.”
Rodvard was jerked against the steps, striking his shin, and stumbled up
by using his hands. The one-eyed captain reached out and ripped the
badge from his breast, tearing the cloth. “Go below, stink-pot,” said
he, “and tell my boy he’s promoted to seaman. You shall serve my table.”
“Yes, sir,” said Rodvard and looked around for his route, since all the
architecture of a ship was stranger to him than that of a cathedral.
“Go!” said the captain, and lifted an arm as though to strike him with
the ocular, but changed his mind. “What held you from telling your
status?”
“Nothing,” said Rodvard, and gripped the rail of the stair-head, for his
gorge began rising within.
“If you puke on my deck you shall lick it up.” The captain turned his
back and shouted; “Lift the topper peak-ropes!”
Down the stairs again there were not so many ways to choose from, so he
took to the door to the right (hoping under his mind that this would be
an omen) along a passage and into a room, where a sullen-faced lad of
maybe eighteen was folding a cloth from a table. “You are Captain
Betzensteg’s boy?” asked Rodvard, trying to keep from looking through
the window, where the sea-edge rocked slowly up and down. “I am to say
you are promoted seaman.”
The lad’s mouth popped open as though driven by a spring, he dropped the
napery and ran around the table to seize Rodvard by both arms. “Truly?
If you trick me—” For one instant pale eyes flashed fury and the small
down before first shaving trembled. But he must have seen honesty before
him (“Born for the sea and freedom!” his thought read), and quickly
thrust past to make for the door.
“Stay,” said Rodvard, holding him by the jacket. “Will you not show
me—?” The spasm caught him and he retched, mouth full of sour spittle.
The lad turned laughing, but without malice, and clapped him on the
back. “Heave hearty!” he said. “It will come better when you come to
learn the free way of the ocean; grow to love it and care nothing for
landlouts. Here are the linens.” He opened the midmost of a set of
drawers built into the wall. “The old man takes no napkins save when
there are guests aboard—a real dog of the brine, with fish-blood in his
veins, that one! I am called Krotz; what’s your name?”
Rodvard’s telling, he hardly seemed to notice, but continued his flood
of instructions. “In these racks are the silvers; he uses only the best,
and be careful at dinner to set his silver bear on the table, it was
given him by the syndics at the time of the Tritulaccan war for his
seamanlike skill. The bed-bunk you must carefully fold in at the base,
but he likes the top loose, so. Wine always with the early meals, it is
here. If the weather’s fair he sometimes takes fired-wine in the
evening. If he orders it so—”
The lad Krotz halted, looked sidewise out of his eyes and leaned close.
“Hark, Bergelin, I am not what you would call jealous. Have you
ever—that is, when he has fired-wine, he may desire to treat you as his
lover.”
“I—” Rodvard recoiled, and retched again.
“Ah, do not be so dainty. It is something that every true seaman must
learn, and keeps us from being like the landlouts. You do not know how
it can be, and he gives you silver spadas after. But if you will not,
listen, all the better, when the old man calls for his fired-wine, set
the bottle on the table, take away the silver bear, and call me.”
Said Rodvard (no little astonished, that the emotion of which The Blue
Star spoke was indeed jealousy); “No. I’ll have none of it, ever.”
A smile of delight so pure that Rodvard wondered how he had thought the
lad’s look sullen. “The cook will give you breakfast. I must go—to be a
seaman.”
Captain Betzensteg ate by himself. Rodvard was glad that he remembered
the silver bear, but when he tried to hold forward the platter of meat
as he remembered seeing Mathurin do it for Cleudi, he got things wrong,
of course, and the one-eyed man growled; “Not there, you fool. The other
side.” The meat itself was something with much grease, pork probably,
which it sickened Rodvard even to look at as the captain chewed
liquidly, pointing with his fork to a corner of the cabin and declaring
he would barber someone of his ears unless it were kept cleaner. That
night there was no call for fired-wine; Rodvard felt a surge of
gratitude for preservation as he cleared up after the meal, and made his
way forward to the crew quarters in what he now had learned to be the
peak-jowl.
Sickness sent him to his shelf at once, for the movement of the ship was
becoming more vivid as twilight fell, but sleep had not yet reached him
when there was a change of duty, as in the morning, and of those who
came tumbling down the ladder, Krotz was one. He was much less the lord
of the earth than earlier; no sooner was the lad in place than all the
Kjermanash were after him unmercifully, with hoots and ribald remarks,
pinching his cheeks and his behind, till at the last the lad, crying;
“Let me alone!” flung his arms out so wildly that he caught one of the
sailors a clip on the nose and sent him staggering. The fellow snarled
like a tiger, all his rough humor dissolved in black bile, and
recovering, whipped out a tongue of steel. But Rodvard, without knowing
how or why he did so, rolled from his shelf onto the shoulder and arm
that held the knife, bearing the man to the floor.
The Kjermanash fought upward; Rodvard took two or three nasty blows on
the side of the head, as he clung with both his hands to the dagger, and
knew with more interest than fear that he must lose in the end to the
overbearing strength of the man. But just as he was giving way, a pair
of hands beneath the armpits wrenched him clear and flung him against
the shelves, while a big foot kicked the knife.
“What’s here?” demanded the voice of the bearded mate. “Puke-face,
you’ll have a dozen lashes for this, damme if you don’t! You to attack a
full-grade seaman!”
Said Rodvard, feeling of his head; “He would have knifed Ser Krotz.”
“Ser!” The mate barked derision, and his head darted round like a
snake’s. “Is this veritable?”
All the Kjermanash began cawing together; the mate appeared to
comprehend their babble, for after a minute or two of it, he held up his
hand with; “Shut up. I see it. This is the sentence—Vetehikko, three
days’ pay stopped for knifing. As for you, Puke-face, your punishment’s
remitted, but in the future, you’ll sleep in the lazarette to teach you
your true status aboard this basket.”
He turned to the ladder, and not a word from the Kjermanash for once,
but as they glowered among themselves, young Krotz came to throw his
arms around Rodvard. “I owe you a life,” he said, at the edge of tears.
Said Rodvard; “But I will pay for it.”
“Ah, no. I—will surely buy you free.”
“I did not know there was status aboard a sea-ship; you said the life on
one was free as a bird.”
“Why, so it is, indeed, but not for lack of status, which is the natural
order of things. Are you an Amorosian?”
It nearly slipped off Rodvard’s lips that he was rather of the Sons of
the New Day, but Krotz’ words showed how little he would find such a
confession acceptable, and he did not trust the Kjermanash; and by
another morning, the ship’s motion told on him somewhat less heavily.
17
CHARALKIS: THE DEPTH AND RISE
It would be maybe on the fourth day out (for time had little meaning on
that wide blue field) when Rodvard remarked how at the evening meal
Captain Betzensteg took more than usual wine, glowering sullenly at his
plate while he jabbed a piece of bread into gravies as though they had
done him a harm. The last mouthful vanished, he sucked fingers
undaintily and without looking up, said; “Set out the fired-wine.”
Rodvard felt a cold sweat of peril. The silver bear leaped from his
fingers, and it was his fortune that he caught it before it reached the
floor. The captain sat with eyes down, not appearing to notice. Bottle
clacked on table; the one-eyed man poured himself a deep draught, and at
the sound of the door opening, said; “Stay.”
Rodvard turned. Both the captain’s hands were on the table, gripping the
winecup and he was staring into it as though it were a miniature of his
beloved. “Come here.”
(Fear: but what could one do or say?) Rodvard glided to his post in
serving-position behind the chair. For a long breathless moment no sound
but the steady pace of someone on the deck above, muted slap of waves
and clatter of ship’s gear. Then the head came up, Rodvard saw how the
rich lips were working (and in that single eye read not only the
horrible lust he had expected, but that which gave him something akin to
pity, a ghastly agony of spirit, a question that read; “Shall I never be
free?”) Captain Betzensteg lifted the cup in his two hands and tossed
off the contents at a gulp, gagged, gave a growl of “Arrgh!” and,
reaching up his left hand, ran it pattingly over Rodvard’s buttocks.
“No,” said the young man under his breath, pulling away. The captain
jerked to his feet, violently oversetting his chair, and with distorted
face, drove his fist against the table. “Idiot!” he cried. “Do you not
know your benefit?” and reaching to his purse, tossed clanking against
the bottle a handful of coins. Rodvard shrunk away, and giving a kind of
mewing cry as the one-eyed creature leaped, tried for the door. His foot
caught something, he took three desperate lunges, gripped the handle as
the huge fist caught the side of his head and spilled him through onto
the deck, senseless.