“Is it true,” Bruno whispered, “that some have followed you and died?”
“It is true,” said the other with a quiet above and beyond sadness. “They followed me for love of death and not for love of me—except the children, and they don’t come to my anymore. Since they were in love with death and merely a little shy of speaking to him, I did not keep death from them. But you would be sharing my journey for love of me. Had you thought, Poet, that this village, this nation might be part of a world so much larger that if we had a map of it the Empire of Katskil might look like a speck of dust on a sheet?”
Bruno nodded happily. Then the world’s angers-rushed in across his happiness and he whispered: “Tiger Boy, they are forming a posse in Maplestock, to destroy you. I’ve listened in the Store, where they talk-talk. From tonight on, men will be waiting there to hunt you down as soon as you appear.”
Tiger Boy smiled. “I no longer need to appear there,” he said, and he took up the pipes and played a small thing of amusement, an impudent, jaunty, defiant air. The tiger slanted his head and rubbed his neck softly against the youth’s side. “We’ll go away, Poet. I know places where forest extends for many days’ journey. I know more open regions full of deer and elk and wild swine and buffalo where our tiger can feed in his natural way with no risk of a hunter’s arrow. I have heard talk of a river as mighty as a sea, and beyond it wider plains—they say the old ruins of men’s work stand up stark and lonely there—and beyond that, mountains so huge, so closely ranked together that surely no man ever climbed them: snow remains on the summits, I hear, through all the summer season. We shall look on them. And no more than ten days’ journey from here I know a small lake, deep water blue as noon sky, sheltered by little hills. Men seldom go there now, for fear of tiger, red bear, black wolf—no, they huddle in villages, stockaded villages, the great villages they call cities with high stone walls to defend them against others of their own kind. Isn’t it marvelous, Poet, what fools men are? But we can go to that lake. You’re strong. I’ll make you a bow like mine. We’ll stay there as long as we please, and I’ll make you a set of pipes too, and teach you how to play.”
Bruno wondered why he felt no wish to ask Tiger Boy who he was, or how a brown tiger came to be his friend, or what it was he meant to do with his life in the years to come. Bruno found he truly had no such wish: if in his own time Tiger Boy chose to tell him, good; if not, no matter. Bruno waited among the multitude of words that offered themselves, until he knew he had found the most beautiful company of them in the language, and then he whispered them: “I will go with you.”
* * * *
Maplestock woke to the distress of Hurley the Iron-smith, who rode into town jouncing on his gray plug and his gray hair flying, too early for most folk—scary excitement comes better after settling breakfast. Bruno was gone.
If he’d been an ordinary boy prone to laziness and lapses of virtue—but he wasn’t. Always loyal to his work, seemed to enjoy it too, punctual and goodnatured. Everyone knew how he wandered harmlessly at night, and hung around the Store when he had a free daylight hour. No harm in that. Hurley had never known him to be late or unwilling. Now he was gone, the door of his cabin closed, his bunk not slept in.
Shouting the news to everyone he saw without waiting on a reply, Hurley rode direct to the posse, who were making the best of Mam Bodwin’s cornpone and thin tea, on the back steps of the Store. “Bruno’s gone.”
“Who’s Bruno?” said the gaunt archer with the brown shirt and orange loin-rag.
Stunned, Hurley glared, phuphing his gray moustache. “Da’say you’re newcome around here,” he said, and then realized this must be one of the men sent by Baron Ashoka. He looked at the others, not at their best at seven in the morning after three hours’ guard alert and another hour to go. Dan Short, Barton Linz, Tom Denario —not incompetent exactly, but a scraggy lot, getting on for elderly. Jo Bodwin came out then, and Hurley spoke to him in a dry snarl betraying the truth that he rather loved the boy: “Bruno’s gone.”
“Well, now—the men can’t go looking for him now, Wilbur—see, it’s guard duty. Not without the Baron says so. Ain’t it natural a boy might be late for work?”
“Goddamn it, Jo, you know how it is—he sleeps right there by the forge. He’s never been late. Always there when I want him.”
“But you know, Wilbur, he does kind of go wandering at night.”
“Likely,” said the stranger, “you’ll find him dead beat in bed with some little piece.” Wilbur Hurley stared, his blacksmith’s hand tight on the bridle and one eyelid twitching. “Well, Jesus and Abraham, I can’t seem to say nothing right.” Hurley’s silence agreed.
“Like to oblige you myself,” said Jo Bodwin, “but you see I can’t leave the Store, not with this guard duty thing, I’m supposed to keep it organized and so on and so on.”
“Shit,” said the Ironsmith.
“No, honest, Wilbur, I really like that boy, you know yourself there wasn’t a time he couldn’t come in here and sort of help himself to a bite and so on.” Unknown to Jo, perhaps, his voice had already taken on a note of elegy, as if Bruno were six feet under in the churchyard. “And you’ll find Mam Bodwin say the same—I bet there wasn’tnobody really that didn’t kind of like him.”
“He’ll turn up,” said Tom Denario. “You’ll see.”
“Up there right now likely,” said Barton Linz.
“Guts of Abraham!” said Hurley the Ironsmith. “You can’t any of you lift up off your butts without the Baron says so, I’ll get the Baron.” And he kicked the old gelding into a shambling gallop.
Watching his receding dust the stranger remarked: “Skin my ass if I ain’t just remembered, the Baron was off to Nupal at daybreak, anyhow said he intended it when he rousted me out, sent me down here.”
“Do say!” said Jo. “Now I wonder—”
“It’s a fact Hurley’s old ho’se needs the ex’cise,” said Dan Short, whose uncle had carried on a line-fence quarrel with Hurley’s father about forty years back.
“I do wonder,” said Jo, “what he’s off to Nupal for.”
The man with the orange loin-rag started his morning’s chaw and spat between his feet. “When he rousted me out, Storekeeper, he was higher’n a hickory tree on monastery wine, nor I wasn’t truly wakeful whiles he was expressing himself, but I believe it was something or another to do with hound dogs.”
* * * *
Father Elias Clark, parish priest of Maplestock and long ago a graduate of St. Benjamin’s Seminary at King-stone, privileged (under supervision of the Church) to read the books of Old Time and to write after his name the rarely awarded letters F.L., Frater Literatus, climbed the wearisome long road to the manor under the sun of mid-afternoon. His broad black hat held away the heavy light but pressed its own soggy heat on the pain in his head. The village behind him buzzed and yattered at him keenly, every predictable word another spike driven tap-tap-tap into his skull.
Don’t y remember, wun’t he always ready with them special favors, the way Marget couldn’t do no wrong? Like the time—
Oh, I dunno—poor Bruno, always did think he COULD be a—you know, it ain’t nice to speak the word—and in that case he wouldn’t be none of Father Clark’s get—
Yah, but look how quick and sharp the Father was to say Bruno wun’t no—
But look, didn’t he turn out to be a nice sort of kid except he can’t talk? Wun’t for that he’d be just like everybody, and what harm’d he ever do anybody?
It’s the sin. Turns my stomach to think of that Mar-get you-know with the priest that’s give me communion with his own hands. Disgusting, him and her, wonder the lightning didn’t come for both-
Well, see, God got his reasons to wait for this p’tic-lar judgment,
—in his mysterious ways, amen—
But look, she’s been dead sixteen years.
Do say! Been that long, has it?
But look—
Wouldn’t think he
had it in him, would you?
But look—
Father Clark’s mind echoed:Sixteen years! He halted short of breath on the high ground not far below the manor, and through a gap in the hemlocks he looked out over the valley, his valley, to Maplestock, his village, his charge, his parish, his life’s labor, a jewel of human making in that hollow of the hills which he had once thought of as a symbol for the hand of God. And with the village, did not God also hold and cherish that building, that white church he could see from here, and its clean spire rising toward heaven from the matrix of the sacred Wheel? Yes, she has been dead (and not in consecrated ground) for sixteen years, and I may have lost the son I never had—to a beast, to some outrageous devilish thing, whatever it is that haunts us in these years. O Bruno, I begot you on my poor wild love, only to rob you of both father and mother, and have given you nothing in return. (The watch and ward of a parish priest is nothing?) I saved your life—no crossroads burial with a stake in the infant heart, not for my son! Saved you for what?
He sank down by the roadside and covered his face with his hands. How they feared your silence, Bruno, even before it was time for a child to speak! Oh, natural enough, for certainly a child should weep aloud on entering this world, if only to break the silence with a demand and a protest. But they fear silence anyway, because no one ever knows what may come out of it. Not I, certainly.
Out of the silence that surrounded him here and absorbed the small sounds of his trouble as the ocean might swallow one drop of blood, he heard a distant noise of hooves—Baron Ashoka, he hoped. Wilbur Hurley had ridden back to the village fuming because the Baron was away to Nupal and not expected back until after midday. Father Clark had spoken with him, and with many others in the muttering, clattering village. Everyone thought it would be a fine idea if somebody (else) got up a search party. Mam Sever, the priest thought, would have shamed the men of the village into action. But Mam Sever was dead last year of the smallpox.
And why could not I? What’s happened to my silver tongue? My calculated angers? They heeded me once, they believed me a true vessel transmitting the will of God for the direction of their affairs. Now and then (O Lord, forgive me!) I believed this too. I had a vision of a great moral cleansing that would start in this small place (myself the evangelist, O vanity!) and spread—who knows how far? . . . Had I not? And what happened to it? Was my sin so great that God took away all virtue from me? But would not that be a punishment of my village for a sin that was only mine and Marget’s? More light!
O God of Christ and Abraham and of the prophets, having given us life couldst thou not have enlightened us, if only a little, how to deal with it?
It was the sound of horse’s hooves, but blurred as though other feet scuffed along in the dust Baron Ashoka appeared around the turn of the road on his beautiful roan mare, and behind him a foul-faced man with matted hair—a black tangle of it never combed and doubtless full of lice. This man seemed to be slouching along in his excellent, immensely dirty moosehide moccasins, but the slouch was an illusion given by his overdeveloped mass of shoulder and arm muscle; actually he was moving in a quick buoyant stride that matched the mare’s pace without effort. His left hand held two stout leashes, a finger hooked on each; his right grasped a vicious, heavy-butted whip—easily, lightly, like an extension of his arm ready for immediate use. His arms and knotty legs were marked as if by smallpox, but a second look showed the dents to be the scars of a hundred old bites. Father Clark remembered Kingstone, and the wild animal dealers, feral creatures themselves, who brought in wolves and black bear (never the red bear!) to parade them through the city streets before delivering them to the Arena.
The leashed brutes who followed this man, if he could be described as a man, did so not meekly, but with that savage resignation which is only a waiting for the chance that never comes. They were northern wolfhounds, probably from the Saranac country, long in the snout, shaggy, gray as stormclouds and fast as the brown tiger himself. The Baron halted, and as the dogs raised their heads to stare in iron cruelty at Father Clark, he saw that their muzzles were level with the trainer’s waist
The Baron dismounted courteously. “On your way to the manor, Father?”
“I was, yes. This is a fortunate chance—now I can get back to the village immediately. I came to tell you, Baron, that the boy Bruno has disappeared. There was strange music heard in the woods night before last and the night before that. Most of our people think the tiger has taken him.”
“Oh, that’s bad, that’s bad.”
“Some, Baron, are for going in search of him.” Father Clark tried for a neutral voice. “Others are already saying that the tiger has accepted the—the sacrifice, and will now go and leave us in peace. ... I must know which course you favor, Baron Ashoka,” said Father Clark, remembering and half regretting the long years of his dislike for this man whose image tended to submerge itself in the image of abstract power, this man whom he seldom met at all except in the formalities of Friday mornings, when the Baron in his pew was making all the correct motions and would shake his hand correctly after the service with the correct small talk and never offer anything beyond that. Seeing the Baron now sagging with fatigue and his square face gritty with road dust (and in the background that infernal trainer with his dogs waiting like a little company from Hell) it seemed to Father Clark that he could almost like the Baron—if there were time for any such trifles. “The village, Baron, will go according to what you say, not by what I say.”
“Oh, please, Father! Mustn’t underrate your influence— I don’t think that’s so at all. And I can’t let you go back without a drink—wine—tea—whatever you favor, and a little rest. You must be as tired as I am, sir. Please take my horse the rest of the way—I’d like to get the cramp out of my legs anyhow.”
“Thank you, Baron, but I must go back at once. Is it to be a search, or must we let the boy go for lost?”
“My dear man, of course we don’t let it go.” The Baron had taken offense and made no effort to hide it. “We’ll search. But this day will soon be spent. And this fellow and his hounds have walked fifteen miles.”
“It is a human life,” said Father Clark, and lowered his gaze, in fear of seeing some flicker of denial, some unspoken suggestion that Bruno was rather less than human. “There are nearly six hours of daylight left.”
“Father, I beg of you! Exhausted men and dogs can’taccomplish anything, not against brown tiger. If the tiger’s taken him it’s far too late for us to do Bruno any good. We can only hunt down the beast and this—this mythical person, whatever it is, that goes around with him. That I propose to do. With rested men and dogs, first thing in the morning and a whole day for the work.”
“We don’t know the tiger took him. We only know he’s gone, and may be lost somewhere in the woods. These dogs can follow scent, can’t they?”
“They can, Father. They follow it as hunters. They are not much used, I’m told, in work of mercy—too dangerous, hard to hold. And I understand that when they catch scent of tiger they can’t be taken off the trail or they go berserk, nobody can handle them. Once we start after this beast we must stay with the hunt until the end—six hours might be only a small part of it if the quarry is traveling. Am I right, Horrow?”
“They folia, they do. Stay with. Folia till they can pull’s guts out on t’ grass.”
* * * *
“Hear that? He’s made his kill, Poet—woods buffalo, I think. Now he’ll feed and lie up a while, but we can go on if you like, he can always find us.”
“I wish I could sing of our journey, of the journeys to come.”
“No need. I always hear you and I’ll sing for you. Look at the little orchids! Moccasin-flower—Lady’s slipper, some call them. Often they grow where some tree has fallen and lies in decay.”
Here in a lake of shadow
it fashions the sunlight of itself.
If love can wake and shine,
make and declare its own light,
/>
there’s no night too dense for journeying.
Hurley the Ironsmith followed a false trail that day, after returning from the manor in anger and frustration. He had gone again to that rickety cabin by the forge, stood in the bleak room wondering how a boy could have lived there and collected almost no possessions—a few spare clothes, another pair of sandals, all neat as the cell of a monk, his bunk with the blanket squared and trim, no clutter, no dust. As if Bruno had never been here at all. No knife, but the boy did own a good one, and so must have taken it with him—any reassurance in that? Hurley had not been aware of his wife coming in until she slipped an arm around him; he saw she was weeping. “Will, why didn’t we ever know anything about him?”
“Ah, well, Ann...”
“Why don’t we ever know anything about others? Why?”
“Baron’s away to Nupal, Ann. Posse won’t move without he gives ‘em word. So I have to go by myself.”
“By yourself? Where the tiger is? I lose you too, and then—”
Universe 2 - [Anthology] Page 22
