The Collected Short Fiction of C J Cherryh

by C. J. Cherryh

  Dead children. She shuddered, appalled that such a dream could have come out of her own imagination; it was not at all the kind of thing that a girl wanted to think about.

  Tom. . . now he was worth thinking about.

  She read her story; and the woman in the story had problems not direr than hers, which made her own seem worse and the story seem trivial; but it was going to be a happy ending. She was sure that it would, which would cheer her up.

  Would they give her more books, she wondered, when these ran out? She thought that in the morning she would put another note on the tray and ask for books for herself; and maybe she should not, because that would admit to the jailer that she thought she was staying; and that would get to Richard too, who would ask how she was bearing up. She was sure that he would ask.

  No. She would not ask for things to indicate a long stay here. They might give them to her, and she could not bear that.

  Again she found she was losing the thread of the story, and she laid the book down against the side of the bed. She tried to think of Tom and could not, losing the thread of him too. She dreamed only the needles, back and forth, in and out, click.

  The light dimmed. . . to candlelight; she felt it dim through her closed lids; and she cracked a lid very carefully, her muscles rigid and near to shivering. The dream was back; she heard the children laughing together.

  "Well," said Edward's voice, "hello, Bettine."

  She looked; she had to, not knowing how near they were, afraid they might touch her. They were standing against the bricks again, both of them, solemn-faced like boys holding some great joke confined for the briefest of moments.

  "Of course we're back," said the boy Richard. "How are you, lady Bettine?"

  "Go away," she said; and then the least little part of her heart said that she did not really want them to go. She blinked and sat up, and there was a woman walking toward her out of the wall, who became larger and larger as the boys retreated. The newcomer was beautiful, in an ancient mode, wearing a golden brocade gown. The visitor dipped a curtsy to the boy king Edward, who bowed to her. "Madam," the boy-king said; and "Majesty," said the stranger, and turned curious eyes on her .

  "She is Bettine," said Edward. "Be polite, Bettine: Anne is one of the queens."

  "Queen Anne?" asked Bettine, wishing that she knew a little more of the ancient Tower. If one was to be haunted, it would be at least helpful to know by whom; but she had paid very little attention to history—there was so much of it.

  "Boleyn," said the queen, and spread her skirts and sat on the end of her bed, narrowly missing her feet, very forthright for a dream. "And how are you, my dear?"

  "Very well, thank you, Majesty."

  The boys laughed. "She only half believes in us, but she plays the game, doesn't she? They don't have queens now."

  "How pretty she is," said the queen. "So was I."

  "I'm not staying here," Bettine said. It seemed important in this web of illusions to have that clear. "I don't really believe in you entirely. I'm dreaming this anyway."

  "You're not, my dear, but there, there, believe what you like." The queen turned, looked back; the children had gone, and another was coming through, a handsome man in elegant brocade. "Robert Devereaux," said Anne. "Robert, her name is Bettine."

  "Who is he?" Bettine asked. "Is he the king?"

  The man named Robert laughed gently and swept a bow; "I might have been," he said. "But things went wrong."

  "Earl of Essex," said Anne softly, and stood up and took his hand. "The boys said that there was someone who believed in us, all the same. How nice. It's been so long."

  "You make me very nervous," she said. "If you were real I think you'd talk differently; something old. You're just like me."

  Robert laughed. "But we aren't like the walls, Bettine. We do change. We listen and we learn and we watch all the passing time."

  "Even the children," said Anne.

  "You died here."

  "Indeed we did. And the same way."

  "Murdered?" she asked with a shiver.

  Anne frowned. "Beheaded, my dear. Quite a few had a hand in arranging it. I was maneuvered, you see; and how should I know we were spied on?"

  "You and Essex?"

  "Ah, no," said Robert " We weren't lovers, then."

  "Only now," said Anne. "We met. . . posthumously on my part. And how are you here, my dear?"

  "I'm the Mayor's girl," Bettine said. It was good to talk, to have even shadows to talk to. She sat forward, embracing her knees in her arms. Suddenly the tears began to flow, and she daubed at her eyes with the sheet, feeling a little silly to be talking to ectoplasms, which all the fashionable folk denied existed; and yet it helped. "We quarreled and he put me here."

  "Oh dear," said Anne.

  "Indeed," said Lord Essex, patting Anne's hand. "That's why the boys said we should come. It's very like us."

  "You died for love?"

  "Politics," said Anne. "So will you."

  She shook her head furiously. This dream of hers was not fa her control, and she tried to drag things her own way. "But it's a silly quarrel. And I don't die. They don't kill people here, they don't."

  "They do," Anne whispered. "Just like they did."

  "Well," said Essex, "not axes, any more. They're much neater than they were."

  "Go away," Bettine cried. "Go away, go away, go away."

  "You'd do well to talk with us," said-Anne. "We could make you understand what you're really up against. And there's really so much you don't seem to see, Bettine."

  "Don't think of love," said Essex. "It's not love, you know, that sends people here. It's only politics. I know that. And Anne does. Besides, you don't sound like someone in love, do you? You don't sound like someone in love, Bettine."

  She shrugged and looked down, expecting that they would be gone when she looked up. "There is someone I love," she said in the faintest of whispers when she saw they were not gone.

  Anne snorted delicately. "That's not worth much here. Eternity is long, Bettine. And there's love and love, Bettine." She wound insubstantial fingers with the earl's. "You mustn't think of it being love. That's not the reason you're here. Be wise, Bettine. These stones have seen a great deal come and go. So have we; and you don't have the face of one who loves."

  "What do you know?" she cried. "You're nothing. I know people , believe me. And I know Richard."

  "Good night, Bettine," Anne said.

  "Good night," Essex said very softly and patiently, so that she did not seem to have ruffled either of them at all. And the children were back, who bowed with departing irony and faded. The lights brightened.

  She flounced down among the bedclothes sulking at such depressing ideas and no small bit frightened, but not of the ghosts—of her situation. Of things they said. There was a chill in the air, and a whiff of dried old flowers and spices. . . the flowers, she thought, was Anne; and the spice must be Essex. Or maybe it was the children Edward and Richard. The apparitions did not threaten her; they only spoke her fears. That was what they really were, after all. Ectoplasms, indeed. She burrowed into the covers and punched out the lights, having dispensed with fear of ghosts; her eyes hurt and she was tired. She lay down with utter abandon, which she had really not done since she came, burrowed among the pillows and tried not to think or dream at all.

  In the morning the phone came on and the screen lit up.

  "Bettine," said Richard's voice, stern and angry.

  She sprang up out of the covers, went blank for a moment and then assumed one of her bedroom looks, pushed her thick masses of hair looser on her head, stood up with a sinuous twist of her body and looked into the camera, moue'd into a worried frown, a tremble, a look near tears.

  "Richard. Richard, I was so afraid. Please." Keep him feeling superior, keep him feeling great and powerful, which was what she was for in the world, after all, and how she lived. She came and stood before the camera, leaned there. "I want out of here, Richard. I don't un
derstand this place." Naivete always helped, helplessness; and it was, besides, truth. "The jailer was terrible." Jealousy, if she could provoke it. "Please, let me come back. I never meant to do anything wrong. . . what is it I've done, Richard?"

  "Who was he?"

  Her heart was beating very fast. Indignation now; set him off balance. "No one. I mean, it was just a small thing and he wasn't anyone in particular, and I never did anything like that before, Richard, but you left me alone and what's a girl to do, after all? Two weeks and you hadn't called me or talked to me—?"

  "What's the name, Bettine? And where's the grade-fifty file? Where is it, Bettine?"

  She was the one off balance. She put a shaking hand to her lips, blinked, shook her head in real disorganization. "I don't know anything about the file." This wasn't it, this wasn't what it was supposed to be about. "Honestly, Richard, I don't know. What file? Is that what this is? That you think I stole

  something? Richard, I never, I never stole anything." "Someone got into the office. Someone who didn't belong there, Bettine; and you have the key, and I do, and that's a pretty limited range, isn't it? My office. My private office. Who did that, Bettine?"

  "I don't know," she wailed, and pushed her hair aside— the pretty gestures were lifelong-learned and automatic. "Richard, I've gotten caught in something I don't understand at all, I don't understand, I don't, and I never let anyone in there." (But Tom had gotten in there; he could have, any time, since he was in the next office.) "Maybe the door. . . maybe I left it open and I shouldn't have, but, Richard, I don't even know what was in that file, I swear I don't"

  "Who was in your apartment that night?"

  "I—it wasn't connected to that, it wasn't, Richard, and I wish you'd understand that. It wasn't anything, but that I was lonely and it was a complete mistake, and now if I gave you somebody's name then it would get somebody in trouble who just never was involved; I mean, I might have been careless, Richard, I guess I was; I'm terribly sorry about the file, but I did leave the door open sometimes, and you were gone a lot. I mean. . . it was possible someone could have gotten in there, but you never told me there was any kind of trouble like that. . ."

  "The access numbers. You understand?"

  "I don't. I never saw that file."

  "Who was in your apartment?"

  She remained silent, thinking of Tom, and her lip trembled. It went on trembling while Richard glared at her, because she could not make up her mind what she ought to do and what was safe. She could handle Richard. She was sure that she could. And then he blinked out on her.

  "Richard!" she screamed. She punched buttons in vain. The screen was dead. She paced the floor and wrung her hands and stared out the window.

  She heard the guard coming, and her door closed and the outer door opened for the exchange of the tray. Then the door gave back again and she went out into the anteroom after it. She carried the tray back and set it on the table, finally went to the bath and looked at herself, at sleep-tangled hair and shadowed eyes and the stain of old cosmetic. She was appalled at the face she had shown to Richard, at what she had been surprised into showing him. She scrubbed her face at once and brushed her hair and put slippers on her bare feet, which were chilled to numbness on the tiles.

  Then she ate her breakfast, sparingly, careful of her figure, and dressed and sat and sewed. The silence seemed twice as heavy as before. She hummed to herself and tried to fill the void. She sang—she had a beautiful voice, and she sang until she feared she would grow hoarse, while the pattern grew. She read some of the time, and, bored, she found a new way to do her hair; but then she thought after she had done it that if Richard should call back he might not like it, and it was important that he like the way she looked. She combed it back the old way, all the while mistrusting this instinct, this reliance on a look which had already failed.

  So the day passed, and Richard did not call again.

  They wanted Tom. There was the chance that if she did give Richard Tom's name it could be the right one, because it was all too obvious who could

  have gotten a file out of Richard's office, because there had been many times Richard had been gone and Tom had followed her about her duties, teasing her. Safest not to ask and not to know. She was determined not to. She resented the thing that had happened—politics—politics. She hated politics.

  Tom. . . was someone to love. Who loved her; and Richard had reasons which were Richard's, but it came down to two men being jealous. And Tom, being innocent, had no idea what he was up against. . . Tom could be hurt, but Richard would never hurt her; and while she did not tell Richard, she still had the power to perplex him. While he was perplexed he would do nothing.

  She was not totally confident. . . of Tom's innocence, or of Richard's attitude. She was not accustomed to saying no. She was not accustomed to being put in difficult positions. Tom should not have asked it of her. He should have known. It was not fair what he did, whatever he had gotten himself involved in—some petty little record-juggling—to have put her in this position.

  The pattern grew, delicate rows of stitches, complex designs which needed no thinking, only seeing, and she wept sometimes and wiped at her eyes while she worked.

  Light faded from the window. Supper came and she ate, and this night she did not prepare for bed, but wrapped her night robe about her for warmth and sat in the chair and waited, lacking all fear, expecting the children, looking forward to them in a strangely keen longing, because they were at least company, and laughter was good to hear in this grim place. Even the laughter of murdered children.

  There began to be a great stillness. And not the laughter of children this time, but the tread of heavier feet, the muffled clank of metal. A grim, shadowed face materialized in dimming light.

  She stood up, alarmed, and warmed her chilling hands before "her lips. "Edward," she cried aloud. "Edward, Richard. . . are you there?" But what was coming toward her was taller and bare of face and arm and leg, bronze elsewhere, and wearing a sword, of all things. She wanted the children; wanted Anne or Robert Devereaux, any of the others. This one. . . was different.

  "Bettine," he said in a voice which echoed in far distances. "Bettine."

  "I don't think I like you," she said.

  The ghost stopped with a little clank of armor, kept fading in and out. He was young, even handsome in a foreign way. He took off his helmet and held it under his arm. "I'm Marc," he said. "Marcus Atilius Regulus. They said I should come. Could you see your way, Bettine, to prick your finger?"

  "Why should I do that?"

  "I am oldest," he said. "Well—almost, and of a different persuasion, and perhaps it is old-fashioned, but it would make our speaking easier."

  She picked up her sewing needle and jabbed her cold finger, once and hard, and the blood welled up black in the dim light and fell onto the stones. She put the injured finger in her mouth, and stared quite bewildered, for the visitor was very much brighter, and seemed to draw a living breath.

  "Ah," he said. "Thank you with all my heart, Bettine."

  "I'm not sure at all I should have done that. I think you might be dangerous."

  "Ah, no, Bettine."

  "Were you a soldier, some kind of knight?"

  "A soldier, yes; and a knight, but not the kind you think of. I think you mean of the kind born to this land. I came from Tiberside. I am Roman, Bettine. We laid some of the oldest stones just. . ." he lifted a braceletted arm, rather confusedly toward one of the steel walls. "But most of the old work is gone now. There are older levels; all the surly ones tend to gather down there. Even new ones, and some that never were civilized, really, or never quite accepted being dead, all of them—" he made a vague and deprecating gesture. "But we don't get many now, because there hasn't been anyone in here who could believe in us. . . in so very long. . . does the finger hurt?"

  "No." She sucked at it and rubbed the moisture off and looked at him more closely. "I'm not sure I believe in you."

  "You're
not sure you don't, and that's enough."

  "Why are you here? Where are the others?"

  "Oh, they're back there."

  "But why you? Why wouldn't they come? I expected the children."

  "Oh. They're there. Nice boys."

  "And why did you come? What has a soldier to do with me?"

  "I—come for the dead. I'm the psychopomp."

  "The what?"

  "Psychopomp. Soul-guider. When you die."

  "But I'm not going to die," she wailed, hugging her arms about her and looking without wanting to at the ancient sword he wore. "There's a mistake, that's all. I've been trying to explain to the others, but they don't understand. We're civilized. We don't go around killing people in here, whatever used

  to happen. . . ." "Oh, they do, Bettine; but we don't get them, because they're very stubborn, and they believe in nothing, and they can't see us. Last month I lost one. I almost had him to see me, but at the last he just couldn't; and he slipped away and I'm not sure where. It looked hopelessly drear. I try with all of them. I'm glad you're not like them."

  "But you're wrong. I'm not going to die."

  He shrugged, and his dark eyes looked very sad.

  "I can get out of here," she said, unnerved at his lack of belief in her. "If I have to, there's always a way. I can just tell them what they want to know and they'll let me go."

  "Ah," he said.

  "It's true."

  His young face, so lean and serious, looked sadder still. "Oh Bettine."

  "It is true; what do you know?"

  "Why haven't you given them what they want before now?"

  "Because. . ." She made a gesture to explain and then shook her head. "Because I think I can get out of it without doing that."

  "For pride? Or for honor?"