The Shadow of the Torturer

by Gene Wolfe

Page 13

 

  Then I, still unmasked and in the dress of an apprentice, stepped forward and said: "Resistance avails nothing. You are to be broken on the wheel, but we would do you no further indignity. "

  The maid gave no answer but reached out and touched the wheel, which at once fell to pieces, collapsing with a clatter to the floor, all its roses gone.

  "Behead her," demanded Maxentius, and I took up the sword. It was very heavy.

  She knelt before me. "You are a counselor of Omniscience," I said. "Though I must slay you, I beg you spare my life. "

  For the first time the maid spoke, saying, "Strike and fear not. " I lifted the sword. I remember that for a moment I feared it would overbalance me.

  When I think back on that time, it is that moment I recall first; to remember more, I must work forward or backward from that. In memory it seems to me I stand always so, in gray shirt and ragged trousers, with the blade poised above my head. While I raised it, I was an apprentice; when it descended, I would be a journeyman of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.

  It is our rule that the executioner must stand between his victim and the light; the maids head lay in shadow on the block. I knew that the sword in falling would do her no harm - I would direct it to one side, tripping an ingenious mechanism that would elevate a wax head smeared with blood while the maid draped her own with a fuligin cloth. Still I hesitated to give the blow.

  She spoke again from the floor at my feet, and her voice seemed to ring in my ears. "Strike and fear not. " With such strength as I was capable of, I sent the false blade down. For an instant it seemed to me that it met resistance; then it thudded into the block, which fell into two. The maids head, all bloody, tumbled forward toward the watching brothers. Master Gurloes lifted it by the hair and Master Palaemon cupped his left hand to receive the blood.

  "With this, our chrism," he said, "I anoint you, Severian, our brother forever. " His index finger traced the mark upon my forehead.

  "So be it," said Master Gurloes, and all the journeymen save I. The maid stood.

  I knew even as I watched her that her head was only concealed in the cloth; but it seemed there was nothing there. I felt dizzy and tired.

  She took the wax head from Master Gurloes and pretended to replace it on her shoulders, slipping it by some sleight into the fuligin cloth, then standing before us radiant and whole. I knelt before her, and the others withdrew.

  She raised the sword with which I had so lately struck off her head; the blade was bloody now from some contact with the wax. "You are of the torturers," she said. I felt the sword touch either shoulder, and at once eager hands were drawing the head mask of the guild over my face and lifting me. Before I well knew what had occurred, I was on the shoulders of two journeymen - it was only afterward that I learned they were Drotte and Roche, though I should have guessed it. They were bearing me up the processional aisle through the center of the chapel, while everyone cheered and shouted.

  We were no sooner outside than the fireworks began: crackers about our feet and even around our ears, torpedoes banging against the thousand-year-old walls of the chapel, rockets red and yellow and green leaping into the air. A gun from the Great Keep split the night.

  All the brave meats I have described were on the tables in the court; I sat at the head between Master Palaemon and Master Gurloes, and drank too much (very little, for me, has always been too much), and was cheered and toasted. What became of the maid I do not know. She disappeared as she has each Katharines Day I can remember. I have not seen her again.

  How I reached my bed I have no notion. Those who drink much have told me that they sometimes forget all that befell them in the latter part of the night, and perhaps it was so with me. But I think it more likely that I (who never forget anything, who, if I may for once confess the truth, though I seem to boast, do not truly understand what others mean when they say forget, for it seems to me that all experience becomes a part of my being) only slept and was carried there.

  However it may be, I woke not in the familiar low room that was our dormitory, but in a cabin so small it was much higher than wide, a journeymans cabin, and because I was the most junior of the journeymen, the least desirable in the tower, a portless cubbyhole no larger than a cell.

  My bed seemed to toss beneath me. I gripped the sides and sat up and it was still, but as soon as my head touched the pillow once more the swaying began again. I felt I was wide-awake - then that I was awake again but had been sleeping only a moment before. I was conscious that someone was in the tiny cabin with me, and for some reason I could not have explained I thought it was the young woman who had taken the part of our patroness.

  I sat up in the tossing bed. Dim light filtered beneath the door; there was no one there.

  When I lay down again, the room was filled with Theclas perfume. The false Thecla from the House Azure had come, then. I got out of bed, and nearly falling opened the door. There was no one in the passage outside.

  A chamber pot waited beneath the bed, and I pulled it out and filled it with my spew, rich meats swimming in wine mixed with bile. Somehow I felt what I had done was treason, as if by casting out all that the guild had given me that night I had cast out the guild itself. Coughing and sobbing I knelt beside the bed, and at last, after wiping my mouth clean, lay down again.

  No doubt I slept. I saw the chapel, but it was not the ruin I knew. The roof was whole and high and straight, and from it there hung ruby lamps. The pews were whole and gleamed with polish; the ancient stone altar was swathed in cloth of gold. Behind the altar rose a wonderful mosaic of blue; but it was blank, as if a fragment of sky without cloud or star had been torn away and spread upon the curving wall.

  I walked toward it down the aisle, and as I did so I was struck by how much lighter it was than the true sky, whose blue is nearly black even on the brightest day. Yet how much more beautiful this was! It thrilled me to look at it. I felt I was floating in air, borne up by the beauty of it, looking down upon the altar, down into the cup of crimson wine, down upon shewbread and antique knife. I smiled . . .

  And woke. In my sleep I had heard footsteps in the passage outside, and I knew I had recognized them, though I could not just then recall whose steps they were. Struggling, I brought back the sound; it was no human tread, only the padding of soft feet, and an almost imperceptible scraping.

  I heard it again, so faint that for a time I thought I had confused my memory with reality; but it was real, slowly coming up the passage, slowly going back. The mere lifting of my head brought a wave of nausea; I let it fall again, telling myself that whoever might pace back and forth, it was no affair of mine. The perfume had vanished, and sick though I was, I felt I needed to fear unreality no longer - I was back in the world of solid objects and plain light.

  My door opened a trifle and Master Malrubius looked in as though to make certain I was all right. I waved to him and he shut the door again. It was some time before I recalled that he had died while I was still a boy.

  Chapter 12

  THE TRAITOR

  The next day my head ached and I was ill. But as I was (by a long-standing tradition) spared from the cleaning of the Grand Court and the chapel, where most of the brothers were, I was needed in the oubliette. For a few moments at least the morning calm of the corridors soothed me. Then the apprentices came clattering down (the boy Eata, not quite so small now, with a puffed lip and the gleam of triumph in his eye), bringing the clients breakfast - cold meats mostly, salvage from the ruins of the banquet. I had to explain to several clients that this was the only day of the year on which they would get meat, and went along assuring one after another that there would be no excruciations - the feast day itself and the day after are exempt, and even when a sentence demands torment on those days, it is postponed. The Chatelaine Thecla was still asleep. I did not wake her, but unlocked her cell and carried her food in and put it on her table.

  About midmorni
ng I again heard the echoes of footsteps. Coming to the landing, I saw two cataphracts, an anagnost reading prayers, Master Gurloes, and a young woman. Master Gurloes asked if I had an empty cell, and I began to describe those that were vacant.

  "Then take this prisoner. I have already signed for her. "

  I nodded and grasped the woman by the arm; the cataphracts released her and turned away like silver automata.

  The elaboration of her sateen costume (somewhat dirty and torn now) showed that she was an optimate. An armigette would have worn finer stuffs in simpler lines, and no one from the poorer classes could have dressed so well. The anagnost tried to follow us down the corridor, but Master Gurloes prevented him. I heard the soldiers steel-shod feet on the steps.

  "When am I . . . ?" It had a rising, somehow terrorized inflection. "To be taken to the examination room?"

  She clung to my arm now as though I were her father or her lover. "Will I be?"

  "Yes, Madame. "

  "How do you know?"

  "All who are brought here are, Madame. "

  "Always? Isnt anybody ever released?"

  "Occasionally. "

  "Then I might be too, mightnt I?" The hope in her voice now made me think of a flower growing in shadow.

  "Its possible, but its very unlikely. "

  "Dont you want to know what Ive done?"

  "No," I said. As it happened, the cell next to Theclas was vacant; for a moment I wondered if I should put this woman there. She would be company (the two could speak through the slots in their doors), but her questions and the opening and closing of the cell might wake Thecla now. I decided to do it - the companionship, I felt, would more than compensate for a little lost sleep.

  "I was affianced to an officer, and I found he was maintaining a jade. When he wouldnt give her up, I paid bravos to fire her thatch. She lost a featherbed, a few sticks of furniture, and some clothes. Is that a crime for which I should be tortured?"

  "I dont know, Madame. "

  "My name is Marcellina. What is yours?"

  I turned the key to her cell while I debated answering her. Thecla, whom I could hear stirring now, would doubtless tell her in any event. "Severian," I said.

  "And you get your bread by breaking bones. It must give you good dreams by night. "

  Theclas eyes, widely spaced and as deep as wells, were at the slot in her door.

  "Who is that with you, Severian?"

  "A new prisoner, Chatelaine. "

  "A woman? I know she is - I heard her voice. From the House Absolute?"

  "No, Chatelaine. " Not knowing how long it might be before the two would be able to see each other again, I made Marcellina stand before Theclas door.

  "Another woman. Isnt that unusual? How many do you have, Severian?"

  "Eight on this level now, Chatelaine. "

  "I would think you would often have more than that. "

  "We rarely have more than four, Chatelaine. "

  Marcellina asked, "How long will I have to stay here?"

  "Not long. Few stay here long, Madame. "

  With an unhealthy seriousness, Thecla said, "I am about to be released, you understand. He knows. "

  Our guilds new client looked at what could be seen of her with increased interest. "Are you really about to be set free, Chatelaine?"

  "He knows. Hes mailed letters for me - havent you, Severian? And hes been saying goodbye for these last few days. Hes really rather a sweet boy in his way. "

  I said, "You must go in now, Madame. You may continue to talk, if you like. " I was relieved after I had served the clients their suppers. Drotte met me on the stair and suggested I go to bed.

  "Its the mask," I told him. "Youre not used to seeing me with it on. "

  "I can see your eyes, and thats all I need to see. Cant you recognize all the brothers by their eyes, and tell whether theyre angry, or in the mood for a joke? You ought to go to bed. "

  I told him I had something to do first, and went to Master Gurloess study. He was absent, as I had hoped he would be, and among the papers on his table I found what I had, in some fashion I cannot explain, known would be there: an order for Theclas excruciation.

  I could not sleep after that. Instead I went (for the last time, though I did not know it) to the tomb in which I had played as a boy. The funeral bronze of the old exultant was dull for lack of rubbing, and a few more leaves had drifted through the half-open door; otherwise it was unchanged. I had once told Thecla of the place, and now I imagined her with me. She had escaped by my aid, and I promised her that no one would find her here, and that I would bring her food, and when the hunt had cooled I would help her secure passage on a merchant dhow, by which she could make her way unnoticed down the winding coils of Gyoll to the delta and the sea.

  Were I such a hero as we had read of together in old romances, I would have released her that very evening, overpowering or drugging the brothers on watch. I was not, and I possessed no drugs and no weapon more formidable than a knife taken from the kitchen.

  And if the truth is to be known, between my inmost being and the desperate attempt there stood the words I had heard that morning - the morning after my elevation. The Chatelaine Thecla had said I was "rather a sweet boy," and some already mature part of me knew that even if I succeeded against all odds, I would still be rather a sweet boy. At the time I thought it mattered.

  The next morning Master Gurloes ordered me to assist him in performing the excruciation. Roche came with us.

  I unlocked her cell. She did not understand at first why we had come, and asked me if she had a visitor, or if she were to be discharged. By the time we reached our destination she knew. Many men faint, but she did not. Courteously, Master Gurloes asked if she would like an explanation of the various mechanisms.

  "Do you mean the ones you are going to employ?" There was a tremor in her voice, but it was not marked.

  "No, no, I wouldnt do that. Just the curious machines you will be seeing as we pass through. Some are quite old, and most are hardly ever used. "