Past Imperative [Round One of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  They would have to chain her to the bed, Eleal thought. She would rather starve in a gutter. She said nothing, just stared at the floor.

  "Why do you limp?"

  "My right leg is shorter than the other."

  "I can see that. Why? Were you born like that?"

  "I fell out a window when I was a baby."

  "Stupid of you. But it won't matter. It won't show when you're on your back, will it?"

  Eleal gritted her teeth.

  "I asked you a question, slut!"

  "No it won't."

  "Mother."

  "Mother."

  Ylla sighed. “You will begin your service by plucking chickens. By this time next year, you will be able to pluck chickens in your sleep. Scrubbing floors, washing clothes ... good, honest labor to purify the soul. Normally we should start with your oath of obedience. However—"

  She frowned. “However, in your case the Lady gave explicit instructions."

  "What sort of instructions?"

  "Mother."

  "What sort of instructions, Mother?"

  "That for the next fortnight you are to be kept under the strictest confinement. I don't know if we can even take you to the altar for the oath—I'll ask. And guards on the door!” The old hag looked both annoyed and puzzled by that.

  "The Filoby Testament!"

  Ylla stared. “What of it?"

  Eleal had blurted out the name without thinking and wished she hadn't. “It mentions me."

  The woman snorted disbelievingly. “And who told you that?"

  "A reaper."

  Ylla surged to her feet, astonishingly fast for her size. Her thick hand took Eleal in the face so hard she stumbled and fell prostrate on the pallet, her head ringing from the blow and a taste of blood in her mouth.

  "For that you can fast a day,” Ylla said, stamping out, slamming the door. Bolts clicked.

  The room faced east, offering a fine view of the slate roofs of Narsh. The wall beneath it was sheer, and although the stonework was rough and crumbly, Eleal had no hope of being able to climb down it. It was quite high enough to break her legs. Upward offered no hope either, for her cell was a full story below the cornice—they had thought of that.

  Below her lay a paved courtyard, part of the temple complex, enclosed by a row of large houses in high-walled grounds. She could see through the gaps to the street beyond, where people went about their business, enjoying freedom. She could even see parts of the city wall, Narshwater, farms, grasslands. If she leaned out as far as she dared, she could just see the meadow with the mammoth pen.

  To north and south Narshflat became Narshslope, rising to join the mountains of Narshwall. She had a fine view down the length of Narshvale. Indeed she thought she could see to the end of it, where sky and plain and mountains all converged. It was a small land and a barren one. She wondered why Joalia and Thargia would bother to quarrel over it.

  Later she saw the mammoth train leave and even thought she heard faint trumpeting. She was too far away to make out the people. The mammoths themselves were small as ants, but she hung over the sill for a long time, watching them go.

  Farewell Ambria! Farewell Grandfather Trong, you cold, proud man! Farewell Uthiam and Golfren—and good luck in the festival! May Tion keep you.

  Remember me.

  If she listened at the door, she could hear her guards muttering outside, but she could not make out the words. A choir of students practiced for a while in the courtyard below.

  Not long after noon, Ylla returned, bringing some burly assistance in case it might be needed. She made Eleal strip, and gave her a red robe too large for her, a skimpy blanket, a jug of warm water, and a pungent bucket. She even confiscated Eleal's boots, leaving her a pair of sandals instead. Eleal stooped to pleading over that—walking was much harder for her without her special boots. The priestess seemed pleased by the pleading, but refused to change her mind.

  Then she departed, taking everything Eleal had been wearing when she entered the temple, even her Tion locket, and leaving her a sack of chickens to pluck—eviscerated sacrifices, caked with blood and already stiff.

  The rest of the day went by in boredom, fear, anger, and despair in various mixtures. The prisoner raged at her split lip, the goddess, the priestess, the fat priest, the chickens and all their feathers, Dolm the reaper, the Filoby Testament—whatever that was—her unknown father, her unknown mother, Trong and Ambria for deserting her and betraying her and lying to her. She refused to open the book of scripture. She seriously considered throwing it out the window, then decided that such an act of open defiance would merely provide an excuse to whip her. By late afternoon she knew that whippings would not be necessary. A few days of this confinement and she would be willing to kiss every shoe in the temple.

  A year of it and she would be ready for the naked men in the alcoves.

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  23

  THE DAHLIAS WERE MERELY THE LEADERS OF A PARADE OF flowers that staggered Edward. They came from his old housemaster Ginger Jones on his own behalf, with another on behalf of all the masters, from the president of the Old Boys’ Club, from Alice, and from a dozen separate friends. The word must have spread across all England, and he could not imagine how much money had been spent on trunk calls. The nurses teased him about all the sweethearts he must have. They set vases on the dresser and then ranked them along the wall he could see best, turning the drab brown room into a greenhouse. He could hardly bear to look at them. It was Bagpipe who needed the flowers, wasn't it?

  Somewhere in that floral parade, someone smuggled in a copy of the Times. He suspected the plump nurse with the London accent, but he wasn't sure. It was just lying there on his bed when he looked.

  Mr. Winston Churchill had ordered the fleet mobilized. Some holiday excursion trains had been canceled. France and Russia were preparing for war with Germany, and there had been shooting at border points. He found his own name, but there was nothing there that he did not already know. In normal times the yellow press would make a sensation out of such a story, a general's son murdered under his own roof by a house-guest, complete with nudge-nudge hints about public school pals. Just now the war news was sensation enough, but the press might be one more reason why there was a policeman outside his door.

  The Times made his eyes swim, so he stopped reading for a while. He had just picked up The Lost World when he heard another voice he recognized, and all his muscles tensed. Had he not been tethered he might have rolled under the bed or jumped out the window. As it was, he tucked his book under the covers in case it might be snatched away from him, then waited for a second visitor who would not be restrained until formal visiting hours.

  The Reverend Roland Exeter was a cadaverous man, invariably dressed in black ecclesiastical robes. His elongated form was reminiscent of something painted by El Greco in one of his darkest moods, or a tortured saint in some Medieval church carving—a resemblance aided by his natural tonsure of silver hair, a homegrown halo. His face was the face of a melancholy, self-righteous horse, with a raucous, braying voice to match. Celebrated preacher and lecturer, Holy Roly was probably better known than the Archbishop of Canterbury. Alice called him the Black Death.

  He strode into the room clutching a Bible to his chest with both arms. He came to a halt and regarded his nephew dolefully.

  "Good morning, sir,” Edward said. “Kind of you to come."

  "I see it as my Christian duty to call sinners to repentance, however heinous their transgressions."

  "Caught the early train from Paddington, did you?"

  "Edward, Edward! Even now the Lord will not turn his face from you if you sincerely repent."

  "Repent of what, sir, exactly?"

  Holy Roly's eyes glittered. He was probably convinced of his ward's guilt, but he was not fool enough to prejudge the criminal matter with a policeman listening outside the door. “Of folly and pride and willful disbelief, of course."

  There had been no
need for him to come all the way to Greyfriars to deliver the sermon again. He could have written another of his interminable ranting letters.

  "I don't feel up to discussing such solemn matters at the moment, sir.” Edward's fists were clenched so hard they hurt, but he had tucked them under the sheet. This was not going to work. The two Exeters had exchanged barely a dozen friendly words in the two years since his parents died. Fortunately, the guv'nor's will had stipulated that Edward be allowed to complete his education at Fallow, or Roly might well have pulled him out. Roly had had no choice there, but his idea of pocket money for a public school senior had been five shillings per term, probably less than any junior in the place received.

  Also fortunately, Mr. Oldcastle had provided generously and regularly. Edward was resolved to have his affairs audited as soon as he reached his majority, for he strongly suspected that his parents’ money had long ago vanished into the bottomless pit of the Lighthouse Missionary Society. Meanwhile he must endure his minority for almost another three years.

  Holy Roly's wrinkles had twisted into an expression of mawkish pity. “You see that you have thrown it all away, don't you?"

  "Thrown all what away, sir?"

  "All the advantages you were given. You don't imagine Cambridge will accept you now, do you?"

  "I understood that every Englishman was innocent until proven guilty."

  "Then you are a fool. Even if you do not get your neck snapped on the scaffold, all doors are closed to you now."

  There might be a hint of truth in what the old bigot was saying, but he was obviously enjoying himself, preparing to heap hellfire on an immobilized sinner. His voice descended to an even more melancholy range. “Edward, will you pray with me?"

  "No, sir. I have told you before that I will not add hypocrisy to my shortcomings."

  His uncle came closer, opening the Bible. “Will you at least hear the Word of God?"

  "I should prefer not, sir, if you don't mind.” Edward began to sweat. Normally at this point he excused himself as politely as possible and left the room, but now he was trapped and the bounder knew it. That might be the main reason he had come.

  "Consider your sins, Edward! Consider the sad fate of the young friend you led into evil—"

  "Sir?” That was too much!

  "The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians,” Roly announced, opening the Bible, “beginning at the thirteenth chapter.” His voice began to drone like an organ.

  Blackened sepulchre! He had not come to ask after his nephew's health, or to ask what really happened, or what he could do to help, or to display faith in his innocence. He had come to gloat. He had been predicting Edward's perdition since the day they met and now believed it had happened even sooner than expected. He had to come and drool over it.

  How could two brothers have been so unalike?

  Edward closed his eyes and thought about Africa.

  He thought of Nyagatha, high in the foothills of Mount Kenya, amid forest and gorges, glowing with eternal sunshine, as if in retrospect the rainy seasons had been suspended for the duration of his childhood. He savored again the huge dry vistas of Africa under the empty sky, the velvet tropical nights when the stars roamed just above the treetops like clouds of diamond dust. He saw the dusty compound with the Union Jack hanging limp in the baking heat, scavenging chickens, listless dogs, laughing native children in the village. He recalled the guv'nor handing out medicines in the sanitarium; the mater teaching school in the shade of the veranda to a score of wriggling black youngsters and three or four whites; tribal elders arriving after treks of days or weeks to conclave in the black shadow of the euphorbia trees and listen solemnly to Bwana's advice or judgment; visiting Englishmen passing through the district, drinking gin and tonic at sundown and amusing themselves by talking to the boy, the future builder of Empire. It had all seemed quite natural—was not this how all white people grew up?

  Above all he remembered the leggy, bony girl in pigtails, who bossed him and all the other children of every color—who chose the games they would play and the places they would visit and the things they must do and the things they must not do, and with whom he never argued. He remembered again his horror when she had to go Home, to England, to the mystical ancestral homeland her parents had left before her birth.

  "Edward?"

  Hospital and pain returned. “I beg your pardon, sir. What did you say?"

  Holy Roly closed his eyes in sorrow. “Why can you not see that prayer and repentance are your only hope of salvation, Edward? He will make allowance for your doubts. Lord I believe; help thou mine unbelief!"

  His sepulchral, ivy-coated bleating was probably comforting the ward next door. It was giving his nephew prickly heat.

  "I appreciate your kindness in coming all this way to see me, sir."

  Hints were wasted on Uncle Roland.

  "Edward, Edward! Your father was a misguided apostate and look where it got him!"

  Edward tried to sit up and his leg exploded in flame. He sank back on the pillow, streaming sweat.

  "Good-bye, sir!” he said through clenched teeth. The pain was making him nauseated. “Thank you for coming."

  A flush of anger showed in the sallow cheeks. Roly slammed the bible shut. “Do you still not see? Exodus, chapter twenty-one, the fifth verse: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."

  "I never quite saw that as fair play, somehow,” Edward said, wondering what insanity was boiling inside the old maniac now. “Bowing down to what?"

  "Idols! False gods! The Father of Evil! Your father was a disgrace to his country and his calling and his race! Read what the board of inquiry wrote about him, how he betrayed the innocent savages placed in his care—"

  "Innocent savages? They were innocent until you Bible-bangers got to work on them! My parents would be alive today if a bunch of meddling missionaries—"

  "Your father turned away the Word of God and frustrated the laws of his own people and sold his soul to the Devil!"

  That did it. "Out!" Edward screamed, hauling on the bell-pull. “Go away or I shall throw things at you."

  "I warned him that the Lord would not be mocked!"

  "Nurse! Constable! Matron!"

  "Wherefore, seeing we are encompassed about ... “ declaimed his uncle, rolling his eyes up to inspect the electric lighting.

  The lanky policeman appeared in the doorway. Footsteps were hurrying along the corridor.

  "Get this maniac out of here!” Edward yelled.

  " ... sin which does so easily beset..."

  "Nurse! Matron! He's driving me as mad as he is. He's insulting my parents."

  "And it is also written—"

  "He's preaching sedition. Remove him!” To emphasize the point, Edward grabbed up the kidney-shaped dish and hurled it, aimed to bounce off the book his uncle was again clutching to his breast. It was unfortunate that at that moment the old man started to turn. The dish, in cricket parlance, broke to leg. As Matron steamed into the room, a loud shattering announced that Edward had bowled a vase.

  She impaled him with a glance of steel. “What is the meaning of this?"

  "He insulted my father...."

  Too late the expression on Holy Roly's cadaverous face registered. Edward could not call back the words, nor the act itself.

  He had resorted to violence!

  Matron spoke again and he did not hear her; he did not see an ample, whaleboned lady in a stiff white cap and starched uniform. He saw instead the crown prosecutor in black silk and wig. He heard himself being forced to admit to the jury the damning answer he had just given, and he heard the question that would follow as surely as night must follow day:

  "Do you remember discussing your father with Timothy Bodgley?"

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  24

  THE SUSPECT HAD TRAV
ELED TO PARIS AND BACK WITH Julian Smedley, who was therefore an obvious witness. The Smedleys resided at “Nanjipor,” Raglan Crescent, Chichester, and Leatherdale could justify another drive in that spiffy motorcar General Bodgley had placed at his disposal.

  "Nanjipor” was a terrace house. It had an imposing facade fronted by a garden of roses, begonias, and boxwood topiary hedges. From the outside, therefore, it was identical to all the other houses in its row. The interior was suffocatingly hot and resembled a museum of Oriental art—wicker chairs, gaudy rugs, brass tables, lacquer screens in front of the fireplaces, idols with innumerable arms, hideously garish china vases, ebony elephants. The English had always been great collectors.

  A chambermaid ushered Leatherdale into a parlor whose heavy curtains had been drawn, leaving the room so dark that the furnishings were barely visible. There he met Julian Smedley.

  For Bank Holiday, young Smedley wore flannel trousers with a knife-edge crease, a brass-buttoned blazer, and what must obviously be an Old Fallovian tie—he was too young to lay claim to be an Old-Anything-Else. His shoes shone like black mirrors. He sat very stiffly on the edge of a hard chair, his hands folded in his lap, staring owlishly at his visitor. He added, “sir,” to every statement he uttered. He gave his age as seventeen; he did not look it.

  A certain amount of reticence could be expected in anyone who found himself involved in a very nasty murder case and Smedley was probably shy at the best of times. He might have been more forthcoming had Leatherdale been able to speak with him alone.

  His father was present and had a right to be, as the boy was a minor. Sir Thomas Smedley was ex-India, a large, loud, and domineering man. He apologized for not being at his best: “Just recovering from a touch of the old malaria, you know.” He certainly did not look well—he was sweating profusely and his hands trembled. Tropical diseases were something else the English collected while bringing enlightenment to the backward races of the world.