The Scar

by Marina Dyachenko

  Egert was wont to require the same daring of those around him as he himself possessed, and he did his best to mock those who fell short of his expectations. He was especially unforgiving to Karver; once in late autumn, when the river Kava, which skirted the town, froze over for the first time, Egert proposed a contest to see who could run over it, from bank to bank, the quickest. All his friends quickly pretended to have important business to attend to, sicknesses and infirmities, but Karver, who showed up as he usually did just to be at hand, received such a contemptuous sneer and such a scathing, vile rebuke that he flushed from his ears to his heels. Within an inch of crying, he consented to Egert’s suggestion.

  Of course, Egert, who was taller and heavier, easily skimmed across the slick ice to the opposite bank as the fish in the gloomy depths gaped at him in astonishment. Of course, Karver got scared at the crucial moment and froze, intending to go back, and with a cry he dropped into a newly made, gleaming black opening in the ice, magnanimously affording Egert the chance to save him and by that act earn himself yet more laurels.

  Interestingly enough, he was sincerely grateful to Egert for dragging him out of the icy water.

  Mothers of grown daughters winced at the name of Egert Soll; fathers of adolescent sons put him up as an example for the youths. Cuckolds scowled darkly upon meeting Egert in the street, and yet for all that, they hailed him politely. The mayor forgave him his intrigues and debauches and ignored any complaints lodged against Egert because an event that had occurred during the boar-fighting season still lived in his memory.

  Egert’s father, like many in Kavarren, raised fighting boars. This was considered a sophisticated and honorable art. The black boars from the House of Soll were exceptionally savage and bloodthirsty; only the dark red, brindled boars from the House of the mayor were able to rival them in competition. There was never a contest but that in the finale these eternal rivals would meet, and the victory in these battles fluctuated between the two Houses, until one fine summer day, the champion of the mayor, a crimson, brindled specimen called Ryk, went wild and charged his way through the tilting yard.

  Having gutted his adversary, a black beauty by the name of Khars, the maddened boar dashed into the grandstand. His own brindled comrade, who happened to be in his path and who gave way with his belly completely shredded to pieces, delayed the lunatic boar for a short moment, but the mayor, who by tradition was sitting in the first row, only had time to let out a heartrending scream and, scooping up his wife, jump to his feet on the velvet-covered stand.

  No one knows how this bloody drama might have ended; many of those who came that day to feast their eyes upon the contests, the mayor and his wife among them, may have met the same sad fate as the handsome Khars, for Ryk, nurtured in ferocity from his days as a piglet, had apparently decided that his day had finally come. The wretch was mistaken: this was not his day, but Egert Soll’s, who appeared in the middle of the action before the public in the back rows even understood what was happening.

  Egert bellowed insults, most offensive to a boar, at Ryk while a blindingly bright piece of fabric, which later turned out to be the wrap that covered the naked shoulders of one of the more extravagant ladies in town, whirled without ceasing in his left hand. Ryk hesitated for all of a second, but this second was sufficient for the fearless Egert, who having jumped within a hairsbreadth of the boar, thrust his dagger, won on a bet, beneath the shoulder blade of the crimson-colored lunatic.

  The stunned mayor presented the most generous of all possible gifts to the House of Soll: all the dark-red, brindled boars contained within his enclosures were instantly roasted and eaten, though it is true that their meat turned out to be tough and sinewy. Egert sat at the head of the table while his father swallowed tears of affection and pride; now the ebony beauties of the Solls would have no equal in town. The elder Soll felt that his impending old age promised to be peaceful and comfortable, for there was no doubt that his son was the best of all the sons of the city.

  Egert’s mother was not at that feast. She often kept to her bed and did not enjoy noisy crowds of people. At one time, she had been a strong and healthy woman; she had taken to her bed soon after Egert killed his first opponent in a duel. It sometimes occurred to Egert that his mother avoided him and that she was nearly afraid of him. However, he always managed to drive away such strange or unpleasant thoughts.

  * * *

  One clear, sunny day—actually, it was the first real spring day of the year—an agreeable new acquaintance befell the merchant Vapa, who was strolling along the embankment with his young wife near at hand.

  This new acquaintance, who seemed to Vapa such an exceedingly distinguished young man, was, curiously enough, Lord Karver Ott. What was remarkable about this meeting was that the young guard was promenading in the company of his sister, a girl of uncommon proportions with a high, magnificent bust and humbly lowered gray blue eyes.

  The girl was named Bertina. As a foursome—Karver alongside Vapa and Bertina next to the beautiful Senia, the young wife of the merchant—they nonchalantly sauntered back and forth along the embankment.

  Vapa was astonished and simultaneously moved; it was the first time one of these “cursed aristocrats” had shown him such warm regard. Senia stole a passing glance at Karver’s youthful face and then immediately lowered her eyes, as though fearful of what the punishment might be for even a single forbidden glance.

  They passed by a group of guards, picturesquely stationed along a parapet. Casting a wary glance at them, Senia discovered that the young men were not chatting away as they usually did. Instead, they all stood with their backs facing the embankment and their hands held to their mouths; from time to time they trembled strangely, as if they were all suddenly stricken by one and the same ailment.

  “What’s wrong with them?” she wondered to Bertina.

  But Bertina merely shook her head sorrowfully and shrugged her shoulders.

  Anxiously shifting his gaze from the guards to his sister and then from his sister to Senia, Karver spoke suddenly in a lowered voice. “Ah, believe me, there is such a strong tradition of debauchery in this city! Bertina is an innocent girl; it is so hard to choose friends for her when one is wary of all the pernicious influences. Oh, how good it would be if Bertina could become friends with Mistress Senia.”

  With these last words, a sigh slipped out of him.

  The foursome turned and began to walk on the opposite side of the embankment; the guards on the parapet were now fewer, but those who remained stubbornly watched the river: all but one who was sitting squarely on the cobblestone pavement and having some sort of fit.

  “They’re drunk, as usual,” Karver noted in condemnation. The one who was sitting raised his clouded eyes and then doubled over, unable to control the laughter that pulled at his chest.

  * * *

  On the following day, Karver and his sister called upon Vapa. Bertina confessed to Senia that she did not know a thing about embroidering silk.

  On the third day, Senia, who was intolerably bored from whiling away her days in solitude, asked her husband to allow her to meet with Bertina more often: this would undoubtedly amuse them both, and furthermore Karver’s sister had asked Senia to give her lessons in embroidery.

  On the fourth day, Bertina presented herself. She was guarded by her faithful brother, who was unaccountably sullen, and as soon as he had greeted them and deposited his sister, he bowed his apologies and left. The merchant sat down to go over his accounts while Senia led her guest upstairs to her own rooms.

  A canary chirped in an ornamental cage. Needles and delicate linen were extracted from a basket. Bertina’s fingers, far too stiff and coarse, refused to comply with the task, but the girl seemed to be trying her best.

  “Dearest,” said Senia thoughtfully in the middle of the lesson, “is it really true that you are completely innocent?”

  Bertina pricked herself with a needle and put her finger in her mouth.

  “Don�
�t be embarrassed.” Senia smiled. “It seems to me that we can be completely open with each other. So are you really, well, you know what I mean?”

  Bertina raised her gray eyes to Senia, who saw with amazement that those eyes were unimaginably sorrowful. “Ah, Senia, that is such a sad tale.”

  “I thought as much!” the wife of Vapa exclaimed. “He seduced you and then dropped you, didn’t he?”

  Bertina shook her head and again sighed heavily.

  The room was silent for a short time and then from the street came the sound of friendly laughter from two dozen young throats.

  “The guards,” Senia muttered, going to the window. “They are laughing again. What are they always laughing for?”

  Bertina let out a sob.

  Senia turned away from the window and sat next to her. “I see. Was he, your beloved, was he a guard?”

  “If only,” whispered Bertina. “The guards are tender and honorable, the guards are faithful and manly, the guards…”

  Senia pursed her lips incredulously. “I highly doubt the guards are faithful. I think it is more likely that your beloved is called Egert Soll, isn’t that so?”

  Bertina jumped slightly on the cushions. The room again became quiet.

  “Dear one,” began Senia in a whisper, “you know you can tell me. Have you ever experienced, well, you know, they say that women can also experience, um, pleasure. Do you understand what I mean?” Senia blushed; such candor made her uneasy.

  Bertina again raised her eyes, but this time they were astonished. “But, my dear, you’re married!”

  “Yes, that’s just it!” Senia abruptly stood up, entirely out of humor. Forcing the words out between her teeth, she said, “I am married. So I am.”

  Her guest slowly set aside her embroidery.

  Their conversation went on for about an hour. Bertina talked and talked, but her voice never gave out: on the contrary, it discovered an almost musical quality as she progressed. She closed her eyes and tenderly stroked the back of the chair; she practically cooed at one point. Senia, unable to move, stared at her with widened eyes; she could only breathe and from time to time lick her parched lips.

  “And all that really happens?” she asked finally in a shaking, choked-up voice.

  Bertina slowly, solemnly nodded.

  “And I’ll never experience it?” Senia murmured, paralyzed by distress.

  Bertina stood up. She took a deep breath as if she were planning to plunge into cold water. She tugged at the front of her dress, and two round, padded sacks fell, one after the other, onto the floor.

  Senia’s breath caught in her throat, and she could not scream.

  The dress slid from Bertina like skin from a snake. Muscular shoulders, a wide chest covered in curly hair, and a stomach with well-defined ridges of muscle were revealed from beneath the dress.

  When the dress slipped even lower, Senia covered her eyes with her hands.

  “If you scream,” whispered the voice of the man who had been Bertina, “your very own husband will…”

  Senia did not hear the rest; she simply fainted.

  * * *

  Of course, Egert would not take advantage of the helplessness of a languishing woman. Of course, he quickly managed to bring Senia back to consciousness. And of course, their confidential conversation quickly resumed, though it was now of a decidedly different quality.

  “You promise?” asked Senia, shaking from head to toe.

  “Upon my word as a guard.”

  “You! You’re a guard?”

  “How can you ask! I’m Egert Soll!”

  “But—”

  “Only with your consent.”

  “But—”

  “One word, and I’ll go.”

  “But—”

  “Should I go?”

  “No!”

  On the first floor, the merchant Vapa was frowning angrily; his accounts just would not add up. The two dozen guards standing below the windows of his home got bored and decided to wander off.

  The needlework basket had long since tumbled to the floor, spilling colorful tangles of thread. The caged canary was silent, astonished.

  “Oh. Glorious Heaven!” gasped Senia, embracing Egert’s neck with her arms. He was silent; he no longer had the ability to speak.

  The poor little bird was beginning to get frightened. Its cage, which hung over the bed, was swaying, rhythmically and vigorously. An ancient clock emitted a majestic series of chimes, and then it did so yet again, and again.

  “Oh! Good Spirits! Glorious Heaven!” Senia did not know to whom else to pray; she was almost ready to burst from trying not to cry out at the top of her lungs.

  The merchant Vapa rubbed his hands contentedly: the mistakes had been corrected, and a careless scribe would soon lose his position. And how good it was that Senia had become friends with the sister of Lord Karver! For a whole day she had been neither seen nor heard; she did not fidget in front of him, or pester him, or ask to go out walking. The merchant smirked suddenly, thinking he might even have time to go out and visit his mistress.

  He raised himself up, intending to escape the confines of his armchair, but he winced at a pain in his back and remained seated.

  Lurching slightly, Egert Soll peered out the window toward the embankment. Naked and enervated, he stood in the window aperture and regarded his comrades with scorn. The merchant Vapa jumped and winced. Cursed guards! What did they have to laugh about so?

  A few minutes later, Senia and Bertina came downstairs. It seemed to Vapa that his wife was not herself, as if the lesson in embroidery had exhausted her. Saying good-bye, she looked into Bertina’s eyes with special tenderness.

  “You’ll come again, yes?”

  “Without fail,” breathed the girl, “I have not yet mastered this … stitch, dearest Senia.”

  The merchant sneered contemptuously. These women are so sentimental.

  “I’ll cut out the tongue,” Egert told his friends in the pub, “of anyone who gossips. Is that clear?”

  There was no doubt to anyone that he would do so if the secret of the merchant’s wife Senia became gossip in the town. They all remembered their hereditary blades and their family honor, and they held their tongues.

  They winked at Karver and shook his hand because it was clear to them that he had played a significant role in this whole affair. The congratulations, it seemed, afforded him little joy; heedless of the reflection of Egert’s glory that fell to him, his “brother,” Karver first got extremely drunk and then silently slipped away.

  * * *

  Spring broke forth with driving rains; muddy currents coursed through the steep, cobbled alleyways, and the children of cooks and shopkeepers launched wooden shoes with canvas sails attached to them off to sea while the young aristocrats peered at them from high, oriel windows with quiet envy.

  One morning, a simple highway coach drove up to the inn the Noble Sword, which was located near the center of Kavarren. The coachman, going against the usual habit of his kind, did not rush to open the door of the coach, but instead sat indifferently on the driver’s box; apparently, the passengers were not his masters, but nothing more than renters. The carriage door swung open on its own and a young man, slight and lean, kicked open the running board so he could step down.

  Outsiders were not all that rare in Kavarren, and it is possible that the arrival of the coach would have gone unnoticed had not Egert Soll and his friends been whiling away the hours at the Faithful Shield, a tavern opposite the inn.

  “Take a look at that one!” said Karver, who was sitting by the window of the tavern.

  Two or three heads turned in the direction he was looking; the other gentlemen were far too engrossed in their conversation or their wine.

  “I say, check it out!” Karver nudged Egert, who was sitting next to him, in the side.

  Egert glanced over. By this time, the young man had already jumped down onto the wet cobblestones and was offering his hand to someone unse
en, someone still inside the coach. The youth was dressed all in dark colors, and Egert instantly felt that there was some sort of oddity in the figure of the young stranger, but he was not sure what.

  “He’s not carrying a sword,” said Karver.

  Only then did Egert see that the stranger was unarmed, that he was not even wearing any empty baldrics, and that on his thin belt there was no sign of a dagger, not even a kitchen knife. Egert looked at him more intently; the stranger’s clothes seemed extremely formal, but if they made up a uniform, it was in no way military.

  “He’s a student,” explained Karver. “Definitely a student.”

  In the meantime, the student, having conferred with the person who still remained inside the coach, went to pay the coachman, who still did not display a single sign of obeisance; obviously, in addition to not being the coach’s owner, the student was not wealthy.

  “I suppose,” drawled Egert through his teeth, “students, like women, don’t wear swords?”

  Karver snickered.

  Egert smirked disdainfully and was about to turn his back on the window when a girl, leaning on the arm of the student, emerged from the carriage. All sound in the tavern immediately ceased.

  Her face was anxious, pale from exhaustion, and doleful from the rain, but even this could not spoil it. It was a perfect face, almost as if it were finely cut from marble; only, whereas a marble statue’s white, dead eyes would have stared dully, this girl’s dark, tranquil eyes gleamed lustrously without the slightest shade of coyness.

  Like her companion, the newly arrived girl was dressed simply. However, her simple traveling dress was unable to hide either her elegant figure or the lightness and suppleness of her movements. The girl jumped down onto the cobblestones next to the youth. He said something, causing the soft lips of his tired companion to quirk in a small smile and her eyes to become even more penetrating and vivid.