CHAPTER THREE
The discussion of blades went on for a long time; Andrew knew a good deal more about the subject than Peter did. He spoke about leaf-bladed swords, double-edged daggers, wasp-waisted blades, razor-sharp thigh-daggers . . .
Inevitably, they worked their way round to the topic of jokes about blades. And in this manner Peter was finally able to raise the subject that he had most wanted to talk about with Andrew.
“Girls,” he said, “are more mysterious than a thousand Case volumes written in Railik.”
He looked up and found that Andrew was giving his shadow-smile again. With much effort, Peter had managed to persuade Andrew that it would be better for them to eat on the bed than on the floor. Now Andrew was perched on the very edge of the bed, reaching forward to pick final bits of meat from his plate, while Peter, left with plenty of room, sprawled out on his stomach atop the blanket.
“I suppose it’s because I never knew my mother,” he said, staring down at the blanket as he ran his fingers over the yarn. “I don’t remember my wet-nurse well, and I never had a dry-nurse; slave-servants looked after my needs as soon as I was old enough to be weaned. The people I’ve been around the most have all been men. But I give witness, I’m sure that I would have found girls mysterious even if I’d been surrounded by them all my life. I’ll be talking to them, and they’ll start giggling when I haven’t made any jokes, and they’ll get all teary-eyed when I haven’t said anything sad, and they’ll keep blinking, as though we were standing in sunlight—”
“They’re trying to make you notice their eyelashes.”
Peter looked up at his slave. “Are they?”
Andrew nodded, worldly-wise at age eleven.
“Well, then, why don’t they just say, ‘See what beautiful eyelashes I have’?”
Andrew laughed then. It was the first time Peter had ever heard him laugh; his chuckle was softer than the flames eating the logs nearby.
Peter smiled. “Oh, well, I suppose they couldn’t say that. But girls really are like a book written in a foreign tongue. It will take me years to figure them out. The only part I’m sure about is that I’ll like the mating.”
Andrew suddenly stopped smiling. He looked down at his plate, picking at it with his knife, as though food remained there.
Peter hesitated, wondering whether he ought to change the subject. He knew what his father would think of him discussing this matter with a slave. But there were certain things he just couldn’t ask his father – things that Andrew might know about, since he seemed to know quite a lot about different subjects.
Peter stared down at the blanket for a minute. Next to his treasures, the blanket was his favorite object in the room; it had been created by an Arpheshian weaver as a gift for the Chara To Be. The blanket showed the Chara’s seal: the Balance of Judgment holding the Sword of Vengeance and the Heart of Mercy. The Heart – a fluttering bird with a bleeding breast – made Peter think of the bird that Andrew had trapped and killed. Peter traced his finger across one of the tiny, open-paged books woven around the seal, wishing that everything in life was as orderly as the Chara’s law.
“Andrew,” he said, “do you ever dream of girls?”
He looked up again. Andrew had abandoned his plate and was staring at the wall. After a minute, the slave said, “I used to dream of them at home.”
“At home?” cried Peter, jerking up onto his elbows in astonishment. “But you were only eight then!” In his chest of treasures was the certificate of transfer of ownership for Andrew, made out to the Chara, since Peter’s father was the official owner of the slave. The certificate was signed by Lord Carle, and it provided the date on which Lord Carle had bought the slave, as well as Andrew’s date of birth.
Andrew looked at him sidelong. “My mother said I was precocious.”
Peter laughed. After a minute, Andrew shadowed a smile. Reaching over, Peter refilled Andrew’s water-cup and shoved it in his direction. “Eight years old. All I was thinking of when I was eight was whether I could be High Judge without having to memorize a dozen laws each day.” He waited until Andrew had drained the cup and set it down again before adding, “I always thought you were mature for your age.”
Andrew looked sidelong at him again. He said nothing. Peter tried to think of a way to get himself past the hurdle of asking the question he wanted to ask.
Andrew filled the gap by saying, his eyes now focussed once again at the wall, “The physician thought that would make a difference.”
“Physician? You mean Woods? Or his assistant?” Woods was the palace physician, but he did not deign to tend the slaves; he left that work to one of his many assistants.
“No. A city physician. He never told me his name. He told me . . . he asked me questions. I didn’t answer them, but he examined my body, and he seemed to know that I was old for my age. He said it was better for me. It was better that I was just beginning to mature when they did it.”
Peter wondered whether his face was as blank as his mind. Glancing at him, Andrew said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“No.” He was beginning to think that he had not paid careful enough attention to the talk his father had given him. Was Peter to be examined by a physician too, when he gave signs that he was maturing? Who were “they,” and what had they done to Andrew? Would it be done to Peter as well?
Andrew wrapped his arms around his legs. His knuckles were bone-white as he gripped his hands together. Whatever it was that “they” had done, it had evidently not been pleasant. He said finally, “Suppose you own a horse.”
“All right,” Peter said, resigning himself to another long discussion of farmyard behavior. At the start of their conversation on marital duties, his father had spent quite a long time talking about farm animals before he had finally reached the point of his tale. Peter had been half convinced, before he figured out what the point of the conversation was, that his father was preparing to break the news that he did not consider Peter to be worthy to be his heir, so he had arranged for Peter to supervise of one of the Chara’s country estates.
“And the previous owner wants to make the horse into a gelding.” Andrew’s gaze remained fixed on the wall.
“Yes?” Peter prompted, trying to follow the path of Andrew’s thought.
“If he does it when the colt is quite young, the colt is just a gelding. The colt can’t do anything. But if the owner waits till the horse is older, when the horse is starting to become a stallion, he . . . it’s still a gelding. It can’t mate. It can’t . . . insert its blade into a mare. But it can . . . do other things. You see?”
“Oh, yes.” Peter did not, in fact, have the least notion what Andrew was talking about, but it was hard to admit outright that he had paid so little attention to what the Chara had told him. Perhaps, somewhere in the law books, there was a passage that talked about colts and geldings and stallions, which would help him make sense of what Andrew had just said.
Working his way back to the last part of the conversation he had been able to understand, Peter asked, “So do you still dream about girls?”
Again that look out of the corner of the eye. “Occasionally.” Then: “Quite a lot, actually.”
Peter sighed as he rested his chin upon the back of his hands, which were flat against the blanket. “I only started dreaming about them this year. Do you . . .” He licked his lips in a nervous twitch before asking, “Do you dream about mating with them?”
“Sometimes.” Andrew’s voice was still cautious, but he was looking straight at Peter now.
“I dream about that a lot,” Peter confessed. “I wondered whether anyone else did.”
Andrew seemed absorbed in the conversation now; he turned his body to face Peter. “I suppose lots of people dream about things they can’t have.”
“Yes.” Peter sighed. He would have to wait until he was married, and that might be years from now. Just getting the council’s permission to marry would take him months, he had been told.
“Well, at least there’s the dreams. That’s something. Do you ever . . . I mean, do you discover, after you’ve dreamt . . .” He hesitated again, and then, girding up his courage as though he were ordering his first execution, he asked the question he had not dared ask his father.
Thankfully, Andrew’s reply was matter-of-fact. “No, but it doesn’t signify in my case. It’s different for me.”
Peter nodded. He forgot sometimes that Andrew was three years younger than himself. Even being mature for his age, Andrew would not have yet reached that stage, Peter supposed. “But for me . . .” he prompted.
“For you, it means you’re ready to beget children.” Andrew, as always, had the information Peter needed.
“Oh.” He thought about this. He had always assumed that he would not be ready to sire children until he came of age, but he supposed that was why his father had decided to hold the discussion now, rather than wait until Peter was sixteen. “I think I can manage that.”
His voice must have sounded doubtful, for Andrew laughed. Peter grinned up at him. “You know what I mean. I don’t mean giving my wife a child, but . . . all the rest of it. The mating part. It doesn’t sound as though it would be difficult. Actually . . .” He felt his cheeks begin to grow warm. “I’m actually looking forward to it. Does that make me precocious too?”
“It makes you ready to marry.” Andrew smiled at him.
“Oh, no.” Peter shook his head. “No, not at all. Not till I can figure out what the pattern is to when girls giggle. I don’t suppose there’s a law which covers that, is there?”
Andrew laughed again, and Peter, relieved that the hard part of the conversation was over, sat up. He had other questions, but he no longer feared that Andrew would be scandalized by having the Chara To Be consult him on such matters. After all, Andrew must have thought about such matters himself, since he was a boy too. Placing both their plates onto the sideboard, Peter said, “I suppose that you’ll marry as soon as you can?”
Andrew went rigid.
It was like seeing a soft clay ornament suddenly turn into the diamond-hard Sword of Vengeance. Every bone in his body, every piece of flesh, turned adamantine. All the laughter had fled from his face.
Peter remembered, too late, that slaves were not permitted to marry. “I meant . . . I didn’t mean marry, of course. But I know that some of the slave-men mate with slave-women, so I thought, since you’re dreaming about girls . . .”
Andrew’s eyes were as dark now as a night-shadowed pit. Peter was just trying to figure out whether he had cast a slur on Andrew’s honor by suggesting that the boy would sleep with a girl outside marriage when Andrew leapt up from the bed, so vigorously that the bed shook against the sideboard. Peter’s goblet, still filled with the sugar-laden wild-berry wine, tipped over and spilled onto the blanket.
Peter was trying to determine where his face-cloth had gone, so that he could hastily wipe up the liquid, when he became aware that Andrew was no longer standing by the bed. The slave was backing up slowly, his eyes fastened upon Peter in the same horrified expression a man might show if faced with the Sword of Vengeance.
“Andrew!” Peter jumped up from the bed, the ruined blanket forgotten. “What’s wrong?”
Andrew did not reply. He had reached the wall next to the hearth now, and he flattened himself against it, as though trying to hide from danger.
“Andrew, what—?” Peter had reached the other side of the room. On the point of stretching out to touch Andrew, he let his hand fall. His slave was staring at him, as dumb and aghast as a farmyard animal faced with some terrible fate.
“What is it?” whispered Peter.
“I thought you knew.” Andrew’s voice emerged faintly, as though he were being strangled.
“Knew what?”
“I’m a eunuch.”
A bit of log fell, soft into the ashes, sending sparks of flame up the chimney. In the corridor, the guards talked quietly with one another. Beyond the shutters, a mockingbird trilled at the night sky.
“No,” said Peter, hearing his own voice as from far away. “No, you couldn’t be.”
Andrew said nothing. The look of horror had gone; now his face was a mask, as blank as it had been on the evening when Peter had watched him serving Lord Carle.
“You couldn’t be,” Peter repeated. He looked again at Andrew, seeing nothing he had not seen before: a boy wearing a slave-tunic, dark-skinned, but otherwise no different from himself.
Still Andrew made no reply. Still the mask stayed in place, as though it had always been there.
“Who . . . ?” Peter had to stop to clear his throat. “Was it the soldier who enslaved you who did it?” They. Andrew had said they had done it. And there had been a physician from the city. From the Koretian capital?
“No. Lord Carle.” Andrew’s voice turned toneless.
Peter stared at him, willing away the words. Then he shouted, “No! It couldn’t be! Not Lord Carle!”
Andrew said nothing. Peter tried to control the sickness that was overwhelming him. Lord Carle. . . . And he had spoken so lovingly of the Chara’s law. . . . He had given Peter the brooch with the royal emblem upon it, the balance between judgment and mercy. . . .
“You could give me back.”
Peter stared, trying to make sense of Andrew’s words. “Give you back?”
“To Lord Carle. He would probably return all your money. You have only had use of me for a week.”
The final, cold words, stiltedly formal, were like a blow. Peter asked, “Why should I want to do that?”
It took Andrew another minute to speak. Peter could see the struggle in him from the way in which his fists formed. Finally the slave said, in that same, dead voice, “Damaged goods.”
“No!” Peter heard the anguish in his own voice and strove to take control of himself. “No, I don’t see you that way. You’re not damaged. You’re . . . different. You’ve always been different from other people. I like you different. I . . . like you this way.”
He tried tentatively to touch Andrew. Andrew flinched. Peter hastily drew his hand back. He could not think of the right thing to say. He supposed it was cruelty itself for him to have hinted that he preferred Andrew gelded. He heard Andrew’s voice echoing in his head: “Buried, cold . . . dead.”
Peter said, unable to think of the right way to phrase his thought, “I still want you.”
Andrew made no reply. The terrible, blank mask that he always wore around other palace residents remained in place; it made him look like a complete stranger.
Feeling as though he were floundering in an ice-cold avalanche, Peter said, “‘They’ . . . you said they did it to you. Not Lord Carle.”
“Not with his own hands.” Something about the way Andrew spoke conveyed that the slave thought Lord Carle would gladly have wielded the gelding knife himself, if it had suited his fancy. “He gave me over to the dungeon torturers at the time he bought me. They brought in a city physician to advise them on how to do it.”
Peter felt a cold sickness enter his stomach. The palace dungeon. An eight-year-old boy had been gelded in his own palace, and he had not even known.
He had been aware that men were sometimes gelded in the dungeon, of course. It was part of the so-called Slave’s Death – the manner of execution for disobedient palace slaves and for treacherous free-men. Sometimes a pardon was given to the condemned prisoner before the full death had been exacted – hence the presence of eunuchs in the palace.
But gelding a young boy?
“What did you do?” Peter could not imagine what the crime had been. Even if Andrew had tried to kill Lord Carle, surely the lord – who was said to be the finest bladesman in the council – could easily have defended himself against a small boy.
Andrew had been looking Peter straight in the eye all this time. Now, as though recollecting his proper place, he dropped his eyes. He said in his dead voice, “I looked straight at him. I told him I was Koretian – that I did not wish to be a
n Emorian.”
In the silence that followed, the palace trumpets called the half-hour warning before the midnight hour. Peter turned away, feeling the chill on his skin turn to clamminess. Lord Carle. Lord Carle, of all people. The man Peter had revered most, next to his father. Peter had even pleaded to his father that the council lord be assigned as his tutor.
Such a man had gelded an eight-year-old boy for a slight offense.
Peter stumbled his way over to the windows, seeking the freshness of the night air that was making its way through the cracks in the shutters. He felt a sudden urge to throw the royal emblem brooch in the fire. Lord Carle. How could Peter ever trust anything his new tutor would tell him about the Chara’s law? Gripping the mantelpiece, Peter stared blindly at the misshapen Balance of Judgment.
It was some time before he realized that Andrew had left the chamber.
Re-creation: gift for a slave (The Three Lands) Page 3
