“They could be sister and brother,” said a voice speaking near Irene—speaking to her, she realized, startled from the absorbed compassion with which she had been watching Hugh.
Lord Horn had come to stand by her. He was not looking at her but at Allia and Hugh, set apart by their blondness from the others there. The old man’s long face was severe and calm as always. Irene said nothing, taken aback by the curious irony or intimacy of his remark. Presently he turned to her. “Will you be long with us, this time, Irenadja?”
“Only as long as I can be useful,” she said with sarcasm. Then she was ashamed. It was Horn who had said to her, “Your courage is beyond praise,” words she had treasured against frustration and self-doubt. There in the other land, where she could find no home, she had not thought who had said them to her, but had held fast to them: your courage, you have courage…You will not force your mother to make the choice she cannot make; you will not ask for help she cannot give. You don’t need help. Your courage is beyond praise.
“Lord Horn,” she said, “I wish I had gone to the City, when—when people still could go.”
“There is more than one road to the City,” he said.
“Were you ever there?”
He looked at her with his grey, distant gaze.
“I have been to the City. That is why I am called lord, because I have been there,” he said, kind and cold and calm.
“Did you see the King?”
“The shadow,” Horn said, “I saw the bright shadow of the King,” but the word was feminine so that it must mean the Queen or the Mother; and none of the words he spoke meant anything, and she understood them as she had never understood anything in her life. His eyes that looked always from a distance were on hers. If I reach out my hand and touch him I will see clearly, she thought. The screen will be gone and I will stand both there and here. But in that knowledge I am destroyed.
Horn’s grey eyes said gently, Do not touch me, child.
Someone was approaching them where they stood beside the hearth. She turned away slowly from Horn and saw, with indifference, that it was Master Sark.
“Now that Irena is here, my lord, we can speak to your guest more freely,” the Master said, deferent yet officious, impatient.
The old man looked at him and spoke as always after a pause: “Very well. Will you speak for us and for him, Irena?”
“Yes,” she said. She felt released from the stupor that had bound her down so long. She felt she could trust her own will again. She caught Hugh’s attention; the other people, falling silent, gathered round the hearth in a loose half-circle. Allia stood nearest Hugh. He looked from her to Irene with alert, clear eyes, a little apprehensive, candid as a child. Lord Horn spoke, and Irene translated his words and Hugh’s.
“We are asking your service, we are asking your help.”
Hugh nodded.
“We have no claim on you. If you do what we ask it is in pure mercy to those who have no other hope.”
“I understand.”
“We cannot help you, and you will be in danger.”
After a moment Hugh said, “What is the danger?”
She did not understand all Horn’s reply, but put it into English as well as she could: “We who live here are afraid—are the fear, he said—and so cannot face the enemy—only the other, the stranger, can turn its face, his face—I don’t understand what he’s saying, really.”
“Ask him who the enemy is.”
She asked. Horn answered, “The eye that sees gives form; the mind that knows, names.” So his words came out in English as she spoke them.
“Riddles,” Hugh said with a smile. He thought it over, began to ask a question, and checked himself; he waited. Patience became him, Irene thought. There was dignity in him, under the clumsiness. Part of the clumsiness, perhaps.
“What will you give him to take, my lord?” the Master said.
“The sword I was given, if he wants it,” Horn replied.
“What will you give him to give, my lord?”
She had begun to translate this for Hugh when she realized that the old man was speaking, slowly as ever, but with harsh weight: “You are your grandfather’s grandson, Sark, but where are the children of his daughter?”
“All of us,” the dark man said. “All of us are her children.”
“The children of fear. And so we are bound. And our right hands useless. Would you sell us again, Sark? Allia, bring the sword.”
She crossed the room to a chest against the inner wall, and knelt, and opened the lid.
The tension between Horn and the Master was so great, and its sources so obscure to Irene, that she did not try to interpret their exchange to Hugh. She and he both stood watching Allia.
Her pale fleece of hair floating, the girl returned across the room carrying on her hands a bright, thin strip of light. She stopped before her father; he motioned briefly and gravely towards Hugh. She turned to Hugh and raised her hands a little; she was smiling, but her lips and face were pale.
Hugh looked at the sword, and said under his breath, “My God.”
Without looking up from it at Allia or Horn or Irene, he took hold of the grip, awkwardly and with a dogged expression on his face, and lifted the sword from the girl’s hands. It was evidently heavy. He did not raise it or try to test or flourish it, but held it clumsily across the air in front of him, like a barrier.
“I judge from this,” he said with detachment, “that whatever it is I have to face is real.”
“I guess it is,” Irene whispered.
“I was hoping it would be magic. It would be easier. Listen. You’d better tell them that I didn’t take fencing in high school.”
He set the point of the sword down carefully on the polished floor and stood with his hand on the pommel, looking down at the handle and blade with an expression of grudging respect. The beautifully modeled grip looked right for his big hand; the blade was very thin and long. The hilt, where Irene looked for a crosspiece as in a picture-book sword, was a massive oval flange set with a ring of yellow stones.
Looking up from the sword at last, she saw that she was the first of them to do so. Sark’s face was pinched and aged; Horn gazed imperturbable.
“He says he has no skill with swords, my lord,” Irene said, and felt a strange small pleasure of malice in doing so, a solidarity, against Horn and all of them, with Hugh.
“I do not know if any skill would serve him,” the old man said. “I could not send him out unarmed.” His voice was sad, and the spark of defiance died down in Irene.
“It’s his sword, from the City, I think,” she said to Hugh.
“Thank you,” Hugh said to the old man, in the language of the twilight; and to Irene, “Well, can they tell me where to go, and what to do?”
When she asked his question, several of the men who had stood silent, listening, replied: “On the mountain,” one said, and another said, “In the mountain,” and old Hobim said, “It is the mountain.” The Master took the word from them. “Up the mountain, in the summer pasture on the High Step. Irena knows the way there.”
“No!” Allia broke in, her face gone wild and terrified. “Let me go—I will go with him—”
“You cannot,” Sark said. “You will be crawling on hands and knees, begging to turn back, before you have crossed the bridge.” He spoke with vindictive satisfaction, not trying to conceal it. Allia turned to her father, with her hands up over her white face, weeping.
“Tell me what they say,” Hugh said to Irene, desperately.
“They want you to go up the mountain, to the highest meadow. Allia wants to show you the way, but she knows she can’t. Lord Horn—”
But the old man was speaking, to Sark: “You would send the child, again, Sark? You know only the one way. But you can no longer send her, or keep her. And a road goes two ways. Where are their faces set, who came to us from the south?”
“Tell them never mind,” Hugh said. “I’ll go where they say. If I
go out looking for trouble with this thing, I expect I’ll find it.”
“It’s a long way and there are different paths. I’ll go with you, I’ve been up there.”
“All right,” he said, unquestioning.
She turned to Horn. “He will go. I will go with him.”
The old man bowed his head.
“When shall we go?”
“When you will.”
“When do you want to go?” she asked Hugh. She was beginning to feel shaky; Allia’s tears made her want to cry.
“The sooner the better.”
“You think so?”
“Want to get it over with,” he said with simplicity. He looked at Allia, who stood protected by her father’s arm; she did not look up to meet his eyes.
“Tomorrow,” he said, after a little pause. “Ask them if that’s O.K.”
“You’re the boss.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Why can’t they say—It isn’t fair. For all I know they’re just sending you out as a—I don’t know. A scapegoat. A—.” But she could not think of the word she wanted, that meant something given up as an offering.
“They’re stuck,” he said. “They can’t do what they have to do. If I can, then I will. It’s all right.”
“I don’t think you ought to go.”
“It’s what I came for,” he said. He looked at her, completely unselfconscious. “What about you, though? If you think it’s a mug’s game…No use both of us being stupid.”
She saw the firelight run in long slivers of tawny red up the blade of the sword.
“I know the way, you’ll need somebody. But anyhow. I don’t want to stay here. Any more.”
“I could stay here forever,” he said under his breath, looking at Allia, not at her face but at the white hand against the blue-green dress.
“Most likely you will,” Irene said, but an unwilling pity muted her bitterness, her sense of betraying and having been betrayed; and he did not understand her.
She was asked to stay and dine with them at the manor, but excused herself and got away as soon as she could. Hugh didn’t need an interpreter; he got on better without speaking the language than she did speaking it. And she could not bear to be with them any longer. It was her fault, she had been a fool, but it was too late now. It was all too late. She had paid no heed to the wise and dangerous man, and had made her promise to the empty-hearted one. She had mistaken herself, and chosen to be a slave. So she was left now to look at her master, her mirror, and see no trust, no honesty, no courage. His darkness was emptiness, and all he felt was envy.
And yet, if Allia were to look at him, would she not see that proud man Irene had seen? It was they that belonged together, he dark and bright, she fair and cool. How could he not be envious when Hugh stood beside her? Sister and brother, Lord Horn had said looking at Hugh and Allia, but looking at Allia and Sark he would say lover and lover, man and wife. And that was as it should be. All here was as it should be, as it must be; all but her, who did not belong here, or anywhere, having no house, no people of her own.
She ate supper with Palizot and Sofir, and spent a little while in the firelit kitchen with Palizot after supper, but there was no going back to the old tranquillity. The thread on which she had strung her life was tied off; the game was done. She had pretended to be their daughter but it had never been the truth, and now the pretense was only a constraint upon affection. And, knowing she was going up on the mountain in the morning, though they tried not to show it they were in awe of her. Sofir was miserable. Palizot carried it off better, but the hypocrisy was trying to all three of them, and Irene soon bade them good night and went to her room.
She drew the curtains across the changeless clarity of the sky, lighted the fire, and sat down to think. No thoughts worth thinking came. She was weary. She went to bed. There, before she slept, listening to the wind which was gusting a little, buffeting the dormers of the old house, she thought, “Whatever happens, I won’t come back to Tembreabrezi. It’s time to go. To be gone. He only made me promise to do what I would have done anyway.” There was no comfort in the thought, yet it quieted her. Resentment, the sense of betrayal, rose from resisting the knowledge that she must go, pretending she could keep what she had loved. There was nothing to keep, except maybe the willingness to love. If she lost that she was lost, all right.
She asked herself why she was no longer afraid. Her tiredness now was the memory in nerve and muscle of the endless sickening fear she had felt coming, this time; but though she made herself imagine going out on the road, going up on the mountain, no awful chill began in the pit of her stomach, no panic in pulse or mind. Maybe that meant she had finally made the right choice—done what you came for, as Hugh said, poor Hugh, heavy and anxious, with his honest eyes. He was going though he did not want to go, wanted to stay. What choice was right, then? But that would prove itself, and meanwhile there was no fear, but only sleep, here rising from the sources deeper than dream, beyond the screen of word or touching hand, the mountain that is within the mountain, the sea that is in the spring, here where no rain fell.
When the household woke and she got up, she dressed in her jeans and shirt and desert boots, intending, as always when she left the ain country, to take nothing across the threshold with her; but then she went to the chest in the hall for an old, patched cloak that Palizot had given her when she went down the north road with the merchants. It was of dark red wool, much stained, ragged at the hem, but warm, and easily carried as a little back roll. Sofir, with the same idea that this journey might not be over with in a day, had made her a hefty packet of dried meat and cheese and hard bread, enough for several days certainly, and she rolled that up in the cloak.
She and Palizot clung to each other for a minute. Neither could say anything. It was an end, and words are for beginnings. She kissed Sofir and he kissed her, and she left the inn.
As she came out into the courtyard she saw Aduvan and Virti and other children, waiting for her, looking excited but a little frightened or bewildered. They did not say much, but clustered around her as if for reassurance. A group of people were coming down the street of steps: Horn and Allia, Sark and Fimol, a group of old men and women, and Hugh amongst them, tall and white-faced, the ox led to slaughter. They waited at the foot of the street and Irene with her escort of children came to join them.
Other people stood in their doorways along the street that led westward through town. They greeted Lord Horn softly by his title, and Hugh and herself by name. “Irena, Irenadja.” Some joined their group, and others gathered at the crossings. She realised that this was their parade. Sad and quiet the people of Tembreabrezi gathered to honor them, to wish them well, to send their hope with them.
A young father held his baby up to see Hugh go by. That made her want to laugh, a foolish, jeering laugh, and she scowled to prevent the laugh. Big Hugh, in the handsome leather coat they had given him, and his backpack, and the sword in a leather sheath at his side, would have looked like a hero if only he had known he was a hero; but he looked wretched, embarrassed, hunching his shoulders and losing his share in glory because nobody had ever told him he had a share in glory.
The street leading west out of town became a road, pavement stones giving way to packed earth. The houses on either hand were lower, and then fewer, and then the fields began, walled with rock, and the long low pastures where all the flocks were now, west and north of town. People had joined them so that as they walked between the walled fields there were forty or fifty walking along together, easily and quietly. With a leap of the heart Irene thought, “Maybe they’re coming with us, maybe all they needed was to start out with us, and we can all keep together and go on.” But the parents of the children were walking with the children, now. They had taken the children’s hands; they stooped to them and spoke softly. No voice spoke aloud. “Irena,” Aduvan said in an unhappy whisper, standing beside her mother and little brother. Irene turned back to them. O
ther children put up their arms to her, whispering, “Goodbye!” Virti would not kiss her; he cried, whimpering, “I don’t want to see the bad thing, I don’t want to see it!” Trijiat turned back with him. Irene went on; she looked back once; the children stood there on the road, in the dusk. No lights showed behind them in the town.
Women and men stopped, one by one. They stood still on the road, watching the others go on. The soft, restless wind blew by them.
The shoulder-high wall of dryset stones continued on the left, and on the right a high hedge darkened the way. She could just make out the whitish stones of the bridge that carried the mountain road over a small torrent which spread out below as a stream watering the pastures. That would be the boundary: the bridge.
“Goodbye, Irena,” a woman said softly as she came past. The wind blew out her grey skirt a little, her face looked pale in the dim light on the road. She was Aduvan’s grandmother, Trijiat’s mother; she had taught Irene to spin. “Goodbye,” Irene said to her. The road curved a little to the left, towards the bridge. She passed the Master standing rigid and desperate, his hands clenched at his sides. She said, “Goodbye, Sark,” calling him by his name for the first time and the last. He did not or could not speak. She went on a little farther and halted beside Lord Horn. Near him, Allia’s hair shimmered in the dusk of the road as if it held light in it, as she stood facing Hugh.
“May our hope go with you, may our trust support you,” Allia said in her soft, clear voice in her own language. He said only, and only Irene understood it, “I love you.”
“Farewell!” Allia said, and he repeated the word.
Lord Horn’s hand, thin and light, was on Irene’s shoulder. She looked up at him startled. Smiling, he kissed her on the forehead. “Go without looking back, my daughter,” he said.
She stood bewildered.
Hugh was going on towards the bridge. She must go with him. She passed Allia, standing silent in the dark road like a statue. He called me daughter, her heart said, he called me daughter. She went on. They all stood silent in the dusk on the road behind her. She did not look back.
The Beginning Place Page 13
