Later that night she heard Senghor in argument with men outside her door: they were demanding to come in. The girls downstairs had talked about her to their customers.
Next day, but not till the afternoon, she went down to the big room. The women had just got up, and were lolling about, yawning. The little plump girl was sitting inside the arms of the tall white one, with her straight, pale hair; she was stroking and playing with the hair, but when she saw Mara, she reached out, took Mara's hands with little cries of pleasure, and pulled her down. So Mara was sitting within touching distance of this white female, who was so alien and so disturbing; and when the little girl said, "Talk to us, Mara, tell us something," she found it hard to compose herself. She told her story again, because what else could she tell them, when they were so curious about her? They took it as a tale, an invention, for what she said was so far from their experience, and this even though some were from the country regions of Bilma, sold by their parents to Dalide, because of hard times. None had known real hunger and could not conceive that there might not be water to drink. So Mara told her own tale and marvelled at it with them, particularly as she left out all references to the gold coins that had saved her and Dann. So the central thread of the story was not there and sometimes in the tale it sounded as if the brother and sister's successful flight had been due to supernatural interventions, instead of the slog of endurance backed by the little store of gold that had spent years hidden inside a battered floor candle.
She finished the tale as the customers were coming in, while the girls clamoured for her to come again tomorrow and tell them another tale. The girl, Crethis, who had been as close to her during the telling as she could, short of climbing inside her arms, now returned to sit on the lap of her pale friend, Leta, whom the others called the Albina. But immediately Crethis had to leave Leta, because in came a man who claimed her. He was a sensible looking, serious, pleasant man who seemed like a Mahondi — was he one? Yes, he was. He took a good, long look at Mara, nodded, smiled, but did not ask for her. He took Crethis off with him to a private room, and Mara went upstairs.
There she found that all her dresses had been washed and hung up. Her bag of coins had been put on the table.
She tried on the two gowns from Chelops. Well, these flounced, bright cottons had seemed fine enough, then. She put on the indestructible brown garment, and stood in front of the glass. It was short on her now, just to her knees, and seemed to float around her like a shadow. She was standing looking into the water-wall when Senghor came in with her supper tray and saw her. At once he pointed to what she wore and said, "What is that thing?" For he had tried to wash it.
"Once there was a civilisation that made things which were — they never wore out."
He shook his head: I don't understand.
"A people, long ago, hundreds of years..." She thought he had taken in the hundreds and tried, "Thousands of years ago, they found the secret of how to make things — houses, garments, pots, cans, that last for ever."
"What people? Who? Where?"
"Long ago. No one knows." He stared, his forehead puckering. "There were many peoples who lived and then vanished. No one knows why."
His face, as he stared at her, was sombre, awed, but also angry. Then he decided to laugh. "You must tell this story to the girls — they would like it," he said, and then dismissed all these difficult thoughts with an energetic shake of the head.
Next day, after the midday meal, when all the house and everyone in it was sleepy and heavy, the girls because sleep was their refuge from their lives, Mara went down again and found Crethis in her place in Leta's arms. This time Mara sat so close that Crethis did not have to move, but put out her hand to stroke Mara, or touch her hair, from inside Leta's protection.
Mara told them of the cities everywhere that had fallen into ruins, and the city she had seen that could never change or fall down; and then she began to tell them of the past of where they were now, the lands around Bilma. They listened, leaning forward, so interested they forgot their sweets and the poppy, and their yawns.
"From where we are to the Middle Sea was once only sand. The Middle Sea is called that because it was once a sea, but now it is only an enormous hollow in the earth where once a moon hit — it fell out of the sky and tore the earth open. Only sand. Imagine that a white streak of sand you see on the road grows and becomes everything you see — everything is sand everywhere you look." Crethis's friend had come in and was listening. He signalled to Crethis to stay where she was, and not interrupt Mara. "Yet under this sand were once forests and fields where people grew corn. Forests and fields that fed people, and then for some reason the sand covered it all over. And then after many, many years" — she did not dare say hundreds, let alone thousands — "over the sand blew earth, and then seeds, and then again instead of sands were forests, deep forests. But people came to live in the forests, and they began to cut down the trees, and what you see now is that stage, people making towns among the forests and cutting trees and — everything always is a stage, one way of being changes into another."
The young women seemed troubled, or anxious, but not all. Some understood and leaned forward to listen, and Leta in particular followed every word.
"And when will the sands come back here?" asked one.
"Who knows? But perhaps it will all be sand again, where nothing can grow; but just when they think everything is dead, nothing will ever grow, the seasons will change and the rain is different and, instead of spreading, the sands go and there will be forests."
"As we have now," said Crethis, and she smiled over Leta's arm at the man who was listening.
"We have light forests now, and in them towns and great spaces where there are fields, and there the soil is blowing away and thinning. Deep under our feet are the sands of the time when all this was desert, sands as far as you could see."
Crethis's friend nodded, approving, which silenced the little sighs and exclamations of incredulity.
"Where did you learn all this?" he asked Mara.
"From Shabis in Charad. He taught me everything I know."
He looked hard at her, meaning her to mark it, and said, "I know Shabis."
"Do you know Darian?"
"Yes, I do know Darian."
That meant, he would know about Dann. He got up, signalled to Crethis to accompany him, and said to Senghor, "Mara will come with us." "It is not permitted," said Senghor. "I will answer for it to Mother Dalide."
The three went into a side room that had a table and cakes and a jug of juice, and even fruit, as well as the bed. Senghor tried to come in but had the door shut in his face.
Mara sat in the only chair, and the other two sat on the bed, where Crethis snuggled up to her friend, who put his arm around her, with an indulgent smile.
"My name is Daulis. I am one of the Council of Bilma." "You don't look like the others."
"Thank you, Mara. I hope I am not like them — but not all are like the ones who spend their evenings here."
"I wish you spent all your evenings here," Crethis said, and pouted. This pout and the accompanying dimples were not something put on for work, but were how Crethis was, always — little smiles, and pats and pouts, and snuggles and strokes.
"Your brother is in danger, Mara. There is a big reward for bringing him back to Charad. And for Darian, too."
"I don't understand why Shabis couldn't — just bend the rules."
"Shabis is very much the odd man out among the Generals. Dann was his protege. Darian was going to replace Dann. The other Generals criticised Shabis: they said Dann and Darian were too young. Shabis said they were both as competent as men twice their age. It is only a question of time before they are caught and taken back to Shari and a big show trial."
The tears were running down Mara's face. Little Crethis, from Daulis's lap, leaned forward to stroke them away.
"So, Dann and Darian have gone up to Kanaz."
"How?" But she knew.
"The
y were employed as coachmen. Pushing the coaches to Kanaz."
She could not prevent a despairing wail of laughter. "We joked that this might happen. But we said I would be riding in the coach." "He will wait for you in Kanaz."
"And how am I going to get to Kanaz?" she said bitterly. "I am to be sold here."
He looked gently at her, and smiled, and she knew that this was the man to whom she would be sold. Meanwhile Crethis was smiling up at him and her hand was down inside the pocket of his robe. Mara knew that she had to leave. She got up, and saw how he looked at her, humorously, and like a friend. She went out, shut the door, and there was Senghor.
"I am sure it is all right," she said. "It seems that Daulis is a special friend of Mother Dalide's."
"Yes, they are friends. But it is forbidden, what has happened."
Back in her room, she sat down to think. Daulis was going to buy her, but meanwhile he was making love with Crethis. This made her sad. She hoped it wasn't jealousy, and knew she was foolish.
To be sold to Daulis, when she had seen what kind of man she might have been sold to — surely this was reason enough to be happy. And she was, if not happy, relieved, and realised that her breathing had been oppressed and shallow for days. She was breathing deeply again, from her diaphragm, and she did not feel as if there were knives in her eyes.
This man knew about Dann, knew about her, and wanted to help them. Why did he? He was a Mahondi, yes. There was something here, she knew, that should have been explained. Would it be explained? When Dalide came back, he would pay the old woman the sum of money for Mara and then — she would be out of here. But Dalide might be gone for days, for weeks..
18
Mara was falling asleep, and she was thinking, not of Daulis but of Shabis. He loved her, so Dann had said, and she had never seen it or thought about it. Now she did think, seeing him standing there in her past, smiling at her, tall, kind, generous, but like a father, not a lover. Her heart was warm, thinking of him, but not as when she thought of Meryx, poor Meryx, who would never know he had fathered a child.
Mara's arms were full of a sweet warmth, small arms clung, and she felt a wet baby mouth open on her cheek and heard baby laughter. She woke, grieving, in the early morning. She had not allowed herself to think of the child disposed of by the wise women of Goidel, and she was not going to remember it now. Up she got, and washed and dressed and sat at the window, while the watchmen kicked aside the smoking logs of their night fire and went off yawning to their beds. Sunlight everywhere. A clear, cool sunlight, and she saw a little animal, a pet like her Shera, long ago, and it was frisking in some fallen leaves. It was so quiet here, in Mother Dalide's house. When Senghor brought her breakfast she thought he looked at her differently, but did not know what that meant. She sat at the window all morning, and nothing happened in that garden; and the guard yawning, and a small wind shaking a scarlet wall plant so that its shadows moved in patterns on the stone, were big events. Below her the women slept in their soiled beds. She knew they did not enjoy waking, often made themselves go back to sleep again, woke and slept, and got up only when they had to. At midday she heard their scolding, petulant voices, no laughter, and the big room was slowly filling, for there were sometimes afternoon customers, and the women lay around yawning and nibbling sweets and cakes, drinking juices. The weight of their sadness dragged the house down into it. The afternoons were always the worst time. Long, heavy, dragging afternoons, and the occasional customer was a diversion, and the quarrelling about who he — or they — would choose, was exaggerated to give them something to feel other than their griefs and grievances. Mara knew that in all her adventures, all her dangers, she had never known anything as bad as the hopeless dreaming that those poor women downstairs lived inside, like a poisonous air. She was thinking of herself as apart from them, different, yet she was a house woman, with them, as Senghor reminded her. She could smell the cold, sweet, slow poppy smoke. Downstairs they were lighting their little stubby pipes, or the girls who did not were leaning closer to the ones who did, drawing in great breaths that had been in companion lungs. Second-poppy, they called this practice.
A knock. What was this? No one knocked, not Senghor; but it was Seng-hor, and he said, "The women want you to go down and tell them stories."
His manner was different. And when she went into the big room, she thought the girls looked at her differently, while they called, "Mara, talk to us," and the little one, Crethis, from Leta's lap, said, "Mara, start from the beginning again."
Now Mara began earlier than she had, which was the moment of running away from her parents' house into the dark, and started with her life as a small child — that wonderful, friendly, easy, indulged life where she woke every morning to the adventure of a child's discoveries, and to the expectation of What did you see, Mara, what did you see? And, as she talked, she remembered even more details, little things half forgotten: how the water in a stream ran over a shallow stone and made patterns; the soft flower smell of her mother when she came to say goodnight. Mara talking, her mind a long way in her past, was looking at plump Crethis, with her baby face and wet pink lips, and she knew who was the infant she had been dreaming about. Crethis, lying inside a sheltering arm and looking out at Mara, was like a little girl. She was a little girl, even a baby, with her wandering hands, touching this, poking at the face just above her, and laughing. The face that was unlike all the others, with its heavy, green eyes and pale lashes, white, glistening white, and the heavy, pale hair that fell over Crethis's face so that she pulled it and laughed. But because Leta was so different, she never lacked customers, and a man came in and pointed at her, and she had to get up and go off into one of the little rooms with him. Crethis crawled to Mara and climbed inside her arms. Mara talked on, hearing in her voice undertones of longing, like a song, and thought, Yes, but I'm not telling them about how the dust piled up in the courtyards and the fountains were dry and the trees stood pining for water.
And now Crethis reached forward to touch Mara's face and said, "Princess Mara, and you lived in a palace."
Mara understood the new respect she was getting from Senghor, and the curiosity of the girls, and she said, "If I was a princess I didn't know it, and I'm not a princess now."
The evening's customers were coming in, and the girls got themselves out of their lazy poses, and sat about attractively and talking coquettishly to each other, with an eye on the door to see who would appear.
Daulis arrived. He looked worried, hurried, and at once signalled to Mara. Crethis got up but he shook his head — no. At this moment Leta came back and, seeing Daulis, went to him and talked urgently, in a low voice, holding his arm.
"Wait," he said. "Wait, Leta. Wait."
He and Mara went up to her room. Mara had time to see how Crethis cuddled up to another girl, not Leta, who was standing staring after Daulis. They did not sit down.
Daulis said, "Something bad. It is my fault. I am afraid I said something to Crethis about you."
"A princess," said Mara. "A princess in a brothel."
He made a gesture — don't. And his face was miserable, all apology and anxiety. Seeing him thus she thought much less of him: he even seemed smaller, less impressive.
"So," said Mara, "she told the girls and the girls have told customers."
"I have the money to buy you out. It is partly mine and partly Shabis's money. But now some Council members want to buy you."
"A princess prostitute?" said Mara.
"A Mahondi princess. It would be a feather in their caps. And they are going to offer Dalide double the price I settled on with her. I haven't got that much."
Mara thought, I've got it, here, on my body, but I'm not going to tell him. I might need it later even more than I do now.
"Luckily Mother Dalide is away. She wouldn't be able to resist, although she agreed on the price. I think you would soon find yourself in a much more unpleasant captivity than this one. And so we are going to move fast. I have made a
statement before the chief magistrate, who is a good friend of mine, luckily, that the price was agreed between me and Dalide. It is legally binding, but I am sure Dalide and those crooks would find a way around it. I propose to take you up north with me to Kanaz immediately. And then when you have met up with Dann, we'll go on."
"Who controls the exit lines north from here?"
"The Council, of course. I am one of them. We have to leave before the others find out."
"And who is so keen to get this princess safely out of Bilma? Where am I supposed to be?"
He hesitated. "You'll soon know, Mara. I promise. You'll understand it all. Meanwhile, we must hurry."
She began putting her clothes into the sack, sad that these so beautifully washed and pressed dresses would be crushed up again.
Outside there were loud, arguing voices. Senghor and Leta. She came in, trying to shut the door on Senghor. He would not be shut out. Daulis had to push him back.
Leta said, "Daulis, why wouldn't you listen to me? I was trying to tell you. I've just been with the Chief of the Council, and he said that they are putting a guard on the north station."
Daulis sat down heavily on the bottom of the bed and put his head in his hands.
"But if you listen to me," said Leta, "Just listen. I know a way. You must marry Mara and then they can't stop you — well, you aren't married, are you?"
Daulis was silent, but a quick, almost furtive look at Mara said that he did not want to marry her.
"The marriage would not be legal outside the country of Bilma." "Wouldn't it? How do you know?"
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