There was a moon to throw black shadows on passing cat and man; Lalette’s little sharp heels clicked so loud on the pave that she almost changed to tiptoe. The Street of the Weavers was known to her; at its gate she had first met Rodvard, amid booths gay with bunting for the autumn festival. He slapped her with a bladder then, and challenged her to dance the volalelle among the reeling violins and sweet recorders . . .
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“Fair lady,” said a tentative voice. Not even looking round, she pulled the hood closer and hurried her steps until those behind her sounded irresolute and then died away.
One, two, three; moonlight showed a door that would be a worn blue by day, clearly a pensionnario. Lalette caught her breath at the loud flat rap of the knocker through the silent street, held it for a long minute and was just wondering whether she dared strike again, when there was a sound of fuzzy disturbance within, and a wicket window beside the door came open on an ill-tempered face, with a long, drooping, dirty moustache.
“What do you want?”
“I—I must speak with Rodvard Bergelin.”
“This is a respectable house. Speak with him in the morning.”
“It is—a matter of life and death—Oh, dear God!” as the wicket began to close. “Here.” She reached in her purse and recklessly thrust at the face one of the three silver spadas that were all the money she had in the world (What will mother do tomorrow morning?). The face expressed a sour satisfaction; an inarticulate grumble came out of it, which she interpreted as a command to wait where she was. (The musicians’ booth had been where the shadow of a turret split the corner in particular shapes.)
A sound of footsteps approached the door from within and it opened upon Rodvard yawning, hair awry, hose wrinkled at the knees, jacket flung around unlaced.
“Lalette! What is it? Come in.”
The moustached face hung itself in the background. “She cannot come in this house at night.”
“The parlor—”
“I say she cannot come in so late. This is a respectable house. Go down to Losleib Street.”
Face closed the door; Rodvard, all anxious, came down the single step, pulling his jacket together (with the fine brown hair curling on his chest in the form of a many-pointed star). “What is it?”
“Can you help me? I do not want to be a burden, but there is trouble. Truly, not meaning to, I set a witchery on Count Cleudi, and they said he would have me arrested to the Court of Deacons.”
He was all wideawake and grave at once. “Is there no legalist or priest you could—”
She stamped. “Would I come here, to your respectable house?”
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“I did not mean—I only asked—forgive, this is to be thought on. . . . Attention; I have heard of an inn by the north gate where provosts never find anyone who pays. I will go with you.”
“I have hardly any money.”
Even in that uncandid light, she saw his face frown and alter, almost as Cleudi’s had, another resemblance. (That is what he imagines I am like, the quick thought crossed her mind, bitterer than the doorman’s suspicion.) “Wait; I think I know where you’ll be safe for tonight, with a friend of mine who is no friend of provosts or court lords, either. But I must get my cap and knife.”
She was quick enough dodging his kiss to make it seem she was only missing the intention. He went round on his heel and up the stair, back in a minute with the feathered cap he had worn that afternoon, and properly belted with his knife. “This friend of mine is a Dr. Remigorius, have you heard of him? A great man to roar at you like a lion, but of good and generous heart. For the poor he has always a kind word, and often physics them or delivers their children without ever asking payment.”
They passed into the night city. “How did it happen?” questioned he at a turning.
“In the beginning an accident—ah, do not ask me.” She gestured impatient, then put the hand that did not hold his arm up to her face. “And now I am a witch, and I swore I never would be.”
“It is my fault. I am sorry. Will you wed with me?” (The words were out; he felt a thrill of peril run up his spine.)
“Do you wish—no you do not, I know it. Beside, how would we find a priest who’d make a marriage without episcopal license—and for a witch?”
“But I do truly desire it. I swear—”
“Oh, spare me your false oaths. Since you ask forgiveness, I’ll forgive anything but those.” She gripped his arm suddenly so hard it hurt. At the corner of the next street was a watch of two, one with halberd and helmet, the other sword and lantern, but the sight of late-walking couples would be less than novel to them, they only gave a glance in passing.
246
Rodvard brought her round another corner and before one of those houses built with jutting overstoreys in the Zigraner fashion. Small-paned windows were beside a door, where a stiff stuffed lizard hung to show that someone within practiced the art medic. The bell tinkled crackedly; Rodvard’s arm came nervous-tight around the girl. “It will turn to a happy issue,” he said. “No harm can touch us, now we have—found each other.” She did not try to draw from the warm sweet pressure, and it endured until a second ring brought the man out, with a fine beard ridiculously done up in a sleeping-bag to hold its shape, and a robe like a priest’s hastily corded round him.
“This is the Demoiselle Asterhax,” said Rodvard. “Can you help her? She has put a witchery on one of the court lords, Count Cleudi, and is searched for by the provosts.”
Sleep fell from the older man’s eyes. “A witchery? The Tritulaccan count? He has enough favor to be deadly if he will, and it would involve me in the overthrow. . . . But I am sworn by the practice of the healing art to refuse help to none who come in distress. Enter from the cold.”
Lalette caught a darkling glimpse of shelves lined with jars in glass or stone as they passed through. Rodvard half stumbled against a stool and they were at an inner door, where Dr. Remigorius said; “Halt,” struck flint and steel to a candle and stood in its light beside the untidy bed, pulling off his beard-bag. “Now you shall tell me a true tale of how this came about,” he said, “for a physician must know the whole nature of the disease he is to cure, ha, ha. Will the demoiselle sit?” He swept the pile of his own garments from the only chair to the bed.
The wine in her limbs and the long double walk had left Lalette tired and safe and not caring very much now. She sat down slowly. “It was only that Count Cleudi came with some baskets of supper and was trying to persuade me to go to the opera-ball with him, and I was toying with my fingers in some spilled wine on the table. You know how one does—” she made a little gesture of appeal. “I accidentally drew witch patterns and when he saw what they were, he—he—he would have had me against my will, so I witched him. That’s all.”
Not a line changed in Remigorius’ face. Said he; “I see—all but one detail. What made you flee so fast by midnight to my friend Rodvard? What do you know about this Count Cleudi?”
“It was his servant, a man named Mathurin, said I must instantly take my mother’s Blue Star and go. Because he would have had me killed.”
She saw Rodvard flick up his eyebrows as he glanced at Remigorius. (The expression round his mouth might have been triumph, which was incomprehensible); her brow knit, but the doctor’s voice was smooth as ice; “It is not your mother’s Blue Star, but your man’s, while he is your lover, and I think this must be the case, or you would not have witched this southern Count. You have Ser Rodvard’s bauble safe, then?”
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(A faint perfume of suspicion—was it to herself or to this Blue Star that he was offering kindness?) Lalette said; “I have it here,” and took the box from under her cloak.
The doctor, gravely; “Then you will have the provosts much the hotter on your trail, since the lords temporal and spiritual are not desirous to have these things in hands they are not certain of. I think you must fly from the city as fast as you can, perhaps even beyond the Queen’s writ, up to Kjermanash. Not Mayern, because of the Prince and his prophecies. But before that it would be well to provide this Blue Star with the needed witchery and let Ser Rodvard bear it. When you are not easily found, be sure they will set spies out for you, and with this tool you may be sure of people you meet.”
Lalette frowned, but looked at Rodvard. “Is this your word also?”
“How could it be other? I think we may need the protection.”
“Very well.” She lifted one palm to her forehead. “This witching is, I think, something that leaves one without force or will, and I have performed one tonight. But I will do it. I would be private.”
“There is the shop. Do you require materials, demoiselle?”
“Only a little water—though wine would be better.”
Remigorius produced a bottle half-filled with wine from a tall cabinet against the wall, lighted a candle-stub, and swung the shop-door open with a bow. When it had closed behind her, Rodvard said; “I do not see how, if she is to be taken instantly from the city, I can use this Blue Star for our purpose.”
The doctor glanced sidelong and whipped a finger to his lips. “Tish! Matter for the High Center. But who said you would go with her?” They were quiet; a small sound, like the mewing of a kitten, came from the shop, then it stopped, and Lalette came back in. The hood was on her shoulders, and her face was white to the hair-roots; the wooden case stood open in her hand, and in it, lying on a bed of white silk so old it had faded to yellow, the Blue Star, the witch-stone, smaller than might have been imagined, barely a finger-joint across, but seeming to have depth, so that even in the candlelight all the sapphirean fires of ocean and cold hell were in its heart.
Rodvard shivered slightly. Lalette said; “Open your jacket,” and when he had done so, hung the jewel round his neck on its thin gold chain.
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“Now I will tell you as I have been taught,” she said, “that while you wear this jewel, you are of the witch-families, and can read the thoughts of those in whose eyes you look keenly. But only while you are my man and lover, for this power is yours through me. If you are unfaithful to me, it will become for you only a piece of glass; and if you do not give it up at once when I ask it back, there will lie upon you and it a deadly witchery, so that you can never rest again.”
She came forward to take his face in both hands and kiss him on the lips. The stone lay like a piece of ice against his bare chest. Rodvard felt no different, unchanged, but as he looked deep into the girl’s eyes before him, he knew without words but beyond any doubt that a black shadow had closed round her mind, she would never witch him, she had decided, but was hating all this and Remigorius and him too, for the moment. He turned his head, the thought flashed away, and the doctor said, with a twist at the corner of his lips:
“Now we will see if this star is a true marvel or only another of the bogey-tales made up by the lords of court to keep men in submission. Look in my eyes, Ser Rodvard, and tell me what I am thinking.”
Rodvard looked. “Why, why,” he said, “I do not altogether understand, but it is as though you were saying in words that you would try on a living person whether an infusion of squill in vinegar is useful in a stoppage of the passages.” (It was not the complete thought, there was a formless shadow at the back of his mind, something about a treason.) Remigorius shook his head and turned from the gaze with pressed lips.
“God’s splendor! You are become a dangerous man, Ser Bergelin,” he said, “or a cleverer one than I think.” Then; “I count the night more than half gone, and you will need rest, having far to travel in the morning. I leave you two my bed while I arrange for your journey.” He picked up his clothes and bowed himself into the shop to dress. Rodvard and Lalette were left alone.
II
She remained in the chair, with her head drooping and slightly to one side, so he could see only the angle of cheek and chin. “The bed,” he said. “I am so weary,” said she, “that it’s not needed. Do you take it and let me rest here. I’ll turn my back if you wish to undress.”
(The thought went tingling through his mind that after this afternoon—so long ago, now—they needed no more be modest with each other.) It almost reached his lips, but instead; “No, you shall have the bed; you need it,” and held his hand to help her up, but she hardly touched it, on her feet with a sweep of skirts, to take one stumbling step to the towseled bed, where she flung herself down in her cloak, and as he could tell from her breathing, was asleep almost at once.
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He, wakeful as an owl-bird with excitement and having slept earlier, sat in a chair with the ice-cold jewel unfamiliar around his neck—bodily contact had not warmed it at all—half daydreaming, half thinking. A high destiny? Not with a witch and through witchery. All he thought revolted against that, it was cheating, if witchery should rule, there was an end of free choice where choice meant most, all hopes were then fled. There’s no new day if this rules, we may as well make our beds under the old Queen’s rule, and that of Florestan, the Laughing Chancellor.
Remigorius. The doctor would say this was not what he thought, but what he had been taught; they had quarrelled on this issue before, and Remigorius would say how Rodvard’s reasoning led straight as a line to the support of all the things that both desired to throw down; how it was precisely the rejection of witchcraft as devilish and unclean that Episcopals and Queen stood for. If there were a good God, as the Church said, He could not allow a free choice that might be turned against Himself and so deprive Him of godhead.
Mathurin would chime in at this point to say that no man under tyranny would by free choice choose freedom, the generality preferring rather to have a chance of rising to the tyrant’s seat. They must be compelled to take the better way to their own betterment, so that even in the secular affair free choice was a dream—and then he, Rodvard, would be overborne by the whirl and rush of their arguments.
A high destiny? Let us, Sons of the New Day, compel them, then; ride the stormwind to greatness by setting men free. Oh, it would be noble to be acclaimed as one of those who had brought about the change. But no; no; that honor would go to those of the High Center, the leaders now hidden in shadow, whose forms would stand forth in granite with the dawning of the New Day—while the name of Rodvard Bergelin was never heard.
A high destiny? He thought of battle, the close combat where steel bows flung their sharp messengers against the double-locked shields and horsemen went past, while the trumpets shouted. The war-tune rang through his head—“Lift the star of old Dossola, brave men rise and tyrants stare . . .”
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No. The star would never rise in this time. Dossola, defeated and dead to honor, bound down by treaties which Queen and Florestan upheld merely to keep their own place. Shame—no high destiny could come from serving such a cause. For so much, what could Rodvard Bergelin do in war, even if the cause were better? There had been Dagus of Gr?densteg, to be sure, the archer, the great hero who sprang from night and nowhere when Zigraners were a terror to the land—Rodvard thought of his statue in the Long Square, one arm aloft to hold the deadly bow, the star-badge in his cap. But that was in the far-off glorious times, when one could clap on a hat and run forth to adventure instead of a day’s toil over yellow documents at the Office of Pedigree. What could one do in this modern war, where noble birth and twenty years of service were needed to make a commander? He’d lay some captain’s bed, no doubt, and clean his tent; or enter for a ten-year man, learn the halberd, how to shoot the bow and form square—a dull depressing life, with a cold lone grave at the end of it; “stupid as a spearman” said the proverb, and all he had known were stupid enough. No; no destiny. “The destiny of all is to service, for only so can happiness be won.” Who had said that? Some priest; member of what Mathurin called the conspiracy against poverty. Yet if it were not true, one must save one’s services for oneself and be false as hell to all the world beside. Let conscience die . . . and dawn began to poke behind the gray window at the sound of the doctor’s entry returning.