“War?” I’d grown so used to the yak about possible war with Katskil I’d given it no more heed than mosquito-buzz.
“Declared yesterday. Everyone knows about it.”
“Not me, sir. Lost in the woods yesterday.”
“Likely tell,” he said, and we were back where we started. If war had been declared yesterday, wouldn’t Emmia have spoken of it to me? Maybe she had, while my wits were wandering. “Kay, so wha’d you do at this ’ere wha’d you say the God-damn name of the place was?”
“Bull-and-Iron, sir. Yard-boy. You ask Mister Jon Robson. Mister. Member of the City Council too.”
I didn’t blame him for not being impressed. Misters are a nickel a pair. Even Esquires don’t have the important shoulder-tattoo, and Esquire was the biggest Old Jon would ever get to be. The guard’s foot rolled me from side to side, hurting and churning. “Hear tell they’s lots of redheaded scum in Katskil. No pass. Doing a sneak-in. And bearin’ down on this crap about Mister like I needed a sumbitch like you to teach me manners, little snotnose fart that a high wind’d blow away. Aw, even if you a’n’t lyin’ you got to be reamed out some. Take you to the Captain is what I got to do. By him, being Mister Jon Whosit’s pansy a’n’t helping you.”
I called him a bald-assed son of a whore, and now that I look back on it I believe that was almost the wrong thing to say. “Give y’self away then, Katskil. You be a Katskil spy. No b.s. is going to talk thataway to a bejasus member of the city gov’ment. Git up!”
He had become an obstacle between me and Emmia, just that, hardly anything more. He’d told me to get up, but his foot was still grinding me. I grabbed it, heaved, and he went flying ass over brisket.
My beef does get underestimated because of my pidlin size and natural-born goofy look. His brass helmet slammed the palings, a bone snapped in his neck, and when he spread out on the ground he was dead as ever a man needs to be.
No pulse at his throat; his head flopped when I shook him. I caught the death smell — the poor jo’s bowels had let go. Not a soul near; shadows lay heavy, with only one dull lamp down the street. The noise of the helmet on the logs had been small. I could have climbed back over the stockade and been gone for good, but that’s not what I did.
As I knelt staring at him the universe was still full to bursting with the hunger for Emmia that had drawn me back. There seemed to be some connection as I looked at the dead guard, my love-rod stiffening like a fool, as if he’d been a rival. Why, I’m no rutting stag that needs to crash horns into another male to make himself ready for the does. I wasn’t heartless either. I recall thinking there’d be others — wife, children, friends — whose lives would be jolted by what I’d done. That pale brown fitfully illuminated thing beside my knee was a human hand, with dirty fingernails, an old scar in the crotch between thumb and forefinger; maybe it could play a mandolin once. But it was dead, dead as the mue, and I was alive and hot for Emmia.
I left him, not hating him at all, nor myself too much. Nor did I think once, as I stole across the city, of the Eye of God beholding every act, the way the church teaching had told me it does, and this seems curious to me, for at that time I was by no means free for any clear thinking.
Nobody was abroad now except the watch, a few idlers and drunks and fifty-cent prosties, all of whom I could avoid. In the more respectable region where the Bull-andIron stood there wasn’t a cat stirring. The only light at the inn was in the tap room; I caught the drone of Old Jon talkmg along to some polite guest who likely wanted to go to bed. The moon was fairly high. I saw glints of light from it on the jinny-creeper leaves. I climbed softly, easily, and let myself over the sill.
The moonlight gave me faint shapes: a chair, a bit of angular darkness probably a table, and a pale motion near at hand — why, that was myself, my image in the wall mirror by this window. I watched the image slip off shirt and loin-rag and lay the knife-belt on them, and stand naked as if held fast by its own quietness. Emmia stirred then, murmuring, and I went to her.
My own shadow had been hiding her from the moon. As I moved, the light displayed her; she might have been glowing in the dark, her warmth like a touch as I bent over her and my hand made contact with tender silkiness. She was lying on her side, her back to me. The sheet was at her waist, pushed down because this night was heavy as the rose-season of summer.
My fingers brought the sheet gently further down, barely touching the swell of her hip. Lightly also I touched the dark mass of her hair on the pillow and the dim curves of her neck and shoulder, and I wondered how she could sleep when my ungentle heart was so quickly and heavily drumming. I let myself down on the bed. “Emmia, it’s just me, Davy. I want you.” My hand roved, astonished, for my liveliest imaginings could never have told me how soft is a girl’s skin to a lover’s fingers. “Don’t be scared, Emmia — don’t make no noise — it’s Davy.”
I felt no waking start, only a turning of her heat against my thigh, then answering pressure of her hand to tell me she was neither angry nor afraid. Later I wondered if she might not have been awake all the time, pretending sleep for a game or to see what I would do. Now she was staring up at me from the pifiow and whispering: “Davy, you be such a bad boy, ba-ad — why, oh, why did you go away again today? All day? So wild and crazy-like, what’ll I do about you at all?” — calm, soft talky-talk as if there was nothing remarkable about the two of us being on her bed naked as eggs in the middle of the night, my hand curling over her left breast and then straying downward bold as you please and she smiling.
Yes, and so much for last night’s instructions on virtue and mustn’t-kiss-me-again. Gone like late-staying oak leaves when the spring winds lose patience, for I was kissing her now for sure, tasting the sweet life of her lips and tongue and nibbling her neck and telling her there was a right way and a wrong way and this time we’d bejasus do it the right way because I was going to have it into her come hell or hi-ho. And she whimpered: “Ah no!” — in a way that couldn’t mean anything except: “What the devil would be stopping you?” — and twisted her loins away from me, only to remind me I must use a little strength in this game.
I was also driven to say: “Emmia, I did go off to do something difficult and honest — done it best I could, only it’s a thing I can’t tell you of, not ever, Spice. And I got to run away.”
“Nay.” I don’t know if she heard anything truly except the “Spice.” I was at her ear again, and kissing the funny tip of her breast, and then her mouth. “So bad, Davy! — so bad!” Her fingers wandered now and demanded, as mine did, and mine found the little tropic swamp where I’d presently go. “Spice yourself!” she panted. “Tiger-tom. I won’t let you run away from me, Tiger-tom, won’t let you.”
“Not from you.”
“You be all man now, Davy. Oh!”
I did want to say I loved her, or some such message, but speech was lost, for I was over her, clumsy and seeking, understanding for the first time the mimic violence that a loving heart can’t allow to go beyond the bounds of tenderness. She who had maybe always understood it, resisted me enough so that I must hold her down, overcome her, until presently the hot sweaty struggle itself was binding us together, as closely as our lips were bound whenever our mouths met and clung in the strife. Then, no longer resisting, her hands helped and guided me toward the blind thrust that took me into her.
I could imagine myself her master then, while she was locked fast to me and groaning: “Davy, Davy, kill me, I’m dying, my lord, my love, you damn big beautiful Tiger-tom — keep on, oh, keep on!” — but all in a tiny voice, no outcry, mindful of our safety even when my world blew up in rainbow fire. So now I am fairly sure, years later, that in the first embrace I can’t have satisfied her completely. Kindness Emmia possessed. I think that to some extent, that first time, she acted a part out of kindness, well enough so that a green boy could feel happy and proud, emperor of her shadowplace, a prince of love.