Silk said, "I had better give you the goddess's message now-I've already waited too long. She said that I was to tell you that no one who loves something outside herself can be wholly bad. That Orpine had saved you for a while, but that you must find something else to save you now. That you must find something new to love."
Orchid sat silent for what seemed to Silk a long while. The white heifer, lying beneath the dying fig tree, moved to a more comfortable position and began to chew her cud. The people waiting in Sun Street, on the other side of the garden wall, were chattering excitedly among themselves. Silk could not understand, though he could easily guess, what they were saying.
At last she murmured, "Does love really mean more than life, Patera? Is it more important?"
"I don't know. I think it may be."
"I would've said I loved a lot of other things." Her mouth twisted in a bitter grin. "Money, just for starters. Only I gave you a hundred cards for this, didn't I? Maybe that shows I don't love it as much as I thought."
Silk groped for words. "The gods have to speak to us in our own language, a language that we are always corrupting, because it's the only one we understand. They, perhaps, have a thousand words for a thousand different kinds of love, or ten thousand words for ten thousand; but when they talk to us, they must say 'love,' as we do. I think that at times it must blur their meaning."
"It won't be easy, Patera."
Silk shook his head. "I never imagined it would be, nor do I think that Kypris believed it would. If it were going to be easy, she wouldn't have sent her message, I feel sure."
Orchid fingered her jet beads. "I've been wondering why somebody-Kypris or Pas or whatever-didn't save her. I think I've got it now."
"Then tell me," Silk said. "I don't, and I would like to very much."
"They didn't because they did. It sounds funny, doesn't it? I don't think Orpine loved anybody except me, and if I'd died before she did . . ." Orchid shrugged. "So they let her go first. She was beautiful, better looking than I ever was. But she wasn't as tough. I don't think so, anyhow. What do you love, Patera?"
"I'm not certain," Silk admitted. "The last time that we talked, I would have said this manteion. I know better now, or at least I think I do. I try to love the Outsider-I'm always talking about him, just as Auk said-but sometimes I almost hate him, because he has given me responsibility, as well as so much honor."
"You were enlightened. That's what somebody told me on the way here. You're going to bring back the Charter and be calde yourself."
Silk shook his head and rose. "We'd better go inside. We're keeping five hundred people waiting in that heat."
She patted his shoulder when they parted, surprising him.
When the last sacrifice had been completed and the last morsel of the sacred meal that it had provided parceled out, he cleared the manteion. "We will lay Orpine in her casket now," he explained, "and close the casket. Those who wish to make a final farewell may do so on the way out, but everyone must leave. Those of you who will accompany the casket to the cemetery should wait outside on the steps."
Maytera Rose had left already, to wash his gauntlets and the sacrificial knife. Maytera Mint whispered, "I'd rather not watch, Patera. May I . . . ?"
He nodded, and she hurried off to the cenoby. The mourners were filing past, Orchid waiting so as to be last in line. Maytera Marble said, "Those men will carry it, Patera. That's why they were here. Yesterday I happened to think that there would have to be someone, and the address was on the draft. I sent a boy with a note to Orchid."
"Thank you, Maytera. As I've said a thousand times, I don't know what I'd do without you. Have them wait at the entrance, please."
Chenille was still in her seat. "You should go, too," he told her, but she appeared not to have heard him.
When Maytera Marble returned, they lifted Orpine's body from its bed of ice and laid it in the waiting casket. "I'll help you with the lid, too, Patera."
He shook his head. "Chenille wishes to speak with me, I believe, and she won't as long as you're here. Go to the entrance, please, Maytera, where you won't overhear us if we keep our voices down." To Chenille he added, "I'm going to fasten the lid now. You can talk to me while I do it, if you like." Her eyes flickered toward him, but she did not speak.
"Maytera must remain, you see. There must be two of us, so that each can testify that the other did not rob the body or molest it." Grunting, he lifted the heavy lid into place. "If you stayed to ask whether I've confided anything that you told me in your shriving to anyone else, I have not. You probably won't believe this, but I've actually forgotten most of it already. We make an effort to, you see. Once you've been forgiven, you're forgiven; that part of your life is over, and there's no point in our retaining it."
Chenille remained as before, staring straight ahead. Her wide, rounded forehead gleamed with perspiration; while Silk studied her, a single droplet trickled into her left eye and out again, as though reborn as a tear.
The casket builder had provided six long brass screws, one for each corner. They were hidden, with the screwdriver from the palaestra's broom closet, under the black cloth that draped the catafalque. Holes had been bored to receive each screw. As Silk got them out, he heard Chenille's slow steps in the aisle and glanced up. She was looking toward him now, but her motions seemed almost mechanical.
He told her, "If you'd like to say good-bye to Orpine, I can remove the lid. I haven't started the first screw yet."
She made an inarticulate noise and shook her head.
"Very well, then." He forced himself to look down at his work. He had not realized she was so beautiful-no, not even when they had sat talking in her room at Orchid's. In the garden, he had begun to say that no artist could paint a face half so lovely as Kypris's. Now it seemed to him that the same thing might almost be said of Chenille, and for a moment he imagined himself a sculptor or a painter. He would pose her beside a stream, he thought, her face up-tilted as though she were watching a meadowlark. . . .
He sensed her proximity before he had tightened the first screw. Her cheek, he felt certain, was within a span of his ear. Her perfume filled his nostrils; and though it was in no way different from any other woman's, and stronger than it ought to have been, though it was mingled with perspiration, the inferior scents of face and body powders, and even the miasma of a woolen gown that had been stored for most of this protracted summer in one of the battered old trunks he had seen in her room, he found it intoxicating.
As he drove the third screw, her hand came to rest on his own. "Perhaps you'd better sit down," he told her. "You're not supposed to be in here, actually."
She laughed softly.
He straightened up and turned to face her. "Maytera's watching. Have you forgotten? Go and sit down, please. I have no desire to exert my authority, but I will if I must."
When she spoke, it was with mingled wonder and amusement. She said, "This woman's a spy!"
Chapter 3. COMPANY
Though he had been in the old cemetery often, Silk had never ridden the deadcoach before-or rather, as he told himself sharply, the deadcoach had been Loach's wagon. They always walked behind it in procession, as custom demanded, on the way there; and Loach nearly always invited him to ride back to the quarter, sitting beside Loach on the weathered gray board that was the driver's seat.
This was a real deadcoach, however, all glass and black lacquered wood, with black plumes and a pair of black horses, the whole rented for a staggering three cards from the maker of Orpine's casket. Silk, who had scarcely been able to limp along by the time they reached the cemetery, had been relieved when the liveried driver had offered him a ride, and utterly astonished to find that the deadcoach seat had a back, both seat and back stylishly upholstered in shiny black leather, like a costly chair. The seat was very high as well, which afforded him a fresh perspective on the streets through which they passed.