“Speaking of cards,” he said.
“Or one cut deck,” she said, ignoring him. “You know the way small children will sometimes, in trying to shuffle, get one-half the deck upside down? And then there they all are, shuffled together, inextricably mixed backs and faces.”
“I want my cards,” he said.
“I don’t have them.”
“You know where they are.”
“Yes. And if you were meant to have them, so would you.”
“I need their counsel! I need it!”
“Those who have the cards,” Hawksquill said, “prepared the way for all this, for your victory such as it is or will be, as well or better than you could have yourself. Long before you appeared, they were a fifth column for that army.” She struck a chord, sweet-sour, tart as lemonade. “I wonder,” she said, “if they regret that; if they feel bad, or traitorous to their own kind. Or if they ever knew they were taking sides against men.”
“I don’t know why you say there’s no war,” the President said, “and then talk like that.”
“Not a war,” Hawksquill said; “but something like a war.” Something like a storm, perhaps; yes, like the advancing front of a weather system, which alters the world from warm to cold, gray to blue, spring to winter. Or a collision: mysterium coniunctionis, but of what with what? “Or,” she said—the thought suddenly struck her— “something like two caravans, two caravans that meet at a single gate, coming from different far places, going toward different far places; mixing it up, jostling through that gate, for a time one caravan only, and then, on the far side, unwinding again toward their destinations, though perhaps with some few having changed places; a saddle bag or two stolen; a kiss exchanged…”
“What,” Barbarossa said, “are you talking about?”
She turned her stool to face him. “The question is,” she said, “just what kingdom it is you’ve come into,”
“My own.”
“Yes. The Chinese, you know, believe that deep within each of us, no larger than the ball of your thumb, is the garden of the immortals, the great valley where we are all king forever.”
He turned on her, suddenly angry. “Now listen,” he said.
“I know,” she said, smiling. “It would be a damned shame if you ended up ruling, not the Republic that fell in love with you, but some other place entirely.”
“No.”
“Someplace very small.”
“I want those cards,” he said.
“Can’t have ’em. Not mine to give.”
“You’ll get them for me.”
“Won’t.”
“How would you like it,” Barbarossa said, “if I got the secret out of you? I do have power, you know. Power.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I could have you—I could have you killed. Secretly. No one would be the wiser.”
“No,” Hawksquill said calmly. “Killed you could not have me. Not that.”
The Tyrant laughed, his eyes catching lurid fire. “You think not?” he said. “Oh ho, you think not?”
“I know not,” Hawksquill said. “For a strange reason which you couldn’t guess. I’ve hidden my soul.”
“What?”
“Hidden my soul. An old trick, one which every village witch knows how to do. And is wise to do: you never know when those you serve may turn resentful, and fall on you.”
“Hidden? Where? How?”
“Hidden. Elsewhere. Exactly where, or in what, I won’t of course tell you; but you see that unless you knew, it would be useless trying to kill me.”
“Torture.” His eyes narrowed. “Torture.”
“Yes.” Hawksquill rose from her stool. Enough of this. “Yes, torture might work. I’ll say goodnight now. There’s much to do.”
She turned back, at the door, and saw him standing as though stuck in his threatening pose, glaring at her but not seeing her. Had he heard, or understood, anything she had tried to tell him? A thought took hold of her, a strange and fearful thought, and for a moment she only looked at him as he looked at her, as though they were both trying to remember where, or whether, they had ever met before; and then, alarmed, Hawksquill said, “Goodnight, your Majesty,” and left him.
New-Found-Land
Later that night, in the Capital, the episode of Mrs. MacReynolds’ death appeared on “A World Elsewhere.” In other places the time of its showing varied; it was no longer in many places a daytime drama, often it was a post-midnight one. But shown it was, broadcast or cabled or—where that wasn’t possible, where lines had been cut or transmission interdicted—smuggled into small local stations, or copied and carried overland by hand to hidden transmitters, the precious tapes beamed feebly to far small snowy towns. A walker on this night through such a town could pass along its single street and glimpse, in every living room, the bluish glow of it; might see, in one house, Mrs. MacReynolds carried to her bed, in the next, her children gathered, in the next, her parting words spoken; in the last house before the town ran out and the silent prairie began, her dead.
In the Capital, the Emperor-President watched too, his eagle-browed but soft brown eyes dimmed. Never long; longing is fatal. A cloud of pity, of self-pity, rose in him, and took (as clouds can do) a form: the form of Ariel Hawksquill’s aloof, amused and unyielding face.
Why me? he thought, raising his hands as though to exhibit shackles. What had he ever done that this awful bargain should have been struck with him? He had been earnest and hard-working, had written a few cutting letters to the Pope, had married his children well. Little else. Why not his grandson, Frederick II, now there was a leader; why not him? Had not the same story after all been told of him, that he was not dead but slept, and would awake to lead his people?
But that was legend only. No, he was here, it was his to suffer this, insufferable though it seemed.
A king in Fairyland: Arthur’s fate. Could it be true? A realm no larger than the ball of his thumb, his earthly kingdom nothing but wind, the wind of his passage from here to there, from sleep to sleep.
No! He drew himself up. If there had been no war so far, or only a phony war, well, that time was over. He would fight; he would extract from them every jot of the promises so long ago made to him. For eight hundred years he had slept, doing battle with dreams, laying siege to dreams, conquering dream Holy Lands, wearing dream crowns. He had hungered eight hundred years for the real world, the world he could just sense but not see beyond all the dissolving kingdoms of dream. Hawksquill might be right, that they had never intended him to have it. She might (might well, oh yes, it was all coming quite, quite clear to him) have been in league with them from the beginning to deprive him of it. He almost laughed, a dreadful laugh, to think that there had been a time when he had trusted her, leaned on her even. No more. He would fight. He would get those cards from her by whatever means, yes, though she unleashed her terrible powers on him, he would. Alone, helpless it might be, he would fight, fight for his great, dark, snow-burdened new-found-land.
“Only hope,” Mrs. MacReynolds said, dying; “only have patience.” The lone walker (refugee? salesman? police spy?) passed the last house on the outskirts, and stepped out along the empty highway. In the houses behind, one by one the bluish eyes of sets were closed; a news broadcast had begun, but there was no news any longer. They went to bed; the night was long; they dreamed of a life that wasn’t theirs, a life that could fill theirs, a family elsewhere and a house that could make the dark earth once again a world.