Of course, at night the climb would be far more hazardous, and once I topped the corrie I would still be in the dark, and lost in a part of the Toppings that the bandits knew and that I did not. I was not a woodsman, and I knew little of how to evade the pursuit that would follow.
My wanderings brought me to the stream that fed the lake, and there I stripped off my remaining clothes and dove into the chill, clear water. Like rats from a drowning ship my fleas leapt for safety, and I cracked them between my fingernails as they struggled in the water.
The lice, unfortunately, would survive a bath, so I would have to be satisfied with eradicating only a single species of tormenter.
After my bath, I dried myself with tufts of grass, put on my clothes, and followed the stream through a grove of osiers toward the cliffs. A fresh, cool scent filled the grove, and the leaves were turning gold with autumn. At the foot of the cliff I found an ancient structure, a half circle of dressed yellow-brown sandstone overgrown with bushes and vines, and in front a deep, broad, weed-filled marble trough filled with water gushing from a spring at the base of the cliff, a trough that overspilled to form the stream. I saw fallen pillars and broken arches and realized that I was viewing a nymphaeum, a monument to the divine spirit of the spring.
I knew that such things had been built in the ancient Empire of the Aekoi. The Aekoi had never conquered Fornland, but nevertheless someone had built this imitation here.
Curious, I looked through the rubble, and found the broken remains of old marble urns and bits of shattered, elaborate carving, wreaths and flowers and vines with pendulous grapes.
The melancholy ruins set amid the drooping osiers suited my dark mood. I jumped up on the edge of the trough, then stepped over the water to what had been the central arch. The natural spring rose just behind, in a small grotto, and was brought into the nymphaeum by a thick-walled lead pipe that might have survived a thousand years. Atop the pipe were the remains of the fallen arch, the rubble overgrown with brooklime and creeping jenny. Water dripped from the walls of the grotto into the spring, the sounds echoing in the confined space.
I squatted by the bank of the spring, and stirred the cold liquid with a hand. A frog leaped from the bank into the safety of the water. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the grotto, I saw something pale amid the rubble, and as I leaned closer, I saw that it was a human hand.
For a moment my blood ran cold, and then I saw the hand belonged not to a corpse, but was made of rose-colored marble. Gently I pulled rubble and water plants away from the remains of the broken arch, and laid bare the statue of a woman clad in ancient drapery. She was about four feet tall, and lay on her side, her cheek reposed on her hand as if in slumber.
I freed the statue from the rubble and picked her up as if it were a child. I carried her out of the grotto and laid her in the trough to clean the marble, and afterward propped her up amid the ruin of the arch. She was posed prettily with one hand lifted to her cheek, and the other holding a bunch of water lilies. The draperies exposed one breast. Her hair waved gently down to her shoulders, and her features were so worn by time that there was only the suggestion of a face, the nose worn down, the merest outline of brow and lips. On the lips there was a trace of an impish smile.
Despite its age and condition, there was still a spirit in the old statue, a sense of coquettish mischief that lifted my mood.
“Well, mistress,” said I aloud. “It seems we have both met with misfortune.”
I filled a cupped hand with water and washed away a smudge of dirt that clung to the nymph’s neck. Then I heard a horn blow from down in the bandits’ camp, and knew it for the call to supper.
I rose and bowed courteously to the statue. “I hope to pay you court tomorrow,” I said, “if the ruffians will permit it.”
I made my way out of the grove feeling strangely lighthearted. The westering sun had left the corrie in shadow, with only the trees atop the cliffs still in bright sunshine. For a moment I saw a human figure outlined against the sky, and the sun winked scarlet against a red cap, or perhaps red hair, before the figure turned away and vanished. Though the figure had only been visible for a few seconds, its appearance was enough to darken my mood.
There were sentries on the cliffs, I thought. I could climb the cliffs and be shot down as soon as I set foot on the corrie’s rim.
Roast meat scented the air as I approached the camp. I saw a pair of bandits carrying plates to the Oak House, where it seemed the two noblemen would sup on spit-roasted calf shank. Other bandits, mixed promiscuously with their captives, sat on the grassy sward around the lake with their plates and cups. I thought for a moment that this might be a good time to escape, with the bandits relaxed, but I looked up at the old fort and saw the gleaming helmets of a pair of sentries.
I was the last to arrive, and I found the kitchen deserted. Dorinda I saw quite alone, squatted down by the lake, and bent over her plate.
Trestle tables had been set up with bread, plates, and wooden spoons. There was little left of the veal stew, and the remains of the cooked vegetables were unappetizing, so I looked up on the thatch for any parts of the calf that the cooks had left unused. I saw the calf’s brains in their bowl and fetched them down. I cleaned away the membranes and blood vessels, then blanched the brains in a pot of water that had been set boiling to clean the dishes. Once the brain was cooked, I cut it up, dusted the pieces with flour, and fried them in an iron skillet with butter, parsley, garlic, and a sprig of rosemary, and then ate while congratulating myself on enjoying the best meal in the camp.
I looked up from my bowl to see Dorinda glaring at me from across the table, her ladle poised in her fist. I put on my attentive-courtier face. “No one else was using the brains,” I said.
She fetched me a stunning blow to the skull, one that set stars blazing before my vision. “No one in this camp uses their brains!” she cried, and then she burst out into coarse laughter and hit me again.
Under Dorinda’s ferocious gaze I hastened to wash the skillet along with my bowl, and then took a brief stroll along the stream that ran from the lake past the fort. I was gazing down into a tree-shrouded vale and trying to make sense of my location when I heard a meaningful click, and looked up to see that the two guards were looking down at me from the walls of the fort, and that one of them had ostentatiously cocked his firelock. I doffed my cap to him, and returned to the corrie until the horn sounded to tell the prisoners to march to their dungeon.
As I made my way through the broken curtain wall, I looked out over the bandits’ camp, and I saw a woman who stood quite by herself on the sward near the lake, perhaps a hundred yards away. She wore a dark skirt that contrasted with the bright green grass, and a dark shawl over shining red hair.
She was staring at me with shadowed eyes in her pale face. A thrill ran along my nerves at that look, and I froze, staring back in astonishment. The women of the camp looked worn, or brazen, or vicious, but this woman seemed none of these, but a vision of freshness and beauty from out of a song.
We stood there, staring wordless at each other, and then one of my captors swore at me and shoved me along, and I stumbled on toward my captivity, my mind awhirl.
After the hours spent in the open air and sunshine, the miserable, fetid, dark cellar with its vermin and its stinking slop tub was all the more intolerable, and I had to steel myself to go down the steep stair. I found my blanket where I had left it, and prepared for another night of scratching and misery.
“This blanket’s soiled!” someone complained. “By the Pilgrim, I think it’s blood!”
I looked over my shoulder to see the two cavaliers, Fork-Beard and Slope-Shoulder, who had so signally failed to butcher the calf. One of them, the angry Fork-Beard, was holding up the blanket he’d just been given, and I saw that it was the same blanket in which I and the others had carried Gribbins’s body to his grave.