He ate from Murgen's larder, and slept on a couch in the hall.
In the morning he dressed in the costume of a wandering musician: a green brimless cap pointed at the front with a panache of owl's feathers, tight trousers of green twill, a blue tunic and a nutbrown cape.
On the great table he found a silver penny, a dagger and a small six-stringed cadensis of unusual shape which, almost of its own accord, produced lively tunes. Shimrod pocketed the coin, tucked the dagger into his girdle, slung the cadensis over his shoulder.
Then, departing Swer Smod, he set off across the Forest of Tantrevalles toward Dahaut.
Chapter 16
IN A BELL-SHAPED CELL fourteen feet in diameter and seventy feet underground, days were differentiated by the most trivial circumstances: the drip of rain, the glimpse of blue sky, an extra crust in the rations. Aillas recorded the passage of days by placing pebbles on a ledge. Each ten pebbles in the "unit" area yielded a single pebble in the "ten" area. On the day after nine
"tens" and nine "units," Aillas placed a single pebble in the
"hundred" area.
He was fed a loaf of bread, a jug of water and either a bundle of carrots or turnips, or a head of cabbage, every three days, by means of a basket lowered from above.
Aillas often wondered how long he would live. At first he lay inert, in apathy. At last, with vast effort, he forced himself to exercise: pushing, pulling, jumping, tumbling. As his muscular tone returned, so rose his morale. Escape: not impossible. But how? He tried scratching handholds into the stone wall; the proportions and cross section of the cell guaranteed failure for this approach. He tried to lift the stones of the floor, that he might pile them and so reach the shaft, but the joints were too tight and the blocks too heavy: another program he was forced to discard.
The days passed, one by one, and the months. In the garden the days and months also passed and Suldrun swelled with the child conceived by Aillas and herself.
King Casmir had forbidden the garden to all but a deaf-mute kitchen maid.
Brother Umphred however considered himself, a priest of the cloth, exempt from the ban, and visited Suldrun after about three months.
Hoping for news Suldrun tolerated his presence, but Brother Umphred could tell her nothing. He suspected that Aillas had felt the full weight of King Casmir's wrath, and since this was also Suldrun's belief, she put no more questions. Brother Umphred attempted a few half-hearted intimacies, at which Suldrun went into the chapel and closed the door. And Brother Umphred departed without noticing that Suldrun already had started to swell.
Three months later he returned and now Suldrun's condition was evident.
Brother Umphred made the sly observation: "Suldrun, my dear, you are becoming stout."
Without words Suldrun once more rose to her feet and went into the chapel.
Brother Umphred sat a few moments in deep reflection, then went to consult his register. He calculated forward from the date of marriage and arrived at a tentative birth-date. Since conception had occurred several weeks before the marriage, his date was just so much in error, a detail which escaped Brother Umphred's attention. The great fact was pregnancy: how best could he profit from this choice item of knowledge which seemed known only to himself?
Further weeks passed by. Brother Umphred contrived a hundred schemes, but none gained him advantage and he held his tongue.
Suldrun well understood Brother Umphred's calculations. Her concern grew as her time approached. Sooner or later Brother Umphred must sidle up to King Casmir and, in that unlikely mingling of humility and impudence, disclose her precious secret.
What then? Her imagination dared not venture so far. Whatever might happen would not be to her liking.
The time grew short. In a sudden panic Suldrun scrambled up the hillside and over the wall. She hid herself where she could watch the peasants on their way to and from the market.
On the second day she intercepted Ehirme, who, after whispered exclamations of astonishment climbed over the stones and into the garden. She wept and hugged Suldrun, and demanded to know what had gone wrong with the plan to escape. All had been in readiness!
Suldrun explained as best she coukl.
"What of Aillas?"
Suldrun knew nothing. The silence was sinister. Aillas must be considered dead. Together they wept anew and Ehirme cursed the unnatural tyrant who would visit such misery upon his daughter.
Ehirme calculated months and days. She judged time against cycles of the moon, and so determined when Suldrun most likely would give birth. The time was near: perhaps five days, perhaps ten; no more, and all without a vestige of preparation.
"You shall run away again, tonight!" declared Ehirme.
Wistfully Suldrun rejected the idea. "You are the first they would think of, and terrible things would happen."
"What of the child? They will take it away from you."
Once more Suldrun could not restrain tears and Ehirme held her close. "Listen now to a crafty thought! My niece is a halfwit; three times she has come pregnant by the stable-boy, another halfwit.
The first two infants died at once, from sheer confusion. She is already cramping and presently will deliver her third brat, which no one, least of all herself, wants. Be of good cheer!
Somehow we shall rescue the situation."
Suldrun said sadly: "There is very little now to rescue."
"We shall see!"
Ehirme's niece bore her brat: a girl, according to external evidence. Like its predecessors, it went into convulsions, emitted a few squeaks and died face down in its own discharges.
The corpse was packed into a box, over which—since the niece had been persuaded to Christianity—Brother Umphred intoned a few pious words, and the box was taken off by Ehirme for burial.
At noon of the following day Suldrun went into labor. Close on sunset, haggard, hollow-eyed but relatively cheerful, she gave birth to a son whom she named Dhrun, after a Danaan hero who ruled the worlds of Arcturus.
Ehirme washed Dhrun well and dressed him in clean linens. Late in the evening she returned with a small box. Up under the olive trees she dug a shallow grave into which she unceremoniously slid the dead infant. She broke the box and burnt it in the fireplace.
Suldrun lay on her couch watching with big eyes.
Ehirme waited until the flames died low and the baby slept. "Now I must leave. I will not tell you where Dhrun will go, so that, in all cases, he will be safe from Casmir. In a month or two, or three, you will disappear, and go to your baby and live thereafter, so I hope, without sorrow."
Suldrun said softly: "Ehirme, I fear!"
Ehirme hunched up her heavy shoulders. "In truth, I fear too. But whatever happens, we have done our best."
Brother Umphred sat at a small table of ebony and ivory, across from Queen Sollace. With great concentration he studied a set of wooden tablets, each carved with hermetic import understood only by Brother Umphred. To either side of the table burned candles of bayberry wax.
Brother Umphred leaned forward as if in astonishment. "Can it be?
Another child born into the royal family?"
Queen Sollace uttered a throaty laugh. "There, Umphred, is either jest or nonsense."
"The signs are clear. A blue star hangs in the grotto of the nymph Merleach. Cambianus ascends to the seventh; here, there—see them now!—are other nascents. No other meaning is plausible. The time is now. My dear queen, you must summon an escort and make inspection. Let your wisdom be the test!"
"'Inspection'? Do you mean ..." Sollace's voice trailed off into surmise.
"I know only what the tablets tell me."
Sollace heaved herself to her feet and summoned ladies from the adjoining parlor. "Come! Whim is on me to walk out of doors."
The group, chattering, laughing and complaining of the untoward exercise, marched up the arcade, sidled through the postern and picked their way down through the rocks to the chapel.