“And then?”
“Let him make the bargain.”
“With whom? What bargain?”
“I cannot tell you,” he said, and the dark face burned and writhed. “I do not know. You say you have loved us. If you have loved me, go with him.”
She could not speak, but she nodded.
“You will save us, Irena,” he whispered. He turned his face as if to kiss her, but the touch of his lips was dry, feathery, hot, less touch than breath.
“Let me go,” she said.
He drew away from her.
She could not speak and did not want to look at him. She turned and walked the length of the long room to the door. He did not follow her.
She did not return to the inn, or go to see Trijiat. She went down the steep streets alone, and out the east end of town past Venno’s shop and Geba’s cottage, to the stone-yard. There she sat on the granite block, and on the wall by the road, and crumbled the little, elegant cones of the cedars in her hand, and thought; but it was not so much thinking as a long grieving, which she must grieve through as a musician plays a tune through, from beginning to end. Often her eyes were on the road north, the road that led down to the City, the road she could not go.
She was summoned the next day to the manor. She wore her red dress and her second-best stockings. Palizot tried to lend her a new pair, and her thin-soled shoes, “to be proper at the Lord’s house,” but Irene refused and went off dogged and sorehearted, in the same dull, grieving mood under which lay, like the deep cold water under the reeds of a sea marsh, fear.
She did not look up towards the peak as she went from the iron gateway to the manor house.
As before, the old manservant took her to the windowed gallery, and the same people were there. This time they had got Hugh Rogers dressed up like themselves. She wished she had worn her jeans and shirt in defiance, and at the same time wished she had worn the thin shoes and striped stockings. She eyed his finery: narrow black trousers, heavy shirt of linen, long vest worked with dark embroidery. He looked well in it. He was heavy but well proportioned; his throat was white and massive in the high, open collar, he carried his head erect. He came forward eagerly to her and spoke to her with clumsy good will. He was happy in his fine clothes, with the old man patting him on the back, and the old man’s daughter simpering at him, and all the food and attention and friendship heart could desire, sure, and then out you go to do what can’t be done and thanks a lot; it’s what you came for, isn’t it?
The Master was there, talking with old Hobim and a couple of other townsmen. She did not once look directly at him, but was continually aware of him, and at the sound of his voice her heart stopped and waited.
Lord Horn’s daughter stood with Hugh. She was talking to him now, teaching him a word, the “adja” they tacked onto the end of your name when they wanted to call you friend, trying to explain that his name as they heard it, Hiuradjas, already had the word in it and would sound ridiculous if they added it, Hiuradjadja! and she laughed saying it, a soft, merry laugh. He stood staring at her porcelain face and sheepswool hair. Fool! Irene thought. Stupid fool! Can’t you see? But she saw the softening of his mouth, the stillness of his eyes, and she was awed.
“Alliadja,” he said, and went red, face and ears and neck red under the thick, fair, sweaty hair; and then white again.
Allia smiled, sweet and cool as water, and praised him.
“They could be sister and brother,” said a voice speaking near Irene—speaking to her, she realized, startled from the absorbed compassion with which she had been watching Hugh.
Lord Horn had come to stand by her. He was not looking at her but at Allia and Hugh, set apart by their blondness from the others there. The old man’s long face was severe and calm as always. Irene said nothing, taken aback by the curious irony or intimacy of his remark. Presently he turned to her. “Will you be long with us, this time, Irenadja?”
“Only as long as I can be useful,” she said with sarcasm. Then she was ashamed. It was Horn who had said to her, “Your courage is beyond praise,” words she had treasured against frustration and self-doubt. There in the other land, where she could find no home, she had not thought who had said them to her, but had held fast to them: your courage, you have courage…You will not force your mother to make the choice she cannot make; you will not ask for help she cannot give. You don’t need help. Your courage is beyond praise.
“Lord Horn,” she said, “I wish I had gone to the City, when—when people still could go.”
“There is more than one road to the City,” he said.
“Were you ever there?”
He looked at her with his grey, distant gaze.
“I have been to the City. That is why I am called lord, because I have been there,” he said, kind and cold and calm.
“Did you see the King?”
“The shadow,” Horn said, “I saw the bright shadow of the King,” but the word was feminine so that it must mean the Queen or the Mother; and none of the words he spoke meant anything, and she understood them as she had never understood anything in her life. His eyes that looked always from a distance were on hers. If I reach out my hand and touch him I will see clearly, she thought. The screen will be gone and I will stand both there and here. But in that knowledge I am destroyed.
Horn’s grey eyes said gently, Do not touch me, child.
Someone was approaching them where they stood beside the hearth. She turned away slowly from Horn and saw, with indifference, that it was Master Sark.
“Now that Irena is here, my lord, we can speak to your guest more freely,” the Master said, deferent yet officious, impatient.
The old man looked at him and spoke as always after a pause: “Very well. Will you speak for us and for him, Irena?”
“Yes,” she said. She felt released from the stupor that had bound her down so long. She felt she could trust her own will again. She caught Hugh’s attention; the other people, falling silent, gathered round the hearth in a loose half-circle. Allia stood nearest Hugh. He looked from her to Irene with alert, clear eyes, a little apprehensive, candid as a child. Lord Horn spoke, and Irene translated his words and Hugh’s.
“We are asking your service, we are asking your help.”
Hugh nodded.
“We have no claim on you. If you do what we ask it is in pure mercy to those who have no other hope.”
“I understand.”
“We cannot help you, and you will be in danger.”
After a moment Hugh said, “What is the danger?”
She did not understand all Horn’s reply, but put it into English as well as she could: “We who live here are afraid—are the fear, he said—and so cannot face the enemy—only the other, the stranger, can turn its face, his face—I don’t understand what he’s saying, really.”
“Ask him who the enemy is.”
She asked. Horn answered, “The eye that sees gives form; the mind that knows, names.” So his words came out in English as she spoke them.
“Riddles,” Hugh said with a smile. He thought it over, began to ask a question, and checked himself; he waited. Patience became him, Irene thought. There was dignity in him, under the clumsiness. Part of the clumsiness, perhaps.
“What will you give him to take, my lord?” the Master said.
“The sword I was given, if he wants it,” Horn replied.
“What will you give him to give, my lord?”
She had begun to translate this for Hugh when she realized that the old man was speaking, slowly as ever, but with harsh weight: “You are your grandfather’s grandson, Sark, but where are the children of his daughter?”
“All of us,” the dark man said. “All of us are her children.”
“The children of fear. And so we are bound. And our right hands useless. Would you sell us again, Sark? Allia, bring the sword.”