The astonishment and laughter on the other side of the ravine changed into cries of horror; the first to reach him was that adolescent to whom Egert had entrusted his stallion. Glorious Heaven! Egert’s ears burned from shame and mortification, but there was no choice, so he flopped like a fish out of water; he wheezed and gasped while the captain, Karver, and Dron surrounded him on all sides. For about ten minutes, they tried to bring him to his senses, but it was all in vain; clenching his teeth and rolling his eyes back into his skull, Egert assiduously portrayed a dying man, except that a man who was really dying in this situation would have gone cold and turned blue, whereas Egert was hot and red from the unparalleled, fiery shame.
Alarmed by the unexpected illness of Lieutenant Soll, the captain sent him back to town straightaway. He would have accompanied him, but Egert managed to refuse. The captain thought to himself that even in this grave illness, Egert displayed an uncommon bravery.
Egert’s father worked himself up into a lather no less intense than the captain’s. No sooner had Egert pulled off his boots and collapsed into his couch than a knock, polite yet adamant, came at his door. The elder Soll and a short, hollow-seeming man in a smock that extended down to his ankles, a doctor, appeared on the threshold.
Egert had no other option but to force out a report of his indisposition and to hand himself over for examination.
The doctor tapped him thoroughly with a hammer; he probed, listened, and nearly sniffed Egert all over, and then he peered inquisitively into Egert’s eyes for a long moment, extending his lower eyelid for this purpose. Still gritting his teeth, Egert gave answers to extremely detailed questions, a few of which forced him to blush: No, not ill. No. No. Clear. Every morning. Wounds? Perhaps a few trifling scratches. The gash on your cheek? An unfortunate incident; nothing to worry about.
The elder Soll was nervous; he rubbed his hands together so torturously that they threatened to be chafed until they bled. Wishing to peer down Egert’s throat, the physician nearly ripped out his tongue. Then he dried his hands on a snow-white handkerchief, and letting out a sigh, recommended the usual remedy of doctors who have come up against a brick walclass="underline" bloodletting.
Soon a large copper basin was delivered to the room. The leech opened a black valise and set out scalpels and lancets, gleaming like a fine spring day, on the clean tablecloth. Small round jars clanked in the little bag, and the old first maid dragged out fresh linen.
All these preparations drove Egert into a desolate, black anxiety; he began to think that it might be better if he returned to the maneuvers. His father, heartened that there was some way to help his stricken son, solicitously assisted him in taking off his shirt.
The preparations were finished. However, when Egert saw the businesslike blade in the inexorable healer’s hand, it became very clear that bloodletting would not do.
“Oh, my son!” muttered his father perplexedly. “Glorious Heaven, you really are very ill.”
Cowering in the corner with a heavy candlestick held in front of him, Egert breathed heavily. “I don’t want it! Leave me in peace.”
The old first maid pensively chewed her lips. A pale, middle-aged woman stood at the threshold of the room. It was Egert’s mother.
Looking around at those present and then taking another appraising glance at Egert, who was naked to his waist, his round muscles protruding prominently, straining against his fair skin, the doctor dolefully shrugged his shoulders. “Alas, gentlemen.”
The instruments were returned to the valise. The bewildered elder Soll vainly tried to extract an explanation from the physician about the meaning of his alas. Did it mean that Egert’s illness was already too far advanced?
Having gathered his things, the doctor glanced at Egert once more, shook his head, and announced, appealing more to the boars on the tapestries than to the Soll family, “The young man, humph, he is extremely healthy. Yes, masters. But if something is troubling the young man, it is not a medical problem, kind masters. Not medical.”
Glorious Heaven! Stalwart Khars, Protector of Warriors, how could you allow this?
Lieutenant Egert Soll was mortally wounded; his stricken sense of self whimpered plaintively. The most extraordinary and distasteful thing was that Egert’s pride had been wounded not from without, but from within.
He stood in front of the mirror for a solid hour, performing his own medical inquest. The same old familiar Egert looked out at him from the depths of the mirror: gray blue eyes, blond hair, and now the scratch that had taken up residence on his cheek. Prodding the wound with his finger, Egert decided that it would scar. Henceforth, Egert Soll would display a distinctive mark. Well, a scar on a man’s face is more a mark of prowess than a defect.
He breathed on the mirror and traced an oblique cross in the circle of mist created by his breath. It was too soon to lose heart; if all the events of recent days were simply caused by an illness, then he knew a surefire way to cure it.
Changing his linen shirt for a silk one and ignoring the pleas of his distraught father, Egert left the house.
All the guards knew that the wife of the captain, the beauty Dilia, graced Lieutenant Soll with her favors. It was a wonder that so far the captain himself knew nothing about it.
His visits to Dilia conferred a twofold pleasure to Egert: delighting in the ardent embraces of the captain’s wife, he also relished the risk and the awareness he had of his own audacity. He especially enjoyed kissing Dilia when he could hear the steps of the captain on the stairs, coming ever closer, closer. Egert understood very well what would happen should the captain, a decent yet jealous man, find his lieutenant in Dilia’s lace-covered bed. The steel nerves of the beauty never succumbed when her perpetually absent, suspicious husband knocked on the door to her bedroom. Egert would laugh and, still laughing, escape out the window, grabbing his clothes from the hook by the fireplace as he went. And never, not even a single time, did that infernal rogue Egert drop so much as a button or a clasp, and not a single sound did he make as he slipped over the windowsill. Silent, Dilia would simultaneously hear a rustle under the window and the heavy steps of her husband as he came to her bed. And strangely, this vigilant husband never caught the scent of another man in his conjugal bed.
His visits to Dilia always encouraged Egert, and so he went to her now, expecting to cure his strange affliction by resting his head on her breast.
The evening was setting in; twilight, as before, discomforted Egert, but the thought of his imminent bliss helped him to overcome his fears. The chambermaid, as usual, was bribed. Dilia, her beauty hidden only by a lacy dressing gown, met Egert with wide-open eyes.
“Heavens, what about the maneuvers?”
However, her astonishment almost immediately gave way to a smile that was both gracious and covetous. The beauty was flattered. Only a true cavalier would secretly slip out of a military camp for the sake of a rendezvous with his beloved!
The chambermaid brought in wine on a tray and fruit in a little bowl decorated with peacock feathers, the emblem of passionate love. Dilia, pleased, spread herself out on the bed like a well-fed cat.