At one time or another I have been in most of the places that are conventionally considered romantic — atop high towers, deep in the bowels of the world, in palatial buildings, in jungles, and aboard a ship — yet none of these have affected me in the same way as that poor cabin of stones. It seemed to me the archetype of those caves into which, as scholars teach, humanity has crept again at the lowest point of each cycle of civilization. Whenever I have read or heard a description of an idyllic rustic retreat (and it was an idea of which Thecla was very fond) it has dwelt on cleanliness and order. There is a bed of mint beneath the window, wood stacked by the coldest wall, a gleaming flagstone floor, and so on. There was nothing of that here, no ideality; and yet the house was more perfect for all its imperfection, showing that human beings might live and love in such a remote spot without the ability to shape their habitat into a poem.
“Do you always shave with your sword?” the woman asked. It was the first time she had spoken to me unguardedly.
“It is a custom, a tradition. If the sword were not sharp enough for me to shave with, I would be ashamed to bear it. And if it is sharp enough, what need do I have of a razor?”
“Still it must be awkward, holding such a heavy blade up like that, and you must have to take great care not to cut yourself.”
“The exercise strengthens my arms. Besides, it’s good for me to handle my sword every chance I get, so that it becomes as familiar as my limbs.”
“You’re a soldier, then. I thought so.”
“I am a butcher of men.”
She seemed taken aback at that, and said, “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I’m not insulted. Everyone kills certain things — you killed those roots in your kettle when you put them into the boiling water. When I kill a man, I save the lives of all the living things he would have destroyed if he had continued to live himself, including, perhaps, many other men, and women and children. What does your husband do?”
The woman smiled a little at that. It was the first time I had seen her smile, and it made her look much younger. “Everything. A man has to do everything up here.”
“You weren’t born here then.”
“No,” she said. “Only Severian…” The smile was gone;
“Did you say Severian?”
“That’s my son’s name. You saw him when you came in, and he’s spying on us now. He is a thoughtless boy sometimes.”
“That is my own name. I am Master Severian.”
She called to the boy, “Did you hear that? The goodman’s name is the same as yours!” Then to me again, “Do you think it’s a good name? Do you like it?”
“I’m afraid I’ve never thought much about it, but yes, I suppose I do. It seems to suit me.” I had finished shaving, and seated myself in one of the chairs to tend the blade.
“I was born in Thrax,” the woman said. “Have you ever been there?”
“I just came from there,” I told her. If the dimarchi were to question her after I left, her description of my habit would give me away in any case.
“You didn’t meet a woman called Herais? She’s my mother.”
I shook my head.
“Well, it’s a big town, I suppose. You weren’t there long?”
“No, not long at all. While you have been in these mountains, have you heard of the Pelerines? They’re an order of priestesses who wear red.”
“I’m afraid not. We don’t get much news here.”
“I’m trying to locate them, or if I can’t, to join the army the Autarch is leading against the Ascians.”
“My husband could give you better directions than I can. You shouldn’t have come up here so high, though. Becan — that’s my husband — says the patrols never bother soldiers moving north, not even when they use the old roads.”
While she spoke of soldiers moving north, someone else, much nearer, was moving as well. It was a movement so stealthy as to be scarcely audible above the crackling of the fire and the harsh breathing of the old man, but it was unmistakable nonetheless. Bare feet, unable to endure any longer the utter motionlessness that silence commands, had shifted almost imperceptibly, and the planks beneath them had chirped with the new distribution of weight.
XV
He Is Ahead of You!
THE HUSBAND WHO was supposed to have come before supper did not come, and the four of us — the woman, the old man, the boy, and I — ate the evening meal without him. I had at first thought his wife’s prediction a lie intended to deter me from whatever criminality I might otherwise have committed; but as the sullen afternoon wore on in that silence that presages a storm, it became apparent that she had believed what she had said, and was now sincerely worried.
Our supper was as simple, almost, as such a meal can be; but my hunger was so great that it was one of the most gratifying I recall. We had boiled vegetables without salt or butter, coarse bread, and a little meat. No wine, no fruit, nothing fresh and nothing sweet; yet I think I must have eaten more than the other three together.
When our meal was over, the woman (whose name, I had learned, was Casdoe) took a long, iron-shod staff out of a corner and set off to look for her husband, first assuring me that she required no escort and telling the old man, who seemed not to hear her, that she would not go far and would soon return. Seeing him remain as abstracted as ever before his fire, I coaxed the boy to me, and after I had won his confidence by showing him Terminus Est and permitting him to hold her hilt and attempt to lift her blade, I asked him whether Severa should not come down and take care of him now that his mother was away.
“She came back last night,” he told me.
I thought he was referring to his mother and said, “I’m sure she’ll come back tonight too, but don’t you think Severa ought to take care of you now, while she’s gone?”
As children who are not sufficiently confident of language to argue sometimes do, the boy shrugged and tried to turn away.
I caught him by the shoulders. “I want you to go upstairs now, little Severian, and tell her to come down. I promise I won’t hurt her.”
He nodded and went to the ladder, though slowly and reluctantly. “Bad woman,” he said.
Then, for the first time since I had been in the house, the old man spoke. “Becan, come over here! I want to tell you about Fechin.” It was a moment before I understood that he was addressing me under the impression that I was his son-in-law.
“He was the worst of us all, that Fechin. A tall, wild boy with red hair on his hands, on his arms. Like a monkey’s arms, so that if you saw them reaching around the corner to take something, you’d think, except for the size, that it was a monkey taking it. He took our copper pan once, the one Mother used to make sausage in, and I saw his arm and didn’t tell who had done it, because he was my friend. I never found it again, never saw it again, though I was with him a thousand times. I used to think he had made a boat of it and sailed it on the river, because that was what I had always wanted to do with it myself. I walked down the river trying to find it, and the night came before I ever knew it, before I had even turned around to go home. Maybe he polished the bottom to look in — sometimes he drew his own likeness. Maybe he filled it with water to see his reflection.”