It was useless. She was far stronger than I. (“Of course,” I thought, “they say mad people have double strength.”) We left marks on one another’s skin. There was a thick, tangled sort of wrestling. Then we were apart again; she staring with reproach and wonder, I weeping (as I had wept at her prison door), utterly broken with shame and despair. The rain had stopped. It had, I suppose, done all the gods wanted.
And now there was nothing at all left that I could do.
Psyche, as always, recovered herself first. She laid her hand—there was a smear of blood on it; was it possible I could have scratched her?—across my shoulder.
“Dear Maia,” she said, “you have very seldom been angry with me in all the years I can remember. Don’t begin now. Look, the shadows have already crept nearly all the way across the courtyard. I had hoped that before this we should have feasted together and been merry. But, there—you would have tasted only berries and cold water. Bread and onions with Bardia will be more comfort to you. But I must send you away before the sun sets. I promised that I would.”
“Are you sending me away for ever, Psyche? And with nothing?”
“Nothing, Orual, but a bidding to come again as soon as you can. I’ll work for you here. There must be some way. And then—oh, Maia—then we shall meet here again with no cloud between us. But now you must go.”
What could I do but obey her? In body she was stronger than I; her mind I could not reach. She was already leading me back to the river, back through the desolate valley she called her palace. The valley looked hideous to me now. There was a chill in the air. Sunset flamed up behind the black mass of the saddle.
She clung to me at the very edge of the water. “You will come back soon, soon?” she said.
“If I can, Psyche. You know how it is in our house.”
“I think,” said she, “the King will not be much hindrance to you in the next few days. Now, there’s no more time. Kiss me again. Dear Maia. And now, lean on my hand. Feel for the flat stone with your foot.”
Again I endured the sword–cut of the icy water. From this side I looked back.
“Psyche, Psyche,” I broke out. “There’s still time. Come with me. Anywhere—I’ll smuggle you out of Glome—we’ll go for beggarwomen all over the world—or you can go to Bardia’s house—anywhere, anything you like.”
She shook her head. “How could I?” she said. “I’m not my own. You forget, Sister, that I’m a wife. Yet always yours. Oh, if you knew, you’d be happy. Orual, don’t look so sad. All will be well; all will be better than you can dream of. Come again soon. Farewell for a little.”
She went away from me into her terrible valley, and out of sight finally among the trees. It was already deep twilight on my side of the river, close in under the shadow of the saddle.
“Bardia,” I called. “Bardia, where are you?”
12. XII
Bardia, a grey shape in the twilight, came towards me.
“You have left the Blessed?” he said.
“Yes,” said I. I could not talk to him about it, I thought.
“Then we must speak of how to spend our night. We’d never find a way for the horse up to the saddle now, and if we did, we’d have to go down again beyond the Tree into the other valley. We couldn’t sleep on the saddle itself; too much wind. It’ll be cold enough here, where we’re sheltered, in an hour or so. I fear we must lie here. Not where a man’d choose; too near the gods.”
“What does it matter?” said I. “It will do as well as anywhere else.”
“Then come with me, Lady. I’ve gathered a few sticks.”
I followed him; and in that silence (there was nothing now but the chattering of the stream, and it seemed louder than ever) we could hear, long before we came to the horse, the sound of the grass torn up by his teeth.
A man and a soldier is a wonderful creature. Bardia had chosen a place where the bank was steepest, and two rocks close together made the next best thing to a cave. The sticks were all laid and the fire alight, though still sputtering from the late rain. And he brought out of the saddle–bags things better than bread and onions; even a flask of wine. I was still a girl (which in many matters is the same thing as a fool) and it seemed to me shameful that, in all my sorrow and care, I was so eager for the food when it came. I never tasted better. And that meal in the firelight (which had made all the rest of the world a mere darkness as soon as it blazed up) seemed to me very sweet and homelike; mortal food and warmth for mortal limbs and bellies, no need (for a space) to think of gods and riddles and wonders.
When we had ended Bardia said, somewhat shamefacedly, “Lady, you’re not used to lying in the open and you might be cruelly chilled before day. So I’ll make so free—for I’m no more to you, Lady, than one of your father’s big dogs—as to say we’d best lie close, back to back, the way men do in the wars. And both cloaks over us.”
I said yes to that, and indeed no woman in the world has so little reason as I to be chary in such matters. Yet it surprised me that he should have said it; for I did not yet know that, if you are ugly enough, all men (unless they hate you deeply) soon give up thinking of you as a woman at all.
Bardia rested as soldiers do; dead asleep in two breaths but ready (I have seen him tested since) to be wide awake in one if need were. I think I never slept at all. First there was the hardness and slope of the ground, and after that the cold. And besides these, fast and whirling thoughts, wakeful as a madman’s; about Psyche and my hard riddle, and also of another thing.
At last the cold grew so bitter that I slipped from under the cloak—its outer side was wet with dew by now—and began walking to and fro. And now, let that wise Greek whom I look to as my reader and the judge of my cause, mark well what followed.
It was already twilight and there was much mist in the valley. The pools of the river as I went down to it to drink (for I was thirsty as well as cold) seemed to be dark holes in the greyness. And I got my drink, ice–cold, and I thought it steadied my mind. But would a river flowing in the god’s secret valley do that, or the clean contrary? This is another of the things to be guessed. For when I lifted my head and looked once more into the mist across the water, I saw that which brought my heart into my throat. There stood the palace; grey, as all things were grey in that hour and place, but solid and motionless, wall within wall, pillar and arch and architrave, acres of it, a labyrinthine beauty. As she had said, it was like no house ever seen in our land or age. Pinnacles and buttresses leaped up—no memories of mine, you would think, could help me to imagine them—unbelievably tall and slender, pointed and prickly as if stone were shooting out into branch and flower. No light showed from any window. It was a house asleep. And somewhere within it, asleep also, someone or something—how holy, or horrible, or beautiful or strange?—with Psyche in its arms. And I, what had I done and said? what would it do to me for my blasphemies and unbelievings? I never doubted that I must now cross the river, or try to cross it, even if it should drown me. I must lie on the steps at the great gate of that house and make my petition. I must ask forgiveness of Psyche as well as of the god. I had dared to scold her—dared, what was worse, to try to comfort her as a child—but all the time she was far above me; herself now hardly mortal, if what I saw was real. I was in great fear. Perhaps it was not real. I looked and looked to see if it would not fade or change. Then as I rose (for all this time I was still kneeling where I had drunk), almost before I stood on my feet, the whole thing had vanished. There was a tiny space of time in which I thought I could see how some swirlings of the mist had looked, for the moment, like towers and walls. But very soon, no likeness at all. I was staring simply into fog, and my eyes smarting with it.