4 DAYLIGHT; REFUGE

Lalette sat up sleepily and sipped a little wine; there was nothing to eat but the end of a loaf, most of which Rodvard devoured, surprised to find that he was hungry, (and a tingle running down his veins as he thought of the evening under the cedars). Remigorius did not even wait for the end of the meager breakfast before breaking out with; “Hark, the provosts are already forth. This must be hurried, and you two must leave. I have arranged matters to the least peril. There’s an inn on King Crotinianus’ Square, at the north end, called the Sign of the Limping Cat, where the north-going coaches halt to pick up travellers from that side of the city. Go there; you can wait on the bench outside and had better, to avoid talking with someone who might be a spy. I trust you, demoiselle, to keep your face as much covered as possible; Rodvard, you shall use that devil-stone to know the purpose of any who approach.
251

“There will be a blue-painted coach which goes to Bregatz by way of Trandit and Liazabon. The driver’s name is Morsens; inquire. Before Trandit you should make an argument for the benefit of others in the coach, you being a young couple just wed, so joyous in the bridal that the new dame’s trunk has been forgot. At Trandit, then, Ser Rodvard will descend to return for it, while Demoiselle Asterhax rides on to Bregatz in the care of Morsens the coachman and reaches those of the Center there. Are you players enough to play these parts? . . . It will thus not be strange when Morsens protects her, which he will gladly do. But you must give him a gold scuderius, for he is not one of ours, and his danger is very great.”

Lalette, who had begun to take down her hair with fingers swift and sure in order to do it up into the bridal braids, stopped with pursed mouth. “But I do not have a scuderius,” she said. “I have hardly any money at all.”

An expression of furious indignation held the doctor’s face as it turned toward Rodvard. “You?” But the young man, flushing, reached in his jacket-pocket for a handful of coppers and one single silver spada. “Perhaps we can make it up together,” he said. “They are so deep in arrears of pay at the office where I’m employed . . . or if we can find a Zigraner with his shop open early, I might pledge my wage . . .”

“Or if we find a kind-hearted provost with scudi instead of bilboes for those he pursues!” cried Remigorius. “Madam, you will need all the witchcraft you can muster, for you are surely the most improvident fool that ever tried an evasion with what did not belong to her. I’ve no money, either.” He tugged at his beard, looking at her from anger-filled eyes, but before Lalette could more than begin the sound of a hot retort, changed expression, shrugged, and spread his hands:

“There’s a night’s work gone glimmering, then. But I’ll not send you back to Cleudi and the Deacons’ Court, even though you were other than friend Rodvard’s mistress.” He mused (and Rodvard, catching his eye as the head turned, saw in it a flash of deadly acquisitiveness for the Blue Star, no real interest in Lalette’s fate whatever). The young man started as from a blow; Remigorius spoke again:

“You must hide in the city, then, till somehow transport’s found. Would be welcome to this abode, but too many come here for physic; the matter would be bruited about. Nor your place, neither, Rodvard. The Queen’s provosts will not be long in finding your connection with this demoiselle, no. Your mother know of it?”
252

Said Lalette; “If you mean of Rodvard, I—I do not think so. We met always while she was at the Service. He never came to the house and there was only my gossip, Avilda Brekoff, who was ever with us.”

“Then we may have a few days before they come on the scent. Were you seen coming here last night?”

“Only by a watch of two from a distance, and by the doorman where I live,” said Rodvard, but Lalette; “I had to give the man a silver spada to call Rodvard and there was some slight bargle over whether I might enter. I fear I was not only seen, but noted. I regret.”

“You may well. Here’s the few days lost again. If the matter’s pressed, they will surely question the doorman of every pensionnario in the city.” Remigorius swung knit brows to Rodvard; “You had best go to your working place today, for the absence might be noted. But I will let you return to your pensionnario for only the once, and then to bring away nothing but your most intimate needs. Stop for no meal, where there’s talk—at least, till we can be sure of this doorman. What’s his name?”

“Krept or something like it, I do not know for sure. We call him Udo the crab. I have one or two books I would not willingly lose.”

“Would you rather lose your life?” The doctor scrabbled for a piece of paper and began to write. “This is more dreadful than you know of. Demoiselle, you can be secure for a little time with a friend of ours, a certain Mme. Kaja, who used to be a singer in the opera. She lives on the top floor of an old goat’s nest in the Street Cossao and has young girls visiting her all the time for instruction in music, so there’ll be no comment at your appearance.” His pen scratched, he stood up, threw sand on the paper and let it slide to the floor. “This be your passport. Your lover—” (the word was accompanied by a lip-turn that made Lalette shiver) “—can join you there this twilight. But wait—you may be known in the street.”

He bustled into the shop-room and returned with a pair of quills. “Up your nose, one on either side. So. I’d like it better if there were another cloak for you, but leave the hood of this one down; with your hair changed, and your face . . .”
II

It would be the morning after his wedding breakfast on new wine and old bread with fear for a sauce, that she should come to the Office of Pedigree again—with her bands of light hair, fine chin line and cheekbones, and the pointed coronet badge in her hat that showed her a baron’s daughter. All morning Rodvard had been dozing and drowsing; she greeted him gaily; “Have you found more of this matter with which the stem of Stojenrosek is to confound Count Cleudi, or has the weather been too fine for work indoors?”
253

“No, demoiselle.” (There was a twist in his chest, he could barely get the words out.) He passed the chair where she showed a turn of ankle, to one of the tall dark wall-files, and took out a parchment. “One of the recorders lighted on this—see, it is from the reign of King Crotinianus the Second, the great king, and bears his seal of the boar’s head, with that of his Chancellor. It is a series of decisions on inheritance and guardianship for the province of Zenss. At the eleventh year of the reign there is one here—” he handled the pages over carefully “—giving the son of Stojenrosek leave to wed with one Luedecia and pass the inheritance to their daughters, though she’s but a bowman’s daughter herself, there being no heiresses female to take the estate, which would thus have fallen to the crown.”

She had stood up to look at the old crabbed chancery hand of the document where he spread it on the table and her shoulder brushed his. Said she; “Did they wed, then?”

“Alas, demoiselle, I cannot tell you.” (Shoulder did not withdraw.) “So many of the records of that time were destroyed in the great fire at Zenss a quadrial of years ago. But I will search.”

“Do so . . . I cannot read it,” she said. “What does this say?” Her fingers touched his in a small shock, where they were outspread to hold the parchment, and the contact rested as she bent to look, in the spring light filtering through the dusty panes. The inner door to the cabinet adjoining was closed; down the corridor outside, someone was whistling as he walked, she turned her head to face him slowly, he felt the witch-stone cold as ice over his heart, and to shut out what he feared was coming, Rodvard croaked chokingly;

“What is your name?”

“My name is Maritzl.” (No use; it came over sharply—if he kiss me, I will not stay him, I will marry him, I will take him into my father’s house, I will even be his mistress if he demands it . . . this disappearing in the lightning-flash of Lalette saying, “If you are ever unfaithful—” and flash on flash what would happen if he lost the Blue Star for which he had sacrificed so much. Sold, sold.)

She caught her breath a little. He disengaged the parchment from her hand. “I will have it copied for you in a modern hand,” he said.
III

Under Remigorius’ order, Rodvard did not go home to the pensionnario at sun-turning as usual, but took his repast for a pair of coppers on small beer and cheese at a tavern near his labor. He had been there not often, but it seemed to him that the place bubbled with talk beyond custom, and he wondered if the cause were some tale of Count Cleudi’s witching and Lalette’s escape, a speculation dispelled on his return, for there came to him young Asper Poltén from the next cabinet with:
254

“Did you know that girl you squired to the harvest festival turned out to be a witch? She has witched Count Cleudi, and stolen all his money; they say he’s going to die. They have closed the city gates and set a price on her. Your fortune that you carried matters no further with one like that.”

Rodvard shuffled papers. Some reply was necessary. “Why are they so urgent over a foreigner? People have been witched before without having all the paving stones in Netznegon City torn up about it.”

“Do you forever live in dreams? He’s the new favorite—named director of the lottery only yesterday. Perhaps that’s the reason the witch rode him—for jealousy more than the scudi. She’s not to be blamed if, as I hear, he’s more than a proper man in the parts that matter most to women. They say Cleudi and the Florestan held an exhibition for Her Majesty and the Tritulaccan was longer. Speaking of which, Ser Rodvard, you are not far from fortune yourself. I saw the Demoiselle of Stojenrosek here again today. She’ll have a shapelier body than Cleudi will ever press, and bring you a fortune in addition.”

(“Did you see her indeed, curse you? and what business is it of yours?” Rodvard wanted to cry; or “Mine’s the high destiny of the witch.”) But aloud he could only say; “There’s nothing in that. She’s only searching out some old family records. I must go to Ser Habbermal’s cabinet; he has a project forward for me.”

He stood up with a trifling stagger, leg tingling with the pain of the position in which he had cramped it. Asper Poltén made offended eyes. “Ah, plah, you are too nice for anything but priesthood!” He turned away, flung open the door to the next cabinet, and could be heard uttering to the three within; “Bergelin again; this time pretending he does not know what women carry between their legs or what it’s used for—” with a whoop of merriment from the rest.
255

Rodvard himself, before they could all come in and begin their usual sport of baiting, walked to the outer door, through it, and without so much as pausing at the garderobe for his cap, straight down the corridor to the street and away, the last steps running. If there were stares at seeing him without headgear or mark of condition, he did not return them, but hurried on to his own living-place. The pensionnaria was at the foot of the stairs, the little black hairs on her upper lip quivering as she administered some rebuke to a maid who held a trayful of dirty dishes, but her eye lighted as she turned to perceive a new victim.

“You are too late, Ser Bergelin. If we make a rule good for one, it must stand for all, because it is only so that I can keep up a place like this, as cheap as it is, and I simply can’t have you bringing girls here late at night, I have told Udo. . . .” The end of it he did not hear, as he broke past her up the stairs, bounding.

The extra set of hose must come, of course, but his best jacket would not go on over the other, so he had to make a bundle with underclothing and wrap it in the cloak that it was too fine a day to wear. The festival-cap must stay behind, even though it might bring some coppers from a dealer; also the pair of tiny southern-made health-goblets for carrying at the waist on feast days, of whose acquisition he had been so proud. At the last moment he added the volume of Dostal’s ballads; of all the books, he could spare that one least. There was a moment of fear when a glance through the glass-windowed door showed callers closeted with Udo the Crab, but side vision registered the fact that they were only a pair of rough fellows in leather jackets, not blue-and-green provosts.

He had been to Mme. Kaja’s only once before, and then at night, for a meeting of the Sons of the New Day. Under this more vivid light the Street Cossao showed as a dirty courtyard with a running sore of gutter down the center, garbages piled in the corners, yelling children underfoot and somewhere among the upper stories a hand that practiced the violon monotonously, playing the harvest-song, but always going sour on the same double-stop passage. Rodvard elected the wrong house first, the doorman did not know of Kaja, but the next one at the back angle of the court was it; he went up a narrow dark winding stair smelling of yesterday’s cabbage and knocked at the topmost door.

Mme. Kaja herself answered, clad in an old dressing-gown, pink silk, and dirty gray where it dragged along the floor, with her hair packed untidily atop her head. Past her a space of floor was visible, with light coming through a pair of dormer windows, a keyed musical instrument and chairs. “Ser Rodvard!” she squealed, her voice going into a high musical note. “You are sooo welcome. We did not expect you this early. The dear girl is waiting.”
256

A door against the slant of the garret opened and Lalette came out, unaffectedly glad it was he, and this time not avoiding as he ran forward to kiss her on the lips. The older woman; “I leave you to your greetings, while I make myself beautiful.” She passed through the door from which Lalette had come; the girl sat down. After the door had closed behind Kaja, “Rodvard,” she said, very still and looking at the floor.

“Lalette.”

“I have given you my Blue Star. Whether to marry you now I do not know. I think not—it seems to me that you are not altogether willing; I feel you are holding something back from me. But this I say, and you may look into my heart and find it true—” she raised her head in a blaze of grey eyes “—that I want to be a good partner to you, Rodvard, and will honestly do all in my power never to fail you.”

From the inner room came the sound of Mme. Kaja, running scales in what was left of her voice (and what could he say? thought Rodvard, who had won this loyalty for Remigorius’ reason and not his own desire. Let conscience die, but not with a tear at the heartstrings.) “I will do as much,” said he, and as her lip quivered at his tone, “if we ever pass this peril with our lives.”

She lifted a hand and let it fall beside her. “It is life without account of peril that I have offered,” she said. “I do not—”

“How do you know? Lalette, look at me. Will you lie with me this night, in peril or whatever?”

But she would not meet the questioning eyes now (and he thought, she thought, they both knew there had been somehow a lack of communication). Lalette said; “You have come before time.”

He shuddered slightly. “They picked at me till I must leave. You will hardly believe how—how base—”

The inner door sprang open and Mme. Kaja emerged with almost a dance-step, dressed to the eyes in withering finery. “For a little while I must go forth,” she said, “but you will hardly miss me, he, he. I’ll bring sup from the cook-shop, is there a delicacy you desire or any other way I can lighten captivity for my two caged birds?”

She beamed on them fondly. Rodvard thought of the cap left at the office and prayed her for a new one, with the badge of his condition, which took more of his slender store of coppers. The door closed; and now they two had not much to say to each other, having agreed that all that mattered should be left unsaid.
257

The end of it was that Lalette in all her clothes lay down on the bed in the corner to make up for some of the sleep lost last night, while he undid his parcel and set out to lose himself in Iren Dostal’s harmonies and tales—but that did not do very well either, the poems he had always loved seemed suddenly pointless. He fell into a kind of doze or waking dream, in which the thought came to his mind that if he were really ready to let conscience die in exchange for high destiny, he had only to give this witch back her Blue Star, call for the provosts, and claiming the price set on her, seek out Maritzl of Stojenrosek. A destiny not high by the standards of the Sons of the New Day, no doubt. But love and position, aye. Remigorius would approve; would call it the act of a great spirit to seek an inner contentment, no matter what others thought of how it was achieved, no matter if others were hurt during the achievement. But Remigorius thought the struggle more important than its end—and it might be that the reason he, Rodvard, could see no high destiny, was that he did not possess such a spirit, immune to scruple, willing to serve any cause.

Now he fell on to wondering what was the tangle of ideas and thoughts that made up himself, Rodvard Bergelin, where they came from and how they were put together—could they be altered?—and so drifted deeper into his daydream till it began to grow dusk and Mme. Kaja came back with a covered dish of fish and red beans.