27 WINTER LIGHT

As Rodvard left the courtroom, Demadé Slair fell into step beside him. (The man was determinedly, if coldly, friendly; how to shake him off? instead of leading him home to Lalette and another of those conversations in three, where Rodvard felt himself so much hearing a language he did not understand that he always ultimately fled them for a book or the outer air.)

“Escholl is one of our best,” said the swordsman, kicking at the skin of a fruit, “but there’s a judgment I failed to understand.”

“Which one? The merchant who was confiscated for bringing wool-carts past the Mayern camp?”
408

“Ah, bah, no. He had money, the nation needs it; that’s crime enough. I spoke of the Baron’s brother, the noble Kettersel.”

“No more did I understand it,” said Rodvard. “As dirty a character as I ever saw, but the kronzlar let him go and praised him.”

“Oho!” said Slair. “It begins to come clear. What’s the tale?”

“Why, he was after his nephew’s wife—whether for her money or her body the most, I am not sure, but he wants both.” (He could not resist adding); “And it’s a poor task to break up a couple at any time, for it destroys two people’s chance of happiness for the temporary pleasure of one.”

“Not always,” said Slair, avoiding his eyes. “But I am interrupting. Is there more?”

“His only fear is that the Baron will die before the son, and so the right of remarrying the girl will pass to another family. I did not tell the kronzlar because it was not clear enough, but I think he was planning murder. Yet Escholl let him go.”

Slair laughed. “Bergelin,” he said, “do not lose your innocence; it may save your life some day, for no one will ever believe you are subtle enough to be dangerous. I said Escholl was one of our best; depend upon it, he thought more deeply than you, and without any witch-stone to help him. Why, it is precisely because Kettersel has murder and rape at the back of his mind that he was let go. For exactly the opposite reason, the court will condemn Palm as soon as there’s a pretext for a trial. Mathurin has arranged it so.”

“I am innocent again and do not quite understand the reason.”

“Yet you will dabble in high politic! Hark, now: are not all of the noble order enemies to the New Day by constitution, by existence? Are not all their private virtues overwhelmed by this public fault? The true villains among them will sooner or later dig their own graves and save us the trouble, bringing discredit on the whole in the process. But when you have one like Palm or the late Baron Brunivar, he’s dangerous; sets people to loving the institution because they cannot hate the man, and so must be pulled down by force. . . . For that matter, we need something to stir the people, make them fight for their liberty.”

“This seems a hard way,” said Rodvard, (trying to resolve the torsion in his mind).
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“It is a hard life, and hardest for those who avoid battle,” said Demadé Slair; and Rodvard not replying, they walked in silence. (Would this new system somehow produce men of better heart and purpose? For he did not see how the hardness could be justified else. And now his mind fell to wagging between man-system, system-man, and he decided that the justification of the system would be that it produced better men generally, and not merely a few of the best. No, not that either, for that was to confuse politic with ethic, and each was itself a system; for the one would make men good without regard to their happiness, and the other make them happy without regard to their good. . . . Or what was good? Where was the standard? By the system of Mancherei—)

“Will you go on to the quays?” said Slair’s voice, suddenly, and Rodvard found himself three steps beyond the entrance to the Palace Ulutz.

“I am weary tonight,” said Rodvard. “Perhaps because I am so innocent that this affair of spying upon the minds of my fellows is somewhat unpleasant.”

He extended his hand to bid goodnight.

“Oh, I am going with you,” said the swordsman, and as he caught Rodvard’s glance of aversion. “I cannot bear to be without your company.” His face went sober as he quick-stepped beside Rodvard’s dragging feet up the entrance-walk. “This is Mathurin’s arrangement, also, in case it troubles you. Did you not notice those two men who followed us from the court at half a square’s distance? There will be another outside tonight. People’s guards.”

(A tremor of peril.) “But I have—”

“Done nothing but your duty to the nation. True; and for that reason precisely it is needful to guard you like an egg sought after by weasels. Do you think that the fact you bear a Blue Star is a secret? There are not a few persons who may be brought before the court that would rather conceal an assassination than what they have in their minds. You and I may have a fight on our hands.” His face lighted with pleasure at the prospect.
II

They paced slowly through the dead garden, along a walk so narrow that shoulders sometimes touched. Lalette could hear the tiny tinkle of the chain that bound Slair’s sword to his hip when that touch came; she knew he was stirred, and the rousing of emotion was not unpleasant to her. Beyond the slate roofs of the town the sun was sinking redly through striations of cloud; all things lay in a peace that was the peace of the end of the world. He turned his head.

“Demoiselle,” he said, “what will you give for news?”

“Oh, hush,” said she. “You spoil it. For a moment I was immortal.”
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“I ask your grace. But truly I have news for you, and it should please you.”

“Sit here and tell me.” She took her place on a marble bench beneath the skeleton of an espaliered peach against the wall.

“You will not have to use your Art against the arch-priest Groadon. Does that not please you?”

“More than you know. What is the reason?”

“He has fled; slipped through the watch set on his palace and gone—whether to hell, the court or Tritulacca, no one knows.”

“I am glad.” She looked straight before her for a moment. “Ah, if things were better ordered.”

“You are not as pleased as you might be.”

“Oh, I am. But Rodvard—”

“What has he done? I’ll—”

“Oh, it’s no fault of his. You will tell no one?” She laid a cold hand on his warm one. “He has found who the heiress of Tuolén is, but does not know whether to tell Mathurin or not.”

“Who is she?”

“A child, thirteen years old. She lives at Dyolana, up in Oltrug seignory. But I do not know how long Rodvard will keep the secret. He feels a sense of duty.”

“Why should he not? What withholds him from telling?”

“I would have to teach her the patterns and everything. I do not wish it.” She shivered slightly. “And to be a witch—”

The rising shades had drowned the sun. A silence came on the garden, so utter that Lalette felt she could hear her own heart beat, and Demadé Slair’s beside her. The trees stood straight; the ruins of the flowers did not stir. In that enchanted stillness she seemed to float without power of motion. He leaned toward her, his arm close against her back, his other hand crept over her two.

“Demoiselle—Lalette,” he said in a voice so low it did not break the quiet. “I love you. Come away with me.”

Her down-bent head shook slowly; tears gathered behind the almost-closed eyes.

The arm around her back slid slowly beneath her own arm, the hand groped to close slowly around one soft breast; as though it were by no volition of her own, her head came back to meet the kiss. The tears ran down her cheek to touch his; he drew from her and began to speak rapidly in a voice low and urgent:
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“Come with me. I will take you away from every unhappiness. We can go beyond finding. I am a fighting man, can find a need for my service anywhere. It does not matter; we can forget all this entanglement and make our own world. I have money enough. We can go to the Green Islands, and you will never have to use the Art again. Oh, Lalette, I would even take you to the court and join your mother. Do you wish it?”

Her lips barely moving, she said; “And Rodvard?”

He kissed her again. “Bergelin? You owe him nothing. What has he done for you? And now he will tell Mathurin about the heiress of Tuolén, and there will be no more place for you—except with me. I will always have a place for you, Lalette, now or a thousand years from now. Or do you fear him? I am the better man.”

Now her eyes opened wide on the first star, low in the darkening sky, and with one hand she gently disengaged his clasp from her breast. “No,” she said in a voice clearer than before. “No, Demadé, I cannot. Perhaps for that reason, but I cannot. We had better go in now.”
III

“Friend Ber-ge-lin! Friend Ber-ge-lin!” The voice from below-stairs brought back to a consciousness of unhappiness the mind that had lost itself in the sweet cadences and imagined worlds of Momoroso. Rodvard sprang up and threw open the door.

“What will you have?”

“Someone to see you.”

Down the hall another door closed. It would be the little old man who asked so many questions and went almost a-tiptoe, as though always prepared to look through a keyhole. From the stairhead, Rodvard could see in the evening’s first shades a figure covered with a long cloak, somehow familiar, but the face hooded over.

“Beg her to come up,” he called. The figure mounted with one hand on the bannister, in the slow manner of the old. Near the last step his mind clicked; he was not surprised when in the room the hood fell back to show Mme. Kaja. Face cold as ice, he remained standing. She came across the room in a whirl of skirts, with both hands out.

“My de-ear boy,” she said.

With the hangings at the windows, it was too dim to tell how far her sincerity went. “I am more than honored to have one of the regents—,” he said, and let it hang.
412

“Oh, you are the most necessary of all,” she said, and frou-froued to the best chair. “I hope you have forgiven me. It was so-o-o necessary; someone had filed an information with the provosts that I was part of the New Day, and it was such a help. Isn’t it to-o bad about the Episcopals not cooperating? But there are so many of the priests on our side.”

She had seated herself where her face was in the shadow.

“Madame, why have you come?” he asked brutally.

There was a silence in the darkening room. Then: “To help you,” said the voice that, though it might no longer sing, had not lost its silver in speech.

“I will make a light.”

She stirred. “Do not. It is better so . . . I know—you are thinking of the Blue Star. Do you imagine that I fear your using it? No.”

He sat quietly (noting with the back of his mind how the dubious nicety had dropped from her voice, and thinking that this was the woman who had been taken into the High Center). Once more she seemed to gather her forces. “Rodvard Bergelin,” she said, “do you know why I am in the High Center?”

“I . . . think so.”

“I will tell you. It may be that in my ancestry there is a strain from one of the witch-families. It may be because I sincerely serve God. I do not know. But it has been given to me to be able to trace certain secrets of the heart.” Her multitudinous bracelets jingled as she lifted a hand to her breast. “Not as you do with the Blue Star.”

She was silent again, and he (unable to restrain an impulse toward malice) said; “Your success in understanding Dr. Remigorius was—as great as my own.”

“Rodvard, you are so-o unfair.” She dropped for a moment into the old manner, then seemed to shake herself. “I know. Your—witch will never forgive me. Not that I brought the provosts, but that I came in that day when you were on the bed. I do not care; she brings an evil Art into our New Day.”

“Do you think so?”

“Rodvard, hear me. This witch, to whom you are affected, will one day be the end of you. I have seen her but little, yet I know—it is your nature to give offense, and hers to take it. Sooner or later it will happen that she will find something not to be borne and put a witchery on you that will strike like lightning.”

(This clipped him close; with a certain convulsion round the heart, he remembered Lalette’s occasional sudden rages.) “Well,” he said, “what would you have me do?”

“Bid her farewell. Both of you can find partners better suited.”
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Rodvard came to his feet and walked across the room slowly (thinking in little flashes of sweet Leece and Maritzl of Stojenrosek). Mme. Kaja sat immobile.

“No,” he said. “Better or worse, I will not give her up for anything.”

Mme. Kaja also stood. “Forgive an old woman,” she said, and gathering her cloak around her, slipped out the door.