They had much to tell me. The weather had changed the very day after my sickness began. The Shennit was full again. The breaking of the drought had come too late to save the crops for the most part (one or two fields put up a little); but garden stuff was growing. Above all, the grass was reviving wonderfully; we should save far more of the cattle than we had hoped. And the fever was clean gone. My own sickness had been of another kind. And birds were coming back to Glome, so that every woman whose husband could shoot with a bow or set a snare might soon have something in the pot.
These things I heard of from the women as well as from the Fox. When we were alone he told me other news. My father was now, while it lasted, the darling of his people. It seemed (this was how we first came round to the matter nearest our hearts) he had been much pitied and praised at the Great Offering. Up there at the Holy Tree he had wailed and wept and torn his robes and embraced Psyche countless times (he had never done it before) but said again and again that he would not withhold his heart’s dearest when the good of the people called for her death. The whole crowd was in tears, as the Fox had been told; he himself, as a slave and an alien, had not been there.
‘Did you know, grandfather,’ said I, ‘that the King was such a mountebank?’ (We were talking in Greek of course.)
‘Not wholly that, child,’ said the Fox. ‘He believed it while he did it. His tears are no falser—or truer—than Redival’s.’
Then he went on to tell me of the great news from Phars. A fool in the crowd had said the King of Phars had thirteen sons. The truth is he had begotten eight, whereof one died in childhood. The eldest was simple and could never rule, and the King (as some said their laws allowed him) had named Argan, the third, as his successor. And now, it seemed, his second son, Trunia, taking it ill to be put out of the succession—and, doubtless, fomenting some other discontents such as are never far to seek in any land—had risen in rebellion, with a strong following, to recover what he called his right. The upshot was that all Phars was likely to be busy with civil war for a twelvemonth at least, and both parties were already as soft as butter towards Glome, so that we were safe from any threat in that quarter.
A few days later when the Fox was with me (often he could not be, for the King needed him) I said, ‘Grandfather, do you still think that Ungit is only lies of poets and priests?’
‘Why not, child?’
‘If she were indeed a goddess what more could have followed my poor sister’s death than has followed it? All the dangers and plagues that hung over us have been scattered. Why, the wind must have changed the very day after they had—’ I found, now, I could not give it a name. The grief was coming back with my strength. So was the Fox’s.
‘Cursed chance, cursed chance,’ he muttered, his face all screwed up, partly in anger and partly to keep back his tears (Greek men cry easily as women). ‘It is these chances that nourish the beliefs of barbarians.’
‘How often, grandfather, you have told me there’s no such thing as chance.’
‘You’re right. It was an old trick of the tongue. I meant that all these things had no more to do with that murder than with anything else. They and it are all part of the same web, which is called Nature, or the Whole. That south-west wind came over a thousand miles of sea and land. The weather of the whole world would have to have been different from the beginning if that wind was not to blow. It’s all one web; you can’t pick threads out nor put them in.’
‘And so,’ said I, raising myself on my elbow, ‘she died to no purpose. If the King had waited a few days later we could have saved her, for all would have begun to go well of itself. And this you call comfort?’
‘Not this. Their evil-doing was vain and ignorant, as all evil deeds are. This is our comfort, that the evil was theirs, not hers. They say there was not a tear in her eye, nor did so much as her hand shake, when they put her to the Tree. Not even when they turned away and left her did she cry out. She died full of all things that are really good; courage, and patience, and—and—Aiai! Aiai—oh, Psyche, oh, my little one—’ Then his love got the better of his philosophy, and he pulled his mantle over his head and at last, still weeping, left me.
Next day he said, ‘You saw yesterday, daughter, how little progress I have made. I began to philosophise too late. You are younger and can go further. To love, and to lose what we love, are equally things appointed for our nature. If we cannot bear the second well, that evil is ours. It did not befall Psyche. If we look at it with reason’s eye and not with our passions, what good that life offers did she not win? Chastity, temperance, prudence, meekness, clemency, valour—and, though fame is froth, yet, if we should reckon it at all, a name that stands with Iphigenia’s and Antigone’s.’
Of course he had long since told me those stories, so often that I had them by heart, mostly in the very words of the poets. Nevertheless, I asked him to tell me them again, chiefly for his sake; for I was now old enough to know that a man (above all, a Greek man) can find comfort in words coming out of his own mouth. But I was glad to hear them too. These were peaceful, familiar things and would keep at bay the great desolation which now, with my returning health, was beginning to mix itself in every thought.
Next day, being then for the first time risen, I said to him, ‘Grandfather, I have missed being Iphigenia. I can be Antigone.’
‘Antigone? How, child?’
‘She gave her brother burial. I too—there may be something left. Even the Brute would not eat bones and all. I must go up to the Tree. I will bring it . . . them . . . back if I can and burn them rightly. Or, if there’s too much, I’ll bury it up there.’
‘It would be pious,’ said the Fox. ‘It would accord with custom, if not with Nature. If you can. It’s late in the year now for going up the Mountain.’
‘That’s why it must be done speedily. I think it will be about five and twenty days before the earliest snow.’
‘If you can, child. You have been very sick.’
‘It’s all I can do,’ said I.
IX
I was soon able to go about the house and in the gardens again. I did it in some stealth, for the Fox told the King I was still sick. Otherwise he would have had me off to the Pillar Room to work for him. He often asked, ‘Where’s that girl got to? Does she mean to slug abed for the rest of her life? I’ll not feed drones in my hive forever.’ The loss of Psyche had not at all softened him to Redival and me. Rather the opposite. ‘To hear him talk,’ said the Fox, ‘you’d think no father ever loved a child better than he Psyche.’ The gods had taken his darling and left him the dross: the young whore (that was Redival) and the hobgoblin (which was I). But I could guess it all without the Fox’s reports to help me.
For my own part, I was busily thinking out how I could make my journey to the Tree on the Mountain and gather whatever might remain of Psyche. I had talked lightly enough of doing this and was determined that I would do it, but the difficulties were very great. I had never been taught to ride any beast, so I must go on foot. I knew it would take a man who knew the way about six hours to go from the palace to the Tree. I, a woman, and one who had to find her way, must allow myself eight at the least. And two more for the work I went to do, and, say, six for the journey home. There were sixteen hours in all. It could not be done in one stitch. I must reckon to lie out a night on the Mountain, and must take food (water I should find) and warm clothing. It could not be done till I recovered my full strength.
And in truth (as I now see) I had the wish to put off my journey as long as I could. Not for any peril or labour it might cost; but because I could see nothing in the whole world for me to do once it was accomplished. As long as this act lay before me, there was, as it were, some barrier between me and the dead desert which the rest of my life must be. Once I had gathered Psyche’s bones, then, it seemed, all that concerned her would be over and done with. Already, even with the great act still ahead, there was flowing in upon me, from the barren years beyond it, a dejection such as I had
never conceived. It was not at all like the agonies I had endured before and have endured since. I did not weep nor wring my hands. I was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled, or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved.
One day when this deadness was at its worst I came into the house by the little door that leads into a narrow passage between the guards’ quarters and the dairy. I sat down on the threshold, less weary of body (for the gods, not out of mercy, have made me strong) than unable to find a reason for going a step further in any direction or for doing anything at all. A fat fly was crawling up the doorpost. I remember thinking that its sluggish crawling, seemingly without aim, was like my life, or even the life of the whole world.
‘Lady,’ said a voice behind me. I looked up; it was Bardia.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I’ll make free with you. I’ve known sorrow too. I have been as you are now; I have sat and felt the hours drawn out to the length of years. What cured me was the wars. I don’t think there’s any other cure.’
‘But I can’t go to the wars, Bardia,’ said I.
‘You can, almost,’ he said. ‘When you fought me outside the other Princess’s door (peace be on her, the Blessed!) I told you you had a good eye and a good reach. You thought I was saying it to cheer you. Well, so perhaps I was. But it was true too. There’s no one in the quarters, and there are blunt swords. Come in and let me give you a lesson.’
‘No,’ said I dully. ‘I don’t want to. What would be the use?’
‘Use? Try it and see. No one can be sad while they’re using wrist and hand and eye and every muscle of their body. That’s truth, Lady, whether you believe it or not. As well, it would be a hundred shames not to train anyone who has such a gift for the sport as you look like having.’
‘No,’ said I. ‘Leave me alone. Unless we can use sharps and you would kill me.’
‘That’s women’s talk, by your favour. You’d never say that again once you’d seen it done. Come. I’ll not leave off till you do.’
A big, kindly man, some years older than herself, can usually persuade even a sad and sullen girl. In the end I rose and went in with him.
‘That shield is too heavy,’ he said. ‘Here’s the one for you. Slip it on, thus. And understand from the outset; your shield is a weapon, not a wall. You’re fighting with it every bit as much as your sword. Watch me, now. You see the way I twist my shield—make it flicker like a butterfly. There’d be arrows and spears and sword points flying off it in every direction if we were in a hot engagement. Now: here’s your sword. No, not like that. You want to grip it firm, but light. It’s not a wild animal that’s trying to run away from you. That’s better. Now, your left foot forward. And don’t look at my face, look at my sword. It isn’t my face is going to fight you. And now, I’ll show you a few guards.’
He kept me at it for a full half hour. It was the hardest work I’d ever done, and, while it lasted, one could think of nothing else. I said not long before that work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three—far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts.
‘That’s enough,’ said Bardia. ‘You shape very well. I’m sure now I can make a swordsman of you. You’ll come again tomorrow? But your dress hampers you. It would be better if you could wear something that came only to your knee.’
I was in such a heat that I went across the passage into the dairy and drank a bowl of milk. It was the first food or drink that I had really relished ever since the bad times began. While I was in there, one of the other soldiers (I suppose he had had a sight of what we were doing) came into the passage and said something to Bardia. Bardia replied, I couldn’t hear what. Then he spoke louder: ‘Why, yes, it’s a pity about her face. But she’s a brave girl and honest. If a man was blind and she weren’t the King’s daughter, she’d make him a good wife.’ And that is the nearest thing to a love-speech that was ever made me.
I had my lesson with Bardia every day after that. And I knew soon that he had been a good doctor to me. My grief remained, but the numbness was gone and time moved at its right pace again.
Soon I told Bardia how I wished to go to the Grey Mountain, and why.
‘That’s very well thought of, Lady,’ he said. ‘I’m ashamed I have not done it myself. We all owe the Blessed Princess that much at the least. But there’s no need for you to go. I’ll go for you.’
I said I would go.
‘Then you must go with me,’ he said. ‘You’d never find the place by yourself. And you might meet a bear or wolves or a mountainy man, an outlaw, that’d be worse. Can you ride a horse, Lady?’
‘No, I’ve never been taught.’
He wrinkled up his brow, thinking. ‘One horse will do,’ he said, ‘I in the saddle and you behind me. And it won’t take six hours getting up; there’s a shorter way. But the work we have to do might take long enough. We’ll need to sleep a night on the mountain.’
‘Will the King let you be absent so long, Bardia?’
He chuckled. ‘Oh, I’ll spin the King a story easily enough. He isn’t with us as he is with you, Lady. For all his hard words he’s no bad master to soldiers, shepherds, huntsmen, and the like. He understands them and they him. You see him at his worst with women and priests and politic men. The truth is, he’s half afraid of them.’ This was very strange to me.
Six days after that, I and Bardia set out at the milking-time of the morning, the day being so cloudy that it was almost as dark as full night. No one in the palace knew of our going except the Fox and my own women. I had on a plain black cloak with a hood, and a veil over my face. Under the mantle I wore the short smock that I used for my fencing bouts, with a man’s belt and a sword, this time a sharp one, at my side. ‘Most likely we’ll meet nothing worse than a wild cat or a fox,’ Bardia had said. ‘But no one, man or maid, ought to go weaponless up the hills.’ I sat with both my legs on one side of the horse, and a hand on Bardia’s girdle. With the other, I held on my knees an urn.
It was all silent in the city, but for the clatter of our own beast’s hoofs, though here and there you would see a light in a window. A sharp rain came on us from behind our backs as we went down from the city to the ford of the Shennit, but it ceased as we were crossing the water, and the clouds began to break. There was still no sign of dawn ahead, for it was in that direction the foul weather was packing off.
We passed the house of Ungit on our right. Its fashion is thus: great, ancient stones, twice the height of a man and four times the thickness of a man, set upright in an egg-shaped ring. These are very ancient, and no one knows who set them up or brought them into that place, or how. In between the stones it is filled up with brick to make the wall complete. The roof is thatched with rushes and not level but somewhat domed, so that the whole thing is a roundish hump, most like a huge slug lying on the field. This is a holy shape, and the priests say it resembles, or (in a mystery) that it really is, the egg from which the whole world was hatched or the womb in which the whole world once lay. Every spring the Priest is shut into it and fights, or makes believe to fight, his way out through the western door; and this means that the new year is born. There was smoke going up from it as we passed, for the fire before Ungit is always alight.
I found my mood changed as soon as we had left Ungit behind, partly because we were now going into country I had never known, and partly because I felt as if the air were sweeter as we got away from all that holiness. The Mountain, now bigger ahead of us, still shut out the brightening of the day; but when I looked back and saw, beyond the city, those hills where Psyche and I and the Fox used to wander, I perceived that it was already morning there. And further off still, the clouds in the western sky were beginning to turn pale rose.
We were going up and down little hills, but always more up than down, on a good enough road, with grasslands on each side of us. There were dark woods on ou
r left, and presently the road bent towards them. But here Bardia left the road and took to the grass.
‘That’s the Holy Road,’ he said, pointing to the woods. ‘That’s the way they took the Blessed (peace be on her). Our way will be steeper and shorter.’
We now went for a long time over grass, gently but steadily upwards, making for a ridge so high and so near that the true Mountain was quite out of sight. When we topped it, and stood for a while to let the horse breathe, everything was changed. And my struggle began.
We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak). Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. The Mountain, far greater yet also far further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing. Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count. To left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea (though it is not to be compared with the Great Sea of the Greeks). There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.
And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice—no words—but if you made it into words it would be, ‘Why should your heart not dance?’ It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, ‘Why not?’ I had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of hateful Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died—for who knew what Glome would do then? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world’s end. The freshness and wetness all about me (I had seen nothing but drought and withered things for many months before my sickness) made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? It is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom, and desirable.