“I’ll shave your corpse, Rufo; that’s a promise.” We had passed the marker into the next county but Star didn’t slow down. “Bye the bye, where did you learn the undertaker’s trade?”
“The what? Oh! That was a far place indeed. The top of that rise, behind those trees, is a house and that’s where we’ll be having lunch. Nice people.”
“Good!” The thought of lunch was a bright spot as I was again regretting my Boy Scout behavior of the night before. “Rufo, you had it all wrong about the strange thing the dog did in the night.”
“Milord?”
“The dog did nothing in the night, that was the strange thing.”
“Well, it certainly didn’t sound that way,” Rufo said doubtfully.
“Another dog, another far place. Sorry. What I started to say was: A funny thing happened to me on the way to bed last night—and I did lead the life sanitary.”
“Indeed, milord?”
“In deed, if not in thought.” I needed to tell somebody and Rufo was the sort of scoundrel I could trust. I told him the Story of the Three Bares.
“I should have risked it,” I concluded. “And, swelp me, I would have, if that lad had been put to bed—alone—when she should have been. Or I think I would have, regardless of White Shotgun or jumping out windows. Rufo, why do the prettiest gals always have fathers or husbands? But I tell you the truth, there they were—the Big Bare, the Middle-Sized Bare, and the Littlest Bare, close enough to touch and all of them anxious to keep my bed warm—and I didn’t do a damn thing! Go ahead and laugh. I deserve it.”
He didn’t laugh. I turned to look at him and his expression was piteous. “Milord! Oscar my comrade! Tell me it isn’t true!”
“It is true,” I said huffily. “And I regretted it at once. Too late. And you complained about your night!”
“Oh, my God!” He threw his mount into high gear and took off. Ars Longa looked back inquiringly over her shoulder, then continued on.
Rufo caught up with Star; they stopped, short of the house where lunch was to be expected. They waited and I joined them. Star was wearing no expression; Rufo looked unbearably embarrassed.
Star said, “Rufo, go beg lunch for us. Fetch it here. I would speak with milord alone.”
“Yes, milady!” He got out fast.
Star said to me, still with no expression, “Milord Hero, is this true? What your groom reports to me?”
“I don’t know what he reported.”
“It concerned your failure—your alleged failure—last night.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘failure.’ If you want to know what I did after the banquet… I slept alone. Period.”
She sighed but her expression did not change. “I wanted to hear it from your lips. To be just.” Then her expression did change and I have never seen such anger. In a low almost passionless voice she began chewing me out:
“You hero. You incredible butter-brained dolt. Clumsy, bumbling, loutish, pimple-peeked, underdone, over-muscled, idiotic—”
“Stop it!”
“Quiet, I am not finished with you. Insulting three innocent ladies offending a staunch—”
“SHUT UP!!!”
The blast blew her hair back. I started in before she could rev up again. “Don’t ever again speak to me that way. Star. Never.”
“But—”
“Hold your tongue, you bad-tempered brat! You have not earned the right to speak to me that way. Nor will any girl ever earn the right. You will always—always!—address me politely and with respect. One more word of your nasty rudeness and I’ll spank you until the tears fly.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Get your hand away from that sword or I’ll take it away from you, down your pants right here on the road, and spank you with it. Till your arse is red and you beg for mercy. Star, I do not fight females—but I do punish naughty children. Ladies I treat as ladies. Spoiled brats I treat as spoiled brats. Star, you could be the Queen of England and the Galactic Overlord all rolled into one—but ONE MORE WORD out of line from you, and down come your tights and you won’t be able to sit for a week. Understand me?”
At last she said in a small voice, “I understand, milord.”
“And besides that. I’m resigning from the hero business. I won’t listen to such talk twice, I won’t work for a person who treats me that way even once.” I sighed, realizing that I had just lost my corporal’s stripes again. But I always felt easier and freer without them.
“Yes, milord.” I could barely hear her. It occurred to me that it was a long way back to Nice. But it didn’t worry me.
“All right, let’s forget it.”
“Yes, milord.” She added quietly, “But may I explain why I spoke as I did?”
“No.”
“Yes, milord.”
A long silent time later Rufo returned. He stopped out of earshot, I motioned him to join us.
We ate silently and I didn’t eat much but the beer was good. Rufo tried once to make chitchat with an impossibility about another of his uncles. It couldn’t have fallen flatter in Boston.
After lunch Star turned her mount—those “horses” have a small turning circle for their wheelbase but it’s easier to bring them full circle in a tight place by leading them. Rufo said, “Milady?”
She said impassively, “I am returning to the Doral.”
“Milady! Please not!”
“Dear Rufo,” she said warmly but sadly. “You can wait up at that house—and if I’m not back in three days, you are free.” She looked at me, looked away. “I hope that milord Oscar will see fit to escort me. But I do not ask it. I have not the right.” She started off.
I was slow in getting Ars Longa turned; I didn’t have the hang of it. Star was a good many bricks down the road; I started after her.
Rufo waited until I was turned, biting his nails, then suddenly climbed aboard and caught up with me. We rode knee to knee, a careful fifty paces behind Star, Finally he said, “This is suicide. You know that, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t know it.”
“Well, it is.”
I said, “Is that why you are not bothering to say ‘sir’?”
“Milord?” He laughed shortly and said, “I guess it is. No point in that nonsense when you are going to die soon.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“Huh?”
“‘Huh, milord,’ if you please. Just for practice. But from now on, even if we last only thirty minutes. Because I am running the show now—and not just as her stooge. I don’t want any doubt in your mind as to who is boss once the fighting starts. Otherwise turn around and I’ll give your mount a slap on the rump to get you moving. Hear me?”
“Yes, milord Oscar.” He added thoughtfully, “I knew you were boss as soon as I got back. But I don’t see how you did it. Milord, I have never seen Her meek before. May one ask?”
“One may not. But you have my permission to ask her. If you think it is safe. Now tell me about this ‘suicide’ matter—and don’t say she doesn’t want you to give me advice. From here on you’ll give advice any time I ask—and keep your lip buttoned if I don’t.”
“Yes, milord. All right, the suicide prospects. No way to figure the odds. It depends on how angry the Doral is. But it won’t be a fight, can’t be. Either we get clobbered the instant we poke our noses in…or we are safe until we leave his land again, even if he tells us to turn around and ride away.” Rufo looked very thoughtful. “Milord, if you want a blind guess—Well, I figure you’ve insulted the Doral the worst he has ever been hurt in the course of a long and touchy life. So it’s about ninety to ten that, two shakes after we turn off the road, we are all going to be sprouting more arrows than Saint Sebastian.”
“Star, too? She hasn’t done anything. Nor have you.” (Nor I, either, I added to myself. What a country!)
Rufo sighed. “Milord, each world has its own ways. Jock won’t want to hurt Her. He likes Her. He’s terribly fond of Her. You co
uld say that he loves Her. But if he kills you, he has got to kill Her. Anything else would be inhumane by his standards—and he’s a very moral bloke; he’s noted for it. And kill me, too, of course, but I don’t count. He must kill Her even though it will start a chain of events that will wipe him out just as dead once the news gets out. The question is: Does he have to kill you? I figure be has to, knowing these people. Sorry…milord.”
I mulled it over. “Then why are you here, Rufo?”
“Milord?”
“You can cut the ‘sirs’ down to one an hour. Why are you here? If your estimate is correct, your one sword and one bow can’t affect the outcome. She gave you a fair chance to chicken out. So what is it? Pride? Or are you in love with her?”
“Oh, my God, no!”
Again I saw Rufo really shocked. “Excuse me,” he went on. “You caught me with my guard down.” He thought about it. “Two reasons, I suppose. The first is that if Jock allows us to parley—well, She is quite a talker. In the second place”—he glanced at me—“I’m superstitious, I admit it. You’re a man with luck. I’ve seen it. So I want to be close to you even when reason tells me to run. You could fall in a cesspool and—”
“Nonsense. You should hear my hard-luck story.”
“Maybe in the past. But I’m betting the dice as they roll.” He shut up.
A bit later I said, “You stay here.” I speeded up and joined Star. “Here are the plans,” I told her. “When we get there, you stay out on the road with Rufo. I’m going in alone.”
She gasped. “Oh, milord! No!”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“Star, do you want me back? As your champion?”
“With all my heart!”
“All right. Then do it my way.”
She waited before answering. “Oscar—”
“Yes, Star.”
“I will do as you say. But will you let me explain before you decide what you will say?”
“Go on.”
“In this world, the place for a lady to ride is by her champion. And that is where I would want to be, my Hero, when in peril. Especially when in peril. But I’m not pleading for sentiment, nor for empty form. Knowing what I now know I can prophesy with certainty that, if you go in first, you will die at once, and I will die—and Rufo—as soon as they can chase us down. That will be quickly, our mounts are tired. On the other hand, if I go in alone—”
“No.”
“Please, milord. I was not proposing, it. If I were to go in alone, I would be almost as likely to die at once as you would be. Or perhaps, instead of feeding me to the pigs, be would simply have me feed the pigs and be a plaything of the pig boys—a fate merciful rather than cold justice in view of my utter degradation in returning without you. But the Doral is fond of me and I think he might let me live…as a pig girl and no better than pigs. This I would risk if necessary and wait my chance to escape, for I cannot afford pride; I have no pride, only necessity.” Her voice was husky with tears.
“Star, Star!”
“My darling!”
“Huh? You said—”
“May I say it? We may not have much time. My Hero…my darling.” She reached out blindly, I took her hand; she leaned toward me and pressed it to her breast.
Then she straightened up but kept my hand. “I’m all right now. I am a woman when I least expect it. No, my darling Hero, there is only one way for us to go in and that is side by side, proudly. It is not only safest, it is the only way I would wish it—could I afford pride. I can afford anything else. I could buy you the Eiffel Tower for a trinket, and replace it when you broke it. But not pride.”
“Why is it safest?”
“Because he may—I say ‘may’—let us parley. If I can get in ten words, he’ll grant a hundred. Then a thousand. I may be able to heal his hurt.”
“All right. But—Star, what did I do to hurt him? I didn’t! I went to a lot of trouble not to hurt him.”
She was silent a while, then—“You are an American.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Jock doesn’t know it.”
“It has, perhaps, everything to do with it. No, America is at most a name to the Doral for, although he has studied the Universes, he has never traveled. But—You will not be angry with me again?”
“Uh…let’s call a King’s-X on that. Say anything you need to say but explain things. Just don’t chew me out. Oh, hell, chew me out if you like—this once. Just don’t let it be a habit…my darling.”
She squeezed my hand. “Never will I again! The error lay in my not realizing that you are American. I don’t know America, not the way Rufo does. If Rufo had been present—But he wasn’t; he was wenching in the kitchen. I suppose I assumed, when you were offered table and root and bed, that you would behave as a Frenchman would. I never dreamed that you would refuse it. Had I known, I could have spun a thousand excuses for you. An oath taken. A holy day in your religion. Jock would have been disappointed but not hurt; he is a man of honor.”
“But—Damn it, I still don’t see why he wants to shoot me for not doing something I would expect, back home, that he might shoot me for doing. In this country, is a plan forced to accept any proposition a gal makes? And why did she run and complain? Why didn’t she keep it secret? Hell, she didn’t even try. She dragged in her daughters.”
“But, darling, it was never a secret. He asked you publicly and publicly you accepted. How would you feel if your bride, on your wedding night, kicked you out of the bedroom? ‘Table, and roof, and bed.’ You accepted.”
“‘Bed.’ Star, in America beds are multiple-purpose furniture. Sometimes we sleep in them. Just sleep. I didn’t dig it.”
“I know now. You didn’t know the idiom. My fault. But do you now see why he was completely—and publicly—humiliated?”
“Well, yes, but he brought it on himself. He asked me in public. It would have been worse if I had said No then.”
“Not at all. You didn’t have to accept. You could have refused graciously. Perhaps the most graceful way, even though it be a white lie, is for the hero to protest his tragic inability—temporary or permanent—from wounds received in the very battle that proved him a hero.”
“I’ll remember that. But I still don’t see why he was so astoundingly generous in the first place.”
She turned and looked at me. “My darling, is it all right for me to say that you have astounded me every time I have talked with you? And I had thought I had passed beyond all surprises, years ago.”
“It’s mutual. You always astound me. However, I like it—except one time.”
“My lord Hero, how often do you think a simple country squire has a chance to gain for his family a Hero’s son, and raise it as his own? Can you not feel his gall-bitter disappointment at what you snatched from him after he thought you had promised this boon? His shame? His wrath?”
I considered it. “Well, I’ll be dogged. It happens in America, too. But they don’t boast about it.”
“Other countries, other customs. At the very least, he had thought that he had the honor of a hero treating him as a brother. And with luck he expected the get of a hero for house Doral.”
“Wait a minute! Is that why he sent me three? To improve the odds?”
“Oscar, he would eagerly have sent you thirty…if you had hinted that you felt heroic enough to attempt it. As it was, he sent his chief wife and his two favorite daughters.” She hesitated. “What I still don’t understand—” She stopped and asked me a blunt question.
“Hell, no!” I protested, blushing. “Not since I was fifteen. But one thing that put me off was that mere child. She’s one. I think.”
Star shrugged. “She may be. But she is not a child; in Nevia she is a woman. And even if she is unbroached as yet, I’ll wager she’s a mother in another twelvemonth. But if you were loath to tap her, why didn’t you shoo her out and take her older sister? That quaint hasn’t been virgin since she’s had breasts, to my certain knowledge?
??and I hear that Muri is ‘some dish,’ if that is the American idiom.”
I muttered. I had been thinking the same thing. But I didn’t want to discuss it with Star.
She said, “Pardonne-moi, mon cher? Tu as dit?”
“I said I had given up sex crimes for Lent!”
She looked puzzled. “But Lent is over, even on Earth. And it is not, here, at all.”
“Sorry.”
“Still I’m pleased that you didn’t pick Muri over Letva; Muri would have been unbearably stuck-up with her mother after such a thing. But I do understand that you will repair this, if I can straighten it out?” She added, “It makes great difference in how I handle the diplomacies.”
(Star, Star—you are the one I want to bed!) “This is what you wish…my darling?”
“Oh, how much it would help!”
“Okay. You’re the doctor. One…three…thirty—I’ll die trying. But no little kids!”
“No problem. Let me think. If the Doral lets me get in just five words—” She fell silent. Her hand was pleasantly warm.
I did some thinking, too. These strange customs had ramifications, some of which I had still shied away from. How was it, if Letva had immediately told her husband what a slob I was—
“Star? Where did you sleep last night?”
She looked around sharply. “Milord…is it permitted to ask you, please, to mind your own business?”
“I suppose so. But everybody seems to be minding mine.”
“I am sorry. But I am very much worried and my heaviest worries you do not know as yet. It was a fair question and deserves a fair answer. Hospitality balances, always, and honors flow both ways. I slept in the Doral’s bed. However, if it matters—and it may to you; I still do not understand Americans—I was wounded yesterday, it still bothered me. Jock is a sweet and gentle soul. We slept. Just slept.”
I tried to make it nonchalant. “Sorry about the wound. Does it hurt now?”
“Not at all. The dressing will fall off by tomorrow. However—Last night was not the first time I enjoyed table and roof and bed at house Doral. Jock and I are old friends, beloved friends—which is why I think I can risk that he may grant me a few seconds before killing me.”