‘If you are pregnant,’ he said, ‘you have nothing to fear, if that man is your husband.’
‘He is.’
‘You look very much alike.’
‘Mahondis do look alike. We are inbred,’ she said, not knowing that in fact she thought this.
‘Then that is a fault easily cured,’ he said.
Dann was awake and listening, and on his face was a look that told Mara he was fighting inner demons.
‘And do you claim this child?’ Chombi asked him.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Dann, forgetting that Mara had told him not to say she was pregnant.
Mara asked Kira how long it took to get a message to Goidel. Two days there. Then a couple of days of deliberations and a decision, and two days on the return boat. Altogether, allow a week.
Mara told Dann that she might be taken as a concubine for the Goidels. He said, ‘Oh no, they won’t.’ As always now there was a pause after her speaking, before he heard, and responded. She believed that this bout of fever had done him real harm – not physically, for he was recovering, but by bringing his nightmares nearer. She wondered if Dann was perhaps a little mad. Sometimes, yes. On certain subjects.
That week she spent feeding Dann and herself, and making him strong by walking with him around the mud lanes, and to the old deserted city in the savannah. She knew they were being observed. They sat with Kira, and Mara watched to see if Dann was attracted to Kira, for she longed to be reassured: there was a death sentence in the River Towns for men finding men attractive. And Dann did respond to Kira, but she made such a joke of everything it was hard to say what she felt.
At the end of ten days two uniformed men came off the river boat from Goidel to the inn and demanded to see Mara and Dann. They were in the communal room, eating. At the sight of the two men Dann gave a shout and darted out of the door and disappeared into the maze of lanes and little houses. Yes, the two men were quite alike, Mara thought. Like most people around here they were very black, well-built, with lean faces, but their hair was long and black, like the Mahondis’.
‘I see your husband has run away,’ said one man, genially. ‘Well, that makes things easier. Get your things. You are coming with us to Goidel.’ Mara said nothing. She knew Dann had run away because of the two similar men, who later would become, in his mind, one man. Perhaps he would ask Kira for help. And he had not committed a crime, was not sick – or pregnant.
‘Better for you that you are pregnant than ill,’ said the other gaoler. ‘It would be isolation for you and that’s no joke.’
They watched her pay the bill. She had none of the small coins left after that. She watched them conferring with Chombi, while he reported the events of the little town, and was given orders.
The upriver boat came. Mara got on with her sack, and sat where she had before, but this time she had two men behind her, watching. What did they think she might do? Jump into this big, dangerous river, full of water dragons? Swim through them to a bank that edged empty savannah and ancient, deserted towns?
That night in the inn they made her sleep between them. The next day on the boat was the same. She did not dislike these men, who were only doing a job. They were kind, in their way, making sure she ate and drank. That evening they arrived in Goidel and she was taken to a gaol and put in the charge of two women who fed her, washed her, were jocular and tried to make her laugh.
Next morning she went in front of an elderly magistrate who reminded her, by his manner at least, of Juba.
‘So you claim you are married?’
‘Yes.’
‘What degree of marriage?’
Kira had told her to say, second degree. That meant, here, either man or woman could have other partners, but the man must assume responsibility for any child, since there was no way of establishing paternity. This was one of the laws introduced when it was becoming clear that fertility was dropping.
‘Second degree,’ said Mara.
‘Whatever the degree, when the husband is not present, it is irrelevant – wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Yes,’ said Mara.
‘Well, you must go back to prison. If your husband does not claim you within a week, then you will go to the breeding programme.’
Mara had walked between the two gaolers to the court, and now back again. Going she had been too anxious to notice much; returning, her mind easier, since she believed Dann would come, she was able to see the streets she was walking through. Goidel was very different from the little mud towns down the river, several times larger, and while the buildings were of mud or mud-brick, the façades of most were covered with the same fine plaster she had seen in the old ruined cities above the Rock Village. So, instead of looking like an extension of the river bank mud, the buildings were white, or a pale earth colour, or yellow, or even pink. None of these façades was new or clean; some were chipped, or areas of plaster had fallen and not been replaced. The roofs, of reed, needed replacing. In some, birds had nested. Many buildings were empty. But there were hundreds of people in the streets and they wore garments striped with bright colours, or plain, of the same very fine material as the robes she carried rolled at the bottom of her sack. Delicate, almost transparent material, with embroidery around necks and sleeves when the garment was plain. These were well fed people. Above all, there was an air of general confidence and calm. People stood about in groups talking, and laughing. In a little garden families were sitting on the grass eating and drinking. Her gaolers were not marching like soldiers, but strolling along and stopping to explain things when she asked.
The two women gaolers took her in, making jokes with the two soldiers. These were, Mara knew, clever, surviving women, and she wanted to trust them. She decided she would: after all, she had no alternative.
She asked them if they knew any medicine for aborting a baby. She was whispering, so even the walls could not have heard. They were not surprised. Whispering, one said that if they were found out it would be the death sentence for both of them, and the other that they must be well paid.
Mara put her hands up under her robe, to untie a gold coin, then saw she was ridiculous: with one movement they could fling up her robe and see the cord of coins. She untied the cord and brought it forth. Twenty-two. She offered them one. First one, then the other tested it. Then they asked for another. She gave them another. All three knowing that they could have taken everything, there was a moment when Mara despaired and she believed that they were being tempted. But they said, ‘All right, put it back.’ And she tied the cord again, where it had been.
It was lucky, they said, that she was the only woman in the gaol, because otherwise it would have been too much of a risk. Then they joked that it was more usual for them to be asked for drugs to increase fertility, and this was their reputation, which made it easier for them to help Mara.
They gave her bitter drinks, which she had to get down her as hot as she could bear. This was for three days. Then, on the fourth, very late at night, they put her on a pallet on the floor, and got to work on manipulating her stomach. She felt those long knowledgeable fingers probe deep, through her flesh, seeking out her womb, looking for the child – finding it. The pain was intense and she fainted, and came to, and the fingers still probed and pushed. Both women kept their gaze on her face, and when they saw that she really could not bear any more, gave her another potion.
Towards morning she felt the warm rush between her legs.
‘Do you want to see it?’ one asked, and Mara caught a glimpse of a tiny creature in its bloody mess. She felt the most terrible pang in her heart – a knife would have been kinder – and shook her head for them to take it away. She was sorry she had said she would look.
‘Three months,’ said one, and the other, ‘Could be even a few days more?’
So Meryx’s child was alive when Mara saw it. When it was dead one of the women crept out into the savannah – for the prison was on the edge of the town – and when she returned she said briskly, ‘That
’s done.’
Mara was thinking, I’ve chosen between Meryx’s baby and Dann. And then, No, that’s foolish. No baby could survive a boat journey in this heat. That was no choice.
The two women made her sleep, and woke her to say that Dann had arrived at the magistrate’s court in good time to claim her. But there was a problem. He seemed ill. Mara knew he was not ill; it was his terror that made him ill. She knew what it had cost him to go and confront the soldiers that stood guarding the court. She could feel little Dann’s fear in her own nerves, see his face, for that moment little Dann’s face.
‘He has been told that you have miscarried,’ said the soldier who brought the message.
Before Mara was released she again drew the two women into the very centre of a large room, and whispered that she needed to change a gold coin, or if they could, two. And they said, ‘Two. One each. But we shall not be giving you the full value. It’s dangerous for us.’ She gave them two coins, leaving nineteen in the cord, and she got back a mass of the light, trashy-looking coins in exchange. About half the value, she judged, but did not blame them. This change she put into her sack, and thanked them both, and said she would always remember them, which was true. And they embraced her and wished her well.
Dann was in a guest house, waiting for her. He was not ill, but he was frightened still, and haunted, and when Mara thanked him for coming to rescue her he burst into a terrible sobbing, and clung to her – almost little Dann, but not quite, for there was a hardness and obstinacy there, adult, responsible, and his voice, ‘Mara, if I’d lost you…’ was far from little Dann’s.
‘Or if I’d lost you,’ she said.
These two were not in the habit of physical affection, but now they sat close together on the bed, arms around each other, resting and quiet. At peace, that’s what they were; and Mara felt the tension go out of his body, and her own.
A brave thing that was, what he had done. She knew that soldiers, guards, the police, turned him to water. To have made himself walk into that courtroom – what was it she could do that was anything like as brave? But then she did not fear standing in a court, to be judged: that is what tormented him. She knew it, but did he? And then, the two men, two men …
She dared, ‘The two men who came to arrest us back in that other town…’ And waited for him to say, ‘No, not two, one man.’ But he only searched and searched her face with his eyes.
‘Mara, I know you don’t believe me, but there is somebody after me. I’ve seen him.’
‘Who, Dann, who is it?’
He only let his head fall on her shoulder, with a groan.
She said, ‘If you hadn’t come to claim me they would have taken me for their breeding programme.’
‘I know, they told me.’ And then he said quietly, almost humbly, and smiling, ‘Mara, I think it would be better if you didn’t let yourself get pregnant again.’
They had two days to rest in. She was still a little weak, but was herself: she had not felt anything like herself yet on this journey. He ate a lot, and they walked together around and about this most pleasant river town. They were watched by agents from the magistrate’s court, and when they caught the upriver boat the agents went with them. This was to make sure, even now, that they were neither of them ill. Mara had been told by the women gaolers, and Dann had been told, for everyone talked of it, how much epidemics were feared. Terrible diseases arrived in the River Towns, for no reason, made people ill or killed them and then disappeared, for no reason. The river sickness everyone understood, and they did not fear it. Its symptoms were always the same: the sufferers shook and shivered and ran high fevers, and then a lull, and then another attack: lulls and fevers, and sometimes people died, and sometimes not. In every house were medicines for the river sickness, but there was none for these new diseases, if they were new. There was talk among the old people that this was not the first time illnesses had swept along the river, and disappeared.
When two days later the boat went in to the shore for the night, where this river joined the main one, which was called Cong, it was already dusk and so they did not see until morning that if the river they were leaving had made the first one they embarked on seem like a creek, so now that river, which had been so large and powerful, seemed a mere preparation for what they gazed at. They walked down from the inn, still watched by Goidel agents, since this was where Goidel sovereignty ended, to yet another boat, a much larger one, waiting at a pier where boats of all sizes were tied. The river was so wide that the birds in the trees on the other bank were white dots and the trees were a little, low fringe. From this bank it could be seen that on this river were still many kinds of palm, but there were big, green trees, and some like green hands pointing up, covered with thorns. Along the sides of the boat were oars, but they were at rest, lodged in their supports, because this boat was propelled by a device that used sunlight, concentrated and focused on to a slanting square of material that had a dull shine. The secret of this use of the sun had been lost long ago, and so precious was the device – very few were left now – that guards protected it, day and night. Dann, to find a way of travelling free, offered himself as a guard. The owner of this boat, and the navigator, was Han, an elderly woman as lean and dry and brown as a tree trunk, and as wrinkled. She looked long at him, and finally nodded. Dann inspired confidence. He did not have that ease and openness that people have who have never experienced treachery, so it must be, thought Mara, that his many skills and aptitudes were evident in his expectation that he would be accepted. He also offered to cook the midday meal, or to serve it. And he would travel free. The voyage would take a month. They were going on this stage farther than all their travelling from the Rock Village. Mara paid out three of her gold coins, from the nineteen she had left. Now she had sixteen. There were about a hundred people on this boat, some of them from as far as Chelops, some from the first River Towns they had passed. She felt she must know these faces, that they were familiar, and saw how Dann’s eyes went from one face to another, slow, concentrated, memorising each one.
10
This wide river did not have the force of its tributaries. It was much shallower. It was running low in its bed, but here there were no grassy verges because of a fallen water level, only the eroded gullies and collapsed banks of rivers that flood, with the detritus of flood high above the water and even leaving wisps of straw and dead weeds in the trees. The water dragons were not on these banks, but deep in the water, or floating like logs: the blunt wedge heads could be seen just under the water, the nostrils exposed, or long, dark shapes steered beside or behind the boat, for the beasts were hoping that something or someone might fall in; and the deck was too high to attempt a leap. The sky was hot and blue and empty – not a cloud. Through the palms and thorn trees on the bank could be glimpsed the little dance and whirl of the dust devils sucking up dirt from between the grass clumps. It was sultry, the air clinging to the skin. But Mara was not sick now. She looked back on the days of nausea on the other boats and wondered how she had borne them. Well, she had because she had to. Now she sat at ease and wondered about the city of Shari, where they were going. They would be on this river, Cong, going upstream, for half their journey, and then, after a brief, tight squeeze through a canal, would join another river that flowed into a lake called Charad. On that river they would travel downstream, and the precious machine that gathered sunlight would be switched off, to save it. That is when the oars would come into use. All this she was told by Dann, during the intervals he was stood down from his post as guard, with three others, and came to sit with her. He said to her, ‘Mara, all the time it gets better, doesn’t it?’ And he glanced anxiously into her face to see if she did feel what he felt: a relief, a reassurance, a kind of awe perhaps, that things were going well for them, after being so very bad.
Mara sat neither asleep nor awake, but in a reverie where everywhere her eyes rested seemed sharp and clear, but far from her; and she was in a dream, a dream, and the silen
t boat that clove its way up the river, the gliding banks, the cloudless sky where occasionally appeared a visiting cloud – all this floated through her mind as if she were transparent, or two people, for always she remembered the Mara whose skin had forgotten water, and who had often woken from sleep, her mouth dry and cracked and longing for water. When the pails of water dipped from the river went about among the passengers, and it was her turn, she felt that every gulp of the coolness going down her was like a whisper: Mara, you are safe now; and when she dipped her hands in and splashed her face her skin remembered old hungers.
Sometimes sandbanks appeared ahead, and on them the water dragons lay, and slid into the water when the boat appeared. The banks were too far on either side to see the details of nests and birds’ lives; nor did they see animals standing to drink, because they ran away when they saw the boat. And so, day after day, they went along. Every night they tied up, sometimes in a town or village, sometimes at an inn that stood by itself on the bank, waiting for the river travellers. All these inns and guest houses were simple, and clean, and pleasant. They supplied evening and morning meals of bread, and sometimes cheese, and vegetable stew, and a drink made from palm tree juice. The travellers were given big communal rooms to sleep in, or were four, five, six in a room. Dann and Mara were never out of each other’s sight. The towns were like Goidel, each one with its own individuality, expressing itself in the eyes and faces and ways of moving and talking of the inhabitants, which Mara found invigorating, a challenge, because she had not till recently known living, busy towns full of confidence, each one needing to be understood, like a person. When the boat was tied up in the evenings, sometimes she and Dann wandered about the streets, looking – always – into faces, perhaps risking the purchase of a fruit, or sweets, or a small cake, for its taste of this place, so different from other places. Sometimes Dann would stare so long and hard at someone that he, or she, would be annoyed, and disturbed, and stare back: What do you want?