Mara and Dann

  ‘When will we be safe?’ asked Mara.

  ‘Not in Kanaz,’ said Leta. ‘But it is a big town, I hear, so we can hide.’

  And the two looked at her with respect, and believed her. Leta, now she was out of that place which so demeaned her, was an impressive woman, authoritative because of her knowledge of life, and handsome too. She wore a dark green garment which made her pale skin gleam, and her green eyes shine. Her pale hair was in a big knot. And who is the princess now? thought Mara, fascinated by this strange female who was like nothing she had ever known.

  The three of them were clutching each other and clinging on where they could. This ‘coach’ was a contraption of wood slats and lattices, like a cage, and it rattled and bounced and swayed – surely in danger of toppling? And quite soon a mess of splintered wood beside the track showed that these coaches indeed fell over, although they did not move very fast. A good runner could easily have kept up; runners were: the youths who pulled were loping along, and had plenty of breath to shout at each other as they ran. The youths who had pushed, had leaped on to the coach at the last minute and were waiting to replace the others, when they tired. But from their talk, it was apparent that there was a place ahead where the lines had fractured. That these breaks were not uncommon could be seen by the piles of rail sections at intervals along the tracks, pieces of the heaviest wood in the forests. Soon the coach was pulled to a halt by the ropes, and ahead workmen were replacing broken rails. The three did not have to confess their unease that they were stationary not more than a couple of hours from Bilma, and that a fast horse could easily catch up with them.

  At first they had travelled through a light forest; but here was a grassy valley, rather like the ones Mara had seen so often in her journey north, across the wide, dry savannahs; but the grasses were different, and the trees too: lower, more compact and dense, not the airy, wide-branched trees of the forest south of Bilma. Beneath them, to the depth of – it was believed – twenty feet, still lay the old sands of the desert ancient people had called the Sahara. And Mara thought that in her sack were two striped robes called Sahar. While the sands far beneath them had been flooded – so they said – and pushed up forests, been swept by fire, and again and again, by floods, had been sands again…While all this was going on, for thousands of years, one little word stubbornly kept an old sound, and people who did not know the names of their ancestors, or even that they had had them, could walk into a shop and say, ‘I want to see your Sahar robes.’

  On a parallel track to the lines appeared a stately procession of horses, donkeys, light carts, litters carried by – but they didn’t have slaves in Bilma – and men and women walking. The people in the coach watched this caravan go by for a good half hour. Mara asked, ‘Then why the need for coaches?’

  ‘A good question,’ said Daulis. ‘Some people want to end the coach service. But it takes one of those caravans a week to reach Kanaz, and it is a couple of days by coach. This is really used for urgent council work.’

  ‘And other things,’ said Leta, smiling at him, and he actually blushed.

  ‘And other things,’ he agreed.

  ‘This is also called the Love Trail,’ said Leta to Mara. ‘There are inns all along the route used for holidays and love.’ The word ‘love’ when she used it sounded like a curse.

  Daulis said to her, ‘Poor Leta. But soon it will all be different for you.’

  Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her face to look away from them. ‘Perhaps it will,’ she said at last. And then, ‘You are a good man, Daulis. We all of us know that.’ She was using the we of the brothel. ‘We know who are the swines.’ And again her voice shook.

  Mara, sitting so close to Daulis, thought that she had not yet had a close look at him, and she did now, in the bright morning light. Yes, he was a good man. His face was one to trust – well, she had trusted him. But when she compared his face with another in her mind’s eye, then he had to suffer from the comparison. Shabis was finer, and both stronger and more sensitive.

  Mara asked, as the idea popped into her on some kind of prompting or instinct, ‘Do the Three Generals want me too, as well as Dann?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell you yet. But yes, they do.’

  ‘Are they offering money for me?’

  ‘Not officially; but they have been in touch with our Council. They think you have Shabis’s child.’

  ‘But that was just a bit of spite on the part of his wife.’

  ‘They think you had his child while you were with the Hennes. They plan to get rid of Shabis, and they don’t want any child of his alive.’

  ‘There is a child of his alive.’

  ‘There was.’

  Mara thought of her life as a soldier, at the watchtowers, imagined a baby there, a child, and began to laugh. And laugh, while Leta and Daulis gravely watched her. She knew she sounded hysterical. She was tired, still frantic with anxiety because of Dann – and hysterical. ‘You don’t know how funny it is,’ she said at last. ‘Well, the Three Generals can’t know much about the Hennes. The Hennes planned to start a breeding programme, to improve their stock, using Shabis’s child, if there was one, and to kidnap the Generals’ children too.’

  ‘Exactly. Using Shabis’s child to establish their claim over Agre. They planned to march into Agre with the child in front of their army.’

  ‘Then the Hennes don’t know much about the Agre.’

  ‘And the Three Generals want the child. Because Shabis is so popular, they are afraid the soldiers will rally around Shabis and his child.’

  And now Mara sat silent, discouraged. She was afraid, too. Just a few spiteful words by an unhappy woman could get her, Mara, recaptured. Had caused so much fevered plotting and planning. Could have caused another war…But she was thinking too that she was to blame. How could she have been so blind and thoughtless, so blithely ignorant, living there with Shabis and not ever thinking that he had a wife who must be at the least suspicious. Though it turned out that she was poisoned by jealousy. Mara tried to imagine how she would have felt if, living with Meryx, she knew that he spent all his days with some captured woman, talking to her, teaching her, taking his midday meal with her.

  ‘I have been very stupid,’ she said aloud, and told Leta and Daulis that part of her story.

  Leta pronounced judgement. ‘Any of the house women could have told you what to expect.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  Daulis took her hand and, as she instinctively pulled away, teased her, ‘As my wife, Mara, you must allow me to hold your hand. If only to reassure me that you don’t actually hate me.’

  ‘You know you don’t want me as your wife.’

  She heard her voice, forlorn, sad, rough with tears. ‘Do you know what I keep thinking of? It’s the baby I lost. The baby…’ And she began to cry.

  Leta said, ‘And I keep thinking of the baby I lost.’

  Here Mara and Daulis looked at her, surprised, and Leta explained, ‘Crethis. She was my baby. I never had a baby. And I can’t help thinking of her.’

  ‘And I,’ confessed Daulis.

  Leta said, ‘I’ve always looked after her. And now I’m gone. She loves Daulis – as much as she can. Mother Dalide is away. She must be in a bad state today.’

  ‘Are you feeling sad because you left?’ asked Daulis.

  ‘You mean, do you think I should have stayed a house woman because Crethis will miss me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what do you mean? Of course I feel sad. It’s not only Crethis, but she is the most of it. The girls there are all I’ve known, as friends. But I’ve been trying to get out of that house from the day I found myself in it. And so – Crethis might die.’

  ‘Why die?’ asked Daulis, quickly.

  ‘You are sentimental,’ said Leta, ‘I don’t respect that. If you do something that has consequences then accept them. Crethis has a weak chest. She nearly died. I nursed her. I was with her all the time. She would have died wit
hout me. Well, knowing Crethis, she’s probably found someone else to cling on to already. But no one is going to sit by her bed day and night for weeks…’ And now Leta wept too.

  The rails were mended. The young men who had jumped on to the coach went forward to pull, replacing the others who took their place in the coach.

  But they did not have to clutch and cling for long, because about an hour later they stopped where there was an inn, among the dark, sombre trees of this region. Some passengers got off, couples holding hands or with linked arms. Servants came from the inn to sell food to the passengers and they brought a jar of water.

  Everyone drank in a way Mara recognised: they were afraid it would be some time before they got water again.

  The young men who made the coach move changed again. Now they were all tired and were not shouting jokes and bits of gossip as they ran, and the ones in the coach waiting their turn to get out and push, or pull, were silent and apathetic.

  The journey went on. They were shaken, rather sick, and Leta said she had a headache. Mara was glad to accept Daulis’s offer of a steadying arm, and she sat against him, her head on his shoulder, and thought that her long, fierce independence had made it hard for her to be as simply affectionate as Crethis, who hugged and caressed and stroked and kissed as naturally as she breathed. She was thinking two contradictory things at the same time: one, that she was glad to be married to Daulis, for it made her feel safe; and then that she would shortly be free and herself again and married to no one.

  When it got dark they had to stop because the coaches did not run at night over these fragile and so easily broken rails. There was an inn and they took a room together, the three of them, ate in the room, and locked the door from inside, and pushed a heavy table against it. Each had a bed, and they dozed and woke, and saw that the others were awake and watching and knew that this had to be one of the nights when the first light was a reprieve from enforced immobility. As soon as the square of the window showed some light they were up and dressed, and were down by the tracks waiting. It was a fresh clear morning, rather cold, and they sat on the benches provided for travellers and ate breakfast.

  Mara told them about the flying machines down south that were grounded and had to be pushed by runners, and about Felice and her flying service. Leta was amazed, for she had not heard of such machines; but Daulis said that not long ago, in his father’s lifetime, there had still been these machines in Bilma, but there was a coup, and possession of the machines was what was being fought over, and at the height of the fighting the rebels had set fire to the machines, all ten of them. Their remains could be seen in a forest north of the town, what was left of them, for they had been pulled apart over the years to make shacks and huts.

  Mara asked, ‘Are you afraid of another coup?’

  Leta laughed from surprise, but Daulis said seriously, ‘Yes, Mara, some of us are. But if there were a coup, it would be my friends who would make it. I don’t know if we are more afraid of there being a coup, or not being. But it does seem as if the life of a rule, a period of peace, is never longer than a hundred years or so. And the last coup was a hundred and fifty years ago.’

  ‘And your Council is corrupt.’

  ‘Yes, some of us are corrupt.’

  ‘And there must be a lot of poor people in Bilma, otherwise you’d not have all these youths that look as if they need a square meal to push your coaches.’

  ‘Yes, there are poor people, and it is getting worse.’

  ‘Why worse?’ asked Leta. She sounded threatened.

  ‘It seems fairly clear that we are having another change of climate. They are saying up North that the Ice is retreating again.’

  ‘But there’s always ice and snow up North,’ said Leta.

  ‘Sometimes yes and sometimes no,’ said Mara. ‘Thousands of years of one, and then thousands of years of the other. Once, in a warm time, the sands stretched here from sea to sea. I have never seen the sea.’

  ‘Well, who has?’ said Leta. ‘The traders talk about it, but that’s all.’

  ‘I have,’ said Daulis. ‘When I was a child. But I can hardly remember it. It was rough water, crashing on rocks.’

  ‘Salt,’ said Mara. ‘Salt water.’

  ‘Why salt?’ asked Leta ‘The traders say it is salt, but they tell us all kinds of tall stories, to see how much we will swallow.’

  Now the coachmen came down from their hostel, and soon the coach was off again. The shaking and rattling went on. They had to stop so the coachmen could change places, and once there was another break in the line. Because of the delay they did not reach the outskirts of Kanaz until it was nearly dark. They decided to stop at the last inn of the coach run for the night. Daulis was known there, as a member of the Council, and he dared to claim the privilege of a suite of rooms. Mara asked if any message had been left for her by one Dann, though Leta told her to be careful. ‘You’ll be safe when you are in Tundra, and not till then.’

  ‘And you? What will you do?’

  ‘I will get employment as a maid in one of the inns in the centre. And if I fail, I’ll go to Mother Dalide’s house here.’

  ‘But you ran away from her,’ said Daulis.

  ‘She was my mother. At least, I don’t remember another one. She’ll forgive me. And besides, my colour makes me a prize.’

  ‘Once everyone was your colour – where the Ice is now,’ said Mara.

  Leta was astonished. ‘Everyone? When?’

  ‘Oh, thousands of years ago,’ said Mara, laughing and thinking that soon she would be like Shabis, who, when teaching her, used thousands of years as one might say, last summer. ‘And then, later, there were colonies of refugees from the Ice in north Ifrik.’

  ‘There is still a colony,’ said Daulis.

  ‘Perhaps I should go there?’ said Leta.

  ‘Then you’ll lose your rarity value,’ said Mara. ‘Better stay with us.’

  ‘If you want to travel with us north, please do,’ said Daulis. His voice was much more than kind; and he put his hand on her shoulder, smiling. ‘Come on, take your chances with us.’

  Mara said, ‘I’d miss you, Leta.’

  And now Leta looked at them both, serious, grateful, her usually hard face soft, and said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘At least if you fail in Kanaz, come up after us.’

  ‘Fail at being a housemaid? But I don’t intend to stay a housemaid. I’m ambitious. But I’ll remember what you said. But where could I find you up North?’

  ‘People find each other,’ said Mara. ‘I’m waiting for Dann to find me.’

  Next day they moved into a caravanserai in the heart of Kanaz, to wait for Dann. This city was different from Bilma, that trading town so full of people from everywhere. Kanaz was not polyglot and busy. It was populated by a people with lean, flat bodies, and sharp features. Mara had seen them before, on the walls of the ruins near the Rock Village. And here they were, just as if thousands of years and many migrations had not come and gone. They were phlegmatic, slow moving, and all over the town were buildings with turrets and towers that were, Daulis said, places of worship.

  ‘Of what?’ Leta and Mara asked, at the same time.

  And he told them they believed in a powerful, invisible Being who could be put into a good temper, a mood to help favour, by these fanciful, brightly coloured buildings, inhabited by men and women who wore special clothes, walked about the streets chanting and shouting the name of this Being, and were the rulers of the town.

  ‘And Kanaz is not under the jurisdiction of Bilma?’ asked Mara.

  In theory yes, but in practice no. This was one of the reasons the more intelligent of the Council of Bilma believed in the imminent end of their rule. Bilma did not have the strength to bring insubordinate provinces to heel, and while harmony prevailed on the surface, the two cities watched each other, waited. So Daulis explained, and went into details of the situation which interested Mara, but Leta, not much.

  But then
Daulis said to Leta, ‘If you stay here you will have two disadvantages.’

  ‘One I already know. I shall not be such a novelty here as I am farther south. I am only a little paler than some of the people here. And the other?’

  ‘You will have to learn the special language and customs of the priests and pretend to believe in them, because they are cruel to anyone who does not at least pay lip-service to their rule.’

  ‘And how does Mother Dalide manage to prosper here, with her brothel, in such a town?’

  ‘She pays the priests here just as she pays us in Bilma.’

  Meanwhile they were all nervous. This was the biggest travellers’ inn, and there were bound to be spies, both from Bilma and the rulers here. But this was where Dann was bound to look for them. They decided to stay that night, not move to a less well known place but eat their food in their room, well away from the enormous room that took up most of the ground floor, where food and drink was served.

  Or perhaps they themselves should go from inn to inn around the town, asking for Dann? Mara had never told anyone about the coins hidden under Dann’s scar, but she told these friends now, to explain why she did not know if he would be working in some low place, in order to eat, or if he would be decently lodged somewhere. Or – but she did not say this aloud, kept it to herself – perhaps in some place where he is smoking poppy again. For she feared this for him more than anything.

  Late that night, when they had decided to sleep, and not wait any longer, there was a commotion outside the door. Mara rose straight to her feet – she recognised Dann’s voice. Then he was standing there, in the doorway, and behind him the servant who had tried to bar the way of this poor coachman in his torn tunic, with his bare dusty feet. Which Dann was this? – Mara wondered, but saw in his eyes the responsible Dann, the grown up man, though his whole body seemed wrung with apology and with supplication. And the two were in each other’s arms, hugging and weeping, ‘Oh Mara, forgive me,’ and Mara, ‘Oh Dann, you are here.’ The other two sat on their floor cushions and watched, silent, until brother and sister at last were able to let each other go and stand back, and look. Then Dann said, ‘Mara, it was the other me, not me.’ ‘I know,’ said Mara and thought that Dann had never before acknowledged his division. Now Dann took Mara’s hands, and said, ‘Mara, it is easy for me to say now that it will never happen again – but you’ve got to help me.’