‘And what could I have said that would have stopped you going to the gambling room that night?’
His face seemed to crumple, and it was hard for him to look at her; and then he rallied and said, ‘Mara, all you have to do is to remind me that I gambled you away, and you are the most precious thing, the most…’ And they embraced again.
This scene might have gone on, but there was another loud exchange of voices outside, the door opened, and Dalide came in, her hands full of travelling bundles and bags. These she set down, and then looked around the room, not the inn’s best, with the supper trays still on the floor in a corner, the faded floor cushions, and in a comer a pile of shabby sleeping pallets.
‘Well, Councillor Daulis, this is not exactly the kind of place one expects to find you.’ To Leta she said, ‘Pile up some of those,’ and Leta made a high seat with the bed pallets. On this Dalide carefully disposed herself, and then looked at each of them in turn. And they waited, apprehensively, for each had reason to fear her.
This powerful woman looked like some doll or puppet, with a voluminous red cotton garment, for the dust, over her tight leather travelling outfit, and her sharp, black button eyes, her dyed orange-coloured hair.
‘Councillor, you owe me for Mara – and I hear that I could have got twice as much for her.’
‘Not legally,’ said Daulis, and took out a bag of coins and laid it beside him.
She made a gesture – wait until later. And turned to Leta there on her cushion, ‘Well, Leta? Have I really treated you badly?’
‘No, Mother. But you know that I’ve always wanted to leave. And I have my quittance money.’
Now Dalide turned to Mara. ‘I suppose you think that what you are going to find up in that Centre they talk about is going to be some kind of happy-ever-after? Well, I shouldn’t count on it.’
And now a long, very cold inspection of Dann, designed to shame him. He did manage to return her gaze, but they could all see he was not far off tears.
‘Leta,’ Dalide said, ‘the woman who runs my house here wants to retire. Would you like to take her place?’
Leta did not seem able to take this in. She shifted about on her cushion, took her hand to her face in the beginnings of that gesture: It is all too much for me, dropped her hand, then she was sitting with both hands over her mouth, staring at Dalide. ‘You mean, stay here in Kanaz and run your Kanaz house?’
‘That’s what I said. You can do it. You are a clever woman. You know how I operate.’
Daulis and Mara watched the struggle going on in Leta, and understood it. She had said she was ambitious, and the truth was that they could easily imagine her as the Mother Dalide of Kanaz.
‘What makes you think I could deal with these praying people? I have no experience of them.’
‘They are just men. Like the Councillors. I have today paid them off for the coming year. And if there’s trouble, I’m only a week away in Bilma. Or two days by coach.’
‘That means that yet again I’ll not be able to walk about the streets without looking into the face of every man I meet to wonder if some time I’ve been his mattress.’
‘There’s no need to sleep with them if you are running the place.’
Leta was very still. Her eyes were fixed – staring inwards. And then she said, ‘Mother, I can’t, I’m sorry. I think I’ll go North with Mara and Daulis.’
‘And Dann,’ said Dalide. ‘Perhaps he’ll gamble you away next.’
Mara said, ‘Dalide, I gather you don’t exactly discourage men from gambling away their women. And if you don’t like Dann, then what about that little snake Bergos?’
‘I don’t have to like them for it,’ said Dalide. ‘Nor like Bergos. I’m a business woman. I see opportunities and I take them. And I’m not the only one who has agents in the Transit Eating House, to see what women are there to be bought or what men have got the gambling fever badly enough. Some of the Councillors, for instance – yes, Councillor Daulis?’
‘I don’t,’ he said.
‘Some of your friends do.’ And now she said to Leta, ‘Give me your quittance price.’
‘Mother,’ said Leta, ‘it is all I have.’
This time it was in Dalide that a struggle took place. Her eyes were on the bag that held the quittance price, and then her face softened and she said, ‘Very well, keep it.’
And now Leta flung herself forward, embraced Dalide’s knees, pressed her face into the scarlet folds, and sobbed.
The great knot of pale hair, which glistened in the lamplight, stood out over her neck, and Dalide took out the pins, and the hair flooded down, like sunlight. Dalide sat stroking the hair, fingering it, lifting strands, letting the light play on it. The face of the ugly, little black woman was a marvel of regret, sorrow, and bitter humour. ‘Ever since you came to my house as a little girl, I’ve longed to have hair like this.’ And she patted her own orange spikes in a way that was rueful, comic and self-critical. ‘Leta, if you don’t do well up North, then come back to me. I’m fond of you – though I daresay you’ve sometimes wondered.’ She pushed Leta away, and said to Daulis, ‘Give me Mara’s price now.’
‘May I give it to you in Bilma?’
‘No. I need it to pay for two new girls I’m taking back with me.’
Daulis gave her the bag with the money.
‘At least with you I don’t have to count it.’ She got to her feet. ‘And have you any messages for little Crethis?’
Daulis shook his head. ‘And you, Leta?’
‘Tell her…tell her…’
‘I know what to say. And are you coming back to Bilma, Councillor?’
‘I suppose I am. When I’ve done what I have to do.’
‘When you’ve delivered these two Mahondis.’
‘Who are these girls, Mother?’ asked Leta.
‘Local girls. One of these precious priests asked me if I wanted them. He bought them from their parents, just as I bought you, Leta. They’ll be a nice change for the men, in my Bilma house. What do you say, Councillor?’
Daulis shook his head: Leave me alone.
‘How old are they?’ asked Mara.
‘They don’t know how old they are. I would say ten or eleven. But they’re underfed, so they look younger. I’ll have them fed and prettied up in no time. Goodbye, Mara. You can’t say you’ve done badly in my house. You’ve found a protector. Goodbye, Leta. Perhaps I’ll see you again. I’ll say goodbye to you, just in case, Councillor.’ She ignored Dann. And went out.
Leta ran to the window and they all crowded around her. Down in the street waited a carriage, with two mules. It was protected by a light awning, but they could see huddled together two little girls, who shrank away from Dalide when she got in and sat opposite them. Two frightened little faces: and they could hear the children’s miserable sobbing.
Leta left the window, sank to a floor cushion, sat with her face in her hands, and swayed, back and forth, containing grief.
Daulis laid his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘That’s all over for you, Leta.’ Then, ‘I’m going to sleep.’
He threw a pallet into a corner, lay on it with his back to the room. Soon Leta did the same. Mara and Dann lay face to face on a single pallet and whispered to each other what had happened to them both in the last few days.
In the morning they sat around their breakfast trays, and made plans. How much money did each of them have? – was the main question.
Leta offered her quittance price, and Daulis said, ‘No, you keep it. We’d only use that as a last resort.’
Dann said he had some change, but he was keeping it for an emergency.
‘This situation not being emergency enough?’ asked Daulis, and Dann laid out what he had, enough of the little coins for perhaps a day’s lodging and a day’s food.
What Daulis contributed was not much more: he had been counting on paying Dalide in Bilma.
Mara slipped her two hands up through her loose sleeves, untied her cord of coins an
d laid it down. ‘Eleven,’ she said.
‘Treasures concealing treasures,’ said Daulis, and Leta looked sharply at him, while Dann said jealously, ‘I hear you are Mara’s husband?’
‘You may have noticed that I’ve not been insisting on my marital rights.’
Dann apologised. Then he said, ‘I’m going to have to get out my coins.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mara, and untied a coin to give to him.
He went white. Really, she might have hit him. ‘I can’t take your money after…after…’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mara.
Leta said, quickly, tactfully, so that Mara realised she had been too casual, insensitive, ‘Let me have a look, Dann. Mara’s told us…’
Dann said, ‘I think one of them is just under the skin.’ He lifted his robe up. The scar showed white and glistening, and there were lumps under it. ‘Look,’ he said to Leta. ‘Feel that.’
‘I’m sure we could get that one out easily.’
She took out a little leather bag, and from that a tiny knife, and some bundles of herbs. She wetted one of them and rubbed damp leaves on the place where the edge of the coin showed. ‘It will kill the pain,’ she said.
Mara watched, suffering. Leta saw this, and said, ‘I told you, I learned everything I could from the men who came to Mother’s house. I’ve learned some medicine.’
After about five minutes, she rubbed the little knife against another bunch of leaves, and made a tiny slit just above the scar and at once the coin was visible. Leta picked it out. Dann said, ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ and she said, ‘Yes, but it will hurt a little soon.’
‘We should stay here until Dann is better,’ said Mara and Daulis said, ‘It’s dangerous to stay.’
Mara untied another coin, and said, ‘Go down and bribe them. It’s not likely anyone is going to offer them more than this.’
‘Not in a year,’ said Daulis, and took the coin and went out.
When he came back he said he had booked the room for another day and he thought they would be safe.
Leta wrapped a cloth around her hair, to make herself unnoticed, and said she was going out to see the town. Mara wanted to go too but Daulis said she should stay. Dann asked Leta to buy him something to wear. He had only his soiled and torn coachman’s garb.
Leta went, and then Mara asked, ‘Now, tell us about this Centre. Why are you taking us there?’
‘All I can say is that they have plans for you both. Shabis told me, and it’s not much more than he knows.’
‘But that “not much more” is the point.’
‘Yes. But I’m not going to tell you more. Shabis said not. You’ll find out. You’ve got some sort of choice to make.’
‘It’s because we are Mahondis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are all these Mahondis we were told are everywhere?’
‘There are very few of us left.’
‘Does that matter?’ said Mara, for now she had seen so many different kinds of people, in different regions, it was hard to think one was better than another.
‘I think there are people who dream of the time when Mahondis ruled all Ifrik.’
‘All?’
‘All.’
‘Did we rule well?’
Daulis laughed. ‘We ruled well from the point of view of the Mahondis.’
‘So there are many people who do not remember Mahondi rule kindly?’
‘You know, people forget quickly. This Mahondi empire was – let’s see – at its height about three hundred years ago.’
‘So recent. And there are still people who think it should come back?’
‘It is Leta who should come back. I’m getting worried.’
And they were all three anxious, as the hours passed. Then Leta did come back. She had bought all kinds of things useful for travelling: two of the long black and white striped gowns, the Sahar robes, worn by men. Then she inspected Dann’s little wound and said it was almost healed. She said she was glad she was leaving Kanaz, it was a horrible town. The praying men were everywhere, and they had sticks, and if someone was behaving improperly, in their view, they might hit buttocks, shoulders, or even heads. ‘Lucky I wrapped myself up well: they beat women if they don’t like the look of us.’
Dann wanted to know how much money they would need to bribe the frontier guards, to get into Tundra; but Daulis said, ‘Believe me, you don’t bribe these guards.’
‘That’s unusual.’
‘It is the regime that is unusual, you’ll see. It’s quite new, and still virtuous.’
‘How new?’ asked Mara.
‘Oh about a hundred years. So the usual rot will set in soon, I suppose. If it hasn’t already.’
After supper they each lay on a separate pallet, talking into the dark, until one after another they fell asleep.
Next morning they had to choose between using a coach again, or a conveyance like Dalide’s, a light carriage, with mules. They could not face another day of shaking, so chose the carriage, which would take two days to the frontier. It was as uncomfortable in the carriage as in the coach. The driver kept the mules at a steady pace, but the road was rough. They were all sick, the driver having to pull his mules up so they could get out. And they were cold. A thin, chilly cloud blew past above them and, on the higher parts of the road, came down low enough to hide the country they were travelling through. Leta seemed ill. When Mara said she hated the woolly whiteness hiding everything, Leta said she liked it, and confessed that the vastness of the landscape frightened her. ‘Too much space,’ she whispered, hiding her eyes as they came out again from the obscuring mists. The other three consulted with each other, but with their eyes. It was occurring to them that this woman had been sheltered inside Mother Dalide’s house, had scarcely ever gone out, had been fed and kept warm, in a horrible and degrading safety, but safety. And here she was out in the world, with no idea at all of what would happen to her.
Mara put her arm around her, and felt her trembling.
Leta let her head fall on Mara’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Mara, have I made a terrible mistake?’
The jolting and rattling were such that Mara had to say to the two men, sitting opposite, ‘Leta is afraid she has made a mistake in coming with us,’ and at once Daulis leaned forward and, all concern, took Leta’s hands and said, ‘No, Leta, no, of course you must be feeling bad. It’s our fault for not thinking about it.’
‘When you go back, please take me, Daulis, I don’t think I can keep up with you, I really feel ill when I look and see…It goes on and on and it is so cold and so ugly.’
This was an interval in the mist, and Mara thought that this great, sombre landscape had a beauty, though the chilly dampness of everything was not where she felt at home. Was this really Ifrik? – she had been thinking.
Daulis still held Leta’s hands, and a jolt brought her forwards, and he lifted her. He said something to Dann, who precariously slid in beside Mara as Daulis settled Leta in beside him. There she clung to him and wept. This proud, strong woman with her lean, hawk face was at this moment not unlike her pet Crethis.
It was a long day, a bad one, the worst since Bilma. The inn the driver stopped at in the evening, was large, being on this main route North, but looked poor and shabby. It stood in the main street – the sole street of a village that had clearly come into being only because of the inn. When the four got out, the driver said he would come for them in the morning, and demanded payment for that day. Mara had already paid him. There was an argument, which caused interest among groups of people going into the inn. Dann said to Mara, ‘Don’t draw attention.’ She gave the driver a little more money. He grumbled, but went off. And now there was no need to discuss what they must do next. There was a shop, of the kind that supplied travellers’ needs, and in it was a whole wall hung with every sort of cloak, cape and shawl. They bought capes of the kind that has a hole in, for the head, and large enough to make bed coverings, for they had been cold at night. And
they chose grey, not the bright or cleverly woven patterns, because they did not want to be noticed.
At the inn across the road, they were given a room without comment, and the innkeeper did not show any particular interest in them. But they were uneasy, and Dann said that this was the most dangerous part of their journey: tonight and tomorrow night. The daytime was probably safe, because pursuers would be looking for them on the coaches, would not expect them to risk themselves fully visible on almost empty roads. Besides, unless these pursuers were officials, they would not have money for a carriage. Which brought the four, hiding in their room with the door well barred, to the question, Which pursuers? Representing what, or whom? How could they be recognised? If the Bilma Councillors still hoped to sell Dann and Mara to Charad, then they would not send officials, but hired ruffians. If it was the long arm of Charad they had to fear, then, again, it would be disguised as a beggar, or a pickpocket or a thief. Or a gang of thieves. Or a servant in this inn…‘So, what’s new?’ said Dann. ‘I’m frightened,’ said Mara.
They ate in their room. Leta dosed herself with potions from her medicine bag. She was apologetic and ashamed. She still trembled, though this could not now be from cold. They wrapped her well, and laid her on a pallet, and lay down themselves, to rest. They were not only fearful, expecting to hear a bang on the door, but badly affected by the days of being shaken and jolted. Without the fear of pursuers they would have walked, and tonight they would have been healthy and calm – themselves. Walking was best, they all agreed. After that, a boat – water. And lastly, the litters, the coaches, the chairs, the carriages, which shook you to bits and left you hardly able to think.
Daulis told them that once, thousands of years ago, there had been machines that whisked travellers over the distance it had taken Mara and Dann so long to cover, in a couple of hours. They could go around the world in a day. (With difficulty Mara forced her mind away from the shape of Ifrik to encompass hazy immensities.) There was every imaginable kind of vehicle, and some that they, descendants of those great ones, could not begin to imagine, for they were like the tales of flying dragons or talking birds told to children. Once, to travel from one country to another had been as comfortable as being transported sitting in a chair or lying in a comfortable bed.