Redder than Blood

  “How do I please him?” I asked, sullen with terror.

  “It’s simple, child. Never ever say no. God said women must be obedient. Do whatever your lord wants. And—well, I’ll speak of that later, your wedding night. But you must always pretend that you like what he does. Recollect always, he’s your superior. You owe everything to him.”

  I couldn’t say that he made me sick, that I wished to throw up from his kiss. I knew about sex, although she had tried to hide it from me, as she had successfully hidden menstruation. The thought of that struggling and grappling and the obvious pain, with him, repelled me so greatly I couldn’t even think about it.

  I said, “I see, Mama.” And at my feet, the frog ate a little sugar, staring into the fire that made his eyes look, also, green.

  When she sent me to bed—I must be at my best to see the monstrous husband off tomorrow; in fact she knew my delighted, drunken father would want intercourse with her tonight—I ran, Froggy in my arms, and shouted at the woman with the rose oil to go away.

  Then, rocking Froggy, I wept, until needles seemed to be drawn through my eyes.

  My own fire was out by then. It was growing stealthily and awesomely cold. I said, “Let’s go into the forest. The wolves may kill us or we’ll freeze. Let’s do it. Anything. Anything instead of him.”

  There was a long silence. I heard the stars crackling like icy knives in the black sky. Then the frog spoke back to me.

  “There’s another way.”

  “No. No other way. Nothing.”

  “Yes. Do you remember the maiden who was rescued?”

  “Oh, that story—”

  “Do you remember the prince that the maiden saved with her love?”

  “Shush,” I said. I would say today: But this is true life. This is real, and inescapable. Here, there are no miracles or magic. Then I said, “Don’t talk about those silly things. They can’t help me.”

  “Yes. I’ll tell you how.”

  I held him in my arms and he spoke and I listened. His voice—the very voice he used to charm the dog, to charm them—scratchy and little, mesmerizing in the silence.

  “A spell can be broken so simply, princess. Do you love me by now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then all you need do is kiss me. On my frog’s mouth. Is that unthinkable?”

  “I had to kiss him.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  I looked down at him, my slumbrous, umbrous jewel. His holy frog face. My friend. “I’d have done it—I just thought you might not like me to—”

  “I?” He couldn’t smile. His eyes smiled, half closing, like a cat’s. “Do it now,” he said.

  I never in my life did anything more easily. I lifted him up, and kissed him. His mouth was like a summer leaf, cool, a little moist, smelling of fresh salad, and with a crumb of sugar from the walnuts—sweet.

  When I opened my eyes it was because my hands and my arms were empty.

  “Who are you?” I said. I was so afraid, I was numb.

  He said, “My God, it hurt so much. Worse than before. Oh God.”

  He leaned on my wooden chair, and then dropped into it. His shining golden hair fell long over his pale face. I had never seen a man who was so beautiful. He wasn’t like a man. An angel, perhaps. I heard him breathing. Presently, in his musical voice, he said to me, “Little princess, my enemies worked against me. They changed me to the form—of what you saw. But your loving kiss—has brought me back. Now I’m yours for ever, and you’re mine.”

  His eyes, as he looked at me, were not amber or green. They were very dark, the color of night, just as his hair was the color of day. His garments too. Fur, gold, steel, gems.

  What did I feel? I was excited. I tingled all over. The fairy story had come true.

  I didn’t need to hear the sound of hoofs below, galloping, bells ringing from the village, to know his men were coming, all glorious as he was, washed, perfumed, and brave, armed to the teeth. Spell broken, he could drive the unwanted husband away. And my father—he would never cease to be grateful to me for the alliance I had brought him instead, this other husband, a prince who had been a frog.

  And yet, I only went back to him slowly. He was now far larger than I. My head, when he stood up, reached just below his shoulder. The enormous rings on his fingers were icy. He had a smell like fire not water. But it was very cold.

  My arms were empty, but he took me into his instead. What was wrong? What did I miss?

  Oh, I missed my friend.

  • • •

  There was never such a wedding. They still talk about it, seven years after. Of course, I left my father’s house. A bride does. She belongs to her husband. But he owns a princedom. My father cried large tears of greed as he bade me farewell.

  There’s everything here. A bed all my own, with a canopy shaped like a firmament and stitched with diamond stars, a different bath for every day of the week, marble, rose-quartz, cinnabar, and so on. There are foods, and drinks, I’d never heard of. He has a menagerie, with lions. His people, now he has come back, worship him like a god.

  It was almost a year before he began to eat meat again. This was advised, to make him strong, and it worked, because soon after I conceived a child and it was a son. I’ve given him three sons now, and my body has changed shape a little. This happens. A woman’s lot. Sex remains a mystery to me. But yes, it does hurt.

  In our third year together, he struck me for the first time. It was over some small quarrel—I’d forgotten my mother’s rule of obedience. I mean, God’s rule. My husband was gracious afterward, said he was sorry, and sent me a rose made of rubies, just the color my blood had been from the broken tooth.

  Despite the baths, he’s just a little understandably lax that way. He smells of health and meat and wine, sweat, lust, sometimes of other women. From politeness, he says, he shuns me during menstruation. He never sings to me, or tells me stories, being very busy. He kicks the dogs.

  I don’t know why he changed so much, changed spiritual shape as pregnancy and birth physically have altered me. Was he always this way, when human? Yes, naturally. A fine, noble virile man. A prince. He doesn’t juggle, never lights candles himself. Evidently, he’s mislaid all the magic.

  Every night, when I’m alone, as increasingly now, thank God, I am, in my heavenly bed, I say a prayer for the one I had. He taught me so much. He was my friend, my frog. He never left me. I loved him. Not like a baby, or a pet, not like a man. A unique and crystal love, all shattered now in pieces. I didn’t know what was happening, and he must have suffered, being that other one. And so we wasted it, that perfect time. Now, it’s forbidden to all of us to speak of it, the period of his life when he was enchanted. When he was a frog.

  Nevertheless, I dream of it still. Sometimes. All that we did, when I was slender, young and free, and how I loved him so. And how I lost him for ever to that hateful betrayal of a kiss.

  Into Gold

  1

  UP BEHIND DANUVIUS, the forests are black, and so stiff with black pork, black bears, and black-gray wolves, a man alone will feel himself jostled. Here and there you come on a native village, pointed houses of thatch with carved wooden posts, and smoke thick enough to cut with your knife. All day the birds call, and at night the owls come out. There are other things of earth and darkness, too. One ceases to be surprised at what may be found in the forests, or what may stray from them on occasion.

  One morning, a corn-king emerged, and pleased us all no end. There had been some trouble, and some of the stores had gone up in flames. The ovens were standing empty and cold. It can take a year to get goods overland from the river, and our northern harvest was months off.

  The old fort that had been the palace then for twelve years, was built on high ground. It looked out across a mile of country strategically cleared of trees, to the forest cloud and a
dream of distant mountains. Draco had called me up to the roof-walk, where we stood watching these mountains glow and fade, and come and go. It promised to be a fine day, and I had been planning a good long hunt to exercise the men and give the breadless bellies solace. There is also a pine-nut meal they grind in the villages, accessible to barter. The loaves were not to everyone’s taste, but we might have to come round to them. Since the armies pulled away, we had learned to improvise. I could scarcely remember the first days. The old men told you everything, anyway, had been going down to chaos even then. Draco’s father, holding on to a commander’s power, assumed a prince’s title which his orphaned warriors were glad enough to concede him. Discipline is its own ritual, and drug. As, lands and seas away, from the center of the world caved in, soldier-fashion, they turned builders. They made the road to the fort, and soon began on the town, shoring it, for eternity, with strong walls. Next, they opened up the country, and got trade rights seen to that had gone by default for decades. There was plenty of skirmishing as well to keep their swords bright. When the Commander died of a wound got fighting the Blue-Hair Tribe, a terror in those days, not seen for years since, Draco became the Prince in the Palace. He was eighteen then, and I five days older. We had known each other nearly all our lives, learned books and horses, drilled, hunted together. Though he was born elsewhere, he barely took that in, coming to this life when he could only just walk. For myself, I am lucky, perhaps, I never saw the Mother of Cities, and so never hanker after her, or lament her downfall.

  That day on the roof-walk, certainly, nothing was further from my mind. Then Draco said, “There is something.”

  His clear-water eyes saw detail quicker and more finely than mine. When I looked, to me still it was only a blur and fuss on the forest’s edge, and the odd sparkling glint of things catching the early sun.

  “Now, Skorous, do you suppose . . . ?” said Draco.

  “Someone has heard of our misfortune, and considerably changed his route,” I replied.

  We had got news a week before of a grain-caravan, but too far west to be of use. Conversely, it seemed, the caravan had received news of our fire. “Up goes the price of bread,” said Draco.

  By now I was sorting it out, the long rigmarole of mules and baggage-wagons, horses and men. He traveled in some style. Truly, a corn-king, profiting always because he was worth his weight in gold amid the wilds of civilization. In Empire days, he would have weighed rather less.

  We went down, and were in the square behind the east gate when the sentries brought him through. He left his people out on the parade before the gate, but one wagon had come up to the gateway, presumably his own, a huge conveyance, a regular traveling house, with six oxen in the shafts. Their straps were spangled with what I took for brass. On the side-leathers were pictures of grind-stones and grain done in purple and yellow. He himself rode a tall horse, also spangled. He had a slim, snaky look, an Eastern look, with black brows and fawn skin. His fingers and ears were remarkable for their gold. And suddenly I began to wonder about the spangles. He bowed to Draco, the War-Leader and Prince. Then, to be quite safe, to me.

  “Greetings, Miller,” I said.

  He smiled at this coy honorific.

  “Health and greetings, Captain. I think I am welcome?”

  “My prince,” I indicated Draco, “is always hospitable to wayfarers.”

  “Particularly to those with wares, in time of dearth.”

  “Which dearth is that?”

  He put one golden finger to one golden ear-lobe.

  “The trees whisper. This town of the Iron Shields has no bread.”

  Draco said mildly, “You should never listen to gossip.”

  I said, “If you’ve come out of your way, that would be a pity.”

  The Corn-King regarded me, not liking my arrogance—though I never saw the Mother of Cities, I have the blood—any more than I liked his slink and glitter.

  As this went on, I gambling and he summing up the bluff, the tail of my eye caught another glimmering movement, from where his house wagon waited at the gate. I sensed some woman must be peering round the flap, the way the Eastern females do. The free girls of the town are prouder, even the wolf-girls of the brothel, and aristocrats use a veil only as a sunshade. Draco’s own sisters, though decorous and well brought-up, can read and write, each can handle a light chariot, and will stand and look a man straight in the face. But I took very little notice of the fleeting apparition, except to decide it too had gold about it. I kept my sight on my quarry, and presently he smiled again and drooped his eyelids, so I knew he would not risk calling me, and we had won. “Perhaps,” he said, “there might be a little consideration of the detour I, so foolishly, erroneously, made.”

  “We are always glad of fresh supplies. The fort is not insensible to its isolation. Rest assured.”

  “Too generous,” he said. His eyes flared. But politely he added, “I have heard of your town. There is great culture here. You have a library, with scrolls from Hellas, and Semitic Byblos—I can read many tongues, and would like to ask permission of your lord to visit among his books.”

  I glanced at Draco, amused by the fellow’s cheek, though all the East thinks itself a scholar. But Draco was staring at the wagon. Something worth a look, then, which I had missed.

  “And we have excellent baths,” I said to the Corn-King, letting him know in turn that the Empire’s lost children think all the scholarly East to be also unwashed.

  • • •

  By midday, the whole caravan had come in through the walls and arranged itself in the market-place, near the temple of Mars. The temple priests, some of whom had been serving with the Draconis Regiment when it arrived, old, old men, did not take to this influx. In spring and summer, traders were in and out the town like flies, and native men came to work in the forges and the tannery or with the horses, and built their muddy thatch huts behind the unfinished law-house—which huts winter rain always washed away again when their inhabitants were gone. To such events of passage the priests were accustomed. But this new show displeased them. The chief Salius came up to the fort, attended by his slaves, and argued a while with Draco. Heathens, said the priest, with strange rituals, and dirtiness, would offend the patron god of the town. Draco seemed preoccupied.

  I had put off the hunting party, and now stayed to talk the Salius into a better humor. It would be a brief nuisance, and surely they had been directed to us by the god himself, who did not want his war-like sons to go hungry? I assured the priest that, if the foreigners wanted to worship their own gods, they would have to be circumspect. Tolerance of every religious rag, as we knew, was unwise. They did not, I thought, worship Iusa. There would be no abominations. I then vowed a boar to Mars, if I could get one, and the dodderer tottered, pale and grim, away.

  Meanwhile, the grain was being seen to. The heathen god-offenders had sacks and jars of it, and ready flour besides. It seemed a heavy chancy load with which to journey, goods that might spoil if at all delayed, or if the weather went against them. And all that jangling of gold beside. They fairly bled gold. I had been right in my second thought on the bridle-decorations, there were even nuggets and bells hung on the wagons, and gold flowers; and the oxen had gilded horns. For the men, they were ringed and buckled and roped and tied with it. It was a marvel.

  When I stepped over to the camp near sunset, I was on the lookout for anything amiss. But they had picketed their animals couthly enough, and the dazzle-fringed, clink-bellied wagons stood quietly shadowing and gleaming in the westered light. Columns of spicy smoke rose, but only from their cooking. Boys dealt with that, and boys had drawn water from the well; neither I nor my men had seen any women.

  Presently I was conducted to the Corn-King’s wagon. He received me before it, where woven rugs, and cushions stitched with golden disks, were strewn on the ground. A tent of dark purple had been erected close by. With its gilt
-tasseled sides all down, it was shut as a box. A disk or two more winked yellow from the folds. Beyond, the plastered colonnades, the stone Mars Temple, stood equally closed and eye-less, refusing to see.

  The Miller and I exchanged courtesies. He asked me to sit, so I sat. I was curious.

  “It is pleasant,” he said, “to be within safe walls.”

  “Yes, you must be often in some danger,” I answered.

  He smiled, secretively now. “You mean our wealth? It is better to display than to hide. The thief kills, in his hurry, the man who conceals his gold. I have never been robbed. They think, Ah, this one shows all his riches. He must have some powerful demon to protect him.”

  “And is that so?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  I glanced at the temple, and then back at him, meaningly. He said, “Your men drove a hard bargain for the grain and the flour. And I have been docile. I respect your gods, Captain. I respect all gods. That, too, is a protection.”

  Some drink came. I tasted it cautiously, for Easterners often eschew wine and concoct other disgusting muck. In the forests they ferment thorn berries, or the milk of their beasts, neither of which methods makes such a poor beverage, when you grow used to it. But of the Semites one hears all kinds of things. Still, the drink had a sweet hot sizzle that made me want more, so I swallowed some, then waited to see what else it would do to me.

  “And your lord will allow me to enter his library?” said the Corn-King, after a host’s proper pause.

  “That may be possible,” I said. I tried the drink again. “How do you manage without women?” I added, “You’ll have seen the House of the Mother, with the she-wolf painted over the door? The girls there are fastidious and clever. If your men will spare the price, naturally.”

  The Corn-King looked at me, with his liquid man-snake’s eyes, aware of all I said which had not been spoken.

  “It is true,” he said at last, “that we have no women with us.”

  “Excepting your own wagon.”