The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (good novels to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Fletcher Pratt
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(“I am not a servant,” Rodvard wanted to cry, “but a clerk who makes his gain as hard as you; and it is you we most wish to help.” But he forebore), saying only; “Is there an inn at Kazmerga? I need something to eat, being without breakfast, and a place to lie down for the cure of my fluxions.”
“No tavern—” the man stopped, and the expression above the uncut whisker became crafty (so that now Rodvard longed for the Blue Star); “Would you pay an innkeeper?”
“Why, yes. I have a little money.”
“You be letting me take you to my home. The old woman will arrange your fluxions in less than a minute with her specific if you pay for it, and give all else you need for less than half what an innkeeper would ask, and no questions if the provosts come nosing, ey. Go, Mironelle.” He leaned forward and rammed the goad into the mule’s rump, which shook its ears, danced a little with the hind feet, and began to trot, so that Rodvard’s aching head jounced agonizingly. There was a turn, the track was broadening, fields showed, pigs rooted contentedly in a ditch, and the trees gave back to show a church with its half-moon symbol at the peak, and around it, like the spoke of a wheel, houses.
“Kazmerga,” said the mule-man. “I live on the other side.”
IIIShe was fat and one eye looked off at the wrong angle, but Rodvard was in a state not to care if she had worn on her brow the mark of evil. He flopped on the straw-bed. There was only one window, at the other end; the couple whispered under it, after which the housewife set a pot on the fire. Rodvard saw a big striped cat that marched back and forth, back and forth, beside the straw-bed, and it gave him a sense of nameless unease. The woman paid no attention, only stirring the pot as she cast in an herb or two, and muttering to herself.
Curtains came down his eyes, though not that precisely, neither; he lay in a kind of suspension of life, while the steam of the pot seemed to spread toward filling the room. Time hung; then the potion must be ready, for through half-closed lids Rodvard could see her lurch toward him in a manner somewhat odd. Yet it was not till she reached the very side of the bed and lifted his head in the crook of one arm, while pressing toward his lips the small earthen bowl, that a tired mind realized he should not from his position have been able to see her at all. A mystery; the pendulous face opened on gapped teeth; “Take it now my prettyboy, take it.”
The liquid was hot and very bitter on the lips, but as the first drops touched Rodvard’s tongue, the cat in the background emitted a scream that cut like a rusty saw. The woman jerked violently, spilling the stuff so it scalded him all down chin and chest as she let go. She swung round, squawking something that sounded like “Pozekshus!” at the animal. Rodvard struggled desperately as in a nightmare, unable to move a muscle no more than if he had been carved out of stone, realizing horribly that he had been bewitched. He wanted to vomit and could not; the cottage-wife turned back toward him with an expression little beautiful.
Her grubby hands were shaking a little. She grumbled under her breath as he felt her detach the belt-pouch with all his money and then slip off his shoes. The jacket came next; but as she undid the laces at the top, grunting and puffing, her hand touched the chain that held the Blue Star, and she jerked out the jewel. In all his immobility Rodvard’s every perception had become as painfully sharp as an edge of broken ice. He thought she was going to have a fit, her features seemed to twist and melt into each other, her hand came away from the stone as though it had been a red coal. “Oh, nonononono,” she squealed, backing away. “No. No. No. Ah, you were right, Tigrette; you were right to stop me.”
The cat arched against her. As though the small act had released some spring in herself, the woman bustled to the invisible end of the room, where Rodvard could hear wood click on earthenware, then some kind of a dumb low-toned chant she raised, then became aware of a different and aromatic odor. He was wide awake now and hardly sick at all any more; could see how the mist in the room was clearing a little, then heard the door creak open and the mule-driver’s voice, saying:
“Did you get it done, ey?”
“Not I, you old fool, you rat-pudding, you dog-bait.”
“Old fool yourself.” Rodvard heard the sound of a slap. “Call me old fool. You weren’t so dainty with the last one. Taken with the pretty lad, are you? Now go do it, or I’ll slice his throat myself and never mind mess. What’s one runaway servant more or less, ey? This is real money, hard money, more nor you ever seen.”
Now she was whimpering. “I tell you you’re a fool. He has a Blue Star, a Blue Star, and his witch will know what’s put on him and recoil it back to us, double, triple. Worms that never die crawling under your skin till you perish of it. All the hard money there is is not worth it.”
A sound of steps. The scratchy face looked down at Rodvard, he felt the man palm the jewel. “Blue Star, ey? Ah, fritzess, this is some piece of glass.” But the tone was little sure.
“It is a Blue Star and nothing else, the second one I see. They are wedded with the great wedding.”
The man turned, and though his own head did not, Rodvard could see how the expression of craftiness had come on back to him. “Blue Star? Now you witch it for him, wife, witch it for him, so it will be no longer good. You can witch anything. Then I’ll take him away from here.”
The whimper became a sniffle. “I’ll witch, ah, I’ll witch, mumble, mumble, mumble.” Rodvard heard her tottering shuffle go and come, the fat face was over his again, all filled now with oily kinks that held little beads of sweat. She looked at him closely and then flung over her shoulder; “Go out, old man, and leave us. There’s something not healthy for you to see,” and began plucking at her garments to undo them, at the last moment pausing to throw an edge of stinking blanket over Rodvard’s face. His heightened senses caught the stiff rustle of clothes sinking to the floor; the aromatic smell declared itself over all others, her fingers sought his burned chin beneath the blanket and applied a relieving unguent.
“Mumble, mumble,” came her voice, and he understanding not a word. “Meowrrr-row!” shouted the cat, as it raced through the narrow cot from end to end. He could have melted with relief as the fingers soothed his chest, but then his mind went off on a picture of Lalette become old in the manner of this one and he would have shuddered if he could have stirred. The crooning mumble ended, the witch-wife’s ministrations at the same time. There was a silence set with small sounds, over which the continued mewling of the cat. He heard the woman at the door summon her husband, then the two of them speaking in voiceless sibilants, a contention going on, which terminated with the man’s strong arms around Rodvard, heaving him up like a sack of meal.
Exterior air came through the edge of the blanket; step, step, he was borne, and with a grunt, dumped in what must be the mule-cart. A pause; the blanket was twitched from his face and he was looking up into the disparate eyes of the woman.
“Nice boy, nice boy,” said her voice. “You tell your witch now how I do good. You tell her I respect the great wedding. Not him; he keeps your hard money.”
She patted his still unmoving cheek, a touch that made his senses creep; and the Blue Star was suddenly, shockingly cold over his heart, (he could see beyond any question that there was in the woman’s mind a great fear, but also the great longing kindness of two joined against an armèd world).
From where he was leading the mule to hitching, the man’s voice came; “Wife, get that badge we took from the last one, the mechanician. I say to you, you hurry now.”
NETZNEGON CITY; A ZIGRANER FESTIVAL
After he had gone, Lalette cried a little, but the widow pretended not to notice, busying herself with sewing on one of the festival masks, a task at which the girl was presently helping, so far as she could, for she was no great artist with the needle, nor wished to be. When they began talking again it was about the robe they were working on, grey silk velvet which had been artfully torn here and there to a pretense of raggedness, through which the slashes were being backed with flame-color. Lalette passed her hands across the lovely fabric (longing to be gay and courted in such a gown, though it left so much of the leg bare that she would have felt a little shame to wear it). Who was it made for?
“The Countess Aiella of Arjen, for the festival ball at Sedad Vix. The younger Countess, that is, the unmarried one. I designed it especially for her. The mask is there.” She nodded.
It hung on one of the standards, empty of eye and mouth, but no one could mistake the provenance of the high-bridged nose and the cheekbones from which the full rumpled beard flowed down. “Why,” said Lalette, “it is Prince Pavinius when he was Prophet of Mancherei; I thought you were—” and stopped.
“Amorosians?” The widow Domijaiek smiled. “I am a follower of that doctrine, though not yet perfected in it. But in spite of what you have been told, it is not one of gloomy reverence. It does not prohibit joy, nor even keep us away from the world, only declares that the joys of the world are false beside those that come to us when we learn how we have been deceived by the flesh. You, who are newly married, have the other kind of love now, and will not know what I mean, but in the end you will come to see that kind of love as sin.”
“I am not married,” said Lalette, letting her needle fall (but doubting that her feeling toward Rodvard were indeed the love the poets carolled, and of which Dame Domijaiek spoke), “except in what we who have the Art call the great marriage.”
“I would as soon not speak as to that,” said the widow, “but in our church we are taught that to love a person is to love the world, which is a deception due to the God of evil.”
IIRodvard did not come back that evening, nor the next, and no word from him of any kind. Lalette felt unhappy and listless after so long indoors; above her she could hear from time to time Mme. Kaja’s footsteps come and go, and when the door was opened, often one of her pupils in song, flatted usually and more frequently than not, off key. The boy Laduis soon held little more for her, and in any case with the spring festival now rushing on so fast, had to be taken from his academy to run errands for his mother, who now worked late every night. The widow said the court had gone down to Sedad Vix, the doubled guards at the city gates were withdrawn, and the provosts somewhat relaxing in vigilance as to their search for the girl.
It might be safe to leave her refuge, if she had any place to go. Surely, not to her mother’s, who would still be watched by Uncle Bontembi the priest if by no other, and it seemed to Lalette there was no friend of her own age near enough to be trusted, now that all the world knew her for a witch. It was a box. For the present, one was able to pay in some sort for food and shelter by labor on the festival costumes, but that would soon be done. Ah, Rodvard, are you detained or faithless—which?
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