Страница 19 из 66
‘Then one day when I was standing around on a corner I saw a man I took to belong to some order I hadn’t talked to yet. By that time I was pla
“Anyway, I followed this man I’d seen, and when he stopped-he’d been sent to buy vegetables, you see-I went up to him and asked him about his order. He told me he was a slave of the Pelerines and it was about the same as being in an order, bat better. A man could have a drink or two and nobody’d object so long as he was sober when he came to his work. He could lie with the girls too, and there were good chances for that because the girls thought they were holy men, more or less, and they travelled all around.
“I asked if he thought they’d take me, and I said I couldn’t believe the life was as good as he made it out to be. He said he was sure they would, and although he couldn’t prove what he’d said about the girls right then .and there, he’d prove what he’d said about drinking by splitting a bottle of red with me.
“We went to a tavern by the market and sat down, and he was as good as his word. He told me the life was a lot like a sailor’s, because the best part of being a sailor was seeing various places, and they did that. It was like being a soldier too, because they carried weapons when the order journeyed in wild parts. Besides all of that, they paid you to sign. In an order, the order gets an offering from every man who takes their vow. If he decides to leave later, he gets some of it back, depending on how long he’s been in. For us slaves, as he explained to me, all that went the other way. A slave got paid when he signed. If he left later he’d have to buy his way out, but if he stayed he could keep all the money.
“I had a mother, and even though I never went to see her I knew she didn’t have an aes. While I was thinking about the religious orders, I’d got to be more religious myself, and I didn’t see how I was going to minister to the Increate with her on my mind. I signed the paper—naturally Goslin, the slave who’d brought me in, got a reward for it—and I took the money to my mother.”
I said, “That made her happy, I’m sure, and you too.”
“She thought it was some kind of trick, but I left it with her anyhow. I had to go back to the order, right away, naturally, and they’d sent somebody with me. Now I’ve been here thirty years.”
“You’re to be congratulated, I hope.”
“I don’t know. It’s been a hard life, but then all lives are hard, from what I’ve seen of them.”
“I too,” I said. To tell the truth, I was becoming sleepy and wished that he would go. “Thank you for telling me your story. I found it very interesting.”
“I want to ask you something,” he said, “and I want you to ask Journeyman Palaemon for me if you see him again.”
I nodded, waiting.
“You-said you thought the Pelerines would be kind mistresses, and I suppose you’re right. I’ve had a lot of kindness from some of them, and I’ve never been whipped here—nothing worse than a few slaps.
But you ought to know how they do it. Slaves that don’t behave themselves get sold, that’s all. Maybe you don’t follow me.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“A lot of men sell themselves to the order, thinking like I did that it’ll be an easy life and an adventure.
So it is, mostly, and it’s a good feeling to help cure the sick and the wounded. But those who don’t suit the Pelerines are sold off, and they get a lot more for them than they paid them. Do you see how it is now? This way, they don’t have to beat anybody. About the worst punishment you get is scrubbing out the Jakes. Only if you don’t please them, you can find yourself getting driven down into a mine.
“What I’ve wanted to ask Journeyman Palaemon all these years ...” Wi
“Yes, he was. He still is.”
“Then what I want to know is whether he told me what he did to torment me. Or was he giving me the best advice he could?” He looked away so that I would not see his expression. “Will you ask him that for me? Then maybe sometime I’ll see you again.”
I said, “He advised you as well as he could, I’m certain. If you’d stayed as you were, you might have been executed by him or another torturer long ago. Have you ever seen a man executed? But torturers don’t know everything.”
Wi
I touched his arm to detain him for a moment. “May I ask you something now? I myself have been a torturer. If you’ve feared for so many years that Master Palaemon had said what he did only to give you pain, how do you know that I haven’t done the same just now?”
“Because you would have said the other,” he told me. “Good night, young man.”
I thought for a time about what Wi
At last, hoping to turn my mind to less painful matters, I stood and stretched and strolled to Foila’s cot. She Was awake, and I talked with her for a time, then asked if I might judge the stories now; but she said I would have to wait one more day at least.
XIII. Foila’s Story-The Armiger’s Daughter
“HALLVARD AND MELITO and even the Ascian have had their chances. Don’t you think I’m entitled to one too? Even a man who courts a maid thinking he has no rivals has one, and that one is herself. She may give herself to him, but she may also choose to keep herself for herself. He has to convince her feat she will be happier with him than by herself, and though men convince maids of that often, it isn’t often true. In this competition I will make my own entry, and win myself for myself if I can. If I marry for tales, should I marry someone who’s a worse teller of them than I am myself?”
“Each of the men has told a story of his own country. I will do the same. My land is the land of the far horizons, of the wide sky. It is the land of grass and wind and galloping hoofs. In summer the wind can be as hot as the breath of an oven, and when the pampas take fire, the line of smoke stretches a hundred leagues and the lions ride our cattle to escape it, looking like devils. The men of my country are brave as bulls and the women are fierce as hawks.
“When my grandmother was young, there was a villa in my country so remote that no one ever came there. It belong to an armiger, a feudatory of the Liege of Pascua. The lands were rich, and it was a fine house, though the roof beams had been dragged by oxen all one summer to get them to the site. The walls were of earth, as the walls of all the houses in my country are, and they were three paces thick.
People who live in woodlands scoff at such walls, but they are cool and make a fine appearance whitewashed and will not burn. There was a tower and a wide banqueting hall, and a contrivance of ropes and wheels and buckets by which two merychips, walking in a circle, watered the garden on the roof.