‘But you haven’t yet defined evil. If it isn’t a failure in natural function, and if it isn’t normality, what is it?’
‘It’s the means by which supreme good is contrasted with the merely normal.’
‘Then you mean that Sally is the Goddess’s instrument of evil?’
‘Yes. I do.’
She was silent for awhile and then said: ‘Well, I suppose that’s what Cleopatra meant by the verse:
When water stinks I break the dam,
In love I break it.
Ordinary goodness grows stagnant and customary and the Goddess proves her love by destroying custom – by re-introducing evil.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘But what then? Will the sequel be a return to the same loveless horrors that have lined your face and hands? Will the Three Rogues return?’
‘I’m certain they won’t. The Goddess never repeats herself. This will be something quite new.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘I haven’t the least idea. But what were you saying about the lines on my hands?’
‘They’re hatched and cross-hatched all over with creases of pain and sorrow; ours are marked with only the four main lines. I fell in love with your hands and face as soon as I saw them; somehow they reminded me of my grandfather’s coat. When he was young, he went adventuring in the Bad Lands of Africa, was separated from his comrades by a dust storm and was lost for months; when he returned, his coat had been torn by a thousand thorns but each rent had been neatly sewn up again. He hung it up in Nimuë’s shrine at Sanjon, and there it remained until his death.’
‘Your face attracted me for the opposite reason. You can’t imagine how startling it was to see a grown woman’s face as unlined and unclouded as a child’s.’
‘But now, if it becomes lined and clouded, will you still love me?’
I laughed: ‘Do you want me, after all, to go on seeing you as I first saw you?’
‘If it keeps your love for me fresh, I shan’t mind.’
‘Are we staying here tonight?’
‘I must stay. I have some painting to do.’
‘Then you’ll want to be alone. In any case, it’s stopped raining now and I shall have to take the horses back; they’re in the paddock on the other side of the road. Is there a message for the servants about your things?’
‘No, Edward, don’t go to the house: I’m afraid of what might happen. Take the horses down the road and tell them to trot home. They’ll understand.’
‘Will you have finished your painting by midnight?’
‘I hope so. I need sleep.’
‘Shall I come back then?’
‘No, please, you mustn’t. There’s only one bunk, but in the morning we’ll ride to Dunrena together. The King’s last day begins tomorrow at curfew, and since I’ve decided to remain what I am for your sake, I shall have to attend. Good night, and don’t be too late to bed. Any house will welcome you. Come back early. You will, won’t you?’
Her lips were trembling.
‘But I don’t understand. Why can’t we share the bunk? I don’t want to be parted from you at a time like this.’ I tried to embrace her.
‘No,’ she panted, ‘no, you mustn’t touch me! Not yet. You’re tied to Sally now.’
‘To Sally? What nonsense. I don’t intend ever to see her again.’
‘She gave you the right of fatherhood, and you accepted it, so you and I can never again sleep in the same bed, until –’
‘Until what?’
She continued in a voice so cold and low that it scared me. ‘– Until I spread my cloak for you on Sally’s grave.’
Chapter XVIII
The Nonsense House
I rode down to the bridge, with Sapphire’s mare trotting behind, then dismounted and shoo’d both horses home. As I strolled around the deserted streets of Horned Lamb I felt rather at a loss; unhappy too. Sapphire’s parting words re-echoed menacingly in my head, yet the threat of murder disturbed me far less than the insistence that our love was to be consummated. I knew now more clearly than ever that I did not want this; it would have spoilt everything. A few more drops of rain fell. Was there a village inn? I did not remember having seen one either here or in any of the villages I had visited. A cottage door stood open and I peeped in. The interior reminded me irresistibly of the frontispiece to an early Victorian novel, The Weaver’s Cottage, which I had read as a child; a placid domestic scene caught just before the neighbour runs in, all dishevelled, with news that the Bristol press-gang is in the village. The woman of the house spinning, a young man working a hand-loom, a rosy-checked girl mending a shirt, another embroidering a waistcoat, an oldish man in the chimney-corner telling them a story with dramatically raised forefinger; kettle simmering on the hob, cat asleep on mat. For a little while I stood listening to the story:
‘It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything. I went up to a rising ground to look farther. I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one…’
Not wishing to interrupt at that perpetually thrilling point, I walked quietly on. ‘These villagers work all day and all night,’ I said to myself, ‘and not because they’re exploited by a tyrannous squire or mill-owner but, I suppose, because their backward economy doesn’t allow them to let up for a moment. Or perhaps because they really enjoy work, poor blighters! But no evening paper with the list of tomorrow’s runners, no football-pool coupons to fill in, no Odeon round the corner, no variety programme on the radio, no nine o’clock news, not even any nine o’clock. Nothing but work and custom, and more custom, and custom again and, for a treat, Uncle reciting his bed-time story of the footprint on the sand. Terrible!’ But here I was breaking my resolution to leave the past alone; besides, I wasn’t even sure whether I was being sarcastic about my own age or about New Crete. ‘The best place for you tonight is a nonsense house,’ I reproved myself. ‘The Hag’s pass will let you in.’
At the Nonsense House I dawdled for a moment on the porch and listened. A great deal of noise was going on inside, shouting and arguing punctuated by occasional high screams of laughter. I knocked, but as nobody came to let me in, I pushed the door open and went into a large entrance hall, furnished with five hat-stands each with a different type of hat on it, a table with refreshments including anchovy-paste sandwiches – one of which I sampled – a barrel of draught beer, a pier glass, several high stools, and about a hundred capacious lockers each painted with a symbol that represented the owner’s nickname. I gently pushed open one of three silk-curtained glass doors and looked into a big room full of elderly women. Nine of them were squatting in a ring with their hands spread out level with their faces. In the centre, about four feet above the floor, a bloody human head was revolving slowly on what seemed to be an upward current of air. I withdrew at once but one of the spectators rushed after me. ‘Hey!’ she cried, catching me by the collar. ‘What are you doing here, young man?’
‘Paying a visit,’ I said mildly.
‘Back with me to the women’s room!’ she ordered, and dragged me along.
‘Look, my dears, what we have here!’ she shouted. ‘We’re in luck tonight!’ There was a cackling of joy, the ring broke up, the head dropped to the floor and rolled under a chair, and about forty women thronged round me. They started by kissing and petting me and went on to offer me even more embarrassing caresses.
‘I don’t want to infringe custom, ladies,’ I said in a loud voice, ‘but I’d be much obliged if you’d let me alone until I’ve had a chance to introduce myself. Your attentions overwhelm me.’
They screamed with laughter and began to unbutton my coat and trousers and pull off my shoes.
‘Butterfly ha
s first whack!’ someone shouted. ‘She spotted him first, and then it’s Two Cows, Head-in-Air and Grip-tight.’
‘No, you’re wrong, dearest: Grip-tight’s at the head of tonight’s roster.’
‘Ladies, ladies!’ I pleaded, struggling to rebutton myself. ‘Give me a chance, I say!’
By this time Butterfly and two others had dragged off my coat and an old woman with a mahogany-coloured face and silver ear-rings had unfastened my belt and was busily debagging me. I socked her hard on the jaw and dislodged her. She squealed with rage but before she had time to return to the charge I slipped my hand into my-trouser pocket, pulled out the crystal locket and waved it above my head.
‘Stop!’ I shouted against the hubbub. ‘In the Name of the Goddess! Stop!’
They broke away at once. Two of them who had taken down cats-o’-nine-tails from a wall-bracket and were swishing them menacingly round their heads, hung the nasty-looking things up again in contrition. They all turned their backs politely, giving me an opportunity to adjust my dress.
I gasped with relief. ‘In the nick of time!’ So the Soldier in the Hans Andersen story must have felt when he produced the tinder-box on the scaffold.
‘You must forgive us,’ said Butterfly. ‘Naturally, we mistook you for a trespasser and were going to deal with you as is customary. We had no notion that you were under protection.’
‘No, forgive me,’ I said, ‘for intruding without first showing my credentials. And you, madam, whom I struck, I hope I have done you no injury?’
The mahogany-faced woman stroked her jaw and grinned. ‘That’s nothing, youngster, don’t speak of it. You should see the hooks and hay-makers that fly about here on Tuesday Eve when the whisky’s been round for the third time. But it’s lucky for you I didn’t land you a packet before you got your hand into your trousers; I’d have laid you out stiff.’
‘Aren’t you the fellow from the past?’ asked the woman they called Grip-tight. ‘I thought so. We’ve been hearing quite a lot about you recently. I bet you know a thing or two to amuse us. A new bad little story, or a bad little game – something really contraband. Don’t you think you ought to pay us for the disappointment you’ve caused by not being a trespasser?’
‘Oh, shut up, you couple of old bitches!’ said a distinguished-looking woman who turned out to be Bee-flight. ‘Is this the way to talk to a man under the Crane’s protection?’
‘Thanks for your support, Elder,’ I said. ‘At the moment I can’t say that I feel in the right vein for entertaining your friends. And, in any case, it doesn’t look as though I could teach them anything. What were they doing with that head under the chair?’
‘Oh, that’s Claud’s.’
‘And who was Claud?’
‘You knew him well: he was Fig-bread. When his death was registered we borrowed his head from the grave at Zapmor – the witch Sally dug it up for us – and made him answer a few questions. He was just telling us about the setup at the Magic House. What an amusing story! But he’s dreadfully cross with you for having refused him the chance to be reborn as Sally’s child. Would you like to apologize to him?’
She retrieved the head from under the chair and offered it to me. Fig-bread’s earnest brown eyes stared dully into mine.
I declined the gift and the suggestion with a shudder, and though I felt that some intelligent comment was expected of me, all I could say was: ‘Nobody ever warned me what to expect here!’
‘Nobody ever is warned,’ said Bee-flight, ‘not even people who elect to become elders and look forward to a mild continuance here of their former life. It’s known, of course, that within the walls of this house we’re not bound by custom and that strange sounds sometimes float out through the shuttered windows, to which it’s bad luck to pay attention. But it always comes as a shock to newcomers to find that what goes on here is as different from what goes on outside as Ana is from Nimuë. We’re free to do more or less as we please among ourselves from noon to midnight. Then we return, like good children, to the dormitory house across the road for bed and breakfast. That’s subject to outside custom, so we always get a good night’s rest. In the mornings we pay visits, unless it’s raining, of course.’
‘Did I understand Grip-tight to say that you had roughhouses here once a week?’
‘Ana bless me, yes! Often two or three times a week. There’s a lot of women who enjoy a good free-for-all scrap, but we always get them to the dormitory sober and with their black eyes and swollen lips doctored. You see, as children we’re kept under perpetual restraint and when we grow up we keep to custom voluntarily, but Ana doesn’t like us to die without a taste of liberty.’
‘I should have thought that the licence came rather too late. What happens, for example, if one of you falls desperately in love with a young man from outside? How is she to satisfy her passion? Or doesn’t the case ever arise?’
‘If this were Friday Eve,’ said Butterfly, ‘you’d never have asked that question. I can assure you we’re not starved in any way. Bee-flight conjures up ass-imps for us and transforms them into the young men of our choice; and she turns us into young girls sometimes, just for the fun of it.’
‘What about the old men?’
‘They have their fun, too, but since they’re nearly all impotent they mostly resort to what we call little piggeries with their imps. Ana is generous: she looks on and laughs.’
Grip-tight was still hanging about expectantly. I couldn’t think of any new bad little games for her but I remembered two or three old bad little stories from my Erica period which went down very well. She and Two Cows slapped me on the back enthusiastically and called for more. ‘Another day, ladies, another day!’ I pleaded.
Bee-flight took me to the men’s room, where I showed my pass once more and was hospitably received. ‘If you have time,’ she said, as she rejoined her friends, ‘come and see us again before you go home.’
I looked around me. Except for some revoltingly erotic frescoes on the walls and the absence of newspapers and magazines, the place reminded me of the smoking room at the Athenæum, not only in shape and size but in its leather and oak furnishings. The frescoes, which would have made the House of the Two Brothers at Pompeii look as respectable as the parlour of a Bournemouth lodging-house, were delicately executed in yellow, violet and a particularly poisonous sweet-pea shade of pink. Little piggeries indeed! And I had fondly believed that old age dulled the sexual appetite!
‘Have a cigarette, my boy,’ said a tall emaciated ex-captain, offering me his case. ‘We smoke at all hours here.’
‘Thanks, I’ll know where to come in future,’ I said, lighting one. ‘What’s all the excitement over there?’ I nodded towards a table at the end of the room around which a crowd of elders was gathering.
‘Oh, nothing much. Tiger-Tiger, one of our ex-recorders, has just invented a naughty little toy, thoroughly against custom, and the boys are having fun with it.’
‘What sort of a toy?’
‘He calls it a model steam-engine. It’s a reconstruction in gold of a machine of the Late Christian epoch that turned up in a quarry some years ago. Tiger-Tiger’s not entirely satisfied with it yet, but it works. Most ingenious. You pour ordinary water into a tank at the back and heat it up with a little fire of brandy, and it whistles, and the steam jets out and the wheels turn round. He’s a very clever fellow. The other day he discovered how to make paper, at least he swears it’s paper; but something seems to be wrong because he’s made ink too, and the ink soaks the paper when he writes on it.’
‘What’s your particular interest, if I may ask?’
The ex-captain smiled and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I lived an energetic life before I retired. Here I like to stand by the fire warming my backside and doing a bit of reading: I’ve learned to read since I came here. Mostly I read contraband books written by elders. There’s quite a library of those in the billiard-room, apart from the usual Hundred Volumes. At the moment I’m interested in astronomy;
a great many rediscoveries have been made lately about the distances and weights of the stars. Just imagine, the stars can actually be weighed – isn’t that a surprising fact? And, of course, quite at variance with our mythology. We’re hoping one day to be able to reconstruct a small telescope; so far we’ve only managed to get hold of a single well-preserved lens, but we need two. Optical glass is quite beyond our power to manufacture. You don’t happen to know anything about the process, do you?’
I shook my head. ‘And if I did,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I’d tell you. Isn’t it more fun to find things out than to be told them?’
He assented, though with some disappointment.
‘Have you made any re-inventions of a later age than my own?’ I asked. ‘I’m from the Late Christian.’
At this point an appalling hubbub broke out next door: a hoarse male bellow of agony soon drowned by hysterical female screams. The ex-captain smiled at me, drily: ‘That’ll be young See-a-Bird being initiated into the ways of the house. If I know Bee-flight, she’ll put him through his paces pretty savagely: he’ll think his last hour has come.’
I was shocked. ‘But they were lovers, weren’t they? – from what he told me, the most idyllically devoted couple in New Crete?’
‘The lover must be shown the other blade of the labra, as we say, and Bee-flight isn’t going to kill him. We all have to go through this sort of thing when we first come here. But you were asking about reinventions… Let me see. No, nothing of any great interest. We have some information about such machines as the Apporteur and the Cic-Fax, but they’re quite beyond our scope: they need rare metals and a complicated nebular fissive system. Here we limit ourselves to toys: we’re not ambitious.’