you,’ he groaned out, between his teeth, ‘how did I get saddled with you.’
At which she suddenly let out a snort of something that was unmistakably amusement. She sat up. She swung her legs down over the couch, then she all at once burst into swift tears that shook her shoulders quite soundlessly, and then, just as suddenly, she stopped crying, and crept to her cushion, where she sat with her back to the wall, staring at him.
He noted that she was afraid of him, but not in any way that could appeal to him.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s that.’ He gave her uneasy sideways glances, as if waiting for a comment.
‘Is that really what you do?’ she enquired. ‘Or is it because you don’t like me?’
At this he gave her a look which was all appeal, and he sat on the bottom of the bed, and pounded it hard, with his fists.
She saw, at last, that he was a boy, he was not much more than a small boy. She saw him as one of her own half-grown sons, and for the first time, her heart softened.
Looking at him with the tears still full in her great eyes, she said, ‘You know, I think there might be something you could learn from us.’
He gave a sort of shake of his great shaggy head, as if too much was reaching his ears all at once. But he remained leaning forward, not looking at her, but listening.
‘For one thing, have you never heard that one may choose the times to conceive children?’
He winced. But only because again she talked of children. He pounded the bed with one fist, and stopped.
‘You did not know that the nature of a child may be made by its conception?’
He shook his head and hung it. He sighed.
‘If I am pregnant now, as I could be, then this child will have nothing to thank us for.’
He suddenly flung himself down on the bed, prone, and lay there, arms outstretched.
Again, a long silence. The smell of their coupling was a small rank reminder of lust, and he looked up at her. She sat leaning against the wall, very pale, tired, and there was a bruise by her mouth, where his thumb had pressed.
He let out a groan. ‘It seems there is something I can learn from you,’ he said, and it was not in a child’s voice.
She nodded. Looking at each other, they saw only that they were unhappy, and did not know what to expect from the other.
She it was who got up, sat by him on the couch, and laid her small hands on both sides of his great neck as he still lay prone, chin on his fist.
He turned over. It was an effort for him to face her.
He took her hands, and lay there on his back, she sitting quietly close to him. She tried to smile, but her lips trembled, and tears rolled down her face. He gave an exclamation, and pulled her down beside him. He was astounded that his own eyes had tears in them.
He tried to comfort this strange woman. He felt her small hands on his shoulders, in a pressure of consolation and pity.
Thus they fell asleep together, worn out by it all.
This was the first lovemaking of these two, the event which was fusing the imaginations of two realms.
He woke, and was at once alert. His senses were anxiously at work, mapping the space that surrounded him where it should not, coming to terms with sounds that suggested whispering, danger. His tent flap had been left open … but the opening was higher than it should be: his tent had been torn away by a wind, or an attack? Water … water flowing, and rising: the canals were overflowing, would he find himself standing in water? Ready to accept the cold wet clasp of a calamitous flood around his ankles, he swung his feet over onto a dry floor, and had taken several strides forward, calling out in the hoarse shocked voice of nightmare for his orderly, when he saw that he had mistaken the high curve of the central pillar where it met the ceiling for the tent opening. At once he remembered everything. He turned around in the dark, believing that the woman Al·Ith could be mocking him. But it was too dark even to see the couch. What he wanted then was simply to stride out of that place and not come back. With the understanding it was the fountains tinkling he had been taking for floods and inundations, the panic thought overcame him that he was not himself. He was undermined, unmanned, and made a coward. Bitterness shook him; his mouth was dry with it. Quite simply he was appalled—by the situation, by himself, by her. Yet, if he knew nothing else, he knew obedience. An order had brought him here to this effeminate pavilion, and duty must take him back to that couch. Convinced that she was lying awake and somehow watching him, he nevertheless took cautious steps in the dark until his shins encountered the softness of the couch. He slid himself to a half-sitting position, and began feeling the couch for her limbs — for her. Then he was groping all over the surface for her and finding nothing. She had escaped! Relief! That could only be her fault, and not his! He did not have to do anything! But then, these thoughts were chased away by indignation, and by chase lust. If she had escaped she must be caught. The confusions and indecisions of the last minutes came together in a surge of energy. He actually began a lively whistling — then thought she might be somewhere in the room, perhaps behind the pillar, watching him. And laughing. He swung around and strode to the pillar and felt all about with his hands. Nothing. Again he was about to raise his voice to call his orderly, and remembered that there were to be no servants here, no regular attendants. He did not mind about that: this king was happiest on campaign, a soldier among soldiers, and not marked out from them except that it was his task to make decisions. What he did mind was having to be alone with her without attendants. Shut up with a woman. This woman. Who as a witch might certainly be somewhere in the room, seeing where he could not. Anger fed his decisiveness. He pulled his army cloak about him and strode to the door opening onto the fountains.
Awaking in the dark, he had not known the time. In the camps a sentry was ordered to halt outside his tent and to announce — not call out, but state — each half-hour. If he was awake, he needed to know where he was in the countries of the night. Which he did not enjoy: distrusted, in fact. He liked to put his head down soon after the evening meal and to sleep until first light, and to know nothing in between — but if awake for some reason, then he would wait for the low reassuring voice of the sentry.
Now he stood square in the archway, with the dark room behind him, looking out past the arches of the porticoes, and he knew at once that it was about an hour before dawn, although the sky had no moon or stars in it and low clouds hurried past. An irregular streak showed the long rectangle that was the pool where seven jets of water played. Irritation was remembered — almost claimed him again. The dimensions of this pavilion, its adjacent rooms, the approaches, the galleries surrounding it, the gardens, the many pools and fountains, the walks, and the steps and the levels — every one exactly specified, prescribed, measured, and all in the damnedest of measurements — everything in halves and quarters and bits and pieces, irregularities and unexpectedness. The architects, none of whom of course had built anything but army forts and towers and barracks for years, had been expected to mutiny. At any rate, this particular very long and narrow pool, or ditch, as he had muttered when he had seen the plans, had had seven jets prescribed for it. Not ten, or five, or twenty, but seven. And the long oval pool beyond it had three, of different sizes from each other … a clump of nine spice trees stood to one side of the pools, and under them he saw something shadowy and disturbing. But it was too big to be a woman. He heard movements, though. Just as he realized it was a horse — that damned horse! — his eyes had come to life enough to see that she was sitting quietly at the end of the long pool, between it and the oval pool, on a raised stone dais, or terrace, which was a circle that had a radius of exactly seven and a half feet. The masons building it had joked it would make a good bed. Oh, the jokes, the jokes, he had been sick of them, was sick to death of them, of the whole thing … he could not make out if she had seen him. But it occurred to him that if he had seen her, she could be expected to have seen him.
However, there was nothing ridiculous about his stance there, legs apart, arms folded, everything soldierly and correct.
It