Maia (42 page)

"Cran, I've just thought!" said Maia, jumping to her feet. "Where's your knife, Occula? Is it in your box? She might wake up and find it."

"Yes, I'd thought of that, too," replied Occula. "It's hidden, along with the tessik. But somehow I doan' think Milvushina's the sort to do herself in. I'm not really worried about that. I'm much more bothered about Piggy and his jolly fun."

"You don't think he might drive her to it?"

"No-because we're goin' to help her to turn herself from a baron's daughter into a crafty, hard-headed slave-girl. Oh,
you
were no trouble, banzi; you're a tough little thing, aren't you? You quite enjoy ruttin' about with Piggy, doan' you? Uh-huh, I've seen you:
and
he knows it. But d'you realize what it's goin' to be like for
her!
That's why he had her brought here, the bastard-partly that and partly so's he could feel he'd got twelve thousand meld's worth for nothin'."

Maia looked up quickly, finger to lips, as the door beyond the bead curtains openedsoftly. A moment later they stood up as Terebinthia came in.

"Ah, there you are, Occula," said Terebinthia. "You may go to the High Counselor now. I don't think he's very well this morning, but no doubt you'll be able to make him feel better." Then, turning to Maia, "Where's the Chalcon girl? You've seen her, I suppose?"

"Yes, saiyett. We put her to sleep with me in the big bed-jus' so's I could keep an eye on her, like: only she was a bit upset last night, see. Thought I'd sit in there and

do a bit of mending till she wakes, and then Ogma can get her something to eat."

"Yes, that will do," replied Terebinthia, "and you'd better tell her that the High Counselor will want to see her later on, at supper time." She stooped, holding her hands to the stove, and then added quietly, "He's greatly looking forward to it."

Nevertheless, the High Counselor did not send for Mil-vushina that evening. At dinner next day, when he was attended by Occula and Maia, he was listless and petulant, cutting short his gluttony and showing no inclination for other pleasures. Although replying to Terebinthia, with testy annoyance, that he did not feel ill, he plainly lacked the energy and zest to enjoy the humiliation of a baron's daughter turned concubine. Early in the afternoon he dismissed the girls, but later recalled Occula to bathe and massage him, after which he fell asleep without even attempting to gratify himself.

The next two days brought no change and Maia, to her own surprise, realized that she was beginning to feel frustrated. It had never occurred to her that what she had become accustomed to doing for the High Counselor gave her any satisfaction; indeed, she had now and then, in the secrecy of their bed, expressed to Occula her disgust. Now she began to understand that her feelings were not as simple as she had supposed.

She had never forgotten the day when Lalloc had first displayed her-the day when Sencho, beside himself at the mere sight of her, had vainly tried to raise himself from the cushions. Nor did she forget the night of the Rains banquet, when Meris had failed him and she herself had not. She was also well aware, of course, that he felt not the least affection for her and that if for any reason, such as illness or injury, she were to become less attractive he would simply sell her off for the best price he could get. Yet in a strange way this state of affairs suited her. She enjoyed the fact that her beauty and wantonness were sufficient in themselves and needed no supplement of emotion. Her own nature was down-to-earth. So was Sencho's.

Despite his delight in humiliating his girls, he was in this respect an easy master, since he wanted and expected nothing but pleasurable sensations, which Maia could provide without difficulty. If questioned about her work, she would probably have answered much the same as a farm-hand- that she could do it all right, but would have been happier if there was less of it. Dyphna, she knew, would have liked a more cultured, aristocratic master, and Occula one in whose house there Was more social life and opportunity for her ambition and quick wits. She herself had no such feelings-the reason, she had hitherto thought, being simply that she was not required to do anything beyond her.

She now discovered that there was more to it than this. Occula and Dyphna despised Sencho and found him tedious. To her his vulgarity, cruelty and salacity were offset by another quality-his enormous capacity for enjoyment-together with the knowledge that she herself was what he particularly liked. The transient indolence of his intermittent satiety-that too had been acceptable to her, as a night is acceptable between two days; but this new listlessness, unrelieved as one day succeeded another, began to seem like a long spell of rainy weather. Hunching her shoulders, as it were, she looked about her at a household become more wearisome than she had hitherto found it. If Sencho could not gormandize or rut, she was as much at a loose end as a farm-lad kept idle by snow.

"He keeps telling Terebinthia there's nothing the matter," she said one afternoon, after she had finished practicing the senguela-at which she had greatly improved- and she and Occula were lying together in the pool. "And if I ask her whether he's really ill, she gets cross. But if there's really nothing the matter, why doesn't he want anything? Don't want any girls, don't want any dinner: I just about wish he did, and that's the plain truth."

"It often takes them like that, so I've heard," replied Occula. "Gluttons, I mean, and lechers: people who've lived a long time the way he has. They get so their bodies jus' can't respond any more. Well, when there's nothing left in a barrel it runs dry, doesn' it? And take it from me, that's what's frightenin' old Pussy. She's afraid he's going to die."

"D'you reckon he is, then?"

"I doan' know, banzi. Always been in steady employment, myself. I jus' doan' know enough about people like

Sencho. But I'll tell you one thing-we ought to take damn' good care he doesn't have a fit or somethin' while we're stuffin' him or workin' him up to a bit of fun. We could easily get the blame, you see."

Nevertheless, it was remarkable to Maia that during these days Occula spent more time with Sencho than did any other member of the household-more even than Ter-ebinthia. He would send for her in the course of the morning, and she would remain with him for several hours. Once or twice Maia, entering the room on some errand from Terebinthia, had the notion that she had interrupted a conversation. Also, she received a vague impression that in some way Occula was influencing the High Counselor. One evening, for example, having been called unexpectedly to the small hall and finding, to her surprise, that he wanted her to gratify him, she sensed that in fact this had been instigated by Occula, who remained to encourage him and urge him on to satisfaction. Another day Occula was successful to some slight extent in re-awakening his greed, yet to Maia it seemed to come from the strength of her will rather than from his own appetite.

Formerly, the High Counselor had not been in the regular habit of requiring a girl to spend the whole night with him; but now, more often than not Occula would remain with him all night and herself perform those menial tasks, such as bringing water, cushions or fresh towels, which would normally have been the duty of Ogma. Maia, herself puzzled, was secretly amused by the greater bewilderment of Terebinthia. Plainly, the saiyett did not know whether to feel vexed or relieved, for on the one hand Occula had to a considerable extent assumed her functions, while on the other the black girl seemed the only person able to soothe and relieve the malaise of the High Counselor. Under her ministrations he would pass each day in a kind of lethargy, occasionally rousing himself to eat, but for the most part drowsing in the bath, sleeping, or simply listening to Occula, whose whisperings and occasional chuckling laughter-about what? Maia wondered-clearly possessed some odd power. She herself had never had much occasion to converse when she was with the High Counselor.

These long absences of Occula from the women's quarters left Maia a good deal together with Milvushina, about whom Sencho seemed for the moment to have forgotten. She herself was, she now knew, jealous of Occula's pity

for the wretched girl, but of this she did not feel particularly ashamed. Family disaster, violent death and enslavement, though certainly out of the ordinary, were nevertheless recognized hazards throughout the half-barbaric empire, and Milvushina's luck was no different from that of the daughters of many a ruined man. The last people from whom those who have come down in the world can expect pity are those who have never been up in it. Milvushina had scarcely anything in common with Maia. Paradoxically, however, this proved a source of strength to her. A more sympathetic and understanding girl might well have increased Milvushina's grief beyond endurance, simply by feeling and reciprocating it more fully. Maia, by her ability to feel only a limited sympathy, blunted-a little, at least- the fearful edge of Milvushina's misery.

Yet, peasant lass as she was, she was not lacking in a peasant's homely kindness to someone in trouble. If nice cups of tea had been known in Bekla, Maia would have made a nice cup of tea. The unspeakable horror which had been inflicted on Milvushina might be as much beyond her powers of empathy as was the Chalcon girl's aristocratic sense of her degradation and shame. (Maia had never felt in the least
ashamed
of becoming a concubine.) Yet it was not beyond her to persuade Milvushina to eat, to send Ogma out to buy her a brush and comb, or to hold her in her arms and soothe her when she woke screaming in the night. If the girl had not been plainly on the verge of collapse-even of madness-Maia might very well have given way to her natural feelings of resentment, for there were times when Milvushina unconsciously revealed that she regarded her in much the same way as she had once regarded her dead mother's servants; not, indeed, by ordering her about or saying anything contemptuous (her careful good manners, in fact, rather added to Maia's annoyance, since to her they seemed affected beyond anything she had ever been used to), but by her maintenance of a kind of reserve and distance, even when she was doing her best to be friendly, and by her inadvertent way of showing that she saw the world from a higher standpoint. "But that was long ago," she said once, recalling some memory of childhood, "before we had even fifty men on the place." And again, "My mother didn't possess a great many jewels, really." Maia made no rejoinder, for the tears were standing in Milvushina's eyes as she spoke, and after all it

was she herself who had led her on to ease her mind by talking.

To Milvushina the company of Maia, as pretty and about as cultivated as a gazelle, often seemed rather like that of the fire on the hearth. Creatures and elements have their fixed properties, which cannot alter, and in deep misery it is often easier to whistle to a bird or tend a fire than to make the effort to talk to an educated person. All the priests of Cran could not have influenced Milvushina to try to preserve her self-respect so effectively as did Maia by her mere presence. The educated person will indulge, excuse and make allowances for you; but you have to feed the bird and you have to tend the fire-or else do without them. Milvushina could hardly do without Maia, for Dyphna, polite but withdrawn, was bound up in her own professionalism and imminent prospect of freedom, while Terebinthia, relishing cruelty cat-like and sensing that Milvushina found it well-nigh intolerable to be at the orders of a woman like herself, seldom spoke to her without exercising her authority or going about to abase her in one way or another.

Maia, however, with her ingenuous, bouncing warmth, often felt herself snubbed by Milvushina, and more than once expressed to Occula her annoyance on this account. Yet how could anyone-let alone Maia-long remain resentful of a girl whose father and brothers were just dead, who had actually seen her mother murdered and then been dragged to Bekla to become the slave of a man like Sen-cho?

Sometimes Milvushina would speak of her former life in Chalcon, but this was always of her own accord and not in reply to any questions from Maia. One day, to Maia's astonishment, she told her that she was still a virgin. To those who had attacked her home, looting and raping without restraint, orders had evidently been given that she was not to be touched; and she had been brought to Bekla under guard of a tryzatt especially told off for the purpose. She asked Maia whether she had heard tell beforehand of any plans on Sencho's part; to which Maia replied that although she had heard nothing whatever, she could guess that at the time when he had agreed with Kembri to kill her parents and family, the High Counselor must also have decided to take her for himself. At this Milvushina wept bitterly, fearing that her very existence, known to Sencho

through his spies, might have been a motive for her parents' murder. Maia felt this unlikely and said so; yet, as so often, had the impression that Milvushina attached little weight to her opinion.

Often enough she felt that the Chalcon girl was keeping her at arm's length. More than once, when Maia had been telling her about Morca and Tharrin, or about swimming in Lake Serrelind, and then awaited some reciprocal narration, she met only with polite but mortifying evasion. All too plainly, Milvushina had no wish to become unduly intimate with a little Tonildan tart who could not write her own name.

"Wants it all ways, she does," Maia said to Occula one night, when Milvushina was out of hearing. "Ten meld to talk to her, Lady Heldro, that's about it."

"Oh, give her time, banzi!" answered Occula. "For Cran's sake, only give her time! In a life like ours, your friends are the people you find beside you. She might come in very handy one day, you never know. Meanwhile jus'
try
to remember what it's all been like for her.
And
she doesn't know when Piggy might not start feelin' inclined for a bit of fun. Neither do I, come to that-though I'm doin' all lean."

So, little by little, despite a good deal of mutual incomprehension, the two girls came after a fashion to accept and respect each other. One day Maia, to her own surprise, found herself defending Milvushina against an unjust rebuke from Terebinthia for putting Ogma to unnecessary trouble. After all, it had taken her some time to get Milvushina to feel it worthwhile to give Ogma any orders at all.