Till We Have Faces, Page 3

  ‘Heigh-ho,’ yawns Redival, lying flat on her back in the grass and kicking her legs in the air till you could see all there was of her (which she did purely to put the Fox out of countenance, for the old man was very modest). ‘Heigh-ho, a step-sister for goddess and a slave for counsellor. Who’d be a princess in Glome? I wonder what Ungit thinks of our new goddess.’

  ‘It is not very easy to find out what Ungit thinks,’ said the Fox.

  Redival rolled round and laid her cheek on the grass. Then, looking up at him, she said softly, ‘But it would be easy to find out what the Priest of Ungit thinks. Shall I try?’

  All my old fear of the Priest, and more fears for the future than I could put a name to, stabbed into me.

  ‘Sister,’ said Redival to me, ‘give me your necklace with the blue stones, the one our mother gave you.’

  ‘Take it,’ said I. ‘I’ll give it to you when we go in.’

  ‘And you, slave,’ she said to the Fox. ‘Mend your manners. And get my father to give me to some king in marriage; and it must be a young king, brave, yellow-bearded, and lusty. You can do what you like with my father when you’re shut up with him in the Pillar Room. Everyone knows that you are the real King of Glome.’

  The year after that we had rebellion. It came of my father’s gelding Tarin. Tarin himself was of no great lineage (to be about a king’s house at all) and the King had thought his father would have no power to avenge him. But the father made common cause with bigger men than himself, and about nine strong lords in our north-west rose against us. My father took the field himself (and when I saw him ride out in his armour, I came nearer to loving him than I had been yet) and beat the rebels, but with great slaughter on both parts and, I think, more slaughter of the beaten men than was needed. The thing left a stench and a disaffection behind it; when all was done, the King was weaker than he had been.

  That year was the second bad harvest and the beginning of the fever. In the autumn the Fox took it and nearly died. I could not be with him, for as soon as the Fox fell sick the King said, ‘Now, girl, you can read and write and chatter Greek. I’ll have work for you. You must take the Fox’s place.’ So I was nearly always in the Pillar Room, for there was much business at the time. Though I was sick with fear for the Fox, the work with my father was far less dreadful to me than I expected. He came, for the time, to hate me less. In the end he would speak to me, not, certainly, with love, but friendly as one man might to another. I learned how desperate his affairs were. No neighbouring houses of divine blood (and ours cannot lawfully marry into any other) would take his daughters or give him theirs. The nobles were muttering about the succession. There were threats of war from every side, and no strength to meet any one of them.

  It was Psyche who nursed the Fox, however often forbidden. She would fight, yes, and bite, any who stood between her and his door; for she, too, had our father’s hot blood, though her angers were all the sort that come from love. The Fox won through his illness, thinner and greyer than before. Now mark the subtlety of the god who is against us. The story of his recovery and Psyche’s nursing got abroad; Batta alone was conduit-pipe enough, and there were a score of other talkers. It became a story of how the beautiful princess could cure the fever by her touch; soon, that her touch was the only thing that could cure it. Within two days half the city was at the palace gate—such scarecrows, risen from their beds, old dotards as eager to save their lives as if their lives in any event were worth a year’s purchase, babies, sick men half dead and carried on beds. I stood looking at them from behind barred windows, all the pity and dread of it, the smell of sweat and fever and garlic and foul clothes.

  ‘The Princess Istra,’ they cried. ‘Send out the Princess with her healing hands. We die! Healing, healing, healing!’

  ‘And bread,’ came other voices. ‘The royal granaries! We are starving.’

  This was at first, while they stood a little way off from the gate. But they got nearer. Soon they were hammering at it. Someone was saying, ‘Bring fire.’ But, behind them, the weaker voices wailed on, ‘Heal us, heal us. The Princess with the healing hands!’

  ‘She’ll have to go out,’ said my father. ‘We can’t hold them.’ (Two-thirds of our guards were down with the fever.)

  ‘Can she heal them?’ said I to the Fox. ‘Did she heal you?’

  ‘It is possible,’ said the Fox. ‘It might be in accordance with nature that some hands can heal. Who knows?’

  ‘Let me go out,’ said Psyche. ‘They are our people.’

  ‘Our rump!’ said my father. ‘They shall smart for this day’s work if ever I get the whip-hand of them again. But quick. Dress the girl. She has beauty enough, that’s one thing. And spirit.’

  They put a queen’s dress on her and a chaplet on her head and opened the door. You know how it is when you shed few tears or none, but there is a weight and pressure of weeping through your whole head. It is like that with me even now when I remember her going out, slim and straight as a sceptre, out of the darkness and cool of the hall into the hot, pestilential glare of that day. The people drew back, thrusting one another, the moment the doors opened. I think they expected a rush of spearmen. But a minute later the wailing and shouting died utterly away. Every man (and many a woman too) in that crowd was kneeling. Her beauty, which most of them had never seen, worked on them as a terror might work. Then a low murmur, almost a sob, began; swelled, broke into the gasping cry, ‘A goddess, a goddess.’ One woman’s voice rang out clear. ‘It is Ungit herself in mortal shape.’

  Psyche went on, walking slowly and gravely, like a child going to say a lesson, right in among all the foulness. She touched and she touched. They fell at her feet and kissed her feet and the edge of her robe and her shadow and the ground where she had trodden. And still she touched and touched. There seemed to be no end of it; the crowd increased instead of diminishing. For hours she touched. The air was stifling even for us who stood in the shadow of the porch. The whole earth and air ached for the thunderstorm which (we knew now) would not come. I saw her growing paler and paler. Her walk had become a stagger.

  ‘King,’ said I, ‘it will kill her.’

  ‘Then more’s the pity,’ said the King. ‘They’ll kill us all if she stops.’

  It was over in the end, somewhere about sunset. We carried her to her bed, and next day the fever was on her. But she won through it. In her wanderings she talked most of her gold and amber castle on the ridge of the Grey Mountain. At her worst, there was no look of death upon her face. It was as if he dared not come near her. And when her strength came back she was more beautiful than before. The childishness had gone. There was a new and severer radiance. ‘Ah, no wonder,’ sang the Fox, ‘if the Trojans and the Achaeans suffer long woes for such a woman. Terribly does she resemble an undying spirit.’

  Some of the sick in the town died and some recovered. Only the gods know if those who recovered were those whom Psyche had touched, and gods do not tell. But the people had, at first, no doubts. Every morning there were offerings left for her outside the palace; myrtle branches and garlands and soon honey-cakes and then pigeons, which are specially sacred to Ungit. ‘Can this be well?’ I said to the Fox.

  ‘I should be greatly afraid,’ said he, ‘but for one thing. The Priest of Ungit lies sick with the fever himself. I do not think he can do us much mischief at present.’

  About this time Redival became very pious and went often to the house of Ungit to make offerings. The Fox and I saw to it that she always had with her a trusty old slave who would let her get into no mischief. I thought she was praying for a husband (she wanted one badly since the King had, in a manner, chained her to the Fox and me) and also that she was as glad to be out of our sight for an hour as we were to be out of hers. Yet I warned her to speak to no one on the way.

  ‘Oh, make your mind easy, sister,’ said Redival. ‘It’s not me they worship, you know: I’m not the goddess. The men are as likely to look at you as at me, now they’ve seen
Istra.’

  IV

  Up till now I had not known what the common people are like. That was why their adorings of Psyche, which in one way made me afraid, comforted me in another. For I was confused in my mind, sometimes thinking of what Ungit by her own divine power might do to any mortal who thus stole her honour, and sometimes of what the Priest and our enemies in the city (my father had many now) might do with their tongues, or stones, or spears. Against the latter the people’s love for Psyche seemed to me a protection.

  It did not last long. For one thing, the mob had now learned that a palace door can be opened by banging on it. Before Psyche was out of her fever they were back at our gates crying, ‘Corn, corn! We are starving. Open the royal granaries.’ That time the King gave them a dole. ‘But don’t come again,’ he said. ‘I’ve no more to give you. Name of Ungit! d’you think I can make corn if the fields don’t bear it?’

  ‘And why don’t they?’ said a voice from the back of the crowd.

  ‘Where are your sons, King?’ said another. ‘Where’s the prince?’

  ‘The King of Phars has thirteen sons,’ said another.

  ‘Barren king makes barren land,’ said a fourth. This time the King saw who had spoken and nodded to one of the bowmen who stood beside him. Before you’d wink the arrow went through the speaker’s throat and the mob took to its heels. But it was foolishly done; my father ought to have killed either none of them or nearly all. He was right enough, though, in saying we could give them no more doles. This was the second of the bad harvests and there was little in the granary but our own seed corn. Even in the palace we were already living for the most part on leeks and bean-bread and small beer. It took me endless contrivance to get anything good for Psyche when she was mending from the fever.

  The next thing was this. Shortly after Psyche was well, I left the Pillar Room where I had been working for the King (and he still kept the Fox with him after he let me go) and set out to look for Redival, that care being always on my mind. The King would have thought nothing of keeping me away from her at his own business all the day and then blaming me for not having my eyes on her. But as it happened I met her at once, just coming in from one of her visits to the house of Ungit, and Batta with her. Batta and she were as thick as thieves these days.

  ‘You needn’t come looking for me, sister-jailer,’ said Redival. ‘I’m safe enough. It isn’t here the danger lies. When did you last see the little goddess? Where’s your darling step-sister?’

  ‘In the gardens most likely,’ said I. ‘And as for little, she’s half a head taller than yourself.’

  ‘Oh mercy! Have I blasphemed? Will she smite me with thunder? Yes, she’s tall enough. Tall enough to see her a long way off—half an hour ago—in a little lane near the market place. A king’s daughter doesn’t usually walk the back streets alone; but I suppose a goddess can.’

  ‘Istra out in the town and alone?’ said I.

  ‘Indeed she was then,’ chattered Batta, ‘scuttling along with her robe caught up. Like this . . . Like this.’ (Batta was a bad mimic but always mimicking; I remembered that from my earliest years.) ‘I’d have followed her, the young boldface, but she went in at a doorway, so she did.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said I. ‘The child ought to have known better. But she’ll do no harm and come to none.’

  ‘Come to no harm!’ said Batta. ‘That’s more than any of us know.’

  ‘You are mad, Nurse,’ said I. ‘The people were worshipping her not six days ago.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Batta (who knew perfectly well). ‘But she’ll get little worship today. I knew what would come of all that touching and blessing. Fine goings on indeed! The plague’s worse than ever it was. There were a hundred died yesterday, the smith’s wife’s brother-in-law tells me. They say the touchings didn’t heal the fever but gave it. I’ve spoken to a woman whose old father was touched by the Princess, and he was dead before they had carried him home. And he wasn’t the only one. If anyone had listened to old Batta—’

  But I at least listened no more. I went out to the porch and looked towards the city a long half hour. I watched the shadows of the pillars slowly changing their position and it was then I first saw how the things we have known ever since we were weaned can look new and strange, like enemies. And at last I saw Psyche coming, very tired but in great haste. She caught me by the wrist and swallowed, like one that has a sob in the throat, and began leading me away and never stopped till we were in my own chamber. Then she put me in my chair and fell down and laid her head on my knees. I thought she was crying, but when at last she raised her face there were no tears on it.

  ‘Sister,’ she said. ‘What is wrong? I mean, about me.’

  ‘About you, Psyche?’ said I. ‘Nothing. What do you mean?’

  ‘Why do they call me the Accursed?’

  ‘Who has dared? We’ll have his tongue torn out. Where have you been?’

  Then it all came out. She had gone (very foolishly, I thought) into the city without a word to any of us. She had heard that her old nurse, the freewoman whom I had hired to suckle her and who now lived in town, was sick with the fever. And Psyche had gone to touch her—‘For they all said my hands cured it, and who knows? It might be. I felt as if they did.’

  I told her she had done very wrong, and it was then that I fully perceived how much older she had grown since her sickness. For she neither accepted the rebuke like a child nor defended herself like a child, but looked at me with a grave quietness, almost as if she were older than I. It gave me a pang at the heart.

  ‘But who cursed you?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing happened till I had left Nurse’s house; except that no one in the streets had saluted me, and I thought that one or two women gathered their skirts together and drew away from me as I passed. Well, on the way back, first there was a boy—a lovely boy he was, not eight years old—who stared at me and spat on the ground. “Oh, rude!” said I, and laughed and held out my hand to him. He scowled at me as black as a little fiend and then lost his courage and ran howling into a doorway. After that the street was empty for a space, but presently I had to pass a knot of men. They gave me black looks as I was passing, and as soon as my back was towards them they were all saying, “The Accursed, the Accursed! She made herself a goddess.” And one said, “She is the curse itself.” Then they threw stones. No, I’m not hurt. But I had to run. What does it mean? What did I do to them?’

  ‘Do?’ said I. ‘You healed them, and blessed them, and took their filthy disease upon yourself. And these are their thanks. Oh, I could tear them in pieces! Get up, child. Let me go. Even now—we are king’s daughters still. I’ll go to the King. He may beat me and drag me by the hair as he pleases, but this he shall hear. Bread for them indeed. I’ll—I’ll—’

  ‘Hush, sister, hush,’ said Psyche. ‘I can’t bear it when he hurts you. And I’m so tired. And I want my supper. There, don’t be angry. You look just like our father when you say those things. Let us have supper here, you and I. There is some bad thing coming towards us—I have felt it a long time—but I don’t think it will come tonight. I’ll clap my hands to call your maids.’

  Though the words You look just like our father, and from her, had hurt me with a wound that sometimes aches still, I let go my anger and yielded. We supped together and turned our poor meal into a joke and a game and were, in a fashion, happy. One thing the gods have not taken from me—I can remember all that she said or did that night and how she looked from moment to moment.

  But whatever my heart boded, our ruin (and even now I had no clear foresight what it would be) did not fall upon us the next day. A whole train of days went past in which nothing happened, except for the slow, steady worsening of everything in Glome. The Shennit was now no more than a trickle between one puddle and another amid dry mud-flats; it was the corpse of a river and stank. Her fish were dead, her birds dead or gone away. The cattle had all died or been killed or were not worth the ki
lling. The bees were dead. Lions, which had not been heard of in the land for forty years, came over the ridge of the Grey Mountain and took most of the few sheep we had left. The plague never ceased. All through these days I was waiting and listening, watching (when I could) everyone who went out of the palace or came in. It was well for me that the King found plenty of work both for the Fox and me in the Pillar Room. Messengers and letters from the neighbouring kings were coming in every day, demanding impossible things and contrary things, dragging up old quarrels or claiming old promises. They knew how things were in Glome and they clustered round us like flies and crows round a dying sheep. My father would pass in and out of his rages a dozen times in one morning. When he was in them he would slap the Fox about the face and pull me by the ears or the hair; and then, between the fits, the tears would stand in his eyes, and he would speak to us more like a child imploring help than a king asking counsel.

  ‘Trapped!’ he would say. ‘No way out. They will kill me by inches. What have I done that all these miseries should fall upon me? I’ve been a god-fearing man all my life.’

  The only betterment in these days was that the fever seemed to have left the palace. We had lost a good many slaves, but we had better luck with the soldiers. Only one died and all the rest were now back at duty.

  Then we heard that the Priest of Ungit had recovered from his fever. His sickness had been very long, for he had taken the fever and won over it and then taken it again, so that it was a wonder he should be alive. But it was noticed for a strange and unlucky thing about this sickness that it killed the young more easily than the old. On the seventh day after this news the Priest came to the palace. The King, who saw his coming (as I did too) from the windows of the Pillar Room, said, ‘What does the old carrion mean by coming here with half an army?’ There were indeed a good many spears behind his litter, for the house of Ungit has its own guards and he had brought a big handful with him. They grounded their spears some distance from our gates, and only the litter was carried to the porch. ‘They’d better come no nearer,’ said the King. ‘Is this treason or only pride?’ Then he gave some order to the captain of his own guard. I don’t think he expected it would come to a fight, but that was what I, being still young, looked for. I had never seen men fight and, being as big a fool in that way as most girls, I felt no dread, rather, a little tingling that I liked well enough.