Cyrion, page 25
Cousin Roilant, seeming nervous of his new relationship, informed Eliset, as they walked more slowly through the holy building, that he had taken a room at the inn opposite, where she might dine and rest, before they returned to Flor. Eliset thanked him politely, and nodded politely to all the other little mutterings to do with her comfort, and the muted assurance, implied rather than spoken, that he would have an hour or so’s business in the city, and would not be sharing the room with her. Some ten yards from the church door, Eliset burst into a peal of wild laughter that rang upward into the dome.
Her husband looked at her in alarm, clearly pondering if the day’s excitements had proved too much.
Recovering herself, she only said, “Did you sleep well last night, Roilant?”
“I? Oh, yes—very deeply, in fact.”
Through the veil, she seemed on the point of some revelation, some sinister promise, perhaps, but restrained herself. “I am hungry,” she said.
So they went to the inn, and there he left her, going off to attend to his city business.
Part, if not all, of his city business was sitting at the other inn across the way, a cup of wine before it, a bundle at its side in which were packed a priestly vestment and a dark intermingling bush of false hair and beard.
As Cyrion sat down, Roilant-Veritas, with yet another wig pulled fast on his head and sweat starting under it, looked up.
“I did not,” ann ounced Roilant, “enjoy that.”
“You wished to be discreet. The fewer players the better, so you must play one part yourself. Besides, I thought you rather expected to. Enjoy it. Something about ‘bitter humor.’”
“I mistook myself. It was also hellishly difficult. The old priest had agreed to my hour of private prayer in the chapel, then, when I arrived, began to make objections.”
“So you doubled his bribe.”
“Tripled it.”
“Ah.”
“No, I do not find it amusing. That is the first time I saw her, since I was fifteen. Even through her veil—Cyrion!”
“Well?”
“I cannot believe her capable of this villainy.”
Cyrion rested his rounded face on his lean hand.
“You can always go back in my stead and make full confession, my dear. She would no doubt love it. She herself has quite a tart sense of humor. On the other hand, if your other suspicions are correct, tonight should confirm them.”
“They will attempt to kill you.”
“No, they will attempt to kill you, as gleefully represented by myself. For murderers, their way of going about it is intriguingly gross. I cannot think they would be any more subtle in their timing.”
Roilant woollily scowled into his wine.
“I botched the service.”
“Of course. You were meant to, surely? The whole essence being that it should, in all ways reasonable, be invalid. However, it was close enough for the layman to think it sound. I was, incidentally, captivated by your prayer. To compare our union to the mating of bees. You know, naturally, that after mating, the male bee is shed like a glove, and drops dead upon the ground?”
Roilant had paled. “I did not—Do you suppose you should continue with this? The danger is considerable.”
“As each of us has known for some while. The plan proceeds toward a goal of discovery. And it would be a shame to spoil their fun.”
“But Eliset,” Roilant broke off. “Tonight she thinks herself your wife. Cyrion, you will not—”
The long hennaed brows rose like the wings of angels. His look, even in disguise, was so quintessentially Cyrionesque that Roilant was defeated by it, and grinned.
“I suppose,” conceded Roilant, “she is scarcely innocent.”
“You may also suppose that I will scarcely be allowed to get so far.”
* * *
• • •
Alone in her private room, Eliset had taken off her veil, but did not rest. She paced about, now to the table with its half-eaten repast, now to the narrow window with its uninformative view of the inner courtyard. Her step was light and volatile, and her eyes had a look of banked fire. Only once did she glance at the couch that had been prepared for her should she wish to lie down on it. Without inflection then, but aloud, she said: “Whoever I may bed with tonight, Cousin Roilant, it will not be with you.”
* * *
• • •
In the later afternoon, some four hours of daylight left in which to undertake the two-hour homeward journey, the wedding party deserted the inn. The order of advance remained the same: Cyrion, floppily piled on the mule, next the four hired men with Eliset’s litter, and Harmul bringing up the rear. Having not profited by other example, Harmul was drunk. The four hired men were not entirely sober. Somewhat unevenly, therefore, the small cortege passed from the square, swayed through the arched tunnel, and wandered dreamily along the Street of Smokes, among the incense vapors and the poppy fumes. Thence through the Street of Birds, where Harmul saw fit to imitate each whistle and tweet, and thus down Silk Street, where Harmul inefficiently stole a floating, banded scarf with silver stars worked on it, yells and curses broke out, and Cousin Roilant, with a heavy-eyed frown, reimbursed the shopkeeper and wondered loudly what Harmul could require with such an item. Harmul haughtily did not vouchsafe either answer or thanks. They resumed.
Amid the striped awnings of the market-place, a new commotion ensued.
It happened very suddenly. A basket of dates fell in their path, another of figs, and another of oranges. A fruit-seller in a panic followed, and an un-cage-full of incontinent doves. Picking over the sticky litter on one hand, and with feathered and other debris whirling about their heads, the mule and Cousin Roilant were discommoded, the hired men pumped their free arms and the litter joggled, while Harmul screamed at the world and God. In the midst of invective, squabbling, laughter, fruit and fluff, a meaty muscular man hurled himself from the crowd and, with a single grab, pulled Cousin Roilant from his mule.
They landed on the dates, squelched, and rolled, grunting. The amusing scene, which most of the bystanders had stepped back to admire and encourage, changed its character as a long grey knife sliced upward in the air. Screams came then, but no aid. The strong and weighty man pinned the floundering redhead beneath him, pummeling the podgy face into submission, flinging up the arm at the end of which the knife had readied itself, like some horrible iron tooth, to bite.
The fang tore down.
There was a complementary wail from the crowd, followed by a gasp.
The ginger young man, who had seemed beyond redemption, had somehow incredibly twisted himself away. The bite of the knife had met with full impact the hard surface of the ground—and the blade snapped from the hilt.
With a cry, the big man leapt up. Without a backward grimace, he dashed into the crowd, tossing obstructions inanimate or human from his path. He was soon lost to view, and if any pursued, they did not catch him up.
Cyrion, in the person of Roilant, got to his knees. Holding a date-stained cloth to his mouth, he climbed to his feet. Thereby rather muffled, he thanked the litter-bearers and Harmul, with surprising dryness of wit, for their help.
Eliset had at last persuaded the bearers, formerly too interested in the fight, to put the litter down. She thrust through the curtains and went to her cousin, ignoring the gapings of the throng.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not to death. My regrets.”
“What?” she said.
“A broken tooth or two. He did not kill me. As you hoped he would.”
Her face through the veil was flamingly cold.
“Neither a seemly time, nor place, to jest,” she said.
“You mean this was not your plan? It did seem somewhat crude. Also a little premature. I had thought you would wait for the modesty of darkness. . . . cool refreshing steel slipped between the sheets.”
“Roilant,” she said, “the man was a thief.”
“Who stole nothing, nor attempted to steal.”
The crowd was enthralled. It stood about and smiled upon them, the angry aristocratic young woman with a torch of hair and cheeks which burned as if to set her veil on fire, and the tall yet dumpy young man whose hair had already caught.
“Are you telling me,” she said, “you judge I wed you only to have you assassinated?”
“Why not? That is what all the rumors promised.”
“We have had this out before. You discounted rumor as base, I thought.”
“Did you?”
“If not, why are you so stupid as to be here, and to have married me?”
“A death wish?” murmured Cyrion. “For sure, wifey dear, now we are as one, my life is not,” he gazed at the detritus about his boots, paused unworthily before the obvious, and added, “a fig.”
And then, stunning her worse than if he had slapped her, he removed the cloth from his lips and bestowed upon her the most beautiful and malicious smile she had ever beheld. So beautiful, his whole face changed and ceased to be Roilant’s, so malign, she took half a step backward before she knew what she did. And, to her absolute and inappropriate horror, trod on a fallen orange which promptly burst, causing the crowd practically to expire of joy.
Controlling herself with an effort, yet succeeding, Eliset—having been white, next scarlet—was now grey.
“If that is what you think, then,” she said, “or if it is your joke, either way, you are contemptible. The damage is done, but may be undone. I am your wife in name only, and will remain so, in name only. Come to the door of my chamber and you will find it barred.” A few in the crowd cheered lovingly. She ignored them. “Go back,” she concluded, “to your fine estate at Heruzala, without me. Go court some mindless woman who will accept your suit, if any is fool enough. Yes. You shall have a divorce. Gladly. And nothing else.” At which she turned on the goggling, wine-muzzy Harmul and cried: “Get down.”
Harmul, with a dizzy nod, sprawlingly dismounted. Eliset, with a glorious acrobatic agility that managed three instantaneous things—to mount in a sea-wave of skirts, to achieve and maintain a side-saddle posture with only one fixed stirrup, and to uphold the while total decorum—won the ultimate heart of her large audience. Raging, she smacked the mule into a gallop, carving an exit through the market and out of the gate, amidst a hail of adoring flowers.
* * *
• • •
Flor had been decked for celebration in an abstracted way. Brown palm branches and rangey flowers stood in urns, and a perfumed candle burned within the roof pavilion, surrounded by dead moths.
“It was before half the city he said it.”
The girl’s voice trembled with alarm or shame, or both.
“To the delight of Cassireia.” Mevary.
“But do you take my meaning?”
A pause.
“No one,” said Mevary, “will remember the gist, only the show.”
“If he is suddenly dead,” she replied, steady now as the iron shine on the assassin’s blade had been, “if that happens, Mevary, they might.”
“Then,” said Mevary, “we must wish our darling Cousin Roilant a long and healthy life. By God, what a nuisance he is becoming. How one wishes the wretched dagger had not broken.”
There was after that a wide silence and a kind of crackle on the air of the roof, that made itself known, along with the smell of scent and flutter of dim lights across the dusk, to anyone who might be standing on the stair below the terrace.
The new wife had come home to Flor alone, and exhausted, almost a full hour before her husband trundled up, with his lower face wrapped in a cloth, Harmul walking sulkily a quarter of a mile behind, and neither bearers nor litter with them, or due.
Eliset, by then, was in her apartment. Mevary had leaned over various carious balustrades and sticks of crumbling furniture, and interrogated. All signs of debauch had left him. It was Cousin Roilant who seemed in need of medicine.
“I was attacked, probably by some fanatic or cutpurse. Being shocked, I said something irrational.”
“So I gather.”
“I hope she will forgive me. I meant it as an irony, and was taken in earnest. I suspect also a tooth has been broken. I can hardly move my lips for the pain.”
“You had better save your talk for Eliset, then. I think she means to freeze you to death tonight.”
What was visible of Roilant’s face around the cloth, moped.
Now, washed, combed, ringed and dressed untidily in unsuitable splendor, the survivor of the Cassireian murder attempt stood on the stone stair, heard out the brief drama above, then went into his habitual announcing stumble.
“That stair,” said Cousin Roilant, tumbling up on to the terrace.
“It’s dangerous?” asked Mevary, helpfully. With the lit and latticed pavilion behind him, he was a figure of elegant menace, clad in the fourth set of impeccable new clothes he had so far sported. His eyes looked yellow as the lamp flames, and heightened as they did, as the dark blue of the sky became black.
Cousin Roilant went forward.
“Is she—?”
“Here? Yes. I persuaded her. I told her you were sorry.”
“I told her I was sorry.”
“Well,” Mevary was bashful, “she has known me longer.”
“And I am her husband.”
“Yes! So you are. And how is the poor assaulted face?”
Cousin Roilant touched it, nervously.
“The gum has swollen. I shall undoubtedly lose the tooth.” Mevary tutted.
Under the—now clean—continuously patting napkin, the round face indeed seemed rounder still, the lips pushed up by the inner swelling and unable quite to close. Cyrion-Roilant’s speech was also thick, and accomplished with difficulty.
“And on your wedding night, too.”
Cyrion went by him, and entered the pavilion.
Eliset sat in her robe of cream silk and heliotrope, outstaring a lamp. He mumbled. She acknowledged the mumble with a frigid nod.
“A toast,” said Mevary, stepping in, refilling his cup, beaming. “To love.”
The cold dishes were already on the tables, kept at a suitable temperature maybe by Eliset’s glances. The rest of the dinner arrived shortly with Zimir. His head was haphazardly bandaged from the cut the breaking oil jar had given him. Between himself and swollen Cousin Roilant (as Mevary pointed out), the place began to resemble a hospital.
“He fears,” said Mevary to Eliset, “he will lose a tooth.”
Eliset said nothing.
“He fears he will also lose a wife,” said Mevary. “Come, my duck. Having drawn him here by means of magical force, you really have to put up with him.”
Her head went up. She stared at Mevary.
He turned away. “Look how distraught you have made the poor man. He will eat and drink nothing.”
Eliset rose and walked out of the pavilion on to the terrace. There she stood, lamp-brushed on the darkness, ignoring them.
Mevary grinned. “Try this raisin loaf. It really is almost edible.”
“I am finding it very difficult—”
“To eat. Drink, then. Dull pain and heartbreak with the blood of the vine.”
Without a sound, like a gazelle, a second female figure appeared on the roof, dark for the other’s gold. Jhanna, who bore in her hands a great curved dish of basted meats. She came into the pavilion with it, and set it down in the midst of the tables.
Mevary seemed displeased, his smooth surface ran off him. “Go wait on Eliset, not here.”
Jhanna bowed low, eastern fashion. The obeisance was so complex as to be a caricature.
“It is for my lady to dismiss me.”
Still and straight as Eliset outside, Jhanna poised herself before him.
“Then she shall.”
Mevary strode out on to the roof.
Jhanna, a sable lily, swept down toward the table, brushing Cyrion with her perfumed hair.
“Lord. Do you have the vial I gave you?”
“Uh—oh, yes, I have it somewhere.”
“About you? If so, then use the potion in the enchantress’ cup. Now, before they return.”
“I have already,” said Cyrion, carefully through his swollen face, “used it.”
She drew in a deep breath. Her hands glided over the table and she offered him, for the sake of pretense, a dish of bread.
“You are wise, lord. Wise.”
Cyrion glanced toward one of the doorways. Mevary’s voice was spilling on the starry air.
“I, care for that slut?”
“Slut,” Jhanna whispered. “Yes, a slut when he is by. Watch them well, lord. And watch your cup.”
She glided out, and was gone down the stair like a ghost.
Cyrion leaned forward himself, now, making a brief tally, so it seemed, of the plates and cups set at the three places. Flor being Flor, though each cup was matched with the others, each, due to wear and tear, had some distinguishing mark. That set before Mevary’s place had a sizable piece missing from the brim, and that set before Eliset’s, unsipped, boasted a white pock on the bowl. The cup Zimir had laid out for Roilant, and which Mevary had filled—both before his arrival—had a roughness high on the stem, invisible but immediately discernible by touch.
Since he would eat nothing, and the jugs were communal, a murderer would have to see to it the physic was dropped in his goblet. There was now, since the fiasco at Cassireia and his public declaration, every good reason for an intelligent murderer to see to it Cousin Roilant’s death appeared natural. With the widow’s fortune, the law might be bribed, but it would need some seemliness to back it. Which meant a death without a wound, a death by poison. And doubtless a story to add ballast: The ill-starred Roilant had been exposed to the infectious madness of which the slave Jobel had perished. It was not uncommon in such cases for more than one to succumb.
