LITMIR.BIZ

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all the branders and slaughterers had come shouting up round Tarrik, keeping a space open and safe for him. The bull was quite dead. It had seemed to Sphaeros as if he were rushing off somewhere, on the clear path at last, away from the world, the thick air of passions and arguments, into some simple, fiery place, from which the movements of the stars were all plain. Only his arm was holding him, pulling him back, with immense tension and pain; if once his spirit could make the supreme effort, tear itself away regardless of any hurt, he would be able to lose himself in that fire of truth and understanding. For long ages he struggled to bring his will to bear on this sure Good, and then without any pause he was looking up at Tarrik’s face between him and the sky, noticing the flecked brown of his eyes and the tiny drops of sweat crawling down his forehead and nose. ‘Truth,’ he said, clearly, in Greek, ‘truth is—a fire—God—Charmantides, my truth—’ and so came back, dejected, into the tangle of unfriendly arms and legs that seemed to be his body. Tarrik put an arm under him, gently, and nodded to one of the others to pull, biting his lip, because he hated the sound of a friend in pain, and knew it would be bad, getting the horn out. ‘Don’t strain!’ he said, ‘go soft—we shall do it quicker so.’ And obediently Sphaeros the Stoic relaxed into their hands, into heaving, alternate waves of pain and faintness, for some ten minutes, while they got him loose from the horn and bound up his shoulder with soft rags, and by and bye took him out of the flax market into a house. He found then that he was crying, making small noises like an animal, and he stopped himself, concentrating his mind instead on the problem of breathing without hurting his poor body too much. Tarrik was standing beside him, twisting knots and loops in his whip-lash, and then pulling them out again. ‘You saved me then,’ he said dispassionately, into the air, as it were, over Sphaeros’ head, and then again, ‘you risked your life to save me.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Sphaeros at last, hoping not to have to say any more.

      But Tarrik dropped on the floor beside him: ‘Is it because I am king? No. But why? Would you do it for anyone?’

      ‘Of course,’ whispered Sphaeros again.

      ‘But do you not care for yourself at all? Sphaeros, Sphaeros, how are you so brave?’ He bent closer, staring into the white face and eyes half shut: he could only just catch the sound of those faintly moving lips.

      ‘Good,’ they whispered, ‘to do good,’ and fell into the shape of laboured breathing again.

      ‘Is it because you are a Greek?’ asked Tarrik again, very eagerly. ‘Are all good Greeks like you? Is it—could I see for myself? Was I wrong? Is it like this in Hellas after all?’

      But for all Tarrik’s wanting to know, and for all that he was Chief of Marob, he could get no answer at all out of Sphaeros then, nor for another half-day and night. But his mind had come awake and cloudless, and gone south, searching down a secret road—towards Hellas.

      When Erif Der screamed, the odd part of it was that she screamed for her mother. It was not the sort of thing that either of the men expected of her, and it made them angrier than ever. Yellow Bull would probably have beaten her solidly with a stick, particularly as she started by hitting back at him and even getting in one good tug at his beard before he had her hands tight. But Harn Der would not have it: he was too deeply angry for a fleeting violence like this. He told her quietly that she had ruined everything, her father and brother, her family, Marob itself, how she was nothing but a woman after all in spite of the trust they had put in her, and the way he said it made her wince and quiver away as if he had spat in her face. She had a lump in her throat that stopped her explaining. She just said once: ‘It was the Greek—’ but they did not choose to heed. They treated her at once as a naughty child and a wicked woman, and she, with her own hostile magic to deal with as well, had nothing to do but take it.

      Outside, the bullfighting was over for that year. The young bulls had been driven, branded and exhausted, to their winter byres: the old ones had been killed and the carcasses taken away for salting. The crowd had almost gone. Dumb and aching in her spirit from all this unanswered anger, Erif Der turned and jumped out of the window. Air and earth were kind to her still; she fell unhurt, but with Tarrik’s clouds so wrapped about her eyes that she stumbled into pools of blood and knocked herself against a corner of the hurdles on the well-head. She went home to the Chief’s house: for once she felt utterly lost and baffled and unhappy. As she passed the forge, she looked in, and there was Berris leaning over his bench, making a chain of triple rings. He looked up vaguely, his face changing to astonishment as he saw her. Then she ran.

      All the household were scurrying about with excitement: Sphaeros had been carried in and was lying on the great bed in the guest-room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, listening to the laboured heave of his breathing. Though it was all his doing, she did not, somehow, hate him. For some time she sat on her own bed, with her hands clasped in her lap. It was odd that Tarrik should be alive after all that afternoon. From minute to minute she was struggling inwardly with her own magic; the clouds were on her so badly that there seemed to be nothing to do but acquiesce and wait till it was over, as it must be some time. She wished Tarrik would come; she wanted fantastically to have somebody’s arms to creep into and take shelter in from herself. She groped out for a shirt of his and held on to it, until he should come himself. But instead of the Chief, Eurydice came in, with the maid Apphé behind her.

      ‘Well, Erif Der,’ she said, ‘I think even our Charmantides must see now.’

      Erif Der gathered herself up to meet this with some of the lies that had been her daily sport with Eurydice—for months now. But her tongue was slow and she could not help looking at the hunchback maid leering at her from behind. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said at last, rather wearily, ‘and if I did, I don’t care!’

      ‘But you will care,’ said Eurydice, ‘all in time. And how did your dear father like it?’

      ‘If you think you’ve found out anything that Tarrik hasn’t known for half a year,’ said Erif, low and savagely, sitting sideways on the bed, screwing her eyes up, ‘go and tell him! Much he’ll thank you for it, you double-clever Eurydice!’

      But Eurydice was bending over her, looking down into her clouded, miserable soul. ‘I have seen him looking like this,’ said the aunt, ‘yes. … So you can be hurt too: of course. These things are in your nature. Well, child, I am glad to know it.’

      Erif Der jumped up and hit out at her; but the same thing happened to her that would have happened to Tarrik with the bulls. Her right hand jerked up with all the fingers out as if something had suddenly pulled at it, and a bluish and buzzing flash blinded her for a second. ‘Oh,’ she said, very softly, ‘so it would have been like that.’ By now the clouds had hidden Eurydice; she was left alone inside herself, and there she was thinking that this was what Tarrik had escaped. From behind a thick curtain, she felt that Eurydice was laughing and going out, and that the hunchback maid had gone with her and left the room calm again. For herself, there was nothing to do; she lay down and slept.

      Tarrik came in and held a lamp close to her face and looked at her; her shut eyelids screwed and twitched and she whimpered in her sleep. He had meant to wake her, to hit her suddenly in the face so that she would wake in a fright and answer any questions. But he watched a few minutes, thinking it over, and at last decided not to. He felt strong enough now to stay uncertain and not make judgments. He lay down beside her, pulled the blankets over to his side, and he slept too.

      Nothing more happened for a few days; the fine, late autumn weather that had come after that storm lasted on, though any evening it might break, for good this time. Eurydice copied poems and embroidered, and re-read Pythagoras without understanding him any more than usual, and smiled to herself, because it seemed to her that what she wanted was going to happen at last, and she believed, of course, that it was good. Erif Der stayed very quietly wherever she happened to be; she had come out of her clouds, and now she was very angry with her magic and would not touch it for the time being. She had left some of her beads in Harn Der’s house, but she would not even go and fetch them. She thought they could look after themselves; besides she would rather lose them than see her father or brother again, or even know what they were doing. One day she went and walked

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