He stood up to break the mood. “What shall we take to read in the summer?” he asked, and I said without thinking, “Not Trudec!”
The Family had stayed in the city for the past two summers, since the farm had not been considered safe from roving bands of Votusan soldiers out for plunder in the Ventine Hills; but our army had a camp now near Vente and had driven the Votusans back to their city gates.
I remembered the farm as a marvelous place. It was as if I felt the warmth of summer whenever I thought about it. Even the preparations for going were exciting, and when we actually set off, a great straggling procession of horse-drawn chariots and wagons and donkey carts and outriders and people afoot going through the streets of Etra to the River Gate, it was as good as a heroes’ parade, even if we didn’t have drums and trumpets. The chariots in which the women and girls and old people of the Family rode were high and ungainly and seemed too wide for the bridge across the Nisas; but Sem and Tan and all the drivers and outriders were in their glory, guiding the teams across, hoofs clattering on the bridge, plumes on the harnesses nodding. Sotur’s elder brothers rode ahead with Yaven on fine saddle horses. The wagons and carts came creaking behind, with a lot of shouting and whipcracking, and the inevitable donkey who did not want to cross the bridge. Some of the women and little children rode on the wagons, high on the piled-up goods and foodstuff, but most of us walked, and when people stopped to watch us go by, Tib and I waved at them with patronising pity, because we were going to the country and they, poor cockroaches, had to stay all summer in the city.
Tib and I were like dogs on an outing, traveling three times farther than anybody else because we kept running up the line of the procession and back to the back again. By noon we had become a bit less energetic and mostly stayed close to the women’s wagon, where Sallo and Ris had to ride, because they were getting to the age where girls can’t run loose; they had Oco with them, and several babies, and the kitchen women, who were always good for a handout of food when Tib and I came panting by.
The road was going up now, winding among small hillside fields and oak groves; ahead were the round green summits of the Ventine Hills. As we climbed we began to be able to look back over the countryside and see the silver curve of the Nisas where it ran down to the wider river Morr, Across the Nisas was Etra, our city, a hazy huddle of roofs of thatch and wood and red tile in the circle of its walls, with four towered gates of yellowish stone. There was the bulk of the Senate House, and the dome of the Forefathers’ Shrine. We tried to make out the roofs of Arcamand, and were sure we saw the tops of the sycamore grove by the wall where we used to drill with Torm— miles away, years ago…
The wagons creaked slower and slower, the horses strained at the climb, the drivers flicked their whips, the gaudy tops of the chariots up ahead dipped and rocked as the high wheels lurched in the ruts of the dusty road. The sun was hot, the breeze in the shade of the roadside oaks cool. Cattle and goats in the wood-fenced pastures watched our procession solemnly; colts at a horse farm went bucking off stiff-legged at the sight of the chariots, and then came mincing back to have another look. Somebody came running down the line of carts and wagons, a girl—Sotur, who had escaped from the Family and now clambered up onto the wagon to sit with Ris and Sallo. She was flushed with the excitement of her escapade and much more talkative than usual—“I told Mother Falimer-io I wanted to ride outside, so she said go ahead, so I came back here. It’s all stuffy and jouncy in the chariots, and Redili’s baby threw up. It’s much better here!” Pretty soon she began to sing, raising her sweet, strong voice in one of the old rounds everybody knew. Sallo and Ris joined in, and the kitchen women, and then people walking or riding in other wagons up the line sang too, so the music carried us up the road into the hills of Vente.
We came to the Arca farm after sunset, a long day’s journey of ten miles. To look back on that summer and the summers after it is like looking across the sea to an island, remote and golden over the water, hardly believing that one lived there once. Yet it’s still here within me, sweet and intense: the smell of dry hay the endless shrill chant of crickets on the hills, the taste of a ripe, sun-warmed, stolen apricot, the weight of a rough stone in my hands, the track of a falling star through the great summer constellations.
All the young people slept outdoors, ate together, played together—Yaven, Astano and Sotur and the cousins from Herramand, and Sallo and I, Tib and Ris and Oco. The cousins were a skinny boy and girl of thirteen and ten, Uter and Umo; they had been unwell and their mother, Sotur’s elder sister, brought them to the farm hoping the country air would be good for them. There was a whole scrabble of little kids, too—Family babies, Sotur’s nieces and nephews, and slave children being mothered—but the women looked after them and we had little to do with them. We “big ones” had lessons with Everra early in the morning and then were set free for the rest of the long, hot day. There was no work for us. The slave women from the city waited on the Family and looked after the huge old farmhouse along with its regular housekeepers, of whom there were plenty. Tib had been brought as a kitchen boy, but was so unneeded that he was released to study and play with us. Everything else on the farm was in the hands of its people. They lived in a fair-sized village, down the hill from the great house, in an oak grove by a stream, and did whatever it was farm people did. We city children knew nothing of them, and were ordered to keep out of their way.
That was easy. We were busy with our own doings from morning till night, exploring the hills and forests, wading and splashing in the shallow streams, building dams, raiding orchards, making willow whistles and daisy chains and tree houses, doing everything, doing nothing, whistling and singing and chattering like a flock of starlings. Yaven spent some time with the grown-ups but much more with us, leading us on expeditions up into the hills, or organising us to put on a play or dance to entertain the Family. Everra would write us out a little masque or drama; Astano, Ris, and Sallo had been trained in dance, and with Sotur’s pure, true voice to lead the singing, and Yaven playing the lyre, we put on some pretty shows, using the big threshing floor as our stage and the haybarn as our backstage. Tib and I were sometimes the comic relief and sometimes the army. I loved the rehearsals, and the costumes, and the tension and thrill of those evenings; all of us did, and as soon as we’d put on a show and been politely applauded by our noble audience, we started discussing the next one and begging Teacher-di for a subject.
But the best times of all were the nights after the hot days of midsummer, when it finally began to cool off, and a little wind stirred from the west though heat lightning still played in the dark sky to the south, and we lay on our straw-stuffed mattresses out under the stars and talked, and talked, and talked…and one by one fell silent, fell asleep…
If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It’s only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.
Good as my memory is, I’m not always sure what happened in which summer of those three we spent at Vente, because they seem all one long golden day and starlit night.
I do remember from the first summer how pleasant it was not to have Torm and Hoby with us. Sallo and I spoke of it to each other with surprise, having scarcely known how Hoby’s hostility oppressed us or how much we feared Torm’s outbreaks. Miv’s death, though we seldom spoke of it, had made our dread of Torm urgent and immediate. It was wonderful to be completely away from him.
Astano and Yaven seemed to be relieved and released by his absence as much as we were. They were older, they were Family, but here they played with us without observance of age or class. It was the last summer of Yaven’s boyhood and he enjoyed it as a boy, active, high-spirited, careless of his dignity, joyful in his strength. With him and us and away from the restraint or the women of the Family, his sister As-tano too became merry and bold. It was Astano who first led us on a fruit raid in our neighbors orchards. “Oh, they’ll never miss a few apricots,” she said, and showed us the shortcut to the back of the orchard where the pickers hadn’t come yet and wouldn’t notice us…
Although they did, of course, and taking us for common thieves, came shouting and hurling rocks and clods at us with deadlier intent than ever Tib and I had when we were being Votusans. We fled. When we got onto our own land, Yaven, panting and laughing, recited from
“Those men are horrible,” Ris said. She’d barely gotten away from a big fellow who chased her to the borderline and threw a rock after her, which luckily just grazed her arm. “Brutes!”
Sallo was comforting little Oco, who had been following us into the orchard when we all came flying past her in a shower of rocks and clods. Oco was scared, but soon reassured by our laughter and Yaven’s posturing. Yaven was always aware of the younger children’s fears and feelings, and was particularly gentle with Oco.
He picked her up to ride on his shoulder while he declaimed, Are we then men of Morva, To flee before the
