This was the fearsome, feared DeRod; he was a giggling old man, an old buffer, naughty, like a child.
‘I’ve come on serious business,’ I said.
‘Of course you have, dear boy. You wouldn’t come just for fun, dear old Sage.’
‘DeRod, as I walked heir I saw die Fall is running low. That means the water channels are silting up. There are big cracks in the silos and the rats are getting in. The irrigation ditches need attention. The roads are going into potholes.’
He could easily have giggled, become a child, called for that woman, but he looked harassed, even annoyed, and said, ‘You know how labour is now. They are lazy and irresponsible and incompetent.’
‘But DeRod, what do you expect? They get no training, they haven’t done for a long time.’
‘That’s why we use the Barbarians, they are used to work.’
Again it seemed as if he simply wanted me to keep quiet … go away … stop bothering him. Yes, that was it, he was like someone irritated with an importunate or pestering person.
I went on. ‘DeRod, when you put an end to the instruction, to the teaching, when you ended the storytelling and the songs - obviously this was going to happen?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When your mother died she left behind her a system of education, of training … you ended it.’
Again, he stared, and, there was no doubt of it, was surprised.
‘Don’t you remember, DeRod?’
And that was the moment I understood. Oh, all kinds of enlightenment came flooding, rather late, but there it was, right in front of me. It was not that he had forgotten. Not that he had deliberately destroyed what was good. He had never known it was good. He had never understood. He had seemed to be part of it all, but he, Destra’s son, the graceful and charming and delightful DeRod, whom we had all admired, had been a blind person among us. From some spirit of emulation he had gone along with it all, as children do, but he had understood nothing at all.
Oh, yes, the scales were indeed falling from my eyes.
I sat there looking back over my long life, and thinking how we, The Twelve, had not seen the first most obvious thing. We had deluded ourselves with all kinds of imaginings and resentments and suspicions: we had seen this man here, DeRod, as a villain, a scheming, ambitious, unscrupulous scoundrel. The truth, had always been - he was stupid. That’s all. We had never seen it. But clearly, his mother had … and that was something I had to think out.
When that formidable woman, his jailor, came in, I got up and said to her, ‘Thank you. You must take good care of him. ‘And to DeRod, ‘Did you know I am the last of The Twelve?’
‘Are you? No, I didn’t know. No one told me.’
‘Who are The Twelve?’ she asked, suspicious.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ And to him, ‘Eleven died a few days ago.’
‘I’m sorry’ he said, and it sounded as if he really was. ‘We had good times, didn’t we?’ he said, the tears starting. ‘Do you remember our games in the teaching room?’
‘Yes, I do remember.’
‘It was such fun.’
‘Yes, it was.’ And as I turned to go, ‘I have arranged with some youngsters to teach them how to write and read. They are my great grandchildren.’
‘Oh, are you?’ He seemed puzzled and I saw he had forgotten about writing. Then he said, and I remember he said it in the old days, ‘What use is it, when we’ve got Memories who keep records of the past, and all that?’
‘I don’t think many people now know about our history. Or only in a distorted kind of way. ‘And then I could not help adding/Your mother, Destra, is remembered as a sort of clever courtesan.’
At this the woman carne in with, ‘She was a bar girl. She was a singer in the bars. What’s wrong with that?’
So, I knew what her past had been.
‘Nothing wrong. But she would have been very surprised to hear that she was a bar girl. Destra was a great woman,’ I said, knowing this woman would have no conception of greatness. Then to DeRod, ‘She was a great woman and a fine ruler and there is nothing left of what she created.’
I turned and left, not wanting to see his face, though I expect it didn’t show any real comprehension.
And I walked home slowly through the wood, almost dark now, and dangerous, but I did not see anyone there.
That was last night. I did not sleep. The old are familiar with how memories can shift and change their meanings. A scene from childhood that you have often visited can suddenly say to you, ‘No, you’ve been wrong. This is what was going on.’ But now it is not a question of a scene, a day, but a lifetime, and it will need more than a night or two of sleeplessness to understand it all.
It is Destra, first of all, who commands my attention. When she first came to us all those years ago we knew no more about her people than a few rumours could tell us, so far away did everything seem that was not The Cities. But since then the other cities of the peninsula have come close to us, because of DeRod’s raids, and we know a great deal about peoples and places, and Destra’s story is well known. Her father was a minor chieftain of the Roddite tribe, with several wives. Destra did not marry as the other daughters did, obedient to custom, going to a husband’s clan as early as ten or eleven. Destra was eighteen when she came to us, old, according to her people’s ideas. She refused many suitors. She was headstrong, wilful, and very beautiful. Why did she at last agree to marry? She must have known something of The Cruel Whip’s reputation, but the fame of EnRod’s reforms had travelled everywhere: Destra wanted to live where women were as free as men. Not everyone admired these
