My Da had said, “Your capabilities will be questioned. The only answer is to refrain from action. To be confident in your capacity.”
“My capacity as quantified by what parameters?” I asked.
“By the parameters of your moral code,” my Da said. “By your capacity to help our people. It’s all that matters.”
I thought then as I thought now. My Da, and his Da, and all the Das before them, were much stronger than I was, more altruistic, filled with greater humility.
Harella stood then and asked me to bed, possibly for love and possibly for sleep, but I wanted neither. She sighed her great sighs and drifted up the staircase alone, her gown flaring around her hips, the light of her beauty carrying her like soaring wings.
I sat in my chair mulling over my matters, full of mull, my mull full of dull, until the dawn broke and I heard, in the distance, the first flutes, trumpets, and squeezeboxes welcoming the fencing masters.
I kept still another minute trying hard to be above such matters, but soon found that I was not only not above them, or even of them, but probably well below them in the strictest sense. I was soon at the back of my closet and halfway dressed in my finest fencing garb.
Harella, two floors above, could hear me buckling my belts and snapping shut my buckles. She sighed so deeply that the frill on my jacket wafted to and fro. I retrieved my sword from above the fireplace, fit it within its sheath, and on horseback rode to the trials just as the bassoons and tubas and harpsichord announced Reedle.
Reedle was the reigning champion of fencing, and had been since I was driven from the trials. His coat was adorned with countless medals that shone not quite as shinily as the shine of his gleaming white teeth and brilliant black eyes. He arrived in a six-horse-drawn carriage. Himself, and his blade, and his epaulets, and his purple sash. He stepped from the carriage to the cheers of our people as I climbed off my horse.
He gave me his finest smile. “Ah, Cruel Thief of Rosy Infants, how are you this day?”
I did my best to smile my finest smile, which wasn’t nearly as fine as his finest smile.
“Fine,” I said.
“Has there been some revoking of the revoking of your privilege to enter our tournament?”
“Not to my knowledge,” I said.
“And yet you wear your fencing finery?”
“My wife waxed the boots and polished the buttons recently, so out of respect for her sweat and efforts I thought I should wear the finery this day, while I sat in the stands and applauded your genius with a sword.”
“Your boots are covered in horse shit,” he told me.
Like all of us, Reedle is full of great grace, but his grace is less than the grace of everyone else.
So Reedle won the tournament in straight matches, as he always did since my expurgation. Each time he vanquished an opponent he would turn to the stands and find my bright buckles and buttons and slash the air as if he were cutting into my heart. I felt each slash through my grins and salutes. I was not confident in my capacity or the pa ram e ters of my moral code.
I made my way down to the dueling field and waited until most of the crowd and carriages had withdrawn from the area. I gave the proper encouraging murmurs and displays of respect and veneration to those who’d lost, shook hands, tapped sword points, and clapped shoulders as the moment called for. When I approached Reedle he turned from me in an ample and obvious showing of contempt, then climbed into his carriage along with his purple sash, sword, and epaulets, and left the games.
My fist tightened on my weapon. My eyes narrowed. I thought to follow. I thought to lunge, lance, riposte, gore, gouge, stab, pierce, plunge, and clean the horse shit from my boots with his finest finery. I was glad that I was not traveling beyond the wall. I did not want to meet myself on the road and look at my face as it might appear at this instant.
I alighted upon my horse’s back and rode toward home.
Harella met me outside in the garden, which she was tending to full bloom. I leaped from the horse and unbuckled my buckles and belts and took off the coat and garb and thought about chucking it all in the mud. Instead I folded it and laid it across the marble garden bench I had crafted for her our first year of marriage. I placed my palm upon its smoothness, shut my eyes, and tried to recall my earlier skills, but could only think of rough human hands and the beating of my own unpredictable heart.
I fed and watered the horse as my wife touched me upon the shoulder.
“You must get Livia’s child back,” Harella said.
“What’s happened?”
She tucked her chin in and gave me a look that was both wise and harsh, much more harsh than wise, I thought. “I saw her strike the child this afternoon.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Only if I was dreaming, and I assure you I was awake.”
“We do not do — ”
“Oh, stop with the ‘things we do because we must do them’ nonsense. Livia is a mother whose child was stolen. She’s capable of anything. You must know that’s the truth.”
I knew it was the truth.
“Travel again, and return her own flesh to her.”
“I can’t do that. No one must ask, not even her.”
“She’s not asking,” my wife said. “I am.”
“It’s not something you can ask. It’s not something I can do.”
“You swap children. That is your calling. That is what you do. So simply go back and do it again. Swap again.”
“That isn’t what we do.”
“Perhaps you should have considered it more often, instead of blindly performing your duty. Exercising your imperatives. Go get her child or a baby’s blood will be on your hands. Can you stand that? Sniff your fists. Do you smell blood yet?”
I did.
Traveling across the wall now, the wall had become a wall of people, huddled in the town square, gathered to watch a hanging.
I drew my slouch hat lower across my brow.
A woman was brought out in the center of the square, riding in the back of a hay cart drawn by two mules. The crowd threw rotted fruit and vegetables and eggs at her while shouting vile and varied insults.
She was matronly, heavyset, soft of features but with a righteous tilt of her chin, a dark gleam in her eye that made me take note. They hadn’t tortured her the way they do with some. She wasn’t marred at all, except for the eggshells, which meant she had signed a confession without any coercion. She looked as wholesome as humans can, with her hair still set under a milking cap, still wearing an apron.
I saw motherhood in her, nursing, bandaging, healing, life-giving and life-saving. The town crier unfurled his parchment scroll and read off a list of her crimes. They seemed to focus, more or less, around the fact that she had helped other women during difficult pregnancies, healed the sick with herbs and poultices, and once shouted down the queen’s taxman who was kicking urchins in an alley.
When they sought to drop the red velvet bag over her head she stiffly refused. She had courage and sought to garner a touch of vengeance upon the crowd by showing them her dead and awful face rather than merely her complacent corpse. The hangman adjusted the knot, and the minister said a lengthy and not altogether appropriate prayer, and the dancers came out and performed their ritual dance, throwing their flowers and veils, and the choir sang two lackluster hymns, and the queen’s guard performed a well-choreographed military promenade, then fired the requisite thirty-seven shots at the sky, and the fainters fainted, and the swooners swooned, and panters panted. More than one man drooled. There was a good deal of spitting.
At last the woman was asked to say her last words, but she simply shook her head. Her eyes searched the square, perhaps for family or friends, lovers, a kind expression, a forlorn face. I raised the brim of my hat. Her gaze found mine. She gave me a slight nod and I returned the gesture.
At the moment of death, her grace met my grace. They would carry on together elsewhere, wherever else there is to go afterward.
