was looking toward him now, but her motions seemed almost mechanical.
He told her, 'If you'd like to say good-bye to Orpine, I can remove the lid. I haven't started the first screw yet.'
She made an inarticulate noise and shook her head.
'Very well, then.' He forced himself to look down at his work. He had not realized she was so beautiful-no, not even when they had sat talking in her room at Orchid's. In the garden, he had begun to say that no artist could paint a face half so lovely as Kypris's. Now it seemed to him that the same thing might almost be said of Chenille, and for a moment he imagined himself a sculptor or a painter. He would pose her beside a stream, he thought, her face up-tilted as though she were watching a meadowlark. . . .
He sensed her proximity before he had tightened the first screw. Her cheek, he felt certain, was within a span of his ear. Her perfume filled his nostrils; and though it was in no way different from any other woman's, and stronger than it ought to have been, though it was mingled with perspiration, the inferior scents of face and body powders, and even the miasma of a woolen gown that had been stored for most of this protracted summer in one of the battered old trunks he had seen in her room, he found it intoxicating.
As he drove the third screw, her hand came to rest on his own. 'Perhaps you'd better sit down,' he told her. 'You're not supposed to be in here, actually.'
She laughed softly.
He straightened up and turned to face her. 'Maytera's watching. Have you forgotten? Go and sit down, please. I have no desire to exert my authority, but I will if I must.'
When she spoke, it was with mingled wonder and amusement. She said, 'This woman's a spy!'
Chapter 3. COMPANY
Though he had been in the old cemetery often, Silk had never ridden the deadcoach before-or rather, as he told himself sharply, the deadcoach had been Loach's wagon. They always walked behind it in procession, as custom demanded, on the way there; and Loach nearly always invited him to ride back to the quarter, sitting beside Loach on the weathered gray board that was the driver's seat.
This was a real deadcoach, however, all glass and black lacquered wood, with black plumes and a pair of black horses, the whole rented for a staggering three cards from the maker of Orpine's casket. Silk, who had scarcely been able to limp along by the time they reached the cemetery, had been relieved when the liveried driver had offered him a ride, and utterly astonished to find that the deadcoach seat had a back, both seat and back stylishly upholstered in shiny black leather, like a costly chair. The seat was very high as well, which afforded him a fresh perspective on the streets through which they passed.
The driver cleared his throat and spat expertly between his horses. 'Who was she. Patera? Friend of yours?'
'I wish I could say she was,' Silk replied. 'I never met her. Her mother's a friend, however, or so I hope. She paid for this fine coach of yours, as well as a great many other things, so I owe her a great deal.' The driver nodded companionably. 'This is a new experience for me,' Silk continued, 'my second in three days. I'd never ridden in a floater; but I did the day before yesterday, when a gentleman very kindly had one of his take me home. And now this! Do you know, I almost like this better. One sees so much more from up here, and one feels-I really can't say. Like a councillor, perhaps. Is this what you do every day? Driving like this?'
The driver chuckled. 'An' curry the horses, an' feed an' water, an' muck out an' so on an' such like, an' takin' care T of the coach. Waxin' an' polishin', an' keepin' everythin' clean, an' greasin' the wheels. Them that rides in back don't complain more'n once. Mebbe less. But their relations does, sayin' it sounds so dismal an' all. So I keeps 'em greased, which ain't nearly so hard as all the waxin' an' washin'.' 'I envy you,' Silk said sincerely. 'Oh, it's not no bad life, long as you rides up front. You get the rest of the day off, do you, Patera?'
Silk nodded. 'Provided that no one requires the Pardon of Pas.'
The driver extracted a toothpick from an inner pocket.
'But if somebody does, you got to go, don't you?'
'Certainly.' 'An' before we ever loaded her in, you'd done for how many pigeons an' goats and such like?'
Silk paused, counting. 'Altogether, fourteen including the birds. No, fifteen in all, because Auk brought the ram he'd pledged. I had forgotten it for a moment, although its entrails indicated that I-never mind.'
'Fifteen, an' one a ram. An' you done for the lot, an' read 'em, an' cut 'em up, I bet.' Silk nodded again.
'An' marched out to the country on that bad leg, readin' prayers an' so forth the whole way. Only now you get to pull your boots off, unless somebody's decided to leave. Then you don't. Have a easy time of it, don't you, you augurs? 'Bout like us, huh?'
'It isn't such a bad life,' Silk said, 'as long as one gets to ride back.'
They both laughed.
'Somethin' happen in there? In your manteion?'
Silk nodded. 'I'm surprised that you heard about it so quickly.'
'They were talkin' 'bout it when I got there, Patera. I ain't religious. Don't know nothin' 'bout gods an' don't want to, but it sounded interestin'.'
'I see.' Silk stroked his cheek. 'In that case, what you know is fully as important as what I know. I know only what actually transpired, while you know what people are saying about it, which may be at least as important.'
'What I was wonderin' was why she come after nobody for so long. Did she say?'
'No. And of course I could not ask her. One does not cross-examine the gods. Now tell me what the people outside the manteion were saying. All of it.'
It was practically dark by the time the driver reined up in front of the garden gate. Kit and Villus, who had been playing in the street, were full of questions: 'Did a goddess really come, Patera?' 'A real goddess?' 'What'd she look like?' 'Could you see her really good?' 'To talk to?' 'Did she tell things, Patera?' 'Could you tell what she said?' 'What'd she say?'
Silk raised his hand for silence. 'You could have seen her, too, if you'd come to our sacrifice as you should have.' 'They wouldn't let us.' 'We couldn't get in.' 'I'm very sorry to hear that,' Silk told them sincerely. 'You would have seen Comely Kypris just as I did, and most of the people who attended-there must have been five hundred, if not more-could not. Now listen. I know you're anxious to have your questions answered, just as I would be in your place. But I'm going to have to talk a great deal about the theophany in the next few days, and I don't want to go stale. Besides, I'll have to tell all of you in the palaestra, in a lot of detail, and you'll be bored if you have to listen to all of it twice.'
Silk crouched to bring his own face to the level of the quite dirty face of the smaller boy. 'But, Kit, there's a lesson in this, for you especially. Only two days ago, you asked me whether a god would actually come to our Window. Do you remember that?'
'You said it would be a long time, but it wasn't.' 'I said it might be, Kit, not that it would be. You're fundamentally quite right, however. I did think it would be a long time, probably decades, and I was badly mistaken; but the thing I wanted to point out was that when you asked your question all the other students laughed. They thought it was very funny. Remember?' Kit nodded solemnly.
'They laughed as though you'd asked a foolish question, because they thought it a foolish question. They were even more mistaken than I, however; and that must be plain even to them now. Yours was a serious and an important question, and you erred only in asking of someone who knew very little more than you did. You must never let yourself be turned aside from life's serious and important questions by ridicule. Try not to forget that.'
Silk fumbled in his pocket. 'I want you boys to run an errand for me. I'd go myself, but I can hardly walk, much less run. I'm going to give you, Villus, five bits. Here they are. And you, Kit, three. You, Kit, are to go to the greengrocer's. Tell him the vegetables are for me, and ask him to give you whatever is best and freshest, to the amount of three bits. You, Villus, are to go to the butcher. Tell him I want five bits worth of nice chops. I'll give each of you,' Silk paused, ruminating, 'a half bit when you bring me your purchases.'
