“In exchange for one, Stavia. Just like always,” he said stubbornly, lower lip clenched and angry. He had truly expected her to come to him before now, offering to put everything back as it had been before she refused him. Michael had thought she would.
“Not in exchange for anything. Oh, Chernon, don’t you care about me at all? Or yourself?”
What was this? He was shifty, biting his cheeks, eyes darting this way and that as though she were trying to trap him. “Yes. You’re my friend.”
“Then don’t risk our lives, Chernon.”
His jaw sagged. “What do you mean?”
“If I don’t get it back, I must tell the Council, Chernon. I broke the ordinances. Now that you’re really going to be a warrior, I can’t go on breaking them. If you won’t give it back, I’ll have to….”
“Don’t,” he said hastily, too hastily. Michael wouldn’t want that. Michael wouldn’t want the Council knowing anything about Chernon at all, about Chernon and Stavia!
“Besides, you should be worried about what the warriors might do to you.”
He had to detour her, distract her. He put out his hand to touch her face, the soft tips of his fingers making gentle trails down her cheeks to her jaw, his mouth like one on a tragic mask, drooping. “You were really worried about me. I didn’t know. I thought you were just being… trying….”
She had been being, trying. She was still trying, but none of that got through to him at all.
“I’ll… I’ll bring it back to you this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll put it through the hole.” They had widened the hole. It was almost a window, now, suitable for the passage of books. When she leaned tight into the wall on the inside, and he on the outside, they could touch hands in the dark depth of the stone while the tree sifted the light onto his face. He could never see her, but she could see him. She felt he was closer to her then, separated by all that thickness of wall, than he was now.
Now he started to go and she stopped him. “Stay, Chernon. We have this room for an hour.”
“No, no,” he said, sounding trapped again. “I can’t. Can’t stay. Oh, Stavia….”
And then he was kneeling before her, his head in her lap, weeping while she tried frantically to comfort him.
“I don’t know what to do!” he wept, surprising himself by this flood of honest, uncalculated tears. “I think I’ve got it picked, and then I’m not sure, and then I think I’ll do something else, but that’s worse. I couldn’t do anything that would make them hate me, Stavvy. I want him to, Michael to…. I just couldn’t. You know that. I shouldn’t have to. There should be something else I can do….”
She held him. She didn’t ask what he meant. There was nothing she could say. If she told him she loved him, it would only trap him more! She couldn’t beg him to come home to her—she had already done that. It was all in the ordinances, ordinances she had already broken. All she could hear, inside her head, was Myra’s words when she saw Barten’s body. “So they’ve killed him, too!” It was as though she had killed Chernon, too. If she had not given him the first book, perhaps he would not be weeping now. She had wronged him, hurt him. She was guilty. Somehow, she would have to make it up to him. She swore to herself she would make it up to him. Somehow.
She held him, rocking back and forth, her face frozen. They stayed there until the attendant knocked on the door, telling them their time was up.
Joshua was waiting for her at home. He saw her face and his own changed. “Do you have the book?”
“He said he’ll probably bring it. This afternoon.” She was numb from emotion, pain, guilt.
“Tell me, Stavia!”
She temporized. “He’s confused, Joshua, that’s all. I don’t think he knew how much danger he was in.”
“I’ll come with you this afternoon.”
“You’re not supposed….”
“By the Lady, Stavia, you’ve already got me in over my head.”
All his willingness to bend the customs did no good. When they went to the hole in the wall, the book was there, but Chernon was not. Joshua, after a long, calculating look at Stavia’s stricken face, decided that something drastic had to be done.
REHEARSAL OF IPHIGENIA AT ILIUM: COUNCILwoman Stavia in the part of Iphigenia.
CASSANDRA I have seen blood….
HECUBA Cassandra, do sit down. (To Polyxena) Odysseus had Andromache’s child thrown to his death from high atop the walls.
POLYXENA A pity, though no more than one might guess would happen with these disputatious Greeks.
IPHIGENIA For all the joy they take in getting sons, they take as great a joy in killing them. There’s not a warrior but would have his sons be warriors in their time. (To Andromache) If Hector lived would he not teach this baby how to kill and how to die?
ANDROMACHE He would have, yes, if he’d lived long enough. He would have felt dishonored if his son had not espoused the sword.
IPHIGENIA (Jiggling the baby) It’s just as well, then, that he didn’t live.
ANDROMACHE Do you speak of my husband or my child?
IPHIGENIA What difference? I speak of either one.
POLYXENA Who are you to have cared for Hector’s son?
IPHIGENIA Iphigenia, Agamemnon’s child. I came to Ilium to avenge myself on him who murdered me.
CASSANDRA I have seen blood.
HECUBA Hush, dear, please.
CASSANDRA Blood and bodies broken.
HECUBA Shh, Cassandra. We know, dear. We have seen blood enough to last our lives. Blood and dead children and the bones of men. I cannot understand how warriors live among so many slain. They seem to take their strength from dying men as do the Holy Gods from sacrifice!
CASSANDRA White altars red with blood. With heart’s blood shed. With blood and bodies broken.
HECUBA Shh.
FOR FIFTY DAYS AFTER
