Rodvard picked at the bedcover for a moment (deciding it was as well to change the subject). “But tell me—why can’t your Myonessae be loved for themselves? I am only two days here, and know so little about your customs.”
“By the diaconals who choose them, you mean? Ah, no. All the Myonessae know they are only second choice. The diaconals have already chosen the service of the God of love first.”
“Then the Myonessae are jealous of the church—or of your God of love?”
“Oh, no. Women think more spiritually than men. You must go to a service with me and then you’ll understand.” The corner of her mouth twitched slightly; she reached over to touch his hand. “I must go,” she said, and was gone.
This was the beginning of a custom, by which she came to him each morning to be his instructor in all that concerned Mancherei. Once or twice fat Dame Gualdis wheezed up the stair and smiled through the door at the two, wishing them good morning as she went past on some errand, real or pretended; she seemed to find it decorous that the girl often sat on the edge of Rodvard’s bed. Their conversation never seemed to fail, and they took delight in minor contacts, as when he showed Leece the fashion of sitting wrestle he had learned as a lad, with each opponent gripping the other’s right elbow and only that arm engaged. Leece was so nearly as strong as himself as to make the contest a true one (and she was as greedy as he of the almost-meeting of bodies, as the Blue Star told him. She would go a long way with him, it said, perhaps all the way if pressed, but felt a little fearful of her own desires, and would want him as a husband in permanence. When she left, he would think of Damaris the maid as he dressed, and how she also had sat on his bed, and the end of that meeting, sweet and terrifying, how she had killed his Blue Star, and how he would surely have been trapped into some regular connection with her, had not circumstance ordered his flight from Sedad Vix. At this it seemed to him, walking the street to his daily toil, that there was nothing in the world so precious as that jewel and the use to which it must be put, and he must reach Dossola again, and by no means do the thing that would rob the Blue Star of its virtue; and then he thought of the penalty Lalette had promised, which lay at the back of his mind like a dark cloud of dread. But as he took his place on his stool, the thought came that he had already earned whatever penalty there was. It was not credible that the accident of having the Star’s power restored by the old woman in the hut would disannul what he had to bear; nor was it likely that the restoration would hide his action from one possessed of the witch-powers of the far-away girl to whom he was bound. But why was he bound to Lalette? Now the sweetness of the touch of Leece and the desire of her body ran through him like a liquid fire, and he felt as though he were running across a bridge no wider than a knife-blade over a yawning chasm, toward a goal hidden in mist, and all his inner organs were wrung.)
“Bergelin!” said the protostylarion. “You will remember that this work is given to you as a charity, which it will profit you not to abuse.”
20
INEVITABLE
Another girl was already before the mirror in the dress-room, running a comb through fair hair; taller than Lalette. She looked over her shoulder at the newcomer with an expression not unlike that of a satisfied cat and went on with her task, humming a little tune; Lalette felt that she was being asked to speak first. “Your pardon,” she said, “but I have just come. Can you tell me where the soap is kept?”
The tall girl surveyed her. “We use our own,” she said, “but if you have not brought any, you may take some of mine tonight. In the black-dressing-box, there on the table—that is, if you do not mind violet scent.”
“Oh, thank you. I didn’t mean . . . My name is Lalette” (again the hesitation, a momentary question whether to say “Bergelin” here, but that was all dead and gone, she would never see him again) “Asterhax.”