“What would never pass? You are more mysterious than the Count, friend Mathurin, with your hints here and there.”
The servitor turned on him eyes of angry candor. “Rodvard Yes-and-No, my friend, Cleudi is right in calling you more of a moralist than a churchman is. By what right do you question me so? Do you think I am of the High Center? Yet I will show you some of the considerations. It will never pass that the Chancellor should execute Brunivar and then have it proved that this fate came on him for some private reason. And now that you whip me to it, I will say as well that it will never pass that Brunivar should not be executed while we cry shame. We need a general rising, not a rescue that will drive many of us abroad. People will not leave their lives to fight until there is something in those lives that may not be sustained.”
(Conscience again.) Rodvard set his mouth. “If you wish the reign of justice for others, it seems to me that you must give it yourself, Mathurin, and I see no justice in watching a good man condemned to death when he might be saved. I heard the Baron speak out in conference, and he may yet win something there. But even fled to Tritulacca, or to Mayern and Prince Pavinius, he would still be worth more than with his throat cut.”
The serving man stood up. “I’ll not chop logic against you; only say, beware. For you are a member under orders; your own will or moral has nothing to do with the acts of the High Center. Brunivar is nothing to us; down with him, he is a part of the dead past which is all rotten at the heart, and of which we must rid ourselves for the living future. I will see you later, friend Bergelin.”
III
A tray had been left in his room as usual, but Rodvard hardly ate from it before flinging himself down to lie supine, watching the pattern of light through the shutters as it slowly ticked across the wall, trying to resolve the problem that beset him. Brunivar with his noble aspect and surely, his noble mind. “Free will and the love of humankind,” the Baron had said, and they called it the doctrine of the apostate Prophet. Yet for what else had he himself joined the Sons of the New Day? What else had the Baron put into practice out there in his province of the west?
Yet here is Mathurin saying that no happiness could be bought by love of humankind, since certainly no love of humankind would let a high man go to shameful death when it might be prevented. No, perhaps that was not true, either; even barbarians had sacrifices by which one gave his life that many might live, though their method in this was all superstition and clearly wrong. . . . But only by the consent of the one, Rodvard answered himself; only when there was no way but sacrifice.
Brunivar had made no consent; was being pushed to a sacrifice by malignance on one side, with the other accepting the unwilling gift he gave. Yet in that acceptance was there not something base and selfish? He remembered the curious unformed thought of treachery he had surprised in Remigorius’ mind, Mme. Kaja’s active betrayal, Mathurin’s violence, and was glad they were joined with him, in one of the minor Centers of the Sons of the New Day. When that Day rose—but then, too late for Brunivar. Ah, if there were some deliverance, some warning one could give that would be heeded.
A clock somewhere boomed four times. Rodvard twisted on the bed, thinking bitterly how little he could do even to save himself, willing in that moment to be the sacrificed one. With witchery one might—Lalette . . . Little cold drops of perspiration gathered down his front from neck to navel at the perilousness of the intrigue in which he was now embarked for the night, perilous and yet sweet, delight and danger, so that with half his mind he wished to rise and run from this accursed place, come what might. With the other half it was to stay and hope that Cleudi would not interrupt the rendezvous in the box, as he had said, so that the heart-striking loveliness he had now and again seen from far in the last seven days (for he did not doubt that the mask to meet him in the box would cover the Countess Aiella) might lie in his arms, come what might to the felon of Lalette’s witcheries. Was he himself one of those whose purposes were hideous, as Tuolén the butler had put it, with an inner desire toward treachery toward her who had received his word of love? Wait—the word had been wrung from him, given under a compulsion, was the product of a deed done under another compulsion. This, too. Before a high court I will plead (thought Rodvard) that I myself, the inner me who cherishes ideals still, in spite of Mathurin or Tuolén, had no part in betrayals . . . and recognized as he thought thus, that the union in the place of masks was of that very inner me, given forever . . . or forever minus a day.
Flee, then. Where? A marked man and a penniless, trying to escape across the seignories, with only a clerk’s skill, which demands fixities, to gain bread. Brunivar might perhaps be held from flying to safety by compulsions as tight as these—at which the wheel of thought had turned full circle; and the realization of this shattering the continuance of the motion, Rodvard drifted off into an uneasy doze, twitching in his place.