Lead
There was a moment when I thought I would fall
into the gaping hole in the center of the little room before I
could regain Terminus Est and carry the
mistress of the Duck’s Nest to safety, and another when I was
certain everything was going to fall—the trembling structure of the
room itself and us together.
Yet in the end we escaped. When we
reached the street, it was clear of dimarchi and townsfolk alike,
the soldiers no doubt having been drawn to the fire below, and the
people frightened indoors. I propped the woman with my arm, and
though she was still too terrified to answer my questions
intelligibly, I let her choose our way; as I had supposed she
would, she led us unerringly to her inn.
Dorcas was asleep. I did not wake her,
but sat down in the dark on a stool near the bed where there was
now also a little table sufficient to hold the glass and bottle I
had taken from the common room below. Whatever the wine was, it
seemed strong in my mouth and yet no more than water after I had
swallowed it; by the time Dorcas woke, I had drunk half the bottle
and felt no more effect from it than I would have if I had
swallowed so much sherbet.
She started up, then let her head fall
upon the pillow again. “Severian. I should have known it was
you.”
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” I
said. “I came to see how you were.”
“That’s very kind. It always seems,
though, that when I wake up you’re bending over me.” For a moment
she closed her eyes again. “You walk so very quietly in those
thick-soled boots of yours, do you know that? It’s one reason
people are afraid of you.”
“You said I reminded you of a vampire
once, because I had been eating a pomegranate and my lips were
stained with red. We laughed about it. Do you remember?” (It had
been in a field within the Wall of Nessus, when we had slept beside
Dr. Talos’s theater and awakened to feast on fruit dropped the
night before by our fleeing audience.)
“Yes,” Dorcas said. “You want me to
laugh again, don’t you? But I’m afraid I can’t ever laugh
anymore.”
“Would you like some wine? It was free,
and it’s not as bad as I expected.”
“To cheer me? No. One ought to drink, I
think, when one is cheerful already. Otherwise nothing but more
sorrow is poured into the cup.”
“At least have a swallow. The hostess
here says you’ve been ill and haven’t eaten all day.”
I saw Dorcas’s golden head move on the
pillow then as she turned it to look at me; and since she seemed
fully awake, I ventured to light the candle.
She said, “You’re wearing your habit.
You must have frightened her out of her wits.”
“No, she wasn’t afraid of me. She’s
pouring into her cup whatever she finds in the
bottle.”
“She’s been good to me—she’s very kind.
Don’t be hard on her if she chooses to drink so late at
night.”
“I wasn’t being hard on her. But won’t
you have something? There must be food in the kitchen here, and
I’ll bring you up whatever you want.”
My choice of phrase made Dorcas smile
faintly. “I’ve been bringing up my own food all day. That was what
she meant when she told you I’d been ill. Or did she tell you?
Spewing. I should think you could smell it yet, though the poor
woman did what she could to clean up after me.”
Dorcas paused and sniffed. “What is it
I do smell? Scorched cloth? It must be the candle, but I don’t
suppose you can trim the wick with that great blade of
yours.”
I said, “It’s my cloak, I think. I’ve
been standing too near a fire.”
“I’d ask you to open the window, but I
see it’s open already. I’m afraid it’s bothering you. It does blow
the candle about. Do the flickering shadows make you
dizzy?”
“No,” I said. “It’s all right as long
as I don’t actually look at the flame.”
“From your expression, you feel the way
I always do around water.”
“This afternoon I found you sitting at
the very edge of the river.”
“I know,” Dorcas said, and fell silent.
It was a silence that lasted so long that I was afraid she was not
going to speak again at all, that the pathological silence (as I
now was sure it had been) that had seized her then had
returned.
At last I said, “I was surprised to see
you there—I remember that I looked several times before I was sure
it was you, although I had been searching for you.”
“I spewed, Severian. I told you that,
didn’t I?”
“Yes, you told me.”
“Do you know what I brought
up?”
She was staring at the low ceiling, and
I had the feeling that there was another Severian there, the kind
and even noble Severian who existed only in Dorcas’s mind. All of
us, I suppose, when we think we are talking most intimately to
someone else, are actually addressing an image we have of the
person to whom we believe we speak. But this seemed more than that;
I felt
that Dorcas would go on talking if I left the room. “No,” I
answered. “Water, perhaps?”
“Sling-stones.”
I thought she was speaking
metaphorically, and only ventured, “That must have been very
unpleasant.”
Her head rolled on the pillow again,
and now I could see her blue eyes with their wide pupils. In their
emptiness they might have been two little ghosts. “Sling-stones,
Severian my darling. Heavy little slugs of metal, each about as big
around as a nut and not quite so long as my thumb and stamped with
the word strike. They came rattling out of
my throat into the bucket, and I reached down—put my hand down into
the filth that came up with them and pulled them up to see. The
woman who owns this inn came and took the bucket away, but I had
wiped them off and saved them. There are two, and they’re in the
drawer of that table now. She brought it to put my dinner on. Do
you want to see them? Open it.”
I could not imagine what she was
talking about, and asked if she thought someone was trying to
poison her.
“No, not at all. Aren’t you going to
open the drawer? You’re so brave. Don’t you want to
look?”
“I trust you. If you say there are
sling-stones in the table, I’m sure they’re there.”
“But you don’t believe I coughed them
up. I don’t blame you. Isn’t there a story about a hunter’s
daughter who was blessed by a pardal, so that beads of jet fell
from her mouth when she spoke? And then her brother’s wife stole
the blessing, and when she spoke toads hopped from her lips? I
remember hearing it, but I never believed it.”
“How could anyone cough up
lead?”
Dorcas laughed, but there was no mirth
in it. “Easily. So very easily. Do you know what I saw today? Do
you know why I couldn’t talk to you when you found me? And I
couldn’t, Severian, I swear it. I know you thought I was just angry
and being stubborn. But I wasn’t—I had become like a stone,
wordless, because nothing seemed to matter, and I’m still not sure
anything does. I’m sorry, though, for what I said about your not
being brave. You are brave, I know that. It’s only that it seems
not brave when you’re doing things to the poor prisoners here. You
were so brave when you fought Agilus, and later when you would have
fought with Baldanders because we thought he was going to kill
Jolenta …”
She fell silent again, then sighed.
“Oh, Severian, I’m so tired.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I
said. “About the prisoners. I want you to understand, even if you
can’t forgive me. It was my profession, the thing I was trained to
do from boyhood.” I leaned forward and took her hand; it seemed as
frail as a songbird.
“You’ve said something like this
before. Truly, I understand.”
“And I could do it well. Dorcas, that’s
what you don’t understand. Excruciation and
execution are arts, and I have the feel, the gift, the blessing.
This sword—all the tools we use live when they’re in my hands. If I
had
remained at the Citadel, I might have been a master. Dorcas, are
you listening? Does this mean anything at all to you?”
“Yes,” she said. “A bit, yes. I’m
thirsty, though. If you’re through drinking, pour me a little of
that wine now, please.”
I did as she asked, filling the glass
no more than a quarter full because I was afraid she might spill it
on her bedclothes.
She sat up to drink, something I had
not been certain until then that she was capable of, and when she
had swallowed the last scarlet drop hurled the glass out the
window. I heard it shatter on the street below.
“I don’t want you to drink after me,”
she told me. “And I knew that if I didn’t do that you
would.”
“You think whatever is wrong with you
is contagious, then?”
She laughed again. “Yes, but you have
it already. You caught it from your mother. Death. Severian, you
never asked me what it was I saw today.”