Loe raamatut: «The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5»

CANOPUS IN ARGOS: ARCHIVES THE MARRIAGES BETWEEN ZONES THREE, FOUR AND FIVE

Rumours are the begetters of gossip. Even more are they the begetters of song. We, the Chroniclers and song-makers of our Zone, aver that before the partners in this exemplary marriage were awake to what the new directives meant for both of them, the songs were with us, and were being amplified and developed from one end of Zone Three to the other. And of course this was so in Zone Four.

Great to Small High to Low Four into Three Cannot go.

This was a children’s counting game. I was watching them at it from my windows the day after I heard the news. And one of them rushed up to me in the street with a ‘riddle’ he had heard from his parents: If you mate a swan and a gander, who will ride?

What was being said and sung in the camps and barracks of Zone Four we do not choose to record. It is not that we are mealy-mouthed. Rather that every chronicle has its appropriate tone.

I am saying that each despised the other? No, we are not permitted actively to criticize the dispensations of the Providers, but let us say that we in Zone Three did not forget — as the doggerel chanted during those days insisted:

Three comes before Four. Our ways are peace and plenty. Their ways — war!

It was days before anything happened.

While this famous marriage was being celebrated in the imaginations of both realms, the two most concerned remained where they were. They did not know what was wanted of them.

No one had expected the marriage. It had not reached even popular speculation. Zones Three and Four were doing very well, with Al·Ith for us, Ben Ata for them. Or so we thought.

Quite apart from the marriage, there were plenty of secondary questions. What could it mean that our Al·Ith was ordered to travel to the territory of Ben Ata, so that the wedding could be accomplished on his land? This was one of the things we asked ourselves.

What, in this context, was a wedding?

What, even, a marriage?

When Al·Ith first heard of the Order, she believed it to be a joke. She and her sister laughed. All of Zone Three heard how they laughed. Then arrived a message that could only be regarded as a rebuke, and people came together in conferences and councils all over the Zone. They sent for us — the Chroniclers and the poets and the song-makers and the Memories. For weeks nothing was talked of but weddings and marriages, and every old tale and ballad that could be dug up was examined for information.

Messengers were even sent to Zone Five, where we believed weddings of a primitive kind did take place. But there was war all along their frontiers with Zone Four and it was not possible to get in.

We wondered, if this marriage was intended to follow ancient patterns, whether Zones Three and Four should join in a festival? But the Zones could not mingle, were inimical by nature. We were not even sure where the frontier was. Our side was not guarded. The inhabitants of Zone Three, straying near the frontier, or approaching it from curiosity as children or young people sometimes did, found themselves afflicted with repugnance, or at the least by an antipathy to foreign airs and atmospheres that showed itself in a cold lethargy, like boredom. It cannot be said that Zone Four had for us the secret attractions and fascinations of the forbidden: the most accurate thing I can say is that we forgot about it.

Ought there perhaps to be two festivals, simultaneously, and each would celebrate that our two lands, so different, could nevertheless mirror something, at least in this way? But what would be the point of that? After all, festivals and celebrations were not exactly pleasures we had to do without.

Should there then be small wedding parties among us, to mark the occasion?

New clothes? Decorations in our public places? Gifts and presents? All these were sanctioned by the old songs and stories.

More time passed. We knew that Al·Ith was low in spirits, and was keeping to her quarters. She had never done this before, had always been available and open to us. The women everywhere were out of temper and despondent.

The children began to suffer.

Then came the first visible and evident manifestation of the new time. Ben Ata sent a message that his men would come to escort her to him. This curtness was exactly what we expected from his Zone. A realm at war did not need the courtesies. Here was proof of the rightness of our reluctance to be brought low by Zone Four.

Al·Ith was resentful, rebellious. She would not go, she announced.

Again there was an Order, and it said, simply, that she must go.

Al·Ith put on her dark blue mourning clothes, since this was the only expression of her inner feelings she felt she still had the latitude to use. She gave out no instructions for a Grief, but that was what was being felt by us all.

Felt confusingly and — we suspected — wrongly. Emotions of this kind are not valued by us. Have not been for so long we have no records of anything different. As individuals we do not expect — it is not expected of us — to weep, wail, suffer. What can happen to any one of us that does not happen at some time to everyone? Sorrow at bereavement, at personal loss, has become formalized, ritualized, in public occasions seen by us all as channels and vehicles for our little personal feelings. It is not that we don’t feel! — but that feelings are meant always to be directed outwards and used to strengthen a general conception of ourselves and our realm. But with this new dispensation of Al·Ith the opposite seemed to be happening.

Never had our Zone known so many tears, accusations, irrational ill-feelings.

Al·Ith had all her children brought to her and when they wept she did not check them.

She insisted that this much must be allowed her without it being considered active rebellion.

There were those — many of us — who were perturbed; many who began to be critical of her.

We could not remember anything like this; and soon we were talking of how long it had been since there had been any kind of Order from the Providers. Of how previous changes of the Need — always referred to by us simply, and without further definition, in this one word — had been received by us. Of why, now, there should be such a reversal. We asked ourselves if we had grown into the habit of seeing ourselves falsely. But how could it be wrong to approve our own harmonies, the wealths and pleasantness of our land? We believed our Zone to be the equal at least of any other for prosperity and absence of discord. Had it then been a fault to be proud of it?

And we saw how long it had been since we had thought at all of what lay beyond our borders. That Zone Three was only one of the realms administered generally from Above, we knew. We did think, when we thought on these lines at all, of ourselves in interaction with these other realms, but it was in an abstract way. We had perhaps grown insular? Self-sufficing?

Al·Ith sat in her rooms and waited.

And then they appeared, a troop of twenty horsemen, in light armour. They carried shields that protected them against our higher finer air which would otherwise have made them ill, and these they had to have. But why head protection, and the famous reflecting singlets of Zone Four that could repel any weapon? Those of us who were near the route chosen by our unwelcome guests stood sullen and critical. We were determined not to give any indications of pleasure. Nor did the horsemen greet us. In silence the troops made their way to the palace, and came to a standstill outside Al·Ith’s windows. They had with them a saddled and bridled horse without a rider. Al·Ith saw them from her windows. There was a long wait. Then she emerged on the long flight of white steps, a sombre figure in her dark robes. She stood silent, observing the soldiers whose appearance in this manner, in her country, could only have the effect of a capture. She allowed plenty of time for them to observe her, her beauty, her strength, the self-sufficiency of her bearing. She then descended the steps slowly, and alone. She went straight to the horse that had been brought for her, looked into his eyes, and put her hand on his cheek. This horse was Yori, who became celebrated from this moment. He was a black horse, and a fine one, but perhaps no more remarkable than the others the soldiers were riding. Having greeted him, she lifted off the heavy saddle. She stood with this in her arms, looking into the faces of the men one after another until at last a soldier saw what it was she wanted. She threw the saddle to him, and his horse shifted its legs to adjust the weight as he caught it. He gave a comical little grimace, glancing at his fellows, while she stood, arms folded, watching them. It was the grimace one offers to a clever child trying something beyond its powers, yet succeeding. This was of course not lost on Al·Ith, and she now showed they had missed her real point, by the slow deliberation with which she removed the bridle and tossed that, too, to a soldier.

Then she shook back her head, so that the black hair that was bound lightly around it cascaded down her back. Our women wear their hair in many ways, but if it is up, in braids or in another fashion, and a woman shakes her hair loose, in a particular manner, then this means grief. But the soldiers had not understood, and were admiring her foolishly; perhaps the gesture had been meant for the onlookers who were by now crowding the little square. Al·Ith’s lips were curling in contempt of the soldiers, and with impatience. I must record here that this kind of arrogance — yes, I have to call it that — was not something we expected from her. When we talked over the incident, it was agreed that Al·Ith’s bitterness over the marriage was perhaps doing her harm.

Standing with loosened hair and burning eyes, she slowly wound a fine black veil around her head and shoulders. Mourning — again. Through the transparent black glowed her eyes. A soldier was fumbling to get down off his horse to lift her on to hers, but she had leapt up before he could reach the ground. She then wheeled and galloped off through the gardens in an easterly direction, towards the borders with Zone Four. The soldiers followed. To those of us watching, it looked as if they were in pursuit.

Outside our city she pulled in her horse and walked it. They followed. The people along the roads greeted her, and stared at the soldiers, and it did not look like a pursuit now, because the soldiers were embarrassed and smiling foolishly, and she was the Al·Ith they had always known.

There is a descent off the high plateau of our central land through passes and gorges, and it was not possible to ride fast, apart from the fact that Al·Ith stopped whenever someone wanted to talk to her. For when she observed this was so, she always pulled up her horse and waited for them to approach her.

Now the grimaces among the soldiers were of a different kind, and they were grumbling, for they had expected to be across their own frontier by nightfall. At last, as another group of her people waved and called to her, and she heard the voices of the soldiers rising behind her, she turned her horse and rode back to them, stopping a few paces before the front line of horsemen, so that they had to rein in quickly.

‘What is your trouble?’ she enquired. ‘Would it not be better if you told me openly, instead of complaining to each other like small children?’

They did not like this, and a small storm of anger rose, which their commander quelled.

‘We have our orders,’ he said.

‘While I am in our country,’ said she, ‘I will behave according to custom.’

She saw they did not understand, and she had to explain. ‘I am in the position I hold because of the will of the people. It is not for me to ride past arrogantly, if they indicate they want to say something.’

Again they looked at each other. The commander’s face showed open impatience.

‘You cannot expect me to overturn our customs for yours in this way,’ she said.

‘We have emergency rations for one light meal,’ he said.

She gave a little incredulous shake of her head, as if she could not believe what she was hearing.

She had not meant it as contempt, but this was what transmitted itself to them. The commander of the horsemen reddened, and blurted out: ‘Any one of us is capable of fasting on a campaign for days at a time if necessary.’

‘I hadn’t asked as much,’ she said gravely, and this time, what they heard was humour. They gratefully laughed, and she was able to give a brief smile, then sighed, and said, ‘I know that you are not here by your own will, but because of the Providers.’

But this, inexplicably to her, they felt as insult and challenge, and their horses shifted and sidled as the emotions of their riders came into them.

She gave a little shrug, and turned and went to the group of young men who stood waiting for her at the road’s edge. Below them now lay a wide plain, behind them were the mountains. The plains still lay yellowed by the evening sun, and the high peaks of the mountains sun-glittered, but where they were it was cold and in dusk. The young men crowded around her horse as they talked, showing no fear or awe, and the watching horsemen’s faces showed a crude disbelief. When a youth put up his hand to pat the horse’s cheek briefly, the men let out, all together, a long breath of condemnation. But they were in doubt, and in conflict. It was not possible for them to despise this great kingdom or the rulers of it: they knew better. Yet what they saw at every moment contradicted their own ideas of what was right.

She held up her hand in farewell to the young men, and the men behind her put their horses forward at this signal which had not been to them. She rode on, before them, until they were all on the level of the plain, and then turned again.

‘I suggest that you make a camp here, with the mountains at your back.’

‘In the first place,’ said the commander, very curt — because he had been annoyed his soldiers had instinctively answered her gesture by starting again, instead of waiting for him — ‘in the first place, I had not thought of stopping at all till we reached the frontier. And in the second …’ But his anger silenced him.

‘I am only making the suggestion,’ she said. ‘It will take nine or ten hours to reach the frontier.’

‘At this pace it will.’

‘At any pace. Most nights a strong wind blows over the plain from the east.’

‘Madam! What do you take these men for? What do you take us for?’

‘I see that you are soldiers,’ said she. ‘But I was thinking of the beasts. They are tired.’

‘They will do as they are ordered. As we do.’

Our Chroniclers and artists have made a great thing of this exchange between Al·Ith and the soldiers. Some of the tales begin at this point. She is erect before them, on her horse, who hangs his head, because of the long difficult ride. She is soothing it with her white hand, which glitters with jewels … but Al·Ith was known for her simple dress, her absence of jewels and splendour! They show her long black hair streaming, the veil streaming with it and held on her forehead with a brilliant clasp. They show the angry commander, his face distorted, and the jeering soldiers. The bitter wind is indicated by flying tinted clouds, and the grasses of the plain lie almost flat under it.

All kinds of little animals have crept into this picture. Birds hover around her head. A small deer, a great favourite with our children, has stepped on to the dust of the road, and is holding up its nose to the drooping nose of Al·Ith’s horse, to comfort it, or to give it messages from other animals. Often these pictures are titled ‘Al·Ith’s Animals.’ Some tales tell how the soldiers try to catch the birds and the deer, and are rebuked by Al·Ith.

I take the liberty of doubting whether the actual occasion impressed itself so dramatically on the soldiers, or even on Al·Ith. The soldiers wanted to ride on, and get away from this land they did not understand, and which continually discomfited them. The commander did not want to be put into the position of taking her advice, but nor did he want to ride for hours into a cold wind.

Which in fact was already making itself felt.

Al·Ith was more herself now than she had been for many weeks. She was seeing that while she mourned in her rooms, there had been other things she should have done! Duties had been neglected. She remembered that messages had come in to her from all over the country, which she had been too absorbed in her fierce thoughts to respond to.

She was seeing in herself disobedience, and the results of it. This made her, now, more gentle with this troop of barbarians, and its small-boy commander.

‘You did not tell me your name,’ she asked.

He hesitated. Then: ‘It is Jarnti.’

‘You command the king’s horses?’

‘I am commander of all his forces. Under the king.’

‘My apologies.’ She sighed, and they all heard it. They thought it weakness. Throughout these experiences with her, they could not help feeling in themselves the triumph that barbarian natures show when faced with weakness; and the need to cringe and crowd together when facing strength.

‘I want to leave you for some hours,’ she said.

At this they all, on a single impulse, and without any indication from their leader, crowded around her. She was inside a ring of captors.

‘I cannot allow it,’ said Jarnti.

‘What were your orders from the king?’ she enquired. She was quiet and patient but they heard subservience.

And a great roar of laughter went up from them all. Long tension exploded in them. They laughed and shouted, and the crags behind them echoed. Birds that had already settled themselves for the night wheeled up into the skies. From the long grasses by the road, animals that had been lying hidden broke away noisily.

What Ben Ata had finally shouted at his commander of all the forces, was: ‘Go and get that — — — and bring her here. I’m for it if I don’t — — ’ For while Al·Ith had been weeping and rebellious in her quarters, he had been raging and cursing up and down the camps of his armies. There was not a soldier who had not heard what his king thought of this enforced marriage, while the camps commiserated with him, drinking, laughing, making up ribald toasts which were repeated from one end of Zone Four to the other.

This scene is another favourite of our storytellers and artists. Al·Ith, on her tired horse, is ringed by the brutal laughing men. The cold wind of the plains is pressing her robe close around her. The commander is leaning over her, his face all animal. She is in danger.

And it is true that she was. Perhaps for the only time.

Now night had fallen. Only in the skies behind them was there any light. The sunset sent up flares high towards the crown of the heavens, and made the snow peaks shine. In front of them lay the now black plain, and scattered over it at vast distances were the lights of villages and settlements. On the plateau behind them that they had travelled over, our villages and towns were crowded: it was a populous and busy land. But now they seemed to stand on the verge of nothingness, the dark. The soldiers’ own country was low and mostly flat, and their towns were never built on hills and ridges. They did not like heights. More: as we shall see, they had been taught to fear them. They had been longing for the moment when they could get off that appalling plateau lifted so high among its towering peaks. They had descended from it and, associating flat lands with habitation, saw only emptiness. Their laughter had panic in it. Terror. It seemed they could not stop themselves laughing. And among them was the small silent figure of Al·Ith, who sat quietly while they rolled about in their saddles, making sounds, as she thought, like frightened animals.

Their laughing had to stop at some point. And when it did nothing had changed. She was still there. They had not impressed her with their noise. The illimitable blackness lay ahead.

‘What was Ben Ata’s order?’ she asked again.

An explosion of sniggers, but the commander directed a glance of reproof towards the offenders, although he had been laughing as hard as any of them.

‘His orders?’ she insisted.

A silence.

‘That you should bring me to him, that was it, I think.’

A silence.

‘You will bring me to him no later than tomorrow.’

She remained where she was. The wind was now howling across the plains so that the horses could hardly keep their footing.

The commander gave a brief order which sounded shamefaced. The posse broke up, riding about on the edge of the plain, to find a camping place. She and the commander sat on their tired horses, watching. But normally he would have been with his men who, used to orders and direction, were at a loss. At length he called out that such a place would do, and they all leapt off their horses.

The beasts, used to the low relaxed air of Zone Four, were exhausted from the high altitudes of this place, and were trembling as they stood.

‘There is water around that spur,’ said Al·Ith. He did not argue, but shouted to the soldiers to lead the horses around the spur to drink. He got off his horse, and so did she. A soldier came to lead both animals with the others to the water. A fire was blazing in a glade between deep rocks. Saddles lay about on the grass at intervals: they would be the men’s pillows.

Jarnti was still beside Al·Ith. He did not know what to do with her.

The men were already pulling out their rations from their packs, and eating. The sour powdery smell of dried meat. The reek of spirits.

Jarnti said, with a resentful laugh, ‘Madam, our soldiers seem very interesting to you! Are they so different from your own?’

‘We have no soldiers,’ she said.

This scene, too, is much celebrated among us. The soldiers, illuminated by a blazing fire, are seated on their saddles among the grasses, eating their dried meat and drinking from their flasks. Others are leading back the horses, who have drunk at a stream out of sight behind rocks. Al·Ith stands by Jarnti at the entrance to this little natural fortress. They are watching the horses being closed into a corral that is formed by high rocks. They are hungry, and there is no food for them that night. Al·Ith is gazing at them with pity. Jarnti, towering over the small indomitable figure of our queen, is swaggering and full of bravado.

‘No soldiers?’ said Jarnti, disbelieving. Though of course there had always been rumours to this effect.

‘We have no enemies,’ she remarked. And then added, smiling straight at him, ‘Have you?’

This dumbfounded him.

He could not believe the thoughts her question aroused.

While she was still smiling at him, a soldier came out from the entrance of the little camp and stood at ease close to them.

‘What is he standing there for?’

‘Have you never heard of a sentry?’ he enquired, full of sarcasm.

‘Yes. But no one is going to attack you.’

‘We always post sentries,’ he said.

She shrugged.

Some soldiers were already asleep. The horses drooped and rested behind their rocky barriers.

‘Jarnti, I am going to leave you for some hours,’ she said.

‘I cannot allow you.’

‘If you forbid me, you would be going beyond your orders.’

He was silent.

Here again, a favourite scene. The fire roaring up, showing the sleeping soldiers, the poor horses, and Jarnti, tugging at his beard with both hands in frustrated amazement at Al·Ith, who is smiling at him.

‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you have not eaten.’

She enquired good-humouredly: ‘Do your orders include your forcing me to eat?’

And now he said, confronting her, all trouble and dogged insistence, because of the way he was being turned inside out and upside down by her, and by the situation, ‘Yes, the way I see it, by implication my orders say I should make you eat. And perhaps even sleep, if it comes to that.’

‘Look, Jarnti,’ said she, and went to a low bush that grew not ten paces away. She took some of its fruit. They were lumpy fruits sheathed in papery leaves. She pulled off the leaves. In each were four segments of a white substance. She ate several. The tightness of her mouth showed she was not enjoying them.

‘Don’t eat them unless you want to stay awake,’ she said, but of course he could not resist. He blundered off to the bush, and gathered some for himself, and his mouth twisted up as he tasted the tart crumbly stuff.

‘Jarnti,’ she said, ‘you cannot leave this camp, since you are the commander. Am I correct?’

‘Correct,’ he said, in a clumsy familiarity, which was the only way he knew how to match her friendliness.

‘Well, I am going to walk some miles from here. Since in any case you intend to keep that poor man awake all night for nothing, I suggest you send him with me to make sure I will come back again.’

Jarnti was already feeling the effects of the fruit. He was alert and knew he could not fall off to sleep now.

‘I will leave him on guard and come with you myself,’ he said.

And went to give orders accordingly.

While he did this, Al·Ith walked past the sleeping soldiers to the horses, and gave each one of them, from her palm, a few of the acrid fruits from the bush. Before she had left their little prison they were lifting their heads and their eyes had brightened.

She and Jarnti set off across the blackness of the plain towards the first of the glittering lights.

This scene is always depicted thus: there is a star-crowded sky, a slice of bright moon, and the soldier striding forward made visible and prominent because his chest armour and headpiece and his shield are shining. Beside him Al·Ith is visible only as a dark shadow, but her eyes gleam softly out from her veil.

It could not have been anything like this. The wind was straight in their faces, strong and cold. She wrapped her head completely in her veil, and he had his cloak tight about him and over the lower part of his face; and the shield was held to protect them both from the wind. He had chosen to accompany this queen on no pleasant excursion, and he must have regretted it.

It took three hours to reach the settlement. It was of tents and huts: the herdsmen’s headquarters. They walked through many hundreds of beasts who lifted their heads as they went past, but did not come nearer or move away. The wind was quite enough for them to withstand, and left them no energy for anything else. But as the two came to within calling distance of the first tents, where there was shelter from low scrubby trees, some beasts came nosing towards Al·Ith in the dark, and she spoke to them and held out her hands for them to smell, in greeting.

There were men and women sitting around a small fire outside a tent.

They had lifted their heads, too, sensing the approach of strangers, and Al·Ith called out to them, ‘It is Al·Ith,’ and they called back to her to approach.