Bright Segment (30 page)

“We do as the Lord directs. We do it freely and with all our hearts, and are saved, or we do it blindly until we end in darkness; but serve Him we shall.”

Such confidence is more unnerving than any magic. “I cannot believe that.”

“
Will
not,” she corrects me calmly.

“But I’ve choice! Here we stand, Bradamante, and in the next heartbeat I might slay thee or woo thee or bite thee or fall on the earth and gobble grass; and which of these things I do is for me to decide!”

Slowly and so surely she shakes her head. “It is in thee to serve the Lord, else I should not have been sent to thee. Choice thee has: Thee may serve Him willingly or thee may serve Him blindly; and none has a third way.”

“Thee cannot force—”

She puts up her hands. “We do not force. We do not kill. We need not. The Lord—”

“Thy Lord let thee kill Atlantes!”

“No, Rogero. He is not dead.”

I spring to the crumpled magician; and indeed, he is but stunned. I snatch out his own poiniard, and instantly, under its point, Bradamante thrusts her firm brown arm. “The Lord will take him in his own time, Rogero. Spare him.”

“Spare him! He would have killed thee!”

“But he did not. He too is a servant of God, though unwilling. Spare him.”

I fling down the blade so violently that nought but the jewelled knob at the hilt-top shows between the grass-blades. “Then I will; and having done thee the one service, I shall call my debts discharged. Art satisfied, girl?”

She makes my head bubble, this quiet creature; and I recall Atlantes’ scoffing words, that this dedicated beetle of a Bradamante shall think more of her faith than of my flesh, and that she shall have more brains than I.

Her lashes fall, and “Sobeit,” she says, and not another word.

I need my sword, and to get it I must turn my back on her—a good need. So up the slope I go lightly, just as if her very presence were not like a heat on my shoulder blades. I close my eyes as I spring up the smooth grassway, and it does nothing to shut her out.

Patience, Rogero! Down the hill, over the rise, and she’ll be forgotten!

And in any case, one could come back if one must …

So I let my eyes come open again, and gasp; for there stands the hippogriff, and he has never let me come so close. If I am to continue upward I must go round him, or I must move him. For a split second I falter, and his great head comes round to me; and oh, I’ve looks in the wells of Kazipon which are bottomless, I’ve followed the light of my torch in the endless caverns of Qual, and I’ve known a night when the stars went out; and never before have I looked into such depths and such reaches as the eyes in his eagle head. True bird’s eyes they are, fierce in their very structure and unreadable. Through them the beast sees—what? A soft sac of blood and bones to be a sheath for that golden beak … or a friend … or a passing insect … I should flee. I should stand. I should sidle about him and be wary. I should, I should—

But I shall ride him!

I finish my stride and go straight to him, and when my hand falls on his purple shoulder he swings his head forward and high, and trembles so that from his wings comes a sound like soft rain on a silken tent. My heart leaps so that I must leap with it or lose it, and with a single motion I am on his back and my knees have him.
Aiee!
such a shout comes from me, it would rival his own; it is full of the joyous taste of terror. With it I fetch him a buffet on the withers which jars me to the very neckbones, and before I can feel the blow as any more than a shock, his wings are open and thrusting, and he rears and
leaps
 …

It is a leap that never will end; fast he flies and faster hurtling higher just at the angle of his leap, and the surges of his body are most strange to a horseman. Only the glint of the golden ring convinces me that we are not involved in an enchantment; for flying sunward warms nothing, curious as it may seem, and the bright air grows cold as the hoary hinges of perdition’s door.

I think of poor sod-shackled Bradamante, and look back and down; but by now she is lost in that indeterminate new place between haze and horizon, and there, for all of me, she may stay. I shrug, and find that I have not shrugged away the picture of her face, which is strange, since it is hardly one worth remembering. Surely, Rogero, thou art not smitten?

With her? With—
that?

Ah no, it could not be. There must be something else, something buried in the whole mosaic of our meeting. Of our parting … ah; that was it!

Atlantes is not dead.

That in itself is nothing. Atlantes distant is, to me, as good as Atlantes dead. But Atlantes slowly waking in the meadow, his enchantments all destroyed, his shield and steed gone—and the peaceful author of his ruin doubtless helping him to his feet with her sturdy unwomanly hands … this is another matter.

But forget it! The sly-tongued termagant could, by the time Atlantes was fully conscious, have him so morassed in debate he would forget to be angry. Bradamante has a most powerful helplessness;
she attacks with the irresistible weapon of being unarmed, immobilizes the enemy by surrendering, and at last sits on his feeble form, holding by the great weight of her passivity. I need not fear for Bradamante.

But the ring flicks a mote of light into mine eye, and I know I have taken her last defense and left her at the mercy of the merciless, and this is small thanks indeed for what she dared for me.

But what else would a knight, a true knight, do?

One thing a knight would do, I tell myself bitterly, is to regain his sword if he lost it, and not pleasure himself with a hippogriff, however beautiful. Thou art no knight, Rogero; not yet, not again. Regain thine own holy blade, its very hilt encrusted with thy sacred promises, ere thee call thyself knight again.

Back, then, for the sword, and decide then about the maiden; and keep thyself armed with the thought of thy destiny—it is with her, and means soaking in meekness until I am mushy as bread in a milk bowl … 
no!
by the heart of the fire in the nethermost pit, I shall get my blade and hew out a new destiny!

There are no reins, and I remember that the magician controlled the beast with words. “Enough, my beauty!” I cry. “Back now—take me back!” And somewhere inside a voice sniggers
Thee deludes thyself with the matter of the sword; it’s the plight of the maid that drives thee
. “No!” I cry, “she shall not have me! Let her King of kings save her, she’s His ward, not mine!” And I thump the hippogriff with my hard-tooled heels: “Back, my beauty, take me back!”

And the hippogriff tilts to the wind, and balances and sails as before, for these are not the magic words.

“Turn! Turn!” I bellow, rowelling him. I ball my fist and sink half of it in the feathered root of his neck just forward of the shoulder; for by this, if rightly done, one may stagger a horse. “Mule!” I shriek. “Turn thy spavined carcass about ere I tie a knot in thy neck!”

At this the eagle’s head turns about like an owl’s and the measureless eyes loom over me. Slowly the beak opens that I may see the spear tip and the scissor sides of that frightful weapon. Like a blind animal, the gray-pink tongue shifts enough for any soldier. Fear, however, is an assistant to safety only up to a point, and I am
far past it. “Go back, aborted monster, ere I snatch out that ugly horn and crack thine eyeballs together! By the pleasure-bred blood of thy half-bred dam and the—” Thus far I rant, and he strikes. And would he had killed with the one stroke; for instead he has slipped the point of his beak between my saddle and my hams, and I am flipped, unharmed and sore humiliated, high in the air over him. I am spinning like a broken lance, or the earth is circling me head to heel, chased by a blazing band of sun. I see the glory-tinted wings below me, too small and far away; around I go and see them again closer; and again, and this time I must touch, clutch; I claw my hands and flex my legs, and turn again—and the hippogriff slips away to the side to let me plunge past him.

I cover my eyes and I scream; I scream till my tendons cannot bear it, sob and scream again fit to startle the starlings off every bank from here to Brookline, Mass. I recant, I’ll accept my destiny and honestly wed the little brown nun, if she’ll have me; ay, and do for her Lord what paltry dog-tricks He’ll ask of me; only make this hippogriff, this lovely, legitimate, honorable beauty of a hippogriff save me.
Aiee!
and I’ll lie on my back on a scaffold and paint Thee murals, Lord, and I swear never to punch Miss Brandt in the eye, or anywhere else again, if thee’ll but send me a cloud or an eagle or a parachute or a helicopter … oh holy Pete, what a spot for him to lose his mind in and be me again. I wonder if he knows it won’t take any real time at all, where he is. And there below me the mottled earth pursues a sun-turned-rocket … whew. Giles, old boy, don’t you shut your eyes again until you have to—“Hullo!”

There at the area railing stands a smut-faced urchin and a smaller but female version of himself, all eyeballs and streaky cheeks. “Gee, mister, you all right? You sick?” and the smaller one: “Canchasee, he’s
dyne!
”

“Don’t mind me, kids,” I mumble. “I just fell off a hippogriff.” I find I’m half-kneeling and try to stand, and it seems my hands are locked around the iron uprights of the railing. I stay there stopped and feeling very foolish while they watch me, and I concentrate from my stone-cold marrow up and out until at last my left fingers begin to stir. With a little more effort the hand comes free, and with
it I disengage the right, one finger at a time. I straighten up then and look a while at my hands and wiggle them. “He ain’t dyne,” says the boy in a robbed tone, and his cohort says defensively, “Anyway he
wuz
dyne,” because her ardent hopes had made it her production.

Briefly, a sun flashes past, but I ignore it; I’ll be all right now. You get so you know the signs. “Here,” I say, “I’ll try to do better next time,” and I give them money, I don’t know how much but it must be enough; they beat it.

I put my elbows on the railing, keeping these spastic hands away from it, and look across the street. The clock hands haven’t moved any that I can see, and Miss Brandt, who was just starting out the door when my addled brains caught up with me, is pausing on the portico, the door just closing behind her. Two seconds, three maybe. My God, what a way to live!

Miss Brandt looks up the street and down, descends the shallow steps and turns right toward the old Mayor’s statue. When she has quite gone I cross to the bank and go inside. At the island table I write a check, and take it to the wicket where the fierce-faced man is caged. He takes the paper and turns it over with the same snap Mr. Saffron used, and that is a trick I must learn one day. “You’ll need to get this initialed,” he says. So off I go to Mr. Saffron again, and stand in front of his shiny desk until he looks up at me and makes the pink meaty ridge across and above his narrowed eyes. The man disapproves of me to the point of ecstasy, and I take this as a kindness; for it makes us both feel important. I let the check fall to him, and he looks, snaps, looks, and grunts. “All right, Mr. Ahh,” he says, and squiggles on it with his personal pen. I take the check and stand where I am.

“Well?”

“I want to know whose money this is.”

“Yours.” He has a way of snapping off the margins of his words as if he doesn’t want you to have a whole one.

“Yes, but—”

“The deposit is in your name; surely that’s sufficient!”

I look at the check. “Is there any more left?”

He is offended by the whole thing, but he is stuck with it. “There is,” he says.

“Much?’

“More than you can spend today,” he says. “Or this week.”

“Well, dammit, how
much?
”

He sort of spreads his pale-pink hands, which means, I gather, that this is not an account like other accounts, and he wishes he could do something about the irregularity but he can’t. He says, “That is the one and final checkbook you get. Aside from that, there doesn’t seem to—ahh—be any upper limit. And now you’ll excuse me, I’ve a great deal to good day Mr. Mmmm.” And down he goes to his papers.

Well, I’ve asked enough questions to know there won’t be any answers. I go back to the wicket and slide the fierce one the check. “Half in hundreds and the rest in small bills.” He makes a long snort or a short sigh, clicks the bars between us down tight, lets himself out the back with a key, and is gone for too long, but I don’t mind about that just now. Pretty soon he’s back with a sack. He opens the wicket and starts taking stacks out of the sack and sliding them to me. The sixty hundreds go into my socks; they have elastic tops and pull up high enough. The sixty fifties fan out flat enough to go between my belly and my knit shorts, though they hump up some. Then I spend some time with the hundred and eighty twenties and tens, cramming ’em into two side and one back pants pocket. By now I’m lumpy as a sofa cushion just out of the wet wash and I’ve collected quite a crowd. The fierce face flutes, “You’re going to run into trouble, carrying all that money that way,” as if it was a wish, and I say “No, I won’t. They all think I’m crazy, and there’s no telling what a crazy man will do.” I say it good and loud, and all the people watching stop their buzz-buzz and back off a little. They make a wide empty aisle for me when I start away.

“Wait!” cries the teller, and punches some keys on his little machine. Coins slide down the half-spiral chute and pile up in the cup at the botttom with a cast-iron clink. “Wait! Here’s your twenty-eight cents!”

“Keep it!” I bellow from the door, and go out feeling a lot happier than I’ve been feeling lately. All my life I’ve wanted to leave
twenty-eight cents for a bank teller, who wouldn’t put it in his pocket to save his soul, and who hasn’t got any place for it in his books.

Down the street there’s a big men’s shop with little letters over the door and a windowful of somber-colored suits with no creases in the jacket-arms. I look them over until I find the one with the most pockets and then I go inside.

It’s like a church in there, but with wall-to-wall broadloom, and the only showcases I can see are the two little ones set into mahogany pillars, one with tie-clasps and collar pins, one with four hand-painted silk ties. I go look at the first one. Every velvet box has a humble little card with “the” on it:
$200 the set. $850 the pair
. I’m on my way to look at the ties when a tall man with a paper carnation steps out of a potted palm and stands where I have to run him down in case I’m not going to stop.