The Claw Of The Conciliator (26 page)

MAID: Your Grace—

CONTESSA: Which I doubt. This afternoon she laid out a purple stole with my green capote. I was to look like a post decked with morning-glories, it would seem.

MESCHIA
, who has been growing angrier as she speaks, strikes her, knocking her down. Unseen behind him, the
AUTARCH
flees.

MESCHIA: Brat! Don’t trifle with holy things when I am near, or dare do anything but what I tell you.

MAID: Who are you, sir?

MESCHIA: I am the parent of the human race, my child. And you are my child, as she is.

MAID: I hope you will forgive her—and me. We had heard you were dead.

MESCHIA: That requires no apology. Most are, after all. But I have come round again, as you see, to welcome the new dawn.

NOD: (Speaking and moving after his long silence and immobility.) We have come too early.

MESCHIA: (Pointing.) A giant! A giant!

CONTESSA: Oh! Solange! Kyneburga!

MAID: I’m here, Your Grace. Lybe is here.

NOD: Too early for the New Sun by some time still.

CONTESSA: (Beginning to weep.) The New Sun is coming! We shall melt like dreams.

MESCHIA: (Seeing that
NOD
intends no violence.) Bad dreams. But it will be the best thing for you, you understand that, don’t you?

CONTESSA: (Recovering a little.) What I don’t understand is how you, who suddenly seem so wise, could mistake the Autarch for the Universal Mind.

MESCHIA: I know that you are my daughters in the old creation. You must be, since you are human women, and I have had none in this.

NOD: His son will take my daughter to wife. It is an honor our family has done little to deserve—we are only humble people, the children of Gea—but we will be exalted. I will be … What will I be, Meschia? The father-in-law of your son. It may be, if you don’t object, that someday my wife and I will visit our daughter on the same day you come to see him. You wouldn’t refuse us, would you, a place at the table? We would sit on the floor, naturally.

MESCHIA: Of course not. The dog does that already—or will, when we see him. (To the CONTESSA:) Has it not struck you that I may know more of him you call the Universal Mind than your Autarch does of himself? Not only your Universal Mind, but many lesser powers wear our humanity like a cloak when they will, sometimes only as concerns two or three of us. We who are worn are seldom aware that, seeming ourselves to ourselves, we are yet Demiurge, Paraclete, or Fiend to another.

CONTESSA: That is wisdom I have gained late, if I must fade with the New Sun’s rising. Is it past midnight?

MAID: Nearly so, Your Grace.

CONTESSA: (Pointing to the audience.) All these fair folk—what will befall them?

MESCHIA: What befalls leaves when their year is past, and they are driven by the wind?

CONTESSA: If—

MESCHIA
turns to watch the eastern sky, as though for the first sign of dawn.

CONTESSA: If—

MESCHIA: If what?

CONTESSA: If my body held a part of yours—drops of liquescent tissue locked in my loins …

MESCHIA: If it did, you might wander Urth for a time longer, a lost thing that could never find its way home. But I will not bed you. Do you think that you are more than a corpse? You are less.

MAID
faints.

CONTESSA: You say you are the father of all things human. It must be so, for you are death to woman.

The stage darkens. When the light returns,
MESCHIANE
and
JAHI
are lying together beneath a rowan tree. There is a door in the hillside behind them.
JAHI’S
lip is split and puffed, giving her a pouting look. Blood trickles from it to her chin.

MESCHIANE: How strong I would be still to search for him, if only I knew you would not follow me.

JAHI: I move with the strength of the World Below, and will follow you to the second ending of Urth, if need be. But if you strike me again you will suffer for it.

MESCHIANE
lifts her fist, and
JAHI
cowers back.

MESCHIANE: Your legs were shaking worse than mine when we decided to rest here.

JAHI: I suffer far more than you. But the strength of the World Below is to endure past endurance—even as I am more beautiful than you, I am a more tender creature by far.

MESCHIANE: We’ve seen that, I think.

JAHI: I warn you again, and there will be no third warning. Strike me at your peril.

MESCHIANE: What will you do? Summon up Erinys to destroy me? I have no fear of that. If you could, you would have done it long before.

JAHI: Worse. If you strike me again, you will come to enjoy it.

Enter
FIRST
SOLDIER
and
SECOND
SOLDIER
, armed with pikes.

FIRST
SOLDIER: Look here!

SECOND
SOLDIER: (To the Women:) Down, down! Don’t stand, or like a heron I’ll skewer you. You’re coming with us.

MESCHIANE: On our hands and knees?

FIRST
SOLDIER: None of your insolence!

He prods her with his pike, and as he does there is a groaning almost too deep for hearing. The stage vibrates in sympathy with it, and the ground shakes.

SECOND
SOLDIER: What was that?

FIRST
SOLDIER: I don’t know.

JAHI: The end of Urth, you fool. Go ahead and spear her. It’s the end of you anyway.

SECOND
SOLDIER: Little you know! It’s the beginning for us. When the order came to search the garden, special mention was made of you two, and orders given to bring you back. Ten chrisos you’ll be worth, or I’m a cobbler.

He seizes
JAHI
, and as soon as he does so,
MESCHIANE
darts off into the darkness.

FIRST
SOLDIER
runs after her.

SECOND
SOLDIER: Bite me, will you!

He strikes
JAHI
with the shaft of his weapon. They struggle.

JAHI: Fool! She’s escaping!

SECOND
SOLDIER: That’s Ivo’s worry. I’ve got my prisoner, and he let his escape, if he doesn’t catch her. Come on, we’re going to see the chiliarch.

JAHI: Will you not love me before we leave this winsome spot?

SECOND
SOLDIER: And have my manhood cut off and shoved into my mouth? Not I!

JAHI: They’d have to find it first.

SECOND
SOLDIER: What’s that? (Shakes her.)

JAHI: You take the office of Urth, who will not trouble herself for me. But wait—release me only for a moment and I will show you wonderful things.

SECOND
SOLDIER: I can see them now, for which I give all thanks to the moon.

JAHI: I can make you rich. Ten chrisos will be as nothing to you. But I have no power while you grasp my body.

SECOND
SOLDIER: Your legs are longer than the other woman’s, but I’ve seen that you don’t move so readily on them. Indeed, I think that you can scarcely stand.

JAHI: No more can I.

SECOND
SOLDIER: I’ll hold your necklace—the chain looks stout enough. If that’s sufficient, show me what you can do. If it’s not, come with me. You’ll be no freer while I have you.

JAHI
raises both hands, with the little fingers, index fingers, and thumbs extended. For a moment there is silence, then a strange, soft music filled with trillings. Snow falls in gentle flakes.

SECOND
SOLDIER: Stop that!

He seizes one arm and jerks it down. The music stops abruptly. A few last snowflakes settle on his head.

SECOND
SOLDIER: That was not gold.

JAHI: Yet you saw.

SECOND
SOLDIER: There’s an old woman in my home village who can work the weather too. She’s not as quick as you, I admit, but then she’s a lot older, and feeble.

JAHI: Whoever she may be, she is not a thousandth part as old as I.

Enter the
STATUE
, moving slowly and as though blind.

JAHI: What is that thing?

SECOND
SOLDIER: One of Father Inire’s little pets. It can’t hear you or make a sound. I’m not even sure it’s alive.

JAHI: Why, neither am I, for all of that.

As the
STATUE
passes near her, she strokes its cheek with her free hand.

JAHI: Lover … lover … lover. Have you no greeting for me?

STATUE: E-e-e-y!

SECOND
SOLDIER: What’s this? Stop! Woman, you said you had no power while I held you.

JAHI: Behold my slave. Can you fight him? Go ahead—break your spear on that broad chest.

The
STATUE
kneels and kisses
JAHI’S
foot.

SECOND
SOLDIER: No, but I can outrun him.

He throws
JAHI
across his shoulder and runs. The door in the hill opens. He enters, and it slams shut behind him. The
STATUE
hammers it with mighty blows, but it does not yield. Tears stream down his face. At last he turns away and begins to dig with his hands.

GABRIEL: (Offstage.) Thus stone images keep faith with a departed day, Alone in the desert when man has fled away.

As the
STATUE
continues to dig, the stage grows dark. When the lights come up again, the
AUTARCH
is seated on his throne. He is alone on stage, but silhouettes projected on screens to either side of him indicate that he is surrounded by his court.

AUTARCH: Here I sit as though the lord of a hundred worlds. Yet not master even of this.

The tramp of marching men is heard offstage. There is a shouted order.

AUTARCH: Generalissimo!

Enter a
PROPHET
. He wears a goat skin and carries a staff whose head has been crudely carved into a strange symbol.

PROPHET: A hundred portents are abroad. At Incusus, a calf was dropped that had no head, but mouths in its knees. A woman of known propriety has dreamed she is with child by a dog, last night a shower of stars fell hissing onto the southern ice, and prophets walk abroad in the land.

AUTARCH: You yourself are a prophet.

PROPHET: The Autarch himself has seen them!

AUTARCH: My archivist, who is most learned in the history of this spot, once informed me that over a hundred prophets have been slain here—stoned, burned, torn by beasts, and drowned. Some have even been nailed like vermin to our doors. Now I would learn of you something of the coming of the New Sun, so long prophesied. How is it to come about? What does it mean? Speak, or we shall give the old archivist another mark for his tally, and train the pale moonflower to climb that staff.

PROPHET: I despair of satisfying you, but I shall attempt it.

AUTARCH: Do you not know?

PROPHET: I know. But I know you for a practical man, concerned with the affairs of this universe alone, who seldom looks higher than the stars.

AUTARCH: For thirty years I have prided myself on that.

PROPHET: Yet even you must know that cancer eats the heart of the old sun. At its center, matter falls in upon itself, as though there were there a pit without bottom, whose top surrounds it.

AUTARCH: My astronomers have long told me so.

PROPHET: Think on an apple rotten from the bud. Fair still without, until it collapses into foulness at last.

AUTARCH: Every man who finds himself still strong in the latter half of life has thought on that fruit.

PROPHET: So much then for the old sun. But what of its cancer? What know we of that, save that it deprives Urth of heat and light, and at last of life?

Sounds of struggle are heard offstage. There is a scream of pain, and a crash as though a large vase had been knocked from its pedestal.

AUTARCH: We will learn what that commotion is soon enough, Prophet. Continue.

PROPHET: We know it to be far more, for it is a discontinuity in our universe, a rent in its fabric bound by no law we know. From it nothing comes—all enters in, nought escapes. Yet from it anything may appear, for it alone of all the things we know is no slave to its own nature.

Enter
NOD
, bleeding, prodded by pikes held offstage.

AUTARCH: What is this miscreation?

PROPHET: The very proof of those portents I spoke to you. In future times, so it has long been said, the death of the old sun will destroy Urth. But from its grave will rise monsters, a new people, and the New Sun. Old Urth will flower then as a butterfly from its dry husk, and the New Urth shall be called Ushas.

AUTARCH: Yet all we know will be swept aside? This ancient house in which we stand? Yourself? Me?

NOD: I have no wisdom. Yet I heard a wise man—soon to be a relative of marriage—say not long ago that all that is for the best. We are but dreams, and dreams possess no life by their own right. See, I am wounded. (Holds out his hand.) When my wound heals, it will be gone. Should it with its bloody lips say it is sorry to heal? I am only trying to explain what another said, but that is what I think he meant.

Deep bells toll offstage.

AUTARCH: What’s that? You, Prophet, go and see who’s ordered that clamor, and why.

Exit
PROPHET
.

NOD: I feel sure your bells have begun the welcome of the New Sun. It is what I came to do myself. It is our custom, when an honored guest arrives, to roar and beat our chests, and pound the ground and the trunks of trees all about with gladness, and lift the greatest rocks we can, and send them down the gorges in honor of him. I will do that this morning, if you will set me free, and I feel sure Urth herself will join me. The very mountains will leap into the sea when the New Sun rises up today.

AUTARCH: And from where did you come? Tell me, and I’ll release you.

NOD: Why, from my own country, to the east of Paradise.

AUTARCH: And where is that?

NOD
points to the east.

AUTARCH: And where is Paradise? In the same direction?

NOD: Why, this is Paradise—we are in Paradise, or at least under it.