The Shadow of the Torturer

23. HILDEGRIN

With what must surely have been the last strength I possessed, I managed to throw Terminus Est onto the floating track of sedge and grasp its ragged margin before I sank again.

Someone caught me by the wrist. I looked up expecting Agia; it was not she but a woman younger still, with streaming yellow hair. I strove to thank her, but water, not words, poured from my mouth. She tugged and I struggled, and at last I lay wholly sup-ported on the sedge, so weak I could do nothing more. I must have rested there at least as long as it takes to say the angelus, and perhaps longer. I was conscious of the cold, which grew worse, and of the sagging of the whole fabric of rotting plants, which bent beneath my weight until I was half submerged again. I breathed in great gasps that failed to satisfy my lungs, and coughed water; water trickled from my nostrils too. Someone (it was a man’s voice, a loud one I seemed to have heard a long time before) said, “Pull him over or he’ll sink.” I was lifted by my belt. In a few moments more I was able to stand, though my legs trembled so I feared I would fall.

Agia was there, and the blond girl who had helped me onto the sedge, and a big, beef-faced man. Agia asked what had happened, and half-conscious though I was I noticed how pale she was.

“Give him time,” the big man said. “He’ll be all right soon enough.” And then, “Who in Phlegethon are you?”

He was looking at the girl, who seemed as dazed as I felt. She made a stammering sound, “D-d-d-d,” then hung her head and was silent. From hair to heels she was smeared with mud, and what clothing she had seemed no better than rags. The big man asked Agia, “Where did that one come from?”

“I don’t know. When I looked back to see what was keeping Severian, she was pulling him onto this floating path.”

“Good thing she did, too. Good for him, anyway. Is she mad? Or chant-caught here, you think?”

I said, “Whatever she is, she saved me. Can’t you give her something to cover herself with? She must be freezing.” I was freezing myself, now that I was alive enough to notice it.

The big man shook his head, and seemed to draw his heavy coat about him more closely. “Not unless she gets clean I won’t. And she won’t unless she’s put back in the water, and stirred around, too. But I’ve something here that’s the next best thing, and maybe better.” From one of his coat pockets he took a metal flask shaped like a dog, which he handed to me.

A bone in the dog’s mouth proved to be the stopper. I offered the flask to the blond girl, who at first seemed not to know what to do with it. Agia took it from her and held it to her lips until she had taken several swallows, then handed it back to me. The contents seemed to be plum brandy; its fiery impact washed away the bitterness of the fen water very pleasantly. By the time I replaced the bone in the dog’s mouth, his belly was, I think, better than half empty.

“Now then,” said the big man, “I think you people ought to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here—and don’t none of you say you’ve just come to see the sights of the garden. I see enough gawkers these days to know them before they come in hailing distance.” He looked at me. “That’s a good big whittle you’ve got there, to begin with.”

Agia said, “The armiger is in costume. He has been challenged, and has come to cut an avern.”

“He’s in costume and you aren’t, I suppose. Do you think I don’t know stage brocade? And bare feet too, when I see them?”

“I never said I was not in costume, nor that I was of his rank. As for my shoes, I left them outside so as not to ruin them in this water.” The big man nodded in a way that gave no clue as to whether he believed her or not. “Now you, goldy-hair. The embroidered baggage here has already said she don’t know you. And from the look of him, I don’t believe her fish—that you pulled out for her, and a good piece of work that was, too—knows any more than I do. Maybe not that much. So who are you?”

The blond girl swallowed. “Dorcas.”

“And how’d you get here, Dorcas? And how’d you get in the water? For that’s where you’ve been, plainly. You couldn’t of got that wet just pulling out our young friend.”

The brandy had brought a flush to the girl’s cheeks, but her face was as vacant and bewildered as before, or nearly so. “I don’t know,” she whispered. Agia asked, “You don’t remember coming here?”

Dorcas shook her head.

“Then what’s the last thing you do remember?”

There was a long silence. The wind seemed to be blowing harder than ever, and despite the drink, I was miserably cold. At last Dorcas murmured, “Sitting by a window… There were pretty things in the window. Trays and boxes, and a rood.”

The big man said, “Pretty things? Well, if you was there, I’m assured there was.”

“She’s mad,” Agia said. “Either someone’s been taking care of her and she’s wandered away, or no one is taking care of her, which seems more likely from the state of her clothes, and she wandered in here when the curators weren’t looking.”

“It may be somebody’s cracked her over the head, took her things, and threw her in here thinking she was gone. There’s more ways in, Mistress Slops, than the curator knows of. Or maybe somebody brought her in to be sunk when she was only sick and sleepin’. In a com’er, as they call it, and the water woke her up.”

“Surely whoever brought her in would have seen her.”

“They can stay under a long time in a com’er, so I’ve heard. But whichever way it was, it don’t much matter now. Here she is, and it’s up to her, I should say, to find out where she come from and who she is.”

I had dropped the brown mantle and was tyying to wring my guild cloak dry; but I looked up when Agia said, “You’ve been asking all of us who we are. Who are you?”

“You’ve every right to know,” the big man said. “Every right in the world, and I’ll give you better bona fides than any of you have given me. Only after I does so, I must be about my own business. I come because I saw the young armiger here drowning, like any good man would. But I’ve my own affairs to take care of, the same as the next.”

With that he pulled off his tall hat, and reaching inside produced a greasy card about twice the size of the calling cards I had occasionally seen in the Citadel. He handed it to Agia, and I peered over her shoulder. In florid script, the legend read:

“And that’s who I am, Mistress Slops and young sieur—which I hope you won’t mind my calling you, firstly because you’re younger nor me, and secondly because you’re a sight younger than what she is, for all you was probably born only a couple years sooner. And I’ll be on my way.

I stopped him. “Before I fell in, I met an old man in a skiff who told me there was someone farther down the track who could ferry us across the lake. I think you must be the man he referred to. Will you take us?”

“Ah, the one what’s lookin’ for his wife, poor soul. Well, he’s been a good friend to me many a time, so if he recommends you, I suppose I’d better do it. My scow will hold four in a pinch.”

He strode off motioning for us to follow; I noticed that his boots, which seemed to have been greased, sank in the sedge even deeper than my own. Agia said, “She’s not coming with us.” Still it was obvious that she (Dorcas) was, trailing along behind Agia and looking so forlorn that I dropped behind to try to comfort her. “I’d lend you my mantle,” I whispered to her, “if it weren’t so wet it would make you colder than you are already. But if you’ll go along this track the other way, you’ll come out of here altogether and into a corridor where it’s warmer and drier, Then if you’ll look for a door with Jungle Garden on it, that will let you into a place where the sun is warm and you’ll be quite comfortable.”

I had no sooner spoken than I remembered the pelycosaur we had seen in the jungle. Fortunately, perhaps, Dorcas showed no sign of having heard what I said. Something in her face conveyed that she was afraid of Agia, or at least aware, in a helpless way, of having displeased her; but there was no other indication she was any more alert to her surroundings than a somnambulist. Conscious that I had failed to relieve her misery, I began again. “There’s a man in the corridor, a curator. I’m sure he’ll at least try to find some clothes and a fire for you.”

The wind whipped Agia’s chestnut hair as she looked back at us. “There are too many of these beggar girls for anyone to be worried about one, Severian. Including yourself.”

At the sound of Agia’s voice, Hildegrin glanced over his shoulder. “I know a woman might take her in. Yes, and clean her up and give her some clothes. There’s a high-bred shape under that mud, thin though she is.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Agia snapped, “You contract laborers, according to your card, but what’s your business here?”

“Just what you said, Mistress. My business.”

Dorcas had begun to shiver. “Honestly,” I told her, “all you have to do is go back. It’s much warmer in the corridor. Don’t go in the Jungle Garden. You might go into the Sand Garden, it’s sunny and dry in there.” Something in what I had said seemed to touch a chord in her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

“The Sand Garden? You’d like that?”

Very softly: “Sun.”

“Here’s the old scow now,” Hildegrin announced. “With so many, we’re going to have to be particular about the seatin’. And there’s to be no movin’ about—she’ll be low in the water. One of the women in the bow, please, and the other and the young armiger in the stem.”

I said, “I’d be happy to take an oar.”

“Ever rowed before? I thought not. No, you’d best sit in the stern like I told you. It ain’t much harder pullin’ two oars than one, and I’ve done it many a time, beheve me, though there was half a dozen in her with me.” His boat was like himself, wide, rough, and heavy-looking. Bow and stem were square, so much so that there was hardly any horizontal taper from the waist, where the rowlocks were, though the hull was shallower at the ends. Hildegrin got in first, and standing with one leg to either side of the bench, used an oar to nudge the boat closer to shore for us.

“You,” Agia said, taking Dorcas by the arm. “You sit up there in front.” Dorcas seemed willing to obey, but Hildegrin stopped her. “If you don’t mind, Mistress,” he said to Agia, “I’d sooner it was you in the bow. I won’t be able to keep my eye on her, you see, when I’m rowin’, unless she sits behind. She’s not right, which even you and me can agree on, and low as we’ll be I’d like to know if she starts friskin’ around.”

Dorcas surprised us all by saying, “I’m not mad. It’s just… I feel as if I’ve just been wakened.”

Hildegrin made her sit in the stern with me nonetheless. “Now this,” he said as he pushed us off, “this is something you’re not likely to forget if you’ve never done it before. Crossin’ the Lake of Birds here in the middle of the Garden of Everlastin’ Sleep.” His oars dipping into the water made a dull and somehow melancholy sound.

I asked why it was called the Lake of Birds.

“Because so many’s found dead in the water, is what some say. But it might only be that that’s because there’s so many here. There’s a great deal said against Death. I mean by the people that has to die, drawin’ her picture like a crone with a sack, and all that. But she’s a good friend to birds, Death is. Wherever there’s dead men and quiet, you’ll find a good many birds, that’s been my experience.”

Recalling how the thrushes sang in our necropolis, I nodded. “Now if you’ll look past my shoulder, you’ll have a clear view of the shore ahead of us and be able to see a lot of things you couldn’t before, because of the rushes growin’ all around you back there. You’ll notice, if it’s not too misty, that the land rises farther on. The bogginess stops there, and the trees begin. Can you see ‘em?”

I nodded again, and beside me Dorcas nodded as well. “That’s because this whole peep show is meant to look like the mouth of a dead volcaner. The mouth of a dead man is what some say, but that’s not really so. If it was, they’d of put in teeth. You’ll remember, though, that when you come in here you come up through a pipe in the ground.”

Once more, Dorcas and I nodded together. Though Agia was no more than two strides from us, she was nearly out of sight behind Hildegrin’s broad shoulders and fearnought coat.

“Over there,” he continued, jerking his square chin to show the direction, “you ought to be able to see a spot of black. Just about halfway up, it is, between the bog and the rim. Some sees it and thinks it’s where they come out of, but that’s behind you and lower down, and a whole lot smaller. This that you see now is the Cave of the Cumaean—the woman that knows the future and the past and everything else. There’s some that say this whole place was built only for her, though I don’t believe it.”

Softly, Dorcas asked, “How could that be?” and Hildegrin misunderstood her, or at least pretended to do so.

“The Autarch wants her here, so they say, so he can come and talk without travelin’ to the other side of the world. I wouldn’t know about that, but sometimes I see somebody walkin’ around up there, and metal or maybe a jewel or two flashin’. Who it is I wouldn’t know, and since I don’t want to know my future—and I know my past, I should think, better than her—I don’t go near the cave. People come sometimes hopin’ to know when they’ll be married, or about success in trade. But I’ve observed they don’t often come back.” We had nearly reached the center of the lake. The Garden of Endless Sleep rose around us like the sides of a vast bowl, mossy with pines toward the lip, scummed with rushes and sedge below. I was still very cold, more so because of the inactivity of sitting in the boat while another rowed; I was beginning to worry about what the immersion in water might do to the blade of Terminus Est if I did not dry and oil it soon, yet even so, the spell of the place held me. (A spell there was, surely, in this garden. I could almost hear it humming over the water, voices chanting in a Ianguage I did not know but understood.) I think it held everyone, even Hildegrin, even Agia. For some time we rowed in silence; I saw geese, alive and content for all I could tell, bobbing a long way off; and once, like something in a dream, the nearly human face of a manatee looking into my own through a few spans of brownish water.