The Beginning Place Read online

  He nodded. But he said, “There are no walls, Irena. And now, for us, no ways.”

  The tone of his voice held her silent. He turned to his desk and went on presently with the same forced quietness, “We can’t go on the roads. They are closed. You know that some have been closed to us for a long time. The south road, your road—you know that we don’t use that.” She had not known it, and stared uncomprehending. “But we had the summer pastures and the High Step, and all the eastern ways, and the north road. Now we have none of them. Nobody comes from Three Fountains, or the foothill villages. No traders or merchants. Nothing from the plains. No news from the City of the King. For a while we could go westward, up the mountain, on the paths; but not now. All the gates of Tembreabrezi are locked.”

  There were no gates to lock. Only the street that led out to the south road and the north road, and the paths up and down the mountain west and east, all open, without gate or barrier.

  “Is it the King that says you cannot use the roads?” Irene asked, in frustration at not understanding, and then was alarmed at her rashness in questioning the Master. Learning his language had not, after all, been like learning Spanish in high school, la casa the house, el rey the king…The word rediai, which she thought meant king, did not necessarily mean king, or what she meant by king; she had no way to know what it meant except by hearing it used, and it was not used often, except when they spoke of the City of the King. Perhaps it was her year of Spanish and the beginning syllable “re” that had made her decide that the word meant king. She had no way to be sure. She was afraid she had said something stupid, sacrilegious. The Master’s dark face was turned away from her. She saw that his hands were clenched before him on the desk.

  He had perhaps not even heard her question. “This stranger,” he said, turning but not looking at her, his voice very low but harsh. And he too hesitated.

  “It could be—a mistake—he mistook the way—” A tramp, she wanted to say, a wanderer, a blunderer, camping there overnight without noticing anything about the place, maybe for him there was nothing special about the place, maybe he had crossed no threshold, and he would go on the next day, hitchhiking on into the city probably, he was gone already, he did not belong here. She wanted to say all this, though she could not. She was sure now it was true. It was the truth she wanted and, she saw, that the Master also wanted, for he understood her and considered the possibility with evident relief. He was perhaps not convinced, but she had given him some hope he wanted. He looked directly at her at last, and smiled. His smile was rare, very brief and sweet. “I did not dare hope you would come back, Irena,” he said softly. If she had spoken all she could have said was, “I have always loved you,” but she could not, and there was no need to. He knew his power. He was the Master.

  “Will you stay with us?” he asked.

  Did he mean for good? His tone was restrained; she was not sure what he meant.

  “As long as I can. But I must go back.”

  He nodded.

  “And then when I try to come back, if the gate is shut again—”

  “It will open for you, I think.”

  His eyes were strange, dark as caverns; nothing he said changed that inward gaze.

  “But why—”

  “Why? When you know the answer there’s no question, when there’s no answer there never was a question.” It sounded like a proverb, and his voice was dry and a little mocking; that was the way he had used to talk to her; his return to it comforted her.

  “That is your road,” he said.

  He turned to his desk again, adding, almost indifferently, “The south road and the north.”

  “Could I go north? If something is wrong—Could I go ask for help—carry a message—?”

  “I do not know,” he said, only glancing at her; but there was a flicker of praise or triumph on his face, and it was that that stayed with her, after he had taken her, in accordance with the sedate ways of the house, to greet his mother and have a little formal collation and conversation with her, and after she had left the house and returned to spend the day with Trijiat. For the first time, she thought, he wanted something of her. There was something she could give him, if she could find what it was. She had come closest to it when she spoke of going north. He had turned their talk away from that at once, but not before she had seen the flicker of pleasure, of praise.

  If only she could understand him better! She must take seriously what he had said half-mockingly about questions and answers: He, and she, and all of them here, were subject to the laws of the place, laws as absolute as the law of gravity, as impossible to disobey and as difficult to explain. He had told her, if she understood him at all, that none of the townsfolk could leave the town, prevented by some power or law. But it was possible that she, since she could come to Tembreabrezi, might be able to leave it. Or perhaps he had meant that, being from outside this land, she was outside its laws, and need not obey? Was that what he had meant? But she would obey him. He was her law. If she could please him: if she could find what he wanted! If he would ask, so that she could give…

  This was the longest she had ever stayed in Mountain Town. In the old days her visits had been frequent but short; now that she could spend a week or a fortnight (a night or weekend, on the other side of the gate) if she chose to, the gate had mostly been closed to her. All her longing had been to find it open, to come through. Now she was here, settled in, living at the inn and working with Sofir and Palizot as always, visiting with her friends, playing with their children. All, as always, sat her down to table if they were eating, put her to work if they were working, made her at once and entirely at home. That had been the bliss of the old days, and was still a pleasure. But it was no longer enough. It seemed to her, now, that there was an element of falseness in it, of pretense. The peace she felt here, the homeliness, was truly theirs; but not hers. She came and would leave again, no true part of their life. They did not need her help in their work. They did not need her.

  Unless, as the Master had suggested—or had he?—she could help them not by coming here, not by being here, but by going on farther.

  No one but he had yet spoken of there being anything wrong, so that at first she thought little about it. Then, as she noticed that in fact no one came to the town, and no one left the town, that they were taking the flocks only to the nearer pastures, that there were shortages of salt, of wheat flour, that when Trijiat lost her good sewing needle she was upset and looked for it for days…as she noticed this and that and the other thing she realised that what the Master had said was true: all the roads were closed. But why? by whom, by what? She tried once or twice to speak of the matter, with Trijiat, with Sofir; they avoided answering, Sofir with a meaningless laugh, Trijiat with such open fear that Irene knew she could not bring the subject up again. It was a taboo, or a dread so deep they could not speak of it at all. They spoke of nothing but the day’s doings, and pretended that nothing was wrong. And that was the falseness she felt, the discomfort. They did need help, but they would not admit it.

  What would it be like to go on from Tembreabrezi, northward, down to the plains?

  A couple of years ago, a long Sunday on the other side, she had gone with Sofir and old Hobim the merchant and his crew and a train of tiny donkeys laden with woven goods, first to a village a day’s walk north over the shoulder of the mountain, and then on to the town called Three Fountains, in the northeastern foothills; they had stayed there two days to trade and then come back, six days’ journey altogether. She remembered where the road to Three Fountains turned off eastward and the north road went straight on towards a dark pass. How far down from there to the plains? How far across the plains to the City they spoke of? She had no idea; many days’ walking, no doubt; but she could take food, and there would surely be villages or towns along the way, and so she could cross the long, twilit plains and come to the City and ask help for Tembreabrezi. If they would send help. Or was she forbidden to go on the roads too? But
they had no right to forbid her. If the Master asked her to go, she would go.

  He did not send for her. She grew impatient and restless. She could not understand her friends here going about their work and never talking about what was wrong, like people with cancer saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” like her own mother always saying, “Everything is all right,” she did not want to think about that here, she resented having to think about it. Why didn’t they talk about it? Why didn’t they do something? What were they waiting for?

  At last the Master sent for her to come to a gathering at his house. She had been asked to such gatherings before. Business was largely carried on at the inn, in the public room, but decisions involving more than trade were taken during unhurried, long-drawn-out, chin-rubbing conversations in the hall of the two hearths. Both men and women came; and not always, but often, the Lord of the Manor; and any visitors from other towns who were people of substance or manners. The Master’s mother, Dremornet, white-haired and dark-eyed, sat in state in a velvet armchair under the portrait of the ancestor with a withered arm. If there were not many guests, most gathered about her, leaving the other hearth for private conversations; when there were more people, a group formed at each end of the room. This evening a quiet circle of women and several young men had drawn about the velvet armchair, while three or four elderly men pontificated at the Master at the other hearth. There were of course no strangers there this night but Irene. She stayed in the party with the Master’s mother until he came by, signaling both of them with a glance. Lord Horn had come.

  Dremornet gathered up her skirts and rose to greet the visitor, making him a full curtsy, after which the other women bobbed at him. Lord Horn was a thin, stiff, grey man. He made a brief, stiff bow. Not even the spectacle of the tiny, self-important old lady performing a superbly self-important curtsy uncreased the cold folds of his face. His daughter, a pace behind him, blonde, dressed in pale silks, bowed and smiled palely, and they passed on. Their function, Irene thought, was to be bowed to and to bow; they were figurehead people, empty titles. The master of the town was the one called Master, Dou Sark. But they were old-fashioned people here and kept to old ways and habits, and so they thought they had to have a lord.

  The Master had glanced at her again in passing, and she soon followed him. At the second hearth the townsmen, who had been croaking away like a pond of bullfrogs, now stood solemnly about. Lord Horn listened without expression and to all appearances without interest to something the Master was telling him. The daughter had sat down, characteristically selecting the only uncomfortable chair in the room, a stiff, spindly piece covered in faded brocade. She sat bolt upright and motionless. Between her pastel insipidity and Horn’s dull coldness, the Master’s face was bright and dark as the embers of the fire.

  “The Master tells me,” Lord Horn said to Irene, and paused, looking down at her as if from a distance, from a tower several miles off, with bleared windows through which it was hard to see clearly—“Sark tells me that you met another traveler, on the south road.”

  “I saw a man. I did not speak to him.”

  “Why,” said Lord Horn, and paused again while he got his slow, cold words together—“why did you not speak to him?”

  “He was asleep. He was—he did not belong here—” Her need for words was hot and hasty, she grabbed at the nearest one: “He was a thief.”

  Another long pause, hard to endure. Lord Horn’s grey eyes, which had put her in mind of tower windows, did not look at her any longer; but he spoke again. “How did you know that?”

  “Everything about him,” she said, and hearing the defensive rudeness of her tone she grew angry with the same sudden vindictive rage she had felt seeing the intruder and whenever she thought of him. What right did this old man have to ask her questions? Lordship, the hell with his lordship, another of the thousand words for bully.

  “You think then that the man was not…” a long silence, as if Horn had run permanently out of words, “…could not be the one, the man who…”

  “I do not understand.”

  “The man for whom we wait,” Horn said.

  She saw then that all of them standing there by the fireplace were watching her, and that their faces, the worn, heavy faces of middle-aged and elderly men, were intent, pleading—pleading for the right answer, the word of hope.

  She looked to the Master for help, to tell her what she should say. His face was set, unreadable. Did he, all but imperceptibly, shake his head?

  “The man for whom you wait,” she repeated. “I do not understand. What are you waiting for? Why wait? I can go.” She glanced again at the Master; his eyes were on her now, his expression though still guarded was warm; she was saying what he wanted. “If none of you can go on the roads, send me. I can carry a message. Perhaps I can bring help. Why must you wait for someone else? I am here now. I can go to the City—”

  She looked from the Master to Lord Horn, and was checked by the old man’s expression.

  “It is a long way to the City,” he said in his slow, quiet voice. “A longer journey than you know. But your courage is beyond praise. I thank you, Irena.”

  She stood confused, all the wind out of her sails, till the Master, frowning, drew her away, and she understood that her interview with the Lord of the Mountain was over.

  Alone in her room, early, before her departure, she opened the shutters and watched the dreaming twilight over the roofs and chimneys of the town. She was still warm from bed, she wanted to sleep longer, she wanted to stay longer. When she left would the gate close again? When would she be able, would she ever be able, to come back? The reason why she must go was remote, meaningless: She had been gone a whole night now and if she did not get back to the apartment by seven in the morning she would be late to work…Work, apartment, night, morning, none of it made sense here, words without meaning. Yet, like the force or fear that kept the townspeople from leaving their town, senseless as it might be it must be obeyed. As they must not go, so she must.

  As always, Palizot and Sofir were up to breakfast with her before she left, and Sofir had a packet of bread and cheese for her to take on the long walk back to the gate. They were troubled, and unable to hide their trouble. They were, she saw, afraid for her.

  She looked back once as the way turned. The windows of the town glimmered faint gold in the dark sweep of the forests to the valley floor. Northward above the mountain shoulder she saw one bright star shine clear, gone the next instant, lost, like the reflection in a raindrop or the glitter of mica in sand.

  After crossing the Middle River she ate Sofir’s bread and cheese, and drank the aching-cold water of the river; rested a while and would have liked to fall asleep, but did not, could not; and went on. Nothing threatened her in the forest, nothing frightened her, but she could not rest. She must keep on. She held her light, fast pace, and came at last to the last rise, the crest between red-trunked firs, down the long slope to the rhododendron thickets and through them to the beginning place, the gateway clearing—and saw, before she crossed the water, the blackened ring of stones, the plastic sack half hidden under ferns, the ugly rubbish of the intruder’s camp.

  She drew back at once to the thickets and from their shelter watched for some while. There was no sign of the man himself. Her heartbeat slowed, her face began to burn and her ears to sing a little. She crossed the river, went to the hearth ring—cold—and kicked it apart stone by stone, kicking the stones into the water. She picked up the plastic sack and the bedroll and turned to the river; then, whispering under her breath, “Out, get out, clear out,” she lugged the stuff through the gateway, up the path, and dumped it in the middle of Pincus’s woods at the foot of a blackberry thicket, just off the path. Hurrying on to the edge of the woods she picked out of the ditch a board nailed to a post, the NO HUNTING sign long torn or rotted away, which her eyes if not her mind had noted twelve days (or hours) ago when she came this way. With it she returned at a run to the threshold. Only when she
was across it did she think, “What if I couldn’t have got through?”—but without any thrill of retrospective alarm. She was too angry for fear. She snatched a lump of charred wood from the ruined hearthplace, crossed the river, and sat down on a boulder with the signboard on her knees. Carefully, in black block letters on the ribbed, rain-bleached wood, she printed: KEEP OUT—NO TRESPASSING.

  She planted the sign on the crest of the bank, where it would dominate the whole clearing to the eyes of anyone coming through the gateway. The foot of the post went into the sandy soil easily enough, but the whole thing tended to slant, and she was fetching a rock to pound it in solid when some movement across the water caught her eye. She froze, looking up over the glimmering rush of the river. The man, coming down from the threshold, straight at her. Nothing between them but the water.

  He knelt down, there on the far bank, and put his head down to the water to drink. Only then did she understand that he had not seen her.

  She was near enough to the great rhododendron bushes that she could crouch and draw back, all in one long pulling motion, till the white of her shirt and face was concealed by leaf and shadow. When she looked for the man again he was standing up there across the river, staring—staring at the sign, of course, her sign, KEEP OUT! Her heart leapt again and her mouth opened in a soundless, gasping laugh.

  Standing up he was big, heavy-bodied, as he had looked in the sleeping bag. When he moved at last he was heavy-footed, turning to plod back up the bank. He stopped to stare at the places where his hearth, his pack, his bedroll had been. He moved, stopped, stared. Finally he turned slowly, turned his back and headed for the gateway between the laurels and the pine. Irene clenched her hands in triumph. He stopped again. He turned, and came back, straight down and across the water in a heavy, stumbling charge that brought him up the bank in a rush. He pulled up the sign, broke the board off the post, broke the board across his thigh, the charcoal smearing off on his wet hands, threw down the pieces, and looked around. “You bastards!” he said in a thick voice. “You sneaking bastards!”