Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [333]
She was aware of Mai TolramKetinet, trailing dolefully behind her, hating exile. ‘Keep up, Mai,’ she called encouragingly. Mai did not respond.
XI
Journey to the Northern Continent
The old man wore an ankle-length keedrant which had seen better days. On his head was a scoop-shaped hat, which protected his scrawny neck as well as his bald pate from the sun. At intervals, he lifted a shaking hand to his lips to puff at the stem of a veronikane. He stood all alone, waiting to leave the palace for good.
At his back was a coach of light build, loaded with his few personal belongings. Two hoxneys were harnessed between the shafts. It needed only a driver, and then SartoriIrvrash could be gone.
The wait afforded him a chance to look across the parade to a corner where an old bent slave with a stick was encouraging a mountain of papers to burn. That bonfire contained all the papers ransacked from the ex-chancellor’s suite, including the manuscripts which formed ‘The Alphabet of History and Nature’.
The smoke rose into a pallid sky from which light ash occasionally fell. Temperatures were as high as ever, but a grey overcast covered everything. The ash was born on an easterly airstream from a newly erupting volcano some distance from Matrassyl. That was of no interest to SartoriIrvrash; it was the black ashes ascending which occupied his attention.
His hand trembled more violently and he made the tip of his veronikane blaze like a small volcano.
A voice behind him said, ‘Here are some more of your clothes, master.’
His slave woman stood there, a neatly wrapped bundle offered to him. She gave him a placatory smile. ‘It’s a shame you have to go, master.’
He turned his worn face fully to her, stepped a pace nearer to look into her face.
‘Are you sorry to see me go, woman?’
She nodded and lowered her gaze. Well, he thought, she enjoyed it when we had a little rumbo – and to think I never bothered to ask. I never thought of her enjoyment. How isolated I have been in my own feelings. A good enough man, learned, but worth nothing because I had no feelings for others. Except for little Tatro.
He didn’t know what to say to the slave woman. He coughed.
‘It’s a bad day, woman. Go inside. Thank you.’
She gave him a last eloquent glance before turning away. SartoriIrvrash thought to himself, Who knows what slave women feel? He hunched his shoulders, irritated with her, and with himself, for showing feeling.
He scarcely noticed when the driver appeared. He took in only a youthful figure, head shrouded against the heat in a kind of Madi hood, so that its face could scarcely be seen.
‘Are you ready?’ this figure called, as it swung itself up into the driver’s seat. The two hoxneys shuffled as the weight adjusted against their straps.
Still SartoriIrvrash lingered. He pointed with his kane towards the distant bonfire. ‘There goes a whole lifetime’s learning.’ He was mainly addressing himself. ‘That’s what I can’t forgive. That’s what I shall never forgive. All that work …’
With a heavy sigh, he climbed aboard the coach. It began at once to roll forward, towards the palace gates. There were those in the palace who loved him; fearing the king’s wrath, they had not dared to emerge and wave him farewell. He set his face firmly to the front, blinking his eyes rapidly.
The prospects before SartoriIrvrash were dim. He was thirty-seven years and eight tenners old – well past middle age. It was possible that he could get a post as advisor at the court of King Sayren Stund, but he detested both the king and Oldorando, which was far too hot. He had always kept himself apart from his own and his dead wife’s relations in Matrassyl. His brothers were dead. There was nothing for it but to go and live with his daughter; she and her husband dwelt in a dull southern town near the Thribriat border.
There he would sink from human ken and attempt to rewrite his life’s work. But who would print it, now