Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [587]
It was a mile from the gate to the ancient house, through land still known as the Vineyard. Now it was rough pasturage, where a local strain of yelk was bred.
Shokerandit alighted. The snow whirled round the corner of the house as if personally interested in turning them to ice. The woman closed her eyes and clutched Shokerandit’s skins. Following ghostly materialisations of the structure, they climbed steps to the iron-banded front door. Above them sounded the dismal tolling bell, long drawn out, like a sound heard underwater. Other bells, drowning farther off, added their tongues.
The door opened. Dim guardian figures showed, helping the two new arrivals inside. The snow ceased, the roaring and clanging ceased, as bolts were shot home behind them.
In an echoing darkened hall, Shokerandit exchanged words with a servant unseen. A lamp glittered high on a marble wall, not yielding its illumination beyond the frosty surface which reflected it. They padded upstairs, each step with its own protesting noise. A heavy curtain was drawn back as if to abet the powers of darkness and stealth. They entered. While the woman stood, the servant lit a light and quit the room, bowing.
The room smelt dead. Shokerandit turned up the wick of his lamp. An impression of space, a low ceiling, shutters ineffectively barring out the night, a bed … They struggled out of their filthy garments.
They had been travelling for thirty-one days and, since Sharagatt, had been allowed only six and a half hours of sleep a day, rarely more, sometimes less, according to whether Uuundaamp considered the police were closing on them. Their faces were blackened by frost and lined by exhaustion.
Toress Lahl took a blanket from a couch and prepared to lie beside the bed. He climbed into the bed and beckoned her to join him.
‘You sleep with me now,’ he said.
She stood before him, her expression still dazed from the journey. ‘Tell me what place we are in now.’
He smiled. ‘You know where we are. This is my father’s house in Kharnabhar. Our troubles are over. We are safe here. Get in.’
She attempted a smile in return. ‘I am your slave and so I obey, master.’
She got in beside him. Her answer did not satisfy him, but he put his arms about her and made love to her. After which, he fell asleep immediately.
When she awoke, Shokerandit had gone. She lay gazing at the ceiling, wondering what he was trying to demonstrate by leaving her on her own. She felt herself unable to move from the comfortable bed, to face the challenges that would have to be met. Luterin was well disposed to her, and more than that; she had no doubts on that score. For him, she could feel only hatred. His casual handing over of her to the animal who drove the sledge, a humiliation still fresh in her mind, was merely the latest of his coarse treatments. Of course, she reflected, he did not do these things to her personally; he was merely conforming to fashion and treating her as slaves were treated.
She had good reason to hope that he might restore her social status. She would be a slave no more. But if that entailed marrying him, her husband’s murderer, she did not think she could go through with it, even to ensure her own safety.
To make matters worse, she felt a dread of this place to which she had been brought. A spirit seemed to brood over it, chill, hostile.
She rolled over unhappily in the great bed, to discover that a female slave was waiting silently, kneeling by the door. Toress Lahl sat up, pulling the sheet over her naked breasts.
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Master Luterin sent me in to attend you and bathe you when you woke, lady.’ The girl bowed her head as she spoke.
‘Don’t call me lady. I am a slave just as you are.’
But the response merely embarrassed the girl. Resigning herself to the situation and half-amused, Toress Lahl climbed naked from the bed. She raised an imperious hand.
‘Attend me!’ she said.
Nodding compliantly, the girl came forward and escorted Toress Lahl to a bathroom, where warm water ran from a brass tap. The whole mansion was heated by