Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [604]
‘What a pity you were not here to welcome him, Luterin.’
‘That can’t be helped,’ he said dismissively. ‘Listen, I want to give you something.’
He led into an alcove off the hall, where a wooden cupboard stood. With a key taken from his pocket, he unlocked the cupboard. Within hung dozens of heavy iron keys, each labelled. He ran a finger along the rows, frowning.
‘Your father has a mania for locking things,’ she said, half laughing.
‘Don’t be silly. He is the Keeper. This place has to be fortress as well as home.’
He found what he wanted and picked out a rusted key almost a hand’s span long.
‘Nobody will miss this,’ he said, locking up the cupboard. ‘Take it. Hide it. It is the key to that chapel built by your countryman, the king-saint. You remember, in the woods? There may be a little trouble – I can’t tell what. Perhaps about pauk. I don’t want you harmed. If anything happens to me, you will be in danger of arrest at the least. Go and hide in the chapel. Take a slave with you – they’re all longing to escape. Choose a woman who knows Kharnabhar, preferably a peasant.’
She slipped the key into the pocket of her new clothes.
‘What can happen to you?’ She clutched his hand.
‘Nothing, probably, but – I just feel an apprehension …’
He heard a door opening. Hounds came scurrying, nails clicking on the tiles. He pushed Toress Lahl into the shadows behind the cupboard, and stepped forth into the hall. His father was emerging. Behind him came half a dozen of the conspiratorial men, bells clanking.
‘We’ll speak together,’ said Lobanster, lifting one finger. He led into a small wooden room on the ground floor. Luterin followed, and the conspiratorial men moved in behind them. The last one in locked the door on the inside. The biogas hissed when turned up.
This room had a wooden bench and table and little else in the way of furniture. People had been interrogated here. There was also a wooden door fortified with iron straps, which was kept locked. It was a private way down into the vaults, where the well was whose waters never froze. Legend had it that precious brood animals had been preserved down there in the coldest centuries.
‘Whatever we discuss should be said privately, Father,’ Luterin said. ‘I don’t even know who these other gentlemen are, though they make free in our house. They are not your huntsmen.’
‘They are returned from Bribahr,’ said Lobanster, speaking the words as if they gave him a cold pleasure. ‘Eminent men need bodyguards in these times. You are too young to understand how plague can cause the dissolution of the state. It breaks up first small communities and then large. The fear of it disintegrates nations.’
The conspiratorial men all looked very serious. In the limited space, it was impossible to stand away from them. Only Lobanster was separate, poised without movement behind the table, on the surface of which he played his fingers.
‘Father, it is an insult that we should have to converse before strangers. I resent it. But I say to you – and to them, if they are capable of hearing – that although there may be truth in what you say, there is a greater truth you neglect. There are other ways of disintegrating nations than by plague. The harsh measures being brought against pauk – the common people, the Church – the cruelty behind those measures – will eventually bring greater destruction than the Fat Death—’
‘Cease, boy!’ His father’s hands went to the region of his throat. ‘Cruelty is also part of nature. Where is mercy, except with men? Men invented mercy, but cruelty was here before them, in nature. Nature is a press. Year by year, it squeezes us tighter. We cannot fight it but by bringing to bear cruelty of our own. The plague is nature’s latest cruelty, and must be fought with its own weapons.’
Luterin could not speak. He could not find, under that chill,