The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [58]
O lente, lente currite noctis equi!
What?
Run slowly, slowly, horses of the night. It’s from Ovid, she says. In Latin the line goes at a slow gallop. That was clumsy, he’ll think she’s showing off. She can never tell what he may or may not recognize. Sometimes he pretends not to know a thing, and then after she’s explained it he reveals that he does know it, he knew it all along. He draws her out, then chokes her off.
You’re an odd duck, he says. Why are they the horses of the night?
They pull Time’s chariot. He’s with his mistress. It means he wants the night to stretch out, so he can spend more time with her.
What for? he says lazily. Five minutes not enough for him? Nothing better to do?
She sits up. Are you tired? Am I boring you? Should I leave?
Lie down again. You ain’t goin’ nowheres.
She wishes he wouldn’t do that – talk like a movie cowboy. He does it to put her at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, she stretches out, slides her arm across him.
Put your hand here, ma’am. That’ll do fine. He closes his eyes. Mistress, he says. What a quaint term. Mid-Victorian. I should be kissing your dainty shoe, or plying you with chocolates.
Maybe I am quaint. Maybe I’m mid-Victorian. Lover, then. Or piece of tail. Is that more forward-looking? More even-steven for you?
Sure. But I think I prefer mistress. Because things ain’t even-steven, are they?
No, she says. They’re not. Anyway, go on.
He says: As night falls, the People of Joy have encamped a day’s march from the city. Female slaves, captives from previous conquests, pour out the scarlet hrang from the skin bottles in which it is fermented, and cringe and stoop and serve, carrying bowls of gristly, undercooked stew made from rustled thulks. The official wives sit in the shadows, eyes bright in the dark ovals of their head-scarves, watching for impertinences. They know they’ll sleep alone tonight, but they can whip the captured girls later for clumsiness or disrespect, and they will.
The men crouch around their small fires, wrapped in their leather cloaks, eating their suppers, muttering among themselves. Their mood is not jovial. Tomorrow, or the day after that – depending on their speed and on the watchfulness of the enemy – they will have to fight, and this time they may not win. True, the fiery-eyed messenger who spoke to the Fist of the Invincible One promised they will be given victory if they continue to be pious and obedient and brave and cunning, but there are always so many ifs in these matters.
If they lose, they’ll be killed, and their women and children as well. They’re not expecting mercy. If they win, they themselves must do the killing, which isn’t always so enjoyable as is sometimes believed. They must kill everyone in the city: these are the instructions. No boy child is to be left alive, to grow up lusting to revenge his slaughtered father; no girl child, to corrupt the People of Joy with her depraved ways. From cities conquered earlier they’ve kept back the young girls and doled them out among the soldiers, one or two or three each according to prowess and merit, but the divine messenger has now said that enough is enough.
All this killing will be tiring, and also noisy. Killing on such a grand scale is very strenuous, also polluting, and must be done thoroughly or else the People of Joy will be in bad trouble. The All-Powerful One has a way of insisting on the letter of the law.
Their horses are tethered apart. They are few in number, and ridden only by the chief men – slender, skittish horses, with hardened mouths and long woebegone faces and tender, cowardly eyes. None of this is their fault: they were dragged into it.
If you own a horse you are permitted to kick and beat it, but not to kill it and eat it, because long ago a messenger of the All-Powerful One appeared in the form of the first horse. The horses remember this, it is said, and are proud of it. It is why they allow only the leaders to ride them. Or that is the reason given.
Mayfair, May 1935