Till We Have Faces_ A Myth Retold - C. S. Lewis [21]
"It's a thousand pities, Lady, that you weren't a man," said Bardia. "You've a man's reach and a quick eye. There are none of the recruits would do as well at a first attempt; I'd like to have the training of you. It's a thousand — "
"Ah, Bardia, Bardia," I sobbed, "if only you'd killed me. I'd be out of my misery now."
"No, you wouldn't," said he. "You'd be dying, not dead. It's only in tales that a man dies the moment the steel's gone in and come out. Unless of course you swap off his head."
I could talk no more at all now. The whole world seemed to me to be in my weeping.
"Curse it," said Bardia, "I can't bear this." There were tears in his own eyes now; he was a very tender man. "I wouldn't mind so much if the one weren't so brave and the other so beautiful. Here! Lady! Stop it. I'll risk my life, and Ungit's wrath too."
I gazed at him, but was still not able to speak.
"I'd give my own life for the girl in there, if it would do any good. You may have wondered why I, the captain of the guard, am standing here like a common sentry. I wouldn't let anyone else do it. I thought if the poor girl called, or if I had to go in to her for any reason, I'd be homelier for her than a stranger. She sat on my knees when she was little . . . . I wonder do the gods know what it feels like to be a man."
"You'll let me in?" I said.
"On one condition, Lady. You must swear to come out when I knock. It's quiet up here now, but there'll be comings and goings later. There'll be two temple girls coming to her presently; I was warned of that. I'll give you as long as I can. But I must be sure of your coming out when I give the sign. Three knocks — like this."
"I'll come out at once when you do that."
"Swear it, Lady, here on my sword."
I swore it. He looked to left and right, did back the bolt, and said, "Quick. In you go. Heaven comfort you both."
* * *
SEVEN
The window in that room is so small and high up that men need lights there at noon. That is why it can serve as a prison; it was built as the second story of a tower which my great-grandfather began and never finished.
Psyche sat upon the bed with a lamp burning beside her. Of course I was at once in her arms and saw this only in a flash; but the picture — Psyche, a bed, and a lamp — is everlasting.
Long before I could speak she said, "Sister, what have they done to you? Your face, your eye! He has been beating you again." Then I realised somewhat slowly that all this time she had been petting and comforting me as if it were I who was the child and the victim. And this, even in the midst of the great anguish, made its own little eddy of pain. It was so unlike the sort of love that used to be between us in our happy times.
She was so quick and tender that she knew at once what I was thinking, and at once she called me Maia, the old baby's name that the Fox had taught her. It was one of the first words she ever learned to say.
"Maia, Maia, tell me. What has he done to you?"
"Oh, Psyche," said I, "what does it matter? If only he had killed me! If only they would take me instead of you!"
But she would not be put off. She forced the whole tale out of me (how could one deny her?) wasting on it the little time we had.
"Sister, no more," I said at last. "What is it to me? What is he to either of us? I'll not shame your mother or mine to say he's not our father. If so, the name father is a curse. I'll believe now that he would hide behind a woman in a battle."
And then (it was a kind of terror to me) she smiled. She had wept very little, and mostly, I think, for love and pity of me. Now she sat tall and queenly and still. There was no sign about her of coming death, except that her hands