Till We Have Faces_ A Myth Retold - C. S. Lewis [58]
But I thought it most likely those words You also shall be Psyche meant that if she went into exile and wandering, I must do the same. And this, I had thought before, might very easily come about, if the men of Glome had no will to be ruled by a woman. But the god had been wide of the mark — so then they don't know all things? — if he thought he could grieve me most by making my punishment the same as Psyche's. If I could have borne hers as well as my own . . . but next best was to share. And with this I felt a sort of hard and cheerless strength rising in me. I would make a good beggarwoman. I was ugly; and Bardia had taught me how to fight.
Bardia . . . that set me thinking how much of my story I would tell him. Then, how much I would tell the Fox. I had not thought of this at all.
* * *
SIXTEEN
I crept in by the back parts of the palace and soon learned that my father had not yet come home from the hunting. But I went as soft and slinking to my place as if he had. When it became clear to my own mind (it did not at first) that I was hiding now not from the King but from the Fox, it was a trouble to me. Always before he had been my refuge and comforter.
Poobi cried over my wound and when she had the bandage off — that part was bad — laid good dressings on it. That was hardly done, and I was eating (hungrily enough) when the Fox came.
"Daughter, daughter," he said. "Praise the gods who have sent you back. I have been in pain for you all day. Where have you been?"
"To the Mountain, Grandfather," said I, keeping my left arm out of sight. This was the first of my difficulties. I could not tell him of the self-wounding. I knew, now I saw him (I had not thought of it before), that he would rebuke me for putting that kind of force upon Psyche. One of his maxims was that if we cannot persuade our friends by reasons we must be content "and not bring a mercenary army to our aid." (He meant passions.)
"Oh, child, that was sudden," he said. "I thought we parted that night to talk it over again in the morning."
"We parted to let you sleep," said I. The words came fiercely, without my will and in my father's own voice. Then I was ashamed.
"So that's my sin," said the Fox, smiling sadly. "Well, Lady, you have punished it. But what's your news? Would Psyche hear you?"
I said nothing to that question but told him of the storm and the flood and how that mountain valley was now a mere swamp, and how I had tried to cross the stream and could not, and how I had heard Psyche go weeping away, on the south side of it, out of Glome altogether. There was no use in telling him about the god; he would have thought I had been mad or dreaming.
"Do you mean, child, you never came to speech with her at all?" said the Fox, looking very haggard.
"Yes," I said. "We did talk a little — earlier."
"Child, what is wrong? Was there a quarrel? What passed between you?"
This was harder to answer. In the end, when he questioned me closely, I told him about my plan of the lamp.
"Daughter, daughter!" cried the Fox, "what daemon put such a device in your thoughts? What did you hope to do? Would not the villain by her side — he, a hunted man and an outlaw — be certain to wake? And what would he do then but snatch her up and drag her away to some other lair? Unless he stabbed her to the heart for fear she'd betray him to his pursuers. Why, the light alone would convince him she'd betrayed him already. How if it were a wound that made her weep? Oh, if you'd only taken counsel!"
I could say nothing. For now I wondered why indeed I had not thought of any of these things and whether I had never at all believed her lover was a mountainy man.
The Fox stared at me, wondering more and more, I saw, at my silence. At last he said, "Did you find it easy to make her do this?"
"No," said I. I had taken off, while I ate, the veil I