Mating Dance
Chapter 17
Knowing that Rollo was the leader of a sizeable group, I had expected his house to be much bigger. When he opened the door to my knock, I stepped into a three-room cottage. The biggest room, which was smaller than the room where Leila’s slaves had their midday meal, had the fireplace with a hob and a small hanging cauldron for soup, a few cushions to sit on, a small, square table with two chairs facing each other. He had found a cloth to put over the table and borrowed two small plates that matched and two bowls that didn’t. Neither did the two fired-clay cups out of which we were supposed to drink the very expensive Crescent red wine I had brought, having requisitioned it from Caspar.
Apparently Rollo noticed me looking around for the boy.
“I changed my mind and asked Tono’s widow next door to take ‘Zekiel for a few hours. . . ‘Zekiel; that’s my son. I asked her to take him . . . I hope you don’t mind. I thought we might want, uh, privacy.”
I allowed myself to show only a small amount of the relief I felt. I gave him my best premeditated smile.
“Privacy can be nice,” I said softly.
“I made a stew,” he told me. “With meat. Mutton.” He kept the pride out of his voice, but I could read both that pride and his fear that I would find it laughable.
“You did not need to go to such expense for me,” I answered. There was no irony in my words. By the way the man lived, I knew that he did not live off the men he led. Meat was a luxury which, if it could be had at all, would be used to mark the highest festivals and celebrations, once or twice a year.
“My son was lost under the water, and you found him,” he answered simply.
Everything this man said made it harder for me to do what I had come to do, what I had to do, if Jak was to live. I tried to think about Caspar’s arguments, of the danger that a man like this could represent, the chaos that would be there if the trading system fell apart, if property itself—people’s right to own what was theirs—ceased to exist.
“Have the . . . the Owners ever talked with you about your demands?” I asked him. “Could you perhaps work out some alternative to the rioting? I heard that several people died.”
“The ‘rioting,’” he said bitterly. “We were drawn up in front of the bark grinding shop—the bark peelers, cutters, and grinders, even the tree-fellers. A crowd of off-islanders came—desperate men, walking skeletons. Crops had died from a blight in one of the other islands, so the owners, instead of giving them food to tide them through the blighted season, hired them, at wages even lower than ours, to take our jobs. We locked arms and would not let them through. I pleaded with them to join us—the owners had been running their operation stupidly understaffed, for years, because they looked only at their short-term profit. They could hire a quarter again as many workers, produce more spice, and make twice as much money for everyone. I thought I might be getting through to them, I don’t know. Then the crowd stampeded toward us—not angry, they didn’t look angry. They looked frightened, and then I saw why. A whole hundred of marines, armed with clubs and fighting staffs, were driving them into us. They herded them into us, in a column, with flankers to keep them from running away. We were pushed up against the grinding-house wall, which the owners had locked. And then we fought, just for space enough to breathe in, and the marines reached us with their staffs and clubs. Eighteen of us died, and five of those poor devils from off-island. That was our “rioting.”
Maybe his version was the truth, maybe the owners’, maybe neither. Either way, Jak would die unless . . . I let my hand creep forward on the table until I could just lay my fingertips on the back of his big, scarred knuckles. I looked at him like a woman who does not dare more but is hoping to be kissed, considering what I would do if he failed to pick up my hint, but he didn’t fail. He looked into my face wonderingly; he could not quite believe that this was happening but wanted desperately to believe it. At last he kissed me gingerly, as if he expected me to vanish into the air when he touched me. I drew him along slowly into a deeper kiss, pretending to close my eyes but watching through my lashes for the moment when he closed his. That was when I emptied the small vial of easydeath into his cup. After a few moments I gasped in a maidenly way, my face telling of shock at my own boldness. That let me take a deep swallow of my own wine, as if to compose myself. I kept looking at him all the while, and, as I had planned, he took up his glass, too.
“It sounds so frightening,” I said, “and yet you stayed there. You must be braver than I could be. Braver than any men I’ve met,” I added, a touch ruefully. “Of course, I don’t seem to have much luck with men.” He knew what I was saying.
He took a big swallow to fortify himself and said, “My wife died two years ago. I was never with anybody else, before or after her. “
“What about the widow next door?” I asked, with a teasing half smile.
“Tono was my good friend. He died in the riot, and his widow is a good woman; I try to help her with a little money. But nothing else. This is new to me.”
I met his eyes. “To me, too,” I said, knowing that he would mistake what I meant, and that he would mistake my sadness for maidenly reserve, or loneliness. Certainly I felt lonely enough at that moment; I took another drink of my wine. “Do you like our Crescent Island grape?” I asked. Of course, he drank again.
“It’s delicious,” he said. “I’ve never had it before; you Crescents don’t make much of it, and the price is high.” He blinked quickly, three times.
I watched his eyes. The pupils were beginning to dilate; that first big swallow was entering his blood. “Yes, the price is high,” I whispered. Tears began to form in my own eyes and I blinked them away.
He told me of his wife, of what a good mother she was, and of how she died—a fever of the kind that struck the impoverished cinnamon workers and their families disproportionately. He told of his son’s mourning, of his desolation, of his anger.
“I have to let him rage at home but make him keep it to himself while we are out in public,” he sighed. It’s not easy.” He yawned. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to hear that.”
“It must be very difficult,” I said softly, watching for the other signs. “I would be exhausted. Aren’t you?”
“What? Yes. What did you say? . . . Oh, my.” He massaged his eyes with his fingertips. “Your Crescent wine must be stronger than it . . ..”
He stared up at me, recognition stabbing at him through the fog of the drug taking hold. “Oh. Oh no,” he said. There was more grief in his voice than fear. And now I was the one being stabbed, with pity and shame. I did not want him to know what was happening to him. I did not want to feel the fear in his mind, see the betrayal in his eyes.
“Shhhh, you’re just tired. Just relax,” I whispered. It was too late.
He shook his head slowly. “You’re going to hand me over to Caspar’s men. I should have known; beautiful women don’t . . . ’m a fool.”
He tried to get up, but the poison was in his muscles now; he was slow and clumsy. I stepped quickly around the table, pushed him back down gently, straddling his lap, and placed my hand over his mouth. With the other hand, I stroked his head, an unfeigned tenderness.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered in his ear. “They were going to kill my friend if I didn’t . . . I won’t give you to Caspar to torture. The potion won’t hurt. Don’t fight it. You’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. . . And you’re not a fool. Don’t be ashamed of wanting love. You deserve it; I would love you myself, tonight, and be honored to do it, but . . . we don’t have time.” My own voice was too full of grief to be soothing now. The paralysis was spreading fast. I took my hand off his mouth, warily, so that I could stop him from crying out if he tried. But he spoke to me, in a slurred, exhausted tone, raising a leaden arm that drooped at the wrist, toward the door,
“Mmmmy. Mmboy.” He tried to focus his eyes on my face. His voice entreated me, his lips thick and clumsy from the poison. He shook his head, as slowly as if it were a huge weight.
“Don’ . . . Pffflease.”
In his mind I saw the image of a small boy, waiting for his father to come home, waiting alone in a dark house as night came on, and then a shadowy stranger closing in on him: Me. Rollo believed that I would do that. Why shouldn’t he? –Because you’re a good person? You just poisoned your host.
I held his face in my two hands, making him look at me. “Rollo, I won’t hurt him. And I won’t let anyone else hurt him. I’ll see that he’s looked after. I swear it, Rollo. You’re a good man, and I’ll be ashamed of this night my whole life. Forgive me if you can. Please,” I began to weep as I begged him, “go to sleep.” I kissed his eyelids.
Before I could read whether he forgave me, the last breath huffed out of him and his eyes set, half open. Like Jak’s, I remembered, but this time I was the killer, and among the bottles Leila had left for me in Jak’s coffin, the one holding the antidote for easydeath had been drained to save Jak’s life. I had just done murder. I don’t know if he heard the last things I said. I suppose I didn’t deserve to know.