Supper was nearly at an end. In accordance with Beklan custom some of the guests, in twos and threes, were beginning to get up and stroll out of the hall, either into the corridors or as far as the westward-facing portico of the palace, whence they could look out across the city walls towards the afterglow beyond the far-off Palteshi hills. The rest, either still inclined for eating, or simply for remaining where they were to converse or to listen to the music, relaxed luxuriously, while their shearnas fanned them and the slaves carried round trays of sweetmeats.
Throughout the whole of this gentle disturbance, Elvair-ka-Virrion still sat absorbed in talk with Mirvushina. One or two of his friends, having failed to distract him, gathered about Sarget on their own account, inquiring banteringly--for they knew his somewhat staid reputation--what he had in mind for their entertainment and whether he had ever composed any music for a kura. The fastidious Sarget, though on the one hand wishing to continue to stand well with these young men, on the other hoped to avoid seeing his supper-party take on the tone of the Rains banquet and such-like functions governed by the tastes of men like Kembri or Sencho. As he sat smilingly temporizing and assuring a young man named Shend-Lador, the son of the citadel castellan, that he knew Nennaunir was anxious to get to know him better, Bayub-Otal, appearing quietly at his shoulder, stooped and whispered a few words in his ear.
Sarget, rising, at once took the Urtan's arm and led him out into the corridor, leaving the young Leopards to mutter and shrug their shoulders over what they regarded as an intrusion. A minute or two later, however, the two returned and walked over to where the musicians were squatting together near the center of the hall. The music died away, and as it did so Maia looked up, opening her eyes and giving a little shake to her head, as though awakening.
Fordil, the elder of the two hinnarists, a musician whose name and skill were known from Kabin to Ikat, nodded as he listened to U-Sarget, from time to time looking round at his drummers to make sure that they too had understood the patron. Maia, watching them and wondering what was in preparation--some kind of Urtan music, presumably (why should that wretched Bayub-Otal have gone and interrupted her enjoyment?)--was suddenly puzzled and confused to see them all looking round in her direction.
She dropped her eyes and reddened, wondering what might have been said. The next moment Bayub-Otal was standing beside her.
"Maia," said Bayub-Otal--and now, or so it seemed to the disconcerted Maia, everyone was listening--"U-Sarget wishes you to dance for us."
Maia, a clutch in her stomach, stared at him speechlessly.
"I've told Fordil," added Bayub-Otal, smiling; in earnest or in mockery? she wondered, "that you'd probably like to dance the senguela. I assure you that you'll find him an accompanist of very different quality from that man at "The Green Grove'; and the floor's all that even my mother could have wished. They're sweeping it now, as you can see."
Maia, looking round her in a daze, saw that Sarget himself was personally directing two slaves with brooms.
"My lord, I can't, really I can't--oh, my lord, you must tell him--you must tell U-Sarget, please--"
"Maia," replied Bayub-Otal, scarcely moving his lips, "Elvair-ka-Virrion brought you here at my request. U-Sarget and I wish you to dance."
His manner, following upon his courteous, friendly behavior during dinner, filled Maia with sudden rage.
If ever Occula's dreams were to come true, and the two of them became shearnas with all Bekla at their feet, then first and foremost she would settle accounts with this bloodless, high-handed bastard of an Urtan baron. Meanwhile she could only set her teeth and do her best to show him he couldn't put her out of countenance--for that could only be what he was trying to do. Without another word she stood up, raised her palm to her forehead with a gesture as ironic as she could make it; then turned and walked--steadily, she hoped--across to the musicians.
"I have no money, U-Fordil," she said, pulling up the hem of the cherry-colored skirt and dropping to her knees beside him on the floor. "I'm only a slave-girl as yet. But do your best for me and I promise I won't forget you."
Old Fordil, smiling, inclined his gray head towards her with a fatherly look.
"We don't need to be asked for our best, my lass. We are the best. Lean on us as hard as you like--the rope won't break. You're going to dance the senguela?"
"Yes.."
"Selpe and reppa? The whole thing?"
She nodded.
Fordil smiled again. "Sure you can manage it? If it's just on account of orders and you feel it's too much, I can probably get you out of it. Only it's generally better, you know, to stick to something you're sure of."
"I'm going to dance the whole thing," answered Maia firmly.
"Then Lespa be with you, little saiyett," replied Fordil. "I shall be, anyway."
Maia, leaning over, gave his bristly cheek a kiss. "Thank you, U-Fordil. No one's ever called me 'saiyett' before. I'll remember that."
One of the drummers looked up from tightening the cords round his zhua. "That dress--think it'll fall quick enough?"
Maia nodded again. "It'll fall." Thereupon she rose to her feet, walked a few steps into the middle of the empty floor, turned towards Sarget and stood waiting for the frissoor.
It was customary in Bekla for a dancer or singer to await from her host, initially, a signal of invitation, known as the frissoor. Once this had been received the performer, even if a slave, had the complete right to order everything as she wished--the space about her, the lamps, the music-- even, if she insisted, the dismissal of anyone unwelcome to her. Thus, the leader of the Thlela had sought the frissoor from Durakkon at the Rains banquet, and Occula from Elvair-ka-Virrion before her now almost legendary act as the doomed huntress. As soon as Sarget, smiling reassuringly, had extended his left hand and then lowered it to his side, Maia, with the best air of authority she could muster, beckoned to two slaves and, having told them what she wanted, stood impassively while they moved or extinguished sufficient lamps to make one side of the central floor bright and the other shadowy and dim.
The hall seemed to have filled again. Word, it appeared, had got round that she was about to dance, and men and girls had come back, some to their former places, others merely to stand wherever it might suit them--a few near the doors, ready to slip out again if she should prove a disappointment. With a quick smile she gestured to Shend-Lador and a girl with him to move back from the edge of the floor, and felt delighted surprise when they did so at once. Whoever would have thought it? It worked for her, just as for anyone else who had received the frissoor.
Suddenly she knew that Lespa was with her. Kind, merciful Lespa was looking down from the stars at her servant about to honor her--Lespa of the heart's secrets, Lespa, sender of dreams! A few moments more she stood in silence, offering herself to the goddess. Then she spread her hands; and at once the zhuas began the low, throbbing opening of the selpe.
She was Lespa--mortal Lespa, the prettiest village lass that ever walked the earths--Lespa on her way to the green-wood, tripping through the meadows of spring. The grass was cool at her feet, the flowers were springing--ah! and here was a patch of muddy ground she had to cross. Pouting, she stopped and wiped her feet, one and then the other; then stooped to pick a yellow spear-bud and put it in her hair.
Her body was burning with frustrated longing, with desire for her lover, for poor young Baltis gone to the wars.
During this first, opening minute she realized what Bayub-Otal had meant in speaking of Fordil. She had never conceived of any accompaniment of this quality. She would not have thought it possible. The quick, pattering notes of the hinnari seemed actually created by her own movements. They did not follow her; they led her on and bore her forward. It was Fordil who was really dancing, except that she, happening to be young and a girl, was acting on his behalf. She was his reflection, and therefore they could not be out of accord.
A kynat, migrant of spring, purple and gold in the sunshine, flashed suddenly
out of the distant trees and she stood entranced, shading her eyes to gaze after it as it flew. Then, recalling her errand, she went on up the course of the little brook towards the watercress-edged cattle-wade on the outskirts of the wood.
When dancing for Occula, Maia, throughout this first episode of the selpe, had always felt, above all, the pathos of a girl left forlorn in spring; intensely aware of the multifoliate burgeoning of the new year all about her, yet separated from it by her loneliness. To stress this sense of loneliness, she knew, was important as a contrast to the excitement to follow. She was a girl sad in springtime: this was what she had to express; and now the hinnari, with a soft sobbing of zhuas beneath, was saying it for her as, in Occula's hands, it had never been able to.
How long should she give it? Not very long, for this was only the prelude to her story. Bending down, she pulled some strands of watercress and nibbled them; then sprawled on the short grass in the sunshine, first picking her teeth with a twig, then rolling quickly over to catch a tiny frog and let it jump off her hand into the water. So clearly did she mime these things and so closely did the drummer follow her, that the frog's leap was represented by a quick, sharp stroke of his thimbled finger on the side of the hollow lek, at which Maia herself, watching the frog, spontaneously gave a little jump. The watchers laughed, not only at the joke but with pleasure in the skill which had enabled them to recognize it. A moment later she got up and, disentangling her skirt from a spray of bramble as she climbed the fence, entered the wood, disappearing into the darkness on the lampless side of the hall.
Almost at once--more quickly than she would have wished, but she guessed that Fordil wanted to forestall any possible outbreak of chatter or restlessness among the audience--the music changed to the quick, light knocking of the two leks, playing alone. Yet she herself must wait a moment; she could not change her role so quickly. This was Shakkarn coming--Shakkarn stolen away in spring from the palace of the gods to wander footloose among the fields and woods of earth. Far off he was as yet, his footsteps faint but coming closer, sending before them the disquiet and apprehension latent in all sounds of approach by someone or something unknown to the hearer. And at this moment, as luck would have it, two of the lamps, their oil exhausted, simultaneously flickered and died. A total silence fell throughout the hall, save for the tapping of the leks answering each other, hoofed footstep and echo, among the rocks high up in the wood.
Occula had told her that sometimes a girl would elect to play Shakkarn masked and horned, and thus disguised as the god would appear in full light as plainly as in the part of Lespa. Yet this was not the true style of the senguela, the tonda and the other great traditional dances. "So often, banzi, a pretty girl wants to show off as Lespa, but she only wants to dress up as Shakkarn. That's not real senguela! You've got to be Shakkarn--make them believe you're another person--well, almost." And had not Maia seen Occula herself perform just such a feat on the night when Ka-Roton had taken phantom knife and stabbed himself?
Here came Shakkam; barely to be seen, a shadow among dark trees; half-brute, peering from side to side, pausing to sniff the air, plunging into the stream and shaking the water from his back as he lurched himself up and out; Shakkam grinning and licking his lips like a hound, pausing to rub himself against the stump of a tree. Then, almost as soon as glimpsed, he had vanished again into the blackness; but it was enough. A noise of running, and on the flutes startled birds flew up in the distance. Something umbral was slinking away, disappearing between the tree-trunks; reemerging for a moment to peer out, round-eyed, slobbering with excitement, kindled by what he had caught sight of in the glade below. Then once again, swift as a lizard, he was gone.
Maia, racing silently round the darkened edge of the hall, reached the opposite side quickly enough to create the effect of surprise she wanted. Hardly, it seemed, had the wanton god been lost to sight in the forest than here came pretty Lespa, gathering sticks, getting together a good, stout faggot to carry home; pausing to listen to the song of a greenbreast from the outskirts of the wood. Still going about her work, she came upon the pool; brown and clear, not too deep and not too cold, for she dabbled one foot in it to try.
As the hinnaris rippled about her in liquid cascades of descending quarter-tones Maia, with a single, swift movement, loosed the halter of the cherry-colored robe, let it fall to her ankles and stepped naked into the pool, giving a quick shudder and clutching her arms about her as she felt the first chill. She was still standing on the floor of the hall, yet now the water was nearly up to her shoulders and her feet were groping on the stones as she waded slowly forward. Cupping her hands, she splashed water into her face, laughed and tossed back her wet hair. She, at all events, knew where she was now; under the falls on the edge of Lake Serrelind.
For a little she made all she could of this most beguiling of scenes, bringing to it every scrap of invention at her command. She had been naked often enough for Sencho. She had been naked for Kembri, for Elvair-ka-Virrion, for Eud-Ecachlon, for Randronoth of Lapan; but never before for the delectation of eighty men and women at once. Under the bravado which she had assumed to Fordil and his drummers she had been very nervous, but had thrust the fear away by telling herself (as might a soldier) that it had simply got to be done and that was all there was to it. Now that it was here, however, she was delighting in it. Intermittently, glancing up through the splashed water and her own wet hair, she glimpsed, on the edge of the surrounding lamplight, the fascinated eyes of watchers, and felt her power over them. "I am Lespa," she thought. "I am Lespa of the inmost heart." Her nakedness was no mere matter of tantalizing young men like Shend-Lador. It was the revelation of womanhood by the goddess. Not to be naked now would have been irreverent and impious.
Ah, but it was heady stuff, this! And here she might have remained, displaying herself in the pool, and well content would they have been to watch on, even until she had dishonored the goddess with her selfish vanity. Some girls did, and so she had been warned. But against this the good Fordil stood her friend. Oh, but one moment, Fordil! Just one more plunge, turning on my back and sliding upward to the bank! I do it so well! But no--she must obey him, must obey the goddess, obey the story and the music.
For here, broken loose, straying aimlessly one might suppose, never a care, no harm in the world, down through the wood and grazing as he wandered, came the goat Shakkarn. Oh, but such a goat, the music said, such a goat as no lout of a farmer ever held on a chain; milk-white, silky-coated, his great, curving horns like the frame of a lyre, his hooves shining smooth as bronze. From the pool Lespa stared in wonder, her eyes following the goat rambling here and there as he cropped the green leaves. Then, as he hesitantly, almost timidly, approached to drink, she rested her two hands on the bank, drew herself out of the water and sat close by him in the sunshine.
Everyone in the hall could see the magnificent creature--not merely because his likeness was carved on the walls of temples all over the empire, not only because he lay in their minds and their dreams as surely as doomsday or the flood, but above all because he was real to the girl sitting beside him, her body seeming to glisten with water-drops as she gently stretched out one hand to touch him, to stroke his back as he stood docile on the margin of the pool. She put her arms round his neck and rubbed her cheek against his ear.
Then followed the slow dawning in Lespa's mind that this paragon of beasts was indeed male: and that she herself--ah! Round-eyed, open-mouthed, she sprang up, fleeing a little way in hot shame: yet still her companion made no move and showed no impatience as the inmost secret stirred in her, revealing to her that she herself, she too--And here Maia stood for long moments down-glancing, trembling, bewildered. At last a little smile came to her lips and she took one single tentative step to return to him whom she herself had summoned unaware.
The mounting excitement as Lespa, of her own accord, began their love-play was conveyed by Maia, as Occula had taught her, shamelessly, in the sense that shame had been discarded
, a thing of no meaning to the consort of a god (" 'cos you can be sure of one thing, banzi--whatever goddesses have, it's not shame: else they'd be liars"). As at length he seemed to draw back, tantalized beyond endurance by the touch of her hands, only next moment to press himself yet more eagerly upon her; and as she rose, laughing, inviting him to go with her into the recesses of the wood, more than one couple followed her example and slipped away out of the hall on their own business.
And now Maia, once again out of sight in the darkness, found herself faced with a dilemma, unforeseen in her agitation at being so suddenly called upon to dance. Now she had to become the prying old woman--and here she was, naked and costumeless, without even a dresser to help her. Fordil himself had not anticipated or remembered this. Whatever was she to do? At all costs things must not go wrong now! In desperation she beat her fist on the wall; and as she did so felt the smooth texture of one of Sarget's panels of green cloth.
The panels, side by side and slightly overlapping, had been hung one above another in two rows. Each woven piece measured about seven or eight feet square, with loops at the upper corners by which it was hung on nails driven between the stones. Standing on tiptoe, she lifted down a square of fabric, wrapped herself in it from head to foot and drew up one corner as a hood. Then, as the zhuas began the comic, shuffling rhythm of the old woman's gait-- boom da-da-da, boom da-da-da--she came hobbling once more into the light.
The peering, prurient curiosity of the old woman, her outrage at what she saw, her envious disgust, her hurry-scurry back to the village, her jabbering to her cronies and their setting forth in a body to put paid to the shameless hussy up in the wood--these things Maia rattled through, playing them very broadly, Meerzat festival-fashion, a peasant making fun of peasants. Perhaps, indeed, she overdid it a little, for the old woman in her haste need not really have trodden in a cow-pat and gone hopping about; but it got a laugh. Off they all hurried to the forest, and in the emptiness left behind, the two hinnaris began the reppa--the universally-known song of Shakkarn, hymn of Lespa's humility and acceptance of the inmost longing revealed. The audience began a low clapping to the rocking, thrusting rhythm--for it was impossible not to reciprocate--and all eyes were turned once more towards the dim glade whither Lespa had stolen away with her divine companion.