The Sea Peoples(79)
He stopped in the park by the Lethal Chamber, admiring the shining marble white in the darkness, and the shadowed faces of the Fates.
Hildred noted absently that he had eaten nothing since breakfast, but he was not hungry. John was, and thirsty too. The sensations were muffled since he was feeling Hildred’s too, but they were there.
“Sir?”
A man in the tattered remnants of a military greatcoat had been staring across the park at the Chamber, his face thin under the stubble.
Hildred looked at him, and he spoke in a slurred tone, not meeting the younger man’s eyes.
“Sir, I have not eaten for two days. I haven’t been able to find employment since the war—I fought the Germans in New Jersey—my nerves—the shells, Oh, God, the shells—”
Hildred absently pulled a handful of change from his pockets and dumped it in the man’s hand. He took it and looked into Hildred’s face as he carefully wrapped the coins in a scrap of cloth, then turned and shambled away without another word.
Hildred waited, as wisps of fog ran through the street and it grew a little chilly. An hour later another beggar approached, and he greeted him with a smile.
That made the man flinch, but he still held out his hand.
“Please, sir, if you could spare some money for food I would thank you and thank God.”
Hildred looked at him. “Why do you wish money?”
The man blinked rheumy eyes; he might have been anything from thirty to sixty, and he smelled quite strongly. John’s instinctive estimate that he was near the lower end of that range; beggars usually didn’t live long lives, mostly having some quirk of mind that kept them from taking care of themselves and earning their keep, and gave them an aversion to letting others help. In Montival anyone could earn enough to eat and a place to sleep if they were willing and able to work, and now that the terrible years after the Change were long past there was usually charity for those who could not. In the Association territories the Church would look after those who had no kin or lord or guild to fall back on, and other realms of the High Kingdom had their own arrangements.
Though that may not be true everywhere. God has blessed us with rich lands and good lordship has let us have the peace that lets each household reap what it sows with none to put them in fear.
“So . . . so that I may eat, sir,” the man said.
“Why do you wish to eat?”
“So that I should not die of starvation, sir.”
“Why do you fear death?” Hildred said, his voice—and the emotions John could sense—genuinely curious. “Your life is a hell of loneliness and misery and regret for what you have done that cannot be undone, without purpose, promising you only suffering. Why do you strive to keep yourself alive in a world that offers you nothing but pain?”
The man stared at Hildred, the dull unhappiness in it flaring into something more active; he smeared the back of his hand across his bristly chin and mouth, exposing blackened teeth, and tears ran down from the corners of his eyes.
Hildred pulled out a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, on which was traced the Yellow Sign, and handed it to him.
“Here. This is infinitely more valuable than money. It will give you purpose!”
The derelict took the paper and stared at it, frowning in puzzlement at first. Then his eyes grew wider and wider.
He’s . . . really seeing it, John thought. And it’s telling him things . . . maybe making him think certain things.
There was an old French poet he’d read once, who’d explained a friend’s suicide by saying that he turned a corner one night and came face-to-face with himself, and could not bear it. That came suddenly to his mind as he watched the beggar’s face. Too much truth without context could be a deadly lie.
The man turned and stumbled away, still staring at the paper, then mechanically tucked it way. His head turned as if he was hunting for an escape, and then fixed on the statue of the Fates. That froze him for an instant, and then he ran towards the Lethal Chamber. It was an odd motion, as if he were dashing towards it and trying to pull back at the same time, and when he reached the bronze doors his hands went out to the side to hold himself off against the marble. Then they buckled, and the doors swung open and then shut again.
That heavy chunk sound came again, and the whirring and grinding. Hildred chuckled softly at the rush of energy he felt, and the faint sufferings of hunger that John had been noticing abruptly went away in a rush of curiously detached nausea—as if he wanted to vomit and had no stomach to do it with, which was more or less true and very disturbing to think about.
The electric lights were sparkling among the trees, and the new moon shone in the sky above the Lethal Chamber. Hildred felt a mixture of anticipation and restless boredom that sent him wandering from the Marble Arch to the artillery stables and back again to the lotus fountain. The flowers and grass exhaled a fragrance that John found soothing, as if something had wafted through the barred window of a prison cell. The jet of the fountain played in the moonlight, and the musical splash of falling drops reminded Hildred of the tinkle of mail in Hawberk’s shop; there was a little mental jar as John and the Boisean had the same thought at the same time, though it was more natural for them since they’d both worn mail often.
For an instant John had a strong sensation; a mail shirt with a padded backing resting on his shoulder and cinched at his waist, the sort of thing Eastern light horse wore in Montival. It was a memory, but not his and not Hildred’s either.