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women, even the best of them, could be unutterably blind, even when telling us
how blind we are.
My other recollections of that day's proceedings are like my memories of a
fight; fragmented, frozen images: the bride, my daughter, radiant with joy,
holding her husband's arm tight to her side, laughing into my eyes; the great,
brown hill bear I had seen outside, dancing and beating on a tambourine; some
of
Ullic's men tumbling and spinning, turning somersaults in the air; a roasted
swan, its flawless feathers back in place, surrounded by a flock of roasted
ducks and geese, passing before me on a massive board carried by several men;
and my own owlish eyes peering back at me from the surface of the wine in the
goblet I was peering into. It was a grand feast, I gather; for perhaps the
third time in my life, I was carried senseless to my bed. But then, I was the
father of the bride.
I awoke in pitch-darkness, with no idea of where I was; I knew I was abed, but
that was all. I could hear people singing drunkenly, off in the distance, and
my memory came back to me slowly. I was in our tent, outside the walls of the
new fort. I reached out slowly for Luceiia, but she was not there, and that
left me wondering what hour of the night it was. I struggled upright to a
sitting position and immediately wished I hadn't done so; my head felt as
though all the smiths of Vulcan's forge were pounding inside it.
I was groaning unashamedly, in a fine stew of self-pity, by the time I got to
the opening of the tent, and there I stopped, stung by the cool night air into
realizing that I was wearing nothing more than my tunic. I
wondered who had taken off my armour and my clothes. And then I wondered how.
Going back to the pile of furs that was my bed, I fumbled about in the
darkness and finally found the cedar chest that contained my clothes. Luceiia
had insisted I bring my sheepskin tunic, knowing that the nights would still
be cool up here on the hill. It took a minute or two of ill-natured groping
and fumbling in the dark before I located the heavy sheepskin, but then I
pulled it over my head and went back to the entrance of the tent, throwing the
leather flaps wide to admit the moonlight. The improvement was great and
immediate. I then found my sandals and took down a woollen cloak from a peg on
the tent pole before going outside to sit on the ground and lace up my
sandals, realizing that even the light from the crescent moon was painful to
my eyes. I was not happy; in fact, I could not remember ever having felt quite
so awful as the result of what were supposed to be pleasurable activities. The
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ground felt cold against my backside, too, so I struggled back to my feet,
groaning again, and re-entered the tent to pull a couple of skins from the
sleeping pile. There was a tree of some kind no more than a few paces from the
front of my tent. I threw the skins down at its base and seated myself
carefully upon them with my back to the trunk, my cloak wrapped tightly around
my shoulders as I breathed very deeply, gulping great draughts of the cool
night air and squeezing my eyes tight shut.
A dog began to howl quite close by and my mind cringed at the sound. I swore
if the cur came any closer I would find it and choke it to profound, permanent
silence. And then I heard footsteps approaching me, and someone began to sing
in a loud, drunken voice, to be joined immediately by his equally drunken
companions. I scrambled to my feet and fled into the night, clutching the fur
I had been sitting on.
I must have walked a good half-mile along the hillside, paralleling the walls
that loomed above me, tilting my body upward against the steep slope that fell
away downhill on my right. I could still hear an occasional shout of laughter
from late revellers within the walls, but I was soon far enough away from the
level tent area to leave all noise there completely behind and my head was
thankful.
Eventually I found myself another tree to lean on and sat down, bracing myself
slightly against the fall of the slope with my heels, resting my elbows on my
upraised knees and pressing the heels of my palms against my pounding temples. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]