Death's Master Read online

  In the dusk, the priests entered the day’s last village, where they were to be housed that night in a little shrine. Lamps shone from every lintel and men with torches and bells escorted them. The shrine had been swept clean and adorned with flowers, incense burned and embroidered carpets hung on the wall. The herdsmen had killed a sheep and a cow to be the young priests’ dinner, and now roasted this meat in the courtyard under the cinnamon trees. The red fires leapt toward the blue night, and the village people were singing over the wall as if they were glad their food was to be eaten and their gold coins taken away.

  In the street, in the light of the lintel-lamps, Zhirem had carefully cleansed the lids of several children with sore eyes. An old woman shambled to him with an ache in her back. She told Zhirem it was better the instant he touched her. Perhaps it was.

  Shell, playing the wooden pipe, watched Zhirem return slowly into the temple court. He had bathed in the river, and water drops hung in his hair.

  “Yes,” Zhirem said, sitting by Shell under the cinnamon trees. “Yes.”

  “Now I wish,” said Shell, speaking, unexpected as his speaking always was, “now I wish I had fallen sick.”

  Zhirem sighed and closed his eyes.

  “I will sleep three nights in this one night,” he said, as if he had not heard.

  Just then there came a commotion at the shrine gate, a sound of male altercation, while over the wall the village women stopped singing and bawled curses. The herders shifted at their roasting fires. The priests stared.

  For into the courtyard came a woman. She wore a dress of crimson and saffron, a necklace of white enamel, and on her arms were bangles of glass, red and green and pale purple, but on her ankles were bangles of gold. Her hair was the color of new bronze and curled as a fleece, and it fell to her waist; brown and slim she was as the women of the villages, but beautiful as they were not. In her ears were bells of silver which chimed lightly as she moved. She had rouged her face to a young sunrise, and her eyes were darkened with kohl. Many village men, inside the court and out, were shouting, but none tried to stop her. Presently, even the shouting ended.

  Then she looked about at the young priests who stared, and she swayed herself a little so she caught the firelight, and the flames shone through her thin garments showing how her breasts were fashioned, and they were fashioned well.

  “I am the harlot,” said she. “Who will buy?”

  Not a word. Though the herders and the men in the gate were savage and sullen. Though the young priests paled or flushed or fidgeted. Eyes grew hot, not only from reflected fire.

  “See,” said the harlot, showing herself some more. “Like the temple, I too have homage paid me and rich gifts given me.” Then she walked up to the young priests, and along the line of them and through the groups of them. They smelled the incense in her dress, not like the incense of the shrine. “Ah,” said she, “for shame, I thought the priests would bless me. I thought they were healers, and would heal me of the wounds I receive at the hands of these village clods when they lie down with me. Behold, all are afraid to touch me now. One touch brings desire.”

  Someone got to his feet and shouted. It was Beyash, the fat young priest with the jasper earring. “Harlot you call yourself, and harlot you are.”

  “So I am,” smiled the harlot, “I have ever been truthful.”

  “Then, harlot, take yourself away,” ranted Beyash. His face and his lips were moist; he breathed fast, and glared at her with all his sight, and breathed faster, and said: “You profane the sacred court.”

  “No, no,” said the harlot, “I am here to be healed.” And slowly she slid down the thin silk of her dress and bared one burnished shoulder and one wicked breast. There, on the swelling ripeness of her breast was a dark blue bruising made by some man’s teeth.

  “Note how it is with me,” said the harlot. “Take pity—will you not smooth into this mark a salve, will you not rub me with your holy fingers, charitable priest?”

  Beyash’s eyes were popping in his fat.

  The harlot laughed.

  “But no. I have heard there is another here who is more kind than you. A dark-haired man, slender and beautiful as the new moon’s shadow on the earth. This man I will entreat. This man will be gentle to me.”

  She had already discovered where Zhirem sat under the trees and fixed him with her gaze. Now she went to him and stood over him, and next she kneeled before him and shook her beautiful hair about her.

  “Indeed,” she murmured, “they say the brushing of your hand alone is a cure, beloved. Let us discover.” And she took up his hand and laid it on her breast. “Ah, beloved,” said the woman, “men bring me gold, but you I would pay to lie with. And if I lay with you, I would give over my sinful ways. Your eyes are level as pools at dusk, but you tremble. Tremble for me, then, tremble for me, my heart’s darling.”

  Zhirem took his hand from her. There was something terrible and desolate in his face she did not properly see, though his eyes had altered their shape to the shape of yearning. He said softly to her: “You are too fair to live as you do. What devil drove you to this life?”

  “A devil called man,” said she. “Come, change me then.”

  “You must change yourself.”

  “Into whatever it pleases my lord.” And she leaned close and whispered: “Two hundred paces south beyond the village, the poplars grow by the old well. My house is there. I will leave a lamp burning and watch for you. Bring me nothing but your beauty and your loins.”

  Zhirem did not answer. The harlot rose and drew together her dress. Shaking her mane, she crossed back through the court; smiling she went out through the gate. The din began again outside, then faded away.

  “This is a foul negligence!” screamed Beyash. “This village will be called to account for permitting such a she-beast to dwell here.”

  “Her house is two hundred paces from us,” the herders excused themselves. “The rich men come to her, and it is hard for us to fight the rich men.”

  “The temple shall fight them. Her house shall be burned and the woman stoned. She is an abomination.”

  In the black shadow of the cinnamon trees, Shell’s pipe went on a moment, playing, as it had continued to play the whole while. All had grown accustomed to it, as to the sound of the night breeze in the foliage. Now, the pipe abruptly ceased.

  “When do you go to her?” a voice asked from the shadow, Shell’s voice for Zhirem alone. But maybe it was no voice, only the silence, only the rustle of leaves.

  Zhirem answered, “I do not.”

  He rested against a tree. His eyes were yet that particular shape. His hand, which had lain on the woman’s breast, lay wooden on the ground.

  “Beyash will go,” said Shell, or the leaves.

  “One should go and lift her from the pit she is in, not lie down with her in the pit.”

  “Go then, lift her.”

  Zhirem turned, but Shell sat immobile, his lips closed like the carved lips of an image which never speaks, never meddles.

  A herder brought a dish of food. Zhirem ate listlessly and sparingly, as always. Shell ate the red fruit in the dish, biting the pith of it cruelly.

  Beyash was not done with complaining but his complaints were more distant. The other young priests drifted into the shrine, tired by food and wine and travelling, eager to be supine and there consider the woman. . . .

  Zhirem and Shell remained alone, and the roasting fires sank into red cinders and into gray smoke; the herders slunk away. A night bird sang in the eaves of the shrine. The crescent moon rose like a broken ring.

  “I remember,” said Zhirem, “how we climbed the wall when we were children and ran about in the night. In the desert, the night is a naked thing as day is naked, but here everything is secret between the trees and the grasses.”

  Zhirem set off for the courtyard gate. Shell
got up, paused in a feline stretching, and followed him.

  In the village nothing stirred. The windows were black and no one looked out. The villagers were afraid to see any going by, any young men in yellow temple robes going by on the track toward the old well where poplars grew.

  Where the village ended a track turned south before the road began. At this spot, Zhirem said: “Why will you lead me this way?”

  Shell glanced at him. The glance said, “No one leads; you are already on this way.”

  “No,” said Zhirem. And he turned and walked northward up the hill above the village, among the wild flowering olives there.

  Shell did not travel with him. Shell loped along the track toward the well.

  It was not that he desired the woman. It was that he had seen that Zhirem desired her, that the man’s lust in Zhirem, smothered all this while, had woken.

  Shell burned. The soft flames which had always lapped him, unanalyzed, now gored and snapped. Eshva-like still, he ran to the fire rather than away. Envy was a green blade in his side; he twisted to enjoy the piercing of it. Love was a violet veil over his eyes, sadness changing the color of the world. First the weakness and illness of men had been able to draw the beloved away, now a woman could do it. But a woman was less abstract, easier to contend with. Then, go and watch the woman, twist the green blade in the wound, learn it all and more.

  Her house, near to the well, was finer than the village houses. It was built of stone and the door was wood. Through the ornate iron lattice of the lower window came the faint glow of a lamp.

  Shell slid from the shadow to the window, noiseless, and stared unblinking at the lattice with his lynx’s eyes.

  The beautiful harlot sat at her cosmetics table, before a bronze mirror, combing scent through her bronze hair, and she yet smiled to her reflection in the mirror, lulled by the combing and by what she thought of.

  The flame gnawed in Shell. He saw how the lamp painted the woman, the quiver of the slender muscles of her arms, the glint of gold falling from the golden comb into the fleece of her hair.

  Shell left the window. He circled about the house. Once, twice, three times he circled it, as the animal circles the human dwelling, cautious, curious, fascinated, meaning no good yet with no actual plan of wrong-doing.

  Now the harlot did not hear him, nor did she glimpse him. But she sensed that he, or someone, was there.

  She came to the wooden door and opened it and stepped out boldly with the lamplight.

  “Who is there?” she called. “Approach. I will do you no injury.”

  Shell was a shadow, a tree, invisible.

  But from the poplars, another answered. “It is I,” and into the lamplight sneaked Beyash.

  “Oh, is it you?” said the harlot, “I had hoped for another. Well, what do you want? To upbraid me some more?”

  “I was too harsh,” said Beyash, edging closer. “How do I know what has forced you to this sin? Perhaps the gods sent you to me in order that I might redeem you.”

  “Thus and so,” said the harlot. “My price is high. Do you have my price?”

  Beyash came edging on. He edged right to the harlot.

  “Let me see,” he whispered, “let me see your breast again.”

  “What, only one breast? I have two.”

  “And are both of them hurt?” whispered Beyash, shuddering and licking at his lips.

  “Depending on what you will give me, they may be.”

  Beyash fumbled in his sleeve. He brought out a shiny thing—a silver cup one of the villages had presented to the temple, and in the cup was a handful of small jewels another of the villages had given.

  “Offerings,” said the harlot, “will these not be missed?”

  “There are so many offerings,” hoarsely murmured Beyash. “I can intimidate the clerk who keeps tally. He has committed a sin with his sister and is in my power, for I know of it.”

  “So many offerings, you say,” mused the harlot. “You shall bring me something else tomorrow, perhaps.”

  “If you will,” said Beyash.

  The harlot pointed to her door.

  “Enter then.”

  Beyash did as she said, stumbling as if drunk.

  When the door shut on them, Shell stole again to the window. Beyash had seized the breasts of the harlot, and grasped them and felt of them as if he would commit their form to his recollection. Presently, she put him from her and slipped off her dress. The color of her was like dark honey, and she knotted up her tresses with enamel pins, and all her body was to be seen, her narrow waist and her wide hips which were strong and smoothly hard as the quarters of a lioness. She took from a chest a switch of horsehair, and opening the robe of Beyash she tickled him with this switch and then smote him with it. Beyash cried out and his member rose from his loins like a pole. Then the woman made him sit upon the couch, and she split her thighs to kneel with her legs either side of him and sat upon his lap in such a way that she took him inside her. After this, she danced on him as a snake dances, and Beyash kneaded her with his hands and writhed as if he could not be quiet, till suddenly his face appeared over her shoulder like the face of one who has gone mad, very red, with just the whites of the eyes revealed and the mouth wide open and the spit running out and from this mouth came a burst of howling. Having howled, Beyash fell back as if dead on the couch. The woman instantly left him and went away out of sight and there was the sound of water being used in a basin.

  Shell leaned on the wall, trembling with an odd revulsion and with the lasciviousness which now had found a name within himself. He made no move to leave the window. He observed Beyash as he recovered, now sitting up again, now fastening his robe. The face of Beyash had turned from its congested excitement to a nervous pallor. At length, he said:

  “You will not tell?”

  “I?” said the woman, out of sight of the window at her washing. “Whom could I tell but your temple? What could I tell but that you came here to redeem me?”

  “You must not,” said Beyash.

  “I will not,” said the woman, “if you go to the treasure wagons and bring me something of gold, which does not weigh less than your two great fatty hands.”

  “Not gold,” said Beyash, “I dare not take gold.”

  “You dare,” said the woman, “you are very brave. You dared steal silver and gems. You dared come to the harlot’s house and put up your tool inside her. You will bring me gold, brave priest.”

  Beyash got to his feet.

  “You are a whore and full of vileness,” he said. “You led me here. I never meant to visit you. You are a sorceress and have bewitched me. I am not answerable.”

  “If I could witch one here,” said she, “it would have been another than you, you hog. Tomorrow, I go to the temple.”

  Through the window, Shell perceived how Beyash crept to the cosmetics table, how he caught up the bronze mirror there and, turning about, ran with it across the room and out of sight of the window. Out of sight, there came a sound, dull and indescribable, then a clatter of light objects falling, and then another fall, like heavy silk thrown on the ground.

  A moment more, and Beyash reappeared. His face was once again excited, though still pale. He no longer had the mirror, but he picked up the silver cup and the jewels he had given the harlot, and returned them to his sleeve. He gazed about as if to be sure he had not forgotten anything. Then he opened the door and came out stealthily, and shut the door stealthily. And then he saw Shell leaning by the window.

  Beyash cried out to the gods. His legs loosened and he sank to his knees.

  “Ah, my brother, Shell—did you see? She was a sorceress. The gods directed my arm, I had no choice. I was possessed by the vengeance of heaven. Ah, Shell, say nothing. We have been friends—for our friendship’s sake, say nothing.” Shell only looked at him, impervious, it seemed, dreadful
, pitiless. “Where is Zhirem?” chattered Beyash. “Yes, he will be near if you are about. Do not tell Zhirem. Tell no one.”

  Shell, his caution put aside, aroused and simultaneously drained by the act he had witnessed, confused and alerted by the act he had not, looked implacably back at the quivering jelly of Beyash, till it dragged itself up and tottered away.

  When he had gone, Shell went into the house of the harlot, turning toward the fire, rather than away, inquisitive as the Eshva, yet, at last, dimly afraid, as a man would be.

  There was a screen of painted wood, and behind the screen a scatter of enamel pins on the rugs. Among the pins lay the woman, and in her hair lay the mirror with which Beyash had broken her neck.

  Shell stood there, looking at death. Shell feared Death, who did not know? The live cobra he caressed, the dead mouse he avoided. Never before had Shell seen a human corpse. But no, that was not true. Once before he had seen. She had lain straight and cold in her black dress. Her skin had turned azure, and she had not heeded the child who had been locked up with her in the tomb. The child had wept, and Death had come in person. The child had seen Lord Death. The child had screamed.

  Shell remembered. His eyes were sprinkled with blackness and his soul with terror. Half blind he ran from the house and cleaved the night with his passage, trying to lose himself. He had forgotten everything but Death. He ran by the village and up the hill, crazy as the beast which flees from fire.

  7

  A pool gleamed among the wild olive trees. Some of the green-white flowers had rained into it. Attracted by water, as were many born of a desert people, Zhirem had come to the pool and sat down there. Staring into it, between the flowers, Zhirem thought of the ruin and the holy men and the pool he had sat by then, struggling with his spirit, struggling to erase memory or to recapture it, struggling to be free of a darkness or a light. He thought of the woman too, and of the thing he must not have and of the Master of Night—who no longer was real to him, only a symbol of the blackness that crouched within his own ego.