"Oh, was it, now?" replied Occula, looking at her quizzically over the rim of her goblet. "Travel broadens the mind, eh? Well, I expect Suba's a wonderful place for- er-"
"Frogs?" asked Maia, smiling. She had already slipped off her sandals: now she stretched out her legs, parted her toes and wriggled them, looking down at them and shaking her head.
"Webbed feet? Neither had Lespa," said Occula. "Her feet were so pretty the boys used to kiss the grass where she'd walked by. But I'll get on. Sometimes she and Baltis were able to steal a meetin'-it might be in the woods when she was gatherin' sticks, or p'raps it might be that young Baltis would be comin' back from some job he'd been sent out to do on a bull's stall or some bolts for a door, and he'd stop by at the back of the wood-pile and whistle like a blue-finch, and then Lespa would suddenly remember she had to go down the garden for parsley or some such little thing. But you know how it is, makin' love in a hurry-for a girl, anyway, and even for a few men, though not half enough of them-a bit of this and that and
not long enough, as the stag-hound bitch said when the lapdog tried to mount her.
"Well, but sweet Lespa was a fine, spirited girl with a heart and mind of her own, and one way and another she managed to see to it that she and Baltis did sometimes meet together at night and no one else the wiser in the mornin'. And besides that, she managed to contrive that her father's ideas didn' get much further than his own head. If you're unlucky enough to be a girl-"
"I'm not unlucky," interrupted Mirvushina, smiling.
"Wouldn' change that belly of yours for old Sencho's, eh?" returned Occula. "Well, you can stuff 'em from one end or you can stuff 'em from the other, I suppose: they seem to get bigger just the same. But I'll oblige you, Milva, and alter what I said. If you're lucky enough to be a girl, all the same you can' refuse to see guests who come to the house: but how much you say to them when they're there- that's quite another matter. I suppose Lespa's father could have ordered her to do this, that or the other, but somehow he didn'. I dare say she'd already got, even then, some of those qualities which people have been worshippin' these hundreds of years.
"Well, she loved Baltis as girls have always loved the first man who takes them. And for a mortal girl she could have done worse, no doubt, if only the immortal gods- whatever names we give them up and down the world- hadn' had other plans for her destiny. For he was a right enough young lad, and a servant of the gods himself in a manner of speakin', 'cos he was a smith; and as you know, the skill of forgin' metal's a gift from the gods, a divine secret which men could never have thought up on their own account, any more than they could have thought up music. Anyway, now Baltis and Lespa had this other divine gift between them as well, and that sort of pleasure's a plant that thrives on hoein' and waterin', so they say. They practiced their music and they got pretty good at it.
"But then came the cruel wars. What wars they were I doan' know, and maybe it doan' matter all that much. All wars are the same to women, aren' they? You lie in a cold bed and weep for what's gone, and those that doan' have to weep for ever are the lucky ones. No, doan' you go takin' on, Milva: he's the commander-in-chief, isn' he? He'll be back, you see if he woan'.
"Whatever wars they were, it seems that after a time
the baron of those parts found himself hard-pressed for soldiers, and the need was so desperate that in the end all the village elders up and down the province agreed to a levy; and so in due time the baron's men came to Lespa's village to take their quota from among the young men. All the grown lads of the village-hunters, smiths, fishermen, farm-hands; no matter what they were, didn' make no difference-they had to stand forth, as the sayin' goes, to be looked over, and some right old weepin' and wailin' there was among the mothers and sweethearts and wives, I dare say.
"I doan' know how many they took from Lespa's village. But if the blasted quota had been no more than two, Baltis would have been one of them all right, for he had a pair of shoulders like barn doors: he must have been the likeliest-lookin' young chap they'd come upon in weeks. So, poor lad, he had to pack up his bits in a bag and belt on his sword (which he'd forged for himself, to make sure it was a good one, from a nice piece of Gelt iron he'd had marked down for a ploughshare) and away he went for a soldier, with Lespa hangin' on his arm two miles up the lane, cryin' her eyes out and not carin' now who saw her, either.
"After Baltis had gone, she felt just about as lonely and discarded as an old bucket thrown in a hedge. It wasn' even so much that he wasn' actually with her, for of course she'd already had to put up with a deal of that: it was the havin' nothin' to look forward to, nothin' to liven up the day with plannin' a bit of funny business: no more hope of slippin' down the garden for a handful of-er-parsley. And after a bit it got to downright, blasted starvation. 'Cos you know how it is: once you've had it and taken pleasure in it-well, you miss it, doan' you, just for itself? Anyway, Lespa did." Suddenly Occula raised her voice. "And she's not the only one, either!" She bit her finger for a moment and was silent.
At length she continued. "And the attentions of the lads left behind didn' afford her any consolation, either. I dare say they seemed a poor lot after Baltis, and anyway Lespa wasn' a girl to throw away her self-respect and have people winkin' behind her back and sayin' she was the kind of lass who thought half a loaf was better than no bread. She wanted to think that wherever the wars had carried Baltis, he was stayin' true to her, and she reckoned the best way
to be sure of that was to be true to him. She used to- banzi, what on earth's the matter? You're never cryin', are you? What the hell for? I haven't said anythin' funny yet."
"You let me alone," faltered Maia, wiping her eyes. "I'm enjoying myself. You just get on with the story, now. You ain't sat there to ask questions, you're sat there to tell the tale."
"She used to go down the village and ask passin' travelers for news of the wars," resumed Occula. "But no one ever seemed to know anythin' about Baltis, and come to think of it, 'twasn' likely they would, him bein' just an ordinary soldier-boy among hundreds and thousands mar-chin' and batterin' up and down the land.
"Now after a time it got to be winter and then it was spring and still pretty Lespa was sufferin' in her heart and dodgin' all her father's schemes and goin' her own way alone as far as the lads were concerned. And there were one or two-there always are, aren' there?-that she'd, sent packin', even though she did it nicely (for Lespa was never hard-spoken to anyone, though I dare say she might have been more or less forced to be a bit firm now and then-you know what some fellows can be like)-there were one or two who began sayin' there must be somethin' queer about her; pretty or not, she couldn' be a natural girl, or else she thought herself too good for anybody; and all such things as that. So she wasn' very happy, not even when the warm weather came, to hear the kynat callin' and see the brooks full of yellow spear-buds under the banks.
"Now one mornin'-one perfect spring mornin', that's how the story has it-with all the trees in new leaf, wild cherry and zoan and scented poplar an' I doan' know what-all-Lespa was told by her mother to go up to the wood and bring back a good, big faggot of sticks and maybe a log as well if she could manage it. So off she went, with the grass cool at her feet and all the daisies in bloom. But still she had thoughts for nothin' but Baltis gone to the wars. Yes, she was a girl forlorn and sad in springtime. So she wasn' in much of a hurry to get on with the business of gatherin' the sticks. She was in a mood for everythin' to seem a waste of time. She sat down by the brook for a bit and pulled some watercress; and then she just lay on the bank while the birds sang and the frogs sat on the lily
leaves in the sunshine. But after a while she supposed she'd better get on with it, so she got up and climbed over the fence and went her way into the wood.