The women in the dormitory paid little attention to Hoby’s tales, but the older boys in the barrack listened to him and came to treat me as a worthless little spy, a master’s pet. I didn’t see much of those boys, whose work took them out of my way. But I saw Torm daily at lessons. Ever since the battle in the ditch, Torm had dropped Tib and me entirely and made Hoby his only companion. Hoby had taken to calling me “the dung,” and Torm began to do so too.
Everra could not reprove Torm directly. Torm was the son of the Father. Our schoolmaster was a slave; it was his role, not himself that was respected. He could correct Torm’s mistakes in reading or measurements or music, but not his conduct; he could say, “You need to do that exercise over,” but he couldn’t say, “Stop doing that!” But Torm’s fits of mindless rage when he was younger had given Everra an excuse and device which he still used to control him. When Torm began to shout and strike out, Everra used to lug him bodily out of the schoolroom and shut him up in a storage room down the hall, with the threat that if he came out, the Mother and Father would be told of his misbehavior. Torm would get over his fit there in solitude, and wait to be released. It may have been a relief to him, in fact, to be shut away; for even in the midst of a yelling, foaming rage, when he had grown too big and strong for Everra to manhandle, if the teacher said, “To the hall room, Torm-di,” he’d go running there and let the door be shut on him. He hadn’t had a fit of that kind for nearly a year now. But once or twice, when he was unruly and restless, disturbing everybody else, Everra had said quietly to him, “To the hall room, please,” and he had gone, obedient as ever.
One spring day in the classroom, Hoby was bent on persecuting me; he shook the bench when I was writing, he spilled the ink and accused me of trying to spoil his copybook, he pinched me savagely when I had to pass him. The teacher caught him doing that, and said, “Keep your hands off Gavir, Hoby. Hold them out!” Hoby stood up and stuck out his hands palm up for the punishment, with his sheepish, stoical grin.
But Torm said, “He did nothing to be punished for.”
Everra stood silent, taken aback. Finally he said, “He was tormenting Gavir, Torm-di,’
“That boy is dung. He should be punished, not Hoby He spilled the ink.”
“That was an accident, Torm-di, I do not punish accidents.”
“It was not. Hoby did nothing to be punished for. Punish the dung boy.”
Though Torm was not going into the shaking frenzy of his old rages, he had the look of them in his face, a grimace, a blind stare. Our teacher stood silent. I saw him glance over at Yaven, who was on the other side of the room bent over the drawing table, absorbed in measuring an architectural plan. I too was hoping the older brother would notice what was going on; but he didn’t, and Astano was not in class that day.
At last Everra said, “To the hall room, please, Torm-di.”
Torm took a step or two in automatic obedience. Then he stopped.
He turned to face the teacher. “I, I, I order you to punish the dung boy,” he said, thickly, barely able to make the words, his face quivering and shaking as it had that day when his father reprimanded him.
Everras face went grey. He stood still, looking thin and old. Again he looked over towards Yaven.
“This is my classroom, Torm-di,” he said at last, with dignity, but almost inaudibly.
“And you are a slave and I give you an order!” Torm cried, his voice, which had not broken, going up shrilll. Now Yaven heard and looked round, straightening up.
“Torm?,” he said.
“I’ve had enough of this filth, this disobedience!” Torm cried in that thick, shrill voice. He sounded like a crazy old woman. Maybe that was what made four-year-old Miv laugh. His little giggle rang out. Torm turned on the child and struck him a smashing blow to the head that threw him right off the bench against the wall.
Then Yaven was there, and with a grave and hasty apology to the teacher, took his brother by the arm and led him out of the room. Torm did not resist and did not say anything. He still glared blindly, but his face had gone loose and confused.
Hoby stood staring after him with the same dull, stricken look. Never had I seen so clearly that it was almost the same face.
Sallo was cradling little Miv, who had not made a sound. He seemed dazed for a while, then he wriggled about and turned his face against Sallo’s arm. If he cried it was in silence.
The teacher knelt by them and tried to make sure the child had suffered no injury except the bruise that would be swelling up soon across half his face. He told Sallo and Miv’s sister Oco to take him out to the atrium fountain and bathe his face. Then he turned to Ris and Sotur, Tib and Hoby and me, the only pupils lett. “We will read Trudec,” he said, his voice still hoarse and faint. “The Sixtieth Morality. On Patience.”
He had Sotur read first. She stumbled bravely through it.
Soturovaso was the Father’s niece. Her father had been killed at the siege of Morva soon after her mother died giving birth to her, so she was an orphan within the Family; the last and least among them. She had much the same quiet modesty as her older cousin Astano, whom she trusted and imitated, but the temper underneath it was quite different. She was no rebel, but she was not resigned. She was a solitary soul.
She was extremely upset now by Torm’s defiance and discourtesy towards our teacher, whom she loved. Because she was the only one of the Family in the room, she felt responsible for that injury and for the apologies that should follow. There was nothing she, a child of twelve, could do, except obey promptly and show the teacher the utmost politeness, which she did. But she read very badly. The book was shaking in her hands. Everra soon thanked her and told me to go on with the passage.
As I began to read, I heard Hoby, on the bench behind me, move restlessly and hiss something. The teacher glanced at him and he was silent, but not quite silent. I was aware of him there behind me all the time as I read.
We got through the rest of the morning lessons somehow. Just as we were finishing, Sallo came back. She reported that she had left little Miv and his sister with the healer Remen, because Miv was dizzy and kept falling asleep. The Mother had been told, and would come see to the child. That was reassuring. Old Remen was only a slave mender, whose cure for everything was comfrey ointment and catnip tea, but the Mother was a renowned and experienced healer. “Arca looks after her own, even the littlest,” Everra said with grave gratitude. “As you leave today, go by the Ancestors and give them worship. Ask them to bless all the children of the House, all its children, and its kind Mother. ”
We all obeyed him. Only Sotur could go in among the Ancestors, whose names and carven images crowded the walls of the great, dim, domed room. We house people knelt in the anteroom. Sallo held her little Ennu-Me in her closed hand and murmured, “Ennu bless us and be blessed, please make Miv all right. I follow you, Ennu-Me, dear guide.” I made the reverence and knelt to my chosen Ancestor, Altan Bodo Arca, Father of the House a hundred years ago, whose portrait, carved in relief on stone and painted, could be seen from where we knelt. He had a wonderful face, like a kindly hawk, and his eyes looked straight at me. I had decided as a very small child that he was my special protector, also that he knew what I was thinking. I didn’t have to tell him that I was frightened of both Torm and Hoby right now. He knew. “Great Shadow, Forefather, Grandfather Altan-di, let me get away from them,” I asked him silently, “or make them not so angry. Thank you.” After a while I added, “And please make me braver.”