“Can’t you wash yourself?” Agia asked Doreas.
“I’d like a bath, yes, but not with you watching me.”
“Severian will turn his head if you ask him. He did very well in a place where we were this morning.”
“And you, madame,” Dorcas said softly. “I’d rather you didn’t watch. I’d like a private place, if I might have one.”
Agia smiled at that, but I called the scullion again and gave her an orichalk to bring a folding screen. When it was set up, I told Dorcas I would buy her a gown if there were one to be had at the inn.
“No,” she said. In a whisper, I asked Agia what she thought was the matter with her.
“She likes what she has, clearly. I must walk with a hand up to hold my bodice if I wouldn’t be shamed for life.” She let her hand fall, so that her high breasts gleamed in the dying sunlight. “But those rags let her show lust leg and chest enough. There’s a rent at the groin too, though I dare say you haven’t noticed it.”
The innkeeper interrupted us, leading in a waiter who carried a plate of pastries, a bottle, and glasses. I explained that my clothing was wet, and he had a brazier brought in—then proceeded to warm himself by it, for all the world as if he stood in his private apartment. “Feels good, this time of year,” he said. “The sun’s dead and don’t know it yet, but we do. If you’re killed, you’ll get to miss next winter, and if you’re hurt bad, you’ll get to stay inside. That’s what I always tell them. Of course, most of the fights are around midsummer’s eve, so it’s more appropriate then, so to speak. I don’t know if it comforts them or not, but it does no harm.”
I took off the brown mantle and my guild cloak, put my boots on a stool near the brazier, and stood beside him to dry my breeches and hose, asking if all those who came this way on monomachy stopped to refresh themselves with him. Like every man who feels himself likely to die, I would have been happy to know that I was taking part in some established tradition.
“All? Oh, no,” he said. “May moderation and St. Amand bless you, sieur. If everyone who came tarried at my inn, why it wouldn’t be my inn—I’d have sold it, and be living comfortable in a big, stone house with atroxes at the door and a few young fellows with knives hanging about me to settle my enemies. No, there’s many a one goes by here without a glance, never thinking that when he comes past next time, it may be too late to drink my wine. “Speaking of which,” said Agia, and handed me a glass. It was full to the brim with a dark, crimson vintage. Not a good wine, perhaps—it made my tongue prickle, and carried with its delicious taste something of harshness. But a wonderful wine, a wine better than good, in the mouth of someone as fatigued and cold as I. Agia held a full glass of her own, but I saw by her flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes that she had already downed one other at least. I told her to save something for Dorcas, and she said, “That milk and water virgin? She won’t drink it, and it’s you who’ll need courage—not she.” Not quite honestly, I said I was not afraid.
The innkeeper exclaimed, “That’s the way! Don’t you be feared, and don’t fill your head with no noble thoughts about death and last days and all that. The ones that do is the ones that never come back, you may be sure. Now you was going to order a meal, I think, for you and your two young women afterward?”
“We have ordered it,” I said.
“Ordered, but not paid nothing toward, that was my meaning. Also there’s the wine and these here gateaux secs. Those must be paid for here and now as they’re eaten here and now, and drank up too. For the dinner I’ll require a deposit of three orichalks, with two more to be paid when you come to eat it.”
“And if I don’t come?”
“Then there’s no more charge, sieur. That’s how I’m able to offer my dinners at such low prices.”
The man’s complete insensibility disarmed me; I handed over the money and he left us. Agia peeped around the side of the screen behind which Doreas was cleansing herself with the aid of the scullion, and I sat down again on the couch and took a pastry to go with what remained of my wine. “If we could make the hinges in this thing lock, Severian, we might enjoy ourselves for a few moments without interruption. We could put a chair against it, but no doubt those two would choose the worst possible moment to squall and knock everything over.”
I was about to make some bantering reply when I noticed a scrap of paper, folded many times, that had been put beneath the waiter’s tray in such a fashion that it could be seen only by someone sitting where I was. “This is really too much,” I said. “A challenge, and now the mysterious note.” Agia came to look. “What are you talking about? Are you drunk already?” I put my hand on the rounded fullness of her hip, and when she made no objection, used that pleasant handle to draw her toward me until she could see the paper. “What do you suppose it says? ‘The Commonwealth has need of you—ride at once…’ ‘Your friend is he who shall say to you, camarilla…’
‘Beware of the man with pink hair…’ “
Falling in with the joke, Agia offered, “ ‘Come when you hear three pebbles tap the window…’ The leaves, I should say here. ‘The rose hath stabbed the iris, who nectar affords…’ That’s your avern killing me, clearly. ‘You will know your true love by her red pagne…” She bent to kiss me, then sat in my lap. “Aren’t you going to look?”
“I am looking.” Her torn bodice had fallen again.
“Not there. Cover that with your hand, and then you can look at the note.” I did as she told me, but left the note where it was. “It’s really too much, as I said a moment ago. The mysterious Septentrion and his challenge, then Hildegrin, and now this. Have I mentioned the Chatelaine Thecla to you?”
“More than once, while we were walking.”
“I loved her. She read a great deal—there was really nothing for her to do when I was gone but read and sew and sleep—and when I was with her we used to laugh at the plots of some of the stories. This sort of thing was always happening to the people in them, and they were incessantly involved in high and melodramatic affairs for which they had no qualifications.” Agia laughed with me and kissed me again, a lingering kiss. When our lips parted, she said, “What’s this about Hildegrin? He seemed ordinary enough.” I took another pastry, touched the note with it, then put a corner into her mouth. “Some time ago I saved the life of a man called Vodalus—” Agia pulled away from me, spewing crumbs. “Vodalus? You’re joking!”
“Not at all. That’s what his friend called him. I was still hardly more than a boy, but I held back the haft of an ax for a moment. The blow would have killed him, and he gave me a chrisos.”
“Wait. What has this to do with Hildegrin?”
“When I first saw Vodalus, he had a man and a woman with him. Enemies came upon them, and Vodalus remained behind to fight while the other man took the woman to safety.” (I had decided it was wiser to say nothing about the corpse, or my killing of the axman.)
“I’d have fought myself—then there’d have been three fighters instead of one.