Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun

He shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting up.

“They was big men, bigger than you or me or anybody in this boat, a head taller than Trason. Anyway, they were gone in a moment, just like the galleass. That was the only other craft I saw till the mist lifted. But...”

I said, “But you saw something else. Or heard something.” He nodded. “I thought maybe you and your people here was out because of them. Yes, I saw and I heard things. There was things in this river I never saw before. Maxellindis, when she woke up and I told her about it, said it was the manatees. They're pale in moonlight and look human enough if you don't come too close. But I've seen 'em since I was a boy and never been fooled once. And there was women's voices, not loud but big. And something else. I couldn't understand what any of 'em was sayin', but I could hear the tone of it. You know how it is when you're listenin' to people over the water? They would say so-and-so-and-so . Then the deeper voice — I can't call it a man's because I don't think it was one — the deeper voice'd say go-and-do-that-and-this-and-that . I heard the women's voices three times and the other voice twice. You won't believe it, optimates, but sometimes it sounded like the voices was coming up out of the river.”

With that he fell silent, looking out over the nenuphars. We were well above that part of Gyoll opposite the Citadel, but they were still packed more densely than wildflowers in any meadow this side of paradise.

The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its vastness seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its thousand metal towers ready to leap into the air at a word. Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint disgust of the “unhealthy” growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that men may live, and men die that green things may live, even that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own ax there long ago. All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no doubt it is so; and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds. But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines' in the necropolis when the wind swells their branches. They draw their strength from the departed generations of mankind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many trees, are not so high as they.

The Sanguinary Field stands far from the river. We four drew strange looks as we journeyed there, but no one halted us. The Inn of Lost Loves, which had ever seemed to me the least permanent of the houses of men, still stood as it had on the afternoon when I had come there with Agia and Dorcas. The fat innkeeper very nearly fainted when he saw us; I made him fetch Ouen, the waiter. I had never really looked at him on that afternoon when he had carried in a tray for Dorcas, Agia, and me. I did so now. He was a balding man about as tall as Drotte, thin and somehow pinched looking; his eyes were deep blue, and there was a delicacy to the molding of his eyes and mouth that I recognized at once.

“Do you know who we are?” I asked him.

Slowly, he shook his head.

“Have you never had a torturer to serve?”

“Once this spring, sieur,” he said. “And I know these two men in black are torturers. But you're no torturer, sieur, though you're dressed like one.”

I let that pass. “You have never seen me?”

“No, sieur.”

“Very well, perhaps you have not.” (How strange it was to realize that I had changed so much.) “Ouen, since you do not know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you were born and who your parents were, and how you came to be employed at this inn.”

“My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate, on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me to an inn to be a potboy, and I've worked in one or another since.”

“Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?” Ouen's face still held a waiter's deference, but his eyes were puzzled. “I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her, but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father said.”

“But you know what she looked like.”

He nodded. “My father had a locket with her likeness. Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found out he'd pledged it. I'd come into a bit of money then helping a certain optimate with his affairs — carrying messages to the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I went to the pawnbroker's and paid the pledge and took it. I still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where there's so many in 'n out all the time, it's best to keep your valuables about you.”

He reached into his shirt and drew out a locket of cloisonne enamel. The pictures inside were of Dorcas in full face and profile, a Dorcas hardly younger than the Dorcas I had known.

“You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can read and write.”

“A bit, sieur.” He looked embarrassed. “I've asked people, various times, what writing said. I don't forget much.”

“You wrote something when the torturer was here this spring,” I told him. “Do you recall what you wrote?” Frightened, he shook his head. “Only a note to warn the girl.”

“I do. It was, ‘ The woman with you has been here before. Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are my mother come again. ’ “

Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. “It was only that she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I used to think that someday I'd find such a woman. I told myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father, and he had, after all. But I never did, and now I'm not so sure I'm a better man.”

“At that time, you did not know what a torturer's habit looked like,” I said. “But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew. He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and that was why he ran away.”

“Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for him, he did.”

“But you saw the innocence of the girl and wanted to warn her against the torturer and the other woman. You were right about both of them, perhaps.”

“If you say it, sieur.”

“Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her.” The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly. Now he chuckled. “He looks more like you!”

I am afraid I turned to stare at him.

“No offense intended, sieur, but it's true. He's a bit older, but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isn't a patch of difference.”

I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with that coloring aside, his face might almost have been my own.

“You said you never found a woman like Dorcas — like that one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think.” His eyes would not meet mine. “Several, sieur.”

“And fathered a child.”

“No, sieur!” He was startled. “Never, sieur!”

“How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the law?”

“Several times, sieur.”

“It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you loved — or perhaps only one who loved you — a dark woman — was taken once?”

“Once, sieur,” he said. “Yes, sieur. Catherine was her name. It's an old-fashioned name, they tell me.” He paused and shrugged. “There was trouble, as you say, sieur. She'd run off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never saw her again.” He did not want to come, but we brought him with us when we returned to the lugger.