Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

“We’ll take care that those forces avoid us. We’ll remain light-hearted and rise above them.”

Silence save for the industrious bees, and then Katerina said, gesturing outside, “These elegant birds with forked tails are flying about our towers again. They arrive every year from somewhere —some say from the bottoms of ponds. They never alight on the ground. I believe they have no feet or legs, according to Aristotle.”

“They’re called cavorts, and are supposed to come from a continent of southern ice which no man has ever seen.”

She made no answer, instead producing a small white comb with which she commenced to comb out the lustrous amber coat of Poseidon, till his purr was as loud as the noise of the bees.

“It’s hard to imagine a land that no living person has ever seen.”

“Is it? I believe we live in such a land. Close at our hand, everything is mysterious, undiscovered.”

She laughed. “I’m sure that’s a line from one of your plays!”

“Whenever I say anything profound, or even sensible, everyone tells me I stole it from some wretched comedy or other. Don’t you recall how clever I was as a child?”

“I recall how you used to do living statues for us, and we had to guess whom you were supposed to represent. And you nearly drowned in the lagoon when you were doing Triton! I ruined my new dress, helping to rescue you.”

“It was worth it for the sake of art. You were always the best at guessing, Katie!”

As she collected a combful of fur, she would pull it away and flick it out of the window. Combful after combful poured out of Poseidon’s coat and drifted out into the warm air beyond.

“Could it be unlucky to see cavorts on a certain day, do you think?”

“I never heard so. Who told you that?”

“Perhaps it’s an old wives’ tale. They say that if you see a cavort on a certain day of the year, you will think about it ever after, and gradually the thought becomes so obsessive that you can think of nothing else.”

“I’ve heard that theory expounded of other things, but surely not of a mere bird. It’s ridiculous!”

“Possy, look at all this fur you are wasting, you silly cat! People’s thoughts are funny affairs—perhaps they could be attracted to one special thing, as a lodestone enchants metals.”

I stretched and climbed off the bed, groaning and yawning pleasurably.

“Certainly I know people whose thoughts are obsessed by horses or precious stones or women or—”

“Women are different!”

“Different each from each other, sister, I agree—“

“And then there’s poor father, whose thoughts are obsessed by his books...”

She released yet another handful of fur through the window. I went over to her, lolling against the side of the window and tickling the cat’s head, saying idly, “I suppose we are all obsessed with something or other, even if we don’t recognise the fact.”

Katerina looked up at me. With a hint of reproach, she said, “You still generalise about life. You take it so lightly, don’t you? You think everything’s arranged for your amusement.”

“I have no evidence to the contrary so far. You used to be carefree enough, Katie. Is Volpato unfaithful to you? Does he beat you? Why does he leave you here alone for so long?”

She did not remove her gaze from me for a while. Then she looked down at her slender hands and said, “I was fascinated by Volpato and the Mantegan family even as a carefree child. On my eighth birthday, an old soothsayer told me I would grow up to marry him. I did so, and I love him, so that’s all there is to it.”

“Predestination! Have you no will of your own, Katie?”

“Don’t tease me! You are better, I see. You can leave the castle tomorrow, if you desire.”

I kissed her hand and said, “Sweet sis, don’t be cross with me! You are such a beautiful person and I have much liked being pampered by you. I shall marry a girl as much like you as possible—and I will leave the castle tomorrow in search of her!”

She laughed then, and all was well between us, and Poseidon purred more loudly than ever.

The window at which we all were was deep-set within its embrasure. Its ledge was fully wide enough for Katerina and her cat to sit there in comfort and gaze out at the world below. Or a man might stand there and, with no inconvenience to himself, discharge a musket from the coign of vantage. The woodwork round the window was lined like an aged peasant’s brow with the ceaseless diurnal passage of sunlight; perhaps some such thought had crossed the mind of an old unknown poet who, with many a flourish, had engraved two tercets of indifferent verse on one of the small leaded panes of the window:

Poseidon changed his position and lay stomach upward on my sister’s lap, so that it was now combsful of white fur which were released on the breezes to join the brown. The afternoon had created within the courtyard a bowl of warm air which spilled outward and upward, carrying the cat’s fur with it; I was surprised to find that not a single strand had reached the ground. Instead, the brown and white tufts floated in a great circle, moving between the facades of the rooms on this side of the courtyard and the next, the stables and lofts with their little tower opposite us, and the tall and weather-blasted pines which stood on the fourth side, by the wall with the gatehouse. A whole layer of air, level with our window, and extending to each of the four limiting walls, was filled with Poseidon’s fur. It floated like feathers on water, but in a perpetual stir. Katerina squeaked with amazement when I pointed it out; with her attention fixed on me, she had not noticed the pleasant phenomenon.

The cavorts were also busy. There were perhaps six pairs of them, and they swooped up from their positions in eaves and leads, tearing at the layer of fur, and whisking it down again to line their nests with. We stood watching, delighted by their activity. So intent were the little birds on their work that they often blundered almost near enough to our window to be caught. Majestically round and round floated the fur, and erratically up and down plunged the birds.

“When the baby birds are born, they’ll be grateful to you, Poseidon!” said Katerina. They’ll be brought up in proper luxury!”

“Perhaps they’ll form a first generation of cat-loving birds!”

When at length we went downstairs, the fur was still circulating, the birds still pulling it to shreds, still bearing it back to their aerial nests.

“Let’s play cards again tonight . . . Birds are so witless, they must always be busy—there’s nothing to them but movement. I never find that time hangs heavy on my hands, Prian, do you?”

“Oh, I adore to be idle. It’s then I’m best employed. But I wonder time doesn’t hang heavy for you here, alone in the castello.”

Placing a hand on my sleeve, smiling in a pleasant evasive way, Katerina said, “Why don’t you employ yourself by visiting our wizard of the frescoes, Nicholas Dalembert? There’s a man with a mind obsessed by only one thing, his art Like his wife, he’s melancholy but interesting to talk to—when he feels disposed to talk.”

“Dalembert’s still here! It’s many a moon since I last saw him, and then he was threatening to leave the castle on the morrow! The man is probably one of the geniuses of our age, if unrecognised.”

As we descended to her suite of rooms, and her pretty black maid, Peggy, ran to open the doors for her, Katerina said, “Dalembert is always threatening to leave. I’d as soon believe him if he threatened to finish his frescoes!”