Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“Let me see you,” his mother said before he could get out the door. Obediently, he stood still, Elfryth brushed away an almost-visible speck of lint, smoothed down the hair he’d just combed, and finally nodded. “You look very nice,” she said. “If your young lady isn’t swept off her feet, she ought to be.” She’d been saying that as long as he’d been taking young ladies out. She added something newer: “Don’t try sneaking in after curfew. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Aye,” he said. His father would have told him exactly the same thing, and his father’s advice, he knew, was nearly always good. Even so, he sounded at best dutiful, at worst resigned, rather than enthusiastic.

Elfryth stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. “Go on, then,” she said. “If you must get home sooner than you’d like, you won’t want to waste your time standing around chattering with the likes of me.”

That being true, Leofsig nodded and left. He’d walked half a block before he realized he should have denied it for politeness’ sake. Too late now, he thought, and kept going.

By then, he’d already pulled the cloak tight around him and fastened the polished brass button that closed it at the neck. A raw wind blew up from the southwest. There might be frost on the windows, maybe even on the grass, come morning. As Gromheort went, that made it a chilly evening.

A couple of Algarvian soldiers on patrol rode past him. They didn’t look twice. To them, he was just another subject. Maybe they knew how much he hated them. If they did, they didn’t care.

The sun was low in the northwest when he knocked on a door a few blocks from his own. A plump man a few years older than his own father opened it. “Good day, Master Elfsig,” Leofsig said. “Is Felgilde ready?”

“She won’t be but a moment,” his companion’s father said. “Step on in, Leofsig. You have time for a cup of wine, I think, but only a quick one.”

“I thank you, sir,” Leofsig said. Elfsig led him to the parlor and brought the wine himself. Felgilde’s little brother, whose name Leofsig always forgot, made faces at him from the doorway—though only when Elfsig’s back was turned. Leofsig ignored him. Ealstan had been only a bit too big to play such games when young men started coming to Hestan’s house to take Conberge out.

Leofsig hadn’t quite finished his wine when Felgilde came into the parlor. Elfsig said. “You’ll want to bring her home before curfew, so we don’t have trouble with the redheads.” His eyes twinkled. “Maybe you won’t want to do it—I recall what it’s like being your age, believe it or not—but you will, for her sake.”

“Aye, sir,” Leofsig said, so mournfully that Elfsig laughed. He would cheerfully have disobeyed his own mother; evading the wishes of Felgilde’s family was harder. Putting the best face on it he could, he turned to her. “Shall we be off?”

“Aye.” She kissed Elfsig, who wore rather a bushy beard, on the end of his nose. Leofsig offered her his arm. She took it. Her maroon cloak went well with his blue one. She’d done up her black hair in a fancy pile of curls. She looked like her father, but in her Elfsig’s rather doughy features were sharply carved. She said, “I hope the play is good.”

“It’s supposed to be very funny,” Leofsig answered as they headed for the door. Most of the plays that ran in Gromheort these days were farces. Real life was grim enough to make serious drama less attractive than it would have been in better times.

People streamed toward the playhouse, which stood a couple of doors down from the public baths. Leofsig saw two or three couples come right out of the men’s and women’s wings of the baths, meet, and head for the theater. One such pair all but ran to get in line ahead of Felgilde and him. “I hope we’ll have decent seats,” Felgilde said.

If you’d been ready when I got there, we’d have a better chance. But Leofsig, like any other swain with an ounce of sense in his head, knew better than to say that out loud. He paid for two seats. He and Felgilde both held out their hands so a fellow could stamp them to prove they’d paid. Thus marked, they went inside.

Leofsig bought wine for both of them, and also bread and olives and roasted almonds and cheese. A stew of some sort bubbled in a pot, too, but he knew it wouldn’t be much more than gruel. The playhouse had no easier time getting meat than anyone else in Gromheort. Spitting out olive pits as they walked, he and Felgilde headed for the benches in front of the stage.

At the entranceway, a sign that hadn’t been there the last time he came to the theater announced, KAUNIANS IN REAR BALCONY ONLY. “Oh, good!” Felgilde exclaimed. “More seats for the rest of us.”

He looked at her. Most of what he wanted to say, he couldn’t, not unless he also wanted to betray himself. Felgilde and her family didn’t know he’d escaped from the Algarvian captives’ camp, or how he’d escaped, or with whose help. Like most people, they thought the redheads had released him. The fewer folk who knew any different, the better.

He did say, “They’re people, too.”

“They’re not Forthwegians, not truly,” Felgilde said. “And the trousers their women wear—well, I mean really.” She tossed her head.

As he’d grown toward manhood, Leofsig had eyed a good many trousered Kaunian women. He didn’t know of a Forthwegian man who hadn’t—including, he had no doubt whatever, Felgilde’s father. Saying anything about that also struck him as unwise. He pointed. “There’s a spot wide enough for two, I think,” he said. “Come on—let’s hurry.”

The spot proved barely wide enough for two. That meant Felgilde had to squeeze in close behind him. He didn’t mind. She leaned her head on his shoulder. He didn’t mind that, either. She was wearing a floral scent that tickled his nose. When he slipped an arm around her, she snuggled closer. He should have been very happy. Most of him was very happy. Even the small part that wasn’t very happy made excuses for Felgilde: if she didn’t care for Kaunians, how was she different from most Forthwegians? She wasn’t, and Leofsig knew it.

“Ah,” she said as the lights dimmed and the curtains slid back from the stage. Leofsig leaned forward, too. He’d come here to forget his troubles and his kingdom’s, not to dwell on them.

Out came an actor and actress dressed as Forthwegian peasants from a couple of centuries before: stock comic figures. “Sure is hard times,” the actor said. He looked at the actress. “Twenty years ago, now, we had plenty to eat.” He looked at her again. “Twenty years ago, I was married to a good-looking woman.”

“Twenty years ago, I was married to a young man,” she retorted.

He winced, as from a blow. “If I had red hair, I bet my belly’d be full.”

“If you had red hair, you’d look like an idiot.” The actress looked out at the audience, then shrugged. “Wouldn’t change things much, would it?”

They took things from there, poking fun at the Algarvian occupiers, at themselves, and at anything else that happened to get in their way. The villain of the piece was a Kaunian woman—played by a short, squat, immensely fat Forthwegian actress in a blond wig; she looked all the more grotesque in tight-fitting trousers. Leofsig wondered what the real Kaunians in the rear of the balcony thought of her. Felgilde thought she was very funny. So did Leofsig, when he wasn’t think about how laughing at her helped estrange Forthwegians and Kaunians.

In the end, she got what she deserved, being married off to a drunken swineherd, or perhaps to one of his pigs. The Algarvians in the paly went off to harass some other fictitious village: the sort of relief Gromheort wanted to see but never would. And the two peasants who’d opened the show stood at center stage. The man of the pair addressed the audience: