K Parker: The Belly of the Bow

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the interiors all betrayed more than a hint of Perimadeian decadence; there were frescoes painted on the walls, bushy and inedible plants in pots dotted round the edge of the cloister and, in the middle of the courtyard, a fountain supplied by a natural hot spring in which the members of the household were rumoured to wash themselves at regular intervals. Infuriatingly for the neighbours, Gorgas’ servants were all foreigners and depressingly reticent about their master’s eccentricities, and (since they also formed his personal bodyguard) it was deemed unwise to press them too closely for information they weren’t prepared to give. One consequence of this tantalising shortage of hard data was the quite bewildering cloud of rumour and speculation that had settled around the man, which included such bizarre and improbable tales as the one that held that he’d fled from his native country after prostituting his sister and murdering his father and half his family. Needless to say, nobody actually believed that particular fantasy. But there were plenty of quite sensible people who felt there was no smoke without fire, and that there might well be secrets in Gorgas’ past that would be better left undisturbed for everybody’s sake.

He dumped his kitbag in the lodge and went straight through into the courtyard, which was the likeliest place to find his wife at this time of day. She had set up her desk in the shade of the cloister, just clear of the ring of sparkling fallout from the fountain, and he kept back in the shadows for a minute or so watching her as she painstakingly copied a long legal document. At the end of each line she carefully read through what she’d written, comparing it a word at a time with the original. A strand of her long black hair had worked loose from the tight bun on the back of her head, and was dangling perilously close to the ink pot.

‘Watch out, Heris,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll get ink on the page.’

She twitched, almost knocking over the ink. ‘Idiot,’ she replied, with a smile. ‘Don’t make me jump like that. So you’re not dead, then.’

‘Not so as you’d notice,’ he replied, strolling across the courtyard and kissing her gently on the cheek. ‘All well?’

She nodded. ‘A couple of men came looking for you, middle-aged merchant types, yesterday, and an old boy this morning. They both said it wasn’t important and they’d come back. Vido sent the North Coast papers down, and I’m copying them now. Luha got sent home from school for fighting,’ she continued with a frown. ‘Again. Oh, and She wants us to go round for dinner tomorrow.’

Between the two of them, there was no need to specify who She was. By and large, Heris managed to cope remarkably well with the all-pervading presence of her sister-in-law. She’d known before she married Gorgas that there was no way in which she could compete with Niessa Loredan in any department of her life. When Niessa spoke, Gorgas listened, and when she gave an order, he obeyed. Dimly Heris was aware that it had something to do with various disagreeable things in the past, and she had the common sense to keep out of it. Common sense was, in fact, the cornerstone of her existence. If she had been the princess in the fairytale who was forbidden to go into the one locked and secret room in the castle, then into that locked and secret room she would never ever have gone, and the happy ending would have happened for her years earlier than scheduled. So, instead of making difficulties and trying to intervene between Gorgas and Niessa, she made sure that the things that mattered to her were areas in which Niessa had no interest or involvement.

The compromise was simple and effective, and only failed to be completely viable when Gorgas had to go away on business, most specifically the sort of business that made it necessary for him to wear his mailshirt under his coat and pack three days’ rations in his kitbag. There had been a time when she’d been able to keep her mind off those, too; but ever since his last trip to Perimadeia, when he’d barely managed to get out of there alive when the plainsmen sacked the place, she found she had difficulty in being properly detached about it all. That aside, she represented the part of his life that took place here inside the enclosed area of the house, where nothing too disagreeable was ever allowed to enter. Anything he did outside, be it his work, his relationship with his sister or even his occasional infidelities (and they were very occasional; or at least she had no reason to think otherwise) might have been the acts of some other man who by coincidence shared the same name. They were neither interesting nor relevant to her, just as the management of the house and the buying of vegetables for the evening meal were of no interest to him.

‘Tomorrow,’ Gorgas repeated, sliding into the chair beside her and peering over her shoulder at the mortgage deed she was copying. ‘That’s a nuisance. I was going to spend tomorrow evening catching up on the work that’ll have piled up while I was away. You know, I wish she’d think about things like that sometimes.’

Heris kept her eyes on the page and didn’t answer. Years ago she’d worked out that while Gorgas frequently said all sorts of unpleasant things about his sister, that prerogative was reserved for him alone. For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it’s been put and doesn’t go wandering off all over the board.

‘Have you got much more of that to do?’ Gorgas said. ‘I’d like to take a walk around the Square before dinner.’

Heris shook her head. ‘At least,’ she added, ‘I wasn’t planning on finishing it today. There’s miles of it. The parcels clause alone is two sides.’ She hesitated and wrinkled her nose. ‘This is a big place,’ she said. ‘Since when did we have clients among the landed gentry?’

Gorgas laughed. ‘You should see it,’ he said. ‘Three square miles of rock and scrub, no useful timber and about the only thing you’d ever grow there is old before your time. The two brothers – they’re both in their late sixties – gave up trying to make a living farming it years ago; they just net the weirs for salmon and pootle about in that little toy quarry they’ve got on the western edge. We’ll be lucky if we see a bent quarter out of that one while they’re still alive. But two old boys living on their own – call it a long-term investment.’

‘I see,’ Heris replied. ‘I expect you know what you’re doing. There,’ she added, drawing a line under a finished clause with her ebony ruler and putting the stopper back in the ink bottle. ‘That’s enough of that for one day. I’ll get Luha and Niessa ready while you put the desk away for me.’

It was almost dark by the time they arrived in the Square, and the evening promenade was nearly over. Around the steps of the fountain the stallholders were gradually packing up for the night; fortunately, they all knew Gorgas Loredan by sight and quickly unfolded their trestles, spread their cloths and started laying out their goods again. Heris bought a honey-cake each for Niessa and Luha, cheese and sausages for the evening meal and a quarter of cinnamon to flavour the wine, while Gorgas amused himself by haggling with an old friend and sparring partner for a new penknife and set of writing tablets he didn’t really want, and ended up striking such a good bargain that he was obliged to buy them.

‘Heris,’ he called out across the Square, ‘I’ve come out without any money. Have you got seven quarters?’

The stallholder grinned and assured him that his credit was good, but Gorgas looked suitably shamefaced and promised faithfully to send his boy out first thing in the morning with the money. The stallholder insisted on making a show of wrapping the things carefully in a square of waxed silk tied up with red cord, packed up his stall with a flourish and departed with his trestle and pack over his shoulder, whistling cheerfully.