Jesse Ball - The Way Through Doors

The man’s smile broadened. His features were odd, grand and haughty even as they were drawn and pursed.

— I have no need for gold.

The man had knucklebones in one hand. He was casting them out upon a flat stone, then scooping them up and casting them again.

— A wager, then? asked Loren. I would wager anything against you for that skin of water. My horse? My mule?

— I have a horse, said the man. And mules in a stable.

The man unstoppered the wineskin and took another draught of water. This was almost too much for Loren, whose face betrayed his desperation.

— Have you nothing else to wager? asked the man.

And then Loren thought of the one thing that was of worth in his life, the one thing that nothing matched.

— Have you not a wife? asked the merchant.

— I have a wife, said Loren.

Now, never before had he ever considered wagering Ilsa. She was more important to him even than the good fortune that had hitherto sheltered him. But it was true that he had never lost a wager in his life.

— Then let us say, said the merchant, this skin of water set against your wife. Ilsa, her name is, no?

Loren drew back. How did the man know her name?

— She is a noted beauty in these parts, the merchant said, answering Loren’s unspoken question.

Loren drew in a deep breath. He could win this with a single throw, get the water, take the horse and mule, and be home by nightfall. It would be over in a moment. He would be hazarding her only for a moment.

The man lifted the skin to his lips again. Soon the water would be gone.

Loren reached out his hand.

— Let’s have it. Come now.

The merchant took from beneath his green coat a tattered leather cup. Into it he dropped the bones and handed them to Loren. Loren felt in himself a great unease. He looked into the merchant’s face and was terrified by what he saw there. He knew then that he should stop. He felt a horror in himself and in the world.

He threw the bones down onto the flat rock.

They skipped out and landed in that series known as “bird’s teeth.” It was the second-best throw. Never before had Loren failed to get the best throw. But “bird’s teeth” was a good throw.

The merchant’s hands moved almost faster than Loren could see, scooping up the bones, dropping them into the cup, and passing them over the rock once, twice, three times. On the third pass he let them slide out and drop, one two three four five. They dropped slowly, perfectly into the “widow’s net,” the very best throw. Loren had lost.

With a cry he threw up his hands.

— This is foolishness, he said. I am leaving.

The merchant stood up to his full height, and he was a large man indeed. The dice cup fell from his hand.

— Loren Darius, I know you. I have known you long, and long you have been kept from my hand. But now my weight is upon you and I will never relent. Ilsa Darius is mine. I may not come for her today; I may not come tomorrow. I may not come for years. But when I do there will be nothing you can do. For on this day you have lost her to me. On this day you have given your wife for a skin of water.

The man turned and called out in a strange voice. His horse trotted up beside him. The man walked away down the road as Loren watched, and after he was gone a dozen paces, a fold of heat and light arose and the man was lost to sight.

At this, Loren stirred. He leaped onto his horse’s back and, forgetting the mule, rode at breakneck speed the remaining miles home.

As he came up the path to his house, his horse foaming and lathering, he saw upon the porch, Ilsa. She was singing and singing the song he had heard every night in his dreams as he woke again and again into that grave hallway.

He leaped from off his horse and ran up the steps.

— Ilsa, he cried. Ilsa, are you well? Have there been any visitors?

And Ilsa looked at him strangely even as he caught her up in his arms.

— No, my love. No visitors. Only your absence, and your return.

Loren breathed a sigh of relief. It must have been a dream, he thought, a dream prompted by the heat. Yet when he looked down at his wrist he saw a mark, a mark as of a burn where the man had touched him when taking the leather cup in his turn. The curling touch. Loren had heard of it. He had not dreamed the wager. Yet who was this man? If he came here, Loren would slay him. That was all. He would slay the man.

And so their life continued. Things continued as they had, and Loren and Ilsa were glad in their days. Yet sometimes Loren would think that he heard things or saw things. He would be returning from a trip to gather wood and he would think he saw a man leaving the house. Or he would see from afar in the window of the bedroom a man’s shape. Always he would run to the house and come shouting in, to find poor Ilsa all alone, seemingly confused at what had aroused her husband to such madness.

She bore such things well, yet as time went on, the occurrences began to come with greater and greater frequency. Loren would search the house from top to bottom. But never would he find anyone there, or anything not as it should have been. As had happened repeatedly in the past, the couple began to run out of money. But now, instead of going off to the city as he had before, Loren refused to leave the house. He was sure that as soon as he left, the man would come. Yet their money dwindled, and their food, and soon there was nothing for it but that he go.

So Loren left one day, and went along the road to the nearest city. There he stayed six days gambling, and raised such a fortune as he had never seen. He took two mules and his good horse and set out home. Yet with each mile that passed, his anxiety increased, and it was all he could do not to cast aside the slower mules and gallop home.

As he came up the path to his house he saw tracks left by a horse not his own. When he reached the house, he found Ilsa sitting, wearing clothes he had not seen before. And so his greeting to her was not, as it had been, My love, how I have missed you, or Darling, how are you, but:

— Who gave you that dress? And what horse left tracks upon the path? You have had visitors; I know it.

Ilsa told him that it was a woman who lived nearby, who had come several times to see her, for it grows lonely here when no one is around.

To which Loren said, you have never grown lonely before.

And she replied, always before you have been here with me, even when you were not.

Then they both saw that something deep and terrible had happened. But they did not know how to fix it, or even how to name it.

The mark on Loren’s wrist remained. The money he had made was enough to continue their life for a very long time without his going away. Yet still, he would go down into the meadow past the house, where a narrow path wound through trees to a brook, and the Cassila, with its flowering branches raves in good pleasure all through the spring, and even there, there with the bouquet of scent, the dazing pleasuring sunlight, the rushing swiftness of the brook, and the standing comfort of the grasses, he felt at his core the beginnings of a slight terror. It was then he would turn to the house and would see, or hear from afar, as though he were near, the sound of Ilsa’s love-making as she lay with another man, the sound of her calling out, the rustling of sheets, the noise of skin and skin.

He would rush, blue veined in anger, up the stairs, to find her at needlework by a window, or weaving in the parlor. Yet there would be to her then some slight disarray, a looseness to her hair, a flush to her lips, a half-buttoned dress or an uncaught breath, that to him would cement all his fears.

In his dreams, both waking and sleeping, he was forced to watch as different men, not just the merchant, but others, came to his wife, and she to them. Finally Loren’s angers grew too great, and Ilsa fled the house in the company of a friend she knew only slightly, a girl she had encountered once, the supposed daughter of woman she knew. They fled to a nearby village, pursued by Loren, and took shelter in the uppermost room of an inn.