David Malouf - Ransom

‘You’d feel better, sir,’ he ventured, ‘if you were to do as I have, and come down and dabble your feet a little. The coolness of the water will buck you up no end. There’s a good hour till sundown, and we’ll go safer on the other side if we wait till dark.’

The king looked startled, as if this voice had come from nowhere. But the driver, bolder now, thought that having once begun he had better go right on. He climbed back up the shelving bank, knelt, and since the king offered no resistance, but simply stood looking down at what he was doing as if it were happening with no agency at all, unlaced first one, then the other of his sandals, each time with an upward glance of apology for anything there might be in the action, or in his touch, that was unseemly.

Like an obedient toddler, Priam lifted one foot then the other till the sandals were off and sitting side by side on the lip of sand; then, with a glance towards the driver, who nodded to urge him on, took three uncertain steps into the stream. When, as the driver had promised, he felt the cooling effect, he smiled, looked back to where the driver was still crouched on the bank above, and nodded. Then stood staring down at his naked feet, which were very bony and white, as the same little slivers of light came flashing in, and nudged and tickled. He observed with amusement that they found the royal feet every bit as disappointing and without interest as the driver’s.

He was a rough fellow, this companion he had chosen, with no notion, so far as he could see, of what was proper, but he did know his way about, and there was so much simple modesty and goodwill in the man, and so much tact in the way he made his suggestions, that Priam found nothing objectionable in him. It was not reverence he lacked, only a knowledge of the forms. And out here, perhaps, and in the world the fellow moved in, such forms might not be altogether useful.

He indicated to the man that he should sit, then sat very contentedly himself, letting the goodness of the cool clean water extend its reviving benefit from his feet to his whole being.

His spirits, which till now had been clouded by uncertainty and a fear of so much that was still unknown, cleared and lightened.

Meanwhile the driver had released a leather satchel from his shoulder and was laying out its contents on a square of clean if ragged cloth.

‘It might be as well,’ he suggested, ‘if you took a bite to eat, my lord. We won’t get another opportunity, and we’ve got a goodish journey before us. Just a mouthful. To keep your strength up.’

Priam shook his head.

The carter nodded. He looked at the good things he had taken from the bag.

There were olives, plump black ones. Pumpkin seeds. A stack of little griddlecakes of a kind Priam had never seen before, of a golden yellow colour and about the size of a medallion. The man, his Idaeus, looked at them, he thought, rather regretfully. No doubt the fellow was hungry.

With great courtesy the king said, ‘Please, do eat something yourself. The little cakes look good and I have no objection.’

‘Well, it’s true, sir, I’ve taken nothing since early morning and it’s already after five.’ He took up one of the cakes.

‘These little cakes, now, since they’ve caught your eye, sir — pikelets they are, or griddlecakes as some people call them — were made by my daughter-in-law. Best buckwheat flour, good thick buttermilk, just a drop of oil. The buttermilk has to be of a cream colour, and thick, so that when you pour it out of the crock it comes in a slow stream. Then the batter is ladled onto a skillet over hot stones. My son, the gods rest him, set the stones up in a new way, out of affection, you know, for my daughter-in-law, to make things easier for her, and so that the cakes would cook faster and be the sweeter for it. He was a clever fellow in that way, always thinking about things. And it has an effect, it really does. It’s a real pleasure to watch the batter bubbling and setting and turning a golden brown, as you can see, around the edges. The lightness comes from the way the cook flips them over. Very neat and quick you have to be. The daughter-in-law, she’s a good girl, uses her fingers — it’s a trick you have to learn — and if she happens to burn them she pops her fingers into her mouth quick smart like this —’ and by way of illustration, he popped one of the little cakes into his mouth, almost unnoticed it might have been under the influence of his talk.

‘Ummm, you can taste the lightness! I’ve eaten twenty of these little fellows at a single sitting. Not out of greed, sir, but for the joy they bring to the heart. The flavour comes from the buttermilk, but owes something as well, I dare say, to the good humour of the cook, and the skill, you know, of her fingers in the flipping. That too you can taste. But maybe for that you have to have been there to see her do it. So quick and light,’ and with thumb and finger not quite touching, he turned his hairy wrist in the air to give Priam some notion of it, but also to revive his own happy memory. ‘Are you quite sure, my lord, that you won’t take just a bite of one?’

When Priam shook his head the man said, ‘Well at least, sir, take a few drops of wine. To wet your mouth a little and bless the occasion.’

Priam, who realised now that the man mentioned it that he was rather dry, but also because the fellow was so pleasant and persuasive, agreed to this, and Idaeus, with a happy smile, passed him the flask.

‘There now,’ he said, as Priam took a modest swig, ‘that’ll do you no end of good.’

And it was true, it did. Priam took another, more copious mouthful.

‘You see, sir, a fellow like me, who needs his strength for hard work, has to know a little about what is good for the body as well as the spirit. Now — if you’ll allow the suggestion, my lord — not to be light-headed after the wine, you really should take a bite of something. It won’t help our business if halfway along we get sick with faintness. A man needs to be practical about these things, to help the spirit along, if you’ll entertain the thought, sir, with a good comfortable feeling in the belly and the legs. There’s no harm in that. If the one is to be considered, so must the other. We’re children of nature, my lord. Of the earth, as well as of the gods.’

So it was that Priam, who did feel himself a little faint, but not without a fear that in this he might be compromising the purity of his mission, allowed himself to be persuaded and took one of the little cakes in his fingers, broke off a morsel, and tasted.

It was very good. What the driver had said of its lightness was true, and of its effect on the spirit. He finished the cake but declined a second. Abstemiousness was native in him. He based a certain sense of his formal relationship to nature on his being not too dependent upon it; despite what the driver had said, and very pertinently too, of their being doubly tied both to the gods and to the earth.

When he set out on this business he had understood quite clearly that he would be exposing himself to things he had not previously encountered. That was the price of the new. But as he sat now with the golden taste of the pancake in his mouth and another drop of wine on his lips, he saw that what was new could also be pleasurable.

This sitting with your feet in cooling water, for instance, that ran over them and away.

The little fish that came to investigate, and said, No, nothing to be got out of this one.

The wheeling and piping of swifts, which grew both in volume and excitement as the day’s light thickened.

Of course these things were not new in themselves. The water, the fish, the flocks of snub-tailed swifts had always been here, engaged in their own lives and the small activities that were proper to them, pursuing their own busy ends. But till now he had had no occasion to take notice of them. They were not in the royal sphere. Being unnecessary to royal observance or feeling, they were in the background, and his attention was fixed always on what was central. Himself. The official activity that was his part in any event or scene, the formal pose it was his duty to maintain and make shine.