Chapter Forty Two – Newcomer

"Come back to bed."
"I can't sleep."
"What is it?"
"Tomorrow."
"Everything will be fine. It's not a trial."
"It just seems a lot of nosy people asking a lot of nosy questions. Why can't they just believe you?"
"I'm sure they will, and Shuna, and Councillor Kamaesa, Bhema and his brothers. Lots of testimony."
"Hm."
"Please? Bed. You make me nervous."
"In a while. I think I'll walk. You sleep."

She sighed, this was the fifth night like this, the fifth time he'd hardly slept, had dressed and gone out in the snowy dark, in the blue moonlight, walking, thinking, worried. Four of those times she had come to him, soft and tender and wanting them to be as one. And four times he had gently said no. That irked him too, hurting her was something he hated, but right now, with these thoughts buzzing in his head, with these worries, he couldn't rest, couldn't relax. Couldn't love.

He stood near the shore on the wet soil of the lakeside field watching the moons sailing over the white hills and black water. Although he was cold he didn't want to return to bed and sleep, he wanted to think. Think about tomorrow. The date of the meeting with the Grand Gathering had been set a week ago, in Penraeth. It was a big town but not a city, Gondoa had no great cities, no industrial areas. Penraeth was the capital. It would take most of tomorrow to ride there and the meeting was the day after that. The Gathering was to decide who he was, they would interview him, and other witnesses and look up things in their big dusty books then debate the issue. That might take a day or two days or it might take a week, he didn't know how long.

He'd thought long and hard about what he would say. He knew they would get it out of him eventually, his and Sheeta's story, they would find out about Laputa and Muska and Goliath. So, shivering in the blue night, in the snow, that last night before he traveled, he decided. The truth. Complete and without dressing it up in fancy language, exactly as it happened. His childhood too. His father's discovery of Laputa and his dream as well. If they asked he would tell them that. He somehow thought the Grand Gathering wouldn't be stupid, made up of dribbling easily fooled old men. If Councillor Kamaesa was an example then no way could he fool a dozen of so of these people.

It made him cross because he wanted, for now, to just be home. For the two of them to be simple people and put aside all this for a while. The solstice was in a few weeks, the Suethelhin. He was looking forward to it, it would mean he could dance with her again. Just a simple thing, but these days simple things were what he craved.

He had fallen in love with the farm, her simple farm, the very first day. Not just where it was on the edge of the village with the sloping fields next to the lake and the woodland above it, and the mountains behind, but the house too. The garden and apple orchard to the rear, the big yaoko shed with it's hairy steaming occupants, the chicken coop, and the small cheerful house of stout warm Gondoan stone with its steep slate roof. Downstairs at one end was the main room the width of the house, windows in two opposite walls, one facing the yard, one the garden. Through a door near the garden end was the kitchen, Sheeta's room he came to know it as, where she would cook the most amazing things, stews, pies, fish from the lake, mescah and bomao, charza and eothren. And she cooked meat for him even though she wouldn't touch it. The last quarter of the downstairs space between the kitchen and the yard, under the stairs, was the scullery where she did her laundry and bathed. Pazu, inspired by the bath house in the inn in Restormel decided he would build her a fixed bath, arrange drainage and put in a boiler here. A gift to her, he said, the Woman Who Loved to Bathe.

Upstairs the stair at the yard side of the house opened onto a landing which ran back above the yard. There were two rooms up here, a smaller spare room that she used as her sewing room because the north facing window gave good light, and her room, a big room above the downstairs parlour. It was a lovely room, the ceiling beams, whitewashed walls, bright rugs on the polished wooden floor and two large windows made it light and airy. Her bed had posts at the corners and heavy drapes on the top and the rich autumnal colours in the coverlet that Gondoans favoured. Inside the bed, with the drapes dropped down and incense burning in the room, it reminded him a little of Shuna's tumurh. But he hadn't begun to relax here yet, in this community, and especially in that bed.

It was her bedroom, her bed, not theirs. He couldn't yet feel that it was their bed. Not yet. So for this last week all they had done was sleep in it. Kiss goodnight, hold each other. And sleep. Nothing more. He wasn't ready. He still felt like an outsider, an intruder. A stranger in bed with their princess. It wasn't right. He would lie awake at night and feel he could reach his hand out into the village, grasp hold of their mutterings, their discontent, their spiteful rumouring and arguing about him.

The confrontation the night they had arrived had shown the whole village who he was and what he was capable of doing. He just had no idea if he was accepted. That night they had stayed at Shuna's house. Sheeta's farm was a mess, the place stank of smoke and while Surun and his men were still in the village Councillor Kamaesa insisted it was not wise that they be alone. So for the sake of safety they stayed in a house with another family.

The next day a group of men escorted Surun's party back to Restormel, to an aerodrome near one of the northern ports. The Councillor impounded the skidplane and Shuna, quickly taking on the de facto role of her right hand man, went through it, retrieving some interesting paperwork. Councillor Kamaesa, over the following days discussed the incident at the Sheeta farm with the Grand Gathering and they agreed to lodge a formal complaint to the Numenaorian government. By this means the affair was made public and the Agency would not dare interfere again with the Gondoan royal family. They also decreed that Paztsu Fuhmonhir should attend upon them and prove himself.

And since then he hadn't been able to relax.

But simple things were there to distract him from these worries. Sheeta was there to distract him, make it easier to bear. The morning after they arrived they went to the farm. Pazu lifted the worst of the burnt floor boards from the main room and replaced them, adding varnish. He went to take the elm table to a carpenter for a new top to be made for it but Sheeta stopped him. She wanted it to remain with its damaged surface as a reminder of that night. She wanted their children, if there should ever be any, to know the story of how power and lust for influence can make men go bad. So Pazu rubbed the table top down, removed the worst of the splinters and polished it.

She opened the windows to remove the smell, made up the bed with clean linen and later went out to pick displays of evergreens and berries to hang in the rooms to cheer the place up. He lit roaring fires in the main room and kitchen and brought in more firewood. In the afternoon she took him out and walked him around her fields showing him what she grew in each, which would lie fallow next spring, where her yaoko grazed and where the wind pump was. He looked at the pump. He thought he could get it working more efficiently with a smaller bore pipe and better bearings on the spindle behind the blades. They talked about small things, inconsequential things, began to plan for a future, and he loved her for that, for taking his mind off what worried him.

But still he could not be at ease. Not completely.

--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I

Imthumi (she didn't pronounce the 'h'), or just "Immy" as she liked to call her, was Sheeta's horse, a four year mare of sixteen hands and jet black apart from a diamond on her forehead and one white sock. Immy was strong enough she said, she would carry them both to Penraeth. They rode with Shuna, Shuna's youngest boy Teba who was nine and wanted to see the big city for the first time, and Councillor Kamaesa who rode in a litter on top of a big fat yaoko she called Norris. The Councillor brought two girl servants with her who also rode ponies and together they made quite a convoy. Two villages up the valley they met with Bhema and his brothers and the eleven of them journeyed to the town.

The Councillor had her own quarters but the rest of them lodged at an inn at the Gathering's expense. That night they talked, ate, drank and danced. Except for Pazu, he didn't dance, he didn't drink much and he hardly talked at all. In the middle of the evening he got up from the cushions and went out into the street. It was busy outside, in the archways under the shops stall holders sold hot food even late into the night and travelers coming into the town would buy from them and use them to pick up on the gossip. Pazu walked down the muddy road to a bridge over a small river and looked at the black water, the reflected clouds sailing deep within it.

A hand came onto his shoulder. He knew who it was.

"Tomorrow, Sheeta, when they ask you, just tell them the truth."
"Yes."
"No more made up stories."
"No."
"If they ask, I'm going to tell them everything."
"I think that's best."
"If we are truthful, there is no chance of our stories not matching. I can't go through all that again."
"I understand."
"When we were hiding and running across Marinaer it was different. Here people are going to judge me, I don't want them thinking Paetsu Fuhmonhir is a liar. Everything would go wrong for me and us after that, if Gondoa found out Phom's descendent had come back after seven hundred years and I told lies..."
"You're right. Paetsu?"

He turned from the dark water to her dark eyes.

"Come back inside. You don't have to join in the party, just sit with me."

So he did. And she just stayed near him and held his hand, not talking, just holding. He was grateful. Just being near her helped. He sat and worried about tomorrow.

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8 – 9 April 2007

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