Ursula K. Leguin - Olders

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2024-11-23 0 0 30.16KB 14 页 5.9玖币

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URSULA K. Le GUIN

OLDERS

The moon slips and shines in the wrinkled mirror before the prow, and from the

northern sky the Bright Companions shoot glancing arrows of light along the

water. In the stern of the boat the polesman stands in the watchful solemnity

his task. His movements as he poles and steers the boat are slow, certain,

august. The long, low channelboat slides on the black water as silently as the

reflection it pursues. A few dark figures huddle in it. One dark figure lies

full length on the half deck, arms at his sides, closed eyes unseeing that

other

moon slipping and shining through wisps of fog in the luminous blue night sky.

The Husbandman of Sandry is coming home from war.

They had been waiting for him on Sandry Island ever since last spring, when he

went with seven men, following the messengers who came to raise the Queen's

army. In midsummer Four of the men of Sandry brought back the news that he was

wounded and was lying in the care of the Queen's own physician. They told of

his

great valor in battle, and told of their own prowess too, and how they had won

the war. Since then there had been no news.

With him now in the channelboat were the three companions who had stayed with

him, and a physician sent by the Queen, an, assistant to her own doctor. This

man, an active, slender person in his forties, cramped by the long night's

travel, was quick to leap ashore when the boat slid silently up along the

stone

quay of Sandry Farm.

While the boatmen and the others busied themselves making the boat fast and

lifting the stretcher and its burden up from the boat to the quay, the doctor

went on up to the house. Approaching the island, as the sky imperceptibly

lightened from night-blue to colorless pallor, he had seen the spires of

windmills, the crowns of trees, and the roofs of the house, all in black

silhouette, standing very high after the miles of endlessly level reedbeds and

water channels. "Hello, the people!" he called out as he entered the

courtyard.

"Wake up! Sandry has come home!"

The kitchen was astir already. Lights sprang up elsewhere in the big house.

The

doctor heard voices, doors. A stableboy came vaulting out of the loft where he

had slept, a dog barked and barked its tardy warning, people began to come out

of the house door. As the stretcher was borne into the courtyard, the Farmwife

came hurrying out, wrapped in a green cloak that hid her night dress, her hair

loose, her feet bare on the stones. She ran to the stretcher as they set it

down. "Farre, Farre," she said, kneeling, bending over the still figure. No

one

spoke or moved in that moment. "He is dead," she said in a whisper, drawing

back.

"He is alive," the doctor said. And the oldest of the litterbearers, Pask the

saddler, said in his rumbling bass, "He lives, Makalidem. But the wound was

deep."

The doctor looked with pity and respect at the Farmwife, at her bare feet and

her clear, bewildered eyes. "Dema," he said, "let us bring him in to the

warmth."

"Yes, yes," she said, rising and running ahead to prepare.

When the stretcher bearers came out again, half the people of Sandry were in

the

courtyard waiting to hear their news. Most of all they looked to old Pask when

he came out, and he looked at them all. He was a big, slow man, girthed like

oak, with a stiff face set in deep lines. "Will he live?" a woman ventured.

Pask

continued looking them all over until he chose to speak. "We'll plant him," he

said.

"Ah, ah!" the woman cried, and a groan and sigh went among them all.

"And our grandchildren's children will know his name," said Dyadi, Pask's

wife,

bossoming through the crowd to her husband. "Hello, old man."

"Hello, old woman," Pask said. They eyed each other from an equal height.

"Still walking, are you?" she said.

"How else get back where I belong?" Pask said. His mouth was too set in a

straight line to smile, but his eyes glinted a little.

"Took your time doing it. Come on, old man. You must be perishing." They

strode

off side by side toward the lane that led to the saddlery and paddocks. The

courtyard buzzed on, all in low-voiced groups around the other two returned

men,

getting and giving the news of the wars, the city, the marsh isles, the farm.

Indoors, in the beautiful high shadowy room where Farre now lay in the bed

still

warm from his wife's sleep, the physician stood by the bedside, as grave,

intent, careful as the polesman had stood in the stern of the channelboat. He

watched the wounded man, his fingers on the pulse. The room was perfectly

still.

The woman stood at the foot of the bed, and presently he turned to her and

gave

a quiet nod that said, Very well, as well as can be expected.

"He seems scarcely to breathe," she whispered. Her eyes looked large in her

face

knotted and clenched with anxiety. "He's breathing," the escort assured her.

"Slow and deep. Dema, my name is Hamid, assistant to the Queen's physician,

Dr.

Saker. Her majesty and the Doctor, who had your husband in his care, desired

to come with him and stay here as long as I am needed, to give what care I

can.

Her majesty charged me to tell you that she is grateful for his sacrifice,

that

she honors his courage in her service. She will do what may be done to prove

that gratitude and to show that honor. And still she bade me tell you that

whatever may be done will fall short of his due."

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