Chapter 16: Madness, Poison, Flowers
The arrow impaled the apple on a chestnut tree with a dry thud.
‘What a waste of a good apple,’ grumbled Robert. His eyes were red from lack of sleep.
Robert wasn’t truly worried about the apple, and Neville knew it. He was just trying to make conversation, which meant talking to himself because Neville, who was naturally introspective, was even quieter than normal that morning. Whenever Robert, Thaila, and Neville met, ponds of silence cooled their conversations every time Neville was expected to participate. He always carried his guitar with him, replacing his voice with tunes while the mother-of-pearl on the wooden guitar reflected dawn or moonlight.
Neville’s father was awake, speaking, moving. But this wasn’t the same Father Neville used to know. The eyes, after such a long time focusing on Why? spent months without any focus at all, and were now alight and red from not blinking enough. The legless captain spent his days working with wood, making sturdy, unadorned furniture, practical things that the people of Debur could use and afford. The nights he spent at the library. When Fulion was in Debur, she locked the door, went to her room on the second floor, and left the captain alone with books about Nakamura and bushido. The library window stayed open, sleepless, shedding candlelight on ghostly moonlight.
Inside, the captain debated. He argued with books, discussed, brandished his fists. One morning, Fulion woke up and found him on the floor. He had got so worked up that he had fallen from the wheelchair.
‘In the books there are lamps,’ he said to the ceiling, still lying on his back. ‘Bushido existed in times of lamps, but they don’t exist anymore. There is no light.’
Fulion didn’t mind the noise.
‘My body sleeps when it has to sleep,’ she said.
The legless captain slept on sawdust during the day, his face resting on sandpaper. Neville was afraid he would one day sleep on a saw, pierce his eye with an iron nail.
When Neville mentioned his fear, his father reacted as though Neville had grown horns, wings, and started spitting fire like a dragon. Maybe his father thought it impossible to get hurt. Maybe he just didn’t care, even wanted another wound. One that healed, just to prove to the world that something could heal; or a wound that ended everything. A much welcome end. To get hurt might never have crossed the captain’s mind, but after Neville mentioned the possibility, the saw and the axe started to show up where a wheelchair could easily turn in such a way that his father’s forehead would fall right on the blade, or his hands would suffer a wound so grave that all his blood would leak through them, ending, at last, in death.
When Neville’s father thought of the possibility of dying, his eyelids trembled but didn’t lower. The corners of his eyes stretched and the pupils swallowed up the irises. But Maëlle said that honored men didn’t kill themselves, and:
‘Honor is all that is left,’ the legless captain told his son in a moment of apparent clarity (most of the time he was debating – if not with books, with something inside his own head. His mouth moved, his neck spasmed, and his forehead scrunched). ‘Honor is the only concrete thing in this world, the only lamp. Never break your word, son. Never. If you break it, the light will go out. In the end, all we have left is knowing we are men of honor.’
Robert hurled three apples in the air. Neville hit them all, and his friend put a pale hand on Neville’s brown shoulder.
‘You’re something else, you know? The Eslarian said it takes ten years to master a Satironese bow. You’ve trained for two years and you don’t miss an apple.’
The stars began to fade from the sky, but the sun had not yet risen. Neville picked another arrow. He prepared to pull the string, but the sound of many feet on grass called his and Robert’s attention to the foot of the hill. A few dozen soldiers with training kimonos saluted them.
‘What do they want here?’ asked Robert.
‘I called them,’ said Neville.
The other day, Henrique asked him if he still carried his father’s medallion in his pocket. Neville took the eagle and gave it to the king who then put the chain around Neville’s neck. The eagle landed cold against Neville’s shirt.
‘I finally have a new captain,’ said Henrique.
But, why? Neville had done nothing to deserve the medallion. The eagle was heavy against his black chest, and he tried to remove the chain, but Henrique stopped him.
‘Do you question my decision?’ asked the king. ‘Your family, Neville, is one of the things that makes Baynard the best place to live in Franária. Deran might have got rid of the northern raids, but the Wave still casts an ominous shadow on their land. Here we have bushido and a library. Thanks to your parents.’
Neville’s parents deserved many things, but Neville had done nothing.
‘You don’t wait for a flower to bloom and only then nurture it,’ said the king. ‘First you create the best conditions, then it blooms.’
‘Soldiers aren’t flowers,’ said Neville. ‘Neither is war the best condition.’
‘You talk like your father. Don’t lose your head, Neville. Don’t lose your legs. Flowers are stronger than men. Be the captain and protect my flowers. That’s all I ask.’
Neville couldn’t return the medallion, so he decided to be the best captain Baynard had ever seen. Better even than his father. His soldiers would be the best warriors in all of Franária, which meant that training in the flat grounds of the Emerald wasn’t enough.
All his life, Neville had trained on the hill behind the house where he lived. Robert often joined him. The hill was steep, and one of its faces was an abrupt fall to moorland. Neville summoned his men there, and Robert organized the soldiers in groups so they could try different terrains. At the end of the training, Neville asked his soldiers to describe each terrain, its advantages and dangers. The soldiers exchanged confused glances. They were used to receiving instructions, not questions. Neville simplified the questions, demanding mere yes or no answers.
In the beginning, the soldiers replied with only nods, but Neville put his hand around his ear and waited until someone voiced an answer. After a while, they shouted their yeses and noes, disagreeing with one another, raising fists.
In the books Neville had read about bushido, some sentences always came up. They were repeated often enough that Neville was convinced Nakamura had actually said them. Sometimes they appeared together, other times in different parts of the books. Neville collected them in his head and organized them like this: Weak governments control their people. Strong governments count on their people. You must fight egotism, not independence.
In Baynard, they believed a soldier should only obey. Neville thought it was possible for a warrior to learn how to think and in spite of it, maybe because of it, follow orders.
A weak leader fears the questions of their people, was another sentence that often came up in Nakamurian literature.
‘By the end of the month,’ Neville told Robert, ‘they’ll be discussing strategies.’
‘We’ll have trouble to shut them up.’
A few days every week, very early in the morning, instead of training with his bow, Neville practiced with the king in the Emerald orchards. Those days, Neville always saw Leonard, the Accident’s, face watching him through a gap in his shelter made out of discarded cardboard boxes. He watched until Neville disappeared inside the Emerald. Leonard lived in an alley, under rotten wood, behind old cardboard, with mice. He had a big cat with a round face, black chin, and white whiskers. It had no tail. The cat lived happily with the mice, played with their tails and, every so often, ate one. Neville didn’t understand why the mice stayed around the big cat.
‘Jean is a very strong cat,’ said Leonard. ‘He keeps the other cats away.’
‘But he also eats mice,’ said Neville.
‘True, but he’s only one. If there were other cats around, many more mice would die. It was the mice that came to him. Jean didn’t do anything. Neville, are you captain now? Make me a soldier.’
‘If they draw your name, you’ll be sent to the Mouth of War and die.’
Leonard petted Jean.
‘If your name is drawn, you will die, too,’ said the Accident. ‘Even Olivier’s wife died by draw.’
Neville changed the subject:
‘How did he lose his tail?’ he pointed at the cat.
‘Cruelty,’ said Leonard. ‘They burnt his tail and would have burnt the cat, had I not interfered.’
Later, at the Emerald, Neville asked the king if that was true.
‘Of course it is,’ said Henrique. ‘Olivier and his wife are the noblest example of bushido Baynard has ever seen. Her name was drawn as soon as she moved to Debur. Not one of them complained or tried to change her fate. She went away and died with honor. He stayed and serves me with honor.’
The king was a good combatant, but he had more strength than skill. Training with him always demanded much from Neville, for the king attacked with brute force and weight, demanding greater dexterity from Neville, not only to protect himself, but to not hurt the king. Henrique didn’t attack with anger, nor did he want to hurt Neville, he just didn’t know his own strength.
After practice, the king showed Neville roses or primroses. It didn’t matter what the king planted, it blossomed.
‘When I was a child, Olivier showed me a book,’ said Henrique on a blue morning. ‘It was all illustrated with flowers. From then on, all I wanted was to bring those flowers to the Emerald.’ Henrique held a rose blossom with the tip of his fingers, like he was holding a baby’s chin. ‘War is ugly, Neville. War’s red is dirty and it stinks. But at the Emerald there is a place for flowers.’
Neville took a rose home and asked his mother if it didn’t have color enough for her. Ever since Maëlle saw the Frontier, she believed she saw colors in certain people and certain places. Even in Debur, she said, there were people with true colors. Fulion was one of them.
‘This flower is as grey as the rest of us,’ said Maëlle. ‘The colors that I saw, that I still see in alleys at night, they’re true. Baynard is faded. The Frontier is moving.’
In spite of what Maëlle said, that red rose on the table was one of the most beautiful things Neville had ever seen. Years earlier, on that same table, his father’s blood had run. Years earlier, Neville had helped his mother amputate his father’s legs, then he had cremated the legs and buried them at the foot of the hill.
One day, Robert found Neville at the top of the hill, not with his bow but with his guitar.
‘Looks like you didn’t sleep,’ said Robert. ‘What happened?’
‘My parents.’
Robert was very quiet. Neville rarely talked about what happened inside his house. Robert and Thaila noticed the sadness and turbulence in a home that was once the happiest in Debur, but Neville said nothing. Only once he told his friends:
‘My parents have gone mad.’
On a crescent moon night, Robert and Thaila spied through the library’s window while the legless captain argued with the books. They tried to hear what he said, but Neville’s father muttered nothing coherent, then he began to cry. Thaila pulled Robert away from the window, told him they shouldn’t trespass on someone else’s sadness like that.
Maëlle, on the other hand, went mad with colors.
‘They exist,’ she said. ‘And the tree. It exists as well. Fulion knows it, she has to. Fulion has colors.’
‘There are colors everywhere,’ said the Eslarian, for Thaila’s father often visited the maddened couple, trying to anchor them back in Debur with bread and treats.
‘You’re wrong,’ said Maëlle. ‘Here there’s only ash. You don’t see the colors, but I do. They exist but no one notices. Worse, no one sees the grey.’
Maëlle spent her days looking for books about colors. She asked Rimbaud of the Caravan to search other countries and asked Fulion why she never brought any books that dealt with colors. Two weeks before that, when Fulion returned from one of her expeditions, Maëlle grabbed her by the shoulders. It wasn’t an attack. She simply took hold of those bony shoulders and held Fulion very close, as though she could see a miracle, or at least an answer, on the face worn out by weather.
She intended to say something, but Fulion’s black and white horse bit her arm, and Maëlle let go of the bookseller. Fulion held Stain’s head in her arms, rested her forehead on his white snout, and whispered something as smoothly as her harsh voice could. Then she removed the books from his back and took him to the back of the library, where she brushed his fur and massaged his legs. Fulion never asked Maëlle what happened. She didn’t ask what Maëlle saw, she didn’t ask anything.
Robert had witnessed the whole thing and he found that lack of curiosity strange, but Fulion was never normal. Maybe Maëlle was right and the bookseller had more color than the rest of Debur.
‘She seems normal to me,’ said Thaila later, but she didn’t quite dismiss the notion. ‘Maybe it’s one of those things that are always there and nobody sees simply because they’ve always been there.’
Robert didn’t get the logic, but Thaila said they should watch Fulion. If there was anything to see, and they looked long enough, they’d find it. So it was that one day the two of them entered the library, took a book each, and sat down, side by side, facing Fulion. Robert had always been discreet, something every orphan learned early. Thaila was different. She faced Fulion for hours. Even when Fulion looked back at her, Thaila stayed firm.
At the end of the day, she was dizzy and had a headache, but couldn’t tell why.
‘Did you see anything?’ asked Robert.
‘I don’t know,’ said Thaila.
There was a moment, she told him, in which Fulion seemed to be the only outlined thing in the world. Everything else was blurred with some sort of fog made out of ashes. Everything was grey, except for Fulion.
From that day on, Thaila was always very cold. She wore jackets and scarves on the hottest days. When everyone else was on short sleeves and short pants, she was wearing long skirts and trousers. The grey fog, she told them, stole her warmth.
Even with Robert and Thaila’s help, Neville didn’t know what to do with his parents. His friends supported him, the soldiers demanded his attention, Henrique raised flowers.
‘Everything will be all right,’ said the king when Neville told him he was afraid for his father’s life. ‘It will be fine. As long as there are flowers, there’s hope. Give your father some time, give life some time.’
Neville told his father what the king had said.
‘The king,’ said his father.
Neville waited, but that was all his father said: the king. And Neville couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t tell what in those two little words threw him to the corners of his bed until the whole bed became sandpaper, and Neville had to get up. He took his guitar and went to the hill to try and erase his father’s king with musical notes, even if disconnected. At least music bloomed.
When Neville reached the hill, he stumbled and fell. There was a hole. A drop of sweat ran down Neville’s spine. Years ago, his father’s legs had been cremated, and Neville had buried the ashes at the foot of the hill. Who would dig them up, and why?
Neville didn’t tell any of that to Robert, who sat beside him on the grass and waited, as always, for Neville to open up. Neville knew what Robert expected, but what could he say? He himself didn’t know what bothered him: was it something real or something imagined?
‘I’ll leave the soldiers in your charge today,’ said Neville. ‘They need to practice with the spear against an attack from horsemen.’
‘I see,’ said Robert. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to think.’
Neville went down the hill and plunged into the sinuous, narrow streets of Debur. Summer early mornings had no fog. The alleyways of Debur were naked in the unflattering, rising light, which plucked the stars out of the sky, one by one. Jean, the cat, curved his back at Neville’s passing. Behind the cat, the Accident slept under a cover with mice.
Warm light and the white smell of bread in the oven leaked from the bakery’s windows, where Thaila’s and the Eslarian’s shadows danced like specters. The golden light of the windows clashed with the blurring dawn.
The Emerald emerged graciously from the shadow, first the tips of the towers, then the top of the wall. The shadow ran down to the ground, and the castle’s green stone glittered like a storm at sea. That green stone could only be found in Sátiron, unreacheable because of the Land of the Banished, and in the Frontier, where no one went for the same reason. So many unreacheable things in the world, so much that could never be recovered. Green stone, red apples, legs.
Neville went through the Emerald’s stone arches, into the courtyard which had staged his oath two years ago. He stepped on the crack where pebbles sometimes got stuck, and at which Olivier poked his boot during the solemn ceremony. Neville went around two towers until he reached the vast lawn surrounded by bushes, where he and Henrique used to practice.
Morning dew darkened Neville’s boots. It was too early, even for Henrique, who visited his greenhouse before he met with his captain. Neville sat down on the grass and waited. The shadows leaked away, the Emerald glittered, the weight of a sleepless night sank Neville’s body into the grass. The sun rose slowly, and Neville’s eyelids went down, went up, went down, stayed down.
‘Captain Neville.’
The call that woke him seemed to come from very far, but the man’s lean silhouette stood right above Neville’s head. Neville got up and stood face to face with Olivier of Tuen. Oliver’s wrinkles seemed to have been sucked in, as opposed to other people’s wrinkles, whose faces sagged. The skin around his eyes sank deep and purple.
‘You have been made captain,’ said the counselor.
Neville remembered Olivier’s wife, drawn to die in Fabec. He tried to imagine the willpower, the honor resounding inside that man’s chest. He had watched his wife march to the Mouth of War but did not protest.
‘How was she?’ asked Neville.
‘Is it pity I see on your face, soldier? I can only think of one episode in my life which would cause pity,’ said the counselor. ‘Who told you?’
‘A beggar,’ said Neville, ‘and the king. It isn’t pity, it’s awe.’
‘What for?’ asked Olivier. ‘For my silence? Silence is your worst enemy.’ He pointed at the medallion on Neville’s chest. ‘I was not consulted.’
‘Would you have been against it?’ asked Neville.
‘I am.’
Neville held the medallion protectively. He also disagreed with the king’s decision, but he felt suddenly protective of the eagle.
‘Think, Neville,’ said Olivier. ‘How did your father lose his legs? The first battle to take place outside the Mouth of War in centuries. It should have been a surprise, an unexpected invasion. Yet Fulbert was right there to defend Patire.’
Neville tightened his hand around the medallion, which bit his skin.
‘Only three people knew your father intended to build a bridge over the Loefern,’ said Olivier. ‘He himself, me, and King Henrique of Baynard.’
‘Why would the king betray my father?’
‘To defend his flowers,’ said Olivier.
At that moment, they heard Henrique’s roar.
‘Olivier! Come inside. Breakfast has arrived.’
Olivier began to walk toward the Emerald, but Neville held his arm.
‘It isn’t true.’
Yet he remembered the king’s words on the day Neville became captain. You speak like your father. Don’t lose your head, Neville, don’t lose your legs.
Olivier’s mouth twitched. He said:
‘The king has never spoken to your father again, has he?’
‘You have never visited him. You didn’t even see my mother when she went to Tuen.’
‘I didn’t have the courage.’
‘To see him crippled?’
‘To seem him at all. Your father was an idealist,’ said Olivier. ‘He believed in honor, courage, and all those pretty things that make us think of legends like Yukari Nakamura and Sáeril Quepentorne. Bushido. Always evolve, always conquer. Henrique wasn’t prepared for such glorious philosophy. No one in Baynard is.’
‘My father was.’
‘Thus, he should die.’
‘For wanting a better future?’
‘For trying to exchange flowers for glory. What do you think would happen to these gardens if the war crossed the Loefern?’
‘Why tell me all this now?’
‘Olivier,’ Henrique called from inside the castle.
A gentle smell of bread reached the orchard. Olivier freed his arm from Neville’s grasp and went away.
‘I didn’t know anything,’ said Neville.
‘Your father chose silence because the truth is poisonous. I have the poison, but I have no fangs.’ Olivier spoke while walking away, without turning. Neville thought he heard the counselor whisper ‘Thaila,’ and suck air between his thin lips.
