Chapter 17: Neville – The Only Thing Left For Us
Neville asked the king about the former captain’s legs.
‘How did he lose them?’ he asked. ‘What battle was this, far away from the Mouth of War, and how could Fulbert possibly know my father’s bridge’s exact location?’
At each question, Neville came closer to the king, until his shadow covered the other man completely. Henrique and all his muscles were shrunk around a budless orchid. The further Neville asked, the tenser the king became.
‘Who told Patire about the bridge? Was it really Fulbert who killed my father’s legs?’
Suddenly, Henrique exploded like an erupting volcano. He stood up so suddenly that Neville took three steps back.
‘What did he expect?’ shouted the king. ‘So much to protect around here, so much beauty, so many flowers. Why change the course of war? It is safe in the Mouth, why move it? I didn’t ask for glory or victory, he was the one who wanted them. He took that risk on his own, but he put everything in jeopardy. Don’t you see? He put us all in danger.’
‘Did you betray him?’
‘I’m not responsible for what happens outside the Emerald,’ said the king.
‘Did you betray him?’
‘He betrayed us by trying to bring the war to Baynard.’
‘Did you betray him?’
Henrique sat down again and wrapped the orchid with his immense body.
‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’
‘Who was it?’
‘War has its ways,’ said Henrique. ‘We’re safe here. What happened to your father was tragic, but we have to be grateful that the war never crossed the Loefern. No one died.’
‘Drawn soldiers die every day in Fabec,’ said Neville.
Henrique caressed the orchid with his knuckles.
‘It is chance,’ he said. ‘Their names are drawn. I’m not responsible. It’s the War.’
Disgusted, Neville went away. He didn’t have an answer, though. The king never admitted to betraying his father. He could have, and Olivier thought he did, but what Henrique said was not enough proof.
Treason takes the ground from under your feet. Every step is a chasm. Doubt corrupts the mind. Neville went looking for his father. The legless captain was not in the shed Neville had built for him when the captain started working with wood. The captain spent his days there and his nights at the library. The smell of mold was replaced by sawdust and old paper. That day, Neville found his father inside the house, taking tea with Maëlle and Fulion, who bent over an open book.
Fulion said:
‘We forget. It feels like we’re inside a giant stomach of darkness that digests us slowly. While the gruesome tongue rolls in dark saliva, Franária forgets that there is a world out there.’
Fulion rarely spoke more than two words at a time unless she was talking to her horse, Stain, who was outside and had tried to bite Neville on his way in. The legless captain listened to the bookseller with his cup midway between the table and his mouth.
‘A world out there,’ he said. The words got mixed with the vapor from the tea and dissolved in the graying sunlight.
Neville wanted to speak with his father and wouldn’t have paid attention to any of that if it weren’t for his bow. As soon as he came in, the black bow began to buzz like a beehive. Neville knew, by the itch in the lines of his hand, that the bow was reacting to the open book between his mother and the bookseller. He leaned forward to see the illustration.
Trees. They were black and had small leaves of a very clear, unnatural green, that seemed to shine in the dark. Maëlle had described that kind of tree when she came back from the Frontier. Before Neville could come any closer, Fulion closed the book. Her face seemed even more weathered by the wind, her hair was almost white from sun exposure. She put the book inside a satchel and promised to look for someone who could translate it for Maëlle. The two women walked together to the library. Whenever she could, Maëlle followed Fulion. Neville’s mother kept on seeing colors everywhere.
When the two women left, the bow stopped buzzing, and Neville stood in front of his father.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked.
The legless captain lowered his cup. A soft fragrance of herb lingered in the air, mixing with the sawdust that was now part of the man. He said:
‘In my silence I failed as a father. I didn’t want to destroy you with words when it was too late.’
‘It’s never too late for the truth.’
‘Truth is poison. Your word is your law, and you gave it to Henrique of Baynard. You are your honor, son. Never break your word for a broken world. In this torn Franária, the only thing left for us is to die with honor.’
On the windowsill, together with the two orchids the king had given them, there was an urn. In it, were the captain’s legs. Neville never asked why his father had uninterred his legs. What was it like to live together with his own ashes? It must be similar to this thing that made Neville’s heart gray today.
That night, Thaila came looking for Neville at the top of the hill. She sat down and placed in his lap a sweet bread made with wild strawberries she had picked herself.
‘Thank you,’ he said and bit the warm bread. He chewed and swallowed without paying much attention to it.
‘I made this bread for you,’ said Thaila. ‘I invented the recipe.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I made it for you alone. No one else.’
He had already thanked her, so he kept on eating, thinking of poisonous truth, coming to realize that he, too, didn’t have fangs. And the bread disappeared, torn apart by careless teeth; swallowed and immediately forgotten.
Neville cleaned his hands on his trousers, getting rid of the last crumbs, and began to play his guitar. Deliberately freeing notes to vibrate alone, momentarily ruling the breeze, until the next notes took their place, until Thaila went away unnoticed.
The shadows were long when Neville went down the hill, never suspecting that he was stepping on Thaila’s tears. Never even thinking of Thaila.
‘Mother.’
Neville’s voice was softer than the turning of the open books’ pages.
‘In bushido,’ said Neville, ‘when you kneel before a great man, but later find out that this man is a fraud; what happens then?’
‘Nothing,’ said Maëlle, leafing flicking through books.
‘Do you stay knelt?’
‘You remain honorable,’ she said.
A breeze crossed the library and Fulion came in.
‘If this man is cowardly,’ said Neville. ‘If he is not worthy of your loyalty.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have knelt before him in the first place,’ said Maëlle.
She closed the book and sought another one on the shelf. Fulion walked soundlessly to Neville’s side. He felt the weight of her look, the curiosity, the questions.
‘Maëlle,’ said Fulion.
‘I can’t find it,’ said Maëlle. ‘The book I was talking about, the one on colors, the one on grey. Where is it?’
‘Mother. If a person has made a mistake, made a promise to the wrong man. Mother, does bushido allow rupture?’
‘Bushido is the only thing whole in this broken Franária. It is the only thing left for us.’
Fulion stepped forward and grabbed Maëlle’s arm with such urge that Maëlle dropped the book she was holding.
‘Watch what you’re saying,’ said Fulion.
Maëlle blinked like someone who just woke up. She looked for her son, but all she found was the door and an empty threshold.
Next morning, at the foot of the hill, blades licked shields, spears trespassed dummies, and Neville, at the end of the training, gathered his men and announced:
‘I asked the king to transfer me. By the end of the week I’ll leave for the Mouth of War together with the drawn soldiers.’
At night, Neville met his two best friends at the Eslarian’s bakery and told them what Olivier had said to him. He told them about the conversations he had with the king and then his father.
‘There is nothing left for me to do,’ he said, ‘except to die with honor.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Thaila.
She and Robert argued, protested, begged. After seven days, Neville left for the Mouth of War with a hundred drawn soldiers. Together with Thaila, Maëlle, and the Eslarian, Robert watched them go with shameful tears running down his face. Neville had given him orders to stay put in Debur.
‘I should have paid attention,’ said Maëlle. ‘I should have paid attention.’
From the top of the Emerald, Henrique of Baynard and Olivier of Tuen watched Neville’s departure. Tired wrinkles sunk the skin around the king’s eyes.
‘So young,’ he said.
‘At least his death wasn’t caused by the draw,’ said Olivier.
Henrique went back into the shadows of the emerald-coloured tower. Olivier was alone on the wall. That morning he had held Thaila’s hands. So small, so soft. In Olivier’s hands, veins were beginning to pop, the joints stretched his worn out skin. Brown stains sprouted like weeds. The brown, young hands fled the old, stained ones.
Maybe dying by the draw was more human than dying little by little, one wrinkle at a time. Maybe dying young was less painful than looking at those twisted, disdainful lips of Thaila.
The people drawn to be chewed by the Mouth of War were the lucky ones. It was torture to stay behind and live this withering, stained life full of flowers and young disdain.
Leonard, the Accident, sitting on a box that wouldn’t stand the weight of a normal human being, watched Jean, the cat, playing with a mouse that squeaked in agony and terror. The other mice were piled up in a corner, and their eyes shone like tiny crystal balls. While Jean played with a mouse, the other mice devoured the body of another cat Jean had killed. The cat’s death had been as slow as the mouse’s would be. Jean was hungrier for death than for flesh.
‘If I were a mouse,’ said Leonard, ‘would I stay in your shadow?’
The mouse squeaked, Jean purred.
Thaila.