Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

They beat him of course.

With their fists and feet and with the flats of their cared-for blades. Naddo too—for being there and so a part of it. The crowd did not disperse though, which would have been the usual thing when a beating took place. They watched in a silence unnatural for so many people. The only sound was that of the blows falling, for neither boy cried out and the soldiers did not speak.

When it was over they scattered the crowd with oaths and imprecations. Crowds were illegal, even though they themselves had caused this one to form. In a few moments everyone was gone. There were only faces behind half-drawn curtains at upstairs windows looking down on a square empty save for two boys lying in the settling dust, blood bright on their clothing in the clear light. There had been birds singing all around and all through what had happened. Dianora could remember.

She forced herself to remain where she was. Not to run down to them. To let them do this alone, as was their right. And at length she saw her brother rise with the slow, meditated movements of a very old man. She saw him speak to Naddo and then carefully help him to his feet. And then, as she had known would happen, she saw him, begrimed and bleeding and hobbling very badly, lead Naddo east without a backwards look, towards the site where they were assigned to work that day.

She watched them go. Her eyes were dry. Only when the two of them turned the corner at the far end of the square and so were gone from sight did she leave her window. Only then did she loosen her white-clawed hold on the wood of the window-ledge. And only then, invisible to everyone with her curtains drawn, did she allow her tears to fall: in love, and for his hurts, and in terrible pride.

WHEN THEY CAME HOME that night she and the servant-woman heated water and drew baths for them and afterwards they dealt with the wounds and the black and purpling bruises as best they could.

Later, over dinner, Naddo told them he was leaving. That same night, he said. It was too much, he said, awkwardly twisting in his seat, speaking to Dianora, for her brother had turned his face away at Naddo’s first announcement.

There was no life to be made here, Naddo said with passionate urgency through a torn and swollen mouth. Not with the viciousness of the soldiers and the even more vicious taxes. If a young man, a young man such as himself, was to have any hope of doing something with his life, Naddo said, he had to get away. Desperately his eyes besought her understanding. He kept glancing nervously over to where her brother had now fully turned his back on both of them.

Where will you go? Dianora had asked him.

Asoli, he’d told her. It was a hard, wet land, unbearably hot and humid in summer, everyone knew that. But there was room there for new blood. The Asolini made people welcome, he’d heard, more so than in the Barbadian lands to the east. He would never ever go to Corte or Chiara. People from Tigana did not go there, he said. Her brother made a small sound at that but did not turn; Naddo glanced over at him again and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

Three other young men had made plans, he said to Dianora. Plans to slip out from the city tonight and make their way north. He’d known about it for some time, he said. He hadn’t been sure. He hadn’t known what to do. What had happened this morning had made up his mind for him.

Eanna light your path, Dianora had said, meaning it. He had been a good apprentice and then a brave and loyal friend. People were leaving all the time. The province of Lower Corte was a bad place in a very bad time. Naddo’s left eye was completely swollen shut. He might easily have been killed that afternoon.

Later, when he’d packed his few belongings and was ready to leave, she gave him some silver from her father’s hidden store. She kissed him in farewell. He’d begun weeping then. He commended himself to her mother and opened the front door. On the threshold he’d turned back again, still crying.

‘Goodbye,’ he’d said, in anguish, to the figure staring stonily into the fire on the front-room hearth. Seeing the look on Naddo’s face Dianora silently willed her brother to turn around. He did not. Deliberately he knelt and laid another log on the fire.

Naddo stared at him a moment longer, then he turned to look at Dianora, failed to achieve a tremulous, tearful smile, and slipped out into the dark and away.

Much later, when the fire had been allowed to die, her brother went out as well. Dianora sat and watched the embers slowly fade, then she looked in on her mother and went to bed. When she lay down it seemed to her that a weight was pressing upon her body, far heavier than the quilted comforter.

She was awake when he came in. She always was. She heard him step loudly on the landing as was his habit, to let her know he was safely home, but she didn’t hear the next sound, which should have been the opening and closing of his bedroom door.

It was very late. She lay still for another moment, surrounded and mastered by all the griefs of the day. Then, moving heavily, as if drugged or in a waking dream, she rose and lit a candle. She went to her door and opened it.

He was standing in the hallway outside. And by the flickering of the light she bore she saw the river of tears that was pouring without surcease down his bruised, distorted face. Her hands began to shake.