Secret Sacrament (3 page)

Finally he reached the hall leading to the bedrooms. On one side of the hall, by a window in a small alcove, a lamp burned. His parents stood there, waiting. One of the city sentries was with them, his smooth bronze breastplates and helmet shiny in the lamplight.

Gabriel's mother gave a relieved cry and moved toward him, but her husband gripped her wrist, restraining her.

“Where have you been, Gabriel?” he asked. His face, always impressive and severe, was more fierce than ever. His red tunic and trousers were dark as blood, and jewels winked on his wide belt.

Gabriel tried to speak but could not. His breath
came and went in deep, painful gasps. He shook his head.

“We've been searching for you all night,” said his mother softly. “I've been so worried. I—”

“Silence,” said his father. “You go to bed now, Lena. There's no more need to worry. I'll deal with the boy.”

“Please, be easy with him,” Lena begged. “It was an accident.”

“It was no accident that he stayed out all night,” muttered his father. “Now leave us.”

Gabriel watched as his mother went down the hall. She did not notice as the sentry bowed to her; her head was held high but she walked slowly, as if she were unspeakably tired. He dared not look at his father. He stared at the sentry's high boots and noticed the horse, symbol of the Empire, embossed in red on the brown leather.

“I'm glad to see the lad is safe, sir,” the sentry said. “I'll go now, and call my men back from their search.”

“I'm sorry I've wasted your time,” said the father. “It seems he had run away, as I suspected. I'm happy to pay you for your trouble. Would five hundred hasaries be enough?”

“Please don't even think of it, sir. We only did our duty.”

The sentry bowed, and a slave stepped forward
to show him out. Gabriel waited, his head bent, his heart thudding in his chest. He could feel his father's gray eyes boring into him.

For a long time Jager did not speak but stood looking at his son with an expression of contempt. At last the man said, “You made a fool of me, son. I've had twenty sentries out looking for you. You've piled wrong on top of wrong. But first things first. Come.”

He led the way along the hall, toward the schoolroom where the family tutor taught the boys to read and write and do math, and where they learned the great Navoran creed and the history of their Empire. Outside the room was the pedestal on which the statue had been. The pieces were still on the floor where they had fallen hours before. Jager opened the schoolroom door. “Pick up every bit,” he said. “Put them on the table in here.”

With trembling hands Gabriel obeyed. Carefully he placed each piece on the table. Each fragment he tried in vain to join with the part it belonged to; he tried to join the two halves of the beautiful head, the hands to the shattered arms, the legs to the cracked body. It was no use; they fell apart again on the dark wood of the table, glowing and lovely as living flesh, each piece a witness to his wickedness.

“You're a great disappointment to me, Gabriel,”
said his father. “You're seven years old, and you still haven't learned integrity. You're a coward. You wouldn't even stay here to tell me what you'd done. You let me find out from your mother. Have you no courage at all, no sense of what is honorable? You're Navoran. Do you know what that means?”

Gabriel wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“It means you bear responsibility for your actions,” said his father. “If you make a mistake, you do your best to right it, or you take your punishment like a man. You don't run away and hide. Look at you—you're filthy. Your tunic's torn. Your feet are muddy.” He hesitated, then asked in a low voice, “Were you down by the river?”

Gabriel nodded.

For a while the father did not speak. When he did, his voice was shaking and deadly quiet. “I never thought you'd go there, Gabriel, not after what I'd told you about that place, not after all my warnings. You don't know how lucky you are to be alive. Were you alone there? Did you see anyone?”

The boy lifted his face. He opened his mouth to speak but had no words for the horror he had seen. Instead he wept, and Jager made an impatient sound.

“You have to learn obedience, Gabriel,” he said.
“This isn't just for the statue. It's for wasting the sentries' time, and mine. It's to teach you to be strong, to be a true son of Navora. Also, it's for distressing your mother. Take off your tunic and bend over the table.”

While Gabriel did as he was told, he heard his father go to the cupboard and take out the bamboo rod. He waited, hands clenched, his face pressed to one side against the table's smooth wood, his eyes on the gleaming shards of the broken statue. And all the time his father whipped him, he saw only those fragile, ruined pieces, glowing and warm in the morning light like real flesh, the slender arms broken, the hands outstretched toward him, the beautiful eyes tormented and full of grief and pleading. He wept in agony and guilt, and when he could not stand the pain any longer, he cried out words of which he did not know the meaning. Then his father shouted something furious and hit him harder. And it was only later, when he found himself lying on his bed with a cool sheet laid over him, that he realized he held in his right hand the alien bone carving on the leather thong, and it had cut his palm, and his fingers were slippery with blood.

All day he lay there, dozing. The first time he woke, he felt his brother Myron leaning over him.
“I tried to tell Father it was my fault,” Myron whispered, “but he knew it was you, because you'd run away. I wish you hadn't. I can't stay; Father said we weren't allowed to see you.” Myron's voice broke as he wept, and he kissed Gabriel's cheek before he crept out.

Several times Gabriel's mother came in. Gently she washed his back, and he smelled herbs and wildflowers she had added to the water. Though her tender ministrations were agony to him, he made no sound, pretending to remain asleep. Once he thought he heard her softly crying. And once she lifted his head and offered him a drink. It tasted bitter, and he guessed it was drugged. He slept again, drifting in and out of painful dreams.

When he awoke the midday sun was streaming through his window. He stared at it, narrowing his eyes so they were almost shut and his lashes made shadows like tawny grasses shimmering in the light. He felt the smooth surface of the bone carving in his hand, and timidly opened his fingers. He expected the bone to glint at him like an accusing eye; instead, to his amazement, it gave him comfort.

Dreaming, he lay in long grass on a wide plain. The wind was warm and sweet on his face. High above, an eagle soared in a cloudless sky, and nearby a river rushed, gurgling, across shifting
stones. He could smell sheep, their wool warmed by the sun. Somewhere a woman sang, her voice rising and falling on the wind as smooth as a silken flag. Her words were foreign, yet he knew she sang of a summer's day, and of the earth laughing. The song moved across his soul, easing it. Never had he felt so much at peace, so much at home.

When he awoke the dream was still with him, holding him warm in its power, the smell of wool and wind and grass still vivid and strong. He realized he was cradling the bone carving against his cheek. He lifted the bone into the sun and watched it swinging there on its short thong. The etching was filled with blood, and Gabriel wiped his thumb across the bone, smoothing most of the redness away. What remained colored only the lines engraved in the creamy surface, and for the first time he clearly saw what the carving depicted.

It was a design made up of an eagle and a man. Only the man's head was shown. His face, etched in profile, was strong and steadfast, almost fierce, and his eyes seemed to look beyond, to places ordinary people could not see. Behind his head, worked so that his long hair flowed and became the feathers of the outstretched wings, was an eagle in flight. It was a striking design, skillfully executed, and wonderfully blending the images of bird and man.

Gabriel pressed the carving against his aching forehead. The bone was smooth and cool, and seemed to vibrate softly against his skin. Instinctively he knew it was old, very old, and precious. He closed his eyes. He heard his brothers running down the hallway outside his room, their footsteps muffled on the narrow strip of thick carpet. The sound was prolonged, became deep and haunting, like the throbbing of drums. He heard the rushing of a river, and men shouting. The sounds faded. An old man was chanting, his voice grating and cracked like stalks of grain falling on dry ground. Thunder rolled, rain hissed onto the parched earth, and cool water ran deliciously over his naked skin. Inside an earthen dwelling a fire roared, and fish sizzled on hot stones, smelling good. Again the odor of wool, and the sound of women singing. Then a curtain rattled on its wooden rail, and the enchantment was shattered.

It was Gabriel's mother, drawing his curtains now because it was evening and the air was chill. Gabriel slid the bone beneath his pillow. He longed for the dream-images, the solace and the joy. Desolation swept over him, as if something unspeakably precious was gone.

“How are you feeling now?” asked Lena gently, sitting near the foot of his bed.

He did not reply.

She sighed and looked down at her hands, tensely clasped on the soft blue linen of her robe. She was again carrying a child, and her long dress flowed loosely about her. Her hair, tied back in a knot, was chestnut brown.

“There's something you have to understand, Gabriel,” she said. “You're a very special child. Your father is one of the most honored merchants in Navora. You're his eldest, his heir and future hope. But the city's full of desperate, unhappy people, and some of them do terrible things to get money. You must never wander the streets at night, never go outside the city walls, never go down by the river. We've told you this a hundred times. I worried so much about you, last night. I thought you had been kidnapped. I couldn't bear that. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

He shook his head, distraught. “I'm not special. Father says I'm a coward. He says I run away, instead of facing my responsibilities. He says I'm not a true son of Navora.”

“Strength isn't always a matter of muscle, Gabriel. And, in a way, you were brave to run. But there are times to run, and there are times to stand firm. You'll learn the difference as you grow up.”

“I'm not brave,” he said, choking, tears streaming
down his cheeks. “I ran. I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have left . . .”

“Hush, hush,” she said, stroking away his tears with her hand. “It's all right, it's over now. Try to sleep some more.” She smoothed back his damp, disordered curls and caressed his face. When he was quiet she stood up and went out, closing the door behind her.

He lay on his side crying, hot with guilt. Afterward he took the bone carving out from beneath the pillow and looked at it again. Slowly, like a dawn, peace came to him: a Shinali peace, full of the sweet scent of the grasslands and the grand freedom of the skies. With that clear, unquestioning trust that only children have, he opened his heart and accepted it. Sighing deeply, he curled his fingers about the bone, held it close against his heart, and lay for a long time staring into the gathering dark.

T
HE YOUTH WAITED
at the top of the mausoleum steps, staring down at the open ancient doors and the musty dark beyond. Though he stood in bright sunlight, and his black funeral clothes sucked up the summer heat and made sweat run down his back, he shivered. He looked across the stone steps at his mother. She appeared calm and assured, but she was very pale, and there were deep shadows under her eyes. Her youngest child, her three-year-old daughter, Subin, dragged on her hand and whimpered in the heat. Beside them, lined up in single file on the steps, were her other four children, all sons. In silence they waited, while the funeral bier bearing their father was carried up through the winding stone paths of the huge city cemetery. All Navora's dead were interred here, in family crypts hewn out of the rocky hillsides. On the lower slopes were the simple caves where the poor were buried; but where these mourners stood, on the
highest ground, were the stately tombs of the wealthy, adorned with carved obelisks and statues. There were no plants or trees, and the dark stones glinted in the sun and threw back the heat like a furnace.

Gabriel wiped his sleeve across his face, pushing back the heavy curls. Glancing at the other mourners on the path behind him, he saw mainly uncles and aunts and cousins, and close family friends. Among them were several distinguished citizens: dignitaries from the palace; a famous astronomer from the country of Sadira, tall and majestic and olive-skinned, and now a Master teaching at the famed Citadel; and the commander of the Navoran navy. They too looked uncomfortable in their formal clothes, their faces flushed but dignified. In spite of the hot day the commander was in full naval uniform, his heavy cloak falling in deep blue folds to his black boots. He wore several jeweled rings, and priceless stones fixed his cloak to the shoulders of his tunic. The front of his tunic was richly embroidered with the sign of the horse, cleverly intertwined with the Empress's initials. He was an imposing man, a famous navigator and warrior, and one of the most powerful people in the Empire.

The heat intensified. High above, gulls wheeled and screamed in the blazing skies. Elsewhere in
the cemetery children laughed, the sound echoing and incongruous in the solemnity. There was a scuffle farther down the path, and the mourners heard men laboring, heavily burdened, up the steep slope. Gabriel looked straight down the steps, his eyes narrowed, his expression suddenly tense. As the bier was carried past him, he noticed the sickly odor of embalming liquids, precious oils, and spices; and he glimpsed his father's face, stern and resolute even in death. He tried not to think of the rest of his father's body, the lower half crushed by a marble block that had fallen while it was unloaded at the wharves; tried not to think of his father carried home, wrapped in an old boat sail that dripped with blood, with the slaves wailing and sobbing; tried not to think of his mother's screams, or of his own horror and powerlessness in a household suddenly devastated.

The bier disappeared into the cavernous dark below, and Gabriel glanced at his mother. She saw his tension, the beads of sweat across his upper lip, and she smiled a little to encourage him, and nodded.

As eldest son, he led the way down into the hollowed earth. From brilliant light he passed into utter darkness; from birdsong and summer warmth into silence, ominous and cold and suffocating.

Slowly he grew accustomed to the dark. Immediately in front of him was the stone sarcophagus, its huge lid propped against one side. Beside it stood the bearers, his father's six brothers, stern and straight as they held the bier. Beyond them, indistinct in the dimness, loomed the stone coffins of previous family members, some richly carved and bearing statues of those interred within. Gabriel looked away from them and concentrated on the living. His relatives stood close by, and the more important family friends. They stood very still, the shadows pitch-black about them, their faces glimmering in the torchlight. In the hollowed stone even their breathing seemed loud, and their fine clothes rustled like moths' wings against the dark.

A priest stepped forward and said an old Navoran prayer, and the body of Jager Eshban Vala, merchant and navigator, was lowered into the stone coffin. Other people made speeches and placed gifts in the tomb, or messages from those who could not attend but who wished to honor the dead man. The navy commander said a few words and placed across Jager's body a Navoran banner flown from his ship when he had won a great victory for the Empire. The banner was gold with a scarlet horse and was splendid. Then one of the palace officials read a eulogy written by the
Empress Petra herself, in which she called Jager one of Navora's most faithful and worthy sons. “‘You brought to our city not only wealth and foreign splendors,'” the palace envoy read, “‘but you brought to it the greatest glory there is—the presence of a true Navoran. In you we saw a man who not only loved the ideals and dreams that first made our Empire great, but who lived them. You were an honest Navoran, a brave navigator, and a wise and discerning merchant. We all are richer because you lived.'”

Then Lena said a few words, her voice steady and low in the echoing dark. She leaned over the stone, kissed the tips of her fingers, then placed them against the dead man's cheek. All the children went up to the coffin and either whispered a few words or pressed a special gift into the folds of their father's shroud. Then it was Gabriel's turn. Always the eldest son spoke last, then drew the shroud over the departed before the lid of the sarcophagus was forever dropped in place.

He stood at the foot of the coffin and looked down at his father. Torchlight flickered over Jager's face, giving the waxen skin a warm and golden sheen. Yet there had been no warmth in Jager, not that Gabriel had ever seen. As he looked at the hard mouth, firmly closed, he thought of all the times he had longed to hear
words of approval or encouragement, and received only criticism. He looked at the permanent frown carved between his father's brows and tried to forget the image of Jager in his office, annoyed at being interrupted; tried to forget the impatience, the sarcasm, the fault-finding even when Gabriel had shown him something he was proud of. Never had he made his father proud. Always there had been only a devastating struggle to please, and bitter failure. It occurred to Gabriel, with a rush of unbearable grief, that his father had never hugged him, never once given him the smallest sign of tenderness or love. Fighting down the hurt, he began speaking aloud the famous tribute paid by all firstborn sons to their dead fathers.

“With all my heart, I honor you,” he said, his voice coming out nervous and high. He hesitated, and one of his cousins giggled. Quivering, feeling as if his throat were full of dust, Gabriel went on: “With all my heart, I shall honor all that you have . . . have left to me. I shall do my utmost to live . . . utmost to . . .”

He stopped, unable to speak the words. How could he live out his father's ambitions for him when he hated the whole idea of taking over the shipping business? How could he swear it, breaking the vow in his heart before his lips even spoke the words? Despairing, horrified at what he was
doing but unable to help himself, he deliberately missed the greater part of the eulogy and went on with a safer bit. But the next part, filled with gratitude for a father's love and guidance and encouragement, also stuck in his throat. So he stood there in the glimmering dark, his gaze fixed on the dead man's face, and said nothing. People began to whisper. Lena stepped toward him, but one of his uncles spoke first.

“Leave him, Lena. He's not a child. He's fourteen and the man of the family now. He can do it.”

Gabriel bent his head. They waited. The torches spat and sizzled in the stale air, and somewhere a rat squeaked. Outside, in another world, birds sang, and the children shrieked with laughter among the tombs. At last Gabriel lifted his head. “Good-bye, Father,” he said, and abruptly bent down and drew the pale cloth over the stern face. Breaking into the shocked silence, the priest said a last prayer, then Lena gathered the youngest children about her and led them out into the sun. Gabriel followed, feeling severed from them, and shamed. As they went up into the sunlight, blinking in the sudden glare, the darkness behind them boomed as the stone lid was dropped onto the sarcophagus. With all of his being Gabriel longed to run back, to say all the things to his father he had never said; but too many people pressed from
behind, and going back was impossible.

His brother Myron, a year younger, came and walked beside him. They did not speak, but Myron walked so close their shoulders touched, and he made the secret sign they had used when they were small, to encourage one another when they were in trouble: he made a fist with his right hand, the little finger and thumb extended like the horns of a defiant bull.

Gabriel saw the sign, and his eyes met Myron's for a moment. But even Myron's brotherly support could not wipe away the scandalous silence where a son's homage should have been, or the sound of the uncles' boots heavy on the stones behind him.

In the house he expected the reproaches to begin the moment he got in the door. But no one spoke to him. They all went into the spacious dining room, and slaves handed out goblets of cooled wine and tiny fruit pastries. People talked in subdued tones about the heat, and there was some discussion on the rising prices of fresh fruit and vegetables, and whether or not the Shinali would sell some of their land so more market gardens could be developed. Then one of the aunts said how wonderful all the funeral orations had been, and there was an onerous silence. Feeling as if all eyes were on him, Gabriel went and stood by the open door to the courtyard and looked out.
Behind him the talk resumed, and there was polite laughter at something one of the uncles said. It seemed an age he stood there, wanting to flee. Then one of his aunts called to him. He went over, trying to look nonchalant.

“Gabriel,” she said, her fingers fluttering toward the low table with its bottles of wine and empty goblets, “it really is time the slaves started serving the funeral feast, and your mother's not here. I don't know where she is. Would you go and find her, dear? Some of us have a long way to travel back. If we don't eat soon, we'll miss out. This really is turning out to be a very disorganized day, isn't it? Not at all your conventional funeral.”

“I'm sorry; we don't get much practice at funerals,” Gabriel replied. The aunt looked perturbed, and he hurried out to look for Lena.

It was cool in the entrance hall, for the slaves had left the front doors wide open, and a breeze swept across the polished stone floors and up the long stairs. Perhaps Lena had gone to her room for a moment's quiet. As he passed his father's office on the way to the stairs, he heard voices and stopped. The office door was not quite closed, and he could clearly hear his mother.

“I won't agree to it, Egan,” she was saying, her voice raised in anger. “I've just lost my husband; I'm not going to lose my eldest son as well.”

Gabriel halted just outside the door, his breath caught in his throat.

“You won't be losing him,” said Egan, quietly, reasonably. “You can visit him whenever you like. It's the only way, Lena. The boy's spoiled. If you don't do this for him, he'll never amount to anything. He's already made a total disgrace of himself.”

“No, he hasn't! He didn't forget those words today. He chose not to say them. He couldn't say them and mean it. He was being honest, and even Jager wouldn't blame him for that. You don't know what Jager was like, always putting him down, never—”

“Jager was a hard man, I know, but he was also fair. If he put Gabriel down, it was because the boy had already let himself down, was already a grief and a disappointment. Today's shameful exhibition wasn't the first. What about all the other times he failed—the times his father wanted him to study commerce and navigation at school, and he refused? Or else he failed the exams deliberately. Gabriel's got a good brain in him—he must have, he's Jager's son—but he's self-willed and defiant and aimless. What's he going to do with his life—play around with plants and microscopes, and read books all day?”

“He doesn't play around. He passed exams with
honors, in biology and anatomy,” said Lena. “His tutors say he's gifted in certain—”

“Gifted? The only gift he's got is his inheritance, which is in grave danger of being thrown away. He's not wasting his life on biology. He's got a great vocation ahead of him, and he has to take it. There are twenty ships out there owned now by him, and he has to learn to manage them. There are trade centers in major ports all over the Empire, all his now. Until he's old enough, Jager's shipmasters will carry on, but the time's going to come when the business has to be taken over by someone in the family. That has to be Gabriel. And if he's not properly trained for it, he'll throw away everything his father ever built up. I won't stand by and watch that happen. Jager broke his heart over that boy. He often said the only disappointment in his life was his eldest son. He was going to send Gabriel to the Academy this year to study business and navigation, in a last attempt to make a decent son of him. I'll see that wish is carried out.”

“What about Gabriel?” cried Lena. “What about his wishes?”

“Has he got any?”

“I don't know. I don't know what he wants. But I do know he doesn't want to take over the family business.”

“Every other lad in Navora would give anything to have what Gabriel's got. He's going to be grateful for it, Lena, if I have to beat it into him. If he stays here, you'll spoil him. He's coming to live with me, and I'll see that he studies the right things at the Academy and is fit to inherit everything his father left to him.”