A shudder plus a vigorous nod made Melilot’s gross body wobble under his fine robe.
“But how does he make shift aboard a ship?” he demanded. “If he may not sleep twice in the same bed-“
“He brought a hammock, and each night slung it from two different posts or hooks. This is permissible.”
“Then: eating twice from the same table?”
“Until this evening I had not seen him eat from a table at all. Aboard ship, he carried his dish to a different spot on deck or in the ‘tween-decks, but this strategem did not entirely serve; our voyage, as you know, was prolonged by a contrary wind, and for the last two days he did not eat at all. In the tavern where I met him, where he had already spent a week, he had to bribe its keeper to move him each night to a different bunk or pallet, and since there were only two tables for the customers he was reduced to eating on the floor, like a dog. He was much mocked in consequence.”
“Has he described what happens when he tries to defy the curse?”
“He cannot. He says he’s never had the power to do so. It is, he says, as though he has become a well-trained animal. Though he might sit down to your table tomorrow, be he never so hungry his hands would remain in his lap, refusing to lift food to his lips; though he might fall upon the softest couch in the world, weary to the marrow of his bones, only the first time would he be allowed repose. Thereafter he would toss about all night, unless exhaustion drove him to prefer the floor. He must, he says, avoid the highest and the lowest sorts of lodging: the former because the wealthy often buy antiques, the latter because the poor make shift with what’s been handed down or looted from abandoned homes. This carven table might be one he ate from centuries ago, that horsehair pallet might have been in use elsewhere. The curse still holds, even at so remote a reach; he starves, he grows red-eyed with lack of sleep, until he wanders on and falls exhausted.”