There were astronomers in the West, too; he even knew the names of two cities famous for their experts, Babylon and Alexandria. But, a thin smile moved his lips as he thought, they hadn’t done very well by Alexander. If he had been on that great General’s staff he could have warned him that his attempt to conquer India was doomed to failure, a waste of time and money. Mars in decline, Saturn in the ascendant. Hopeless! He could have foretold, too, the break-up of the Empire Alexander did succeed in establishing; in the third house there was every augury of disintegration and division.
To be honest, though, there had in the last month or two been moments when he would have been glad to talk to a really skilled, truly learned fellow scholar; not in order to indulge in the futile, wrangling arguments such as he had witnessed and sometimes taken part in during his student days. He would have liked to hold out this chart and say, “What do you make of it?” Not because he was unsure of himself; a pregnant sky was as unmistakable as a pregnant woman; some new thing was augured; probably a comet; he would have welcomed another opinion about that.
He was now well away, and no longer aware of the cold; and Senya need not have feared his observation. If by any chance he had looked out and downhill and seen her about to enter his old home he would merely have thought that she had shuffled out to have a gossip with some of her own kind. There had been a time when she would go out with some regularity and stay away for hours; women had an infinite capacity for gossip.
When Melchior had decided that he could no longer afford the house and the tower, and had also argued that to live on the spot would be more convenient, he had .taken Senya, the two young male slaves, and enough furniture and gear for their needs. The rooms at the base of the tower were small, however, and much had been left behind and sold with the house. So the kitchen looked very much as it had done when Senya left it. The great chopping block still stood in one corner; several enormous cooking pots hung on the wall, and on a shelf were the blue and white, lidded jars, ‘left behind with some regret. Not that she’d have had any use for them lately, being unable to afford the spices and exotic herbs they were designed to hold. Onions and salt had been the only flavourings she had used for years, and the onions had been homegrown.
There were three people in the kitchen. The young woman who had let her in, an older woman with a full-fleshed face and hard-looking eyes, and a boy on the verge of manhood. Their easy, holiday-making air confirmed her guess that they had been left in charge of the house; she
knew the situation; little to do,nobody to oversee them. Here they were, at midday, drinking tea and eating, what were they eating? She used her nose as well as her eyes. Delicious! Small savoury dumplings, packed with chopped pork and herbs. She’d made many in her time. And if her master would agree to the killing of the pig before it starved to death, she would again—if by some means she got some flour, some herbs.
The woman said, in a rousing, challenging way: “Well, what about these fortunes?”
Senya, disturbed from her meditations, started and blinked. What fortunes? Then she remembered, and said:
“Oh yes, the fortunes. By palm or by tea-leaves? And I have to be paid, you know;’ “We could have guessed that! How? In cash or in kind?” On any previous day asked that question, she would have said, “Cash.” She was a Shrewd, shrill bargainer and down in the village invariably managed to get more than her money’s worth, but now—she thought swiftly–she simply didn’t feel able to walk the rest; of the downhill way, face the bustle and shoving in the market, haggle, and then, carrying bundles, climb all the way back. And she thought of the store-room that adjoined the kitchen; in the old master’s day it had been a treasure house of good things. Hams and strings of sausages and bunches of salt fish had hung from hooks, there’d been barrels and sacks of flour and honey, soya meal, dried peas and beans, rice, jars of oil and vinegar and wine. She turned dizzy again at the thought of the abundance. And doubtless it was the same now. The Bawd-master had a bad reputation as a landlord but nobody had ever suggested that he was a stinting, niggardly master. So she said :
“Pay me in food.” And as she said the words she could see herself carrying away food for two, perhaps even three, days. And she could see Melchior, tomorrow, coming down from the tower top and being so surprised and pleased to find that she, whom he had left with a bit of bread and cheese, had somehow, miraculously produced a real, belly-filling meal. He wouldn’t ask how; he’d just enjoy it and say, as always, “Thank you, Senya, a very good meal.”
“Food it shall be, then,” the woman said. She was plainly the one in command, probably the cook.
“I’ll have mine in the tea-leaves.”
The girl said, The too.”
The boy said, “I think I’ll have mine by hand.”
Senya watched, enviously, mouth-wateringly as the two women drained their tea-bowls. And then she did her very best. She knew absolutely nothing about telling fortunes, but she did know what everybody wished to hear—impossibly favourable things. She was handicapped by her lack of knowledge about this household; in kitchens you found born slaves, like herself, bonded people, who must serve a certain term, and free people working for hire. And since status governed the future with an iron hand, a would-be fortuneteller must needs be very careful. She was careful; and she managed to offend every one of them. Staring into the meaningless pattern made by the tea-leaves and thinking of what she would have wished to hear when she was this woman’s age she told the cook that she would have children, beautiful children, and the cook, now the secret mistress of the old Bawd-master, chanced to desire nothing less. She told the young woman what surely any girl would wish to hear; many lovers, she said; and the young woman, who had one lover to whom she was utterly devoted, heard in that her doom. For the boy, regarding the delicate, uninformative palm that he offered, she foretold a future that was possible to any young man, slave, bonded or free; because of all things the army was the most powerful; masters of every kind were always being asked to contribute to the army—that was a polite way of putting it. So she told him that he would be a soldier and a very successful one. The boy, a homosexual, who was waiting for one of his master’s friends, a rich man of the same mind, to buy him and dress him in silk, was not pleased by this prospect.
It struck Senya, as the boy withdrew his hand, and she abandonee! the trance-like attitude that all the fortunetellers she had ever encountered had adopted, that they were an ungrateful lot. What had they expected? How had she failed?
The cook said, “Well, that is that. Now we will pay you.” Shepoured hot water into a cup and sprinkled tea-leaves on it; she took a long-handled spoon and caught one of the savoury dumplings, and put it into another bowl.
“There you are,” she said coldly.
“Eat and drink.” The three of them withdrew a little, whispering amongst themselves, saying each one speaking from his own inner dissatisfaction, that this was no true teller of fortunes, just a dirty old woman who shrank from downright begging. Take no notice, they said.
To Senya the bowl of tea was very welcome. In good conscience she could drink it and enjoy it; but the lovely little dumpling presented a problem. If only she could get it home, unbroken, what a meal it , would make for her master when he came down from his tower tomorrow morning. Five minutes in a pan of boiling salt water and it would be as though it had been freshly made. Draining her bowl of tea, looking at the dumpling and repressing a fierce desire to eat, to taste it, she said :
“I would like, if you please, to take it home with me, to eat just before I sleep. One sleeps ill on an empty belly.”
She could see, by their faces, that they were now hostile. And the hostility took-the form of opposition, even to that simple request.
The cook, thinking what pregnancy would mean to her, said: