given to Gilla to wash.
Once, Lalo would have rejoiced in the play of light and shadow, or at least
reflected ironically on the relationship between illusion and reality. But he
was too familiar with the poverty the shadows hid – the sordid truth behind all
his fantasies. The only place he now saw visions was at the bottom of a jug of
wine.
He got up stiffly, brushing ineffectually at the blue paint smeared across the
old stains on his tunic. He knew that he should clean up the pigments spilling
across the floor, but why try to save paint when no one wanted his pictures?
By now the regulars would be drifting into the Vulgar Unicom. No one would care
about his clothing there.
Gilla looked up as he started towards the door, and the light restored her
greying hair to its former gold, but she did not speak. Once, she would have run
to kiss her husband good-bye, or railed at him to keep him home. Only, as Lalo
stumbled down the stairs, he heard behind him the vicious splatter of peas
hitting the cracked glaze of the bowl.
Lalo shook his head and took another sip of wine, carefully, because the tankard
was almost empty now. ‘She used to be beautiful…’ he said sadly. ‘Would you
believe that she was like Eshi, bringing spring back into the world?’ He peered
muzzily through the shadows of the Vulgar Unicorn at Cappen Varra, trying to
superimpose on the minstrel’s saturnine features the dimly remembered image
of the golden-haired maiden he had courted almost twenty years ago.
But he could only remember the scorn in Gilla’s grey eyes as she had glared down