We Leave Together, стр. 58
He kept his eyes open. He looked up at the stars. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so many stars. From where he was lying, he could see the helmet, still on Sergeant Calipari’s head, bobbing back and forth with the motion of the cart. In the near perfect darkness broken only by a small lamp hovering out above the donkey hanging off a branch Calipari had cut from a tree, the helmet was an absence of stars, luminous in the moonlight. It was like a ghost’s head hovering atop a shadow. The animal was exhausted and kept trying to stop and kick. Calipari whipped it hard, and often, to keep it going. He cursed at it. He made no friend that night.
“You going to sleep on me?” said Calipari.
“I’m trying to,” replied Jona.
“Well, don’t expect me to wake you at the tavern,” said Calipari, “If you want to sleep in a bed, you have to be awake.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Jona looked up at the stars, and wondered what they were. Religions had answers, but there was never an answer that satisfied Jona when his own existence was an abomination to the religions. He didn’t feel like an abomination. He just felt lonely. Also, the hard road and the grumpy mule made the journey rough, and soon his back hurt on all that armor. He hopped out of the cart to walk off the jostling in his body.
Behind him, he saw the city wall like a cliff, with the torches burning high on crenelated heights. His father’s skull might be up at the top, somewhere.
He tried not to think of his father, but the night was so empty and there was nothing else to do but think.
***
They reached the first tavern soon enough. Franka stood in the dark. She was a tall woman in dirty white with a long shadow in torchlight. She stood beneath the sign of a huge Owl carrying a rich man in its claws by the exposed backside. Jona strained his neck and squinted to see her better. Her voice was all he had. Her voice was high, and carried a sharp edge to it. This woman had the voice of a woman weary of speaking to men that wanted something.
“Is that you, Nic?”
“’Tis, my love.”
“What took you so long? Heard from the wall that you’d be here an ages ago, and I been out here all night and now it’s almost morning.”
The cart came to a halt in the tavern’s muddy yard. Already, sleep had claimed whatever drunks were inside. A few slept in heaps beneath the eaves where the rain might not wake them.
Nicola stood up with his dark cape flowing, his hand on the pommel of his sword, and the ridiculous helmet reflecting the torchlight where it wasn’t covered in rust. He was a tall man on the cart, and he frowned down at her. “You waited for us all night? That’s foolish, Franka, and you know it. Stay in out of the damp! You’ll catch fever over nothing!”
Franka touched his leg. She held out her other arm to help him down from the cart. “Well you should have thought of that taking your time. You know I wait up for you when you’re coming.”
“If I’m late, go to bed, love.”
“Shut up and get over here, already. I’m not tromping through mud for you.”
“Aye,” he said. He swooped down from the cart and did his best dashing walk in uniform across the muddy yard. She held her arms out for him. They embraced.
She rapped her knuckles on his headgear. “Nice helmet,” she said, “Is it new?”
“No.”
“I don’t kiss helmets. Might cut myself.”
Jona cocked his head. Franka was much taller than Nicola. It looked strange to see her leaning over him, and him straining up. It reminded Jona of a mother with a child, but the kiss was all wrong for that. Jona looked away.
The sergeant turned towards his corporal one last time that night. “Take care of the brute,” said Nicola, “We leave in the morning, soon as we can stand up. There’s probably a room for you somewhere, but it ain’t with me.” He threw the helmet at Jona.
Jona caught it in mid-air. It was still warm from the sergeant’s skull, and had a misty patina of sweat. Jona tossed it back on the cart where it clanged.
The sergeant and his lady disappeared into the building.
Jona looked around, and didn’t see a stable. He walked around the building. It was solid stone bricks along each side, mortared together with good plaster. The front was logs in lumps like an old cabin, as if the stones had collapsed on one side and been replaced.
Jona unhitched the mule from the cart. The worn out animal immediately kicked and snorted and stepped towards a trough of water near the hitching post. Jona slipped a rope from the cart, from the lip of the sacks. He tied it to the mule’s neck. When the mule was done drinking, Jona pulled the stubborn animal into the stable. The warm stink of fresh manure was as deep as the darkness. A single sliver of moonlight crept through a crack in the roof and reflected on the murky metal of the shovel. Jona stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
“Hello?” he said.
He heard horses breathing. Somewhere, a mouse scurried through the hay.
“Is anyone here?” he said, again. Jona’s eyes adjusted