A History Maker

FIVE THE HENWIFE

HE DISMOUNTED on Dryhope common, stabled Bucephalus and went through the garden without seeing a soul. He was thankful but puzzled, then realized that if Bowerhope had warned the Dryhope mother of his filthy and disordered appearance she would certainly have organized a party or expedition to move the children where they would not see him. She had also made the walls of the house opaque except for a line of clear portholes under the eaves. As he approached the veranda she was waiting for him there and said sternly, “What hit ye? Have ye been pioneering in the woods? Is this the result of alfresco fucking?”

“Aye, but not how ye think. Where are the bairns?”

“Off to watch the circus being pitched on the hills round Selkirk. The aunts and a few grannies have gone with them.”

Standing on the path beneath her he said, “I’m coming no nearer till nurses have seen me. Mibby I’m infected with something.”

“Aye? Well, they’re waiting for you.”

He walked round the path to the infirmary door. It was ajar. He mounted the veranda and entered.

Two nieces, a sister and a cousin swiftly undressed him and were shocked by the sight of his body. They said, “Naebody in Ettrick makes love like that!” and, “Were you playing soldiers with a queer man, Wat?”

“No.”

“Was it a gangrel lass?”

“No.”

“Was it a circus woman?”

“Mibby. She said she was famous but I didnae ken her. Be quick with this.”

One cleaned his body and put lotions on the wounds. The others took samples of his breath, blood, lymph, urine and (by an exertion which almost had him screaming) semen. They analyzed the samples and keyed the results into the network while he was shaved and massaged by hands which expertly avoided the bites and bruises. One told him, “Your brother Joe is a lot cheerier. Annie Craig Douglas visited him last night. She’s still with him.”

“Good.”

“She says her mother sent her — Nan, ye ken? — but I think Annie would like to see you.”

“I’ll see naebody till I’ve seen Kittock.”

“You can see her as soon as you’ve dressed and had your medicine,” said another handing him a diagnostic printout.

It said Wat Dryhope’s excellent constitution had been exhausted by at least nine days of intense muscular and nervous exertion, by opiate overdose from a cocktail of caffeine-lavoured chloroform water plus heroin plus alcohol plus cocaine plus L-dopa aphrodisiac, also by a common and harmless throat infection which only afflicted the exhausted. For the exhaustion it prescribed a fortnight of mild activity, sauna baths and massage; for the narcotic poisoning, detoxification with naloxone and total avoidance of all stimulants including caffeine; for the throat infection, a syrup of squill liquid extract and capsicum tincture, one spoonful after meals. A nurse went to order these medicines from the powerplant. In a puzzled way Wat re-read the diagnosis.

“A few hours ago I was in the worst fever of my life,” he said, frowning, “My heart was hammering and the sweat lashing off me, but I don’t remember coughing. Are ye sure I’ve just a throat infection?”

“No, Wat, we’re too ignorant, but the network is sure. The network has records of every virus that ever mutated naturally, along with those invented by murderous governments and business corporations in the bad old days. It knows all viruses that have evolved on the satellites and the planets, all viral mutations which could possibly happen in the last three weeks and next ten days. You’re safe, Wattie. Your fever was a sober body’s healthy reaction to bad drugs in your coffee. I hope you gave the bitch as good as you got.”

“Here’s a billet doux from her!” cried one of his nieces triumphantly, returning from Wat’s room with clean clothing and a rainbow-coloured ticket which she waved above her head, “I found this and a book about shaking the world while emptying his dirty pockets. It’s for tonight’s circus and on the back it says — ”

“Gie’s it!” yelled Wat so fiercely that she stuck out her tongue at him, threw the clothes into his lap, dropped the ticket on top. He lifted it and read with the other nurses peering over and round his shoulders.

Cher Liebling!

I will never forget the maddening

sweetness of your caresses. Dressed in flame

tonight I will again be yr

slave after the big show.

D.P.

Someone asked him what the initials meant and he said they wouldnae believe him if he told. He spoke absent-mindedly because the words on the card filled him with a murderous desire for Delilah Puddock. Someone asked if she was a circus artist, a gopher or a camp follower. He cried, “I’ve telt ye I don’t ken a thing about her! I just ken that I’m going to — ”

Their startled faces silenced him. He saw his hands clutching the air before him as though throttling a neck.

“Lassies,” he said plaintively, “I’m hungry. My wame thinks my throat’s cut.”

They brought him powsoudie, drummock, kebbuck and farle. He ate it and dressed.

Kittock had no modern intelligence communicators so he went through the garden to the old tower near the duck pond. The smoke of her oven trickled up through bushes on the ruined top. She was not in the goose field or poultry runs and as usual (he thought with a smile) the tower door was locked against him. She might be entertaining a gangrel. On a scrap of paper he wrote, “Wat is home, mother, and badly needs you,” slipped it under the door, returned to the house, and entering his room suddenly saw it was too small for a grown man. When he had returned from the stars, and found it kept for him, and realized the women had foreseen he would return, he had been so grateful that he had refused offers of a bigger room. The only change since infancy was a bed which now covered half the floor, also a new telecom with commander facilities — the mother must have ordered and installed it as soon as she heard of his colonelization. The screen showed names of many who wished to speak with him but none was Delilah Puddock. A thick sheaf of pink, blue and violet printed sheets had issued from it. He could not face them so made the outer wall transparent and was soothed a little by the familiar view: a garden with a tower holding the wisest person he knew, the loch and hills beyond the tower under a cloudy April sky which was brightening to a fine afternoon. With a faint cough the telecom spat a rainbow-coloured message onto the sheaf. Its print was too eye-catching to be ignored.

PROFESSOR DOGBITCH Z. CELLINI

Virtuoso Assoluto of the

COSMOPOLITAN CLOUD CIRCUS

invites

COLONEL WAT DRYHOPE

Commander of the Ettrick Warriors

and Prime Instigator of the New Era of

Military Power and Poetry

to be

GUEST OF HONOUR

At a Grand Banquet Breakfast for

ARTISTS, HEROES, COMMANDERS

Attending the Dusk-to-Dawn

Never-to-be-Repeated Cloud Circus

Production of

HOMAGE TO ETTRICK

A Four Act Evolutionary Opera

Hymning Creative Strife From The

Big Bang to The Battle of

The Ettrick Standard!

ORIGINAL TEXTS BY

Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Milton,

Goethe, Tolstoy, T. S. Eliot,

MacDiarmid, Hamish Henderson

et cetera;

ORIGINAL MUSIC BY

Carver, Haydn, Beethoven, Berlioz,

Wagner, Verdi, Stravinsky,

Hamish Mac Cunn

et cetera;

ORIGINAL CLOUD EFFECTS BY

Rubens, Tiepolo, Delacroix, Turner,

Thanks …

Impatiently Wat scanned the print for the name of a living woman and saw Alauda Magna was Choral Synthesizer, Cathleen na Houlihaun was Cloud Choreographer and the mirages had been designed by Lulu Dancy. Under these was a guest list of over three hundred commanders and famous fighters from all round the globe. Lust for Delilah Puddock, the honour of his clan, personal vanity now pulled him so strongly toward the circus that he instinctively knew it would be wrong to go. Welcoming escorts, loud cheering, handshakes with other celebrities would inevitably turn him into a posturing, smirking ornament — into a something used for other people’s benefit. To find why he had been called Instigator of the New Era he switched his telecom to the public eye.

Several housewives, one weeping, said the mobilization epidemic infecting most of the world’s males was a crazy and dangerous fad. An equal number of young women were shown who expressed pride that their brothers or lovers would face death for the glory of their clan.

“Like the crowds of men swarming to their local Warrior houses, most people in the public eye are responding euphorically,” said a public eye announcer euphorically, “Commanders everywhere predict a new age of more challenging war games played on a scale of almost historical proportions. They also insist that this is no cause for alarm. The Geneva Conventions will not be contravened though war game rules may have to be redrawn.”

Wat was alarmed by how many people said there was no cause for alarm. He watched Wolfgang Hochgeist with a globe of the world showing the spread of the epidemic from its origin in Ettrick. The least infected areas were Tibet, Ireland, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Italy. Most of the worst infected had military histories. In Japanese, German and French speaking lands the armies trebled, in the British Isles and North America they more than quadrupled. The big surprise was Canada, where fighting men had multiplied by six. Hochgeist daringly suggested that the Japanese, German and French had been slightly inoculated against militarism by historical recollections of disaster; Britain and the former U.S.A. were more prone to it because of former victories; Canada was worst infected because as a historical nation it had a less secure identity for which it was now compensating.

“The persistence and evolution of national military attitudes through generations for whom nationality has not been operational is interesting but not alarming,” said Hochgeist,

“Since soldiers will not be fighting to enrich their homes future warfare will remain unpolitical.”

Wat switched to another channel and found an amicable discussion between Hinchinbrook, commander of the East Anglian Alliance, and Winesburg, North America’s most popular fighter since Stormin’ Norman. The alert and boyish Englishman was obviously talking hard to impress the famous veteran.

“The primitive armies of yesterday — and I mean precisely the yesterday of twenty-four hours ago — were single regiments. This wonderful new influx means every general must divide his force into three, four, five new regiments, so we will require a whole new hierarchy of command.”

“Or an old hierarchy of command?” said Winesburg, smiling.

“Of course! How clever of you to notice. Yes, we will have to bring back the highly unpopular sergeant major.”

“And commanding officers will lead less risky lives, if you don’t mind a battle-scarred old veteran saying so.”

“Quite right! More brain work, less cut and thrust.”

“What do you think now of the global and interplanetary referendum called by Geneva, General Hinchinbrook?”

“What do you think of it General Winesburg?”

“Out of date?”

“Utterly out of date. I don’t mind keeping the Boys’ Brigades in reserve because with these thousands of other lives to play with we don’t need them. But it’s absurd to confine battles of the scale we now anticipate to two days! Why not a fortnight? Plenty of room to manoeuvre in that. And this fuss about standards also seems outmoded. What the world’s armies now need — and what our families viewing us from home deserve — is a more inspiring object to struggle for. Last week a great Scottish soldier called his standard a pole with a tin chicken on top. I was shocked, I confess. I now see he had the right idea.”

“Have you another object to fight for in mind?”

“None. Not the faintest. But in six months — not more than six months — we’ll be commanding whole new companies of troops just raring to go. I dare say we’ll have thought of something better by then.”

“Would you mind saying a word about the manoeuvring of large new armies on common land for whole fortnights?” said a public eye chairman, “Won’t that play havoc with the migration of gangrels? Not with all of them everywhere, of course, but many of them sometimes?”

“Some havoc, no doubt,” said Hinchinbrook with a pleasant smile, “But we are many and they are few. I’m sure they’ll manage to adapt. Besides, they stink. There is nothing to be alarmed about as long as our houses are safe.”

Wat blanked the screen and gloomily pondered the fact that every general in the world would soon command a new army of beginners, most of them bigger than his because they lived in more peopled places. He had another fit of wanting Delilah Puddock. He wanted to tie her up and torture her until she told him exactly what she was trying to do; he was also disgusted with himself because he knew she must have foreseen that reaction. He kicked his shoes off, lay on the bed and tried not to want her by remembering other women he had passionately wanted. Their only similarity was that none had passionately wanted him.

He had staggered after the henwife as soon as he learned to walk because she was small, aloof, and unlike the comforting big-bosomed grannies and thin energetic ones. She only visited the house for the morning service, always ordering two sacks of grain and a book. She had a pocket for the book but he insisted on carrying it, trotting beside her when she crossed the garden to the poultry yard with a sack under each arm. After feeding the geese, hens and chickens she firmly took the book back, entered the ancient tower and shut him out. No other granny had a door which could be locked from inside. It was the only wooden door in Dryhope and he hated it, kicked and screamed at it, pounded it with his fists, threw stones at it and occasionally butted it with his head until the Dryhope mother came and carried him home. After what seemed years but was maybe less than a month the upper half of the door opened inward. Kittock leaned her folded arms on top of the lower half, looked down on him with interest and said, “Will you keep doing that till I let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“Even if I never let ye in?”

“Aye.”

“If you hold on to me you’ll have a lonely life, Wattie. I don’t like weans.”

“I don’t care.”

“O, if you understand that cheeriness is not man’s chief end, come in.”

The tower wall was so thick that the doorway seemed a tunnel. It led to the living-room, a cavernous vault with a plank floor, a big flat-topped stove in the middle, several chairs and a table. The stove was called the Aga. Above it stood a giant bed whose leg-posts were seven feet high and nine inches square. It had a ladder to climb in by and a low plank wall to prevent rolling out. From floor to ceiling the walls were hidden by shelves packed with every size of book, some in good condition but most appearing to have been often read by people with dirty hands. She led him across this chamber and up a dank spiral stair. They reached to a vault shaped like the one below. It was loud with croodling pigeons and had a thick carpet of feathers and bird shit.

“The doocot,” she said, leading him higher.

They emerged between broken walls on an open space where brambles, birks and an osier bush sprouted. Wat, looking out across the sunlit loch, had never been so high. He felt as high as the hills. After a moment Kittock said,

“I am the henwife because I’m too selfish to be a housewife, too feart to be a gangrel. We should all be gangrels. Will I make ye one Wattie? I know their ways.”

“No.”

“Their lives are short but never dreich because they see more than settled folk — they can only feed and keep warm by seeing more. They have added reading to their old skills of song and story-telling. Some are still Christians — it adds zest to their swearing. Most are fiercely monogamous and often unfaithful. They need no powerplants and telecoms because the world is their house. Would you not like the world for your house Wattie?”

“It’s too big, Kittock.”

“Gangrels don’t think so. Do you promise never to try and stop me doing what I enjoy?”

“Aye.”

“Do you promise not to ask more than two questions a day?”

“Aye.”

“Do you promise to go on playing in the garden with your nephews and nieces?”

“Aye.”

“Then stay for a while and I’ll teach ye to read.”

She had taught him to read very fast, he thought, remembering how shocked he had been when the lessons stopped. She had promised to cuddle him all night when he had read her a Rudyard Kipling story aloud from start to finish. In bed she always lay with her back to him; he hated that so worked hard and read the story aloud perfectly.

“Good,” she said briskly, “My teaching days are over. Now you can teach yourself.”

“But you’ll cuddle me all night?”

“Aye, for the first and last time. You should cuddle lassies of your own age.”

Because it was the first and last time he couldn’t enjoy being cuddled by her that night. He told her so.

“Good!” she said pleasantly, “Neither of us is being used as a doll.”

“Are you my mother, Kittock?”

“Mibby. I had a wheen of bairns before I tired of housework. I was good at childbirth but never nursed the gets for more than a week because I didnae like small thoughtless animals. Luckily there are a lot of women who do. Folk who cannae talk bore me. I went to the stars to hear a brainier class of talker.”

“Why did ye come back?”

“The talkers up there are all specialists.”

“I hope you’re my mother, Kittock.”

“It doesnae matter who is your mammy and daddy, you’re the world’s son, my man, born into the world’s house, and if it’s too big for you, leave it and crawl into a satellite or a crater with a roof over it on a dead world. Ask the grannies who your mammy is. They told you about your daddy because boys are supposed to feel safer with a manly pattern ahead of them, just as girls are supposed to feel safer with a mother. Mibby they do feel safer but it’s idol-worship or doll-cuddling just the same. The only pattern we should learn to follow is the one that grows inside us. You have to look in, not out to find that.”

“I don’t know what ye mean Kittock.”

“Then forget it.”

He had never asked the grannies who his mother was in case she was not Kittock at all.

There was every kind of book on Kittock’s shelves, many with pictures. He found one with tiny engravings of many naked women and a few men wearing curly wigs, knee breeches, embroidered dressing-gowns and buckled shoes. The men seemed to own a vast palace where they used the women as furniture and ornaments. The text was in words he could not read.

“What does play-sir dam-our mean, Kittock?”

“Pleasure of love, in French.”

“Will you teach me French?”

“No. Learn it through a telecom in the big house. Contact a French boy who wants to learn English. Show him that book and ask him to explain.”

“I wish you had a telecom.”

“I don’t want to learn another language.”

“You could watch films.”

“It would waste my mind.”

He wanted to ask why, but it would have been his third question that day. He watched her hard and expectantly instead. She sighed and said, “When a lot of folk watch something on a screen they all see the same thing. What a damnable waste of mind! Readers bring books to life by filling the stories with voices, faces, scenery, ideas the author never dreamed of, things from their own minds. Every reader does it differently.”

“So when you and me read The Cat That Walked by Itself we read a different story?” said Wat, disliking the idea.

“Exactly!” said Kittock with great satisfaction.

“Can a man say a sensible word?” said a fat, thickly bearded gangrel sitting in a chair near the Aga where he had been examining a book, “You undervalue intercourse between people, Kitty my love. Yes, in Hegelian terms every book is a thesis to which each and every reader’s reaction — no matter how enthusiastic! — is antithesis and uniquely private. This would turn us into Babylonian chaos or a swarm of solipsistic monads if natural garrulity did not make us chorally symphonic. We mingle our private and divergent responses to what delights or exasperates us, thus instigating a plurality of new syntheses. Glory be to God, you’re a lovely woman, Kitty. Let a man tip another drop of real stuff into your glass.”

“Ignore him, Wat,” said Kittock amiably, “None of his words are sensible except a few at the end.”

Gangrels visited the tower to return and borrow books, usually bringing a hare or salmon for the larder, sometimes a load of peats or logs for the Aga. Wat hated them because he wanted Kittock to himself. He hated the fat man most because he had come early, seemed perfectly at home and showed no sign of going away. Kittock had produced two glasses which the fat man kept filling from a labelless bottle of clear liquid. At one point he asked Kittock,

“Should a man offer a drop of real stuff to your solemn young husband here?”

“Aye, but he’ll refuse. He hates you.” The man asked Wat politely, “Is she telling the truth?”

“Aye.”

“Ah well, here’s a health to you anyway.”

Later they were joined by another gangrel just as bad: a small thin one with a deeply wrinkled brow, moustache so bushy that it hid his mouth, a sack from which he removed another bottle of real stuff, a copy of Catch 22, rabbits, birds, potatoes, onions and a turnip which he suggested would make a good game stew. Kittock started preparing it. The men exchanged tobacco pouches, filled their pipes, filled their glasses again and discussed whether ten thousand years of civilization should be called The Dark Ages because of their greed and cruelty, or The Middle Ages because they had achieved some splendid things. The discussion lasted throughout the afternoon, through a meal of game stew, through the evening until long after nightfall. During it Wat heard so many people confidently quoted that he thought the gangrels had recently met Socrates, Pericles, Voltaire, Frederick of Prussia, Pushkin, Czar Nicholas, James Kelman and Margaret Thatcher in remote cities. In Dryhope house he sometimes saw films of people living in cities, so did not know they had disappeared. And all the time Kittock listened closely to the men with quiet amusement which infuriated Wat because he could not amuse her that way. Without bidding anyone goodnight at last he climbed the ladder to bed and, despite the loud voices below, fell asleep without undressing.

And was shaken awake by Kittock saying, “Home to your aunties, Wat! Home to your aunts!”

There was a smile on her face giving it a youthful beauty he had never seen before. When he understood what she meant he yelled, “No!” and clung to the side of the bed.

“Help me men!” she cried gaily, “Up here, Tiger Tim. Stay below and catch him, Desperate Dan.”

She and the small man lifted him and dropped him screaming into the arms of the fat man who carried Wat to the door, pushed him out, slammed and locked and bolted it behind him. The night was warm, a full moon in the sky. He rushed at the door, banged it uselessly with his shoulder, kicked it, hammered with his fists and yelled furiously for minutes on end till he was suddenly drenched by a big cold lump of water. It had been tipped from a pail by the fat man who, looking down from the broken tower top, said, “Moderate your transports you misfortunate wee bastard! It’s a big bed but there’s only room for two men when Kitty goes wild.”

Then he was being led back to his first home by a mother who said softly, “Poor Wat, poor Wat, why did ye attach yourself to her? Tonight you’ll sleep with me.”

“No!”

“Well I’ll put you in with Joe — he likes you.”

“No!”

“Then where can I put ye, Wattie? Who in this great big house do you want to sleep with? I can arrange it with anyone for tonight, maybe for longer. Peggy is loving. She’s ten and plump and likes wee lads.”

Snatching his hand from hers he hardened every muscle till his body vibrated with tension and roared, “Can a man not have a bed of his own?” “O yes,” she said, smiling sadly down on him, “A man can have a bed of his own.”

A day later he saw Kittock at the morning service and glared at her. She smiled and shrugged back. His feelings then were exactly what he felt now for Delilah Puddock. Before returning from the stars he could not think of Kittock without pain; afterward he was as glad to see her as any of the rest.

Yes, he had come to this small room at the age of five. Most children were given a bigger room when they left their chosen granny at that age, sharing it with two or three others. They slept, played, squabbled together until puberty, when each wanted, and was given, a room of their own to entertain privately invited guests. Wat had never wanted another room. He wanted attractive nieces and young aunts to stand outside his little room and say timidly, “Wat, O Wattie, please let me in.”

He found cruel pleasure in imagining their sufferings when they heard him say very coldly and casually, “Leave me alone, I’m busy.”

Unluckily the only girl who had begged to enter his room was a tall awkward eleven-year-old lassie from Mountbenger who visited him when he was nine. She had been so awkward and unattractive — so like himself — that there was no satisfaction in keeping her out. She had sat for hours on his floor but eventually stopped coming because he answered her questions with monosyllables, said nothing else to her, never looked at her and went on reading or playing with his screen as if alone. Later he heard she had grown into a uniquely intelligent and attractive woman, so her dull remarks to him had been caused by shyness. He still fantasized about excluding women who loved him. When twelve he had refused an offer of a bigger room, saying he would soon be leaving for the satellites as soon as possible so must get used to cramped spaces. He bitterly enjoyed the sorrowing wonder with which the mother heard this crisp, quiet statement. It had proved he was cared for. But those he most wanted had never cared much for him. Kittock had not wanted him near her. Nan was more of a mother than an equal. Annie had talked to him as if she was an older sister. He had certainly loved them but none (except Kittock, perhaps) had occupied his mind as wholly as the woman in the tent who had treated him with absolute contempt.

“Why am I a perverse bugger?” he whispered then noticed someone on the veranda watching him.

It was Kittock. She nodded without smiling and turned and walked back to the tower. He put his shoes on and scribbled a note: A political matter — someone you do not know is listening to us.

His room lacked a door onto the veranda. He caught up with her in the living-room library he had not visited for over twenty years. She stood facing him, hands clasped before her in perfect silence. He said, “You’re angry?” She nodded.

“Why?”

She took his first note from her pocket, showed it to him, lifted a plate from the Aga and dropped it inside saying, “I never mothered you.”

He humbly shrugged his shoulders and handed her the second note. She read it, looked at him, smiled and burned that too. She said kindly,

“Sit down Wattie. If false folk are listening the truth cannae hurt you. You arenae false.” It was what he wanted to hear.

“Are ye sure?” he said, thankfully sitting, “I met a very bad woman last night, Kittock.”

“I think ye met a woman who was bad to you, Wattie.”

“If what she said is right she wants to be bad to everyone and I love her, Kittock!” said Wat with a wild chuckle, “There’s been naething like me since José fell for Carmen. I’m corrupted!”

She brewed and served camomile tea while he talked, then she sat opposite and gave him such full attention that he felt as safe at home with her as when he was three. She asked questions which helped him recall details, like the colour of Delilah’s eyes. He also told her the news he had gathered through the telecom, growing excited about it.

“Surely there’s more than one of her, Kittock? The public eye presenters and telecom gurus and commanders broadcasting just now all seem part of her conspiracy, but so do I — the worst part. An hour ago a veteran strategist called me the spearhead of a great new movement restoring manly courage to its ancient prestige — he predicted that in a year we’ll be battling in leagued armies as big as those of the defunct nations and based on the same territories. Weapons and war rules must be modified for larger areas of manoeuvre, he said, but only the commons will be seriously encroached upon. A woman asked if this meant future battles would not only be fought on the commons, but also for them. He said Why not? Territorial instincts will add zest to manly contests and in no way endanger our houses. Why are so many so sure of this? Why are only a few women worried about it? I must fight this daftness — ”

“Fight it?”

“Speak against it. Every commander in Scotland will be at a banquet after the circus tonight with nearly a hundred foreign champions. As guest of honour I’ll be expected to make a speech. What if I tell the world that there is a conspiracy against the safety of our homes?”

“You will sound like a quotation from a history book,” mused Kittock, “At first the whole audience will think you a fearmongering maniac from the worst period of human history. Then your sincerity will move folk who like you, and others who also fear the effect of the bigger armies, to start a crusade, a witch hunt, a police force to denounce or arrest plotters. The folk any such force arrested or threatened to arrest would mostly be innocent, of course. The new police force, like previous ones, would become the evil it was created to prevent and would provoke a resistance exactly like it. That would delight the puddock you met in the wood.”

“Shall I kill her and then myself, Kittock?”

“I believe she would like that too, Wattie. Finish your tea while I think.”

He sipped lukewarm tea, watched her ponder and relaxed into the comfort of the high-backed armchair. Since explaining his problem to her he was enjoying a pleasant drowsiness. The colour of a winking light on his wristcom showed three people had left urgent messages and a fourth wanted to talk to him at once. He let the winking light hypnotize him into shallow sleep which suddenly deepened and banquet, Wat,” said Kittock loudly. He yawned and muttered, “I didnae catch that.”

“Don’t go to that circus and banquet. Don’t even speak to these people, let Jenny do it for you. Tell him you’ve a viral infection, but don’t say you cannae go. Say you won’t go, and mean it.”

He took the ticket from his pocket, re-read the message, sighed and said, “All right mother, though it will be hard. Every bit of me but my common sense hungers for that woman.”

“Stand firm. Hold on to your common sense and she’ll come to you,” said Kittock grimly,

“I won’t let you out of my sight today, tonight or tomorrow, Wat. Stop looking excited! She can only harm ye.”

“I told you I’m corrupted, mother,” said Wat with a despairing smile, “I know she can only harm me so my only hope is she needs me to do it to. Why are ye sure she’ll come?”

“I’ll tell you when we’ve seen the great-grannies of Dryhope,” said Kittock, standing, “Come! We must tell them everything.”

“Why?” asked Wat, perplexed, “What use are a wheen of old housewives to anybody but the bairns they care for? I ken they like knowing all about everything but gossip won’t save the world — or save me either.”

“Sometimes you have fewer brains than a headless hen Wat Dryhope! You always thought too little of the women who bred and nursed you because you wanted danger, not safety — that’s why you fell in love with me, and history books, and going to the stars, and warfare, and with Delilah Puddock. I wish I could have made you a gangrel, Wat. That life has all the healthy danger a sane man needs and no time for communal crazes and elite conspiracies. Among settled people it’s the great-grannies who stop these things becoming dangerous. Their gossip has been the only government and police the world has needed for more than a century — if you’re ignorant of that then you don’t know what keeps modern society stable. If she is as ignorant as you in that respect (and she may be, you and she were very alike) we can stop her doing much damage.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The bonny, merciless puddock you met in the woods, Lulu Dancy, who was sweet on you when you were wee.” Wat jumped up and walked to and fro saying,

“That scrawny, lanky thing? She wasnae a Lulu — they cried her … What was it …?”

“Meg Mountbenger. You paid her no attention so she came to me, asked all about you and read the books you read. I got her hooked on books. She borrowed more than anyone I ever knew, history, art, poetry and novels. A very clever lass she became and a good looker with it, but she was scunnered by the Ettrick lads after you and didnae care much for her aunts and grannies either. She became an artist and went to the stars. She was one of the team designing the hollow world, K20, but she loved sounds and appearances more than solid forms so changed her name to what it is now, returned to earth and joined Cellini’s Cloud Circus last year — what’s suddenly right with ye, Wattie?” With tears on his cheeks he said hoarsely, “I’ve never been happier. She needs me like I need her! There was hatred in what she did with me last night but nothing calculating, nothing political! It’s a miracle that she’s needed me all these years. I’ll go to her.”

Kittock grasped his hands and tried to keep him seated saying, “And she wasnae false when she said she wanted to restore poverty and greedy governments! Does her brand of nooky mean more to ye than the proper feeding of the world’s bairns? The safety of our sisters, aunts and grannies? The happiness of Annie, Nan and your other kind sweethearts?”

“She cannae hurt them,” said Wat impatiently pulling his hands free, getting up and going toward the door, “And I’ll stop her if she tries to, that’s a promise Kittock.”

On an agonized note Kittock cried, “She’s a neo-sapience Wat!”

He stared then asked how she knew.

“Guess,” she said, smiling mournfully.

“You’re one too?”

She nodded.

After a moment he spoke casually, like a man prepared to spend a few more minutes with a stranger. He was pleased to see this hurt her.

“When I was wee you told me the earth is the seed bed of the universe — that folk who choose immortality must leave the earth to prevent overcrowding. Immortals break that rule?”

“I’m no immortal now,” said Kittock humbly, “I shogged off the insanity of rejuvenation when I returned to earth. I was sixty years abroad in the universe before admitting how much I hated eternity and infinity, how much I needed the world’s wonderful big smallness. The Dryhope grannies (some of them my daughters) let me sneak back to this outhouse where I crowd nobody and take nothing from the powerplant but poultry food and books for the gangrels. But Meg Mountbenger is another kind of woman altogether. She’s also your …”

A rushing noise like distant wind had been coming nearer and suddenly surrounded the tower with a deafening, steady roar. The door at the foot of the spiral stairs burst open, a blast of warm air came out carrying a cloud of dust, feathers and four pigeons who tumbled and fluttered overhead before settling in window slits and book shelves. Wat and Kittock, partly blinded by dust, rushed to push the door shut but before they reached it the pressure of the blast eased and the roaring, though still continuous, lessened enough for the noise of hearty male voices and descending footsteps to be heard from above.

The first to enter was a young lad in Boys’ Brigade uniform who cried, “Wattie, Wattie, we got the standard, we got the standard!”

It was Sandy, Wat’s brother. Behind him a bulky, magnificent figure in the full dress uniform of a Northumbrian commander stooped to get his plumed helmet under the lintel. It was General Shafto looking so robustly, serenely cheerful that Wat felt happier at the mere sight of him. Shafto turned his grin from Wat onto Kittock, saluted her and said, “Forgive the rude intrusion, madam, but we have come here on urgent warrior business, having failed to contact the Ettrick commander by any other method. Colonel Dryhope! My good friend and best enemy! Your carriage awaits upstairs with Archie Crook Cot in full control. Since the entire Northumbrian command were coming north for the shinding at Selkirk tonight (yes, even old Dodds — he’s quite got over his huffs with you) I decided to return with your standard bearers, so here we are to collect the guest of honour and man of the moment.”

“He’s not going to the circus,” said Kittock and Wat was puzzled by her appearance. She no longer looked calm and wise but small and frantic like a frightened child.

“Forgive me for disagreeing madam, but he must! The circus cannot start without him! World champions are waiting to shake your hand, Wat Dryhope — Inongo, Winesburg and Pingwu, to name but a few. Commanders of great new recently created military leagues are here to shake your hand — Sheer Khan of Mongolia, Jack Ripper of Texas, Siegfried Krawinkel of the Fifth Reich. Every commander in Scotland is waiting to shake your hand — yes, Scotland will be a nation again and who but Wat Dryhope is fit to lead it? By gum, the Scots and Sassenachs can look forward to some grand scrimmages again! A whole galaxy of public eyeballs is also waiting outside but we won’t pay any attention to them. Come upstairs Wattie!”

With pursed lips Wat had been smiling, nodding, almost laughing at what Shafto said yet he did not go at once. Part of him knew he was being swept away by other people’s wills and that nobody should let themselves be swept away. He looked at Kittock. She stared back and shook her head in a slight, definite negation. He suddenly knew that not going would be the greatest and truest act of his life but Shafto, chuckling, put a warm friendly hand on his shoulder and said, “Why should a hero like you skulk away from his comrades like Achilles did? Achilles’ lovely bedmate had been snapped from him by the commanding officer but YOU are the supreme commander here and the lovely and famous Lulu Dancy awaits your command in the flying bedstead upstairs. Go to her! Besides, Colonel Dryhope, your life is partly mine! I saved it a week ago! Tonight I insist that you do as I want. I order you to stop being a damned dour reticent Scot and for once enjoy yourself!”

So Wat went to the circus after all.