A Servants Servant

They rested north of the pool, by the mouth of a wide alley that ran between two great houses.

Liveried servants made a heavy traffic in and out of the alley. Orem watched them, all so busy, all so important, yet time enough for a smile or a nod at each other, regardless of livery. Oh, there were some who passed cold as you please, Orem saw, but even that was so pointed that it was a sign of a quarrel—there were no strangers among the servants.

"Forget it," said Flea.

"Forget what?"

"You'll never get hired by one of the great houses. You'll never get past the gateman."

"Then let's not go to the front gate."

Flea refused to go. "If we go back there they'll think for sure we're thieves."

"We got away once," said Orem.

"We damn near didn't," answered Flea.

"You play with the snakes, and you're afraid of the servants?"

So Flea went in with him, but this time hung back, forcing Orem to lead the way. The street quickly narrowed, and though the fog still lingered, it only greyed the buildings on left and right. At first there were still gates, for a few of the lesser great houses fronted into the alley rather than the street.

Then the gates ceased, and suddenly the street widened to a plaza between the high-walled houses.

Within the plaza a little maze of streets, and along the streets little wooden miniatures of the great stone buildings. Were there stone colonnades in the great housefronts? Then there were intricately lathed wooden posts here. Were the great houses pierced with many large windows, all barred? Then these small homes were festooned with small windows, and wooden bars echoed the bronze and iron of the masters. The servants imitated their masters as best they could, though their small homes stood among the kitchens of their lords.

Orem had no notion where to go, now that he was here. He had expected someone to challenge them, but no one did. In fact there were others without livery, dressed as simply as he. It gave him hope. There might indeed be work here.

"It's like a little city," Flea whispered.

"Come on," Orem answered. He strode boldly toward the back gate of a great house, where the kitchen fires burned hot and smoky, sending more fog to thicken and yellow the light.

"Ho, boys!" An old man watched them from the portico of a wooden house.

"Ho, old man!" Orem answered.

"You want work?" the old man asked.

"Nothing less," said Orem.

"Ah, yes, wanting work, all the world wanting work except those who presently have employment. And except for me. I'm handsomely pensioned and I sit on a porch all day and hollo to boys in hopelessly rustic clothing. Do you know that within the house, those who buttle and those who kitch and those who bake and those who wait, they know you're coming?"

"They know? How?"

"The odor of a farmboy and a Swamptown lad can be smelt from rods off. The uncouth clop of your sandals on our stony walks can be heard even farther off, and the rough accents of your speech betray you more than anything. You were seen as you walked from the public fountain. You were noted as you squatted by the portals of our humble alley. And now you are being examined by an old man who has nothing better to do than turn away the pathetic strangers who think there's work for them here."

Orem had been turned away too many times now; he had lost his fear of the rejectors. "There's work here. Why shouldn't I do it?"

The old man cackled. "Oh, you should, you should—but you can't. Any man can learn to be a noble or a beggar, but you must be born a true servant."

"I was born to be a cleric or a soldier," Orem said. "I'm not meek enough for the one and not strong enough for the other. Why shouldn't I learn to do what servants do? Someone had to be the first servant—who taught him?"

"There, that's the first thing you have to lose—that insolent manner."

"Let's go," said Flea. "He just wants to talk."

The old man heard him, and shouted angrily. "Go away, then! If you don't want what I have to offer, go away! You'll get no second chance from me!"

"What are you offering?" asked Orem.

"A job and a pass. Does that mean anything to you?"

So they stayed and listened. He beckoned them within his gate, and soon they stood before the old man, who grinned toothily up at them. His teeth were all bronze. It turned him into a statue, at least at the mouth. It was like a miracle watching him speak.

"Stand, yes, stand, that's what a servant does when his lord speaks. Stand and look at me respectfully, and don't glance away, no, and listen to every word in case I ask you a question. You can't ever be caught not hearing what I say. And stand with your foot back so, with a bow always ready, and an answer quick to your lips. You call your own master 'honored sir,' and his son is 'new master' and his second son and all his daughters are 'blest one' and his third son and later are

'hopeless sir,' said always gravely with the right respect and a touch of irony so they'll know you are their friend, though their father is not. And if the man is master of another house, he is 'esteemed sir'

unless he and your master are not on good terms, at which time he becomes 'most high and noble eminence,' which is said utterly without irony lest he take its phallic meaning, and his wife you call

'esteemed lady' if she is a friend, but if your lord despises her she is 'most fecund mother of a noble lineage,' and if your lady despises her she is 'envy of nations' and if both despise her you say nothing to her but bow low and touch your brow to the ground, which will be unbearable insult to her but she dare not answer. Have you understood that? Can you do it now?"

"It's all shit, if you ask me," Flea said.

"But you, young fellow, tall and thin as the last smoke from a censer, you have another idea."

Orem smiled. "We had it just as hard at the House of God. If you speak to God with sins heavy in your heart, but there is other company and you want no questions, address God as Holy One Who Dwelleth in Heaven. If you're willing to confess your sins and your repentance, then you address Him as Holy Father Who Loveth the Weak. If you're praying for a company of your betters, the name of God is Master of the Brethren, but if you're praying for a company of common folk or if the company is mixed, you call Him Creator of All, First and Foremost, and if the King is present you—"

"Enough, enough!" cried the old man. "So you trained for a priest, did you?"

"Enough to know I'd never be a priest."

"And never a servant in a great house, either. It's not anyone wishing you ill. Not at all. We wish you well. But a servant's work is to be invisible, to have all done silently; a servant's work is to have no sign that work is done at all. A servant steps his steps like a dancer. An art, that's what it is. An art, and we're born to it and raised to it, and there's no hope for someone stumbling into it. What if the master has had too much wine, and yet asks for more?"

Orem smiled a little and shrugged. How could he know?

"Do you water his wine? Never. Do you refuse him, or give him half a glass? Never. No, you add the strongest gin you can find, so that the next glass puts him out, and then you gracefully stand beside him and bid his guests good-bye in his name, one by one, and they all touch his hand as they leave, so that in the morning you tell him, 'You shook hands with everyone as they left.' No one thinks ill of him because it was done gracefully, and though he knows the truth of what you did he doesn't mind because that's the way it's done. We are what keeps all going smoothly in Inwit. Who do you think serves in the palace? We, the fifty families. We are the only servants of Inwit and have been from the beginning. Back when God was still telling his name to strangers, we were passing the bread and bearing the meat. Does the House of Grell need a boy for stairs? I have a nephew. Does the House of Bran need a woman for children? My wife does children and teaches them dancing, too.

My family is the Family Dyer, and we have a man or woman placed in every great house, and with responsibility, too. Nothing happens on Queen's Road but what we know of it."

My feet hurt, thought Orem. What is your offer?

"Do you think these lords rule anything? Nonsense. We do. It's one of us who's major-domo, lording the house. Who is his steward caring for his lands, if not one of us? Oh, the master makes his decisions, but who gives him all the information he uses to decide? We are the masters of Inwit, we are the ebb and flow of everything. We give them allowances and they think that they are the ones who pay us! They even think they hire us!"

"But the offer you spoke of, what could you need us for?"

The old man leaned forward and smiled. "Well, you see, while we're off tending to their estate, what of our own houses? We have lovely houses here, you know, the finest in Inwit, saving our masters' own. Who serves in the house of the servant? That's what we want you for."

The servant of a servant. That's my pass. That's my entry into Inwit. Orem did not feel triumphant at getting work. Instead he kept trying to think if he had ever heard a song about a servant.

"How much?" Flea asked.

"Two coppers a week," said the old man. "Two coppers a week, and an afternoon off, another on holy days if you worship God, and room and two meals besides."

"Two coppers," said Flea, awed.

"Here's the best. You'll wed here, you'll bed here, you'll sire here and your sons, your daughters, they'll do what you cannot. They'll wear the livery, they'll learn the words and times, they'll stand at the elbow of great men and be part of our family, the family Dyer, and do us proud forever. You'll be the sires of members of the fifty families, though you'll never belong to us yourselves."

Orem knew then that he must turn it down. He did not understand why, not for a moment. It was work, it was a way to stay inside Inwit, but it was unbearable. His sons and daughters servants, and their sons and daughters, forever and ever, all his children bowing and vanishing, cooking and vanishing, cleaning and vanishing. "No," Orem said. "Thank you, sir, but no."

Flea grabbed at his shirt, pulled so hard that the fabric cut at his neck. "God's name, Scant, this is it! You don't bargain with passes and two a week!"

"The young one's crude but correct," the old man said. "I won't bargain. I know I'm being generous."

"I'm not bargaining," Orem said.

"Then what?" asked the old man.

"Turning you down."

"Then you're a fool," he said contemptuously.

"Yes. No doubt of it."

"What about me?" Flea asked the old man. "Will you take me without him?"

The old man smiled thinly. "At one a week. This one can read. The two a week was for his sake, because you came together."

"One or two a week, fine with me."

"Stay, then, Flea," Orem said. "Thank you for everything. God's gifts with you." He nodded and stepped from the porch. His father had been a mere farmer, too poor to give a portion to his seventh son, but he had been a freeman, and his son was also free, and he would not bring children into the world less free than he was.

He was out of the alley, striding on into the darkening, deepening fog when he heard footsteps behind him. He knew the runner. "Flea," he said.

"You chewer," said Flea.

"That's as may be."

"Two meals a day and coppers besides. Why not, in the name of my mother's blood?"

"I came to Inwit for a name and a place and a poem."

"I thought you came for work."

"Why work? To keep yourself alive. But then, why live? Not for that. Don't blame me. You could have stayed."

"You chewer. I thought you knew what you were doing. A poem! My father's piss!" And Flea spat on the ground for emphasis.

"Then go back."

"I will."

"All right then."

"Tomorrow."

They walked on in silence, and stood together at the door of the Spade and Grave. The fog was deep, the night was on them, all but a faint glow above the roofs; the lanterns were lit pathetically, as if they had a chance to cast a light in air so wet. "What sort of poem?" Flea asked softly.

"A true one."

"Such a poem for you, Scanthips?"

"Why not?"

"Heroes do great things."

"I mean to do them."

"My mother's eyes."

"And there's no hope for a servant of a servant."

"So what now, Scant? Tomorrow you got no pass."

"Then I'll go out. And come back in."

"When your cheek is healed! Months from now!"

"I'll come back in another way."

Flea shook his head. "I don't know that end of the city. I don't know them as comes in that way."

"Good night, Flea," Orem said. "I'm a fool for sure. Go back to that old man and live well."

"Truest words I ever heard, God help you." And Flea stepped back away into the fog.