LI

—BY ALL MEANS, said Jocasta. Go, by all means.

Virgil stood before her like an errant schoolboy, wringing his hands, opening and shutting his mouth as though eternally on the verge of producing an acceptable explanation of his misdeeds.

—Go, repeated Jocasta. If the things we have done for you, the things I have done, mean so little, then please go at once. Go back to her. She’ll shred you into tiny pieces, that one. This time there will be nothing left for me to patch up. She sits up there and spins her webs and of course you walk right in. Go, go, be done with it, if you have the urge to wound yourself, I will not stop you any more. Perhaps you are a fool. Perhaps you are mad. It is mad, to go back, after the shame she brought upon you, but go. I will not stand in your way.

—I have to, Jocasta, said Virgil, distressed. I must show Flapping Eagle the Gate.

—Flapping Eagle! she cried. Who returned your kindness with betrayal. Who returned my kindness by intoxicating Media. Who has brought nothing but trouble to all who took him in. You’ll do anything for him.

Virgil Jones said in a very quiet voice:

—It is Flapping Eagle who is doing this for me.

—All of you, burst Jocasta. Go, all of you. Leave me to my House again.

Elfrida Gribb in white lace, her face veiled, a fly crawling unhindered across the veil, standing at the window, carvings to her right, mountain at her back, Flapping Eagle at her left, disaster staring her in the face.

—You will not go, she said. You cannot, after what I did. I love you, Flapping Eagle. My place is at your side.

He closed his eyes and hardened his voice as much as he could.

—I loved you, he said.

Her eyes turned to stone, green marbles of blindness.

—Loved. The word was not a question. It was a bleak statement.

—Everything has changed, he said miserably. I must go.

—A whore, she said. You think I’m a whore. I do not talk to whores. You and her. You planned this, to make me love you, to make me jealous, to ruin me.

—No, he said.

—Whore. Elfrida the whore. Yes, why not. Yes, why not. If my love thinks me a whore, I must live up to his idea of me. Yes, why not. I shall be a whore and earn my keep. Yes, why not, why not.

Why not, thought Flapping Eagle, was the phrase of the moment.

Media, eavesdropping, heard the interchange; and was delighted.

In the kitchen of the House of the Rising Son, amid the desolate pots and pans, the man called Stone ate, the only guest of the night, the one who could not be turned away. Virgil Jones saw him, and the escape was planned.

Flapping Eagle left the house by the side door and crawled out on to the Cobble-way, decrepit as his borrowed clothes, stained as the houses, dusty as the streets, and began to count the cobblestones. He greeted them like old friends. Slowly, tattered hat pulled low over stooping face, he made his way down the night road, pail in one hand, cloth in the other, on his knees, mumbling, polishing.

Madame Jocasta lay in her bed, shut into her room, refusing to know what was happening in her house. Media had volunteered to keep the pebble-cleaner occupied, even though it was a breach of House rules; and while Jocasta turned her face to the wall, Media used every scrap of experience at her command to ensnare Stone, her first man in an eternity, long enough for Flapping Eagle to make good his slow, painfully deliberate escape.

Just before dawn, Virgil Jones left the brothel, bowler hat on head, watchless chain around his waist, humming innocently to himself. The mob had dispersed to its bed, for the most part; but the implacable Peckenpaw sat bearlike on the front doorstep. He looked at Virgil angrily, but let him pass. Virgil went humming up the street, and was interested to notice that it bore no crawling figure. Flapping Eagle had either been discovered or had reached his goal.

At the far end of the Cobble-way, at the point where the town of K yielded to the resurgent slopes of Calf Mountain, the forest regained its supremacy. Thick vegetation concealed the narrow path, more suited to donkeys than men, which led up to the last habitable point, the rock on which Liv’s house stood and looked down on K. Here, in the forest, Virgil and Flapping Eagle made their rendezvous.

—Just like old times, said Virgil Jones.

Media, gone. Flapping Eagle’s absence was a relief. Virgil’s absence she had fortified herself to expect. But to find a man, and a wretched man at that, in Media’s bed, and her nowhere to be seen, was almost more than Jocasta could bear. Media, poor, infatuated Media, Media of all her girls.

Gone, but where? To follow Virgil and Eagle, but how far? And had they asked her, and did they want her, and would she come back cowed and crawling and beg forgiveness? Jocasta wanted to think so but she, too, remembered Liv; and she knew Media would not return, not if she could help it, not if she could…

Jocasta walked out into the corridor, silent as it was, and was hit by the third blink there, alone.

She gasped when it passed and leant against a wall. Elfrida Gribb came out of her room, tight-faced, controlled.

And put an arm around her.

—Madame, she said. I should like to stay. To stay … and work.

Jocasta looked at her vacantly. Anything was possible now.

—Since we have a sudden vacancy, she said, you’re hired.

The two bereaved women stayed there a moment, clutching each other; and then Jocasta, eyes red-rimmed, went down to the front door. Peckenpaw stood as she opened it.

—The House of the Rising Son is open for business, said Madame Jocasta.

It was morning.