The Marriages Between Zones 3, 4 and 5. Doris Lessing

laughing had to stop at some point. And when it did nothing had changed. She was still there. They had not impressed her with their noise. The illimitable blackness lay ahead.

      ‘What was Ben Ata’s order?’ she asked again.

      An explosion of sniggers, but the commander directed a glance of reproof towards the offenders, although he had been laughing as hard as any of them.

      ‘His orders?’ she insisted.

      A silence.

      ‘That you should bring me to him, that was it, I think.’

      A silence.

      ‘You will bring me to him no later than tomorrow.’

      She remained where she was. The wind was now howling across the plains so that the horses could hardly keep their footing.

      The commander gave a brief order which sounded shamefaced. The posse broke up, riding about on the edge of the plain, to find a camping place. She and the commander sat on their tired horses, watching. But normally he would have been with his men who, used to orders and direction, were at a loss. At length he called out that such a place would do, and they all leapt off their horses.

      The beasts, used to the low relaxed air of Zone Four, were exhausted from the high altitudes of this place, and were trembling as they stood.

      ‘There is water around that spur,’ said Al·Ith. He did not argue, but shouted to the soldiers to lead the horses around the spur to drink. He got off his horse, and so did she. A soldier came to lead both animals with the others to the water. A fire was blazing in a glade between deep rocks. Saddles lay about on the grass at intervals: they would be the men’s pillows.

      Jarnti was still beside Al·Ith. He did not know what to do with her.

      The men were already pulling out their rations from their packs, and eating. The sour powdery smell of dried meat. The reek of spirits.

      Jarnti said, with a resentful laugh, ‘Madam, our soldiers seem very interesting to you! Are they so different from your own?’

      ‘We have no soldiers,’ she said.

      This scene, too, is much celebrated among us. The soldiers, illuminated by a blazing fire, are seated on their saddles among the grasses, eating their dried meat and drinking from their flasks. Others are leading back the horses, who have drunk at a stream out of sight behind rocks. Al·Ith stands by Jarnti at the entrance to this little natural fortress. They are watching the horses being closed into a corral that is formed by high rocks. They are hungry, and there is no food for them that night. Al·Ith is gazing at them with pity. Jarnti, towering over the small indomitable figure of our queen, is swaggering and full of bravado.

      ‘No soldiers?’ said Jarnti, disbelieving. Though of course there had always been rumours to this effect.

      ‘We have no enemies,’ she remarked. And then added, smiling straight at him, ‘Have you?’

      This dumbfounded him.

      He could not believe the thoughts her question aroused.

      While she was still smiling at him, a soldier came out from the entrance of the little camp and stood at ease close to them.

      ‘What is he standing there for?’

      ‘Have you never heard of a sentry?’ he enquired, full of sarcasm.

      ‘Yes. But no one is going to attack you.’

      ‘We always post sentries,’ he said.

      She shrugged.

      Some soldiers were already asleep. The horses drooped and rested behind their rocky barriers.

      ‘Jarnti, I am going to leave you for some hours,’ she said.

      ‘I cannot allow you.’

      ‘If you forbid me, you would be going beyond your orders.’

      He was silent.

      Here again, a favourite scene. The fire roaring up, showing the sleeping soldiers, the poor horses, and Jarnti, tugging at his beard with both hands in frustrated amazement at Al·Ith, who is smiling at him.

      ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you have not eaten.’

      She enquired good-humouredly: ‘Do your orders include your forcing me to eat?’

      And now he said, confronting her, all trouble and dogged insistence, because of the way he was being turned inside out and upside down by her, and by the situation, ‘Yes, the way I see it, by implication my orders say I should make you eat. And perhaps even sleep, if it comes to that.’

      ‘Look, Jarnti,’ said she, and went to a low bush that grew not ten paces away. She took some of its fruit. They were lumpy fruits sheathed in papery leaves. She pulled off the leaves. In each were four segments of a white substance. She ate several. The tightness of her mouth showed she was not enjoying them.

      ‘Don’t eat them unless you want to stay awake,’ she said, but of course he could not resist. He blundered off to the bush, and gathered some for himself, and his mouth twisted up as he tasted the tart crumbly stuff.

      ‘Jarnti,’ she said, ‘you cannot leave this camp, since you are the commander. Am I correct?’

      ‘Correct,’ he said, in a clumsy familiarity, which was the only way he knew how to match her friendliness.

      ‘Well, I am going to walk some miles from here. Since in any case you intend to keep that poor man awake all night for nothing, I suggest you send him with me to make sure I will come back again.’

      Jarnti was already feeling the effects of the fruit. He was alert and knew he could not fall off to sleep now.

      ‘I will leave him on guard and come with you myself,’ he said.

      And went to give orders accordingly.

      While he did this, Al·Ith walked past the sleeping soldiers to the horses, and gave each one of them, from her palm, a few of the acrid fruits from the bush. Before she had left their little prison they were lifting their heads and their eyes had brightened.

      She and Jarnti set off across the blackness of the plain towards the first of the glittering lights.

      This scene is always depicted thus: there is a star-crowded sky, a slice of bright moon, and the soldier striding forward made visible and prominent because his chest armour and headpiece and his shield are shining. Beside him Al·Ith is visible only as a dark shadow, but her eyes gleam softly out from her veil.

      It could not have been anything like this. The wind was straight in their faces, strong and cold. She wrapped her head completely in her veil, and he had his cloak tight about him and over the lower part of his face; and the shield was held to protect them both from the wind. He had chosen to accompany this queen on no pleasant excursion, and he must have regretted it.

      It took three hours to reach the settlement. It was of tents and huts: the herdsmen’s headquarters. They walked through many hundreds of beasts who lifted their heads as they went past, but did not come nearer or move away. The wind was quite enough for them to withstand, and left them no energy for anything else. But as the two came to within calling distance of the first tents, where there was shelter from low scrubby trees, some beasts came nosing towards Al·Ith in the dark, and she spoke to them and held out her hands for them to smell, in greeting.

      There were men and women sitting around a small fire outside a tent.

      They had lifted their heads, too, sensing the approach of strangers, and Al·Ith called out to them, ‘It is Al·Ith,’ and they called back to her to approach.

      All this was astonishing to Jarnti, who went with Al·Ith into the firelight, but several paces behind.

      At the sight of him, the faces of the fire-watchers showed wonderment.

      ‘This is Jarnti, from Zone Four,’ said Al·Ith, as if what she was saying