When Thurston presented the note and its news to the chancellor, the older brother jumped up from his lunch of stewed rabbit and turnips and shouted for joy. The return of twenty prisoners would be the first reason for celebration since San Francisco had watched the ALA turn and march its mighty column westward with the single goal of havoc.
#
The next day, like all days, the sun rose through the fog on the muddy outskirts of the Angeleno camp. Debris and rock were thick at this southern frontier of the Shambles. Rats and dogs owned the Shambles at night, but with the rising of the fat red sun, the scavengers scurried for cover. They would wait out the gun-infested day and come back to feed on new bodies at night.
Looking into the Shambles through the thick fog, the ALA sentry saw a dark, moving spot. The spot grew, and he informed the group of officers standing behind him. The spot turned into the blurry figure of three San Franciscan soldiers approaching slowly out of the great rubble and fog. Their white flag showed brightly in the spectral gray dawn.
Isoka, wrapped in his greatcoat, watched the trusting enemy approach, and he thought the moment brilliant and full. Now I’ll find out who I am dealing with, he thought. He was as confident of the enemy’s good word as they were of his. He turned and looked down over his shoulder at twenty militiamen, heavily chained, huddled together, terrified of what would come next. In a concession to Aslanian, the vice mayor had ordered that his San Franciscan prisoners not be apprised of their good fortune. The chief of police had made a tortured argument for the deception, but the vice mayor and Isoka thought that instilling these men with even more fear was an unnecessary cruelty with no purpose other than to torment. Nonetheless, it was a trivial matter and they were glad to be able to throw Aslanian a bone. Now, Angeleno guards surrounded with pointed guns the sweating prisoners. These wretched men thought they were about to die.
Isoka could now make out a man in the middle, with giants on either side. He stiffened, clasped his hands behind his back, and rolled on his heels. He cleared his voice and waited. In a few moments, Thurston Wentworth and two seven-foot guards stood grimly before the ambassador. No handshakes were offered. For a few long seconds, these bloody antagonists looked eye-to-eye, one man, then the next. This was the first planned meeting between the combatants since day one of the siege. Thurston Wentworth had not expected to find himself so filled with hate for these men. Seeing those uniforms, seeing in person one of the leaders whose decision it was to assault his city did not, as Thaddeus said it would, humanize the enemy. It made his hatred more acute. The black man’s face, his light-brown eyes, the freckles across his thin nose: These were the exact qualities he hated and wished to kill. But not now.
Wentworth looked around for Isoka and focused on the bedraggled prisoners. Their cowering revolted him, and he looked toward Isoka for an explanation.
“No one has been mishandled,” the ambassador said firmly. Then, as had been previously decided, he added, “They just tend to cower!”
Thurston saw that the prisoners were filled with joy and relief. Several were crying. He saw no violent marks on their bodies beyond what one would expect from the struggle at the moment of capture. Their best interest was in immediate release. While transmitting his fury into Isoka’s mind with his eyes, Wentworth said placidly, "Unchain them and prepare to be blindfolded."
Isoka turned to his guards and grinned smugly. Two of his soldiers began unlocking the chains of the speechless prisoners. Behind the two commanders, the prisoners were kneeling and kissing the hands of their liberators.
The ambassador felt the natural thing would be to lash out with insult for insult, and Wentworth’s glare had been meant and taken as an insult. As he was being blindfolded Isoka said, "One day we’ll find all your tunnels, and when that happens, your city will disappear from the face of this earth."
"Your military records suggests otherwise."
Isoka smiled at the truth of the dig. "Kout was one traitor; there’ll be more. They’ll lead us to other tunnels, just like he did."
#
Thurston Wentworth led his guards, Isoka (now without blindfold), and the weak but enthusiastic prisoners through the jagged-walled tunnel. They walked upright. Their flaming torches scorched the ceiling and walls, further blackening the rock. Isoka seemed to have caught the excitement of the men he'd just released and seemed in great spirits, joking and needling the ecstatic herd and picking up conversations with several of them. At the front of the column, Wentworth and his stern-faced guards marched.
#
Irma awoke to see the smoke of her most recent breath hovering above her. She pulled the comforters up to her chin. Her eyes snapped around the room. And then she smiled. Todd sat on the windowsill, looking out onto the courtyard where they'd first met. He was naked, and his arms were folded easily across his chest. Todd had a beautiful body, with few war scars, well-shaped muscles, broad shoulders, and he was well endowed. Irma thought it fine that he was seemingly impervious to weather. Such a sublimely-willed resistance to that which made all other men shudder delighted and intrigued her.
His immediate thoughts were directed towards the moment rather than the future. The moment would be brief. He would have to go back into battle; his conscience would have it no other way. That’s when the moment would end. Until he re-armed and went down the hill to stand side-by-side with Thurston and Thaddeus--until then, the moment survived.
In plan, if not in fact, he could give dimension to his pleasure. So he thought about installing Irma in the house at Lafayette Park. His family would pretend it was natural, and nothing more would be said. His choice of a wife was his own prerogative, and the position, “Todd Wentworth’s wife,” came with total freedom of mind and much freedom of action. She would join him that night. He would come back here after the fighting, then move in unannounced, and because he had chosen her, the others would dare not make a scene. However, if he told them beforehand, sparks would fly in the privacy of the Wentworth stronghold.
"Aren’t you cold?" she said from the warmth of the great, soft bed.
Todd smoothly turned his head towards her and smiled peacefully. He shook his head. For the next few moments, they admired each other from this distance of ten feet. Despite the intimacy of the last hours, they were still new to one another, and each study of the lover’s face revealed new symmetries, character, and hungers. Todd walked over to the bed and turned her towards the wall, then lay down, spoonlike, behind her; his naked arms and legs draped over her, adding warmth to the stack of blankets.
Todd pinched the end of his straight, sharp nose. "I have to go."
Irma jerked up on her elbow. "Go where?"
"You know where."
And she did, so they were silent.
Suddenly Irma laughed and slapped the bed beside her. "To get a priest?"
"What?"
"You said I know where you're going, and I do. You are going to get a priest so we can get married today!"
Todd smiled and brushed her hair aside. "You know, I think under normal circumstances I would.”
She said, "I would . . .even if I had to stay in that fucking shack with poor Major Rollins."
“One precludes the other.” He could see that she, also, had thought of the housing situation.
“I wish that weren’t so.”
“That you didn’t profit so greatly.”
“I wish that I didn’t profit at all. That we could have met as equals. ”
They turned and faced each other, their noses touching, eyes closed, lost in each other’s scents. After several moments they embraced, kissed deeply, then began to make love.
#
A half hour later, they still lay there, though more ruffled and flushed than before. His breathing was loud, hers disguised not to be. Irma rolled her head toward her Wentworth. "You’re going into the Shambles?"
"Yes. This morning."
Irma looked at the ceiling for a long moment. “I understand," she whispered coldly. He smiled at her frankness. She poked his cheek with the tip of her finger. They squeezed each other’s hands. She ran her hand briskly across his naked flesh, and it felt so warm to him that he visualized a cartoon of his heart on fire.
Outside the crows began screeching; the day’s battle would commence soon. The lovers pulled close together.
A loud, dull, thump! thump! came at the door.
Todd tensed; Irma smiled ruefully. "My uncle."
From outside the door the councilman cried playfully, "I’m looking for my niece. She is a prim and conventional girl, not one of the those pub tarts. Have you seen her, Wentworth?"
"Sure have, Councilman."
"He’s seen all of me, Uncle," Irma cried, then covered her head with the blankets. Concealed under the bedclothes, which spread about as though her head were a great tent pole, her expression changed briefly. She felt uncomfortable, wondered why; then she quickly realized that she didn't want to be flip about their intimacies.
His voice shaky with unfamiliar bashfulness, Spicer said, "May I come in?"
"It’s your house," the girl sang. She pulled back the covers and kissed Todd, missing his mouth and smacking against his nose. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
His smile and head shake showed that he did not mind a bit. In his present situation, each moment carried a special reason to smile and be thankful. Todd and Irma pulled the covers tight around their necks and Spicer entered, carrying a tray with bread, tea, and cream. He deftly put the tray in the one location on the bed that would serve both of them with ease. All three smiled at his dexterity. Spicer went back through the open door, then returned with a stack of clean bedding.
The smell of sex bathed the room. Spicer sniffed longingly, then said, "After two days in this room, I thought it might be time to change the sheets."
Irma was relieved that someone other than herself had suggested a hygienic improvement in their love nest. She looked at the sheets with dismay. This part of sex, she didn’t care for.
Todd, naked, jumped up and went to the fireplace. He squatted on the hearth and stacked wood on the andiron. Irma blushed at his immodesty, not in front of herself, but in front of her uncle. Watching her with insuppressible good will, Spicer understood. "He’s a soldier, he thinks nothing of being naked in front of other men."
Todd stood up and faced them.
"Am I crude?"
"Don’t mind us," laughed Irma, thinking, I can't imagine being naked in front of anyone other than him.
Spicer waved his hand. "Our clan has always been good with money and politics, but when it comes to common morality, we’re sometimes found wanting."
"Speak for yourself," she snapped with disbelief. But upon quick reflection, she knew what the councilman meant. She was uncomfortable about her uninhibited lovemaking with a man she had known less than a week, and the former prisoner was always pained by her father's lack of ethics. She reminded herself of her thoughts when first told of her father’s treason. She had heard the news from a frightened bank vice-president who, hoping to bolster his own unconvincing innocence, had run to warn her before turning himself in. Irma’s first thought had been, “I’ll have to live with this for the rest of my life!” Her uncle’s joke brought back a sense of the family shame, and for the umpteenth time, Irma felt the cut, then went on.
Todd’s fire blazed quickly, and the room warmed. After a few more words were exchanged, they could all see that a three-way conversation would be fun. Spicer sat tenuously on a straight-back chair, conspicuously not making himself comfortable so that he would be ready to go in the event that either of these young lovers even breathed in a way that suggested impatience with his presence. Irma and Spicer gossiped for a half hour. Todd lay close beside Irma, drinking in her scent and roasting deliciously in her aura.
Thud, thud! The muffled pounding of a large metal door-knocker came from the front of the house. The lightness of the moment fell suddenly into shadow. The three fell silent and stared in the direction of the sound.
"Oh, for Christ’s sake," muttered Spicer.
Irma heard the fear in his voice. "Who’s that?" she gasped.
Todd's eyes narrowed and his voice dropped. He said, somewhat threateningly, "I’m not here."
"Of course,” the councilman said slowly. He looked at Todd now as a liability. “Haven’t seen you in days!"
There was no way the councilman could ever speak with enough gravitas to convince Wentworth that his commitment to the weightiness of the situation was sufficient. "No, I mean it,” said Todd. “I can’t be here."
Spicer blurted in frightened anger, "Don’t you think somebody’s been trying to figure out where you were? Well, they figured it out."
"You haven’t told anyone?"
"Of course not!"
"You’re sure?" Irma demanded.
"Do you think I’m a fool?" Spicer did not for a second forget that Irma’s new lover was a killer. Spicer stood, patted Todd on his naked back, and exited, an expression of control and purpose masking his face.
After watching the door shut, Todd said somberly, "Well. It’s probably nothing.” They both laughed.
"Then come back to bed." Irma lifted the covers to show Todd her athletic body, its pink appointments.
The light returned to the young man's eye. He made a gesture as if to say something but could not. He shook his head dumbly. Irma, looking straight at his sex, giggled. Todd looked down to see his cock tightened. They smiled each-to-each.
#
Spicer stumbled through his unkempt house (he could not allow the cleaning lady to come while Todd was here). All the running about of the past few days had caught up with the councilman in the form of shin splints. As he made his way to the front of the room, he had the uncommon thought that he was old. Watching Todd and Irma together had brought home the true distance between himself as he was that day and the great feelings of early love and an unbought body.
In the living room, Rollins sat erect in a wingback chair. "You could have answered," Spicer timorously snipped. The guard said nothing; his attention and his gun were fixed on the door. The knocking came again. Spicer rolled his eyes and unlocked the door.