Prospero's Half-Life (39 page)

“
Well, what do you think?” she exclaimed proudly. “We’re going
to have ourselves a righteous feast tonight, you’ll remember it for
years”.

Richard found
himself grinning in response. “Sounds like the best idea I’ve ever
heard,” he replied, “what do we have to burn”.

Tyler gestured
vaguely into the city of tents next to them. “A guy came by while
you were getting set up to say that he had charcoal for sale if we
wanted some. He said he would take beer in trade, so we’re going to
give him one of the kegs that we brought along in exchange for ten
bags. We’ll be cooking well for months!”

Richard
frowned but it was only temporary. He felt a surge of annoyance,
since he was normally the one to authorize trades of that nature.
It would definitely have been one that he would have said yes to,
however, so his annoyance did not last long. He replaced the frown
with a grin and made a show of licking his lips.

“
Excellent stuff, what are we cooking today?” he asked
jovially. Sandra smiled and clapped her hands together.

“
Well, I have some of the salted beef we can grill,” she
replied, “and I noticed a small market through the tents that might
have some other things we can make to go along with it”. She looked
towards the carriage and shook her head. “We’ve brought a lot of
good preserved food, but I think we should eat something fresher
than that. A lot of the servants are still very frightened, and
having a nice, fresh meal might help them to feel more at home
while we’re here”.

Richard
nodded. It was a very good idea. Keeping the morale of the other
servants up was a high priority; he felt confident in that line of
shining soldiers at the outer wall, but it would come down to a
siege regardless. There would be misery enough to go around before
too long, he knew, and if he could keep spirits up at the outset he
would.

“
I’ll go check it out,” he volunteered. “When I get back it
should be time to start cooking everything. Has Karl been out to
see us yet?”

Sandra shook
her head and Richard shrugged. He would have to come out
eventually, and it wasn’t a pressing concern at the moment. He
headed off into the sea of tents to find the market that Sandra had
seen from a distance.

The other
tents seemed to be occupied by servants as well, and the free
workers that circulated amongst the farms at harvest time to ensure
that all of the crops were picked efficiently. Everyone that he saw
wore the same sort of rough clothing that he wore, and bore faces
that he imagined were just like his: an undercurrent of fear and
uncertainty with a mask of stern acceptance slapped on overtop.
They bustled around their tents, talking amongst themselves, and
paid Richard very little heed as he made his way through them. He
spotted the little market within a few moments, centered around a
strip of concrete and twisted metal poles. There were five or six
people whom had brought their wagons into a rough semi circle and
were hawking their wares from the backs of them. Most were selling
food, although one of them seemed to have clothing in large supply;
it was being sold for cheap, which made Richard automatically
dubious of the quality. He decided not to investigate it, and
turned his attention to one of the wagons that was selling off an
inventory of fresh green vegetables. He picked through them while
the merchant chattered about how good and fresh they were; to
Richard’s discerning eye, they were not anywhere near as
“right-from-the-ground” as the merchant claimed them to be, but he
had little recourse in any event. He chose the freshest-looking of
the bunch and inquired about payment. The merchant seemed willing
to accept the currency of the Republic, so they haggled for a while
and settled on a price that Richard felt was a bit high. He paid it
out without any real complaint, however; he had expected that
everything would be much more expensive here than it would be under
normal circumstances. He bundled the bunch of vegetables under his
arm and turned to make his way back through the crowd of tents and
people.

He was pushing
his way through the throng of humanity when he saw her. It was just
a brief glance, from quite a distance and through the gaps in other
people, so at first he wasn’t sure that his mind hadn’t simply
decided to play tricks on him. After standing in stunned awe for a
moment he began to push his way through the crowd, but away from
his campsite. He peered ahead intently, resorting to shoving people
away when he couldn’t move through them fast enough. There were a
number of angry exclamations around him but he ignored them,
pushing onward instead of getting caught up in meaningless
confrontations. After a few minutes of finding nothing he grew
discouraged and nearly gave up. Then, as he pushed through a crowd
of people at the edge of the old city hall he saw her again,
leaning against the wall and smoking a loosely rolled cigarette.
Her hair was even blonder than he remembered, bleached as it must
have been by long years in the sun, and longer, growing out below
her ears now. Her face was dark and beset with wrinkles around her
eyes and through the cheeks of her wide face. She was more heavyset
than she had been, but he reckoned that over the course of
twenty-five years such things were bound to occur; in any event,
the extra weight accentuated her curves in a more powerful way, and
he found himself attracted to her just as much as he had been all
of those years ago. He felt his heart stop and his feet moved him
forward of their own accord. He had his hand out to steady himself
and in a sober moment he realized that he must look ridiculous,
like a lurching, starving beast. He found that he didn’t care,
however.

“
Carolyn,” he breathed, and when she looked up and saw him the
surprise and slowly growing delight on her face was the most
beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

SEVEN

They stared at
each other for a virtual eternity, their eyes doing all the talking
in the initial phase of their conversation. Around them, the new
inhabitants of old Stratford jostled and milled, chattering in a
wall of noise that seemed to surround them as safely as the two
layers of physical walls that did the same. Then Richard stepped
forward and embraced Carolyn with a strength and verve of which he
had no longer considered himself capable. She returned with a
stunned stiffness that melted into the same sort of gripping
affection. They held each other for just as long as they had stared
at each other, and then Richard broke away. He raised his hands to
Carolyn’s face and took her gently by the cheeks. He stared into
her face, drinking it in as a man trapped in catacombs may drink in
the light upon his finding the exit.

“
Where have you been?” he whispered, and an obscure pain
flashed through her eyes. He leaned in and kissed her deeply,
trying to draw that pain out of her through the lips. They pulled
themselves forcefully apart and Carolyn’s hand darted and grabbed
the hair on the back of Richard’s head. She was breathing heavily,
and by her expression she was either about to kiss him again or
burst into tears; either outcome would have been believable from
what he saw in her eyes.

“
Where have
you
been?” she whispered back, a smile ghosting across her
swelling lips. He cracked a smile back; his mouth felt stretched,
leathery.

“
Somewhere I shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I’m back where I
belong now”. Her smile increased until it seemed to threaten to
swallow her entire face. Her eyes shone, and then a cloud passed
across them.

“
I can’t stay,” she whispered, anguished. Richard’s heart
underwent a spasm, but he knew the reasons. Neither of them could
lay claim on the other; neither of them belonged to themselves. He
caressed her cheek and she leaned into his hand, drawing strength
from the warmth of it.

“
Where can we meet?” he asked, suddenly frightened. She
stretched upward and kissed him soundly on the mouth.

“
Meet me here, noon, any day you can. Every day. I will be
here. My master has wheedled me a room next to his, claiming urgent
need”.

“
You haven’t changed,” he said, laughing. Carolyn gave him a
quick smile and darted her eyes urgently towards the
right.

“
I have to go,” she said. Richard leaned in and kissed her one
more time before letting her go. He watched her disappear through
the crowd, feeling his heart swell and break in the same instance.
Once she was gone, he made his way back to his camp, clutching the
vegetables that he had mostly forgotten about.

True to her
word, Carolyn waited for him every day at the corner of the old
city hall. For the first week she could not meet with him for long;
they would have enough time to hold each other, kiss furiously like
they were adolescents, and stare longingly into each other’s eyes.
Then Carolyn would have to leave, and Richard would be bereaved of
her all over again. The stress of constant heartache made him
somewhat short with the other servants, and more withdrawn. He
ceded some of his decision-making authority onto Sandra and Tyler,
trusting them as much as he could with keeping the servants sane
and fed. He stayed away, half-afraid that he would snap on them at
an inopportune moment.

During the
second week, about eight or nine days after they had first arrived,
Carolyn asked him to come into the old city hall with her.

“
I spoke with several of them, including your master – Karl, is
it? – and they agreed that you could be granted clearance to
enter”.

Richard
snorted. “How did you get them to agree to that, exactly?” Carolyn
shook her head.

“
I said that we needed more assistance among the House
Servants. There are three House Speakers in there but none of them
have full serving staffs. I told them you had experience, and
competence, and that we could use all the hands we could get. Your
master seemed quite adamant that you could be trusted in most
matters”. She smiled winningly. “You seem to be well-liked”.
Richard laughed and shuffled his feet.

“
I do alright,” he quipped, and leaned in to kiss her. “What
about the others? I won’t be able to live there the entire time.
The others depend on me”.

“
Do they?”

Richard was
about to respond quickly and then stopped. He thought it over for a
moment, teasing it over in his mind. He supposed that, in the end,
they didn’t. Between Sandra and Tyler, the serving staff could be
taken care of while the siege raged around them. He licked his lips
and nodded slowly.

“
I suppose not,” he said, still not convinced about it. “I
suppose I should check in with Karl, after all. Plus, it’s not as
though there is much variety in the day-to-day happenings out here.
It’s pretty much a matter of eating and sleeping, and finding
something to occupy the time in the intervals”. He nodded more
decisively. “I’ll tell them, gather my belongings, and meet you
here tomorrow”. The rapidly exploding smile and the feverish nature
of her resulting kiss made the final decision for him.

Sandra and
Tyler accepted his secession of authority with equanimity,
reasoning as he had that between the two of them they would be able
to handle anything that came up. They reported that the other
servants seemed a bit dazed, but were otherwise well-fed and in
good spirits. They discussed the goings-on outside of the city but
no one had any real, concrete news to offer. A series of
large-sounding thuds had been heard from what could have miles away
earlier that day, but there had been no forthcoming explanation as
to what those had been. There had been no real news at all, except
that there were battles going on near the walls.

Tyler retired early, eating with the others but eschewing the
late-night talks that they had. The older servants only wanted to
talk about the world before the plague came, and the younger ones
only wanted to listen to their stories. The idea that there were a
number of those servants that had never known the glitzy world of
chaos and technology that he had grown up in was a depressing one,
and avoiding it was typically a high priority for him. He sat in
his tent and browsed the tablet instead. He stayed away from the
folder of pictures entirely; now that Carolyn had found her way
back into his life, the thought of looking back to another woman he
had loved in a different world seemed to be a vaguely terrible way
to spend his time. He was still fascinated by the other artefacts
in the tablet, though; he had found a number of essays that
Samantha had written for her university classes – her major seemed
to be sociology – and he ran his eyes with wonder over the now-dead
language that had comprised academia. Each syllable seemed like a
ridge or bump in a particularly well-loved wall, and he savoured
each one.
In a generation this will all be
a cipher
he thought,
a secret cipher whose key will be scattered amongst scraps
here and there. If at all.

It was a
gloomy thought, like contemplating the meaning of the ages of the
younger servants, and he put it away as best he could. He shut it
off quickly, noting as he did so that the remaining battery life
was just under half. Without any way of charging it, he would have,
at best, two weeks of usage left in it. That was if he rationed its
usage in the way he had been. This thought chased him around the
labyrinth of his darkening mind as he sought sleep with no small
difficulty.

The next day
he moved into residence at the old City Hall. The inside of the
building was decayed, like any other building of those long-dead
times, but there had been a concerted effort to maintain it lately.
Many of the more rotten floor boards had been ripped out and
replaced with roughly-cut replacements that did not fit well but
did the job. The drapes on the windows had all been replaced with
heavy, newly-made cloth curtains, and the old electric lights had
of course all been replaced with oil lamps. Oil was in short
supply, naturally, so most of these lamps were shut off during the
majority of time. The only lamps that were in more or less constant
usage were the ones that lit the meeting rooms of the important
people, which were on the second floor along with their sleeping
quarters. The servants slept in the basement, much like at Karl
Tiegert’s farmhouse, and while the accommodations were not ideal,
they were better than the tent that Richard had been living in.