The Lady of Rhuddesmere by Victoria Strauss

Author:Victoria Strauss [Strauss, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1982-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

12

IN THE DAYS THAT followed I returned to Urien for several more lessons. He would summon me for an afternoon-long session, which always ended when it was dark enough to fetch the torch for the standing bracket behind Urien’s chair. I went on from merely copying and memorizing letters to learning the sounds they made, both singly and in various combinations. I had not yet progressed to words, but I felt as if I were on the threshold of knowledge, as if the long-closed door was at last opening slowly before me. I don’t think I can express how wonderful this was. I drank in Urien’s lessons as someone who was starving would drink fresh milk, and I had no more feelings of fear over the entrance into a new world—on the contrary, I plunged eagerly into it. I spent much of my free time poring over the scraps of parchment Urien gave me to keep, practicing the letters, their names, their sounds. Preoccupied, I twice found that Aylwin had addressed a long speech to me without my hearing a word; Aylwin, unfailingly good-natured, accepted this with a characteristic shrug: “Everyone has their madness,” he said, shaking his head.

It seemed as if I would go on like this indefinitely, merely learning to read and write; but one day, around the fifth or sixth lesson, I was introduced to a whole new pursuit. That day I entered Urien’s room to find him engaged in coloring a large rectangle of parchment. I went to sit beside him in my usual place and looked over his shoulder at what he was doing. On the parchment was inscribed a circle. Outside the circle the paper was tinted blue, and gilt stars were scattered in that space. The circle itself was segmented: in each segment was drawn a number of curious spiky figures. Urien was doing something with a pair of instruments I had learned to recognize as calipers, consulting a book spread open before him. Suddenly, as I watched him, he stopped and turned, regarding me in that intense and disturbing way he had.

“Are you interested in what I’m doing?”

I nodded.

“What I am creating here is a horoscope. It is a charting of the position of the stars at a certain period of time, and by their arrangement one can know of many things.” He took up his work again. After a while he said, “I suppose you know nothing of astrology.”

“No,” I replied. “But I would like to learn.”

“Astrology is the study of the stars. If you wish to become educated, you must certainly know of it. All the great men of our past and present are astrologers. One can know so much—even predict events yet to come—if one knows the stars.”

I must have looked incredulous, for his voice became stern. “The ignorant find this difficult to accept. But you must understand that the stars affect everything. They influence our lives, our bodies, our fates. Each of us is born under a certain conjunction of stars, and if the conjunctions can be charted, much can be told about that person.

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