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Chapter fifteen. Village Justice. |
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The tale takes up again in the early morning. It was not yet dawn, but the sky had begun to grey, and objects - houses, trees - were just visible against it. Two early-rising bucks (116) were picking their way down the street towards the gate. Suddenly, as they went, they heard a shriek in the girls' dormitory; a confused clamour, a struggle, gasps and cries. Then the door burst open and a man broke out and fled. Then a girl ran out. She was crying. She hurried past them and disappeared, still weeping, among the houses opposite. The two boys looked at one another; and, chilled and shocked, they turned back and sat down in the lower morung to await events. |
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There was in the lower dormitory a pretty girl who had long refused Samrangba's advances. He had courted her, everyone knew, for a long time, and would much rather have had her than the girl he married. But she was the daughter of a prominent house whose standards were far superior to those of Samrangba, whose family's record, as well as his own, was unsavoury. More than that, she disliked him personally. She could not bear him. On this girl, asleep, Samrangba had now in a drunken burst attempted rape; and rape is one of the three capital crimes in the Zemi calendar. |
