Chapter seven
Thelda cuts hair and Seg cuts a bow-staveThelda it was who insisted on trimming my shaggy mop of hair, my long fierce moustache and my beard before we entered harbor. My hair was normally worn quite straight and almost to my shoulders. My moustache is of that kind that juts most arrogantly upward — sometimes I despair of its unruly nature — and my beard of that trimmed and pointed kind associated with cavaliers, lace, and rapiers. As a sea officer of wooden ships on Earth in the last days of the eighteenth century I had of course been clean-shaven; very often I reverted to shaving, but I had vowed never to return to wearing the queue.
The custom of growing a great long mass of hair so that it may be twisted up and worn as padding and protection beneath a helmet is a surviva
