The Skin Map

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Giuseppe Arcimboldo had made a name for himself by painting fruit and vegetables in a most remarkably lifelike way. Lately, he had hit on the idea of portraiture as still life—rendering his patrons as if they were agglomerations of items from a greengrocer’s stall. Although the enterprise was still in its infancy, it was hoped that the style would catch on.

  “This pear,” said Rudolf, indicating a large fruit in the centre of the canvas. “What kind is it?”

  “It is a Fiorentina pear, Majesty—an Italian variety.”

  “Do you think an Italian pear was an appropriate choice for our nose?” wondered Rudolf. “Does not its shape make our nose look bulbous?”

  “By no means, Sire. With peaches for cheeks, a pear for a nose makes perfect sense.”

  “Ah, but would not a fig be better?”

  “Perhaps a Turkish fig—”

  “Do not speak to us of Turks!” snapped the emperor. “We are sick to death of all things Turkish.”

  “I am sorry, Your Highness,” said Bazalgette quickly. “Pray, forgive me.”

  “And then there is the issue of colour,” suggested the artist delicately. “Ripe figs being purple, you see.”

  “Let it stand as it is,” commanded Rudolf.

  “A wise decision, Sire. The painting is approaching perfection. I feel as if I could reach out and take hold of that artichoke, or smell those roses,” offered the alchemist, happy for a chance to distance himself from any mention of the hated Turks. “And the aubergine . . . oh, the aubergine is a magnificent specimen of its kind.”

  “Yes,” agreed the king. “It is truly masterful.” Half turning to the painter, he said, “Well done, Arcimboldo. You surpass your craft.”

  “Thank you, Your Exalted Highness,” replied the artist, who stood looking on. “Your praise is food and drink to me.”

  “We will see you tomorrow,” Rudolf told him. He crossed the wide floor of polished walnut to the chamber door, which was opened by one of the two pages standing at attention there; he entered the mirrored corridor. Turning to his chief alchemist following two steps behind him, he said, “We will expect you to inform us when this traveller fellow arrives. We wish most ardently to converse with him.”

  “Never fear, Highness,” said Bazalgette with a respectful bow. “It will be a most interesting meeting of the minds, and I welcome it with greatest anticipation.”

  The emperor gave a slight flick of his hand to dismiss his courtier and proceeded down the corridor, led by the regal figure of his master of audiences and the two young pages. “Ah! Bazalgette,” he called behind him. “Do not forget the Kaffee. We want very much to drink this Kaffee.”

  “Worry for nothing, Highness,” answered the Lord High Alchemist. “It will be done.”

  PART FIVE

  The Man Who Is Map

  CHAPTER 28

  In Which Promises Are Made to Be Broken

  The crossing had been rough for Xian-Li, and Arthur felt bad about that. He put a comforting hand on her back and murmured encouragements as she bent over retching. It was only her third otherworld journey, and she had yet to develop the physical mastery that would greatly reduce the more unpleasant effects and make travel between dimensions bearable if not entirely comfortable.

  He remembered his first few times—leaping blind into the unknown and arriving in a strange world disoriented and incapacitated. To be so helpless in an unfamiliar place and time was alive with dangers of every kind, some of them lethal. That he survived those early exploits, he put down to Providence looking out for him when he did not know how to look out for himself. For that he was abundantly grateful.

  “There, there, my love,” he cooed. “Breathe deeply. The worst is over. The sickness will soon pass.”

  She retched again.

  “You’ll feel better now,” advised Arthur.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped, wiping her mouth with her husband’s proffered handkerchief.

  “Not a thing in the world to be sorry about, my dear.” Taking her elbow he raised her up. “There. Better?” She nodded without conviction. “The important thing to remember is that it won’t always be like this. Your timing and skill will improve, as you will see. And your body will soon grow adept at weathering the changes.”

  “I hope so for your sake.” Xian-Li offered a weak smile. “But I want you to know that even if it never gets better, I still want to come with you. I can happily endure a little travel sickness if that is the cost of joining you on your journeys.”

  Her determination made Arthur proud. His young wife was a fighter, no doubt about it. As she had so ably demonstrated that day in the back alley when driving away the odious Burleigh and his thugs with nothing but courage and naked skill, she was a capable and coolheaded combatant. For that, if for no other reason, he was glad to have her by his side.

  “Are we here?” she said, looking around for the first time. They seemed to be standing in a great expanse of desert with nothing but shattered, buff-coloured, rock-strewn hills in every direction. “I do not see the temple.”

  “The old temple is in the city, and the new one has not yet been built,” he told her. “But it will be, and very soon. This is the Eighteenth Dynasty, as we would call it—probably somewhere around the twentieth year of Amenhotep the Third. I won’t know for certain until we talk to my friend here.” He shouldered the small pack he had brought. “Ready? The city is just beyond those hills.”

  “The priest, yes,” replied Xian-Li, falling into step beside her husband. “I remember.”

  “You will like him. He’s a wise and gentle man—very high up in the royal family, too, as it happens. His mother was married to Yuya—who was grand vizier of Egypt, second only to the pharaoh, and his sister is great royal wife to the current pharaoh.”

  “Brother to the pharaoh,” considered Xian-Li. “He sounds very powerful.”

  “It is useful to have friends in high places,” replied Arthur lightly. “There are none higher than Anen. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he became high priest one day.”

  They walked easily in the dawn light. The land was dry as sun-burnt bone, and there was not a blade of green to be seen anywhere, apart from a single, blasted, dust-covered acacia bush. The early-morning air was alive with coveys of sparrows and gangs of starlings, and high, high overhead larks sent down their liquid song. “Insects,” said Arthur in answer to his wife’s wondering glance. “They draw the birds but will vanish again before noon and not be seen again until this evening at sundown—the birds too.”

  “Where do the insects come from?” asked Xian-Li.

  “You wouldn’t guess by looking,” Arthur said, indicating the bleak landscape surrounding them, “but just beyond that line of hills ahead, there is one of the greatest rivers of the world watering one of the most fertile valleys in the world.”

  “The Nile,” declared Xian-Li proudly.

  “The very same,” confirmed Arthur. “You have been studying.”

  When they reached the foot of the nearest hills they found a narrow and very crooked sheep trail winding up the hillside. “Our ladder to the stars,” he said. “After you, my dear.”

  They followed the path and, upon reaching the top, paused to survey the landscape. To the north, at the wide mouth of a valley leading back into the desert, lay a jumbled assortment of low stone buildings, some obviously under construction. To the south, asprawl in the brilliance of the early sunlight, spread the city the Egyptians called Niwet-Amun, the City of Amun. Nestled on the edge of the desert between the arid desert hills and the fresh verdant fields of the Nile valley, it gleamed with the lustre of a moonstone. They gazed down upon the tangled clusters of whitewashed houses scattered arbitrarily along the lowland that stretched off toward the majestic river, just visible as a clear blue line dancing on the far horizon. The air was bright and clean, the breeze soft. The sound of barking dogs could be heard drifting up from the houses below.

  “It seems our arrival has been notic
ed,” said Arthur. “Dogs are always the first to know.”

  “They are alert to every change in their world,” Xian-Li observed. “In China the old ones say a dog can hear and smell change before it happens.”

  They descended to the valley, keeping an eye on the houses below. Though the dogs kept barking, no people appeared until they reached the road scratched on the hard-packed earth. Once on the track leading to the city, they noticed faces appearing briefly at the small dark windows and doorways of the whitewashed mud houses they passed. “We’re being watched now,” murmured Arthur. “Don’t be afraid; just smile and keep walking.”

  Glancing behind them, she saw two brown men standing outside their houses, arms crossed, dogs by their sides and children hiding behind their bare legs. Xian-Li was glad for her linen robe—not all that different from what she had worn in China, but more in keeping with the local dress. Arthur had the harder part; even dressed in his loose-fitting full-length shirt, he would never blend in with the locals: he was too tall and, it had to be said, too white.

  The farther into the city they went, the closer and more crowded the houses became, the streets and pathways between them more tangled and twisted. They passed through districts of wealth and ease, hard by areas of mean description. In the more affluent quarters the dwellings were made of cut stone, shaded by fig trees or date palms, and surrounded by well-tended gardens; in the humbler neighbourhoods, homes were made of mud brick and plaster, chickens and pigs wandered among rows of cabbages and beans, and the yards were used for small industry: pottery making, carpentry, weaving, and the like.

  Xian-Li found fascination in everything she saw. Even the smallest glimpse brought a frisson of excitement as some new surprise revealed itself: young girls dressed in sky-blue shifts carrying reed baskets of laundry wet from the river; little boys herding flocks of geese with willow switches, stirring up more chaos than order; women spinning raw flax into thread and weaving at outdoor looms; all-but-naked youths working in dye pits, their limbs stained bright blue and green and yellow; stonecutters roughing out grindstones for hand mills; a butcher cutting up the carcass of a cow with an axe and hanging the bloody pieces on hooks all over the front of his house; a potter and his wife toting their wares to the oven on boards balanced on their heads. All of the life of a busy city was on display.

  “It is wonderful!” she breathed. “The people are so . . . so beautiful.”

  They were slender and lithe, with black hair and eyes, their skin colour darker than her own—as dark as some of the folk from the islands in the South China Sea—and Xian-Li swiftly formed the opinion that they were the most attractive people she had ever seen.

  “They are a handsome race,” Arthur agreed. “Very peaceable, in the main. Inquisitive as the day is long too. Very little passes their regard, and they’re terrible gossips.”

  “Just like in China.”

  “Worse,” laughed Arthur. “They will all have noticed that we are here, but they don’t want to be seen to notice. I can tell you they’re all itching with curiosity right now, but they prefer to pretend otherwise. That’s why they’re making such a show of ignoring us.”

  The roads and paths grew more crowded as they approached the centre of the city. Here also, the Egyptians maintained a polite distance and their air of indifference towards the obvious strangers in their midst. At the heart of Niwet-Amun lay the sprawling Temple of Amun, a square building on a low platform of three tiered steps; an odd conical pillar stone stood before the entrance. Three young priests dressed in loincloths were busy anointing the surface of the pale stone; their hands and arms glistened with oil; their cinnamon-coloured skin gleamed with sweat.

  Arthur stopped. “Here’s our man,” he whispered, watching the priests slather oil over the rounded column, rubbing it slowly over the smooth surface.

  “Which one?” wondered Xian-Li.

  “The one with the flowers.”

  A little apart stood a fourth priest: tall and elegant in a pale blue, pleated robe of crisp linen and a chest plate and belt of gold discs, his head newly shaved but for a thick braided queue that hung down his back. He held a garland of yellow flowers looped around his outstretched arms, which were decorated with many golden bracelets and armbands. He called a word to his fellow priests, who straightened from their work, then bowed and, extending their hands, palms horizontal to the ground, backed away. The gold-belted priest stepped forward and placed the garland over the freshly oiled stone. He raised his hands to shoulder height and chanted in a loud voice. Then, stepping away, he bowed, then turned and with his fellow priests started back to the temple.

  “Anen!” called Arthur.

  The priest halted and turned around, scanning the people milling around the temple square for the one who had called his name. His large dark eyes swept the crowd, falling eventually on Arthur and Xian-Li. “Artus!” he cried.

  A moment later, the priest was before them. “Artus,” he said, seizing the forearms of his friend. The two men brushed cheeks on each side, and then the tall priest turned to Xian-Li. Smiling, his eyes merry with delight, he took her hand. “Iaw,” he said. “Jjetj! Jjetj! Nefer hemet.”

  Although she could not understand his speech, the man’s voice was nicely modulated and gentle, and the goodwill shining from his gleaming countenance was unmistakable. She felt instantly at ease and comfortable in his presence.

  “He says you are welcome here, beautiful lady,” Arthur explained. “He wishes you peace.”

  “You speak Egyptian?” Xian-Li asked, her eyes growing round.

  “I spent many months here a few years ago. I was assigned a young priest to teach me their language. I learned as much as I could in the short time I had.”

  The two men spoke briefly to one another, whereupon Anen called out to his fellow priests who had been participating in the ritual with him; they were dressed in simple yellow robes now, and they hurried to meet their master. The priest gave them a series of rapid commands, then turned to his visitors and explained.

  “He has ordered the guesthouse to be prepared for us,” Arthur translated. “We are to stay with him in the temple precinct while we are here. He hopes we plan a lengthy visit. He has much to show us.”

  Turning to Anen, he relayed their acceptance and thanks, whereupon the priest pressed his hands together and then turned, indicating to the two travellers to follow him. He led them past the temple entrance to a gate set in a low wall, through the opening and into a compound containing an assortment of squat buildings. It was paved with white stone, but with numerous islands of greenery resplendent with flowering bushes and small trees; larger trees planted along the periphery wall shaded the open places, keeping the whole area cooler and a world away from the crowded, dusty streets outside. Iridescent blue peacocks strutted in the sun and roosted in the lower branches. Four skinny youths with shaven heads, bare to the waist in short knee-length yellow kilts, swept the pristine pavements of errant leaves and peacock droppings. From somewhere close by, the trickle of water into the bowl of a fountain lent the compound a calm and soothing air.

  “This reminds me of the prince’s gardens at the Jade Palace in Macau,” Xian-Li said. “So beautiful.”

  While the two men talked, Xian-Li strolled around the grounds, feeling the sunlight on her hair and skin. After the cold and rainy winter in England, the sun felt like a long-absent and much-missed companion, and she luxuriated in the warmth. Even as she was enjoying the garden, she was reminded once again how utterly unimaginable her life had become. When Arthur had shared the secret of his tattoos with her, she had believed him—in the same way that a child, not understanding anything of the world, will believe its parents when they tell it that money is valuable; but like that child, Xian-Li did not, could not, begin to imagine the fathomless implications of what he had told her.

  To take even the first shaky steps toward understanding, she had to experience ley travel for herself, although it had to be admitted that the experien
ce raised many more questions than it answered. This was her third time—the first two were but short hops within England and were mere rehearsals for this trip. Those first two modest leaps had shocked her enough for her to take it all very seriously. And now, as she looked around, what she saw simply beggared belief. Nothing in her previous life could have prepared her for the things she was learning, seeing, living under Arthur’s tutelage. She had no words to describe it—at least, any description she attempted always fell far short of the staggering astonishment she felt. Enthralled, enchanted, reeling with wonder, she loved it—almost as much as she loved the man who had opened this fantastic universe to her.

  In a little while, she heard Arthur call her back. “The guesthouse had been made ready,” he said. “We can rest a little if you like. There will be food later. They tend to eat their largest meal at midday, but Anen has ordered some light refreshment for us.”

  “I am not tired,” Xian-Li replied. “And I could not eat a thing right now. I want to see the city. I want to see everything.”

  Arthur laughed. “Then let us take a walk. I can show you around a little. Anen wants to take us to the royal palace to meet the royal family. Tomorrow, maybe. Pharaoh is travelling upriver, but his return is expected any day. Wait a moment; I’ll tell Anen that we’re going for a short walk in the city.”

  The priest would not hear otherwise but that his visitors should be given clothing more suitable for their station, and for the weather. When they had changed into their lightweight robes, he seconded one of the temple acolytes to attend them as guide and interpreter, and the three ventured out from the temple compound and proceeded around the public square. Arthur’s intent was to let his young wife get her feet under her a bit and learn something of the land and its people. Once she had the measure of things, he would take her to see the Nile where they might sail with the gentle Egyptian winds.