by Paul Park
“Now there is no magic left in Charn,” the priest went on. “All those who practiced it are dead. On the fifty-second of October, Raksha Starbridge had the bodies of the council dragged to Durbar Square. He built a huge bonfire out of pews and statues from the temple. That was the beginning of the cult of Desecration. He damned them all to hell. Tell me—is that possible?”
Thanakar shrugged. “It is not possible,” he said. “It’s just more fakery. New lies to replace the old.”
“He had the great bronze statue of Immortal Angkhdt carried down from the temple. The workmen dragged it on wagons through the streets and then smashed it into pieces with their sledgehammers. That was the start of it. By the time I left, there was not one shrine still intact in all of Charn. The sanctuary of Saint Morquar had been turned into a barracks for the Desecration League. The Rebel Angels. They were copulating on the altar. They brought wagonloads of excrement into the shrine and smeared the faces of the statues.”
In spite of himself Thanakar smiled. “And whose idea was that?” he asked.
The old priest shuddered. “I don’t know. Raksha Starbridge is a monster, but he is not the worst. There are others—they had been waiting for their moment, and with the bishop gone and the council dead and the army broken into pieces, well, it seems there was a whole rebel network that had flourished underground. It all happened so fast—a man named Earnest Darkheart, a black man, a foreigner. He held rallies every night in Durbar Square. He divided the city into wards, and now each street is electing officers into a new assembly. They meet daily in the old bathhouse behind Wanhope Prison. They are drafting a new constitution. But until it is finished, they have appointed an executive tribunal, a committee of four men. Raksha Starbridge, he’s one. And the commander of the army, Colonel Aspe. And that black man, Earnest Darkheart.”
“And the fourth?”
“That’s Professor Sabian. A dwarf.”
In the drying shed the shaman had taken colored ribbons and pulled them tight around the wooden posts at the corners of the building, making a multicolored barrier. Inside, men and women threshed the piles of seaweed with long flails, threshing out the eggs of various sea creatures. Though broken by the flails, these would be returned to the sea. The villagers were the strictest of the seven kinds of vegetarians.
The old priest was still talking. He chafed the edge of his pocketknife along his palm. “Listen,” he said. “Listen to me. Who could have believed this a month ago? In those first days after the temple’s fall Professor Sabian had all the Starbridges arrested, all the ones that he could find. He put a hundred of them to work along the levee filling sandbags. But Fairfax Starbridge wouldn’t do it. He let himself be whipped to death, and after that the rest refused. They threw their shovels down into the water. It was the excuse that Raksha Starbridge needed. Since then, every day he has gained power. January First, he calls himself, and that’s the day he means. October sixty-sixth, old style. Twelve days ago—the day he pushed his so-called bill of attainder through the assembly. Now the Desecration League is hunting Starbridges throughout the city. They are given public trials, but not one has been acquitted. The men are crucified in Durbar Square, the women buried alive. Raksha Starbridge is the judge.”
Above their heads the sky had shown signs of clearing, but now it started to rain again, a sudden downpour, the drops exploding like firecrackers where they hit the stones. Sugar dripped down from the eaves.
Thanakar put his fingers to his head. Charn seemed far away. And his feelings, too, seemed far away from him—old bitterness, old anger, old regret. Yet he felt sick at heart: “It’s strange,” he said. “This man Raksha Starbridge. It’s strange that a man could be so bitter against his own family. Who was his father?”
The priest shrugged. “He panders to the passions of the mob. His ferocity is all a sham, I feel sure.”
Thanakar turned his head away to listen to the rain. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said. “Still, you are wrong. Any sane man could have seen it coming months ago. It’s the price we are paying for our arrogance.”
The priest stared straight ahead. “It was our right,” he said. “It was the way God made us. We could not have acted otherwise.”
“Come now,” said Thanakar. “Surely now we can let go of this charade, after what has happened. Paradise above us and all that. You’re an honest man; be honest with yourself. Tell me it was more than just a pack of lies, of magic tricks and sleight of hand, to keep ourselves in power. Tell me Chrism Demiurge was a religious man.”
The old priest stared straight in front of him into the rain. When he spoke again, it was in a softer, sadder voice. “My lord,” he said, “I understand what you are saying. Human beings pollute everything they touch. Religion is no different. My lord, it is not difficult to make us look like hypocrites. And I know what you are saying—in the past, so much of what we did was empty ceremony. Illusion mixed with politics—I know. But it is different now. In this past month I have been given a great gift. I have been given certain knowledge of the truth. You must know what I mean.”
Thanakar smiled. “I suppose you are referring to the martyrdom of my cousin, Abu Starbridge.”
The old priest stared at him. “My lord,” he stammered. “I had no idea.” Again, reflexively, he made the gestures of respect, but then he broke off in the middle. “Then you must know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” Thanakar began, but the old man interrupted him. He leaned forward, speaking low and urgently, and his hand hovered above the doctor’s knee. “The fire burned for two and a half hours. But in the evening, when they cut him down, there was not a mark on him. Listen to this—” The priest lowered his voice still further and tapped the doctor’s leg. “He was seen drinking in a tavern that same evening, the evening that he died.”
“Did you see him?”
“No. But hundreds did. There were a hundred witnesses.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Thanakar. “You didn’t know him as I did. He was an atheist.”
“But don’t you see, that is always the way. He was innocent until his death, ignorant even of his own holiness. No, do not cheat yourself. You must believe it. Listen—that’s not all.”
The priest clasped his hands in front of him in an attitude of prayer. He bowed his head, and his voice was barely louder than a whisper. Yet even so, Thanakar could understand him perfectly, because his articulation was so precise and clear, as if he were reciting from memory. And as he spoke, his wrinkled face took on a new softness, a new color. His yellow-rimmed old eyes shone brightly. “This I saw,” he said. “This I saw with my own eyes. I was in the temple when they burned Cosima Starbridge, Cosro Starbridge’s daughter, thirty-second bishop of Charn. There must have been three hundred of us around the scaffold, though most by now have followed her to Paradise. Still, there are some who can bear witness, as I do. Listen—when the fire was laid on, there was silence for the space of half a minute. Then we looked up through the smoke and saw a great tree growing up through the logs of the scaffold, breaking them apart. There where we had seen her, dressed in white, tied to the stake, the smoke just starting to coil around her, there was the trunk of an enormous tree. And as we watched, it spread its limbs over the courtyard and covered the sky with a canopy of leaves, as if it were midsummer. And all around I heard a singing noise, deafening my ears—it split my skull. I bowed my head and put my hands over my ears, but still I could hear it, and when I raised my eyes, I saw a red bird fly up from the top branches and fly up straight into the night. Most had hid their faces, deafened by that noise, but I saw it with my own eyes, my bishop’s soul ascend to Paradise, and it was as if a voice had cried out in my heart. Because it was true, after all, you see. After all the lies and violence, it was still true. All night I watched that tree burning, and in the morning it was like a skeleton against the sky.”
The rain had ended as suddenly as it had begun, leaving behind it the same soft drizzle out of the low sky. The sugar hung in strings
from the stone eaves of the porch, unwinding in the gentle air.
Thanakar shifted his seat. “And if it were just more magic?” he asked quietly.
Furious, the old man turned on him. “It was no magic,” he hissed. “I have spent my whole life behind the altar. Do you think I still can’t tell the truth from a lie?” He looked away, silent for a minute, and then he let some softness come back into his voice. “You think that since so much of it was rotten, then everything was rotten. But you are cheating yourself.”
Below them the beggars had come back. During the rainstorm they had kept within the shelter of the wall. But now they crept in close, three women and a man. Having finished their food and licked their fingers clean, they wanted more. They squatted in the mud below the lowest step, raising their open palms above their heads. The old priest looked at them. “Besides,” he said. “It would be cowardice, now, to give it up. When I was in Charn, God kept me fed when all around me men were starving. Now they break His image into pieces in the streets, and it is a crime to speak His name. Yet even so I will continue, spreading the news that I have seen. It would be cowardly, now, to turn my back on Him.”
* * *
“Tell me,” said the doctor after a pause. “I heard a rumor, and I don’t know whether to believe it. Prince Abu Starbridge had a sister.” He stopped, unable to continue.
“She took poison,” said the priest. “The night before her brother’s execution. She meant to cheat the jailer, is that what you had heard? She was convicted of adultery, posthumously, the next day. It was probably the council’s last official act.”
“That’s what I had heard,” said Thanakar.
“It was a terrible thing,” continued the old man. “Her husband was a hero. He was a soldier, dead upon the Serpentine Ridge. All the while, that woman had been—”
“And the lover?” interrupted Thanakar.
“He was not named in the conviction. But the rumor was, he was a member of her family. Also an army officer. He was not named—he must have escaped in the confusion. Is that what you had heard?”
“That’s what I had heard.”
This was the part of the conversation that Thanakar took with him when he left. He carried it down the hill under his umbrella, like a box in his hand. And the jewel in the box, the memory he uncovered when he broke apart the words in his mind, was an image of the princess, Charity Starbridge. It was a memory he had kept a long time, in divers secret places, an image of her asleep, curled up away from him, with her naked foot making a small kicking motion at the end of the bed. In his mind she turned over onto her back.
Once, that single memory had been enough to keep him happy, when he was apart from her. Then there had been a hope of future images that he could piece together with the first. But now his memory of her had acquired a different beauty; it was too beautiful to bear. It was too heavy for his strength. Limping back down the hill into the town, he hid it back inside himself. I will not take it out again, he thought.
Yet he was sick at heart. Abu had been his only friend, and he was dead. Charity had been less than that, and more. This is not the season for romantic friendships, thought Thanakar. This is not the weather for a sentimental friendship. He had barely known her.
Nevertheless, once it had been enough to make him happy, just to think that some day he might know her well.
At the bottom of the hill the road divided. He took the way back into town, along a row of houses. He had the impression that people were watching him from the upstairs windows, and he bowed his head. And at a turning in the road, he passed a covered carriage parked before the gate of some new guesthouse.
He recognized the escutcheon painted on the carriage door. Day by day the town was filling up with refugees, priests and Starbridges from Charn, running from the revolution. Late enemies of Argon Starbridge, now they were imposing on his mercy, hoping to cross the border into safety.
Thanakar lowered his umbrella to hide his face. He had no wish to meet the owner of the carriage. Some members of his family had even registered in his hotel, but he had no wish to see them. Always a misfit for the sake of his politics and his crippled leg, now he was isolated for new reasons. These refugees were seeking safety from the revolution and the new laws of attainder. Though Thanakar, if he had stayed in Charn until the end, would have been persecuted as harshly as any for his name and his tattoos, still he had not stayed. He had fled, not from the revolution but from Chrism Demiurge.
Thanakar thought that this difference was enough to place him, in the minds of other Starbridges, with the forces of rebellion. And even though he might not give a damn what they might think, still he had no wish to draw attention to himself. The old priest had been too senile to guess the name of Princess Charity’s lover, but Thanakar assumed that others would have no trouble guessing. He had no wish to hear himself blamed for her death; so, at the entrance to his hotel near the square, he pulled his hat down over his ears.
He need not have bothered. The instant he crossed the threshold into the common room, he heard his name shouted from the corner by a relative of his, a second cousin on his mother’s side, a boy named Oxus Starbridge. Thanakar had known him in the army.
“Cousin!” he shouted. “Cousin Thanakar!” He was very young, with a thin, nervous face and bad skin. “Thanakar!” he shouted. He came hurrying from across the room to shake the doctor’s hand. He looked pale and exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept in far too long. A sad new beard was trying feebly to hide his features, and he picked at it nervously and smelled his fingers as he talked. He was wearing the remnants of his army uniform; his shirt was ragged and his pants were torn.
A row of greasy couches ran along one wall. The boy collapsed onto one and drew the doctor down beside him. Elsewhere around the room, people stopped what they were doing to stare at them. They included a group of Starbridge officers playing cards at a round table, two married women with veiled faces, and an old bearded gentleman wiping his hands on a black-and-white-striped handkerchief.
“Thank God you’ve come,” said the boy. “I don’t know anyone here. Yours is the first familiar face I’ve seen.”
Thanakar put his hand out to touch the boy’s shoulder. “I’m glad to see you,” he said gently. “I’m glad to see that you’ve escaped.”
The boy made a gesture with his arm, as if dismissing recollections too painful to mention. “I swam the river,” he said. “My God, I’ve lived for weeks on garbage and stale bread. And now, I can’t believe it. I have an uncle in Caladon City, only they won’t let me across. They won’t let me go. I can’t believe it. I told them who I was.” He held out his hand so that Thanakar could see the silver bluebird tattooed on his palm. Then he stared at it himself. “They didn’t seem to care.”
Thanakar smiled. “Ignorant swine,” he said.
“It’s an outrage,” continued the boy. “When I get across, I’ll have them all locked up. Filthy bureaucrats! My uncle knows the king.”
“The king is paying them to keep us here. They take the place of soldiers.”
“I don’t care. Who are they, to go against my will? My father was Baroda Starbridge. By God, I’ll have them flogged.”
Suppressing a gesture of impatience, Thanakar made as if to stand, but the boy was clinging to his coat sleeve. And there was something in his face that made the doctor pause, some underlying seriousness. His voice was high-pitched and precarious, as if he understood his own futility but was searching for a way of hiding it from others. Surely that was forgivable in one so young, thought Thanakar. And there was something else: The boy was close to tears. “They broke into my house,” he said. “The Desecration League. I got a message from my sister to come back, and I left my regiment and rode all night. On the morning of the fifty-eighth, I reached the gates of Charn just after dawn, and it took me until one o’clock to go the last few miles, there were so many people in the streets. They had torched that whole block of houses, from Cosro’s Barbican almost to the
river. My own house was gutted—all the furniture was thrown out into the street. And they had written their obscenities on every wall, and everywhere the mark of the red hand—my mother lived there. And my little sister. They were gone.”
With great delicacy and care, the boy pushed a strand of hair back from his face and curled it behind his ear. “I ran away,” he said. “I swam the river, and I ran away.”
He seemed to expect no response to this, so Thanakar said nothing. He relaxed back onto the couch, feeling the familiar mix of pity, irritation, and embarrassment that so often possessed him when he listened to tales of other people’s misery. He put awkward fingers on the boy’s hand and twisted his face into a rictus of compassion. The boy had been afraid. He was confessing cowardice, and for a Starbridge that had always been the most desperate of all crimes. The boy knew it and he felt it; suddenly embarrassed, he turned his face away. But he turned back after a moment, when Thanakar had risen to his feet.
“Please,” he said, and when he raised his chin, Thanakar could see the movement of his epiglottis, a shudder in his narrow throat. “Please,” he said. “I had no money when I came away. This thief of a hotelkeeper is charging me six dollars a night. He has given me a mattress on the floor.”
Relieved, Thanakar fished some money from his coat, two fifty-dollar bills. The boy reached out to grab them. He took them and crushed them between his fingers. He crushed them into little balls, and as he did so, his face took on a sudden expression of hostility.
“Let me give you a receipt,” he said. “You understand—this is a temporary loan. I’ll pay you ten percent a month.”
Outside there was a crash of thunder, and the rain came down redoubled on the greasy windows. The common room was darkened; light came from a small fire on the stove, where three Caladonian merchants sat smoking hashish from long pipes. Light came from the table, where the officers played cards around an oil lamp; they had stopped in the middle of a hand and were staring at the doctor as he looked around. They were playing for money. Loose coins lay scattered across the table.
