by Prue Batten
‘You know, Isolde’s Finnian, we wonder why you did not escape earlier, mesmer yourself away.’
‘It wasn’t possible. She always knew. Every time . . .’ his voice dropped as he remembered.
‘A sick soul. Lost in her madness, her obsessions, ah yes, we know that much.’
‘Obsessions,’ Finnian sneered. ‘Do you know she fancied she could dominate Eirie, mortal and eldritch and her a feeble old woman? A bloody delusion.’
‘That’s no delusion, Isolde’s boy. If she lays her hands on the Cantrips of Unlife, she will do exactly that.’
‘Aine woman, why do you speak as if she lives? When I left she was breathing her last.’ He bent over the stilled pool, as brightly reflective as a mirror in the moonlight. He flicked up a face-full of water and blinked as the drips fell, the water rippling then settling. ‘And besides those Cantrips are gone.’ He knew that was what Isolde had tortured and murdered for and looked up at the water-wight, his head thundering with a wretched ache.
The story of the fateful enchantments ran like a litany through the days of his life. They were created by a Færan Master and were intended to subdue an entire world – those in the air, water and earth when Eirie had been a vortex of chaos. Subsequently the Cantrips were hidden in a secret abyss because the charm master had created enchantments that were above destruction. History said they were lost for the greater good but according to Isolde, apparently not and he tired of hearing about it.
‘Many seek,’ the wight answered, ‘but there are whispers Isolde is closer than most.’ The woman’s lips slid back, her lovely countenance spoiling in an instant as she revealed teeth sharpened to a stake point. ‘And you ask why I speak as if she lives? She does, Isolde’s boy, she does. Weak to be sure, but patently your poison was not her bane. Have no doubt, as soon as she is strong she will find you. And what do you imagine she will do by way of punishment?’
Finnian’s heart collapsed. Instantly he was a little boy, desperate for a family that cared for him, running, hiding, fear racketing like a mob of horses through every inch of his child’s body. I gave her enough to stop a herd of oxen. ‘It’s impossible. She had the bloody flux when I left. Her physician said she was passing blood as if someone had pulled a cork.’
‘She lives. Cannot you feel her eyes upon you even now? Just like before?’ The water-wight reared up over him, disorienting him so that he leaned back. She whispered close by his ear, her breath ice-cold. ‘Aren’t you disappointed you weren’t successful? What would it take do you think, to kill Isolde?’
The woman smiled at him, a deathly grin. Isolde’s grin, the wight’s, it was all of a piece. He stood, pushing himself away from the rock and staring down at the sea-nymph. He could barely think. His audacious plan: rotten, useless.
The sea-wight laughed. ‘Finnian, Isolde’s grandson, you are scared! Ah well, you should be. They say Isolde describes your death in livid detail from her convalescent bed. That she plans to find you, kill you whom she calls an ill-gotten byblow, and secure the charms for herself. Even now she mesmers herself well with every spell in her rotten grimoires. Does that not create the tiniest measure of panic in you, brother of Liam?’ She turned her back on him and flowed like a stream of chilled water into the sea.
Breath eluded him, his chest tightened and he looked at his hands as they knotted themselves on the edges of the rocks. The moonlit pool lay still before him and he looked into it as if the answer would spell itself out. No! No! What can kill her? Some mesmer, some charm? Desperation clawed at the back of his throat and he retched, the sour taste of rum filling his mouth. Some charm, some irredeemable charm?
When it came, the answer was bold in its simplicity. He almost laughed as relief snapped at the heels of his fear.
The Cantrips of Unlife.
He would find them. He would beat her in the race to recover them and then he would use one of the charms. He would kill the woman who had blighted his life like some stinking, maiming disease. He wiped his face and the sense of throttling panic began to recede as he slid down the rockface and sat with his legs pulled up to his chest, thinking on the water-wight’s words.
Brother of Liam. He had never known what his twin had been called. Liam. He repeated the name as he tried not to care that Isolde lived. He mouthed it now in the dark of night, surrounded by a chorus of inebriated snores from further down the shore. He could have known the man Liam, they could have shared a real life, family life instead of an imagined one if it hadn’t been for the sick machinations of a raving old woman. But it was too late now because Liam was dead. Long since.
He brushed impatiently at the hair that was cut into his nape, as if the action would smooth away uneasy thoughts, and then rubbed his hands back and forth over the black stubble covering his chin. He could have done with a woman; it was what he craved after a drunken bout and when tension was high. In the taverns, he would glance their way and they’d fall at his feet for he knew he attracted them; it was a bright spot in an otherwise dark and drear life. But there was no seduction to be had in this cove and instead he reached for a square of parchment from within his coat. He unfolded it, smoothing the creases that marred the surface. The night-breeze lifted a corner and played with it for a moment but he shifted his body to protect it.
Raised with the idea that he was tainted offspring, the bleak emptiness had only ever been leavened by the solace of Isolde’s library, filled with shadows in which he could hide. Hours of his life had been spent lying on the floor, books spread out, as he talked to an unknown, imagined brother – sharing the cruel and the indifferent. The illuminations of the many manuscripts coloured the greyness of his growth and one in particular aroused his interest.
He stared at it now, the page he had torn out and carried forever like a talisman. The moonlight brightened and a beam shone down upon the fragment. It showed a woman at a table with a reed pen in her fingers, her hand curved eloquently over a sheet of white paper. Her black hair draped in a skein across her shoulders and he allowed her beauty and tranquility to cosset him as if she were his love, removing the fear of Isolde that hovered forever like a foetid fog. He ran a finger along the text that he knew by heart:
‘I saw her stare
on old dry writing in a learned tongue . . .
(and) move a hand as if that
were some dear cheek.’
The breath of the dying breeze drifted down over his face and as he slipped into sleep, he wished it was the woman’s finger.
Chapter Three
Lalita
The tall gate blocked out the sunshine as Lalita tilted her head back to stare at it. They named it a door and yet it might as well have been an armoured portcullis. It was the entrance to a fortress, the gate beyond which no full-blooded male could proceed and which they named the Door of a Thousand Promises.
What promises? Promises of sex that an ordinary man might only dream of? Promises of untold wealth and comfort should an odalisque become known by the Sultan? Or promises of heavenly life in the hereafter because one had given up one’s freedom, one’s family and one’s life to serve the Court of the Sultan?
Or perhaps a thousand promises of a thousand terrible deaths should one enter uninvited.
A shiver rattled over Lalita. The door cast a shadow as black as the devil’s mouth and she stood in the middle of it, feet melded to the ground. The janissaries had turned away after the Grand Vizier knocked three times with the hilt of his scimitar and she felt as if each strike shortened her life that much more. Three enormous bars bolted the door, each connected to the other by elaborate scrolls indicating creatures – a scorpion, a spider, a snake. Lalita gasped as the first bar turned and rolled mechanically, the scorpion’s tail lifting to strike as the bar drew back. Then the spider’s fangs jumped forward as the next bar slid away. Finally as the third bar withdrew, the cobra reared up, its hood spreading, the forked tongue flashing.
The doors began to open, peeling back to either side, a shaft
of sun streaming out to her feet and blinding her. The Grand Vizier spoke and she heard his flywhisk tap as he ordered whoever was in front of her to take her to the seraglio. Doves cooed, water trickled, music from lutes floated faintly in the distance and a tinkling laugh slipped into the air. Somewhere a dog barked and Phaeton gave an answering growl.
A firm push in the back set her walking, Phaeton stepping beside her, his damp nose nuzzling her hand. Still the glare filled her vision but she smelt civet, tuberose and lilies, the fragrance of lemons cutting through the sweetness of the perfume. She could hear the crunch of gravel under her feet and then the slap of her slippers on tiles as she was guided into a more subdued space; every smell, every sound with a sharpness that almost pained her. As her eyes adjusted to the softer light, she became aware she was in an elegant colonnade draped in roses. Alongside, as they stepped up from one shallow level to another, a rill flowed in a tiled channel, its murmurings creating a gentle ambience.
Lalita cast a glance at the man who guided her through these outer courtyards. He towered far above her shoulder, big with a loose body – one of the eunuchs who guarded the seraglio. These large white-clad men were mute and she despaired to be part of a domain that saw the need to de-sex a man – to cut out his tongue so the flowers of the harem would only be for the Sultan’s plucking. Nothing, Arifa protect me, could be worse than this; not even if I were grabbed by Baghlet al Qebour of the Graveyards, to be buried alive.
But she could not deny the beauty. She wanted to hate it, to find it disfigured. Instead her eyes wandered to the landscaped water gardens with massive tubs full of lemon, olive, bay and lime trees, to the tiles of floral enamels in ultramarine blue and viridian green. Remotely she wondered how easy it must be to create in such an environment because it stirred every sense. Already she had identified a design in the tiles that would wrap around the letter that began a paragraph. Why should I think of such things now? She sighed. Better that I think of prettiness than prisons.
The mute took her arm and led her to another door, this one carved less ferociously. They passed through a smaller colonnade where in the distance as she looked out, she could see gold leafed domes atop the palace. Even higher were the minarets and a square tower. Another door and the sounds of lute melodies became louder and then the final door was pushed aside.
The delicate notes dropped away, leaving only the rippling, running sound of water. Heads turned and curious eyes pinioned her, measuring and taking stock. Poisonous voices whispered behind organza veils, soft melting tones that stung her skin like nettles, denouncing her face, her hair, her clothes.
She chanted silently, a mantra to uplift and strengthen. I am Lalita Khatoun, Arifa protect me, I am Lalita Khatoun. You are no better than me, I am no worse than you. But even so, her heartbeat bucked and reared like a trapped horse.
A massive man wearing a sumptuously embroidered robe levered himself off a divan, his eyes running over her as if he took an inventory. ‘You are the scribe?’
The sound of his herniated voice plucked at hysteria deep inside her but she stilled herself to answer. ‘I am.’
‘Salah will take you to your chamber. It is also your workroom. You will unpack and then Salah will take you to the baths where you will be prepared.’
‘Prepared for what? I am quite clean now, thank you.’
The other women snickered and the chief eunuch swung around and held up a pudgy palm. ‘Silence.’ The air vibrated with his voice as he turned back to Lalita. ‘I am the Kisla Agha and you will do as I say you must. You will be prepared for life in the seraglio. You will have a certain polish, a certain standard. You may go.’
The afore-mentioned Salah came forward – an adolescent boy, golden and beautiful but oddly youthful, as if time had stopped for him years ago. Look at his dainty feet and his painted toenails; he is surely a plaything here. Phaeton licked her fingers. ‘My dog?’
‘The kennels,’ the Kisla Agha turned away.
No, no. ‘Please, sir, may I have your indulgence?’
She heard the odalisques suck in interested breaths but this big man they called the Kisla Agha merely inclined his head.
‘My dog is obedient. If I am to live alone in my own chamber so that I may work, and given that I am nowhere as lovely as the flowers already seated before me and shall never incur the interest of Sultan, I beg you sir, may my dog stay with me? He is my inspiration and this I truly need if I am to finish the book that is my commission from His Bright Light.’ She bowed her head.
The Kisla Agha’s eyes closed to slits and she guessed she was being weighed and measured. ‘You learn fast, woman. You understand the ways of these poisonous blossoms I think.’ He laughed with keen delight and the sound slid down her spine like a filleting knife. ‘Very well then, the dog shall stay with you. But your work must show the kind of inspiration of which you preach. If it does not, the dog’s life is forfeit. You are dismissed.’
Salah took her hand and led her away and as she left she heard vicious gossip and unkind threats hissed at her from amongst the silk and sarsenet-covered crowd.
‘Keep away, beggar.’
‘Be careful where you step, daughter of a whore.’
‘A slip and you are done, slum bitch.’
She held her head high and walked on.
Salah simpered when they had gone through a further gate. ‘You took a risk, mistress. But I think you know that.’
Her head throbbed but she answered him anyway. ‘There are no risks for me at all now that I am here. I might as well be dead.’
‘Then you are a fool, mistress. Because when one chooses death in this place, it comes painfully and with great suffering. Would you wish the knowledge of such a thing on your family?’
Lalita remained silent but prayed that a djinn might fly in and scoop her up . . . she and Phaeton. As the thought ran, so the softest breeze blew over her forehead and cheeks and caressed her skin like a kiss, raising goosebumps and making her look around as if she would spy another person walking with her. But there were only rows of pleached lemon trees and hedges of oleander that twitched and shifted in a light breeze. Salah said no more, he was obviously not destined to be a friend, and drew her through a plain door of golden cedar, its silent latch turning.
‘These are your apartments.’ He led her past a lattice screen to a space with a divan covered in silk and wool quilts. ‘These are your sleeping quarters.’ And further past another screen. ‘Your workroom.’
A long table sat under tall windows that highlighted her working area. A stool had been pushed underneath the table and already a pile of pristine ivory paper sat waiting. Pots of paints and inks, sheaves of gold leaf, ceramic jars containing pens, brushes and burnishers lined the rear edge of the table. She put down her satchel and ran her fingers over the satin smooth of the paper. ‘This is magnificent.’
‘Of course, it is the Sultan’s own, made in the northern Raj with the finest flax from the Sultan’s own crops. What did you expect?’
She turned to him, anger bubbling at his arrogance. ‘I expected nothing,’ she snapped. ‘Just as this morning when I woke up, I didn’t expect to be incarcerated here for the rest of my life.’
He shrugged and his little boy’s voice answered her back. ‘That is the nub, Lady. The rest of your life. So let us go to the baths and the mistresses there can make you look at least as if you might belong.’
She could tell he was growing bored and no doubt longed to be back with the rest of the retinue as they jumped to the commands of the cosseted odalisques in the courtyards. She dropped her bag to the floor, along with a coverlet off the divan and bade Phaeton stay, knowing he wouldn’t move and would protect her satchel until she returned. Then without looking into Salah’s eyes, she walked past him to the door. ‘Show me the way.’
She reclined in the scented water and allowed the warmth to sooth her nerves. The bath-mistresses had plucked her eyebrows finely, shaped her nails and clucked at the ultramarine
smear. As they tried to draw henna tattoos on her face and hands, she pulled back and swore at them, at which they had pinched and grabbed her to lead her to the baths, thrusting her down the marble steps into the heavily scented water. Then mercifully they left her.
She pushed some rose petals around with her fingers as she listened to the trickle of water into the massive pools. The baths were fogged with drifting eddies of steam and the quiet echo of drips underlined her solitude. The petals blurred as tears filled her eyes.
Uncle and Aunt, what will you say when you know? And Kholi my brother… if you were in Ahmadabad, this would never have happened. You would have loaded me on Mogu and we’d have beaten a path over the Goti Range after you had killed Kurdeesh, for you would have I’m sure, and fed him in pieces to the jackals.
As she thought of Kholi, a familiar black shroud slid up over her shoulders and she remembered its inception. She was working on an illumination, the gold letter entwined with a crimson rose and her throat closed in a spasm of such pain that she jerked the hand that held the paintbrush and a drop of red splashed onto the pristine body of the paper like a clot of blood. She threw down the brush and stood, clutching her throat, gasping as she tried to suck in air and then as quickly as it started, it ceased. She subsided onto her stool, her fingers trembling and as she stared at that crimson splash, a melancholia seeped over her. It had stayed with her ever since. She dared not tell Soraya and Imran but her belief was that Kholi, her loved brother, was dead. Just like her parents. And now the gathered tears rolled down her cheeks and she forbore to dash them away because they lanced her pain and loss.
‘Why do you cry, Flower? Your fate is sealed. Better to accept it and stop such weakness.’
Lalita jumped, her head with its wet trailing ringlets flinging up as she grasped the white lawn sheet tightly against her body, casting glances left and right.
