The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  ‘Corbillion!’ the torturer roared. ‘Stand up and take your punishment like a man!’ He thumped my chest and threw me off balance: it was a fond embrace to him.

  ‘You used to terrify me,’ I said.

  ‘Whipping boys is tedious work. I longed to punish the girls,’ he said.

  ‘How does Nemione?’

  ‘She has the men just – there!’ He gestured lewdly with his thumb. ‘Her beauty is a wondrous thing, Master Corbillion. It would weaken the knees and sap the will of a blind celibate.’

  I pointed at the man I had killed.

  ‘I must see the Archmage,’ I said.

  ‘Is that a request to the captain of the guard?’

  ‘It is indeed. Will you let me in there, Olburn?’

  He studied me, his green eyes (whose gaze used to terrify me) seeming to glow with a concentration which made his bulk seem more terrible. He must have spent one of his lives as a bear.

  ‘You have not lost the blood-lust and temper of a Green Wolf but you have acquired a new dimension. And you have survived the Archmage’s orders, tamed Peder and brought him back with you. I think I shall – yes, I will,’ he said. ‘The time grows ever more disjointed.’

  He called for the key and opened the door. I heard Manderel Valdine’s agonized groans and his racking cough before I stepped up to the bed and roughly pulled its curtains aside.

  ‘Koschei!’

  ‘Peder failed his mission – though he tried well,’ I said. ‘I thought I had killed you, twice.’

  Valdine laughed, as much as he was able. ‘The book was worthless,’ he said. ‘It was once the grimoire of a noble magician, but five hundred years on the sea bed will destroy anything. The nuns of Polnisha of course believe otherwise.’

  ‘The yellow manikin?’

  ‘A soul, dolt! Someone’s soul.’

  ‘But whose?’

  ‘Its loss is not your concern. Others exist to grieve over it. You are tightly held between the springing tines of a cleft stick, Koschei. Can you feel the pressure? Your sword – which I see is bloodied; I suppose poor Michael is your most recent victim – is of no use to you. You did not find my soul: you cannot kill me – oh, inflict further agony if you will.’

  I pushed the blade into his bedding until the feathers spilled. I raged.

  ‘You will have to retire, Koschei,’ said Valdine, ‘until you think of something better than this crude soldier’s force.’ He picked up his pen again. ‘The orders, Baptist. Peder, pass me my book. I shall read of love as I cannot practise it.’

  He read a few lines, put his pen in the book to mark his place and laid it down.

  ‘I tire easily, Peder,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you would read to me.’

  ‘I forbid it!’

  ‘Oh? He is your creature now? Read to me, Peder.’

  The man looked at me to gauge my temper. I nodded, and he opened the book and prepared to read.

  ‘Such a pity, I used to have a charming little bookmark,’ said Valdine. ‘I wonder where I have mislaid it?’

  ‘The red one, sir?’

  ‘Yes, so pretty. Never mind, read.’

  ‘“Any woman, as I have told you in Discourse I, may felicitously be played upon to produce a tune, but if you will play upon your Lady you must imagine the finest taut-stringed spinet. The wires represent her nerves and sinews. The outside of the instrument, inlaid with divers precious veneers as mother-of-pearl, silver, gold, malachite, or that stone which men call Goblin’s Copper, you may bestrew with such gifts as you can get, as rosebuds, perfumes, necklaces, as liberally as the housewife uses her unguents and polishes. But if you will make her sing sweet airs you must learn which of her Parts –”’

  I went out, passing Olburn and his lieutenants, who did not spare me a glance. I would have preferred imprisonment or torture to this ignominy. Peder, Olburn and the guards surrounded Valdine like a pack of liverless spaniels.

  I sat alone in my rooms, remembering how Nemione, standing by the chair I now sat in, had mocked me and, afterwards, kissed me in the door. I could not go to her and admit my failure in her cause. She would hear of it soon enough. The lamplighter came along the street; I heard his cry from far off. As the flame outside my window sprang into life and the room was filled with its diffuse glow, someone knocked on the door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I called. It was not locked.

  ‘Peder Drum. I am coming in.’

  ‘What can you want?’ He stood before me looking glum.

  ‘I am still your servant. It was politic to stay with Valdine and read him his erotica.’

  ‘And now it is politic to come here and disturb me in my study?’

  ‘I have folded Frostfeather and packed her away in her basket,’ he said. ‘I will prepare your supper.’

  He made me a savoury dish of toasted cheese, and young chickens which he ran out to buy from my neighbour who kept a yard of cackling poultry. He washed the dishes and put clean linen on my bed.

  ‘Rest, Master,’ he said. ‘It will all seem different in the morning.’

  I slept deeply for several hours and woke to hear the clock on the Library tower strike four. Dawn had come and the lemon-coloured light in my room promised heat and sunshine. I looked at the ceiling, which I had caused to be painted with a design of planets. A mouse scratched somewhere in the room. Perhaps I would get a cat. The mouse was bold, looking for food. It would be disappointed. I looked across at the chair where I had left my clothes and saw Peder, no mouse, going through my pockets. I said nothing, only watched him and feigned sleep. He took out and opened my wallet – the same wallet I had carried on my first journey through the forest. Nemione’s hair was in it.

  Peder opened the various pockets carefully and, at last pulled out a bookmark, long, red and tasselled: the marker I had taken from Valdine’s reading desk because it pleased me – and pleased me to steal a trifle from him.

  ‘Is that you, Peder?’ I said sleepily, as if I had just woken.

  He laid my wallet softly down and slipped the marker into his pocket.

  ‘It is, Master. I heard you cough and came to see if you were comfortable. I feared you might have taken a chill in Frostfeather yesterday.’

  I did not know if he was armed.

  ‘That is kind of you, Peder. I feel quite well and require nothing but sleep until eight.’

  ‘Very well, Master.’ He took a step forward. No weapon was visible; but he might have got a new pistol to replace the one I had thrown into the Altaish.

  ‘Peder, perhaps you would tuck in my blankets more tightly?’

  He came closer, near enough, and I, rearing up in the bed like a panther, leapt upon him. For the second time, we wrestled. My bed was firmer than the floor of the basket and I soon pinned him under me. He was only a Navigator and here, out of his element, he was subject and I king.

  ‘Do you read – much – Peder?’ I panted.

  ‘Yes!’ He was not afraid. I wished I had used magic on him and terrified him.

  ‘And need a bookmark in case you fall asleep over your text?’

  ‘It is a useful device.’

  ‘So useful it becomes necessary to steal one from your master instead of buying your own?’

  ‘If you will release me, I will tell you something,’ he said.

  ‘What can you tell me about a petty crime?’

  ‘I can tell you the whereabouts of Manderel Valdine’s soul.’

  ‘I will not let you go, but I will permit you to take a less servile position.’

  Peder moved in my grasp until he was upright.

  ‘I am yours,’ he said. ‘There is no need to mistrust me –’

  ‘– You have betrayed my trust –’

  ‘– I am about to redeem it. The soul of the Archmage is hidden in the bookmark. Here.’ He extracted it. ‘Take it.’

  ‘How can I believe you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Make a trial. Cut it up: you will soon hear of his death. Or better, destroy it in his p
resence. He is so sick that all his powers have deserted him, and Olburn only waits for the next move.’

  ‘Why did you not steal it before?’

  ‘You held the upper hand.’

  ‘As I still do. What would you have done if you had restored his soul to the Archmage?’

  ‘Served him. It is yours now and I will serve you.’

  I made Peder responsible for the disposal of the corpse of his old master. I wanted to be sure he understood the finality of death in Malthassa, even for a mage, and I made certain stipulations: Manderel Valdine was not to buried, either in consecrated or unconsecrated ground, nor was his body to be cast away in any river or the sea. Nor was he to be burned, entombed above the ground or in a cave or cellar; his remains were not to be glorified upon a pillar, or with a cenotaph or other memorial in Pargur or any of its manifestations. The body was not to be taken out of Pargur.

  Peder employed Olburn to cut the body up. He fed each neatly butchered section to the wild dogs which roam the streets in Nether-Pargur.

  You ask why I did not serve Peder Drum in the same way? Yes, I was a fool; but the man’s knowledge was useful to me and I admired him for his mastery over the air. Compared with Peder, the other navigators were mere perching birds.

  I took care of the ashes of the bookmark. The memory they awoke was dear to me. I had held the tasselled marker over Valdine in his bed and cut it in ribbons, afterwards burning them in a censer. Their fumes smelt sweeter to me than the rarest musks or oil-of-cedar. When I reassembled my Memory Palace in Pargur, as I intended, I would keep the censer and its dry content in a specially-constructed reliquary; meanwhile, I kept them under lock, key and sigil. I was satisfied and content. Valdine had made wondrous music as he died.

  I wore my soldier’s garb to greet the civilian governors of Pargur. They acknowledged me as Usurper and invited me to prove my powers; meanwhile, they appointed Elzevir Tate, the furrier, Regent. I particularly remember, for I keep the flag in my Palace, the lowering of Valdine’s oriflamme and the raising of the city standard in its place. Below it on the rope they flew the small multicoloured pennant which shows that the governaunce of the city is in jeopardy.

  My preparations for dinner with Nemione I made with greater care. Peder had found a body servant for me, a slow but particular old fellow named Ivo. An orphan of the Septrentine wars, he had no other name. He was respectful and quiet and knew his discreet work.

  Ivo shaved me and trimmed my beard and hair. He cut my nails, stood back and surveyed my naked body.

  ‘Next, the bath,’ he said. ‘Master Koschei, if you would.’

  I lay an hour in the bath, as Ivo instructed me. I would leave it much refreshed, he said, and himself renewed the cooling water with fresh jugs of hot. A lutanist he had engaged played to me as I bathed. When the hour was up Ivo brought me a glass of wine and dried me as carefully as if he were a mother, and I her babe. Then Ivo dressed me.

  At seven by the Library clock I stood complete before the mirror and admired myself. I was then twenty-seven years and six months old and was healthy, eager and full of energy, no cloister mouse or crypt weasel but as fine a man as any gallant on the streets of Uppermost Pargur. My hidden and devious mind was that of a much older man, one of maturity and experience, although in hindsight I acknowledge the intemperate fits of pride and sheer rage which occasionally possessed me. I wore a suit (scarlet, white and black it was) of the sort the Lord Marshall favoured and carried three weapons: the one Nature gave me, a dagger in a gilded ivory case, and a posy tied up in lace to give the Lady Nemione.

  Ivo fussed about me. He tucked a handkerchief in my breast pocket and pulled and teased it until its black-work edging was displayed to his satisfaction. He surveyed me once more, squinting at me with his watery old eyes as if he would compare the naked, unadorned foundation he had scoured clean with the finished man.

  ‘A fine sight, Master Koschei, a goodly sight. You will dazzle her.’

  ‘Let us drink to it, Ivo!’

  I toasted him, but he would take no wine.

  ‘I shall drink my ale later and think of you and the lady,’ he said.

  Nemione received me in one of the castle’s day-rooms. I watched her carefully from the first and saw, as soon as I entered the room, that she appreciated my outside and the fashionable rags in which I had decked it. Must I describe her clothing again? Indeed, I must: her dress was so much a part of her, the set and scenery before which she played. The gown was dull gold, a figured brocade – I have a piece of it here. Let me look. There are Arcadian lovers who kiss, in the weave. There is a tomb also. I had not noticed that before, but now its significance is obvious. At the time I saw only the lovers and her amber jewellery, the largest beads of which lay on her breast above the kerchief she had tucked into the bosom of the gown. Its skirt was short enough to show her ankles, the clocks on her stockings and the red heels of her shoes. She smiled, but her speech was still barbed.

  ‘The cloister mouse has become a popinjay!’ she said.

  I bowed and presented her with my posy.

  ‘You will find that this particular popinjay is not stuffed with straw,’ I said. Nemione buried her face in the posy and eyed me over its rim.

  ‘With what, then?’ she challenged. ‘Is he puffed up with pride in his appearance, with empty boasts, or with pure lust?’

  ‘With love, Nemione,’ I said. ‘I have carried my memory of you across the Altaish and beyond the Plains into SanZu. It has survived every peril.’

  ‘Then we had better go into my Court of Love,’ she said.

  Her throne had been removed from the dais, and a table, a tall candelabrum and two chairs set there in its place. I helped Nemione to seat herself in one of these and took the other myself. She laid down her posy, rested her elbows on the table and her chin upon her hands and gave me a long, sapphire look. It made me giddy. I saw in it a future of endless intimate years. Nemione sat up and clapped her hands and Erchon ran in to answer her summons, a lighted taper in his hand. The very model of a house servant, he ignored me and bowed low before his mistress.

  ‘Send in the food, Erchon,’ Nemione bade him.

  ‘Will you have music, my lady?’

  ‘I will deal with that, Erchon; keep you to the duties I have given you.’

  The dwarf bowed again and left us.

  ‘You would enjoy a little music, Koschei?’

  ‘If it also pleases you, my Lady.’

  I did not see her move, nor speak or shift her gaze from me, but the five statues which stood in the five corners of the room took each a step forward and raised its hands. The first had a recorder, the second a little drum, the third a dulcimer, while the fourth and fifth held up chimes and bells. They began to play in such a lively manner that I could have believed them creatures of flesh and blood.

  ‘Soft music!’ Nemione cried.

  Then came the food, brought in by a line of solemn little girls clad all alike in short white gowns with wreaths of summer flowers in their hair. These, too, looked mortal till they came close and the absolute perfection and regularity of their features showed them to be mutes fashioned out of Nemione’s sweet energy and the spirits of the damned. The eyes of these childish creatures were cruel. The last in the line, which carried a flagon of wine, was different, its skin slippery and blue-green, its sparse black hair awry like waterweed in a flood and its swollen lips – a most hideous touch – borrowed from a pouting fish.

  ‘Bring the wine to my guest,’ Nemione instructed it and it came and stood beside me in a miasma of river-stench and marsh-gas. ‘Now pour.’ Meanwhile, its companions served up game and sauces, long stems of asparagus and blunt scales from the heads of girasoles all drenched in butter.

  ‘Did you make all these creatures?’ I asked my Lady.

  ‘Yes. All. Do you think my taste too choice to allow deformity, Koschei?’ She picked up her knife and began to shave thin slices of flesh from the breast of a fowl. ‘Monstrosity is the north
face of beauty and one cannot be properly appreciated without knowledge of the other – as the libertine must experience pain in order to come at a true understanding of pleasure.’

  ‘The pretty ones, I might have expected,’ I said, ‘but this, this ganymede – it must be an experiment, a templet. No doubt you have fashioned it for another use and only bid it serve at table to teach it good manners.’

  ‘It is an uncouth thing, certainly.’ She dipped the tip her long forefinger in one of the dishes and licked the sauce from it. ‘Ginger, Koschei, mustard, pepper! Taste them!’ She poured a great pool of the sauce over my meat. It burned my mouth as I ate; she, who ate the same, did not appear to suffer.

  ‘Is your blood hot enough now, Koschei?’ Nemione said. ‘Does your heart burn?’

  I smiled: ‘Only for you, my Lady.’

  She pushed her empty plate away. At once, the sham maidens came to remove it and took away all the dishes. The fishy one, still by me, refilled my glass every time I put it down. The musicians sounded a tinkling fanfare, as if ice fell upon glass, and Erchon carried in ice indeed, a mermaid carved from a block of it.

  ‘Something to cool your palate, Koschei,’ Nemione said. ‘Will you have breast or belly? A little tail perhaps?’

  ‘I will have whatever you, yourself, have. You must guide me in the appreciation of this novel dish.’

  ‘Oh, I will only take a finger or two. That is no kind of portion for a man.’

  ‘Then,’ I said. ‘I will take her head.’

  ‘May it bring you wisdom!’ With the precision of a surgeon and one warm breath, Nemione divided the head from the body and in the same way, removed the little finger from the decapitated mermaid’s right hand. She put it in her mouth and bit it in two. The ice in crunched in her mouth. I stared at the silent head in my dish. It had a face I recognized, that of her golden mouthpiece, Roszi.

  ‘Break off her nose, Koschei! Why do you not taste her lips?’

  Already, the head was melting. Tears streamed from its eyes and clear spittle from its mouth. I spooned up some of the liquor: it tasted salty. The disintegrating head continued to stare and I stared steadily back. It gave me a watery smile as its features dissolved into clear water.