The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  He took it from the shelf and lovingly stroked its stains and scars, unsurprised when it fell open at the ode which had possessed him in those turbulent, adolescent days, To A Nightingale. Someone, obviously himself, had left a marker there, a small scrap of blue paper and he picked it up and held it while he read rapidly down the page; but there was no time to read further than ‘And with thee fade away into the forest dim’ for the bookmark moved in his fingers, of itself, and when he parted them fluttered erect and danced lightly on his palm. My soul! he thought, That’s why Nandje could not hear it – I left it in these pages all those years ago–

  But two pale blue souls were skipping on his hand, two small identical figures like a child’s cut-out chain of paper men, joined at hands and feet. As he watched them they separated, the creased joins tearing softly, until they were two individuals who danced in mirror-image, each exactly mimicking the other. The two souls bowed to each other and, spinning on their tiny feet, to him and the one nearest his thumb ran suddenly forward and up his arm as fast as a mouse pursued by a cat. He felt it step up on his chin, wriggle between his lips and under and over his teeth. It lay like a communion wafer on his tongue; and was gone, for it had tickled his throat with fingers as fine as hair to make him swallow.

  He looked down at the other soul on his hand.

  ‘What have I swallowed?’ he whispered to it.

  ‘Your rightful property,’ it replied. ‘Do you think my brother and I would make the elementary mistake of confusing our identities?’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘In spirit, in imagination, taste, preference, quality. We souls cannot have blood-ties since we are without the organs which manufacture blood; indeed we have no organs in the common sense of the word – you could say “we are all soul” if you liked.’ It emitted a queer, high-pitched squeal which was clearly meant to be laughter and Parados was comforted, for in speech and attitude it was so like Koschei. He turned and looked behind him, seeking the owner of this strayed soul. The library displayed its sunlit silences for him, its rows of speechless book. Koschei was not there but, when he turned again, Koschei was quietly waiting by the shelf, an amused smile on his lips. The soul had gone and the green poetry book was no longer in his hands but in Koschei’s.

  ‘Do you read much verse?’ said Koschei urbanely. ‘I find that the smallest dose distracts me from my real purpose and pre-disposes me to melancholy and thoughts of doomed love.’ He closed the green book and returned it to its place on the shelf.

  ‘Once, I read it. These days, as you know, I make up my own fantasies,’ answered Parados. ‘Did you see –’ but Koschei interrupted him,

  ‘See? Look there, Sir, if you want something other than dry text to occupy your eyes.’

  Parados looked where he pointed and suppressed a gasp.

  Helen had come into the library, walking with graceful, dreamy steps along a line of dark wood in the inlaid floor. She paused, raised her head and smiled gloriously; her dress was one of the fantastic gypsy costumes she had always favoured, a yellow and orange tiered and layered thing from which a low-necked bodice rose like a spirit from the cupped flower of a summer rose. Her bronzed neck and breasts and her black cascade of hair were stronger magic than these feeble dreams of Malthassa and Koschei. She pulled the embroidered shawl from her shoulders and, raising it to her lips, kissed its golden fringe and flung it at his feet. He bent to retrieve it and to accept her flirtatious challenge. Nothing beside a sunbeam lay on the floor; nor was Helen there. The memory was gone, and so had Koschei.

  Parados walked quickly to a window and looked out for a clue to his whereabouts. He saw the shattered crystal towers and ivory roofs of Pargur beyond a wide and sun-filled park. Where was the exit, a door, the way out? He ran swiftly back the way he thought Koschei had brought him but found three painted statues, Odin, Ulysses and Thor – simple, a true mnemonic device! – and a flight of stone steps leading down. The brazen doors stood open at the foot of the stair and, emerging into the garden of the Memory Palace, he looked up at the great keep of Castle Sehol. He listened to the chimes of Pargur’s random clocks which told him the hour was noon, or nine, or six, or seven. He heard the booming of the great culverin and its lesser sisters, the onagers and pelicans, begin as they pounded the walls of the castle’s outermost bailey. It was most likely, then, that the tide ran in his favour. His men had gained Pargur while he stood safe in Sehol, confounded for the moment by the disappearance of his quarry but in good heart, clear-headed and ready to resume the chase.

  Aurel Wayfarer, promoted Captain, stood beside the culverin watching its propulsive glow fade and the dullness of the cooling iron re-appear. He could feel the gun’s heat through his armour though he stood two feet away. He turned and addressed the culverineer.

  ‘Good! A fine attempt. But tell me, Gunner, and forgive me for expressing myself so honestly – do you think you have hit one solid target in the entire assault?’

  ‘It is hard to tell, Sir,’ the culverineer said. ‘Very hard. The target isn’t stable, you see. Moves all the time.’

  ‘It seems to me that the city moves – the walls, though they were already in bad case, appeared to draw back. Perhaps Pargur wants to welcome and assist Parados.’

  ‘Where is he, Sir? He’s been gone near a week.’

  ‘With Koschei, I am sure of it. Parados left on a spell when he found the Lady gone. There can be no other explanation – Githon and Sarai saw him vanish.’

  ‘I hope he is not entrapped, Master Wayfarer. Koschei is better than a genius, though they are saying he is no man but is a demon or the fiend himself from Hell.’

  ‘I hope we shall not be trapped, Master Gunner, in this fine changeable city. The gun is cooler – carry on.’

  ‘Sir!’

  Aurel walked quickly across the broken ground of the riverbank to the officers’ table. Maps, plans and orders were spread out on it and Githon was studying a sheet of paper on which one of the sapper-commanders had drawn a scheme to undermine the western walls of Castle Sehol.

  ‘It would be rape, don’t you think so Aurel?’ he said. ‘Look at the castle! That misty otherworld appearance it had this morning is gone. It appears quite solid and the towers are beginning to flush red. I saw it years ago of course and know of its colour-changing powers – who does not? In my youth it was grey, as I remember, and sometimes flushed with gold; nothing like this! To see it once more in the stone, so to speak – why, as wonderful a sight to a dwarf as the sheer rockfaces of the Altaish.’

  ‘Garzon was a great visionary. I wonder, Githon, if we ever gain the inside, whether we shall find that Koschei too has made his own elegant changes to the castle’s fabric? Privately – repeat this to no man, or dwarf! – I believe Sehol’s reputation of impregnability and I do not think we will ever be in a position to satisfy our curiosity about the wonders inside it.’

  ‘We shall see, Aurel. Do you doubt Custos there, shining by day now as well as night?’

  ‘Then where is the Lady Nemione? How can the star shine so while she is missing?’

  ‘It has faith, Aurel. It is not a man, to trouble itself with doubt and speculation.’

  That night, as the guns and gunners rested and the officers and sergeants sat in council, the star Custos moved into a new position over Castle Sehol, between the twin towers of Vanity and Probity. Its light shone on both and it seemed to pose a question by its presence mid-way between folly and temperance. The council broke in indecision and confusion and the men slept, worn out by the labour of continuing the assault. About dawn, as Aurel was waking, two men entered his tent with a plea. He propped himself on one elbow to hear them. One of the men was his fellow officer, the ballistics captain, Hadrian, but the other was a stranger, a man of middle-age, sturdy and plain of looks and dressed in the uniform of the Castle Guard. Hadrian held the end of the chain which fastened this man’s fetters.

  ‘We found him walking about by the guns, Captain Wayfarer. A spy!’
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  ‘Is that what you are, Guard?’ said Aurel as sternly as he could and sat up straight.

  ‘I am not, Sir. I am a sergeant of the First Watch. It is my job to guard the gates of Castle Sehol.’

  ‘Then why are you here and in such a position of ignominy? An interest in guns?’

  ‘I was looking for the Commander, sir, for Lord Parados.’

  ‘To murder, no doubt,’ said Hadrian.

  ‘No, not murder but help. I was born in the Castle, Sir, and I know a good thing when I see one. This Parados brought the Plains and SanZu out of winter and the Lady from the dead. Now all Malthassa wakes. He may yet restore the fortunes of Sehol and Pargur. Besides, they are all saying – the guard and Captain Olburn himself and all the servants and many of the gentlemen and their ladies too – that Koschei is no man. Some fear he is Beelzebub and some say he is Asmodeus or even him whose name begins with a Z. That, beside the fact that my strong gateway is no longer what it was, is another reason for my leaving the castle and risking my life here.’

  Aurel got out of bed and pulled on his boots.

  ‘Call for water and some breakfast, Hadrian, if you please. We must pay this man better attention. What is your name, master?’

  ‘I am Estragon, sir, Guard-Sergeant Estragon Fairweather at your command,’ and Estragon who had debated the rights and wrongs of his defection for a long time with himself, clicked his shackled heels together and saluted smartly.

  Parados had annoyed and incommoded me by disturbing my soul. I had narrowly avoided its passionate attempts to rejoin itself with me and forced it back into the book, where it lay trapped between ‘O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate,’ and ‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell.’ To have it with me, in me, would have been true folly for, in that circumstance, I should have become my old and vulnerable, mortal self, no longer deserving of my style ‘the Deathless’. But there was no permanent harm. When I appeared beside the shelf, Parados had looked at me with as vacant an expression as a mooncalf. I did not think he had noticed my little blue soul.

  I was at Peklo, in my tower. Nemione also. I had brought her there immediately after her capture from the rebels’ encampment and imprisoned her in the oubliette at the bottom of the tower – in darkness, cold and damp and chains. This cruel, uncalculated abuse was the abyss to which my great love of her had brought me. Jealousy gnawed like vitriol at my vitals, consuming them and any pity I may once have been weak enough to acknowledge.

  ‘Father dear,’ whined Cob, when I entered my wrecked room and beheld the floor and furniture still covered with a false frost of ten thousand thousand fragments of glass. ‘Feed me, father, I am very hungry.’

  He looked thin, his rotund body shrunk like a withered orange into itself; but I had other, pressing business and though my pap was full and tender with his bitter nourishment and the teat on my vein sore, ‘No!’ I said and closed the door on him. I hurried down the stair. Nemione had been seven days in her durance and must be humble, tearful; full of plaintive, sad pleas. I should listen to and humour her before I shut her up again. Not until I chose, should she walk free, but then! – I had built myself a male member out of a mandrake and a devil’s thunderbolt, a fine new pillicock. It wanted ten more hours in its bath of blood before it was full grown and ready to be united with my truncated root – all the pride the traitor, Peder Drum, had left me.

  I had a saffron cake in my hand, to taunt Nemione with and, setting down my lantern and kneeling by the grating in the store room floor, I called her,

  ‘Lady Lorne, show yourself. I have a pretty toy to sweeten your mouth. See –’ (and I dropped a piece of the cake into the dungeon) ‘– it is made of fine manchet flour, butter, honey and eggs. It will satisfy your hunger – if it is not poisoned. And if it is, well, it will release you from your duty.’

  I lifted the lantern and looked into the dark well beneath the grating. Nothing moved. She must be sitting still and pressing her lips together for fear of answering me or of taking my bait; and pressing together her thighs also, for she did not know I was incomplete. I saw the chains running from their anchor in the wall; but they hung slack, encircling nothing. Nemione had gone.

  A moment passed. Panic filled me, rage – and then understanding. She had not been rescued; Parados had not prevailed. Above my head, in the angle where the ceiling of the store room met the wall, was perched a dark brown butterfly with wings folded close. It was almost invisible in the dark.

  ‘Better for you if you had made yourself invisible,’ I whispered, stood up and cupped my hand to capture the trembling insect.

  Peklo tower pointed an angry and accusing finger at the grey skies. It knew, thought Parados, how far from piety and honour Koschei had departed. His view of it was clear and as he moved towards it, or the headland came to him, the tower grew darker and the skies more lowering. Certainly this was the place in which Nemione was held captive. Soon the tower was below him, very close. His feet brushed the pointed roof and he found himself standing on the walk which ringed it, the door of the small, projecting bartizan wide open before him. The stairway was narrow and the steps steep and close together but he ran down them, his hand on the outer wall and, arriving outside a closed door, shook his head to dispel a wave of giddiness. He felt as though he walked on cat-ice or across a quicksand which would quickly suck and swallow him up. He put out an unsteady hand and lifted the door-latch.

  Inside was Koschei’s room, his cell and laboratory, the heart of his darkness. It looked as though the storms which were gathering over the sea outside had ventured here; or else Koschei himself had suffered a berserker’s rage, for the table, shelves and floor were littered with broken and powdered glass. A doll’s house shaped like an ornate castle stood in a corner and a large, pallid ball, half-deflated, lay on one of its towers. It had legs, he saw, a mouth and eyes, and recognized it as Koschei’s misborn son, Cob. The creature was quite dead.

  Parados turned away and continued down the stairs, past the library which was the original of the one in the Memory Palace. A single glimpse of it shocked and disoriented him still more and he hurried on. In Koschei’s living quarters, below, the bed was tumbled and unmade and on a gilt table close beside the head of the bed was a statuette of Nemione, naked. Jealously, he lifted it: who had made it? did it represent a wish or reality? had Koschei seen Nemione in this raw and touching state? The statuette was made of ivory, warm to the touch. Parados stroked its hair and, taking the scarf from his neck, attempted to dress it and preserve its modesty. He left the room and, suddenly returning, picked up the image and spoke to it.

  ‘Is this what he has made of you?’ he said aloud; but the carving remained motionless in his hand and he remembered that Valdine had caused it to be sculpted. He set it down again.

  The stair was dark. A lancet window should have brought him light, but there was none to give. Seeing only shadows where the steps should be, he stumbled and, tottering there and trying to grasp the smooth stones of the wall, realized that he had fallen against a body.

  It was Koschei, magnificent in death. A small and eerie light crept from beneath one arm of his corpse. Cautiously, Parados touched the arm and, nothing stirring, moved it aside. The magician had fallen on his lantern and it burned still, inside its case of horn. Parados pulled on it and the dead fingers which grasped it let go and rattled their long nails against the lantern before the hand fell back. Parados opened the door in the lantern and lifted it high.

  The body was that of a man his own age; there was no outward sign to show how Koschei had met his death. Slowly at first, impeded by the lantern which he put down on the step above Koschei’s head, then faster and more boldly Parados unclasped the red robe the magician wore and saw his broad chest and, swelling on the left side of it like a gall on a fine oak, a single woman’s breast. The wound which surely was the cause of Koschei’s death pierced the chest on the right. He bent closer and saw that the wound was closed, with a thick scab over it. The magician’s
loins were girded with a white cloth: he did not dare untie it and find out the truth but examined the legs, the right wedged against the wall and the left against a stair and fallen sideways – on it, in the soft skin at the back of the knee-joint was a small, red papilla or teat. The body bore many other marks and evidences of a dangerous and active life, criss-cross scars from slashing swords, old bullet-wounds and, in the single breast, the deep scar of Erchon’s accurate rapier-thrust.

  Terror and excitement rose side by side in Parados; he wanted to flee unsatisifed and to remain, knowing all. He wished to punish and to feel pity and he drew the pistol from his pocket, primed it and emptied it into the corpse, drinking in the smell of the powder and admiring the rents the bullets made in the dead flesh. He threw the gun away, out of the window. The pocket of Koschei’s gown was better reward. He took the leather wallet from it and, opening it, found many pockets, each one filled. There were amulets and talismans, a knotted cord and a paper of black powder, matches, a half-burned purple candle, bills and receipts, paper money of many strange denominations, gold coins and a minute book – but this was only a collection of sayings and proverbs. In the last pocket he found Helen Lacey’s cross and Nemione’s broken chain. ‘Keep Faith’ he read again. With them was a lock of black and gypsy hair. To touch it concentrated his emotions and he felt the ghost of old and shameless desire. This, surely, was a lock cut from Helen’s head? Ashamed of his inquisitiveness, he replaced everything he had found and put the wallet back in the pocket. To mutilate, to poke and pry about a dead, unhallowed body was the black reverse of all he had become, an action befitting Koschei himself and not the kristnik Parados, twelfth son of Stanko of Belgard.