Kings of Albion

by Julian Rathbone

  I shrugged and murmured, 'It's a long way from Calais to Vijayanagara. But my main purpose was to fulfil the request of the man who gave it me.'

  'He must have made a deep impression on you in what was, after all. a short time.'

  I inclined my head but did not elaborate.

  'Did you have any knowledge of what this packet contained?'

  I glanced at it. 'When I handed it to your major-domo the leather strings were still knotted. It was not I who undid them. I was told that I would be cursed if I did.'

  Prince Harihara picked up the bundle of parchment leaves and eased them apart. The cured sheepskin of which they were made creaked repellently and he could not repress a slight shudder of distaste. 'You have travelled much,' he said.

  'Just about everywhere, except the southern parts of Africa and the unknown continent of Vinland, which some say lies west of Europe and east of Asia.'

  'And you can read?"

  'A little of most languages.'

  'Inglysshe? Learned men who work in our libraries have already declared that that is the language most of this is written in. However, they were not sufficiently conversant with that language to translate what was in front of them. Can you read Inglysshe?'

  'Bills of lading. Regulations regarding import and export, that sort of thing, yes. I can also ask for a room in an inn, order food, get fodder for any beasts I have with me ask directions and pass the time of day with any travelling companion I might share the road with.'

  He handed me the top sheet of the part of the bundle that was written in the tongue we had been discussing. I read it aloud.

  As John the apostel hit syy with syght

  I syye that cyty of gret renoun

  Jerusalem so nwe and ryally dyght

  As hit was lyght fro the heven adoun

  The birgh was al of brende golde bryght

  As glemande glas burnist broun

  With gentyl gemmes anunder pyght

  Wyth banteles twelve of tiche tenoun

  Uch tabelment was a serlypes ston-

  'Well,' he interrupted, 'what does it all mean?'

  'There are many ways of speaking this language, many dialects,' I replied, 'just as there are in your languages. I travelled and traded in the south-east of Ingerlond, and this is written in a dialect which I would guess is spoken in the north-west.'

  'But you must have an idea of what it is about.'

  'It seems to be describing a city. A city of some wealth, perhaps.'

  'Go on.'

  'Certainly it says there's gold burning bright, noble gems and, if I've got it right, twelve different sorts of precious stone.'

  'How does it go on? What sort of stones? Does it name them?' He handed me the next sheet.

  'Jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald…'

  'Good, good.'

  'Sardonyx, ruby…'

  'Are you sure it says "ruby"?'

  "The sexte the rybe". I'm sure "rybe" must be ruby.'

  'I ask because it is generally believed on this side of the world that rubies can only be found in Burmah and Mandalay. But go on.'

  My finger tracked down the page as I picked out the words I believed were of interest to him, ignoring the rest. 'Chrysolite… beryl… topaz… chrysoprase… jacinth and… amethyst,' I concluded.

  'Is that all? Is that it?'

  I moved on a page or so. 'It goes on about how the streets of the city are golden and the "wones", I think that must mean houses, are all inlaid with precious stones. And the whole place is big. about a mile and a half square.'

  He sighed. A sigh of satisfaction, repletion almost. Silence fell. Water tinkled in a fountain, a caged bird sang.

  'Where is this city?' he asked at last.

  'Jerusalem is mentioned, but I've been there and it was nothing like the place these pages describe.'

  'Could it be anywhere in Ingerlond? Perhaps… in the northwest, I think you said?' I shrugged, stuck out my more or less scar-free bottom lip. He insisted, 'Have you heard of such a place? Surely, if such a place exists, you would have heard of it.'

  'There are stories.' I ventured, 'but it's a part of Ingerlond I have never been in. The north-west, that is.'

  He chewed his thumbnail for a moment and thought, clearly trying to decide how to proceed. 'If you wish payment for the service you have done me – indeed,' he added, double-locking, as it were, the stable-door, 'if you wish to receive a permit entitling you to reside here as a merchant for more than twenty-four hours – you will present yourself to my chamberlain tomorrow morning before noon. You may go now. Enjoy the festival."

  And he turned away, picking up the three bits of parchment he had not let me peruse, on which, I presumed, his brother John, or Jehani, to give him his proper name, had written his personal message to him, in the Teluga language, using the script that is the private preserve of the rulers and nobles ot that country, and began to read them yet again.

  Chapter Seven

  Back at the great platform, I found that the student, or monk, I had met in the morning had been as good as his word and had kept a small space for me beside him, in spite of the huge press that now filled the square. He had even saved me a piece of unleavened bread smeared with a spicy paste that he had bought from one of the many vendors. With it he had kept for me a half coconut shell filled with soured cow's milk, ayran, we call it, lassi is their word – a most refreshing beverage.

  The festivities that followed were as magnificent as I had expected, and as tedious. These things always are, are they not? Every quarter of the city had its troupe of dancers, its musicians; each vied with all in the splendour of their costumes and the intricacy of their performance – all of which is wonderful, no doubt, if you are a tiro, an expert who can distinguish the finer points that raise one troupe above another. And certainly they looked good, in magnificent multi-coloured robes and costumes, mostly in billowing silks with embellishments in gold thread, huge moulded masks crusted with gems, leafed with gold and plumed with the feathers of forest birds. Some wore their nails long or had artificial ones attached, some swung scimitars in ritualised combat. Some stamped their feet and others performed extraordinary contortions to represent their multi-limbed deities. They blew trumpets, banged gongs, tooted on flutes and twanged their long-armed guitars.

  After an hour I was bored. After four hours, with the torches and flambeaux at last burning low, I was practically asleep. And then, to my consternation, I saw these replaced with fresh ones, which, I calculated, would take us through to dawn. I yawned, apologised to Suryan, and told him that I had been travelling on the road and before that by boat for many months without a break, that I had had a long and tiring day, that I was not as young as I once was…

  'Ali, I'm so sorry,' he exclaimed, 'how thoughtless of me! You must come to my lodgings at once where we can have a proper meal and I can lend you a bed. No, no, please, I insist. Like you I have seen enough for one night. The festival runs for a week and we – I – can come again tomorrow. I shall not miss anything of importance.' Already he was leading me downhill, away from the platform, past the huge stables of the imperial elephants, through terraces and parks lit with lamps fuelled with aromatic ghee, towards the river, which we presently crossed on a wide, magnificent stone bridge, guarded by granite lions.

  In apology for the spare entertainment he was about to offer me, lie explained that he led an ascetic life, although his family were landowners who could have provided him with all the luxuries he denied himself However, he was not pompous or preachy about all this – he admired showiness in others, and found nothing wrong with worldly pleasures. For, as he had already told me when expounding the Kauli creed, he, like most Vijayanagarans, believed that what happened after death was at best unknowable and that the highest happiness men or women can achieve, through exquisite and passionate sensation, is that unification of mind and body that reveals the godhead within, all achieved in this life.

  He also told me that he shared his home with
his twin sister.

  Presently he led me to a small suite of rooms in a large, rambling building, which included on the ground floor shops, the offices of traders, public baths and a couple of small enclosed gardens, lit with paper lanterns. Citrus trees grew in tubs above pools filled with small fish that darted about like shards of light.

  Suryan's apartment was lined with, or perhaps even constructed from, a silvery aromatic wood. Its ceilings were finely carved with stalactitic formations apeing the structure of stylised flowers and the more exotic crystal formations one can find in certain mountain caves. Below the dado the walls were hung with fine silk rugs and paintings on cloth, mostly representing scenes of pleasure: hunting, feasting, dancing and copulation. There was, after all, little in the way of asceticism that I could see, but I supposed that in comparison with the luxury and magnificence of his family's palaces, these rooms might have seemed cramped and homely.

  And then something strange happened. While I was still admiring the principal room – indeed, as I peered up at the intricacies of the ceiling – he vanished like a wraith, from my blind side, into the shadows.

  'Lima, my sister, will take care of you now, I must depart to my studies…' and, just like that, he was gone.

  A few minutes later a light glowed beyond a gauze hanging, which I now realised masked a long passage. It came nearer and glowed more brightly, and soon I saw the hands that held it. a silver lamp with a tiny wick above a reservoir of ghee, and the face that seemed to float above it.

  Uma was a delight. Her skin was the colour of dark honey and she had long, glossy black hair, which yet had hints of fire and copper in it. whether natural or applied I do not know. Her almond eyes were surprisingly light in colour, a golden brown, though occasionally tinged with green. Her forehead was high, her neck long but sturdy; her shoulders gleamed like bronzed butter. Her exposed breasts were like pomegranates, the nipples painted scarlet. Her lips were full, rich and welcoming. On that occasion, being indoors and not expecting visitors, she was naked to her waist apart from jewellery and a tall beehive-shaped headdress, gold and studded with gems. Her waist was circled with an emerald green sarong of fine silk and gold thread, which hugged her hips before swooping in a V-shape below the rounded temple of her belly to a fastening that rested on her pelvic bone. It then swept outwards from the shadowy places beneath to expose her thighs. Her only flaw, if flaw it was, was that her eyebrows met, curiously, like Suryan's, above her nose.

  She welcomed me with formal warmth, kissed my hands, made me sit on a low couch. Then, from an alcove she brought a bowl of scented water to wash my feet, and gave me a soothing infusion of fragrant herbs and rice wine to drink. As she knelt in front of me and I saw the way the coils of her hair made spirals in the nape of her neck and down her back, and as her soft breasts briefly caressed my thighs, old longings stirred my ancient loins.

  The ablutions completed, she then brought me a simple meal of rice, aromatic with turmeric and other spices, toasted pine-nuts and mushrooms, followed by fruits carefully chosen to make harmony of colour and taste, sharp and sweet, musky and honeyed.

  As we began to eat, she raised her eyes to mine and said, in a voice that was deep for a woman but as gentle as fur, 'Ali ben Quatar Mayeen, you have lived many years, travelled to the ends of the world, and seen many strange and wonderful ihings; Suryan and I, however, are on the very threshold of adult life, our heads Stooping below the lintel, our feet upon the step, childhood behind us and the great world ahead. It would be a favour it you told me a little of what you have leant, and perhaps, too, what has brought you so far from the inland sea, across the ocean, to Vijayanagara."

  I spoke for an hour or so as the night wore on, recounting some of what I have told you, my dear Mah-Lo, over the last week or so. Prompted by her questions, I overcame my reluctance to assume the teacher's role, and intermittently added something of what I have learnt concerning the nature of our brief existence, building on what I had absorbed at my father's knee and later in the mountains of central Asia, of the secret mysteries of the Shiite sect in which are framed my more formal beliefs.

  These, as I have already suggested, coincided remarkably with what Suryan had made of the deeper aspects of the Kauli religion, not in formal dogma or in outward representation but at a deeper level of understanding. Uma attempted to put this in words.

  'We follow practices known as the panchatnakaras, which help us to achieve the state we call Kula. Kula occurs when mind and sensation are united, the sense organs lose their differences, and the object perceived becomes one with the senses it stimulates. That is the only the ecstasy, the only goal worth striving tor, and thereby and therein is revealed the goddess or god within."

  And what,' I asked, 'are the means by which this state is reached?'

  'They are many,' she replied, stretching out on the cushions that she had scattered to fill a corner of the room, 'and each reveals the goddess not only in different aspects hut at different levels of intensity. For instance, the ceremonial dancing and music you witnessed tonight can bring more than a glimmer, as indeed can the contemplation, which we call rasa, of the carved and painted images with which our city is filled and which contribute to making we Vijayanagarans the happiest of people. The Brahmins believe that the highest ecstasy comes from rasa, from contemplation of the things other people do or have made. But this is perverse and a mere expression of their belief that those who work with their hands and bodies live at a lower level than those who live through their minds. A yet greater revelation comes to those who sing and dance and play their instruments in mystical accord than to those who merely listen and watch, and to the craftsmen who paint and carve and model. At a lesser level are the joys of eating and drinking as we have done tonight… Yet,' she added, with a laugh that chimed like temple bells, 'even here the joy I experienced in making the meal surpassed yours when you ate it.'

  'And how,' I asked, 'is the greatest ecstasy achieved, the most perfect fulfilment, the ultimate state of unity with the god within?'

  For a moment it seemed she withdrew from me into an inner world, then, returned, laughing again. 'Oh, that is a matter of prolonged dispute between the wise men, the sadhus. And what it comes down to is that probably no single activity can produce at one moment the perfect resolution of the separateness that keeps each of us from our god. But that some exercises are more likely to bring one nearer than others is self-evident. Some say the divine moment can come in dance and contemplation of dance; others insist that the taking of certain elixirs is an essential – certainly bhang, which you call hashish, and its derivatives are a help. But there are also distillations of certain plants, fruits and flowers whose habitat and preparation only the hill-people know, which may do even more. Others claim they have found the most perfect enlightenment from breathing in the fumes produced by burning the dried gum of the poppy. And, of course, sexual congress performed with proper skill is a favourite route for many.'

  I shifted on my cushions, and, following the spicy food, racked with a delicious weariness as I was, released a small fart I would have preferred to keep to myself. Uma smiled… like a mother.

  'Better out than in,' she said.

  An indulgent mother.

  'I have been,' I said, partly to cover the mild confusion I felt, 'to places in the Western Lands where enlightenment has been sought not through pleasure but through abstinence and self-mortification. I have seen crowds many thousands in number in which all have beaten each other with many-thonged whips for hours on end until the streets ran with blood. And I have seen others who have taken themselves to caves in the mountains or tiny temples, and there lived on nothing but crusts and water until, with their bodies almost wasted away, their cheeks heightened in colour, their eyes huge and staring, with spittle on their mouths, they have claimed to see good spirits and evil ones and even God himself. I have to say that most of these I speak of are Christian, and as you no doubt have heard, they are the most mad of all. There is
positively no rhyme or reason in most of what they get up to.'

  Uma nodded. 'There arc so-called mystics in India too, who claim enlightenment by similar means: fakirs, for instance, who run across burning coals, sleep on beds of nails, or contort their limbs into absurd and unnatural postures before entering a trance-like state wherein all bodily functions appear to cease for many hours or even days. Perhaps such people do experience the ecstasy we seek, but it seems absurd to resort to such painful means when the same results can be achieved in moments of pure pleasure…'

  I agreed, for it was indeed the case that the greatest deprivation I had suffered, in spending a day and a night on top of a pile of headless bodies in a well, had not led to spiritual union, ecstatic or otherwise, with the godhead.

  And now, while these last few words of Uma were still echoing in my head, I realised that something was happening to me, to my mind and body, which I could not withstand or control. The walls of the room seemed to blow in and out like curtains, I heard a roaring like a wild wind in my ears, and I felt my fingers, my feet, then my lips go numb. A sweat broke out on my brow. Then, as darkness tilled the room and the walls with their hangings receded into it, I became aware of a pinprick of white light that slowly increased in size, became red and spun, like a spiral-shaped comet, trailing fragments of light in a tail behind it. It spun faster and faster, and I felt myself falling into it, or perhaps I was sucked into it, until I became part of it, became the ball of fire itself and I heard a voice, perhaps my own, saying, over and over again, 'I am all there is,' accompanied by a feeling of deepest anxiety and deepest exhilaration combined. Then, nothing, for what seemed a long time, just darkness.

  Then out of the darkness came a dark figure, a black-skinned woman with four arms, blood-red palms and blood-red eyes. Below a protruding tongue, which also dripped blood, she wore a necklace of skulls. Her crown bore lotus flowers, but they were purple and red. Her robe was as black as night and strewn with stars, and the moon rose behind her head. She was girdled with serpents. Her voice, however, was soft and seductive and she said, or did she sing? these words: 'Come joyfully into my arms and you will know all there is any need to know.'