The Secret of the Purple Lake

by Yaba Badoe

  When night fell, a group of gypsies waded to shore guided by the fluorescence of the sea and the light of the stars. They each carried a birdcage, for they knew that in the jungle – in the safety of quiet glades where fruit and flowers grew – lived many birds of paradise.

  The gypsies placed the cages on the forest floor, leaving a trail of sweetened nuts to every door. At a signal from their leader, they retreated to the shadows to wait for their prey. Before long, they heard a bird of paradise singing. And then a second bird and a third – their voices shining in the air with the brilliance of fireflies.

  As the first bird hopped closer, its song filled the glade with a thread of golden sound that made the leaves of trees tremble, while insects vibrated in chorus. A second bird, then a third, dropped to the forest floor and, between bursts of song, they nibbled the nuts and pecked their way into captivity. By dawn, every single one of the twenty-one cages was filled with a bird beating its wings against bars.

  Anxious not to prolong their captivity, the leader of the gypsies plucked a tail feather from each of them before allowing them to fly free again. The birds flew into the air, their wings lighting up the morning sky.

  ***

  The sea gypsies returned to the Gulf of Siam to find Ajuba tickling the walrus Prince with a palm leaf. Leo croaked happily between chuckles. Then, diving underwater, he circled Ajuba. As he did so, he made walrus sounds: a clicking and drumming from the back of his mouth, a strange, rhythmic music that walruses make when they find a mate. Though his body was still cumbersome, it didn’t seem to matter anymore; with Ajuba at his side, Leo felt beautiful again – alive and gifted with love.

  ‘Do you want these feathers?’ the captain of the sea gypsies called out to Ajuba.

  ‘Do you still want your voice back?’ Ajuba asked Leo.

  The walrus Prince nodded, and so Ajuba wove a necklace with the twenty-one feathers. She twisted the necklace around Leo’s neck, then wound it around his tusks so that, intertwined with his mother’s locket, it hung as a garland fluttering on Leo’s chest.

  ‘Try and sing something now,’ Ajuba suggested.

  Leo cleared his throat and opened his mouth, filling his lungs with a deep breath, the way he’d always done before singing at King Gustav’s castle. Leo cleared his throat again. He coughed. Then, after filling his lungs a second time, he opened his mouth and the silver-feathered necklace snapped.

  An unearthly sound filled the Gulf of Siam. It rose like a wave sweeping across the shore to herald the sun and moon laughing at each other across the sky. Yet it wasn’t a frightening noise, for the sea gypsies who heard it say it was as sweet as a rainbow dripping honey.

  To their amazement, they watched the walrus Prince become a man again: a man with the torso of a prince and the tail of an enormous kingfish. They say they saw the walrus Prince swim with their black goddess and a whale far out to sea. And they say (though how they know this I’m not sure) that in a cold faraway kingdom of pine trees and glaciers, a Queen called Astrid heard the walrus Prince’s song, and knew that her son was happy at last.

  4

  Romilly The Golden Eagle

  No one would have thought when Romilly of Westray married Cullen the Carouser, King of Orkney, that her life would be anything but happy. During the marriage ceremony, as the couple exchanged vows before the priests of Eynhallow, the old dowagers of Orkney wiped away tears at the sight of Romilly. The look of love on the new Queen’s face made her shine and when she declared ‘I do’ for all to hear, it seemed that everything about her – her dress with its long silken veil, the blush of pearls that adorned her, even the garland of flowers on her head – glowed in adoration of the King.

  The dowagers sighed, remembering their own wedding celebrations when they too had been young brides full of hope. ‘Aye, it looks easy enough,’ they muttered. ‘It’s easy enough to love and marry but to stay happy beside a wilful Orcadian is another matter altogether.’

  The first three years of Romilly’s life as Queen were happy ones. She decorated Trumland Castle on the island of Rousay, where she lived with the King, to her liking. The moth-eaten skins that hung on the walls were replaced with bright tapestries of fantastic creatures. Soon dragons, unicorns and sea horses danced on the walls of the Great Hall and feathers that she gathered on her wanderings around the island decorated her bedroom mirror.

  She filled the damp, dreary castle with the sound of singing canaries, the bloom of everlasting flowers. And in every room she made a potpourri of lavender and jasmine, insisting that, no matter what the weather was outside, every hearth in the castle should be kept alight to make her home as warm as possible.

  The King doted on his Queen. He said her smile was like the first breath of spring after a long Orcadian winter, her laugh as bright as fireflies at night. He loved her so much that one morning he presented her with a golden tray of peaches and figs, delicacies rarely seen in Orkney.

  ‘Here’s a peach for every son you’re going to give me,’ the King said, patting Romilly’s fair hair.

  ‘But that’s eight! Don’t you want any daughters, Cullen?’

  ‘Perhaps one to keep you company, dear,’ the King replied. ‘Orkney needs sons to keep away troublemakers, sons to maintain the traditions of Trumland Castle. You do understand don’t you, Romilly?’

  Laughing as she savoured every bite of the peach, the Queen wiped away a trickle of juice dribbling down her chin.

  ‘What children men are,’ she said later to Betsy, her old nursemaid. ‘What if I give birth to daughters? Eight sons indeed!’

  Betsy, braiding her mistress’s hair, spoke to the Queen’s reflection. The image, pale and ghostly in the glass, was framed by feathers Romilly had collected on her walks. Feathers of robins and blackbirds, along with feathers of birds that soared over the hills of Orkney – buzzards, kites and clear-eyed eagles.

  ‘They’re children who can’t be spanked, that’s what men are! And if you spoil them like you do the King, Ma’am, they insist on having their way all the time. And then, when they don’t get what they want …’

  ‘That’s quite enough, thank you,’ said Romilly, snatching her long, thick plait from Betsy to tie herself.

  The Queen didn’t like being continually reminded by Betsy of the many ways she indulged her boisterous husband. She allowed him to practice archery in the Great Hall, and to run up and down the castle corridors at night throwing lighted torches to his drinking companions. She allowed Cullen the Carouser and his men to do this even though sometimes, in their revelry, they set her tapestries alight.

  ‘My husband isn’t perfect,’ the Queen sighed after one such incident. She had come downstairs that morning to find her favourite tapestry, of a white unicorn garlanded with roses, badly singed. Romilly chose to ignore it. Biting her tongue, she turned away to gaze at the calm waters of Rousay. ‘I know he isn’t perfect. But then who in this world is without fault? Cullen is wilful, at times he’s reckless and unpredictable, but I love him. And as long as he loves me in return, I can’t help giving in to him, no matter what Betsy says.’

  Before long the Queen was expecting a baby. The King, eager to become a father, began preparing his friends for the talents of his future son.

  ‘He’ll be the best huntsman in Orkney,’ he told Lord Blackhamar as he downed a tot of whisky. ‘He’ll chase deer and wild boar and women as well. And catch ‘em, I’ll wager.’

  The two men nudged each other and chortled. Betsy, knitting woollens for the baby in a corner of the Great Hall, sniffed indignantly.

  ‘And he’ll run faster than a hare,’ the King boasted to Red Norman, his bearded messenger.

  Norman agreed, refilling their glasses.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s not like Leo, the King of Norseland’s son,’ said Blackhamar grinning. ‘Now that’s a poor son for a Viking to have. Cries at a glimspe of the sea, and hates salt water with a vengeance, he does. No good to man or beast.’

  ‘The child may be
a girl,’ said a quiet voice. Romilly, seated by the fire, was embroidering peacock feathers on a silk shawl for her baby. ‘The child may be strong and agile but a girl all the same.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ bellowed Cullen the Carouser. Then, remembering his love for his Queen, he walked to her side and patted her tenderly on the head.

  When the baby was born, it was a girl with sparkling eyes and ruby lips. The King was too awed to be angry. He gazed down at his daughter, prodding her to make sure she was alive. The baby wriggled in her peacock-feather shawl and opened herself up to her father.

  ‘She’ll get her way this one, like I do. Look at her eyes, Romilly,’ said the King. ‘She has the eyes of a Jezebel, a beautiful Jezebel. Yes, that’s what I’ll call her.’

  The Queen laughed, relieved that despite what he had said previously the King liked the child.

  ‘She’s not as good as a boy mind you,’ her husband added, reading her thoughts. ‘But I can see the girl has character. Our next bairn had better be a boy though. It will be a boy, won’t it Romilly?’

  Romilly’s second child was another daughter, born with an auburn curl twisting down her forehead, a smile playing on her lips. Betsy wrapped her up carefully in a kingfisher wrap the Queen had embroidered, and showed the baby to the King.

  ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ Betsy cooed.

  ‘She’ll lead men astray, that one,’ he replied, looking suspiciously at his daughter. ‘She’s a Delilah, if ever I saw one. Romilly, when are you going to give me a son?’ he demanded. ‘More than anything in the world, I want a son!’

  Romilly looked helplessly at her husband. ‘I’d like a son too,’ she sighed. ‘But I can’t defy nature’s will. Why aren’t you satisfied with what we’ve got, Cullen? We’ve got two beautiful, healthy daughters.’

  ‘I need a son!’ the King shouted. ‘A son for Orkney!’

  The King’s obsession with an heir cast a shadow over Romilly’s life at Trumland Castle. Her husband grew unruly, neglecting his family to spend time with his friends, chieftains of the Orkney clans. Lord Blackhamar and Erik the Skull-splitter were frequent visitors at the castle, as were Edgar, Ivan and Cuthbert, the three brothers from Cogar. They sang and drank till late into the night, making such a noise that travellers passing outside hurried along, convinced that the castle was possessed by demons.

  ‘This will never do,’ said Betsy to her mistress’s reflection, as she transformed the Queen’s hair into a mass of curls. ‘No! Those men weren’t content to stay in the Great Hall last night. Not those merrymakers! They had to sing and dance along the west corridor, waking the little Princesses. No Ma’am,’ she said shaking her head severely, ‘this will never do.’

  Romilly’s answer was to sit by a window and gaze out to sea. ‘My husband is unhappy,’ she decided. ‘I try to soothe him but I can’t because the sight of me with our daughters reminds him of his need for a son. I irritate him, yet he loves me still. I know he still loves me.’

  She picked up a white silk shawl she had started embroidering. On it she was stitching a pattern of raven’s feathers, dark swords clashing against each other. Romilly was expecting another child, you see, and she knew it was another girl.

  When the baby was born and the King saw her, he decided to call her Jael – for the baby’s penetrating eyes seemed to cut right through him. It was as if the child glimpsed that, with the arrival of yet another daughter, the King’s love for his Queen was dwindling. He seemed to swallow it with the whisky he drank to ease his longing for a son. And yet he found peace nowhere.

  Eyes that had once looked tenderly at Romilly became sullen and cloudy, indifferent to her beauty and cold to her warmth. Days went by without the King saying a word to his Queen. Then, one morning, remembering the passion of his youth and the vows he had made in church, Cullen the Carouser forgot his sorrow and gathered Romilly in his arms again.

  ‘I would do anything to please you, Cullen,’ the Queen assured him. ‘Anything at all …’

  The King hugged his wife tightly. But after loving her, he shunned her. To Romilly’s dismay that very evening he was distant and resorted to ridiculing her in front of their friends.

  ‘As for my Queen,’ he jeered, ‘the only bairns she’s able to push out are girls. I’ll have to take my pleasure elsewhere to have me a son.’

  Such poisonous words of contempt brought tears to Romilly’s eyes.

  ‘Stop looking at me like that, woman!’ cried Cullen. ‘Get away from me and take those brats with you!’

  To the embarrassment of everyone present – Blackhamar, Erik and the three brothers from Cogar – the Queen left the room sobbing. It seemed the only love the King was able to express was that which he showed his daughter Jael, who he insisted should be brought up as a boy.

  The next day, humiliated and unhappy, Romilly wandered over the cliffs of Rousay and listened to the haunting call of seagulls. She walked over scrubland and rocks, adding to her collection of birds’ feathers.

  ‘This belongs to a cormorant,’ she said, placing a moist, dark plume in the pocket of her cloak. ‘And this is from a hawk.’

  It was as if by scavenging over rough land, she was keeping alight her love for the King. And when she found another feather, she said: ‘He loves me still. I know Cullen still loves me.’

  That winter, the little Princesses and Betsy were the only people able to bring a smile to the Queen’s face. Jezebel and Delilah drew pictures for their mother, while Jael, a fat toddler, sat on Romilly’s lap stroking her golden hair.

  One evening when the sky was night-blue and the children were getting ready for bed, they asked Romilly for a story. She told them of a King who brought a shining tray of peaches and figs to his Queen. The fruit tasted so good, she said, that ever after, whenever the Queen was sad, she remembered that tray of fruit.

  ‘Did it make her feel better?’ Delilah asked, a puzzled expression on her face.

  The Queen nodded.

  ‘But how?’ Jezebel wanted to know.

  ‘It helped her feel better,’ Romilly replied, ‘because it reminded her of how things used to be. And when she remembered, she knew that she would endure anything, anything at all, if the King could return to loving her once more.’

  ‘Why did he stop loving her, Mama?’ Jezebel continued.

  Romilly sighed. ‘Hush, my child,’ she said. ‘It’s time you went to sleep. You too, Delilah.’

  Just before the winter solstice, the Queen realised that she was expecting another baby and began embroidering yet another silk shawl. This one was inky-blue, the colour of a glittering sea at twilight. And on its border she stitched a crown of dove’s feathers.

  ‘This child will bring peace to my marriage,’ she told herself. ‘And if it is nature’s will, the King will have a son at last.’

  Outside, swollen by wind and rain, the Rousay sea tossed angrily against granite rocks. The winter storms were beginning.

  One night, while the King was carousing with his friends in the Great Hall, the Queen went into labour. She didn’t utter a word. She lay staring through a castle window, listening to the sea smashing against the rocks below.

  Wind and rain splattered the window, sending chilly gusts of air into the chamber. The feathers around the Queen’s mirror fluttered. At last, a baby was born. Another girl! Romilly looked sadly into the baby’s face as she cradled it in her arms.

  ‘You’re my Jewel,’ she murmured, kissing the child’s soft crown. ‘My precious Jewel.’

  On hearing that he had another daughter, Cullen tugged his beard in despair. He gnashed his teeth, pulling at his clothes. They fell in shreds at his feet. Then, racing upstairs, he ran wildly through the castle, pounding on every door till he came to the Queen’s chamber. There, unable to contain his fury, he broke down the door, and seeing Romilly’s pale reflection in the feathered mirror, he raised his sword and struck.

  The glass shattered into pieces and, as it did so, the beautiful feathers Romilly had gathered du
ring her years on Rousay scattered on the floor.

  ‘Be gone!’ Cullen cried. ‘I never want to see you again, Romilly! From now on you and your brats will live in the north-west tower of Trumland Castle.’ With these words the King banished his wife from his life.

  A time of great sorrow came to the Queen and the people of Orkney. The King forgot them to drink with his chieftains in the Great Hall. Refusing to govern, he allowed the island to fall into disrepair. He ignored his wife and forgot his daughters. All of them that is except for little Jael, the girl-son he adored.

  The north-west tower held painful memories for Romilly. It was where she had lived with the King when they were newly-weds. The rooms were sumptuously decorated in red and gold, and the dark-blue ceilings shimmered with painted stars. As Jezebel and Delilah rolled on the floor over cushions where their parents had once lain, Betsy noticed the anguish on her mistress’s face. She shooed the children away, telling them their mother needed as much peace and rest as possible.

  But Romilly could not rest. She wandered through the red rooms of the north-west tower, remembering the King’s gift of peaches and figs. It seemed such a long time ago. Even so, it was hard to believe that she was now little more than a prisoner in her husband’s castle!

  ‘He no longer loves me,’ she mumbled as she paced up and down, ripping out her gorgeous hair. ‘Cullen no longer loves me. Dear God, how am I to live if he no longer cares for me?’

  Romilly trailed through the rooms without seeing her children. And if Betsy hadn’t placed the new baby at her breast, the Queen would certainly have let it starve. The only thing she showed any interest in was what remained of her collection of feathers. One day, as she was playing with them absent-mindedly, Romilly stuck three feathers into her dishevelled hair.

  ‘Now this won’t do Ma’am,’ said Betsy, tidying up her mistress. ‘We can’t have you turning yourself into a scarecrow, can we now? Why don’t you sit by the window and do a bit of embroidery?’