Did Cunmar place Leto on his knees and pretend to ride with her? Kim saw them in his mind’s eye: Cunmar paddling in the young girl’s body, and he shivered.
‘I took two of the lances with the hoisted corpses and stowed them in the scabbards hanging from my saddle; Karim my equerry, riding close behind, held the third. We left Cadenas by the postern gate in darkness and rode up to the slope above the enemy so that the sun would rise behind us. I had observed that from the ridge our shadows would fall towards the camp so we held our position there as the sun broke over the rim of the desert behind us and the enemy began to stir.
‘The Enochite ranks in the camp below first saw the dead men hovering aloft, then felt – and saw – their shadows fall across their lines.
‘The outline of the effigies was ghostly; they did not block the swelling sunlight like the stuff of living beings, but allowed it to pass through, glowing – the Enochites began scurrying and looking up and trying to ascertain if they could believe the evidence of their eyes.
‘This was the ghastly plight of the men whom they in their barbarousness had denied burial rites,’ Cunmar continued solemnly. ‘But to them, they appeared to be living ghosts, since the real bodies (as they thought) were still rotting on the battlements in grisly display.’
That day of destiny saw the Enochites run from the advancing squad; they scattered in panic to find armour, weapons, horses. Cunmar had surprised proud Lord Laurent, and his troops tumbled over one another in disarray, until, as happens always in the desert morning, the breeze lifted sharply at daybreak. With his two trophies raised up high, Cunmar, flanked by Karim with the third carcass, and the company packed behind him, began streaming down the slope towards the enemy.
‘The flayed victims’ bodies filled, as I knew they must,’ he turned Leto to face him and look into his eyes as he continued, ‘and the dawn gleamed on their waxy hides, they seemed to swell bigger as they floated. Like phantom riders from the pit of hell, like souls of the dead conjured by devils, they rode with us in the raid on the Enochite camp.’
On that occasion, Cunmar seized enough provender and victuals to refresh the garrison. But above all, his exploit unstrung the besiegers. It grew in the telling, too. I have given the unembellished version, as I learned it from within Cadenas in those days; but the Enochites did not know how the ghosts came to walk and ride into their midst that morning, and their speculations fed their fears. So they failed to press their continuing advantage that spring. Cadenas remained in the power of the Ophiri, but only for another thirteen years.
[Skipwith Add. Mss.: G. Fr. 69]
‘Hereward Meeks notes here,’ Hortense had written, ‘a definite change of tone in the manuscript’: ‘The passages which follow offer an excellent example of the classical rhetorical device, preterition, or writing of what you pretend to be beneath consideration. We should give Saint Jerome the benefit of the doubt (perhaps) when he lingers on the bevy of girls and other delights and fantasies that tormented his solitude in the desert, but the writer here, self-identified as a monk and hagiographer, must be amusing himself in full awareness of his double game; unless, and this is not to be set aside lightly, this section was interpolated by another, mischievous author.’
. . .‘What is a man?’ asked Leto of her nurse. She was keeping company with the male for the first time since she had left the Pearl Quarter at the age of five.
‘Men’ll come in two forms, by and large,’ the nurse would say, with a cluck and a chuckle. ‘At least where you’re concerned. Of course there are many other kinds, but you’re unlikely to meet with them, unless you’re unlucky. There’s the quick sort and the slow. The quick sort treat women like field cooks making an omelette and should be avoided: they want you hot in the pan, instantly, and they break you up, throw you in, and finish.
‘This quick sort are dry and twiggy like old firewood. But the slow are firm and slippery like fresh trout.
‘You can tell quick types from slow types: I’ll give you some rules of thumb which will come in handy when Cunmar lines up some candidates, as he’s bound to do soon, you being the age you are, you’re too dangerous to have around with only me to watch out for you. And when your father comes back (any day now), he’s not going to want to find you a whore or an old maid, which are about the range of choice we have, my dear little lady.’
She was painting blue on the inside edges of Leto’s lids.
‘First: quick types avoid looking a woman in the eye. They’re scared of a devil who, they’ve been told, lives curled up in the veins of a woman and can slither out and milk a man silently, invisibly, emptying him out until he becomes that woman’s slave. She’ll then eat all his money, his lands, his children, oh yes, she’s altogether insatiable, is this devil, who comes with webbed claws and forked tail and bat’s wings and a pretty face with a little dewy mouth hiding her sharp teeth. All disguise, all illusion, all mischief. This devil has many names, and I’ve heard men from north, south, east, west bring her up – it doesn’t matter if they’re Enochites or Tirzahners, or Ophiri, or Lazuli, whatever.
‘She’s very dangerous to you, not to them. For these men go quickly on to the attack, claiming the attack came first from you; they appeal to this devil to cover their worst savagery. I know, my husband is a quick one: but I strike back at him, I tell him that if he comes at me again like that the snake inside me will bite. This keeps him off, for a time.
‘I’m forgetting to tell you how to spot them before it’s too late – if you’re given any choice in the matter, as I hope you will be.
‘Another sign to watch out for: the male friend. If he mentions, in the course of his opening remarks, that friend so-and-so is like this, and then says this-and-that about him, that’s a giveaway he’ll be a quick one: he won’t be able to contain himself before rushing away to tell so-and-so what he did and how he did it. Puff puff, the Great I Am.
‘Another telltale sign: a short beard. In my view. I’ve heard some women say that a scratchy man close to one’s skin is as necessary as putting salt in soup; but I’m not convinced.
‘The slow ones have long, soft beards, which smell of gardenias, and they like to kiss, all over, and their silky hair curls silkily around their soft lips . . .
‘Let me tell you about the slow ones . . .’
So that bawd would lie down alongside Leto, matching her limbs to hers, and tickle her gently with her fingertips trailing over her body, in readiness.
[Skipwith Add. Mss.: G. Fr. 70]
. . . does blood call to blood? When Ser Matteo returned, seven long years after he made his promises, he opened his arms to enfold Leto and cried out in his language, ‘My daughter! My daughter!’ She shrank from him, and when that bold maidservant pushed her upright and forwards towards him, Leto ran to Cunmar and twisted herself under his elbow, where he cradled her, as she peeped out to look at the man who was calling himself her father. Cunmar was less of a stranger to her than her own flesh and blood.
Ser Matteo was crying out, ‘Why, you have become a young woman, and so lovely we’ll be able to marry you well. Ah, what a jewel you are, who have lived and learned the ways of a princely court!’
He did not yet know that Leto had resided for the last few years in the orphanage at the Convent of the Swaddling Bands, learning the livelihood of maids and seamstresses and laundresses.
The boy with the twisted foot had returned, too; he was now a tall, bearded young man, and he still limped, but his boots were made so delicately that, unless you knew to look, you could not tell that the sole of one was two inches thicker than the other. He exchanged words with Cunmar; permission was given for him to have brought into the chamber a little organ, which he sat before and played, most solemnly, while two members of Ser Matteo’s crew plied the bellows at the instrument’s back to keep the music flowing as angels do on cloudbanks in paradise, as sometimes painted on ornamented parchments such as this.
Cunmar patted Leto’s hair, where she huddled against
him, and we wondered that she felt so intimate with him after an absence that had lasted half her life, and that he, who was fastidious about contact with underlings, should allow her presumption. But he was fingering the texture of her hair under the pearl fillet with which it was threaded, and looking across at her father, whispering to her – and in due course, she trotted across to Ser Matteo and curtsied, but he caught her up in his arms and squeezed her against his chest and spun her till she cried out in protest, but he only laughed and set her down and pinched her cheeks till the blood showed in them.
Cunmar then began to make a formal speech, perhaps to dampen Ser Matteo’s paternal effusions, and the merchant, his attention engaged, did not stop Leto from leaving him to return to stand by Doris, though she was all eyes for Cunmar, it was plain. Like a cade lamb, that does not know its progenitors, will become attached to the hand that feeds it, so Leto took refuge with Cunmar the Procurator who had shown her sudden kindness, who had plucked her, it seemed, from the severities of the convent and brought her to the comforts of the Citadel; and likewise, just as a ewe that has lost its own lamb can be persuaded to accept an orphan if this lamb comes draped in the pelt of its dead offspring, so Cunmar recognised Leto, in her Cadenate finery, as something of his own.
He felt the girl cling to him: she had not learned to act her age. Where the nuns had failed, the court would provide. In the presence of her father, he would provide her with a husband, give a handsome, but not inappropriately ostentatious, feast for her wedding. It would perhaps help stabilise the present ambiguities in the truce to make a display of Ophiri generosity, goodwill and enlightenment. He would call in a singer; a couple of acrobats to tumble and cheer up the Keep; even some comedians; the court was dull, and its future – and his own – always uncertain.
His thoughts turned then to the son of his wife Porphyria, Chrysaor, whom he had raised as his own, and who, at twenty-two, was still a bachelor, and pursuing his learning, Lazuli fashion; Cunmar resolved then that he would do very well for the groom.
But the passion that the evil one had inspired in him did not permit him to relinquish her; in the shameless way of that Ophiri faith, he resolved to keep her for himself. And her father, equally fallen in the sight of God, did not refuse this pact; rather he exulted in it. There were only two sheets left; Kim glanced up at the Archives room clock. If Hortense Fernly came, as she’d said she might if she could fit it in, he would have finished this bundle of papers, and be able to play the good pupil in her eyes.
[Skipwith Add. Mss.: G. Fr. 71]
. . . [Chrysaor] sprang forward and fell on his knees before Cunmar, his ruler and his father, where he stood under the bridal canopy holding Leto’s right hand in his. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and I thought blood might spurt from them as it does from a species of frog when it feels itself confronting danger, for Chrysaor’s interruption was bold, and placed his life at risk. Indeed Cunmar’s right hand flew to the dagger he wore in his belt, and Leto, losing the mainstay of her bridegroom’s hand in hers . . .
Kim stopped, read the sentence again, looked at the beginning of the paragraph, and understood, that yes, Cunmar was the groom, and this was Leto’s wedding. He glanced up at the clock. Two p.m. only. He kept seeing Hetty come through the door; but the hoped for figure would turn out to be someone else.
He bent his head again to the page.
. . . stumbled back into the arms of Doris who caught her and propped her; she seemed an effigy, a statue arrayed in stiff finery for a feastday with the expression of anguish twisting her brows, the Madonna in a swoon at the moment of Christ’s expiry. For Cunmar struck Chrysaor with the flat of the blade across his face; the prince reeled back, holding the wound, he did not cry out or falter but threw himself forward and clasped the knees of the man who had taken his father’s place ever since his own father died.
Chrysaor spoke for many of us when he began:
‘This wedding is a shameful thing in the sight of God and man, and I beg you, my father, whom I love and respect, according to my mother’s wish, not to do this thing and bring dishonour on us all.’
Ser Matteo sprang forward as if to strike him.
Cunmar did not bend to prise the youth’s hold from his knees, but raised his arms and lifted his head as if the contact befouled him, like a swimmer who finds the translucent envenomed limbs of a jellyfish have wrapped themselves in a trail of fire around him and knows that he must not use his hands to unwind them and spread the fiery poison. But nobody ran forward to stop Chrysaor’s pleas, for we were glad that the princely youth had thrown himself between Cunmar and his shameful act.
He rose to his feet again, and, facing the Procurator, went on, ‘The girl Leto isn’t worthy of your love – she’s a schismatic, who came to us as merchandise – not much better than a slave, who speaks no language as a mother tongue, who belongs nowhere.’
Ser Matteo surged forward again, his blood heating; Karim and one other seized him by his arms and held him back, struggling as Chrysaor raced on, ignoring him. ‘Imagine, you are taking to your side a used bargaining counter, a soiled chit of exchange that has been passed from one hand to another. We should keep our affairs in their place and you, you above all, who can draw up battle plans, trick the enemy with your subterfuges, set in train complex trade agreements that have enriched us here and have contributed to the wealth of Ophir, you above all know that everything has its place and her place is not by your side in Cadenas, as the spouse of the ruler in this citadel.
‘This woman Leto has no history. Who is she? The man who calls himself her father is a merchant, a heretic and a usurer, a man of no rank, who appeared, a sail on the horizon, abandoned her here among strangers so lightly she was clearly of little account to him – to her own family, and he from a country where women wield too much power in the household, administer their own estates and even defend their fortresses at the head of their rabble soldiers.
‘No, he would not have left her here as a warranty of his word, and then gone ahead and broken it, not returning in the interval he promised, if she was of any consequence. Besides, the wonder he promised you is fool’s gold, and you know it. Nothing will come of that nest of spiders you have stabled at the Keep. Nothing. She does not belong at your side, at my side, not anywhere.’
Ser Matteo twisted about, crying out imprecations against Chrysaor, but Cunmar looked at him keenly and stroked the air to calm him as he began to reply to his stepson’s challenge. His furious look swept the assembly. ‘None of this matters,’ he declared. ‘I myself am the living proof that in Ophir destiny shapes us, after we have seized it in our hands and bent it to our will. The future moves according to the will of God, but when I find a young horse whose spirit is wild, I don’t say, it’s the will of God that this horse remain unbroken. Who made the bridle, the spur, the saddle, the reins? Who rides that wild colt, that wild mare? The Lord God made the wonders of nature for us to explore and understand: the spider is a model for us, not a monster whom we should shun. We should learn from the ways nature changes and adapts and survive. This also is the will of God – to alter the course of things: the future is a wild creature, and it’s our human gift that we can tame it and shape it to our ends. I will take this girl to be my bride and we will enrich Cadenas together, you shall see.’
‘No!’ cried Chrysaor, clasping Cunmar’s knees once again: ‘Some things are immutable. Think of her way of being, of what she is, of what she has become in that place: these are women who grow the hair on their shameful parts and do not, out of respect for modesty, shave them clean, who live together without curb from brother or husband, who do not observe any of our dietary laws, but will eat anything that is put before them – swelling pig’s bladders with the offal to meet the cravings of their clammy, mere-wife appetites, whitening their hair and their skins with lemon juice in the sun to ensnare men to their rank beds.
‘You have a wife, my exalted mother Porphyria, bequeathed into your care by my noble f
ather after his death in pledge of the love and friendship he felt for you and which you reciprocated. My mother is your lady, in the eyes of God and in the eyes of man. And in her son’s eyes, who now clings to you and implores you not to do this terrible thing, which will shame us all. My mother has shared in your renown, and now you move, like a man whose eyes have been put out and whose ears have been stopped, to repudiate her as if she meant nothing to you and your past was an alien place where you had never travelled.’
Ser Matteo writhed himself free of Karim’s grasp and drew; Chrysaor sprang at him, and the trader fell to the ground, his blood seeping into the embroidered floor coverings. Leto curled more tightly into the body of her maid, her sobbing shook her body in spasms, like a small craft knocked by a tempest towards cruel reefs when the tiller has snapped and the mast is broken. Many of us felt pity for her, as I did.
Cunmar lifted his head to order Ser Matteo to be carried away and tended; then he took Chrysaor in his arms so that he could look into his face where the weal of his dagger blade across it blazed, a brand of his courage.
‘Old lion, young lion,’ he began. ‘When I was your age, I too thought my heart would break if I lost the love of a girl. But it isn’t so. The heart heals and the fire in the belly leaps up again for others, for many others. I’ve stolen a girl I promised you: unkind father, who should make way instead for the energies and ambition of the son who wants everything his father has and more. You shall have another young woman, one whom you prize more than it seems you prize Leto, one born in this place, who shares your high condition and knows your customs and speaks your language and worships in your churches too – since these matters seem to count for you. A young woman, even younger, who has not been bartered and made captive to the stratagems of power – I can think of one or two, right now! Though your words move me and I feel remorse for my earlier rage’ – at this he laid two fingers on the weal – ‘I shan’t relinquish Leto, I do not need to – I feel only pride in my union with her, for she has restored me to the vigour and the splendour of a self I thought had withered on the vine of my old age.’
The Leto Bundle Page 16
