by David Bell
“Your mother, Lady Akusha: there is a matter of grave importance I must discuss with her. You will inform her. She will know where we shall meet. There is a girl waiting outside by the tamarisks. Say to her that I am occupied today and she should come again when I summon her. Come now,” she said to the manservant “you have work to do. I do not like to be kept waiting.”
“Nor does the Governor,” said Merida to Sharesh after the other two had left. “You’d better be off with that tablet quick as you can. Don’t forget to tell the girl out there.”
I want you to be on that ship when she sails. Had Merida really said that?
In the tamarisk grove there was a bench made from polished white limestone with armrests carved in the shape of dolphins. In the summer it was a cool shaded place with a view of the distant Mountain. Two peacocks stood motionless as if inviting all who passed by to admire them. Kallia was sitting there with her back to him. He walked up quietly and as he grew nearer he began to whistle what he hoped was something like the music they had played at the dancing, on that hot night which now seemed so long ago. Sharesh stood behind her, looking down at the glossy black waves of her hair and the smooth skin of her arms. Honey from the acacia blossom was almost the same colour She tilted her head back and looked up at him.
“You would never charm the birds out of the trees with that, but you might be heard in a storm at sea.” She laughed and at that moment he never wanted to hear any other kind of music ever again. She moved to one side of the bench, making room for him. She was wearing a neat blue cotton bodice embroidered with long cross stiches of red thread over a simple straight ankle-length yellow dress. On her feet were sandals of dark red leather.
“Have you ever climbed it?” he said. “The Mountain, I mean.”
“I will one day, I hope: perhaps when we go to gather the crocus. The priestesses won’t let us go to the top, but I’ll find a way.”
Sharesh remembered: this was the girl who had won the hill race.
“Kallia,” he had said her name, to her face. “Kallia” he wanted to tell her of the swimming place and ask if she would go, but he hadn’t the courage to say the words. She said nothing, waiting.
“Kallia, the Lady Tuwea says she is occupied today so you are to come again when she summons you.”
“When she summons me’. That is the trouble, always being summoned.”
He wondered what she could mean. “Kallia, you can go now. I can come with you, if you like. I have to take a message tablet to the Governor’s Residence.”
“I don’t want to move from here yet. It is so peaceful and beautiful today. Have you looked down into the Lagoon from the terrace? The water is so clear and blue you can see the fish. I love the Lagoon, don’t you? It’s so, so safe and warm, away from the sea and its storms, and so lazy and peaceful and I want it to be like that for ever.”
“I know a place in the Lagoon where the water is warm enough for you to swim, even in winter. Will you go? I mean, with Mara and Teptria, of course. And Kavrar, of course.”
“When?”
“On the next sunny day and that will be the day before midwinter, when the sun stands still.”
“How do you know?
He was guessing and hoping but he was not going to tell her that. “Oh, you get to know these things when you spend time aboard ship.”
“So you say,” she laughed. “Everybody knows that the sea grows calm in the days before and after midwinter day and that’s why the kingfishers can build their nests on the water. You don’t have to spend time aboard a ship to know that!
“You’re laughing at me.”
She laughs like the tinkling of tiny silver bells.
“You’ll see.”
She looked at him very calmly. “I can laugh when you are here, Sharesh.” She had said his name, at last! “So I will go swimming, and bring Mara and Teptria, of course, and Kavrar, of course. And you must make sure that the sun shines and the water is warm, so there.” They both laughed, so loud that the peacocks shrieked in answer.
In the summerhouse among the olive trees, Lady Tuwea straightened up suddenly at the sound. The scent of perfumed oils was almost overpowering. The manservant stopped what he was doing and waited for her to speak. “That’s nothing that needs our attention,” she said at last. “Continue, and be a little more vigorous. I won’t break.”
“We can start walking,” said Kallia. “Kavrar is coming for me with the donkey cart but we can meet him on the way.”
The path snaked this way and that down the steep cliffs towards the Lagoon. It must have first been made by wild goats. They sometimes made their way towards the water’s edge to nibble at the red and green seaweed when they had the urge for salt.
There was much slithering and squealing and one basket went bouncing down the rocks to end up crumpled on the shore far below. Eventually they all reached the thin strip of sand and stopped to rest and look around. The red, black-and-white-striped cliffs towered above them. The water of the Lagoon was a dark blue on this sunny winter day and the air was clear enough to make out the white specks of cottages on the distant shores. Sharesh pointed out Palaka and the stone quarry and, farther off, Lemaka, where the famous salt came from. The smell of fish smoking over driftwood fires at Balloso was in the air. They heard someone calling, the voice echoing from the rocky walls, and saw the boy from Balloso waving to them from where the sandy beach ended and the cliffs fell straight and sheer into the sea.
Plunging into the water, scrambling out, feeling the chill of air on skin and jumping back in again to find the water curiously warmer the second time, made them all yell and splutter with exhilaration. Calming down after the first wild rush, they began to watch the trains of bubbles rising from the bed of the pool, small at first, then joining together and getting bigger as they rose.
“It is like that place on Korus,” said Sharesh, “except there the water’s dirty and it smells; here it’s clear and fresh.”
“How do you know?” said Mara. “Nobody is allowed on Korus. The High Priestess forbids it.”
“She forbids lots of things but people still do them,” said Sharesh, then almost bit his tongue at saying such a disrespectful thing. He made the gesture of asking for forgiveness. “Anyway,” he added hastily, “people are allowed to go there sometimes, to make sacrifice. The people from Lemaka do it.”
“The bubbles bring up bad breath from devils that live under Korus,” said the Balloso boy. “My father knows somebody who heard the Governor say so. You can smell it in our village sometimes when the wind blows over from Korus.”
“I always thought it came from eating too much smoked fish,” laughed one of the other boys, dodging the scoop of water hurled at him.
“If the bubbles on Korus bring up stinking devils’ breath then these bubbles must come from a goddess breathing under the sea, because they are sweet,” said Kallia. Everyone looked at her. “So she must have come here to drive the devils away.”
“I’m going to find out,” declared Teptria. She took a deep breath and disappeared under the water. Moments later, she came struggling to the surface, yelping in pain.
“Lady Mother!” she shrieked. “The water’s burning down there!” She thrust her fingers into her mouth. When she took them out again the tips had little blisters. She told them she had seen a crack in the rocks at the bottom with bubbles streaming from it. She had tried to touch the goddess’s breath as she would touch the little effigy she had in the house, and the goddess had burned her. She looked frightened as well as hurt. Was it a warning that this was the goddess’s pool and they should not be there?
“She let us swim in it,” said Kallia, reasonably, “but we are being told not to get too close.” Swimming had made them hungry so they dried themselves quickly, put on their smocks and sat behind some rocks out reach of the cool breeze. Kavrar passed round the baskets which held olives, goat cheese and barley cakes. The boy fom Balloso offered them a leather bottle which he said had
juice in it made from berries that grew on ledges on the cliffs. It was sourer than their own favourite pomegranate juice, but very refreshing. After they had eaten, drowsiness left some dozing in the sun while others trudged along the shore looking for seashells and coloured stones.
“I want to climb up and look at that cave you were talking about,” said Kallia. “We can get a better view of Korus from there.”
With a tingling of excitement which he guiltily tried to suppress, but could not, Sharesh followed her over the rocks towards the cliff. The black rock wall showed the way up to the cave clearly enough but it was very steep and difficult because of loose boulders and one layer of red rock full of shiny black streaks forming a vertical face that had to be climbed using fingertips and toes. They reached the entrance to the cave and flopped down on a ledge covered in soft green moss to get their breath back. They found they were almost halfway up the wall of the Lagoon. They could make out the tiny figures of their friends on the beach below and waved, but no one waved back. Across the waters of the Lagoon they could see the black paws of Korus reaching out into the sea and rising above them the red and sandy coloured hills that formed its crown. Feeling rested they got up and, shielding their eyes against the sun, looked all the way across the Lagoon and its encircling walls to the blue expanse of open sea beyond. Far away they could see smudges on the horizon that were other islands they had heard about from sailors. Sharesh vowed to himself that he would sail to them one day.
“I don’t like it,” said Kallia. “It looks as if it is reaching out to take hold of us and pull us into its lair.”
Sharesh felt the same uneasiness but he put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’ve been there and look, I’m still here.”
She turned and smiled and then seemed to stumble. He felt as if something had shaken him softly but firmly. Some pebbles came clattering down from the ledges above them. He grabbed her hand and pulled.
“Into the cave!” he shouted. “We’ll be killed out here.”
They stood just inside the cave entrance and watched as more small stones and dirt fell outside. It lasted no more than a few heartbeats.
“It must have been the wind,” he said, to reassure her. “A sudden gust blowing loose stones off the slopes, or maybe a goat up above. They get into some awkward places” He had not felt any wind nor seen any goats.
“Or the goddess warning us again?”
“First she burns Teptria and then she throws stones at us! Do you believe that?”
She was still holding his hand after the rush into the cave. She looked at him with eyes that glistened with tears and said, “Sharesh, I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know if I believe.” Before he could say a word, the story poured from her lips.
She had been one of the Chosen Children, bringing pride to her family. Oh yes, in times long ago they would have dreaded the choice because of the debt to be paid and the sacrifice to be suffered, but all that was over and now it was such an honour to serve the Palace, to learn, be educated and perform and oh, how she had loved to learn the dance, to tread the ancient steps that told the ancient legends and reverenced the Lady Mother. She knew from the beginning that she was a favourite because she had the passion and the rhythm for the dance born in her. The Lady Tuwea had told her. So had the Lady Pasipha. Oh yes, the Lady Pasipha; you were born for this, she had said, Kallia, you have the limbs and grace and movement of a fawn, an innocent fawn. I can teach you the skill, the steps, the measures. I will show you how to turn your body into the dance itself, how to make your body serve the Lady Mother.
“Could you, Sharesh, resist such a promise? I can see from the look in your eyes you could not.”
Her whole life became one of service to the Lady Mother and the dance, its mysteries, its ancient meanings a spectacle to entrance a gathering of a summer night, but understood only by a few, the initiated. He had seen her in the dance, had he not, in the Great Courtyard and afterwards when he lolled, half asleep on the stone bench and later, in that Palace room when he had put on the bull mask. And did he then know the meaning of the dance, the full, ancient meaning of the mystery? Could any boy or man know that? One could, but when he knew, it would be too late. Her life was lived in a trance and in a trance a servant of the Lady Mother finds that she will abide by any expectation, any command, which is an act of service, one of the ancient mysteries. Except, except, as suddenly as the blinding flash that sears the sky and brings the rolling roar of anger from the clouds, comes the horror of knowing that the service cannot be offered, cannot be performed, and so leaving emptiness, everything in fragments, like a shattered vessel.
She fell silent. Her tears had dried. Dare he ask her what had brought this horror that he now knew was the reason why she had left the Palace and returned to Kallista? In a voice that seemed to echo from a great distance she told him. The moon was at its full and the rite of offering to the Lady Mother had been peformed. The remains of the sacrificial food had been eaten and more than the usual amount of wine had been served. It tasted particularly sweet and heavy. The air was full of the scent of myrtle and lavender. Lyres and pipes played soft music and at the Lady Pasipha’s sign the dance began. She remembered dancing as she had never danced before, twisting, weaving, turning in steps she began to feel some other being was making, arching her body backwards and forwards, her loosened tresses brushing the patterned dance floor, her arms and hands gesturing in love, devotion, coyness, resistance, acceptance, submission. She blended with the other being into the dance, she was the dance, she was the other being, a being far greater than herself that drew her on in the dance, and away where the light was dimmed. A voice whispered to her out of nowhere. It is time to be of service to the Lady Mother. Take your place on the altar. Her back felt the rich smooth softness of silk. Her head spun still from the dance and the wine. A cool breath of air flowed over her body. Her dance dress must have fallen from her and she was naked. Silence. She lay still, barely awake. Movement. Something was touching her body, brushing across her breasts, slipping down her hips and between her thighs, at first as light as a cat’s paw, then firmer, urgent. The Lady Mother is with you, in you, is you. Accept. A heavy weight on her, hot breath on her face, a snarling panting sound and rough, clumsy searching hands. Accept. Choking grunts, a long gasp and the weight slipped from her. Nothing more but blackness.
Sharesh was speechless, horrified, afraid. Afraid he had been told of a mystery he should not know, but more afraid of what she might yet say. She sat, staring straight ahead, breathing quickly, but silent. At last he tried to speak.
“Was it… did you… were you…?”
“Not that. It was a service to the Lady Mother expected of me, they said. In times long ago the Priestess offered herself on that one night to any man who came to the temple to claim the right, but now others are chosen, knowingly or not, to take her place.”
“But what could have made you…”
“The enchantment of the dance and the poppy syrup in the wine. I told you, it was sweeet and heavy. You need not look at me like that. It seemed the Lady Mother did not require service of me in her shrine: the words whispered to me were false, not hers because when the drug left me, I woke to find the old man, one of the Consort’s Counsellors, dead on the floor, his face purple and his eyes starting out. I found my shift beneath the altar and put it on. I left the silk sheet where it was. There was no blood on it. You don’t know what I am talking about, do you? The lamp was burning low but I found a door. As I was creeping out, someone else came into the shrine, someone I know well, and so do you.”
“Pasipha!”
“I knew then whose voice had been whispering to me when I was drugged, telling me to accept. It was my moment of horror, the moment when certainty deserted me and now I do not know what I should believe.”
“Kanesh says there is always one thing you can believe in.”
“Lord Kanesh? The lord who saved the bull leaper’s life? A
nd what is that one thing he says we can always believe in?
“Yourself.”
She looked at him in a different way as if deciding to take him more seriously.
“Listen, Sharesh. Be careful. You may have come back to Kallista but you have not been forgotten.”
“You have come back, too, but I think Lady Tuwea is trying to persuade you to return. She says she has an urgent matter to discuss with my mother and I think the matter must be you.”
“When you have had your moment of horror – and there are different kinds – you do not return, Sharesh. Ask you mother. It does not worry me that Lady Tuwea wants to talk to her about me.”
He wondered what she could mean about his mother and hardly dared think what he was beginning to think, when he heard faint shouts coming from below.
“The stones have stopped coming down,” said Kallia, smiling. “The goddess is no longer cross with us. We should go. They’ll be wondering what we’ve been up to.” She gave him a mischievous grin. He paid her back with a sudden, not too well placed kiss on her ear.
The others had thought nothing much of the fall of stones; whatever the cause, it was too far away from them to have been dangerous, but Sharesh kept thinking of that push in the back he had felt and Kallia’s stumble just before the stones came tumbling down, as if something had shaken them off the cliff. She was mistaken about a goddess. He had always been told that it was the Lord Potheidan who shook the ground. He asked the Balloso boy if he had noticed anything but he said they had all been in the warm pool and had not felt a thing. They packed up their belongings and made ready to go. Sharesh asked if there was any food left. Kavlar said he could have a barley cake and that was all. Everybody had to be careful about food these days and take back any that was left for another day.
Sharesh waited until the others had started back along the beach. He put the cake on a flat piece of driftwood and pushed it out on the water. He hoped it would float far out into the Lagoon and he hoped the Lord Potheidan would not be displeased by such a meagre offering.
