The Princess and the Captain (9 page)

‘Leave this place,' said Orpheus. ‘As soon as I get the chance.'

‘I understand,' murmured the old woman. ‘Will you come to say goodbye before you go?'

Orpheus shook his head.

‘Well, then,' said Berthilde, ‘I'll bid you farewell now.'

She tried to kiss Orpheus on the cheek, but he escaped from her embrace. He left the graveyard with the old St Bernard at his heels, and did not turn back.

Malva was lying on a straw mattress, and had not yet come round. She was running a high temperature, and her forehead was covered with sour sweat that trickled down her neck and soaked the collar of her jacket. Sometimes she lay there without moving, her eyes closed, sometimes she flung herself about as hallucinations blurred her mind.

‘Elgolia … Elgolia,' she kept repeating. ‘The Vuth-Nathor … Dao-Boa …'

Philomena held her hand, sponged her forehead, made her drink as often as possible, and bathed the nasty wound in her leg. Unfortunately her nursing was doing no good. The Princess seemed to have drifted away into another world, and Philomena despaired of bringing her back to reality.

Every morning, the fisherman and his two sons left the cottage and put out to sea to haul in their nets. It was while fishing that they had rescued Philomena and Malva from drowning. They spoke neither Galnician nor the language of
Lombardaine, but a strange language full of accentuated vowels and sharp consonants. Communicating through gestures, Philomena had finally worked out that they were in Sperta, much further east than she had expected. If Malva ever got better, they would have to retrace their steps to reach Lombardaine, but at the moment such an expedition seemed a very uncertain prospect.

The fisherfolk's cottage was isolated, standing on a white cliff above the sea. A winding path led down to a cove with a stony beach, another climbed hillsides covered with short grass where scrawny goats grazed. That was all.

When she was not with Malva, Philomena helped with the cooking and washing and tended the goats. The bundle containing the Archont's gold pieces, their spare clothes and Malva's notebooks had gone down with the
Estafador
. They were destitute now, but poverty held no fears for the chambermaid. She worked hard, never flagging, so as not to be too much of a burden on their hosts.

Every evening the fisherman's wife sacrificed several fish to making poultices for Malva's injury. Philomena thought she understood the woman's logic: since Malva had been injured by a sea creature, she must be treated with sea creatures too. Anchovies, bream, scorpion fish and cod, reduced to a pulp, were applied to Malva's leg.

‘
Akanaiké!
' the fisherman's wife said as she put the poultice on.

Philomena repeated the strange word like a magic spell, hoping that the fish would take effect.

But at the end of two weeks, when the Princess was still delirious and was becoming alarmingly weak, the younger son of the family took his stick and an empty wheelbarrow and left the house.

‘Thera,' the fisherman's wife explained to Philomena. She made vague gestures, indicating the way her son had gone.

‘You mean he's gone to Thera?' asked Philomena. ‘Is it the name of a town? And what's the wheelbarrow for? Is he going to look for other medicines?'

‘Thera, Thera,' the woman repeated in encouraging tones.

Her younger son came home the next day, wheeling the barrow in front of him along the steep paths and making his way carefully down to the cottage. Philomena saw a black shape which looked like a heap of fabric in the barrow. But as the young man came closer she saw that she was wrong: it was not fabric. There was someone sitting in the wheelbarrow.

‘Thera,' said the fisherman's wife, placing a kindly hand on Philomena's arm.

So Thera was not a place, but a very old woman, so old and tired that she could no longer walk. Her lined face, yellow as a lemon, was buried under a mass of dark scarves.

The fisherman's son took her into the house and showed her the mattress where Malva was lying. With his father's help he carried the old woman over to the sick girl, and then unloaded all kinds of implements from the barrow: phials, large jars, pincers, ladles, oilcans and retorts were soon piled on the trodden earth floor.

Philomena timidly went over, intrigued by the old woman's presence. For several long moments Thera did not move, and her eyes remained closed. She had placed her sallow, spotted hand on Malva's forehead. Only her wheezing breath broke the silence that had fallen on the cottage, and Philomena wondered if the old lady had simply gone to sleep.

But suddenly she opened her eyes. ‘
Pneuma
,' she said, in a croaking voice.

She began rummaging around in her pile of implements, and picked up an earthenware pot into which she poured the contents of one of her phials. Philomena narrowed her eyes to see better. The liquid looked viscous, like oil. The old woman added a few drops of something black, a bag of herbs, some red powder, and a few white particles of what looked to Philomena like goat's hairs.

Meanwhile the fisherman's wife had lit a fire under a cauldron to boil water. Old Thera handed her the pot containing the mixture, and the woman mixed it all together above the hot water.

A revolting smell immediately filled the room. Philomena coughed and grimaced, but she never took her eyes off the old woman. When Thera put the decoction to Malva's lips, Philomena flinched slightly with disgust.

‘
Pneuma, atman, psuché, nephech
,' chanted Thera as the liquid flowed into the Princess's mouth.

Then she packed up her equipment, and the fisherman's son conscientiously put it back in the barrow. Malva had not moved since the old woman entered the cottage. She was breathing quietly with her arms lying beside her body.

Thera put her left hand under her scarves and brought out a little carved wooden figure of a fish, which she placed on the ground. She reached for another bag of herbs with her left hand, sprinkled them over the little figure, and then signed to the fisherman's wife to put a glowing coal to them. As they burned, the herbs gave off a dense, aromatic smoke.

‘
Keryke asclepios hebé
,' the old woman murmured as she dispersed the smoke with her twisted hands.

Then she closed her eyes and waited to be put back in the wheelbarrow. Without another word, the fisherman's son carried
the mysterious guest out of the house, and they went away again up the steep paths, leaving Philomena stunned and puzzled.

A few hours later Malva opened her eyes. Her forehead was dry and there was a little colour in her cheeks.

‘I'm thirsty,' she said.

Within three days scar tissue had formed over the Princess's injury. She recovered her spirits, and it was a pleasure to see her hearty appetite. Philomena couldn't stop weeping and expressing her gratitude to the old Spertan healer who had saved the Princess's life. It was a miracle.

‘I remember it all,' said Malva. ‘Our last evening on board the
Estafador
, those grilled sardines, the songs, Bulo's story … and then the reefs, Vincenzo's disappearance, our struggle against drowning.'

She looked up at the ceiling for some time, lost in thought, brows drawn together. Then her fingers went to her neck and lingered on the Archont's medallion. Philomena made haste to talk about something else, fearing that gloomy thoughts might be bad for the Princess's health.

‘When you can walk I shall take you to Lombardaine,' she said. ‘It's not so far to go, you'll see. The fisherman and his wife will find us a mule. Then you can ride it and I'll lead you there.'

Malva smiled, but she went on gazing at the ceiling as if her future were written on it, and Philomena began to fear that her mistress might have some strange fancy in mind. She was so young; so impressionable. She had read so many fantastic tales with the Archont. Philomena only hoped that all these disasters hadn't clouded her reason.

One morning Malva was able to get up at last. Clinging to
Philomena's arm, she slowly walked across the room. Her right leg was weak, but she made it to the door. Sunlight was flooding the hills, falling on the chalk cliffs and making the surface of the sea so bright that it dazzled the eyes. A little way from the cottage the fisherman's wife was spreading out her washing on a flat rock. When she saw Malva on her feet she smiled and gave a friendly little wave.

‘So here we are in Sperta,' murmured Malva, with a note of surprise in her voice.

All her geography lessons with the Archont came back to her. In her mind's eye she saw the map of the countries of the Known World, hanging from the Great Latitude like sheets from a washing line: Galnicia, Lombardaine, Monteplano east of Polvakia, and then Sperta. And there, still further to the east, the mountains of Gurkistan that bordered the vast expanses of the Great Azizian Steppes.

‘Lombardaine is over there,' said Philomena, pointing east. ‘Four or five days' journey on foot.'

Malva did not even turn her head. ‘We're not going to Lombardaine,' she said brusquely.

Philomena gave a start of surprise.

‘You see, I've been thinking,' Malva went on in a firm voice. ‘Why would Vincenzo have abandoned us on board the
Estafador
? He had nothing to gain by it … unless someone had paid him to do it.' Her hand went to the medallion hanging round her neck. ‘And only one person could have ordered Vincenzo to kill us. It's hard for me to say so, but the Archont betrayed us.'

Philomena leaned against the door frame, her legs suddenly feeling boneless. Such thoughts had certainly crossed her own mind more than once, but she hadn't felt like pursuing them. All that had mattered was for Malva to live. The rest of it seemed so
complicated, so alarming that she had done all she could to put off the moment of discussing it.

‘I trusted the Archont for ten years. I trusted him like a father,' Malva murmured. ‘I thought he understood me. I even thought he loved me …'

She stifled a sob, and then laughed bitterly. She owed the Archont so many happy moments! She had thought he was sincere, but no. Her jaw hardened, and she suddenly cried angrily, ‘And now I hate him! I hate people who are greedy for power! The Archont made use of my rebellious feelings for his own ends! I even wonder whether he read me all those books just to make me discontented with the life I could expect in Galnicia … It was he who encouraged me to write, to make up stories, to believe in all the fabulous legends. What was he doing? He knew perfectly well that the Coronador would never allow such fancies! He knew perfectly well that my parents were going to marry me off, yet he never warned me!'

A host of memories flooded into her mind. She sadly revisited the scenes of her childhood, when the Archont used to take her on his knee to tell her stories of adventure. He had filled her imagination with so many legends that everything else seemed dull and uninteresting. How often he had praised those heroes of the past who set out to accomplish their great tasks without a thought for what they left behind!

Malva took Philomena's arm. ‘Am I mad?' she asked. ‘Do you think the Archont offered to be my teacher simply to remove me from the throne? Do you think he could have manipulated me patiently for ten years before finally reaping the fruits of his labours?'

Such a chain of thought made Philomena feel quite dizzy. Unable to follow it to the end, she cast her mistress a desperate
glance. Malva's nostrils were quivering, and her mouth was twisted with rage.

‘Well, it doesn't really matter whether I'm right or not. I won't be a tool in anyone's hands any more. I'm not a doll to be married off or an heiress to be got out of the way. I want to live my own life, that's all.'

Distraught, Philomena looked at her. Malva's thin face suddenly seemed so hard. And she spoke with such determination!

‘But … but why not go to Lombardaine? My cousins will hide us,' she stammered. ‘They're very –'

‘The Archont is far more powerful than you seem to think,' Malva interrupted her. ‘If we go to Lombardaine I'm sure he'll find out that we're still alive some day. Then nothing will be easier for him than to send more mercenaries like Vincenzo to kill us.'

Philomena shivered. Everything she feared was happening! But how could she struggle with the determination of a Princess who had been so humiliated and deceived?

‘Holy Tranquillity!' she wailed. ‘Why did all this happen? What's to become of us?'

Malva took her hand. Her amber eyes gazed into Philomena's.

‘I don't want any more part in my country's destiny, Philomena. If the Archont wants to overthrow the Coronador and seize power, there's nothing I can do about it now. Everyone must think I'm dead. I'm free to go anywhere I please.'

‘Free?' repeated Philomena faintly. ‘But to go where?'

She immediately regretted asking this question, because she already knew the answer and it terrified her.

‘Are you still like a sister to me?' asked Malva.

How often had the two of them sworn vows of friendship to
each other? They had sworn to stay together all their lives. To share their joys and sorrows, their secrets and their hopes. Philomena loved Malva more than anyone in the world. How could that bond be broken now, when they were together in their hour of need? It was impossible.

‘I'm like a sister to you,' Philomena replied. ‘I'll go wherever you go.'

A smile lit up Malva's face. She looked up at the cliffs and far, far away, as if trying to see beyond the horizon.

‘I've survived shipwreck and the attack of that sea creature,' she said. ‘Nothing can frighten me now.'

She let go of Philomena's hand, turned and hobbled over to her mattress, where she lay down, sighing with pleasure, and massaged her leg before adding, ‘That's decided, then. We'll set off for Elgolia as soon as possible.'