The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

Around the campfire, the companions brooded. Then Kholi shifted and slapped his thighs with his palms. ‘You shall stay with us, sweet Ana. We’ll mind you, won’t we, Adelina? For the moment anyway, so rest easy.’ He cast a look at the woman he wanted to love and saw her eyes narrow but then she nodded and reached for the young woman’s shoulder to rub it. Ana looked at them both and gave them a tentative smile.

Kholi clapped his hands together.
‘Enough of this soul-baring and heart-creasing talk! I’m going to tell a story. Would you like that, sweet ladies? Kholi Khatoun can turn his hand to stories as easy as he can sell rugs. We have a collection
of the most wonderful stories in the Raj called A Thousand and One Nights. I
am going to tell you the one we call The Historic Fart.’

‘Kholi Khatoun,’ Adelina laughed with delight, her eyes bright in the light of the flame.

Kholi began.
‘In the Amritsands there lived a wealthy merchant called Abu Hasan whose money was made selling rugs and mats. Hmm! Just like Kholi, don’t you think?’ His eyes sparkled and he looked wistfully into the flaring red and yellow flames. ‘But Abu Hasan tired of the nomadic life,’
Kholi looked down at his hands and then cast a long glance at Adelina.
‘Again, just like Kholi.’ But then he grinned.
‘So he became a wealthy town merchant with a prosperous shop, a beautiful wife and a big house with a view over the town all the way to where the Amritsands glimmered in the distance. He was young, Abu Hasan, and would always offer up thanks to the spirits of good fortune when he sat on his roof on a rug, smoking a hookah and enjoying the spoils of wealth.’

Kholi shifted on the log on which he sat, smoothing the folds of his cloak which draped around him.
‘But life is never simple, is it?’ He looked directly at Ana. ‘Just when he thought things were at the peak of perfection, his lovely wife died. Just like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And Abu Hasan fell into a black pit of despair, grief stricken and floundering. His friends worried for him, for his loneliness affected him badly and it seemed as if he had lost interest in living After a suitable time had passed, those same friends chivvied the young widower to marry again. He agreed and so the town matchmaker was put to work. She found a lovely woman who, whilst not competing with his first wife for unparalleled beauty, was nevertheless something of a desert bloom.’

He stood up and walked around the fire, assuming a position in front
of the women like a bard in front of an audience. His hair shifted in the lazy breeze and his robes blew and creased gently around him, creating the image of some exotic man of legend; perhaps even Abu Hasan himself. ‘Abu Hasan organized a massive wedding feast whilst the bride, whom he had not yet seen, went into seclusion where she was fêted and served by the women of the town. They would come from her chambers and taunt Abu Hasan with florid and tantalising descriptions of the desert flower’s attributes. And despite himself, he found he looked forward to the wedding greatly.’

‘Kith and kin came from all across the Raj and Abu Hasan provided a wondrous feast in the biggest tent the town had ever seen. There were five different types of rice, sherbets, curries, goats stuffed with figs, dates and almonds and sprinkled with cumin and cardamom. There was lamb tagine and fish stuffed with walnuts and pistachios. Everyone ate until robes and cords, tassels and sashes had to be undone and re-girded as middles expanded.’

‘Finally it was time for the groom to be summoned to the bedding chamber, the bride having departed long since so that she may be prepared. He rose from amongst the guests at the table, pulling his silk robes around, the epitome of dignity and assurance. But as he stepped away from the tables, he let fly with the biggest, loudest, most ripping fart that had been heard in all the Raj. In fact it was said that even the camels at the
Kosi-Kamali oasis stood up with concern as it flew on the air.’

Adelina and Ana chuckled as the images of the desert merchant’s embarrassment filled their heads. Kholi looked at the adorable woman with the cascading copper hair and wondered if she had any idea of how seductive she appeared. He raised his eyes to the skies, offered a small prayer and then continued. ‘The guests, hiding smiles and guffaws, talked loudly, pretending not to have heard. Abu Hasan was mortified, excusing himself as if to go to reliev
e himself and prepare for his nuptial bed. But with other ideas entirely, the poor man ran to the stables, saddled his horse and rode away from the town, weeping copiously.’

‘He took ship for the far away coastlines of the Raj and was employed by a kaffir for ten years as his most trusted bodyguard. But finally, desperate homesickness got the better of him and he slipped away to return to the town of his previous life. To see if people remembered the Abu Hasan from before the fart, not after.’

Again giggles filled the encampment, but Kholi held up a hand for silence and continued. ‘On the long and arduous travail, he endured a thousand hardships of hunger, thirst and fatigue and a thousand dangers from lions, snakes and afrits. If I detailed them all, my ladies, we would be here for the passing of one or two more nights, I can tell you, which is why the story is a part of A Thousand and One Nights. Suffice to say that in every travail his strength and honour prevailed.
But
at great cost to his body and maybe, just maybe, even more to his spirit.’

‘Nearing the town, he was unrecognizable. He looked very different after ten years and more, and so he had occasion to wander unknown and unmolested for seven days. At every turn, with every view, his heart built hope that he might return, that he could once again be Abu Hasan the merchant. Finally as he leaned against a wall, thinking on hope and the future, he heard a young girl talking to her mother.’

‘Mother, tell me what day I was born so that I may have my fortune told.’

The mother answered. ‘
My child, you were born on the very night when Abu Hasan farted.’

Ana and Adelina exploded. Even Kholi who knew the story as well as he knew the lines on the palm of his hand, chuckled. The very air around the fire sparkled with relaxed humour.

‘The poor man fled, crying to himself, '
Verily my fart has become a date! To be remembered forever and ever.'
And so Abu Hasan, the great merchant and famed and esteemed bodyguard returned to the lonesome, singular existence he had experienced as he had journeyed back to his town. He travelled all around Eirie in self imposed exile, never speaking, never spoken to, until he died somewhere in the dry Amritsands.’
Kholi folded his hand across his middle and gave a theatrical bow.

‘Kholi,’ Ana clapped her hand delightedly, ‘you have missed your calling.’

‘Indeed.’ Adelina’s eyes darkened and her face flushed as she looked at
Kholi. He watched her pull gently on Ana’s arm and wished on all the djinns
that his prayers would be answered. ‘You tell a story as if you are made for entertaining. I thank you sir. You have taken the evening and turned it into a treasure.’ She smiled as she spoke and Ana nodded her head in agreement, covering a yawn with her hand. ‘Come now, Ana,’ Adelina said. ‘It’s time for sleeping. I propose for you to use my bed and I have a wish to sleep in Kholi’s tent. I have never slept under canvas and I have often wondered if it should suit me.’

‘Oh no. I couldn’t force you from your bed, Adelina. I shall just roll myself by the fire,’ Ana walked to the van, ‘I’ll get my blanket.’

‘No, I insist. Sleep in my bed.’

‘But what about Kholi? He’ll be forced from his bed.’

Kholi shook his head vehemently.

‘No he won’t.’ Adelina looked steadily at Ana.

‘Oh... oh! I see. I’m sorry!’ In the light of the fire it could have been a blush or the light of the flames that spread across the young woman’s cheeks. She hastily kissed her friends on their cheeks and went to the van. As she left throaty chuckles followed, not unkindly. Her cheeks flamed even brighter.

***

Thus Kholi and I became lovers as a drizzle pattered on the tent folds. Little more needs to be said just now because you must move to the next piece of embroidery, the next part of the hunt. Parts of my life are so precious and so private that I can barely draw up their memory myself, let alone share them with you, my friend. I ask your forgiveness and beg you to move on.

Have you spotted the second group of arched branches? You must follow the berries until you reach the palest gold gooseberries. Very, very carefully lift the wired leaf under which is the spiders’ web. If you carefully feel beneath the leaf, you will find another book. See how I bound its covers in paper from the Raj in exactly the colour of the leaf?

There is a reason.
This whole task has been an exercise in subterfuge and camouflage. Perversely, despite my current predicament, it gives me pleasure. To be cunning, to be capricious... to tell my story. Thank Aine, because life would be intolerable otherwise.

Chapter Twelve

The morning dawned. Pale light wound under Ana’s eyelashes - probing, awakening. She washed away the last remnants of sleep with cold water from the jug on the counter and opening the door to the van, was confronted with an oyster coloured morning, the sky beyond the trees like a piece of Venichese taffeta. Swathes of grey veined the sky and there was an odour
from the drizzle of the night before.
Kholi was right - it would rain before the morning was past.
Approaching the pavilion quietly for fear she would wake the occupants, she need not have worried. Adelina’s husky voice, thick with the passion with which it was becoming more endowed by the minute, murmured forth. ‘Kholi Khatoun, would you give me breakfast in bed? After all, you gave me supper in bed last night?’

Kholi chuckled. The pavilion was lit softly from within as he struck a
tinder and lit a small lamp. Their figures became illuminated like a shadow puppet show. ‘Like this you mean?’ His standing figure lowered itself over the reclining woman, who in silhouette, reached arms up to grasp the man.

‘Indeed. I shall have shaslick and you shall have oyster.’ Her laugh ceased as the pair kissed.

Ana turned away. Her face put the glowing autumn trees to shame. As silent as a wraith, she hurried from the clearing, heading up the Barrow Hills and as far from the encampment as possible. She needed time and space to think, to decide if she could continue the journey with this couple who obviously found themselves in the throes of new lust, if not love. What else would she be but a nuisance, a third wheel, a gooseberry? Puffing as the incline steepened, she stopped briefly to survey the globe-like hills. Rumour had it in Trevallyn that the hills were actually
sidh
, home of the Others. Looking down at her feet, at the stubble and the unprepossessing tussocks that spiked the ground here and there, Ana could hardly imagine the Others occupying such a plain home. Certainly not the Faeran anyway.

She had always loved the tales of the Others of her world. Growing up in the Weald, she was unafraid of the glamour that could bewitch and beguile. Folk-tales told of being able to find a gate to the Faeran world by passing a coat between one’s self and the view of a likely place. Or by finding Ymp Trees, those lines of peaches and apricots that had been pleached together to form long twisted bowers and then pruned beyond natural growth. A perfect gateway to Faeran. Such a world was beauty incomparable, they said. Where every sense was satisfied to the point of surfeit and beyond. It had been a dream that she should find such a passage into a world beyond imaginings despite being fully aware of the price of venturing thence. Tales told of the loss of one’s self; belonging neither here nor there but dimmed by the longing for both.

But she knew she would long for nothing if she was with Liam - absolutely nothing. She longed for him to hold her and touch her as if wanted her.
But would he ever display the uninhibited devotion of Adelina and Kholi? Perhaps he merely lusts after me.
She was after all only a mortal, a mere plaything of Others, and besides, Faeran seldom exhibited long-lasting devotion.
Such staunchly held life-long emotion was what she missed with her
father’s death. Truth to tell, it was why she was on the road. She was searching for someone to fill the gap in her life. There could never be a replacement for her father but was there not someone special for everyone in the wide world? It was what her Pa had told her once whilst describing the breadth of his love for his family.

She turned her gaze up the hill and spotted one of the tumbled peel towers that so reminded her of the
ruhks
in her father’s
shatranj
set. Its walls crumbled and folded onto the ground but there was enough to see it was once a handsome little building, castellated as it no doubt had been. As Ana approached the door, drizzle tickled her face, what her father had called ‘wet rain’ and which Ana as a young child had always found amusing. ‘But Pa,’ she would giggle, ‘all rain is wet.’

‘Ah, but pet,’ he would reply running a hand through her damp, frizzled hair. ‘Mizzle-drizzle seeps and sighs right into the very skin. Until it makes one puckered and wrinkled as a dried out old prune.’

The drizzle on the Barrow Hills had become determined, fogging the landscape with a wet wash. The first drop of something heavier hit Ana’s forehead and she decided to shelter for the moment in the tower. Her hand reached for the wrought knob of the old door but as she grasped it, a singular puff of wind slid past dragging wetness and damp with it and blowing open the growling door.
She jerked her fingers back and stood tentatively
surveying the glum shadows. But the windswept rain pushed her further through the entrance, her footsteps echoing around an interior that cloaked her in shadow as shafts of unwilling grey daylight squeezed through arrow slits in the walls. She negotiated her way across a stone and beam-strewn floor, shrieking as a rat scampered past her feet and her face brushed some lacy, sticky web. Backing away, feet disturbing a cloud of dust and shards of stone, she located a stair clinging with determination to the weeping walls and began to climb. Another cobweb brushed her face, a spider sliding away to the other side of the web to glare at her. Ana jumped up two steps to get away from it, her heart racketing like a moth’s wings against glass.

A sound ground out faintly from above and the moth’s wings froze. ‘Hallo... who’s there?’ she called.

A crushing noise filled the tower subfusc, as though wheat were being crushed by a quern. ‘HALLO!’ she called again, louder. The grinding stopped momentarily and then started again almost above her head. She could imagine a pair of hands rolling the round stone back and forth, back and forth over the grain as it lay in its shallow bowl, an ivory flour dusting the bowl. She jumped up the steps and rounded a corner of the tower as the milling noise continued, looking above rather than at her feet and failing to notice one complete step had crumbled so that she fell, cracking her shins. Swearing and rubbing her leg, she rounded the next bend. Reason told her this dark, crumbling tower was no place to pursue idle curiosity; dim light and damp air were hardly the stuff of interest but she was curious and neglected to remember her father's advice.
'Ana,'
he had said,
'curiosity is ever a mortals' downfall. Beware the eldritch.'

The milling now was as loud as if she were in the presence of a dozen bakers’ wives as they patiently ground millet or wheat. Despite the precarious nature of the tower, Ana’s head filled with the delights of fresh flour and hot bread, blotting out caution as her stomach grumbled. When she placed her hand on the door timbers she felt the vibrations of grinding through her fingers. She called again in the vain hope she could talk, pass the time of day, maybe have breakfast as the rain continued outside. ‘Hallo there, can you hear me?’

The vibrations continued.

The handle to the door in front of her was curiously wrought to represent a hand bunched into a fist and in the weak drizzle-filled light slanting through the arrow slits, it glistened dully with the patina of aged bronze. Her hand reached forward and she grasped the knob.

‘DON’T, ANA! DON’T TOUCH!’

But too late… the bunched metal fist sprang open and cold fingers grasped her hand. The cramped, tumbled room echoed with a scream as the latch clicked and the door began to move outwards allowing a chink of oyster light to slide through.

‘HELP! HELP ME!’ The momentum of the opening door dragged Ana to a sheer drop some hundred or more precipitous feet off the wet ground outside. She glanced down in terror, toes gripping the floor, feet sliding and leaving a trail behind in the dust as she glimpsed the glistening saw-toothed stones lying where they had landed as they crashed from the decrepit building.
Spread-eagled across the rocks lay whitewashed bones; the remains of
a back that had been cracked and broken from where the curious living mortal had been dragged by the door into the ether beyond. The harsh snap and crack of her own frame as it landed on the boulders filled a head empty of everything but the need to struggle. ‘OH PLEASE, HELP!’

Her toes hung over the edge of the tower as the door kept up its remorseless tugging, her free hand trailing desperate fingers on the doorframe, dragging splinters and dirt which filled her fingernails. She screamed again as an arm snaked around her chest and pressure pulled the other way. ‘LET GO,’ Liam shouted to the malevolence dragging Ana to a shattering death.

‘Never, no, never more!

See what happens when you open the door!’
The reply echoed cruelly around the little building.

Liam’s arm came up sharply and a
shriek dropped from above followed by a spattering of sharp footsteps running across the old shingles of the tower roof. He pulled Ana’s body back hard against his chest, dragging her on her feet away from deathly space. As the footsteps and the yelling faded away, the bronze fingers fell open and released her. The door slammed shut and the hand was seen to give a lewd gesture to the pair before rolling itself into a bunched, inanimate doorknob.

Ana sagged in the circle of his arms, her own curling over his as they wrapped tight around her. From behind, she felt his chin rest on her head and then...

‘Alright?’

She nodded and was sure she felt a kiss through her tumbled hair,
burning into her scalp. Her heartbeat rushed as she bent her head and rested her lips on the damp oilskin of his coat. The heady intimacy of the moment was not lost for a minute on either of them and a fulsome silence filled the damp space. Finally, Liam took her hand and pulled her towards the stairwell behind him. ‘They were dunters,’ he said over his shoulder as they made their descent. ‘Malicious beings whose sole purpose is to entice the curious and unwary to their deaths from the top of any peel tower.’ They reached the entrance to the ruins without Ana uttering a word. ‘Why were you here and where is your rowan crook?’ Liam turned to her and held her at arm’s length.

Despite the shock, Ana sensed an edge to his voice as if she were wanted and cherished. Perhaps he...
She replied hastily before a blush coloured her frightened cheeks too much.
‘I forgot it. I left camp in a hurry.’ She sat down on a pile of stones, legs folding and Liam sat down beside her.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Um... Adelina and Kholi...’ Ana burned as the blush finally seeped across her cheeks.

‘Yes?’

‘Aine Liam, does it matter?' Suddenly she was angry. With herself, with him, with life. 'They were... making love. I saw them.’

‘Did you, by Aine! Did they see you?’ He laughed with apparent delight.

Ana jumped up. ‘Don’t laugh. How could you? It was such an intimate moment and as
laden with sex as anything could be.’ Humiliation,
reaction, all touched her taper.

‘Ana, Ana.’ He grasped her shoulders. ‘It’s the most natural thing in the world for two people who are so attracted to do what they did. Don’t take on so.’

‘So easy for you to say. No doubt Faeran do it all the time, willy-nilly. I however, was embarrassed. Profoundly so. And because of their little love-nest I feel I shall have to leave and that goes a long way to spoiling all
my
plans. Aine I hate this world! Everywhere I turn, people I trust fail me. Pa,
Mother, Peter. And now I can’t even trust my only two friends. This whole world
is obscene.’ She pushed her hair away from a red face.

‘Have you finished?’ Liam raised his eyebrows.

She growled at him, a rising crescendo, and stormed off towards camp.