*
Chapter 17
‘I’ve talked to him! It’s Pavro, undoubtedly! You don’t know him; I do!’
My insistence has hints of the hysterical.
‘I saw him die.’ Courundia remains calm. ‘Then they – Señorat Holandros, this Grindfarg – they came and doused all the oil lamps; for they live in darkness.’
She glances my way, pausing while she lets me take this odd fact in.
‘I’ve heard there are a lot of light-sensitive chemicals–’
She cuts me off with a shake of her head.
‘No; they live in the darkness. No lamps, not even candles: not until someone like you visits.’
‘Maybe they’ve become sensitive to the light: like the mercury a hatter uses makes him a little crazed.’
She shrugs, like she accepts this might be possible, yet she remains doubtful.
‘But…’I say, wanting to hear more of what had happened to Pavro, ‘you said you saw Pavro die?’
She nods.
‘With no light, it was naturally hard to make out what happened next. I just heard a sort of slithering, or maybe even a rapid clicking – I can’t be sure, I’ve never heard anything like that before – across the floor. Then a, maybe a – sort of chewing?’
I squirm as she describes this noises.
‘A soul?’ I say, recalling my conversation with Katerina. ‘Could it be the return of the soul?’
‘A noisy soul, if that’s what it was,’ Courundia says dismissively.
‘What were you doing there? In Señorat Holandros studio? I mean, how did you get there?’
‘Originally, I’d come looking for you: we’re only given the names of our intended. I…I knew you must be beautiful…’
She hides her face, as if in shame, as if aware of and attempting to hide her ugliness.
I touched her wrist consolingly; but she snapped her arm back, alarmed and perhaps angered by my pity for her.
‘Beauty doesn’t concern me as much as it does you!’ she snapped. ‘Just as you fear the transference – oh yes, I know you fear “sharing” my ugliness – I’ve no wish to be changed into someone I don’t recognise!’
‘It’s necessary for our inner comfort, the betterment of our inner natures.’
It’s just a line of the creed, drummed into us since we were children.
‘And me?’ Courundia is still furious. ‘Inside, I’m a more beautiful person than you could ever hope to be!’
‘A beautiful person? A girl who steals?’
‘A girl who has to steal to keep you clothed,’ she fumes, indicating my veiled hat with an accusatorially pointing finger. ‘What right do you have to judge the way I’ve been forced to live? Why have I to suffer for your ridiculous religious beliefs?’
‘You don’t believe–’
‘Of course I don’t believe nonsense like that! And you, do you really know everything there is to know about your so called religion?’
‘That’s for our Priestas to–’
‘To tell you what to do? How to behave?’
I’m incensed by Courundia’s unfair accusation.
No one understood the difficulties of recognising our darker sides better than the members of our Church. Chosen at an early age from only the best families, trained remorselessly for their future roles as guiding Priestas, they weren’t allowed the luxury of undergoing a transference to make that recognition easier: rather, they have to constantly suffer the far more onerous task of continually bearing in mind the poverty of their condition, never allowing themselves any freedom from that burdensome thought.
‘Do you even know how it’s done, this “transference”?’ Courundia persists. ‘We can’t even remove a bullet safely, without causing gangrene: and yet we can transpose one half of a face onto another! Tell me, Andraetra; do you truly think you’ll benefit from sharing my face?’
She glares at me, staring directly into my face: displaying her hideousness far more clearly than even one of Señorat Holandros photographs could ever manage.
Ashamedly, I shake my head.
*
We keep to the hills, despite the discomfort of the traveling. There are too many army and revolutionary deserters lying in wait on the roads.
Having informed me of the dangers I face alone on the roads, Courundia has let me know I can leave her anytime I want to. She only wants to show me how people like her live, in the hope that I might persuade my father to use his power and contacts to make changes.
She’s disappointed when I tell her I’m not really a Delmestra; that I’m only their ward.
‘I’ll show you anyhow,’ she says miserably. ‘Perhaps you’ll have to marry your Pavro after all: maybe he can make the changes we need.’
‘He was fighting for the revolutionaries. That’s how he died; shot by the soldiers.’
She grins wanly, maybe because she’s thankful for my concern, maybe because she’s amused by my naiveté.
‘These revolutions: they just replace one set of powerful people with another set of powerful people. That’s all they’re ever for.’
It abruptly dawns on me that Courundia’s description of what she had witnessed happening to Pavro didn’t make sense; if she had come looking for me, and followed the Delmestra’s carriage to the studio, then Pavro would have already been resurrected when we all arrived there!
She couldn’t possibly have seen him die!
She had lied.
Everyone lies to me!
*
Chapter 18
When we come to a veiling, small copse of trees, itself situated within a hollow hiding it from most of the surrounding hilltops, Courundia calls a halt, slipping down from her mount with enviable agility and ease.
After helping me down from my own horse, with a reassurance that this was a far more hospitable place than it might appear, she immediately began digging into the soil beneath one of the smaller bushes.
‘I prepared all this earlier, a sort of place I knew I could always fall back on if I hit trouble,’ she says as she digs out a number of cases, each one battered and filthy but containing fresh, expensive clothes.
‘As purloined from the very best in society,’ she grins happily, tossing me a blouse, trousers, and even riding boots, all of the very best tailoring and materials. ‘I knew you’d hardly be dressed for a long ride,’ she adds, indicating my torn dress with a nod of her head.
‘So, you’d intended kidnapping me all along?’ I scoff, refusing to appear grateful for the soft, clean clothes.
‘I’d intended persuading you to come with me: and only a Gorgesque would be out travelling with her “servant”, not some girl who’s not yet come of age.’
‘You’ve thought of everything,’ I reply scornfully. ‘Oh, apart from food and water.’
‘Trees mean water,’ Courundia says, pointing off toward a large stone I soon realise is covering another hole she’s dug earlier, this time to unearth an underground spring. ‘As for food,’ she adds, standing up and heading off towards an outcrop of rocks, ‘I’ve got traps set up all around here: and at least one of them should have caught something that hasn’t already been eaten by any other vermin or insects around here.’
‘Very resourceful.’
Naturally, I really am extremely impressed, yet I keep my tone mocking, resentful that she’s abducted me, lied to me.
‘I’m ugly,’ she says, glancing back over her shoulder with a smile, ‘not stupid!’
*
No could accuse Courundia of being stupid.
When she lights the fire to cook the rabbit she’s caught, together with the oddly-shaped root vegetables she’s managed to dig up from somewhere beneath the bushes, she makes sure it’s not going to draw too much attention by building it in yet another pit she’s dug. Similarly, the smoke is dissipated by an upper layering of branches and leaves, not that there’s much of a plume to hide anyway, for she’s chosen her flammable materials well.
As soon as the food’s cooked, she puts the fire out, using large stones she’d placed inside the fire pit as heated blocks to grant us some warmth as we settle down for the night. The harnesses and what remains of my dress serve as our beds.
Every move she makes is quick, graceful, athletically smooth and accomplished.
Her face may be hideous, but her body could have been sculpted to ensure survival. At last, I can understand how she managed to shadow both myself and anyone working within the art studio without being discovered or even heard.
It would take an amazing amount of skill to accomplish that: especially with someone like the odious, serpentine Grindfarg perpetually hanging around.
‘When you took me, when the magnesium flashed: why didn’t I hear Grindfarg?’ I recall hearing the others, but not him, the one most likely to suspect something odd was happening and react to it. ‘Had you…done something to him?’
Courundia nods, grins mischievously.
‘He was the only one who could have given me any real trouble: so when the magnesium went “bang”, so did his head!’
‘You killed him?’
With a pang of shame, I realise I’m hoping the answer is ‘yes’.
‘No.’
She shakes her head, pouts and grimaces thoughtfully, as if aware yet somehow regretting that she would never really be capable of anything so terrible.
‘That would have made too much noise!’ she chuckles grimly.
*
In the morning, I wake to an already cooked breakfast of more rabbit, more roasted roots. A layer of hot stones keeps off the worst of the dawn chill.
Courundia offers me yet another fresh blouse, pointing out that we wouldn’t be coming back here anyway. She changes into fresh clothing herself, briefly and partially stripping off to reveal a taut body, the undulating muscles decorated with colourful tattoos.
She catches me looking at the tattoos, notes my surprise.
‘Sorry, I shouldn’t stare.’ I apologise, averting my eyes shamefully. ‘I’ve…I’ve never seen tattoos before and…and…’
‘And you never thought you’d see them on a “lady”, right?’
I nod, still ashamed.
‘Well you, haven’t,’ she says with a laugh. ‘Because I’m not a lady, am I?’
As if to back up her statement with ever more proof, she flexes her muscles the way a man would: causing the tattoos to move, the bright disc of a glistening moon shifting slightly within its surrounding darkness.
There are other tattoos of the moon, some almost completely veiled, others the crescent of the new moon. It reminds me of the stained glass portrayals of our religious texts proudly displayed within our churches and cathedrals.
The darkness and the light: the way the transference helps us recognise our endangering darkness, as well as our redeeming inner light.
‘I thought you said the creed was nonsense,’ I snort triumphantly, indicating the way the moon lights up so many repeated areas of darkness upon her skin.
‘It’s an older religion,’ she confidently snorts back. ‘One yours stole its better ideas from.’
‘And you believe this?’ I scoff.
She shrugs noncommittally.
‘All religion, at best, simply seeks to give reason to the unreasonable.’
With first a lithe twist this way, another even more malleable twist that way, she indicates the scenes upon her body as if revealing a sacred text to me.
‘Through our mortal father, we are at best earthly shepherds fearful of the Old Crone, granted knowledge of the darkness within us; itself granting us a recognition of the merest glimmer of light within us that is our salvation.’
Another twist of her waist, a turn of her shoulders, brings another scene to my attention, one of a sparkling new moon whose bright glow has no visibly hard edges.
‘Through our Divine Mother, we are the Royal Daughter herself, the reawakened new beginning.’
She slips on her blouse, drawing an end to her show.
‘In terms of the moon, there’s always more than one ending, countless new beginnings,’ she adds, nonchalantly buttoning the blouse.
‘And this, you think – this notion of inner darkness and light, I mean – is where the idea of the transference came from?’
‘A twisted version of it,’ she agrees with a nod. ‘And like all twisted versions of a religion, it’s introduced to grant someone, somewhere, extra powers over us.’
As she dresses, I’ve put on my fresh blouse too, surprised once again by its quality: its previous owner must have been a powerful person in her own right. I feel weirdly glamorous in this exotically wonderful riding gear, its very elegance and expensive cut granting me a grace and sense of confidence I never realised I so naturally possessed.
‘If I believed your version,’ Courundia continues, quickly moving on to the final preparations in making the horses ready, ‘then what hope would there be for me? My ugliness would be a sure sign that I was full of only irredeemable darkness: and that, of course, is exactly how I’m supposed to feel!’
‘If there’s really a glimmer of goodness in you – then why did you lie to me about seeing Pavro die?’
She turns around, seems surprised by the way I’m glaring hatefully at her.
‘Lie?’ She briefly frowns bemusedly then, with a shake of her head, as if clearing it of a confusing fog, firmly declares, ‘I told you what I saw, what I heard, what I sensed. That’s the truth according to my creed!’
She pauses, frowning a little as if pondering this.
‘In fact, no; that’s not true – I have been hiding something from you.’
‘What?’ I ask triumphantly, glad to have at least prised this small admission out of her.
‘When I saw him die–’ she waves a hand violently in the air, stilling the beginnings of my protests – ‘he knelt on the floor, placing a dark box before him, then took out from a sheath on its top a long-bladed knife: and then he plunged the knife deeply into his chest, just above his heart.’
*
Chapter 19
Far down in a valley, a battle is taking place.
The multiple cracks of massed gunfire is muted way up here, despite its dull echoes. Vast plumes of smoke drifts across and veil everything, such that all those men could be fighting for nothing more than the possession of an empire of clouds.
They could be insects, they’re so small, many clad in bright blue or green, those opposing them mostly garbed in black. They move in their ordered formations, slowly moving squares or rectangles, until one of them breaks and scatters, leaving lifeless husks lying upon the ground.
We draw as far aside from the battle as we can, not wishing to meet up with any wayward formations, scouting patrols, or those fleeing the worst of the fighting.
Apart from this fear that the battle might inadvertently catch up with us in this way, I feel quite regal, quite distanced from it all, observing it from my exulted position. Courundia, however, glances down at it all with anxious frowns, intensely focusing now and again on a particularly violent section of the fight, glumly sighing as if somehow aware of and caught up in each individual trauma.
Distracted in this way, she uncharacteristically fails to either hear or respond to the clack of what could be a disturbed stone off to our other side, the side on which the high hill we’re on falls away too steeply for anyone to safely approach us.
The hill’s steep incline briefly drops completely away, forming the slightest of cliff faces before leavening out into a relatively smoother drop. It's here that I spot amongst the dull rocks and stones the bright fluttering flame of a lance pennant. Looking a little harder this way, I detect other flashes of colour: the sheer black of another lancer’s wide brimmed hat, the yellow of another’s jacket.
It’s a small section of mounted lancers, perhaps scouts who have found themselves misdirected by the few and awkward paths around here.
They’re all still too far off to have at
tracted Courundia’s attention; she's more concerned with checking we’re not being approached by the easier trails leading up from the battlefield.
It flashes through my mind that I should warn her; a flash of thought that abruptly transforms into an admonishment not to be so stupid.
This girl has endlessly lied to me.
And now she has even made the outrageous claim that Pavro committed suicide!
With a sudden, fierce jerk of the horse’s reins, I pull my mount sharply around.
I dig my knees hard into the flanks, urging the mare into action, whipping her on either side of her neck with my reins, spurring it into a swiftly accelerating gallop.
Courundia whirls around on her horse, obviously wondering what’s going on.
But she’s too late; she can’t stop me now.
I’m dangerously careering down the rocky incline of the hill, the angrily clattering hooves of my mount struggling to keep any real purchase on the slipping and sliding stones.
‘Help me, help me!’ I yell out to the lancers now curiously glancing my way. ‘I’ve been kidnapped!’
*
‘No no! You’ll kill yourself!’ Courundia screams after me.
I don’t know if she’s also chasing after me. It’s too dangerous for me to try and even briefly glance over my shoulder to check, for my mount is finding it increasingly difficult to remain upright.
The incline’s too steep. The ground too unstable.
After a quick observation of their surroundings, the lancers have begun hurriedly clambering up a rock fall that’s transformed a small section of the steeper drop into a reasonably accessible slope. A few of them are letting their lances drop to the floor, reaching alongside themselves to grasp instead the short barrelled muskets sheathed on their mounts’ flanks.
Courundia must be either in close pursuit, or attempting to ride away.
I spin around a little in what passes for a saddle on my mare. Courundia is trying to ride away, realising she has no hope of preventing me from reaching the oncoming lancers.
There’s a crack of a musket going off, then another.
‘No, don’t shoot her–’