Part One 2 page

At the edge of the well of moonlight, a figure sat cross-legged before the fire. A man, muscular and bald, with glistening, oiled skin. A heavy gold ring hung from his ear; his face was blank, impassive. He stirred; from a pouch looped around his waist, he took a bottle, fixed with a metal stopper. With a series of languid movements that nevertheless suggested the feral, easy strength of a desert lion, he uncorked the bottle and drank. Tossing it aside, he stared into the flames.

After a few moments, an odd scent extended out across the valley, accompanied by distant zither music. The man's head nodded, drooped. Now only the whites of his eyes showed; he slept where he sat. The music grew louder; it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

Out from the darkness someone stepped, past the fire, past the sleeper, into the lit ground at the center of the valley. The music swelled; the very moonlight seemed to brighten in homage to her beauty. A slave girl: young, exquisite, too poor to afford adequate clothing. Her hair hung in long, dark ringlets that bounced with every tripping step. Her face was pale and smooth as porcelain, her eyes wide and studded with tears. At first tentatively, then with a sudden loosening of emotion, she danced. Her body dipped and spun, her flimsy drape struggled vainly to keep up with her. Her slender arms wove enticements in the air, while from her mouth issued a strange chanting, heavy with loneliness and desire.

The girl finished her dance. She tossed her head in proud despair and gazed up into the darkness, toward the moon. The music died away. Silence.

Then, a distant voice, as if borne on the wind: "Amaryllis..."

The girl started; she looked this way and that. Nothing but the rocks and the sky and the amber moon. She gave a pretty sigh.

"My Amaryllis..."

In a husky, tremulous voice, she answered: "Sir Bertilak? Is that you?"

"It is I."

"Where are you? Why do you taunt me so?"

"I hide behind the moon, my Amaryllis, lest your beauty burn my essence. Shield your face with the gauze that presently lies so uselessly upon your breast, that I might venture near to you."

"Oh, Bertilak! With all my heart!" The girl did as she was bid. From the darkness came several low mutterings of approval. Somebody coughed.

"Darling Amaryllis! Stand away! I descend to earth."

Giving a little gasp, the girl pressed her back against the contours of a nearby rock. She tossed her head in proud expectation. A crack of thunder sounded, fit to disturb the slumbers of the dead.

Open-mouthed, the girl looked up. At a stately pace, a figure descended from the sky. He wore a silvered jerkin across his bare torso, a long flowing cape, puffed pantaloons, and a pair of elegant curled slippers. An impressive scimitar was tucked into his jeweled belt. Down he came, head back, dark eyes flashing, chin jutting forward proudly beneath his aquiline nose. A pair of curving bone-white horns rose from the edges of his forehead.

He landed gently near where the girl was draped against the rock and, with a casual flourish, flashed a gleaming smile. Faint female sighs sounded all around.

"What, Amaryllis—are you struck dumb? Do you forget so soon the face of your beloved genie?"

"No, Bertilak! Were it seventy years, not seven, I could never forget a single oiled hair upon your head. But my tongue falters and my heart pounds with fear, lest the magician wake and catch us!

Then he will bind my slender white legs in chains once more, and immure you in his bottle!"

At this, the genie gave a booming laugh. "The magician sleeps. My magic is greater than his, and ever shall be. But the night is growing old, and by dawn I must be away with my brothers, the afrits, riding on the currents of the air. Come to my arms, my darling. In these short hours, while I still have human form, let the moon be witness to our love, which shall defy the hatred of our peoples even unto the ending of the world."

"Oh, Bertilak!"

"Oh, Amaryllis, my Swan of Araby!"

The genie strode forward and enfolded the slave girl in a muscular embrace. At this point the ache in Kitty's bottom became too much to bear. She shifted in her seat.

Genie and girl now began an intricate dance, involving much swirling of clothing and extending of limbs. There was a smattering of applause from the audience. The orchestra set to with renewed gusto. Kitty yawned like a cat, slumped lower and rubbed an eye with the palm of one hand. She felt for the paper bag, tipped out the last few salted peanuts and, cupping them to her mouth, crunched unenthusiastically.

The anticipation that always came before a job was upon her, digging like a knife into her side.

That was normal, she expected it. But layered on top of this was the boredom of sitting through the endless play. No doubt, as Anne had said, it would provide a perfect alibi—but Kitty would rather have been working out her tension on the streets, keeping moving, dodging the patrols, not witnessing such awful pap.

On stage, Amaryllis, the Chiswick missionary lass turned slave girl, was now singing a song in which (once again) she expressed her unremitting passion for the genie lover in her arms. She did so with such force on the high notes that the hair rippled on Bertilak's head and his earrings spun. Kitty winced and glanced along the shrouded silhouettes in front until she came to the outlines of Fred and Stanley. Both looked highly attentive, eyes trained on the stage. Kitty curled her lip. Presumably they were admiring Amaryllis.

Just so long as they remained alert.

Kitty's gaze wandered down into the well of darkness by her side. At her feet was the leather bag. The sight made her stomach lurch; she closed her eyes, instinctively patting her coat to feel the reassuring hardness of the knife. Relax... all would be fine.

Would the interval never come? She raised her head and surveyed the dusky reaches of the auditorium, where, on either side of the stage, the magicians' boxes hung, heavy with gold fretwork and thick red curtains to shield the occupants from the commoners' eyes. But every magician in town had seen this play years ago, long before it had opened to the sensation-hungry masses. Today the curtains were drawn back, the boxes empty.

Kitty glanced at her wrist, but it was too dark to make out the time. Doubtless there were many forlorn partings, cruel ravishments, and joyful reunions left to endure before the interval. And the audience would love every minute of them. Like sheep, they thronged here night after night, year after year. Surely all of London had seen Swans of Araby by now, many people more than once. But still the buses puttered in from the provinces, bringing new customers to gasp at all the shabby glamour.

"Darling! Be silent!" Kitty nodded with approval. Nice one, Bertilak. He'd cut her off in the middle of her aria.

"What is it? What do you sense that I cannot?"

"Hist! Do not speak. We are in peril..." Bertilak rotated his noble profile. He looked high, he looked low. He seemed to sniff the air. All was still. The fire had burned right down; the magician slumbered; the moon had been obscured behind a cloud and cold stars twinkled in the sky. Not a sound came from the audience. To her great disgust, Kitty found she was holding her breath.

Suddenly, with a ringing oath and a rasp of iron, the genie drew his scimitar and clutched the trembling girl to his chest. "Amaryllis! They come! I see them with my powers."

"What, Bertilak? What do you see?"

"Seven savage imps, my darling, sent by the queen of the afrits to capture me! Our dalliance displeases her: they will bind us both and drag us naked before her throne to await her awful pleasure.

You must flee! No—we have no time for soft words, though your limpid eyes implore me! Go!"

With many a tragic gesture, the girl disentangled herself from his arms and crept to the left of the stage. The genie tossed aside his cape and jerkin in bare-chested readiness for battle.

From the orchestral pit came a dramatic discord. Seven terrifying imps leaped out from behind the rocks. Each was played by a midget wearing a leather loincloth and a skin-coat of luminous green paint. With horrid whoops and grimaces, they drew stiletto daggers and fell upon the genie. A battle ensued, accompanied by a frenzy of screeching violins.

Vicious imps... a wicked magician... It was a subtle job, this Swans of Araby, Kitty could see that. Ideal propaganda, gently acknowledging popular anxieties rather than denying them flat out.

Show us a little of what we fear, she thought, only take away its teeth. Add music, fight scenes, lashings of star-crossed love. Make the demons frighten us, then let us watch them die. We are in control. At the end of the show, all would no doubt be made well. The wicked sorcerer would be destroyed by the good magicians. The wicked afrits would be cast down, too. As for Bertilak, the rugged genie, doubtless he'd be a man after all, an eastern princeling transformed into a monster by some cruel enchantment. And he and Amaryllis would live happily ever after, watched over by the wise council of benevolent magicians....

A sudden sick feeling swelled in Kitty. It was not the tension of the job, this time; it came from deeper down, from the reservoir of fury that bubbled away perpetually inside. It was born of knowing that everything they did was utterly forlorn and useless. It would never change anything. The crowd's response told her this. Watch! Amaryllis has been seized: an imp has her under his arm, kicking and weeping. Hear the crowd gasp! But see! Bertilak the heroic genie has tossed one imp over his shoulder into the smoldering fire! Now he pursues the captor and—one, two—makes short work of him with his scimitar. Hoorah! Hear the crowd cheer!

It didn't matter what they did in the end; it didn't matter what they stole, what daring attacks they made. It would make no difference. Tomorrow the queues would still be forming in the streets outside the Metropolitan, the spheres would still be watching from above, the magicians would still be elsewhere, enjoying the trappings of their power.

So it had always been. Nothing she had ever done had made any difference, right from the beginning.

Kitty

The noise on the stage receded; in its place she heard bird-song, the hum of distant traffic. In her mind's eye, the darkness of the theater was replaced by remembered light.

Three years ago. The park. The ball. Their laughter. Disaster on its way, like lightning from a blue sky.

Jakob grinning as he ran toward her; the bat's weight, dry and wooden in her hand.

The strike! The triumph of it! Dancing with delight.

The distant crash.

How they ran, hearts thudding. And then—the creature on the bridge...

She rubbed her fingers into her eyes. But even that terrible day—was it truly the beginning? For the first thirteen years of her life, Kitty had remained unaware of the exact nature of the magicians'

rule. Or perhaps she was not consciously aware of it, for looking back she realized that doubts and intuitions had managed to negotiate their way into her mind.

The magicians had long been at the zenith of their power and no one could remember a time when this wasn't so. For the most part, they kept themselves removed from the experience of the ordinary commoner, remaining in the center of the city and in the suburbs, where broad, leafy boulevards idled between secretive villas. What lay between was left to everyone else, streets clogged with small shops, waste ground, the factories and brickworks. Magicians passed through occasionally in their great black cars, but otherwise their presence was mainly felt in the vigilance spheres floating randomly above the streets.

"The spheres keep us safe," Kitty's father told her one evening, after a large red orb had silently accompanied her home from school. "Don't be frightened of them. If you're a good girl, they'll do you no harm. It's only bad men, thieves and spies, who need to be afraid." But Kitty had been frightened; after that, livid, glowing spheres often pursued her in her dreams.

Her parents were visited by no such fears. Neither of them was overly imaginative, but they were robustly conscious of the greatness of London and of their own small place in it. They took for granted the superiority of the magicians and fully accepted the unchanging nature of their rule. Indeed, they found it reassuring.

"I'd lay down my life for the Prime Minister," her father used to say. "He's a great man."

"He keeps the Czechs where they belong," her mother said. "Without him, we'd have the hussars marching down Clapham High Road, and you wouldn't want that, dear, would you?"

Kitty supposed not.

They had lived, the three of them, in a terrace house in the south London suburb of Balham. It was a small home, with a sitting room and a kitchen downstairs and a tiny bathroom out back.

Upstairs was a little landing and two bedrooms—Kitty's parents' and her own. A long, thin mirror stood on the landing, before which, on weekday mornings, the whole family stood in turn, brushing hair and arranging their clothes. Her father in particular fiddled endlessly with his tie. Kitty could never understand why he kept on tying and untying it, kept on weaving the strip of fabric in, up, around and out, since the variations between each attempt were practically microscopic.

"Appearances are very important, Kitty," he would say, surveying the umpteenth knot with furrowed brow. "In my job you've got only one chance to impress."

Kitty's father was a tall, wiry man, stubborn of outlook and blunt of speech. He was shop-floor manager in a large department store in central London and very proud of this responsibility. He supervised the Leathers section: a broad, low-ceilinged hall, dimly lit by orange lights and filled with expensive bags and briefcases made from cured animal skin. The leather goods were luxury items, which meant that the vast majority of customers were magicians.

Kitty had visited the shop once or twice, and the darkly overpowering smell of the processed leather always made her head spin.

"Stay out of the magicians' way," her father said. "They're very important people, and they don't like anyone getting under their feet, even pretty little girls like you."

"How do I know who's a magician?" Kitty asked. She was seven at the time, and wasn't sure.

"They're always well dressed, their faces are stern and wise, and sometimes they have fine walking sticks. They wear expensive scents, but sometimes you can still catch hints of their magic: strange incenses, odd chemicals.... But if you smell that, the chances are you'll be too close! Stay out of their way."

Kitty had promised faithfully. She scampered to far corners whenever customers entered the Leather hall and watched them with wide, curious eyes. Her father's tips did not help much. Everyone visiting the store seemed well dressed, many carried sticks, and the stench of leather masked any unusual scents. But she soon began to pick out the magicians by other clues: a certain hardness in the visitors' eyes, their air of cool command and, above all, a sudden stiffening in her father's manner. He always seemed awkward when talking with them, his suit newly wrinkled with anxiety, his tie nervously askew. He gave little bobs and bows of agreement as they spoke. These signs were very subtle, but they were enough for Kitty, and they disconcerted and even distressed her, though she hardly knew the reason why.

Kitty's mother worked as a receptionist at Palmer's Quill Bureau, a long-established firm hidden among the many bookbinders and parchment makers of South London. The Bureau provided special quill pens for the magicians to use in their conjurations. Quills were messy, slow, and difficult to write with, and fewer magicians than ever bothered to use them. The staff of Palmer's used ballpoints instead.

The job allowed Kitty's mother glimpses of the magicians themselves, since occasionally one would visit the Bureau to inspect a new consignment of pens. She found their proximity thrilling.

"She was so glamorous," she would say. "Her clothes were the finest red-gold taffeta—I'm sure they came from Byzantium itself! And she was so imperious, too! When she snapped her fingers, everyone jumped like crickets to do her bidding."

"Sounds rather rude to me," Kitty said.

"You're so very young, love," her mother said. "No, she was a great woman."

One day, when Kitty was ten years old, she came home from school to find her mother sitting tearfully in the kitchen.

"Mum! What's the matter?"

"It's nothing. Well, what am I saying?—I am hurt a little. Kitty, I am afraid... I am afraid that I have been made redundant. Oh dear, what are we going to tell your father?"

Kitty sat her mother down, made her a pot of tea, and brought her a biscuit. Over much snuffling, sipping, and sighing, the truth came out. Old Mr. Palmer had retired. His firm had been acquired by a trio of magicians, who disliked having ordinary commoners on their staff; they had brought in new personnel and sacked half the original employees, including Kitty's mother.

"But they can't do that," Kitty had protested.

"Of course they can. It's their right. They protect the country, make us the greatest nation in the world; they have many privileges"—her mother dabbed at her eyes and took another slurp of tea—"but even so, it is a little hurtful, after so many years...."

Hurtful or not, that was the last day that Kitty's mother worked at Palmer's. A few weeks later, her friend Mrs. Hyrnek, who had also been dismissed, got her a job as a cleaner in a printing works, and life resumed its structured course.

But Kitty didn't forget.

Kitty's parents were avid readers of The Times, which brought daily news of the army's latest victories. For years, it seemed, the wars had been going well; the Empire's territories expanded by the season, and the world's wealth was flowing back into the capital. But this success came at a price, and the paper continually advised all readers to be on the lookout for spies and saboteurs from enemy states, who might be living in ordinary neighborhoods, while all the time quietly working on wicked plots to destabilize the nation.

"You keep your eyes open, Kitty," her mother advised. "No one takes heed of a girl like you.

You never know, you might see something."

"Especially around here," her father added, sourly. "In Balham."

The area where Kitty lived was famous for its Czech community, which was long established.

The high street had several little borscht cafes, marked by their thick net curtains and colorful flowerpots on the sills. Tanned old gentlemen with drooping white mustaches played chess and skittles in the streets outside the bars, and many of the local firms were owned by the grandchildren of the émigrés who had come to England back in Gladstone's time.

Flourishing though the area was (it contained several important printing firms, including the noted Hyrnek and Sons), its strong European identity drew the constant attention of the Night Police. As she grew older, Kitty became used to witnessing daytime raids, with patrols of gray-uniformed officers breaking down doors and throwing belongings into the street. Sometimes young men were taken away in vans; on other occasions the families were left intact, to piece together the wreckage of their homes. Kitty always found these scenes upsetting, despite her father's reassurances.

"The police must maintain a presence," he insisted. "Keep troublemakers on their toes. Believe me, Kitty, they wouldn't act without good intelligence on the matter."

"But, Dad, those were friends of Mr. Hyrnek."

A grunt. "He should pick his pals more carefully then, shouldn't he?"

Kitty's father was in fact always civil to Mr. Hyrnek, whose wife had, after all, gotten Kitty's mother a new job. The Hyrneks were a prominent local family, whose business was patronized by many magicians. Their printing works occupied a large site close to Kitty's house, and provided employment for many people of the area. Despite this, the Hyrneks never seemed especially well-off; they lived in a big, sprawling, rundown house set a little back from the road, behind an overgrown garden of long grass and laurel bushes. In time, Kitty came to know it well, thanks to her friendship with Jakob, the youngest of the Hyrnek sons.

Kitty was tall for her age and growing taller, slender beneath her baggy school jersey and wide-legged trousers, stronger than she looked, too. More than one boy had regretted a facetious comment to her face; Kitty did not waste words when a punch would do. Her hair was dark brown, veering to black, and straight, except at the ends, where it had a tendency to curl in an unruly fashion.

She wore it shorter than the other girls, midway down her neck.

Kitty had dark eyes and heavy black brows. Her face openly reflected her opinions, and since opinions came thick and fast to Kitty, her eyebrows and mouth were in constant motion.

"Your face is never the same twice," Jakob had said. "Er—that's a compliment!" he added hastily, when Kitty glowered at him.

They sat together in the same classrooms for several years, learning what they could from the mixed bag of disciplines on offer to the common children. Crafts were encouraged, since their futures lay in the factories and workshops of the city; they learned pottery, woodcutting, metalwork, and simple mathematics. Technical drawing, needlepoint, and cookery were also taught, and for those like Kitty, who enjoyed words, reading and writing were on offer, too, with the proviso that this skill would one day be properly employed, perhaps in a secretarial career.

History was another important subject; daily, they received instruction in the glorious development of the British State. Kitty enjoyed these lessons, which featured many stories of magic and far-off lands, but couldn't help sensing certain limitations in what they were being taught. Often she would put up her hand.

"Yes, Kitty, what is it this time?" Her teachers' tones often displayed a slight weariness, which they did their best to disguise.

"Please, sir, tell us more about the government that Mr. Gladstone overthrew. You say it had a parliament already. We've got a parliament now. So why was the old one so wicked?"

"Well, Kitty, if you'd been listening properly, you'd have heard me say that the Old Parliament was not wicked so much as weak. It was run by ordinary people, like you and me, who did not have any magical powers. Imagine that! Of course, that meant that they were constantly getting harassed by other, stronger countries, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Now, which was the most dangerous foreign nation in those days... let me see now... Jakob?"

"Don't know, sir."

"Speak up, boy, don't mumble! Well, I'm surprised to hear you say that, Jakob, you of all people. It was the Holy Roman Empire, of course. Your ancestors! The Czech Emperor ruled most of Europe from his castle in Prague; he was so fat he sat on a wheeled throne of steel and gold and was pulled about the corridors by a single bone-white ox. When he wished to leave the castle, they had to lower him out by reinforced pulley. He kept an aviary of parakeets and shot a different colored one each night for his supper. Yes, you may well be disgusted, children. That was the kind of man who ruled Europe in those days, and our Old Parliament was helpless against him. He governed a terrible assembly of magicians, who were wicked and corrupt and whose leader, Hans Meyrink, is said to have been a vampire. Their soldiers rampaged— yes, Kitty, what is it now?"

"Well, sir, if the Old Parliament was so incompetent, how come the fat Emperor never invaded Britain, because he didn't, did he, sir? And why—"

"I can answer only one question at a time, Kitty, I'm not a magician! Britain was lucky, that's all.

Prague was always slow to act; the Emperor spent much of his time drinking beer and engaging in terrible debauchery. But he would have turned his evil gaze to London eventually, believe you me.

Fortunately for us, there were a few magicians in London in those days, to whom the poor powerless ministers sometimes came for advice. And one of them was Mr. Gladstone. He saw the dangers of our situation and decided on a preemptive strike. Can you remember what he did, children?

Yes—Sylvester?"

"He persuaded the ministers to hand over control to him, sir. He went in to see them one evening and talked so cleverly that they elected him Prime Minister there and then."

"That's right, good boy, Sylvester, you'll get a star. Yes, it was the Night of the Long Counsel.

After a lengthy debate in Parliament, Gladstone's eloquence won the day and the ministers unanimously resigned in his favor. He organized a defensive attack on Prague the following year, and overthrew the Emperor. Yes, Abigail?"

"Did he free the parakeets, sir?"

"I'm sure he did. Gladstone was a very kind man. He was sober and moderate in all his tastes and wore the same starched shirt each day, except on Sundays, when his mother cleaned it for him.

After that, London's power increased, while Prague's diminished. And as Jakob might realize, if he weren't slumped so rudely in his seat, that was when many Czech citizens, like his family, immigrated to Britain. Many of Prague's best magicians came, too, and helped us create the modern State. Now, perhaps—"

"But I thought you said the Czech magicians were all wicked and corrupt, sir."

"Well, I expect all the wicked ones were killed, don't you, Kitty? The others were just misguided and saw the error of their ways. Now there's the bell! Lunchtime! And no, Kitty, I'm not going to answer any more questions just now. Everyone stand up, put your chairs under your desks, and please leave quietly!"

After such discussions in school, Jakob was frequently morose, but his moodiness rarely lasted long. He was a cheerful and energetic soul, slight and dark-haired, with an open, impudent face. He liked games, and from an early age spent many hours with Kitty, playing in the long grass of his parents' garden. They kicked footballs, practiced archery, improvised cricket, and generally kept out of the way of his large and boisterous family.

Nominally, Mr. Hyrnek was the head of the household, but in practice, he, like everyone else, was dominated by his wife, Mrs. Hyrnek. A bustling bundle of maternal energy, all broad shoulders and capacious bosom, she sailed around the house like a galleon blown by an erratic wind, forever uttering raucous whoops of laughter, or calling out Czech curses after her four unruly sons. Jakob's elder brothers, Karel, Robert, and Alfred, had all inherited their mother's imposing physique, and their size, strength, and deep, resounding voices always awed Kitty into silence whenever they came near.

Mr. Hyrnek was like Jakob, small and slight, but with leathery skin that reminded Kitty of a shriveled apple's. He smoked a curved, rowan-wood pipe that left wreaths of sweet smoke hanging around the house and garden.

Jakob was very proud of his father.

"He's brilliant," he told Kitty, as they rested under a tree after a game of fives against the side wall of the house. "No one else can do what he does with parchment and leather. You should see the miniature spell-pamphlets he's been working on lately—they're embossed in gold filigree in the old Prague style, but reduced to the tiniest scale! He works in little outlines of animals and flowers, in perfect detail, then embeds tiny pieces of ivory and precious stones inside. Only Dad can do stuff like that."

"They must cost a fortune when he's finished," Kitty said.

Jakob spat out a grass shoot he was chewing. "You're joking, of course," he said flatly. "The magicians don't pay him what they should. Never do. He can barely keep the factory working. Look at all that—" He nodded up at the body of the house, with its slates skew-whiff on the roof, the shutters crooked and ingrained with dirt, the paint peeling on the veranda door. "Think we should be living in a place like this? Come off it!"

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 1080