by Paul Park
“I think you are a monster,” she repeated.
“Yes. Well, perhaps.” Lord Chrism swallowed, and then he looked away. His voice had risen defiantly, but now it resumed its soft, insinuating tone. “But in a sense, it doesn’t matter what you think. You are deposed. You lack . . . authority.”
“I am Bishop of Charn.”
“Yes. Perhaps. For a little while longer, I suppose.”
* * *
That day, all day, there was chaos in the streets of Charn. At nine o’clock, in Soldan Square, the spokesman for the Inner Ear had nailed up a pronouncement, confirming rumors of the bishop’s condemnation. A crowd of seven thousand people waited for the news under a light rain, and when it came, they raised a howl that could be heard for half a mile. They pelted the council’s spokesman with excrement and mud; he was an old, fat, blind man, and they almost killed him.
By noon the news had spread throughout the city. The churches and chapels were all packed for morning prayer; after the distribution of the grain, the parish priests stood up to give the news, and later many of them took refuge in the crypts, cowering among the tombs while the crowds rampaged above their heads. One at least, the chaplain at St. Soldan’s Gate, stripped off his miter and went down to join his angry congregation. With his own crosier he beat in the stained-glass portrait of Lord Chrism Demiurge above the altar, and with his own hands he rang St. Soldan’s Bell and called the folk to arms.
“Which one of you has not received some comfort from her hand?” he asked rhetorically. “Which one of you has never felt the comfort of her grace?” His name was Ripon Starbridge, and within a month he would be dead, broken on the gallows of the revolution. For the sake of his name and his tattoos, he would be broken and condemned, but on that day he was a hero of the revolution, the first to raise his hand against oppression. Later chroniclers would call that time the Starbridge Uprising; from the 45th of October to the fall of the temple five days later, much of the violence against the government was led by rebel officers and priests, seeking first to free the bishop, later to avenge her death.
Too late these men would realize their own danger: They were rousing passions that would overwhelm them. That day, when Ripon Starbridge rang the bell above St. Soldan’s Church, he rang the tocsin for his race. All over the district men and women stopped what they were doing and looked up.
When Raksha Starbridge heard the sound, he was squatting over the workbench in his house on Spider Ghat, a beaker of what looked like urine in his hand. He turned his head and squinted up into the air. “What’s that?” he asked, but he already knew. And there was no one else to tell him; to Princess Charity the bell was just a noise, another cadence fighting with the squall of rain upon the tiles, the slap of water on the pilings underneath the house. Or more than that: After a while the sound of the bell seemed to drown out other rhythms. Charity shivered, and wrapped her skinny body in her arms.
She stood near the doorway of the parson’s house, leaning back against the bare studs of the wall. The house was larger than it looked from the outside, a single room, packed to the rafters with huge piles of junk. Near Charity, a mass of broken bicycles, scrap metal, and electrical supplies loomed up above her head. In front of her, occasional rodents wandered among bales of paper, chimney stacks of books.
Charity shivered, and listened to the tolling of the bell. After her morning in the streets, she was relieved to be inside. The outside world had proved so varied and intense, it was a relief to get away; concentrating on a single sound, she felt her strength return. In time she was secure enough to feel bored; that morning Raksha Starbridge had dragged her to his house. But once inside, he had abandoned her and disappeared. After an hour, she pushed away from the wall and walked down a pathway between boxes, following a line of revolutionary slogans painted on the floor. There, in an open space in the center of the house, Raksha Starbridge kept his bed and kitchen. There he kept his laboratory, a strange, eclectic cluster of burners and pipettes and dusty bulbs of colored liquids. And there he crouched over his workbench, stirring a beaker, while with his other hand he added pinches of some dark and dirty powder.
He was talking softly to himself. Standing above him, Charity noticed a new purpose in the way he moved, a new anxiety. “It’s Soldan’s Bell,” he said aloud, anticipating what was on her lips to ask. “God help us all,” he said.
Baffled, she shook her head, and he turned back to stare at her. “My God, you’re ignorant,” he said. “Even Rosa would have understood—listen,” he said, rising to face her, cradling the beaker in his hands. “Listen, why do you think I brought you down here? It’s because I needed you for my experiment. But I didn’t guess I needed you so urgently.”
Baffled, she shook her head. He tried again. “I have a friend in Kindness and Repair. He told me this: Last Wednesday Chrism Demiurge, returning late from midnight mass, surprised the bishop of this city coupled with a stranger, before the altar of her private shrine. Lord Chrism had them both arrested, and the bishop was indicted for witchcraft and impurity. That was on Sunday. This morning the council was to meet, to vote on the indictment, and I was sure she’d be released. That bell tells me I was wrong.”
The parson’s face was full of movement, even when he paused. Drugs and alcohol had penetrated every part of him; his eyes were dilated, and his eyelids twitched. Clouds of angry rashes and discolored skin seemed to move over his cheeks; his mouth was never still and never dry. Charity stared down at his trembling hands, watching the uneven surface of the liquid in his beaker.
He wasn’t finished: “I was wrong. The chaplain of Saint Soldan’s church is calling for armed demonstrations and a general strike. He is Lord Chrism’s cousin, but he is the bishop’s man. What can that mean, except she was condemned? What can that mean, except the moment I have feared and hoped for all my life is here at last, and I am unprepared?”
Raksha Starbridge held the beaker in one hand. The other he spread open, and Charity could see his strange tattoo: a dark thicket of leaves and underneath, almost invisible, a single seam of gold, a tiny lizard hiding in the grass. “Once their power splits,” he said, “then it will fall. I used to think, yes in my lifetime, yes in one thousand or two thousand days, the people would rise up. But that bell means that in a week—no more—the people will be hunting Starbridges through all the streets, and they will murder all they find.” He stared down at his palm, and with the forefinger of the hand that held the beaker, he touched the seam of gold. “And I mean to survive.”
Then suddenly he took her hand and led her over to another bench, under the shadow of a wall of books. “Stand here,” he said. He put the beaker down upon the bench. “I needed you,” he said. “For my experiment. Just for a moment—you will hardly feel it. The experiment has been complete, only I need the test. My own blood was never pure, and I have ruined it. Besides,” he said, glancing down at his mottled forearm. “I find it hard to raise a vein.”
With trembling fingers he lit a spirit lamp and then chose four test tubes from a dusty box. He rubbed them with a piece of cloth, then poised them upright in a row, balanced in a wooden rack. Then he crouched down. Under the bench there was a small electric cooler; he opened it and took the only thing that it contained—a china beaker covered with tin foil. Standing again, he poured two of the test tubes full of a thick liquid. It was dark blue and almost black.
“This is human blood,” he said. “Ordinary. Starving class. But this”—he broke the seal on a sterile bag, and drew out a thick needle, which he connected to a plastic tube—“this,” he said, and then he grabbed the princess by the arm and jammed the needle into the big vein inside her elbow. She grunted with surprise and pulled away, but he was stronger than he looked. He held her by the arm and then let go; it only took a moment for him to fill two test tubes with her blood. He yanked the needle out almost before she had a chance to say a word, and clamped a piece of gauze over the wound. Then he let go and turned back to the test tubes.
With a chuckle of delight, he held one up against the flame. “Perfect,” he said. Her blood gleamed amber-colored in the lamplight; he shook it, watching the residue settle, and then replaced it in his rack. “Perfect,” he said again. Charity said nothing, only she held the gauze clamped tightly over her arm.
Then he took the other beaker, the one that he had first prepared, and with a pipette he dripped seven drops of liquid into each tube.
In the two tubes of ordinary blood there was no change. But instantly the Starbridge blood turned color, and let forth an evil smell. When it was gone, the four tubes were interchangeable.
“What does it prove?” asked Charity.
Raksha Starbridge laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. But you and I are not religious. If we were, we’d find this demonstration most significant.”
“What do you mean?”
Raksha Starbridge held the tubes up to the light, one after the other. “There are millions in this city who believe the myth we taught them, that there are differences between the rich and the poor. There are millions who will find it hard, even now, to rise up against their masters. They will think, ‘What is the use? Our masters are like gods. To kill them is to send them straight to Paradise.’ Now, to such a one, I would think this demonstration might be most significant. If they could be convinced there was a drug that could eliminate that difference, they might feel a revolution might succeed. A pill, perhaps, or an injection—something that would neutralize the sacred essence of the Starbridge blood . . . well, then they’d feel their hands were free to strike at their oppressors. And more than that, might they not be grateful to the man who gave that drug to them, who freed them from the burden of that myth? Might they not give him a high place in their counsels, and if he is a Starbridge, might they not forgive his blood, forgive his past?”
“My God,” said Charity. “You’d sell us to the mob . . .”
“Ah yes, my family,” interrupted Raksha Starbridge, and again he raised his hand, so that she could see the gleam of gold along his palm. “Ah yes,” he said, looking around the filthy room. “My family, who have treated me so well. No, it is their own stupidity that has betrayed them. I have not brought them to this place. But I plan to survive—what are your plans?”
Charity took the gauze from her arm and looked down at the patch of amber blood. “I miss my cousin Thanakar,” she said, tears in her eyes. “My cousin and my brother. He’d know what to do. The bishop’s been arrested—he could free her. Just by raising up his hand.”
“Yes. Perhaps. He has the power, but he lacks the strength. And Chrism Demiurge is burning him this afternoon. Had you forgotten?”
She had not forgotten. Tears were in her eyes. He went on: “No. These stories are all coming to an end. Your brother and the bishop. The Starbridge power in this city is coming to an end. The storm is coming, and I mean to ride it. I mean to survive.”
“I, too,” said Charity. “But not like that.” She seized the beaker from the table and tried to pull away, but the parson had grabbed her by the arm. She tried to pull away, and then she turned and dashed the contents of the beaker back into his face, so that it ran down his clothes.
Raksha Starbridge laughed and licked his lips. “It doesn’t matter. Rat piss and dopamine, that’s all it is. I know the formula.”
The bell had stopped. Charity pulled away, and he released her suddenly, so that she staggered and fell back. “Go,” he said. “If you’re not with me, you’re against me. Don’t come begging, later on.”
He turned back to his test tubes. And Charity felt a sudden rush of terror, because, disgusting as he was, in all the vicious city he was everyone she knew. Almost, already, she felt like begging his forgiveness; the house on Spider Ghat seemed like a refuge, dark and peaceful, from the crowds outside. But then she gathered strength. She turned and walked up through the piles of junk, into the open air.
* * *
“What are you doing?” asked the boy.
In Kindness and Repair, part of the bishop’s cell was still intact. When the old man had gone and sealed the door behind him, the boy sat on the windowsill, his cat upon his lap. He watched with a strange, silent absorption as she lit the candles of her private altar. From her own chamber in the bishop’s tower, she had brought an old four-handed statue of Angkhdt the Charioteer. It was about ten inches high, carved of blackened bronze. The God was dancing, His arms making a circle around His head, and in each hand He held a symbol of the four great mysteries—love, war, poetry, and faith. His face was human, and there was nothing vulgar or deformed about His sex. The statue had been for children in the ancient time.
The bishop mixed some kaya gum into a bluish paste. At the same time, she was reciting vespers in her clear, low voice. She poured water into a row of small brass bowls, so that it trembled on the lip of overflowing. “Oh my Father,” she intoned, “teach me how to love, for my love is the joy, the passion, and the flame.”
At two o’clock, the bells started to ring again in churches all over the city. The bishop sat back on her heels to listen. She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. The boy watched her from the window, and with the thumb and index finger of his right hand he stroked the fur under the cat’s right ear. Once again, the clouds outside had broken apart, and the afternoon sun was coming through the bars into the room, touching his golden hair, his golden skin. “There is part of you that I don’t like,” he said.
“I am sorry,” replied the bishop. She didn’t turn around.
“This is slavery,” he said. “In your mind. Leave it and come with me. Can you break the door?”
The bishop made the mark of Paradise above her forehead and her heart, tracing it in water. “I cannot,” she said. “He has sealed it with an incantation, which will not be released until my death.”
The boy hummed a few notes of a song called “come with me.” Outside the window, the sun was shining with a clear, straight, golden light. It shone on the backs of the soldiers laboring in the courtyard around the scaffold, and it made their shadows long and black. They had built a pyramid of logs. Soaked with rainwater, scented with perfume, now it was smoking in the sunlight and the unaccustomed heat. The great pile of wood with the heavy stake on top pointed dolefully up towards the sky. The shadow of it stretched across the yard and touched another, smaller gallows by the wall. “Tomorrow night,” said the bishop. “Tomorrow night we shall be free.”
“In Paradise,” said the boy, his voice a music of contempt.
The bishop frowned. Again she pushed the hair back from her face. “Not quite that far,” she said. “Watch this.”
In a dark space near the altar an image gathered shape. It spun and twisted on the floor, a coil of snakes, a white stag, and a cloud of butterflies. A mixture of illusions in a space six inches high, and then another image: a tree growing from a pyre of burning logs, spreading its limbs, its leaves and branches catching fire. A silver apple on its topmost bough spun in the light, detached itself, and floated up into the air. It was the Earth, a tiny simulacrum of the Earth, spinning, changing color, changing season.
The bishop frowned. “I can make a dream as real as flesh,” she said.
* * *
Six miles away across the city, Prince Abu watched the sun for the last time. He stood on the steps of Wanhope Prison, squinting myopically into the glare. “How warm it is,” he said. “This is real spring weather, after all.” These were his last words, and later people argued constantly about their meaning. And in fact it was the hottest day in Charn so far that season. That, and the unsettled weather, were things that people would remember later, when they sang songs about his death.
The priests had ungagged him and untied his hands, so that they could shrive him. Lord Chrism had asked them to perform this ceremony in public. So they had put up sawhorses and barricades in the open square before the prison steps, and the purge was holding back the crowd. There were fifteen hundred people in the squa
re. “Abu, Abu, Abu,” they shouted. The prince smiled and waved. He felt like a fool. He had been drinking steadily all day, and now he could scarcely stand. He wasn’t thinking at all clearly, but he liked the feeling of the sun on his bare cheeks.
For a while he had thought to make a gesture. When the priest approached him with the cup, he had thought to knock it from his hands so that it clattered down the steps. In his mind he had rehearsed how he would strike it down and then raise up his hand, so that the people could all see the symbol of the shining sun. But when the moment came, he saw that for his benefit the sacrificial balsam in the cup had been replaced by rum, a good, solid shot of rum, a last present from his uncle, and no doubt liberally drugged. So instead, he grabbed the cup and raised it to his lips, and all around him the cheering was redoubled. It was something they would all remember, how Prince Abu grabbed the cup and drained it, instead of kneeling to accept a sip.
He wiped the sweat from his bald forehead. He was happy, even in that circle of repulsive priests. Only, when they brought him the mask and gauntlets, for a moment he turned away. “Wait,” he said. He turned back towards the sun and closed his eyes. So that he wasn’t even paying attention when they tied him and locked the silver gauntlets to his wrists. They strapped the silver mask over his head.
And when he opened his eyes again, he found that he could scarcely see. The mask was padded so as not to hurt him, and the eye slits were several inches from his eyes. He didn’t care. The world of his sensation was closing down. But he could still feel the sunlight, and his body chafing in his clothes. And he could still hear the chanting of the crowd, cheering for him, though doubtless for the wrong reasons. It didn’t matter; reasons didn’t matter. But the cheering seemed to fill his heart.