The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  Her attention was drawn to the other side of the lake where tiered pagodas stepped to the heavens, the glimmer of gold peeping from winter gardens indicating the imperial palace. She knew it immediately, despite having no knowledge of it, and as the horses’ hooves clicked on the cobbles, she turned her back on the imperial structure with a deliberate move of her shoulders.

  Four packhorses and two mounted men waited as she turned and the one who spoke her language looked at her and raised his eyebrows as if to ask was she ready.

  ‘Would you like to ride behind me?’

  She nodded and was grabbed in a leather-clad grip and swung up to balance on the wide rump, her hands lying at the man’s waist.

  She swayed behind him as she viewed the life of the Han. Few people were about and those who were, hurried and scurried. Indigo robed slaves were loaded down with baskets of vegetables on bamboo poles. Others trotted along with fowl or fish, wet laundry and bundles of firewood suspended at the end of the poles and she could see in detail that whilst Han life must continue, it did so on the well-watched backs of her fellows. They seldom looked up at the passing horse parade and Belle wondered at their bowed heads and docility.

  How many of you are like Lucia, content with your lot? How many of you are like myself? And goodness, there’s a thing! They are all women!

  ‘I am Xuan, Ibo. I have seen you in the compound.’ The voice of her companion disturbed her thoughts. He spoke cleanly, his words far removed from the twisted, sharp language of the Han. ‘It is unusual for a slave to be allowed out beyond the Han Gate. Master Koi must trust you.’

  ‘He has been kind,’ she said. ‘And I am doing Madame’s bidding. I am honoured by their trust.’

  Subterfuge is all.

  They were heading up an incline, the horses’ muscles rippling, their heads lowered. The housing had thinned and all around were trees and gardens where even in the light frost, groups of people performed slow orchestrated movements, some with hands, some with dash and beauty as they flicked a silver sword in a slow arc, massive red tassels shadowing the graceful movement of hilt and blade. Others had fans, the crisp click flicking in the early morning air.

  ‘What do they do?’ Isabella asked.

  ‘It is a moving meditation. It grounds the mind, centres the person ready for a new day.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered, looking back over her shoulder. ‘Does the Master do it?’

  ‘Of course, and Madame, in the Merchants’ Gardens every day. It is a discipline practised only by the upper levels. For anyone else it is forbidden.’

  Isabella had difficulty seeing the vituperative Madame Koi grounding herself with anything.

  ‘Are you a practitioner?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. But what I do is different, suited to my trade.’

  He didn’t expand. Her companion was evidently not a great conversationalist so she sat quietly and was content to observe.

  This was, after all, a fishing trip.

  Chapter Six

  Nicholas

  Nicholas tried to settle himself, to smooth his feathers.

  No matter that the Prosser flowed equably at his side or that the sun shone.

  No matter at all that the air was filled with the excitement and colour of one of the greatest fairs in Eirie or that his tastebuds were titillated by the smells from tent and brazier as providors sought to fill famished bellies.

  Everything seemed to happen on a different plane for Nicholas and it worsened by the hour, his temper fraying, his patience exhausted, his frustration purulent. He looked, he smelled, he heard, but from a murky distance. Perhaps his family felt the same, he thought, they had reason to. But were they cursed?

  In a manner of speaking they are, Nicholas. You must be kind.

  Wise Ebba’s voice overlaid Jasper’s in his mind – the mortal carlin and the Færan healer. He sucked air in through his nose in disgust.

  And that about sums it up – the mortal and the Færan.

  He threw money on a stall and the vendor passed him an ale which he grabbed, swallowing half in an instant, impatiently waiting for the alcohol to slice into his mood.

  Cut half of it out, a quarter even. Anything to help.

  He watched Adelina and Gallivant out of the corner of his eye. Phelim had gone to the livery stables to find mounts suited to their needs and the Hob was wound like a clockwork toy, a painted smile on his face, as if an elevated mood would drag the woman from her doldrums. She stepped listlessly along the first row of vendors, the smells of food and drink coating the air above with appetite.

  Around them stilt walkers tilted and swayed, their garments wafting around like pennants and bannerols. Jesters and jongleurs wove and ducked amongst the crowd, occasioning laughter and merriment and a skein of children chased after a merry piper, raising memories of the perhaps not so pleasant Hamlyn man who had disappeared to the Other world with an entire town of children. Such memory reminded Nicholas of Isabella’s disappearance. The other half of the ale disappeared down his throat.

  ‘Look, Stitcher. There they are. The fabric stalls, can you smell?’

  The Hob bounced like an overzealous terrier and Nicholas wanted to grab him by the scruff and say Sit! But Adelina’s head had lifted and her nose did indeed almost sniff the breeze. Nicholas sucked a breath through his nostrils and smelled it too; the smell of cotton, silk, hemp, wool and leather melded with the unmistakeable fragrance of dyes from all over Eirie. Each stall had the merchant’s name displayed and the type of fabric they purveyed and the names read like a litany or a gorgeous passage of poetry as Gallivant mouthed them aloud.

  ‘Damask, brocade and velvet,

  Bombazine, lutestring and scarlet,

  Samite, cambric and sarsenet,

  Buckram, muslim and felt…et.’

  He glanced sideways at Adelina with a cheeky sparkle in his eyes and her mouth tipped up slightly and so he slipped his arm through hers and dragged her onward.

  ‘See, it’s alright. Come on.’

  Nicholas followed behind and observed because it was easier than thinking. The fetters of impatience at this delay for haberdashery had him chafing hard.

  ‘Nico. Nicholas!’

  His stepfather’s voice sounded above the crowd and he turned to see the broad shoulder pushing politely through, a vague smile here and there as Phelim recognised merchants and landsmen.

  Nico tipped his head and pointed and Phelim’s eyes followed until they settled on Adelina’s faded russet hair and the relief on the man’s face was palpable. Adelina’s head bent as she dragged fabric through her fingers and held a piece to the light to shift it this way and that and it was obvious she had found an interest, that some deep-seated love had been re-awakened.

  ‘Perhaps the day isn’t so bad after all,’ Phelim muttered. ‘Worth the delay.’

  Nico couldn’t gainsay the man, how could he? He watched his stepmother as she walked from stall to stall, grateful that she was interested in something other than loss and grief and even blame, let it be said.

  *

  The fabric had the look of jewelry, an array of colours that sparkled like treasure; heady amethyst derived from the Trumpet mollusc from deep in the waters of the Pymm Archipelago, red from the lac beetle that crawled and died in some unknown vale in the Raj, indigo as rich as a night sky from lichens and mosses in Trevallyn and yellow from the ferruginous clays that hung on the edges of the Venichese laguna. One would have no soul not to be impressed at the fanciful weavings and embroideries which aroused a million different dreams of imperial halls and dancing houries, royal troubadours and regal maidens. In its own way it was exciting and something stirred in the pit of Nicholas’s stomach as he heard Adelina’s throaty tones.

  ‘I can feel a breath of wind about me, Gallivant. It’s a welkin wind, isn’t it? And look, see that?’

  In front of them a white owl’s feather was caught in the wind’s grasp, dancing on its end, flipping over, all the while enticin
g in its perfection. It didn’t move beyond Adelina’s ambit, performing a strange carole, describing a circle in front of her.

  ‘It’s a summons, I can sense it,’ Adelina whispered and Nico had to listen hard. ‘Gallivant?’

  The Hob pushed hands through the sandy fair hair that waved upon his nape.

  ‘Adelina…’

  ‘I’m right. Traveller’s intuition. I know!’

  She took a step and the feather moved further, another step and another and she and the feather proceeded, Gallivant hastening behind as Adelina twined in and out of the lanes of fabric sellers, barely stopping to look at any, just following the errant feather dancing in the wind.

  Phelim led off quickly with Nicholas following, but as he hurried alongside his stepfather, he glanced at the trees, at the canvas awnings of the stalls and none moved with a wind – no billows, no flapping, no rustling of leaves. And yet the feather danced on, pulling them in its eldritch wake.

  Around Nico’s neck the welkin wind sighed.

  Fate, it whispered. Fate.

  They stopped in front of a stall manned by a tall Raji with dark eyes, his black hair caught up behind and split in two gleaming rolls which were skewered at his nape with a splinter of fine silver metal. He smiled and bowed, his hands describing a fluid move from his forehead to his mouth to his chest.

  ‘Salaam alaykam,’ he said.

  ‘Alaykam-as-salaam,’ responded Adelina in her throaty voice and even Nico knew she was remembering Isabella’s merchant father who had called Adelina shrimati and was a storyteller.

  ‘Madame,’ the Raji spoke with only the faintest trace of an accent, as though almost all of his life had been spent outside the Raj and somewhere else entirely. ‘May I show you my wares? I see you are a stitcher who likes earthy colours, perhaps of the hedgerow and the forest, yes?’

  Adelina nodded and brought forth a small kerchief she had embroidered – palest coffee organza with a cluster of tiny berries, a minikin ladybird and a spider on a dewdrop jewelled web.

  ‘Ah. Then I have this…’ he hefted a bolt of shot silk onto the table, its coffee throwing to amethyst in the sunlight. ‘Or this,’ a thud followed as the next bolt was lifted from the pile behind him. A heavier fabric, a yellow tinted pink that had Adelina gasping as she reached for a draping fold and ran it under her fingers.

  ‘Or…this.’

  He slid a bolt on top of the other two where it sat as if on a throne, a raw silk with a textural slub and with the colour of new-minted gelt slipping through its weave. Its colour was as rich as the sun at sunset, as mellow as copper.

  ‘Madame,’ said the Raji deferentially. ‘In the light it is almost the colour of your hair.’

  ‘Sink me if the fellow isn’t right,’ Gallivant held up a fold at the side of Adelina’s head and the colours blended. Sunrise and sunset. ‘Look at that.’

  Nicholas heard Adelina whisper, ‘It sings to me.’

  ‘What do you say, Adelina?’ Phelim leaned down.

  ‘It speaks to me, it sings.’ She looked up at her husband and her eyes shone for the first time in a year as she spoke with fierce intensity. ‘Like the feather, it summons me I tell you.’ Her fingers grasped the fabric as if it were a long lost friend.

  ‘Wrap it up, no matter the cost.’ Phelim said in the voice of a man who would move heaven and earth for the one he cherishes. ‘I will pay you what you want.’

  ‘It is not cheap, sir. The dye and the weave are rare. It is called shifu and comes from high in the Goti Range. It is an ancient technique and combines the finest paper shreds with the finest silk and has not been woven for three hundred years.’

  ‘Your price, sir. I will pay it.’ Phelim had taken out a jingling leather purse and Nicholas understood this was his way of staunching a gaping wound.

  ‘A thousand gelt.’

  Nico choked. It was more than Phelim would have saved in a lifetime but he had turned to Gallivant. The Hob jumped in with his own bag, clinking it onto the stall.

  ‘Here. A thousand gelt. Count it if you wish.’

  Adelina frowned at the Hob but the Raji just bowed and smiled.

  ‘There is no need, sir. I can tell you are honourable.’

  Nico’s eyebrows shot for the sky. He’d heard of Gallivant’s purloining through the years – a bag of money laid down along with a mesmer and if the merchant was honest it was filled with gelt, if not then with sticks and leaves. It was a common practice with the Others, to treat mortals so.

  The bolt was wrapped in burlap and Phelim hoisted it on his shoulder after shaking the man’s hand.

  ‘My pleasure, sir. May your path be safe and your life be long.’

  ‘And yours,’ Gallivant added as they left.

  Adelina turned to the Hob when they had moved far enough away. ‘Gallivant, please don’t tell me…’

  ‘No. He’s an honest trader so he was paid in full. I can mesmer real coin as easily as I can mesmer twigs and such.’

  Adelina heaved a sigh.

  ‘Thank Aine because the fabric is unique and the merchant was such a polite man. I tell you when I touched it, it was almost as if it belonged to me, as if it spoke my language and could see my dreams. If it wasn’t made in the Raj, I would almost say it had been woven in Færan or some Other place.’

  ‘It’s enough that you found something you like, Adelina, and I’m glad.’ Phelim hugged her with one arm. ‘Shall we make haste to the Travellers now?’

  He kept his wife moving through the crowds, the bolt balanced easily on his shoulder, slight relaxation in the lines of his face.

  But Nicholas sensed something else at play.

  ‘Fate,’ whispered the welkin wind. ‘Fate.’

  *

  The Travellers’ vans were lined up under the oaks and elms of Orford, the colours of the vans mimicking the precious-stone tints of the fabrics. Adelina’s face changed as she gazed at the sight and tears began to trickle.

  ‘Phelim, it has been so long…’

  ‘I know,’ her husband replied, laying the bolt on the ground and holding her in the circle of his arms. Nico and Gallivant stood behind them as her tears continued to fall. ‘But there they are and here you are,’ whispered Phelim. ‘Go on, we’ll follow.’

  She moved forward, her black journeyman’s garb at odds with the richness of the Travellers’ own clothes. It was as if the shadow of a prophecy moved with her, Nico thought and shivered. As if there was something that had arisen in the last hour and walked with them and he wondered why such a thought should come unbidden. He hurried after the others as they followed his step-mother and reached them in time to see her fall into the arms of a cheroot smoking woman of her own age. The Traveller had conker brown hair that curled wildly in the air and as she shouted ‘Adelina,’ her voice brought the rest of the Travellers into a loud group surrounding them.

  ‘Oh Adelina, it’s been years. How are you? We know what happened and we sing songs for you.’ The conker haired woman spoke up. ‘You must have a drink with us, some wine. You must come to the campfire, no arguments and there’s an end to it. We can put the children in charge of the stalls.’ It was quickly arranged and then the Travellers moved in a tight protective herd with the woman in black in their midst, the three Others who were her family shoved to the outer edge, ignored and snubbed. Adelina looked around.

  ‘Wait. My husband.’ She thrust through the barrier of people and grabbed Phelim by the arm. ‘This is my husband. Phelim, this is Katinka. And Joshua, Sarah and Michel and oh, there are so many! Everyone, this is my husband and that is my stepson Nicholas, and this,’ she grabbed the Hob and held him pinioned at her side, ‘is Gallivant, my…’

  ‘Hob, yes, we know. And we know that Phelim is Færan and that Nicholas claims the blood too. Have you forgotten Traveller’s intuition, Adelina? We can feel the presence of Others.’

  Katinka’s voice betrayed something very close to dislike and Nico sensed the Travellers closing round Adelina again, a protecti
ve wall that might insulate her from any ugly glamour.

  ‘Katinka, they are good people and I love them. If I had not had them to lean on this last year, I may not have survived.’

  ‘If you hadn’t had them around you,’ a wrinkled grandmother muttered so that only Nicholas caught the words, ‘you may not be in the position you find yourself now.’

  But Adelina didn’t hear her acerbic comment and was urged to sit by the fire, a glass of rich red wine placed in her hands and one each more circumspectly in Phelim’s, Gallivants’ and Nico’s.

  They sat excluded as Adelina answered solicitous questions but her hands twisted and it was obvious her mind was on other things. Finally she said something that caused Nicholas to tip his wine with shock.

  ‘Katinka,’ she spoke softly so that Nico at first wondered if he had heard right. ‘I wanted to see you. I want you to read my fortune, tell me what will happen. I must know and you are the best.’

  ‘Except for me,’ whispered the grandmother who had sat next to Nicholas and who as she sucked each drop of the wine through her fragile teeth, had kept her eyes glued to him, almost as if she stared at his very soul. He glanced quickly at Phelim, but if the man was surprised he kept his face as unreadable as a book of Færan runes.

  Gallivant on the other hand, whispered to Nico sourly.

  ‘Fortune-telling from a mortal. So now she reduces her future to a bit of augury. If she seeks to know that Isabella is alive, haven’t we told her a hundred, a thousand times, that yes she is. And we know better than anyone.’