The Memory Palace

by Gill Alderman

  He drove on through the Vallée de I’Oise while the girl chattered. Sometimes he had the illusion that he was driving his eldest daughter; Phoebe had picked up the same vapid talk and culture from her friends. He watched the road, as he must, and noticed the traffic on it which, lighter than that of England though it was, had still a good variety of vehicles. There were obvious differences, more Mercedes and Renaults, no Vauxhalls, and, while he wondered what had become of the motorists from the ferry, they passed a little clutch of British cars. No salaried holidaymakers in these, a Rolls and a new Jag, two big Rovers. Then came three British lorries, giant kith and kin of the European trucks he had passed on the M25. The road signs looked international. How long, he wondered, before the cultures merge? This is Europe, not France. Individuality is disappearing.

  Alice spoke,

  ‘The secret places have gone – the deep tree-filled coigns, the lazy rivers and grassy banks, the unexpected flower-studded meadows,’ she said. ‘This is all there is – motorway, bridge after bridge after bridge. Europe has shrunk.’

  ‘What?’ He was annoyed – no, just mildly disturbed – to hear her speaking in such an adult and authoritative voice.

  ‘You were thinking how much things have changed, weren’t you?’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry. The perilous places still exist – they’ve just moved over a bit. In a sense, they are even further from ordinary people than they were before, they are so hard to reach. But a storyteller can find them.’

  He glanced at her and while he thought, so briefly, that her mix of semi-adult profundity and teenage chat would be odd if it were not so engaging, noticed only that her expression was demure and that her hands were folded, not in her lap as they would be if she wore a skirt, but because of the encasing leggings, against her groin.

  Rain surprised them as they passed through a national park. He read its name aloud, from the sign: ‘Pare Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’

  ‘I wonder where the noble savages live now,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Perhaps Etta knows.’

  ‘There?’ he wondered, as Alice waved to a group of bikers.

  ‘They’re giving us the V-sign,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going faster than they can.’

  ‘No. Like Churchill not “up yours” – aren’t there noble savages in Malthassa?’

  He frowned. The world he had created in his mind had grown so vast, he sometimes had trouble remembering all of it. It had got away from him, he felt, and was trying to live on its own. The frown helped him grasp and hold it.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There are only the Ima and they are neither noble nor savage.’

  Then they were entering the choked sprawl that is outer Paris and were caught in a crowd of traffic as dense and wild as any London jam. It moved erratically but always at high speed and he had neither time nor attention for Rousseau’s philosophy.

  ‘Look out for the signs which say “Lyon”,’ he snapped. ‘No, don’t talk.’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  His hands involuntarily tightened on the wheel and a painful spasm passed through them. He felt a waterfall of sweat run down his back, despite the air conditioning. No wonder: the heat. The signs above the road shimmered with it and he read the ambient temperature on one, 28C; checked it against the readout in the car. As he looked at it, the 8 became a 9. Alice had found the bottle of water he kept in the car and she undid and passed it him without comment.

  Nemione Baldwin knelt to dip water from the river. She lowered the brass cup into the current and held it steady there, so that the water which filled it flowed with the stream.

  ‘Thank you, nivasha,’ she said, and spilled a few drops of water on the ground. I leaned forward anxiously to look into the water but could see nothing there except the stones of the river bed. Should I have seen the nivasha lying on her underwater bed of green weed or, worse, swimming towards me, I would have been mortally afraid – and eternally curious, filled with the same desire for change and danger that makes men climb mountains or trek into the forest’s infinity. Nemione handed me the brimming cup and I drank gratefully.

  She had changed a great deal; but no more, I suppose, than I. Her loose, maiden tresses were gone. The fair, almost white hair was braided and looped about her ears and pinned in elaborate merlons high on her head – that was how it looked to a military man. She wore a long gown of green stuff, open from the waist down to show white petticoats. There were rings on her fingers and jewels at her throat and in her ears.

  But in all this elaborate show there was no hint of seduction or carnality. The gold cross of our Order hung chastely amongst her trinkets.

  As for myself, the reflection in the slower water at the riverbank showed a dark and travel-weary face above a dented cuirass from which the embossed wolf’s head had all but worn away.

  ‘So you became a licensed outlaw,’ said Nemione.

  ‘And you a lovely and fashionable lady!’

  She laughed – the sound was richer than it had been when it echoed in the cloister – but it suggested wit and a keen mind, rather than woman’s art.

  ‘What gallantry! Who would have thought that silent Koschei Corbillion would grow into such a cavalier?’

  She drew a fan from her pocket and flicked it open; put it to her face and looked at me over its rim. Her eyes were the colour of male sapphires, or the Septrential Ocean, and they matched the blue eyes painted on the fan. She flicked the fan which subtly and rapidly was changed, becoming a thing of grey estridge feathers, then a froth of rose and white blossom; again, and it was as green as her skirts, a simple chusan leaf.

  ‘Perhaps not “My Lady”, but Prestidigitator,’ I said.

  Nemione shook her head.

  ‘That is for gypsies and mountebanks.’

  ‘Then … Sorceress?’

  ‘For the time being let us agree on Prentice.’

  She touched the leaf and folded it away like a fan.

  ‘You, Sir Koschei, Wolf’s Brother,’ she continued, teasing me. ‘Are you in search of your fortune, or a pretty wife perhaps?’

  ‘I have left one war to journey to another,’ I told her. ‘That’s the truth of it. My apprenticeship will be as long and as hard as yours.’

  ‘But fighting only lays waste to the body!’

  ‘Not true. It saps the spirit just as well.’

  ‘But you are young, and strong enough for it. How long is it since you left our Order?’

  ‘Two years this day week.’

  ‘Then I left it only days after you.’

  A breeze came rustling through the forest and stirred her fortress of hair and her finery. She sighed and tapped one foot on the stones by the river.

  ‘I would travel more simply,’ she said, ‘but I thought this frippery a good disguise – the peasants will do anything for a high-born lady. Did you see my dwarf as you came along the track?’

  ‘I saw nothing but the birch trees and the birds in them – and a hind in the shadows.’

  ‘He is an idle knave! I sent him forward to spy out the way.’

  ‘Surely it is dangerous to be here, alone. What if I were more Wolf than Brother? What if I were the Duschma with her sharp nails full of poison and her ulcers festering with the pox?’

  Nemione stood up straight. ‘I am in no danger,’ she said, with more than a hint of pride. ‘I may be an apprentice but –’ With a dextrous twist of her fingers she made the folded fan disappear and, in its place, a narrow tongue of flame grow. She held out her hand and invited me to touch the flame which, notwithstanding my fears, I did. It was cold.

  ‘Now watch!’

  She tipped her hand and the flame slid down it, dropped to the ground and burned there. Soon it was licking through the grass and leaves, rapidly growing into a hazard.

  ‘Stop!’ I cried.

  ‘You are afraid, Koschei. Of a little fire? See!’

  The fire collected itself together in one place and Nemione, gathering her yards of silk about her, sat down beside it
and held both hands up to the blaze. At that moment also, a short and stalwart figure stepped forward out of the bushes.

  ‘Bravo, Mistress,’ the dwarf said, applauding her. She smiled a welcome. I realized that her abuse of him was, like her costume, an affectation, and that they were as fond of each other as mistress and servant may be.

  The little fellow looked somewhat like an eft or newt in the breeding season, or like a scorpion perhaps, with a sting in his rapier. He wore a breastplate and cuisses of silvery scales, and his skin had a silvery cast too. I remembered what my mother had told me when I was a child at her knee: that a dwarf of the Altaish, though he leave his mountain home for ever, must always retain this ingrained livery, tincture of the metal he had dug and abandoned.

  ‘This is Erchon,’ said Nemione.

  The dwarf bowed low.

  ‘And you, sir,’ he said, ‘do not need your armour to be recognized as a Brother.’

  ‘Good day, Master Scantling,’ I returned, and he bowed again, with a flourish, and walked on down the little stony beach and into the river, where he waded thigh-deep.

  ‘Take care!’ I shouted.

  ‘Peace, Wolf’s Head,’ said Erchon. ‘The nivashi cannot smell a dwarf.’ From close beneath the riverbank he lifted a fish-trap which he opened and emptied on to the bank. A mass of writhing fish, as scaly and argent as himself, fell out and the dwarf in his turn fell on them, banging their heads against a stone. Soon he had spitted them and was roasting them at the fire.

  ‘The trouble with this pretence,’ said Nemione, as her dwarf offered her a portion of the fish, ‘is that silks are not practical for the wayfaring life. I had better give up being a lady and turn myself into a gypsy. It will be easier that way.

  ‘Eat your fish, Erchon, Koschei. Do not look at me.’

  The dwarf obediently turned his back on her and began to devour his fish, not bothering to separate them, flesh from bone, but eating them whole, heads, bones, tails: all. I bowed my head and used my knife on my fish, trying hard to concentrate on the food.

  Yet I could not help peeping at Nemione. I saw her prepare herself for conjury with a whispered charm. Then she closed her eyes and started to strip off her jewellery. I do not mean that she unclasped and unpinned the many pieces she wore but that she touched each one and, at her touch, it vanished. I had to bite hard on a piece of fish to stop myself exclaiming. She stroked her embattled hair. At once it began to writhe, twisting about her head like a nest of vipers as it freed itself from its confinement and settled about her shoulders like some errant and lusty cloud. I had to bite my hand to stop myself crying out in fear.

  Next, she began on her garments.

  Perhaps the spell was a primitive one; or, more likely, she did not know enough to transform her dress with one pass. Her garments melted successively from her and left her sitting there in nothing more than a thin, white shift.

  I thought, I am a Brother and I should take what is offered me. I moved my hands, putting down the fish.

  ‘Cheat!’ cried Nemione, opening her eyes. She glared at me.

  ‘You are very lucky, Brother Koschei, that I did not slay you where you sit!’

  Judgement had the upper hand. I was quiet. If she could not make the unclothing spell more elegantly, I reasoned, she was unlikely to have the powers of life and death. After a moment or two had passed, when we were both calm, ‘Forgive me, Mistress Baldwin,’ I said, and bowed my head.

  So I did not see what Nemione did to clothe herself again but only that, when I was allowed to look at her, she wore the red and orange garb of a Rom and a burden of brassy necklaces around her neck.

  ‘No more lady,’ she said.

  ‘You look as well in this gallimaufry,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, empty compliment! Now I am a dirty hedge-drab.’

  ‘You have the same angel’s hair.’

  ‘I can’t change that,’ she confessed. ‘Help me, Koschei, for old times’ sake; help me to darken my hair.’

  By good fortune I had with me a bottle of the dye with which we Green Wolves used to darken our faces on moonlit nights. I took the stuff from my wallet and showed it her.

  ‘This may help. You must dilute it in water. Then rub it on.’

  ‘Perhaps if I use my comb – oh, fie! It is gone with the gown.’

  It was my turn to laugh; but I only smiled gently.

  ‘I have a comb.’

  We worked together, Erchon and I, he fetching water from the river in the brass cup, which fortunately had been left on the bank and so had not packed itself away in whatever ethereal trunk or closet the fine clothes were laid; I mixing a proportion of the dye into each cupful and combing it into Nemione’s hair with my soldier’s comb of steel. It was hard to do – not the dyeing, which worked admirably – but the combing of her gossamer hair. Never before had I stood so close to her. The only women I had touched were rough camp followers and country girls who, knowing their business with men, were greedy and sharp-tongued. Nor did their skins smell sweet as a damask rose and feel like one petal of that rose, fallen in the dewy morn.

  ‘Spare me,’ I whispered in her ear, so that the dwarf would not hear. ‘I am a man.’

  ‘Pretend we are sister and brother,’ she said. ‘As once we were, in the Cloister.’

  So I finished the task. Nemione, looking into the dye-bottle exclaimed,

  ‘It is all gone!’

  ‘I shall easily get more,’ I lied. I knew that the penalty for losing any part of my kit was three month’s duty without leave and possibly a flogging at the end of a rope.

  The stuff was drying in her hair, turning it as black as a night-crow’s wing. She looked as bewitching as the Queen of Spades.

  ‘You will soon get a gypsy lover, Mistress,’ said Erchon the dwarf.

  ‘Look in the river,’ I said. ‘You will see yourself how much you look the part.’

  She stood there a long time, on the river’s edge, gazing at the rippling simulacrum of herself.

  ‘I shall journey safer when I have found a band of Rom,’ she said. She turned and looked at me.

  ‘What can I give you Koschei, for your patience and your dye?’

  ‘A little piece of yourself – to meditate on and to love.’

  ‘I will give you some strands of this counterfeit hair. But that is not enough. I have a long and perilous journey ahead – but I do not need Erchon any more. What gypsy lass has her own dwarf? I will lend him to you and, when I send, you must discharge him from your service.’

  ‘Very well.’

  She pulled some long hairs from her head and gave them to me; I coiled them up and put them, wrapped in my neckcloth, in my wallet. Then she gave me Erchon, telling him to march smartly to my side and there remain, until she called.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, and turned and walked away along the track, her brave gypsy clothing bright in the shadows of the overhanging trees. She did not look back but Erchon and I watched until we could see her no more. Then, facing each other, we exchanged smart salutes before we shook hands.

  ‘Will she soon find company?’ I asked the dwarf. ‘Do gypsies travel in this locality?’

  ‘Yes, Master – and many of them at this time of the year. There is a horse fair in Vonta, fine trotters, proud pacers, sumpter horses, palfreys, vanners, destriers, barbs – what you will. And the mountain men bring their cast-off slaves to sell.’

  ‘Yet there is danger for Nemione.’

  ‘She will survive it, more than half nivasha as she is,’ the dwarf said.

  ‘She is the daughter of the reeve at Espmoss.’

  ‘But who was his mother? And who is her mother?’

  ‘Why does she journey?’

  ‘Ours not to ask, Master; nor to reason why.’ As he talked, Erchon busied himself in tidying our temporary caravanserai, and trod upon the ashes of the fire. He heard the rumble before I did, and the jingle of harness.

  ‘Hark!’

  ‘Into the trees!’

&nb
sp; ‘Too late, Brother Wolf. There is the caravan-master and he has seen us. Smile as they pass and pray they will soon overtake my lady.’

  We stood aside to watch the procession of gypsies pass.

  ‘Look, gypsies!’ Alice exclaimed.

  ‘I can’t. Tell me.’

  ‘You can see the ripe corn. They are camped on the edge of the field. The chrome on their vans glitters in the sunlight and they have a lorry – two – and a car; there’s some washing on a line – gone now. Out of sight. What a pity gypsies gave up horses and painted vans.’

  ‘I knew one who lived in a vardo black as coal, and every line and carved curlicue upon it was picked out in gold and red – and a great hairy-heeled mare pulled it.’

  ‘Dominic’s mother?’

  She must have guessed it.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I read your letter when you went for a pee.’

  It was the sort of thing Helen herself would have done; that this Alice had pried in his guilt did not make him angry, but irrationally fearful. She was cheeky and unpredictable, that was all, he reasoned, the child of a broken home; and he had left the letter and the postcard on the dashboard.

  ‘Why did Dominic send you the picture of a horse?’ Alice continued.

  ‘Thought you’d read my books.’

  ‘Not all. I suppose there is a horse like that in one of them.’

  ‘Right! The Ima, who live in the Plains of Malthassa, herd horses – we were talking about them earlier, when we passed the sign that said “J-J Rousseau”. The best ones belong to the Imandi, their leader, and the best one of all is the Red Horse.’

  ‘What colour was Helen’s horse? I can’t remember.’

  Again he was disturbed. He was sure he had not revealed Helen’s name; and Dominic had not written it down. He had not told her what colour the horse was either: he was certain of that.

  ‘I didn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘She was brown and white – skewbald, or “coloured” in gypsy parlance. They prize pied animals highly.’

  ‘Half and half, like good and evil; neither one thing or another, like me,’ Alice said and then, before he could respond to this new slant upon her puzzling character, reached forward and reinforced his unsettled mood with a fresh CD.