They had, he reckoned, covered roughly a quarter of a mile by the time the path broadened, opening into a vast, vaulted chamber, banded on one side by a shallow stream. In a small boat on the near bank, a boatman waited.
“Ready, Dovedale?” asked Sir Francis Medmenham.
Robert’s brown-robed guide faded off into the web of tunnels. “With all due reverence and humility,” drawled Robert, matching his tone to his host’s. “Wither do we sail?”
Medmenham raised a brow and the boat pole, all at the same time. “Across the River Styx and down into Hades.”
“Rather a Greco-Medieval mix for an Order of the Lotus,” Robert commented as Medmenham poled the boat to the other bank.
“Thrift, thrift, my dear Dovedale,” replied Medmenham, managing the skirts of his robe with the ease of long practice as he climbed out of the boat. “We are an accretion of generations of sin.”
“And all the more sinful for being so?” Clambering about in a habit wasn’t nearly so easy as Medmenham made it look. Robert inadvertently showed a good deal of leg as he swung out of the boat onto the bank. It was a decidedly humbling feeling—which was no doubt the intent.
Medmenham smiled a closed lipped smile. “It’s not quantity of sin but quality to which we aspire. Decadence, after all, is an art. When done properly.”
The brass doors blocking their path did, indeed, bear out that statement. Clearly from an earlier incarnation of the group, they were a work of art in their own right, featuring a bas-relief of Bacchanalian orgies, where tipsy maenads in disordered robes offered their attentions to Bacchus, a herd of satyrs, and one another in a staggering array of wanton combinations. The only concession to the new order was a knocker surmounted on the older panels, its brass jarringly bright in contrast to the mellowed patina of the maenads. It was an elephant’s head. The angle of the elephant’s trunk left no doubt as to its priapic connotations.
Lifting the ring hanging from the elephant’s open mouth, Medmenham let it fall against the brass doors once, twice, three times. On the third swing the doors swung open, propelled by invisible hands—or, far more likely, by some sort of pulley system. Incense billowed out, sifting like mist across the river, only scented as no mist had ever been, redolent of exotic ports and foreign temples.
Through stinging eyes, Robert could just barely make out the bodies in the haze, rank upon rank of them, it seemed, all in identical brown robes with hoods shrouding their features and whips at their waists. With an ironically courtly gesture, Medmenham gestured him forwards into their midst. The silent brethren shuffled back to form a semicircle around him, blocking off his means of egress. How many were there? Robert tried to count, but the smoke was in his eyes, blurring his vision and his senses. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe, it was hard to tell when one looked much like another and the purple-blue smoke belched from braziers slung from the ceiling on thick brass chains.
Medmenham urged him forwards, into the center of the room, directly beneath the room’s sole lantern, so that the light fell directly on his hooded head, placing him in stark relief while leaving the rest of the room in shadow.
Ahead of him, at the far end of the cave, loomed an immense altar. A great stone slab was surmounted by an arch that might have been stolen from an Indian temple—or simply manufactured with that in mind. All around the arch, in minute carvings, lush concubines attired in little more than strands of beads engaged in a variety of acrobatic erotic activities. Not just any concubines; some of the fertility goddesses portrayed in the carving had the bodies of voluptuous women, but their heads were formed of the overlapping petals of the lotus flower.
“Initiate!” declared Medmenham, in thrilling tones, once the meeting had been convened to order with proper pomp and a roll call of assumed names. “Do you come here of your own free will?”
“I do,” intoned Robert.
“Do you come of an impure heart?”
“I do.” Just not the sort of impure heart Medmenham had in mind.
“Have you any sins to confess to the company?”
So that was part of Medmenham’s game—or Wrothan’s. Robert had heard of such a club when he was in India, among the British community at Poona. As an initiation rite, members confessed their sins, usually of a sexual nature. They subsequently found themselves at the mercy of less scrupulous members of the society.
Robert marveled, as always, at the idiocy of his fellow men, willing to sacrifice their dignity on the promise of little more than a bit of slap and tickle.
“I confess,” declared Robert thrillingly, and paused for good effect, “that I am sinfully eager to sample the pleasures of the evening.”
That played well with the crowd. Lord Henry Innes roared his appreciation, pounding his large fist against his thigh. Robert would have known that guffaw anywhere, just as he recognized the braying laugh unique to Lord Freddy Staines. The one edging closer to Medmenham, always seeking to be closer to whatever he deemed the center of power, that had to be Martin Frobisher. That combination of arrogance and obsequiousness was unmistakable, even shrouded in brown wool.
That made four, four out of fourteen whom Robert could identify at a glance. Who were the others? And where in the hell was Wrothan? He might be one of the brown-cloaked figures, but it was impossible to tell. For a moment, Robert thought he caught an elusive whiff of jasmine, as delicate as a ghost in the smoke-haunted chamber, but beneath the heavy reek of incense it was impossible to be sure, and even less possible to trace the source. Robert’s shoulders tightened with impatience. Where was the bloody man? Nothing was going as he had planned.
Medmenham yanked on the end of a tasseled cord, sending up a shrill clanging that reverberated through the small chamber. “We call on the god to bring us the elixir of immortality!”
Claret, no doubt, thought Robert. Or brandy. His head was beginning to ache from the incense, and the ground was gritty and cold against his bare feet. As sin went, this was a fairly ramshackle affair. He wondered if they had mustered a more impressive performance back when they still called themselves the Monks of Medmenham. He doubted it. It would have been inverted crosses then, rather than elephant heads, but it all boiled down to the same thing: a stage set for an otherwise unimaginative bout of drinking and wenching.
It all made him feel very old and very tired.
With a tinkling of beads and a rush of air, a dozen giggling girls scrambled through the arch over the altar, each done up in pseudo-Oriental costumes of strategic straps of chiffon held together with strings of beads that clattered as they moved. Bracelets dangling silver bells circled their ankles and wrists. The exotic costumes sat oddly with flushed pink skin and masses of hair in shades ranging from blond to mid-brown. They were clearly village girls done up to look like temple dancers, preening and giggling as they jangled their bells and pushed out their chests. Their gyrations bore about as much relation to a genuine nautch dance as a jig to the ballet.
One by one, they ranged in an obviously choreographed formation around the base of the altar, posing with their hands clapped above their heads in poor imitation of the figures on the arch above them.
Lord Henry, who had, God help him, appointed himself Robert’s personal sponsor, struck Robert’s shoulder with a familiar hand.
“The handmaidens of the god,” he rumbled, in the worst stage whisper since Garrick’s Hamlet had a spot of bother over whether to be or not to be. “Just you wait. Here it comes!”
There was more?
Apparently, there was. Innes wasn’t the only one bouncing on his heels in anticipation. One of the girls giggled and was hastily hushed. Robert could practically hear the quivering of taut muscles as everyone in the room strained towards the door, waiting for something—or someone. Robert could feel the tension beginning to infect him. His eyes burned from the smoke and his ears rang in the expectant silence.
Someone began a chant and the others took it up, intoning, in unison, “So-ma, so-ma.”
It wa
sn’t a name Robert recognized. Clever nonsense, perhaps, cooked up to sound foreign? It was certainly eminently suited to a chant. The low sound echoed through the vaulted room, whirling around and around like a serpent chasing its own tail, over and over again in endless refrain, until the syllables blurred together and one voice was indistinguishable from the next.
Far off—or perhaps it merely sounded like it, through the chanting and the smoke—a pair of cymbals clanged.
Behind him, Robert could hear Lord Henry draw in a rough breath in anticipation. The sound was echoed all around the room. The chanting grew ragged, then faded off entirely, as all eyes focused on the lotus altar. A great blast of smoke blew through the beaded curtain and swirled through the room, a thick, blue-tinged smoke that carried with it a sickly sweet aftertaste that made his tongue feel thick and clung unpleasantly to the back of Robert’s throat.
In its midst stalked a creature out of myth.
Through the smoke, he appeared at least seven feet high. His tunic and baggy trousers were of cloth of gold, sewn with bits of metal that caught and reflected the light, so that he seemed to glitter with living flame. A curved sword hung from one hip, the hilt a full six inches high, set with rough chunks of lapis lazuli, carnelian, jasper, and tourmaline in a display of barbaric splendor. A gaudy gold pectoral hung across the creature’s chest, from which dangled a single chunk of red glass on which was etched, with a great deal more care than on the members’ rings, the insignia of the society.
But that was the least of it. Above the pectoral reared, not a human head, but a grotesque ritual mask, an elephant’s head, fully three feet high, with immense ears that spanned a yard on either side and an arrogantly curved trunk that arched up to reveal a great, gaping cavern of a mouth, painted with thick, red lips. But it was the eyes, the eyes that were the most distressing. The area around the eyes had been decorated as though for a festival day, painted a bluish white and outlined with gold beads, like a Venetian carnival mask. But within the ovals carved out for the eyes, all was black. There was nothing inside.
Medmenham’s voice rang out high and clear through all the corners of the room. “We bring, O Great Lord, a humble novice to your service in pursuit of the elixir of immortality.”
Despite himself, Robert couldn’t help but feel a frisson of superstitious fear as the sightless elephant head swung in his direction. There was something distinctly eerie about that hollow stare. There had to be eyeholes concealed somewhere else in the mask, somewhere one wouldn’t expect, especially when distracted with billowing clouds of blue smoke and a costume that scintillated like a royal fireworks display with every minor movement. Somewhere near the trunk, perhaps, where a viewer would be least likely to look.
From a niche in the wall, the creature produced a two-handled chalice and offered it out to Robert with hooves rather than hands looped through the handles.
Not Indian, that, thought Robert cynically. The bowl was of French enamel, hastily doctored with rough gemstones in an attempt to give it an Oriental air.
“Drink,” intoned the creature.
The word clanged through the corners of the room and seemed to reverberate in the cluttered corners of Robert’s brain.
His hands, he was alarmed to see, were trembling as he reached for the bowl. Good for verisimilitude’s sake, he thought fuzzily. Let them think he went in trembling of their god. It would be nicer, however, if he weren’t trembling quite so much. The scented smoke scraped the inside of his nose, making his eyes swim. All around him the sound of chanting rose from the assemblage, louder this time, more forceful, pounding into his skull with every blunt syllable.
“So-ma!”
“So-ma!”
Wrapping both hands around the baroque curls of the handles, Robert raised the chalice above his head in tribute. The simple action brought beads of sweat to his brow. He found, to his alarm, that his arms were shaking, his muscles fighting him as though the cup were weighted with lead rather than liquid. In front of him, through the corrosive smoke, the elephant mask gave nothing away. Fighting for control, through pure will power, Robert held the chalice suspended in the air. The room tilted around him, rocking from side to side like a boat in a squall. His stomach twisted, fighting a bitter battle with the remains of his supper.
One thing was for sure. It wasn’t claret in the cup. Inch by painful inch, he lowered the cup to his lips. Whatever was inside moved sluggishly as he tilted the chalice, too thick to be wine. It had a golden sheen to it, like mead, and a honeyed smell with a medicinal tang beneath its sweetness. Robert fastened his lips around the rim, made a barrier of his tongue, and tilted the cup.
It was harder than he would ever have thought to try to make it look as though he was swallowing while allowing none of the liquid into his mouth. The effort of swallowing nothing made him want to gag. A few trickles of liquid slipped past his tongue. Even that small amount made his throat tingle and his head swim. Robert tipped the cup farther back. Liquid dribbled down the sides of his lips, trailing in sticky streams down the matted wool of his habit.
At a nod from Medmenham, two of the dancing girls flung themselves on their knees beside him, greedily licking the fallen drops of elixir from his robes, working their way up his body as they went.
In the ever-shifting smoke, they seemed as insubstantial as ghosts but for the very human pressure of their small, plump hands on his thighs. Were they swaying, or was he? Robert found himself rocking like a mast in a high wind, twining his fingers into the disordered hair of his handmaidens, clinging like a sailor to the rigging. They tilted their heads back to stare up at him, eyes glazed, their pupils so dilated that their eyes were nearly as black as the great, empty holes in the elephant mask.
It wasn’t the elixir; he hadn’t had enough of it for it to work so quickly. Nor had they, unless they had been guzzling behind the altar. But they hadn’t looked like that when they first danced in, giggling and posturing. There must be something in the smoke. There was a blankness to their wantonness that chilled Robert to the bone even as his body responded mindlessly to their touch.
Shaking their tangled hair over their shoulders, the dancing girls licked their way up his body, tracing the honeyed path of the elixir up his neck, their bare breasts rubbing against his side as they pressed themselves against him. In automatic reflex, Robert’s arms wrapped around their waists, feeling warm flesh beneath his fingers, the generous curves of waist and hips. They ventured further, following the line of liquid up over his jaw, sucking the last of the sweetness from the corners of his lips. He wasn’t sure who moved first, or who gave way, but with no more thought than a rutting animal, his fingers were tangled in someone’s hair, his lips moving against hers as her tongue sought out the last of the golden potion.
It was like falling into a dark cavern. He scarcely knew who he was or what he did. It was mindless, meaningless, a matter of pure physical reaction. Behind him, somewhere beyond the cavern of his flesh, he gradually became aware of noises. Catcalls and ribald shouts. Comments on his performance—largely favorable ones. The blood slowly began to return to Robert’s brain.
The hair under his fingers suddenly felt coarse, the touch of it lacerating his palms. It wasn’t Charlotte’s hair; it wasn’t Charlotte’s lips; it wasn’t Charlotte’s breasts or hips or thighs or any of those other bits he had been so mindlessly enjoying. He had one woman twined around his neck, another wrapped around his waist, and his body was convinced that this was a perfectly splendid thing.
Behind him, others felt much the same way. He could hear fabric rending, beads shifting, flesh meeting flesh as the smoke continued to snake down from the braziers and the revelers set to coupling in an orgiastic haze.
Robert stumbled back so quickly that both women went sprawling. Their bells jangled discordantly in protest. He scrubbed the back of his hand against his mouth, but it didn’t do any good; he could still taste them, along the roof of his mouth, coating his tongue, sickly sweet like rot.
“I have to—” He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and wobbled a bit. The wobble was exaggerated; the nausea was heart-felt. What in the hell had he just been doing?
The girls backed away with flattering promptness. As they jangled their way over to a group enthusiastically making a beast with three backs, Robert hoisted himself up onto the altar, took the beads in both hands, and hauled himself hastily through the opening.
There was fresh air coming through. For a moment all he could do was stand with his back against the wall, drawing deep, gasping breaths into his laboring lungs, his stomach roiling like a ship on the high seas. Oh Lord. What in the hell had he been about to do? Was he no better than that? No more loyal, no more honorable, no more true? Five more minutes in that smoke . . .
Whatever it was that Medmenham was burning, it was more than mere incense. Even away from the smoke, he felt oddly light-headed, and his eyes showed an annoying disinclination to focus properly.
Focus. He had to focus. He had to remember why he had come here. It was the least that could be salvaged from the whole cursed affair. It was better than thinking of what had happened in that room, or what had almost happened.
Rubbing his eyes, he levered himself away from the wall and took stock of his surroundings. In niches in the wall, two braziers still smoldered slightly—the source of the smoke that had bellowed out in front of the elephant god. Water sloshed about on the bottom. The so-called god must have poured water over the burning coals to create those bursts of smoke that had preceded his entrance.
The god had also left behind his mask, hanging from a peg on the wall. It was an oddly homely thing, that peg, hardly appropriate to a deity, even a minor one. Discarded, the mask was a trumpery thing, nothing more than painted plaster of Paris, garishly decorated to show to good effect in the uneven light. Robert found the eyeholes just where he had suspected, right below the trunk.
Had Wrothan worn it? Or someone else?
A clever man might hand the starring role to someone else while hiding himself in the anonymity of a brown monk’s robe.
Pink Carnation 05 - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine Page 16