‘But you’re such a clever girl. Besides, your friend’s elder sister will have taught her much. And her mother, too, of course. Oh, yes—for Miss Lipski, the cult is in her blood!’
‘The training goes on for six months. There’re all the dances to learn, the ars amatoria, rituals, drill, sacred invocations, and the duties to—’
‘The Illuminati?’ he cut in, his voice grown terse.
‘Yes,’ I said, frowning with confusion. ‘I mean—’
‘The Illuminati,’ he whispered, bitterly. ‘Those who you created, and who served your will on Earth—the servants who gradually became your masters!’ He released me and rose to his feet. ‘For centuries, the Illuminati created discord between nations to increase their indebtedness and provoke war against their opponents, and all so that a centralized authority might be created to control mankind under the aegis of Ishtar. But, today, my dear, it is the Illuminati who control you. They exploit and use your cult merely to justify their godless, materialistic world order.’
He tugged at his sleeves, and then at the lapels of his jacket, seemingly at pains to collect himself.
‘You should have no fear about how you will be received by the temple,’ he continued, his voice steady now. ‘With the papers we will give you, you will be accepted, just as if you had successfully completed your postulancy.’ He gazed around the tent, seeking something that he had misplaced: his sangfroid, perhaps. ’I would like you and your friend to lend me your assistance, Miss Fell. Indeed, the Black Order insists upon it.’
I could feel my eyes beginning to mist.
‘I’ll see you again, though, won’t I?’ I said.
If, deep inside, there was a part of me that was ready to throw up her hands in horror at such a maudlin performance (or, perhaps, simply to throw up), then there was a corresponding part that was not merely gratified at being given the chance to play the romantic female lead, but almost moved to tears, like an unknown actress thrust into the limelight after auditioning for East Lynne.
‘We shall meet again. You may be assured of it,’ he said. He sat back down, leant forward a little, and then, with becoming hesitation, a little more, until finally bringing his face close to my own and brushing his lips against my ear, whispered: ‘But listen. What I am going to ask of you is of great consequence. Of more consequence, I believe, than anything that will ever be asked of you again.’
I returned to the modest but well-equipped little pavilion that served as my temporary living quarters. Like the other tents set up within the boundaries of the palisade, it had served the needs of men who, for the most part, lived a nomadic life. As I pulled back the canvas flap I heard a howl split the night. The tent stood on the encampment’s periphery. And I wondered what animal— beside that most dangerous of animals, the human male—haunted the burnt-out ruins nearby.
Entering the tent, I discovered that I was alone. Cliticia had not returned from her assignation. And an hour later, I was still alone. Bored, I changed into my nightgown and went to bed. I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke it was to a commotion, as if someone had inadvertently walked into the pots and pans hanging outside.
The flap of the tent was thrown back.
I sat myself up on one elbow, lit the candle that stood on the bedside table, and then held it up so that its light fell upon the entrance.
Cliticia stood in the shadows, her small, compact, yet insistently buxom frame backlit by a colossal moon. She let the flap fall back into place and walked forward. When she reached the tent’s central pole she stopped and placed a hand against it to steady herself. With her right knee flexed, the other hand found purchase on her displaced left hip, so that she struck a pose that was characteristically jaunty.
She had lost her dress, stockings, drawers, chemise, and stays, and stood naked but for the black leather tunic bedecked with military insignia that, I would guess, she had either borrowed or purloined from Mr Malachi. The armband over the left sleeve displayed the symbol of the Black Sun, and was complemented by a frilly silk garter.
Taking her hand from her hip, she adjusted her headpiece— a peaked, leather cap—so that it was perched at a more rakish angle. Then she walked to the opposite side of the pole, placed her hand against it, flexed her left knee, and adopted a pose that was the mirror image of the one she had adopted a few seconds earlier.
‘So,’ she said. But before she could proceed, she was seized by a fit of hiccups. ‘So,’ she repeated, with an emphasis that seemed designed to suggest that, though quite obviously intoxicated, she had not strayed so far beyond the bounds of sobriety as to be unworthy of attention, ‘did your beau make you into a Joy Maiden, Maddy Fell?’ But she was more than tipsy; she was very drunk. ‘I bet ’e did. I bet that’s just what ’e did.’ She staggered across the intervening space, collapsed onto the bed, and snuggled up to me. Long, corkscrew locks fell to either side of her cheeks, the greater mass of the unravelled hair spilling across the pillow.
‘Welcome aboard, ol’ cock. We really are sisters now.’ She closed her eyes and rolled over onto her back, her head sinking into the pillow so deeply that she seemed in danger of drowning in the savage luxuriance of her own coiffure. ‘Welcome to Joy Division.’ And then she fell asleep.
That night, she would confide nothing further, except snores. But I had no need to ask her to eSans-serifte. It was as she had said: we were sisters, now, in life and in death.
CHAPTER TEN
Soon after we had awoken, one of the young grooms had come to our tent to inform us that a horse and carriage had been made ready. We were, it seemed, to be entrusted to the care of one Lord Melkarth, who would act as our driver and guide. His lordship, we were assured, would conduct us to a point in the city where we would be able to flag down a train bound for Temple Ereshkigal, where Gabrielle Lipski served the Goddess.
An hour or so later, when we finally set off from the encampment, I turned and looked over my shoulder, hoping that Lord Azrael might be standing outside his marquee, eager to wish us a sad, but fond, goodbye. But he was nowhere to be seen. Most of the Men remained in their tents; either that, or they had risen before us and departed in silence, leaving only the smouldering embers of a few campfires brazenly to proclaim that they had set foot here, where no man was allowed.
The gates of the palisade stood open. We passed through and came upon the expanse of gutted buildings already familiar to me. Indeed, after a restless sleep, in which that landscape had figured too often in my dreams, it seemed decidedly over-familiar. I glanced left, then right, evaluating the long avenue of scorched brick that stretched out into the far distance, half willing to believe that each burnt-out hovel represented a troll that had turned to stone the moment I had woken up, but which was still sentient, still watching me. I looked away, and noticed that the train, which had earlier been shunted onto the branch line that terminated at the palisade, was missing, suggesting that Lord Azrael and his contingent of irregulars had indeed slipped away into the moonlit ruins while Cliticia and I had slept, to leave us in the sole care of Lord Melkarth and his groom.
Lord Melkarth said little, and with both his charges distracted by meditations upon how they would be received by the Ereshkigal temple-maidens, the journey of two to three hours passed in comparative silence.
The train we had taken yesterday had followed the Processional Way, the great artery that linked the northern Gates (used these days, it seemed, exclusively by the Men) with the Gates to the south, specifically the Blue Gate of Ishtar. But Lord Melkarth left the Processional Way quite early, adopting a zigzag route through the deserted, open-air museum called ‘Modern Babylon’ whose collection featured architecture, statuary, and engineering that represented over 2,000 years of proud, if for the most part clandestine, human devotion to Ishtar and those maidens who served her.
The topography was chaotic. At one point, Lord Melkarth handed the reins to his groom and turned about to check on us. As he did so he saw fit to volunteer the i
nformation that we were on the east bank of the Euphrates, or rather, the canal that had been excavated in ancient times to lend the newly built replica of Babylon—this alien city on an alien world—greater verisimilitude. And then, with a rare smile creasing his face, he pointed north, towards two landmarks that had suddenly become visible: Esagila, that is, the temple of Bel, or Marduk, and its centrepiece, the unmistakable, towering edifice of Etemenanki, the ziggurat linked in popular legend with the Tower of Babel. My skin flared up into a rash of goose bumps. I had long known that Esagila and the famed Citadel of the Men were one and the same.
Having got my bearings, I orientated myself so that I looked south. In the farthermost south—and still hidden by convection—was the old quarter: the complex of temples and palaces dedicated to Ishtar and her votaries—the temenos, or scared precinct, that was to be our adopted home.
‘You are little more than 300 miles from your objective,’ said Lord Melkarth, whose gaze had followed my own.
I lowered my eyes and again concentrated on the surrounding ruins.
‘What happened here?’ I said. His lordship frowned, shifted in his seat, and redirected his attention to the road ahead.
‘You have been taught, I suppose, that our Order is little more than one hundred years old?’
‘Well, that’s what we’re taught in school, but—’
‘We have not always called ourselves the Black Order. Indeed, in the past, we were not really an “order” at all. We had forgotten our Hyperborean origins.’
‘Then what were you?’ I said.
‘We were men who didn’t fully understand ourselves. Men slowly awakening to what they were, what they were honour bound to achieve. We were men who sought to realize the truth, but who were lost to history.’
‘The truth?’ I said.
‘The truth of the eternal war between male and female.’ He gestured towards the ruins. ‘The evidence of our attempt to acknowledge that truth is all around you.’
‘Like, there was an incursion ’ere?’ said Cliticia.
‘Not one that you will find in the history books,’ he said. ‘But yes.’ With a flick of his wrist he brought the reins down smartly across the horses’ backs. ‘Indeed, there have been several such... ’
‘But how could that be?’ I said. ‘In those days, only Shulamites and the Illuminati knew of Babylon’s existence.’
‘My dear, I assure you that some others did know. If, at first, they only suspected the existence of a worldwide conspiracy to seduce, corrupt, and enslave the entire world, then persistence, aided by serendipity, sometimes confirmed their suspicions. I will give you an example. During the height of the so-called seventeenth-century witch-craze, a certain London magistrate, by name Henry Walsingham, pursued a young woman he suspected of practising sorcery through the dark streets of Bankside and Southwark, hoping that she would lead him to her confederates. Instead, she led him through a secret, interdimensional Gate, and into Babylon.’
‘He never returned?’ I ventured.
‘Correct. He became hopelessly lost. Though, as you can see’— he swung his arm right and left—‘he managed to wreak a measure of revenge before succumbing to hunger and despair.’
‘But you say ’e weren’t a Minotaur,’ said Cliticia.
‘Perhaps he was, but simply didn’t know it,’ I said.
Lord Melkarth snorted, though whether in laughter or derision, I could not tell. ‘Oh yes. I’d been told you were a clever one, Miss Fell.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Cliticia.
‘He means—’
‘I mean’ he said, a little annoyed, I think, at my presumption, ‘that history—all history—has merely been a rehearsal for our own times.’
‘We are the truth of history,’ I said. ‘The writing between the lines. History’s secret text. Its substance. We’re what history has always really been about.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘History is, for the most part, a discipline of interpretative evasion.’
‘You mean there’s always been Minotaurs ?’ said Cliticia.
‘I would go further,’ he said. ‘There have only been Minotaurs. Just as there have only been temple-maidens. History, stripped of its obfuscating, humanistic veil, is a chronicle of unacknowledged gendercide.’
‘And we are living at the end of history,’ I said.
Lord Melkarth nodded.
‘So this ‘Enery Walsingham,’ said Cliticia, struggling to keep up
‘Was an actor in the world’s secret history,’ I said, turning to her and placing a hand reassuringly over her own. ‘A sleepwalker in a dream we have at last woken from and are about to fulfil.’
We stopped. Lord Melkarth laid aside his whip, leapt to the ground, and assisted us out of the cabriolet. We carried no luggage. Due to the role we would soon be constrained to play, it had been necessary to leave the carpetbag, and all the nice things it contained, behind.
I spun around, taking in the view. We were in a street that, if far narrower than the Processional Way, also boasted a pair of parallel, iron lines running down its middle and into the far distance.
‘Like all whores, novices enter the city from the south,’ said Lord Melkarth. ‘But our intelligence tells us a train is due from one of the less frequently used western Gates. This is sometimes done to minimize the threat posed by the Black Order. It’s a small consignment. About two dozen girls; no more, I should think. You will flag it down and explain yourselves, in the way in which you have been instructed.’ He mounted the box-seat and again took up the reins. ‘We will meet again,’ he concluded, the thin smile he had bestowed upon us when he had pointed out the Citadel again enlivening his otherwise lifeless face.
With a crack of his whip the cabriolet departed.
With arms raised above our heads, we stood astride the track, waving, shouting, braying, squealing, as the train applied its brakes and, in a cloud of steam, came screeching to a halt.
Our stratagem had been a simple one. We had torn our skirts and petticoats, rubbed dust into our faces and hair, and then—like two imperilled heroines who had recently escaped ravishment by highwaymen or buccaneers—made our loud, if inarticulate, appeal for assistance.
We walked up the track. On reaching the engine we were engulfed in a white, fluffy cloud of steam that rose up the sides of the embankment and into the sky. Undeterred, we stumbled forward, half tripping over the sleepers. As the steam cleared, I spied a copper nameplate on the boiler’s carapace. It bore the legend: The Princess Faustina. By the time we stood beneath the cab, the steam had completely dissipated, revealing the entire locomotive frame and its burden of coal and water. With fourteen coupled drive wheels, it was quite a beast. I looked up. A matronly woman stared down at me.
‘Where in the Goddess’s name have you come from!’ she cried as she wiped some of the soot from her face.
‘We’re two novices!’ said Cliticia, a little too eager to regale all and sundry with our trumped-up tale. ‘We were travelling on a train from the south, when—’
‘When we were ambushed by Minotaurs!’ I said, not trusting her to dissemble with adequate finesse. But undismayed by my stern look, and seemingly unable to withstand the temptation of offering up a supererogatory detail, Cliticia added:
‘We ’id in a culvert!’
‘Never mind that,’ said the engineer, whose eyes were fearfully scanning the ruins. ‘Get in quickly. Quickly now! You’ve placed us all in danger!’
I clambered up the rungs that gave access to the cab, and Cliticia followed, close upon my heels. ‘We crossed over to Babylon two Earth days ago,’ I said, looking up at the sooty woman who had extended a hand to help me board. ‘Please, Madam Engineer, we’re starving!’ As I swung myself into the relative sanctuary of the cab’s interior, I happened to glance down the line. The train’s wooden carriages were painted bright pink and caparisoned in bunting and ribbons. But what caught my attention, and held me rooted to the steel-plated floor, was the g
allery of faces that protruded from the open windows of the nearest carriage, each one turned to evaluate me and filled with a wild surmise.
Eeek!cried our fellow passengers as Cliticia outdid herself in extemporizing ever more gaudy variations upon the theme of our lucky escape.
It made me cross. It was completely unnecessary. Madam Celeste—the Duenna in charge—had been so eager to have Madam Engineer make steam and get under way that she had not even checked our papers.
The carriage’s pink, gaily-apparelled exterior had been misleading. We travelled very much third-class, the Spartan wooden seats, and lack of private compartments and drapes, contrasting markedly with the luxury I had enjoyed in the company of the Men.
Until we had boarded, our fellow novices had probably been occupied singing silly, schoolgirl roundelays and otherwise celebrating their first sight of Modern Babylon. But our appearance had had a sobering effect.
It was a sobriety that succumbed to a wholly different kind of intoxication as they began to listen, aghast, to tales that Mrs Radcliffe, or even ‘Monk’ Lewis himself, might have blushed to tell.
At last, Cliticia held her tongue.
There was a lull—though I suppose it is truer to say that the ‘lull’ was more like a state of shock-stunned, collective paralysis— during which I took the opportunity of reacquiring my gabby little friend’s attention.
‘Did you?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Did you—’ I steeled myself. ‘Did you enjoy osculation?’
‘Enjoy what?’
‘Did you enjoy—’ I took a deep breath. Sometimes Cliticia could be very annoying indeed. ‘Did you enjoy intimacy?’
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