Babylon

by Richard Calder

  I was pleased to discover that the library also contained books by Marie Corelli: A Romance of Two Worlds (which I had read when it had been first published two years ago) and, quite amazingly, what looked like the bound, uncorrected proofs of its sequel: Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self.

  I opened A Romance of Two Worlds. I had enjoyed this book. It was about a spiritual quest. The mysterious Chaldean, Heliobas, approaches the first-person narrator—a Shulamite who has only recently been inducted into the faith—to teach her the meaning of life, death, and love.

  ‘In the winter of 188—, I was afflicted by a series of nervous ailments, brought on by overwork and over-worry. Chief among these was a protracted and terrible insomnia, accompanied by the utmost depression of spirits and anxiety of mind. I became filled with the gloomiest anticipations of evil; and my system was strung up by slow degrees to such a high tension of physical and mental excitement, that the quietest and most soothing of friendly voices had no other effect upon me than to jar and irritate... ’

  I skipped ahead. I was in no mood to sympathize with another’s ‘nervous ailments’ and ‘terrible insomnia’. But as I turned the pages, and let my eyes scan the closely printed text, I discovered that the novel was not as I remembered it. And as I put it aside to pore over the bound proofs of Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self I suspected that I was reading a completely different author—not the female Rider Haggard at all, but someone whose books were more likely to find a home in Holywell Street, that ghetto of indecent literature and unregulated fantasy where shop windows were filled with licentious scribblings and the prints of actresses and ballet dancers in extreme states of picturesque dishabille.

  ‘The door opened. Miss Lesbia Ascot-Smythe looked up. Framed in the doorway was a man who, by virtue of his uniform, was immediately recognizable as a member of the Grand Order of the Nephilim. He stepped forward, his eyes darting left, then right, as he took stock of the assembled girls.

  ‘Just before the door closed behind him she caught a glimpse of a white-tiled corridor. Then she lowered her gaze, bowed her head, and hid behind her veil of long, sable hair. Only the flicker of her eyelashes and the agitated rise and fall of her bosom betrayed the fact that she was flesh and blood and not a lifeless mannequin.

  ‘The man walked into the middle of the room. She directed her gaze towards the floor and focused on his riding boots. When, however, he came to a halt and had his back to her, she became more bold and ventured to stare up at him through the gauze of her kohl-blackened lashes. She had not seen his face. But she had had no need to. She knew he would look like the other men in Château Miséricorde: pale-skinned and with a regularity of feature that could not disguise the essentially cruel, lupine nature of his countenance. He was, of course, dressed in the familiar uniform of his Order. In many ways, he was the mirror image of the man opposite—the guard who stood before a door that opened onto the hydraulically operated lift shaft that connected the holding cell to the prison high above. They were twins. Ciphers. Not real men at all, but embodiments of a nightmare, or, perhaps, an ideal.

  ‘For a moment, the interloper examined the clipboard he held before him, running a finger down its attached sheet of paper. Then, taking a pencil, he made a mark at the spot where, seconds before, his finger had pointed to a name. It was, of course, but one name amongst many. Not that that was of any consolation when she heard the name pronounced.

  ‘“Miss Lesbia Ascot-Smythe,”’ he said in a quiet but authoritative voice.

  ‘She held her breath, lowered her head a little more, and stared between her feet. No. It was impossible. She couldn’t be the first. She must have misheard, she decided. None of this was really happening. None of it... ’

  I shut the book. And I did so with such violence that I stirred Cliticia from her apathy. She sat bolt upright and flashed me a startled look.

  ‘What’s going on?’she cried.

  I gazed about the room, hot, confused, fearful, like someone who wakes up after an afternoon nap and cannot quite decipher her surroundings, or remember where she has come from, or even whether it is day or night. The room itself—with its collection of heavy furniture that seemed barely able to support its own weight—was, like me, ready to swoon, its thick, muddy atmosphere a toxin that had poisoned its aesthetics and turned it into a chapel of rest.

  ‘Everything’s wrong,’ I said, rubbing my arms to warm myself. The smell of stale perfume had become overpowering. It was a deathbed smell: the smell of sweat glistening on febrile limbs. ‘Everything, everything,’ I concluded.

  Leaving Cliticia to her mope, I staggered out into the corridor. I simply had to find some measure of respite from the room’s oppressive atmosphere.

  As soon as I was in the corridor my nostrils perked and I became aware of a faint but distinctive odour. Wafting from some nearby but less uninhabited part of the temple—a Lady Chapel, perhaps—was the pungent smell of burnt offerings, such as had filled the air when the temple’s reception party had greeted us.

  Careless of who should see me, despite the neglect of my toilette and the quite scandalous disarray of my dress, I looked down the length of corridor that I had only recently traversed and then walked in the opposite direction, following my nose like a mangy bloodhound.

  When I came to the stairwell, the scent became stronger. I descended, each wooden stair sending up a creak or moan of complaint.

  The stairwell did not connect with the corridor immediately below, or indeed even with the one below that; instead, it corkscrewed relentlessly downwards like some secret passageway in a Gothic novel, without having any seeming purpose other than to deliver me into the temple’s hot, claustrophobic bowels. Before I had taken more than a few dozen steps, I came to the conclusion that to continue might be to commit myself to a point of no return, after which I would be doomed to descend forever, like a ghost repeating her last, tragic movements. But, emboldened by the sound of voices, I pressed on, and soon—alerted by the drip-drip of water—knew that my initial suspicions had been correct. I was underground.

  The light grew dim, but before it was entirely extinguished I came upon a landing suffused with candlelight. The candles—all made from black wax—had been placed in a series of regularly spaced niches.

  The smell of burnt offerings had become particularly strong. I left the stairwell behind, walked across the landing and proceeded through a narrow archway. I found myself in another dark, candlelit passage. And again, I heard the sound of voices.

  I paused. There was music, too: the sound of flute, zither, and drums. Then the music stopped.

  ‘No, Saccharina, no, no, no—you must dance on your toes, digitigrade. Now, once more. And like a cat, dear! Like a cat!’

  I walked forward. The music recommenced. Before me, at the end of the short, narrow passageway, was a heavy, iron-banded door. As I drew up to it, there was a jangly diminuendo, and then silence.

  ‘No, no, dear, I said like a cat, like a cat!’

  I pushed the door open. Its rusty hinges set up a horribly impolite discord. And I found myself transfixed by several pairs of eyes.

  I stood on the threshold of a Lady Chapel, just as I had suspected I would, for all such chapels were located deep underground in honour of the chthonic deities. A rotunda, it was constituted entirely of black marble, and lit, like the passageway outside, by black candles that had been set within a series of niches.

  Two girls stood at its centre. They each wore the traditional Babylonian costume called the bedleh: red chiffon panel skirts made of two rectangles of fabric, one in front and one in back. These hung from a hipband decorated with ‘hip accents’, such as mozunas, assuit, and shisha mirrors, over which, in turn, hung the coin belt that was emblematic of prostitution. The skirts glimmered with silk thread and sequins, the leg slits and hem trimmed with a border of paillettes and beads. A matching choli decorated with brilliant appliqué completed the shameless ensemble.

  Behind the dancers, and seated upon t
he steps that led up to the high altar, were four more girls: three musicians who cradled their instruments and, a little to one side, the sole girl to be dressed respectably: a qadishtu. All temple-maidens were ishtaritu, but were accorded different ranks. The girls dressed in the bedleh, were, for instance, herem, like me. That is, simple whores. But the other girl—and it was obvious, I suppose, not merely from her sash of office, but from the rather martinet riding habit that she wore—was a scribe and therefore exercised a degree of authority.

  She got up and walked toward me, her dress swaying as if taking a fluid pleasure in its own opulence, the train like an insidious slick of oil following her across the shiny, marble floor.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

  She came to a halt a few feet away. ‘You’re a new girl, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Just arrived. I’m sorry to interrupt. If I shouldn’t be here, then—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘If you’ve managed to find your way all the way down here, then I suppose you’ve earned the right to stay.’ She wasn’t that much older than me. Her accent identified her as the daughter of a London bank clerk, tradesman or, perhaps, even an industrialist. And her complexion—dark, but resembling that of the two French girls who had led the welcoming song rather than, say, Cliticia’s—suggested that her Shulamite heritage was, like mine, spiritual, rather than a matter of blood. Yes, she was like me, I decided. Or at least, she was like one of the girls I had planned on becoming. ‘You do know where you are I suppose,’ she concluded, a hint of reprimand in her voice. ‘You’re not lost?’

  ‘I’m in a Lady Chapel,’ I said, keen to show that I was her equal. ‘Today is the feast day of, of—’

  ‘We’re in rehearsal for the feast of St Catherine,’ she said, wearily.

  ‘But her feast day isn’t until—’

  ‘Not Catherine of Alexandria,’ she said. ‘Catherine Howard.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling rather foolish. ‘That’s February 13, isn’t it?’

  Her eyes lit up with surprise. ‘Correct,’ she said. She spun around to confront her half-naked charges. ‘Someone in this temple, it seems, actually knows something about our history!’ She once more turned her back on them and they took the opportunity of awarding me a collective scowl. ‘I’m delighted to meet you,’ she continued, eager, it seemed, to show that she could be genial as well as severe. ‘Miss—’ She raised her eyebrows in expectation.

  ‘Madeleine Fell,’ I said. She offered me her hand and I shook it. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you too, Miss—’

  ‘Ethelbertha Manning,’ she said.

  ‘Miss Manning,’ I said, dipping my head and smiling in acknowledgement.

  ‘Please,’ she said, her nose wrinkling in amusement, ‘it’s sister. Sister Ethelbertha.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, flustered. ‘I’m a novice, I’ve just arrived, I—’

  ‘Come in, come in, Sister Madeleine,’ she said, waving her hand in an attempt to dispel my embarrassment. ‘We were just running through some of the celebratory dances. Really, February may seem a long way off, but there is so much work to do, and these girls—’ She shook her head. ‘So much work.’

  I followed her into the middle of the chapel, where we stopped. Her two students stood to either side of us, picking nervously at their thin, diaphanous skirts with their long, red, exquisitely cultivated fingernails.

  She clapped her hands. ‘Now, girls, you know that I expect only the very best from you. This is a very significant feast day. Of all sacred prostitutes who were to exercise their charms and wiles upon a King of England and his court, and to make men slaves to Ishtar, she was without doubt the most valiant. Braver than her cousin, Anne Boleyn, I would say.’ She turned to face me. ‘Here, deep in the earth, where we are near to the Queen of the Underworld, our own Lady Ereshkigal, we have, of course, many, many Lady Chapels in honour of our Shulamite martyrs. Chapels dedicated to the Phantom Helen, Cleopatra, Salome, and, of course, your own patron saint—’

  ‘The Magdalene,’ I murmured. ‘Her feast day is July 22.’

  The dancers scowled all the more.

  ‘Of course, of course.’ She glanced left, then right, smiling at her reluctant students, her vermilion lips parting to reveal two rows of cruelly brilliant teeth. ‘And then there are the chapels to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, Nell Gwyn, and—’

  ‘Oh, Nell Gwyn has always been a favourite of mine,’ I said.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Sister Ethelbertha, rewarding me with another look of approbation. ‘I can see we have much in common.’ The students’ faces, which had gradually become frozen in aspects of extreme dislike, hardened still further. ‘Now my girls here—’ She let her voice drop to a whisper. ‘And mind, one must always say girls, sister. Babylonians are not women, they are always, always girls.’ Her smile grew more radical, until I began to associate her with the Duenna who had conducted my interview: a wolf in ruminant’s clothing. ‘The French make something of a moral distinction between “Les Femmes et les files”, do they not? It follows that we must always remember that we are files—les files de nuit.’ She turned and studied her students, her gaze travelling from toe to crown as she appraised their whorishness.

  They fidgeted, transposing their weight from one leg to the other, thereby displaying glimpses of ebony thigh through the artfully engineered rents in their skirts. From the bottom of the thorax to an area just above the pubic bone their flesh was quite bare. And the skin was dusted with some kind of clinquant, or body tinsel, so that it glittered, like frosted tar, or a coal seam impregnated with powdered diamonds. The navels were heavily bejewelled, the ellipsoid lips distended by great slugs of garnet, almandine, ruby, or carnelian.

  ‘The navel,’ said Sister Ethelbertha, as her gaze followed my own, ‘is not merely the symbol of birth, but of original sin, too. Specifically, of feminine sin. Or, rather, the sin that is femininity. Eve was the first of the ishtaritu. She seduced Satan, the great serpent, and brought sex into the world, for then as now, the King of Hell fell in love with her and did her bidding. Ever after, her daughters bore the mark of generation that is the mark of the witch.’ She took a step towards the dancer on my left and pointed to the glittering red punctum at the centre of her belly. ‘The mark of the witch is the mark of Ishtar. It is the locus of the Feminine Daemonic, the omphalos of sin and sexuality, just as femininity is the sin of sins and the locus of the world’s desire.’

  For the second time, she clapped her hands.

  ‘And now we must celebrate the omphalos—celebrate the power of the Dark Mother! Now we must celebrate the memory of Catherine Howard, daughter of Eve and of Ishtar. Catherine Howard, our blessed whore. Begin!’

  The musicians struck up.

  Sister Ethelbertha took my arm and ushered me to one side, her muslin hem skittering across the floor like a host of attendant mice, the monotony of black silk and marble enlivened, here and there, by the occasional flash of white petticoat.

  The flute and drums set up a sinuous melody and rhythm, though a dulcimer (which in Babylonian we call ‘ladies’ fingers’) had been substituted for the zither I had heard earlier in the passageway. The finger cymbals worn by the dancers chattered like tin songbirds.

  The drummer slapped and punched her skins; the dulcimer player strummed and plucked; and the flautist performed hectic runs and trills, dipping, raising, and twirling her instrument like a snake-charmer, which, metaphorically at least, of course, she was. ‘Come to me,’ sang the girl who played the dulcimer, ‘and be my bridegroom. Grant me seed of your body. Let me be your bride and you shall be my husband. For I am Ishtar, Queen of Heaven, and kings, princes, and rulers bow down before me and bring tribute from the mountains and the plain.5

  The dancers advanced towards the steps, gazing past the musicians and up towards the altar, where a brazen image of Sammael, the Babylonian snake-god, reared its head above the clouds of perfum
e sent up by the surrounding braziers. Behind the altar was the spectacular altarpiece that lent the chapel its personality. At its centre was Catherine, fifth wife of the cruel Tudor king, and emissary of Babylon and Ishtar. She had been painted in the manner of all virgin martyrs, whether they had met their fate by rope, sword, quarrel, bullet, or, as in her case, by axe: that is, crucified upon the symbol of the male exterminating principle, the lingam cruris. Decorating the side panels, and kneeling with their hands held before them in prayer, were the images of those over whom the Daughters of Ishtar had triumphed: Paris, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Caesar Claudius, Justinian, and, from later times, several Popes and Holy Roman Emperors. And above, winged girl-children, in similar attitudes of adoration, welcomed the ascension of Catherine’s spirit into the realms of the blessed.

  The dancers stopped, genuflected, and then turned so that they faced us. The dance began.

  With their palms held downward, their arms began to undulate, like duplicates of Aaron’s rod come to serpentine life. They crossed their wrists behind their backs. Then they brought them towards their bellies until the backs of the hands were touching. The hands opened up like flowers.

  Their pelvises began to rock. They raised their arms, so that the backs of their hands met above their heads. They breathed deep and then lifted their rib cages. Their shoulders began to oscillate; the hips, too, as the pelvis swayed, thrust, shimmied, bucked, and transcribed the classic figure eight that Cliticia had spoken of in St Messalina’s.

  The music became more urgent. And now came the abdominal waves and flutters that characterized the dance of martyrdom and death.