Babylon

by Richard Calder

  For some time now I had been able to descry Etemenanki. Even from a considerable distance I could tell that it was huge. Indeed, it was without doubt the tallest building in Babylon. High above the Northern Citadel—that vast complex whose splendours included the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar-—and foregrounding it in shadows, it had been built by Nimrod, the nephew of Cham, Noah’s son. It was the same Tower of Babel that, on Earth, had been swallowed up by the desert. Etemenanki had been built to glorify the might of the kings of Babylon. But its off-world counterpart had succumbed to the same mongrelization of style that affected so much of the city’s architecture. Each new century had brought modifications and additions, until the original tower had disappeared beneath a weight of Graeco-Roman columns, Gothic buttresses, and Baroque and neo-Palladian porticos and spires. Now it glorified only the aesthetic turmoil and anarchy that became more extreme the closer we drew to our destination.

  Lord Azrael got up, leant over me, pulled down the shutter, and then resumed his seat.

  ‘And when we reach the Citadel, I will become a slave?’ I asked. A slave. How easily that word tripped off my tongue. We made slaves of men. The world was a slave to the Illuminati. And we, in turn, longed to become slaves to the Black Order. In this life the only reality was power: not only the power to enslave, but the power to submit, too. And in offering myself, I knew that that power would free me. I was no longer a goose girl. I was no longer a whore. I was the World’s Desire. ‘Your slave?’ I added. My mouth became dry. I swallowed.

  He shook his head—not, I think, to deny me hope, but to indicate a measure of wonder at my naïveté. ‘You are such an intelligent, well informed young lady, Miss Fell, that you must surely perceive how things stand?’ I continued to avoid his gaze, the sound of wheels over rails—which had reverted to the usual clickety-clack—mimicking the rattle of blood in my temples.

  The air was close. It was filled with the scent of leather. Of leather tunics, breeches, riding boots, and peaked caps. I was beginning to feel quite sick.

  ‘For untold millennia,’ he said, ‘our two races have been locked in cosmic combat. And there have been those amongst the Black Order who have indeed argued that, if the Shulamites are not assimilable into European culture, they must serve us as our slaves, or playthings. But you would be our Delilahs, I fear, shearing us of our strength and purpose.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘When we Aryans lived in Thule we were masters of the Earth. But we lost our birthright by lying with a subhuman, halfanimal race. Such races are always linked to Earth cults. And as such, they are irresistibly seductive.’ He sighed. ‘You, Miss Fell, are a descendant of that ancient, evil race. And I fear that you would seduce me, too. You would divert me, corrupt me, and rob me of my potency.’ He sighed again, and this time, with something approaching passion. ‘It goes without saying that if we are to be together then you must be made pure.’

  ‘Pure?’ I said, a little affronted.

  ‘I do not speak ill of your character, Miss Fell.’

  ‘I have never, I have never—’ To my surprise, I was becoming angry. And anger, perhaps, resurrected what was left of my better judgement. Milord certainly had a gab on him, I told myself. Who on earth did he think he was? And I began to think of what the Serpentessa had said, of how all the high, mighty talk of Hyperborea and Thule was, perhaps, nothing more than a fairy tale.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said, his voice hinting at some deep and subtle pain too horrible, too magnificent, to share. ‘The very last thing that I want to do is cause you offence.’ He massaged his forehead. ‘Or hurt you,’ he concluded.

  And it was then—as I wondered if I were listening to a proposal, if not of marriage, then of something far, far more honourable—that I wondered if it really mattered who he was.

  I strove to calm myself, and put criticism behind me, as befits the fairer, gentler, and more gloriously irrational, sex.

  ‘You see, for us, purity is a prerequisite,’ he said.

  ‘A prerequisite to what?’

  ‘It is an absolute,’ he continued, ignoring me. ‘Without it, we cannot—’

  ‘Please, you don’t have to explain,’ I said, regretting my earlier outburst. It hardly fell to me to stand on my dignity. ‘I too am sorry.’ I breathed deep, my ribcage swelling with unaccustomed, and not entirely welcome, freedom, so much, of late, had I come to rely upon the voluptuous narcotic of my stays. ‘I do not think I have to tell you how much I admire you, Lord Azrael,’ I added. ‘If you wish me to renounce Ishtar, then—’

  ‘You and me, Miss Fell,’ he said, seemingly at pains to override, not only my anxieties, but his own, by returning to the safety of his fairy-tale world, ‘and all others like us—it falls to us to usher in the New Order that will represent a union between the Sun and the Moon. Only then will Man live as a totality with the Light and Dark polarities of his soul returned to balance.’ He placed his elbows on his knees and leant forward, looking me in the eye. ‘A New Order, Miss Fell—think of it! In this Kali-Yuga, all forms of life are at each other’s throats. Pain, fear, and death are the result. What kind of God perpetuates such misery?’ He extended a hand and took a lock of my hair between his forefinger and thumb. ‘Long ago, there was a solar age. An age of gold.’ And then he frowned, like a prospector who, after a lifetime’s experience, discovers he can no longer distinguish between fool’s gold and the real thing. ‘But we are not merely of different bloodlines, Miss Fell, we were made by different gods. My god is the god of light. But your god?’ His face became hard, yet sad and noble, too, like that of a philosopher who must be cruel to be kind. ‘Your god is the Demiurge, the creator of the inferior beings my people confined to Sumi-An when, half a billion years ago, we lived amongst the stars.’ He took a handful of hair into his fist and gently, gently pulled me forward. ‘Your god,’ he murmured, as his lips touched mine. ‘Your god, Miss Fell, is Jehovah.’

  The train slowed down. The armed men who had come to meet us walked alongside the carriages, keeping pace. As we passed beneath the gate of Beltis—a massive arch flanked by two winged bulls—the train blew its whistle, a great streamer of smoke and steam unravelling across the moon-haunted sky.

  Lord Azrael had pulled up the shutter so that I might see the marvels that awaited me: sheer walls of brightly-coloured brick that were like the precipices of a vast Himalayan mountain range, decorated, perhaps, at the chimerical whim of legions of Hindoo craftsmen and engineers; towers, campaniles, and minarets; and rows upon rows of marble columns that supported the cloud-capped heights of the many-tiered Palace of Nebuchadnezzar.

  But most marvellous of all had been my first sight of the gardens.

  On Earth, Nebuchadnezzar had constructed vast, hydraulic-served terraces to remind his wife, Amyitis, daughter of the King of the Medes, of the beauty of her native land. Here, they served to remind Ishtar’s temple-maidens that their adopted home possessed an unearthly beauty of its own. Like all off-world vegetation, the flowers that bedecked the Hanging Gardens ingested, not the light of the sun, but the light of the moon; consequently they were a bizarre, and quite alien, riot of blue— infinitely varied, subtle, and wholly alien shades of indigo, cyan, azure, sapphire, aquamarine, and turquoise.

  We pulled into a station. Great, cast-iron girders and arabesques, such as distinguished London’s railway termini, arched over us, like the ribs of a decomposed whale. Iron pillars and trelliswork lined the platform. The engine groaned; steam billowed, like mist rising from the damp bracken of a moor. And then, with a judder that announced our arrival, the mist receded. Outside the window stood a disused ticket booth, and, a little further on, ragged streamers and a dozen, moth-eaten national flags: testament that, in the not-too-distant past, before the Citadel had fallen into the clutches of the Men, our arrival might have occasioned cheers, speeches from Duennas and High Priestesses, and the striking up of a brass band.

  Lord Azrael stood and offered me his arm.

  ‘You will need to refresh you
rself, I think,’ he said, as I got to my feet. He glanced down the carriage. Some girls averted their faces; some chose to study the floor; but others stared back, their eyes flashing with defiance. ‘All of you will, of course. My men will show you to the reception centre.’ I took his arm and he led me into the aisle. ‘Don’t worry about your luggage. It will follow later.’ From each side, whispered curses assaulted my ears. ‘Traitress,’ said some. ‘Bitch,’ said others more inclined to frankness. And ‘Necroslut,’ snarled those who knew the truth. While those girls from France, Germany, Italy, and Spain treated me to péjoratives I could only guess at.

  Lord Azrael squired me the length of the aisle and then opened the carriage door. He stepped out onto the platform, turned, held me by the waist and swung me down, as if I were his partner in a country-dance. Breathless, I stood by his side, looking about me, conscious, horribly conscious—for the first time since becoming reacquainted with him—not only of the stark fact that I was wearing a nightgown, but moreover that I did not feel shame, only a strange and delicious sense of vulnerability.

  ‘Come,’ he said, again taking me by the arm. ‘I shall make it my duty to escort you to where you may conduct your toilette. And if I may say so, my dear, however charming you are déshabillé, you must allow me to present you with a trousseau.’

  ‘A trousseau,’ I said, my heart galloping so fast that it threatened to unseat my reason. ‘Do you mean—’

  My words were lost to a hubbub of voices: commands, sighs, orders, screams, warnings, and pleas. To our rear, the Men were shepherding the other girls off the train. And ahead, amongst an already swelling crowd of captives, was Cliticia. I waved, but her back was towards me. And then Mr Malachi appeared, took her arm, and led her off into the throng. For a moment, I felt impelled to break free of my own escort, run down the platform, and reassure myself that she had not simply vanished into thin air, never to return. But then something deep inside me forcibly smothered my concerns. She will come to no harm, it said, whispering my lines, and urging me to follow the script. You must simply act the part as you have rehearsed it. And, Madeleine, you have rehearsed it, have you not, not less than a hundred thousand million times? Then conclude:

  ‘Doubtless,’ I said, obeying the prompt, ‘Mr Malachi will make it his duty to ensure that my friend is treated like a lady?’

  ‘Like a lady, Miss Fell,’ said his lordship. And then he laughed. ‘Indeed, she will be treated just like you.’

  On leaving the train station we came upon a public square that served as a holding area. After briefly assembling for the purposes of a head count, we proceeded along a colonnade and then filed into the eastern court, the first of the five great courts of the palace. There, an avenue of monumental winged bulls led to a narrow incline and the mouth of a shadow-occluded tunnel. Those who went before were led two abreast into the tunnel mouth, and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

  I scrutinized each face, both hoping and dreading to discover one that I might recognize.

  ‘The Serpentessa—’

  ‘Alas,’ said Lord Azrael. ‘We could not capture her alive.’

  I stopped, spun about and looked up at him.

  ‘You killed her!’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ He too came to a halt, and for a moment seemed genuinely distressed; and yet I had seen the illustrations in The Illustrated Police News; and I had read the accompanying stories. It did not become me to entertain illusions and play the ingénue. ‘Spontaneous combustion,’ he concluded, somewhat apologetically. ‘It is always the way with women like that.’

  I saw that now. The sack of Ereshkigal was doubtless what the Serpentessa had always wanted, even if, wanton hysteric that she was, she had kept it a secret from herself. And I wondered if the same might have been true for Ereshkigal as a whole. Cliticia and I had, perhaps, done no more than provide a long hoped for coup de grâce. I bowed my head. ‘I’m glad she was different,’ I said.

  ‘There are none so different as you, Miss Fell,’ he said. ‘Upon my word, you are an original.’

  Was I also an hysteric? Hysteria was, after all, a female malady most often associated with rebelliousness and abnormal force and decision of character. I must say, if an alienist like Dr Charcot had thought me worthy of being committed to an asylum such as the Salpêtrière, I might even have taken it as a compliment.

  ‘Spontaneous combustion,’ I said, so quietly that I perhaps gave the impression that I talked to myself. ‘Is it—’

  ‘Spontaneous combustion,’ he said, careless, perhaps, of exactly who I addressed, ‘is, more properly speaking, a hystero-epileptic seizure. Three phases are involved: the epileptoid, during which the subject foams at the mouth and loses consciousness; the clownistic, involving the adoption of bizarre postures; and the attitudes passionelles, or miming of amorous encounters. After which—’ I

  ‘Death occurs ?’

  ‘After which,’ he said, studying me closely, ‘the subject experiences the full onslaught of the hysterogenic paroxysm.’

  ‘And dies in ecstasy,’ I said, with more boldness than I had thought possible. The deep waters that I longed to drown in had always been covered in ice. But like decency, the ice was thin, and I felt it begin to crack beneath my feet.

  ‘Black ecstasy,’ he said. And then he smiled. ‘Do not concern yourself about the High Priestess.’ His smile at once broadened and became thinner, crueller, like something inflicted upon parchment by the swipe of a paper-knife. ‘A grand mal can be so ... fulfilling.’ His lordship’s flippancy made me a little angry. But, reminding myself where I was, and that a question mark hung over what was to happen to me, I refrained from criticism.

  ‘And Duenna Celeste?’ I said.

  ‘The crones? Oh, they eluded us. Not that it was difficult. My troops, quite understandably, always concentrate on the acquisition of a temple’s more nubile elements.’ He pursed his lips. ‘We’ll just have to deal with your accursed Duennas some other day.’

  Where was Miss Manning, I wondered. And more to the point, where was Gabrielle? But before I could ask, his lordship tightened his grip on my arm and strode forward. Cliticia and Mr Malachi were by now quite a way in front of us. The crowd had become compressed as we neared the tunnel mouth, and progress had become difficult. But as we slowly closed the gap I stood on my toes and, looking over the heads of those in front, observed Mr Malachi stoop, whisper something in Cliticia’s ear, and then turn aside to allow her to walk on alone. For a moment, she seemed confused. Approaching her again, he seemed to say something else, and she carried on walking down the incline, glancing back just once to fortuitously catch my eye. Her lips flickered with an uncertain smile. And then she was gone, consumed by the shadows like those that had gone before.

  Again, Lord Azrael drew to a halt.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. He was staring at the flow of femininity that crowded the approach to the tunnel, a mass of ringlets, downcast eyes, glittering jewellery, painted lips, and pink, yellow, and blue silk ribbons—a prospect that suggested an army of nymphs returning to their Venusberg to celebrate a victory over the collective heart of man. ‘Please,’ I added. ‘What is it?’ His lordship’s grip had become so fierce that he almost made me cry out. Then, as if upon impulse, he drew back—away from the long line of temple-maidens who still patiently filed down the central incline—and ushered me through a gap in the line of colossal stone beasts towards an archway set in the courtyard’s farther wall. ‘What is it?’ I said again.

  Reaching the archway, we stopped. He seemed unable to make up his mind whether to proceed or turn back. His brow creased. And then, with cool, almost scientific, detachment, he turned to me and gently stroked my cheek—not to console, I was sure of that, but it seemed, to evaluate. ‘So pale,’ he said. ‘And your hair—’ He began to fondle it, as if testing the quality of a fine silk. ‘Your hair is almost... Hyperborean.’ I lowered my gaze.

  ‘Am I really so pale?’ I said, blushing a little and looking u
p at him through my eyelashes. ‘It seems to me that my skin is actually getting darker.’ I lifted up a cotton sleeve, exposing the underside of my left arm, the blue-veined delta of the wrist betraying a hint of burnt sienna. ‘The moonlight—it’s starting to burn me.’

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of musty thoughts. He repeated the operation several times, on the last occasion so violently that it seemed he was determined to make his intellect unfit for habitation. ‘There is something I must show you,’ he said, as his head came to rest and his mood shifted into the abstract. ‘Something I want you to understand.’ He was gazing across the courtyard at the slow procession of compliant girls that fed the hungry, gaping maw of the tunnel. ‘They, of course, would not be able to understand. They are creatures of the night. But you?’ Again, he began to toy with my hair. ‘You have the locks of an Aphrodite or Poppaea, the locks’—there was a little catch in his voice—‘of a Blessed Virgin.’

  Mum, I knew, kept a curl of Dulcie’s hair in her jewellery box, and sometimes I had spied upon her when, thinking herself alone, she had taken her golden treasure from its hiding place to savour its scent, press it to her cheek, and weep. One day, unable to contain myself, I had burst in upon her and thrown my arms about her neck. ‘Read me the stories,’ I whimpered, ‘that you used to tell Dulcie. Read me La Belle aux Cheveux d’Or and La Belle et la Bête.’

  As it was then, so it was now. I could only indulge my feelings by means of an impersonal expedient, such as a fairy tale, or verse: ‘I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine gold. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk ...’