‘A great deal of what I read in travellers’ accounts of travels may be fabulous.’ She crossed her eyes to try to see a tangle over her forehead. ‘Not all. While I’m sure that there are dragons, for we see their tiny cousins among our own rocks, I do doubt the reality of men who carry their heads beneath their arms.’ She looked at him under her own upraised arm. ‘How can the soul animate a body from which it is detached? It flies in the face of reason. Don’t you agree?’
‘I agree that you’re right to apply the test of reason. Does my golden city pass?’
She pulled the ivory comb carefully through her hair. ‘The existence of such a place has long been reported. The old queen herself, and the Spanish king both sent expeditions in search of it. I know that gold exists and I don’t doubt cities. Therefore, it doesn’t strain reason to imagine the two combined.’
‘May I do that?’ He held out his hand. ‘There are tangles here which you can’t see.’
She gave him the comb and turned her back to him. He worked in silence for a time, tugging gently, then stopping to unpick snarls with his fingers.
‘I feel like a horse,’ she said. ‘It’s quite pleasant.’
‘Yes.’
She liked the idea that an old soldier, used to carrying a sword and commanding large numbers of men, now plied an ivory comb with such gentleness. When the word gentleness came into her mind, she was startled to feel tears well up.
‘The tangles in fishing lines are easier,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked gruffly.
‘My fingers have never met threads so fine as these. Even the silk I use to tie my lures…even the green which I need for making my dragon flies…’
She cut him off. ‘They won’t work, you know.’
‘The silks or the dragon flies?’
‘These attempted distractions…ow!’
‘Tell me when you mean to move.’
‘What did you do after you looked down and saw the city?’
He gave her hair a pat. ‘There. Now I think you should most probably lie down again.’
‘It was my child who was weak, not I.’ After two days abed, she ached to walk in the open air. ‘I’d rather go fishing.’
‘Lie down,’ he said gently. He stretched out beside her on top of the quilt.
‘You must try to understand what I felt, there on that mountain. That city was my own discovery. I knew that the Spanish, who controlled those islands, could not yet have found it, for their custom was first to plunder all gold and then to destroy any remaining objects of wonder, of fine or ingenious manufacture.’
‘And not to take them as booty?’
‘They dared not. Or else the “savage nature” by which they characterized the native peoples they conquered would be thrown into doubt. And with it would go much of their excuse for conquering.’
‘Did you not go to conquer?’
‘To trade. A subtle difference. We fighting men merely provided defence, against the Spanish, and pirates.’ He gathered a handful of her loose hair into a rope and laid it across her shoulder. ‘There. The finest gold I’ve seen for at least twenty years.’
‘What happened to your creature?’
‘When I lifted my eyes from the valley, it had vanished. Not even a quiver of leaf showed which way it had gone. I looked back into the valley. But the city still glowed there in the sun, a great pyramid covered in gold at its centre, with smaller buildings around, set beside a silver reflection, like a mirror.
‘I descended the waterfall at once, meaning to gather my men, if they were still to be found in this world, and to return, to essay trade and gather intelligence.
‘Back on the floor of the jungle, I followed my own tracks to the shallow stream.’ He began to run his thumbnail along the teeth of her comb. ‘I could hardly force myself to break out of the trees onto the beach. I half-expected to see nothing there. No men, no boats, no ship riding at anchor. Half-believed that I might after all be caught in a fit of madness. I didn’t know which I feared most to find – an empty beach or a busy London street.’
‘And?’ She had propped herself up on her elbow facing him.
He smiled at her intensity. ‘The ship was still there and so were my men. They pounded my back in relief and swore that I had disappeared just as suddenly as I felt they had done.’
‘How strange.’
‘Beyond reason?’
‘I’ll judge when I’ve heard the rest.’ But she saw his golden city in the jungle so clearly that she knew it must exist, like one of Lamb’s Platonic ideals, or else its ghostly image could not be so strong in her imagination.
‘I confess, my conscience would have been easier,’ said Philip, ‘if I had told them fully where they went. I did not tell all the truth about my guide, for I still doubted it myself. And I did not want to stir their fear. In such strange territory, anything not understood becomes an insidious enemy. In semi-ignorance, our captain agreed to an exploring party. The following morning, I set out with over half the crew and a collection of needles, soap, knives and bolts of silk damask.
‘I found the way back easily, as I had known I would. Hardly needed the barking cough that guided me from time to time. I knew that I had begun the great adventure of my life, that the compass needle of my fate had swung.’
He laughed without mirth and scratched the top of his head reflectively. ‘Oh, yes, indeed it had. Well.’ He looked at her, then away again when she could not share the joke.
‘We lost only one man on the climb up the falls. The city still gleamed in the cleft of the valley. The men were both awe-struck and jubilant. We began the descent from the pass. Then disaster struck.
‘The inhabitants of the city attacked, eight or more against each one of us. I soon found myself netted like a bird, so that I could not swing my sword. They trussed up the few of us who had survived the bloody fighting, hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot, and slung us beneath poles like hunted game. Then, two to a pole, they set off along a jungle track towards the city.
‘Every step my bearers took jolted my joints apart like the rack. Every sinew was stretched beyond endurance. My hands and feet lost all feeling. My ribs crushed my heart…’
He rolled to the edge of the bed.
She caught his sleeve. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I no longer relish this account. Forgive me.’ He pulled his sleeve away. ‘I did not intend to toy with you. Truly, I did not.’
‘Philip. Turn back to me.’
After a moment, he did.
‘Is it so very painful to recall these things?’ She ducked to look up into his face.
‘And if I answer, yes?’
‘Then I discharge you from any further telling. I withdraw my original terms for the marriage.’
‘You’ll survive without the truth?’
‘I didn’t say that. Only that I won’t insist on any more of it.’
‘Why?’ He frowned and stuck out his lower lip.
‘Do you think it gives me pleasure to cause you pain? Or even to listen to you tell of pain, knowing that I force you to revisit it?’
His expression was hard to read in the dim light. Then he tugged gently on the rope of hair that still lay across her right shoulder. ‘You should never give ground so easily.’ He leaned forward and kissed her.
His lips were dry, warm and brief. He placed one hand lightly on her arm as if to hold her in place.
‘What I feel in recounting old adventures is not pain,’ he said. ‘Pain is of a different order altogether.’ His eyes were on her mouth.
I was right, she thought. He does mean to make love to me, now that I’m no longer with child. When I am a little more healed. The air has just twisted like a veil about my head.
He left her chamber. A few moments later, he was back with two stemmed Venetian glasses and a flagon of wine. ‘Thank you for that offer. You are kind, but I am a man of my word…Will you drink with me? I’m sure it will do you good.’
He poured
wine for them both, then stirred the fire back into life. They sat at either end of a small oak table pushed against the wall. He got up again to bring her wool cloak and wrapped it around her. The night was so cold their breathing made little puffs of cloud in the air. She pulled her bare feet up onto the chair and tucked the cloak under her toes. She still felt giddy, but otherwise better than she had since the baby died.
‘The city stood on the edge of a lake,’ he said. ‘The silver I had seen from the top of the pass was water catching the sun. My blood beat so thickly in my head that it half-blinded me, and I saw little of the city itself as we entered it. Our captors set down the poles in a large open place near the lake. They untied us, and then re-shackled us, with our hands behind our backs and just enough slack between our feet to shuffle a few inches at a time. By now, I was able to look about me again. I smelled smoke, animals and wet rot, as well as unfamiliar spices. But I had no time to wonder at the place itself.’ He drained his glass and poured another.
‘I forgot my fetters,’ he said. ‘Stood open-mouthed at what next took place. You must understand that I was already in a curious state of accommodating new knowledge into my old universe. Unlike you, I had doubted. Dismissed travellers’ accounts of the golden land as the self-serving fantasies of adventurers trying to woo new patrons and to raise money for their expeditions. Now I learned how wrong I had been…Will you drink a little more?’ He stood and leaned over the table to fill the glass she held out for him.
Wrapped in her cloak, she watched him, as still as a hunter in a blind.
‘They were a mighty nation, these children of the jaguar. I heard the multitude before I could shake the red mist from my eyes. Even unbooted, their feet shook the ground. Accompanied by drums and high-pitched pipes, they wailed and cried out as if in grief. Not singing, but nevertheless, I heard the shape of music in their clamour.
‘They approached the lake along the dusty avenue from the golden pyramid. Wave after wave of bodies, all glinting with gold at wrists, ankles and thighs. Some wore jaguar skins, still attached to the head, so that each man’s eyes gleamed within the open snarling mouth of the beast. Their voices rose in a high dreadful keening but their fierce eyes showed more elation than grief. A strong perfume of musk and civet filled the air.
‘Then I saw the musicians, also decked in gold, who played their reed pipes, not to draw out melody as we know it, but as if they had been running and now panted out their souls into their instruments. Behind the pipes, came drums, hanging on cords around the neck and struck with the hand.
‘As the procession reached the shore of the lake, it divided. One column walked to the left along the shore, the other, right. Men in jaguar skins still advanced down the avenue. Then came a regiment of warriors with golden spears. Overhead disturbed birds wheeled and cried. The leaves of the trees quivered and dropped a bright shower of collected rain.
‘The air was also filled with a faint metallic jingling. I looked for these other musicians, then saw that all the marchers wore strings of golden bells on their ankles, so that all their separate steps rang together like hail striking a vast metal plate.’
‘I would like to see such sights!’ said Zeal passionately. ‘And hear such sounds.’ And perhaps I will, she thought. John too might see the golden city and take me there.
She tried to imagine standing with him looking down into the valley, the jaguar with human feet at her other side. She glanced at Philip’s intense, distant expression. His younger self was crowding out the indentured servant of an Antilles tobacco farmer.
Her husband stared into the bottom of his glass. ‘When you hear the end, you may feel otherwise.’ He poured again though her glass still stood nearly full. His hand jumped so that he spilt some wine on the table. He suppressed a curse, then dipped his finger in the puddle and drew a circle. ‘Here is our lake, then, though it was not so close to the colour of blood. Its shores grew crowded with the multitude.’ He conjured the image with his hands.
‘After the warriors with their spears, came priests – or so I took them to be. In linen tunics and fragile crowns made of bright bobbing plumes that rose four or five feet above their heads. The feather tips dipped and waved as they walked, so that I could not see whether they were indeed men or giant birds. Some carried golden axes. Some, black knives, which shone like glass. All were weighed down with gold of every sort – necklaces, breastplates, bracelets, and short blunt rods of gold thrust through their ear lobes.
‘When they had surrounded the sacred lake, they redoubled their cries and dropped to their knees. A single figure advanced towards the water. He did not walk, for a god’s feet must not be allowed to touch the ground. And he was a god – or so it seemed that these heathens believed. He stood with easy balance on a palanquin borne on the shoulders of six men, his hands raised as if in blessing.’
Philip leaned across the table and took her hands in his. ‘Feel how I still tremble at the memory. He appeared to be made all of gold. Wore a golden cap, short gold rods through his ear lobes and a golden collar. Breastplate, wide golden bands around his wrists and the muscles of his upper arms. A golden belt circled his waist. Golden greaves covered his shins. Every finger of his upraised hands flashed brightly. Otherwise, he was naked, and his skin too was covered in gold.’
Zeal closed her eyes to capture the picture. The beautiful golden god, riding his jerky palanquin with straight back and loose knees, as Muscovite riders stand on a cantering horse at a fair. She tightened her grip on the faint quiver she felt in her husband’s hands. His fingers were cold.
‘He glittered in the afternoon sun,’ said Philip. ‘For an instant, I was blinded by a flash of light off his breastplate. I wanted to weep with the force of what I had just understood. Then I wanted to laugh.’
He looked intently into her face. ‘No one yet alive in England knows what I understood then and am about to tell you now.’
She held him steady in her grip.
‘Though in fear of my life, I still presumed to feel triumph. Our party, or what was left of it, had found that which all men sought. Which countless expeditions had pursued. For which monarchs had commissioned searches, armadas had sailed, armies clashed. And though rich spoils had been taken, the fabled quarry had eluded all. In consolation, we told ourselves that we had perhaps misunderstood rumour. I had often said that we should be satisfied with smuggling tobacco or tin. Or with plundered cargoes of enemy ships. There, by that lake, I felt as I imagine St Paul felt at his thunderclap – ecstatic, terrified and humbled all at the same time.’
He still gazed into her eyes. ‘You may not think it possible, seeing me as I am now. But all those years ago, I had arrived at the ultimate goal, and I understood that, like all those other venturers, I had been chasing the wrong prize. El Dorado, a place, a kingdom. Indeed, when I first looked down into the valley, I thought that I had found it. Now I saw that we should have sought a man. El Rey Dorado. The golden king.’
‘Oh!’ breathed Zeal.
‘I would not wish the curse of finding what he seeks on any man.’ He released her hands, stood up and began to pace. ‘I’m afraid that understanding was only the first of my many tutorial surprises.’
He paused at the window to look down into the darkness at the track he had taken up from Sir Richard’s lake.
‘I was pushed to my knees, in imitation of the golden horde around the lake. The only sounds now were of birds and creatures in the jungle. An insect hummed near my ear.
‘The palanquin-bearers lowered their burden to the ground beside the water. The golden king stepped forward, raised gleaming arms and unclasped his golden collar. He threw it into the lake.
‘As it sank into the dark water, a cry went up around the shore. He removed his rings, his armbands, his belt, and threw them all into the lake. Then, when he had stripped himself naked, his attendants threw water on him until they had washed off even the golden dust.’
Philip came back to the table to pick up his g
lass.
‘As he bathed, he seemed to grow weaker. Two priests half-supported, half-carried him into the lake. He stood in water up to his thighs, unsteady, eyes glazed, reaching out as if he might fall. Suddenly, he gave a cry and slipped down under the water. The priests hauled him back to the surface. Then, as if in a frenzy, the crowds around the lake began to strip off their own golden ornaments and throw them into the lake, as if to feed the virtue of the precious metal back into their once-golden king. A hail of gold rained into the water. The king stood unsupported but still reeled. All gold had been thrown. There was nothing left to give. He cried out again. A wailing passed through the crowd, back towards the golden pyramid. Their arms reached out as if begging for something more.’
Philip’s glass slipped from his hand. He cursed under his breath as it shattered on the hard ebony floor. ‘I forgot myself in my own tale.’ He squatted down to pick up the shards, his broad back turned to Zeal, and set the broken glass carefully in the corner of the fireplace for a groom to clear the next day.
‘I must go to my own chamber now.’
‘Are you testing my resolve?’ she asked.
He frowned. ‘How so?’
‘Not to press you against your will.’
‘I’m not in full control of my tongue. Should not have brought you so far. I’m sorry. Despite my word, I’ve reached the end.’
‘But tomorrow night?’
‘What comes next is not for the ears of a woman.’
‘You are cruel to tantalize me like this,’ she said lightly.
‘Don’t use words you can’t begin to understand.’
‘Which one? “Cruel” or “tantalize”?’
He stared at her, from a great distance.
‘Why not tell me?’ she begged. ‘I beg, rather than demand.’
‘I would give all I own not to have been there for what followed. And I will not take you there with me. I should never have let you persuade me to blab so much already.’
‘You seemed to find a little pleasure in the recounting.’
‘A maundering grey-beard!’
The Memory Palace Page 22