Master of Shadows

by Neil Oliver

  The basement was dark, but light fell here and there through gaps between the pine floorboards that formed its roof. She walked quickly across to a flight of wooden stairs and climbed them. At the top was a landing and a heavy oak door. Taking a long-shafted key from a pocket of her skirts, she unlocked the door and opened it, gingerly.

  There was silence beyond and she pulled it wide enough to allow her to look out into the corridor beyond. There was no one around – there never was – and she stepped out, taking care to lock the door behind her as quickly as possible.

  Viewed from this side, the door was nondescript, without adornment, and therefore apt to be overlooked by passers-by. Pocketing the key once more, the key to the kingdom of her memories, Yaminah crept silently along the corridor, opened a larger and altogether more impressive set of double doors, and began making her way back towards her quarters. In one hand she held the small, smooth bone. She did not look at it, merely grasped it tightly in one hand before slipping it into her pocket alongside the key.

  It was indeed time for the prince’s therapy and she needed the chariot. Since Constantine flatly refused to have it anywhere in his line of sight when it was not in use, it stayed always in Yaminah’s rooms.

  For her own amusement, and partly due to her fondness for the dark, she closed her eyes. She focused on the sound of the hems of her skirts brushing lightly on the flags of the corridor and made her way by memory alone, taking turns left and right. Rounding the final corner, she counted fifteen steps before reaching out with her right hand and finding, with faultless judgement, her own door handle. Only when she was inside, with the door closed behind her, did she allow herself to open her eyes.

  Her suite of rooms was flooded with dazzling wintry sunlight and she blinked hard. While her eyes adjusted to the brightness, she crossed the room to one of the tall windows and, by touch as much as anything else, located the chariot. She placed her hands on the handles, turned it smoothly towards the door and set off towards the prince’s quarters.

  After years of what felt like hiding in the palace, of behaving like an interloper or an intruder, she felt infused suddenly with a sense of … right. As she made her way towards the man she had just sworn to protect, she realised for the first time since her mother’s death that she had an important role to play and a duty to perform. This time it was Constantine who stood on the edge of the abyss. This time it was her turn to catch him.

  The chariot, so-called, was a wheelchair of sorts. Leonid’s masterstroke had been to conceive and then design a contraption that would perform, simultaneously, the two functions he felt were key to Constantine’s well-being. While he had denied himself the luxury of saying so, it had troubled the old man that his patient was confined to his bedroom, trapped like a moth in a jar. The interior of one room, well appointed though it might be, lacked the stimulation necessary for the maintenance of a healthy mind, he thought.

  That he was unable to repair the prince’s body drove Leonid almost to distraction. But he was equally determined to care for the boy’s mind. That much, he felt, was not necessarily beyond him.

  In the end it had been Yaminah’s devotion that had provided his inspiration. As one of her early sessions of exercise and manipulation of the prince’s muscles and joints had drawn to its close, Constantine had glanced away from his young carer’s attentions and so caught sight of his physician standing silently in the doorway. Quite how long Leonid had been observing them, the prince could not guess, but he identified concern in the old man’s eyes.

  ‘You have to agree she’s a dedicated student,’ said Constantine, trying to lighten the mood and brush away, as always, any sign of pity.

  Yaminah had been completely absorbed by her task, vigorously massaging the calf muscle of the prince’s right leg. She had her back to the doorway and so had been entirely unaware that they were being watched.

  While she and Constantine were alone, physical intimacy between them seemed natural and unaffected. Young as she was, she had never once felt awkward in his presence. It was as though any barriers between them had been obliterated in that moment when their lives collided, deep in the cavernous heart of the Church of St Sophia.

  And yet for all that, the sudden presence of another, an observer, made her instantly self-conscious, and the sound of Constantine’s voice addressing his physician made her stop what she was doing and stand to attention like a little soldier.

  After a moment or two, she allowed herself to glance over her shoulder at whoever had joined them. When she saw it was Leonid, a man whose age and authority made her more nervous almost than any other, she stepped away from the bedside and turned to face where he stood in the doorway.

  Leonid said nothing at first, but approached the pair quietly, his eyes on Yaminah.

  ‘Hmm,’ he murmured, a rumbling low in his throat. To Yaminah’s ears there was agitation in the sound, like a fly trapped against a window pane.

  ‘I have long since lost count of the miles this girl has walked on my behalf, and with my legs,’ said Constantine. He was reaching for levity, hoping to coax something light-hearted from a man for whom humour was an always unsettling companion.

  Yaminah realised she was wiping her hands, slick with scented oil, on the fabric of her dress. She wanted desperately to assess the damage done, the inevitable staining, but forced herself to remain as motionless as possible.

  Leonid was notoriously taciturn, and when he finally spoke, both Yaminah and Constantine were faintly startled.

  ‘It is not enough,’ he said.

  ‘Yaminah tends to me every day,’ said Constantine, almost crossly. ‘Or at least every day that I let her.’

  The old man waved one hand, impatient at the misunderstanding.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, doing his best as far as he was able to lighten his own tone. ‘I am not talking about the frequency of the treatments.’

  Yaminah inadvertently made eye contact with him as he said this.

  ‘Nor their thoroughness,’ he added, apparently for her benefit. She lowered her eyes, but she was pleased by the old man’s seeming praise for her efforts.

  ‘What then?’ asked Constantine. ‘She could not give any more of herself to the task – nor I, for that matter.’

  Leonid shook his head slowly as he came closer to the bed.

  ‘No … it is not enough that you remain here in this bed, in this room, day after day and week after week,’ he said. ‘Your legs are not the only part that wastes away for want of stimulation.’

  Without another word Leonid had turned and left them, his tattered black robes flapping behind him like the untended wings of an ailing crow.

  Yaminah sighed with relief and returned thankfully to the application of the therapy – switching her attention to Constantine’s left leg. As she did so, she looked him in the eyes, questioningly. The prince said nothing; just shrugged his shoulders.

  A month later, the physician returned, preceded by an assistant pushing an outlandishly complicated-looking chair on wheels. All the while it advanced, it made a clicking sound like an incessantly dripping tap. The contraption was reminiscent of a little cart that might be pulled by a pair of miniature horses, with a shaft that protruded from beneath the seat and extended for a distance of a yard or so. A pair of pedals, or stirrups, was mounted either side of the shaft, and these revolved all the while the assistant pushed the chair forward. When he stopped, in the centre of the prince’s room, so too did the stirrups.

  Constantine was in his bed, propped up on pillows and cushions and reading a book. Yaminah was perched upon a window seat, enjoying the warmth of sunlight on her back and shoulders. Having been briefly transfixed by the arrival of Leonid and his assistant, and most of all by the wheeled contraption, she looked at the prince. His expression was one she had not seen before – some way between amusement and suspicion – and she waited to hear what he would say.

  He let out a long, whistling breath and allowed his book to fall forward int
o his lap.

  ‘I am impressed, Professor,’ he said. ‘Now tell me what it is.’

  Leonid clapped his hands once, and the assistant, understanding the instruction, turned from the chair and quickly exited the room.

  ‘This is the next stage of your treatment, your highness.’ Leonid’s eyes were not on the prince but on his invention.

  ‘Treatment,’ murmured Constantine softly. ‘It is without end.’

  ‘It will end when you can walk again,’ said the physician sharply.

  His choice of words was bold, as was his tone. Despite his age and experience – and therefore the status that came with them – he was nonetheless addressing his superior. The suggestion that he, and not the prince, might determine the duration of the treatment was clearly open to challenge, if not a downright rebuke.

  But something else in Leonid’s tone, a note of implicit and deeply held commitment to Constantine’s well-being, was unmistakable and also touching. The old man usually exuded only crustiness and lack of sentiment, and this confession of determination to make good caused the breath to catch in Yaminah’s throat. She looked again at Constantine and was relieved to find there only affection for the good doctor.

  ‘And this will help me how?’ asked the prince, gesturing towards the chair with one hand.

  ‘This will help,’ said Leonid, suddenly more animated than either Yaminah or Constantine had ever seen him, ‘by performing two tasks simultaneously.’

  ‘How so?’ asked the prince, warming to Leonid’s enthusiasm.

  The physician walked to his contraption and grasped a pair of handles mounted on either side of the chair’s backrest. He turned it until the seat faced the prince and pushed it towards the bed, and Constantine watched once more as the stirrups turned in sympathy with the forward motion.

  For the first time he noticed an intricate mechanism mounted beneath the seat, a set of interconnecting wheels of different sizes. Around the rims of two of the wheels – a large one beneath the seat and a small one between the pair of stirrups – were protruding teeth. Captured in the teeth were the links of a chain that looped around both wheels, each link taken in turn by one of the teeth and passed forward to the next. Two more chains connected other smaller wheels beneath the seat to those mounted on each of the four wheels on the chair’s legs. Constantine noted with fascination that some cunning interaction between the mechanism of wheels and chains, and the forward motion achieved simply by pushing the thing, caused the stirrups to rotate.

  ‘It is not enough that you spend all of your time in this room,’ said Leonid. Again he was looking not at Constantine, but at his invention. The prince saw a rare expression of fondness on the old man’s face as he regarded the chair, of a sort he had never seen directed at any human being of the physician’s acquaintance.

  ‘From a healthy mind comes a healthy body,’ said Leonid. ‘And your mind is being denied nourishment by remaining within these few walls. You must sally forth once more. A change of scenery will be to your brain as good food is to your blood and bones.’

  ‘And so you would have me mount this wooden steed of yours?’

  ‘An excellent choice of words,’ said Leonid, either missing or overlooking a note of scepticism in Constantine’s voice. ‘Yes – a wooden horse that will carry you out of this room and back into the wider world.’

  The physician clapped his hands once more, and this time two large men entered the room.

  ‘With your permission, we will place you into the chair and you will see at once the benefits to be had from so doing.’ The old man raised his eyebrows questioningly, seeking royal approval.

  Constantine glanced at Yaminah, who had remained motionless and silent throughout. She nodded her head vigorously. The prospect of seeing the prince leave the confines of his room was nothing less than thrilling.

  Constantine dropped his shoulders in submission and sighed. There was something about the idea of being pushed around the palace, helpless in a wheeled chair, that struck him as demeaning. Mingled with his uncertainty and hesitation, however, was an undeniable desire for a change of scenery.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Back in the saddle it is.’

  Yaminah leapt to her feet in excitement as Leonid and his two heavily muscled assistants crossed to the bed. She joined them there and, without even bothering to ask permission, quickly pulled back the sheets covering Constantine’s legs. He was clad only in a white cotton nightdress, and the sudden sight of his frailty, of the almost transparent skin on his lower legs – and in the face of such large and able men – stabbed briefly at her heart. Dismissing the pain, she stepped back to let them get to him. For big men they were surprisingly gentle in their handling of him as they raised him from the mattress and transferred him easily into the chair.

  Still conscious of his inadequate attire, Yaminah grabbed an embroidered blanket from the end of the bed and wrapped it around Constantine’s shoulders, covering his torso and also providing a layer of softness between the wood and his bony back.

  Leonid himself set about gently raising the prince’s legs and flexing them into position so that his feet fitted into the stirrups. Content that all was as it should be, he turned suddenly to Yaminah. It was the first time he had acknowledged her presence since he had entered the room, and she was instantly flustered by his attention. Unperturbed, he cocked his head to one side and flashed her a smile. She had never before seen such an expression on his face and she stepped backwards in surprise.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you show us how it works?’

  Tentatively she stepped behind the chair and grasped the handles. She pushed it forward, slowly at first; then, realising that it would be easier if she applied more force, she speeded up. She raised her head and saw with amazement that Constantine’s legs were moving, his knees rising and falling in a smooth and rhythmical motion. It looked for all the world as if he were powering the chair forward with his own efforts.

  ‘Do you see?’ asked Leonid, excitement and satisfaction obvious upon his face and in his voice as he watched. ‘Do you see?’

  Almost every day since then, Yaminah had taken Constantine for what they came to call their excursions. Sometimes he was keen, and other times less so. It seemed to her that he was always torn between a desire to be out of his room and on the move, and an ever-present sense of humiliation at being dependent on the physical abilities of others.

  In any event, he would allow Yaminah and no one else to push the chair – or the chariot, as she called it. Sensitive to his feelings, she scheduled their excursions either just after dawn or late in the evening. In this way she sought to ensure there were fewer people around to see him. Beneficial though the exercise was, she understood Constantine’s discomfort.

  He had been especially hesitant at first, insisting on being taken only to the great throne room of the palace. Having first ordered the place cleared of all occupants, he could relax while Yaminah pushed him around and around the empty perimeter. With no one to see him, his legs cycling endlessly and his knees rising and falling helplessly, he could forget the absurdity of it all and lose himself in conversation with her.

  Perhaps it was because so many of their first conversations were conducted in this way, without eye contact, that they grew so comfortable with one another, and so quickly. They had been all but strangers when they met, after all. Until then, each had been to the other nothing more than a vaguely familiar face. The force of their coming together had somehow and instantly broken all the boundaries that normally separated people. Having collided – been joined in an instant into a bundle of legs and arms and crumpled clothes that had to be untangled by witnesses to the fall – it seemed they had never quite been separated again, or at least not entirely. Some unbreakable bond, an invisible glue, remained between them ever after. Countless conversations only reinforced the strength of it, burnished its gloss.

  There was a gap of six years between them. When he caught her in his arms s
he was twelve years old and he was nearly nineteen. It had felt like a wide gulf at first, but gradually it mattered less and less. He began by treating her as the child she was, and she saw him only as an adult. But as days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years, so the distance contracted until in time she came to see that she was more than his companion. They were travelling together into the darkness of the unknown, and he needed her. She needed him too and could not escape him, not that she wanted to. She was the moon to his earth. Her face was always turned towards him and together they spun through the void, as dependent on one another as they were oblivious to all the rest.

  When it finally came, the sound of his voice was a surprise. He hardly ever used her name when they were together, and it surprised her. Normally nowadays their excursions took them through the lamp-lit corridors of the palace, passing closed doors and the private lives lived behind them.

  Often they would invent intrigues involving the occupants, some of the hundreds of people who formed the royal court, thrilling each other with fantastical rumours and scandals. Now of course the apartments were mostly abandoned, their occupants having sought sanctuary elsewhere.

  On this day, however, Yaminah had been distracted from the moment of her arrival in his rooms, and without thinking she had brought him to the throne room, the venue for those first, self-conscious excursions long ago. He had noted her silence, but let her be. Companionable silence was no less enjoyable, provided it was hers.

  They had made two slow orbits of the huge room and were embarking on a third before he spoke.

  ‘What’s wrong, Yaminah?’ he asked softly.

  She had been immersed, as though in deep water, in her own concerns. Even the throne room, at once so familiar, seemed to harbour invisible dangers.

  What secrets lurked in the shadows high above them? The figures on the tapestries draped around the walls, depicting scenes from the lives of the emperors – what were they whispering about? What did they know that she did not? She felt the towering space above her, felt it bearing down on her head and shoulders. She might as well have been at the bottom of one of the great cisterns that kept the city’s inhabitants supplied with water.