Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

He also told me that he shared his home with his twin sister.

Presently he led me to a small suite of rooms in a large, rambling building, which included on the ground floor shops, the offices of traders, public baths and a couple of small enclosed gardens, lit with paper lanterns. Citrus trees grew in tubs above pools filled with small fish that darted about like shards of light.

Suryan's apartment was lined with, or perhaps even constructed from, a silvery aromatic wood. Its ceilings were finely carved with stalactitic formations apeing the structure of stylised flowers and the more exotic crystal formations one can find in certain mountain caves. Below the dado the walls were hung with fine silk rugs and paintings on cloth, mostly representing scenes of pleasure: hunting, feasting, dancing and copulation. There was, after all, little in the way of asceticism that I could see, but I supposed that in comparison with the luxury and magnificence of his family's palaces, these rooms might have seemed cramped and homely.

And then something strange happened. While I was still admiring the principal room – indeed, as I peered up at the intricacies of the ceiling – he vanished like a wraith, from my blind side, into the shadows.

'Lima, my sister, will take care of you now, I must depart to my studies…' and, just like that, he was gone.

A few minutes later a light glowed beyond a gauze hanging, which I now realised masked a long passage. It came nearer and glowed more brightly, and soon I saw the hands that held it. a silver lamp with a tiny wick above a reservoir of ghee, and the face that seemed to float above it.

Uma was a delight. Her skin was the colour of dark honey and she had long, glossy black hair, which yet had hints of fire and copper in it. whether natural or applied I do not know. Her almond eyes were surprisingly light in colour, a golden brown, though occasionally tinged with green. Her forehead was high, her neck long but sturdy; her shoulders gleamed like bronzed butter. Her exposed breasts were like pomegranates, the nipples painted scarlet. Her lips were full, rich and welcoming. On that occasion, being indoors and not expecting visitors, she was naked to her waist apart from jewellery and a tall beehive-shaped headdress, gold and studded with gems. Her waist was circled with an emerald green sarong of fine silk and gold thread, which hugged her hips before swooping in a V-shape below the rounded temple of her belly to a fastening that rested on her pelvic bone. It then swept outwards from the shadowy places beneath to expose her thighs. Her only flaw, if flaw it was, was that her eyebrows met, curiously, like Suryan's, above her nose.

She welcomed me with formal warmth, kissed my hands, made me sit on a low couch. Then, from an alcove she brought a bowl of scented water to wash my feet, and gave me a soothing infusion of fragrant herbs and rice wine to drink. As she knelt in front of me and I saw the way the coils of her hair made spirals in the nape of her neck and down her back, and as her soft breasts briefly caressed my thighs, old longings stirred my ancient loins.

The ablutions completed, she then brought me a simple meal of rice, aromatic with turmeric and other spices, toasted pine-nuts and mushrooms, followed by fruits carefully chosen to make harmony of colour and taste, sharp and sweet, musky and honeyed.

As we began to eat, she raised her eyes to mine and said, in a voice that was deep for a woman but as gentle as fur, 'Ali ben Quatar Mayeen, you have lived many years, travelled to the ends of the world, and seen many strange and wonderful ihings; Suryan and I, however, are on the very threshold of adult life, our heads Stooping below the lintel, our feet upon the step, childhood behind us and the great world ahead. It would be a favour it you told me a little of what you have leant, and perhaps, too, what has brought you so far from the inland sea, across the ocean, to Vijayanagara."

I spoke for an hour or so as the night wore on, recounting some of what I have told you, my dear Mah-Lo, over the last week or so. Prompted by her questions, I overcame my reluctance to assume the teacher's role, and intermittently added something of what I have learnt concerning the nature of our brief existence, building on what I had absorbed at my father's knee and later in the mountains of central Asia, of the secret mysteries of the Shiite sect in which are framed my more formal beliefs.

These, as I have already suggested, coincided remarkably with what Suryan had made of the deeper aspects of the Kauli religion, not in formal dogma or in outward representation but at a deeper level of understanding. Uma attempted to put this in words.

'We follow practices known as the panchatnakaras, which help us to achieve the state we call Kula. Kula occurs when mind and sensation are united, the sense organs lose their differences, and the object perceived becomes one with the senses it stimulates. That is the only the ecstasy, the only goal worth striving tor, and thereby and therein is revealed the goddess or god within."

And what,' I asked, 'are the means by which this state is reached?'

'They are many,' she replied, stretching out on the cushions that she had scattered to fill a corner of the room, 'and each reveals the goddess not only in different aspects hut at different levels of intensity. For instance, the ceremonial dancing and music you witnessed tonight can bring more than a glimmer, as indeed can the contemplation, which we call rasa, of the carved and painted images with which our city is filled and which contribute to making we Vijayanagarans the happiest of people. The Brahmins believe that the highest ecstasy comes from rasa, from contemplation of the things other people do or have made. But this is perverse and a mere expression of their belief that those who work with their hands and bodies live at a lower level than those who live through their minds. A yet greater revelation comes to those who sing and dance and play their instruments in mystical accord than to those who merely listen and watch, and to the craftsmen who paint and carve and model. At a lesser level are the joys of eating and drinking as we have done tonight… Yet,' she added, with a laugh that chimed like temple bells, 'even here the joy I experienced in making the meal surpassed yours when you ate it.'

'And how,' I asked, 'is the greatest ecstasy achieved, the most perfect fulfilment, the ultimate state of unity with the god within?'

For a moment it seemed she withdrew from me into an inner world, then, returned, laughing again. 'Oh, that is a matter of prolonged dispute between the wise men, the sadhus. And what it comes down to is that probably no single activity can produce at one moment the perfect resolution of the separateness that keeps each of us from our god. But that some exercises are more likely to bring one nearer than others is self-evident. Some say the divine moment can come in dance and contemplation of dance; others insist that the taking of certain elixirs is an essential – certainly bhang, which you call hashish, and its derivatives are a help. But there are also distillations of certain plants, fruits and flowers whose habitat and preparation only the hill-people know, which may do even more. Others claim they have found the most perfect enlightenment from breathing in the fumes produced by burning the dried gum of the poppy. And, of course, sexual congress performed with proper skill is a favourite route for many.'

I shifted on my cushions, and, following the spicy food, racked with a delicious weariness as I was, released a small fart I would have preferred to keep to myself. Uma smiled… like a mother.

'Better out than in,' she said.

An indulgent mother.

'I have been,' I said, partly to cover the mild confusion I felt, 'to places in the Western Lands where enlightenment has been sought not through pleasure but through abstinence and self-mortification. I have seen crowds many thousands in number in which all have beaten each other with many-thonged whips for hours on end until the streets ran with blood. And I have seen others who have taken themselves to caves in the mountains or tiny temples, and there lived on nothing but crusts and water until, with their bodies almost wasted away, their cheeks heightened in colour, their eyes huge and staring, with spittle on their mouths, they have claimed to see good spirits and evil ones and even God himself. I have to say that most of these I speak of are Christian, and as you no doubt have heard, they are the most mad of all. There is positively no rhyme or reason in most of what they get up to.'