Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Uma nodded. 'There arc so-called mystics in India too, who claim enlightenment by similar means: fakirs, for instance, who run across burning coals, sleep on beds of nails, or contort their limbs into absurd and unnatural postures before entering a trance-like state wherein all bodily functions appear to cease for many hours or even days. Perhaps such people do experience the ecstasy we seek, but it seems absurd to resort to such painful means when the same results can be achieved in moments of pure pleasure…'

I agreed, for it was indeed the case that the greatest deprivation I had suffered, in spending a day and a night on top of a pile of headless bodies in a well, had not led to spiritual union, ecstatic or otherwise, with the godhead.

And now, while these last few words of Uma were still echoing in my head, I realised that something was happening to me, to my mind and body, which I could not withstand or control. The walls of the room seemed to blow in and out like curtains, I heard a roaring like a wild wind in my ears, and I felt my fingers, my feet, then my lips go numb. A sweat broke out on my brow. Then, as darkness tilled the room and the walls with their hangings receded into it, I became aware of a pinprick of white light that slowly increased in size, became red and spun, like a spiral-shaped comet, trailing fragments of light in a tail behind it. It spun faster and faster, and I felt myself falling into it, or perhaps I was sucked into it, until I became part of it, became the ball of fire itself and I heard a voice, perhaps my own, saying, over and over again, 'I am all there is,' accompanied by a feeling of deepest anxiety and deepest exhilaration combined. Then, nothing, for what seemed a long time, just darkness.

Then out of the darkness came a dark figure, a black-skinned woman with four arms, blood-red palms and blood-red eyes. Below a protruding tongue, which also dripped blood, she wore a necklace of skulls. Her crown bore lotus flowers, but they were purple and red. Her robe was as black as night and strewn with stars, and the moon rose behind her head. She was girdled with serpents. Her voice, however, was soft and seductive and she said, or did she sing? these words: 'Come joyfully into my arms and you will know all there is any need to know.'

I came round to the sound of running water and chiming bells, with the warmth of the sun on my body and a sweet, jasmine-like fragrance in my nostrils. Opening my eyes, which seemed gummed as they are when one wakes from a fever, I found I was lying beneath a low orange tree or bush whose glossy leaves, black against the pearly sky of dawn, shaded my eyes though not my torso and legs. They were lit by the first glow of the sun that had just cleared the crags to the east of the city, bringing with it instant warmth. A deep happiness filled my soul, and without questioning how I had come to be where I was I allowed myself to drift off again into a different sort of sleep, a healing, warming, happy sleep.

Next time I awoke I sat up with a start, and the last shadow of a second or third dream melted like mist. Again it had been of a lady, but as different from the first as could be. This one was pure white, with yellow hair, naked, standing in a cave of ice. Even as I hauled myself into a sitting position (the leaves brushed my old turban and a big round fruit bumped on the top of my head) and re-oriented myself, she vanished. She had left me with a warm, rich glow in my loins and, such was her power, even on an old man, a smear of semen across my stomach.

I plucked an orange from the tree, broke through its rind with my thumb and gorged myself on it. Never had I enjoyed a fruit so much as the juice trickled down my chin and my eyes roved across the domes, shikhatras, or mountain-like towers, and pinnacles of the city. They were both behind and in front of me, on the far side of the valley, glowing with gold leaf or ceramic mosaic. The great river with its woods, gardens, threaded its way between them before losing itself in the fields and forests that stretched beyond into the mist-enshrouded distances.

Again I wondered how I had got to be where I was. Had the time I had spent with Suryan and Uma been just as little real as the dream of the naked white woman? Perhaps. At all events I had come to no harm, had, for the most part, pleasant recollections to dwell on, but now, if I was to be paid by Prince Harihara, I had an appointment to keep.

This time, the chamberlain with his silver and ebony wand was waiting for me and eager to conduct me into the Prince's presence. Harihara had chosen to be out of doors, and was sitting in a carved marble chair beneath a palm tree in one of the small, enclosed gardens. Beside him there was an octagonal table, also marble, pierced and fretted to look like one of the more intimate temples. His long fingers picked at a silver dish tilled with ripe fresh dates; next to it he had placed the package of parchment leaves I had brought him from across the world, the red thongs loosely tied up again.

He now questioned me far more closely than he had before about my previous journeys to Ingerlond, how well I knew the language and the customs, and whether or not I should be able to find the place where his brother Jehani was hiding. From this I gathered, erroneously it turned out, that what interested him as much as the whereabouts of his brother was the location of the city built of precious stones and gold.

I answered all these questions with as much honesty as I could muster, but as I sensed that an offer of employment was in the air and since I was destitute, following the loss of my shipwrecked horses, I said nothing that might imply a less than complete mastery of the Inglysshe tongue, or a less than extensive knowledge of the country and its customs.

Next he concentrated on the prowess of the Inglysshe in the arts and sciences of war but on this subject I had to confess myself ignorant-at least at first hand. I gave him my impressions: that both gentry and common people fought with foolhardy bravery, were competent in the management of their weaponry, but had been, in recent times, poorly led. In the past their kings, who claimed many cities and much land on the mainland by right of inheritance, had won many great battles against the kings of the Franks, but in the last few years had lost almost all they had gained. This was because their current king was first a babe then a youth and finally an indecisive weakling, some said mad, and partly because the Franks were led by a wild woman, possessed by devils, who inspired her troops to feats of bravery and cunning. How else could a mere woman have won so many victories before the Ingerlonders captured her and burnt her alive as a witch?

'But they are skilled in the most up-to-date improvements in the art of warfare?' Prince Harihara was now insistent, clearly signalling the answer he wanted to hear.

I am a stranger to the courtier's arts but I knew there would be no point in denying something about which he had already reached a conclusion.

They fight from horses?' Yes. 'They understand the science of building fortifications?' I remembered the towers and battlements that circled Calais. Yes. 'And the art of using fire-powder? Do they have that? I mean not merely as an incendiary but as a propellant.' I recalled that I had seen, on the quay at Calais, monster tubes, known as canes or cannons for their resemblance to the hollow stems of wood children use for simple whistles or pipes, mounted on wheeled carriages. They were used, I had been told, to throw large balls of stone or iron at hostile ships, pirates or Frankish, attempting to cross the harbour bar. So, yes again.

The interrogation continued for a half-hour or more, but, though I could only guess to what it tended, I sensed that I had already said enough and that Prince Harihara's mind was made up. He was merely padding out the process so that it would not appear that he had taken an important decision without due consideration. At last he came to the point, and I confess I was more surprised than I allowed myself to reveal.