Julian Rathbone - Kings of Albion

Ali appears, coming in from the street through the yard door. He looks up at us with his one gleaming eye, waves and disappears into the stable. Clifford. I suppose it is Clifford, appears in the gully above us. Then disappears. I can hear him shouting but not make out what he says as he storms down the inside of the house, calling the soldiers together behind him, or sending them on in front. Ali comes out of the stable, hauling Genet on the end of a rope halter. Eddie, after a moment's hesitation, launches himself, bare-arsed, on to the stallion's back. Genet rears like a mad thing but Eddie hangs on round his neck and scoops up the rope halter. Soldiers appear in the gateway behind Ali who steps to one side as, knees and ankles, Eddie drives Genet into their midst. A clatter of weapons and armour, hoofs on cobbles flashing sparks, a neigh like a banshee, and they are gone, with the soldiers making a show of following them.

Ali comes and stands beneath me, looking up with his squinting eye. 'You'll catch your death,' he says.

He helps me down with his good arm, steadying me with his bad one until my toes touch the stones. Then he wriggles out of his smelly old fur and wraps it round me.

'And that, Mah-Lo, is quite enough for one session.'

I drew in breath and let out a long sigh. She was right but I had been so caught up in her telling of this eight-year-old tale that I had quite forgotten where I was. But Ali's garden was all around me, just as it had been, and Ali himself in the shade of his tree on the other side of the table. He appeared to be asleep, but stirred, emitted a tiny fart, opened his one eye.

Uma turned to him. 'Ali, ask Murteza to fetch the children. I should go now.'

Ali rang a little handbell and presently the Nubian servant appeared, received his instructions and departed.

Una stood. 'It has been a pleasure,' she said, again dipping her head above her lingers.

I struggled to my feet. 'Wonderful, wonderful, I assure you,' I managed to blurt out. 'Will you… when will you…?'

'Oh, I shall be back when Ali reaches a point where my side of the story is needed.'

And she walked away, across the flags, past the little fountain, through the pierced sandalwood door. Briefly I caught a glimpse of two young children in the vestibule, holding Murteza's big black hands. He passed them to their mother and the door swung shut.

There was a long moment of silence before I sighed again.

'She tells a good story, doesn't she?' Ali murmured.

'Yes,' I said. Then I gave it a moment's thought. 'And true, I suppose?'

'As the day is long. Why should you think otherwise?'

Again that brow, lifted like a cobbler's needle.

'Oh, I don't know. These three voices you are giving me. Your own, the Prince's letters, and now Uma's. I suspect art, contrivance.' 'Contrivance? What can you possibly mean?'

I glanced up over the low eaves at the fanciful dragons and suchlike that adorned the gables of Ali's house, and shivered. So long, I thought, as he limits himself to three narrators, I'll go along with him. But if a fourth appears, making, forgive me, a set of Chinese boxes out of it… I resumed my seat, breathed in. A hint of Uma's perfume still lay on the air.

'What did you do then?' I asked.

Ali sipped lemonade, eyed me across the rim of his gilded cup. 'Dear Mah-Lo,' he murmured, 'this is the tenth consecutive day you have come to hear my tale. And I cannot believe that, following the vigour of Uma's story-telling, you want to hear more from me. I am not so conceited that I cannot recognise that I lack her style, her enthusiasm.'

I could see that my passing doubts had disturbed him and I was at pains to reassure him that truly I was enthralled, and not least by the unassailable veracity of his telling.

'Very well, then.' Ali set down his cup, stretched his legs out into the slanting sunlight and laced his fingers, the good ones and the withered ones, over his hollowed stomach. He cleared his throat. I took the poor shivering thing,' he resumed, 'back into the house and sat her down on a settle in front of the fire. I kicked the smouldering logs into life and tossed on another, then went in search of a hot drink for her. At that moment the main hall of Alderman Dawtrey's house was empty, apart from a couple of small long-haired while dogs that he kept, which snuffled about everywhere and nibbed their penises against your shins if you sat down. But by the time I got back from the kitchen with a mug of mulled wine for Uma, there was quite a gathering, summoned I suppose by the commotion which had just taken place…"

Prince Harihara had taken the big chair with arms at the end of the table, which, of course, annoyed the Alderman as it always did. The Prince was wearing a lace-trimmed nightshirt, beneath a velvet stocking cap with a gold tassle on the 'toe', both purchases made in Venice. His long black hair and glossy cheeks shone in the lamp- and candle-lights. Next to him was Anish, shivering despite his coat of beaver. At the other end of the table Mrs Dawtrey was having hysterics, while the Alderman stood with his back to the fire and Uma to his side. Although he was angry and disturbed, I could see how his eyes kept flickering to the flesh she had left exposed above her breasts in spite of the coat I had given her. I longed to put the poor fool out of his misery and tell him, yes. you're quite right, she's a woman and naked underneath it.

The Prince looked up at me as I went past with a cup of hot wine for Uma. 'Ali, Eddie March has gone, then?'

'It looks like it.'

'And won't be back?'

'I doubt it.'

'March is not coming back here,' Mistress Dawtrey screamed. 'We'll end up chopped in pieces on Tower Green if he conies back here.'

She had not understood our conversation, of course, but no doubt had heard the name of March in the middle of it.

The Prince ignored her, went on: 'So, Ali, we no longer have our guide to show us the way to the north of Ingerlond.'

I assented.

'Master Dawtrey has expressed a desire that we should begone by daybreak. The question is, where shall we go? Where is there to go?'

There was an unaccustomed tremor in his voice, a hint of weariness and anxiety, fear even. It dawned on me that he was at the end of his tether: thousands of miles from home, divested of almost all the prestige of rank he was used to; bewildered by everything around him – not just his dubious position in a strange country of having allied himself to a rebel, a traitor, but the food, the language, the people, the weather. I reminded myself that I was the traveller, that I was used to situations like this, that I had no home, that Vijayanagara was as strange to me as Ingerlond. It was a consideration I had not given enough attention to, mainly because until now Prince Harihara and Anish had managed so well. But now I felt nothing would satisfy them but to return to the river, take a boat back across the water and retrace our steps to the warmth, comfort, security, and decency of their homeland. Uma sneezed.

I turned to Alderman Dawtrey and did the best I could with my limited command of his language. 'Sir,' I said, 'it is unreasonable to expect the Prince and his following to be gone by daybreak. But I think I can find people in London who will help us, if you would give me until the afternoon to organise it.'

After some blustering, largely feigned I believe to satisfy his wife, he agreed, especially when I suggested to him that he might like to take what spices and condiments we still had off our hands for a fair price so we would have money to pay our way on our journey. He offered a fifth of their street value but I got him up to a third – forty-five pounds. I was content to do this: it left us with no large load to carry, fewer mules and muleteers to hire, and we would be far less conspicuous as we travelled through the country. And, when all was said and done, the actual sum remained high: it was enough to keep us all in funds and tolerable comfort for a month or more. And after that we would still have the small bags of gems we had secreted about us.