The Princess and the Captain Read online

  At this early hour of the morning even the birds were still quiet. Wisps of mist drifted past the carved wooden columns, and only an occasional frog in the distance dared disturb the imperial silence.

  Lei always positioned herself just behind Malva. As soon as the Princess began to limp she managed to slow the pace slightly so that her friend’s handicap would pass unnoticed. But for Malva, the fifth stroke of the gong meant the beginning of an interminable period of suffering every morning. Not only was it a long walk to the Baths of Purity, after that they had to face the Immersion ceremony.

  The Emperor Temir-Gai had built a vast city on the heights of his capital city of Cispazan. Every building, every door and every column had been carved from the wood of the mesua tree, also called the iron tree. The city’s skyline bristled with terraced towers capped with bell-shaped roofs. Watchmen mounted guard in every one of them.

  Malva walked with her head down, trying not to put too much weight on her right leg. The procession soon came out into the mandapa, a strange hall open to the sky, where rows of pillars adorned with scrolls and encrusted with hundreds of gemstones reflected the light like a mirror. When the first rays of the sun fell on the pillars of the mandapa, it was the hour of Immersion.

  The girls separated and stood in little groups in front of the pillars as the Chief Preunuch had taught them. None of them risked disobeying his orders, or indeed those of any other preunuch. They all knew what punishment they could expect: the Cages of Torments.

  On the day of her arrival in the harem, Malva had heard desperate cries and pleas for mercy. They came from one particular place in the city; the girls called it ‘the slaughterhouse’. She had gone there during her rest period to find out who was crying aloud and calling like that. Her heart missed a beat when she saw what the slaughterhouse actually was. Cages of mesua wood stood on a vast platform exposed to the sun and the wind. Outside them, a mechanism of interlocking wheels allowed the top of the cages to be lowered, and the sides to be moved apart, or brought closer together. And there were girls inside the cages, some of them so tightly compressed between the bars that they were weeping and screaming. The more they screamed, the tighter the preunuchs turned the vice that was slowly crushing them. The same torture was inflicted on all who disobeyed Temir-Gai or failed to satisfy him.

  At last sunlight flooded the mandapa. The preunuchs immediately emerged from the recesses where they had been concealed and raised their clear voices in honour of the new day.

  To the sound of that crystalline song, the girls moved towards the Baths of Purity: a series of artificial pools in which the harem inmates bathed at certain times of day. The largest, full of sea water, was covered with lotus flowers. It was in this one that the Immersion took place. Malva felt her pulse quicken again. She feared this moment so much that the pain grew worse every day, but what could she do? She must obey or be condemned to the Cages.

  She stopped on the rim of the pool. Beside her, Lei was looking at its grey surface. At a change of tone in the preunuchs’ singing, all the girls stepped into the water.

  Malva took a deep breath and then held it. The salt water was already stinging her injured leg like thousands of needles driven into her skin.

  ‘Swim,’ Lei murmured. ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  Gritting her teeth, the Princess began swimming, and all the girls around her made their way to the centre of the pool through the lotus flowers. The Emperor Temir-Gai had appeared on the opposite bank in his silver robe, which had sleeves so long that they fell to his feet. He was watching the Immersion with a host of preunuchs beside him.

  Every time she stretched her leg Malva felt her wound burning. It was almost unbearable, but she reached the middle of the pool somehow, casting Lei a glance of great distress. Any moment now the gong would sound for the sixth time. Then they must dive under water and stay there as long as possible. If they didn’t …

  The gong was struck. Malva opened her mouth, filled her lungs, and dived at the same time as all the others. The rules were very simple: the first to come up again was chosen by Temir-Gai to spend the next night with him in the imperial bedroom. Every time she went down into the cold waters of the pool, Malva tried to imagine what that night would be like, and it gave her the strength she needed to stay below the surface. Except that after a while she was so short of breath that she couldn’t stay down any longer.

  This morning, when she came up again, she saw that she had been saved once again; another girl had just been chosen.

  ‘It’s all right, Malva,’ Lei smiled as she came up too. ‘We have another day left.’

  Malva smiled at her, but she knew it was only a reprieve. Who knew – tomorrow, or the day after, the pain in her leg might prevent her from swimming at all, and then …

  While the preunuchs were fishing out the unfortunate girl chosen by Temir-Gai, the other prisoners moved quickly back to the bank. Malva cast a glance at that day’s victim: a small girl with pale brown skin and curly hair, probably from the Mahara Desert. She was struggling and begging the Emperor to spare her, but in vain. Everyone in the harem knew that no girls ever came back from Temir-Gai’s chamber. There had even been one terrible morning when the Emperor had wanted two girls: one for himself, the other for a distinguished guest whom he was entertaining at his court. Neither girl had been seen again.

  ‘Last night I find galeod larvae at last,’ Lei suddenly told Malva in a low voice. ‘Final ingredient missing to make medicine. You see – I heal leg tonight.’

  Full of hope, Malva looked hard at her friend. Since they had been held captive in the harem she had lived only for that magic medicine. Lei had been patiently collecting its ingredients, but it had taken her a long time to find the larvae of those nocturnal spiders.

  ‘I do hope your medicine works,’ sighed Malva, reaching the bank of the pool at last.

  ‘Is sure to!’ Lei happily replied. ‘Is Balmun knowledge, remember!’ And in her dripping sarimono she gave Malva her hand. ‘So soon as wound healed, you and me escape harem,’ she whispered. ‘Like my sister before us. Trust me.’

  Malva lay down in the grass, exhausted. The sun was climbing in the sky now, and all the girls dispersed among the columns to rest and talk. The Emperor Temir-Gai had disappeared with his prisoner, and the rest of the day would pass without too much anxiety – until the gong sounded tomorrow, and the cruel little game of the Immersion began again.

  Yes, I trust you, daughter of Balmun, thought Malva. And once we’re out of here I’ll go and find Philomena, wherever she is, and take her to Elgolia. There’ll be no Coronador there, no Archont, no Vincenzo, no sea monster, no Amoyeds, no Emperor, no harem and no torture.

  Ever since she left the Citadel Malva had been adding more names to the list of dreadful people and things she never wanted to suffer from again. She was coming to realise that the Known World very rarely obeyed the precepts of Tranquillity and Harmony.

  17

  Midnight Feast

  Our 69th day at sea, wrote Orpheus in his logbook. I’m not dead yet. The sea is calm and there’s a favourable wind. While I was on watch I saw birds like our seagulls, and larger shoals of fish than usual. Yesterday our cook – who’s an excellent fisherman too – took advantage of a moment of calm to dive into the sea with a harpoon. He brought back some big breamacudas with silvery scales, which he says are typical of the Ochre Sea. There’s no doubt about it: we’re approaching Cispazia.

  He closed the logbook thoughtfully. In the silence of his cabin the candle flame cast moving shadows on the wooden walls. Zeph was asleep, his chops drooping. This was the calmest hour of the night, a little before dawn, when the hull of the ship creaking and the snores of the sleeping sailors could be heard. It was the perfect time to go about his business in secret.

  Orpheus blew out his candle, rose from his chair, slowly opened the cabin door and made for the galley on tiptoe. Except for the two men on deck who had just taken over after his watch, no one would find
him taking provisions on the sly.

  Having made his way secretly into the galley for so many nights running, Orpheus had come to know the ways of the cook, Finopico. There was a shelf full of books and treatises behind the cast-iron stove. They were not cookery books, but scientific works about fish. The cook was obviously passionately interested in the species populating the deep waters of all the known seas. But what interested Orpheus were the stores behind them: fruit pastes, blueberry fritters, marzipan cakes. He could always find a jar of herrings or spiced anchovies on other shelves. Of course Finopico noticed the food disappearing, but he dared not complain to the Captain, for these delicacies ought not to have been on board at all. The only problem was that the little redhead’s suspicions fell on Zeph, and he vengefully kicked the poor St Bernard in the ribs whenever the dog put his nose out of the cabin.

  Oh well, thought Orpheus, filling his pockets with sweetmeats. Zeph is pretty tough, and being half paralysed I don’t suppose he feels much. He reassured himself as best he could, salving his conscience by reflecting that it was all in a good cause.

  He came out of the galley and went stealthily down to the hold, where he groped his way past the stacks of barrels, the salt-corroded mooring ropes and the sacks of flour.

  ‘It’s me!’ he whispered into the dark.

  Soon he heard movement behind the sacks.

  ‘What have you brought us?’ asked a voice.

  ‘Fruit paste, I hope!’ added another.

  ‘Everything you need,’ replied Orpheus, sitting down on a crossbeam. He took a candle end out of his pocket and lit the wick. Two dirty but hungrily beaming little faces emerged from the darkness.

  ‘Herrings first!’ said Hob, seizing the jar.

  ‘Fruit paste for me!’ exclaimed Peppe.

  Orpheus watched the twins attack their feast with amusement.

  ‘One meal a day doesn’t go far,’ commented Peppe, licking his fingers, ‘but it tastes good all the same.’

  ‘I can’t come down and see you in the daytime,’ said Orpheus apologetically. ‘You know it’s too risky. If anyone noticed you were on board –’

  ‘… the Captain would have us hung from the main yard by our feet, we know!’ chanted the twins in chorus.

  ‘And me too!’ Orpheus pointed out. ‘A quartermaster who hides stowaways deserves no better. Frankly, I don’t know what’s kept me from throwing you overboard since the first day of our voyage. To think I was idiot enough to believe you’d gone back on land without asking for your fifty galniks!’

  The two brothers nodded, still eating.

  ‘We knew we could count on you,’ smiled Hob. ‘You’re the sort who wouldn’t hurt a fly!’

  ‘We didn’t hesitate for a moment, not once we knew you were going on board the Errabunda,’ Peppe continued, between mouthfuls.

  ‘And we’ve sort of paid our way,’ said Hob. ‘The information we gave you was worth two berths down in the hold here, wasn’t it?’

  Orpheus looked doubtful. That information hadn’t amounted to much: just some fortune-teller’s predictions. According to the fortune-teller the Archont had taken ship for Cispazia a few days before the Errabunda sailed. The two boys believed firmly in what she said, but Orpheus had too rational a mind to put his faith in a fortune-teller and her cards. To ease his conscience, however, he had mentioned it to the Captain, but the Captain had laughed in his face. The Archont couldn’t have put out to sea ahead of them, for no ship had left Galnicia for months.

  ‘Good, is it?’ asked Orpheus, to change the subject.

  ‘A real banquet!’ sighed Hob, devouring his fourth herring. ‘How’s your dog, by the way? Is he still seasick?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ laughed Orpheus. ‘He spends all his time asleep – and there was I thinking he was such a good sailor!’

  ‘When do we arrive in Cispazia?’ enquired Peppe.

  ‘Tomorrow, with a favouring wind.’

  ‘And then what? You’re going to save the Princess, aren’t you? I just wonder how you’re going to go about it!’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Orpheus admitted, ‘but I suppose the Captain has his plans.’

  Hob abruptly straightened up. ‘I know what I’d do if I was captain of this ship. I’d send the giant to talk to Temir-Gai, and –’

  ‘The giant?’ Orpheus spluttered with laughter. ‘You mean Babilas?’

  ‘That’s him! The one who can lift four barrels with one hand! I saw him do it when he came down to the hold the other day. He’s very, very strong!’

  ‘He is indeed,’ agreed Orpheus. ‘I’ve never seen a man as strong as Babilas. But the Captain can’t send him to talk to Temir-Gai.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Babilas is mute,’ Orpheus explained. ‘He hasn’t spoken a word for years. No one knows why.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hob, disappointed. He sat down beside his brother and pinched a marzipan cake from him.

  ‘There’ll be fighting anyway!’ said Peppe. ‘With all the cannon and the loaded musketoons aboard the Mary-Belle, the Cispazians will soon see who they’re dealing with!’

  ‘You bet!’ Hob agreed. ‘And they’ll give us back our Princess like a shot!’

  Orpheus smiled as he saw the eyes of these two little warmongers shine. Every night, when he came down to talk to them, he briefly forgot the cares and responsibilities weighing on him. He was certainly doing very well as quartermaster, and if he had made a few mistakes they hadn’t been serious. But the crew could be sullen, and some of the old salts didn’t like taking orders from him. Among themselves they called Orpheus ‘Greenhorn’. If they could play a mean trick on him they did: it might be beetles in his soup, a dead rat in his shoes, a squirt of vinegar ‘accidentally’ sprayed in his face. Nothing really vicious, just the rough humour of seamen. All the same, Orpheus felt that he was an outsider and they misjudged him. In making him quartermaster, the Coronador had handed him something of a poisoned chalice. So these moments spent with the two boys did him good.

  ‘Are you finally going to tell me why you were so keen to sail with the Errabunda?’ he asked them. ‘Whenever I ask you turn all mysterious.’

  In the course of their nights on board, the twins had told Orpheus something about their eventful if poverty-stricken life. They had been born thirteen years earlier in a distant province on the border between Galnicia and Armunia. Their parents had fallen ill and died, and the two little boys were left orphans before they were three. An old woman in the village took them in, and they had lived with her for many years, but she gave them more beatings than bread, and at the age of ten they had decided to run away.

  Wandering the roads and begging for food, they had eventually reached the city, but once there they were caught and sent to an orphanage. ‘It was worse than a prison!’ said Hob. ‘They made us sleep on straw mattresses full of bugs, and we had to go out begging for the monjes who looked after us. By way of thanks they whipped us and shut us up in dark cells for days on end.’

  Tough and resourceful, Hob and his brother had run away again. Ever since then, they had been living in the streets, their only family a gang of other urchins. Such hardships no doubt explained their wish to leave Galnicia, but Orpheus guessed there was something else too. A secret that they were keeping between them.

  ‘We don’t have any secrets,’ Hob assured him. ‘We just wanted to see something of the Known World.’

  ‘If we have to live in poverty, we might as well be free!’ added Peppe. ‘And anyway, our future is going to be –’

  Hob elbowed him in the ribs to make him shut up.

  ‘Nobody knows the future, you fool! Don McBott has told us we shouldn’t believe everything that fortune-tellers say!’

  Just then Orpheus heard hurry and bustle between-decks. Day was dawning. It was time for him to go back and join the crew.

  ‘Keep as quiet as mice,’ he told the two boys. ‘As soon as we land I’ll come and get you, and then you’ll be free to go where you
like.’

  He snuffed out the candle and hastily went back up. He didn’t in the least want to run into one of the sailors, still less the cook. When he was safe in his cabin he took out his china bowl, filled it with water, and splashed his face. He was short of sleep, but he couldn’t lie down now. He began shaving.

  As he ran the razor-blade over his cheeks, he thought of his little protégés. He was certainly getting fond of those two lads. They had cheek and audacity. They had dared to do what Orpheus himself should have done at their age: they had struck out on their own without asking anyone’s permission. It was for all these reasons that he took the risk of hiding them. It wasn’t entirely honest, of course, and his conscience had given him trouble, but he’d have felt even worse if he had given the boys away to the Captain. And the presence of the twins didn’t put the expedition in any danger; it hurt no one and nothing but the irascible cook’s personal stocks of food.

  Zeph moved at the end of the bunk and yawned fit to split his jaws. Then he went back to sleep.

  As he put down the shaving soap, Orpheus looked at himself in the mirror. The sun and the sea-spray had weathered his skin. He almost looked like a real sailor, but these sixty-nine days of easy sailing weren’t enough to make a man of him. Storms, he thought. I want storms and tempests! Shipwrecks! Battles and the sound of cannon fire!

  18

  In Temir-Gai’s Cages

  Malva and Lei woke well before the gong sounded for the first time. All around them the other girls were sleeping peacefully on their bamboo mats.

  ‘Show it,’ murmured Lei.

  Malva pushed back her sheet to uncover her leg. The night before, Lei had wrapped her wound in a dressing of her own making, and now it was time to see what effect it had taken.