Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (14 page)

 
          
The palace had two storeys and looked
to be octagonal. Hat-like, it wore a superimposed tile roof with eaves
upswooping. Long leaden beaks jutted far out to spill rainwater clear of the
curtain walls of gildenwood, polished and gleaming. Orange marble columns
divided each wall from the next. Numerous tiny windows, set at random, were
outlined by frames of bloodthread rubyvein. Each little window appeared to be
of opaque wax-paper rather them glass.

 
          
What a splendid, enchanting, rich
palace this was! That it should be found out here deep in the forests was
an astonishment
to me— though such an edifice, in tatty Port
Barbra, might have been even more amazing.

 
          
"Our private place," said
Peera-pa.

 
          
Credence set me down at last.

 
          
I was too stunned to comment.
Peli likewise.
Or maybe she was still stunned from her
encounter with that tree.

 
          
The stone pavement cut through the
moss to the palace, which it encircled. As we were drawing close, I found my
voice.

 
          
"But
why?
Why such a
building?"

 
          
"All the usual reasons,"
said Peera-pa.
"Keeps the rain out.
Wildlife too."

 
          
"No, but why
so beautiful?"

 
          
"The path of truth is beautiful,
Yaleen. If an answer isn't beautiful, how can it be right?"

 
          
"Oh. Is this the path of truth
we're walking now?"

 
          
She chuckled. "Commencing in the
midst of nowhere; yet arriving at a marvellous destination?
Perhaps!"
She tossed back her hood. She lowered her black gauze scarf. For the first time
I could scrutinize her features.

 
          
She was at once old, and young. By
which I mean that her face was the face of a young woman, yet at the same time
it was wizened. Her hazel eyes were lively, youthful—yet webbed around with
wrinkles. Her hair was part auburn, part ashen grey. Her teeth were white and
untarnished; the mouth which held them was puckered.

 
          
Here was somebody who had over-used
the fungus drug. Were her limbs lithe and smooth, I wondered, or shrivelled?

 
          
Obviously she read my thoughts. She
smiled enigmatically. "It doesn't matter, this. You see, I have lived as
long as anybody else has lived; namely, the whole of my life." She slid a
door aside on runners and called, "We're here!"

 
          
The entry was hung about with muslin
drapes, one behind another. A strong smell of herbs and spices drew my
attention to little bags of popery dangling on strings; or is the word
"peppery"? Peera-pa held the first veil aside. Peli and I slipped
through the various layers—she sneezing thunderously mid-way.

 
          
Within, the lower floor of the palace
seemed to be all one huge room; with eight, yes eight, sides to it. Various
lacquered cabinets, red and black, hugged the walls. The floor mostly consisted
of springy straw matting of the tight sort, pack-woven inside large cloth-edged
frames which fitted neatly side by side. However, there were also several
sunken pits containing piles of cushions, in all shades of red. In the pastel
light diffusing through the paper windows, these pits looked like storm-tossed
pools of blood. A broad brass stairway circled around upon itself, to gain the
upper storey. Descending those stairs, carefully,
came
a bald fat man.

 
          
The man wasn't just fat. He was a
pyramid of flesh. He wore a pink silk blouse of considerable volume,
embroidered with flut- terbyes, and matching trousers of even greater girth
with a mauve sash tied around his equator. The blouse and trousers clung
sweatily to breasts and paunch; though it was still early in the morning. When
finally he achieved the floor, he waddled beaming towards us. His smile was a
twisting mass of blubber

 
          
"Peepy!" he panted.

 
          
"Papa," said Peera-pa
affectionately.

 
          
"Uh?" said
I.
"Is this your dad?" ‘

 
          
"No, Mardoluc is an honoured
friend.
And a wise one.
That's why I call him
Papa."

 
          
The man squinted at me from amidst
pouches of fat.

 
          
"Blessings, Yaleen!" he
wheezed. "I cannot easily kneel or bow. Blessings, none the less! Oh no 1
cannot easily bend
myself
to you. As soon fold a world
in half." A snorting noise commenced deep within him. This increased in
volume as it penetrated through the layers to the outside. He wobbled violently
as if massaged by hidden hands. Tears squeezed from his eyes. I decided that he
was laughing.

 
          
Presently the convulsion subsided.
Clutching his belly with both hands—as if otherwise he might burst apart—the
gross figure headed for the floor-pit closest by. He entered this like a boat
launched down a slipway, displacing a wave; in this case, of cushions. Somehow
he managed to rotate as he sank so that he came to rest upon his back, facing
us.

 
          
He thumped cushions. "Bless
us, that
you're here! Yaleen: come and talk to Papa
Mardoluc!"

 
          
At this point Peli yawned; none too
quietly. That yawn gave Peera-pa her excuse.

 
          
"Sleepy time," she
announced, "for all but those who have slept already." Linking with
Peli, Peera-pa started to hustle her off in the direction of the stairway. Peli
blundered along, confused. The rest of our troupe crowded in behind. So did I.
Credence promptly picked me up and turned me around, while my legs were still
busy walking. I felt like a wind-up toy automaton such as I'd seen kids playing
with in Venezia. Pointing me back towards the pit, Credence gave me a push.

 
          
Unlike a toy, I turned again.

 
          
"No, no," said Credence.
"You heard the lady. You've had your snooze. Stay and amuse Papa. Play
with him. You might learn a few new tricks."

 
          
"Hey! I'm not some fat ogre's
plaything!"

 
          
Looming over me, she smiled nastily. "He
isn't going to
bother
you, dearie.
What a grotesque notion. Whatever put such a fancy in your head?"

 
          
"You just did," I muttered.
Her smile became a smirk. "Oh I get it!" I hissed. "You've nobly
forgiven me for ruining your life—but you don't mind a spot of venom on the
side."

 
          
"Dear me, and
after I carried you all this way!
I'm sure I don't know what you're on
about, little priestess."

 
          
"Don't you just."

 
          
"Yaleen!" bleated recumbent
Mardoluc.

 
          
"Is something amiss?"
Peera-pa called from the stairway.

 
          
"No!" I bawled back.
"Everything's lovely!" So as not to afford Credence further cause for
petty satisfaction, I headed for the fat man's pit under my own sails.

 
          
"Amiss!" cried Mardoluc.
"Amiss, is
food.
We'll need food, Peepy.
Food for our guest, food for me.
In proportion! The pot's on
the hob upstairs." He licked blubbery lips and flexed podgy fingers: a
display which I decided wasn't aimed at me personally. Even so, I perched on
the edge of the pit well out of reach.

 
          
So he'd been cooking; hence the
sweat. . . . As he wallowed expectantly, I found to my surprise that his gross
conduct was actually whetting my appetite. There was a kind of, yes, blatant
innocence about it, which I almost found endearing.
Almost.

 
          
Cancel that "almost".
Before long I found myself really regretting that I'd ever called him a fat
ogre. (Put it down to nerves!) We got on like a house on fire.

 
          
The catalyst, the spark, was the
meal.

 
          
Mardoluc wasn't any old cook. He was
a master chef. What came down on trays to our pit was a dream: bowls of thick
peppery bean and potato soup, vine leaves packed with minced lamb, broiled
land-snails, sour curd with pollfish fritters (eccentric but yummy), sweetbread
buns spread with lime jelly. Confronted with such foods one could only become
the Complete Gourmand: both glutton and gourmet at once! Which Mardoluc
certainly was, gluttony-wise; for this was just breakfast time. Yet he managed
to combine the gutsiest exuberance with appreciative finesse in an infectiously
persuasive blend.

 
          
He munched. He sucked his fingers.
"You need to slacken up, Yaleen. Relax."

 
          
"Do I?" I nibbled and
licked.

 
          
"Yes indeed. You're like a
coiled spring. That's why you snap at people." He seized a soup bowl.
"Glub-glub-glub-glub."
He actually said this as he
drank; I kid you not. "Slurp the stuff down, but savour it too."

 
          
"Likewise, gobble your famous
fungus?" I'd been picking at my food on the lookout for any fungi, whether
whole or minced.
Which was simply a waste of time.
As
I recalled, the cultists were supposed to use the fungus in powder form. The
meal could have been laced with it, and me none the wiser. Maybe the fungus
possessed a distinctive tang. Never having tasted any, how should I know?

 
          
"There you go again!" He
emptied a last dollop of soup down his throat, and then his tongue was out
questing into the bowl, lapping up the smears. "That comes later, not now.
So dig in; don't be shy.
That's
better!" He cheered me on as I began to do more justice to the stuffed
vine leaves. He thrust a snail at me, expertly cracking the shell. "Try
one of these!"

 
          
Eventually I had to cry quits. There
are limits.

 
          
By the time that stage arrived I felt
sleek and sensual; and I'd joined Mardoluc lolling amidst the cushions.
(Somehow, he'd managed to avoid spilling anything.) He had awoken a buried
fire in me which so far had only peeked out in the form of flashes of jealousy
at Mum and Peli; and he'd done so without anything overtly erotic occurring.
(Else, I'm sure I would have screamed the palace down.)

 
          
How can I put it? Touch had
transmuted into taste; and now I wanted to taste more experiences, and wilder,
but in some different mode than usual. I'm aware that frustrated people often
console themselves with food, but that wasn't the case here. Mardoluc was flesh
supreme Flesh-plus. Consequently he was more than flesh. His presence made me
bigger and fleshier. He freed the woman hidden in the child. He expanded me.
This made me want to expand further still, into some new sphere.

 
          
"You are one fine cook," I
said.

 
          
He looked comically pained.
"Just
one?
Not two?
Or three?
Or a whole kitchen of cooks all
rolled into one?" A tear rolled down his cheek (with difficulty).

 
          
"Sorry,
chef!"

 
          
"Apology accepted! Ah me, but
I'm still famished."

 
          
"You can't be serious."

 
          
"Oh I am. I'm starving. I have a
hefty appetite for truth, too."

 
          
So saying, we got down to business.

 
          
Truth.
The
truth about Mardoluc was that he had inherited a modest family fortune when he
was barely out of his teens. The money came, of course, from trade in precious
woods. Mardoluc's parents had been married ten years, with still no sign of an
heir, when at his mother's persuasions they finally consulted a wise woman of
the hinterland. She solved the problem—of sterility or impotence—with a potion.
After Mardoluc's birth, however, his mother's womb had sickened, so that the
boy would remain their only offspring ever; no daughter would inherit. When
Mardoluc was ten, his mum had died. Heart trouble killed his dad a decade
later.

 
          
Mardoluc only discovered the secret
history of his conception upon opening his dad's death-letter. Presumably his
dad spilled the beans in the hope of filling his heir with a new sense of
responsibility.
For had not Mum and Dad risked their health
and mutual happiness to bring their son into the world?
Whether
accurately or no, his dad traced the genesis of his own heart condition back to
that trip up-country and to the wise woman's medicine; not to mention the
sickness of the womb which made his wife ail. Mardoluc, by his teens, had
become something of a sensualist and epicure—hardly the sort of young fellow to
hand over to with a light heart, unless he was first thoroughly dunked in cold
water.