Calabash Read online

  ‘There are other times for your lectures, I think,’ warned Rosamunde. She pulled me closer. Beneath a tang of oranges I could smell the scent of her warm flesh.

  ‘Well, Menavino and I have been neglecting our studies of late,’ Trebunculus decided. The apprentice showed the whites of his eyes and shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Really,’ sighed the doctor as Rosamunde pulled at me and we ran off down the hill towards the beat of the drums. ‘O! Call back yesterday, bid time return.’ He watched us for a moment, then, followed by his loyal apprentice, strode off in the direction of his laboratory, shaking his head at the transient follies of youth.

  Chapter 20

  In the Tower of Trezibaba

  We danced like dervishes for an hour in the crowded market square where the band played its strange, skirling sambas. The music sounded as though its origins lay in Spain, ancient Arabia and the Upper Nile, but there were also modern Latin elements, and something else hiding within the rhythms, something very English that I could not identify. Everybody danced: shopkeepers, weavers, fishermen and camel-drivers, mothers, children and grandfathers; all were swayed by the hypnotic power of the band’s strange melodies. Dancing had been forbidden within the imperial palace since the death of Rosamunde’s mother, but it survived in these streets, where the Princess always came to enjoy the companionship of her people. Nobody seemed awed or uncomfortable in her presence. She was barely noticed as she passed through the cavorting crowd.

  Afterwards Rosamunde presented the musicians with a handful of ducats, and they encouraged us to slake our thirst on a sharp fermented nectarine drink that was poured onto our parched tongues from tall clay bottles.

  ‘I hope you still have some energy left for climbing,’ said Rosamunde, wiping her mouth and pulling me away. ‘Come, I want to show you something.’

  We left the market square and re-entered the city through the great South Gate, making our way to a slender, pale obelisk that bulged from the outer wall.

  ‘This is the Tower of Trezibaba,’ Rosamunde explained, pushing open the door in its base. ‘Seven storeys high, built of a rare white brick made from china clay and ground ivory. Trezibaba was a brave warrior who was felled by his enemies when he was ordered to march into battle after dusk. In those times, nobody waged war beyond the setting of the sun, and the fate of Trezibaba and his loyal men was sealed upon the loss of his honour. The tower was built as a rebuke, against the orders of the Emperor Sun-Mo-Tsung (for during this period the kingdom was ruled by a Chinese warlord). It was constructed by the sons of the troops Trezibaba commanded, the children whose fathers died for him. It was made seven storeys high so that its shadow would sweep like a pendulum across the palace, touching the Emperor’s quarters with its shadow each day to remind the royal dynasty that the misuse of time can destroy an army, and, by inference, a kingdom. We must go all the way to the roof.’

  She ran ahead of me, vanishing and reappearing in the fierce shards of light that were cast by the narrow embrasures. Twice I was forced to stop and draw fresh breath before I reached the top. A narrow balcony circled the turret, which was lined with tiles of beaten gold. I looked down at the tower’s shadow, which cut across the city like the minute hand of a clock, the only measurement of time in the land. Rosamunde stood with her hands spread wide on the railing, her head lifted to the sun.

  ‘Feel the air,’ she said. ‘How fresh it is up here. Cooler, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ I stood beside her and looked down at the kingdom spread beneath us. ‘What is that?’ I asked. To the southwest of the city walls a grey building, squat and sinister, stood surrounded by sentry boxes.

  ‘It is the military compound containing the drill grounds, General Bassa’s quarters and the interrogation chambers.’

  This bird’s-eye view of the kingdom brought my Mesopotamian maps to mind. ‘Why doesn’t the army protect the city from within?’

  ‘From the time of Trezibaba onward, the militia remained separate from the royal state. It receives its orders from the Lord Chancellor, not the Sultan. The army has no divine right, but draws its strength from political will. We attempt no crusades here.’

  ‘And that, what is that?’ Below the compound a dark wood grew, its wild, dense trees hiding the ground completely. Lined by tall hedgerows on every side, it appeared from above to form an impenetrable green fortress.

  ‘It is the oldest part of our land, a territory forbidden to outsiders.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ajnabee, always you ask questions. It would be best for you to stay away from there. Remember my words and heed them well.’

  ‘Is there something I’m not supposed to see?’

  ‘It is sacred ground. Old gods, you understand? Nobody goes there. Enough.’ She turned to face me, brushing her hair from her face, and readied herself for my embrace.

  ‘From the moment I saw you…’ I began.

  ‘It is best not to say.’

  I had no way of stopping myself. ‘You know I’m in love with you.’

  ‘I know.’

  I seized her hands, but it was she who succeeded in drawing me to her. To try to explain or describe that first kiss is pointless. Even now, though, I remember the silkiness of her skin and the touch of her lips, and will remember them at the moment of my death. I have no idea how long I held her atop the white tower, but by the time we came to leave, the sun was setting and the tower’s shadow lay beyond the city walls.

  ‘I want to be with you,’ I said foolishly, not caring because I felt sure that none of this could be real.

  ‘And so you may,’ she replied, ‘but it must be our secret. I am sure the doctor has told you that I am soon to be married. My husband-to-be is Major Maximus, the son of the Lord Chancellor.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘I have never been alone in his company.’

  ‘Then you have no way of knowing if you do.’

  ‘It is not a matter of love, but of honour and duty. I will learn to love him. This marriage is for the good of the state. To reunite my father with his people.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My father and General Bassa. Well, let us say there are misunderstandings. These problems go back many years, perhaps as far as Trezibaba himself. My marriage is—what is the word—a stratagem.’

  ‘But will you be happy?’

  ‘If I succeed in performing my duty. And if you love me as you say you do, you will be happy for me.’ She nodded to herself. ‘We must understand this, you and I. Abide by my terms and we shall know happiness.’

  ‘But for how long?’

  ‘All happiness is fleeting. Your kings take mistresses, no? I will never betray my husband with a lover. But I will be with you until Maximus comes for me. I know it will be difficult for you, but you are the outsider and I am the Princess, and my sacrifice is greater than yours, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, reluctantly.

  ‘So—you must leave the tower first. Make sure no-one sees you go. Accept my situation and I will be yours. It is an agreement?’

  ‘You make it sound so formal.’

  ‘I have to. I am the Princess. There is no other way to proceed.’

  There was a nobility about her when she spoke of her duty. I wanted to argue, to say that she could run away with me, but knew that doing so would doom any chance I had of seeing her again. At the foot of the stairs we kissed in the dark, and then I was back in the bright afternoon, darting through the streets and checking to make sure that my departure was unwitnessed.

  For me, the world of Calabash had taken a further step into the light. Everything was becoming clearer, sharper. It was a world whose people followed rules I understood, who behaved and who thought as I did.

  It was my world.

  Chapter 21

  The Necessity of Belonging

  Menavino’s calculations had begun to show results. One sultry afternoon—was there ever any other kind?—stood out in my memory.

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p; ‘Ready when you are,’ called Trebunculus. He was leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees in order to keep the fat elastic cables taut. The heels of his pattens dug into grass. Rosamunde stood by with her hands at her mouth. Menavino settled himself in the narrow hide seat and adjusted the strap of his goggles over his new-grown tonsure, a symbol of his completed apprenticeship. He licked a finger and raised it in the air, then gave the thumbs-up, a gesture I had taught him. There was a collective holding of breath. Rosamunde raised a scarf of amber silk to check the wind speed, as she had been shown.

  ‘Now!’ The doctor swung down his arm and released the elastic. The pale balsa contraption lurched forward and toppled over the ramparts of the Jasmine Terrace, which was built at the second-highest point of the kingdom. For a moment none of us could bear to look.

  The sound we had dreaded hearing, the splinter of wood, the tearing of limbs, did not come.

  ‘Look! Look!’ The doctor was jumping about like a child and pointing down. Far below us Menavino swung gracefully over the fields, then up across the face of the sun. He was silently laughing into the sky. His feet worked the pedals that controlled the silk wings of the little craft. Catching an updraft he tilted alarmingly, then levelled out. Farmgirls stepped back from their barley baskets and shielded their eyes, turning to watch as he passed over their heads. Children chased the shadow of the craft across the meadows. From a distant silk-draped window in a palace turret, the Sultan’s entourage applauded politely.

  The doctor was ecstatic. ‘Proof that man can be made lighter than air! This is just the beginning!’ His enthusiasm was not dampened even when Menavino crashed into the top of a fig tree and had to be cut down from his harness. We galloped across the fields to right the shaken but elated boy, and dragged the broken-spined craft down through the branches. Then we seated ourselves beside a stream to discuss the next step.

  ‘I suppose the skies of your home are filled with flight devices of every conceivable nature,’ suggested Trebunculus, sucking on one of the fallen figs that surrounded us.

  I found myself reluctant to discuss scientific progress in my own world. I had a horrible feeling that somehow we would end up discussing Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon. Every time the doctor enquired about a particular invention it seemed to me that a coolness crept into the air, a chill that warned against advancing too quickly and upsetting the precious balance of life here. The Sultan had no agenda for the modernisation of Calabash, and seemed far too preoccupied with his various internecine military disputes to consider how the kingdom might be ameliorated. His methods for dealing with the simplest problems seemed circuitous to say the least. For instance, after being informed by the Lord Chancellor that the palace staff were failing to complete their housekeeping duties before noon, the Sultan sanctioned the construction of a gigantic golden statue that portrayed him as a benevolent half-human, half-cockerel, to ‘improve the vital humours’ of his staff and remind them of the benefits of an early start. His thinking was impossible to guess. Still, the people and their land existed in such easy, ancient symbiosis that to alter any part of it would risk damaging the whole. And I did enjoy our conversations of comparison.

  ‘Our aircraft are forged from steel,’ I explained, ‘into great carriages that can hold over a hundred passengers at once.’

  ‘But how can something so heavy rise into the heavens?’ asked Rosamunde, slipping her hand in mine, much to the doctor’s disapproval.

  ‘I’m not really sure. It has something to do with sucking in air.’

  ‘Have you ever been up in one of these carriages?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ha!’ Rosamunde slapped the ground, happy to have caught me out.

  Trebunculus frowned. ‘Kay, perhaps you can tell me something I don’t understand. Today we have seen Menavino ride on the natural currents of the air. But to put a hundred people in the sky is so obviously against nature that it must invite disaster. Why would you wish to tempt fate?’

  ‘Progress, I suppose,’ I replied dejectedly. ‘My science teacher used to say that if you weren’t going forwards, you were going backwards.’

  ‘What did he mean?’

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  We looked down at the city basking in the afternoon sunlight, the stillness of the sleeping streets. Menavino rubbed his bloodied knees with a soothing leaf.

  ‘I think you are not happy when you go home,’ the doctor decided. ‘Perhaps you should spend more time here.’

  I thought of my family, and a more troublesome problem clouded my mind. ‘That’s just it,’ I admitted uneasily. ‘As happy as I am here, this place can’t be real. It’s born from my imagination. It’s what I wish the world was like.’

  Rosamunde leaned forward and pressed her warm lips against my bare arm. She took my hand and placed it on her smooth stomach. ‘Then I am not real?’ she asked. ‘Can you not feel my body?’

  ‘Princess, I would ask you to remember your station,’ admonished the doctor. ‘But Kay, how can you be so sure of what is real? You tell us your brother has travelled to a faraway land, but how do you know that it exists? Why must reality contain bad things in order to prove itself to you?’

  ‘I guess that’s what makes it real,’ I replied. ‘It doesn’t always go the way you want it to. Reality is unexpected. This is all so—perfect.’

  ‘Then we must make ourselves less predictable?’

  ‘No, you don’t have to do anything like that—I don’t know how it works.’

  ‘Too much head. Not enough heart. Trust more to instinct, I think.’

  ‘You’re probably right, Doctor. I suppose it will sort itself out. Now I must go home.’ As much as I hated the thought of returning to Cole Bay, it felt necessary to keep one frozen foot there. I gently disentangled Rosamunde’s hand and rose. ‘I’ll be back in a day or so, I promise.’

  As I walked down through the swaying fields towards the harbour, I looked back and saw the little group unmoved beside the stream, Rosamunde in her silken saffron shift and bracelets, her brown face tilted to the sun, Trebunculus sporting his velvet top hat, Menavino peeling figs, surrounded by his great feathered wings, and for the first time I began to fear their loss.

  Chapter 22

  The Conundrum of Eliya’s Chamber

  ‘I have something for you,’ I told the doctor on my next visit. ‘Go on, unwrap it.’ Trebunculus lifted the paper package from my hands with the tips of his bony fingers and carefully peeled it open. He slid the glass lozenges into the palm of his hand and examined them. ‘Dear boy!’ he grinned, ‘you found lenses for me. Oh, well done!’

  ‘Machine-ground, as you asked.’ I had removed them from Sean’s old school microscope. It had been broken from its mount during one of our more boisterous fights, and was now beyond repair. My latest crossing to Calabash had been the easiest yet, and I was pleased to be doing a service for my new friend.

  ‘Machine-ground, my! You have no idea how exciting the prospect of a degree of accuracy is to me. There is so much guesswork here. Menavino, look!’ He held the lenses up for the boy so that they caught the light. I looked down for the piebald piglet that usually wandered between my feet.

  ‘Where’s that little—?’

  ‘Oh, I kept tripping over Cerastro, so we stuffed her with figs and ate her. Seat yourself on that stool over there.’ I watched Trebunculus busying himself in the laboratory. ‘There are many formal experiments I wish to conduct, but first I must use these to answer a question that has dwelt in me for many years. Perhaps you should not bear witness, Kay, for my intention is a seditious one,’ he whispered.

  ‘I’m an outsider,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Very well, then.’ He crossed to the shelves that lined the rear of the room and stretched until his hands seized upon a small iron box. Setting the box upon his workbench, he produced a key from the chain around his neck and inserted it into the lock. Inside were two glass vials containing what appeared to be identical red crystal
s, the colour of ground rubies. He spent the next hour hunched over the bench. First he suspended the crystals in two separate solutions, then boiled them down in iron pots. During this process, he fitted the lenses I had brought him into a sliding set of rods, by which he could adjust their distance from each other. Then he dried and scraped the residues out of the pots and set them beneath the lenses.

  Menavino darted about preparing each stage of the test for his master, leaving the doctor free to concentrate on the technical specifications of his experiment. When Trebunculus finally rose from the bench, his face had lost its colour. ‘It is as I have always suspected,’ he said. ‘Poor Eliya.’ He tipped one of the vials out onto his bench and separated the crystal residue with a pair of wooden tweezers. ‘Both samples are the same. The poison is fast-acting and causes total muscular paralysis. It comes from a scarlet octopus found in the deep sea beyond the harbour. The fishermen know about it and are careful to avoid its breeding grounds, yet the roasted flesh of the creature may be eaten because the poison is only found in the tips of its tentacles, and in low concentration. To prepare a toxic dose you simply need to milk the octopus and boil its poison to a crystallised sediment. This is the sediment I found in the glass that was set on the table beside the Sultan’s wife as she gave birth to her daughter.’

  ‘Do you know who put the glass there?’

  ‘Well, of course.’ The doctor’s face fell further. ‘I put it there. It was a difficult birth; I had prepared a sedative potion for her.’

  ‘Somebody wanted you to be blamed for her death.’

  ‘But why? I am the court physician, I bear no political interests.’

  ‘The Sultan trusts you. He almost treats you like one of his family. Whoever divides his trust weakens the power of the hand that rules.’

  ‘You think so?’

  I had read too many books on dynastic collapse to believe anything else. Fallen civilisations were my specialist topic. ‘Tell me, Doctor, what else do you remember of that day? Why did suspicion not fall on you? Why were you not arrested?’