The Princess and the Captain (15 page)

‘Want any help, Don McBott?' a piping voice suddenly enquired.

Leaning over the rail, Orpheus saw Hob encamped at the foot of the gangplank, looking at him with amusement. He wore new trousers, he still had his military hobnailed boots on, and a merry sparkle danced in his eyes.

‘Carry your bag for fifty galniks?'

‘Only fifty? Your kind heart will be the ruin of you, Hob!' replied Orpheus. ‘What are you doing here?'

The lad crossed his arms. ‘I wanted to see the heroes leave! Let me help you and I'll give you some very interesting information.'

Orpheus hesitated. This urchin was perfectly capable of bamboozling him, but he liked the boy's nerve. He put his bag down in the middle of the gangplank, and with two agile leaps Hob was beside him. Zeph began growling as he sniffed the newcomer's feet.

‘Is that your dog?' asked Hob. ‘Is he going too?'

‘Zeph's had plenty of sea-going experience,' said Orpheus. ‘He's crossed the Maltic Ocean, the Sea of Ypree, and he's even sailed to the Ochre Sea and the coasts of the Orniant.'

Hob looked impressed, and hunkered down in front of the St Bernard. ‘So you're the one who will rescue our Princess?' he
murmured, ruffling the fur on the dog's chest. ‘I can see Galnicia's in good paws!'

‘I didn't have the heart to leave him behind,' said Orpheus defensively. ‘He's old. By the time I'd gone to Cispazia and back he could be dead. He might as well come with me.'

Hob rose and picked up the bag. ‘It's very heavy,' he pointed out. ‘I think I'll need help.'

The boy whistled. On the quayside, Orpheus saw another boy emerge from behind a pile of barrels where he had been hiding.

‘By … by all that's holy!' Orpheus stammered.

The second boy was as like Hob as two peas in a pod! The same clear eyes, the same quick movements, the same dirty face, the same tousled hair.

‘We'll offer you a bargain!' said the second boy. ‘Fifty galniks between my brother and me.'

Twins, thought Orpheus, with a certain sense of relief. For several seconds, he had thought he was hallucinating. He smiled. ‘It's a deal. Bring the bag up here. But get a move on. We'll be setting sail soon.'

In a twinkling of an eye, the twins had carried the kit-bag up the gangplank. They raced across the deck of the
Errabunda
.

‘Hey, wait! What about that interesting information?' Orpheus shouted after them.

But the two boys had already disappeared down the first open hatch. Orpheus sighed. His dizziness was slowly passing. All around him the sailors were busy, climbing ladders, working pulleys, winding up the sheets. The quay was teeming with porters and curious onlookers. To the sound of much shouting, the holds of the
Errabunda
were being loaded up with barrels of water, Rioro wine and crates of pickled herrings, as well as fifty live chickens, twenty goats, ten sheep and four bullocks.
Orpheus caught sight of a flamboyant redhead on the poop: the ship's cook supervising the stores being taken aboard.

‘Well, Zeph,' murmured Orpheus, ‘I think we already have an enemy on board. You'd better make sure you don't show your face in his galley!'

Orpheus also noticed the presence of the giant with the sombre face whom he had seen on recruiting day at the Citadel. With unusual dexterity, he was carrying crates over the gangplank of the
Errabunda
's sister ship. The holds of the
Mary-Belle
were given over to arms and armour: stocks of gunpowder, carabins and musketoons, arbapults and a great many arrows. All these weapons were being taken in the expectation of battles against the armies of Temir-Gai, the formidable Emperor of Cispazia.

According to the calculations of the official map-makers, the expedition could reach its destination in less than two months, for favourable winds blew when ships sailed that way. Coming back, they would probably have to take new sea routes and sail to the limits of the Known World. The venture had its risks, so the Coronador had insisted that a surgeon be taken on board the
Mary-Belle
and a Holy Diafron on board the
Errabunda
.

Orpheus looked up at the topgallant mast. The shrouds were quivering in the wind, and the green and yellow of the Galnician flag was already fluttering against the pure sky. Hadn't he always dreamed of this moment? Come along, he thought, time to move.

Followed by Zeph, he went over the deck looking for the twins. It was some time since they had disappeared. Suppose the young rascals had made off with his things? They had a crafty look! Worried, he went down the ladders leading between decks. Several of the sailors were waiting beneath the low ceiling for the
moment of departure. Orpheus questioned them, but none of them had seen the twins.

How stupid of me, thought Orpheus crossly. Those two urchins have robbed me, that's what! They'll sell my clothes, my books, my compass – and they're sure to get more than fifty galniks!

As he was fulminating to himself, he suddenly saw his kit-bag lying in a corner with all the others. He opened it. Everything was still there. Disturbed, he looked for the brothers among the sailors again, but without success. When he climbed back on deck, he had to admit that they were no longer on board.

‘That's funny,' he murmured. ‘It's not like Hob to go off without being paid.'

But there was no time to search for an explanation now. Orpheus shrugged and went to look for the Captain and report for duty now that anchor was being raised.

A few moments later the
Errabunda
and the
Mary-Belle
were leaving harbour to the cheers of the crowd. Feeling nervous, but with his mind full of all the knowledge of navigation he had stored up in it, Orpheus supervised the hoisting of the sails without making any mistakes. The mizzen topgallant went up, then the fore topgallant, then the fore topsail. At last, standing on the fo'c's'le, he watched the Citadel and the shores of Galnicia move away, while Zeph, sprawled on deck, was taking his first siesta of the voyage.

A great peal of bells rang out from the Campanile on the highest point of the Upper Town, saluting the sailors as they left. Orpheus even saw the white walls of the McBott house in a ray of sunlight. As he watched it dwindle in the distance he swore to himself that if he survived this expedition, he would restore the glory to the name that he had inherited and that his father had besmirched.

When the gong sounded for the fifth time, all the girls had to be ready and waiting. Malva and Lei had soon found out what ready and waiting meant. Dressed in their red sarimonos, hands crossed on their breasts, their feet bare, they joined the long line of women captives in the harem cloisters. Then they all made for the Baths of Purity in silence. None of them must speak or smile or sigh. Only the soft sound of their bare feet on the white sand of the cloisters was to be heard.

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.