Moths to a Flame Page 19

  ‘Asking?’ This was unlike Clodolë; she usually expressed her wishes in a more forthright way.

  ‘She is sick, very sick. Didn’t you know, lord? I am so worried about her.’

  ‘And what form does this sickness take?’ Melmeth had heard stories like these before; Clodolë’s ‘sicknesses’ were often a cry for attention, a way to attract his notice.

  ‘She is listless, weak, she just lies in the darkness.’

  ‘You have, of course, brought the physician to her—’

  ‘She will see no one, lord, she will let no one near her, not even me. And she cannot bear bright light – either of sun or lucerna. It is just as it was with the Torella Sarilla – before she lost her reason. I fear – I fear—’ Lerillys dabbed at her brimming eyes with a lacy kerchief.

  ‘What do you fear?’ Melmeth demanded.

  ‘That she is dying, lord. Please go to her. Don’t turn your back on her now.’

  Clodolë dying? Another exaggeration, no doubt. But Melmeth felt a slight pang of conscience. He had treated her badly … but hadn’t she provoked him, taunting him with stories of her lovers?

  Melmeth slipped unannounced into the Arkhys’s apartment. Several of Clodolë’s dhamzels were lolling around on cushions in an outer chamber, dipping berries into spiced sugar and gossiping as they ate the ripe fruit. They seemed little troubled by their mistress’s sickness. He glimpsed their juice-stained mouths, glimpsed them licking the tips of their fingers and laughing. Or was it merely sugar? The white powder gave off an unnatural sparkle and the chamber smelt deliciously sweet, sweet as boskh …

  Once he would have lingered to watch, tantalised by their laughter, their languorous gestures … Now he moved on unseen, a ghost haunting his own palace, silently entering Clodolë’s bedchamber.

  The balcony doors were open to the warm night; a light breeze stirred the swathes of summer muslin that were draped around the Arkhys’s bed.

  She lay unmoving, beneath the drifting gauzes, her tawny hair tumbled about her bare shoulders. As he drew closer he saw how pale she looked, pale as the ivory petals of funerary lilies.

  Once on a distant moonlit night he had approached this bed, a bridegroom of eighteen summers treading a carpet of rose petals, parting the gauzes to greet his bride. He could still remember how he had felt, that trembling sensation of exhilaration and apprehension, how his hand had risen to draw back the curtain—

  ‘Clodolë,’ he said.

  She seemed not to hear him. Suppose what Lerillys had said was true—

  He took her slender wrist, feeling for a pulse.

  ‘You came,’ she said, her eyes opening. ‘So maybe you do still care for me … just a little …’

  He tried to step back but her arms were around him, clinging to him.

  ‘You tricked me! They told me you were sick.’

  ‘Don’t be angry with me. Please.’

  ‘What do you want, Clodolë?’

  ‘You. You, Melmeth.’

  Dizzying spicescent of her hair, her breath. Boskh. The very scent of it made him hungry for more.

  ‘Irresistible,’ she whispered. ‘It’s irresistible. Can’t you taste it in the air?’

  White snowpetals drifting on the night breeze, falling incense flowers, paler than moonlight …

  Moonmoths came floating in through the open windows and encircled her in a halo of white wingbeats.

  Clodolë shook out her hair and the moths fluttered to settle amongst the loose tumble of dark gold, exotic, furred whiteflowers adorning her head like a bridal wreath.

  ‘Twelve years ago …’ Her dark-filmed eyes were radiant, her full red mouth smiling, ecstatic. ‘Remember?’

  His lips opened, hoarse sounds struggled to become words. He stood mesmerised, as though his feet had merged with the marble floor, unable to move away.

  The moths rose from her hair in a puff of sparkling dust, the spiced fragrance bewitching his senses as they fluttered overhead, emitting their eerie twittering calls.

  The dust was clogging his eyes, his nostrils, his mouth, he could not help but breathe it in and the sparkling dust-granules fizzed acid-sweet. The air burned dazzling white, searing his skull; he gasped, staggering, finding Clodolë’s arms wound about him.

  ‘Say you still want me, Melmeth. Say it. Say it.’ Her voice, rich as the purpled evening sky, trickled like dark wine into his senses as her full grapesoft lips nuzzled his cheek.

  Knees buckling, he was borne back down onto the bed, ensnared in her arms, her cloudy gauzes, her writhing hair.

  Boskh-tranced, his senses slid drunkenly askew.

  White, all white, white of rushing clouds …

  ‘We can start again. Maybe the boskh has cured me … maybe I can carry a child … at least we can try again, Melmeth, we should try again, Ophar says so—’

  ‘Wait.’ His hands caught hold of hers, gripped, pushed her away from him. He had not noticed till then how huge and dark her eyes had become; they dominated her pale face. ‘Can’t you understand, Clodolë? It’s not just the question of a child. It’s us. It was never right. We were ill-matched from the start.’

  ‘How can you say that when you know I love you?’

  ‘You don’t love me,’ he said bitterly. ‘You don’t even know me.’

  Child-bride, consort, Arkhys – but not lover. Never lover. She had touched the animal lurking within him – but not the soul. There was so much of him that she did not know, had never even troubled herself to know. There was so much he could have given her in return. And would have given, willingly …

  Now he saw the futility of trying to change the way it was between them.

  In the darkness she began to speak in a dull monotone.

  ‘The boskh is the only thing that makes me feel alive, truly alive. Everything else is grey without you. Colourless. Pointless.’ Her hands dropped into her lap; moths scattered wildly into the air. ‘empty.’

  He tried not to look at her, hearing the utter despair in her voice, the despair that he knew he could never comfort nor assuage. He began to edge away, one step at a time.

  ‘Come back, Melmeth.’ She reached out her arms, imploring. But the panic was rising, a choking floodtide that would drown him and all his hopes.

  He ran to the door, stumbling, holding himself up by a chill twist of marble column, running on and on past her astonished dhamzels, making for the gardens.

  There he was violently sick. Even when he had stopped retching, grinding stomach cramps doubled him up again, moaning. He rolled in the dew-damp grass until the pain in his belly slowly quietened.

  Whisperings in the gloom of the grove, sere voices whispering his name … Eyes were watching him from the dank foliage …

  The night garden was devouring him, clinging webs brushing his cheeks with spiderslime, whirred winged shadows flying into his face—

  A warning bell was tolling a dull tocsin somewhere in the ruins of his mind.

  She would never be satisfied. And one pathetic little bier after another would fill the locked attic of her mind. Dreams of dead children. Dreams of a dying dynasty.

  The fall of the House of Memizhon …

  CHAPTER 15

  At the foot of Laili’s bed lay a little carved box of sandalwood; the pungent scent of the rosy wood perfumed the morning air.

  Kneeling on the bed, she picked up the box to find a note attached.

  ‘Laili, flame of my heart, wear this for me. Melmeth.’

  Had he guessed, then? She had meant to tell him last night but he had been in no mood for talking, he had only wanted to hear her play. And as music always seemed to soothe him, she had played her flute for him, as he desired.

  She opened the box. There, nestling against a lining of silk, lay a bracelet of gold, set with a ruby carved in the form of a flame whose blood-dark heart glowed crimson in the morning light.

  What did it mean, so rich a gift? He knew she cared little for jewels … and yet there was something formal, almost
contractual, in the sending of this flame-fashioned stone, the emblem of his House.

  Fragments of Sarilla’s malicious gossip whispered in her mind, a chill draught, wreathed with bitter pyre-smoke.

  She took the bracelet between finger and thumb, easing it from its casing, turning it round to find the catch—

  The door opened and Melmeth came in.

  ‘This gift,’ Laili stammered, ‘it is too precious for me, my lord—’

  ‘Gift?’ he said, frowning. ‘What gift—’

  And then with a cry, he struck it from her hand.

  Laili just stood there, amazed, tears starting to her eyes, watching the golden bracelet roll away across the floor. Her wrist throbbed with the force of the blow. He had never struck her before.

  ‘Let it be – don’t touch it—’ He was breathing hard, moving warily to where the bracelet lay, as if it were some poison-fanged snake about to rear up and strike.

  ‘M–my lord?’

  He looked at her, the green of his eyes piercing her like splinters of jade.

  ‘I sent you no gift.’

  ‘But – the note said—’

  ‘What note?’

  Trembling, she picked up the card and handed it to him. He glanced at it and then threw it down on the floor.

  ‘A poor imitation of my hand.’

  ‘My lord?’

  He took up the fire-tongs from the fireplace and gingerly turned the bracelet over. Then he beckoned her closer.

  ‘But not too close, Laili. Look. On the inside of the bracelet; here.’

  A thin barb of gold, darkly discoloured, was concealed beneath the clasp. She would never have noticed it as she pulled the bracelet on her wrist, not until the barb had pierced her skin.

  ‘Poison?’

  ‘Deadly poison. You would have been dead within a few minutes. If I had not come when I came—’ He turned from her, his voice choking.

  ‘Who – who wished me dead?’ she asked dazedly, although she knew the answer.

  ‘She has overreached herself this time.’ He replaced the bracelet in its box and closed the lid.

  Laili was still gazing fixedly out onto the distant city hazed in summer heat when he put his arms around her, his hands sliding down to cover her belly.

  ‘Laili, Laili, why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I was going to, my lord. I wanted to be sure. And then you were so preoccupied with … other matters …’ She was still in a state of shock, uncertain of what she was saying.

  ‘When will the babe be born?’

  ‘I cannot be sure … but most likely after the summer’s heat has died. When the leaves are falling.’

  ‘A child,’ he whispered, resting his head against hers. Suddenly he tensed. ‘She will stop at nothing now to try to kill you … and our child. Touching in a way, her devotion to me.’

  ‘She is still your consort, my lord,’ Laili said stiltedly.

  ‘You cannot stay here. Too many of the servitors are in her pay. I must hide you in a safer place until I have dealt with her.’

  ‘Nowhere is safe now.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid. I will protect you. I know of just the place. She will not be able to touch you there.’

  ‘Away from you?’

  ‘Only for a little while. I will look after you, Laili.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘You … and my heir.’

  ‘Make way for the Arkhan, make way, make way—’

  Melmeth paused a moment in the hallway, steeling himself for what was to come. The little box was concealed in the folds of his sleeve.

  If only there were some other way … but the only other way was the one she favoured. And he would not demean himself, he would not stoop to murder. If he was to be remembered, he would be remembered as Melmeth the Just, not Melmeth the wife-murderer.

  Now it was too late to turn back. The arrangements were made; the documents had been drawn up. All that remained …

  The gallery filled with whispering courtiers, many fanning themselves in the oppressive heat with citrus-scented fans of painted silk and feathers. They parted, bowing, as Melmeth appeared, his ceremonial robes of ivory brocade brushing the floor with a sleek silken hiss as he walked to the porphyry throne and sat down. Jhafir came to stand at his right hand, carrying a roll of parchment.

  ‘What does this mean, my lord?’ Clodolë came stalking into the chamber, followed by an armed escort. ‘I am ordered to appear before you? Not requested, but ordered? Marched here by your tarkhastars, like some common criminal?

  ‘I have a gift for you,’ Melmeth said in a quiet voice.

  ‘A – a gift?’

  He beckoned her closer.

  ‘Hold out your hand.’

  Slowly, questioningly, she extended her graceful white fingers, fingers a court poet had once likened to magnolia petals, Melmeth remembered bitterly. If only things between them could have gone otherwise, if only …

  He slid the sandalwood box from his sleeve and placed it on her palm, closing the slender fingers around it, feeling them begin to tremble against his own.

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘Here?’ Her eyes still defied him. ‘In front of the court?’

  ‘I wish it so.’

  The audience chamber was silent now, not even a whisper from the upper gallery stirring the air.

  Her fingers fumbled with the clasp until the lid sprang open.

  ‘Now try the bracelet on.’

  He saw her bite her lip.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The gift does not please you?’ he said, frowning.

  ‘I didn’t say that …’

  He rose from the throne and approached her.

  ‘Then try it on.’

  ‘No. I will not.’

  ‘Must I put it on you myself, then?’ He reached towards the glint of gold, wondering as he did so whether she would dare him to go so far.

  Suddenly she gave a rasping cry and dashed the box to the floor. The bracelet rolled out of its silken nest. As one of the tarkhastars bent to retrieve it, Melmeth shouted, ‘No! It’s poisoned! Don’t touch it!’ Turning back to Clodolë, he gripped hold of her by the arm.

  ‘And you knew it was poisoned, didn’t you, Clodolë? For this was not my gift to you. This was your gift to the Lady Laili, intended to kill. I even have the accompanying letter you sent, mimicking my hand. Only by the grace of Mithiel did I arrive in time to save her. And this is not the first time, my lady Arkhys, is it? There have been other deaths, other wasting illnesses in my court that the physicians have been unable to explain.’

  She stared coldly back at him.

  ‘You have no proof.’

  ‘Jhafir has the letter. He has had the court scribes compare the hand with mine – and yours. There is no doubt that you wrote it. You have become careless of late, Clodolë.’

  She still stared at him, silently reproving. After a while she drew in a slow, shuddering breath. ‘Oh, you are more cruel than I imagined, Melmeth. Trying me in front of the court – with no means to defend myself. So.’ She drew herself up to her full height, chin held high. ‘What is my sentence, lord? Death?’

  Melmeth glanced at Jhafir. The light in the audience chamber seemed bright, too bright. His eyes stung. No one moved, not even a fan lifted to waft a breath of air through the stifling heat.

  ‘The Lady Clodolë is henceforth banished from the court of Myn-Dhiel to the summer palace at Shandaira.’ Jhafir unfurled the parchment and began to read aloud. ‘“All contracts between the Lady Clodolë and the Arkhan Melmeth are, of this day, annulled. The Arkhan has made a very generous settlement on the Lady Clodolë on condition that she never returns to the city of Perysse.” ‘

  ‘Banished!’ Clodolë hissed.

  ‘The Arkhan gives you the summer palace and all the estates that surround it.’ Jhafir rolled up the parchment and handed it to her. ‘Exceptionally generous, in the circumstances.’

  ‘You call this generous! Consigned to a living death! Why didn’t you have
me executed?’ Clodolë cried to Melmeth. The parchment fell to the marbled floor. ‘Did you think you were being kind, Melmeth? Or were you just too weak-willed to sign the death-warrant?’

  Melmeth just looked at her, saying nothing. Her pale features, distorted with contempt, seemed to blur in the painful sunlight. He remembered another day, bright with sunlight, when he had first seen her, a slender girl with eyes as brown as striped bees …

  ‘I demand a fair hearing. I demand the right to appeal. I demand—’

  ‘Lady.’ Jhafir moved forwards and took hold of her arm. ‘Accept what you are offered. The Arkhan is merciful.’

  She pulled away from him.

  ‘He is bewitched. By his Aelahim concubine. Look at his eyes – glazed, dull – she is poisoning his mind with love-philtres, binding her to him with witchcraft!’

  Melmeth shook his head. At a click of Jhafir’s fingers, the tarkhastars moved forwards and surrounded her.

  ‘Take the Lady Clodolë away.’

  A curious straggle of onlookers followed the Arkhys’s jade-striped palanquin as its bearers made their way down to the river-quay. Street children ran alongside, hopeful maybe that the Arkhys’s entourage would fling a few eniths in their direction. The armed escort seemed somewhat excessive for what was said to be a pleasure-trip.

  A sultry breeze stirred the half-furled sails of the royal barque and the dusklit riverbank was alive with gnats.

  Sombre-robed figures moved amongst the gathering crowd on the quay. Whispered rumours spread. The Arkhys was in disgrace. She no longer pleased the Arkhan. He had divorced her.

  ‘Clodolë!’ clamoured the onlookers. ‘Clodolë!’

  But the blinds of the Arkhys’s palanquin remained closed. Clodolë would not show herself to her people.

  ‘If the patient’s been dead some while, there’s little I can do!’ Azhrel said in irritation.

  The tarkhastars of the watch looked uneasily at each other; the youngest wiped his mouth as though he had just been sick.

  ‘We think you’d better take a look, doctor. Before we remove the body. In case we need to close off the building.’

  They led him to a dilapidated tenement on the edge of the Street Marches.

  ‘If it’s plague, we’ve orders to put the sign on the door and inform the Haute Zhudiciar.’