My Lady of the Bog (23 page)

But her grave had been transformed: both desecrated and consecrated. “Nighthawks” with metal detectors had scoured the land for thirty, forty yards around, drilling scores of probe holes into the sod even while, on the edges of the cutting, there were a dozen memorial bouquets—including what looked like a hand-written prayer.

I turned from the grave to the bog in which it lay. In the rainy evening it was a melancholy station, a maze of streams and waving grasses brightened by loosestrife and overhung by silver willows. As I imbibed its desolation, a primal panic rose inside me. And I understood viscerally, then, why bogs were so long regarded as doorways to the underworld and the ideal sites for sacrifices—and how easily one could become disoriented here and, subsequently, lost or drowned.

So when a little old man came doddering down the track, I will admit I felt relieved.

He was, it turned out, the “grandfer” of Sam, the lad who’d first unburied my Lady. Rail thin and spry enough in a creaky sort of way, he clenched between his strong, stained molars the bitten stem of an unlit pipe. When I referred to his grandson’s find, he nodded: “Say Queen Abby’s buried here.”

“Queen Abby?”

“Good
fairy, don’t you know? Used to bring her sickly wee ’uns. And barren wives would spend the nights where you’re a-settin’—sometimes even barren cows!”

“Who was she?”

“Agh!” He scratched his head with the stem of his pipe. “Fairy Queen. Lived in the pond down by the stones, ’til some saint or other made ’er shift. Me grammy said ye’d see ’er of a night on a pale horse, leading souls of those who would die on the morrow. That’s how she ken Rector Kingman was a goner. She’d zeed his ghost the night afore he died riding a pure white mare with Abby!”

Sensing he had my full attention, he went on: “Well, bein’ a ’ooman, even if a
fairy
one, but didn’t she fall in love? In order to wed, she took the form of a human queen. But her lad was betrothed to one Jessica Meeks who, despite her name, was anything but. Declaring she would not be cuckolded by any heathenish fey, she learned from her lover boy where he was a-meetin’ Abby. Then when Abby did appear, the girl’s Da and brothers caught her in a net.

“Well, didn’t they have the fight of their lives, as Abby took on one hundred shapes: tiger, camel, pizen sarpent, she-bear and giant coney! Holy water was sprinkled on her. It smoked and hissed and burned her flesh like tanner’s acid until at last, scarched and exhausted, she came back home to her original form: that of a beautiful, black-haired ‘ooman in whose dark heart the light of Christ never has entered once—nor
will!”
He paused for dramatic effect and breath.

“Now, bein’ immortal, she could na be slain and so she was buried, staked to the bog with golden pins. Bound like that, she’s prey to fiends who ravish her cruelly night after night. And so, ’tis said, if you walk the downs when the moon is nil, you can sometimes hear her moan with pleasure, even as she weeps in loneliness and shame.”

Trying to hide my fascination, I said, “And her name, you say, was Good Queen Abby?”

He fitted the unlit pipe in his teeth. “Good Queen Abby, yis t’was.”

“And did people ever make her offerings?”

“Na me. But me Grammy did.”

“Really! And how did she do that?”

“How?” He glared at me like I was daft. “Tossed ’em in the bog. Even offered up her watch, Grammy did. Barkin’ mad, volks said she is. It’s when we thought Da ha’ been killed in the war.”

“What war?”

“Why, the
Great
One. Later, we heard he was guest of the kaiser, and the Boches eventually
did
let him go. So you zee,” he winked, “maybe old Abby done the trick.”

I thanked him warmly for his reminiscences, and asked if he’d ever seen Abby himself.

“Abby. Pookas. Boneless Ned. And a black dog once, with eyes like barnin’ coals!”

“Really?” I said. “And what did it do?”

“Well, he give me an evil, thievin’ look, now didn’t he?” Then he sucked on his pipe, jerked at his cap, and as if he’d thought better about speaking of such matters, marched straight off without another word.

I was almost certain now that the legend of Good Queen Abby held a distant memory of Lady Albemarle. Just as peat and sphagnum moss had formed around my Lady’s body, so other myths had conflated her own until she had blurred in the minds of the folk with the Fairy Queen and primordial Mother. Everything was falling into place.

And moving to her grave, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Around the margins of the hole, the peat was a different hue and texture. That is, it was peat laid down at a
different
time than the peat that was surrounding it.

I hurried home, looking for a quote I had kept for future reference, though it took me some minutes before I could find it:

While bodily incorruptibility was associated with sainthood in Russia, on the continent and England it was generally regarded as proof of vampirism. Such bodies, whether disinterred by accident or design, were often burnt or staked . . .

There it was! Three hundred fifty years ago, by “accident or design,” someone had unburied my Lady! And given the times—the Puritans were in power and witchcraft trials at an all-time high—her perfect, unspoiled, undead corpse was surely thought to be immortal, a vampire sleeping in the bog by day and rising to stalk the country by night. And so, that day she was first uncovered, no one had suggested preserving her in some museum. Instead, a blade of dread had stabbed the parish. Persuaded by the Puritan clergy and divines, they had removed her heart and reburied her, staking down her wandering spirit with wooden crooks and hand-carved curses—even as the common folk (the uninterrupted chain of artifacts showed) continued their offerings as they had for centuries.

For, when a cow was lost or a loved one dying, it wasn’t to the chapel of the saint the simple folk turned—but to their Lady. There, in the dusk or dawn or midnight, with witnesses none but the wheeling stars, they made their sacred pacts and pleadings and offered up their secret prayers.

Still, there was one nagging question. If the runes were carved in the seventeenth century, why—
ingesusnam
—was their form and English so damned old?

But the answer to that was simple enough: the inscription was traditional, with Jesus only the last in a long list of gods in whose name it had been uttered, and Albemarle the latest in a long line of fiends. For in sacred formulas, archaic words and language endure, so that to this day good Christians pray, “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . .”

It was Strugnell calling. “Book you found? Wasn’t part of the treasure. Lads unearthed it, wrapped in silk. Tossed it on the hoard.”

“How very scientific of them. Have they never heard of
strata
?”

“Course not.”

“Do they remember where they found it?”

“It was dark.”

“And the silk. What happened to it?”

“Somehow got left behind, and the next night were a cold one. One of the lads threw it on his filly.”

“And that’s where it’s been for the past three months. On a horse’s ass.”

Strugnell laughed.

I wasn’t surprised. In archeology, such things happen all the time. The Bedouin boy who found the Dead Sea Scrolls spent the better part of the following winter burning them in his stove for warmth.

“And where’s this cloth now?”

“Aren’t I looking at it? Fine design. One end’s got a sort of fringe.”

“What’re its dimensions?”

“Say . . . six by one.”

“Feet?”

“Meters.”

“Thank you.” It was a sari.

So my Lady really could be Queen Mayura!

Eagerly, I reopened the “enchanted book”—hoping to confirm her identity once and for all. On the page to which I turned, however, we were fighting a wild, Afghani tribe
. . . and as we watched them coming at us, some central nerve inside my body quivered with a sort of sickening joy—for being charged by five hundred ululating Uzbeks is, in truth, an indescribable feeling, and one you record in the depths of your bowels.

But God was with us. We turned their charge and in the end, we counted forty-seven enemy dead, including their chieftain, Aziz Beg Khan, plus twenty-nine prisoners, some of whom were maimed.

Approaching them, I gave them a choice: join us or die. Every one to a man opted for the former. In fact, some of them wept and kissed my hands, though I had few illusions. They would be loyal for as long as they shared our booty.

‘Abd al-Wali, who was strutting about like a peacock who believes himself the reason for the autumn rains, led me to the spoils, including treasure from other raids. I inspected a golden crown inlaid with yellow topaz and coral. An inscription declared it the R
ā
ja of Indore’s, and I wondered how it had come into their hands. Was it seized in a raid? Or had my brother plucked it from the head of Mul (I did not believe he’d been slain by the Queen) and given it to their Khan? However obtained, returning it brought me great satisfaction.

I had the chieftain’s hands removed and placed upon a golden plate, the crown secured between his fingers, and sent it thus to the Rani of Indore with this greeting:

O Queen — The grace of He without Stain allowed me to retrieve this Precious Crown from One who is now a Traveller on the Highway to Annihilation. May you remember me always and read in this gift the Sign of my Brotherly Love and Protection.

Prince Sikandar

Then I ordered that the chieftain’s head be separated from his body, wrapped in straw and conveyed to Jafir with these words:

O Brother — I send you the first fruits of this Harvest of Uzbeks who dared to flourish in our Father
’
s Field. May you be pleased with this offering and read in it the Sign of my Loyalty and Brotherly Affection.

Kando

I had other pieces of the Khan sent to other restive princes. Then the headless, armless, legless corpse was hung from a balcony, beneath which pooled a sty of blood in which the pups and piglets wallowed.

Finally, I had the heads of the enemy dead removed and piled in the town square. They looked like bearded human fruit. Regrettably, they would not stay up. Whenever a dog nibbled an ear, the whole pyramid collapsed and heads went rolling, careening about like cabbages. So, after some consideration, I ordered built a pillar of victory, for whose uses I was gaining a new regard. On it I had carved:

On this spot, in the year A.H. 725, Prince Sikandar Khilji delivered Khadya from a band of mutinous Uzbeks, dispatching 47 of their Crooked Souls to the Hiding-place of Nothingness. Let this Pillar be a support to all who uphold Dharma and may these Faces of Ruin appear as a Warning to those Ungrateful Servants who would become their own Masters.

Finished with these measures, I went to the Chambal and bathed the dust and blood from my body, watching it swirl away in the stream. I felt elated. Life was sweet. And it struck me now that everything my eyes took in was mine: men, women, horses, jewels.

My servant, Ram, laid out fresh garments; donning a lime-green floral robe and a silken turban, I went back to the town square where I had myself weighed against cotton, paddy, grain and fruit, milksweets,
ghee
and toddy, which were then distributed to the poor.

Declaring a holiday, I invited the town’s nobles to a wine-feast in a merchant’s garden, which I renamed
Vijayabagh
—that is to say, Garden of Victory.

Dancing lulis and beguiling charmers whose caresses would have captivated the hearts of angels incited the assembly, while musicians sang that graceful ode:

Sing, Minstrel,

Fill my cup,

For the world has ordered itself

As I desire.

And what was a song by the great Nizami without another tune by Khayyam?

Later, I patronized N
ā
madev, the captain of my scouts. And to my loyal commander, ‘Abd al-Wali, whose bravery was unmatched, I presented a golden robe of honour. I then gave orders that whosoever amongst my men might wish for exhilarating drinks and drugs be not debarred from using them.

That evening, the village women brought us roasted pigeon and the wine of the country: a rough white with a nose that we consumed in swinish quantities. Sitting there before the yellow fire in the chill desert night with gold in our pockets, squab in our mouths, wine and the smoke of
kif
in our blood and the grease of the sweet, white doves smeared and shining on our sunburnt faces, we revelled in the nectar of victory and youth, thinking it but an appetizer, a hint of things to come. And yet, alas, I tell you now, my life never tasted so sweet again!

Part V

JAFIR

The antidote is hidden in the poison
.

—
Rumi
The Diwan

Chapter 31

I
awoke to two cops standing over my bed. Vidya, too, was hovering above me—though as our eyes met, she dropped down beside me and laid her head upon my chest.

“Now, now, miss, there’ll be none of that,” the bobby fussed. The CID man cleared his throat. “Alexander Donne. We arrest you for the murder of Jai Prasad. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be taken down and used against you.”

I looked up at the two of them, staring down so intently. I recalled the wine-feast in the pleasure garden, overseen by the pillar of heads.

In one world, I was the rising man; in another, a murderer—when, in fact, I was neither.

Maybe that’s why I was the calmest one there. For being charged by the British police with murder is really nothing compared to being charged by a band of ululating Uzbeks!

Then something happened that savaged my calm: they handcuffed Vidya and led her away.

“. . .
you
know the type: family of six, kids and all, wasted on an Easter Sunday; German
turista
gunned down in Chinatown by a ‘Ghost Shadow’—worst shots in the fuckin’ world! Or some tony professor, like your buddy, Prasad, cut to bits in his book-lined study . . . . Cases like that tend to stick in the public craw. Citizens demand action. Governor calls hizzoner; hizzoner, the commissioner; commissioner, the deputy commissioner of pleece—and next thing you know, some fuck’s got a microscope and is lookin’ up
my
rectum.”