Abruptly he was aroused by the scraping of the wooden bars locking the
cell door as they were drawn aside. He turned to face the entrance,
rising to his knees.
The door creaked on its peglike hinges. In the opening was the jailer's
bodyguard, club upraised. He believed the prisoner to be a sorcerer,
and terribly dangerous. But he also believed in his club, and was proud
of it, for it had been cut from a tree the like of which did not grow
within seven days' journey. He had studded it with copper nails and
around its narrower end he had bound leather strips for better purchase.
Behind him, though, came the jailer himself, wearing a relatively cleanly
robe with an embroidered hem and a pair of costly copper bracelets.
"Come on, you!" he barked. "Got to make you fit to enter the king's
presence!"
All of a sudden the prisoner realized the music had stopped while he was
lost in his self-induced torpor. From the same direction there now came
shouts and occasional wails of anguish.
Very interesting!
Stiffly, so he expected the creaking of his joints to be audible, he
complied. He was hastened up a narrow passageway leading to a flight of
much-worn stone stairs. At the top two women were waiting by the light of
a rush-dip torch: one scrawny and middle-aged, one still youthful, both
naked but for loincloths and bracelets. They had visibly been weeping;
their eyes were red and swollen.
"Throw away that rag you're wearing!" barked the jailer. And, when the
prisoner was slow to comply, ripped it from him.
"Rinse him down!" he ordered. "Anoint him with something that'll get rid
of the stink! Hurry!"
The women had brought rags and pottery jars of clean water. With obvious
distaste, for their services were not ordinarily misapplied to jailbirds,
they slopped and sluiced away the worst of the dirt, then ladled perfumed
oil on to his hair and beard and tore at the tangled locks with bone combs.
A passable result was rapidly achieved, and the jailer, fretting, handed
him a new robe, ankle-length, of blue cloth with red embroidery. Also
his bodyguard produced a pair of sandals with leather thongs.
When he was presentable, he was hustled along another passageway and
into a large courtyard, where he was surrendered into the charge of
a guard captain, a burly man with a bronze sword, helmet and greaves,
and bronze strips on his leather cuirass. He was accompanied by four
taller men bearing long spears, like pikes, also helmeted, but with only
epaulette plates on their cuirasses and short daggers in their belts
instead of swords.
There was a formal exchange that included an oath or two. During it,
the prisoner registered that the air stank of incense, roast meat, and
terror in approximately equal proportions. He also saw that ahead of
him, on the far side of the courtyard, there were several large windows
beyond which torches shone and people's shadows moved. That was where
the shouting was coming from, though it was not so loud by now.
The wailing and weeping, however, had proved contagious. It was being
echoed from somewhere behind him, doubtless from other cells like his
where hapless prisoners were confined in misery. It was amazing they
had the strength to cry.
Then it was time for him to be taken into the royal presence and display
his gifts as a soothsayer. With the guard captain ahead of him, two
soldiers flanking and two following him, he limped across the irregular
paving of the courtyard, resolving that the first thing he was going to
demand when he entered the banqueting hall was a goblet of wine. And
some decent bread, too, to mend the pangs in his belly. If this pagan
despot wanted to use his services, he could damned well pay for them!
The prospect of bread and wine quite elevated his spirits, together with
the sensation of clean cloth on his body and sound footgear under his
abraded soles. He heard music beginning again and by reflex started to
hum along, for he recognized it.
It was by William Walton.
It was
Belshazzar's Feast
.
Hurt, puzzled, dismayed, he halted in his tracks. Instead of colliding
with him from behind, the soldiers following him froze like a stopped
cinema film. So did those either side; so did the captain a pace ahead.
It became impossible to move. The shifting shadows visible on the wall
beyond the high windows, cast by flickering torches, became equally
still. Everything turned into a fixed picture. Only his mind kept on
functioning, though he was incapable of moving a single muscle. It was
far worse than being confined in a cell, and it lasted for what felt
like an eon. Then --
Then it was worse still. He was taller, but he was also older, and instead
of merely being chafed at wrists and ankles he had open, running sores;
he had worn metal gyves until they were lately struck from him with such
casualness he thought one of his wrist bones might be broken. He was
completely naked, and did not need to glance down at himself to realize
he was closer than ever to the verge of starvation.
The air was hot, but now with the full blast of a noontide sun, and
it reeked not just with the stench of unwashed humanity but also with
the fouler stink of rotting meat and new-spilled blood. He was in a
barrel-shaped, vault-like room, shadowy but not cool, one end of which
was blocked with the same two-palms-by-one fired brick that made up its
ceiling-wall, the other being closed by a chained metal grille.
He was not alone. Slumped on the floor, or leaning with their backs
against the wall in attitudes of unspeakable despair, were half a dozen
men and women and two very young girls, not more than ten, all naked,
all bruised and filthy. The girls were on either side of a woman who
looked like their mother. It was obvious from their expressions and
their tear-swollen eyes they wanted to hug her for what comfort the
contact could provide; it was also plain that they dared not, for they
were indecently unclad, and instead of reaching out with their hands
they were using them to shield their private parts.
From outside, at intervals, could be heard screams, some of which
were definitely not human, and the roar of a crowd brought to a peak
of hysteria.
Someone, using a pebble or a smuggled stick, had managed to erode the
outline of a fish into one of the softer bricks. One of the men was on
his knees before this symbol and praying with all the force terror could
lend him, except that not a sound emerged from his working lips.
The rest looked on as though they could not summon enough energy even
to whisper.
More and different noise, much closer, heralded the arrival of four
lanistae: all clad in rags, all armed with whips and sharp metal goads,
one of them one-eyed and another one-armed. The two intact ones held
great baying, slavering hounds on leashes.
The girl-children started to scream.
But with cuffs and kicks and jabs the lanistae roused the captives and
herded them along a twisting tunnel, also closed by a grille, which at
their approach was drawn aside. They were forced to emerge into the harsh
sunlight of the arena called the Colosseum. They signed themselves and
attempted futilely to strike up an audible hymn, but the roar of the crowd
-- loudest on the expensive side, where the spectators enjoyed awnings
as a protection against the heat -- drowned everything else, even the
winding of buccinae as the editor of the games signaled for the next item.
A gang of slaves hurried out of the arena, wheeling with them carts which
had served first to remove the carcasses from the last performance,
then to bring clean sand while a musical interlude kept the throng
entertained. But music was not what they had come here for.
A gust of laughter greeted the appearance of the captives, bare and
helpless, and the emperor himself deigned to glance down from his box,
where in fact a game of dice was occupying his attention. But on seeing
that none of the victims was armed, and that a lion was being released
from a cage on the far side, he lowered his emerald monocle and went
back to something less predictable in its outcome.
The lion was nearly as ill-favored as the meal he was scheduled to
enjoy. His tawny pelt was blotched with some sort of eczema, and he
favored his right front foot as he looked about him, growling, in a
posture halfway between a crouch and getting ready to spring. The crowd
shouted louder than ever and people began to toss empty wine jars and
bits of broken masonry in the hope of arousing the beast.
But instead of scenting food and rising to his full height and pouncing,
he looked vaguely puzzled for a moment and then sat back and inspected
his right forepaw. After licking it a couple of times, he looked again
at the huddled group of humans in front of him.
And purposefully, despite his limp, began to pad in their direction,
purring noisily.
He looked remarkably like a man in a lion's skin, rather than a real lion.
Oh -- no!
Shaw! Androcles who took the thorn out of the lion's pad! The whole setup
was so silly, he couldn't help bursting into laughter. The laughter spread.
First his fellow Christians, whose identity he had no faintest notion of,
and then the watchful lanistae and the slaves who surrounded the arena
like banderilleros and picadores at a bullfight . . . and then the crowd
at large, and ultimately the emperor himself were caught up in the
hysterical mirth.
Meantime the editor of the games fumed and screamed and struck out
insanely at his personal retinue.
This also ground to a halt eventually.
Then --
He was being helped to mount a bad-tempered horse. He felt like a lobster.
He was encased in stiff, badly articulated armor bolted on his body over
a thick, here and there quilted set of garments designed, apparently,
to protect his most vital organs . . . but which were wholly revolting
to the skin. They chafed; they itched abominably.
He could see very little of the world, for his head was boxed in by a
clanging metal sallade and his view was obstructed by its visor.
Yet some thrilling chord in the depths of his being was touched by this
predicament, as though he had proved in the ultimate analysis to be a
bondage freak after all.
A person at the left edge of his field of vision took his left hand,
which wore a clumsy plated gauntlet, and forced along his forearm
a shield held in position with leather straps. Another person to his
right, equally unrecognizable because the helmet acted like blinders,
thrust a long, heavy, metal-tipped wooden pole into his grasp.
A lance? Yes, logically. But not nearly as well balanced as he had
always imagined a lance to be. Trying to couch it against the back of
his saddle -- which itself was by no means a masterpiece -- so that the
brunt of an impact would be transferred to the greater mass of the horse,
he found there was far too much of it still ahead of the pivotal point
at which he was constrained to grasp it. It was going to wave about like
a ship's mast in a gale.
But it was much too late to worry about that kind of thing. His attendants,
screaming with terror, were vanishing into the surrounding woodland . . .
Woodland?
As best he could he surveyed the scene. This was a glade in hilly but
well-forested country, and there were chiefly birch, ash, and beech
trees to be seen. It had recently been raining: the nearby rocks --
which looked like granite -- were glistening, and the grass underfoot
was damp and marshy.
And a noise was coming from somewhere out of sight which was causing
his steed to whinny and back, provoking a reflex jerk on the reins and a
jab of both heels into the sides of his poor mount. He was clearly not
the finest one could wish for; though he was stocky and broad-hoofed,
he was fitter to haul a cart or drag a plow than carry a knight-at-arms
into battle. He was half bald, and --
Battle?
Still thinking about the horse's mange-gnawed mane, the rider listened
again to the noise, partway between a roar and a howl, which had so upset
the beast. This time it provoked a curvet, a caracole and a turnabout,
all done without schooling, which bid fair to unseat him. He found himself
facing in the opposite direction before he could regain control.
And there, dead ahead of him, was a nearly naked girl tied to the face
of a smooth gray rock. She was overweight for her age -- about fifteen
-- and her hair was hanging in sweaty strands either side of her fat,
ill-tempered face, and her fat hands had clawed at the rock until the
nails were rimmed with red, and she had shat herself with terror and
the thin yellow garment which was all she wore revealed the news to the
world only too plainly.
As it began to crisp around the edges in the blasting-hot breath of a
creature waddling toward her on scaly legs with claw-tipped toes like an
overgrown cockerel's, its body patched with lurid yellow and green like an
attack of luminescent fungi, its head on a serpentine neck weaving back
and forth with its maw not just blood-red as it gaped, but
glowing
red, and instead of arms or forelegs or forelimbs, a pair of totally
unbelievable scarlet wings, as formal as a lady's fan.
Half Uccello, half -- someone else's. Confused. But with the ill-assorted
mix still identifiable. It did not require him to turn his shield to
realize that it would be white with a red cross.
What were these bastards and sons-of-bitches trying to
do
to him?
This wasn't funny. This was a mockery!
And a great welling flood of black, unadulterated fury erupted from the
depths of his being. The scene tried to freeze. It didn't have time
(curious that he should think in terms of the scene as autonomous --
but since obviously it could never have occurred in reality, perhaps it
was so).
Instead, it melted: each patch of color, like wax, blending into another;
like the contrasts of children's modeling clay rolled into a ball,
it ended in a flat brownish- gray mess in the midst of which he was
embedded, unable either to move or to reason. He felt that someone's back
had been turned on him: that a Power had offered him the best that was
to be had, and he -- through stupidity or ill-temper or perverseness --
had rejected it.