A Place Called Armageddon (9 page)

‘It matters not,’ she said, breaking off a hunk of each, taking bites. ‘And you didn’t answer my question.’

‘Which was?’

‘Do you ever take off your mask?’ When he did not move, did not answer, she wiped her fingers on the cloth, then raised them to her veil. ‘Come. We have broken bread, drunk wine and fought together on the streets. We speak each other’s languages. Why, we’re practically cousins. So I’ll shock you with my face if you’ll shock me with yours.’ With that, she removed the silk. Laying it by, she leaned closer to the lamp.

He did not move, scarcely breathed. If she did not have Sofia’s nobility, she was pretty for all that. Prettier perhaps, if less beautiful, her almond eyes deep-set, her eyebrows a plucked line of hair, her mouth full, the lower lip swollen as if bruised.

It was her nose he stared at. They always fascinated, their variety, their complexity, the ones that just sat upon a face, the ones that joined with the other parts in expressing the person. Hers did. It was large yet not overly so, her nostrils flaring the challenge that echoed in the raised eyebrow, in the dark eyes. In the words that came now.

‘Your turn.’

Those words returned him to himself. He had never had a woman in his house. Had only twice
had
a woman since his disgrace, fumbling, drunken acts of brief satiation and lasting regret. He lifted the lamp, moved away from the table, causing the light to spill onto the horsehair mattress on the floor. ‘You may sleep here,’ he said, hanging the lamp from a ceiling hook, moving to the door.

‘Where do you go?’

He did not turn round. ‘Out. To the tavern. I can sleep in a corner there easier than on this floor.’

Her urgent words halted him. ‘So I have driven you from your house, from your bed, all because …’ She took a step towards him. ‘I am sorry. My mother warned me against my unceasing curiosity. There are many reasons why a man would want to remain masked. I shall not presume to find out yours again. Unless, somehow, I earn your permission.’

She had come close as she spoke. He’d turned back and she was there, as near to him as she’d been in the doorway of that alley. He breathed in – and caught her scent.

When the saw-toothed dagger had first descended to take his nose, and his wound clotted with blood and ripped cartilage, he’d believed he would never smell anything again. Eventually he’d discovered he could, if the scents were strong, as hers were. They were a mix of sweetnesses – cinnamon was there, clove. But there was something else too – sandalwood, he realised in a rush of memory. He had not smelled that since his last day in Constantinople, the day he’d set off for his first war … and said goodbye to Sofia. That same scent rising from this woman, fragrant, spiced, reminding him of all he’d lost. Her eyes were dark pools and he thought there would be nothing better than to dive into them, swim deep, never come up for air.

‘What is your name?’

‘Leilah,’ she replied. ‘And how are you called?’

He hesitated. Everywhere he was known as Zoran. It was a mask, just like the other. Yet here, now, with her, he wanted to reveal the truth of himself. For some reason, for the first time in the six years since he’d put them on, he wanted someone to see behind the masks.

‘My name is Gregoras,’ he replied softly, and as he spoke, he reached up and pulled aside the cloth that covered his face.

Even in the shadows by the door, there was light enough to see. He waited for the usual reactions, those he’d seen on the few who’d looked before, the physicians, the whores, the mercenaries. Shock, followed by – depending on who looked – either pity, fascination or mockery. The last two he could handle. It was the first that he had never been able to stand.

He saw none of them now. All he saw was something he’d not seen in anyone’s eyes in six years.

Desire.

‘Well,’ she said, closing the small gap between them, till their clothes touched, ‘I have seen wooden ones before, but never … is it ivory?’

‘Yes.’ He reached up, touched the tip of the false nose. ‘The carver was a sculptor of Thessalonica. He made me three, for ivory yellows. It is nearly time for me to exchange this one.’

‘And it is held on by …?’ She looked to the side, to the twin leather straps that braced it high and low and went around his head above his ears. ‘It looks tight. Do you ever take it off?’

‘When I am here, alone. When I sleep. Sometimes when I fight, if I am not wearing a helmet.’

‘A soldier? But of course I knew that.’ She took his hand, raised it to her mouth, kissed it. Her eyes never left his. ‘Take it off,’ she said.

The shock ran through him at her touch, at her command. It was, for him, a mask within a mask. The last concealment. No one saw behind it.

He said nothing. Just bent his head, reached behind to the catches that held the leather straps, flicked them, put the ivory in a pocket. Searched her gaze again.

No shock. No revulsion. No pity. The excitement never wavered in her eyes.

She still held his hand. She tugged it now and, wordlessly, led him to the bed.

Leilah woke to shuttered sunlight striping the man beside her, his face buried in a sprawled arm. She raised herself to stare … and smiled. Not at the memory of their lovemaking, intense though it had been. No, it was something else, something even more powerful.

For how often does one gaze upon one’s destiny?

She’d had the dream again, in the brief time of sleep. A man, cloaked and hooded, leading her. A locked door. ‘Do you have the key?’ she’d ask. Only then would he turn to her. Within the hood, he was masked. ‘Here,’ he would reply, reaching up, pulling the mask away.

Mask falling, door opening, she’d stumble forward, past him, fall onto her knees, reach, finally touch what she’d sought from the moment she’d heard of it, in another man’s bed – Isaac’s, her previous lover; Isaac the Alchemist, his grey eyes lost to a greater lust than he’d ever felt for her. Lust for the manual of alchemy written by the great Jabir ibn Hayyan, whom others called Geber. The Arab’s hand-written notes in the margin. Answers to questions that every alchemist sought. Answers to life itself.

It was in a monastery in the city known as the Red Apple. It would reveal to her the secrets of the world, secrets she could sell to some man for the fortune that would free her of all men. And this one, who stirred beside her now, was going to get it for her.

She always woke from the dream wet with desire – of every kind. ‘
Heya
,’ she called softly.

Gregoras woke. Had he slept? A stronger light was in the sky than the last he remembered and she was against it, her face in shadow. He could see her hair, unbound and flowing over her bare shoulders. See one breast, silhouetted against slats.

She bent to him now, breasts falling onto his shoulder, brushing his bare chest as she kissed him. Her nose pressed into his cheek … and he remembered. He was naked before her. Not unclothed, he was not concerned about that. Unmasked.

Yet before he could slip from the bed and seek his protection, she had slid down, curved around him, drawing the covers they’d thrown off over them again. ‘I’m cold,’ she whispered. ‘Warm me.’

Then he remembered that with her, he didn’t care about masks.

Their lovemaking was sleep-laden, half a dream, gentle, unlike the fury of the night before. He was aware now of each part of her he touched, when last night they had passed before his eyes, under his hands, his mouth, in a trembling blur of delight. Now he took his time to explore them all. Her breasts, their wine-dark nipples growing, responding to his tongue and teeth. The slope of her belly, its rise and fall, down to her loins, which flooded her thighs like a stream its banks at his stroke. He consumed her, tasting in her the same scents he’d received before, fragrance of spices, of cinnamon and clove. With that scent behind them all: sandalwood, its memories ignored now, the past conceded to the delights of the present. While she took an equal delight in him, moving now above, now below, up him and down, tracing his many scars with different parts of herself, running the length of him with fingers, tongue, with the firmness of a nipple, exploring his varied hardnesses.

In the end, their cries came together, but softly, as if daylight restrained their voices, though there was nothing held back, nothing not given.

She lay for a while with her elbows on his chest, studying him. There was a different kind of hunger in her gaze, disturbing him. Despite her protests, he managed to untwine himself.

There was a small porch at the back of his hovel, walled in, but open to the sky. He kept his water there, and a pail to relieve himself in. He did so now, aching slightly, smiling at the ache. Stood there afterwards, staring at the blue sky, despite the chill breeze – until he heard her call from within. Filling a flagon with water from the brimming rain barrel, he returned to the room.

He was disappointed to see her in her shift. ‘Do you leave?’ he said.

‘Soon. And it was cold in here without you.’

‘Well, now I am back. With water,’ he said, lifting the jug.

She was taming her hair, catching it up with pins. ‘Ah, that I would like.’

He rinsed his one goblet out, throwing the dregs of wine out of the window, refilling it with rainwater. Bringing it to her, he said, ‘Shall we return to the bed?’

‘I would like that.’ She pushed the last pin in. ‘But I must go.’

‘Must?’ he asked.

‘The tides. My captain swore he’d abandon me if I was not back at the harbour by noon.’

‘Captain?’

‘Of the ship I came on. I am on my way … elsewhere. We were blown into this port by the storm. I was seeking an inn last night when those men …’ She shrugged.

‘Oh.’ He bent to his discarded clothes, fetched out the ivory nose. With practised hands he secured it.

‘You need not do that for me,’ she said.

‘I do it for myself,’ he replied, reaching for a shirt.

Silence came as they sipped. Of course she is leaving, Gregoras thought. Why would she stay? He didn’t like the feeling he had. Wanted her gone now, so the feeling would go too. But he found himself asking something else. Opposite.

‘Do you have to go?’

‘I do.’ She laughed as she saw the look on his face. ‘But I can return soon. If you would like me to. I do not travel far.’

‘I would like you to,’ he said, too swiftly. Then he remembered. ‘Yet I must also travel today. I will be gone a … a few months. And then I will return.’ He hesitated – then said it anyway. ‘Will you meet me here?’

She considered him – and remembered her dream. ‘Here? Perhaps we could meet somewhere … warmer?’ She looked around and smiled. ‘With furniture?’

He looked around also, saw the room as she saw it. Lost in lust, they could have been anywhere. But in the morning light …

‘Come with me,’ he said suddenly, putting down the water jug, taking her hand. He led her across the room to the other shuttered window. Throwing it back, he said, ‘Look!’

‘At what?’

‘At the view.’

She laughed, looked. It was indeed a sight. They were high up in the town. To their left it fell away in swoops of red-tiled roofs, houses leaning over the alleys that threaded the town. Directly below them, a stone’s throw away, the walls of the city followed the land, dipping straight ahead, giving an uninterrupted view out to a sea that sparkled in the winter sun. Xebecs, with their slanted red-striped sails, and tall-sided carracks tacked against the wind, making for harbour. In the near distance, an island thrust pine-covered slopes toward the sky.

‘I own the house, but it was this,’ Gregoras said, ‘that I paid so much gold for. Now I need much more, and I will build something worthy of it.’ He swept his arm against the expanse of sky and sea. ‘There was a poet who lived in Byzantium near a thousand years ago. His name was Paul and he said, “A room with a good view is a surer possession than virtue.”’ He laughed. ‘Since I possess few virtues, I will settle for my view.’

Byzantium, she thought, content that he’d mentioned the place of her dream. ‘Why here?’ she said. ‘Why not there?’ She leaned closer to him, continued softly, ‘For you are of Constantinople, are you not?’

His eyes narrowed above the ivory. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I live my life from knowing people,’ she replied. ‘Your accent is from the East, its tone refined. I would guess you are from the city, and well born.’

He grunted his reply. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Then why not return there? The views your poet speaks of are there.’ Her eyes searched his. ‘So is your heart, is it not?’

‘No!’ He was surprised at the savagery with which he shouted it – until he remembered what he’d already revealed to this stranger. And so he did not hold himself back, as he had not held back before. ‘That city took my heart and crushed it. It took my face and destroyed it. It is a sickened place, it is about to receive its mortal wound and I … I could not be happier.’ He turned to gaze out to the east, his voice quietening, yet losing none of its intensity. ‘I will never return there, not even to gloat among its blackened stones. Never!’

Passion again, of a different kind. Leilah liked her men to be passionate. And she was always interested when a man declared he would not do the very thing he must.

In the silence after his storm, a bell tolled. She counted ten. ‘I must go,’ she said, turning.

Anger passed from his face. ‘As must I.’ He reached, caught her hand. ‘But I meant it when I said I would like you to return.’

‘And I was serious when I said I would like to.’ She squeezed his fingers hard, then stepped away. ‘Do you have anywhere for my … relief?’

He gestured to the back door. She picked up her bag, went out onto the walled porch. She squatted, then used rainwater to wash herself, shivering the while.

By the time she returned, Gregoras was dressed. She finished dressing too, and finally they both donned their masks. Once done, they drew back and stared at each other. ‘Well,’ she said finally, ‘I prefer you bare.’

He chuckled. ‘And I you. But the stone merchants I go to meet might not.’

As he opened the door, he stooped beside it to pick up a bag and something else. She smiled. ‘Will the stone merchants appreciate a crossbow?’