Babel Tower (7 page)

The Lady Roseace walked from room to room, exclaiming and touching, fingering silks and ivories, tortoise-shells and lustres, satins and furs and feathers. When she drew back the silk curtain from the window and let in the daylight, the rosy fire died away in many of the fabrics and artefacts, revealing a new subtlety of snow-whites and creams and ivories, of northern furs and southern bones and tusks, of silvery threadwork and palest gold silk quilting.

A close inspection would reveal, in time, that this richness was a light covering over stony coldness and crumbling, that the flagstones were stained and chipped, and the walls flaking away. But they were covered for now with bravely stiff tapestries and draperies, all white and rose-red in honour of the Lady Roseace. There was a most exquisite depiction, all in reds and whites, roses and flesh tints, of the chaste Diana bathing under snowy branches by a silver spring, and of the lovely young Actaeon, part ruddy youth, part milk-white stag, and all laced and interlaced with gouts of brilliant crimson blood, which dripped also from the bright white teeth of the pale hounds, as they reached elegantly for his extended, panting throat …

Towards mid-afternoon on the third day the company were gathered on a great balcony, drinking and discussing what was next to be done
towards increasing the pleasure and fruitfulness of their life together. Serving men and women poured foaming ale and crimson and golden wine, constantly replenishing beakers and glasses. It had been decided that there should be no more servants and masters—decided, that was, by the masters, for the servants had not as yet been informed or consulted about this project—but no agreement had been reached about the time and manner of this great change in the relations of the population of the Tower. All that was agreed was that it should be debated fully when the whole company was gathered together and what had been set in motion could be deemed to be truly begun.

The Lady Roseace and Culvert, Turdus Cantor and Narcisse were all looking out over the meadows and the plain when the keen-eyed Narcisse detected a movement amongst the trees at the rim of the bowl of the valley. From that height what emerged from the dark woody shadows appeared at first to be a slow worm attended by dancing ants, but as it made its slow way across the meadows it could be seen to be a series of covered carts and carriages, attended by pricking outriders, and as it came still nearer, all could see that there were three great covered wagons, each drawn by two bullocks, and, as they came nearer still, that the bullocks were fantastically decked with garlands and the tips of their horns were gilded. A cry went up from the courtyards below, “The children, the children are coming,” and the company waited to glimpse them from above as they paced towards the gatehouse, before hurrying down flight after flight of staircases to greet them in the inner fastness where their journey ended.

From above, no one could be seen in the swaying wagons, save their drivers, all of whom were cowled in heavy hooded cloaks, and carried stubby whips with long lashes, such as were usual in that country to urge on the blundering slow creatures. And indeed the labouring white flanks were blooded here and there, were scored by encouraging strokes, which appeared to have no effect on the steady, deliberate pace of the flower-decked beasts. There was trouble enough getting these ungainly vehicles through the passages to the centre, if it was the centre, of the Tower, and strange stifled sounds, pitiful lowings and nervous bellowings reached the ears of the company before the carts finally emerged into the dark courtyard.

And then the joyful moment, so eagerly awaited, was there. From every side, the coverings of the carts were pushed back, rolled up, burst open, and the small faces and the soft hair, the bright eyes and the tender fists of the children were seen. Some were sleepy, stretching
their little limbs to rouse from the abandonment of sleep. Some were alert and mischievous, smiling eagerly at the adventures to be undertaken. Some were more timid, hanging their heads bashfully, flickering their silky lashes on their plump cheeks. Some were whimpering—there are always some who whimper in any group of children; no group of children, however generally cheerful and playful, but has some little whimperers among them—but these were quickly silenced in the general excitement as the children were welcomed and lifted down from the sides of the wagons on to the flagstones of their new abode. They were handed from loving arms to loving arms, they were softly kissed and their little clothes tenderly set to rights, and there was much laughter and general cheerfulness in the shadow of the high roofs.

The drivers too of the wagons were urged to come down from their perches and join the throng. This they did, pushing back their hoods from their dusty faces, coiling the lashes of their whips and tucking them away. The first was an old friend of all, Merkurius, lithe and muscular, with a fine face like a knife and a quizzical smile that quivered the gutstrings of Cynthia and Coelia. There was great rejoicing at the safe arrival of Merkurius, for rumours had been rife that he had been cut off by troops, that he had been taken naked as he made love to a whore in a city brothel, that he had died on the scaffold as a secret substitute for his great friend Armin, that he had drowned in an attempt to swim across a river in full spate. The fantasies of the company had been most fearfully exercised by all these contradictory reports. The sensitive, Narcisse as well as Cynthia and Coelia, had undergone drowning and decapitation, naked apprehension and coitus interruptus, the chase, the flight, the whipping branches, the strangling thickets. Indeed the only consolation for these sensitive souls had been the plethoric variety of these narrations, which could not all be true, so might all be false, as they were now joyfully proved to be.

The second driver had a round red face like a burning flower, and jet-black cropped hair like one a week or two away from escaping from prison or the army. It was only when this personage threw back the cloak with a rich, round peal of laughter that it could be seen that the cloak concealed a billowy female body, that this jovial gaol-bird was the Lady Paeony, heroine of many amorous adventures, and of more anecdotes of intrigue, false and true. Culvert and Roseace hastened to embrace this solid person, who gave her whip a last crack in the courtyard and declared that all her little charges had been golden-good and
deserved sweetmeats, that they had been quiet as mice as they passed the pickets, and sung as sweetly as larks, to her great delectation, as they crossed the mountain meadows, and that she loved them all, she could crush them in her arms for love and happiness.

And now the third driver came forward, and pushed back his cowl slowly and deliberately and revealed a grizzled head and a grizzled beard, and a leathery skin wrinkling round pale-blue eyes. There was a hush in the courtyard, and a thrill of whispering ran through the company, for no one knew him, and all enquired of others, if they did, or had seen him before.

And the Lady Roseace said, quick as a flash and unthinking, “This man smells of blood.”

And the man took a step or two forward, fingering his whip and perhaps smiling a little amongst his beard, and perhaps not—different impressions were formed by different persons.

“Who are you?” said Culvert.

“You know me well enough, by name at least, and some of you by more than name,” said the man. “To my sorrow,” he added, but not in a sorrowful tone.

“If it were not impossible,” said Fabian thoughtfully, “I should say your name was Grim, that you are Colonel Grim of the National Army.”

“I have been Colonel in the National Army,” said Grim, “and Colonel in the Royal Army before that, and a professional soldier all my life. And now I am here, and wish to join you, if you will have me.”

At this acknowledgement, a great murmuring and even hissing began amongst the people gathered round the carts, and several people repeated what Roseace had said, “This man smells of blood.”

And Colonel Grim stood there easily amongst them all, looking from faces of hatred to faces of fear, and said, “That I smell of blood is true. I smell myself daily and the smell disgusts me. I have had enough of blood. The gutters of the city are running with blood, there are flecks of blood in the loaves of bread, blood feeds the roots of the apple trees where stinking dead men hang among the apples. You may not believe me now, but a killer by trade who has had enough of blood is a good founding member for a community based on kindness and freedom, as yours is to be.”

“How can that be?” cried Coelia. “We know what you have done, we have heard the stories, the tortures, the punishments, the killing, the killing—how can such a creature be a fit companion for the gentle and the harmonious?”

“We should rather kill him,” cried a young man, “we should put him to the sword for the sufferings of our families and our friends; we should cement our social bonds with his foul blood.”

Colonel Grim said, “A man of blood can smell bloodthirstiness in any household, any society, any family. It is my business to smell bloodthirstiness. I am a wolf who can detect a rogue sheepdog, Monsieur Culvert. I am an instrument of control and have been an instrument of terror, and I can tell you much of the nature of control, and terror, and control by terror, which you do not now think you need to know. But it is what all men need to know, you will find, even if you expel or kill me. I bear the mark of Cain in your household, Monsieur Culvert. I have red hands, and most of you, all of you it may be, have not. But Cain was marked so that the children of Adam should not harm him. A man is not only the history of his deeds, I suppose, according to your philosophy, if not to that of my previous masters. You owe it to me to see how I can live peaceably.”

“I do not understand how you have come here,” said Culvert, frowning.

“I persuaded Merkurius and the Lady Paeony that I was another, that I was your old friend Vertumnus, who died, I am sad to have to tell you, in the oubliettes of the Tower. I had forged letters from yourself with which I convinced them. You must not blame them, sir. I am a sufficiently clever man.”

“He will bring the national armies in his train,” said Mavis.

“And how should that be?” asked Grim. “And why should I come, thus openly and alone, saying who I am, and leaving my fate to you, if the armies were following in secret. No, if I wished, I could have had the armies here to greet you. But I did not wish—your hopes are mine, my good friends—I hope you will be my good friends. The armies will not bother you here, and I am no longer Colonel Grim, but plain Grim, grey and grizzled and making a new start in the evening of his days, if you will have me.”

“Turn him away,” said the Lady Roseace, wrinkling her nostrils.

But Culvert said, “What he says is just. He may stay, until any of us detect him casting any baleful influence on our family. For all men are capable of change and redemption, as he says, though he must be watched, to see whether he says so with guile, or with honest intention.”

So they all went into the citadel together, discussing the day’s events.

II
 

Frederica reads to Leo. Inside his green and white room, which was Nigel’s room, with its Beatrix Potter frieze, she sits on the edge of his fluffy eiderdown and reads to him about the Hobbit, setting out on his adventure. The curtains are drawn against the dark; they are lit by a bedside lamp inside a creamy glass shade, a creamy light.

“At first they passed through hobbit-lands,” Frederica tells him, “a wide respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business. Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely and sang songs Bilbo had never heard before. Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people. Everything seemed gloomy, for the weather that day had taken a nasty turn.”