Babylon (17 page)

For a few seconds, they spoke amongst themselves. And they spoke in French. They were the first Shulamites I had encountered from beyond England’s shores. What is more, they were white. The Babylonian moon had tanned their flesh, but only so far as to lend them the appearance of a couple of East End girls who had spent a long, hot summer in the hop fields. The composition of Babylon was indeed changing. I would doubtless soon meet others who, like me, had volunteered from outside the cult’s hereditary ranks.

‘There goes the neighbourhood,’ whispered Cliticia as she elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Land of the crazy white girl, that’s what Babylon’s turning into.’ She looked up at me and smiled. ‘No offence, ol’ cock.’

‘Shh!’

‘Welcome, novices from Earth Prime,’ said one of the French girls, in thickly accented, but otherwise flawless, English.

Then both she and her companion stretched out their arms. ‘The Temple of Ereshkigal welcomes you as sisters!’ they said, their voices perfectly synchronized. ‘And Queen Ishtar welcomes you as daughters!’

From behind them appeared a host of other girls similarly attired in white and carrying bouquets of roses and poppies. They walked to the edge of the ambulatory, and with a great cheer, threw the flowers over our heads.

And then they sang:

‘Praise the goddess, the most awesome of the goddesses.

She is clothed with pleasure and love.

She is laden with vitality, charm, and voluptuousness.

In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth.

At her appearance rejoicing becomes full.

She is glorious; veils are thrown over her head.

Her figure is beautiful; her eyes are brilliant.

The goddess—with her there is counsel.

The fate of everything she holds in her hand.’

Our reception committee came down the steps to meet us, smiling, laughing, and picking up scarlet petals from the flagstones to once again shower them over our heads. Other girls emerged from the
cella
and joined in the celebrations.

Much to my surprise, I felt a tear trickle down my face. I

-                      ME - looked up at the ziggurat’s ascending terraces, towards a point where the capstone pierced the heavens in an act of homage to the moon. At last, I was here. Here, in the place I had dreamt about for so long. Here, in the world where I might be myself and find release from England’s stultifying hypocrisy. Free from Mrs Grundy. Free from fear.

‘Gabrielle!’ cried Cliticia, darting forward into the throng.

A face in the crowd had lit up with astonishment.

‘You’re lucky to ’ave caught me ’ere,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I go on leave soon.’

‘Are you looking forward to it?’ I said. I accompanied Cliticia and her big sister through the temple’s intricate knot of corridors—a maze that evoked the notion of some faded, Parisian hotel that had seen better days but which still managed to draw in the quality, even out of season. And if not a continental hotel, perhaps a night house, or brasserie, like the Café Royal in Princess Street, Leicester Square, where the
poules de luxe
went to meet their Illuminati lovers.

‘Not really,’ said Gabrielle. ‘It’s not like it was when I was your age, and everything was a big, new adventure.’ I had always supposed Cliticia’s sister to be no more than two or three years older than us; but Gabrielle Lipski—pretty as a picture as she still was— approached her mid-twenties, and her upcoming six-week sabbatical would be her last until she retired sometime early next year. ‘Those were the good ol’ days,’ she continued. ‘First time I went off-world, I was like you two, I suppose, wondering what it’d be like to be on sabbatical back on Earth Prime, going to parties and the like with toffs from Brook Street and Westminster. Well, it was a real laugh, I can tell you. I’d only been off-world a couple of months, and there I was, on leave and kicking up me ’eels in Cremorne Gardens.’

‘I told you she ’ad lots of stories to tell,’ said Cliticia, beaming with sisterly pride.

‘That was ten years ago, of course, before the gardens were dismantled,’ Gabrielle continued. ‘But I remember it like it was yesterday. There were illuminations, fountains, a dancing platform, and, and—’

‘An East End girl could feel like an heiress in Cremorne,’ Cliticia interjected.

‘Some of those Illuminati thought we
were
bleeding’ heiresses!’ said Gabrielle. And then, with peals of giggles, the two sisters threw back their heads and broke into raucous song:

‘So mind all fast young gentlemen, who journey to Cremorne,

Or any other gardens, or where crinoline is worn,

Do not propose to wed strange girls, ’owever well they dress,

Or else like me you perhaps may get in such another mess,

Be sure you know ’er station well, before you say you’ll wed ’er,

A little care is just as good, as good and a great deal better.’

They both stopped in their tracks, doubled over with laughter.

‘Give over, Gabrielle,’ said Cliticia, choking back her snorts of merriment. ‘Give over, do.’ And then, turning her tear-streaked face to me, added: ‘What’d I tell you? She’s a caution, ain’t she? A real caution!’

Slowly, the laughter ebbed away.

We had stopped outside a room whose door stood open. Inside, the drapes were pulled, and the bed was a mess of disordered sheets. A small altar stood against one wall. A bronze image of the snake-king, Samael, consort of Lilith and Lord of the Damned, stood on top of it, alongside two earthenware pots containing sticks of incense.

‘Does anyone actually live on this corridor?’ I said.

‘Not for a while now,’ said Gabrielle, straightening herself. Her ribcage still palpitated, as if at any moment she might be seized by another hysterical fit of giggles. ‘It’s not so easy to attract volunteers these days, and those that do volunteer, well—’

‘Well,
wot?’
said Cliticia pointedly, all merriment sapped by resentment and fear.

Gabrielle shrugged. ‘They turn out to be the wrong sort,’ she said, as drained of joy as her sister.

‘I ’ope you’re not implying—’

‘Tell me more about what it’s like to be on sabbatical,’ I said, taking the reins, as it were, and steering all three of us clear of the hidden precipice.

Gabrielle arched an eyebrow.

‘For me, it was fun,’ she said. ‘At least, it used to be. You see things you’d never dream of seeing. You see Cremorne, you see the posh clubs, you go to parties and balls.’ She sucked thoughtfully at her teeth. ‘The Illuminati: I suppose you could say that they like to show us off.’

‘We’re their trophies,’ I said. We walked on. Absently, I glanced into another room whose door also stood open and noticed that, like the previous room, it contained an altar whose centrepiece was a bronze statue of a snake: a representation of Samael—or Satan, as He was more commonly known. ‘We’re the outward symbols of their divine prerogative,’ I added, unable to resist the call to pedantry. I might have added that if the Illuminati were to invite
me
to a pleasure garden, party, or grand ball, I would have to learn to close my eyes and think upon that same image of Satan that many of the former tenants of Temple Ereshkigal had obviously summoned up whenever they had accepted a gentleman’s tribute to the Goddess.

‘Trophies? Dunno,’ said Gabrielle. ‘But I
do
know that sometimes it’s a shilling, sometimes a gold sovereign, and
sometimes
even a five-pound note.’ She proceeded forward; Cliticia and I followed. ‘Course,’ she sighed, ‘for
that
you really ’ave to gamahuche ’em till the bleeding cows come ’ome.’

The principles of the
hieros gamos
had become corrupted; I had known that before I volunteered. But I had not thought that a ritual that had conferred kingship and godhead upon so many great men both ancient and modern could ever be referred to in such cold, mechanical terms.

‘You get lots of
cadeaux
,’ said Cliticia, looking up at me, and then turning to her sister. ‘Remember all the flowers and chocolates, all the ribbons, stockings, and petticoats, that you got last time you were on leave, Gab?’

‘As long as it’s not a dose, I don’t care what they ruddy give me,’ Gabrielle countered. ‘I’m sick of it.’

This romantic exchange was, to be frank, somewhat disillusioning. Back in Wilmot Street, lying in bed, I had imagined my off-world sisters in their own bowers of bliss, sharing my moon-haunted, sherbet-filled dreams. Dreams not of Mammon, but of demon lovers. In ancient times, the sacred prostitute’s sexuality had been indistinguishable from her spiritual nature. But in these latter days, a Shulamite cared, it seemed, less about love, desire, and surrender, than getting and spending.

‘What makes all doctrines plain and clear?

About two hundred pounds a year.’

We continued down the long, high-ceilinged corridor, with its stucco of lions and serpents and its oblong windows opened upon the night. Moonbeams, falling obliquely across our path, had transformed the corridor into an underwater tunnel. And as we walked, the breeze outside blew the gossamer draperies into our path, so that we moved beneath billowing waves of tulle and satin.

We stopped outside a door. Unlike so many others, it was closed, and seemed in good repair. Like the others, it displayed a brass nameplate. The inscription read:
Miss
Noctiluca de Torqueville.

‘This’ll be your room,’ said Gabrielle. ‘The girl ’oo used to be ’ere ’as retired. It’s a good room. Noctiluca ’as left some of ’er stuff behind, so you can rummage through it. It’s all up for grabs. But you’ll just ’ave to accept the fact that you’re going to ’ave to double up for the time being until we can find you rooms of your own.’ She turned to her younger sister, bent over, and kissed her on a cheek still grimy from travel. ‘Sorry to ’ear about the rough time you’ve ’ad of it, darling. You were lucky to escape. It don’t bear finking about what might ’ave ’appened to the poor little beggars they caught.’ She straightened her back and looked from one of us to the other. ‘Can’t believe ’ow you managed to ’ide the way you did,’ she concluded, not for the first time betraying her suspicions, and those, perhaps, of others, too.

‘I told you before,’ I said. ‘We hid in a culvert, by the side of the track.’

‘Until the Men diverted the train onto another line,’ said Cliticia, ‘and left, taking the other girls with ’em.’

‘To the Citadel, I suppose,’ I added.

‘Well, that
was
 a lucky escape,’ said Gabrielle. ‘A wery, wery lucky escape.’

I opened the door.

Gabrielle tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Make sure you clean yourself up,’ she said, ‘the ’igh Priestess won’t tolerate slatternliness.
Especially
in ’er audience chamber.’ On entering the temple, our papers had been inspected. No one had questioned their veracity. But just as we were about to leave the main hallway and be taken to our rooms by a still astonished Gabrielle, we had been approached by a lady-in-waiting and told that the Serpentessa had granted us an audience. We were to report to her chambers in three hours time.

I wondered if we were to face an interrogation.

Gabrielle turned her gaze upon her younger sister and looked her up and down. Then, with a deep, woeful sigh, she shook her head. ‘Clitich, Clitich, whatever ’ave you done to your bleedin’ ’air?’

‘Will there be many people at the audience?’ I said, quickly, before the two of them became involved in a sisterly spat.

‘Just you,’ she said, smiling, I thought, with a certain air of triumph, first at me, and then Cliticia. ‘Just you.’

Cliticia lay supine on the big, four-poster bed, her dress thrown to the floor, her stays unlaced, and her stockings rolled down about her unshod ankles.

‘We really should be getting ready,’ I said. She cast her right forearm over her eyes and did not reply. But though Cliticia suspected the worst, I refused to give in to despair. Our papers were in order; our story sound; there was no reason to think that we would be discovered. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We can’t keep the Serpentessa waiting.’ Cliticia cast her left forearm over the right, as if meaning to shut out the world entirely.

‘I’m no good at speaking, you know that,’ she said. ‘I’ll get all tongue-tied, I’m bound to.’ She tsked. ‘I don’t like ’igh Priestesses. And Gabrielle says this one is bad news. She’ll find out, Maddy, I’m
sure
she will.’

‘Then let
me
do the talking,’ I said.

I sat at a vanity table on the opposite side of the room. To pass the time, and to accommodate Cliticia’s sulk, I had fallen to perusing some of the books that had belonged to the room’s former occupant, and which had lain piled up in a corner gathering dust alongside a small mountain of girlish fripperies and cosmetics. Some were mere feuilletons, grubby with thumbprints, and distinguished only by their outrageous cover price of a shilling. They had lurid, somewhat disturbing, titles:
The Confessions of a Lady’s Maid or Boudoir Intrigue
,
disclosing many
Startling Scenes and Voluptuous Incidents, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Balletgirl,
and
London by Night
;
or Gay Life in London.
The vellum-bound books were a different matter. Many were signed, suggesting that they had been gifts. (The recipient had obviously enjoyed an enviable degree of popularity.) I studied some of the signatures. Shulamites, of course, often gave their children exotic, not to say brazen, names; but the names of some of the temple-maidens at Ereshkigal were, it seemed, more brazen than most.
With love, from Voluptua
, read the dedication inscribed in a copy of M. Verne’s
Le Sphinx
des Glaces.
And a young lady who had gone by the curious appellation of
Pudenda
had it seemed presented a novel entitled
La Curée
by one Emile Zola
‘In memory of golden days.’
The pages exuded a sickly, cloying smell of stale scent that soon came to pervade the whole room. Other signatures testified to the affections of scores more girls. Their names were equally bizarre:
Lascivia, Morbidezza, Libitina, Septicaemia, Veneria, Dementia,
and
Immodestista.

I was pleased to discover that the library also contained books by Marie Corelli:
A Romance of Two Worlds
(which I had read when it had been first published two years ago) and, quite amazingly, what looked like the bound, uncorrected proofs of its sequel:
Ardath
:
The Story of a Dead Self.

I opened
A Romance of Two Worlds.
I had enjoyed this book. It was about a spiritual quest. The mysterious Chaldean, Heliobas, approaches the first-person narrator—a Shulamite who has only recently been inducted into the faith—to teach her the meaning of life, death, and love.

‘In the winter of 188—, I was afflicted by a series of nervous ailments, brought on by overwork and over-worry. Chief among these was a protracted and terrible insomnia, accompanied by the utmost depression of spirits and anxiety of mind. I became filled with the gloomiest anticipations of evil; and my system was strung up by slow degrees to such a high tension of physical and mental excitement, that the quietest and most soothing of friendly voices had no other effect upon me than to jar and irritate... ’

I skipped ahead. I was in no mood to sympathize with another’s ‘nervous ailments’ and ‘terrible insomnia’. But as I turned the pages, and let my eyes scan the closely printed text, I discovered that the novel was not as I remembered it. And as I put it aside to pore over the bound proofs of
Ardath: The Story of a Dead Self
 I suspected that I was reading a completely different author—not the female Rider Haggard at all, but someone whose books were more likely to find a home in Holywell Street, that ghetto of indecent literature and unregulated fantasy where shop windows were filled with licentious scribblings and the prints of actresses and ballet dancers in extreme states of picturesque dishabille.

‘The door opened. Miss Lesbia Ascot-Smythe looked up. Framed in the doorway was a man who, by virtue of his uniform, was immediately recognizable as a member of the Grand Order of the Nephilim. He stepped forward, his eyes darting left, then right, as he took stock of the assembled girls.

‘Just before the door closed behind him she caught a glimpse of a white-tiled corridor. Then she lowered her gaze, bowed her head, and hid behind her veil of long, sable hair. Only the flicker of her eyelashes and the agitated rise and fall of her bosom betrayed the fact that she was flesh and blood and not a lifeless mannequin.

‘The man walked into the middle of the room. She directed her gaze towards the floor and focused on his riding boots. When, however, he came to a halt and had his back to her, she became more bold and ventured to stare up at him through the gauze of her kohl-blackened lashes. She had not seen his face. But she had had no need to. She knew he would look like the other men in
Château Miséricorde
: pale-skinned and with a regularity of feature that could not disguise the essentially cruel, lupine nature of his countenance. He was, of course, dressed in the familiar uniform of his Order. In many ways, he was the mirror image of the man opposite—the guard who stood before a door that opened onto the hydraulically operated lift shaft that connected the holding cell to the prison high above. They were twins. Ciphers. Not real men at all, but embodiments of a nightmare, or, perhaps, an ideal.

‘For a moment, the interloper examined the clipboard he held before him, running a finger down its attached sheet of paper. Then, taking a pencil, he made a mark at the spot where, seconds before, his finger had pointed to a name. It was, of course, but one name amongst many. Not that that was of any consolation when she heard the name pronounced.

‘“Miss Lesbia Ascot-Smythe,”’ he said in a quiet but authoritative voice.

‘She held her breath, lowered her head a little more, and stared between her feet. No. It was impossible. She couldn’t be the first. She must have misheard, she decided. None of this was really happening. None of it... ’

I shut the book. And I did so with such violence that I stirred Cliticia from her apathy. She sat bolt upright and flashed me a startled look.

‘
W
hat’s going on
?’she cried.

I gazed about the room, hot, confused, fearful, like someone who wakes up after an afternoon nap and cannot quite decipher her surroundings, or remember where she has come from, or even whether it is day or night. The room itself—with its collection of heavy furniture that seemed barely able to support its own weight—was, like me, ready to swoon, its thick, muddy atmosphere a toxin that had poisoned its aesthetics and turned it into a chapel of rest.