Dancing In The Shadows of Love (12 page)

Elijah bobbed his head so vigorously his cap was in danger of falling off. ‘
Master
Barry is sometimes too clever,’ he chuckled, his old wrinkled face alight with some secret glee. He thumbed his cap back and, his chest strained by too much laughter, started coughing.

Grace and Enoch hurried towards him. She smiled at Elijah and, clasping his hand gently between hers, asked how he was as Enoch patted his back until the fit was over.

We all headed to the Rolls. I slotted away every action, every expression, the old woman used. It would come in handy when I had to visit the sick, when Grace’s time was over and mine had begun.

‘Barry phoned me and told me you would take me shopping,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be too busy.’ She slipped her hand over my arm. I was unable to pull away as I usually do, for Enoch watched and absorbed and assessed my reactions as Grace asked, ‘Will you drive with me to the farm, dear? The children need supplies.’

With Enoch there, not a foot away from us, I said a simple, reluctant, ‘Yes.’

I hated that road through the Droogrivier Mountains. It twisted and turned through a wasteland of stony inclines until it broke free into the flatlands. But there was no escape from the desolation, for Grace’s strays filled the Templeton farm: the poor, the sick, and the needy. Children with eyes too big for their faces and adults with the dumbness of poverty leaching the life out of their limbs. More than the dust choked me when we went there. Memories rushed in. I’d come too far to let these pieces of human driftwood destroy all Zahra had fought for.

I went with Grace that day hoping, perhaps, that the watchful gaze of Enoch would shine with approval, as well as with appraisal, and he would accept that I could offer him a love greater than any he received from Grace.

We stopped at the corner grocery store, and Grace stocked the boot of the Rolls full. Soon we left the sea and the city behind us. There was little conversation between us; the drone of the car’s engine and the hushed sounds of Enoch and Elijah chatting in the front seat lulled us into that pleasant realm halfway between sleep and wakefulness.

The cars we passed diminished in number as the road climbed upward through the mountain pass that would take us to the farm. Eventually, even Elijah ran out of conversation and I slipped deeper into sleep. When I saw the horsemen, I thought I was dreaming.

Four men, draped in an absurd mixture of flowing black robes and khaki uniforms, rode alongside the road. They waved ancient rifles and shook them in the air. Incredibly, they gained on the Rolls. I watched them dreamily for I did not believe they were real.

‘It is time,’ I heard Elijah say, and I wanted to ask ‘Time for what?’ but my tongue was thick and sluggish and I couldn’t form the question.

Enoch leaned across and gripped his bicep. ‘Have courage, my seer. There is nothing to fear from these men, for the
Master
is always with you.’

And Elijah, swathed in the same dignity as when he donned his chauffeur’s uniform, gave him the giddy smile of a child who knew he was returning home. ‘I do not doubt it,’ he said and pulled on the brakes.

Chaos erupted.

I
was
awake. This was real. Across the worn leather seats of the regal old car that had taken both Grace and I to wed our husbands, we stared at each other. Would this be our hearse as well as our wedding chariot?

The horsemen milled around, shouting in a foreign tongue and waving a flag I recognised as that of the rebel insurgents of the land to the north of us. A land torn asunder by
The War
, by corruption and violence, poverty and starvation. Why was this band of scrawny soldiers so far south, marauding our hills?

I never thought
The War
would affect me. How could it, when it raged so far away, beyond our borders? Grace fluttered with fear and looked at Enoch. His attention was all on Elijah and she turned to me.

‘Zahra, dear,’ she quavered, ‘what will we do?’

My tongue was frozen. I reached out and grasped her hand, for my comfort or hers I couldn’t tell. I remembered the Hunt Ball meeting I had planned for the afternoon. Would Barry hear about the tragedy that was about to befall him—the loss of his wife and his mother—when the committee telephoned him to ask where I was? Grace and I shifted closer until we were one in our uncertainty.

Elijah rubbed his hand over the badge he had pinned to his lapel. As he reached into the cubbyhole and took out a small leather book I recognised as the
Eden Book
, I remembered those letters engraved on the star meant
Court of Sion
and Elijah was a lay
Prior
. I wanted to weep for his innocence and tell him that both his belief and his book were useless: they never saved Little Flower and they would not save us now.

He shared one last glance with Enoch and climbed out of the car. Sheltered by his dignity, he ignored the anarchy around him and shut the door. He straightened his cap and slipped the
Eden Book
onto the car roof. With solemn ceremony, he opened the back door of the vehicle for Grace and me. Enoch climbed out too and stood behind the old man. The horsemen, used to strong warriors blenching when they strutted about, fell silent, staggered by the two unarmed men’s courage. The only sound was the scuffling of the horses’ hooves as they puffed up plumes of dust that settled on my smart lavender shoes as I stepped into the danger that awaited me.

Grace followed and we clung together as one of the horsemen, a young rebel, not as disciplined as the others, let out a shriek. He bent low on his horse and ripped the pearls Barry had given me for our wedding anniversary from my neck. He held them aloft and they dribbled out of his clenched fist as he raised his arm in victory.

The scent of their depravity was strong. The young one’s greed, his zeal to take what was not his, fed his
ezomo
, and that of the others. The horses sensed their masters’ eagerness and began to neigh wildly, their hooves a dusty susurrus.

I wished fiercely I had my Daddy’s gun. It would help more than Elijah’s stupid doctrine. But the gun was long gone. The last time I saw it, it lay wrapped in plastic on the judge’s desk. I was defenceless: as weak as Little Flower ever was. Grace was no use; she shivered violently and clung to my arm without a sound. I turned back to tell the men we must fight, we must attack before the horsemen attacked us. But they stood and did nothing but whisper.

‘Take care of the madams,’ Elijah said and clasped Enoch’s fingers in a silent farewell.

A drop of perspiration ran in a white rivulet down Enoch’s strained face as he nodded. ‘I will,’ he promised. He left Elijah alone at his post next to the old car and walked towards us as we cowered in the shadows of the looming mountains.

Elijah, a serene smile on his face, lifted his
Eden Book
and peered at our captors.

The air shimmered and a wind, like no other wind before, wrapped itself around us as Enoch reached our side and held us in his embrace. His elegant hands were firm in their hold as he pushed our faces into his chest and all else except the slow pounding of his heart under my ear receded into a soft roar. I jerked my face free, but could not speak, for what I saw and what I heard made me wonder if this was not, after all, a dream.

We no longer existed to the horsemen. Only Elijah mattered. He stood there, his bowed back straight and his cough silent. He opened his small holy book, once white but creamed with age and use. The embossed gold
nova
glinted in the sun, blinding me. I wanted to close my eyes and bury my head in the safety of Enoch’s shirt, sweet smelling with cedar wood, but the simple grandeur of my old chauffeur, Elijah, denied me any such evasion.

He did not waver. Not even as the rebels shoved him with their feet and pushed him with their horses. He staggered but did not fall. He lifted a hand to clutch at the piece of green felt, with its flimsy star, pinned to his jacket. As he held his centre, the rock that held him steady, he read from his
Eden Book
, pulsating with a peace that drove the horsemen frenzied.

‘Yea,’ Elijah quoted, ‘let them turn every one from his weakness.’ The opening spray of bullets hit him and splattered blood over his hands and over the cream leather with its gold
nova
. He forged on and the four horsemen screamed in fury and fright. ‘Let them turn from the violence that is in their hands…’ At last, he weakened and the book tumbled from his hands. He fell to his knees, his white shirt crimson and his face beatific. He held his arms to the sky and cried, ‘
Master
! Master!’

I wanted to attack him and scream, ‘Leave him alone! Leave him alone!’ But I was not there; I was in Little Flower’s bedroom, shouting ‘Leave her alone! Leave me alone!’

There was so much blood, but my Daddy was not dying, for more than one bullet boomed through the air. I dug my face deeper into the safe cedar-smell of Enoch’s chest as a fireball thundered, flinging us to the ground as the unearthly wind roared to a crescendo before my world fell into silence.

After a while, I lifted my head and looked around me. I saw the scattered bodies of the rebels, dead every one and burnt ashes to ashes.

And, in the midst of that inferno, I saw the ghostly outline of Elijah dancing.

He arose from the flames consuming Barry’s old Rolls, his chauffeur’s cap at its usual jaunty angle. His charred arms reached out as if to grip the reins of an ancient chariot and, as I watched, his transfigured remains collapsed into ashes, dispelling the flickering image in the clouds of smoke billowing around us in the aftermath of a malevolent evil I had thought I would never experience again.

My head ached from tension and fear and I fell back onto the ground. I lay there, with my face in the dirt, tears I’d never cried before—no, not even when Daddy slumped dead against my breast—streamed off my chin and soaked into the dry and desolate land that cradled all of me: both body and soul, body and soul.

“Trust nobody, for fear you be betrayed.”

When the prison commandant had gleefully told me that
Prior
Ajani was the only person willing to give me this job, I had no real choice. Starve on the streets, or come to this sleepy little court. As a self-disclosed unbeliever, the last thing I wanted was to work in a place that reminded me of the small court at the Sacred Heart Holding Camp, where Dalia and I had daily cleaned the artefacts and symbols of the
Spirit King
.

Not much changes. All I do here is clean altars and polish
novas
, but this time I do not believe what they promise.

When Jamila leaves for the day, I stay. There is no reason to hurry home to the one-roomed apartment the court provides me. I’m alone, sitting in my new life and trapped with memories as familiar as the face that stares from my mirror each day.

Sighing, I pick up the can of Brasso and cleaning rags. I have work to do. I must clean the stains and sorrows of other people’s clutter.

I thread my way through the
pithas
, which are dreary with age. The carved initials of bored courtiers scuff the wood in some places; in others, little brass plaques, which Jamila tells me I must shine every day, are screwed in place.

I always start with the one clamped to the front
pitha
. It reads “Grace Obinna Templeton.” There is a heat to her plaque: her unfettered spirit reaching out through the veils between the worlds. ‘Good afternoon, Grace,’ I murmur in my head. ‘Are you well?’

I begin to caress her engraved memory and hear a whisper. ‘Good afternoon, Luyando dear,’ the sweet, soft sound of my imagination replies. ‘Have you had a good day?’

And, as I’d dreamed before I stopped dreaming, I tell her of my day, of the tentative steps towards a friendship with Jamila. I would’ve shared these small joys with the mother who abandoned me, and Dalia, before she forgot me; instead, I share them with a warm brass plaque. When I move onto the next plaque, which reads “Bakari Dawud Templeton I,” I’m almost at peace. I take my time and wipe each letter clean. I polish each small screw, so I can spend as long as possible next to the relic of Grace’s spirit.

As I finish, I linger, and bend to place a quick kiss on her plaque. Why did I do that? Goosebumps raise the flesh on my arms. I have the eerie sense that someone watches. I peer around, into the gloom of the old stone court, but there is no one except the blind wooden face of the sacrificed
Spirit King
above me.

‘What else am I supposed to kiss?’ I sneer at that stupid man on his stupid
nova
. His relentless sorrow bears down on me; I swear I see a tear roll down his cheek. I blink and it’s gone. I shiver and hurry into the next
pitha
, tripping over a pair of long legs. They stretch out in front of an Outlander. A man with impassive eyes that shift and swirl from blue to grey as does the ocean, lying stagnant with temptation, there beyond the court gardens.

Where was he when I glanced around? Did he hear my blasphemy? ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I demand. I’m embarrassed that he saw me kiss an old brass plaque.

He stands, and I have to tilt my chin up and up. He is tall, elongated. His fine black hair, black as the
Levid’s
wings, is loosely tied back with a thong. A silver earring glints in one ear. His leather jacket has no sleeves and, on one arm, I see a red heart, pierced by three swords. Tattooed on the other arm, floating above a small
Spirit King
nailed in blue to his bicep, a banner reads
“Faith & Hope & Charity.”
L-O-V-E screams the fingers of his left hand; P-E-A-C-E the other. A biker! A
Spirit King
-be-damned biker, right down to the tattoos.

With neither
Prior
Ajani nor Jamila around, I must help him. But strangers are bad news. Faced with their judgment of my difference, I fade and become less than who I have discovered I am.

I sigh and place the can of Brasso and the rags on the nearest
pitha
. Experts have humiliated me. Why should I care if this man saw me kiss a court
pitha
? Or care what he makes of my bleached appearance?