To the Land of the Living (37 page)

Anger throbbed in his breast. The return of the map gave him no pleasure. It was simply one more reminder of the monstrous soul-breaking capriciousness of this place.

Bad enough was it that in the old life he had known such an unending series of heart-rending reverses, the Roanoke disaster and the humiliating attack on Cadiz where he had fought so foolishly, and the catastrophic folly of his quest for El Dorado in Guiana, which had cost him his son and his health and his fortune and, ultimately, even his head. He could blame those misfortunes on bad luck, perhaps, or an excess of enthusiasm leading to bold premature ventures which would be carried off more successfully later by more cautious men; but surely those were not grave sins, to be unlucky, to be overeager. Here, though, where he found himself condemned to trek back and forth across the face of a land that defied all reason, where his maps themselves mocked him as he studied them – no, no, it was too much. Out of love for Her Majesty he had come this far and had suffered this much; but now Ralegh was beginning to think he had suffered enough for Elizabeth’s sake, and for his own insatiable nature. Where had it got him, all his vaulting ambition, all his courage, all his buoyant unconquerable will? To lands of cannibals and monsters, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, and places where there was nothing to drink but sand and nothing to eat but leafless twigs. He stared gloomily at the three broken-down jeeps across the way, the last pathetic rusting reminder of the hundred and fifty shining vehicles with which this expedition had so grandly begun, what seemed like a century ago.

If ever I get out of this barren land alive, he told himself, I mean to settle down and never roam further. By the Rood, I will wander no more, not for the Queen’s sake nor mine own nor that of any man! Jesu Cristo, I will not, I do vow it!

“Well, so we have our map again,” he said sourly. “Shrive me, Hakluyt, what good is that? Can we drink the map? Can we eat the map? We have been in this desert fifty times as long as Moses, and does it ever end? You said that beyond the
Outback there were green fields, and a sea, and a way to the land of the living –”

“It was Dr Dee that said that, Sir Walter.”

“Well, you, Dee, whichever one it was, what boots that now? Beyond the Outback was only another desert, nor are we likely to be quit of it, map or no map. God’s wounds, d’ye think I have the strength to go on? Do you?”

“But we are near to the city of Uruk, and if they take us in and give us drink, we can continue on thence to the isle of Brasil, where peradventure –”

Ralegh threw up his hands. “Peradventure yes, peradventure no, hunger and thirst and sore feet all the while. And utter surety of sorrow and weariness. What is this place called Uruk, anyway?”

“A great city of the Sumerians, Sir Walter, famous for its wealth and power.”

“And who are they, these Sumerians of yours? Saracens, d’ye mean? Paynim villains?”

“They are a Babylonish race,” Hakluyt said, “very ancient, who write with little sticks on soft bricks of clay. It was they who built Babel’s tower in Nimrod’s time, which was before Abraham’s.”

“So they are not Saracens? They know not Mohammed, then?”

“I think they have the look of Saracens, Sir Walter, but Saracens they are not.”

“Not Christians either, though. And they’ll be glad enough to let us leave our bones bleaching in the sand, I trow.”

“The ones we spoke with were kindly folk,” said Hakluyt. “Farming people, they were, inoffensive, without guile. They will return with assistance for us within the hour, I wager, and our sufferings will be at an end.”

“And what will you wager, Richard? Your reading spectacles? Your boots, with the toes sticking through? One of your manuscripts of geography, perhaps? Yes, and I’ll stake my tin drinking cup, or my tobacco-pipe that has no tobacco, or mayhap my –”

“Sir Walter? Sir Walter!” a voice called suddenly in the distance.

“Who’s that?” Ralegh asked, blinking into the sun.

“Helen, I think,” Hakluyt murmured.

“Ah Yes, that trollop! What is she screeching about now, I wonder?”

“Sir Walter! Sir Walter!”

“I hear you, girl,” Ralegh said. “What is it?”

She came running up before him, white-robed, dark-haired, smooth-skinned, flawless. She seemed as untouched by her ordeal in the desert as if she had been bathing in musk and ointments of Araby all the while.

“Girl?” she said, with a little laugh. “Do you call me a girl, and I with three thousand years of lusty life behind me? Ah, Sir Walter –”

“Don’t misconstrue me. It was only a word,” said Ralegh irritatedly. She looked as excited as Hakluyt had been over the map, all flushed and fluttering. And beautiful, too, in her dark Turkish way. He had never been much taken with her famous beauty, really – she was too swarthy for him, give him a good fair English wench and none of these sultry Eastern tarts, and there was something remote and unreal about her besides, too perfect, a waxworks woman, no life to her – but now the spark seemed to have been re-awakened in her, and she was as radiant as an empress. The face that launched a thousand ships, Ralegh thought, not for the first time: well, if only she could launch a ship this very moment that would sail them to some more kindly place! “What rouses you this way, Helen?” he asked.

“The Surnerians! They’ve come to rescue us, with a fleet of Land Rovers!”

“They’re here?” Ralegh struggled to his feet, swaying dizzily, and looked about for his armor. “How many? Where?”

“Fifty or a hundred of them. Armed like Achilles, every one of them, to the teeth. But they seem friendly.”

“Did I not tell you?” Hakluyt said.

Helen said, “They’ll bring us to their city. They’ll feed us and give us to drink. All this by order of their king, whose name is Gilgamesh.”

Ralegh shrugged. “Never heard of him. Is he here too?”

“He has sent his deputy,” she said. “A giant of a man, Enkidu by name, most amazing for his strength and beauty.”

“His beauty?”

“Oh, yes,” she cried. “Yes! A true Heracles, he is. Achilles is nothing compared with him. Paris, Menelaus, Agamemnon – even Hector – they are all nothing to him! Nothing! Oh, Sir
Walter, we’re saved, saved, saved!” She looked then at Hakluyt, who as usual was studying her in his dry, indifferent, scholarly way, but yet with a sort of bloodless fascination, not as though she was the most celebrated seductress who had ever lived but rather some rare manuscript, or other such clerkish treasure. To him she said, “There must be something in your archive, is there not, Dr Hakluyt, about this Enkidu? Tell me what you discover. Tell me everything. I want to know all that is to be known about this man. I want to know it right away.”

“I have heard,” said Gilgamesh, sprawling back comfortably on the throne, “that what you have come to these parts to seek is nothing less than the gateway to the land of the living.”

There was a flicker of surprise, only the tiniest flicker, on Ralegh’s face. But he said calmly enough, “They tell many strange and fabulous stories about me, your majesty. I would that I had a shilling for each one of them.”

“Are they all lies, then?”

“Not at all. I have indeed done a few of the things that are attributed to me. But only a few.”

Gilgamesh chuckled. “I know how that is. Once the poets and romancers get hold of you, there’s no end to it, is there?”

“And the envious, majesty. Don’t forget them. The little petty negligible people whose lives are measured only by dreams and lies, and whose tongues wag foolishly day and night, conjuring up deeds for their betters that they wish they themselves had the daring to undertake – they turn all truth into falsehood merely by touching it.”

“It is so,” said Gilgamesh.

The Sumerian was silent a moment, staring through the smoky candlelit dimness of the throne chamber at this bold and confident man whom Enkidu had hauled, parched and withered and more than halfway to starvation, out of the
badlands just a little while before. Behind Ralegh stood the other Englishman, the mild bookish one, Hakluyt, and behind him was the dark sleek woman Helen, the Greek, she who claimed to be the one called Helen of Troy. She had eyes only for Enkidu, so it seemed, and he only for her. There was a hot erotic force bristling and crackling in the air between them like ghostly fire: you didn’t need to be a mage to feel it. Her eyes were slits, her nostrils flared, her tongue licked over her lips like a serpent’s; and as for Enkidu, he stood rigid, with hands tautly cupped, as though her breasts were already in them. Gilgamesh winked at him, but it seemed to go unnoticed. When Enkidu had come to him with the news that the leader of these ragged wanderers was the Englishman Sir Walter Ralegh, and Gilgamesh had said that Ralegh was known to have been searching for a way into the land of the living on behalf of Elizabeth his queen, Enkidu had been all afire with eagerness to know what luck he had had. “Ask him, brother, ask him and make him tell,” he had said. But from the moment Helen had clamped herself to him, such matters as the way to the land of the living and all other things had seemed to lose all urgency for Enkidu. There was nothing in Enkidu’s eyes now but the reflection of Helen, Helen, Helen, Helen. And she all aglitter and aglow with him. Perhaps this time, Gilgamesh thought, Enkidu has met a woman who can match him appetite for appetite. That would be interesting to see.

All the same, he had given Enkidu his promise that he would question Ralegh, and so he would do.

To the Englishman he said, after a bit, “And the gateway to the land of the living, Sir Walter, for which supposedly you have been searching? Is that one of the strange and fabulous stories also, or is there something to it?”

“Ah,” Ralegh said, smiling broadly. “On that subject I can tell you nothing useful. For all the true knowledge I have of this purported gateway, your majesty, it might have no more substance to it than the myths and fables of the Greeks, or the tales of the Round Table.”

Gilgamesh smiled also. The way Ralegh had twisted the discourse about was admirably deft. Saying that he knew of no proof that the way to the land of the living existed did not mean, after all, that he had not been looking for it. Or that he had not been on the verge of finding it when his provisions and
strength had run out. Plainly this man had spent a long time close to those who wielded great power, and understood the art of withholding information without actually uttering lies. To lie to a king can be dangerous. But so, too, can telling the truth be.

It was clear that Ralegh did not mean to speak of his expedition’s purpose, nor of the land of the living, nor of any gateways that might lead to it. Well, so be it, Gilgamesh thought. This was beginning to grow wearying. He would not press him for the information too seriously, at least just now. One more attempt, perhaps, and then he would drop it. All this mattered much less to him than it did to Enkidu, after all; and Enkidu seemed to be greatly preoccupied with other interests at the moment.

Certainly the Englishman was putting a brave front on things, for one who had been in such grim straits so recently. He was an impressive man, thoughtful and courtly, with a high shrewd forehead, keen eyes, a beard carefully trimmed to a fine point. He was clad in what no doubt were his finest garments, elegant splendid raiment of silk and velvet, bedecked with many a magnificent piece of glistening silver jewelry. Yet there were ineradicable blemishes and stains on the fine fabrics where the rigors of the Outback had marked them, and his finery hung poorly on him where his flesh had grown lean, and his face was gaunt and sun-blackened, and there was a darkness and a bitterness in his deep-set eyes that spoke of great hardships endured and greater ones anticipated. Gilgamesh felt oddly drawn to him. Ralegh seemed no ordinary man.

“I have heard of you, you know,” Gilgamesh said.

“Have you, indeed?”

“Our paths nearly crossed once. There was a time when I was at the court of Prester John, and word came that you were traveling with an army of exploration across the southern boundary of his territory.”

“That was quite some long time ago, your majesty, when I was in Prester John’s country.”

“So it was. It amazed me greatly to hear that you and your troops had continued on the march all this while since.”

“That was not our intention,” said Ralegh, and shot a bleak look toward the clerkish man Hakluyt, as though to say that
he had served as the expedition’s guide, and had served none too well. “We lost our way. Our map proved to be useless.”

“Indeed. They often are.”

“It has been a hard journey for us. I am no stranger to hard journeying, but this one has been a burden to me of an unusual severity. We are more grateful for your kindness than can easily be put in words. But I assure you we will make no long demand on your hospitality. A few days to rest, if we may, and then –”

“Stay as long as you wish,” said Gilgamesh, with a gracious wave of his hand. “It would be an unmannerly thing to send you on your way before you were recovered from your toil.” He heard Herod coughing and muttering behind him. Thinking of the depleted granaries, no doubt. Gilgamesh glared at him. To Ralegh he said, at last making his one final effort at returning the discussion to the point Enkidu had urged him to pursue, “When I was at the court of Prester John two men were there from King Henry’s land, ambassadors to Prester John, who said that your queen – what is her name?”

“Elizabeth, majesty.”

“Elizabeth, yes. Your Queen Elizabeth, they said, who is King Henry’s own daughter, desired greatly to find the gateway to the land of the living. It was their belief that she planned to create an English settlement at that place, if it existed, and extract a tariff from those who wished to travel through it to whatever lies beyond.”

“They imagined such a thing, did they?” Ralegh said casually, as though the idea were the wildest fantasy.

Shrugging, Gilgamesh said, “So I remember it, though it was only something I happened to overhear. There was some discussion of it at court between the ambassadors and Prester John in my presence. Their King Henry had sent them to raise an army from Prester John that was to intercept you before you could find what you sought.”