I write this in a cramped compartment in the hold of the Ark, far from sunlight and moonlight and rain and wind…I fear I’ll never know these things again (I shudder, am wretched to think how, when I first saw, in dark red, stark against the drab steel of its hull, this hulk’s name, I thought it a sign the vessel was to be a refuge). This room was, I’m sure, an office once; it’s furnished with a desk, a chair, and a filing cabinet, empty, save some scraps of paper with meaningless squiggles on and, in the bottom drawer, a pentacle made of five paper clips, bent and twisted together. The tribeswoman and I are confined here, unable to leave, to return to the companion hatch, even if we did feel it worth, to feel the warmth of the sun on our skins again and to gulp our lungs full of fresh air, giving ourselves up to those waiting without.
With no sight of the sky, it’s hard to gauge the passing of time, but I’d hazard we’ve been down here at least a fortnight. Our supply of food has dwindled, and I fear will all soon be eaten up, and that the tribeswoman will starve, even though we’ve been sparing, and I’ve often gone without, knowing hunger can only cause me pain, not kill.
Thankfully, we’d more water, and I’ve not had to go without. That cannot kill me either, but I know, of old, the searing of a parched throat is worse than an empty stomach’s pangs. I’m glad, too, not to have to watch the tribeswoman die of thirst, it’s a bad end, worse than wasting away, belly empty.
I blame myself for our dire pass; we were safe, but I wanted to return for my typescript and typewriter, would not be deterred, was frantic to finish my tale. As it is, I doubt I’ll now be able to; I reckon my age-old adversary behind the attack that led to our being trapped, and await his bursting in, soon, to torture and make an end of me (and, and this wrings me, throw the tribeswoman, if she’s not by then succumbed to hunger, to her former tribe, as a hunter might throw scraps to his hounds). I must press on, with all haste, if I’m to have any chance of setting down all I wish to tell.
Having just looked over the corrected proofs of my account of Jane’s tale and the conversation and events that preceded it, which the tribeswoman finished typing up earlier this morning, it occurs to me that, for you, no matter whether you barely read, merely skimmed, pored over, or struggled with those pages, only a short time has passed since the afternoon my forehead was laid open and I put the posse from the tribe to rout by killing their chieftain; for even the most painstaking or sluggardly, it can’t have been more than an hour’s reading. But it’s not so for me; it’s actually been many weeks since then; my wound has long healed, and things have happened to the tribeswoman and me to entirely overshadow that afternoon’s violence.
My work has been halting, hampered by turmoil.
Forgive this digression, but, now death looms, time, which once hung so heavy, again seems rare, and I feel compelled to hold it in my hands, examine its facets, as a jeweller, loupe screwed into one eye, would a gemstone.
But, with these musings on time, I’m squandering the handful of it remaining to me; I must return to my tale. But I felt the need to make clear that, though for you, my reader, a short time will have passed since the skirmish, really, in my reckoning, it’s been over two months. Wanting to avoid diminishing the dread atmosphere Jane’s tale builds, and to give you, my reader, a tolerably straight way, I’ve resisted breaking it up. But I have, while setting it down, been battered by squally fate.
While I was working on the melancholy epilogue to William’s tale, the tribeswoman and I were granted a lull of a week and a half or so. I was writing the large part of that time, and she, having taken on the burden of meeting most of our wants, spent her days collecting firewood, hunting, fishing, and foraging. She was adept at these things, far more skilled than I, and seemed to pleasure in them. I did, though, take responsibility for the daily chores, such as cleaning, cooking, washing, and so forth, but these tasks were done fairly quickly, didn’t take me away from my tale for long. On a couple of occasions, though, as I wished to learn some of the tribeswoman’s wilderness lore, I did go with her on an excursion. She imparted to me a few of her skills; showed me how bulrush stems, dampened and pulped between stones, yielded long fibres that, once dry, could be stranded into strong, flexible twine for snares; taught me that mushrooms, roots, berries, and nuts could be found by watching the wildlife, that birds flocking to a particular tree told it was in fruit, that boars digging in the earth was a sign of tubers that were good to eat beneath the sod; demonstrated how to drowse bees’ nests with smoke, shake out the stupored bees, plunder the honeycomb.
She and I communicate solely through gestures. Not since our first encounter has she addressed me in her own tongue, and she doesn’t try to convey anything by means of expressive noises, which I find strange, as it’s something that it’s natural to do; I’d think she’d been struck mute by her beating at the hands of the natives, but that I’ve heard her cry out in her sleep, and that she sometimes lilts quietly to herself.
Those peaceful days were marred only by the pricks of my conscience, by my remorse over the tribal leader slain. I won’t claim it was the first death at my hand; in a life as long as mine has been, well…But I don’t believe I’d ever snuffed a simple, innocent life before; till then, my killings had been, more or less, just. I cursed myself for not being shrewd enough to hit on some way of putting her and her minions to flight without bloodshed. I often dreamt of her final throes, was wakened.
But, otherwise, that period was calm, happy. The tribeswoman and I grew close.
On the afternoon of the tenth or eleventh day, while trying to recall the exact words of the bewigged drunk’s weird curse, I heard the tribeswoman scream. Dashing to the gunwale, I looked downriver, to the swathe of estuary mud laid bare by the low tide, where she’d gone seeking razor clams for our supper. She was stood atop a rock jutting from the flats, fending off, with the stick she’d taken with her to help her walk in the quag silt, a pair of swine, boar and sow. They’d yellowed teeth, wild rolling eyes, the boar larger and with a ruff of coarse bristles and reddish tufts ridging its spine. The beasts grunted, snorted, shook their heads, circled the outcrop, churned up mud. As I watched, the boar backed off a little way, then rushed at the tribeswoman and up the steep sides of the rock. Its hooves clattered, scrabbled, and it fell back, but, as it flailed, it thrust forward its head, gored her thigh with a tusk. She yowled, staggered, almost fell. I ran down the gangplank, ran towards her.
But she’d no need of a shining knight; as I made for her, feet sinking with each stride, she feinted at the sow with her stick, then lunged at the boar, put out one of its eyes. Squealing, it turned, fled. The sow stood its ground a moment, snarling, but then the tribeswoman whacked it on the snout, and it too bolted.
After clambering down from the rock, the tribeswoman hobbled towards me, grimacing. Nearing, she stopped, hiked up the hem of her shift, showed me where the boar had gashed her. It was high on her thigh, and I felt a tremble of longing, such as I’d not had in a long, long time, and I looked away, shamed.
The wound was fairly deep, and we went back to the Ark to swab and bandage it.
Much of the rest of the afternoon we spent together, collecting our evening meal, wandering the flats, eyes open for tell-tale dints, delving gingerly in the mud if we sighted one, hoping to grab the clam, without disturbing it, before it could dig deeper, and haul it out. Then we’d heft our catch, and either place it in the sack we toted, or chuck it back if it seemed scanty of flesh. When we’d gathered plenty, we returned to the Ark, and I continued marking up draft pages, while the tribeswoman went off again. Just after sunset, she came back with a bundle of samphire to go with the clams. I put down my pen, and we cooked up the shellfish in the raked ashes of a fire. Then feasted till juices ran down our chins.
That evening, after eating, we were both strangely elated; I wonder if it was the rich clamflesh made us so. We sat together in the prow of the Ark and I taught the tribeswoman to pick out some simple tunes on the banjo. Afterwards, I played and sang for her. At first, she sat quiet, just listening, then she began singing wordlessly along, harmonizing with my melody lines. Once I’d tired, the pads of my fingers were sore, we lay back on the deck, looked up at the sky. It was cloudless, dark, dark blue, daubed with a bright, full moon, spattered with stars. I thought to point out to the tribeswoman the constellations I’d learnt as a child, but found I couldn’t recall any, if indeed they could still be seen in the sky, if the stellar clutter hadn’t shifted too much over the long ages. I’d not picked up any of the intervening epoch’s sidereal ragtags, either. So, I made up fit-seeming names for shapes I saw instead. There was the courtesan, shielding her face with her fan; her suitor, the beggar boy, cap in hand; the snail; the sail-fin shark; the death’s head hawkmoth; and the spider monkey. I was hushed, not afraid of my voice betraying us, but awed by the beauty in the welkin, sleepy, and content. Finally, we retired, the tribeswoman to the pallet in the cabin, me to blankets spread out under my lean-to. I felt really happy. However, something happened that night to dispel my good mood. I wrote an account of it the following morning, perhaps it’s best I give you that version, composed when it was still raw.
Last night, the tribeswoman came to me in my shelter as I slumbered, woke me, traced, with her finger, the healing scar slashing across my brow. Opening my eyes, I saw her, by the moon’s light, crouched on haunches beside me. Naked. She gazed at me hard, with her soft brown eyes, her dark hair, hanging straight down, framing her face. I felt lust for the first time in many ages, sat up, throwing off my blanket, lapped at her breasts, thrust my hand between her thighs, groping in the warm dark cleft. Closing her eyes, biting her lower lip, she seized me by the nape, pulled me to her, then straddled me, took hold my cock, sought to stick herself with it. But I was limp, have been chaste too long. Grimacing, shamed, I pushed the woman aside. She looked at me, bewildered, hurt. I noticed she’d removed the bandage from her wound, that it was healing very well. I was about to mention it, to cover my embarrassment, but she padded away. For some time, I lay awake, staring up at the thatched roof of the lean-to.
This morning, when I roused the tribeswoman, she acted as if nothing had happened; I doubt anything will happen between us now, and that saddens me, if in a muted way; I’ve grown to find her enthralling.
I was wrong about this, we’ve fucked since, though in delirium, not desire, a frenzied, bane-freaked rutting that’s soured all lust now. But our mute friendship has continued to grow, and I’m glad of that.
Our tempers are well matched, and hardship has also tempered our bond, for, since the night of my chagrin, we’ve known no peace.
The following morning, I woke early, brain throbbing. The sky was cloudless, still blue-black impasto, though there was a faint scumble out over the sea. Leaning over the bowrail, looking down on my reflection in the river, a long way below, I saw it clear; the air was still, there wasn’t even the faintest of breezes to rumple the image. It was chill, my breath ghosted in the air, but all augured the day would turn warm and that it would be another of sane shades in the sky, there were no sick tints in the dawn haze, only rose. I roused the tribeswoman. She also seemed a bit blear and sore-headed; she winced, clutched her skull. I supposed the odd, if pleasant, fuddlement we’d felt after eating the shellfish to have been the result of some mild toxin, and that we were now feeling its after-effects. Once we’d eaten breakfast, the tribeswoman returned to the cabin, went back to sleep. I sat down at my typewriter to briefly set down the previous day’s and night’s events before they faded.
I’d only been working a short time, when, looking upriver, I saw charcoal smudges on the flats in the faint, if waxing, light. I crossed to the bowrail, peered; seals, as many as a hundred, and a few larger beasts, walruses and seacows, hitching themselves across the ooze, making for the water. Just then, rising clear of the horizon, the sun set the sloblands blazing. Squinching my eyes against the glare, I watched the animals cross a lake of fire, slip into the river, swim out to sea.
I knuckled my eyes, grinned, stood stunned a short while. But my reverie was soon disturbed by shouts and the beating of drums from upstream. I went to the stern. A mob came our way, crossing the mud: the tribe, come to avenge the death of its leader, come for a reckoning.
Horrored, I looked on the throng. They were many, almost the entire tribe, I guessed, men, women, and children, all who could walk, even some who couldn’t, infants in slings across mothers’ chests, a crone with withered legs who rode on the back of a burly man, all armed, save the babies and the very youngest children, wielding slings, clubs, knives, blowpipes. It seemed they’d picked a new leader, for a young man wearing purple robes walked alone, slightly ahead of the pack, bearing haughty then hunched by turns, looking over his shoulder often, as if he feared some prank, the tribe, sniggering, running off, abandoning him. Not far behind him came the drummers, thickset men with animal-hide tabors on which they thumped out a driving rhythm. Amid the throng was a frame lashed from pine trunks, which the tribe crowded, clamoured, fought to tote. It bore some large thing. It was cloth draped, and I couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was heavy, going by the stoutness of the frame and the many hands needed to carry it.
I called out to the tribeswoman, my voice shaking. She came out of the cabin, blinking in the now bright light, came to the taffrail, saw the rabble, turned to me, biting her lip. It was too late to take flight, we’d be seen and run down. I crossed to the foredeck, winched up the gangplank. Then I went back to stand by the tribeswoman. We watched the tribe approach.
The mob stopped a little way from the ship. The drums fell silent, and the strange burden was set down. Several of the tribe began to untie the thongs holding down the cloth that covered it. I clambered onto one of the shipping containers, boosted up by the tribeswoman, and yowled, loud, drawn out. But the rabble were not cowed, just loosed a few slingstones at me. I jumped back down off the container and took shelter behind the bulwarks with the tribeswoman. A few moments passed, then the clatter of slingstones petered out, and I raised my head, peered over the gunwale, gasped.
The unwieldy thing the tribe had brought with them lay, uncovered, on the mud. A catapult, an arm with a sling dangling from the end, a rope skein. Several of the tribe bustled about it, twisting the skein, even at that distance the creaking of the ropes could be heard. A rough ball of some dark stuff was then loaded into the sling. The chieftain, who had before stood at a distance, crossed over, while the rest took a step back. A flaming brand was put into his hand, and he set light to the projectile. He waited till it was well aflame, sending up a thick rope of black smoke, then knelt down, released the trigger.
The flaring missile arced over the Ark, reeky tail a sooty daub on the blue. I turned, dashed to the prow. The missile came down on a sandbank, out in the middle of the estuary, burst apart in a storm of burning smuts.
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the tribeswoman waving frantically at me, ran back to the stern. The tribe swarmed round the catapult, readying it again, adjusting; I feared they now had their aim and distance.
I cudgelled my brains for a flight, frantic, fretting for the tribeswoman’s life, and for mine also, for, though the bombs couldn’t kill me, one might leave me sore burned, unable to flee or defend myself should the din and smoke draw my enemy, as I feared it would, for to him chaos is what carrion is to crows.
Then I recalled the grappling iron and rope. Beckoning the tribeswoman to follow, I ran to the cabin, and, rummaging around in our pile of things, laid hold of them, a bag of dried provisions, my knife, and my torch. The tribeswoman and I then crossed over to the river side of the hulk, away from the natives, hooked the grapnel to a ring fixed to the deck, and threw the rope over the bulwarks. I gestured to the tribeswoman to go, and she vaulted the rail, swarmed down, hand over hand. While I waited, I looked about, and my heart jolted as I caught sight of, on my makeshift desk, this typescript, and, on top, weighting its piled pages against gusts, my typewriter. I wanted to save these things, to at least try, I’d set down too much by then and had too much still to tell, to purge, of this tale, this account. So I leant over the gunwale, waved to the tribeswoman, signalled she should wait, then ran over to the table, cast about for twine, I didn’t want to leave the pages of my narrative loose, saw a skein on the deck a short way off, darted over, picked it up, then, returning, saw the spare ream I kept under my desk, so took it, tied it up with my tale, then gathered up, in my arms, the bundle of paper and the typewriter, took them over to one of the metal shipping containers, went inside, swept away, with my feet, the draff from a dingy corner, and left them there. A wrench.
I came forth, blinking, from the container, turned to look at the natives of the flats, saw the catapult kick like an ass, fling a missile into the air, slew, break a tribesman’s forearm in a lash of blood. The flaring lump of pitch groaned out of the sky, struck the corner of one of the containers, rained fire down on the foredeck. Our stack of firewood and some bundles of reeds the tribeswoman was planning to work into twine for fishing lines were soon alight. Burning smuts gyred in the air, spread the flames to the lean-to’s thatched roof, a pile of laundry we’d left out, and meal from oats I’d ground, which I kept in an old metal barrel the tribeswoman had found, buried in mud, a little way down the estuary. From the blazing lean-to, I heard twanging, the strings of my banjo, and was sorry. Some embers, falling on me, kindled my clothes, and throwing myself down, I rolled on the boards to put out the flames. Then I got to my feet, darted to the prow, hurdled the rail, grabbed hold the rope, and slid down it, flaying the skin from my palms. As I dropped, I heard a blast, the oatmeal, saw the barrel spin through the air overhead, splash down in the river, float downstream, trailing steam billows. I splattered down, sank, to my knees, into the sludge. The tribeswoman, who crouched a little distance off, waiting for me, crossed over, took my hand, hauled me out. A noise like a toad’s croak. I lay gasping. Then another report rolled on our ears, a third projectile had struck the Ark.
The tribeswoman and I loped across the mud toward the river, waded in, began swimming for the far bank. We strove to keep the freighter’s bulk between us and the rabble, but the current was backing with the rising tide and we drifted upstream into plain view. Still, we were not sighted till, midstream, we were forced to clamber over a sandbank. Then one of the tribe hollered, pointed us out. But the catapult needed to be turned to aim at us, and by the time the tribe had done so, and reloaded, we’d gained the far bank and begun running, bent, to stay hid, through the reeds there. The shot was loosed, but struck the bank at the place where we’d clambered from the river, by then far behind us.
Reaching higher ground, the other side of the reed bed, we halted, gulping air, peered back over the canes at the Ark. Dense black smoke rose from it, roiled. As we watched, the lean-to collapsed, sparks and ash puffing up. Some of the tribe, who’d climbed on board using grapnels, darted hither and yon, scouring the deck, ragged forms stark before the flames, roisterers at some dark revel. They weren’t long searching – I suppose, as I had, they tried the companion hatch, found it wouldn’t open – then shinned back down to the flats, crossed over to where the remainder of the tribe awaited them. A small group broke away, walked a little distance off, sat in a circle. The clan elders, I surmised, conferring. After a short while, council over, they rose, rejoined the rest. The chieftain began gesticulating, giving orders. The tribeswoman and I didn’t wait longer, but turned, stole off.
We fled north through a land of weald and sward; of woods of oak, maple, birch, alder, elm, beech, and ash, where finches twittered, pheasants strutted, woodpeckers drummed, and swine rooted; and of pastures where rabbits frolicked, hares loped, grasshoppers chirred, sheep and goats bleated, and cattle grazed, their lowing the region’s only sorrowful note. Not that, running scared, we’d time for the country’s gentle charms.
But the land had a dark side, portended the dread place we were soon after to come upon. On the second night of our flight, a howl woke me. Against the full moon, just kicked loose of the earth, its big round face like a ball of tallow moulded by sooty fingers, was, stark, the shade of a wolf, muzzle to the sky. The tribeswoman, also roused by the noise, sat up, rubbed her eyes. I pointed out the beast to her, but it had slunk off. She fell back into slumbers, but they were troubled, going by the whimpering she made. I couldn’t sleep, lay awake watching the moon cross the sky on its rod, ears straining for the whirr of gears.
We broke camp early the following morning and, after walking only a short way, came to a brook. Turning, we saw smoke furrowing the sky to the south: the tribe were on our trail. At first, I was bewildered, we’d covered our tracks well, but then I heard the hounds. We stood there, stricken, harking to the frenzied yapping. Then the tribeswoman let her pent breath out in a rush and pointed at the watercourse, walked her fingers through the air. I was bemused a moment, then realized what she meant; we could perhaps throw off the dogs, baffle their noses, by wading in the stream a way. I nodded, she removed her sandals, hitched up her skirt, I took off my boots, rolled up my trousers. Then we entered the water. It was shallow, came only to my knees, but was bitingly cold, my toes went numb almost straight away. We headed upstream, where briar thickets hid the stream from view. After trudging against the coursing water till fatigued, till breathing ragged, we clambered out onto the north bank, lay down to rest. The sky was clear, the morning had waxed warm, and, worn out and careworn we fell into a doze. On stirring, looking up, I saw the sun had reached its zenith. At first I was held rapt by the weird bands of vermilion, puce, viridian, and mallow shimmering in the sky, then I cursed the lapse; we’d doubtless lost any lead our ruse had gained us. I shook the tribeswoman awake, and we hurried on our way.
Mid-afternoon we sighted a forest of gloomy firs up ahead, tall, close-seeded, dark. I thought it a grim enough place, but the tribeswoman seemed in terrible fear, shuddered whenever her eyes fell on it. I supposed it a place of fabled evil for her folk. By dusk we’d reached the treeline. We spent the night there, the pines looming over us.
The next day, rising before sunup, we saw, not far off, the fitful glow of a fire, and had to press on into the forest. The tribeswoman shook her head, shivered, but I cajoled, brought her round. Knarled boles rose stark till far above, where twined black boughs and sprays of dark needles all but blotted out the sky, leaving only flecks of light, strewing the canopy with false stars; it was as if the place had seen a battle between the forces of night and day, and night had won a decisive victory, routed day’s troops, and the land had been forever ceded to it. The undergrowth was dense, if sickly, tangles of wan ferns, clumps of sere nettles, snares of brittle bramble, and crawled with stagbeetles, cockroaches, ants, spiders, writhed with worms and grubs. Of higher creatures, we saw none, no birds, not even a rat or snake, though in places the brake was trampled, and we heard, from time to time, in the distance, the noise of a large animal crashing through the scrub.
We pressed on into that wretched forest, where I hoped the tribe would be loath to follow. By nicking the trees with my knife, small blazes low on the trunks, I marked our path. After a few hours, afraid to go on lest we lose our way, we halted, made camp, bodging a shelter from thicker fallen boughs and wadded moss.
Stuck as to how to go on, I’ve been musing abstractly on my tale a short time. It’s occurred to me I am, at this moment, and have been many times in the writing of it, in three different places at once. It’s uncanny. Just now, I’m huddled with the tribeswoman in our makeshift hut, peering wary into the gloomy pines, but I also sit gawping at Jane, in the Nightingale pub, and at this battered rusty iron desk, in a cabin in the ravelled guts of this hulk, rhapsodizing all these affairs. It’s disconcerting; I hope, by the end of my tale, I’ll have collected myself. But, now, I’d better press on.
I must return, then, to that drear forest, that place so dismal, so apart from the quick world. The writhen limbs overhead, needle rank, clot the sky. We felt oppressed by them, though were glad of their thick shroud on the second day when we heard thunder, wind threshing the treetops, saw rain running in rivulets down the trunks, realized another storm had broken over the region.
Foraging in that place yielded little, just some bland mushrooms with dun caps, a few grouse and pheasant carcasses, maggot-ridden, but edible, though barely, only if we choked our gags. The supplies I’d grabbed before fleeing the Ark dwindled and, within a fortnight, were used up. I realized we’d have to return to the rich land we’d left behind, or else the tribeswoman would starve. I just hoped the natives wouldn’t be lying in wait for us on the edge of the forest (I was almost certain they’d not have followed us in, sure, from the tribeswoman’s reaction, the place was a haunt of boggarts for them).
Early one morning, we set out, following my blazes. But then we came to a place where patches of bark had been stripped from many of the trunks, perhaps by beasts whetting horns, antlers, tusks, and too many of my notches were lost, and so was the trail. Given that I’ve spent millennia poring over books, it might be supposed my brain is crammed with lore. The truth is, though, as I’ve previously written, my memory’s unfitted to the aeons; I couldn’t then dredge up any learning to aid us in getting our bearings. Had I been alone I might have wandered that cursed place for weeks, even months, but the tribeswoman had some survival know-how, discovered where south lay by peering at the dull green and orange mottles of lichen on the bark of the tree boles, and, by dusk, had led us to the edge of the forest.
By certain landmarks I saw we were close to the spot where we’d spent our last night before entering the gloomy pines. The tribe had clearly camped there, bided for us, for scattered ashes and cinders, cornhusks, apple cores, and the picked carcasses of sheep and fowl, strewed the meadow. But it seemed they’d given up their watch. They’d left behind some parcels of nuts, berries, and dried fruit wrapped up in spinach leaves; we supposed, at the time, they’d just been missed when the camp was packed up. Famishing, the young woman and I fell to eating these sweetmeats.
They were poisoned. The bane coursing through our wasted frames, maddened us. Though it was cold, we tore off our garments, cavorted, clinched, danced a grotesque shuffle, then, stumbling, fell to the floor. I groped the tribeswoman, kneaded her breasts, pinched her dark nipples, fumbled between her thighs. She arched her back, parted her legs, groaned. I was hard, the first time in many ages. She pulled me to her, and I drove into her, pounded, animal, abandoned, lost. Then she retched, spewed bile from the corner of mouth, her eyes rolled back, she shuddered, squirmed, but I held her tight. Then, howling, she elbowed me, hard, in the face. Tears blurred my vision, blood gushed from nose, she wriggled free, got to her feet, stood a little way off, trembling, glaring, arms wrapped about her. Holding my broken face in one hand, I staggered to my feet, yelled something nasty at her, advanced on her, priapic, enraged. She turned, ran naked and wailing past a holly bush growing on the forest’s edge, its bright berries red gouts against the firs, yelped, she’d passed too close, the prickles of the dark green leaves had scratched her, then entered the gloom. I made to follow, but gripes flared, and I went to the floor, clutching my gut, passed out.
I’ve pledged to write only what is true; wondering how most faithfully to relate the time that came after my poisoning, I find myself facing a crux. Things took place that were so gruesome I believe them most likely bred out of the venom’s delirium, but I’ve suffered strange horrors in the past, and they could have been only the simple truth. Equally, I can’t be sure that, of the entirely mundane happenings, some were not delusive, indeed, one of them, though not eldritch, many may find hard to credit: an act of genuine altruism.
But now I muse on truth, I realize, having listened in my long, long life to many, many conceptions of it, spouted by wizened philosophers, mystic crones, foolish striplings, mendacious tyrants, &c., &c., I’ve lost all faith in the idea. Born and raised during the Age of Reason’s dotage, in the city, which, though not its cradle, had been the beating heart of the nation that spawned its most fervent torch-bearers, my youthful education was based on its central tenet, the idea truth could be approached through the painstaking observation of phenomena, a second-hand idea taken from antiquity, first proposed by a scholar who wished to refute his teacher’s mystical idealism, just a taunt in a squabble, or so the legend goes. After attaining adulthood, though, I was disabused of the notion; by the late twentieth century, empiricism was discredited, little more than a pedagogical tool, a fable for children. As a way of understanding the world it had proved untenable. After its ruin, folk, frantic to make some sense of their lives, sought solace in myriad wayward metaphysics whose divers assertions about the nature of knowledge and truth led to an epoch of warring systems, and the silent and apparently immobile soil of the Enlightenment era was suddenly riven with flaws, and the ground once again stirred under humankind’s feet.
Since that time, I’ve realized history is rife with disparate ways of making sense of things, each with its own definition of truth, that it’s only the brief span of mortal life that gives it the appearance of stasis, stability…Well, perhaps I can best explain by giving examples.
I once spent many years in Naufana, a place that lay amid sun-seared tracts of red sand. Just east of it, on the other side of a long dried-up river, was another city, Ghadis. They’d both once been thriving stops on the Silk Road, famed for their wealth and the richness of their cultures. But Ghadis had been laid waste by pestilence centuries before I first saw its ruined minarets and cupolas fretted from the rising sun, was then desolate save small lizards, with electric blue markings, basking on its roof terraces and in its public squares. And though Naufana still thrived, it was no longer rich, in wealth or culture; its fine skyline of spires, copper domes, azure-tiled roofs, belied the peril, filth, and wantonness of its streets. The city’s rulers adhered to a doctrine, established at the time disease stalked Ghadis, which proclaimed all illusory and nothing true; therefore, everything was permitted.
At another time, I lived a while in a city sprawled along one bank of a broad river delta, a city whose name I cannot recall, a place also infamous for vice, though its obscene carnality arose perversely, not due to the permissiveness of the regime, but to spite the diktats of despotic leaders, who, in thrall to a school of philosophers that proclaimed the truth of all things, in terror of that fullness, and intent on maintaining the submissive ignorance of the populace, prohibited everything. When the tyrants fell following a popular libertarian coup, and were hung, along with their associates, senior military personnel, and members of the secret police, from the city’s famous green, fluted lampposts, all descended into sheer turmoil and licence, and the place, formerly so gross, so solid, waned to a wraith. A few, perhaps a lucky few, were struck down by a wasting sickness; their innards putrefied, they aware, in great pain the while. A sallow smother of fog settled like a pall on the city; it was hardly possible to see your own hand in front of your face. Then came the sleeping plague; swathes were struck down. I fled.
Though its name is lost to me, my recollections of that place are perhaps starker than those of any other I’ve ever lived in, save London. I think of it, and the memories come glaring, clamouring, jostling, reeking, tanging.
The Olde Market, with its colonnade, its roof, panes of grimy glass, the bustle of the crowds, the babel of the butchers, grocers, fishmongers, and spice vendors crying their wares, the pungent scents and garish colours of the produce. The frieze over its entrance, of a horse floundering in a mire, flies pouring, in droning mass, from its gaping throat, an incident from the city’s foundation myth, whose meaning no one ever managed to make clear to me.
The rooming house I stayed in, which was on the edge of the city, in the gloom of a stark bluff, Promontory Wall, its ramshackle Carpenter Gothic, turrets, steep gables, leaded windows, warped cladding, flaking discoloured whitewash. Inside, the air was stale, there was a film of dust over everything. My room was shabby and drab, the bedclothes were tattered, the sash window, filth-rimed, bulb, bare and dim, carpet, threadbare, the soft furnishings, reeking of tobacco smoke, the maple wardrobe and bedstead, stained the shade of old bone, the dressing table’s veneer, badly chipped, the mirror, dark-specked. The sole ornament, an icon of St Christopher, the dog-headed St Christopher, hid a peephole, a squint into the squalid bathroom next door. The ancient landlady, whose shrunken head and wisps of stark white hair brought to mind a dandelion clock, gambled away all her savings, all the rent she was paid, playing rummy with a bizarre antiquarian, couldn’t afford to keep the place up. The sole other long-term tenant of the place, the rest of the rooms were let by the hour, and then but rarely, was a leech of some kind, who carried his doctor’s bag, black scuffed leather, always, and looked always forlorn.
A ramshackle warehouse, empire of a surly rag-and-bone man, paths leading to it barricaded with broken garden furniture, wrecked statuary, and rusting lawnmowers. A sign over the entrance read, ‘Flea Circus’. Inside, beneath a gyring fan, were shelves heaped with bric-a-brac.
A bar, the Anaconda, worn linoleum, filled with chess players hunched over their boards, haruspices worrying at entrails, and opera music, coming from the jukebox.
A library, in a grand building that had once, long, long before, been a ducal palace, which had a few shelves of rare occult texts tucked away, and a phantasmagoria in the old wine cellars. One time, that same antiquarian who was always besting my landlady at cards, took me down there and showed me some weird scenes. Among them a barren plain strewn with animal bones and girded by sawtooth mountains; giants, human frames, but beast heads, fox, magpie, raven, rat, pike, and blowfly, stalking a city, bleak, beset by wastes, streets choked with sand drifts; and a photocopier, a common piece of office equipment from the era of my long-ago youth, for producing facsimiles of documents and images, but this one containing wetly pulsing viscera, seen through an open hatch in its side, and standing on a plinth, in a temple, a place of sacrifice.
I also recall, in that city whose name I can’t remember, a massive dome under a louring sky, a former railroad museum, long before closed, standing empty.
And a masked orgy (towards the end, after mores had been abandoned for abandon) in a foursquare town house, gluttony, heavy drinking, drugging, and, later, a snarl of sweat-slick flesh, beastly rutting, a farmyard pungency, laced with acrid reeks, groans and yowls, antique furniture tumbled about.
And (and this is the last thing I saw before my flight) row upon row of the seats of a cinema in the red light district filled the dreaming afflicted, snoring, snorting gurgling, whickering, awash in the kaleidoscopic light of the porn movie playing, in silence, on the screen. These victims of the sleeping plague had glucose IVs in their arms, and their urine, soaking into the upholstery, pooling under the seats, gave off a high cloying stench.
The philosophies which held sway in Naufana and the city whose name I can’t remember, are, of course, extremes on a spectrum; in my life, my long weary life, I’ve lived in countless other places, each with their own metaphysics of truth. In many of them, it was unstable, in flux; these places are the weirdest of all my experience: Tainaron, the City of Insects; Ambergris, the City of Saints and Madmen; Ashamoil, the Etched City; Uroconium, the City in the Waste.
But I must go on, indeed, find I must again apologise for a lengthy digression; it’s my hope, though, that it’s not been pointless, that I’ve shown how, if you live long enough, it becomes clear there is no single truth, only a proliferation of divers ones, all merely convenient constructs. Therefore, I think it best I set down my memories of the time I was bane-racked without trying to thresh fact from figment.
A heavy downpour roused me from stupor. It was night and pitch black, neither the moon nor a star could be seen through the heavy clouds. Parched, I lay with my mouth open to the deluge while it lasted. That wasn’t long, though, not long enough, and I was still thirsty when it stopped. I was glad, then, to see, by faint gleams, rain had pooled in hollows. I dragged myself over to one of these puddles, lowered my mouth to the water, gulped it down, slaked my dry gullet. I could see, very dim, my face in the puddle – beard matted with blood and bile, nose and the flesh around it, puffy, turning dark. I splashed it with water, but gingerly. Then lay on my back a time, weak, gut sore. Then blacked out again.
When I came to after that, it was late in the day, the sun a faint reddish stain on the clouds still wadding the sky. I’d been roused by the cawing of some crows that had settled on the turf near me. I felt, if anything, worse than before, was frail, too weak to move much. My feeble efforts to scare off the birds, faint hissing, stirring the fingers, was met with croaks that seemed almost derisive, and I was terrified they, thinking me dead, meant to tear at me with their jetty beaks. But they just strutted, preened their feathers. Then one took flight, flapped, wheeled, alighted on my belly, and, wings outspread, throat juddering, kecked up a seed, sowed it, with its beak, in my navel. The flock then took wing, all at once, flew off.
I lay there while the seed sprouted, put forth a shoot. The shoot grew into a midget apple sapling, swift. Then its roots delved into my innards. I groaned, strained, but could do no more than flutter my hands weakly at the end of my arms, couldn’t pluck it out. Growing, aging, the tiny tree clad itself in foliage, blossomed, fruited, shed its leaves, fleet, many, many times over. The sun, sinking to the horizon, found a break in the cloud cover, and the tree cast a shadow that crept up over my abdomen and ribs. Then, when the tree’s crown, no bigger than my head, occulted the dull red orb, it was blighted. At the beginning of one of its hectic springs. The buds it put forth withered. Its bark split. Lurid, tallowy growths groped forth from the living wood. Foul galls swelled blasted limbs, then burst in a hail of pale grubs, which fell on my belly, burrowed beneath my skin. I closed my eyes, howled, passed out a third time.
More heavy rain woke me. It was night again. The eerie midget apple tree was gone, my belly, though paunchy with the bloating of the poison, was unriddled. I felt a little better, could just stagger to my feet. Though my face throbbed, was swollen tender. My clothes lay where I’d cast them off, and I struggled into them, soaking though they were. Then I shambled into the forest, about where I’d seen the tribeswoman enter it. I felt sure she was dead, it was a fell bane, but wanted to find her body, bury it, keep the scavengers from glutting on her flesh. I searched a short time, but then weakness overcame me once more and, oppressed by the gloom, I left the forest as fast as I could stagger. I’d thought the tribeswoman wouldn’t have got far before succumbing, but it seemed she was tougher than I’d supposed.
Out in the open once more, I found the rain had eased off, though a fine drizzle still fell. The blackcloth of night was slightly washed out, but this didn’t cheer me much, it would be a dismal day, the cloud too thick for the sun to burn through. Then, looking to the south, I saw black shapes moiling against the grey; the clan returning to see whether their scheme had worked, and, if it had, to gloat.
At first I thought of flight, but I was too, too weary, and reasoned the tribe, not finding our bodies, would figure their scheme had failed, that we’d not eaten the poisoned food, and maintain their pursuit. I decided, then, to stay, feign death; though it burns, I can hold my breath for hours before my body finally sucks in a lungful unwilled. And my black and bulgy face would help with the impression. It would be fraught, but I thought worth trying, for if they were cozened, then, I’d be left alone. And, I perhaps had a little fight left in me, if it came to it. So I lay down, sprawled on the sodden ground, gazing vacantly at the clouds racking by overhead, waited.
I lay there some time, seeing the forms of strange beasts in the clouds. A skein of geese passed by. Then I heard footsteps a little way off, took a deep breath, stilled the rise and fall of my chest. A short while later, grim snarling faces were hung before my bleary dull fixed stare, jerked away. I was peered at, prodded, spat on, beaten with fists, kicked, but did not flinch. Then the tribe turned away. Askance, I glimpsed them gathering the brown-capped mushrooms that had sprouted from the dank earth overnight. Only the leader remained stood over me, staring down, grimacing. Then, as I lay there, under his gaze, a large beetle blundered into my neck, clambered up, over my chin, scuttled, on spindly legs, over my filth-caked beard, and across my cheek. Its feelers tickled the insides of my nostrils, its mandibles raked my skin. Then, cresting the ridge of my cheekbone, it crawled down into my right eyesocket, and stopped in that sheltered spot, the chitinous plates of its abdomen scraping my cornea.
I couldn’t suppress a shudder. Paling, breathing in sharply, the chieftain hunkered down at my side. I was on the point of struggling to my feet, staggering off, as fast as my weak legs could carry me, though I feared I’d not make it far, when the leader put his hand on my shoulder, mouthed something. The workings of his jaws and lips were, of course, meaningless to me, but his kindly expression made his meaning clear enough. I don’t know why, but I felt I could trust him, made no move to flee. And he reached out, plucked the insect from my eye, cast it away. Then he got to his feet, turned, addressed the tribe. They stopped picking mushrooms, listened. He spoke at length in that strange tongue, which sounds, to my ears, like the low rumble of a distant snowslide, like a capercaillie’s jeers and taunts, the clucking in the crop, the clacking of the beak, like children throwing stones at the windows of an abandoned house. After his address was concluded, the tribe struck out south, left me alone. I lay there a while, stock still, before falling into an uneasy sleep.
Some time later, night came swaggering in from the east, and day, faded and frail, turned tail and fled. I tried to crawl to the shelter of the trees, but, drained, couldn’t make it, resigned myself to sleeping out in the open. But, though I was enervated, my brain was feverish, and my repose was fitful – sporadic bursts of slumber, long stretches of hectic wakefulness. I was roused from a bit of snatched sleep by an owl’s screech, woken from a dream of London, as it was in my youth, but clinker and ash, folk, with charred flesh sloughing from their bones, stumbling in the streets. I shook my head to clear it of this nightmare, then looked up at the sky, saw a meteor shower in the east.
The following morning a hand on my cheek woke me. Peering about blearily, I saw there was someone crouched down by me. I blenched, but then, rubbing my eyes, saw it was the tribeswoman. The feeling of having known her sometime in the past, which I’d remarked when she first accosted me, but forgotten since, returned, this time stronger, more disquieting. But then, recalling I’d thought her dead, gladness chased that uncanny tremor from my brain (I wonder now whether, perhaps, she bears a resemblance, in certain lights, to a long-ago acquaintance). Then I felt another moment’s wariness, lest she was a figment or devil, but she seemed real and truly herself, and so she’s proved to be. I can only assume she spewed the poisoned food soon after fleeing into the forest, and that this saved her. She’d found and put on her clothes, so I knew she’d recovered her wits. She smiled at me, then reached out, took my hand. I was relieved she’d forgiven me the brute way I’d acted when deranged by the bane.
The poison lingered in our blood, and it was only after resting several days that we felt strong enough to move on from that place. I was then seized by an urgent need to recover this document, this typewriter. I sought to convey this to the tribeswoman by means of gestures, pointed to the south, sketched the outline of the Ark in the air with my forefinger, mimed typing. A look of fear came into her face, and she shook her head; frantic, I got down on my knees, looked up at her in mute appeal. She still shuddered, but I went on with my mummed pleas, beseeching, and finally she cast her eyes down; I’d won (thinking of this now, I am filled with anger at my folly, and guilt over wearing her down). Rightly chary, though, she insisted we ensure we’d food and water to last a while, before setting out. As that land abounded in good things, this was easy enough. We snared rabbits and hares, shot birds down out of the trees with a sling made from a leather thong, cured the meat by smoking it; spent many hours digging up tubers we knew were good to eat; collected and dried mushrooms; picked nuts and berries; and made several waterskins, sacs stitched from deerhide, then proofed with a mix of tallow and beeswax, which we filled from a stream.
Full provisioned, we set out, headed for this hulk, this monstrous, rusting carcass. On reaching the north bank of the estuary, early in the morning of the fourth day, a day cloudless and bright, we concealed ourselves in the same brake of rushes we’d before hidden in, watched the ship. We watched for hours, saw no signs of life, save a cormorant that flapped up from the river, alighted on the portrail, and perched there a little while before flying off, wings outspread to dry in the warm sun, shuffling now and again. Sometime after the sun had passed the zenith, we swam across the river, went aboard the Ark by means of the gangway, which had been lowered. The deck was strewn with char and ash; everything we’d gathered to make the place a home was burnt up.
I crossed to the shipping container I’d concealed my typescript and typewriter in, entered, saw them where I’d left them, in the corner, went over, took them up. The tribeswoman, who’d followed, but waited outside the container, picked up a clinkered long bone and idly clanked it against the ridged metal walls of the container. Lifting the typewriter, I saw, which I’d not noticed before, a number of symbols scored into the floor beneath. They were vaguely familiar, but meant nothing to me.
As I turned, typewriter under one arm, bundle of paper under the other, a blast shook the ship. The tribeswoman yelled. At first I heard, ‘Cunt!’ But then realized it must have been some guttural exclamation in her tongue. I ran outside, saw we’d been gulled; I’d led us into a trap. A fiery missile had struck the twisted wreck of the wheelhouse; a billow of smoke rose from it, as black, writhen, ravelled as an ancient yew. The tribe, it seemed, had been hiding, watching; some moiled about, readying again the catapult, which they’d set on a hill amid the reeds, a little distance off, and the rest were crossing the flats headed for us. I turned to the tribeswoman, was unable to meet her eyes. But she’d choked her rage, merely shrugged her shoulders, smiled wan. I don’t know whether she’s truly forgiven me, but she’s given me no looks of reproach these last weeks, even as inanition has racked her. I, though, have cursed my rashness again and again. I’ve also wondered often how the natives guessed we’d be likely to return to the Ark – why they were lying in wait for us. All musings lead me to one dread conclusion. Even assuming the chieftain betrayed me, the tribe would have had no reason to assume I’d return to the Ark; only someone who discovered my tale, and was able to read this long-dead language, would have realized I’d risk all to get it back.
While the tribeswoman and I havered, another fiery missile struck the bulwarks, not far from us, burst apart, spraying the deck with flaring tar. As if my memory had been kindled by a burning smut, I recalled where I’d seen the sigils scratched into the container’s floor before – they matched those on some of the buttons of the companion hatch’s keypad. I knew, of course, the graving was far more likely to be some reckoning or random phrase, a gambling debt toted up or a crass insult, than the scuttle’s code, but anything was worth hazarding. Having gone back into the container and scored the sigils on my brain, I went back outside again, signalled the tribeswoman to follow me, and dashed for the foredeck, typescript and typewriter in my arms. As we ran, a third missile struck. Then I heard one of the tribe cry out in anguish and turned to see a seagull, perhaps the same I’d descried a few times before, stooping on those gathered about the catapult, stabbing with its keen beak, hindering them, gaining us some time. We flung ourselves down by the trapdoor. I, letting drop my things without a thought for the mechanisms of the typewriter, too afraid, too frantic, crouched, tapped the sequence of symbols I’d memorized into the keypad. But nothing happened. I cursed, thumped the hatch, bloodied my hands. The tribeswoman, who knelt beside me, bit her lip, shook her head.
Looking over at those huddled about the catapult again, I saw one stood jabbing aloft at the bird with his sword. Then the blade grazed the gull’s wing and, squawking, it wheeled away, rising into the blue of the sky. The bird driven off, the tribesfolk turned back to loading the weapon. They’d their range and loft, even scurrying hither and yon we’d soon be struck, and the rest of the tribe had the hulk encircled – we were not simply able to run as before. I groaned. But then the tribeswoman grabbed my shoulder, shook me, jerked me round to look at the scuttle. It was revolving slowly, lifting, the filth clogging its seal was shed in strips, like peeled orange rind. Once above the level of the deck, there was a crunch of gears meshing, and it began to move to one side. Metal shrieked. Taking out my torch, I shone it into the gloom through the widening aperture. Steps descended into darkness. Dust motes, agitated by the air soughing in through the opening, gyred in the beam of light. I stared. Then the end of the gangway began to jounce, and I heard the noise of drubbing feet. I thrust the tribeswoman towards the hatch, followed her inside.
There, I hewed at the murk with the beam of my torch. Sighting a button on the underside of the deck, I reached up, pressed it. The hatch began to eclipse the opening once more. Dazed, relieved, it wasn’t till only a sliver of sky remained that I recalled my document and typewriter. Thrusting out my hands in a panic, I grabbed those things, dragged them through the fast-waning crescent.
Had my stupor lasted a moment longer, the gap would have been too narrow and this document, this typewriter would have been lost.
As soon as the hatch had settled into place once more, a roar from above told of a missile striking the foredeck over our heads. Searing heat forced us down the stairs. We soon reached their foot, found ourselves at one end of a long narrow corridor.
I’ll write, in time, of the horrors of the hold. But, for now, I feel I’d best press on with that strand of my tale, the crucial one in truth, which concerns the evening I and the others learnt of our curse, the night we spent drinking and relating our stories in the Nightingale. Before I do, though, I must, lest my narrative be too confused, tortuous, briefly explain how the tribeswoman and I came to be in the straits I told of at the beginning of this chapter: confined to a cabin, far below decks. It’s not that there’s any gross clog preventing our leaving this place, the doorway’s not blocked outside by crates fallen from a precarious pile we knocked against on entering, the door is not plate steel, did not swing shut behind us and seal us in, is but flimsy plywood, locked only with a bolt we pushed home ourselves, and obstructed only on the inside, by the filing cabinet I’ve pushed up against it as a barricade. It’s simply that the batteries of my torch have given out. We’ve illumination in here, as we found, in one corner of the room, an oil-burning generator, with a full reservoir of fuel. By the flickering light of the fading torch, the tribeswoman managed to get it working, hook it up to the bare bulb dangling by a long cable from the ceiling. It runs with a slight whirring noise. It’s fixed down, cannot be moved, and, therefore, we’re stuck here, in this office; were we to attempt to find our way back to the companion or set out to search the hold for provisions, for anything of use, we’d soon become lost in the dark, mazy, horror-ridden ways and rave.
I don’t understand why my dread foe, who I believe now has the tribe under his dominion, hasn’t sent them in to capture or bolt us yet. Perhaps he means to rack me by leaving me to moulder here. And it does distress me sorely to see the tribeswoman wasting. But he doesn’t know of the light source, without which we’d have been crazed long ago, nor that I am, in some ways, glad of the reprieve, glad of time to write, to set down as much as possible of what remains of my tale. With this task to inspirit me, my dire situation, and looming agonizing death, harry me less than they might.