Accordingly, the rivers here do not begin life as babbling brooks, all sparkling happiness and innocence; that is for the weak who live in the south, where it is warm, where the ice does not reach, where the heat saps strength, and the sun bleaches souls.
No, here, the mountains are made of the same fury that possesses the King and the Queen, and just as it does with them, it causes the very earth to shake, so that from the mountains erupt cascades of lust and febrility, of rigour and will, as water that boils, but not on account of its temperature, as mist that rises not because it is steam, but because it carries the chill threat of death that rises to challenge the hot blood of the housecarls and the crews of the dragon-prowed longboats, and tests them, and then sooths their brows when they prove themselves strong and resolute
— and the water coursing through the rivers and streams is the relentless lifeblood of the world, bearing within it memories of glory and strength and war and regret for nothing
— as waterfalls, it hurls itself into the frozen northern air, fearless, careless, and the men and women who breathe in the sight feel no doubt or fear, and the broadsword and the shield of the housecarl house its strength without fail or hesitation — and it flows to the sea, and its memory does not dissolve there, but retains itself, like the recollection of a great victory of arms, it coheres like a war cry that only the resolute hear, and it picks up the dragon-prowed longboats and carries them across the broad ocean, to the lands of the soft and weak, whose mourning and doom is written on the blades of northern swords;
— and the King and Queen preside over all this, and neither of them care anything for weakness, or failure, or children.
Oh yes, the door. We were in front of a door, weren’t we…
We stood, the young Princess and her friends and retainers, unmoving like so much
terra cotta
, before the door, the age and silence of which left oxen upon our tongues; the rust upon it, the slow, effortless subsiding of the iron framework, reminded us of the smooth and dust-covered bark of the forests of Finland, captured in a luxuriant, faithful mimesis by the King’s court painter, in the memorials to the battles outside Helsinki that hang in the summer banquet hall and in which the blood of the fallen depicted on the snow glows fierce and red when the light of the morning sun as it rises over the castle wall streams in, a flood of pale heat through high-arched windows, turning everything golden and red; but this is the heavy red of languid and slow desire, the red that lowers eyelids and averts the gaze, that sends mouths fleeing to hide behind fans of burgundy lace, that puts an edge on the intake of a breath when a hand touches or brushes—or a glance brushes or lingers —or a gesture lingers or rests; and beneath it all courses an endless, red, stream of blood and deep, unending appetite.
But — the door, yes, the door…
The door was soon opened, of course.
And soon we were standing on the very spot upon which I had stood all those years ago, with the King and Queen there as well, standing on the other side of the water, that over-sized well, the gaping hole as wide as a dragon-prowed longship is long, filled with water into the depths of which there is no seeing; they and the members of the court, the lords and ladies and courtesans and sycophants and hangers-on, they were all there, but no-one knew anything as to what this was; even so it seemed to promise great distress, great discomfort, as though it meant to bring about the disappearances of those who had no interest in disappearing.
And all this inside a room that had been uncovered during the renovations being undertaken in preparation for the birth of the Queen’s child; a room that had by all appearances been built around the edifice of the well, which had itself, by all appearances, been built by unknown hands, a long age ago, around the body of water; water which was dark and timeless and reeked of mystery and inscrutability, and had clearly itself been built around nothing; even a Saxon or a Russian, or a Dane such as I, could tell
that
much… Some of us shook or shivered with fright; some of us could not look upon the water; some could not take their eyes from it. I cannot remember where I stood among all that.
It was the only time I have ever seen the King unsure, or the Queen unable to speak. (As for the singular nature of
that
circumstance, please, just accept the notion without further discussion, otherwise we shall be here all day.)
More than just water was at the root of the unease. Do you remember what I said about the power that resides in the water here, and how these people were all so very used to it?
A power that broods or rages in water is nothing new. No. It would take more than a few square
favner
of ungracious water to gather a crowd here.
It would take this. Before them, insensible and impervious to their dismay, sitting in the water of the over-sized pool built into the forgotten room the door of which had been long sealed by averted glances, and bobbing slightly as a toy boat might after its owner has been distracted by a sudden flurry of crimson parrots from the copse of trees that forms in the dream of a homesick soldier — is a thing of wood and brass, of a shape that resembles a turtle as much as it resembles anything; or a wooden egg embraced by metallic limbs as much as it resembles anything else;
— water slickens its surfaces of dark, polished wood; water drips from its handles and propellers, drips from its raised hatch surrounded by portholes, all made of brass and from which a mist of light glows, causing the wetness on it to shine and shimmer, as though somewhere, within the space that this apparition is occupying, with all its strangeness and wood and brass, a sun has risen, fingers of dawn pierce the gloom like rose thorns, more crimson parrots fly, somewhere there are marks of teeth on skin…
Now the Queen had, a few weeks beforehand, lost the child that she had been carrying. It was not greatly developed, she not being far into the pregnancy, and the people in question being who they were, there were no tears or histrionics, and both the physical and elemental qualities of the landscape being what they were, no rivers had reversed their directions, nor had there been any eclipse or earthquake, nor had any statues turned, toppled, or wept. In fact, the truth of it is that the death of the unborn child had been forgotten almost instantly; make of that what you will. As for myself and the other prisoners, we did not look the matter in the eye, we just continued with our work, covering ourselves in the silence which all in our situation embrace, if they have any wisdom at all.
But on that morning, as the King and Queen and their attendants gathered in this strange room, the matter of children must surely have surfaced in their minds — because from the strange and barnacle-encrusted construction which floated before them, from the portholes of which a soft glow emanated, and the hatch of which had opened, they were told, by itself — the sound of a child happily burbling and cooing could plainly be heard.
In short, there was an infant in this thing, this diving machine which had risen from the depths of the black water just an hour beforehand, in the full and shocked presence of workers, who, being superstitious, illiterate and uneducated (which is to say, foreigners), had dropped their tools and fled at the sight of the monster as it had heaved above the surface of the water, hissing, its gears winding down noisily as it came to rest…
The workers had informed their overseer, who had come and looked, and then had left and informed
his
overseer, who had come and looked… and so on and so on, and soon there had been so much coming and looking and overseeing going on that the King and the Queen soon found themselves standing before the machine, listening to the sound of what was apparently and irrefutably an increasingly hungry human infant.
It wasn’t long before the child had been retrieved from the vessel, which remained obediently immobile and inert during the exercise, which involved two Danish prisoners, an English prostitute, and a Norwegian guard, himself not long released from prison, where he had spent a few months atoning for his lifelong practice of
trolldomr
— a tallying with which he was well satisfied, and by which he was not one bit deterred;
Seeing the looks of wonder on the faces of the onlookers, the Queen stepped forward, took the baby from the Englishwoman, and said, as if it were the end of the matter and would resolve any lingering doubts or complications or speculation: ‘Princess Aslauga.’
The King nodded deliberately, this signifying that he was not about to interfere, even though, as was often the case in matters concerning the Queen, he had no idea of what was happening.
And that was, indeed, that.
The Princess grew up as the daughter of the King and Queen, and no-one ever told her any differently.
Which is why it is something of a mystery; how she came to know of the door which had been concealed from her and the world for so long, and so well. I have my suspicions, but because they do not involve people talking, or people being told, or secrets being betrayed, or whispers, or notes, then I think that I shall not tell you, because if you are like most people, you would not believe me. Me, who has no agenda.
* *
But all that was then. This was now, and here we were, again.
The Princess stood before the water, which was exactly as we had left it, all those years ago — just as dark and impenetrable as when the door was sealed; also exactly as we had left it was the diving vessel. What a wondrous machine it had been when we had first encountered it, and what a wondrous machine it still was now.
The Princess and I — for she had sent the others away now, and it was only her and I who stood in the pale light of the winter sun that struggled through the dust-encrusted windows high above us, washing the color from everything, so that she, and I know I must have as well, took on the appearance of a ghost, standing there, the shade of a smile haunting her pale lips — we paused.
‘I will enter the bell, Bernardo,’ she said, using my Danish name, rather than that Norwegian slur they use to degrade me, and which I shall not mention here.
And she did, and I helped her.
She waited until I had recrossed to what this strange room provided by way of a shore to this even stranger lake, and then she closed the hatch of the bell, as she called it, and indeed, there was something of a ringing sound as it was shut up;
— and then I could see that pieces of the device began to move, as though some train of events has been set in motion, which it most clearly was, as you shall see;
— and as for what happened next, I cannot tell from having seen it myself, from having been there, but I
do
have it from her own lips, and I can assure you that her account is to be trusted, for of all the people in this castle, the Princess Aslauga is the one who is truthful to her core, in whose heart there is no crevice or flaw in which the angel of deceit might find a foothold (I think it has to do with her provenance);
— so, if she says that this is how it happened, then yes, this
is
how it happened…
* *
The Princess descends into the water, past the point where I can no longer see the bell because darkness has swallowed it, and the sound of it, the ticking and grinding of its gears and the hiss of something that I do not understand has ceased, and I stand there and look, feeling helpless now, at the only trace of what has just happened — the settling disturbance of the water, the eddies of pale reflections, the memory of crimson, that dissipates even as I think to notice it…
As the vessel, this bell, takes her into the black depths, light spills from its portholes, illuminating the creatures that live here. Her breath gasps first, and then her heart and her mind gasp as well; the creatures here are so many and so fearsome, some of them; out of the darkness they swim toward her, they bare their teeth, huge and curved like the sabres of the King’s housecarls, some of them — some even brush their hoary scales against the side of the bell, and the sound of it is like names to her, heady names, of things that want to take form and that almost make her swoon. Crystals of ice form on the windows, and her flesh thrills with the cold as she wipes them away, so that she can see out to where the light dispels the darkness and she can see great hides and long, scaled backs. Eyes the size of cart wheels gaze back at her. She has said nothing. She says nothing.
— and then past a great tear, a fissure in the water, a window; through which, illuminated by a sun which never sets or dies under an eclipse, and which calls for no blood, she sees a great open field upon which a godchild plays endless games with tortoises, and kangaroos, and lizards, and Grey Silent Ibolons from the desert worlds of N53-1y57#; all of these playmates being infinite in number, and twenty seven light years long, except for the Ibolons, which are
especially
large;
— and from there the Princess travels down through the gathering and frozen sea, to where the things in the sea become thin and insubstantial and far apart, and they float like sheets of gossamer and forget first each others’ names and then their own;
— and past the male and female gods and deities, past even the very point where the Goddess is enveloping the God, and He is entering Her, past the point of so many of their arms intertwined in love, and so many bodies and legs intertwined in love, that Aslauga blushes, for prudence and on behalf of the sight of others, but also for eagerness and desire…