The Memory Palace. Gill Alderman
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I cried.
‘You are afraid, Koschei. Of a little fire? See!’
The fire collected itself together in one place and Nemione, gathering her yards of silk about her, sat down beside it and held both hands up to the blaze. At that moment also, a short and stalwart figure stepped forward out of the bushes.
‘Bravo, Mistress,’ the dwarf said, applauding her. She smiled a welcome. I realized that her abuse of him was, like her costume, an affectation, and that they were as fond of each other as mistress and servant may be.
The little fellow looked somewhat like an eft or newt in the breeding season, or like a scorpion perhaps, with a sting in his rapier. He wore a breastplate and cuisses of silvery scales, and his skin had a silvery cast too. I remembered what my mother had told me when I was a child at her knee: that a dwarf of the Altaish, though he leave his mountain home for ever, must always retain this ingrained livery, tincture of the metal he had dug and abandoned.
‘This is Erchon,’ said Nemione.
The dwarf bowed low.
‘And you, sir,’ he said, ‘do not need your armour to be recognized as a Brother.’
‘Good day, Master Scantling,’ I returned, and he bowed again, with a flourish, and walked on down the little stony beach and into the river, where he waded thigh-deep.
‘Take care!’ I shouted.
‘Peace, Wolf’s Head,’ said Erchon. ‘The nivashi cannot smell a dwarf.’ From close beneath the riverbank he lifted a fish-trap which he opened and emptied on to the bank. A mass of writhing fish, as scaly and argent as himself, fell out and the dwarf in his turn fell on them, banging their heads against a stone. Soon he had spitted them and was roasting them at the fire.
‘The trouble with this pretence,’ said Nemione, as her dwarf offered her a portion of the fish, ‘is that silks are not practical for the wayfaring life. I had better give up being a lady and turn myself into a gypsy. It will be easier that way.
‘Eat your fish, Erchon, Koschei. Do not look at me.’
The dwarf obediently turned his back on her and began to devour his fish, not bothering to separate them, flesh from bone, but eating them whole, heads, bones, tails: all. I bowed my head and used my knife on my fish, trying hard to concentrate on the food.
Yet I could not help peeping at Nemione. I saw her prepare herself for conjury with a whispered charm. Then she closed her eyes and started to strip off her jewellery. I do not mean that she unclasped and unpinned the many pieces she wore but that she touched each one and, at her touch, it vanished. I had to bite hard on a piece of fish to stop myself exclaiming. She stroked her embattled hair. At once it began to writhe, twisting about her head like a nest of vipers as it freed itself from its confinement and settled about her shoulders like some errant and lusty cloud. I had to bite my hand to stop myself crying out in fear.
Next, she began on her garments.
Perhaps the spell was a primitive one; or, more likely, she did not know enough to transform her dress with one pass. Her garments melted successively from her and left her sitting there in nothing more than a thin, white shift.
I thought, I am a Brother and I should take what is offered me. I moved my hands, putting down the fish.
‘Cheat!’ cried Nemione, opening her eyes. She glared at me.
‘You are very lucky, Brother Koschei, that I did not slay you where you sit!’
Judgement had the upper hand. I was quiet. If she could not make the unclothing spell more elegantly, I reasoned, she was unlikely to have the powers of life and death. After a moment or two had passed, when we were both calm, ‘Forgive me, Mistress Baldwin,’ I said, and bowed my head.
So I did not see what Nemione did to clothe herself again but only that, when I was allowed to look at her, she wore the red and orange garb of a Rom and a burden of brassy necklaces around her neck.
‘No more lady,’ she said.
‘You look as well in this gallimaufry,’ I said.
‘Oh, empty compliment! Now I am a dirty hedge-drab.’
‘You have the same angel’s hair.’
‘I can’t change that,’ she confessed. ‘Help me, Koschei, for old times’ sake; help me to darken my hair.’
By good fortune I had with me a bottle of the dye with which we Green Wolves used to darken our faces on moonlit nights. I took the stuff from my wallet and showed it her.
‘This may help. You must dilute it in water. Then rub it on.’
‘Perhaps if I use my comb – oh, fie! It is gone with the gown.’
It was my turn to laugh; but I only smiled gently.
‘I have a comb.’
We worked together, Erchon and I, he fetching water from the river in the brass cup, which fortunately had been left on the bank and so had not packed itself away in whatever ethereal trunk or closet the fine clothes were laid; I mixing a proportion of the dye into each cupful and combing it into Nemione’s hair with my soldier’s comb of steel. It was hard to do – not the dyeing, which worked admirably – but the combing of her gossamer hair. Never before had I stood so close to her. The only women I had touched were rough camp followers and country girls who, knowing their business with men, were greedy and sharp-tongued. Nor did their skins smell sweet as a damask rose and feel like one petal of that rose, fallen in the dewy morn.
‘Spare me,’ I whispered in her ear, so that the dwarf would not hear. ‘I am a man.’
‘Pretend we are sister and brother,’ she said. ‘As once we were, in the Cloister.’
So I finished the task. Nemione, looking into the dye-bottle exclaimed,
‘It is all gone!’
‘I shall easily get more,’ I lied. I knew that the penalty for losing any part of my kit was three month’s duty without leave and possibly a flogging at the end of a rope.
The stuff was drying in her hair, turning it as black as a night-crow’s wing. She looked as bewitching as the Queen of Spades.
‘You will soon get a gypsy lover, Mistress,’ said Erchon the dwarf.
‘Look in the river,’ I said. ‘You will see yourself how much you look the part.’
She stood there a long time, on the river’s edge, gazing at the rippling simulacrum of herself.
‘I shall journey safer when I have found a band of Rom,’ she said. She turned and looked at me.
‘What can I give you Koschei, for your patience and your dye?’
‘A little piece of yourself – to meditate on and to love.’
‘I will give you some strands of this counterfeit hair. But that is not enough. I have a long and perilous journey ahead – but I do not need Erchon any more. What gypsy lass has her own dwarf? I will lend him to you and, when I send, you must discharge him from your service.’
‘Very well.’
She pulled some long hairs from her head and gave them to me; I coiled them up and put them, wrapped in my neckcloth, in my wallet. Then she gave me Erchon, telling him to march smartly to my side and there remain, until she called.
‘Goodbye,’ she said, and turned and walked away along the track, her brave gypsy clothing bright in the shadows of the overhanging trees. She did not look back but Erchon and I watched until we could see her no more. Then, facing each other, we exchanged smart salutes before we shook hands.
‘Will she soon find company?’ I asked the dwarf. ‘Do gypsies travel in this locality?’
‘Yes, Master – and many of them at this time of the year. There is a horse