‘Perhaps my clothes could be washed?’ suggested Mara, and Felissa said, ‘Of course, but these days we are short, so very short … There is the old man you saw, and his wife, who cooks, and a couple of Alb women come in to clean and do odd jobs.’
‘Then I’ll wash them myself,’ said Mara.
This put Felissa into a real crisis of cries and protests. ‘Oh, Princess, how can you say that … Of course you must be looked after.’
‘Perhaps it would be better to call me Princess and Dann Prince only when there is a real need for it.’
And now Felissa began to weep, her hands over her face. ‘Oh I hope that doesn’t mean that you aren’t going to agree…agree…’ And they could see that if she was not old, she was getting on, for her hands were wrinkled, though delicate in shape. Her black hair was dyed. Her face was made up. Felix was elderly. He was quite good-looking, with the habit of pleasantness. But Mara was thinking, it’s the same, wherever you see it, the Hadrons, or the Hennes, and – did she remember something of the sort in her own family, from her early childhood? Power. The ruthlessness, just hidden by smiles and courtesies. A coldness … And Shabis, he was strong and in command: no, that came from what he did, from his work, not from a belief in his superiority. That is what these people had. How soon could she get out of here?
‘Oh please don’t think we don’t understand,’ wept Felissa. ‘You see we know everything, everything about you, we know everything about all Mahondis everywhere.’
‘Then perhaps you could tell us about the Kin in Chelops.’
‘Oh poor dear, yes, we know you had a child by Juba.’
‘I did not have a child by Juba.’
This setback did not at all discompose Felissa. ‘Oh, then perhaps we do not always get all the truth but… There are so few of us left, and we do keep records about everyone.’
‘Then what happened to Meryx?’
‘They all went to the East. But there was a war and we don’t know who… ’
So, she didn’t know.
‘There was the uprising in Chelops, and the terrible drought and big fires.’
‘We know about drought and fire and famine,’ said Dann, almost indifferently. Then, himself hearing how he sounded, said, ‘There was a time in our lives when Mara and I thought there wasn’t anything anywhere but drought and famine and fires.’
‘Oh dear,’ cooed Felissa, and stroked Mara’s hands.
‘I want to go to bed,’ said Dann, and again heard himself, his brusqueness. ‘I’m sorry. We aren’t used to your kind of – fine living.’
‘I wouldn’t call what we have now fine living,’ said Felix, polite, but cold.
Dann stood up, Mara stood up.
Felissa said, ‘We’ll see you in the morning for breakfast.’
Mara knew Dann was about to say, ‘We’ll have breakfast in our room,’ as if he were in an inn, but her warning look stopped him.
They said goodnight. Mara knew that Felix did not like her, and knew she did not like him. It was an instant, instinctive antipathy. Felix’s smile for Dann was affable, and could be thought of as kind. Mara hoped that Dann was not impressed by it.
The old servant led them through several empty rooms, all with flaking walls, mostly without furniture, to two pretty rooms, large, with floor-cushions and chairs and very large, low beds. It was a suite of rooms with a door between them, standing open. In each room a large, shallow bath of steaming water stood on the floor. The old man went off but not before seeing how Dann pushed his bath through the open door to be near Mara’s. And he had stripped off his gown and was in the water, ducking his head; the water instantly turned brown. And Mara, who waited until the door shut, flung off her robe and was lying in the delicious hot water.
‘What have we got ourselves into this time, Mara?’ genially enquired Dann, rolling in his great basin like a fish. ‘Princess, are you listening?’ For she had her head under water, and thought that water browned by so much travel dirt was hardly likely to leave them both clean.
‘I don’t like all this, I want to leave,’ said Mara. Out she got and, hiding herself with a drying cloth, tugged the bell pull. At once the old man came in – he must have been just outside the door. He was eavesdropping.
‘Is there any more water?’ she asked.
‘It would take some time to heat, Princess.’
‘Then bring us some cold. And where can we throw this dirty water?’
Dann, who had not bothered to wrap himself, said, ‘I’ll throw it out of the window.’
‘No, Prince,’ said the old man. ‘You should not do that.’ Now he pulled the bell pull and soon in came an old woman. She stood in the doorway taking in naked Dann, and just-covered Mara, with her bedraggled hair.
The two old people carried out one big basin, then the other.
‘They shouldn’t be carrying such heavy things,’ she said.
‘Oh, they’re used to it,’ said Dann. And now Mara was really apprehensive, hearing that jaunty selfishness.
The basins were brought back, put side by side on the floor, and a big jug was brought of cold water. Dann slid in, exclaiming and exaggeratedly shivering. ‘Look, clean water,’ he said to the staring old woman and laughed. He was over excited.
Mara waited till the two old people had gone, and got into her bath. The water was very cold. She ducked her head in it, again and again.
Then Dann was out and had dried and was looking at his enormous bed next door.
‘I’ll come in with you,’ he said, and came naked into her great bed.
‘You know, Mara, there’s something about all this that… ’
But he fell asleep in mid-sentence. And in a moment she was in beside him and was asleep. She woke to see Felissa standing beside them, and her face was a mixture of shock, disapproval, and – Mara could have sworn it – triumphant pleasure too.
‘Good morning,’ said Dann, sitting up, naked. ‘Good morning, Mara.’
‘Good morning to both of you,’ said Felissa. ‘It is very late. You must have been exhausted. We are waiting for you. Breakfast is waiting.’
The crushed up clothes in Mara’s sack had all but one been taken away. So while they slept the old man or woman had been in their room. One dress remained, the pretty gauzy one, but it was too light for this chilly place and Mara wrapped over it the blanket which of course was soiled from the journey. She could not wear it. What should she do? She took a covering from the bed, and wrapped that around her. Dann did the same.
In the room where they had been last night, Felissa and Felix sat on the floor cushions waiting. A meal was spread.
‘Good morning, Prince, good morning, Princess,’ said Felix, signalling seriousness.
‘What I saw this morning has made something easier,’ said Felissa.
‘What did you see?’ asked Dann. Innocently.
Felix and Felissa conferred, with their eyes, but Mara broke in with, ‘It is not what you think. Dann and I have shared beds, sometimes much narrower than your beds, a hundred times. And there was Daulis and Leta. We have all four shared beds.’
‘We know who Daulis is, but who is Leta?’
‘She is a friend – an Alb.’
‘Oh, an Alb …’ And that was the end of Leta, for them.
Felissa gushed, ‘There is something, a story…something fascinating…it is history … let me tell you both … you’ll understand it all…you see, it is of the greatest importance …’ Felix broke in with, ‘I shall tell them, otherwise we shall be here all day. Do you know the history of this part of Ifrik?’ he asked the two.
‘Not much,’ said Dann.
‘A little,’ said Mara, thinking of Shabis and his lessons, which had all been in response to her questions – her ignorant questions, she knew now.
‘Long ago, a very long time ago … ’
‘Thousands of years?’
‘Exactly; before the Ice covered all the civilisations of Yerrup. Did you know that all those civilisatio
ns, all that history, happened in the twelve thousand years of a warm spell between periods of ice?’
‘Yes,’ said Mara.
‘No,’ said Dann.
‘Twelve thousand years. They thought it would all go on for ever … But if I may be permitted a remark you may perhaps judge to be exaggerated, I think it is true that people always have a tendency to believe that what they have is going to continue for ever. However, that’s as may be. About halfway through that warm interregnum between the ice ages, towards the east from here, at the mouth of the great river Nilus, which is still there, though not in the same position it was, was a successful dynasty of rulers. The royal family kept marriage inside itself. Brothers and sisters married.’
Here Dann gave a loud laugh, and then apologised for interrupting.
‘Yes. If you think about it, Prince, in turbulent times this guaranteed stability. When two families marry, or even two branches of a family, there is always conflict about inheritance, and sometimes wars. The offspring of siblings are more likely to want to keep an inheritance together.’
Dann’s face showed a mix of emotions. One could be described as a kind of jeer, an unvoiced raucousness. There was genuine interest in this old tale. And there was a hint of satisfaction, a puffing up that made his features seem swollen.
‘How long did this dynasty last?’ asked Mara.
‘Hundreds of years, so they say,’ said Felix.
‘With stability? Prosperity? Peace?’
He permitted himself a little look of irony, then a laugh, exactly prescribed, and then he made a little bow towards her. ‘You are asking too much, Princess. Hundreds of years – of peace? No. But the kingdom was able to fight off aggressions and attacks. There was no division inside the kingdom.’
And now Felissa could not remain silent. ‘You two are the last, the very last. You are the only two Royals of the right age.’
‘Wouldn’t any two young Mahondis do?’
‘Real royalty. We need the Royal blood. Your child would revive the Royal house, the Royal family. When people know there is a Royal couple back in the Centre, and Royal children, then they would support us, as they did in the past.’
‘When Mahondis ruled all Ifrik?’ said Mara.
‘Exactly.’
‘And you are planning to rule all Ifrik again?’ asked Dann.
‘Why not? We did once.’
‘I don’t know why you are so anxious to rule Ifrik,’ said Mara. ‘It is a desert of dust and death below the River Towns.’
‘Nothing stays the same,’ said Felix. ‘Now it is a time of dryness. But the drought will end. And we will be prepared. All the history of Ifrik has been that – swings of climate.’
‘The history of everywhere, from the sound of it,’ said Mara.
‘Yes, but let us stick to our own – responsibilities. We believe we are in for another swing. The Ice is going again in Yerrup. There are signs … The Middle Sea has been dry for thousands of years. There were cities built all along its bottom. But the oceans must be rising, because water is coming in from two different places: the Rocky Gates to the big ocean that once was called the Atlantic but now is the Western Ocean; and beyond the Nilus, to the east, there is a canal, which has been dry, but it is filling. There is a shallow lake now covering the cities at the bottom of the Middle Sea and the water is rising. It will be a sea again.’
‘In thousands of years?’
‘Probably hundreds. But there are stages, and different levels of the ice and the melt. The Middle Sea has been filled to the brim between Ice Ages, and it has been half full, with cities along the shores. You two may live to see it filling so fast that shores you see on one visit may have disappeared on your next.’
‘And you think the dryness will soon disappear from Ifrik?’
‘Why should it not?’
Dann was listening, and he was more intrigued than Mara liked.
She said, ‘You told us you know Daulis.’
‘Of course. He brings us news from the south,’ said Felissa.
‘And he told us that you have wonderful things here in the Centre, and that we should see them.’
‘Yes, we have, and you should,’ said Felix. ‘We believe that what has happened will happen again. We are on the verge of another great age of discovery and invention. And in the Centre we have prototypes of the inventions of the past.’
‘Not everything,’ said Felissa. ‘You forgot a lot of it has been stolen.’
‘There have been raids,’ said Felix. ‘Robbers took some of the machines and inventions.’
‘We have seen them,’ said Mara. ‘May we see the Centre?’
‘My dears, of course,’ said Felissa. ‘You’ll find everything quite easy to understand, because it is all so carefully documented. Of course you won’t see the original machines. Everything was copied, and then copied again, as long as any of the old skills were left, but then there came a time…oh, it is so sad.’
‘You will think about our plan,’ ordered Felix.
‘We’ll think about it,’ said Mara and stood up, and so did Dann, and they went to their rooms.
There Dann said, violently, ‘They want me as a stud, and you as a brood animal.’
‘That’s about it,’ she said.
Then his mood changed and he said, ‘I rather fancy the idea of being married to you, Mara. And all our little ones running about.’
‘I would say they are a little insane,’ said Mara, ‘a little mad.’
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to see everything as mad.’ She did not know what to say; she felt apprehensive. ‘How old are they?’ he went on. ‘Fifty? Suppose we had a child at once. They would be really old by the time it was ready to mate. Mate with whom? You or me. There would be another child. Ideally it should be not the same as the first. Imagine it, two old people, with two old servants, who’ll be dead soon, and you and me. The Royal Family. Why should the locals put up with it? They don’t necessarily remember Mahondi rule with pleasure, so I’m told.’
And while he said all this, it was as if he were arguing with an invisible interlocutor.
Mara said quietly, ‘All the same, there is something in the idea you like.’
He flung himself on the big bed and lay face down. He did not reply. She stood at the window and looked out over innumerable roofs, some as beautiful as those in the drowned cities. Some were crumbling, or had even fallen down.
‘I want to walk around the whole place, along the wall,’ she said. At first he did not move, then got up, sullen now, angry about his thoughts; and they found the old woman cooking, and said they were going to walk around the wall: there must be a walkway of some kind. She said, not looking at them, so great was her disapproval, that there was a path just inside the top of the wall, and it was in good condition most of the way, but they should be careful, and it would take them the rest of the day. She gave them some food to take with them.
They set off, westwards. The wall was at the height of their waists. In some parts there were piles of sharp wire, now rusting. They knew where Chelops had got its wire fences.
‘If I were ruling here, for a start all this wire would come down,’ said Dann.
‘I see you are expecting a time of peace, Prince Dann?’
But he didn’t laugh.
On one side of the wall could be seen only interminable wet earth and marshes, with paths through them, and sandy stretches, and rushes and reeds. It was a lumpy landscape that was more water than land. Inside the wall were what seemed like hundreds of every kind of building, for where some of the fine ones had fallen, reeds and mud replaced them. So this was where all the records of the great past were. The country was the same to the north, and they stopped to shelter on their little ledge of a path, from a sharp wind, crouching low to eat some bread. This wind had blown all the way from the ice fields and ice cliffs that covered Yerrup. If they could fly, as once people had flown anywhere they wished, to look down over the ice, would the gr
eat cities of those great civilisations be visible there? No, ice was not water, and so … They went on, chilled inside their thick wrappings. The eastern vistas were the same: this was where they had come, and so they knew that the marshes stretched for days of walking. All along the wall were the old sun traps. The metal of the arms had eroded, and some had disappeared, leaving the circlets of metal lying about on the wall; or they had fallen and lay on roofs or on the earth.
The light was going. Felissa and Felix had left a message that they would be served supper in their rooms, so that they could be alone to think about their decision.
‘They don’t like our manners,’ said Mara.
‘When I am ruler,’ said Dann, and she interrupted with, ‘Dann, please stop it, even in joke. I’m afraid, don’t you see … ’
‘What of, Mara?’ He was defiant.
‘I’m afraid of – the other one.’
He stared, then deflated, and sat moodily on his floor cushion and was silent for a while. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to see Felix and ask to hear more of these plans of theirs. Because there are things they haven’t said. For one thing, they must be planning concubines. A baby takes nine months, and then at best a year before another. Not that I’d use you so badly, Mara.’
‘I had thought of concubines.’
‘And how exactly do they plan to live in the interval before there is another Mara and another Dann? They are obviously very poor.’
‘Another Shahana and another Shahmand.’
‘Do you know what? I keep thinking of Kira. I have dreams of her.’
And she said softly, ‘And I am dreaming of Shabis.’
‘Are you, Mara? Well, we could start our own royal family, have you thought of that?’
‘Please stop it, Dann.’
He lay down on the big bed in her room, and then jumped up and went to his own bed in the next room. ‘I hate them,’ he said. ‘Curse them both. They’ve spoiled you and me.’