Holy City: Chapter Nineteen

Ariadne took V away from the castle on the border of Lyonesse to a different castle, a palace. The Summer Palace was the King’s main residence in Hatusha, the capital of Lyonesse.

They left the castle on the border in a limousine of black that flew the red and green flags of Lyonesse on its hood. The limousine drove at a fast speed on a special lane of the freeway reserved for such official limousines. V looked out the window as the fields of the nation appeared in the background of his trip. There were first fields of dirt and then orchards of washed out vines and then fields of golden wheat. Off in the distance, beyond the immediate background of the ever-changing fields, great hills and lush valleys held the promise of more diverse topography. Ariadne dutifully watched V as he looked out the window at all of this as was required of her as an effective protocol attache. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking as she did this. A long-practiced professional air of dispassion covered her face as she ensured V was both accommodated as a guest of the state and also did not violate one of the many prohibitions of the state.

V continued to watch out the window like a child on his first cross-country road trip. He was astonished by the colors. The colors of the countryside and the colors of the sky. Everything changed so much faster than when he was on foot. Not just the backgrounds but the shades, the shades of all the colors as they transformed from dark to light and back again as V looked out the window of the limousine. The car was moving faster than the clouds, which were unable to catch up, and soon they were on the edge of a very large city that sat atop a very large plain. This was Hatusha and even though they were in a special lane of the freeway that was reserved only for special cars their speed slowed and then stopped just as all of the other cars slowed and then stopped as everyone reached the clogged arteries approaching the heart of the city.

“I apologize for the delay. We shall reach the Summer Palace shortly.” Ariadne said to V, not realizing his sense of time was quite different than the average guest. After walking weeks in the desert, the forty-five minutes it would take to get from their current position amidst the traffic to the gates of the Summer Palace was only the blink of an eye.

V blinked and they were at the gates of the Summer Palace. The gates opened magnificently for the black limousine with red and green flags on its hood. Uniformed soldiers lined the inside and the outside of those gates. V was still looking through the window of the car, now watching a standing parade as the limousine moved past the standing at attention soldiers.

The limousine stopped in front of a wide and high staircase with red steps that led to large red doors with handles of gold that had even more standing at attention guards in even nicer uniforms than the guards who stood beside the gates outside. Ariadne opened her door in the back of the limousine and walked around to the other side where she opened the door for V. She held her left hand out and V exited the automobile and with Ariadne ascended the red steps to the red doors which were ceremoniously opened for them when they reached the top step. V was now the guest of the King in the Summer Palace and as a guest of the King in the Summer Palace he was afforded certain comforts.

That night V went to his bed in a room nearly as large as one of the tents in the refugee camp. The bed in the middle of the room had great wooden posts that reminded V of the pipes that held up those tents. These posts were sturdier than the metal pipes that held up those tents. He knocked on one of them, the oak was as solid as if it was still firmly planted in the ground. He then shook the tree and the bed did not move.

V had to use a footstool to climb in and then sunk down into the soft cushions like he was falling into the sea. V made sure to keep his head up on the pillow so he wouldn’t drown. As he tried to rest he fondly remembered all of the hard beds in his life. He had never liked the plush wilting cushions of a soft bed not because he was an ascetic or felt some need to punish himself but because of an aching back that needed the firm support of a hard bed. This was the reason he had found the bed in the cell in the brig in Damasia to be so comfortable and why he did not like the bed in the expensive hotel and it is also why he had great difficulty resting now that he had been afforded every luxury from King Harold and the Kingdom of Lyonesse.

V tried to raise his head, his body falling further into the sea and looked down to the floor. Maybe he would be more comfortable on the floor. Then he looked to the edge of the bed trying to find the stool he had used to climb into the bed. He could not see the stool from his vantage point. It was too far away now. V figured he would stay where he was.

After an hour of deep concentration and focus V began to drift, his body and mind about to float away from the palace. It was when he found himself at this point halfway between this world and the next he heard the sound of a loud woodpecker going to work on a piece of wood. In his drifting state he thought this was odd because as far as he knew there were no woodpeckers in Lyonesse. He resisted returning to the consciousness of the material world as long as he could but the woodpecker was insistent and wouldn’t stop working on its piece of wood. Finally, the woodpecker stopped. V tried to relax and drift again, but he heard the woodpecker once more. The woodpecker was rummaging through its pockets and put what sounded like a metal key into the lock of the door. In his drifting state he thought it odd a woodpecker would know how to use a key, this was far odder than the fact that the woodpecker was in Lyonesse.

V lifted his head as much as he could lift his head and looked at the door as it opened in the darkness. A blue shroud moved inside and closed the door behind. The moonlight was strong through the open windows and lit the room in cold clear light. The shroud made its way to the bed. V tried to sit up on his elbows, but his elbows sunk in the bed leaving his head at the same height it was before. The blue shroud removed her blue shroud and the face of a beautiful young woman appeared. Her cloak dropped to the floor revealing a thin gown that in the bright moonlight was a pane of glass.

“Hello, sir, I am here for you.” The young woman said as she began to climb into the bed without use of the footstool despite the fact that she was shorter than V. V tried to look down to the floor, to see how she had gotten into the tall bed so quickly but by then she was next to him on top of the covers, her face shining in the strong moonlight.

“Can I help you?” V asked.

“I am here for you.” She said again in a polite but certain voice. Moving to pull the sheet down from V.

“Have you been sent here?” V asked while he fought her over the sheet.

“I am here for you.” She said a third time, now upsetting V a little.

“I understand that you are here for me.” V said. They were still fighting over the sheet. “What if I refuse?”

She let go of the sheet with a sad, maybe frightened, look on her face.

“Then I will be disappointed,” she said.

“Will you be disappointed or will the people who sent you here be disappointed?”

“I will be disappointed,” she repeated unconvincingly.

V inhaled a deep breath and then exhaled making a sound like a sigh. This was not a sigh but the young woman took it as one. Her body slumped at the sign of disapproval.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, I am sure,” V said. “I would like to rest now.”

With this, the young woman descended from the high bed, replaying all her motions in reverse, the blue shroud covered her body once again and the heavy door opened and closed once again and the young woman in the blue shroud was gone.

V rested his head back on the pillow, his body sinking deeper into the no longer calm sea. It would take him some time to begin drifting again. He closed his eyes and tried to force himself to disappear. After many minutes, maybe an hour, he was at the edge of the world, ready to look down, when a loud, heavy thump brought him back to life.

This was not the knocking of a woodpecker, but the sound of a more confident and forceful creature, the sound of a charging bull knocking into a strong wooden obstacle. After several rounds of thumping, the bull produced a key much like the woodpecker before it and the sound of metal turning metal was heard again and another blue shroud appeared in the bright even moonlight that shone in the middle of the room. This blue shroud was shorter and sturdier than the previous version, but it was more purposeful and determined in its movements and reached the bed with little hesitation. The blue shroud dropped to the floor revealing a woman a decade or two older than the one who had just left. She was wearing a tight black gown that accentuated her features and climbed into the bed with even more ease than her predecessor. She was on top of the sheet and on top of V in no time, applying a pleasant amount of force in her attempts to remove the fabrics that covered V.

“You made the right choice. Beauty is nice, but skill is much more pleasing,” she said.

As before, V resisted these attempts. She was not as easily dissuaded as the previous woman and V had to use much of his strength to hold the sheet in place. But V was losing this game of tug of war.

“Stop.”

“That’s what they all say, but they don’t mean it.”

“I’m serious. I mean it.”

“Is there a wife. Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“There’s no wife.”

“Never?”

“There was once.”

“But not anymore.”

“No.”

“Then there is no problem.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you.”

“Then we will have to do other things.”

“No,” V said again, this time with a finality that the woman understood. “Go back to your room. Say whatever you want to whoever you want. But I am not interested.”

The woman in the black negligee took in this information, waiting for a couple of seconds, and then said calmly. “I understand.”

V looked at her with confusion. He had not expected to snatch victory from defeat so quickly.

“Yes, I understand,” the older woman repeated now confident in her understanding.

She climbed down from the bed and her blue shroud once again covered her body and in her direct purposeful way she left the room and V was alone.

V, tired, now even more tired than before, let his head hit the pillow, the air of the pillow and the several pillows underneath that pillow blowing out air like a vent.

V pulled up the covers and turned over. There would be no drifting, but he could try to rest his tired body. A quarter hour passed and V’s tense body had only partially begun to unspool when there was another knock that was neither a woodpecker nor a bull, that was somewhere between the two different knocks.

“What?” V said sharply to the knock behind the door.

As an answer to V’s question, the door opened without the need of a key and a young man entered and walked over and stood under the spotlight of the moon in the middle of the room.

He was as young as the first woman, both with the innocence that comes with a life balanced finely on the edge of the last years of its teenage decade and the first years of the next one.

“I have been sent to you, sir.”

V hung his head.

“Some say it is unnatural, but the King understands, a holy man may have unique needs.” The young man reached the bed and was ready to climb in.

V’s arms were getting tired and he did not know if he had the strength for another round of tug of war, so he put up both palms to the sky and stopped the young man before he could climb in. The young man looked at V’s palms and stopped his movements.

“It is not what I want.”

“There is no need to hide your desires from me,” The young man said starting up his movements again.

“I am not hiding,” V said raising his palms once again.

“I have been trained,” the young man said, his knee now on the bed.

“Trained for what?”

“For entertainment. I can entertain you for the night in any way that you like.” The young man now had both knees on the bed, his body moving forward. V’s palms rested against his chest stopping him from moving closer.

“I do not need entertainment,” V said behind a sad smile. “I have had enough entertainment.”

The young man did not know what to do.

“You are being used,” V said, “as the others sent here are being used. Go and tell whoever it is that sent you I do not need entertainment from my hosts. I seek other things.”

“Comfort? I can provide comfort as well.”

“I seek more than comfort.”

With this, there was silence in the room, the young man did not know what to say and V made no effort to fill in that silence. V gave a gentle nudge with his hands and the young man descended from the bed in his state of confusion, both feet now firmly planted on the floor.

The young man did not have a blue shroud to put back on but he left the room as the others had left before him and locked the door. He was the last visitor for the night. V did not go back to drifting, instead he stayed awake staring at the beautiful mosaic that patterned the ceiling far above his bed. He could hardly make out the shapes in the strong moonlight. He used his imagination to fill in the details, the shapes moving and transforming with every turn of his head. V moved those shapes into place completing the puzzle by the time the moonlight was gone and the arms of the sun were threatening to pull down the horizon. It was only then did V close his eyes and go to another place.

Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty
Previous Chapter: Chapter Eighteen