Babylon (20 page)

I shook myself free from Cliticia’s grasp and held my hand out towards the Serpentessa. She took it and, with great effort, eased herself to her feet.

‘Now give me your arm,’ she said. I complied. Staggering a little under her weight, I allowed her to shepherd me across the room.

We came to a halt before her collection of paintings.

‘When I was last in London, my father arranged a consultation with Dr George Savage, the noted author of
Insanity and Allied Neuroses.
In Dr Savage’s opinion, a woman, generally single, or in some way not in a condition for performing her reproductive function, and having passed through a phase of hypochondriasis of sexual character,
often
becomes bedridden. The body wastes, and the face assumes a thin anxious look, not unlike that represented by Rossetti in his pictures of Shulamites.’

We stood before a sumptuous head-and-shoulders portrait of a pale, languid, world-weary female, almost smothered beneath flowers, jewels, feathers, white and gold drapery, and furs. ‘It is called
Monna Wanna
,’ said the Serpentessa. ‘The model is Alexa Wilding, one of Rossetti’s Shulamite lovers. It recalls certain portraits by Titian and Veronese, does it not? It evokes a time when Europe’s courtesans could not reveal themselves to be what they truly were.’ She took a few steps to her right, so that we stood before another painting. ‘This portrait is called
Venus Verticordia.
Again, the artist is Rossetti and the model Alexa Wilding. There is a hungry look about her that is quite... striking.’ She inclined her head. ‘Look at me, Madeleine,’ she continued. ‘There is a resemblance, do you not think?’ It was true: the woman in the portrait had the same flame-red hair. And her lips, like the Serpentessa’s, resembled a sliced pomegranate. But beyond physical likeness, the two were linked by a spiritual bond: Alexa Wilding held an arrow whose long, steel tip pointed towards her ebony breast, as if she had been caught in an amorous rehearsal of her own impending execution.

We moved to the next painting.

‘And this is my favourite: Alexa Wilding as
Lady Lilith.’

‘Lilith,’ said a voice to one side of us. We both turned. Cliticia stood looking up at the painting. The portrait called
Lady Lilith
depicted a red-haired woman combing her hair and staring languidly into her mirror. She seemed spellbound.

‘Yes, Lilith. The dark side of the Goddess,’ said the Serpentessa. To my surprise, she smiled. ‘I can see that she is dear to you.’

A shudder passed through Cliticia’s body. She seemed to come out of a trance. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, no longer one of Lilith’s madeyed votaries but merely a small, buxom novice in a tea gown two sizes too big for her.

‘There’s no need to apologize, my darling,’ said the Serpentessa. ‘Come, let me show you my private sacrarium.’

Hesitantly, and making full use of my proffered arm, she moved to a section of wall that was curtained off. ‘Pull it,’ she said, gesturing towards a length of golden twine that resembled a bell-rope. I obeyed; the curtain slid back, and an alcove was revealed. It housed a miniature altar. Above the altar hung an iron cross. ‘The Black Sun,’ proclaimed the Serpentessa.

‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s not—’

‘But it is,’ she said. ‘It is the Black Sun in all its purity. Soon, its light will shine down on all the nations of the Earth.’ I stared at the cross. ‘It is to be found amongst the Semites,’ the Serpentessa continued. ‘And in Greece it was called
Hemera
and represented the male principle. But these days’—she smiled, almost coquettishly—‘we know it as the
swastika.’

‘La Croix Gamahuchee,’
I said, under my breath. But nobody heard. And it was just as well, for I do not think I could have adequately explained myself, even if the cross’s symbolism was unmistakable: two interlocked figures: the union of Daughter-Earth with God-the-Sky-Father. Not the
hieros gamos
as it was, but as it was always meant to be. I put a hand to my cheek. I was flushed, excited, yet at the same time profoundly disturbed, as if the deepest reaches of my being had been infused with a delicious poison.

Beneath the swastika, and standing on the altar cloth, was something more immediately recognizable. It was a cylinder-seal from Earth Prime. ‘It is my offering to Ishtar-Lilith,’ said the Serpentessa. ‘And of course, to the men who constitute the Master Race.’

I looked more closely. The cylinder-seal showed a naked woman squatting above a man, apparently in the act of coupling. Another man, who stood nearby, held her by the wrist. In his other hand he brandished a dagger. The woman was a succubus. I knew this because the scene was familiar to me from a plate I had seen of a much later Hellenistic Greek relief depicting a naked siren, with bird’s wings and feet, astride a sleeping man with an erect
membrum virile.

‘She is
Ardat lili,
the Babylonian “Maid of Desolation” who once inhabited the Tree of Life in Ishtar’s garden paradise but was evicted by Gilgamesh and transported to the desert wilds. “Ardatu” was a term that described a young woman of marrying age. Thus, the
Ardat Lili
was a young female spirit—a succubus or demoness. She reappears in the Bible and the Talmud as Lilith, who was created with Adam, before Eve, and who later became Mother of the Succubi.’

‘Is that what we are?’ said Cliticia. ‘Demonesses?’

The Serpentessa’s laughter made me uncomfortable. It was like the chafing of damp petticoats. It was the kind of laughter that made you feel unclean. ‘When our cult began to recruit the daughters of rich and powerful families—and as we began to exert growing political influence—so did we turn to the dark, or sinister, left-handed side of the Goddess in order to consolidate our power.’

We walked on. ‘In the coming days,’ she continued, ‘I will show you more of my collection: paintings by Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon, and others. Indeed, I hope to have the whole temple redecorated quite soon. Morris and Co. has already submitted designs. Before very long, Ereshkigal will be one great altar to Lilith!’ She laughed, gently. ‘Ah yes, in the coming days, I will teach you the invocations and much, much else.’

‘The invocations? I think I know some of them already,’ said Cliticia. ‘I was always shaky when it came to Ishtar, but I know
lots
about Lilith.’

‘And I thought it was you, Madeleine, who was the clever one! But a born Shulamite, of course, does not have to rely on book- learning; the dark knowledge flows through her blood!’ And the Serpentessa laughed again, her voice a bird-like trill that rejoiced in all things dark and inhuman.

I was, of course, miffed. I didn’t like to be reminded that I was a Snow White in the presence of the big, bad Black Queen and her little pawn, the commensurately black Cliticia; but I hid it. I hid it because I knew that, despite my opalescent flesh, I possessed a black heart, and it was brimful with venom.

The Serpentessa disengaged herself and gently propelled me forward. We had reached the wall whose entire length was covered by heavy, velvet drapes.

‘Throw open the curtains, Madeleine.’

‘But, Madam—your eyes!’

‘I said open them, Madeleine. Open them upon the Night!’

I walked to where one drape met another, clasped its edge and pulled it back, then broke into a little run to bring it flush against the connecting wall. Hurrying back to the other drape, I repeated the operation, like a V.I.P. unveiling a monstrous plaque, and then came to an abrupt halt, leaving the thick curtain fabric crumpled and swinging from its brass rail.

I had revealed a great oriel window. Hundreds of feet below, the inner courtyard by which I had entered Ereshkigal swarmed with tiny, scurrying girls.

The night poured into the audience chamber, and the blue shadows that had crowded about its nooks and crannies swirled, eddied, finally to be subsumed by the deeper, more terrible shadows cast by the spectral light of the Babylonian moon.

The Serpentessa screamed.

‘Madam!’ I cried. In a moment I was by her side, holding out a solicitous hand. But she chose not to accept it.

‘The night—it is like a serpent inside my head. It is poisoning me. And ... it is glorifying me!’

Cliticia wrung her hands. ‘I don’t like this, Maddy. Let’s go and get ’elp.’

‘No, no one else!’ cried the Serpentessa.

She stumbled forward until her hands were pressed against the glass. And then, tilting back her head, she forced herself to drink in as much of the night as she could bear, her pupils swelling until they almost completely displaced the whites of her eyes.

I averted my gaze and tried to hide my confusion and blushes by concentrating upon the view. Outside the gates, a handful of girls were unloading crates and boxes from
The Empress Faustina
onto a wagon. Within the gates, other girls milled about the storerooms, preparing to receive the supplies brought in from Earth Prime. The temple, it now became obvious, was, like so much of the city, an amalgam of heterogeneous architectural styles. (High above the inner courtyard, I not only looked down at the tiny forms of my fellow temple-maidens, but also at the glazed roofs of the surrounding buildings.) Some wings were neo-Gothic, and might have owed a debt to Nicholas Pugin; others were far older, dating back, perhaps, to Babylon’s founding stone. And some elements were plainly modern and pre-fabricated, in the manner of the Crystal Palace, to facilitate off-world construction by semitrained female volunteers. Lots of iron was visible: black girders and buttresses that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a factory or on a suspension bridge. But more insistent than the iron, stone, glass, brick, and slate, was the inescapable notion that the temple was constructed—not out of the elements of the world’s materiality—but out of the stuff of fevers and dreams.

‘Out there, look!’ cried the Serpentessa. ‘The great mirage of desire! The modern world’s waking nightmare!’ She put a hand to her breast. It tightened, claw-like, kneading the flesh as if she meant to turn her bosom into a single, angry bruise. ‘This conflict between Minotaur and Shulamite, between woman and man: it has gone on for so long. And no one really knows why they kill and we die. London, Babylon: who can tell which is which?’

We dream our dark dreams night after night
, I thought.
And if we dream too long, too greedily, and too well, is it possible that there may come a time (if that time has not come already) when we may not be able to discern dreams from reality}

‘Fantasy,’ stated the Serpentessa, with all the enthusiasm of a clerk making an entry in a ledger, or a shop girl engaged in stocktaking, ‘has colonized everything that was once real.’

And then, for a moment, I seemed to see through her eyes. No matter that Babylon’s moon cast its silvery glow over towers, spires, and gaping rooftops. The darkness outside—as rich as the shadows in the equatorial forests of Africa and as mean as Whitechapel’s midnight wastes—was a
summum genus
of darkness. It was the darkness of all cities, all times. It was the darkness of the city I had never left. Babylon, London, London, Babylon. Both names were subsumed and became one in the grand vista that extended in all directions before me: the nameless place I could never escape. Both were indistinguishable in that great black mirror that reflected the inner darkness of my own heart.

‘None of it is real,’ the Serpentessa continued. ‘It is all a game. But
they
might be real. The ones we call the Men. Oh, tell me, somebody, tell me at least that
they
might be real!’

‘I’ve told you: they are,’ I said, stunned into bluntness.

‘But what are they like?’ she said, frantically. ‘Tell me, tell ine, please!’

She pressed her face against the windowpane, as if she hoped to cool her smouldering cheeks by application of a vitreous poultice. ‘I didn’t have to come here. I could have remained on Earth and still been a High Priestess. Tell me, you two—you two who have actually seen the Men—why did I cross over? Why, why?’

I spoke before I had time to think. ‘Because they are wonderful,’ I said.

‘Maddy!’ hissed Cliticia.

‘The Men are wonderful,’ I repeated, putting my arm around her and abandoning myself to blind faith. ‘And it’s no game, I assure you. The masked ball ended at midnight. From now on, everything is real.’ Gently, I began to rock her.

‘The city is of night,’ she whispered, from the folds of my embrace.

‘Perchance of death,’ I said. Once again, I gazed out at the prospect beneath me. Babylon stretched out as far as the horizon. Things had always been so, I told myself. The Modern Babylon was, and would always remain, my own world’s underlying reality. ‘But everything will be well,’ I whispered, as I continued to rock her in my arms. ‘I know it. Everything will be well... ’

Cliticia tried to separate us.

‘Are you
crazy,’
she said, in as low a voice as she could manage.

I looked her in the eye. ‘Go outside and get the nurse.’ I still cradled the Serpentessa’s thin, enervated, almost ectoplasmic body, in my arms, though by now I was beginning to tire, and was barely able to prevent her from slipping through my aching fingers. She was mad. All that she had said was mad. ‘Please,’ I added, ‘we’re finished here.’ Cliticia ran towards the door.

It didn’t matter, of course. If everything went to plan—the plan that had swum in and out of focus of my mind’s eye ever since we had left the Men’s encampment—Ereshkigal would soon be in need of another Serpentessa, and indeed, several hundred attendant maidens.

We stood on the balcony of our apartment. Gas brackets and chandeliers with crystal lustres illuminated the rooms opposite. Their windows glittered like prisms—prisms that had exploded to fill the intervening air with splinters of hard, white light. The light was incestuous, propagating itself shamelessly, each room, corridor, stairwell, chapel, and refectory seething with glassware and mirrors, so that the temple seemed like a big, ornate jewellery box, or a shrine dedicated to the brilliance of female vanity. It was a fairy-grotto, the retreat of the Lady of Shalott, and the haunt of the Lamiae and Lilim.

Below, walking across the inner courtyard, were a handful of temple-maidens wearing crescent-moon headdresses and black muslin evening gowns. The train had been unloaded, and the girls who had earlier laboured to fill the storerooms with provisions had taken the opportunity to change into the new dresses and bonnets that had arrived in the consignment from Earth Prime.

One of them led a black unicorn by its bridle. Having seen so many wonders, and grown incapable of feeling surprise, I looked more closely. The fabulous beast shook its sable mane, as if eager to conform to mythological type, surrender itself to caresses, and lay its noble head upon a maiden’s lap.

Staring out over the shimmering roofs, I spied a crossroads from which railway lines sprouted towards unseen termini, and, a little farther off, the magnificent Processional Way. There, rising from the tangled wreckage of antiquity, was Esaglia, the Temple of Marduk, and the towering ziggurat Etemenanki. Towards the east lay the Temple of Ninmah—another goddess of the dead— and St Lucy’s, St Agatha’s, and St Theodora’s. And nearby stood the Temple of Ishtar of Agade, which was omphalos of the abandoned residential quarter known as Merkes, the most ancient precinct in southern Babylon. But despite these markers and signposts—so clear now, so easy to discern—I could no longer orient myself. If the temple was overflowing with glass, I saw through a glass darkly, lost in a directionless night.