#75 - Home Again?

I am home on the Presentation Balcony, watching the funeral pyre lit.  The House of Gold is here all around me. Kinourae is at my back, holding the ermine and gold train that I wear when sitting in Judgment, when the Law is being upheld.

I look down at my right hand on the red and gold marble railing, the gold and white lace falling over my fingers and almost to my knees as I stand, the tall ebony walking stick in my left hand.

 

The funeral pyre has been stacked over the heading block where ‘mother’ and ‘uncle’ have both just been beheaded, hiding their bodies clothed in penitent whites and expiation scarlet as their heads came off.

The High Priest of Aeono and all his Temple Priests fling their books onto the pile whereupon every book bursts into white flame, showing that my judgment was correct and just, the flames roaring up to over top the walls, showing the gathered crowd that the traitors were dead.

Choirs roar, praising me for my Justice, I’m swaying. Kinourae surreptitiously props me up with one gentle old hand.  “Don’t touch me, I’m become a monster,” I/he say. 

“Sen-Lumes’ Chasseur and Iraton and Houneau and Sen-Glor Moritaux are all watching to see if you’ve gotten as weak as they suspected.”

I snarl at him.  “I’ll show them weak!”  There are a couple of snapping noises from the middle of the hellish flames in the courtyard, the popping of a couple of skulls.  I accept a glass of wine from one of my pages, kneeling nearby.  “Good boy.  Go off with you now.”  He scampers away from us and the Sen-Lumes and Sen-Glors and their retinues narrow their eyes at him as he goes, wondering if he is my new favourite.  I drain the glass and turn on my high, red heels.

“We’ve seen justice done, M’sieus and Mesdammes,” I snap.  “Off with the lot of you.”  I pause before smiling into each Lord’s face.  “Go before I decide that my mother and my uncle did not act against me alone.  Go before I question you before God.”  The red column of an Aphoreitos stands right by the door, just to my hand should I wish it and the court frantically bows and curtseys casting their eyes down and away from me.  They recognize a ‘dangerous’ mood and evaporate out of my sight like piss on hot stone.

“Kinourae.”  I say as the door closes behind us.  Giving me privacy at last.  “Kinourae.  I cannot do this.  I’m a monster. I cannot… I just… I just killed Rutaçyen masquerading as Wenhiffar along with their brother.  My family.  I only have my brother Arnziel left and he’s very sensibly run away from me.”  I crumple to my knees.  KILL ME!”  It’s not a scream but a hiss so that no one outside can hear.  Even as he falls apart he keeps quiet.

“Kill me, kill me… just let me die!  I should have died, should have let them kill me…”  I watch my hands pound upon the expensive rug and the stone floor, the skin of my hands breaking the lace besmirched with my blood.

Oh, this is the other Ahrimaz, trying to be me.  Poor soul.  “It’s all right.” I say to him rather than out his mouth but he cannot hear me in the frenzy of his agony.  “You can heal even from this.”

“Kinourae, tell him!” He cannot hear me either, but he goes to interpose his own hands between the flailing fists of the Emperor writhing on the floor and the now damp carpet.  The Emperor freezes rather than hurt the old man.

“Let me run your bath, son.”  My soul has tears though I have no body or mouth to express them, but those of the man playing Emperor and his tears are frozen as mine used to be, his mouth locked tight on… ah… on his forearm.  His scars there are new.  He was fortunate that I was ashamed of them and always wore wrist bands and gold cuffs to hide them.  He would not have had them at the beginning.   

Kinourae gets him up.  Old man.  I loved you.  I hurt you. You were the only family I ever had that never betrayed me even after all we, I, did to you.

Now, when I am not here, I feel betrayed because you are showing love to this man, who I might have been.  He has your heart.  I see it in your eyes.  You used to love me like that.

I watch as careful old hands strip away the elaborate lace and cloth of gold, the silks and the satins, the fire-gems, the expensive cotton underthings and ease this body into the hot, steaming bath that was my only place of safety as Emperor.  Should I feel betrayed?

Should I feel betrayed?  Or thankful?

**

Ahrimaz woke in the velvet dark of the Elephant Hall, with Jagunjagun’s snores and Didara’s whistles marking where they stood in their new sanctuary.

He pulled his nightshirt up over his head and staggered over to the warm pool to plunge into the sandy, heated water, gasping as he rose just enough to float his head onto the pillowed edge.

I was there.  I saw and felt how he was disintegrating.  How much longer can he bear playing the monster before he becomes one?

I do believe I shall be thankful.  It hurts less.