The tram passed the National Theatre. The Calléan Opera House. Hemmington’s white marble department store. A gaggle of pretty women exited the cinema, arm-in-arm and cackling. One glanced upward at the tram and caught Dot’s eye. Dot scuttled her scuffed lace-ups underneath her seat and out of view, even if only to herself.
‘Lecustre Square,’ called the driver, and Dot scrambled from her seat. She thanked him and climbed down onto the pavement, stilling as she saw Saint Penelope’s Cathedral.
It loomed over the square like a giant sat cross-legged, a holy structure built thirteen centuries ago out of stone and green marble, of jade and tesserae.Its spires reached up into the darkness and poked the holes into the blanket of night that now revealed the stars.
Four religions had been practised under the cathedral’s great dome. Incense had changed to idols and then to beads and thento silver. Four times, conquered. With each tumble of the crown, the great cathedral had absorbed the influence of its new inhabitants, along with the rest of the melting pot city. Jade had been added to the dome five hundred years earlier by the Leithians. The grand mosaics were the addition of the Ghists. And the stained-glass mural of the Saint, Herself? Why, that had been there since the beginning, added by the queen, Calléa. Saint Penelope’s wife.
Dot could do little more than stare.
She had no religion of her own. Yet, with an almost divine rapture, she gawked at the far cathedral. Here it was – finally – in waking reality, so much larger than the illustration on her bedroom wall had made it seem. Her eyes darted, trying to catch every detail: the belfry, the carved arches, the purple carpets at the floor of the entrance so obscured by the silhouettes of thousands of tourists and spirits that she had to squint to see them.
So bewitched by the cathedral was she that Dot did not hear the babble of the crowd, nor the cries of the street performers, nor the, at first, polite voice of the mountain spirit asking her to step out of the way of the tram door. She did not hear him when he repeated himself, nor when he cleared his throat – not until he bellowed, ‘For heaven’s sake, girl. Move!’ and shoved her so forcefully that she was thrown onto the concrete.
She landed on her bag, glass crunching beneath her. Her wrist skinned the pavement. Dot lay on the ground for a moment, stunned, her heart thrumming in her throat.
She glanced up to see the mountain spirit disappear into the throng, shaking his head. Eyes were on her. Too many pairs. Dot scooped up her bag, now dripping with sea-green tonic, and hid her face as she darted away, catching only the clipped sound of laughter from the crowd.
Dot pushed through the throng of people, her vision smeared by a flurry of tears, until she found a concrete step at the edge of thesquare and sat down. She opened up her bag and, fingers tremoring, tried to pick out the shattered glass. Two of her blouses were ripped. She mopped up the tonic as best she could with her bath towel.
Tiny insects swarmed the lampposts. The smell of pastry, pistachios and clotted cream wafted from a nearby street vendor. But Dot’s groaning stomach was tempered by humiliation. She refused to look down at her grazed wrist so it was quite by accident that she caught the eye of a pale man, half a century old, wearing a jade-coloured smock.
‘Fortunate,’ said the monk, coming to her, ‘aren’t we?’
He had an accent from one of the northern countries, and his yellow hair was braided down his back. Dot tried to smile.
He seemed to take this as an invitation. ‘How much will you give?’
‘Give?’ asked Dot.
‘To the relief fund,’ said the monk, sitting too close. His breath was sour. She leaned away. He slipped a beaded bracelet over her wrist and handed her a sheet of prayers stamped in a script she could not read. ‘You are a compassionate creature, I am certain. The famine will be glad for your donation.’
‘Famine?’
The monk’s eyes widened.
‘In Beleust, of course. The floods. Did you not see the news of them?’
‘Oh?’ said Dot, clutching her bag a little tighter. ‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’
‘Ah,’ said the monk. ‘The floods were terrible. Last summer, they destroyed so much of the country. Now the spring is here, they have run out of food. Many, many dead. You see this little girl?’ He pulled a daguerreotype from inside his robe, and showed Dot a starved child. ‘My colleague tells me that she will be sold. Salamander, you know him?’
‘Who?’
‘The daemon. He collects servants. Spirits. Children, sometimes. They work in his factories.’
Dot stared at him a moment, and then back at the girl.
‘Bless you,’ said the monk, taking out a ledger. ‘Fifteen silvers will feed twenty families, you know.’
‘What?’ asked Dot.
‘Your donation,’ said the monk.
‘But,’ said Dot, ‘I can’t—’
‘Twelve silvers will do fine,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dot.
