Stag Night

Stag Night

~ XIII ~

Tigerseye

Down, down, down. Shallow depressions in the centers of the marble steps told the tale of many, many feet that had trod the stairs before them. Candles burned in brass sconces, throwing shadows on the walls like the outlines of dancers writhing on stage but seen through the curtain in outline only so that all the eye saw were the lithe and flowing limbs, not the individuals.

James led, although he hadn’t a clue as to where they were going and half-wished they wouldn’t find anything. As the wall curved gently, the stairs continued down without giving a hint as to where they were leading. They didn’t speak as they descended, each lost in his own thoughts. After some minutes--keeping track of time was difficult when each turn of the spiral staircase yielded only more steps and the same soft candlelight--they stopped going down and began to zigzag upward through a series of short flights and landings.

“What’s Lily up to?” Peter wheezed as he tried to keep up with James’s longer strides. Never in good shape, the evening had taken its toll on him.

“Mmm?” James had been hypnotized by the rhythm of one stair after another and by the flickering candles that marched along beside them. He shook his head as if that could make him focus on the here and now. And that made his neck go into spasm again. Considering how little sleep he was going to get tonight--it must be nearly midnight by now--he wondered what sort of shape he’d be in tomorrow.

“Lily?” said James as he slowed down to let Peter catch up. He noticed shiny beads of sweat rolling down Peter’s forehead. “I don’t know. She and her friends were going to meet at my place and do whatever brides do before a wedding.”

“Try on clothes, talk about size…” quipped Sirius from behind, “…of the bridegroom, that is.”

“Thanks for that, mate,” James said with a short laugh. “Lily’s far more sensible than we are, so I suspect she’s already gone to bed. Busy day tomorrow and all that.”

“Early start, I suppose.” Peter caught at James’s sleeve as he spoke, laboring to catch his breath even as he forced a weak smile. “Are you sure you don’t need some help in the morning? Or maybe Lily does? I could show up early and, you know, help.”

Sirius caught up to the pair and gave Peter a shove on the back as he passed, saying, “No worries--all taken care of. Let’s just find this bloody club. Merlin’s beard, we’ve been at it long enough.”

“Sirius is right--about the wedding, that is,” James said. He halted on a landing and looked Peter over critically. “Besides, you need some rest; you don’t look well.”

“Fine, I’m fine,” stammered Peter, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about me I’ll--No, I’m just thinking of you.”

Peter’s small, dark eyes were locked on James’s; the warm candlelight that bathed his sweaty face failed to soften the pale, unnatural color. James thought Peter had overdone it a bit. He’d taken a genuine liking to Lily (and this pleased James) and had helped with a lot of the wedding details, but perhaps he was trying too hard. Peter always wanted to please people, but sometimes he hurt himself by doing so.

Remus halted to stare thoughtfully at Peter, too, and wondered why his friend seemed so distraught about this whole venture. Of course, Peter probably wanted to make sure that he got proper credit with James for the evening’s ‘entertainment’ (and they should find out soon enough just how entertaining it would be). Peter had always looked up to James, had tried to please him most of all. Perhaps that was his only motive. Remus almost believed it, but something about Peter’s distressed, nearly maniacal determination didn’t seem quite right.

“Ho, lads!” called Sirius from above. “I think we’re here!”

James and Remus quickly mounted the last two flights of stairs to find Sirius standing in front of a set of double doors flanked by two torches set atop tall, wrought iron stands. The warm light reflected off the doors’ dark polished wood and highlighted the familiar tracery of the Tigerseye pattern worked into the large gold door handles.

“Hey, wait up! Wha--” Peter cried out breathlessly, the last to arrive. Remus put out an arm to keep him from falling forward as he stumbled on the final step.

“Shall we knock or just walk right in?” Sirius smirked at his friends, his hand half-raised as he approached the door.

Before his fist could connect with wood, however, the doors swung slowly and silently outward, forcing Sirius to step backward. An enormous man filled the doorway, standing almost two-and-a-half meters tall and wearing a flowing purple robe. His short white hair and small pink eyes, deeply set in a lumpy face, reminded James of an albino rabbit from his childhood.

“Hullo,” said Sirius. “We’re here to--that is, we’d like to--” He looked over his shoulder at the others and, with a quick lunge, seized a trembling Peter and dragged him forward so that they both stood in front of the giant doorman. “This is Mr. Pettigrew.”

The albino doorman bowed slightly and, stepping aside, motioned for them to enter. They never figured out whether “Mr. Pettigrew” was the key to gaining entrance. All such questions were soon forgotten. Tigerseye at last!

They found themselves in a spacious anteroom. Thick, red tapestries hung on the walls to either side. Above these hangings, just below the ceiling, were frescoes painted in a Classical style: pictures of persons in gaudy colors with a geometric border at top and bottom--the same design as on the Tigerseye key. Another set of doors, with the same golden handles and dark, polished wood, was closed. What lay beyond had to be left to the imagination, for the moment.

“Shoes. Coats,” said the doorman in a thick foreign accent. He motioned to a marble bench that ran along one wall. Perplexed, they sat down while the albino drew aside the red curtain on the wall opposite the bench to reveal a shadowy alcove that contained cubbyholes of different shapes and sizes. The large man had to duck to get inside.

Resigned to whatever came next, Remus set to work taking off his boots; anticipation mingled with curiosity and a leaden sense of dread.

“Merlin’s great bloody balls!” chortled Sirius, who had been studying the artwork instead of taking off his boots. “I haven’t seen that one before, didn’t think it was possible, but...”

“Whatever are you--“ James looked more closely, as did Remus and Peter, at the frescoes just below the ceiling. James coughed and Peter giggled.

How had they failed to take note of the scenes of naked men and women engaged in various acts up there on the wall? They should have expected such things perhaps; but everyone except Sirius appeared startled.

“All right, Sirius,” said James calmly, although he was somewhat red in the face, “would you care to give us your score? I mean, how many have you attempted?”

“Not nearly enough, mate,” Sirius said as he shoved sideways into James, who was sitting next to him.

Remus suddenly recalled where he’d seen similar pictures. He had been nine when his parents had dragged him all over the ruins of Pompeii on a summer holiday. Long afterward, he wondered whether his parents had believed that his curse would be a terminal illness that would cut his life short. In any case, they had been convinced that he should have a good education, part of which consisted of traipsing through ruins in medieval abbeys and castles, Moorish palaces, and Greek and Roman ruins.

Sirius reached around James and poked Peter, then pointed at one particular painting. “Now, you’d do well to start with that one over there. Don’t try any of that advanced stuff first, right?”

Peter squeaked, even more nervous than before, and suddenly become very, very interested in taking off his boots.

When the albino emerged from the closet, he carried a large, open box. He knelt down in front of them, setting the box on the stone floor, and took out four pairs of black leather slippers. He set a pair in front of each of them.

“Ugh, Sirius,” groaned James, “when’s the last time you took off those boots? Last week?”

“I’ll have you know I put on clean socks this morning,” retorted Sirius as he tossed his boots into the box and stuck his feet into a pair of slippers. “Nothing’s too good for our James.”

James, who’d been putting off the question of his own boots, couldn’t actually reach far enough to pull them off. He could only stretch his arms part of the way before agony set in and his shoulders froze.

“Here, let me,” Remus said, taking note of his friend’s distress. He knelt in front of James and pulled his boots off.

James mumbled “Thanks” and massaged his neck.

Sirius and Remus took off their coats: Sirius’s black leather, which was absurdly hot to wear in the London summer, but too ‘cool’ not to wear; and Remus’s mud-splattered wool. Peter clutched protectively at his Nehru jacket with the pink and yellow flowers as if he wasn’t up to taking any clothes off just yet.

Remus stood a little apart from the others seated on the bench. He watched the doorman silently fold the coats and lay them in the box with their boots. Time slowed to a crawl, and he wondered if his friends felt this, too. The albino put the box into the closet and re-emerged carrying a long, thin black lacquer box. A curious box.

“Here. Wands,” grunted the enormous doorman. He opened the box and held it out in front of James, Peter and Sirius. Cradled in his large thick fingers, the box looked small, but it did seem to be of a length for wands.

As the others stared, puzzled, at the box and at the albino’s impassive face, Remus felt a slight breeze at his back and caught a whiff of that sweet scent of flowers from the mysterious pool they’d encountered earlier, along with other smells, tantalizing this time instead of sickening. The other set of double doors had silently opened partway and a woman stood on the doorstep. No giantess, she was of normal height with long, thick red hair that had a white streak rippling down one side. It didn’t make her look old (her age was hard to determine)--rather, decidedly exotic. She had warm, liquid eyes that hovered between blue and green, set in a round face. Her mouth curved into a mischievous smile that hinted of things pleasurable and mysterious. She nodded to him and held his eyes for a moment, as if the two of them were suddenly the only people in the room. Remus found that his breath quickened in a novel and not unpleasant way.

“Our wands? In there? What is this?” said Sirius hotly to the stolid albino, who continued to hold the box in front of the three of them without saying another word.

“There is no problem, I trust?”

Sirius, James, and Peter stood as one at the sound of her voice, as smooth as water cascading over well-worn pebbles.

She wore a sleeveless dress that fell to her ankles, loose and cinched at the waist with a gold belt. The fabric shimmered and the color shifted from white to purple to green as she glided into the room and signaled to the doorman with an almost imperceptible nod. He gave her the box, then bowed and backed out through the double doors, closing them before they could catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.

“Welcome, guests.” She smiled warmly as her gaze rested on each of them in turn. Remus regarded her coolly, James blushed, Peter looked at his feet, and Sirius seemed to calm down, curiosity overwhelming his irritation.

“Yeah, about the wands. I didn’t mean to cause trouble, but I thought that at a place like this, which isn’t exactly like…” Sirius began.

“--like one of those sleazy houses in Seven Shoe Alley? Here, as there, the Ministry makes the rules and we must abide by them,” she said with a world-weary smile, her eyes fixed on Sirius. “You shan’t need your wands while you’re here and they will be safe, I promise.”

“I reckon a bloke could have a good time without a wand.” Sirius winked at James and, with a shrug, put his wand in the box. The others did the same.

She replaced the lid on the box and directed her attention to Sirius. “How shall I call you?”

“Sirius, er, just that, I suppose.” Like a schoolboy called upon to recite something for the teacher, he shuffled on his feet, then stuck his hands defiantly in his pockets.

“Place your hand on the top, Sirius.”

He slapped the box and it turned from black to green to blue; in the end, it resembled a peacock feather. She tried to open the box, but it wouldn’t yield to her fingers.

“Sealed, you see? And unsealed only at your touch. Does that satisfy you?”

After Sirius had nodded in agreement, she put the box away in the closet and swept the heavy red curtain closed. Her movements were as fluid as a dancer’s. Watching her, Remus felt that time still moved at a slower than normal pace, but he didn’t mind.

“You may call me Madam.” She turned back to them, her arms held out invitingly. “And how should I call the rest of you?”

Sirius gave Peter a significant look and, after Peter failed to speak, said, “This here’s Peter.”

“Of course,” she said, shifting her gaze to a rapidly coloring Peter, who looked as if he might choke. “I trust your father is well?”

He recovered enough to splutter, “Father’s out of--that is, I borrowed the key for… for our friend here.” Peter clutched James’s arm like a life preserver in a choppy sea. “He’s getting married tomorrow, so I thought--we thought we’d show him a good time, you know? Father wouldn’t mind about the key, I don’t think…so, erm, here we are.”

“Ah, friendship is a lovely thing,” she replied with a calculating glance at James, “and we shall do our best not to disappoint.”

“You don’t suppose I could have that key back, do you?” Peter said. “Because that stone tiger swallowed it and I need to…that is, Father will be expecting it.”

“How thoughtful of you. No doubt you will want to return it straight away, as if it had never been borrowed,” she answered solemnly, but laughter danced in her eyes. “Don’t worry. The key will be returned to you before you leave.”

Peter was pacified, or at least less likely to dissolve into a quivering lump of jelly. Remus folded his arms and watched the scene, wondering when his turn would come. It seemed so obvious to him, although his friends couldn’t or didn’t see what she was doing. So obvious, and yet his stomach churned and something smoldered inside him, even as his limbs grew icy cold.

“And the bridegroom. How shall I call you?”

“James,” he replied and offered his hand, thrusting it forward with an awkward jerk that made him wince. “Sorry, bit of a kink in my neck at the moment.”

“We shall see what we can do,” she replied confidently. Instead of taking James’s outstretched hand, she twined her arm around his and drew him forward, toward the doors that led inside to delights only hinted by the smooth purr in her voice. “You might find a bath relaxing. Tigerseye is known for its Roman baths; they’ve been in continuous use by wizards for sixteen centuries.”

“I suppose that would be relaxing--a bath, I mean,” said James.

“Bloody hell!” roared Sirius and glared at James. “We didn’t drag you all this way for a bloody relaxing bath. Come on, then, James. Peter here is going to catch it from his old man for this, not to mention having got injured in the line of duty. You owe it to him.”

“Yes, and Sirius is too modest to mention his own efforts on my behalf, the great personal injuries he’s suffered and so forth,” said James with considerable amusement.

“Being Best Man is quite a responsibility,” said Madam. Sirius smirked triumphantly in response. “We offer all manner of relaxation and… entertainment, as you shall see."

She had stopped in front of the doors, still leading James by the arm, and now turned her gaze toward Remus, the only one who hadn’t yet introduced himself.

“Remus,” Sirius prompted, noticing both the woman’s attention and his friend’s impassive face. “This is Remus. He doesn’t say much--probably working on notes for a travel guide, you know, a walking tour of underground London at night or something.”

“Tigerseye would be a rather sensational entry in a tourist guide, for more than one reason. What you see around you was originally built by a wealthy Roman merchant about 300 A.D.; wizards have been operating this establishment ever since. Quite an archeological find, don’t you think?”

“Looks Roman enough, I suppose,” Remus conceded, with a glance up at the painted figures on the walls. In fact, he did remember such frescoes from his childhood, although those had been murky and hard to interpret, with faded paint and a background of chipped stone. His parents hadn’t explained them and when he’d tried to ask questions (“Why is that man spanking the lady?”), they had quickly moved on to the next stop on the tour.

“To be sure,” he said stiffly, “the paintings, in particular, seem rather characteristic of a certain quarter in Pompeii.”

“And a scholar, too, I see.” She rewarded him with another mischievous smile. “You will find that Tigerseye is a bit more spacious than the lupanaria of Pompeii where the lupae, or ‘she-wolves’, plied their trade.” Remus flinched slightly. The mysterious woman regarded him shrewdly; her gaze seemed capable of taking in much more than he wanted to reveal. “Did you not know that? We do like to think that a visit to Tigerseye will be… educational.”

The awkward silence dissolved as Sirius roared with laughter. Remus laughed, too, although out of unease rather than amusement. He didn’t like the way she stared at him, totting up his reaction and those of the others on some unseen abacus.

“You didn’t know that?” said Sirius, giving Remus a pointed nudge. “No? I’d have thought if anyone--”

“Please excuse my friends,” James interjected with a dark glance toward Sirius direction. “It’s been a long night and some of us are tired.”

“Don’t give me any of this ‘tired’ shit,” said Sirius thickly. “Sure, I may be a little short on sleep--and whose bloody fault is that, eh?--but at least I don’t have a fucking broomstick up my--”

“I’m sure that could be arranged,” Remus said hastily. He wondered if there was any club in London that wouldn’t want to throw Sirius out in his current sleep-deprived and belligerent state.

“Let us go inside where such things can be discussed,” the woman purred as she took Sirius’s arm, linking it with hers. She inclined her head toward Remus, who opened the large double doors leading inside. She swept through with James and Sirius on either arm. Remus and Peter followed in her wake.

The soft glow of a fading, summer twilight. The tinkling of a fountain. The sweet smell of flowers. The sharp smell of burning candles.

Simple things, when novel and unexpected, can overwhelm the senses. What did they expect to see? A repeat of the mind-numbing scene in Seven Shoe Alley? A club, posh but stodgy, suitable for lawyers? What they did see wasn’t close to either of those extremes, but something else entirely.

The soft glow of a fading, summer twilight.

Remus took in the most detail; he compared the architecture to what he remembered from his childhood holidays and wondered at the antiquity of the place. The enchanted ceiling, unlike the Great Hall at Hogwarts, didn’t reflect the true sky outside, but an evening sky just after sunset. Soft clouds, lit by a faint glow that suggested the last lingering rays of the sun, rolled across a deep blue background. A sliver of a moon, a ghostly white flower petal, wove in and out of the clouds. Marble pillars ran along both sides of the long room, as if they might be holding up the sky, and ended in carved tendrils that caressed the gentle curve of the vaulted ceiling.

The tinkling of a fountain.

Beneath the ceiling lay a paved floor with a rectangular pool in its center, reminiscent of the smaller pool they’d encountered at the end of the alley leading to this place. A small fountain bubbled and splashed in the pool--no music this time, just the plinking of water into a copper bowl. The same white flowers ringed this larger pool, luminescent lilies with the same sweet aroma.

Beyond the pool, an enormous white tiger sprawled lazily on the stones. Not another statue, this tiger flicked its ears and its eyes followed their every movement.

Peter gasped and then stifled a nervous laugh. He pulled on Remus’s sleeve and pointed to the far end of the hall. Was it the lounging tiger that upset Peter? No. It became obvious that it was the marble statue at the end of the hall. Soft candelight fell on the curves of two forms: a male figure stood and a female figure knelt in front of him, long hair cascading down her back. Both were naked, the man had his mouth open and his head thrown back, one hand twined in the woman’s hair. Even from a distance, it was clear what was going on.

The sweet smell of flowers.

“Like to get some of that, would you?” Sirius chuckled, noticing Peter’s agitation. He breathed deeply. Here, where the cloying scent of the ghost-flowers mingled with other, more earthy scents, he didn’t feel trapped and claustrophobic as he had in that little courtyard they’d come to earlier. The other scents, musky and spicy, tickled his nose, made him excited, banished his fatigue more effectively than any spell--at least for a time.

The woman smiled at him. She knew what he was thinking. That was her job, wasn’t it? Sirius wondered if all the women at this place were as beautiful.

“This all right with you, James?”

The sharp smell of burning candles.

“It’s… lovely,” James murmured. Beyond aesthetics, the place had a solid, comfortable feeling, not like home or Hogwarts castle, to be sure. Even though the ceiling was high--how high was difficult to tell because of the ever-changing sky scene--and the hall was long, the scale felt comfortably close, like a walk under a night sky in a sheltered, wooded glen. Candles flickered in iron candelabra atop metal stands in the four corners of the hall. Marble pillars glowed with a soft patina of yellow-orange, but the porticoes behind them were deep in shadow.

“Welcome to Tigerseye,” the woman said. She detached herself from James and Sirius and glided toward the edge of the pool; the many-hued fabric of her dress swirled around her as if blown by a summer breeze.

On cue, the white tiger rose and gave a low rumbling growl that startled the four visitors--Peter most of all. He clung to James and cowered while the enormous beast padded placidly along the length of the pool toward Madam, the mistress of ceremonies in a show that was about to begin.

“This is Shambhalananda, but you may call her Shambles,” she said. The tiger purred happily when she grabbed a handful of fur from its enormous neck and playfully shook it. “And now, if you’ll follow me, we shall provide you with refreshments and… entertainment.”

And they followed her like baby ducklings imprinted on a mother of an unknown and exotic species.

-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-