The Travels of Anadrasata Nearabhigan: Day 12
So, Anadrasata had a full day in Amnestri and used the word "interesting" a lot. I wrote many pages and then had to type them out. In the middle of that I came down with a 48-hour virus with fever and stuff - cannot recommend.
This runs to 3,683 words and I hope that you enjoy it.
Index Page.
Onnaday, 22 Ochd, 1893 C.E.
Dear Journal,
When she brought me the hot water this morning, the maid told me that because several of the other parties staying overnight had already left, a private parlor would be available for me to breakfast in. She also passed on a message from the landlady that my tour guide would call for me at ten.
I got ready quickly and went downstairs for breakfast. My parlor this morning was not the one I lunched in yesterday - that one looked out into the square while this one looked into the courtyard. I asked if there was a newspaper I could have to read with my breakfast (I was eating alone so reading at the table could not be considered rude) , and I was offered three. I took them all.
Dear Journal, yesterday morning's incident with the Pearlish Star and the Empress Mhaihoild was on the front page of the local and provincial papers, and on page three of the Imperial Clarion. [Apparently Amnestri is big enough to have papers printed locally from pre-scheduled articles and telegraphed current news items.] There were pictures of both ships and their captains, a rundown of events as known, and many quotes from titled passengers on the Empress Mhaihild. There was a comment in the local paper that Pearlish Lines had declined to share their passenger list with any party other than the Board of Inquiry. Speaking of the Inquiry, the officers and crew of both ships have been forbidden from speaking of the incident until they have given evidence at the Inquiry. That probably explains the numerous passenger quotes.
My mother saw no point in getting a newspaper from the capital after my father died, so at home we only get the local and provincial papers. I was pleased to find that the opinion pieces in the Clarion are as enjoyable as I remember them being.
After breakfast I just had time to check with the booking office next door that the Pearlish Queen will be departing tomorrow and double check what time my luggage and I need to present ourselves to board. The Pearlish Queen is running to schedule but the Pearlish Star is marked as delayed by three days, "Due to BOI."
I returned to the inn and just had time to ready myself to leave before my tour guide arrived. Miss Teyettrot is a few years older than me, and a city accredited guide. We began our tour by getting a cab to the Prnice's Palace.
The Prince's Palace is a long, white building that's three storeys high at the front and faces almost directly onto a square - which is much more of a long rectangle in shape. Miss Teyettrot told me that the location was originally selected because it was far enough from the sea to be out of range of normal storm surge and to make the occasional coastal raider work for access. There are extensive gardens around the sides and back of the Palace. Admission to the interior rooms open to the public is by ticket, which Miss Teyettrot had purchased for us in advance yesterday afternoon. Our first stop was the portico where we admired the facade up close and considered the listed names of the residents beside the post box - several bh'Sedloit Ladies were listed, among other occupants of grace and favour apartments within the building, but the senior residents are two Princesses [whose names were new to me.]
The door was opened for us by a footman in Imperial livery! [I have seen pictures.] We were then asked by a more senior servant (under butler, major-domo, chamberlain) for our cards. I produced a card from my reticule, I am so glad that Anna convinced Mother I would probably need them, and Miss Teyettrot produced our tour tickets. The more senior servant was immediately apologetic, they had tried to contact Miss Teyettrot but she had already left her home when the messenger got there, but one od the senior lady residents was holding a tour and luncheon at extremely short notice for friends and the paid access tours would not occur today. Could we return tomorrow?
I pointed out politely that I was in Amnestri only for today. I also said that although it was disappointing not to see more of the interior of the Palace, I would be equally happy to see some of the gardens, if that could be done without intruding on or inconveniencing the residents and their guests. I added that because I came for so far south, even the kitchen garden here was likely to be full of exotic-to-me plants.
The more senior servant lifted an eyebrow, bowed, and asked us to wait while he enquired. When he disappeared through an inconspicuous door, Miss Teyettrot turned to me and gave me a little smile and a nod of her head.
The more senior servant returned with another footman in tow and told us that a short tour of the gardens had been approved. Bastaion, the new footman, would escort us to the nearest garden gate where he would hand us over to one of the more knowledgeable gardeners. I thanked him for taking the matter further for us and Miss Teyettrot thanked him as well. Then I was escorted along the front of the Prince's Palace and around the street corner to a garden gate by a footman in Imperial livery!! I am probably making too much of it, I found it tremendously exciting. Or...what is it when you feel like the world is being shown that you belong? I wish I'd had time to sketch the garden gate because the ironwork would make a wonderful design on a table runner.
Our guide turned out to be Mr Eutteyel, the Assistant Head Gardener. After Bastaion left us to make his way back indoors, Mr Eutteyel took us through a hedged walkway made of trimmed, head high bushes covered in white, highly scented flowers. Also bees, beetles, and butterflies attendant on the flowers. I expressed admiration of the overall effect to Mr Eutteyel and he told me that we were passing through the outer edge of a small maze - the path we were on was only a direct one if you knew where we were going.
On the other side of the hedge-lined path, there was a herb garden. It looked like every other still room herb garden I've seen back home, Mr Eutteyel described it as being in the Bhryoyc style, and there were only a few unfamiliar plants. But everything was so large! Bigger leaves and things that are knee high at home were hip high, in some cases. I complimented Mr Eutteyel on their vigour and asked him if he thought the difference was due to climate, soil, or the skill of the gardeners? He smirked a little and told us that he thought it was due to the longer growing season and, possibly, the differences in variety.
After that we saw the fishpond and fountain Prince Ventteu built for his wife (they were Prince Leeveu's great-grandparents). The pond is filled from the sea and the water is aerated and cooled by the fountain. The surrounding plantings are salt tolerant, and everything was unfamiliar to me. The pool is ceramic lined and quite deep, and 'planted' with a variety of seaweeds and seagrasses - I confess that I do not know the difference. The fish are what is particularly interesting about this pond. It was originally stocked with fish from near Amnestri, with bright stripes, and fish that liked similar conditions from near the Princess' original home. This second group had brightly coloured spots. Normally these fish would never meet, but in this pond they met and bred. Their descendants are now multicoloured variegated fish - there are definite particular colours and pattern themes, but no two fish are alike. These beautiful fish exist nowhere else in the world, and I was lucky to see them - Miss Teyettrot told me that she's never seen them before, although she has seen the fountain in the distance.
The kitchen garden was, well, a kitchen garden but full of plants I've never seen before, or eaten for that matter. All the fruit trees trained along the walls were unfamiliar to me - apparently most of the trees we grow at home either need more cold than they get here to flower and fruit, or they don't thrive in the local soil. There is a vine covering much of the back wall of the Palace that is very popular here and all parts of it are edible - tubers, leaves, stems, and flowers. Both Mr Eutteyel and Miss Teyettrot told me that the fruit and seed are edible, but the flavour is considered - challenging.
Mr Eutteyel then ushered us out a rear garden gate. Again, I would have liked to have sketched it. Miss Teyettrot thanked him for his courtesy and half a block later explained to me that he'd cut a considerable distance off our walk to our next destination because if he'd taken us back to the front of the Palace, we would have had to walk its depth again to get to where we were now. She also congratulated/thanked me for suggesting the gardens - in her opinion the household staff had agreed because they could avoid refunding the cost of out tickets if we saw the gardens.
Our next stop was the Cathedral of Our Mother Who Preserves. It was repaired/remodelled/partially rebuilt around two hundred years ago because of water inundating parts of the foundations that aren't supposed to be wet, and the drying out of parts that are supposed to be saturated. This means that the building is Eyeleutian with some mo0dernish Imperial touches. The stained-glass windows are held to be particularly fine, and with good reason. The main round window over and behind the main altar depicts Our Mother shepherding a fishing fleet back into port with an incoming storm in the background. At home Our Mother is depicted as a pale, wan, colourless figure, but here she has dark hair, golden-bronzed skin, looks like she can handle a shovel or axe without a problem, and she wears garments that end at her knees. There is also a side window that shows her lowering the Eyeleutian ancestors in their boats to the sea after the tidal wave brought them over the mountains. Frankly, direct intervention by a divine-adjacent figure makes more sense than most things in explaining how anyone survived that drop.
There is a little religious paraphernalia/bookstore just inside one of the side entrances and we went in to look at souvenirs and the various other things that parishes and congregations sell to raise a little extra money. I didn't buy any votive candles or medals, but I did get a volume of sermons to replace the Reverend Fairdaice's sermons. I explained that I was looking for something orthodox that reflected on love and kindness (two qualities I found lacking in the Reverend Fairdaice's writing). The lady attendant looked me out a copy of "Meditations on the Healing Virtues" by the Reverend Doctor Eyemayuil Ghaighul. The publication date is 1847 C.E. and there isa bookplate in the front inscribed, "From the library of Dean Rhumail TTuilott." The attendant told me that the late Dean had died without close family and directed that his books be sold to benefit the congregation. I was happy to pay the asking price for a good cause and less than the price of the Fairdaice tome.
From the Cathedral we took a cab to the Promenade Gardens where we stopped at a pleasant little tea house for tea, a plate of small cakes, and a comfort stop. The main feature of the Gardens for me was that it parallels the seawall built to reduce the damage that storm driven waves might do to the city. Mt interactions with the sea are limited to seeing it from above or from a city street. Going up on the viewing platforms on the seawall was much more...intimate. We saw the plaque commemorating Prince Ventteu's victory in hand-to-hand combat against the leader of the Moon Reaver pirates, and the fountain erected to celebrate the Empress Ghairda's twenty-fifth year on the throne.
From the far entrance from where we'd entered, we got a cab to the Amnestri Museum of Art and Sciences. Miss Teyettrot apologised for fitting this in before the lunch she had planned for us but with all the guests from the Empress Mhaihild held over in town, she was trying to get us into the museum while they were having their lunches. Indeed, as we went to enter the Museum, we had to stand aside and wait for a twenty-something party of ladies and gentlemen to leave the building and be ushered into their cabs - which then left in procession to somewhere else. We entered the Museum, Miss Teyettrot obtained a museum guidebook for me, and I bought a bag to carry it and my book of sermons, and then she whisked me up the up staircase as another large group of well-dressed people chattered and clattered their way down the other stairs in the foyer. We strolled through the art galleries - I enjoyed the Neyesan period prints and the TTeluil carvings but felt no desire to linger in the gallery with TToigett Feye's paintings. I do not think I would enjoy the company of someone who found these uncomfortable images interesting - I may have nightmares tonight. The royal portraits were interesting, but I think the bare-chested style embraced by some of the Princes would be too cold to become popular back home.
The transition between the Art and Sciences sections was a traditionally carved fishing boat with eyes and the rudder as a tail - very interesting. Musch of the science was about fish, the sea, and seabirds. Also the rocks of the Circle Mountains. I found the comparisons between the Circle Sea examples and their oceanid equivalents interesting - the salinity levels are different and some of the Circle Sea species are clearly derived from oceanic species but will die if moved to the ocean. Fascinating, but now we know that can we please not do it again? There were also some comparisons between the geology of the Circle Mountains and that of the other ranges raised in the Age of Cataclysms. Again, fascinating. The last gallery we went through displayed finds from ancient Amnestri, discovered when people had dug down for building foundations, etc. At the very end were some rubbings from an archaeological site in the uplands in the north of the Suleggassi Kerajaa that showed the same decorative patterns in their frieze work. The accompanying plaque warned that any direct connection is still speculation at this stage, but I was amazed and I am sure that it is important to at least some Eyeleutians.
At this point we took a comfort stop in the very nice retiring rooms (flushed as at my inn), left the museum and caught a cab to get lunch. We passed several very full restaurants on the way, full of well-dressed people who may have been those we'd seen at the Museum, and as we went past one of them, Miss Teyettrot said disapprovingly, "They do very good food there, but at this time of year they bring their shellfish in from the north coast." The cab dropped us off where the road ended against the seawall, and we walked along a flagged pavement in front of neighbourhood shops until we reached our eating place.
It was a nice day, so the windows were thrown open to the world to let the light and air in. The tablecloths were a woven red and white check, and the cutlery was steel with bone handles. The waiter who greeted us was a middle-aged man with greying hair, a cool golden skin tone, beautiful dark eyes, and a broad nose. He obviously knew Miss Teyettrot and treated her like a valued customer. He seated us next to a window that looked out over the sea, brought us the menus, and apologised that they had no shellfish because they were out of season. When I looked at the menu, I realised that this wasn't a fish restaurant like we have at home, this was a seafood restaurant. I consulted with Miss Teyettrot and ordered a soup, fried fish and tubers, and a fruit dessert to go with our tea. While we waited for our food I observed the other patrons, who were mainly finishing their meals. For the most part, they were prosperous looking men of the business class or in the professions. A table of three behind me were discussing something to do with a sugar contract, and another pair were still negotiating jovially about a warehouse for storing fortified wine when they passed us as they left the room. It was not the sort of place I would ever gone at home, even though it was very respectable, but isn't that one of the points of travel?
The soup when it arrived was seaweed and pieces of a local crustacean called aquequa in a clear broth. Aquequa seem to be very like the yabbies we get back home, but I have not tasted anything like the seaweed before. It was delicious. Miss Teyettrot had ordered the same things I had, and she seemed pleased that I had enjoyed her recommendation. After the soup plates were cleared, we were brought small plat3es of a fish cream in piped piles decorated with orange fish roe. The waiter explained, apologetically, that the apprentice was practicing for tonight and that these weren't well done enough to be sent out to people who'd ordered them so if we could do a favour by eating them? I looked at Miss Teyettrot, she nodded, and I agreed. The cream was fish and crustacean, the whole thing was delicious, and I told the waiter so.
At home fish, being served as fish and not part of something else, is usually grilled, poached, or fried in butter. This fish had been coated in batter and deep fried in fat or oil - I couldn't tell which fat or oil from the taste. The tubers, Miss Teyettrot confirmed that they were the ones we discussed earlier, had been sliced and deep fried too, but without batter. They were accompanied by a tangy seaweed-based dipping sauce. It was a wonderful combination and I much enjoyed it. I can't see it on our table at home though - Mother dislikes deep fried food and forbids it on her table.
Dessert was pieces of fruit that, I think, had been poached in a sugar syrup, soaked in more sugar syrup, and then dried. The servings weren't large (consider the price of all that sugar!) but the little bowls of transparent fruit pieces were lovely to look at. The cup of tea was definitely needed to cut the sweetness.
Miss Teyettrot paid the bill, I saw it and the little fish creams with roe were not on it, and we made our way back to where we could get another cab. On our way we passed a shop selling newspapers, and on a whim I ducked in and bought the latest editions of the three I'd read this morning. Five minutes later, we were able to get a cab that took us back to the inn. I settled my account with Miss Teyettrot - which I thought was very reasonable, given the things I saw, that I was safely conducted around a strange city, and had an excellent lunch in good company - and bid her farewell.
I asked the landlady if I could have the pages of my newspaper relating to the Pearlish Star incident ironed, and explained that I intended to mail them to my older brother with a letter assuring him of my safety. She agreed, and confirmed that she did have a private parlor available for the afternoon and evening, if I wished to book it. I considered my finances and agreed - and booked a porter ti transport my luggage to the port and my boarding area in the morning.
I spent much of the afternoon in my parlor with a jug of water, a pot of tea, and a small plate of finger food in the late afternoon, writing letters to my brother and sisters. I told them all what had happened yesterday morning from my point of view, assured them that I was safe, gave each of them a slightly different but accurate account of my city tour, and muttered things (metaphorically) about the Reverend Fairdaice. I enclosed the ironed sheets of newspaper with my letter to Tallaig so he could see what was going on. I saw all my letters mailed and then considered whether to seek outside entertainment this evening.
There are no lectures scheduled across the square tonight, and the concerts that interest me are fully subscribed, from the notes scribbled on the flyers in the residents' foyer. Also, is it appropriate for me to attend a public performance like a play or a concert if I am on my own? At home, I would either go with Mother, or I could take a maid with me if Mother didn't want to attend (not that I ever have). Also, Mother sometimes goes to these things without me but with her friends....
I decided to stay in and get an early night.
I had another bath while I could and then enjoyed another good dinner with the life of the inn outside my parlor door and the view of the square outside the window. After a glass of fortified wine, I came bac to my room to finish writing my journal entry, lay out a travelling dress for tomorrow, make sure everything I don't need tonight or in the morning is packed, and go to bed.
Anadrasata Nearabhigan