The Malacia Tapestry (9 page)

At this news, it is the prince who falls back in grief. Seizing his chance, Gerald snatches up his sword and runs it through Mendicula's side. With a last glance at Patricia, the prince dies upon her bed.

Sad fanfares herald the end of our drama of the Prince Mendicula.

Promptly at siesta hour, the Hoytola carriage arrived at the Chabrizzi Palace, with Armida's chaperon, Yolaria, sitting rigid inside. Armida made her farewells and was whisked away.

Next day, the same procedure was followed. I was not to see as much of her as I had hoped. Bengtsohn was secretive about the mercurization and would let nobody view the results. But all appeared to be well because we continued to work slowly through the tableaux. With Armida, it seemed as if mercurization had not taken place between us. I wondered how I could change matters. Accordingly, I walked through the thick afternoon heat to speak to All-People. De Lambant came with me for support.

All-People stood stooped in his whiskery nook by the bottom of the scrivener's stair. His antiquity, his frailty, made it appear that his stiff raiment supported him. His goat was tethered nearby; bluebottles investigated its beard. Neither man nor animal moved. Slow smoke trailed off the iron altar and slipped round the corner about its own business. Because of the hour, nobody was waiting to consult him.

I put down a few paras, all I could spare from the money Bengtsohn had paid me.

‘You were correct in what you said, All-People.'

‘I see the truth is worth little.'

‘Alas, so am I. You said, “If you stand still enough, you will act effectively”. You referred to old Otto Bengtsohn's zahnoscope, didn't you? Why was I chosen?'

He threw a crumb of powder on his ashes. They gleamed dully. The stench of Malacia was in my nostrils.

‘The Earth lies in an everlasting penumbra some mistake for light. The Powers of Darkness created all. One shadow merges with another.'

‘There is a girl, All-People, also involved in Bengtsohn's affairs. How can I make sure that my shadow crosses hers?'

‘I am not the one who blesses your amulet. Go ask of him.'

‘I will consult Seemly Moleskin, of course. But you already have a hand in my affairs. I am ambitious and hope you can encourage me more.'

He closed his eyes, lids falling like wrinkled lips, as if to end the session. ‘The Lord of Darkness has his brand on every one of us. To please him, you must gratify your senses until the carriage shatters.'

I stood looking at him, but the long yellow face had closed itself off from my ken. I shuffled, the goat shook its head, nothing else happened.

Going over to de Lambant, who stood at a respectful distance, as the custom was – to overhear someone else's predication was fatally to entangle your own lifelines – I said, ‘Why does the Natural Religion always rouse fear and confusion? Why do I never understand what the magicians tell me?'

‘Because it's all old-fashioned rubbish,' said de Lambant. ‘I haven't had my amulet blessed in weeks and am I any the worse for it? You're taking this girl too seriously. Let's get Portinari and have a drink.'

‘All-People said something about my body being shattered. My carriage, a carriage. It sometimes crosses my mind that life's more complex than you think. I'll go and see Mandaro.'

Guy shook his head. ‘My dear de Chirolo, priests are worse than wizards, Stay away from them. Come, it's hot. Let's tip Portinari out of bed and have a drink and a chat with him.'

‘You go. I'll come along later.'

We parted. I told myself that it was absurd to have a heavy heart when my purse was so light. The priest would do me no good. The company of my friends would be a lot more cheerful. I turned. De Lambant was not yet out of sight. Giving him a call, I ran to join him, and we headed together for Portinari's house.

On the third day of our enactment of the tragedy of
Prince Mendicula
, the mighty zahnoscope was trained upon us when a great clatter started in the courtyard and Bengtsohn bid us wait.

The Chabrizzis were leaving for their summer vacation in the Vukoban Mountains. In other years, Armida told me, they holidayed in a fertile valley in the Prilipits to the south of Malacia where they owned estates; but this year there were reports of Turkish armies moving in that area. As usual, Malacia was encompassed by enemies.

Soon we were surrounded by a congregation of coaches, carriages and waggons piled with luggage and musical instruments, horses, dogs, pet snaphances, cattle and poultry, not to mention adult and infant Chabrizzis, together with their friends and servants. It was all too much for our tableau. Bengtsohn's wife, Floria, tried to dispel the crowd, but it was not to be dispelled until it was ready. Our impresario dismissed us and walked away grumpily with his dark box under his arm.

We were interrupted in the scene where I as the dishonourable General Gerald was taking Princess Patricia to grand balls (represented by one other dancing couple) and similar splendid occasions (represented by a painting of a marble staircase). Such enforced intimacy served to ripen the relationship between Armida and me, not only because we were the two left outside a Bengtsohn-Bonihatch comradeship which extended to most of the rest of the workshop, but because she had taken a dislike to Mendicula, whose bonithatchian sidewhiskers tickled her unendurably for minutes on end as well as – so Armida said – smelling of stale custard.

She took me to one side. ‘The Chabrizzis will leave the palace almost empty, with only a few servants to deter robbers,' she said. ‘They'll all be gone in another five minutes. Fancy, I haven't entered the old place for years – there was some coldness between our families. Now's my chance to explore those nooks and crannies I recall so well before Yolaria arrives with the carriage.'

‘Don't get lost – or found!'

She slipped her hand into mine. ‘Oh, I dare not go alone. You see how grotesque the palace is, standing under that looming rock. Besides, it is haunted by an ancient wizard with flaming eye-sockets.'

‘I'll come too. Shall we take a bucket of water in case we meet the eye-sockets?'

‘Slip in round the side so that nobody will notice us. Come on, it'll be fun!' She turned her face up, smiling in excitement.

I followed her round to a side door and we plunged together into the gloom of the palace. The clatter of the courtyard was lost. In a way, it was like being trapped inside the zahnoscope, with long vistas of light and shade contrived by window and tapestry and wall and corridor. What a place for an assignation! It was up to me to rehearse General Gerald's role as thoroughly as possible, and I followed Armida's ice-blue robe with despatch.

I mentioned that the palace was set under an outcrop of rock. At this point, the Prilipit Mountains had deposited a last great chunk of limestone, some hundred metres high, upon the landscape. The ingenious Chabrizzis, for reasons of defence, had built their home under and into the face of this mass of rock, upsetting the symmetry of composition intended by their architect.

The interior of the building was confusing. The men who built the place had been so baffled by topography that they had in some instances left a curve of staircase incomplete, or caused a passageway to double back upon itself in despair, or left a potentially grand chamber unshaped, its rear wall broken rock.

Armida, a small venturesome girl again, pulled me through the labyrinth, in and out of compartments, up or down large and little flights of stairs, through small doors that yielded enormous prospects, and a banqueting hall that led into a cupboard. Through tall windows, we saw the vacationing party move slowly out of the main gates and down the hill.

When we were exploring an upper floor, Armida led me outside to a ledge of rock otherwise inaccessible, situated several metres above ground level. The ledge was used as a small park in which the Chabrizzis traditionally kept a few tame ancestral animals. Now only three old siderowels were left. In bygone times, these squat beasts had been employed for battle, chained together in rows with lighted fuses on their tails, to throw disorder among the enemy.

The three remaining siderowels were lumbering about, grunting; their sharp side-armour had been filed blunt, to protect them as well as their keepers from harm. Armida ran to fondle one, and it ate leaves from her hand. Initials had been carved on segments of its shell; we found one initial with a date over two hundred years old. These were among the last siderowels in Malacia. All the ancestral animals were dying out.

Inside the palace again, we crept at last to a little chapel, where the richly carved pews of the Chabrizzi faced towards an altar accommodated in a wall of limestone rock. The rock shone with moisture; a trickle of water ran down it with a permanent tinkle of sound which deepened the mystery of the chamber. Ferns grew in the rock, sacrificial candles burning nearby. There was a grand solemn painting of the Gods of Dark and Light, one horned, one benevolently bearded, with Minerva and her owl between them.

We went to the chapel window. It was set against rock. A continual splash of water rained down the panes, dripping from the limestone. From this narrow view we could observe Mantegan in the distance, where my sister and her negligent husband lived. Looking down we gazed into a servants' court. A thin ray of sun struck down into the shadows of that dank area, picking out two figures. I clutched Armida's arm in its tight sleeve and directed her gaze to the couple.

A man and a woman stood close in the court. Both were young, though the man was a slip of a youth and the woman fairly buxom, in apron and mob cap. We could see her face as she smiled up at him, squinting in the sunlight. His face could not be seen from our angle. He bent towards her, kissing her, and she offered no resistance; he placed one hand on her ample breast, while his other hand stole up under her skirt and apron. The familiar actions were embalmed by the sun's rays.

‘Naughty idle servants!' Armida said, looking at me half-mischievously and half-defiantly. ‘Why are servants always so wanton?'

I kissed her then, and played with the ribbons in her hair, letting my other hand steal under her skirt, much as the servant had done.

Armida immediately broke away, slapping my hand. I saw she was laughing and reached out for her. She moved away and I went in pursuit. Whenever I got too close, she would slap my wrist – except once when I caught her and we started kissing affectionately, with her lips gradually parting and my tongue creeping through her teeth; but then again, when matters were becoming warm elsewhere, she went skipping round the chapel.

At first it was fun. Then I thought her childish.

Tiring of the game, I sank down on one of the quilted stalls and let her sport. Above the altar were two curved folds in the rock, gleaming with moisture, which met in a V where water trickled and flashed, and a fern sent out a spray of fronds.

Now an imp had got into my lady. She was unlike her usual restrained self. She removed her clothes as she pranced, humming a tune at the same time. With a remote expression on her face, she cast away her white stockings, moving her arms and legs as if performing to a select audience – I mean, an even more select one than I provided. Very soon she peeled out of her dress. I paid close attention, only half-believing that this was intended for my benefit. One by one her undergarments came away, the bodice last of all, and there was Armida of the Hoytolas, dancing naked for a poor player, just beyond that player's reach.

Although her body was on the slender side, nothing about Armida was less than perfectly formed. Her breasts bounced so beautifully, and her taut buttocks, to a rhythm of their own. The hair at the base of her small stomach was as dark and vibrant as that on her head. My eyes stood out like her nipples at this marvellous entertainment. What a peach of a girl! And what did she intend? I prayed that it might be the same as I did.

Finally she stopped before me, still out of reach, holding her hands before her private parts in belated modesty. Her garments were strewn all over the floor.

‘I danced here like this once before, long, long ago,' she said in a meditative voice, ‘and have always longed to do so again – free of my family, free of myself. How I wish I were a wild creature!'

‘We are in a shrine to female beauty. If you turn about, you will see what I mean upon the wall.'

This I said ponderously, pointing at the V in the limestone wall and slowly rising from my seat as she turned to look.

‘The rock has delineated the fairest parts of a spectral female. The fern grows where it does out of modesty, do you see what I mean, Armida?'

By which time I placed an arm round her neck from behind, pointing with my free hand until, as I nibbled her ear, that hand was allowed to drop and circumnavigate her swelling hip, where it found its way along a curve of her V and nestled among the foliage growing there. By which time, she had turned about in my arms and our mouths were together. With the other hand now relieved of its duties about her neck, I tore off my own clothes.

Soon I kicked away my boots and breeches, and we were lying together without encumbrance on the wide prayer-bench of the Chabrizzi, who had certainly never had a better altar to worship at than the one I now clasped.

Armida's last restraints were shed with her clothes – or so it appeared at first, for she seized with delight on what I had to offer and pressed her lips upon it, babbling to it as if it were a dolly, until I feared it would babble in its turn. And yet – even then, she would not allow what I desired. That was reserved for the man she married, she said, or she would have no value in the marriage market; such was the law of her family.

With that I had to rest content – and became content enough for the interdiction entailed the use of pleasant ingenuities to which many lovers have become accustomed in our land. The world was lost, transmuted, in her delicious embraces. We enchanted each other until the sun faded from the rocks outside and the siderowels bellowed for their evening gruel. We dozed awhile. We went downstairs languidly, hand in hand through the bewildering passages, into a conflict of shadows. There were no ghosts, only changes in the air as we moved, vapours, and patches of chill or warmth or damp, to which our skins felt unusually sensitive.