Authors: Ron Miller
The Iron Tempest (2 page)
Nevertheless, she forced herself to draw him to her breast, clasping her arms around his neck—something she would never had considered doing in her father’s palace, but then, there would have been nothing to gain from such a display.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, his voice muffled by her bosom.
“Are you speaking to me? I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”
“Please, your highness,” he protested, “Neither can I breath!”
She released her hold upon his head and he looked up at her from within her cleavage. His face had purpled nicely from the lack of oxygen and she thought the color an improvement. She felt a twinge of disgust at how the now-wet silk of her bodice clung clammily to her chest. As for the king, he immediately regretted his protest. If he’d had to die, could he have chosen a better place?
“Has Mohammed brought you here in answer to my prayer?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think so.” She then sat beside the king and recited a judiciously edited version of her adventures since leaving her native Cathay, how Roland had again and again saved her from death and worse than death, but how through it all her virginity had remained as intact as it had been the day she left her mother’s womb. This would have been scarcely plausible to anyone giving it a moment’s thought or who knew her even slightly. To Sacripant, however, who certainly had not a rational thought to spare, let alone any inclination to doubt either the word or the purity his goddess, her word was no less than Truth. He would have believed anything she told him, and did.
If that prig Roland
, he thought,
was so stupid and careless as to allow Angelica to escape him, well, then, there’s no reason for me not to profit by his mistake. God’ll never again offer him so rare a gift; far be it from me to repeat his error.
Upon that last thought he brought his dazzled eyes to bear upon the princess, who was so beautiful she was literally phosphorescent. The last rays of the setting sun were lancing through the highest branches of the surrounding forest and they passed through her gossamer gown like Roentgen’s magic rays; the curved figure within was revealed in glowing outline, like a ship’s figurehead radiant with St. Elmo’s fire. It struck the king’s poor heart like a hammer, but the blow to his mind was even worse.
All his resolve, all his knightly duty, all his vows of chivalry, melted away like hoarfrost under the glaring sun of the princess.
If I delay in plucking this rose, such a chance may never come my way again. I’ll be as big a fool as Roland.
Besides,
his thought continued,
there’s nothing a woman desires more, even when she pretends to protest, even when she cries and screams and beats against your chest! Angelica will no doubt do the same, but I know what she
really
means and what she
really
wants—which is at bottom no different from what every other woman wants—and I’ll not let her false protests deter me!
Angelica, in her cold disdain of anyone’s feelings, failed to notice the sudden glow in the knight’s eyes, or the squint they acquired, or the reddening of his face, or the quickening of his breath, or the tightening of his lips in resolve. Therefore it was a complete surprise when he lunged at her and grasped her by her wrists with an iron grip that made her cry out with shock and pain.
“Careful, you big lout!” she cried angrily. “You’re going to give me a bruise!”
“You’ll be receiving a bruise all right, my lady,” snarled the king, bearing her to the ground as easily as a shepherd throwing a lamb for its shearing, “but not where you’re thinking.” Angelica was about to protest petulantly, when she looked closely into the man’s eyes. Then, instead of scolding peevishly, she screamed. This did not particulary distract Sacripant, but the sound of a horse and the jingle of armor did.
A knight had appeared out of the forest. His figure was clad in a gleaming white-enameled brunia, or byrnie—a kind of mail-covered long-sleeved leather shirt that covered the figure to the knees. It was more or less the standard armor for the time (plate armor being some four centuries in the future) and the overlapping white scales of this, combined with the long, feathered plume that waved from the crest of the bullet-shaped helmet, made him look like an enormous bird, perhaps something like a vast cockatoo. There was neither sign nor device to indicate his identity—which anonymity gave the snowy figure an uncanny, supernatural mien. He was mounted on a horse not a whit less white or noble than its master. The animal snorted and its breath puffed in the cooling atmosphere like steam escaping from a charcoal-maker’s kiln.
Sacripant considered this an intolerable interruption, just as he was about to enjoy the pleasures he thought Angelica had been coyly offering him. He leaped to his feet and, with a malign scowl, clasped his helmet over his head and picked up his lance. The other knight seemed to not notice his presence, but merely approached with a maddening insouciance.
The king mounted his own horse, and called to the interloper.
“Lower your lance, sir, and allow me to knock you from your saddle!”
The other’s only reply was to lower his own lance and, spurring his great horse, charge the king. He did this without the slightest hesitation and the king was, for a moment, immobile with surprise. Then Sacripant jammed his spurs into his own mount’s flanks, which, with a startled whinny, took off like a rocket. The ground thrummed like the skin of a kettle drum beneath the pounding of those eight hooves. Two rutting rams never collided with a greater impact and the forest reverberated from the crash. Both shields disintegrated as the lances passed through them. It was not the lance points only that did not waver so much as an inch during the charge: neither did the stalwart horses, which met head on. The king’s, its head shattered like a clay pot, died instantly and fell to the ground like a sack of meal; Sacripant only barely avoided being crushed beneath it. As it was, his left leg was pinned beneath the dead weight. The white knight’s horse was also thrown back onto its cruppers, but as soon as it felt its rider’s spurs it leaped back onto its feet as nimbly as a gymnast.
The mysterious stranger, who had never lost his place, seemed satisfied to see his opponent unhorsed. As silently as he had appeared he turned and galloped off, disappearing into the glowering forest. By the time the king had extricated himself, the sound of his opponent’s horse had become nothing more than a fading series of echoes, like the thunder of a receding storm. Sacripant looked like a shepherd whose flock had just been hit by lightning, and who, rising to his feet, dazed and disoriented, sees himself surrounded by cooked animals. He turned and his agony was only increased when he saw that Angelica had undoubtedly witnessed his humiliation. He groaned and buried his face in his hands. Tears and mucus drizzled from between his fingers.
The princess came and laid a hand on his shaking shoulder.
“Don’t take it so hard, my lord,” she said, in an effort to recompose her anticipated guide. She was afraid that if he relapsed into his prior depression, or worse, he would never want to leave the forest. “It was the horse’s fault that you fell. It was tired and half-asleep. I’d say that, morally and ethically, the other knight was clearly the loser and can hardly add this fray to his credit. After all, he
was
the first to leave the field.”
“That’s true,” agreed Sacripant, cheering up somewhat. Indeed, the princess’ words were so quickly and effectively restoring his spirits that he began to consider reattempting his interrupted advances.
“Who’s that?” asked Angelica, quickly.
“What?” replied the king, angrily. “What is this? Market day?”
Hardly that, but for a remote meadow in the middle of a virtually trackless wilderness, even the lone rider who was now approaching seemed an excessive amount of traffic. It was, as it turned out, merely a messenger, a young boy, in fact, riding a pony. As he approached the couple, Angelica saw that the child was exhausted. His clothes were filthy and his dusty face was drawn and dispirited. His mission was some official one, for beneath the dirt were arms, though she did not recognize them.
“My lord,” the boy said as he came near the king, “and my lady, have you seen a knight errant pass by this way? wearing white armor with a white plume on the helmet?”
“You can see for yourself,” replied Sacripant shortly. “He’s just overthrown me and killed my horse.”
“Just now, my lord?”
“Yes, just now. You’ve barely missed him. He’s gone that way and you’re welcome to him.”
“Thank you, my lord! Thank you very much!” The boy started to turn his pony, but the king grabbed the reins and stopped it.
“Just a moment there, boy. Who was that knight? I’d like to know who threw me.”
“I can tell you that, my lord, gladly.”
“Well?”
“I can see, my lord, that you are a powerful warrior and that no common knight could unseat you.”
“You’ll get an example of my power firsthand if you don’t answer my question!” cried the king, raising a mailed fist level with the boy’s insolent eyes.
“It was a damsel, my lord!”
“A
what?
”
“A damsel, my lord,” replied the boy, his dirty face glowing with reverance, suddenly unconscious of the fist that still threatened it, like the face of a martyr at the stake. “A damsel who is more than brave—she is wonderful and wise and beautiful! Her name is known from here to there—”
“And that name is?”
“
Bradamant
, my lord! It was Bradamant, daughter of Haemon, who stripped you of your honor!”
The boy took advantage of the king’s shock to spur his pony and gallop off. Sacripant let him go; he was too surprised, hurt and angry to protest. He was too ashamed to say anything and the more he thought about it the worse it seemed.
Without a word, he mounted Angelica’s horse, helped her to a place behind him and rode off, defering his enjoyment of her for a time and place a little more private and a little more peaceful.
CHAPTER ONE
In which our Heroine does a False Knight a kindness
and suffers his Treachery as her Reward
Bradamant rode alone, as upright as a spearshaft, gleaming like white-hot iron in her bright armor, so self-assured and confident that one immediately looked, in vain, for the thousand warriors who surely must be accompanying her.
She rode as she did because she thought that was how a knight errant
should
ride. She looked neither to the left nor the right, neither up nor down. She was aware of the landscape through which she was passing, but she refused to acknowledge it. Like a frog that is unconscious of a fly until it moves—and would starve in the midst of a thousand motionless insects—Bradamant tried to allow only those things that should properly interest a knight to penetrate to her carefully-trained consciousness. Everything else—the road, the dust that rose from it, the lazy
clop, clop
of her horse’s heavy feet; the grassy verge that lined the highway, yellow from the dust that settled on it; the occasional low stone walls and the hedges and the crows that sat upon them, watching her with glittering, intelligent eyes; the ponds, some like circular mirrors, others green with lily pads and duckweed, with armadas of geese and ducks cutting meadering paths like the silvery tracks of snails; the undulating pastures dotted with sheep, cattle or goats overseen by drowsy cowherds, shepherds and goatherds, now and then accompanied by a dog or two that glanced with lazy indifference at the passing knight; the vinyards and orchards and the farmland, worked by heavy men behind wooden plows drawn by grim mules, dense with grain in the summer, harvested in the fall by thick, buxom women and dull, red-cheeked girls; the huts, hovels and castles, the hamlets, villages and cities—all passed by her like a grey mist.
She indeed tried very hard to maintain a proper aloofness from the world, but it persisted in intruding itself in the form of an aching butt, dust that made her nose run and a splitting headache from the glaring sun. Such trivial earthlinessesses—unwelcome reminders of her own corporality—not only annoyed her in their own right, they annoyed her by making her aware that she
could
be annoyed. She gritted her perfect teeth in the face of such self-destructive circularity.
She had removed her enameled helmet in deference to the sultry air—the year had just progressed from Joy-Month to the first days of Plough-Month—, and it was now balanced between her legs on the high pommel. She had ridden many miles while agonizing over the question of whether removing her helmet might not be an expression of weakness or self-indulgence before finally deciding—as she so often did—that weakness and self-indulgence were so inimical to her true nature that,
probatum est
, the removal of her helmet could by definition be only a worthy action. Her hair was caramel-colored and cropped quite short—though not by choice: it had been shorn, and inexpertly at that, as part of the treatment for a grave injury she had recently suffered and it had been frustratingly slow in growing back. The frustration bothered her, since it was symptomatic of vanity and vanity was a sin and sin was unchivalric. The hair was still wet with perspiration and clung smoothly to her head like a skullcap of burnished bronze. A long white scar was visible beneath the locks over her right ear, like a pale snake zigzagging through autumn leaves.
Her tanned face was sculpted in bold planes; serious, stern, aloof, with prominent cheekbones shading the hollow alcoves of her cheeks. Her dark eyes had the shimmering metallic luster of hematite spheres, under brows the color and shape of iron scythes. Her broad forehead was supported by the flying buttress of her sharp raptor’s nose. She enjoyed looking down its length from her great height, as if she were sighting along the stock of a crossbow. Her jaw was square and her mouth was straight and serious and full of bright, white teeth she thought were too small but which were not. The cumulative effect was one of dignity, resolve, great strength and—in spite of a haughty aloofness that sometimes seemed dispassionately, superciliously cold—great beauty. The realization of this came as a surprise to many people, especially those who would have doubted that the combination of so many essentially unfeminine and perhaps individually unattractive parts could be assembled into such a greater whole; it would have certainly been scoffed at by Bradamant herself, who wrongly imagined that she had no illusions about her personal appearance. Nevertheless, whatever her self-opinion, she was as reknowned for her comeliness as she was for her prowess at arms. Surely the wise Francis Bacon had her in mind when he wrote, several centuries in Bradamant’s future, that
there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in its proportion.
It was difficult maintaining the unworldliness she associated with her duty, and for which she strove with such desperate if not always successful singlemindedness, especially on sultry, dusty summer days such as this, when perspiration traced muddy rivulets down her face and neck, trickling from her armpits and over her ribs—the droplets tickling like meandering insects—depositing a salty delta between her breasts; when the grit crunched between her teeth, when her breasts and buttocks chafed and itched beneath the sweat-soaked woolen undergarment that lined her steel-leaved brunia (she could have worn linen, but wool seemed more worthy); when incipient saddle sores stung like dagger points; when the sun—like the open door to a glass-maker’s furnace—burnt her face and chapped her lips and made her eyes squint and water from the glare and from the sting of the sweat that streamed from her forehead. And especially when shady bowers and cool, blue pools looked so tempting. It was a trial almost beyond endurance to face such discomfort with stoicism; but when the serfs in the fields and ditches glanced up with their dull, piggish, foolish eyes she knew that they must be allowed to see nothing less than a perfect knight. It was something they expected and needed, and of all her duties Setting An Example was one of the most important.
This aristocratic and idealistic damsel who had so handily defeated King Sacripant was of the venerable house of Clairmont, the only daughter of Duke Haemon and his wife Beatrice. The duke and duchess, along with Bradamant and her numerous brothers and cousins—all of whom were themselves prodigious knights—, had worked hard to reinstate the family’s name after brother Renaud had impetuously murdered the emperor’s nephew, Bertolai of Bayonne, a darling of the Maganza clan, over a chess dispute—thereby starting a small war between Charlemagne and the Clairmonts. It was halfheartedly waged, really more as a matter of form, since Bertolai had not been particularly loved by either side and had, in any event, begun the argument that led to his demise (Renaud had beaten him to death with the chessboard), but it was nevertheless considered something of a black mark against the Clairmonts—the emperor being required by custom and good taste to look upon them with official disfavor, however personally pleased he may have been with having been rid of such a nuisance as Bertolai—and it was quite some time before the family could again appear in the imperial court without embarassment.
Bradamant’s other brothers included Alard, Wilhelm, Richard and the worthy Reinhold, her identical twin. Her father’s three brothers, Milone d’Aglante, Otto (the present King of Angleland) and Buovo d’Agrismonte, had provided her with no less redoubtable cousins: the astonishing Roland, the only son of Milone, and the scarcely less formidable Astolph, the younger son of Otto—to say nothing of Buovo’s sons: the sorcerer Maugis and his brother Vivian. Reinhold, Astolph and Roland had in turn become the most illustrious and trusted of Charlemagne’s twelve greatest paladins. Roland, of course, eventually became the subject of an entire cycle of legends that rival those of Arthur himself. Bradamant and all her family—including the penitent Renaud—had spent years reestablishing the family’s position in Karl’s official regard and there might be some validity accorded those who argued that they had overcompensated.
The holy emperor himself was no less taken with Bradamant’s bravery, chastity, piety and strength than anyone else who met or saw or knew her. Indeed, she invited comparison with her matchless relatives and in no way suffered for it.
The emperor would certainly have knighted her but for her gender. This was no less frustrating for Karl than it was for Bradamant, since he would have liked nothing more than to openly acknowledge her prowess and loyalty by placing her among his greatest knights, where she certainly belonged. Had it been merely a matter of law, the emperor would simply have changed it. Unfortunately, it was a matter of tradition, which is beyond the tampering even of emperors. Therefore, Bradamant had to wear the white armor of the novice, unadorned by any device, no matter that her feats and accomplishments were already the stuff of legend. However, so well-known and so well-regarded was the bronze-haired warrioress that her undecorated brunia had itself become as distinctive and respected as any knight’s heraldic symbol.
And so her life had been for most of her years until (and she touched the bright scar as though it were a talisman)
something had happened
. Now she doubted not only her purpose but even the loyalty she owed her father, her emperor and her God.
After returning King Sacripant to the mossy bosom of Mother Earth, Bradamant had passed from the oppressiveness of the primeval forest and into the bosky piedmont that rose beyond it. She had dismissed the king almost as soon as her back was turned; succoring distressed maidens was the least part of her job and she had no further interest in either the man or the woman nor had she any wish to become interested. What became of them was of no concern to her. She had done her duty with the dispassion of a streetsweeper.
* * * * *
At noon the day after her encounter with Sacripant, she found at the foot of a slope a spring gushing from between mossy rocks; it flowed into a broad pool filled by the purple shadows of the ancient trees surrounding it. The pool was small enough that the branches overarched it, meeting overhead in a great translucent dome. The glade seemed deserted and the coolness of its submarine shadows invited a rest from the oven-heat of midday. She dismounted and patiently held her horse’s reins as it drank thirstily. The pool’s sapphire depth was compelling and nothing seemed more urgent at that moment than to strip off her red-hot armor and allow that shimmering solvent to cleanse her salty woolens of its filthy burden of caked dust and fermented sweat. It would not occur to her, of course, to remove either the tunic and leggings, to peel herself to the barest extremities, not to put too fine a point on it, which would naturally have made bathing in the pool infinitely more pleasurable and sensible. Or if it did cross her mind—which in truth it surely must have—she quickly dismissed the idea more for its indulgent hedonism than for its immodesty, the former seeming to her the greater sin. As she stared at the cool limpidity, which, like a vast blue eye, returned her gaze with a kindly intimacy, she felt some pride in being able to decline even such a seemingly harmless temptation just as it pleased her that she had borne so much discomfort with such stoicism. Is it not unsurprising, even knowing the girl for so short a time as we have, that it seldom occurred to her that while neither immodesty nor pleasure were one of the seven deadly sins, pride was? She had just begun to unfasten the first leather tie with stiff, sore fingers when, with considerable annoyance, she heard the nearby whicker of a horse.
She glanced around and saw that she was, in fact, not alone. In the shade of a tree on the far side of the pool she spied a figure who had been invisible from her previously elevated position. It was a knight sitting alone, apparently still oblivious to her presence. His horse was tethered to the tree, from the branches of which hung his shield and helmet. The former hung, unfortunately, with its face away from her so she could not see what symbol might be painted on it.
Although still much annoyed at the interruption of her idyll, her aches and pains were immediately forgotten as she placed her own helmet over her head, which was her custom whenever meeting a stranger. Leaving her horse to continue refreshing itself—she had perfect trust in the beast, which never had need for a tether—she approached the pensive knight. He was so still she wondered if he was alive. Indeed, a tiny, evil voice deep within her suggested that it might not be at all objectionable if the man
were
dead. Whoever he was, or had been, would then be of no particular concern to her. If he were dead, she could continue doing what, at the moment, she wanted to do more than anything else she could imagine. As she considered that happy possibility the man unfortunately issued a sigh of heartbreaking resignation. She had never heard a sound that expressed such despondence or soul-weariness (having not, of course, experienced Sacripant’s great cry of woe). He looked up as she came within a dozen paces and seemed neither surprised nor disturbed by the interruption; he only stared with a bored, lugubrious face. Bradamant thought that there was something familiar in its lines—which in spite of its grief was hard-looking, as though all of his heartbreaking emotion had been merely painted onto a lifeless granite sculpture—with eyes behind the tears that looked as cold and dispassionate as damp marbles—but she failed to place it. Since the man said nothing, Bradamant felt compelled to initiate the conversation. Not because she especially cared, but because it was her duty.
“Good day, sir knight,” she said.
“If it’s that for you, than I commend you for your luck,” he replied.
“Thank you.”
“It must have been hell for you out in the sun in that armor.”
“It’s cool enough here, though.”
“The dampness will play hell with your rheumatism, if you happen to be cursed by that disease, and it’ll be no good at all for your armor.”
“It was nice to find the spring, I think.”
“Oh?”
The conversation seemed to be going nowhere.
“Is there something troubling you, sir?” Bradamant asked, finally surrendering to the irresistable human compulsion to inquire into another’s misfortune.
