The Malacia Tapestry (14 page)

‘It would tell against my career to act in a story of low life,' I said. ‘Although the silly innocent trust which Mendicula is representing as having in his wife Patricia might be more credible if it were told of a grocer rather than of a prince.'

He put his thumbs in his waistcoat pocket. ‘How droll you are! Nobody wants plays about
grocers
. The creatures would get above themselves, for one thing. No audience could conceivably care whether or no a
grocer's
wife was faithful to him.'

The conversation appeared about to expire from difficulty. I glanced at Armida, but she was no help, for she was looking at the horses and rubbing their long noses.

I said to her father, as easily as I could, ‘I must admit that the Mendicula tragi-comedy strikes me as absurd. I'm sure Pozzi Kemperer would agree.'

‘In what way absurd?'

‘Perian thinks the story banal, Papa,' Armida said, flashing me a glance I could not interpret. ‘He says it might as well have been written a million years ago.'

‘An interesting remark. Surely one's interest in the play is precisely that it might have been written a million years ago. Some things are eternal and must be eternally re-expressed. Those desperate straits of love, which Bengtsohn effectively conveys, appeal to us because they apply as much today as yesterday.'

‘I see that,' said I, feebly. ‘But there's no moral in the play. The characters are stupid. Mendicula is a fool to be so trusting, the General a scoundrel to cheat his friend, Patricia not much better than a – hm – a loose woman, for all her royal blood, and Jemima is indecisive. I like to have at least one character with a resounding morality.'

‘One might judge that the morality lies in the whole rather than the parts,' said Hoytola.

‘It certainly doesn't lie in my part.'

There was a small silence. Then Hoytola spoke again, more animatedly.

‘One is pleased to see that you are an independently minded young man. My daughter has suggested to one that you might be interested in undertaking a small adventure. One perceives that she has not misjudged.'

The horses as well as the humans were observing me now. There was a strong smell of straw in the stables which made my nose twitch; my instinct told me that it would be undignified to sneeze before Armida's father.

‘What sort of small adventure have you in mind?'

‘A small adventure that would assist the Hoytolas, that would benefit Malacia, that would confer glory on you.'

It sounded like a large small adventure. When he told me what it was, it sounded even larger. But the eyes of Armida were upon me, no less than the ruminative eyes of the Arabs. I said I would do what he asked, in as bold a voice as the occasion would allow.

On the morn appointed for my small adventure, I was bustling about early, in imitation of the bustle in the streets. This was the first day of one of Malacia's most ancient festival weeks, the Feast of the Buglewing, consecrated both to immemorial victories and the mystical relationship between mankind and the creatures of the air.

That relationship bore heavily on my mind; I was about to become a creature of the air: I kept recalling old Seemly Moleskin's warning about a black horse with silver shoes in the sky. I made my movements vigorous, to dispel gloom.

Perching on the edge of my chair, I penned notes to my father and my sister, Katarina. Writing with great flourishes, I besought them to come from their separate retreats and witness my hour of glory, since it might be my last. I summoned a boy from below, paying him two denarios to deliver the messages expeditiously.

I tried an air on my guitar, I attempted a poem and a farewell message to the world. Then I dashed down the street to Mandaro for his blessing.

In Stary Most, elements of the grand parade were already assembling. The old grey and terracotta walls echoed to cries of men, boys and animals. Two shaggy mangonels were there, standing patiently like all elephants, as their faces were painted white and their long, curving tusks adorned. But the great barbaric sight was at the east end, under the tower of the Stary Dom, for there the civic herd of tyrant-greaves was marshalled. These furious beasts, the kings of all ancestral animals, were herded by their traditional herdsmen, satyrs, who had brought the carnivores in from their stockades on the Six Lagoons road.

Oh, the sight of those primitive beings, half-man, half-goat, trotting round their enormous charges! I was impelled to press among the rabble of small boys and tradespeople who gathered to see the horned herdsmen manoeuvre the tyrant-greaves into line. There were four of the monsters, standing six metres high, their scales dappled yellow and green – or more yellow and grey, for these were old beasts. Their tails were secured in great loops over their backs with chains passed round their necks. Each beast was muzzled, with an iron cage over its predatory mouth. They were subdued enough – only satyrs could handle them – but their enormous bird-feet shuffled on the cobbles as if they longed to dash into the crowd and wreak disaster. Tyrants and devil-jaws can scarcely be cowed. They are never tamed. On holy days, they are essential to the ceremony.

Mandaro gave me absolution. ‘There is unity in all things, and duality,' he said. ‘We live physically in a fine city; we also live in a forest of dark beliefs. This day, you are granted an occasion to rise above them both.'

‘Will you be watching me, father?'

‘Indeed. And now I'm going to watch the satyrs and tyrants. Like you, I find the barbarous sight moving. We admit them to the city on ceremonial occasions and no others. That is fitting.'

No sooner had I returned to my room than a knock came at the door. There stood Armida, her whey-faced old chaperon behind her. I got the door between the two of them and poured kisses on Armida's lips, but she wriggled from me and withdrew.

‘A carriage is awaiting us outside, Perian. I see you're ready.' Her mood was rather severe – or certainly not plushy enough to greet a hero with.

‘I didn't notice any carriage down there.'

‘Not in the alleyway, in Stary Most.'

‘I'm feeling all the better for seeing you. I confess to a slight attack of nerves. Can we shut your woman outside and stoke each other's fires a little?'

‘We must hurry down to the Bucintoro.' All this said in a whisper.

‘I'm doing all this for your sake, Armida, as you know.'

‘Don't try to blackmail me.'

I grasped her again, slipping a hand down the front of her dress until it encompassed the greater part of one elegant breast. ‘Armida, how is it that out of all the young bucks in this thronging city, from its grooms to its princes, your illustrious father chose me for this singular and dangerous honour?'

‘You want a chance to rise in the world. If we are ever to marry – but there is also the question of your behaviour – then you must distinguish yourself, as we agreed.'

‘I see. You put my name to him. That was what I wanted to know.'

She looked at me challengingly as we went through the door, where I bowed to Yolaria waiting on the landing.

‘I thought your seriousness should be put to the test, Perian,' Armida said. ‘You know that in general I am forbidden to leave the house after dark, unless it is to go to some occasion, so that my evenings are spent playing the virginals or reading Plutarch and Martyn Tupper aloud to my younger sister. I have recently had an account of how you spend your evenings, hanging about low taverns and attempting unsuccessfully the seduction of sewing-women …'

She was leading the way down the winding stair, Yolaria behind her, then I. I cried out in rage, ‘Who has been telling you these tales?'

Without turning her head, Armida replied, ‘Letitia Zlatorog. A reliable witness in the circumstances, one might think …'

I flew into a rage, believing attack the only safe retreat.

‘That little creature! How jealous she must be to try and create mischief between us! All I did was attempt to purchase a shirt from her, as Bonihatch has done, and she cooks up a story of seduction! Why, she's so plain! Do I fall about in jealousy when you as Patricia loll in Bonihatch's sordid Mendiculan arms – though I have to watch you enjoying it for minutes at a stretch?'

‘I told you I hate him. I hate his whiskers. I hate his odour of oil and acids and custard. I think him plain. But you think Letitia so plain that you must slip your hand up her skirt and invite her to your bed, your bed which I thought sacred to us! How dare you?'

All this passed over and through the bobbing head of Armida's chaperon, which increased my anger and sense of injustice.

‘So! Out of spite, you set up this challenge which would show me as a coward if I did not accept – whereupon your father could send me packing … You have a horrid scheming mind, Armida. You know that little seamstress means nothing to me. She simply intends to make mischief between us.'

‘It's you who have made the mischief.'

In fine high tempers, we made our way to the carriage – not Armida's personal one but a little town coupé, with a seat behind for the driver. Biting our tongues – being unable to bite each other's – we permitted the doors to be closed and the horse to be shaken into action. Yolaria sat imperviously between us, presenting an old yellow cheek to us both.

As we rolled out of the ancient square, we came into a concourse of traffic arriving both from the North Gate and from St Marco's. Our progress was slow, and slower for the silence between us. I was so angry that she should think I cared anything for Letitia.

Outside the coupé, the faces of young and old alike were predominantly cheerful. The Buglewing marked the legendary battle of our remotest ancestors, countless millions of years ago, when the forces of the someone-or-other defeated the forces of someone-else in continent-wide battle; consequently, it was a time to be cheerful.

Even with the Ottomans almost within hailing distance, festivities went forward. The guilds were arriving in strength, with rich processions from the Guildhall, bearing the banners and emblems of their trades. And the religious orders were also present, with many representations of Satan, God and Minerva among their banners; they moved in solemn ranks, preceded by trumpeters, carrying torches, jewelled reliquaries and swinging censers which perfumed the air as they went.

In the midst of these holy men in their grey, black and brown gowns was a burst of colour, white, crimson and gold, where the Bishop Elect of Malacia, Gondale IX, was borne along on a canopied throne set on a platform carried shoulder-high by monks. Gondale was thin and so silvered by age as to be almost transparent; he swathed himself in white for purity and encased the white in a magnificent crimson gown which spilled down from the throne to the platform and from the platform almost to the ground. As he progressed, the holy old man scattered silver coin to the crowd with one translucent hand. The coin bore images of Dark on one side and Light on the other.

Following the Bishop's procession were the ancestral animals of his zoo. The crowd roared its pleasure at the sight as if it too were an animal. First came the bird after which the festival was named, chained to the gauntlet of the Buglewing Keeper. It perched drowsily on his raised fist, its brilliant plumage unfluttered, its toothed beak on its breast. By its side a flautist played soothing buglewing music.

Close behind the bird came other ancestrals, after which other festivals of the year were named. First, a great old halberd-head – shatterhorn, in popular parlance – with three horns ranked one behind the other on its enormous skull. It plodded majestically, its rider controlling it with gold reins bolted to the nasal horn.

This living engine of war was followed by two other giants of battles past, the shaggy mangonels I had seen being prepared with riders perched high behind their ears; and wattle-tassets, striding with dignity on their massive hind legs and surveying the mob with shrewd eyes.

After came the lesser fry, led, not ridden – such common ancestrals as yellow hauberks, hopping and croaking; yatterhobs; and a team of tree-snaphances or grab-skeeters, to use their vulgar name, their mottled skins gleaming in the sun.

Last plodded an amiable casque-body – Old Trundles to the multitude. The two lethal spikes had been removed from its tail, but its dorsal plates were intact. It was a male, and a fine one, its head raised by the chained pole on which it was led.

These majestic creatures pleased everybody.

Mighty tableaux suitable to the day followed. They rumbled through the streets on heavy wheels, bearing the most beautiful scenes of mythology and pageantry that artists could devise. The glowing dreams of the world were let loose in St Marco's, and the lower classes ran by the floats, cheering and waving, men and women, as if there was nothing to their lives but glowing dreams. Beside them in a slower stream went the street-sellers, turning the natural appetites of festivity to their advantage, offering all manner of drinks and fizzes and juices and fruits and spiced meats and kebabs, hot or cold; as well as cakes, tarts, fudges, halva, pitta, bourek, ices and other sweet concoctions. The air became full of good smells. Holy and wordly things combined in our nostrils as incense mingled with the fragrance of fresh-baked bread and pies.

During the evening we would be treated to more challenging smells, as heretics were burnt at the stake – men who believed in one god only, or who claimed themselves descended from frenetic apes.

Our carriage proceeded with difficulty through this
mêlée
. Armida called an instruction to the driver and we turned into a side street, thus avoiding the main crowds and arriving safely behind the Bucintoro to which we made our way on foot.

What a beautiful sight is the Bucintoro! Great merchants' palaces flank its southern side while gardens and the slow river flank its northern. The palaces are white in marble or golden in our local stone.