The Malacia Tapestry (33 page)

‘It's our balloon-going friend,' he said. ‘Still in good order, I see. What brings you here, de Chirolo?'

‘Merely pleasure, sir.' I lifted my glass. ‘I give you good cheer, gentlemen!'

‘This is a private meeting,' Hoytola replied.

‘My wish was not to intrude. I will leave you.'

The duke said cheerfully, ‘If you are looking for Armida, we cannot help you.'

Hoytola's face went a kind of ashy colour. He bent his head to the table to conceal it. In that moment, I clearly understood whom it was that this man preferred as possible husband for his daughter.

As I had my hand on the door to go, a deep voice said, ‘You!'

The courtesan – now I could smell her patchouli, so disturbingly like Armida's – made a slight move towards the back of the room, which served to direct my attention there. In the shadows stood the man who called me. I recognized the dark-visaged Supreme Council member I had first glimpsed in Hoytola's gallery. Chill radiated from his presence. As on that first occasion, he was garbed in unfashionable black with capacious pockets. He spoke again.

‘You have fallen in with Bengtsohn.' Every word emerged separately from his gullet.

The courtesan went to his side. He paid no attention to her, standing without movement, firm in the knowledge that I would answer him.

Why did he terrify me so? I believe it was because I felt that he put the fear of Satan into everyone else in the room too.

‘I have fallen
out
with Bengtsohn,' I said, ‘sire.'

My presence was nothing to do with them. Everyone was motionless, waiting to resume whatever business they had been about – business that held no great pleasure for Hoytola, to judge by appearances; yet somehow their business was of such a sort that it could encompass even me. My words travelled across the room to the Council member, and at last he spoke again, his words coming off a subterranean glacier.

‘You wish to kill Bengtsohn.'

The young duke scratched his curls. Looking at him, rather than the black figure at the rear of the room, I said, ‘I don't wish to harm Bengtsohn – he has never hurt me. I don't wish to harm anyone.'

Experiencing some difficulty with my limbs, I managed to get out of the room and shut the door behind me. The words spoken went through and through my brain. I cursed myself for the feeble thing I had said, as if begging for mercy. I drained my wine and let the glass drop. I fingered my amulet. This meeting was alarmingly similar to the vision I had stumbled on in my own room.

There was nothing for it but to disappear into the night or stay and get drunk. A serving wench came by. I snatched an armorial shell full of hot spiced wine from her and barged into the end room, among dancing and gesticulating couples. The uproar was so intense that the music could hardly be heard. A crowd surrounded a platform on which a savage gentleman was making two yellow hauberks fight to the death.

I did not stay to watch the warm blood fly. I quaffed wine and threw myself into the midst of the whirling figures. I caught hold of a young woman whose conversation I could not understand. We talked madly to each other, gesturing, laughing, grimacing, once kissing. Was it a foreign tongue she spoke? I never knew, nor whether she understood what I said. Movement was all-important, movement and gaiety. As I reeled from her arms, there was Armida, flushed, rushing by with another young woman.

Grasping her unceremoniously, I whirled her into a dance, and so out of the nearest door on to a verandah. A chill night wind blew. I clutched her to me, pouring out professions of endearment, many of which I had just recently exercised – but vocabularies have a limited exchequer, after all.

‘You darling feathered creature, plunging by me in the torrents of night – you are the moon in this terrible place, the sun – everything's so terrible – I believed you weren't here, that you had gone, even that you had submitted to one of those full-bellied –'

‘Hush, hush, you're mad!'

I flailed my arms. ‘Madness and terror are beautiful. Ask the Natural Religion. What else do you expect in this terrible place?'

‘No, no, Perry, nothing here is terrible. Calm down, will you please? It's all so delightful, such
fun
, and the people are so grand, and important –'

‘They matter not a fig, they're beasts in a jungle of the mind, whereas you and I – oh, the music of madness, don't you hear the true sound under it all –'

‘And tomorrow – listen to me, will you? – tomorrow there will be chariot races and the parade of mounts and all kinds of entertainment, and then in the late afternoon – stop! – in the late afternoon –'

‘How I hate that word “afternoon”! Trade only with blazing noon or midnight, my love, my honey-lipped! Afternoons are for children. Look at the great monster hulk of this place above us, lumbering towards midnight, and out there nothing,
nothing
, but blackness, unknown universes, and what can we fight such things with? Only our own weapons: my poor imagination, your white thighs –'

Under my hands her body was glorious in the reeling darkness.

‘Leave my thighs out of this, sir. In late afternoon begins the main ancestral hunt, when we pit ourselves against the most terrible of Satan's creatures. It's sure to be thrilling and someone's bound to get killed … What's the matter with you? Stop that. You're drunk so early. You're taking advantage.'

‘What's the sight of you but drunkenness? What's life but intoxication? What's sobriety but the misery my father puts himself in? I know which I prefer. You darling, you darling, perhaps I'm a little drunk on you, but not yet enough –'

‘My father's wine has played a greater part, that I'm certain. All our wine is grown here in our own vineyards. We have some of the best slopes for hundreds of kilometres.'

‘And your slopes, your ravines, your dells … You look so splendid tonight!' Indeed she did. She had on a fine crimson silk gown with a small matching turban for her head, from under which her dark electric locks escaped. Over the gown was a cape made of the long feathered spines of tree reptopines, while the gown itself extended to the floor and there burst into ruffles, like a ship decked in bunting.

‘Armida, you are the most lovely girl. I adore you as owls adore the night, and long to have our betrothal made public. I will always be true to you and you only. I don't even understand the language other women speak.'

She laughed. ‘You're certainly ambitious. No harm in that. But our betrothal's just our secret fun, don't forget. Do you know, this year we have brought an extra fifty hectares under cultivation – mainly grapes – at Juracia, at no expense to the hunt territory. Isn't that good husbandry?'

‘Marvellous, I'm sure. Someone must have worked hard.'

‘Oh, father worked himself so hard –'

‘But the land means nothing to me. It's you, you yourself – Armida, feel what I feel –'

‘You're drunk, you don't listen. Sometimes you don't seem to understand what's really important. It's father's ambition to be the largest wine-grower in the region. Although the peasants are lazy, the soil is fertile, and –'

‘We're all fertile.' I was clutching her tightly. ‘How things do sprout from the heart! How circumstances sail upwards like balloons, into the sky of light, of hope – of achievement! With you to inspire me, Armida, I could do all things. I'd grow grapes – no, I don't want to grow grapes – I'd become a captain in the cavalry – no, I don't care to be in a regiment – I'd buy a ship and trade with the East in fantastic objects – no, who needs to go to sea? – I'd do anything, almost anything, for you. I don't have to remain a player. There are great things in me which the night brings out. Yesterday I was down. Today I'm up. Perhaps I could rise to serve on the Council and help Malacia – those who serve there don't have our interests at heart.'

‘You're so sweet, Perian, but you have to be well-born, or exceedingly clever, like my father, to get anywhere near the Council. You have a cheerful heart, but –'

I wagged a cautionary finger at her. ‘You think I'm frivolous. Didn't I embark on that little flying adventure your father and you planned for me – and come out of it well? Haven't I sworn to be true? I'm serious beneath my light-hearted air. Of course I can go about looking sober if you require it.'

She burst with pretty laughter, covering her mouth with her finger-tips as I gave my impression of sobriety.

‘You have too handsome a face for that, sirrah! My father says that –'

‘Then kiss it, if you find it handsome. Let me in return kiss you all over, not only on this beautiful nose – mahh! – or this lovely cheek – mahh! – but on these luscious shoulders – mahh! – and this heavenly bosom – mahh! – but creeping like an Arab into this crimson tent of yours to find what secret treasures you have concealed …'

We fell delectably upon each other. Cold though it was, we were warm to one another's touch. In that moment, in a pool of dark between one gleaming window and the next, I saw into my love for her, my Armida, and understood all the difficulties with which she was surrounded: the prosperous household sponged on by untrustworthy nobles, the conventions threatening to defeat her, the father dominating her life. She needed simpler things. It was true, as Bengtsohn said, that wealth corrupted the rich. I could save her from it, if she would dare come away with me.

I jumped up.

‘Let's leave immediately,' I said. ‘We could take your carriage. Damn the soothsayers. This drunken rout would not miss us for hours. The nobles of Malacia, Armida – they are corrupt, one and all, and should be done away with.'

‘What? You are drunk, you rascal! Where would the wealth of the state be without the nobles?'

‘Let's leave here together. We could go to Tuscady. I have a friend there, a captain of cavalry. We could live simply and honestly, in a small house on the street, with a hound, and a cage of singing birds at the window. We could see the hills from our upper windows.'

‘You have picked up revolutionary ideas from Bengtsohn, Perian. My father says so. That man is dangerous. I'd better warn you, those who consort with him are also in danger.'

‘What I say is true. Let's escape now. Tuscady. Or a cottage on the estuary where my kinsmen live.'

‘Why will you not listen to my warning?'

‘Why do you mention Bengtsohn? Only yesterday, he attacked me with a cudgel.' But I did not want to enter into that tale, so I went on hastily, ‘All unprovoked, let me add. But he will be a different man when
Mendicula
is exhibited to the world. Ridiculous though its story may be, its presentation makes it a new form of art, and success will soften him.'

‘That play may never be shown to anyone, Perian, so please keep quiet about it. You'd better go to your bed and sleep.'

‘Only if you come with me and so rob me of the desire to sleep.'

‘I can't. I'd be missed – and compromised.'

‘Then come away with me.'

She stamped her foot. ‘Stop being so impossible. Why do you wish to escape as soon as you are here? Enjoy yourself properly.'

‘I'm trying to! Just think what's happening here. People are drinking their heads afloat. They'll all be in each other's beds in a few hours' time, the dogs! Let's race them to it. Nobody will know – or care. I'll wager your precious chaperon is already pinned under some filthy, randy leather-clad groom in a convenient pile of hay.'

‘You're so coarse. Why should you think of them – supposing it were so – in the same breath as us?'

‘Yolaria may well be as grateful for the chance as any.'

She drew away angrily and I saw I had been too outspoken.

‘Old people care less about that sort of thing,' she said.

‘They care till their dying day – my father once told me so, and he's a scholar. Old Pope Lacrimae II did it on his deathbed at the age of ninety-nine.'

‘Why, I'm glad my father never tells me things like that. Did he
really
?'

‘Yes. With a virgin aged fourteen brought in from the country. Such intercourse is thought to have curative powers. Gerocomy, they call it.'

All the time we were talking, the wind was blowing itself into a gale. Shutters banged overhead. Hounds barked distantly.

‘Perry, you do know such funny things. Is that true about Pope Lacrimae?'

‘Come to bed with me and I'll keep you amused till daybreak.'

She put her arms round my neck. ‘I can't. Really I can't. I am needed to help entertain guests. This is the great occasion of my father's year. Keep yourself happy – find another girl. There are plenty here prettier than I.'

‘What if I did so? Would you blame me?' I asked teasingly.

‘Oh, don't dare even say it! I'd be so jealous – I'd hate you for ever afterwards! You are pledged to me and you are mine and for me. Don't think such loathsome things.'

‘Who suggested it? I only said what I did to see what you'd say. And I'm glad of your anger because it shows you do love me.'

She shook her head. ‘Envy and jealousy are apart from love. Just remember your role as Gerald – he didn't
love
the princess, he merely envied Mendicula's marriage. Don't be like that, please. Don't merely envy what I have, love what I am. You think me difficult, I know it, but matters are difficult for me. At heart, there's a difference – just love me patiently and don't be unkind.'

The cold wind which blew that evening brought indifferent weather next day – yet not indifferent enough to spoil the great organized tumult of pleasure pursued so strenuously at Juracia. By afternoon, rain was falling out of a sky piled to its farthest recesses with cloud. Golden summer was giving a first token that it could not rule for ever.