Mindswap (13 page)

By a clever ruse, Marvin and his compatriots were able to elude the pursuing dragoons and to come unscathed into the great moated tiltyard of Castelgatt. There, upon the sounding of the twelfth hour, the conspirators were to assemble, make final dispositions, and move out that very night for the audacious attempt to rescue d'Augustin from the formidable grasp of Blackamoor.

Marvin retired to his chambers in the high east wing, and there shocked his page by insisting upon a basin of water in which to wash his hands. It was considered a strange affectation on his part in that age in which even the greatest court ladies were accustomed to hide smudges of dirt under perfumed gauze bandages. But Marvin had picked up the custom during his stay among the gay and pagan Tescos of the southern Remoueve, whose soapy fountains and spongy sculpture were wonders of wonders to the complacent and grimy northern nobility. And in spite of the laughter of his peers and the frowns of the clergy, Marvin stubbornly insisted that an occasional scrub of the hands did no damage, so long as the water touched no other part.

His ablutions completed, and clad only in black satin half-knickers, white lace shirt, cavalry boots and shoulder-length gloves of Eretzian chamois, and wearing only his sword Coueur de Stabbat, which had been handed down in his family father-to-son for five hundred years, Marvin heard a half-noise behind him and whirled, hand to hilt.

'La, sir, wouldst run me through with thy terrible great sword?' mocked the Lady Catarina – for it was she – standing just inside the panelled doorway to the inner chamber.

'Faith, your ladyship startled me,' Marvin said. 'But as for running thee through, that indeed I wouldst do right merrily, though not with sword but with a trustier weapon which it happens I do possess.'

'Fie, sir,' the Lady Catarina said mockingly. 'Offerest violence to a lady?'

'Merely the violence of pleasure,' Marvin replied gallantly.

'Your words are too glib by half,' said the Lady Catarina. 'I believe it has been noted that the longest and wiliest tongues conceal the shortest and least adequate of Weapons.'

'Your ladyship does me injustice,' Marvin said. 'For I dare say my Weapon is eminently capable of the uses it may encounter, sharp enough to penetrate the best defence in the world, and durable enough for repeated stabbings. And, quite apart from such utilitarian uses, it has learned from me certain infallible tricks, the which it would be my respectful pleasure to show your ladyship.'

'Nay, keep your Weapon in its scabbard,' the lady quoth, indignantly, but with sparkling eyes. 'Me likes not the sound of 't; for braggart's steel is ever pliable tin, shiny to the eye yet damnably malleable to the touch.'

'I beg of thee but to touch the edge and point,' Marvin said, 'and thus submit thy raillery to th' test of Usage.'

She shook her pretty head. 'Know, sir, that such Pragmatics are for greybeard philosophers with rheumy eyes; a lady relies upon her intuition.'

'Lady, I worship thy intuition,' Marvin responded.

'Why, sir, what wouldst Thou, the Prepossessor of a dubious Weapon of indetermined length and uncertain temper, know of a woman's intuition?'

'Lady, my heart tells me that it is exquisite and ineffable, and possessed of a pleasing shape and delicate fragrance, and that-'

'Enough, sir!' the Lady Catarina cried, blushing hotly and fanning herself furiously with a Japanese fan whose corrugated surface portrayed the Investiture of the Iichi.

Both fell silent. They had been conversing in the old Language of Courtly Love, in which symbolic apostrophe played so important a part. In those days it was deemed no breach of the etiquette for even the best-bred and most demure of young ladies to thus converse; theirs was not a frightened age.

But now a shadow of seriousness had fallen over the two participants. Marvin glowered, fingering the grey steel buttons of his white lace shirt. And the Lady Catarina looked troubled. She wore a panelled gown of dove tulip with slashings of chrome red; and, as was the custom, the neckline was cut fashionably low to reveal the firm rosy swelling of her little abdomen. Upon her feet were sandal-pumps of ivory-coloured damask; and her hair, piled high upon a jade ratouelle, was adorned with a garland of spring snippinies. Never in his life had Marvin seen so beautiful a sight.

'Can we not cease this ceaseless play of word-foolery?' Marvin asked quietly. 'May we not say that which is in our hearts, 'stead of fencing thus with heartless ingenuities?'

'I dare not!' the Lady Catarina murmured.

'And yet, you are Cathy, who loved me once in another time and place,' Marvin said inexorably, 'and who now plays me for the unacknowledged gallant.'

'You must not speak of that which once had been,' Cathy said, in a frightened whisper.

'Yet still you loved me once!' Marvin cried hotly. 'Deny me this an you find it false!'

'Yes,' she said in a failing voice. 'I loved thee once.'

'And now?'

'Alas!'

'But speak and tell me reason!'

Nay, I cannot!'

'Will not, rather.'

'As thee wish; the choice is servant to the heart.'

'I would not have you believe that,' she said softly.

'No? Then surely the desire is father to the intent,' Marvin said, his face gone hard and pitiless. 'And standing thus in familial relationship, not even the wisest of men would deny that Love is inbonded to its half-sister Indifference, and Faithfulness is thrall to the cruel stepmother, Pain.'

'Can you so consider me?' she cried weakly.

'Why, Lady, you leave me choiceless,' Marvin responded in a voice of ringing bronze. 'And thus my barque of Passion is Derelict upon a Sea of Memory, blown off its rightful course by the fickle wind of Indifference, and driven towards the rockbound Coast of Agony by the inexorable Tide of Human Events.'

'And yet, I would not have it thus,' Catarina said, and Marvin thrilled to hear even so mild an affirmation of that which he had considered lost beyond recall.

'Cathy-'

'Nay, it cannot be,' she cried, recoiling in evident agony, her colour high and her abdomen rising and falling with the emotion within her. 'You know not of the wretched circumstances of my situation.'

'I demand to know!' Marvin cried, then whirled, his hand darting to his sword. For the great oaken door of his chamber had swung noiselessly open, and there, leaning negligently in the doorway, a man stood with arms folded over his chest and a half-smile playing across his thin, bearded lips.

'In faith! We are undone!' Catarina cried, her hand pressed to her trembling abdomen.

'Sir, what would thou?' Marvin asked hotly. 'I demand to know thy name, and the reason for this most ungentle and unseemly investiture!'

'All shall be speedily revealed thee,' the man in the doorway said, his voice revealing a faint and menacing lisp. 'My name, sir, is Lord Blackamoor, 'gainst whom your puerile plans have been cast; and I have entered this chamber from simple privilege of one who dutifully desires introduction to his wife's young friend.'

'Wife?' Marvin echoed.

'This lady,' Blackamoor declared, 'who has the uncertain habit of not straightaways introducing herself, is indeed the Most Noble Catarina d'Augustin di Blackamoor, the most loving wife to this your humble servant.'

And so saying, Blackamoor swept off his hat and louted low, then resumed his exquisite's pose in the doorway.

Marvin read the truth in Cathy's tear-stained eyes and shuddering abdomen. Cathy, his beloved Cathy, the wife of Blackamoor, the most detested enemy of those who espoused the cause of d'Augustin, who was Cathy's own father!

Yet there was no time to consider these strange propinquities of sensibility; for the foremost consideration was of Blackamoor himself, standing miraculously within a castle held by his enemies, and betraying no hint of nervousness at a position that should have been perilous in the extreme.

And this infallibly meant that the situation was not as Marvin had supposed it, and that the threads of destiny were tangled now past his immediate comprehension.

Blackamoor in Castelgatt? Marvin considered the implications, and a sensation of cold came over him, as though the angel of death had brushed past him with stygian wings.

Murder lurked in this room – but for whom? Marvin feared the worst, but turned quite steadily, his face a mask of obsidian, and faced the enemy who was his beloved's husband and the captor of her father.

Milord Lamprey di Blackamoor stood silent and at his ease. He was above the middling height, and possessed a frame of extreme emaciation, punctuated by his narrow, closely cropped beard of jetty black, his deep-swept sideburns, and his hair cut
en brosse
and allowed to fall upon his forehead in snaky ringlets. And yet the appearance of narrowness was offset by the breadth of shoulder and the powerful swordsman's arm that could be glimpsed beneath his half-cloak of ermitage. He wore his points and josses in the new foppish style, interlaced with macedium pointings and relieved only by a triple row of crepe-silver darturs. His face was coldly handsome, marred only by a puckered scar that ran from his right temple to the left corner of his mouth, and which he had defiantly painted a fiery crimson. This lent to his sarcastic features a look both sinister and absurd.

'It would seem,' Blackamoor drawled, 'that we have played this farce long enough. The denouement approaches.'

'Does milord then have his third act prepared?' Marvin inquired steadily.

'The actors have been given their cues,' Blackamoor said. Negligently he snapped his fingers.

Into the room walked Milord Inglenook, followed by Sir Gules and a platoon of sour-faced Thuringian soldiery in plain deal-coloured half-jackets of buff, with sword-mattocks at the ready.

'What damnable entrapment is this?' Marvin demanded.

'Tell him – brother,' Blackamoor mocked.

'Yes, it is true,' Lord Inglenook said, his face ashen. 'Blackamoor and I are half-brothers, since our common mother was the Marquesita Roseata of Timon, daughter to the Elector of Brandeis and sister-in-marriage to Longsword Silverblain, who was father to Red Sword Ericmouth, and whose first husband, Marquelle of the Marche, was father to me, but after whose decease wed Huntford, Bastard Royal of Cleve and Pretender to the Eleactiq Preserve.'

'His outmoded sense of honour rendered him sensible to my scheme and ductile to the veriest suggestion,'. Blackamoor sneered.

'A strange state of affairs,' Marvin mused, 'when a man's honour dishonours a man.'

Inglenook bent his head and said nothing.

'But as for you, milady,' Marvin said, addressing Cathy, 'it mazes me past comprehension why you should choose marriage with the captivator of your father.'

'Alas,' Cathy said, 'it is a most diverse and noisome tale, for he courted me with threats and indifference, and captivated me by the dark power he doth possess which none oppose; and further, by the use of damnable drugs and double-edged words and sly skilful movements of his hands he did bemuse my sense to a state of counterfeit passion, wherein I seemed to swoon for touch of his damnable body and nibblature of his detestable lips. And since I was denied the comforts of religion during this period, and therefore had no way of knowing the true from the induced, I did indeed succumb. Nor do I offer any excuse of attenuation for myself.'

Marvin turned to the man who was his last remaining hope. 'Sir Gules!' he cried. 'Put hand to sword and we shall yet hew our way to freedom!'

Blackamoor laughed dryly. 'Think you he'll draw? Mayhap. But 'twill be but to peel an apple, or so I deem!'

Marvin stared into the face of his friend, and saw written there a shame deeper than steel and deadlier than poison.

'It is true,' Sir Gules said, trying to keep his voice steady. 'I cannot aid thee, though my heart breaks at your plight.'

'What damnable sorcery has Blackamoor rendered upon you?' Marvin cried.

'Alas, my good friend,' said the hapless Gules, 'it is a knavery so clearcut and so logical as to be irrefutable; and yet so cunning wrought and executed as to make lesser schemes of littler men seem very foolings of most childlike boys … Did you know that I am a member of that secret organization known as the Grey Knights of the Holy Subsidence?'

'Me knew this not,' Marvin said. 'And yet, the Grey Knights have ever been friends to learning and companions to piety, and most especially they have espoused 'gainst royal opposition, the cause of d'Augustin.'

'True, most extremely true,' the miserable Gules said, his weakly handsome features twisted into a grimace of agony. 'And so I too believed. But then last day yesterweek I learned that our Grand Master Helvetius had passed away-'

'Due to a bit of steel in the liver,' Blackamoor said.

'-and that I was now bound to the new Grand Master, as utterly and completely as ever, since our vows are to the Office, not the man.'

'And that new Master?' Marvin asked.

'Happens to be myself!' cried Blackamoor. And now Marvin saw upon his finger the great signet ring of the Order.

'Yes, so it did befall,' Blackamoor said, the left side of his mouth twisting cynically. 'I appropriated that ancient office, since it was an instrument well suited to my hand and sensible to my usages. And so I am Master, and sole arbiter of Polity and Decision-Making, responsible to no power save that of Hell itself, and answerable to no voice save that which echoes from the nethermost crevices of mine own soul!'

There was something magnificent about Blackamoor at that moment. Detestable and cruel though he was, reactionary and self-involved, luxuriating and careless of others, yet still withal, here was a man. So Marvin thought, with grudging respect. And his mouth hardened into fighting lines as he turned to face his antagonist.

'And now,' Blackamoor said, 'our principals are upon the stage, and we lack but one actor to fulfill our drama and bring it to a meet concludence. And this, our last performer, has long and patiently waited in the wings, observing yet unobserved, watching the convolutions of our situation and awaiting his cue to bring him on for his brief moment of glory … But soft, he comes!'

There was a sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor. Those within the room listened and waited, shuffling uneasily. Slowly the door swung open-

And there entered a masked man, clad in black from tip to toe, and carrying over his shoulder a great double-edged axe. He stood poised in the doorway as though unsure of his welcome.

'Goodday to you, executioner,' Blackamoor drawled. 'Now all is complete, and the final moments of this farce can be performed. Forward, guards!'

The guards closed in the locked sword-mattocks. They seized Marvin and gripped him fast, bending his head forward with neck exposed.

'Executioner!' cried Blackamoor. 'Perform your duty!'

The executioner stepped forward and tested the edges of his great axe. He drew the weapon high over his head, stood poised for a moment, then began his downward swing.

And Cathy screamed!

She threw herself upon that grim masked figure, clawing at him, deflecting his heavy axe, which clashed against the granite floor and drew a shower of sparks. The axeman pushed her angrily away, but her fingers had closed around the black silk of his mask.

The executioner roared as he felt the mask being torn away. With a cry of dismay he tried to cover his features. But all in that dungeon room had seen him clear.

Marvin was at first unable to believe the testimony of his senses. For, beneath that mask, he looked into a face that seemed somehow familiar. Where had he gazed upon that line of cheek and brow, those brown eyes with their faint tilt, that firm jaw?

Then he remembered; he had seen it, long ago, in a mirror.

The executioner was wearing his face, and walking in his body …

'Ze Kraggash!' Marvin said.

'At your service.' And the man who had stolen Marvin's body bowed mockingly, and grinned at Marvin with his own face.