The Malacia Tapestry (31 page)

‘You're longing for trouble, aren't you?' I said to Bonihatch.

He rubbed his hands on his upper arms and shook his head. ‘I'm in agreement with Otto and Flora – I want you to see where truth lies. You're one of the victims, same as him and me.'

‘I intend to be one of the winners.'

Walking away from him, I made for the stables to get Capriccio, depressed to think that the Mendicula affair, entered into lightly, was ending dismally. Armida should have waited for me.

‘By the bones, this reformation takes the light-heartedness out of a lad's character,' I said to myself, half-aloud.

In the shadows at the far end of the stable, beyond where Capriccio was chomping hay, stood Letitia. She smiled and approached, holding out her hands.

I selected one of them and clutched it, determined to be formal, although her smile was good to see.

‘So, Letitia, our play's over. You'll have to go back to your shirts and table-cloths. I have had enough of low life and am off to the hills to hunt devil-jaws and other nasty ancestral animals.'

She pulled her hand from mine, and looked down to hide the flush that came to her cheeks. ‘So I'm low-life, am I? That's how you think of me …'

‘Chk, I didn't mean that. You people are so touchy!'

‘You people, indeed!' With her colour still high, she turned back and looked hard at me, almost with imperiousness. ‘It's true I have no reason to be proud, Perian. But I thought I'd just wait here, away from the others, to bid you goodbye, since we'll not be meeting again. I wanted to tell you that whatever that little beast Solly said, I admired the figure you cut on your horse.'

‘Ah, Letitia, you treat me better than I deserve! I am a real chick-snake at times.'

She laughed, as freely as I ever saw her. ‘I've never ridden a horse, and don't know that I ever shall.'

‘I'll give you a ride on Capriccio one day. He's slightly lame, but a fine animal, aren't you, Capri, old fellow? Now I must be on my way. I've got to get a pair of boots out of pawn.'

She put her hand on the gelding's bridle, eyeing me inquisitively.

‘It's been a pleasure to do the play with you, Perry, I tell you boldly. You're the first actor I've ever spoken with – not in a business way, I mean, for we have made costumes for the University Players. It is an enviable way of life.'

‘Some find it so. Some despise it.'

‘It would be a way of improving myself, and helping the family more than I do at present … You said so. Do you – do you think I could become a professional actress? I mean –' she hurried on, as if dreading my answer – ‘I mean, I know you have to have talent and of course be more beautiful than I am. I couldn't expect to be Lady Jemima ever again, but perhaps I could play funny parts, do you think? Is there a chance that your Maestro Kemperer would take me on?'

I took her frail hands, and we half-leant against the flanks of the horse, gazing at each other.

‘It really is a hard life, especially for a girl.'

‘A hard life's one thing I'm well accustomed to.'

‘If you're serious, I suppose I could put in a word with Kemperer. I'm not on the best of terms with him at present.'

‘You mustn't tell Armida what I've just said.'

‘I won't
tell
anyone, you silly girl – Armida least of all, to be honest. But what will your uncle Joze say when you tell him?'

Letitia's gaze dropped. ‘He'd let me go if mother and I made enough opposition. He's part of what I want to get away from.'

My arms were round her, and her head nestled in my chest. ‘Letitia, you're such an odd mixture.'

‘No more of a mixture than you,' she said, with renewed spirit, looking up at me with flashing blue eyes and a half-smile. ‘Do you make love to every girl you act with, Perry?'

‘Why do you suppose that?'

She twined her arms round my neck. ‘It excites me a little.'

Taking her closer, I said, ‘I thought you were the one who wanted to be an exception to the general rule, Letty.'

Her hair still smelt of the garret, although she had sprinkled cheap powder in it. I pressed my cheek against hers, while slipping one hand into her bodice, so that a small warm breast was cradled in my hand, smooth as an orc's egg, soft as a doe's fur. ‘Ride on Capriccio with me to my billet, just to celebrate a joint farewell to General Gerald and the Lady Jemima. Let them do behind the locked door what they pretend before the zahnoscope.'

The gelding stirred beside us as if in complicity.

As I began kissing her, she pulled her face away and said, ‘It would be more persuasive if you could contrive to let Maestro Kemperer view the
Tragedy of Mendicula
. He might take a fancy to me in my part.'

‘Oh, I'm sure he'd take a fancy to you, in every part, my darling. But that later … Now, while I'm not idle, you be active – slide your dainty hand down here and measure what remarkable effect you have on me, and what a burning torch would light your way to bed …'

Beneath my fingers, was exactly the syruped nook in which that torch might be most pleasurably extinguished. She gasped, parting her lips with an exhalation of excitement, either at what she felt or I felt, or both, and began wriggling deliriously. I slid my tongue between her teeth, hers thrust between my cheeks. At which, she went into raptures on the spot, so jogging me in her convulsions that I was thrown into the same voluptuous spasm. We stood, we tottered, half propped against Capriccio, in the twilit stable.

‘Oh … oh … oh … Perry …'

‘Oh, Letty!' I said, pleased despite the state of my dress. I was trembling. I leant against the wooden wall of the stable. ‘How gloriously ready you are, Letty! Come back to my room and let's celebrate our delight at a more leisurely pace.'

She adjusted her dress, laughing and sobbing, and hiding her face in a characteristic way.

‘Oh, oh, that's so shameful, so abandoned!' She laughed again. ‘You see, I can enjoy myself like any high-born girl. Yes, yes. I want you to take me fiercely in all my finery, pretend I really am the Lady Jemima!'

She threw herself at me, face all aflame. ‘Perry, I'll give you it all. Can I trust you? Oh, I'm so desperate – if I could only speak, if only I could tell you …'

‘Believe me, you're eloquent.'

I heard noises outside the stable.

Her arms slipped round my neck again. ‘It's you – you make me so brazen! Oh, Perry, you will help me become an actress? You did promise.'

‘We'll talk about that later.' There were muttered voices outside.

Leaving my blouse unbuttoned, I looked round for a weapon. A hay rake stood close by. As I grasped it, the stable door was kicked open.

Letitia screamed and darted behind me. There stood Bonihatch, brandishing a stout cudgel, his jaw set. With him was Solly, similarly armed. Otto and Flora and another pair of apprentices stood behind them, all peering angrily or anxiously into the gloom.

‘We've caught you at your tricks this time, you cur,' said Bonihatch. ‘Now I'm really going to learn you. I'm going to beat you to a pulp.'

‘Yes, we're going to beat you to a bloody pulp,' said Solly.

‘Come out from there, Letitia,' called Bonihatch. She made no attempt to move from where she was. I stood confronting them. There were four of them and a pair of apprentices to get by.

‘You scoundrel,' Bengtsohn said. ‘You have had advantage of that young girl, what her uncle told me to keep both my eyes on.'

He pushed Bonihatch forward.

Flora called out, ‘Are you all right, Letitia? Are we too late?'

‘I'm quite safe,' Letitia said indistinctly. ‘Let us come out.'

As she spoke, I jumped forward, lunging with the rake as if it were a pike, catching Bonihatch in the chest. Using the momentum of the lunge, and dropping the rake, I hit Solly full in the face with my fist. In the moment of disorder, I swung Capri's head towards the door, vaulted into the saddle as if I had practised it for years, and sank the stirrups sharply into his flanks. Forward we lurched.

My assailants fell back, shouting. Solly was slammed against the post as we broke free. Bengtsohn had the presence of mind to wave his stick. I kicked out at him, happening to catch him on the side of his skull. He fell cursing against his wife's dumplings. She too, screaming murder, rumbled, back against the other apprentices, in a welter of soiled skirts. They stumbled beneath her weight and fell.

Into the court we galloped. I was yelling, in glee and excitement. Past the loaded handcart, past the zahnoscope. Chabrizzi servants scattered. Heading for the gate at a trot, I turned to look back. Four of them had collapsed in a heap, punctuated by waving arms, pallid legs and red faces. Bonihatch and Solly were presumed recovering inside the stable. Only Letitia was on her feet, standing and waving to me. Returning the gesture, I almost fell out of the saddle. I imagined the admiration in her heart for the way I had handled the affair as I clung to Capri's neck.

I made my way along the Street of the Wood Carvers to my own door. I had stabled Capriccio, and taken a much-needed glass of wine. My pulse was normal again.

As I mounted the bare, wooden stairs, I was conscious of a sulphurous smell but thought nothing of it. I set my thoughts on the good times just past and the good times to come; there was no need to feel low. When I had gathered some belongings together, I would be off for Juracia and the hunt.

At the top of the stairs, I opened the door to my room. My amulet slipped from my arm. I clutched it but it had gone, slithering down my forearm like a snake. Instead of clattering on the boards, it fell on tufty grass.

Through a haze, I saw six people waiting. They stood monstrously, grouped in a misty clearing among blasted oaks and pines; an owl sat on a riven branch, adding its staring face to the others. Something between mist and music assailed my senses.

The two leading figures were exponents of the Natural Religion, as their clumsy drapings, adorned with enigmatic signs, proclaimed. The man in the forefront was of grotesque stature; he sported a luxuriant, reddish-brown beard. Over the ferocious curls of his cranium he had draped a pancake cup of linen. Under his outer gown he nursed a gigantic phallus, showing his allegiance to Satan.

The others of the motley crew were as hideous, though they had not his puissance. Their apparition so terrified me that it took a moment to observe that one of the group was an ape dressed in clothes. They all stood about a mighty cylindrical altar, from the crumbling stone of which protruded carved heads of Minerva and the Devil. Sulphurous smoke drifted from the ashes on the stone.

All these seven faces, animal, bird and human, turned towards me. In every ugly countenance, I read hostility. Fear crawled in my bones.

And there was a woman. She crouched in abasement before the magician with the swollen phallus, her naked back scraping the altar. She was undressed down to a soiled, white shift, and was evidently so demoralized that she left her ample breasts to hang in full view. She clutched a battered bronze plate.

Of all the beings there, she was the last to become aware of my presence. Slowly, despairingly, she lifted her head to gaze at me – and fixed me with such a look of anguish that I would have taken a step back, could I have moved at all.

I was not the only one to hold still. Nothing stirred except the slow drift of rancid smoke across those unblinking faces.

I stood there for ever, it seemed. Time was of no account to them, that I knew; the mist shrouding those trees would never be lifted by the visitation of an ordinary sun.

And then the second magician moved. He was a hulking ruin of a man with coarse features, brows like dead bracken, and a skull bereft of hair. He sidled forward and raised one hand slowly towards me. His mouth was permanently half-open. It opened still more, showing fangs, as if he were about to speak. Then he was gone.

They were all dissolved, with a humming sound like bees swarming – woman and altar and all the rest of the scene. I was standing in my familiar room, shaking.

The spell was broken. I reached slowly down and picked my amulet off the floor. With difficulty, for it was as tight as usual, I slid it back on to my upper arm.

I sat down on my bed.

Someone had worked a spell against me – a fairly typical one, with the figures only mistily realized, and little sound involved. For all that, the vision had contained a super-reality which its enigmatic quality made more terrifying. Were they warning me?

For a long while I sat in anguished speculation. I had nothing on my conscience. Well, not much. The vow I had made to be true to Armida had not been broken. Admittedly, Letitia had dented it a little; but that had been her doing, not mine. Although I might have offered to bring her to my room, the fact was that I had not done so, and in matrimonial matters it is wise to be ruled by facts rather than ifs. I gathered up my things and made for Juracia in a sober mood.

The Hoytola estates were grand in every degree. As the dusty track wound northwards from Malacia, it twisted down into a fertile and afforested valley; there, invitingly, lay the hamlet of Juracia, with Hoytola's lodge behind it. And how invitingly! Capriccio had gone lame ten kilometres back. I had had to walk him. The carriages, waggons and riders passing by had smothered me in the white dust of the Fruila. I was hot, footsore, bedraggled and thirsty.

I entered the estate as inconspicuously as possible. It was soon made clear to me by the servants that no one arrived here without equerry or valet. The impudent fellows treated me as if I were a servant myself. Enraged, I made what disorder I could in the bedroom to which I was shown, beating the dust from my clothes over everything to show them who was master.

After lounging in a hot bath of the Roman type – the only other occupants being two drunken fat men who sang ballads – I was refreshed. I dressed, and went in search of food, wine, company, cheer and Armida.