The Malacia Tapestry (13 page)

There was no denying that the previous evening had brought me little success. I had scarcely spoken to Armida, de Lambant and Bedalar had disappeared, Letitia had proved unexpectedly difficult – not that I really cared about her – and I had not got a glance at Bengtsohn's slides. There was every reason to hope that Seemly Moleskin might have something exciting in prospect.

The old man sat as usual at the mid-point of the Maltese Steps, a tied boy sporting among the skins and bronze globes near his raised chair. I greeted him politely, thinking how ashen he looked in sunlight, as if he had been carried here from a century underground.

Pulling his long animal upper-lip, the astrologer nodded, at which his owl also nodded without opening its eyes.

‘Are there cheerful tidings for me this week, sire?' I asked, presenting my contribution to his coffers.

‘The constellations and signatures are in unfavourable conjunction. Against the heat of Saturn must be set the icefields of idleness. Even those who run free amid the fields of green are also walkers down a slow and narrow alley. For you, buskins are now so thick-soled you no longer tread the everyday ground, so that what you imagine is your territory may be quickly occupied by another.'

‘Do you speak, sire, of my work, my play, or my love?'

‘I speak in universals, so that what does not specify is specific to each. You hold nothing tight and fall when you believe you fly. Nor can you wear a general's shirt without also being a prince.'

‘I wanted to play the prince, if it's Bengtsohn's play you mean.'

‘So you shall play the prince, but the occasions that wheel overhead suggest a salutary turn, less regal than legal. Unless you strive to understand Satan better, the rewards of your play may seem a bitter harvest.'

Thus he went on for some while, occasionally burning little scrolls of sweet-smelling paper. Seemly Moleskin was eloquent this week; I took no great pleasure from his current drift. After listening for a while, I ventured to ask him another direct question.

‘Sire, I have made a secret engagement to be married. I'm speaking now of my life and not of something I'm playing. Can you say if the lady and I will make a happy match?'

‘Though you may think yourself the most flexible of men, yet you are held frozen in an attitude which will undo you. You think you grasp what you grasp; you believe you touch what you touch; but the smoke rises from a dead fire. Fruit smells fresh even as the cucumbers lie rotting by the roadside; the dust you see drifting at the crossroads will not tell you how many men have passed there; and among your friends lies the cruellest deceit which poses as no deceit.'

‘Should I mistrust Armida, then?'

‘Lie on a bed of thistles if you need to watch zealously all night, yet you may know you will be badly pricked after this omen appears in the sky above Malacia; a black horse with silver hooves.'

Pondering on these riddles, I said, ‘Sir Seemly, you have only ash for my spirit today. Is there really trouble coming for me if I see a horse in the sky? A black horse with silver hooves?'

He scratched the great wart on his left cheek, from which blossomed forth a cataract of yellow hairs, curling in every direction like snakes on a miniature Medusa's head.

‘First comes the black horse, aslant in the clouds; then your troubles at ground level.'

‘I'll try to avoid looking up, then.'

‘I'd advise you to look
out
!' he said sharply. He had counselled my mother in her lifetime and my grandmother before that; the mysteries he dealt in had bound the daily lives of Malacia together for millennia. I wished I had saved my pence for a bite of food. Saluting, I left him, though a pungent flavour of goat lingered about me for some while.

The presence of hundreds of Turks outside the city was not enough to interrupt the drama of Prince Mendicula and his unfaithful princess. Still trailing a whiff of goat, I entered the grand gates of the Chabrizzi and prepared to stand once more before the zahnoscope.

Armida had already arrived, looking as fresh as ever in a gown I had not seen before, with a broad sash and buffon over it. Bedalar was with her and conversing amiably with them both was de Lambant. We greeted one another warmly.

‘We have a pair of winners here,' Guy said, when the girls were addressing themselves to the subject of clothes.

‘
And
undeserved. I had hoped to introduce you to Armida.'

‘I thought I'd waited long enough. You're a little pensive this morning?'

‘Have you seen any black horses galloping over the rooftops?'

Letitia soon joined the group, giving me an aslant look.

I walked over to less glamorous company, which consisted of Bonihatch, who was practising incorrect lunges with a wooden sword, the bent figure of Otto Bengtsohn, Solly, and another assistant, a lumbering man-boy called Rhino. We were due to play the scene where General Gerald is closeted with Jemima and takes her into a wood; Bengtsohn was supervising the arrangement of necessary properties.

Seeing me, the old man told the others to continue with the work while he took me to one side.

‘Am I to inspect the finished slides at last?'

‘Pray do not persist about that, what might be a sore point with some.'

‘What, then?'

‘Are you feeling today courageous, Perian?'

‘Like the general, I am always brave.'

‘Good. Though bravery isn't a matter always of cutting some figures, you understand, or of playing even a role. It is something what you have to
be
. There are dangers all about, all the time. We may finish in the Toi with our throats yet cut, even if the Ottoman don't slaughter us.'

‘You asked me a question and I answered straight. Why then a straight sermon?'

‘Not a sermon, think nothing about it. Thinking is dangerous in Malacia. In three days' time there will come the Feast of the Buglewing – then the populace will cease to think and become drunken. But the people what hold power in Malacia, they never cease like machines to think, day or night, feast or fast.'

‘Who was the sinister man in the gallery last night, with the black frock coat?'

He directed an upwards gaze at me which filtered through his straggling eyebrows. ‘Better for you not to know. Keep him off from your mind.'

‘I know he is of the Supreme Council. I cared little for the look of him. Is he part of the reason why you will not show us the mercurization?'

‘Better you should not know. Let's speak of other things.' He cleared his throat. ‘Listen and take not offence, what I don't intend. The Zlatorogs are mine friends. I know a thousand things from them to your one, so have a care there. Do not fool with Letitia, or her uncle Joze and I will see you regret.'

‘Fool with her? What do you mean, fool with her? Is feeding her sister and trying to order a shirt from her improper? Or any business of yours? Or her uncle's? Because I do your wretched play for you, it does not mean you order my life for me.'

‘Lives are for ordering. I tell you I know a thousand things from the Zlatorogs to your one. I have spoke on that subject and that is all what I will say.'

‘You've already said too much.'

He nodded and continued, ‘The other message what I have for you is of more high import. It comes from my mighty and rich master. Andrus Hoytola requires for you to present yourself at him to his mansion in the siesta hour. It is there, and not here before my zahnoscope, that some tax may be put on your courage.'

‘If he wants me, I shall be there. Have you been telling tales to him?'

His manner changed, becoming confidential, as it had on the occasion when he first showed me the zahnoscope.

‘Listen, I was young once, before I was kicked out of Tolkhorm for my revolutionary views. I know better than to tell tales in that quarter, rest assured. I take care how I tread in Malacia.'

‘That black Council coat last evening convinced me there were serious things loose in the world, never fear. What did that man want in Hoytola's gallery?'

In a hurried voice, he said, ‘This is not your concern, I have said. That man is the Devil. All I say is, having the Turks at our back door has improved the standing of my master on more than one count, what the Turks alarm the Council. So you get a summons. A little action is wanted.

‘Inertia has been always the most chief of Malacia's weapons, whether in peace whether war. Inertia it is what has helped it somehow to survive throughout two thousand millennia from history.'

Bonihatch had arrived, rolling down his sleeves and grinning. He butted in, in his impulsive way, to say, ‘Yes, and the Council will rely on inertia again in this new Turkish crisis, if they can, Otto. The plague is on their side – not for the first time in history. Now that the Dog Star falls to bed with the sun, the plague gets in its stride again.'

‘There have been ten burials at St Braggart's this week so far, from the plague alone,' I said. ‘But that isn't going to protect us from the Ottomans.'

Bonihatch looked knowing. ‘Ah, but think how much faster the visitation will move among the ranks of Suleiman's sons, camped with foul water out among the foothills.'

‘Is right,' agreed Otto. ‘It's just an old women's tale that the Turk don't catch plague. They rot of it just like what we do. Besides, there's word what our enemy are not Ottomans proper, but the followers from the Bosnian king, Stefan Tvrtko. Their faith is Bogumilism. They'll fall easy to the plague.'

Bonihatch dismissed this with a shake of his whiskers and said, ‘Our stinking Council hope to sit and wait for death to do their work – in which time we could be invaded as strongly by the plague as by Tvrtko. A plea was sent to Igara and Saville and Vamonal for supporting armies, but in every case nothing has returned except excuses penned on richest vellum. So much for the rotten, corrupt system!'

‘Only Tuscady has sent some troops – the rest know how low is our exchequer,' I said.

‘We should let the Turk in, to lay waste Malacia – then we could start again clean,' said Bonihatch, savagely.

‘No, no, Bonny. That medicine is worse than what is the ailment. Turks must be defeated, then revolution comes from within.'

‘So what's to be done? I gather you have some ideas,' I said to him.

Again the transfixing eye peered from under the cliff of brow.

‘Ideas enough wicked to please the Council. In particular, the young Duke Renardo supports them. You shall see, you shall see. Go to Hoytola this siesta time.' He altered his tone, and added, ‘Change. That's what's needed in Malacia, change from within.' His voice sank still lower. ‘Progress.'

I knew students at the university who professed Progressivism because it suited the cut of their clothes; but the word sounded odd from this ageing Northerner, as it had from Letitia on the previous evening.

‘Well, Otto, let's get the sofa arranged and the zahnoscope set up.'

When the zahnoscope had done its work for the day, Armida offered to drive me to her father. Bedalar and Guy were off to see Caylus train for the bull-fight, so Armida and I were alone together; proudly, she escorted me to one of the Chabrizzi stables, where her birthday present stood. – a neat little post-chaise, with her mare, Betsy, complaisant between the shafts.

At last I had admired and envied it enough and Armida took the reins. The carriage sprang along on its two fragile wheels. Its body was daintily turned, its panels shone like silk, its gilded woodwork glittered in the sun. I coveted it a great deal, desiring a masculine version for myself which I could drive at breakneck speed and astonish my friends. In this charming vehicle we bowled along, Armida and I.

‘What does your father want with me?'

‘That he must explain. The Turks have something to do with it.'

I fell silent. I already knew what Otto had told me, that the Turkish force was commanded by Stefan Tvrtko the Bosnian; his name was being bandied about town. It was said that he was immense, swart, ferocious, that he was no better than a brigand who had thrown in his lot with the Ottomans for gain. It was said that his kingdom was no greater than a valley in the Balkan mountains, and that he had strangled his son Sebastian. What bearing such a villain had on a man of quality like Andrus Hoytola was a matter as yet for speculation.

The Hoytola mansion stood beyond the Fragrant Quarter and the Avenue of the Armourers, in a secluded street not far from the Vamonal Canal. We drove past it and on to the racecourse, where we found the head of the Hoytola family in the stables, supervising the care of his Arabs. A boy took Betsy's head, and Armida and I walked over to him.

The first piece of information Hoytola vouchsafed me was that he owned eighty horses, a good proportion of them Arab stallions, and most of them kept on the Hoytola country estate, Juracia.

Andrus Hoytola wore a supercilious look, rather like one of his thoroughbreds. He was countrified this morning, in a mustard sporting-coat, breeches and gaiters, after the Northern manner. Breaking off a discussion regarding dressage with his grooms, he turned and addressed me formally.

‘The annual Feast of the Buglewing commences in three days. One has to prepare one's thoroughbreds in proper time, in order to make the best display.'

I could think of nothing to say to that; nor did Hoytola appear to expect a reply. After a pause, he addressed me again.

‘One hears that you are progressing favourably in the Prince Mendicula play, de Chirolo. Excellent. One anticipates that it will be an interesting thing. Bengtsohn desired originally to apply the story to present-day low life, but that would never do, not even in his native Tolkhorm where manners are more barbarous than here. Set a few millennia ago, among people of proper standing, the story acquires dignity, one judges.'

His words had a dry quality, as if his mouth had developed a prejudice against saliva.