The Malacia Tapestry

‘Perry, you are as over-confident as Prince Mendicula himself!’

‘Let’s leave that farrago out of our conversation. Of course I hope that Bengtsohn will be successful, and that the play will do well for us, but after all as a story it is such rubbish – banal rubbish, too.’

‘Banal?’ She looked quizzingly down her pretty nose at me. ‘I love stories about princes and princesses. How can such things be banal? And Princess Patricia is so marvellously proud when she is found out … I have a good opinion of the piece. So does my father.’

‘My father would be very scornful. The situation is as old as the hills. Man and best friend, best friend seduces friend’s wife; the deception is discovered, they fall out and become enemies. Blood is shed. Why, that sort of thing could have been written a million years ago.’

‘Yet Otto has set out the old story in a novel way, and draws a sound moral from it. Besides, I like the setting in the captured city.’

I laughed and squeezed her.

‘Nonsense, Armida, there’s no moral in the piece. Mendicula is a dupe, Patricia unkind, Gerald a false friend, Jemima just a pawn. Perhaps that represents Bengtsohn’s view of the nobility, but it makes for a poor tale. My great hope is that the astonishing technique of mercurisation will carry the charade through to success – aided, of course, by the outstanding handsomeness of fifty per cent of the players.’

She smiled. ‘You mean the fifty per cent lying here on this bed?’

‘All glorious hundred per cent of it!’

‘While you are playing with these figures – and with my figure too, if you don’t mind – may I refresh your memory on one point? Otto’s venture will come to naught if my father does not settle his dispute with the Supreme Council. Father is very ambitious, and so is feared. If he falls, then so fall all who depend on him, including his daughter.’

‘You refer to that business of the hydrogenous balloon? Balloons have sailed from Malacia before, for sport and to scare the Turk. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Nothing is going to be changed if the balloon does go up.’

‘The Council think differently. But if popular opinion is too much against them, then they may yield. Alternatively, they may strike against my father – which is why he now seeks powerful friends.’

I rolled on to my back and gazed up at the patches on the ceiling.

‘It sounds as if your father would be best advised to forget about his balloon.’

‘Father intends that the balloon should ascend; it would be an achievement. Unfortunately, the Council intends that it should not. That is a serious situation. As common usage comes between us, so it can come between my father and his life. You know what happens to those who defy the Council for too long.’

What I saw in my mind’s eye was not a corpse in the sewers but its daughter sharing my little bare garret.

‘I would defy anything for you, Armida, including all the fates in opposition. Marry me, I beg of you, and watch me excel myself.’

She would have to have a dozen horoscopes read before she could consent to that; but she did agree to a secret betrothal, and to the same sort of bond that existed between General Gerald and the fair Princess Patricia, our absurd alter egos.

Scents of sandalwood, camphor and pine mingled with patchouli and the precious aromas of Armida’s body as we forthwith celebrated our intentions.

A Balloon over the Bucintoro (#ulink_fefdaa23-5ada-5ea8-a2ca-7ff6a1fe10f2)

When you take a stroll through our city along the banks of the River Toi, and especially along the elegant Bucintoro, where pavements are of gold, you can look north and regard verdant expanses of countryside stretching into the Vokoban Mountains, which are themselves, at least on their southern slopes, green and well-favoured.

When from any other vantage point in Malacia you gaze towards the country, you see nothing so enticing. True, there is the long, dusty road to Byzantium, while to the south-east lies the Vamonal Canal, tree-fringed for most of its course; but in general the vistas consist of undulating plain – ochre, sullen, primitive; all those things against which the idea of Malacia is most opposed. To the west lie the no less uninviting Prilipit Mountains, where the terrain is distorted and uncouth.

Among the folds of the Prilipits, even as Armida and I were luxuriously plighting our troth, gathered an Ottoman army intent upon laying waste Malacia.

There was a general alarm and mustering of arms. Not a citizen but feared for his well-being, his wife, or something he held dear. But such armies had gathered beyond our fortifications before, had been defeated, and had retired in disarray.

The Council and the general did what they deemed necessary. They paraded our own forces, they polished our cannon-balls, they set the blue and black flag of Malacia flying from every battlement, they drew a barrage across the rivers, they increased the price of fish and flour in the markets.

While these high strategies were in process, groups of citizens climbed to vantage points in the city – up rickety staircases to belfries – to espy the gaudy tents of the foe; but most of us saw it as our duty to continue living as usual, whilst paying more for loaves and sprats.

Some there were, of course, who fled the city, going by barge to Vamonal or by foot or litter to Byzantium. Others bolted themselves in houses or cellars. For myself, I feared nothing; Armida had cast a spell over my life.

All know what it is to be in love. When I opened my casement window and the breeze wafted down from a meadow outside the city, that breeze might have touched her cheek on its way to me; when I trod the street, the ground beneath my feet led somewhere to her, was trodden by her feet; when I glanced up and happened to see a bird flying in the sky, it might be that she saw it at the same instant, so that our gazes interlocked. Whenever I touched an object, it reminded me of touching her; when I ate, the action made me recall that she ate; when I spoke to anyone, I recalled what it felt like to speak to her; when I kept silent, it put me in mind of her lips, unspeaking. The world became a conspiracy of her.

In the circumstances, the Ottomans could not weigh down my heart or my considerations by a denario’s worth.

One evening, when a Turkish spy was caught in the main square and had his neck extended by a good half-metre before Fetter Place, I went with de Lambant to visit Otto Bengtsohn and inquire how the mercurisation was progressing. Such was his secretiveness that, as yet, he had shown nobody his results.

‘How appropriate that you should be immortalised on glass.’ said de Lambant. ‘You are such a transparent character, my friend.’

I had paid for the wine that evening. ‘Then we must see that you are posted to posterity on skin and flint,’ I said.

We went in through the court by the sign of the Dark Eye and into the workshop, where Bonihatch and other assistants were still at work, or bowed over their painting desks pretending to work. Slapping the erstwhile Prince Mendicula on his back, I led the way into the gallery which at this hour was closed to the public.