The Malacia Tapestry Read online

  As san Lasionio poured out his admiration for La Singla — and how banal another man's protestations of adoration sound — I tried to work the matter out. By my side was the very rogue that Kemperer was making the fuss about. He had delivered himself into my hands, much as La Singla herself had done the previous day. What a sheepish black sheep!

  Just as I was wondering how the situation could be turned to my advantage, the captain began to resolve that question as well.

  'My divine Singla has briefed me on you, de Chirolo. I know that you have the trust of her old tyrant of a husband. Even now, you are probably going to visit them both, while I must to my duties -the regiment has much preparation before departure. Here's the procedure. I require a great favour of you — well, a small one really, between gentlemen — I request you to take a despatch to her, privily. You may not believe this, but I fear that repulsive old man to whom she's chained. He is capable of spreading lies that would stain my rank and honour. Go to her, inform her that I stand on the brink of despair for her decision.'

  He paused. The plume of his tricorne trembled in sympathy with his moustache.

  'Say on.'

  'Her decision means life or death to me. She must determine today whether to continue entrenched with her dotard of a husband or to embark on a new life with me and the regiment. That's my ultimatum. Will you impress it on her?'

  'Is that all?' I asked.

  'There's no more to say. Tell La Singla that my pistol's primed and that I stand with it even now — say even now — with the muzzle at my temple, awaiting her favourable decision. I have my strategy; I must know hers. Will you do this?'

  'Say on.'

  'There's nothing more to say. Tell the divine Singla — out of that macabre old nanny-goat's hearing, naturally — that I will have a paris in readiness for her at the Stary Most at midnight tonight.' He was ticking the items off on his fingers.

  'Say on.'

  'There no more to say. I'll be in the paris at midnight, the pistol at my head, waiting, hoping, to bear her away.'

  'In pursuit of Tvrtko?'

  'That's the route the regiment takes, northwards, after the retreating Ottoman rabble. Will you do this?'

  'Am I to inform her that her tryst is with you or with King Tvrtko?'

  Narrowing his eyes, he pulled heavily at one cheek.

  'I require help, not mockery. Supposing you knew you were to forfeit your life on a foreign field tomorrow — would you feel so jovial today?'

  'I certainly would not be contemplating matrimony tonight.'

  We paused in the street, the better to glare at each other. I observed over his shoulder a block of noble masonry; from its shelter, an ancient, whiskery face, half-concealed, was watching. Could the crippled magician have followed us? I began to feel a general unease, and knew it was time to strike a bargain with my military friend.

  'I'm a man with a lively heart, Captain san Lasionio. I sympathize with your romantic predicament, believe me. But, like you, like all men, I'm already loaded with my own predicaments. Also I feel somewhat for La Singla. Are you being sincere? If you really believed you would die tomorrow under a swinging scimitar, or whatever these Bosnians use, shouldn't you be on your knees in St Marco's, rather than ordering parises for midnight?'

  He slapped his leg.

  'You're playing the soldier now, de Chirolo, remember, not the priest. Be your part. Will you deliver my message persuasively, without commentary, or will you not?'

  'Very well. Soldier to soldier. I will deliver your message, omitting no detail of your plan. The pistol shall be included, and so shall the paris, and so shall midnight and Tvrtko.'

  'You may omit Tvrtko. I don't want to scare the lady.'

  'Well enough. All but Tvrtko. On one condition, though I know men of honour don't make conditions. Give me your tricorne. No, I understand that you can hardly fight and die without it. Your unblemished saint shall return it to you at midnight, when you meet her at Stary Most. I need it only till then; by that hour, it should have worked my small purpose with Kemperer. We may as well both get something from him this day.'

  He clutched my hand.

  'My hat you shall have. Anything else? You assist my siege of her heart. What can I do to assist you?'

  'Nothing more — wait! Yes. I need a well-trained docile horse — perhaps one too old to go chasing after Ottomans.'

  'You must have a horse!'

  'Yes, I must.'

  'I meant, you must have one already. All right, I see you have not. I'll never understand townsmen — I was reared in the saddle. Very well, you shall have a horse. We have too many baggage animals to lead across the Prilipits. I'll give you note of a place to go and you shall collect a mount tomorrow. Go early, or the tradesmen will have it for meat — soldiers leave debts behind.'

  'Is it black?'

  'It has four legs. That's enough.' He told me the address. As he did so, I adjusted his hat upon my head. It fitted well. He assured me I looked dashing. I repeated my determination as messenger. We shook hands and parted. With a salute, Captain san Lasionio stepped smartly into the shade of a byway and was gone.

  In a little establishment by the canalside, I chose a table hidden from common view and sipped my glass, deep in thought.

  There was the promise of a horse. Very well. That set my affairs ahead a good deal. It placed me in a debt of gratitude to Captain John Pellegrino san Lasionio. I had an obligation of honour to bear his message.

  On the other hand — how terrible for all concerned if La Singla did run off with him! What a blow to theatrical art! How terrible for me, for Kemperer, for Malacia! Recalling her agitation of the day before, I thought that she was indeed prepared to dash off with the gallant captain. Life with Kemperer must be unbearable at times; not that bumping over mountains in a carriage was necessarily the ideal alternative. For her sake, too, I must deliver her lover's message. But…

  Well, I would talk the matter over with de Lambant before I decided.

  Tossing a handful of paras down on the table, I left, pleased by the way the waiter bowed and called me 'Captain' as he saw me out.

  No sooner was I in the street, than two roughs rushed from a nearby doorway. They pinned my arms behind my back before I could draw my sword. As may be imagined, I fought with audacity, kicking out furiously and yelling for help. No matter how much I struggled, I was powerless to resist any clouts over the head or kicks in the shin they chose to give me.

  They were no cut-purses. They made no attempt to rob me and be gone. Instead, they dragged me towards the Vamonal Canal. I fought them every centimetre, calling Satan down on them. My offers to pay them rather than have my uniform ruined fell with no effect on their ears — a filthy hand was clamped over my mouth. On the brink of the canal, I struggled like a madman and nearly got clear, but they had me and, with violent blows behind, I was kicked into the water.

  I sank down through the scummy, green liquid. My senses were fully with me — I was all senses as a fire is all heat — and what I felt was not physical hurt but the pain of injustice. All injustices. The water, the slimy world, was injustice swallowing me. I could not bear the indecency of it. Like a gutted fish, I felt my normal buoyant spirit cut from me, and I wished only to die, to drown, to disintegrate in the mud. And I stirred with my outstretched hands the filth of the canal bottom, wishing never to rise again from my degradation. My borrowed plume only should survive this disgrace.

  Everyone gets beaten up sometimes. But my loving trust of the world had been betrayed; it was best that they murdered me, that I remained down in the sunless murk. Weeds brushed my eyes. I clutched them. They came away from the muck and I floated up with them.

  A monumental block of stone from which jutted a devil-jaw's head met my eyes. In the beast's mouth was an iron ring. Instinct being what it is, I grasped the ring. Spitting foul water, I dragged myself up. Two waiters ran from the tavern to assist me, now that danger was past. I lay face down on the cobbles resisting the
ir efforts to make me rise. I wept.

  Someone — a nearby bargeman — fished out the captain's tricorne and it was crammed on my head. They sat me up. My assailants had long since disappeared down a side-alley. A crowd was growing round me, some in aprons, some laughing, some anxious, some angry, to examine this half-drowned specimen of misfortune.

  I could not bear to be an exhibition. Stumbling to my feet, I broke through their ranks and ran, clutching my hat. What a figure I must have made, trailing water! Rushing down a lane past a blacksmith's, I flung myself into a weed-filled yard and collapsed over a broken grindstone. Too miserable to weep, I hid my face in my hands.

  An image of Captain John san Lasionio came to my mind, driving over the grim mountainsides like the wind, with La Singla by his side. Had he ordered this to be done to me because he thought I had designs on La Singla? That seemed unlikely even in my present mood. Was Otto Bengtsohn behind this? That did not seem likely either. Then I thought of Pozzi Kemperer.

  This was his work and nobody else's. Determined that his wife should remain faithful, he had found out about the captain and set his traps for that gallant officer. And the strong-arm men of whom he often boasted had mistaken me for Lasionio. Why not? Didn't I wear the captain's tricorne? Didn't I look every centimetre the military man?

  Besides, roughs are notoriously stupid.

  Very well. The maestro should be confronted with evidence of what his men had done to an innocent man. I still felt absolutely betrayed. My loss made me hollow; but one cannot sprawl for ever over broken grindstones. Miserably, I rose to my squelching feet. I shook out the hat and dripped my way towards the Fragrant Quarter. The old fox deserved to lose La Singla. I would be a somewhat aquatic cupid and deliver Lasionio's message of assignation immediately.

  'How promptly the crippled magician's prophecy came true,' I said to myself. 'They can foresee events. The bed in which Lasionio and I are both involved is of course La Singla's. Though I may never enter it again, I know well what paradise one finds there, bless her. It does go against the grain to help another man enter it — particularly the man on whose behalf I have been pitched into a stinking canal.'

  The prophecy had come true with suspicious haste. Perhaps the magician himself drew a retainer from Kemperer; it was always said that the old villian had his fingers in as many pies as the Supreme Council.

  Going through Ruppo Place, I stopped to shake a few more drops from my borrowed hat. On the far side of the Place, ever faithful to his position, sat the plump young astrologer, Parterre, complacent on his platform. And before him — a neat little female figure with golden hair — La Singla herself consulting him once more.

  I squelched behind a fallen capital to watch her, feeling both sympathy and anger. It was nothing for a woman to run to her soothsayer every hour in time of trouble, like a child running to its mother when frightened. That she was consulting Parterre again merely spoke of the tumult that the captain had stirred in her pretty breast.

  The young astrologer was in shadow while she, as yesterday, was picked out by sunlight, although it bathed her less brightly than on the previous occasion.

  How pliant her movements, how expressive her gestures! Only a skilled actress could have been so affectingly natural. The astrologer bent towards her, fascinated. I saw them talking, although their voices did not reach me. So telling were her gestures, I understood what passed between them as if I stood beside her.

  She told him that she returned as promised, to receive from him the horoscope he had agreed to cast. What delicate expression! The girl should have joined the pantomimi, who use no words! Yet she was not so much a mistress of gesture that I could grasp at first whose the horoscope was; only as Parterre tugged a scrip of paper from his sleeve and handed it to her did I understand that this was not her horoscope but her soldier's. She was receiving Lasionio's fate into her hands.

  With precise timing, La Singla produced a silver coin from the pocket tied by ribbon to her skirt. She pressed it into the astrologer's palm. Her posture as she reached upward to his hand was beautiful to see. Parterre managed to bow without rising from his chair.

  Turning slightly away from the platform, La Singla opened the scrip and cast her eyes down at what was written. The exquisite droop of her wrist! The delicate manner in which colour drained from her face! The pretty way her lips opened and her affrighted finger-tips flew to them in dismay! Her melting look of sorrow!

  The tears that suddenly stood in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks! What art! What consummate cultivation!

  From where I stood, a distant groundling, the actress's subtle cheironomy made the contents of Lasionio's horoscope as clear as if I scanned the parchment myself.

  The captain's hours in the shadow play of life were numbered! She and the astrologer gesticulated, looking first towards the east, then north. Ah, Tvrtko, thy cruel sword! Thy treacherous hatred of the giaour! Thy ambushes in the Prilipit passes for those who dare pursue thee! Alas, poor Lasionio! So young! So soon! And the stars so rudely conjoined against thee, even as thou fear'st! See how thy lady-love clutches her head as if it were thy severed one!

  With ashen countenance, with trembling lips, La Singla tucked the paper into her breast and ran from the place, distraught, in as telling an exit as ever she made. And, at the last moment — she glanced towards my place of concealment!

  As I suspected. Instinctive little actress that she was, La Singla's best was called forth by an audience. She had been aware all along that I was watching her! A moment earlier, I had anticipated that Parterre's ill tidings would propel her straight to Lasionio with the news; I visualized her begging him to let his regiment leave at midnight without him, in defiance of the stars. Now I knew better.

  Weighing the meaning of that last glance of hers, I perceived that her delight in pantomime was as real as her anguish. That I could understand. It was not that she was as much art as heart; rather, that art and heart were one.

  The paris might trundle off at midnight, but La Singla would not be inside. She preferred to play out the roles of her vitality, not to eyes glazing with death in some inaccessible mountain, but to those who could appreciate to the full her magical abilities (and Kemperer was of that number). Her nature was such that military necessity would bow before artistic temperament. She loved, she suffered, she bled — and sensibly preferred such activities to an end to loving, suffering and bleeding.

  Drenched though I was by my ducking, it was a Perian with a lighter heart who marched in to berate Kemperer for his villainous error. I noticed that La Singla slipped in by the side doorway. I marched through the court, setting the hounds howling, and made my entrance. I confronted Kemperer before a dozen witnesses, dripping dramatically upon his carpetings.

  'My dearest Perian, what a misfortune!' Up went his withered hands as he skipped before me, showing his lined teeth. 'You of all people, beaten up in the street like a common adulterer! Anyone would think you'd been up to no good. How the heartless scum who saw you launched among the fishes must have bellowed with laughter! I wish I'd been there.'

  'It's no use apologizing, Kemperer! You and I are parting company from, this hour forth unless I have full recompense. I know you set your henchmen on me.'

  Then followed one of the worst scenes of my career. The maestro grasped my sodden arm and dragged me to his office. 'Seep into my sanctum, dear boy, poor drowned dragoon, and let us come privately to terms. Why, how even your feather droops — I fear for other parts of your body!'

  He slammed the office door and locked it, continuing to talk on with no change in his tone, although extra venom stirred the rheum in his eye. He swung his cane at me to emphasize each cadence.

  'But I would not have you believe that henchmen of mine made any sort of error, my washed-out warrior! They don't make errors. Oh, no, they'd smell you out in any guise, however unbecoming.'

  'You're lying, you old crank! They took me for the man who owns this hat.'

  'No, you fish
y fancy-man, it's you who can't deceive me. My men made no error, I say. They followed my dear faithful spouse yesterday' (his grimace while pronouncing this phrase was worthy of a devil-jaw), 'yesterday afternoon, as instructed. They witnessed you coax the minx up to your noxious billet. They marked how long she tarried there in your clap-covered embrace. They reported faithfully to me… In Malacia, we're all watched, you aquatic ancestral, didn't you know that?'

  With each article of this declaration, Kemperer struck me so savagely round my shoulders with the cane that my clothes spurted water.

  'But I'm innocent, Pozzi, you dirty-minded old ingrate, innocent!'

  'As a cock is innocent, you sodden studlet!' Whack!

  'I am innocent. I never touched her. You're blaming me for nothing. By the bones, how I loathe jealousy. You're riddled with it, you mouldy old muff-eater.'

  'So I am, I'm happy to say. So I took action to deal with you and that cavalry turnip, with his fool idea of carriages at midnight. How he's going to suffer later! I paid my toughs to kick you in the canal and it was money well spent; you're snivelling here and Maria's weeping outside.' Whack! Whack!

  I leant exhausted against the door, wiping my face. 'What a fiend you are! How little you care for her hurt feelings…'

  'Let her piss herself! She'll come to her senses.' Whack!

  'And look what I get for helping you. I told Lasionio to stay away from your wife, and this is how I'm paid. If you knew how totally disgusted I feel…'

  He burst into angry laughter and executed a sort of jig while unlocking the door. 'You're for all the world like Karagog, you wet wonder-child. Little success in any role! Your lover was a poor performance, your soldier a wash-out! Maybe now you'll comprehend that acting is safer than meddling where your face doesn't belong!'

  For all my defiance, I was drained of normal cheer. That there were people so blind to the delicacy of others' emotions! As I went past him out of the office, I began sneezing. Kemperer cackled at the sound.