'It would be lowering. Now pray don't vex me, Perry.' She turned away.
'You do not have to lower yourself. I will raise myself to you… But what's wrong with actresses? The talented La Singla — she is well born.'
'My father tells me she was of peasant stock, and dishonoured as a very young girl.'
I laughed. 'Her origins are legend. They have given her a career instead of a stuffy mansion.'
'Lucky are they who can choose.' Her face grew very closed.
'Choose to slip away with me after this and let us rediscover that ferny chapel in the palace. This will be our last chance.' I breathed the words in her ear.
She gave me a cool smile. 'I have to go home to prepare for our journey to the country; it needs much forethought. We have an assignation in Juracia.'
Whilst speaking, Armida raised her face to look at me down that delicious nose, with her eyes and her lips appearing to generate a ripe degree of moisture. I was provoked all over again — as I was almost every time she turned that gaze on me and I met those eyes, at once dark and golden, which resembled the eyes of a lioness more than those of a human being. I could only feel that an assignation with her, wherever kept, would be the most wonderful in the world.
We worked through the morning, until we came to the final scene to be re-made, wherein Mendicula confronts his wife and the general in the rose garden. Between them, Solly the Solid, Rhino, Bonihatch and Otto — with Flora supervising — dragged the zahnoscope into the Chabrizzi rose garden. We took up positions. Bengtsohn loaded his machine and adjusted the lens.
For five minutes we stood, Mendicula disadvantaged yet challenging, Patricia and I close, she looking haughty at her prince, I staring above human folly at the sky.
'Magnificent!' cried Bengtsohn, when he had clapped the hood over his lens. 'So is finish our great work. I have good news, too. The Hoytola family has permitted that this little Tragedy of Prince Mendicula shall be shown before all at the Orini-de Lambant wedding.'
'Before or after we present the comedy of Fabio and Albrizzi I asked.
'All will be well, you'll see, Perian,' he said. 'All will be well,' smiling and nodding and showing his yellowed old stumps of teeth.
'Our living comedy must play first. It is already arranged for the second day of the celebrations. Mendicula must come on the last day, in case its novelty is such that people want to see nothing else.'
'Of this I don't know nothing. I'm not in charge with plannings. I'm not in charge of nothing. I'm just a minion who must obey.'
'There is a correct order for things.'
He and his wife drew me aside afterwards, while the apprentices hitched the zahnoscope behind the handcart.
'Master Perian, we do not make obstruction against your success. Do what you can to help ours, that's all what we ask. That's reasonable. With the success of my entertainment, we can achieve more useful things.'
'I'm not obstructing you, Otto.'
'Maybe no, but you think too narrowly just of your own interest.'
His wife Flora had sagging dumplings for cheeks and larger sagging dumplings for breasts and buttocks. She said to me, 'Master Perian, we wish to count you in the Cause, since you have a big name among the youths of Malacia.' She smiled, while looking round to see that she was not overheard. 'Those who have power in the state have no wish to share that power; it must be taken from them. Before revolution can come, there must be a groundwork of change prepared, for the common good. My husband and I are old, but we steadily work for that change, just as we did in Tolkhorm. We cannot have Mendicula lost to view, because it must lead to gooder things. Set aside your personal pride and assist us, like what we assist you.'
This was the first occasion on which Madame Bengtsohn had granted me such a long speech. It crossed my mind that those in power were generally polite and cheerful; while those that wanted change, like Bonihatch, were personally offensive, discontented, and would use any means to cause trouble. While criticizing my pride, she manifested plenty of her own.
'Mendicula is all very well,' I said. 'Yet many will see no art in its silly tale of love betrayed; its one merit is novelty of method. How can it lead to better things?'
Bengtsohn said, 'It is the method what is all-important. Listen to me, once we shall get the principle of mercurizing accepted, then much can be done with. It is mercurizing what is important. Innovations have to be slid into this state with such circumspection. If mercurizing will not be banned by the Council, then we can use the invention for social ends.'
'You're a real schemer, Otto. It won't work you any good.'
I could not get away from the pair of them, and there was Armida, waving goodbye and showing a pretty ankle as she climbed into her carriage, her sour-faced old chaperon waiting to follow.
'You've had experience how my balloons fly,' said Bengtsohn. 'Imagine a modified zahnoscope taken up in a balloon similar. We can mercurize the ground below. Then, next time the Turkish army comes beyond our walls to camp, we mercurize the disposition from his troops. Think of the advantages of such a capacity to the military!'
'And not only the Turkish,' said Flora. She took my hand. 'We have worser enemies within the walls. We could mercurize secretly Fetter Place from the balloon, and the Renardo Palace, and the great mazes of the Palace of the Bishops Elect. Those hellish places will then hold more few secrets, and our revolutionary councils will hold in their hands a useful weapon.'
'Mercurization is a weapon,' Bengtsohn said.
'Be cautious what you say to Master Perian, now that he has a nag,' said Bonihatch, coming up. 'He hopes to gallop himself into privileged beds where anything we tell him might provide a little chit-chat while he re-stokes.'
I turned with immediate anger, but the old man checked us both.
'Save that tongue, Bonny. We don't want no enemies among each other. But the warning is taken. Perian, be wise. Wise is what wise does.' He nodded and walked off. His wife followed.
'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 g
elding'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 deliciously. 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, tumbled, 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 cap of linen. Under his outer gown he nursed a gigantic phallus, showing his allegian
ce 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?