The Malacia Tapestry

by Brian W Aldiss

  'I'm not sure that reason is to be trusted in these circumstances.'

  'Reason and honour. A man must trust something. I trust reason and honour, and I trust Armida, and… Oh, I must get out of this bed!'

  'I do not come solely to talk of love-affairs, Perry.'

  'What do you mean? Do you think that he and she really are making love behind my back? Don't say that!'

  'I did not say that. It was your jealousy that spoke.'

  'Oh, you're right. I am base. I used to have such a good opinion of myself — now it's all gone. The brave acts I've performed count as nothing.'

  'We can learn to live without good opinions. It is better for our humility that we should do so.'

  'Actors and artists cannot survive that way. They have only their own good opinions to nourish them in adversity.'

  'You, I must point out, are not in adversity. Your career advances. You have many worldly things. You should think more of matters which are of greater eternal weight — humility would help you to that.'

  'I'm in your hands, Father.'

  'Not at all. My hands are as weak as yours. In the continuing war between Good and Evil, every man is little more than cannon-fodder. All we can do is to decide into which cannons we should allow ourselves to be thrust. That decision is no permanent thing; indeed, it must be taken every day of your life.'

  'I hate decisions. I want love to be permanent, but I'm so weak.'

  'Do not underestimate yourself. You need courage, but you have it if you will take it up. Your slaying of the arch-ventail is proof that you can take it up, and no man need look down on you on that score.'

  'You're very consoling, Father. But it's a different sort of courage I need to deal with Armida.'

  'Once you are recovered and have regained your spirits, you will not even believe that courage is necessary there.'

  One thing at least he said which was true. I had lost my spirits; where once they danced in the air like down, now they had sunk to ground level. Every night, my misgivings about Armida's faithfulness rose to mind, banishing sleep.

  So my shoulder and arm healed. Katarina, my dear surviving sister, sat by my bed for hours. I would drift into a realm of dreams, just for the pleasure of opening my eyes and finding her there, still embroidering, still waiting for my strength to return. Later, she took to sitting by the window, cosseting Poseidon, or else toying with her tapestry.

  My sister was not a great beauty. She took after my father, with his sallow skin and rather long chin, but I loved the expression about her eyes, as well as the outline of her head and the gentle, teasing way in which she often talked. Her fine dark hair was drawn into an embroidered ribbon so that it hung in a tail down her dove-grey dress.

  Katie remained tranquil in sunlight by the window, while I lolled in the shade of the room; we turned old times into spasmodic conversation. I never talked to her about my anxieties concerning Armida.

  'I'm grateful for your care, Katie. Now that winter is on the way, let's see more of one another than we've managed recently.'

  I'm glad you wish that. So do I, sincerely. Yet forces operate to separate people, whatever they wish.' She spoke serenely, as always.

  'We'll remain light-hearted and rise above our difficulties.'

  Talk about being light-hearted came easily; when Katarina was there, I really believed I was light-hearted.

  Silence fell, save for the buzz of industrious bees about the window. One of them, hind legs overloaded with pollen, would occasionally tumble over the sill, whereupon Poseidon would tap it chidingly with his paw. Beyond the bees, in the clear afternoon sky, birds swooped without moving a single feather on either wing.

  Gesturing outside, Katarina said, 'Those elegant birds with forked tails are gathering about our towers once more. They nest before they depart for lands farther south. I'm always sad to see them go — for their own dear sakes, and because it signifies another year is fleeing. Every year they come back, though, from some mysterious place. They never alight on the ground. If once they alighted, they'd never get off again. That's because they have no legs, according to Aristotle and Tarsanius.'

  'They're called cavorts. Father told me once that they come from a continent of southern ice which no man has ever seen.'

  'How then does he know, may I ask?'

  'He had it from an old authority, I expect.'

  She produced a little white comb with which she groomed the lustrous sandy coat of Poseidon. The cat puffed out his chest and began to purr until he made more noise than the bees, keeping his eyes closed all the time.

  After a while, giving a laugh, Katarina said, 'I was trying to imagine a land that no human eyes had ever seen.'

  'It's not such a difficult task. We ourselves live in the middle of such a land. Everything here is undiscovered, mysterious, never mind so far away.'

  'Perry, you say such peculiar things! That's a line from one of your romances, I'm sure.'

  'Whenever I say anything profound — or even sensible — somebody pretends I stole it from a play. Plays are often written by players — we're clever chaps, you know. Don't you recall that I was clever even as an infant?'

  'I do recall that you used to perform living statues for us, and we had to guess whom you were representing. You nearly drowned in the lagoon when you were doing Triton. I ruined a new dress helping to rescue you.'

  We both laughed.

  'It was worth it for the sake of the art. You were always the best at guessing who I was supposed to represent, Katie!'

  'Andri would have been quick, too, had she lived. I dreamed about her a few nights ago, but the plague got her then, as in life. I hate dreams that turn out no better than reality.'

  As she collected a comb full of fur, she pulled the bundle from between the teeth of the comb and blew. Handful after handful streamed out of Poseidon's coat and drifted into the warm air beyond our room.

  'My dreams are pleasant when I'm not feverish.'

  'Possy, look at all this fur you are wasting, you silly cat! Life would be empty with no dreams at all. I think I'd go mad.'

  She released another combful of fur through the window. I went over to her, lolling against the side of the window and tickling the cat's head as I said, 'It's pleasant to be mad about something — a way of keeping sane indeed.'

  Katarina looked up at me. With a hint of reproach, she said, 'Don't be too light-hearted. You think everything's arranged for your amusement.'

  'I have no definite evidence to the contrary, though I have been much unamused of late. You used to be carefree enough, Katie. Is Volpato unfaithful? Does he beat you? Why does he so often leave you alone in Mantegan?'

  She looked down at her fingers and said, 'I was fascinated by Volpato and the Mantegan family even as a carefree child. They were so wild, with their old castles here and by the Middle Sea. On my eighth birthday, Seemly Moleskin told me I would grow up to marry a Mantegan. I did so, and I love him still.'

  'Have you no will of your own, Katie? Those confounded magicians get you in the palm of their dirty hands unless you ignore them.'

  'Don't tease! You are better, I see. Your arm won't fall off, after all. You can leave the castle tomorrow, if you desire, and I shan't see you until you get into trouble again.'

  I kissed her hand and said, 'Don't be cross! You are a beautiful person and I have much liked being pampered by you, sweet Sis! I shall instruct Armida to be as much like you as possible — and I shall leave the castle tomorrow to instruct her!'

  She laughed. All was well between us, and Poseidon purred more loudly than ever.

  The window at which we were all lazing was deep-set within its embrasure. Its ledge was wide enough for Katarina and her cat to sit in comfort and gaze at the world beneath them. A man might stand there and, with no inconvenience to himself, discharge a musket from the coign of vantage into the courtyard far below. The woodwork was lined like a peasant's brow with the diurnal passage of sunlight; perhaps some such thought had cross
ed the mind of a bygone poet who, with many a flourish, had engraved two tercets of indifferent verse on one of the small leaded panes:

  What twain I watch through my unseeing eye:

  Inside, the small charades of men: outside,

  The grand arcades of cerulean sky.

  Thus I a barrier am between a tide

  Of man's ambitions and the heavens' meed—

  Of things that can't endure, and things that bide.

  Poseidon lay stomach upwards on my sister's lap, so that combs of white fluff were now released to the breeze.

  Afternoon had created within the courtyard a bowl of warm air which spilled outward and upward, carrying the cat's fur with it. Not a single strand had reached the paving below. The fur floated in a great circle, between this side of the courtyard and the next, the stables and lofts surmounted by their little tower opposite, and the tall, weather-blasted pines which grew on the fourth side, by the wall with the gatehouse. A whole layer of air, level with our window and extending to each of the four limiting walls, was filled with the fluff circulated like a faery whirlpool.

  Katarina exclaimed with delight when I turned her attention to the spectacle.

  The cavorts were busy. Six or more pairs of them swooped from their positions in eaves and leads, tearing at the downy whirlpool, whisking it away to line their nests. We stood watching. So intent were the birds on their work that they frequently blundered near to our window. Majestically round and round floated the fur, and erratically up and down plunged the cavorts.

  'When the baby birds are hatched, they'll be grateful to you, Poseidon!' said Katarina. 'They'll be reared in luxury!'

  'Perhaps they'll form the first generation of cat-loving birds. Change comes to Malacian rooftops!'

  When at length we went downstairs, the fur was still circulating, the birds were still pulling it to shreds, and bearing it back to their nests.

  'Let's play cards again tonight… Birds are so witless, they must always be busy — there's nothing to them but movement. I never find that time hangs heavy on my hands, Perry, do you?'

  'I adore being idle — it's then I'm best employed. But I wonder time doesn't hang heavy for you, alone in the castello.'

  Smiling in a pleasant evasive way, laying a hand on my sleeve, Katarina said, 'Why don't you employ yourself by visiting Nicholas Fatember, our wizard of the frescoes? His mind is obsessed by one thing only, his art. Like his wife, he's melancholy these days — but worth conversing with, when you can persuade him to open his mouth.'

  'Fatember's still here, then! When I last saw him, he was threatening to leave on the morrow! The man is one of the geniuses of our age, if generally unrecognized. Kemperer says so.'

  We arrived at Katie's suite of rooms. Her pretty black maid, Peggy, ran to open the doors. Katarina said, 'Fatember is always threatening to leave the castle. I'd as soon believe him if he threatened to complete his frescoes!'

  'Will they ever be finished? Does Volpato pay him?'

  She laughed. 'Don't be silly. What with? That's why Fatember still lives here, always planning, never achieving. At least he has a roof over his head for himself, and his family. The family still grows… Oh, well, go and talk to him. We'll meet this evening in chapel.'

  It was saddening that she looked so resigned.

  I always loved to walk through Volpato's castle. Its perspectives were like no others. With its impromptu landings, its unexpected chambers, its many levels, its never-ending stairs, its aspirations and failures, its descents from stone into wood, its fine marbles and rotting plasters, its noble statues and ignoble decay, it outshone even the Chabrizzi Palace in individuality.

  The Mantegan family had not been rich within living memory. My brother-in-law was the last of the direct line, Julius and the others being distant cousins and equally impoverished.

  It was whispered of Volpato that he had poisoned his elder brother and sister, Claudio and Saprista, in order to gain control of what family wealth remained — Claudio by spreading a biting acid on the saddle of his steed, so that the deadly ichor moved from his anus upwards to the heart, Saprista by smearing a toxic orpiment on a statue of Minerva which she was wont to kiss during her private devotions, so that she died rotting from the lips inward.

  Whether this story was true or false, Volpato never revealed. Dark legends clustered about him, but he behaved tolerably with my sister, and had the goodness to stay away for long periods, seeking his fortune among the wilds of the northern world.

  Meanwhile, the castle on the banks of the Toi fell into decay, and his wife did not become a mother. But I loved it, and my dear sister for marrying so well — the only de Chirolo as yet to move into court circles.

  The way to Nicholas Fatember's quarters lay through a gallery in which Volpato displayed the last of his treasures. Those treasures were few. Rats scuttled among them in the dimness. Among much that was rubbish were some fine blue-glazed terracotta dishes brought back from the lands of the Orinoco; ivories of hairy elephant carved during the last anthropoid civilization for the royal house of Itssobeshiquetzilaha; parchments rescued by a Mantegan ancestor from the great library at Alexandria (among them two inscribed by the library's founder, Ptolemy Soter) and portraits on silk of the seven Alexandrian Pleiades preserved from the same; a case full of Carthaginian ornaments; jewels from the faery smiths of Atlantis; an orb reputed to have belonged to Birsha, King of Gomorrah, with the crown of King Bera of Sodom; a figurine of a priest with a lantern from the court of Caerleon-on-Usk; the stirrups of the favourite stallion of the Persian Bahram, Governor of Media, that great hunter; tapestries from Zeta, Raska, and the courts of the early Nemanijas, together with robes cut for Milutin; a lyre, chalice, and other objects from the Chankrian Period; a pretty oaken screen carved with figures of children and animals which I particularly liked, said to have come from distant Lyonesse before it sank below the waves; a thumb-nail of the founder, Desport, couched in a chased silver relic-case; together with other items of some interest. All that was of real worth had been sold off long ago, and the custodian sacked, to keep the family in meat and wine.

  I paused on my way among the relics and opened an iron-strapped chest at random. Books bound in vellum met my gaze, among them one more richly jacketed in an embroidered case studded with ruby and topaz.

  Carrying it over to the light, I opened the book and found it bore no title. It was a collection of poems in manuscript, most probably made by the poet himself. The verses looked impossibly dull, with odes to Stability or The Chase plodding after apostrophes to the Pox and Prosody. Then, as I flicked the pages, a shorter poem in terza rima caught my eye.

  The poem consisted of four verses — the first two of which were identical with those adorning my bedroom window! The title of the poem made reference to an emblematic animal over the main archway of the castle: 'The Stone Watchdog at the Gate Speaks'. Whoever had transcribed the first half of the poem to the window had been ingenious in accrediting its meaning to glass, rather than to the watchdog. I read the final verses.

  No less, while things celestial proceed

  Unfettered, men and women all are slaves,

  Chaining themselves to what their hearts most need.

  Methinks that whatso'er the mind once craves,

  Will free it first and then it captive take

  By slow degrees, down into Free Will's graves.

  Alas, when addressed, Prosody had not replied. Yet the sentiment expressed might be true. I find myself generally agreeing with the truth of moralizing in poems. Little can be said that is a flat lie, provided it rhymes. Thoughtfully, I tore the page from its volume and tucked it in my doublet, tossing the book back into the chest among the other antiquities.

  Beyond the gallery was a circular guard-room, with a spiral stair up to the ramparts. The guard-room had once stood as a separate building; it now came within the embrace of the castle which, like some organic thing, had sprouted passages and wings and additional courts, century by
century, engulfing houses and other structures as it grew. Yet the guard-room retained something of an outdoor character. A pair of cavorts skimmed desperately round its shell, trapped after venturing in through boarded arrow-slits. On the floor by my feet lay a shred of Poseidon's fur which the birds had dropped in their panic.

  The character of the castle was transformed again beyond the guard-room. Here stood old stables, now converted to quarters for the Mantegan family's resident artist. Nicholas Fatember had his studio in what had been the loft; while his children romped on the cobbles below in rooms that had been a harness-house.

  I called his name. After a moment, Fatember's head appeared in the opening above. He waved, and began to climb down the ladder. He started talking before he reached the bottom.

  'So, Master Perian, it's almost a year — a long while since we've seen you at Mantegan. As God is my witness, it is an inhospitable place — lonely, gloomy, chilly, bankrupt, and up to its eye-sockets in starving rats! What can have brought you here now? Not pleasure, I'll be bound.'

  I explained that I had been ill, and that I would be leaving on the morrow. Natural modesty forbade me to make any reference to the devil-jaw.

  Fatember placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, while using the other to scratch his armpit. He was a ponderous man with a heavy face, from which his beard curled down like fungus on a dead tree bole. Only in his eyes was there something which defied decay.

  'Ah, Mantegan is a suitable hole to fall sick in, that I'll say. Yet you'll never get the plague here. The plague likes juice and succulence, and there's nothing of that in Mantegan — even the cockroaches shun it — it's too draughty for them. Ague, now — yes, the ague in plenty, but better ague than plague.'

  He repeated this with some relish, in the manner of one chewing a bone, while gloomily regarding his many children, who were busy flogging an old greyhound they had cornered. They were not the plumpest of children, and their shirts were patched and torn; as many bones showed through on them as on the greyhound.