by Ron Miller
“Is that it’s proper color?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Funny-looking color.”
“Do you think so, my lady?”
“I believe I just said so. It’s rude, you know, not to listen when you’re being spoken to. You’re very dark-complected, for a blonde. You have some Moorish blood in your veins, I suspect.”
“I spend a lot of time outdoors, my lady.”
“It’s very bad for the skin, you know. The sun is. The most genteel young ladies—I mean those of the best breeding—would never consider going out in the sun. They have skin like milk; it’s a mark of their quality. I,” she said, offering a puckered, cheesy-looking arm for Bradamant’s regard, “have such skin. It’s like a baby’s.”
A baby what? Bradamant thought unkindly.
“Oh dear—our hands are terribly rough—and your nails! Do you bite them?”
“Of course not!”
“I don’t believe you.”
Bradamant hated this persistently negative catalog of her physical insufficiencies. She had always thought, even if in the inevitable error of unobjective self-opinion, that she had no illusions about an appearance that she had always assumed was mediocre at best, yet it hurt and aggravated her to hear her failings listed with such cold-blooded criticism. Until that moment Bradamant had been able to feel more or less insulated from the rest of the company, secure in the knowledge that the foppish and gaudy costumes and cosmetics served only to emphasize the shoddy materials they decorated—like cheap paint on a poorly-constructed house. Now she was made to feel paltry, ugly and oafish. She looked at her hands and imagined horribly that their darkness came from the stain of old blood.
The woman leaned back in her groaning chair and regarded Bradamant intently. “I’ve seen you before, I think.”
“I suppose it’s possible, my lady, though I couldn’t hazard where.”
“Yes. You are very familiar. Just a moment . . . it’ll come to me! Don’t say anything!”
The fat woman’s face screwed itself into such a knot of concentration that beads of heavy oil were squeezed from it.
“Yes! Now I remember! I saw you earlier this afternoon. You were with the princess! That was hours ago and I can recall it vividly. My memory never fails me, you know.”
“I don’t suppose it does, my lady.”
“There was something strange about you then. Whatever was it? I seem to recall mentioning it to someone at the time. I wonder who that could have been? What was it I said to them? Just a moment . . . I know: you weren’t a woman then! That’s it!”
“I’ve always been a woman, my lady.”
“That’s certainly not true! Don’t you dare to doubt me! Whoever do you think you are, young lady? I’m perfectly aware of what I saw. You were armored all over, just like a knight. Ladies never wear armor, you are obviously a lady—though just as obviously not of the very best breeding—therefore you must have been a man! That was logic, wasn’t it? I’m sure it was logic.”
“I’m sorry, my lady, but I’m a woman now and I was a woman then. I was wearing armor because I am a knight.”
“Impossible!”
“But true, nevertheless.”
“Have you ever heard of such a thing?” the woman asked her neighbor.
“Eh?” that person replied from a vinish stupor.
“I said, have you ever heard anything so preposterous as what this young lady just suggested?”
“Eh?”
“She just told me she was not only not a man, but that she’s a knight, of all the most ridiculous things. A self-contradiction if I’ve ever heard one! She must be trying to make a fool of me!”
“Fool?”
“It’s true, my lady,” said Bradamant.
“What’s true?”
“That you are a fool, my dear,” said the man.
“I beg your pardon!”
“No, no, my lady,” said Bradamant, “I meant that it’s true that I’m a knight.”
“Oh? And I’m to suppose you’ve slaughtered Christians from one end of the empire to the other?”
“Oh, no! my lady! Not Christians!”
“Who, then? I suppose you’ve slaughtered somebody if you’re a knight?”
“Saracens, my lady.”
“Saracens? Moors?”
“One or the other. The difference seems a moot one.”
“You are a Christian?”
“Of course, my lady.”
“Good heavens!”
“I owe my allegiance to Karl the Great.”
“Karl? Not Agramant? Karl? Oh, this is just too shocking! Do you hear me?” she fluttered to her neighbor. “Just too shocking! Whatever will Fiordispina think of next! I haven’t been so thrilled in ages!”
“I can well imagine,” said the man.
Bradamant was embarrassed beyond all measure. She passionately disliked being made a public spectacle, and now she had achieved the level of conspicuousness usually reserved for people with sidewalk fits. She did all she could to demure, to defuse the fat woman’s bloodthirsty enthusiasm, to no avail. It seemed that the more she protested, the more she tried to mumble self-deprecating replies, the more she piqued curiosity. And the more the fat woman’s curiosity was piqued, the noisier she got.
Fiordispina, Bradamant was distressed to see, was getting drunk and obviously could not be relied upon to give her succor. Indeed, the princess seemed to be in a distressing state, her face flushed, her movements broad and wild, her hair tumbling around her olive face, her voice loud and strident, her gown rapidly becoming shockingly disheveled. She can’t be like this when her father’s home, Bradamant thought. Why, half her bosom is visible. She wondered briefly if was wise for the princess to act so brazenly in front of her guests, but then decided that few if any of the people in the room either cared about or would remember anything that the princess did. In fact, she noticed that except for the princess’ immediate coterie no one seemed to be paying much mind at all to her indiscretions. Heathens, concluded Bradamant, who decided that the very best thing she could do would be to set a good example and refuse to take part in any such decadent ribaldry or even listen to the licentious and suggestive words that filled her ears, let alone stoop to acknowledge them. She would show them how a Christian behaved.
Fortunately, Bradamant’s steadfast refusal to encourage interest in herself or to take part in any of the inane conversations that surged around her with that unpredictable turbulence characteristic of shallow water caused Fiordispina’s guests to eventually ignore the laconic, aloof stranger, leaving her to enjoy as best she could the remainder of her meal relatively undisturbed. The food was for the most part unfamiliar to her, and her nose revolted at the cloying, over-luxurious odors. There was ragout of venison, calves’ feet and innumerable permutations of beef, mutton, chicken, turkey, duck, goose and pheasant (there was, of course, no pork); there was a heron stuffed with woodcocks and peacock with cameline sauce; there were meat pies, pasties and fritters; stews and soups; meat custards such as blankmanger, a thick chicken paste mixed with rice and sugar and garnished with almonds, and mortrews, a dumpling of fish pounded with bread crumbs, stock and eggs and poached. There were beef ribs in honey and filet of venison with sweetbreads. There was preserved cabbage and a purée of figs and quarters of hare in sweet wine sauce. What she may have recognized was likely to have been buried beneath rich sauces of mustard, vinegar, onions, verjuice, cinnamon and saffron. Of fish there was fresh herring pie prepared with ginger, pepper and cinnamon; mullet, sole, plaice, ray, salmon and trout, the royal sturgeon and whale, crabs, crayfish and jellied lampreys. There were steaming bowls of beans, disguised for the gentry with onions and saffron; honey, apples, pears and plums; loaves of rose- and violet-flavored sugar; figs, dates, raisins, oranges and pomegranates. Bradamant had never seen many of these before; she was at a complete loss as to what to do with the latter fruit, for example. There was wine in vast quantities, but in spite of the fac
t that it had been sweetened and spiced was not very good—Bradamant thought it sour and moldy and tasting of pitch.
“I know my father’s going to ‘prove of you ver’ much!” said Fiordispina, with theatrical enthusiasm. Her breath was sour with wine, the words slurred.
“Yes, Princess. Where is the king? Isn’t he here?”
“Oh no! This’ just a place he comes to for re-relaxation, though he comes’ often as possible. You jus’ missed him leaving, as it happens. He was s’posed to be back here tonight, but he sent a message that he’d run across some wounded knight or ‘nother and he’s taking th’ man directly to Agramant’s head-headquarters, Allah only knows why. He never tells me anything. In th’ meantime, I try to maintain th’ château as bes’ as I can.”
“You are obviously doing very well.”
“Thank you! I know it’s a poor effort, but I do what I can.”
“I really do appreciate your hospitality, Princess. It was kind of you to welcome me here.”
“Oh, it really is entirely my pleasure, Lady Brada-um-Bradamant. Is y’r meal satisfact’ry? The wine?”
“It’s very good,” Bradamant lied. “Thank you.”
“D’ you like your dress? It was one of my mother’s.”
“It’s very lovely. It’s been a long time since I dressed this way. I have to admit it feels peculiar. I’m a little more accustomed to my armor.”
“And I mus’ admit to you that I hoped you would look as beautiful in it as you do.”
“Now you are being too kind, Princess,” Bradamant said warily.
“No, not at all! You are ver’ lovely, Lady Bradamant. I hoped you would be. Y’r armor’s so—so hard and I wanted to be reminded of your fem-femin-ininity.”
“Do I succeed?”
“Eminently! Seeing you now, I can’t imagine what possessed me earlier today. Yes, you are ver’ much indis-indisputably a woman.”
“The incident is as good as forgotten, Princess, I assure you.”
“Then you are as kind as you are lovely, Lady Bradamant.”
“Kinder, I hope.”
The princess laughed and, to Bradamant’s immense relief, turned her attention to her other guests.
It was quite late when the dinner finally broke up and the guests began drifting unsteadily to their various apartments and, no doubt, further pleasures Bradamant prefered not to imagine. She climbed the stairs to her room with unaccustomedly leaden feet. She was surprised to find Fiordispina already there, sitting up in the big bed.
“There aren’t enough rooms in the lodge for everyone, so I gave the countess mine,” the princess said, sounding perfectly sober, much to Bradamant’s disappointment since she had expected that the girl had drunk herself into a sleepful oblivion. “She’s a very old friend of my father’s, so I could hardly have given her anything less. I didn’t think that you’d mind if I shared your room, since it’s only for the one night.”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Oh, good!”
“I just want to get to bed. I’m exhausted and I want to be on my way early tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll do my very best not to disturb you. You’ll not even know I’m here.”
Bradamant, too gracious to exclaim her pleasure at that promise, and too gracious to express her doubts about it, merely nodded wearily, turned her back and began to undress by the light of the single candle. As she dropped her undershift to the floor there was a snuffling sigh from behind her.
“What’s the matter now, Princess?” she asked.
“You really are a woman, aren’t you?”
“Good heavens, are you still having doubts about that?”
“No, I guess not. I—I just . . .”
“Well, please unburden yourself of any lingering hopes that I am otherwise than what I am.”
“Yes, Lady Bradamant,” was the chastened reply.
Bradamant, furiously embarassed, wrapped herself in a linen cloak and turned back to the bed; Fiordispina was there, muffled to her chin in the billowing comforter, her fluffy head almost indistinguishable in so many important ways from the great feather pillow that engulfed it.
Bradamant carried the candle to the bedside and set it on the side table. “Are you ready to go to sleep now?” she asked her bedmate.
“Yes, Lady Bradamant.”
“Good night, then,” she replied, extinguishing the flame.The room was instantly flooded by the cool indigo moonlight that poured through the tall windows; the slanting, transparent curtains of light an icy aurora that cast shifting, submarine reticulations across the bed. She dropped the cloak to the floor and slid between the cool sheets.
There was neither sound nor movement from her neighbor; only the soft susurration of her breath, thank heaven.
Bradamant, thinking she was too tired to be able to sleep easily, did not know when she slipped into the dream. For all her prowess at arms, for all her strength and vigor and stature, for all her disinterest in womanly things, never had she been envious of the other sex. She did what she did because she enjoyed it and was good at it and was encouraged by people she respected and because it seemed absolutely right to her—but certainly never in order to deny her womanhood. Which is why the dream seemed so strangely disturbing, and disturbing in its fascination, perhaps even more disturbing in its implications, because Bradamant dreamed that she was a man.
She was still lying in the bed, on her back, uncovered, looking down the great, undulating length of a body as phosphorescent in the blue glimmering as a moonlit arctic landscape. It was an alien body, as unfamiliar as the sterile plains of the moon, but she did not doubt it was hers. Her new body seemed more a product of geologic forces than of biology. Great slabs of smooth, white dolomite, synclines and anticlines of muscle, stretched before her like an unexplored wilderness beneath the calculating gaze of the surveyor. Her hard, domed breasts were gone, replaced by ridged, glacial sheets; her smooth, concave stomach replaced by undulating ripples like a fossilized beach.
But it was the silver pylon, the great pillar of luminous chalk, the lotus-capped Egyptian column, the lone verticality in that fleshy desert that seemed to draw the moonlight like the sympathetic gnomon of a lunar clock, that attracted her gaze as inexorably as the boreal poles attract the shivering needle of the compass. It rose as lambently as a rocket from the darkness at the distant limits of her torso.
She heard Fiordispina whisper, the warm breath drifting through the labyrinths of her ear like the plaintive echoes of lost Eurydice: I prayed to Mahomet and to your Christian God to give you the sex I preferred you to have. They took pity on me just as they would not deny succor to a poor soul lost in the desert, thirsting for water, tormented by the very memory of it, recalling every drop that had ever passed her lips.
Bradamant was unable to move, as fixed as the earthy formations she seemed to resemble. She felt the press of Fiordispina’s soft warmth, the small hands exploring the thick slabs of her muscular chest, the rippled stomach below the shadowed alcove of the ribs, the hard cords of her arms; she felt the moist pressure of lips on her neck and shoulders, the sharpness of the princess’ teeth, the cool tongue, curious as a ferret. She felt the princess’ mouth at the hollow of her neck, where the pulse beat like a prisoner’s fists against the wall of his cell, at the small, hard, masculine nipples, the tongue plumbing the well of her navel. She saw the princess rise above her like a lambent thunderhead, straddling her like an ivory Colossus, dark eyes crackling with electricity, the glistening tower below her vibrating with anticipation, like a supercharged lightning rod straining toward the imminent blow of the thunderbolt. Fiordispina was a giantess, hips and thighs bathed in the milky moonlight, shoulders and head disappearing into the darkness, lost in perspective, only the constellation of her eyes visible, flaming like Beta and Gamma, the baleful eyes of Draco. Then, with a sudden movement, she impaled herself on the tower, and once again, and again, with all the ferocity and determination of a high-pressure engine—un
til Bradamant vibrated in sympathy with the percussion, seismic shocks radiating from the incandescent epicenter, her body convulsed with the bone-snapping rictus of the strychnine victim.
* * * * *
Bradamant wasted no time in preparing to leave the following morning. Dawn was still an hour away when, after a hasty breakfast of bread and ale, she was saddling Rabican (having decided to make a present of the supernumerary horse to the château’s stable). Fiordispina had entreated her to remain for at least another day, but Bradamant had refused to argue the matter. Convinced more than ever that Rashid was waiting for her, she wanted to reach Vallambrosa by noon. Even the princess’ tears failed to move her, so she was a little embarrassed when Fiordispina appeared in the stables bearing parting gifts. One was a magnificent golden harness for Rabican, who looked a little abashed at such an extravagance, and a richly embroidered surcoat for Bradamant that the princess had made with her own hands. “It was for my poor brother,” she explained, sniffling bravely if a little overtragically, “but I’d rather you have it.”
Bradamant truly did not want any gifts from Fiordispina, certainly nothing bearing such emotional baggage, but could see no graceful way to refuse. She took the surcoat and thanked the girl and since the princess still looked expectant, sighed and put it on. Then, without another word, she threw herself into the saddle and, with scarcely a glance behind, just a brief one to assure herself that the princess was not following, rode off into the shadowed forest. As soon as the lodge disappeared behind her, she removed the garment, folded it neatly and tucked it away in her saddlebag.
Vallambrosa, as she now knew, lay not far away at the mouth of the valley. The trail, even in the predawn darkness, was broad, flat and easy. She felt confident of reaching the monastery well before noon and, at the thought of being so soon reunited with Rashid, her heart and spirit swelled like mushrooms after a spring shower.
Every mile that carried her further away from Marsilius’ château carried her further from its oppressive and corrupt atmosphere, and just as the clean light of dawn washed the dank remnants of night from the valley, her mind again felt pure, uncomplicated and confident.
