by Ron Miller
She suspected that Rashid had denied hearing the soft weeping for the not entirely honorable reason that he feared being distracted from an evening he—and she, she blushed to admit—anticipated with much pleasure. She sympathized with him, but knew also that the sound would haunt her all the night if she did not satisfy her curiosity. Too, chivalry ran in a purer stream through her arteries than his and she could not as cavalierly shrug off evidence of what must surely be someone in distress. Rashid was finally forced to admit that he either heard the sounds or that he was deaf. She heard him grinding his teeth with ill-concealed annoyance as he followed the curious women when they turned toward the copse.
Bradamant was the first to enter the grove and when she saw the three half-naked women huddled on the ground, she cried, “Good heavens! Ullania!”
The Icelandic ambassadress did not reply, but her strained, tear-streaked face looked up at the warrioress with miserable recognition. The other two women, Bradamant noticed in spite of their efforts to hide their faces in their hands, were from among Ullania’s attendants. All three still wore the elegant gowns that Bradamant had once admired, except that the garments had been cut away from the waist down, leaving the women nude from their navels to their feet. Their wretched postures reminded Bradamant of Vulcan’s son, Erichthonius, who vainly tried to hide his deformed feet. She felt her face grow hot and a glance at her dark companion showed that the Amazon’s countenance had gone black with shame and embarrassment.
“What’s happened?” she demanded, as she descended from her horse. “Who did this to you?”
Ullania replied while accepting the cloak that Bradamant offered. Meanwhile, Marfisa threw hers to one of the other women and called to Rashid, who had remained outside the spinney, to bring his for the third.
“I was abandoned by the three kings whom you defeated at Tristam’s castle and, one by one, all of the remainder of my retinue left me as well—all except for these two loyal handmaidens.”
“Abandoned!” cried Bradamant. “How could they’ve done such a cowardly thing? Especially to you, a representative of the queen of Iceland. Was it because I unhorsed them?”
“No, not entirely. Had it been left at that, their egos would have survived. After all, no one knew of their ignominy other than myself and Tristan. But it was I who did far more damage than your lance.”
“What could you have done?”
“I taunted them, I’m ashamed to say. I told them that it’d been a woman who’d bested them. I said, ‘Now that a mere woman has managed to throw all of you with a single swipe of her lance, as thoughtlessly as she’d swat a trio of flies, what’ll happen when you meet Renaud or Roland? Do you suppose their fame has no foundation? Do you think you’d do any better with them than you did with this maiden? What if one of them gets hold of the golden shield?’”
“You were a little hard on them, my lady.”
“I suppose so. It was just that I’d gotten so weary of their endless posturing and rodomontade. But I didn’t leave it at that.”
“No?” replied Bradamant, who’d never before heard the word “rodomontade”, but suspected that she could divine both its meaning and source.
“No. I told them that if they wanted to continue trying to prove themselves in Frankland that they’d only succeed in adding injury to insult. Well, their reaction was far more violent than I expected. At first I thought they were going to murder one another, but instead they threw their armor and swords into the moat and swore they would spend the next year wandering the countryside as mendicants, unarmed and on foot. And when the year was up, they still would not wear armor or mount a horse until they’d won the right to do so. And with that oath and not another word, all three of them walked off down the road. They were out of sight before I realized that they’d been entirely serious.”
“Yes, knights often are about such things.”
“Without them, I was helpless and unprotected and, well, what with one thing and another, I found myself reduced to the company of just these two loyal women. It was while we were seeking shelter at a castle not far from here that this outrage was committed upon us.”
“What happened?
“That’s easy enough to relate. We’d no sooner announced our presence at the gate when we were set upon, beaten and suffered the indignity of having half of our dresses cut off. We were then turned away. We had to continue on foot since the villains’d taken our horses, too. I’d heard that Charlemagne’s army was in Arles and I was taking my complaint to it when you found me.”
Bradamant did not say anything in reply to Ullania’s story, but instead climbed back onto her horse, her face gone as hard and white as marble in her fury—always at its most white-hot when faced with a put-upon woman. She glanced at Marfisa, who had been silently listening to the entire conversation and saw that her face, too, was set, her long eyes and wide mouth compressed to three parallel slashes. The warrioresses turned and rejoined Rashid.
“Did you hear?” Bradamant asked.
“I did,” he replied.
“There’s obviously nothing else for us to do but to right this terrible wrong. Ullania!” she cried as the woman and her two satellites came out of the trees. “Climb up behind me. I’ll need you to show me the shortest way to this damnable castle. Rashid and Marfisa, you take the other women.”
Rashid did not even try to argue.
The road was tortuously winding and the first stars were appearing in the indigo sky when the travelers arrived at a tidy hamlet nestling atop a hill. They were welcomed with as much hospitality as the villagers could afford. Much was made of Ullania and her handmaidens and new clothing was provided—simple and coarse though it was, it was also clean and, better yet, decently complete. Ullania was gracious in her thanks for this generosity. Meanwhile, Bradamant, Marfisa and Rashid, not having eaten in twenty-four hours, plunged ravenously into a meal of bread, cheese, cabbage, sausage and beer. More than half an hour passed before Bradamant, feeling pleasantly mellow and comforted, leaned back in her chair, her hands clasped over her stomach, and belched softly.
“Didn’t you get enough?” asked Rashid.
“Pardon?” she replied.
“You look dissatisfied about something. I thought perhaps you were still hungry.”
“No, everything’s fine. I was just wondering . . .”
“What?”
“Well, I was just wondering—where are all the men?”
“The men?”
“Yes. There aren’t any men here.”
“Oh, sure—there must be.”
“No,” interjected Marfisa, “there aren’t any. She’s right. I haven’t seen a man—not as infant, child, adolescent or adult—since we got here.”
“Well? So?”
“I think something must be wrong,” Bradamant said. Now that she had broached the subject, what had been only a niggling question took on a sinister quality. She looked around the room. It was full of women—many more than when they first arrived. They must have been gathering in twos and threes all the while she had been eating. They were of all ages, young and old, from babes in arms to blind, withered crones. An uncanny shudder made Bradamant’s spine vibrate like a plucked lute string as she recalled the ancient story of the women of Lemnos, who had cold-bloodedly murdered their loving husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. She tried to make the faces of the women look like murderesses, but her imagination just wasn’t up to it. Still . . .
Suddenly sober, she stood and placed her hand on the hilt of her sword. The faces that surrounded her only looked curious—far more sad than threatening.
“Where are your men?” she asked as Marfisa and Rashid joined her at either side. They were also sober, grim and alert, their hands resting on the hilts of their weapons.
An elderly woman shuffled forward, wrung her crispy hands and replied in a voice like crumpling paper: “We’re unhappy exiles, my lady, banished here by our cruel tyrant, separated forever from our fathers, sons and h
usbands.”
“Exiled? Whatever for?”
“He loathes women, our lord does. When we lived on his lands, which are about two leagues from here, he subjected us to every imaginable indignity. Finally tiring of this, and disgusted by our very presence, as though we were the carriers of some terrible plague, he forced us to live here. He’s promised death to any of us who dare attempt to return. Many of us’ve tried only to discover that for all his faults, he is a man of his word.”
“This is monstrous!” cried Bradamant indignantly. “But why haven’t your men come to your rescue?”
“They’re under the same threat of death. Our lord’s guards patrol every road and any man caught trying to escape is tortured or killed. Usually both.”
“I’ve never heard anything so outrageous.”
“It’s been two years now since our families were ripped asunder and there’s been not a soul to set things right. Everyone within a half dozen leagues lives in terror of Lord Marganor. They fear him more than death itself and rightly so: he’s of gigantic stature and prodigious strength.”
“We’ll soon see about that, eh, my friends?”
“I look forward to introducing myself,” replied Marfisa, with a pantherian grin.
“Oh!” cried the crone. “Not you, my ladies! We were hoping that this gentleman here might be convinced to win us our solace.”
“And what’s wrong with us two?” asked Marfisa.
“You’d be much better off escorting these three ladies to safety,” the crone protested, indicating Ullania and her handmaidens. “Take the road that leads away from Lord Marganor’s castle and you’ll thank me for the advice.”
“Whyever should Marfisa and I be afraid of this brute?”
“Ignore me and you’ll find out soon enough. He treats all women with the savagery of a Nero or Caligula, and not least of all foreign women who stumble into his murderous clutches. He craves their blood as the wolf craves the lamb’s.”
“But why?” asked Rashid. “Why would any man hate women so much?”
“He was always cruel,” the old woman replied, “but for many years he was able to successfully conceal his savage nature. Perhaps for this reason his two sons, Tanacre and Cilander, grew up to be quite the opposite of their father: kind, generous, refined, always ready to welcome and entertain guests and travelers. Under their benevolent management, Marganor Castle began to develop a well-deserved reputation for its hospitality. All would’ve been well if the sons hadn’t fallen in love.
“Cilander fell passionately for the daughter of a visiting Greek knight. He couldn’t bear to see her leave, so he schemed an abduction. After the departure of the knight and his daughter, Cilander met them on the road and challenged the girl’s father, who, it turned out, was the more skillful swordsman for he killed the boy at the first blow.”
“Marganor must have taken that well,” observed Bradamant.
“Better than you might think, all things considered. He buried his son and, although his grief was agonizing, his remaining son was able to maintain the manor’s standard of hospitality and grace. Unfortunately, less than a year passed before he, too, fell in love; this time it was the wife of a visiting baron—I forget his name.”
“Olinder of Longueville,” one of the women provided.
“Yes. Olinder—it was his beautiful wife, Drusilla. Well, Tanacre lusted for her no less than his late brother had desired the Greek maiden, but he also realized that there had been a lesson to be learned from Cilander’s fate, one that he wasn’t anxious to repeat.
“Can you imagine how sad this was? This elegant, witty, kind boy throwing away every bouyant virtue, to sink to the bottom of the black waters of evil where his father lay. Aiee, such a waste.
“Well, he waylaid the innocent baron, but unlike his late brother Tanacre was accompanied by twenty armed cohorts who wasted no time in dispatching the poor man. Seeing her husband thus brutally and cowardly murdered, Drusilla fled. Preferring death to dishonor, she threw herself from a cliff. She didn’t die, however, though she was terribly injured, not the least by a cracked skull. Tanacre recovered her unconscious body and had it carried back to the castle. While poor Drusilla was being cared for by Marganor’s doctors, Tanacre began preparations for his wedding.”
“While the girl was still unconscious?” asked Marfisa.
“What a foul little villain!” cried Bradamant.
“True. He did take after his father more than anyone might have suspected. To his credit, for whatever it’s worth, he admitted his crime to the lady, once she’d recovered enough to converse, and did what he could to make things up to her—short, of course, of letting her go. Drusilla, however, would have no part of him or his proposal and the harder he tried to befriend her, the more she loathed him and the more determined she became to kill him.”
“Good for her.”
“Yes, I think you would’ve approved of Drusilla—she had her wits about her, she did. For example, she knew it would do no good to attempt anything overt—Tanacre was scarcely less physically powerful than his father and could disarm her easily. Instead, she resorted to deviousness. As much as it pained her, she pretended to’ve forsworn her loyalty to her late husband, surrendering her heart to his murderer. For a long time she didn’t know how she could take advantage of Tanacre’s trust, other than that she was determined to die along with him.
“Finally, she hit upon a scheme. It was an elaborate one and I won’t burden you with all of its artistic details. The simple upshot was that she persuaded an old servant woman who had loyally remained with her to prepare a virulent poison and mix it into a bottle of Tanacre’s favorite wine. Meanwhile, she told him that she’d decided to finally accept his hand and he immediately announced a ball in honor of the occasion.
“At the height of the festivities she filled a chalice with the deadly wine, drank half and handed Tanacre the remainder. With a happy smile he drained it to the bottom, threw the empty vessel aside and held out his arms for his fiancé. Instead of rushing into them, as he expected, she pushed him away with a snarl, her face and eyes ablaze with anger and triumph.
“‘I’ve just killed you!’ she cried. ‘Killed you with these very hands! I only wish that your death weren’t to be so easy—no torture would be cruel enough to wipe out the crimes you’ve committed. But I’ve killed you as best I could and if I can’t watch you suffer in this world, I can at least console myself with knowing that I‘ll witness your torment in the next one!’
“Tanacre, with a cry of horror, grasped his burning throat with his hands and fell, lifeless, at the feet of his father. Having seen this, Drusilla also died, smiling at the knowledge that she had wiped a plague from the face of the earth.”
“Marganor must have gone berserk!” said Marfisa.
“He did indeed,” agreed the old woman. “He had once had two sons and now he had none—and both were stolen from him by women, or so he saw it. Not knowing whether Drusilla’s grinning body were alive or dead, perhaps not even caring, he vented his insane rage on her poor corpse, savaging it like a mastiff might savage its lifeless prey. Not satisfied with mutilating the body, he turned to his guests, flailing left and right, mowing down every woman he saw like a farmer scything hay. There was no escape. Thirty died in that first onslaught and a hundred more were mortally wounded as they tried to flee. His friends—at that time he still had many—finally restrained him, managing to calm his bloodlust, otherwise he would’ve continued his slaughter until not a woman was left alive. It was on that very day that he issued his cruel edict, banning every woman from his domain.”
“But what was his excuse for tormenting these three ladies?” asked Rashid. “They were strangers.”
“They fell afoul of the other part of Lord Marganor’s vow: that if a woman is found in the company of a man they are both slain forthwith. He personally slits their throats over the tomb of his sons. If a woman is found alone, she is whipped and sent away, but not before the lower
half of her clothing is torn away. He knows that the humiliation is worse than death.”
Bradamant was so impassioned by this story that she would have set off for Marganor’s castle then and there, had her friends not convinced her of the desirability of waiting until daylight.
She did not sleep well that night, her thoughts torn between the mission she had sworn and the disturbing knowledge that Rashid slept not two feet away, on the other side of a wattle-and-daub wall she could have plunged her arm through. She thought she could smell him, but it was probably just the damp mud. Nearby, Marfisa lay curled on a blanket, tucked into a corner where the feverish moonlight would not shine on her. She was snoring softly and steadily, wholly undisturbed by her roommate’s sleeplessness.
When she dozed, Bradamant was haunted by strange dreams; when she was awake her brain spun out of control, like a leaf caught in the eddies and vortices of a rushing stream.
The morning awoke grey, damp and dreary. A thin, chilly mist sifted down from the featureless overcast. Bradamant, who had awakened long before the others, had their horses ready and waiting when her companions appeared. They had only just emerged from the doorway when they heard the sound of approaching horses. All three drew their swords and waited to see what the noise would bring. Around the sharp turn where the road entered the hamlet came a band of about twenty heavily-armed men, half of them mounted and half on foot. In their midst was an elderly woman, mounted on a horse, her thin face grey as slate. With her tattered clothes fluttering she looked like an ailing heron.
“That’s old Jaudenes!” said the knights’ host, emerging from the doorway behind them.
“Who?” asked Bradamant.
“Jaudenes. Drusilla’s old servant.”
“The one who mixed up the poisoned wine?”
“The very one.”
“What are they doing with her?”
“I’d heard she’d fled the castle before the tragedy. She knew full well what Lord Marganor’s reaction to the death of his son would be. They say she’d gotten as far as Austria—not that it matters, since Lord Marganor’s men apparently found her anyway.”
