by Odo Hirsch
‘No, Lord Ronald! You’re being very difficult today. You know perfectly well whom I mean.’
‘Bartlett?’
‘Bartlett. And his friend …’
‘Jacques le Grand?’
‘That’s the one. Bartlett and Jacques le Grand. Where are they? Where have they got to?’
Lord Ronald frowned. ‘I believe, Madam, they went to get you a melidrop.’
‘I know they went to get me a melidrop,’ exclaimed the Queen, ‘but they haven’t come back!’
Lord Ronald sipped his tea thoughtfully. It was true, Bartlett and Jacques le Grand had not come back. But it was not even two months since they had left.
Lord Ronald put his cup down carefully on his saucer. ‘Bartlett said it would take five months, or maybe seven,’ he said in his calmest and most soothing voice.
The Queen was not soothed.
‘Did that include the time it took for him to get here from the Alps?’
‘No, Madam, it did not include the time it took for him to get here from the Alps,’ said Lord Ronald.
‘But that is most unfair. We had to wait four months for him just to get here.’
‘Three, Madam.’
‘All right. Three, then, if you want to be picky. It was long enough. He should have included that in the time it was going to take him to get the melidrop.’
‘He could have done that,’ said Lord Ronald, ‘but then it would have taken him eight months, or ten.’
The Queen calculated, gazing suspiciously at Lord Ronald. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter! How long have they been gone already? It must be months. Months and months.’
It was not months and months. The Queen, Lord Ronald guessed, knew this perfectly well, since she counted each day.
‘Seven weeks, Madam.’
‘Seven weeks? No, it must be more than that. Eleven weeks. Or ten at the very least.’
‘Seven weeks, Madam. Seven weeks and two days.’
‘So, almost seven and a half weeks. Almost seven-and-a-half weeks, not seven!’
Lord Ronald nodded. The Queen picked up a butter cake and took a swift bite.
The Queen found it very hard to accept that she might be waiting for seven months. She was accustomed to waiting seven seconds, or seven minutes, or seven hours, or, occasionally, seven days, or, very rarely, seven weeks—but seven months, that was a new experience for her and she did not find it pleasant at all. Lord Ronald, secretly, thought it might do her some good.
‘You will have to wait, Madam,’ he said. ‘You will simply have to wait.’
‘I don’t want to wait.’
‘But you must.’
The Queen picked up her butter cake again. This time she took a dainty nibble out of it.
‘Of course, I could wait,’ she said, suddenly sounding very sure of herself. ‘Of course I could. But let us say, Lord Ronald, for the sake of argument, let us say that I wait for seven months—seven whole months—and then Bartlett comes back without a melidrop.’
‘That is possible,’ said Lord Ronald.
‘Is it?’ demanded the Queen. Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘I rather think it would be impossible. It would be an impossible situation. To think that a Queen would have waited seven months, which, I believe, is two months longer than a Queen has ever waited before, only to receive nothing at the end of it. No, that would be impossible.’
‘Difficult.’
‘Difficult. Difficult as well. Impossible things are always difficult.’
‘Impossible things are never difficult.’
‘Why not?’ the Queen demanded.
‘Because they never actually happen.’
The Queen stared at Lord Ronald.
‘They are impossible, Madam,’ Lord Ronald explained.
The Queen continued to gaze at Lord Ronald. ‘All right. Difficult,’ she said eventually. ‘I agree. It would be difficult.’
‘Indeed it would. But what do you want to do, Madam?’
‘Well,’ she said, as if the thought had just occurred to her, ‘that fellow Bartlett was not very sure of himself. He did not sound as if he really believed that he would be able to bring back a melidrop, did he?’
‘He was perfectly honest,’ Lord Ronald replied.
‘Oh, yes, of course. He was honest. Honesty is all very well. One wants to have honesty. But one also wants to have a melidrop! If a man is not very sure of himself, Lord Ronald, he will not try very hard. He will give up at the first setback. He will not try again and again.’
Lord Ronald shook his head. ‘Madam, in my opinion you are mistaking honesty for lack of determination. If you ask me, Bartlett will try everything he knows to get you a melidrop. But you must wait.’
‘Must I?’ said the Queen.
‘You must, Madam. You have promised.’
‘I did not actually promise to wait, Lord Ronald.’
‘Madam …’
‘I did not say “I promise”. I did not actually say the words, did I?’
Lord Ronald sighed. ‘Madam. You are our Queen. You must not forget that you are an example to us all.’
The Queen gazed at Lord Ronald. How she hated it when he said things like that! It was always so hard to have your own way when Lord Ronald was around. And it made no sense, no sense at all, because Lord Ronald was merely a lord, and she, after all, was the Queen.
‘And the expedition to the Margoulis Caverns, Madam?’ said Lord Ronald after a moment. ‘Surely that will make him try.’
‘True, but he has already waited years for that. If he doesn’t really want to get a melidrop he won’t mind waiting a few years more.’
‘Who says?’
The Queen hesitated. She avoided Lord Ronald’s eyes. ‘Sir Hugh Lough,’ she replied eventually.
Chapter 9
‘ICE?’ SAID GOZO, grimacing. He took his eyes off the horses and looked up at Bartlett. ‘Where can we find some ice? Is that what you said?’
Bartlett nodded.
Gozo frowned. They had just turned back onto the main road amongst the melidrop orchards. Dawn was breaking and the sky was becoming light. Ahead of them stretched a long line of wagons, all heavily loaded and heading for the bazaar in town.
‘What is it?’ said Gozo.
‘Ice? It’s water that’s frozen,’ said Bartlett.
‘Frozen?’
Jacques le Grand rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why Bartlett had even bothered to ask Gozo where they could get some ice. Anyone who lived in a country with snow knew that you could use ice to preserve food, but here, under the tropical sun, it was never cold enough for water to freeze. People wouldn’t have any idea what Bartlett was talking about. Jacques himself had once had a similar conversation in another hot country—well, almost a conversation. He had bumped his head against the ceiling in an inn and had called to see if there was any ice to put on the bump. The innkeeper, who had obviously never seen or even heard of ice in his life, looked at him blankly, and it was then that he would have had his conversation, to explain what ice was, but Jacques le Grand did not start conversations so frequently that he could afford to waste one on any old innkeeper.
‘Gozo,’ Bartlett explained, ‘when water gets very cold, it freezes. It becomes hard.’
Gozo laughed. ‘Water doesn’t get hard, Mr Bartlett. Look at the water in Uncle Mo’s well. That’s cold. I’ve never drunk colder water in all my life. But it isn’t hard.’
‘It does get hard, Gozo. When it gets very cold—colder than the water in Mordi’s well. When it gets freezing cold.’
‘Water? Colder than Uncle Mo’s?’ Gozo demanded excitedly.
‘Yes.’
‘Hard?’
‘Like a rock,’ growled Jacques le Grand.
Gozo hunched his shoulders. He flicked the reins thoughtfully, as if to ask the horses what they made of this crazy story about hard water. But the horses apparently didn’t have an answer, because eventually Gozo said: ‘I don’t know where you can get water that’s
as hard as a rock, Mr Bartlett. Are you sure it’s water? I can get you rocks, if that’s what you need. Plenty of rocks.’
‘Ice, Gozo. That’s what I need.’
‘Then I can’t help you, Mr Bartlett.’
No one could help them. Ice was as rare in this country as a melidrop in the Queen’s palace. Even in the town, no one even knew what ice was, apart from the town’s scholar. The scholar spent all day sitting by himself over books in the town’s library. No one else in the town ever went to the library or sat over its books, because they had a scholar to do it.
A whole crowd of people took them to the scholar when they discovered that Bartlett and Jacques were looking for something that no one had ever heard of. They pushed and jostled them up the steps to the library, calling out and praising the scholar’s wisdom, knowledge and intelligence. ‘No other town has a scholar who knows as much as ours,’ they cried as they pushed, and they continued shouting until the library doors swung open and their voices dropped to a hush at the sight of the vast room inside.
Every inch of the walls was lined with books. There was a marble floor and a high ceiling held up by a row of columns along either side. In the very centre of the roof was a dome with a circle of windows, and the light streamed down in hazy shafts like golden fingers poking out of the sky. Below it, on a set of soft cushions made of purple and yellow silk, with books spread out all around him on the floor, sat a young man.
The young man was very plump. He wore a flowing gown and a soft red hat that flopped like a melted mushroom. On either hand, amongst the books, was a small wooden table, and on the tables were trays of tidbits and delicacies. The scholar held a sweet between his fingers and was just putting it to his mouth when he heard the door of the library open.
He looked up in alarm at the crowd coming towards him. Although they barely dared to speak above a whisper, in the silence of the library their voices sounded like a tremendous din. Even the sound of their feet shuffling over the marble floor was deafening. The scholar could barely believe his ears. People were not meant to come and make a din in the library! They were supposed to tiptoe in with his food, place it quietly on the tables, and slip away before he had even looked up from his books and realised they were there.
‘Ask him, ask him!’ whispered the people around Bartlett.
‘What?’ asked the scholar impatiently.
‘We are looking for ice,’ said Bartlett.
‘Ah, ice!’ said the scholar. He held one finger meaningfully in the air. This was a question worthy of his great learning.
The people around Bartlett stared at the scholar with their mouths open, barely daring to breathe.
‘Ice,’ the scholar repeated. ‘Water.’
‘Yes,’ said Bartlett.
‘Frozen water.’
‘Yes,’ said Bartlett.
People started clapping. ‘You see, you see,’ they cried excitedly.
‘Wait!’ Then, when everyone was quiet again, Bartlett said: ‘Where can we find it?’
The scholar’s face became troubled. He glanced around the library, as if the answer must have been inside one of all those books that he had read. The answer to every single question that could possibly be asked, the scholar believed, was inside one or other of his books, if only he could remember which one.
Eventually the scholar shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.
‘Thank you,’ said Bartlett. He turned to leave. Jacques le Grand followed him out. People were crying ‘Food, food! Bring food so the scholar will have strength to learn.’
Gozo ate lunch with Bartlett and Jacques le Grand in an inn. He had left a boy watching his wagon behind the bazaar. Gozo looked unhappy and didn’t eat very much.
‘What are you going to do, Mr Bartlett?’ he asked, pushing a piece of chicken aimlessly around his plate with a fork.
Bartlett smiled. ‘I don’t know, Gozo. Something always turns up.’
‘Not always,’ said Gozo.
Bartlett didn’t reply. He always said that something would turn up, but it was true that sometimes it didn’t. Yet that was no cause for dismay! Inventiveness, Perseverance and Desperation: those were the tools of an explorer. If something didn’t turn up by itself, Inventiveness would make it appear!
Gozo frowned. ‘You can’t find any ice, whatever that is.’
‘Not here,’ said Bartlett.
‘Why don’t you bring it, then?’
Jacques laughed. He shook his head merrily before placing a heaped spoonful of meat, potatoes and cabbage into his mouth. The whole lot was covered in spicy melidrop sauce, of course.
‘Ice …’ said Bartlett—then he paused, as if a thought had just come into his mind.
‘… melts,’ Jacques growled, completing Bartlett’s sentence out of the corner of his full mouth.
‘Yes, it melts,’ said Bartlett. But he was still thinking. ‘It melts slowly, doesn’t it, Jacques? And the more you’ve got, the slower it melts.’
Jacques didn’t care how quickly ice melted. There wasn’t any here. And the sooner Bartlett gave up this whole melidrop idea, the better. Bringing a fruit for the Queen was no job for explorers like them, even if she did offer an expedition to the Margoulis Caverns as a reward.
‘What do you mean, melts?’ Gozo asked.
‘What? Oh, when it gets warmer, it melts,’ said Bartlett. ‘Then it’s just water again.’
‘Then I don’t see why you want it. I don’t see at all!’ cried Gozo. ‘Water that’s hard one minute and soft the next, what’s it for? What could you possibly do—’
‘Gozo,’ cried Bartlett suddenly, ‘we have to find a ship!’
‘When?’
‘Now! Right now!’
Bartlett was already on his feet. He had an expression of wild impatience on his face. Jacques knew that look. When Inventiveness strikes, no explorer can wait to put his idea into action.
They went straight to the port. There were six empty ships waiting for wares to take across the sea. One of them was the ship that had brought Bartlett and Jacques two days before. When Bartlett told the captain what he wanted, the captain laughed in his face. When Bartlett offered him half-a-dozen of the Queen’s rubies, he just laughed even louder. So did the captain on the next ship they visited, and the captain on the ship after that. But the fourth captain looked Bartlett up and down, without even waiting to hear about the rubies, and said, ‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’ cried Bartlett. ‘I don’t want maybe. Anyone can say maybe. I want to hear yes. Yes, that’s what I want to hear.’
‘All right: yes,’ said the captain, who was called Captain Wrick.
For a moment Bartlett was silent. He gazed into Captain Wrick’s sea-blue eyes. ‘Really? Do you think you can do it? Do you think you can bring back an iceberg?’
‘Maybe,’ said Captain Wrick.
‘Well, when will you know for sure?’ demanded Bartlett.
‘When we get there.’
‘Where?’
‘To the icebergs.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘There and back?’
‘Each way.’
‘Twelve weeks,’ muttered Bartlett. ‘Gozo, will the melidrops still be in season in twelve weeks?’
Gozo narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s eighty … eighty …’
‘Eighty-four days,’ cried Bartlett impatiently.
‘I know,’ said Gozo, ‘I would have worked it out.’
Gozo started counting on his fingers, whispering numbers under his breath. No one knew what he was counting. He went round and round his fingers.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘But that’s such a long time, Mr Bartlett. Eighty-four days, that’s … that’s …’
‘Twelve weeks.’
‘Twelve weeks! Won’t the Queen get sick of waiting?’ Bartlett laughed. Getting an iceberg would take extra time, but Bartlett wasn’t the sort to count pennies or add up weeks. When you decided
you were going to do something, you kept going until you succeeded, no matter how long it took! ‘The Queen will wait, Gozo. She promised she would. When a Queen promises something, you can trust she’ll do it.’
Jacques raised an eyebrow doubtfully. The Queen had not struck him as a particularly patient person.
‘Well, they won’t be the best melidrops, Mr Bartlett,’ said Gozo. ‘It’ll be the end of the season.’
Bartlett shook his head dismissively. ‘We can’t worry about that. If the Queen wants a melidrop she’ll just have to take what she’s given.’ He turned back to Captain Wrick. ‘When can we sail?’
‘Tonight,’ replied Captain Wrick.
‘What about this afternoon?’
‘If you like, I just have to buy some candles.’
‘And rope,’ added Bartlett, ‘for the iceberg.’
‘Oh, I’ve got rope,’ said Captain Wrick.
‘Good,’ said Bartlett. ‘Now listen, Gozo. We’ll be back in twelve weeks. And as soon as we arrive, you must bring us the freshest, plumpest, juiciest melidrop you have. Make sure Mordi sprays it well before you bring it—no, better yet, put it in a bucket of cold water and bring it in that. As fast as you can. All right?’
‘But how will I know when you’re back?’ asked Gozo.
‘Oh, you’ll know. We’ll be towing the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Ice.’
‘Ice?’ repeated Gozo, scarcely daring to believe it.
‘A whole lump of it, a whole mountain of it. As white as snow.’ Bartlett laughed. ‘I suppose you don’t know what that is, either. We’ll be towing a mountain of ice or we’ll have sunk trying to get it. Either way, we won’t be back without it. Right, Jacques?’
Jacques nodded glumly. Six weeks there and six weeks back: the mere thought of it was enough to make him seasick!
Chapter 10
SEA CAPTAINS DON’T normally go looking for icebergs—they steer as far away from them as possible. The underwater part of an iceberg is like a razor-sharp claw that can rip the bottom out of a ship, and the part above water will smash a boat to pieces if they collide in a storm. Captain Wrick knew all of this. He didn’t say yes to Bartlett out of ignorance.
