Lizard World (10 page)

      
For ’tis known these brutes are strangers to the rheume and other such maladies to which civiliz’d folk are long inured and so they oft do not requite the trouble of their transport and either do expire at sea or languish upon landing, wherefore full soon they must be thrown out like spoiled milk. Natheless, when I did see that this salvage prince did mean to evidence his heathenish goodwill, much as a Christian prince might grant a guerdon, methought it impolitic to refuse his hospitality, altho’ it were otherwise nothing to my purpose.

      
Amongst these wretches whom now I needs must take in charge, I did erelong remark a most mountainous but elsewise not displeasing female whom anon I did grant leave to lift my litter. For the odour of this same salvagess, though somewhat strong, was greatly to my liking. This salvagess, whom I did learn hereafter was named Satchunk, did moreover bear my dressing-box and my claret: for tho’ she oft did thirst, she was full wondrous at lifting.

III.

      
Thus ’twas that with this Satchunk and Simkyn Potter shouldering my chair we did journey onward -- until of a ruddy evening, whilst we did stand upon a knoll, we descried from afar a bonfire and a multitude of hovels
which I did ween to be the capital city of this salvage potentate. Erelong we did progress thither and, traversing a rude bridge across a foetid stream infested by crokadells and painted salvages in canoos, did find ourselves amidst a throng of shrieking fiends whose hair, bedone with top-knots, exhaled a singular smell of pisse. Indeed this village, if it were such, did offend the nose. For ’twas little better than a sewer besprinkled with some forty houses -- tho’ to call them houses were the veriest hyperbole. For in sooth they were not more than rude huts of mud and bark, with hides of beasts for doorways before which crouched a multitude of dirt-smeared babes and toothless, naked dotards whose beggarly, aged infirmity was quite beyond compare.

      
“Here’s harlots enow for the lot of us,” now says this Simkyn Potter.

      
For such was the mirth of these salvages at our arrival, that presently some thirty well-nigh naked women, whom I did learn hereafter were the unfortunate slaves and chattel of this prince, did commence to dance and sing before the bonfire, making all manner of lewd gestures, thrusting their buttocks and exposing their privities howsomever this cruel prince did command. For ’twas all too plain this barbarous Emperor did but reckon them as swine which he did mean to share as proof of his hospitable bounty. Yea, full soon as they had done with this infernal dance, a
score of these unfortunate females, lifting up those beast-hides which engirdled them, did fall down straight upon the hands and knees. For these salvages do couple upon all four like cattle and in this wise did they mean to bid us welcome. Wherefore my mariners were greatly heartened, for they had been at sea these seven months and did rise to the sport forthwith.

  
   
The salvagess Satchunk, of whom I spake before, anon did leave off shouldering my chair and, raising up the skirt of squerrell’s hyde with which she was begirt, did likewise stand awaiting on all four -- whereby I was most cruelly vexed, whether to renounce the dignity of a gentleman or to refuse the hospitality of this most salvage and dangerous prince.

      
Fearing to provoke his majestick ire, I arose to the task. Notwithstanding which, Master Thorogood, my erstwhile tutor, did most tiresomely remonstrate and bestride back and forth amongst us and expostulate upon sin and the fires of perdition to such a frightful extremity that methought he was like to foul his breeches. Natheless, these salvage wenches did continue to disport with us, in plain view upon the sward and talking amongst one another all the while, as if ’twere no more to them than to make curtesie.

      
It now befell, after I had disported with this salvagess and drunk the noxious beveridge which she did proffer for my pleasure, that I was seiz’d -- when I lay adown to sleep -- with a most strange and frantick fever. I did neither entirely sleep nor wake. But in a half-dreaming, extravagant delirium meseemed I was yet again in England and that the Duke my father was a crokadell -- and whereas ere this methought that if the Prince of Orange should become King I might contrive to brand my brother for a Papist and a traitor, now did I shiver with fear that I would die amongst these salvages and never have the dukedom. Such was the feaverish confusion of this frenzy that methought (whilst in truth I lay on ground beneath the stars) that the bonfire of these salvages was my cousin Fawncey’s antique volume which I had stolen and ’twas this book which thus did burn and beckon. Of course ’twas but a scurvy trick of fancy. But thus in my fever did I rave and think myself again in England and remember me of that morning when I blinded my cousin Fawncey and filched his precious book.

      
Young Fawncey had ever been a confounded fool, and altho’ I had liefer buggered a rotted corse than paid a penny for his poems -- or so much as a farthing for his sister’s honour -- yet this old book by which he set such store, this dusty Friar’s book to purchase which he’d pledged fifty guineas in earnest of my uncle’s money, this book methought did surely have some value.

      
’Twas this accurst book which I brought to mind whilst I lay a-shivering in feaverish distemper -- and when I opened up my eyes, methought I did see my cousin Fawncey. For I did mistake him for young Bromley who, bound upon a stake before the bonfire, did most unmanfully whimper whilst salvage harlots sported him with knives and burning brands.

  
And thereupon I slept and meseemed (as on the morning of the duel) I yet again did haste to Fawncey’s chambers and there rummage thro’ the wooden chest wherein all his books and versifying rubbish did together lie concealed. This Friar’s book I did straightways espy -- or rather did it me espy, for its binding was a lyzard’s skin with cabochons for eyes and it did lurk there in that chest, amidst that farrago of quills and pretty sonnets and other such like offal at which methought I would spue up my gorge. Meseemed this book, full soon as I had laid hand upon it, did now verily become a lyzard with angry teeth and darting tongue -- whereat I did shriek and start myself awake, whereupon this lyzard’s tongue was nought again but leaping fire in the night with salvages roundabout. Thus racked by shakes and feaverish fantasms, I did curse aloud my cousin Fawncey and that Friar’s book which like a serpent did beguile and infect me with its talk of golden cities and elixir. Yea, and when I parched and raved for drink, methought that, once again, I was out of luck at gaming and did need a drink of gold.

In which the captive reader is interrupted

. . . Smedlow
had gotten this far in his reading, when once again he felt a stinging -- and his hand instinctively delivered a sharp smack to his Adam’s apple. Damn -- too late. Because now he saw the big fly -- goggle-eyed and bloated -- circling in the shaft of sunlight that slanted down from the tiny, iron-barred window above him. Oh, how he wished he could swat the vermin down, squish its loathsome body in his fist. But already it was buzzing about in wider circles, caroming off the slimy walls, the mildewed harpsichord, the antique toilet chair. He had been so absorbed and repulsed by what he’d read -- the dead man’s voice hypnotizing him with its archaic, insidious language -- that he’d almost forgotten where he was.

      
But now he remembered. And now that he’d read all these disturbing pages, the moldering antiquities around him took on a new and ominous meaning. The insufferable lord in the manuscript had not only harangued him from the grave but had also captured and surrounded him.

      
Wasn’t this cell his private chamber? Wasn’t that the gilt sedan chair in which he’d been carried through these very swamps at least three hundred years ago? Wasn’t that his ivory-stocked flintlock pistol? And that reddish, fungus-covered rag in the corner: wasn’t it a petticoat he’d stolen from some long-dead beauty?

      
The horsefly was above him now, buzzing along the flesh-pink thighs and breasts of the obscene fresco on the ceiling. On the worm-eaten desk, beside the dusty goose quill and ink bottle, the pile of yellowed papers repelled and beckoned him. He really didn’t want to keep on reading -- and yet he turned the page. . . .

IV.

      
How many days I did froth and fever in the gripp of that most hideous distemper I know not. But by degrees I did strengthen, forasmuch as this Satchunk, whose tragic end I much lament, did labour strenuously for the salubrity of my person -- digging tubers, fetching buckets, capturing fish and other such vermin, in such wise that at length she did ripen to a yet more robust smell. ’Twas this smell, indeed, which chiefly I did relish, despite the lowborn and numskull’d brutishness of her nature. Therefore, I resolved to take a memento of this Nimphe -- and for this purpose, when she did snore upon the straw whereon I’d coupled her, I did filch for my portmanteau that girdle of squerrel’s hyde which she bore about her person. For these divers undergarments, I say, did treasure up such perfume of pleasing rankness that, like as a camel draweth water from its hump, my nose did sniff out and drink therefrom the precious licquor of desire.

      
For I was by now become a most erudite philosopher of smell and did prize perfumes for their hunger and their drunken, feaverish odour of the rut. Hence, besides these treasures of my portmanteau, I was eke a great virtuoso of perfumes, which I did transport, whereso’er I travell’d, in all manner of flasks and bottles. If I could adduce a reason for this collection, I should say that they were to me the vintage of the loins. For perfume is nought else but flowers and muske -- and flowers are but the odoriferous privitees of vegetables, even as muske is but the privy smell of beasts. Ergo, muske is but the hot stench of generation, and flowers are but beckoning vegetable harlots, and a garden but a bawdy-house. Thus the fair sex, even those who protest they like it not, do but smear themselves with the juice and smell of breed.

      
’Twas in this wise, as a philosopher and votary of smell, that my fancy was yet inflamed by that Spanish Friar’s book. For altho’ this Friar’s talk of alembicks and Mercury and other such trumpery did seem but the distempered daydreams of alchymic art, yet his maps had proved most apt. Yea, and all the several particulars of his travels -- such as the harlotry and the mien and the cannibal barbarism of these salvages -- did answer so fully to my now incontradictible knowledge, that I could not but swallow down the pith and marrow of his tale -- videlicet, that the Grand Elixir of the philosophers is nought else but the rarest and most fragrant musk, the very perfume from the cod of dragons.

      
Now this rude and wretched village, as I have told, did front upon a foetid stream wherein did throng a wondrous deal of crokadells. ’Twas oft most pleasant, of an evening, whilst I did live amongst the salvages, to watch and smell these dragons at the rut. ’Twas e’en thus, of a crimson dusk, whilst I relish’d in these creatures at their sport, that the soveraign of the salvages, companied by his over-grown queen and a train of barbarous courtiers, did break upon my pleasure with their persons.

      
“Good even, Sire,” says I, tho’ full well I wist he had no more English than a barn-yard swine.

      
This prince, with whom I was now an especial favourite, clipped me with his odious limbs and thereupon, with most excellent ill variety of pitch and measure, commenced to chaunt and moan a porridge of syllables, whilst with outstretch’d hands he did implore and beckon at the sky, as if ’twere his solemn intent to offer idolatrous gibberish to the setting sun. Straightway did this prince, with right imperious demeanour, clap his hands -- which, no sooner had he done, than his courtiers did seize a maiden from amongst them and thrust her, o’er the precipice, to the crokadells. Ere this I had not seen gold amongst these salvages, but presently this heathen lord and eke his sowish wife pluck’d all manner of golden gugaws from a basket and threw them likewise to the dragons. ’Sblood! methought, these devils needs must reverence these dragons, if thus they do regale their maws with maiden’s flesh and gold.

      
Whilst these crokadells made merry at their banquet, these salvages, of a sudden, commenced to shout most fiendishly -- for now, gaping-mouthed upon a litter shouldered by a kennel of these brutes, approached a most ill-beseeming ancient salvage, whom these devils did seem to venerate for his jolly grin of chap-fall’n idiocy. Upon his pate this greybeard wore a helm, which I did ween to be a Spanyard’s morion, whilst a necklace of gold doubloons, which even now he did fret and finger, encircled his leathern gullet. Such was the jubilation at this eldern sot’s arrival that these salvages bestrewed his couch with flowers, whilst at news of his advent a multitude of villagers, even matrons with their babes at suck, flocked hither from their hovels. This dotard, though most uncomely, did salute the nose with a surprising rapture, forasmuch as a pleasing unguent did anoint his raiments, his couch and even his wizened hams withal.