Revenge of the Rose (17 page)

 
          
“Then
you should rest, sir, not be journeying towards the very edge of the world!”

 
          
“Which
island might they have wished to visit?”

 
          
“Any
one of a score, sir, would be my guess. If you like, I can find you an old map
we have.”

 
          
Gratefully
Elric accepted her offer and took the map up to his room, poring over it in the
hope that perhaps some instinct would direct his attention to the appropriate
island. After half-an-hour of this, he was no wiser and was about to prepare
for bed when he heard a sound below, a raised voice, that he thought he
recognized.

 
          
It
was with lifting heart that Elric, who had thought he would never see the man
again, ran to the top of the stairs and looked down into the inn’s main hall
where a small red-headed poet, in frock-coat and trousers, waistcoat and cravat
which looked as if they had come rather too close to a fire, declaimed some ode
he hoped would buy him a bed—or at least a bowl of soup—for the night. “
Gold was the colour Gwyneth gave to
Gwinefyr. And coral for cheeks, eyes blue as the sea. And bearing so perfect,
so gracious, so fine. And lips red as
Burgundy
grapes, lush on the vine. These were the gifts she gave unto her tragic Queen.
Her Queen of Caprice, by Tragedy Redeem’d
. Great Scott, sir! I thought you gone to perdition a year or more ago!
It’s good to see you, sir. You can help me with your Memoriam. I had so few
particulars. I am afraid you will not like it. If I remember, it is not your
preferred style. It tends, I will admit, to the Heroic. And the
ballade
form is considered merely quaint
by many.” He began to search his pockets for his manuscript. “It has gone, I
fear, the way of the
triolet
. Or,
indeed, the
rondel—‘Lord Elric left his
homeland weeping, For his dear young bride whom he loved of yore. We see him stand
by the open door. While the sweet tears down her cheeks are creeping.
’—an
attempt, dear friend, I must admit, to catch the popular taste. Such trifles
have great general appeal and your subject, sir, I felt might attract public
fancy. I had hoped to immortalize you, while at the same time—Aha! No, that is
upon a Hugnit I met last week—and you will say that the
rondel
is inappropriate to epic form—but one has to
dress up
one’s epics, these days—sweeten
them in some way. And a few innocuous cadences do a great deal to achieve that
end. I have no money, you see, sir …”

 
          
And
the poor little fellow looked suddenly wan. He sat himself down upon a bench,
his shoulders slumped, even his shock of red hair limp upon his avian head, his
fingers screwing up miscellaneous pieces of paper in some unconscious pantomime
of self-disgust.

 
          
“Why,
then, I must commission a work from you,” said Elric descending. He put a
sympathetic hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “After all, did you not tell me
once that patronage of the artist was the only valuable vocation to which a
prince might aspire?”

 
          
At
which Wheldrake grinned, cheered by this confirmation of a friendship he
believed gone for ever. “It has not been easy for me, sir, just lately, I must
admit.” There was a wealth of recent horror in the poet’s eyes and Elric did
not tax him on it. He knew himself that all Wheldrake wished to do at present
was rid his mind of the memories. The poet had a momentary recollection and
smoothed out the last piece of paper he had crumpled. “Yes, the
Ballade Memoriam
, I recall—I suppose it
is a somewhat limited form. But for parody, sir—unexcelled!
A warrior rode death’s lonely road, No
lonelier road rode he
 …” Again this brief revival of his old spark
failed to ignite, as it were, the flashpan of his soul. “I am rather wanting,
sir, I think, of food and drink. This is the first human settlement I have seen
in several months.”

 
          
And
then Elric had the pleasure of ordering food and ale for his friend and
watching him come slowly back to something like his old self. “Say what you
will, sir, no poet ever did his best work starving, though he may have starved
himself whilst doing the work, that I’ll grant. They are different things,
however.” And he sat back from the bench, adjusting his bony bottom upon the
boards, and belched discreetly before letting out a great sigh, as if only now
could he afford to allow himself to believe that his fortunes had changed. “I
am mighty glad to see you, Prince Elric. And glad, too, of your aristocratic
conscience. I hope, however, you’ll allow me to discuss the technicalities of
the commission in the morning. As I remember, sir, you have only a passing
interest in the profession of versification—questions of metre, rhyme—Licence,
Poetic Combination, Mixed Metre—Orthometry in general—do not concern you.”

 
          
“I’ll
take your advice on all of that, my friend.” Elric wondered at his affection
for the little man, his admiration for that strange, clever mind so thoroughly
lost to its proper context that it must be for ever grasping at the only
constancies it had, those of the poetic craft. “And there is no haste. I would
be glad of your company on a voyage I expect to be undertaking. As soon as a
likely ship is free. Failing that, I might be forced to employ a little sorcery …”

 
          
“As
a last resort, sir, I beg you. I’ve rather had my fill of wizardry and wild
romance for the moment.” Master Wheldrake took a conclusive pull upon his
ale-pot. “But I seem to recall such stuff is as familiar to you, Prince Elric,
as the Peckham Omnibus is to me, and I would rather link my fortune with one
like yourself, who has at least some understanding of Chaos and her whimsical
eruptions. So I shall be glad to accept both commission and companionship. I am
mighty glad to see you again, sir.” And with that he fell upon his own arm,
snoring.

 
          
Then
the albino prince took the little poet up and carried him, as if he were a
child, to his room before returning to his own bed and his contemplation of the
map—the islands of the great reef and, beyond it, darkness, an impossible
ocean, unnavigable and unnatural, the Heavy Sea. Reconciled to hiring some
fishing boat to visit the islands one by one, he fell into a deep sleep and was
awakened by a scratching at his door and the bellow of some maid informing him
that it was past the one thousand and fifteenth hour (their largest division of
yearly time in Ulshinir) and there would be no breakfast for him if he did not
rise at once.

 
          
He
did not care for breakfast, but he was anxious to confer with Wheldrake on the
subject of the three sisters and was somewhat surprised, once he had prepared
himself for the day, to discover the poet declaiming on the very subject—or so
it seemed …

 
          
“Lord
Soulis is a keen wizard,

 
          
A
wizard mickle of lear:

 
          
Who
cometh in bond of Lord Soulis,

 
          
Thereof
he hath little cheer.

 
          
“He
hath three braw castles to his hand,

 
          
That
wizard mickle of age;

 
          
The
first of Estness, the last of Westness,

 
          
The
middle of Hermitage.

 
          
“He
has three fair mays into his hand,

 
          
The
least is good to see;

 
          
The
first is Annet, the second is Janet,

 
          
The
third is Marjorie.

 
          
“The
firsten o’ them has a gowden crown,

 
          
The
neist has a gowden ring;

 
          
The
third has sma’gowd her about,

 
          
She
has a sweeter thing.

 
          
“The
firsten o’ them has a rose her on,

 
          
The
neist has a marigold;

 
          
The
third of them has a better flower,

 
          
The
best that springeth ower wold.”

 
          
The
inn’s female servant, the landlady and her daughter, listened enraptured to
Wheldrake’s sing-song rendering. But it was the words that captured Elric’s
imagination …

 
          
“Good
morning, Master Wheldrake. Is that a dialect of your own land?”

 
          
“It
is, sir.” Wheldrake kissed the hands of the ladies and strutted with all his
old vigour across the room to greet his friend. “A border ballad, I believe, or
something made very like one …”

 
          
“You
did not write it?”

 
          
“I
cannot answer you honestly, Prince Elric.” Wheldrake sat down on the bench
opposite the albino and watched him sip a dish of stewed herbs. “Have some
honey in that.” He pushed the pot forward. “It makes it palatable. There are
some things I do not know if I wrote, if I heard, if I copied from another poet—though
I doubt there’s any can match Wheldrake’s command of the poetic arts (I do not
claim genius—but mere craft)—for I am prolific, you see. It is my nature, and
perhaps my doom. Had I died after my first volume or two I should even now
reside in Westminster Abbey.”

 
          
Not
wishing a lengthy and impossible-to-follow explanation on the nature of this
particular
Valhalla
, Elric, as had become his habit, merely let
the unfamiliar words roll by.

 
          
“But
this Lord Soulis. Who is he?”

 
          
“A
mere invention, for all I know, sir. I was reminded of the ballad by the three
ladies here, but, of course, perhaps our three elusive sisters struck a memory,
too. Certainly, if I remember further verses I’ll speak up. But I believe it no
more than a coincidence, Prince Elric. The multiverse is full of specific
numbers of power and so on, and three is particularly popular with poets since
three names are always excellent means of ringing changes on something long—which,
of course, is the nature of narrative verse. Again, this slides from favour
wherever I go. The artist is beyond fashion, but his purse, sir, is not. That’s
an odd ship, isn’t it, sir, come into the harbour overnight?”

 
          
Elric
had seen no ship. He put down his bowl and let Wheldrake lead him to the window
where the landlady and her daughter still leaned, staring at a craft whose hull
gleamed black and yellow and whose prow bore the marks of Chaos, while from her
mast there flew a red-and-black flag centred with a sign in some unlikely
alphabet. On her forecastle, weighting the ship oddly so that she was
stern-light in the water and showing too much of her rudder, was a tall, square
object swathed in black canvas and filling almost the whole deck. Occasionally
the thing moved in a sudden convulsion and then was still again. There was no
clue to what the canvas hid. But, as Elric watched, a figure strolled from the
cabin under the forward deck, stood for a second on the polished planks and
seemed to look directly at him. Elric could scarcely return the gaze, since the
helmet had no eyes he could make out. It was Gaynor the Damned and the standard
he flew was, Elric now recollected, that of Count Mashabak. They were fully
rivals, it seemed, serving warring patrons.

 
          
Gaynor
returned to his cabin and next a plank was lowered from the moored galley and
laid onto the mole. The ship’s hands moved with lithe speed, almost like
monkeys, to secure the gangplank as there stepped onto it a lad of no more than
fifteen, clad in all the vivid, pretty finery of a pirate lord, a cutlass in
one side of his sash, a sabre in the other, to stride up towards the town with
the confident swagger of a conqueror.

 
          
It
was only as the figure drew close to the inn that Elric recognized who it was—and
he wondered again at the turning Spheres of the multiverse, marveled at the
extraordinary combinations of events and worlds, both in and out of the
dimensions of time, that were possible within the undiscoverable parameters of
the quasi-infinite.