The Iron Tempest (18 page)
Authors: Ron Miller
“I know. Then let me distract you for a few minutes by telling you something of your descendants.”
“Yes, I’d very much like to hear about them.”
“I see in the future,” said Melissa, her voice becoming distant and monotonic, as though she were talking to herself, “chaste women, mothers of emperors and kings, the immovable foundations of illustrious houses and resplendent empires. For all their feminine trappings, however, they are no less than knights, armored with every virtue: mercy, modesty, courage, prudence, piety, matchless self-restraint. I couldn’t begin, in the brief time of our journey, to list every one of the most worthy of your descendants—it’s going to be difficult enough just picking a handful from the thousands.”
“Thousands!”
“Oh, yes! I can see far into the future . . . There will be Isabel of Mantua, for example. Just to list her virtues alone would take all of our journey and more. And Isabel’s sister, Beatrice—perfectly named for she’ll bring happiness to everyone, let alone the crest of Lodovico, Sforza and Visconti—she’ll spread awe from the northern snows to the Red Sea, from the Indus to the western ocean. Another Beatrice will wear the crown of Hungary and another will be sainted in Italia.
“There will be Biancas, Constances, Lucretias and others, and Ricciarda, wife of Niccolò III of Este and mother of Ercole and Sigismondo, and Eleonora of Aragon, who will give the world Alfonso, Hippolytus and Isabel.”
“And these will be great people, too, I suppose?”
“Of course. Hippolytus will become a cardinal and Isabel will marry Francesco II Gonzaga of Mantua. Eleonora’s daughter-in-law, Lucretia Borgia, will grow in beauty and power like a rose in the rich soil of Venice. As tin is to silver, copper to gold, a poppy to a rose, glass to a diamond, so every woman living today compares to her. And I must at least mention Princess Alda of Saxony, the Countess of Celano, the wife of Azzo VI d’Este, Bianca Maria of Catalonia, Beatrice of Sicily, Lippa of Bologna . . .”
This anticipatory genealogy, which went on for hours, dazzled and confused Bradamant. It also filled her with an enormous confidence. How could she fail to find Rashid with the existence of such an illustrious progeny depending upon their union? If Melissa could so clearly see this future, did it not mean that this future existed? That it was ineradicably preordained? Could all those hundreds of heroes, princes, queens, emperors, popes, saints, conquerors, knights, scholars, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers—could all of them simply evaporate like so much smoke, as the gambler’s dream of a fortune vanishes with an unfortunate roll of a die?
As they came to the verge of a black forest, Melissa drew to halt. Bradamant, a few lengths ahead, turned and asked why she had stopped.
“I cannot go any further, Bradamant,” she replied. “Atalante’s castle lies not far ahead. He knows me well and I don’t dare take a chance that he might recognize me. If he were to see us together, he’d know that his trickery has been discovered. He would take Rashid and flee and all our journey would have been for nought.”
“I wish you’d go with me.”
“No. It’s impossible. But there’ll be no difficulty if you’ll remember what I told you.”
“I remember.”
“It’ll not be Rashid who greets you, you mustn’t forget that.”
“I won’t forget.”
“It’ll be Atalante,” persisted Melissa, “and you must not hesitate to kill him.”
“Yes, yes. I told you I would, my lady,” replied Bradamant curtly; did the sorceress think she was a child? “I know what to do.”
Bradamant saw the sorceress’ face grow sad and she was immediately ashamed that she had hurt her companion, friend and protector. But she was still angry and anxiously aware that Rashid was not far away. She stubbornly bit back an apology, spurred her horse and, without a backward glance, rode into the forest.
She found herself on a narrow path that wound and twisted like a snail-track among the enormous trees. The trees were so large and closely-packed that she felt as though she were passing along some interminable corridor. The dark, fluted walls were close enough to touch. She craned her neck in an effort to see their crowns. Above her the branches and limbs intertwined so densely that not a vestige of sunlight penetrated, only a dim haze, a perpetual twilight, illuminated the forest. There were neither animals nor birds. The air was chill and silent.
She had not gone two miles when she heard the echoing clash of metal on metal. She halted her horse and climbed from the saddle, slipping her sword from its sheath and placing her helmet over her head. She proceeded cautiously, the horse following, led by the bridle she held in her free hand. Another hundred paces took her to a small clearing, not much larger than a tilting field. In it a man was doing battle with a pair of repulsive giants—shaggy, naked, hairy beasts at least ten feet tall. He had obviously been holding his own; the giants were covered with blood that poured smoking from countless gaping wounds. They did not seem particularly discommoded by these injuries, however, while the knight was obviously growing tired. There was little question that the giants were on the point of killing the man, sooner or later. They slavered and hooted like lunatics.
Bradamant was uncertain what to do. Honor and duty urged her to rush to the aid of the harried knight while love, impatience and all of the other constituents of self-interest urged her not to delay Rashid’s succor by even a minute. And how could Rashid be saved if she were injured or killed? Did she dare take that risk?
She was still engaged in this internal dispute when one of the giants struck the knight from behind with a rock the size of a hogshead. The man fell to the ground, stunned, his helmet flying and Bradamant instantly recognized her lover. It was
Rashid
who was being harried by these two monsters and was about to be murdered by them.
Her head spun. There was no question that it was Rashid. It was no illusion, no phantom. She told herself that it was not possible that she could be deceived so completely. Could any conjuror’s trick make her heart clench so painfully? Atalante might be able to fool her senses, but it could not possibly be within his power to deceive that ardent organ. “Why,” she asked herself, “should I place the evidence of my own heart second to what I’ve been told on trust? That
must
be Rashid because I can feel every atom of myself being drawn toward him like every particular drop of the ocean pursues the moon.”
But if that were truly Rashid before her, then that meant that Melissa had deceived her. Why? The sorceress had told her nothing of how she’d rescued Rashid from Alcina. Why not? Had something happened between her and Rashid, something that inspired such rancor and revenge that Melissa desired to have him killed by the very one who loved him the most?
This weird argument was decided for her when she heard Rashid’s voice crying for help. He had managed to elude the giants and reach his horse and was now galloping full-tilt into the forest, away from her. The giants, with an unharmonic bellow, leaped after him, not half a dozen paces behind the flying hooves. It was clear that they would soon catch the fleeing knight and finish the bloody job they had started.
Bradamant leaped upon her own mount and set off in hot pursuit. She crossed the clearing in a second and in the following second was far along the trail that Rashid and the giants had taken.
She was puzzled to find no sign of her quarry—they could not have been very far ahead, yet now there was neither sound nor sight of them. Relunctantly, she reigned in her horse and listened. The forest was silent. What had happened? How could Rashid and the giants have disappeared so quickly and completely? If he were dead, how could they have caught and killed him so silently? With her sword gripped tightly in her mailed hand, she crept slowly forward, scrutinizing every sound and shadow, alert to an indefinable danger. At every turn, she expected an enormous fist to reach out and grasp her like a child might casually and thoughtlessly crush a moth.
Instead, she found a castle. More a château than a fortress, she decided, beautiful but eerie in the silence it shared with the forest. It appeared to have been deserted for ages. As she drew closer, she saw that its delicate arches, columns and arcades were festooned with vines, creepers and moss, so much so that in places it looked as though the vast building had grown from the soft, moist earth like a vegetable mansion. Immersed in the submarine illumination that filtered through the overhanging forest, the château looked rather like some mossy porcelain castle at the bottom of an aquarium.
She cautiously circumnavigated the château, but discovered no sign of either the giants or of Rashid. The thousand blind windows returned her scrutiny with the encyphered gaze of the hydra. Seeing nothing for it but to brave an entry, Bradamant looked for and found an open door. She peered in. Only darkness was visible within. She took a step.
The moment her foot passed the threshold, she was overwhelmed with the certainty that Rashid was there, a certainty that struck with all the violence of a blow. She could
smell
him. He was right behind her! She whirled, her arms spread for his embrace—but there was no one there. The room was as empty as her arms. She felt only the briefest pang of disappointment.
Well
, she decided,
I’ve only been a little overenthusiastic. My imagination just got the best of me for a moment. Rashid’s in the next room, of course. I know that now
. She could feel her heart being tugged toward him like a lodestone seeking the boreal pole. With a glad cry she leaped through the portal, but her cry rebounded from bare walls, returned unanswered.
How could I have been so mistaken?
she thought, smiling at her impetuosity.
I’m acting like a child at Christmas. Rashid’s waiting for me in the garden I see through that window. Why, I can almost hear his voice! the measured beat of his footstep!
All this rushing about was unseemly; she decided to go to him with the dignity and comely restraint her rank and virginity demanded. Smoothing her touseled hair and straightening her armor, she threw her shoulders back, took a deep breath and stepped into the garden. It was filled with people.
They were all of them knights and ladies, all elegantly dressed, immaculately armored, wandering about, peering into one another’s faces with the same puzzled, distracted, vaguely anxious expression usually reserved for amnesiacs or the seriously near-sighted. Bradamant had no interest in any of them. They might as well have been pictures in a mediocre art gallery. Rashid was there somewhere, she only had to find him. So she, too, went from face to face, vainly searching for those familiar features, the original of that face that floated mirage-like before her gaze.
Bradamant searched every path and bower in the garden, every corridor, room and chamber in that labyrinthine castle, high and low, day and night, week in and week out, never resting, never stopping, never eating and never doubting that the very next moment would discover her love. Thus was the strength of Atalante’s spell.
But Rashid
was
there, and Bradamant saw him every day—but Atalante, in his infinite cruelty, had arranged through his magic that neither Bradamant nor Rashid could recognize the other. Thus they met a hundred times, gazed into one another’s face, then passed on, eternally hopeful.
CHAPTER SIX
In which Astolph comes to the rescue, Rashid makes a solemn Promise and Pinabel’s debt to Bradamant is paid in full
There had been a long and arduous struggle before Bradamant’s cousin Astolph had been able to return to Europe. Melissa’s defeat of Alcina had released him from his arboreal prison, but it had also left him stranded on the island. With all of its most pleasant features transformed into either the sorceress’ ex-lovers or into nothing at all, the island was revealed to be a bleak and uninviting place. He had only been enabled to leave because of the help of Logostilla—the only decent member of the sisterly triad whose less worthy members were Alcina and Morgan la Fay—by way of celebrating the return of the island to her rightful possession. The knight’s subsequent adventures were innumerable—indeed, fascinating—but unfortunately not relevant to this history; it is enough to say that he eventually found himself on a ship bound for Calais.
He leaned against the railing, his handsome face wet with spray, longing for the first sight of the coast of Frankland and happily anticipating the pleasures of the emperor’s court—not the least of which were the plump Frankish women he so much preferred—and the company of his famous cousins. Would they ever be surprised to learn that his rescue had evidently been engineered by the famous Saracen paladin, Rashid. The breeze was fresh and carrying the ship directly toward its destination, though not nearly quickly enough to please the impatient knight.
Almost as though his impatience had been transmitted to the air itself, the breeze became brisk and the peaks of the dancing waves were torn off in lacy plumes, like crowds of ladies waving their handkerchiefs to speed his passage. The wind, becoming overenthusiastic, blustered, came this way and that and caused the helmsman to curse as he tried to keep the ship on course. Still, the optimistic knight thought nothing of it. Instead, he went below deck and made certain that his horse, the fabulous Rabican, was well. The intelligent animal rolled its eyes at the sight of its beloved master and whickered affectionately. Astolph spent a pleasant hour or two feeding the horse carrots and recounting his adventures and expectations. The horse slobbered appreciatively.
Toward evening the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change. The piled-up clouds seemed to collapse upon themselves like a failed soufflé and the air that rushed in to fill the void produced a wild and raging tempest. It thundered from every point of the compass; it roared, it shouted, it shreiked with demonic glee. The darkness became complete.
The duke added his enormous strength to that of the helmsman, but even their combined effort failed to check the lurches which threatened every moment to throw the vessel disastrously broadside to the thundering waves. It was a difficult task, for the tiller turned in spite of all they could do, throwing them violently against the bulwarks. Just before midnight a gigantic wave broke against the stern and nearly unshipped the rudder. It was as though the ship had been struck by a huge fist. The men were thrown to the deck by the shock. Water poured down the companionway, threatening to swamp the tiny vessel.
The mainmast had been carried away so no trysail could be set to give the ship some steerage. The foremast still held, but the shrouds were stretched like elastic, thrumming deafeningly in the wind, an enormous aeolian harp. The forestaysail had been torn to ribbons and kept up a constant cracking, like gunfire. Only the bulging foresail, like a soap bubble about to burst, kept the ship precariously before the wind.
At one o’clock a rending crash was heard above the roaring of the storm.
“There went the foremast!” cried the captain.
“No!” said the helmsman. “That was the foresail blown clean away!”
“It’s fouled! Get it cleared!”
Astolph, not caring for whom the order was intended, leaped forward. Though no sailor. he could see that the foresail had to be cut loose. It had caught and was bellying out in such a way that it threatened to capsize the ship. If that happened she’d go to the bottom like a stone.
Barely able to see in the stinging spray and darkness, he started to cut away the ballooning canvas.
“Hold on!” shouted a voice at his ear. It was one of the crew. “Slack off on those halliards and we’ll get the sail down to four or five feet of the deck! We want to have a little canvas so we can keep some steerage!”
Astolph, not really understanding, shrugged and helped the sailor lower the sail and cut away the torn strips. They secured the lower corners. Even under that small spread of canvas, the ship could still be kept on course. The faster she went, the better. Her safety depended on outracing the waves.
An hour later, the remains of the foresail disintegrated, the rags fluttering into the darkness like huge seagulls.
“That was the last of our sail!” the duke heard the helmsman shout to the captain.
“So?” the captain replied. “We’ll just go a little more slowly, that’s all.”
“What kind of answer is that?” said Astolph.
“Look out astern!” cried the helmsman. “Lash yourselves, boys, or you’ll be swept—”
Tons of water broke over the taffrail. Astolph and the captain were hurled across the deck. The water swept the ship from stern to bow, carrying away all the débris in one blow. It would have carried away the captain as well if the duke’s grip on his collar hadn’t kept him from flying into the darkness. Fortunately, the sea ran off the before it had a chance to swamp the ship.
There was little to do now but cling to whatever one could and hope for the best. Sunrise would be in about three hours, the knight knew. With daybreak, the storm might abate. Astolph tried to see if the horizon was lightening, but he couldn’t find it. The ship might as well have been imbedded in a block of obsidian. He went below to check on Rabican, who appeared relieved to see his master.
About half past four the sky began to grow grey, but the air was too misty to tell if the ship was near any land. Only a hundred yards from the ship the raging sea merged into a cloud of spray. The ragged clouds swept by at a terrible speed. The little ship was atop a mountainous wave crest at one moment, plunged into a black trough the next.
Astolph looked gloomily at the wilderness of chaotic water; he was certain that if a calm were much longer in coming he and the ship would be lost. It surely could not remain afloat another day.
Suddenly one of the sailors gave a glad cry: “
Land
! Land on the port side!”
Through a rift in the mist, the knight thought he could make out the silhouette of a coast. Was he mistaken? Was it only a bank of clouds?
“Is it Frankland?” he asked the captain.
“It’s
land
!” the captain replied, pointing to what was now only an impenetrable mass of vapor.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, yes. Of course. Didn’t you see it yourself? There, just a little to the right of the foremast. Look!”
The mist began to open like a torn curtain. Astolph could see several miles across the turbulent surface of the sea.
“Yes!” he agreed. “It
is
land!”
It was a low shore, perhaps five or six miles away, in the same direction the ship was being inexorably driven. In less than an hour it would be smashed among the breakers. Landfall suddenly seemed less appealing.
Though the clouds had lifted, the wind was blowing stronger than ever and the ship, driven before it like a feather, was hurled at the coast. The duke could see a greyish beach and the dark mass of a forest beyond.
Frankland!
he thought.
“Every man on deck!” cried the captain, preparing for the worst. Astolph went below to join the faithful Rabican, whose great eyes were rolling with consternation. He put his arm around the powerful neck, patting and stroking the soft nose while both of them hoped for the best.
It was a little before six in the morning when the ship reached the first line of breakers.
“Hold on!” someone shouted.
There was a sudden shock. The stern of the ship had struck bottom. A second wave lifted her fifty feet further in, just skimming the jagged rocks that protruded everywhere, then she heeled over, spun halfway around and slammed onto the shingle with a jarring, squashing crash, like an egg dropped onto a tabletop.
No sooner had the ship settled onto the shore than Astolph saddled Rabican, donned his armor and strapped on his sword. Leading the horse onto the deck, which was a turmoil of tangled débris and men, both whole and injured, he demanded that the gangway be run onto the shingle. The captain replied with curses. Astolph reinforced his argument by drawing his sword and holding it to the throat of the captain, who, though still cursing, nevertheless found breath to order the gangway lowered. The duke thanked the captain kindly, making generous allowance for the latter’s ungraciousness, sheathed his weapon, took Rabican’s reins and led the animal down the ramp and onto the shore.
Without a backward glance, he set off into the forest that grew down to the sea. He had paid for his passage and here he was. The fate of the ship and its crew was of no further concern.
He rode for days, blithely confident that he would eventually run across a road that would take him to Paris. More than a year had passed since Bradamant had first seen Rashid on that distant battlefield, and it was near the end of yet another sultry summer. The duke was not the stoic that his cousin thought herself, rightly or wrongly, to be and saw no reason to suffer for no other purpose than to pretend he wasn’t suffering—a pretense he found tiresome, though he had never told Bradamant this. He stopped whenever the heat became too much or even when it really wasn’t too much, or whenever he discovered a likely spring or pool of water, a shady grove or cool stream, or perhaps just a burgeoning apple tree. Then he would doff his armor and stretch out on the moss or plunge to his neck in the refreshing water. Even more ideal were the times he found an accomodating inn or farmhouse with an equally accomodating innkeeper’s or farmer’s daughter.
He had been traveling in this haphazard and not at all unpleasant manner for some time when, near the end of a particularly overheated day, after he had been traveling since dawn without finding either a place to rest or get a drink, he was overjoyed to discover a spring bubbling from amidst a tumbled heap of rocks. He dismounted Rabican, tied him to a nearby tree, and, using his helmet as a convenient bucket, went to the rippling pool to fetch the animal some water. He had just knelt by the muddy rim when a serf, who had evidently been hiding in the thicket, casually walked up to the horse, mounted it and rode off. Just like that.
Astolph, almost too astonished to react, at first merely gaped openmouthed at such effrontery. By the time he realized the truth and seriousness of what he had just witnessed, the thief had been absorbed by the woods.
He dropped his helmet, his thirst unslaked, and set off in pursuit on foot, cursing the serf with surprisingly unchristian inventiveness, promising him a vividly-described bloody fate he had every intention of implementing.
For his part, the horsethief seemed more intent on fanning the flame of the knight’s wrath than on escape. Had he chosen, he could have dug his heels into Rabican’s flanks and disappeared like the wind, Rabican being after all the swiftest animal on earth, a hair-covered lightning bolt, who left his pursuers simply nowhere. On the contrary, mysteriously, the thief expended only just enough effort to keep beyond the knight’s reach. He would first give the horse free rein, then draw in to a brisk canter, always remaining well within sight of the animal’s rightful owner, whose ineffectual curses were as perfectly audible as they were ineffective.
This cat-and-mouse pursuit was kept up all the rest of the day, with poor Astolph—who still wore his heavy armor—gasping like a steam engine and leaking perspiration from every interstice, but too angry and too stubborn to abandon the chase. Eventually, wheezing and purple-faced, he found himself on the verge of an open meadow in the midst of which was a remarkable château, like the painted fantasy in an illuminated manuscript. He saw the thieving peasant disappear into one of its viney arcades. Puffing and panting, Astolph arrived where he had last seen his horse and its abductor, but there was no sign of either. Every trace had vanished. The duke stamped his feet and cursed like a petulant child. This was beyond intolerable. He would find Rabican if he had to reduce this miserable pile to its primordial gravel.
With demonic energy, he searched every room, gallery, chamber, hall and nook. The château, which was not all that big, seemed to be completely deserted. All the remainder of that day he searched, without finding so much as a hair of the faithful Rabican, though he could have sworn he heard its familiar whinny around every corner. Finally, he sank, exhausted, onto a bench in the interior courtyard and buried his face in his hands. He was too tired and hungry to be angry—or to be very curious about this strange situation, for that matter. And as soon as he had thought about it he felt his weariness slough away like a snake’s skin, and his stomach now felt full, his veins filled again with thick, rich blood, his thirst slaked as though he had emptied that distant spring in a single gulp. He rubbed his face in consternation and discovered that even the coarse beard he had allowed to grow since the shipwreck was gone and his skin was clean-shaven and smooth.
This, he told himself, bore every hallmark of the magical. And that thought was followed, by not a little effort, with another:
if I’ve indeed been magicked, then this place must be enchanted. If it’s enchanted, then I’m powerless, for all I have is my strength and my sword. Both are prodigious, of course, but of no avail against the purely supernatural.
He wrung his poor brains, trying to wrest from them what little he knew of countermagic. Finally, a single drop exuded from that otherwise barren sponge. A sorcerer’s power, Logostilla had told him, did not come from any natural ability to command the elements, but rather from an ability to impress his or her will on those spirits who
do
have that talent. Somewhere about this castle, therefore, was an imprisoned spirit whose release would dissolve the bonds that the mysterious magician had inexpicably placed upon Astolph. Now the only problem was to remember where the best place was to hide such a thing as an evil spirit. Logostilla had told him once, he was sure, but she was such a charming girl—there were many more interesting things about her than the lectures on necromantic minutiae about which she seemed inclined to endlessly prattle. Now he wished that he’d paid a little more attention to her words and just a little less to her décolletage. Where would
he
hide an evil spirit, if he had one?