The Iron Tempest (6 page)

Bradamant, sadly alone, plodded along the shoreline, determined to be tireless in her quest to rescue the man whom she was destined to love.

A steep and difficult path that wandered up through the tortuous seaside cliffs eventually straightened and entered a pleasant country of vineyards and olive groves. She had lunch with a party of farmworkers who gladly shared their bread, cheese, sausage and wine in exchange for a few stories. She was glad for the food; she had inexplicably not been hungry during all the long march with Melissa, but now she was ravenous. (She wondered somewhat about this. Had time failed to pass while she was in the palace? Had Melissa’s magic kept her from needing to eat? Was it part of Merlin’s hospitality, or his parsimony? In any event, she thought it a little mean that the accumulated hunger was now allowed to catch up with her.)

She found—as she so often did—that a woman bearing arms and armor was a great novelty and the farmers’ honest curiosity was unbounded—even more so when they discovered who she was. Bradamant told them something of her brothers and of the great feats that had gained them membership in Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers. Replying to questions she had heard a hundred times before, she told them how it could hardly have been helped, all things considered, that the lone sister should have been raised in the arts of war. But to the simple question of what she was doing in this particular place, so far from either the emperor or his enemies, she had no ready answer. She blushed with shame at this innocent reminder that she was selfishly shirking her rightful duty and self-consciously hoped that if the serfs noticed her red face, they would attribute the coloring to the sun.

The story she told the peasants was simple enough to satisfy their curiosity and need for an exciting tale, but if it was simple it was because her listeners took her story at face value—it would never occur to them to cross-examine her about the most obvious deletions, contradictions or unlikelihoods.

That Bradamant had been the only girl-child among half a dozen aggresively martial males surely was not enough to account for her prediliction for what were usually considered manly arts; it was a prediliction she had ardently pursued since she had been old enough to walk. That she had been worshipped to the dangerous limits of idolatry by her older brothers had certainly been an incentive, and her reciprocal worship undoubtedly influenced her to emulate them, though surely she must have been born with some innate talent—it is obvious to anyone that belligerancy and martialism ran strong in Clairmont blood. Of course, it did no harm that Montauban had been as much—indeed much more—a military training camp as it had been a home. During the family’s war with the emperor, it had been forced to flee its ancestral home in its native Ardennes when a traitor delivered it into the enemy’s hands. After discovering and hanging the spy, the Clairmonts narrowly made their escape. Finding no refuge anywhere within the realm of Charlemagne, they finally took service with the King of Gascony and there built Montauban, the “Hill of the Foreigner”.

If Bradamant’s combative personality was inherent, then there surely must have been a powerfully dominant gene in the Clairmont line, for Bradamant proved to be no less physically capable than her siblings; her desire to echo their achievements needed be no unfulfilled fantasy. She grew from an awkward and gangly child into a tall, long-armed, long-legged youth; it was a peculiar and incongruous sight to see her handling a five-foot sword as easily as a conductor brandishing his baton. Or at least it seemed incongruous until the watcher noticed the grim intensity of the lean, tight face. The duke once remarked that his daughter must be constructed entirely of willow wands, wire and Damascus steel since there seemed to be no alternate explanation for such prodigious strength in such a lanky body. She was built, as one of the old instructors—retired knights all—said with considerable admiration and not a little envy, much more like a snake than a badger. Her strength was like that of a spring or bowstring, instead of that of the solid block or cudgel. Neither brothers nor cousins, except morally and physically impregnable Roland (whom she had, in any case, always thought of as obnoxiously self-righteous—an ill-expressed opinion that accounted for the perceptible coolness between them) were ever able to consistently best her at any game or with any weapon. And she was virtually indomitable with the lance, her weapon of choice. Nor could any, except Roland of course, match her in piety. But then, piety and martial training do go very much hand in hand, since both depend a great deal upon an unquestioning acceptance of authority.

Bradamant did not at all like the daily grind of her scholarly training—the lessons to be conned, the enforced scrutiny of endless Latin texts—and she hated being cooped up while all the outside world impatiently awaited her to combat its sins. Her happiness, however, counted for nought: for seven years the training of her mind and body was unremitting. More than once she complained bitterly and just as often the priest who was her instructor would remind her that “You will have your own way to make in the world, my lady.” She knew the truth that lay behind those words, however much she resented hearing it: that she needed not only a quick hand and tough body but a feeling heart and thinking brain to survive the brutally hard world that lurked like a starving wolf outside the walls of Montauban. Therefore, every morning, winter or summer, rain or shine, she tramped the five long miles to the priory school, and then back again that afternoon.

After school, her physical training took up the remainder of the day. It was then that Baldrick, the ancient knight who acted as Montauban’s armorer, took her as firmly in his sinewy hand as if she had been the grip of a broadsword. Though now half-blind, there were none who surpassed his knowledge of war-making and its tools. He instructed the avid girl in the proper use of the broadsword, short sword, quarterstaff and cudgel, alavica and bec-de-faucon, luchet and falk, longbow and crossbow, the dagger and the lance—with which latter Bradamant excelled above all others. Her brothers and cousins gladly took on the task of teaching her hand-to-hand fighting and wrestling.

On her fifteenth birthday she was advanced from page to squire and her martial training began in earnest.

She had thought she had been offered all she desired of the world and of life when she finally was allowed to don her new white mail and ride away from Montauban in search of her first adventure. On the day she was graduated from her long noviceship, she had met her father and brothers in the inner chamber of the Great Hall. She embraced the duke and kissed him, then each of her brothers and cousins in turn. Earlier that morning she had bathed, donned a fine linen undergarment, then a tunic, a robe, silk stockings and shoes—all of the most immaculately white materials. It was the same costume each of her brothers had worn upon their initiation and she insisted there be no deference to her sex. After a special predawn mass, she joined her family and friends for breakfast. She was given new arms and a fine Iberian horse. She was then dressed in her freshly-minted armor, created by an ancient armorer who, back in his smithy, was wringing his hands in a paroxysm of terror that he had overlooked even the most insignificant detail, though of course he had not. After her spurs were fastened to her heels a shield was hung from her neck and a helmet placed on her head. She accepted a spear of ash tipped with steel and, finally, with tears that could no longer be repressed pouring down her face, took from her father’s hands an ancient sword, newly-blessed by the priest, that had lain for generations in the family treasury. She kissed the hilt—upon the hollow she hoped soon to fill with holy relics—with trembling lips. Her father then administered the
colée
with his own sword, a blow that nearly knocked the kneeling girl to the floor—“So you will not forget your oath, daughter,” he explained; then, by rote, the ancient invocation: “Go, fair Bradamant! Be a true knight, courageous in the face of thy enemies. Be thou brave and upright, that God may love thee—and never forget that thou springest from a race that can never be false.” And Bradamant replied, “So I shall, Father, with God’s help!”

Thus was Bradamant, the future flower of knighthood, armed; who despite the weight of armor and responsibility leaped with marvelous agility onto the back of her horse. The remainder of that glorious day, dedicated to the honor of the newly-made knight, was spent in games and celebration. For seven entire days the fête continued, then Bradamant rode through the castle gate into the great sinful world beyond.

Like her brothers and cousins, she joined the emperor’s fight against the Moorish invaders and the prowess, courage, strength and valor she demonstrated in a hundred battles soon placed her among his most valued knights. When the defense of her faith called, she was in the vanguard of those who answered and there were few places in all of Europe upon which she had not spilled more than her share of bright Saracen blood.

* * * * *

It was evening before she arrived at the inn. It was in the midst of a miserable-looking village—not more than a score of huts—that, judging by the smell, depended upon fishing for its livelihood and had done so for a great many generations. She entered the hamlet escorted by two dozen filthy children, like a swan gliding among a bevy of frogs. There were as many dogs as children, though so mangy and dirty were all the creatures it was difficult to distinguish between them. She ignored them indiscriminately.

The inn was the largest building in town, albeit of only two sagging stories, slumped shapelessly like a failed soufflé, as though it had been dropped into place from a height, and crowded with people, mostly locals she rightly surmised. Provincial the establishment might have been, but it was either cosmopolitan enough or dull enough that an exceedingly tall young woman in snow-white armor aroused little notice—or perhaps she was simply once again mistaken for a somewhat effeminate mercenary. In any event, the inhabitants of the low-ceilinged room were far too busy guzzling beer, ale, mead and wine to pay a newcomer very much attention. In the greasy blue haze from the ill-trimmed lamps and badly-damped stove the hunched, glowering shapes looked like the dull, ill-tempered inhabitants of a tidal pool. At her elbow four men were engaged in a shouting match of more drunken enthusiasm than virtuosity—the purpose of the argument seeming to be little more than a contest of who could longest stand the other’s spittle in his face. In one corner someone was plucking at a mistuned lute and singing a lewd ballad very, very badly. Bradamant was thankful for the singer’s general incoherency; the ribald subject of the song made her blush and her lips tightened with puritanical disapproval; she bit back the admonition she had been about to speak as the song stirred a vague, indescribable memory that inexplicably made her blush even more deeply. A few days earlier she would have either dismissed the obscenities out of hand or, if the singer persisted, knocked him over the head for his rudeness; now, to her horror and shame, she discovered a hitherto unexpressed and unsuspected ambivalence.
What is this?
she wondered,
what is this?
There had never before been any ambivalence, any doubt: black was black, white was white. There was good and evil and nothing bridged the gulf that separated them. She had heard a hundred lewd lyrics in her time, and she disapproved of them, of course, not because she understood them but because she knew they were unclean, carnal, blasphemous. The knowledge was more important than the understanding. Now, for some unfathomable and distressing reason, she seemed to grasp the meaning. What brought the blush of consternation to her cheeks was that where understanding should have brought even more profound disapproval, it had seemed to instead bring . . . rapport. She turned away, determined to hear no more of the filthy, disturbing words.

At her other elbow three men were deeply involved in a noisily vehement dispute that had something to do with turbinado-worms. Quickly and expertly scanning the remainder of the room, she recognized Brunello immediately. The man was sitting, with several other men, hunched over a rough table—little more than a plank set on a pair of sawhorses—haphazardly shoveling food into his face with both hands. Giving no sign that she had any special interest in the man, Bradamant turned and went to the innkeeper, checked her sword and shield [as the posted sign required her to do], received in return for her request for drink and food a flagon of sour beer and a trencher of hard cheese, pickled eggs and coarse bread, then made her way to where Brunello sat working over a puddle of gristly meat, onions and small, hard potatoes. Without asking leave, she pushed her way between Brunello and his neighbor. A sharp jab from a steel-clad elbow was sufficient to remove the latter to an unobtrusive distance. She was gratified to see her quarry’s bulging, jelly-like eyes, which looked like a pair of enormous frog eggs, glance at her suspiciously, then appraisingly. Accustomed to the sexual ambiguity that resulted from her short hair, height and armor she wondered whether his interested glance was engendered by an inclination toward boys or toward girls. She considered either possibility with disgust. She appraised him as well, though with entirely dissimilar motives since he was even uglier than she had imagined he would be. He was fat and vaguely misshapen; his body looked—well, she concluded, it looked as though he’d slept in it. His nose appeared to have been inexpertly reshaped by a ball peen hammer; his stringy black beard, filled with gobbets of grease that had drooled from his mouth, grew only in patches, as though he were suffering from the mange or an infestation of ringworm; she could see heavy droplets hanging from his glossy locks. This reminded her of something.

“Could you please pass the oil?” she asked.

He wordlessly handed her the cruet and unabashedly watched as she smeared a chunk of the yeasty bread with the dark green olive oil and then rubbed it with garlic. She avoided looking at him, but she felt his clammy eyes upon her like a pair of small, wet sponges.

He finally spoke and the rank humidity of his breath made her skin crawl.