The Malacia Tapestry

Contentedly, Mendicula steps back and engages himself in administering the realm, allowing General Gerald to escort Patricia to balls, to the opera, and other idle occasions. Far from showing to her husband gratitude for his trust, Patricia is slightly cool towards him, as he notes with sorrow, hand on brow. Again, far from blaming her, he still blames himself for having chased Jemima.

So he is forced into a position where thoughts of Jemima pursue him. Although she repelled his advances, he knows she liked his company. We’ll have some music here. One day, he rides back through the forest to see her. To the prince’s delight, Jemima still resides at the inn. He discovers her polishing one of the tankards. They fervently talk for hours. He presses her for a kiss, which she warmly bestows. Although she permits no liberties further, her company is so animated that Prince Mendicula sits all night up talking to her. As you observe, the Lady Jemima also plays the lute and sings well.

Night passes too soon. When dawn filters across the lake, which of course is outside, the Prince once more remembers the realities of his life. Embracing Jemima and thanking her courteously, he tears away himself from her to saddle his horse and ride furiously back to Gorica. Or possibly he will have to run furiously, since Bonihatch and I cannot find no horse what will stand motionless in a galloping position for five minutes in a time.

Back to the city, he bursts into Patricia’s room. He has dismounted first, by the way, if he has a horse. If not, then not. Her bed lies unemployed. The prince then runs to General Gerald’s apartments. The general’s bed is empty also. In anguish, he rushes through the entire building, to come upon them both in the garden of roses.

Sharply, he dismisses his general, what goes out looking so angry as you can observe, and questions sharply his wife about her actions. She becomes as cold as a snowman, explaining how it happened merely that both she and Gerald rose early and met in the garden by accident. This is after all a day of festival, when many people rise early. Here we see some of them, having risen. She says he has no right to question her.

Trouble-sore and saddle-sore, the prince sinks to a bench. She says nothing. He faintly asks her if she and Gerald kiss like lovers. At this, she becomes more angry, evades his question, and demands to know where he has been all night; word has reached her ear – you see how beautiful it is – that what he has somewhere a woman outside the city. The prince replies that no woman means anything in his life except her to what he is wedded to. Patricia scorns this remark, saying that she has observed how he is continually interested in women. We see them stand backs to backs in a picture of frustration and good breeding.

This difficult position is resolved by the return of General Gerald in his military hat. He has put on a good face and a new tunic to announce that on the morrow he will bring his betrothed to Gorica to meet the prince. Patricia walks away with her bunch of roses. Or perhaps just one rose, to save expense.

Once again, Mendicula summons up all his upbringing and dismisses suspicions to the wall. He shakes warmly hands in the eternal emblem of friendship with Gerald, proclaiming what a good friend he is and commending Gerald for his attention to Patricia at a period when their marriage goes through a difficult tunnel. He would do anything to make Patricia happy. Gerald says he would also. They agree.

In a little formal speech, so typical of a military man, Gerald thanks the prince for his indulgence, praising his enlightened attitude and jealousy lack. As we see, they on the shoulder slap each other and Prince Mendicula then admits, man to man, that there is another lady for what he feels attraction, and begs Gerald to continue undeterred his kindnesses to Patricia.

That is rather a long conversation. Perhaps we shall enliven it for the performance with views of sportive nymphs and shepherdesses, or something refined.

So now good relations appear to be restored between the prince and his lovely wife. They amiably ride together on a hunt for ancestral animals in a nobleman’s park. The bag will provide food for the nuptials forthcoming of General Gerald. Towards the end of this golden afternoon, when they are by a lake – that flat will serve twice – a messenger arrives from Gorica with a message for Mendicula. As we observe, he tears it open. It comes from the Lady Jemima, announcing her arrival in the city and craving a mere hour from his time in order to him bid farewell.

In this scene, note the high colour of the participants. Mendicula tells Patricia that urgent matters of state require attention, so he must leave for a while. She is suspicious. She becomes angry and accuses him of assignations. He in turn angers. He begs her to practise toleration, just as he tolerates her fondness with General Gerald. She replies that that relationship has to do nothing with their marriage. He cannot understand this remark, but keeps quiet wisely and rides from the park in high dudgeon. Or perhaps he strides from the park. Or we possibly may procure a stuffed horse what will hold still.

Prince Mendicula goes to the palace to change into state regalia and slip into a crown. There he is met by a deputation from the defeated city councillors. They have honest faces but gloomy ones. They try to prevail upon him to issue an immediate proclamation curtailing activities of his soldiery. These soldieries have been laying waste the countryside and, more importantly, looting, pillaging and raping, and – where rape is inapplicable – seducing in the streets of Gorica in a thoroughly traditional military manner. Mendicula admits the tradition is obnoxious and agrees that a proclamation shall be made through his general. This is the messenger being despatched to Gerald, asking him to curb the natural inclination of soldiers, possibly by shooting a few. We shall not show actual scenes of rapine. These things are best left in the imagination.

This important meeting takes a while, so that the prince is some hours late by the time he arrives to the noble house at what Jemima is lodging.

Here a servant admits Mendicula to Jemima’s room, and the prince is seen standing aghast at the sight of her alone and weeping in a lace handkerchief. In response to his agonised inquiries, she says there is one what she loves; it was for his sake that she rebuffed the prince’s advances, and not because she intended disrespect to the royal line. Now she has learned that this lover of hers has been faithless, consorting with another woman even as he prepared their marriage ceremony, a splendid affair to last three days and no spared expense, which we shall not have fortunately to show. Jemima’s tears fall like the outlet of a fountain. She wets her lute.

The prince is so much moved that he falls on one knee. Or maybe two. Putting his arms about her, he endeavours to comfort. One thing leads to another thing; in particularly, condolence leads to prurience. They go together to the bed, lying in rapture in one another’s arms as if it was habitual to their mutual comfort and amusement. The slides here will be optional, depending on the company. We will not try Letitia’s modesty too far, since she is not a real actress. It’s a challenge.

More pictures. Dawn, if not exhaustion, brings a change from mood. Jemima awakes from a nap and sits up with a look of total repentance for expression. Here comes her wedding day and she faces it a soiled woman – although she freely admits that she is less soiled than if she would have laid with a commoner. Nevertheless, royalty is no substitute for chastity. She declares that she must kill herself.

Assuming the royal breeches, Mendicula attempts to dissuade. He also has a high code of honour but she is exceeding.

Petulantly, she cries that he has placed her into a situation where she would prefer to die. She is no landlord’s daughter. She also has some good blood. The poor must live with all their disgraces about them; she must not. He has her utterly undone, while the man what is to be her husband has spent the night undoubtedly with his paramour.

Mendicula is struck by the coincidence that this will be her wedding day and that also of his close friend, the General. He pronounces Gerald’s name. Jemima gives a cry and reveals that he is none otherwise than her betrothed.

Together they cling. She weeps afresh. The prince feels heavily that he has dishonoured her and his friendship, but he can clear at least half of her double disgrace.

Ringingly, he proclaims that he can deaden the unworthy suspicions what she entertains for General Gerald. For Gerald’s supposed paramour is none otherwise than his spotless own wife, Princess Patricia. He explains how he has heard from Patricia’s own fair mouth that nothing untoward passes between her and Gerald. They have his secure trust, and only since a previous few hours she assured that her fondness for Gerald will not harm their marriage in every way.

Jemima is so cheered that she dresses behind a screen. But the happy night what she and the prince have just passed cannot be blotted so easily out. She bursts forth, crying dramatically with a slight tearing of the hair how she feels herself doubly guilty of misconduct if Gerald is the honourable man what Mendicula just described. Mendicula protests that she is too scrupulous. He and she will forthwith part, despite the fondness what they hold towards each other; he will never more seek out her. Anything between them is now ended, and it will have been as if their joyous one night never will have existed.

Moreover, he will bestow on his general a title, together with another city what they will overrun, where Gerald can live in content with Jemima, so that the parties need never to be exposed against temptation again. Amid music, we see them laugh and cry and embrace each other for the last very time, that doleful phrase in love’s book.

Returned at the Gorica palace, Prince Mendicula goes to the princess’s compartments, full still of goodwill. There is Patricia with her toilet. He passionately declares to her that never again will he vex by looking at other women; he has found his true centre and implores of her forgiveness.

Great his consternation is when Patricia greets this announcement with coolness, turning away as if she heeds scarcely what he says. Shaken, he repeats that he is aware all too much at having neglected her, but that the neglect will end, has already ended. She is his true love.

In a cold voice, perhaps moving to the window, Patricia declares that everything he says is a confession merely that he has a secret lover, as she just suspected and he has denied. She supposes that Mendicula has quarrelled now with the hussy and needs to come back creeping to her. He protests with spirit everywhere. Angry by the way his magnanimity is received as if it is old clothes, he admits with ill-timed honesty that he has been interested in another lady, but that he now has put her for ever away.

Patricia becomes at this even more remote and haughty. She inquires if he makes all this fuss because of herself and Gerald.

The prince does not understand her meaning. He repeats that he relinquishes the other lady and her friendship because simply it is causing pain both to her and to Patricia, what he cannot bear to hurt. He ascribes Patricia’s continued coolness to her suspicions making her unhappy; now she has no further need for coolness or unhappiness.

Once more on his knees, the prince admits freely her right to have disapproved and asks forgiveness for hurts done; the matter is entirely between the two of them and has no concern for Gerald, what has stood by them nobly all along. Why does she introduce his name at this juncture?

We’ll need powder for you here, Miss Armida. Patricia becomes pale of cheek. She turns away from her husband. Her hands shake as she tugs at the curtain. She says in a distant voice that he may repent as much as he likes but it has come too late. She does not intend to discontinue her affair with Gerald – she is enjoying it too much.

At these words, the prince clutches his heart. With dry throat, he forces himself to ask – are she and Gerald then lovers?

‘Of course we are! What else do you think we shall have been doing?’

Mendicula falls back, ashen of face, unable to speak, looking silly.

She turns on him. ‘You have your affair, I have mine.’

He can only shake his head.

‘And you knew Gerald and I were lovers,’ she cries, very haughty.

‘No, no, I trusted you both.’

‘You knew and you encouraged. The other day only you spoke with him privily and commended him, commended him for what he was doing. You told him at his face that he was good for me. That happens to be true! He took your meaning and praised your enlightened attitude. Why, you told him even you had a woman – oh, yes, he informed what you said! And you told me that you tolerated our fondness. You knew what was happening.’

‘If you believed really that you were not deceiving me, then why did you so falter from revealing the truth to me now?’

She merely rages at him and throws a hairbrush or something.

All the prince’s ideals fall like rags from his eyes. He does not even then beat her or berate. Instead, he tries to explain that when he found them both innocent of vice after the first night he spent away from Gorica, he accepted the virtue in them both, thinking them honourable people who could hold their lusts in check for the greater interests of friendship and policy. From then on, he quelled unworthy doubts what arose and trusted them to sustain a proper friendship. That he had encouraged, and he did not deny. She needed a good friend in a strange city and, since Gerald was his sworn friend, owing him many debts of favour, he banished entirely any suspicions of dishonour as dishonouring them. Was his code of behaviour so unworldly? What sort of man would he be if, as she pretended, he had acted as pander to his own wife with a friend as gigolo?

To these questions, she had no answer. Hers is the way of scorn.

‘I thought your behaviour generous and wise. So Gerald did. We honoured you then.’

‘In bed you honoured me?’

‘Now I merely scorn you. So he will.’

Far from being penitent, she is unmoved alike by his anger or his misery. She says that she and Gerald simply amused themselves. She has no intention of now relinquishing Gerald, when they are enjoying both the affair.

‘I tried to be all in all to you. Why are you so cold and hard now?’

‘You were never enough frivolous for my taste.’

‘But he … he … has someone else …’

‘He can have many women, so long as I am one of them …’

‘Patricia, my love, do not degrade yourself! He has debased you …’

Something of that sort. The prince is gentle in his despair, but at that moment, General Gerald himself enters the room, very light and airy – as you do so well, de Chirolo.

In rage, the prince charges him with vile deception in seducing the wife from a man he has called his closest friend, and in betraying totally the trust laid upon him. Gerald uneasily laughs. He adopts a superior attitude and says that the prince has been trifling also. The two wrongs make a right: it is after all the way of the world, and Mendicula would do best to keep quiet. He suspects that if Patricia cares to investigate the matter, she shall discover that the prince has seduced several of her maidservants.

‘You smooth villain, you lie to save your face!’

Gerald takes Patricia’s arm. She clings to him.

‘Besides, admit, my spoilt prince, you encouraged me. By keeping Patricia happy, I merely was trying to improve your highness’s marriage.’

This is more than the prince can tolerate.

‘You will make a fool of me no longer!’ he cries, drawing his sword. Gerald draws also. They fight. Patricia looks on, pale and unmoving. Well, of course unmoving on the slide.

After many a desperate parry, Gerald draws back, his sword arm pinked. He trips on a rug, sprawling against the princess’s bed. He is open utterly to a mortal wound.

As Mendicula hesitates, an army messenger hurries in and announces that the Lady Jemima has been found dead in her room by a maid, dressed in full bridal array. A note by her head declares that she felt herself too much dishonoured to marry such a man of honour as the General Gerald.

At this news, it is the prince who falls back in grief. Seizing his chance, Gerald snatches up his sword and runs it through Mendicula’s side. With a last glance at Patricia, the prince dies upon her bed.

Sad fanfares herald the end of our drama of the Prince Mendicula.

Promptly at siesta hour, the Hoytola carriage arrived at the Chabrizzi Palace, with Armida’s chaperon, Yolaria, sitting rigid inside. Armida made her farewells and was whisked away.

Next day, the same procedure was followed. I was not to see as much of her as I had hoped. Bengtsohn was secretive about the mercurisation and would let nobody view the results. But all appeared to be well because we continued to work slowly through the tableaux. With Armida, it seemed as if mercurisation had not taken place between us. I wondered how I could change matters. Accordingly, I walked through the thick afternoon heat to speak to All-People. De Lambant came with me for support.

All-People stood stooped in his whiskery nook by the bottom of the scrivener’s stair. His antiquity, his frailty, made it appear that his stiff raiment supported him. His goat was tethered nearby; bluebottles investigated its beard. Neither man nor animal moved. Slow smoke trailed off the iron altar and slipped round the corner about its own business. Because of the hour, nobody was waiting to consult him.

I put down a few paras, all I could spare from the money Bengtsohn had paid me.

‘You were correct in what you said, All-People.’

‘I see the truth is worth little.’

‘Alas, so am I. You said, “If you stand still enough, you will act effectively”. You referred to old Otto Bengtsohn’s zahnoscope, didn’t you? Why was I chosen?’

He threw a crumb of powder on his ashes. They gleamed dully. The stench of Malacia was in my nostrils.

‘The Earth lies in an everlasting penumbra some mistake for light. The Powers of Darkness created all. One shadow merges with another.’

‘There is a girl, All-People, also involved in Bengtsohn’s affairs. How can I make sure that my shadow crosses hers?’

‘I am not the one who blesses your amulet. Go ask of him.’

‘I will consult Seemly Moleskin, of course. But you already have a hand in my affairs. I am ambitious and hope you can encourage me more.’

He closed his eyes, lids falling like wrinkled lips, as if to end the session. ‘The Lord of Darkness has his brand on every one of us. To please him, you must gratify your senses until the carriage shatters.’

I stood looking at him, but the long yellow face had closed itself off from my ken. I shuffled, the goat shook its head, nothing else happened.

Going over to de Lambant, who stood at a respectful distance, as the custom was – to overhear someone else’s predication was fatally to entangle your own lifelines – I said, ‘Why does the Natural Religion always rouse fear and confusion? Why do I never understand what the magicians tell me?’

‘Because it’s all old-fashioned rubbish,’ said de Lambant. ‘I haven’t had my amulet blessed in weeks and am I any the worse for it? You’re taking this too seriously. Let’s get Portinari and have a drink.’

‘All-People said something about my body being shattered. My carriage, a carriage. It sometimes crosses my mind that life’s more complex than you think. I’ll go and see Mandaro.’

Guy shook his head. ‘My dear de Chirolo, priests are worse then wizards. Stay away from them. Come, it’s hot. Let’s tip Portinari out of bed and have a drink and a chat with him.’

‘You go. I’ll come along later.’

We parted. I told myself that it was absurd to have a heavy heart when my purse was so light. The priest would do me no good. The company of my friends would be a lot more cheerful. I turned. De Lambant was not out of sight. Giving him a call, I ran to join him, and we headed together for Portinari’s house.

On the third day of our enactment of the tragedy of Prince Mendicula, the mighty zahnoscope was trained upon us when a great clatter started in the courtyard and Bengtsohn bid us wait.

The Chabrizzis were leaving for their summer vacation in the Vukoban Mountains. In other years, Armida told me, they holidayed in a fertile valley in the Prilipits to the south of Malacia where they owned estates; but this year there were reports of Turkish armies moving in that area. As usual, Malacia was encompassed by enemies.

Soon we were surrounded by a congregation of coaches, carriages and waggons piled with luggage and musical instruments, horses, dogs, pet snaphances, cattle and poultry, not to mention adult and infant Chabrizzis, together with their friends and servants. It was all too much for our tableau. Bengtsohn’s wife, Flora, tried to dispel the crowd, but it was not to be dispelled until it was ready. Our impresario dismissed us and walked away grumpily with his dark box under his arm.

We were interrupted in the scene where I as the dishonourable General Gerald was taking Princess Patricia to grand balls (represented by one other dancing couple) and similar splendid occasions (represented by a painting of a marble staircase). Such enforced intimacy served to ripen the relationship between Armida and me, not only because we were the two left outside a Bengtsohn-Bonihatch comradeship which extended to most of the rest of the workshop, but because she had taken a dislike to Mendicula, whose bonihatchian sidewhiskers tickled her unendurably for minutes on end as well as – so Armida said – smelling of stale custard.

She took me to one side. ‘The Chabrizzis will leave the palace almost empty, with only a few servants to deter robbers,’ she said. ‘They’ll all be gone in another five minutes. Fancy, I haven’t entered the old place for years – there was some coldness between our families. Now’s my chance to explore those nooks and crannies I recall so well before Yolaria arrives with the carriage.’

‘Don’t get lost – or found!’

She slipped her hand into mine. ‘Oh, I dare not go alone. You see how grotesque the palace is, standing under that looming rock. Besides, it is haunted by an ancient wizard with flaming eye-sockets.’

‘I’ll come too. Shall we take a bucket of water in case we meet the eye-sockets?’

‘Slip in round the side so that nobody will notice us. Come on, it’ll be fun!’ She turned her face up, smiling in excitement.

I followed her round to a side door and we plunged together into the gloom of the palace. The clatter of the courtyard was lost. In a way, it was like being trapped inside the zahnoscope, with long vistas of light and shade contrived by window and tapestry and wall and corridor. What a place for an assignation! It was up to me to rehearse General Gerald’s role as thoroughly as possible, and I followed Armida’s ice-blue robe with despatch.

I mentioned that the palace was set under an outcrop of rock. At this point, the Prilipit Mountains had deposited a last great chunk of limestone, some hundred metres high, upon the landscape. The ingenious Chabrizzis, for reasons of defence, had built their home under and into the face of this mass of rock, upsetting the symmetry of composition intended by their architect.

The interior of the building was confusing. The men who built the place had been so baffled by topography that they had in some instances left a curve of staircase incomplete, or caused a passageway to double back upon itself in despair, or left a potentially grand chamber unshaped, its rear wall broken rock.

Armida, a small venturesome girl again, pulled me through the labyrinth, in and out of compartments, up or down large and little flights of stairs, through small doors that yielded enormous prospects, and a banqueting hall that led into a cupboard. Through tall windows, we saw the vacationing party move slowly out of the main gates and down the hill.