Mandricardo, page 4
“There, my proud beauty! Just let me close up my shop and you and I will discuss our impending nuptials, which will be celebrated before the Imam at the nearest Mosque whether you will or nill!” And with those sneering words, the man in the purple turban stalked from the room. In a moment you could hear him from the street, shooing away prospective customers and rattling down the blinds to close his shop.
Mandricardo immediately popped up from behind the mound of carpets, behind which he had been hiding and behind which he was by this time rather heartily sick of hiding, and came over to where the redheaded girl lay, staring at him wide-eyed. With his falchion he severed the ropes that bound her limbs and plucked the kerchief from her mouth.
Then he made a courtly bow and lent his arm, assisting the Princess to her feet. “I am hight Sir Mandricardo, son of King Agricane of Tartary, you know,” he announced, in the approved chivalric manner. “Damsel in distress, I’ll wager! Well, my trusty blade and I are ever at the service of damsels in distress, what?”
Recovering her aplomb, the redheaded girl made a low curtsy to her rescuer. “I am hight the Princess Doucelette of Upper Pamphyllia,” she said demurely. “And very grateful for your courtesy in rescuing me from durance vile. I have no doubt that my royal father, King Umberto, will settle upon you my hand in marriage and half of his kingdom, when you return me safely to Court!”
“Good show,” said Mandricardo. “Uh, sorry, I’m already promised to the daughter of the Queen of the Amazons, you know, but thank you very much anyway, I’m sure.”
“Not at all,” said Doucelette politely, with a friendly smile which revealed as delectable a brace of dimples as ever graced a maidenly cheek. She hadn’t really wanted to marry Mandricardo particularly, especially not upon such short acquaintance, but these things are done according to a certain form, you know.
“So your father is hight King Umberto, eh?” said the Tartar chattily. “My pater is hight King Agricane, but I’ve already mentioned that, pon my soul! What is that enchanter hight, by the way, ma’m, if you don’t mind me askin’?”
The Princess shuddered fastidiously. “He is an unprincipled caitiff rogue and varlet,” she explained primly, “and he calls himself the enchanter Gorgonzola.”
“Uncouth sort of name, that,” murmured Mandricardo reflectively.
“Quite,” said the Princess. “He has placed all of my father’s kingdom under a dire and dismal Curse, which he will only remove if my father will bestow upon him my hand!” She shuddered again, in mere contemplation of what might well be termed a Fate Worse Than Death.
“The blighter!” snorted Mandricardo, eyes aflash and moustaches abristle with outrage. “To inflict himself, all unwanted, upon a delicately-nurtured damsel! By my halidom, but words fail me!”
“I quite understand your sentiments, sir knight,” said Doucelette, casting an apprehensive gaze in the direction ol the door which led to the front of the shop, “but perhaps we should flee before the Enchanter returns and discuss these matters later, once we are safe… ?”
“Good thinkin’, begad!” said Mandricardo, striding over to the window. “What say we climb that ruddy trellis to the roof, and make our escape, what, over the rooftops… ?”
Doucelette cleared her throat daintily.
“Eh, what?”
“Why don’t we fly off on the Magic Flying Carpet, which the vile caitiff rogue and varlet has unwittingly left at our disposal?” suggested the girl in practical terms. “To do so would not only give us a mode of rapid aerial conveyance, but would rob our pursuer of his magical flying vehicle, forcing him (should he prove so relentless as to attempt our pursuit) to plod along on foot while we fly upon the wings of the wind.”
“Er, ah,” said Mandricardo nervously.
“Here, just stand in the center beside me,” suggested Doucelette, taking her place.
“Ah, um, er,” remarked Mandricardo. He was not really fond of flying, and much preferred to have either his or his horse’s feet solidly on the ground at all times, as often as possible. Still and all, the Princess’s idea was obviously the only thing to do. Reluctantly, spurs ajingle, he strode upon the carpet, and stood at Doucelette’s side.
“I say, Carpet, you may commence,” said Mandricardo in forceful tones, eyes squeezed tightly shut. A moment later, he said in a small voice, “I say, ma’m, are we, ah, aloft yet?”
They were not. And from the front of the shop came clearly the sounds of thumps and rattles and bangs as Gorgonzola the Enchanter let down the striped awnings, rolled up his carpets, stowed safely away the boxes and baskets and bales, and made haste to close down the carpet-shop for the day.
“Come, Carpet, you great ninny!” roared Mandricardo, scarlet in the face, petulantly stamping one booted foot. “Fly, blast you!”
Again, Princess Doucelette cleared her throat politely.
“I believe the operative phrase, sir knight, is ‘Fly, Carpet!’ ” she said.
“Eh? Oh, really? Well, why didn’t you say so before? Can’t stand here all day long, talkin’ to carpets, what? Fly, Carpet! … Oh, my!”
Shaking itself slightly, the Carpet floated up off the ground and zoomed through the open window. It took a tight turn around a withering palm and soared above the building into the fierce blaze of the early afternoon sun.
“Ker-hem!” snorted Sir Mandricardo; beneath his Tartarian swarthiness he had gone pale and was, in fact, just a trifle green about the lips, eyes squeezed shut. The Princess tugged at the lion-skin which he wore over one armored shoulder.
“Where shall we go, sir knight? Do you mean to return me to my father’s Court, or have you missions of your own upon which you were bound, when the necessity of effecting my rescue from that unscrupulous varlet interrupted your quest?”
“Got to return to the inn, dash it all, I mean caravanserai, and pick up me horse,” said Mandricardo, prying one eyelid open briefly, “as well as gettin’ away from that white elephant chappie.”
“Which white elephant chappie?” inquired Doucelette.
“Chap ridin’ on a white elephant,” explained Mandricardo. “When I didn’t flop down on my face before the blighter, he sicced his soldiers on me. Mean-lookin’ sod; nose like a pickle.”
“I believe you refer to the Grand Vizier,” murmured Doucelette. “I happened to see his likeness painted in miniature once, and he did indeed have a nose like a pickle. Where is your horse?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Your horse; where is your horse. We are over the Delta by now, and heading for open sea,” said the Princess.
It took the two of them more than a little time to get the Magic Flying Carpet turned about and to send it back in the correct and proper direction, and not until it came floating down as lightly as a leaf in the courtyard behind the caravanserai—sending geese squawking in all directions and severely discomforting a brace of goats—did Mandricardo open his eyes again.
While the Tartar knight paid his bill in the caravanserai, finding that a plump pigeon’s-blood ruby went a long way in the local currency, for his change was a bag full of gold dinars big enough to choke a hippo (if a hippo could be induced to try to swallow a bag full of dinars), the stableboy curried Bayardetto and saddled him and led the black stallion out of the stable to be introduced to the Princess of Upper Pamphyllia. (She slipped him a carrot and they became fast friends.)
Mandricardo measured the three of them, then stared at the dilapidated piece of carpet for comparison. He shook his head despairingly.
“Don’t think we’ll all fit on the Magic Flyin’ Carpet, ma’m,” he opined. “Ruddy thing’s just not big enough.”
“Let’s try it, anyway, sir knight,” suggested the Princess. She had always heard that Magic Flying Carpets can stretch themselves to any size in order to accommodate their passengers; this was indeed the case, as they discovered. The Carpet rippled, blurred, became large enough for knight, charger, and Princess. It reminded Mandricardo of a similar experience concerning a magic boat called Skidbladnir which he had encountered during an earlier adventure.
They mounted the Carpet and took off for Pamphyllia. It was Mandricardo’s notion to first fly Princess Doucelette home to the safety of her father’s Court, then off to Frankland or wherever, hoping to locate his beloved Amazon.
“Suppose this is one of King Solomon’s magic flyin’ carpets, eh, what?” he murmured after a time (they were flying over the Suez Canal, or where the Suez Canal would be if Terra Magica possessed one, which it did not). However, the Chronicle Narrative does not make it clear whether he referred to the King Solomon of the Old Testament, or to Soliman Djinn-ben-Djinn, mightiest of the seventy-two pre-Adamite Sultans. As the next line of dialogue renders the point irrelevant, I will not attempt to speculate.
“No, not to him, but to his maiden aunt, Zuleika,” replied the redheaded Princess. “That infamous rogue Gorgonzola could not resist boasting to me of the rarity and value of our mode of conveyance, after completing his odious mission of abducting my person from the grounds of my father’s palace. I was helping the goosegirl pick blueberries for a pie,” she added absently.
“I say, did the beggar explain why he was pretendin’ to be a carpet-monger?” asked Mandricardo. Doucelette shook her head, making her little gold filigree coronet twinkle in the westering sun.
“No, and I had no reason to think him one until he landed the Magic Flying Carpet in the back room of a carpet-shop,” she said. “However, one supposes that even wicked enchanters have to do something to make a living, having their enchantery as a sort of hobby on the side, don’t you think?”
“Deuced clever,” mused Mandricardo. “I’d never have thought of that.”
Bayardetto neighed and whickered just then: they had flown through a very low-flying cloud, and the sudden immersion in cold wet mist tickled all of their nostrils. On the whole, you rather had to admire Bayardetto’s savoir-faire. Surely, only a strictly limited number of warhorses have ever enjoyed the opportunity to ride about on Magic Flying Carpets, so the experience must have been quite a novelty for him. Even without the benefits of hereditary instinct to support him during this rather unnerving experience, the stallion managed everything with commendable aplomb.
It began to get rather dark rather quickly. Aloft where they were flying, the level and ruddy shafts of sanguinary sunlight still bathed them, but beneath their keel (so to speak) the landscape was steeped in the shadows as in the purple lees of wine.
And they were getting hungry.
“Just how far is it to Upper Pamphyllia, m am, about?” queried Mandricardo. “Never been there, meself.” He was beginning to get used to flying; the experience was not all that frightening once you became accustomed to it, he found. Many others, on their maiden flights, have discovered the same thing.
“As the Carpet flies?” said Doucelette with a smile at her little joke. “Actually, sir knight, I’ve no idea. When we flew from there to Aegypt, well, as you can imagine, I was that annoyed and upset—”
“No wonder; wicked enchanter and all; kidnapping, what?” murmured Mandricardo understandingly.
“Quite. You do understand, Sir Mandricardo! As I say, I was simply too upset to pay much attention to the passing of time, but surely it can’t be very much longer. There’s Troy off to the side there, you can recognize it by the topless towers, and before long we should be able to spy Colchis where they used to keep the Golden Fleece—”
They flew on into the dusk.
BOOK TWO
Salamandre
and Undina
6
A Very Damp Knight
Callipygia uttered a stifled squeak and bit her tongue. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, cautiously opened one, took a quick peek around, and hastily closed it again.
She was no longer standing on the pebble-strewn brink of the impassable chasm. Now she was knee-deep in the lush grasses of a green meadow. Trees marched along the horizon, congregating atop low hummocky hills. Also, no longer was the day blindingly clear: now it was dim and gloomy, under a sky thronged with a turbulence of moist dark vapors.
Either she had been transported to another place, or the landscape itself had undergone a miraculous transformation, chasm into meadow, sunny sky to gloom. And the transportation, if that is really what it was, had been performed in an eye-blink. There had been no slightest sensation of movement or velocity. She let her breath out slowly and pried her eyes open.
Both the red mare and the plump little gray mule, Minerva, were adversely affected by the feat of magic that had brought them all here to this unknown spot. The horse and the mule rolled their eyes in panicky fashion, ears laid flat along their skulls, and the horse neighed while the mule brayed.
“It’s all right, girls, nothing to worry about,” murmured the Amazon girl in soothing tones, patting them in an attempt to comfort them. Inwardly, of course, the warrior girl was saying, “What in the name of Memnon’s Moustache happened?”
No answer came to mind. Erelong she had soothed the beasts, mounted up, and tried to figure out which direction was which. There was no easy way to tell since the sun was hidden behind a blanket of wooly clouds, and nowhere in sight did she perceive a town or city or any other token of humanity.
“Magic again,” she said grimly to herself. But not the Troll, surely; they had been hours away from the Troll’s woods when magic had struck again. And again Callipygia racked her mind to think of some powerful enchanter who might have it in for her and Mandricardo; no name rose to mind.
“Not Grumedan, surely, and everybody else is either dead or transfixed to stone,” she muttered to herself. Thumping her heels in the mare’s ribs, she turned the horse’s nose toward a distant stand of trees and followed the road that led in that direction, more to be moving than for any particular desire to travel there. “When in doubt, keep moving!” was Callipygia’s motto.
All this magic happening was beginning to get on the Amazon’s nerves. True, it was good to have gotten away from that dreadful crevasse, but at least there she had known where she was, after all. Here, she had no idea: this could be the empire of Prester John for all she knew.
The stand of trees happened to be pear trees, as it turned out, and several ripe pears still clung to their parental branches. Callipygia unsaddled her mare and removed the saddlebags from Minerva, and permitted the two now-unburdened creatures to wander at will along the edge of the meadow and dine off the lush green grasses, while she munched on a slab of cheese from her stores and chewed thirstily on the luscious fruits.
Wherever they were, it was nowhere near as cold as it had been back in the northerly parts of the kingdom of the Franks. And although those lowering clouds hinted of rain, the breeze was too warm and moist to be redolent of snow. They must have been transported a sizable distance, to have changed their climate this much, thought Cally.
“Well, let’s just hope we’re east of where we were,” she sighed aloud after a bit. “At least we’d be moving in the right direction.” She prowled through the little stand of trees, emerging on the other side to find herself on the edge of a lake of considerable extent. It gleamed dully, pewter-colored under the gloomy gray sky.
“Halloo-o-o!”
The distant call was repeated while the Amazon girl stared around, searching the landscape for the origin of the cry. At length she spied a young man in armor waving his arms frantically in an attempt to catch her eye.
“Halloo yourself,” called Cally. “What are you doing in the middle of that lake?” The young knight (for that’s what he seemed to be) stood atop a tiny hummock exactly in the center of the lake before her.
“I’m marooned, madam, I’m afraid,” he called back. “Do you think … is there anything you can do to get me off this hummock?”
Cally looked around briefly. There were no rafts or rowboats in sight, so she shook her head.
“How did you get out there in the first place?” she called. “In the middle of the lake, I mean.”
“There wasn’t any lake here when I got here,” he called back. Then he began coughing. “If you don’t mind,” said the knight as soon as he had ceased coughing, “I’ll just save my explanations until I get off this islet. All of this shouting back and forth is giving me a sore throat, or would be giving me one, if I didn’t already have one from standing around in wet clothes and soggy boots. Can’t you get me of this filthy hummock somehow?”
“How, exactly, do you suggest?” called Callipygia.
“Can’t you swim?”
“As a matter of fact, no, I can’t,” said Callipygia. The country of the Amazons is in the interior, and there are no lakes worth mentioning and even the rivers are rather shallow, so she had never had cause or opportunity to learn that invaluable skill.
“Can’t you?” she called.
“As a matter of fact, no, I can’t,” he replied woefully, heaving a rather squishy sigh. “Well, I guess I might as well sit down in all this wet mud and catch my death of cold. If you think of anything, just yell.”
“I will, be of good cheer,” said Callipygia. She went back through the little grove of pear trees, plucking a few more ripe ones to put in her wallet. Then she collected Minerva and the red mare—the mare’s name was Blondel, by the way—and led them through the trees to the edge of the lake.
It was fresh water, so all three drank therefrom while the poor damp knight (and he really did look all wet and squishy) watched them sadly from his muddy little hummock.
“I say, could you at least toss me a pear?” he called when they had finished drinking. “I’ve been here since early this morning and by this time I am quite famished.”
Callipygia was nothing loath, if nothing loath means what I think it means. The first couple of pears landed in the drink, but after that the Amazon girl managed to land them more precisely, and soon the damp knight was munching hungrily on the juicy fruit.
