MADOUC

by Jack Vance

  "If you found this unfortunate man, it would be wise to approach him anonymously, and with great caution."

  "Even so, I would be forced to reveal myself in the end. No doubt he would insist that, willy-nilly, I join his sordid household, and I might be reluctant to do so."

  "It might not be so bad as you think."

  "Perhaps not. It might be worse, to my distress! I am not partial to folk who are grim and austere. I prefer fanciful folk who make me laugh."

  "Hmf," said Dhrun. "I would seem to be a failure-much like poor miserable Sir Pellinore, with his virago of a spouse and his smelly children. I seldom see you laugh."

  "I am laughing now! Sometimes I smile quietly when you are not looking, or even when I am thinking of you."

  Dhrun turned his head and looked down into her face. He said: "I pity the poor wretch you finally decide to marry; he will be in a constant state of nerves."

  "Not at all!" said Madouc airily. "I would undertake to train him, and it should be easy enough, once he learned a few simple rules. He would be fed regularly, and I would sit with him if his manners were polite. He would not be allowed to snore, nor wipe his nose on his sleeve, nor sing loudly over his beer, nor keep dogs in the house. To gain my favor, he would learn to kneel nicely before me that he might tender me a red rose or perhaps a bouquet of violets, and then, with his best voice, beseech a touch of my fingers."

  "And then?"

  "Much depends upon circumstances."

  "Hm," said Dhrun. "The spouse of your dreams, as you describe him, would seem idealistic and rather meek."

  "Not altogether and not always."

  "He would surely lead an interesting life."

  "I expect so. Of course I have not seriously considered the subject, except to decide whom I will marry when the time comes."

  Dhrun said, "I also know whom I will marry. She has blue eyes, as soft as the sky and as deep as the sea, and red curls."

  "They are more of a copper-gold, are they not?"

  "Quite so, and although she is still young, she grows prettier by the minute, and I do not know how long I will be able to resist the temptations which push at me."

  Madouc looked up at him. "Would you like to kiss me now, just for practice?"

  "Certainly." Dhrun kissed her, and for a time they sat close together, with Madouc's head on Dhrun's shoulder. Dhrun presently asked, "Now: are you still in fear of Casmir?"

  Madouc sighed. "Yes! I fear him greatly. Though for a time I had forgotten him."

  Dhrun rose to his feet. "There is nothing he can do to you, unless you obey his orders."

  "I will not obey him, that would be folly."

  "There is no more to the colloquy, and my father does not want to embarrass King Audry by staying over. He wants to leave as soon as possible, perhaps within the hour, to catch the ebb tide."

  "I will need only a few minutes, to change from these pretty clothes, and bundle up a few other things."

  "Come, I will take you to your chambers."

  Dhrun escorted Madouc to the east wing and to her door. "I will be back in ten minutes. Remember: allow no one to enter, except your maid."

  Ten minutes later, when Dhrun returned to Madouc's chambers, the maid reported that Madouc was gone, having departed only minutes before accompanied by three men-at-arms of Lyonesse.

  Dhrun groaned. "I told her to keep her door locked and to admit no one!"

  "She followed your instructions, but they came from the chambers next door into the parlour! The Damsel Kylas opened the door to them!"

  Dhrun ran back to the reception hail. King Casmir was no longer present, nor was King Audry, nor yet Aillas.

  Dhrun made urgent inquiries and at last discovered Aillas in a small chamber to the side of the reception hall, in conversation with Audry.

  Dhrun burst in upon them. "Casmir has taken Madouc away by force! She was to ride with us, but now she is gone!"

  Aillas jumped to his feet, face taut with fury. "Casmir went off five minutes ago! We must catch them before they cross the river! Audry, allow me eight fast horses at this very instant!"

  "You shall have them, at best speed!"

  Aillas sent messengers to the knights of his company, ordering their immediate presence at the front of the palace.

  The horses were brought from the stables; Aillas, Dhrun and the six Troice knights of their escort mounted, wheeled and galloped off at a rush, south along the road to the Cambermouth ferry. Far ahead, the troop from Lyonesse could be seen, also riding at a pounding gallop.

  Dhrun called over his shoulder to Aillas: "We will never catch them! They will be aboard the ferry and gone!"

  "How many ride in their company?"

  "I cannot make it out. They are too far!"

  "It looks to be a troop about like our own. Casmir will not choose to stand and fight."

  "Why should he fight when he can escape us on the ferry?"

  "True."

  Dhrun cried out in fury: "He will torment her, and take his revenge in some horrid fashion!"

  Aillas gave a curt nod, but made no comment.

  Far ahead, Casmir's party mounted the bluff which bordered the river, passed over the crest and was lost to view.

  Five minutes later the Troice company rode to the edge of the scarp, where they could overlook the river. A hempen hawser led from a nearby stone buttress at a slant across the river to a similar buttress at Cogstone Head. The ferry, attached to the hawser by a bridle and a sheave rolling along the hawser, was propelled by reason of the slant of the hawser. When the tide ebbed, the ferry was taken south; when the tide was at flood, the ferry was driven north across the river. A half-mile to the west, another hawser slanted in the opposite direction, so that with each change of the tide, the ferries crossed the Camber-mouth in opposite directions.

  The ferry conveying Casmir and his company was just now leaving the shore. His party had dismounted and were tying their horses to a rail. A slender still form wrapped in a brown cloak indicated the presence of Madouc. There seemed to be a bandage or a gag across her mouth.

  Dhrun stared hopelessly at the ferry. Casmir looked back once, his face an impassive white mask. "They have evaded us," said Dhrun. "By the time we can cross the river they will be to the other side of Pomperoi."

  "Come!" said Aillas in sudden exultation. "They have not evaded us yet."

  He rode pell-mell along the scarp to the buttress which anchored the hawser. He jumped to the ground and, drawing his sword, hacked at the taut cable. Strand by strand, twist by twist, the hawser was severed. The ferry tender, looking up from his hut, shouted a frantic protest, to which Aillas paid no heed. He hacked, sawed and cut; the cable sang, spun, as tension over taxed the fibers. The hawser parted, the loose end snaking down the face of the scarp and into the water. The ferry, no longer impelled by the sidewise thrust of the current, drifted down the estuary toward the open sea. The hawser sang loosely through the sheave and at last pulled free altogether.

  The ferry drifted quietly on the tide. Casmir and his party stood with sagging shoulders looking helplessly toward the shores.

  "Come," said Aillas. "We will board the Flor Velas; it awaits our arrival."

  The company rode down the scarp to the harbour where the Flor Velas, a galleass eighty feet long with a square sail, a pair of lateen sails and fifty oars, rested at its mooring. Aillas' party dismounted, put the horses into charge of the harbourmaster, and boarded the ship, Aillas giving the instant order to cast off. Mooring lines were loosed from the bitts; the sails unfurled to catch a favorable north wind, and the vessel eased out into the estuary.

  Half an hour later the Flor Velas drew close beside the ferry and made fast with grappling hooks. Aillas stood on the after deck with Dhrun; the two looked down with expressionless faces at Casmir's sour countenance. Cassander attempted a flippant salute to Dhrun and Aillas, which neither acknowledged, and Cassander haughtily turned his back.

  From the midship deck of the galleass a lad
der was dropped to the deck of the ferry; four men-at-arms descended. Ignoring all others, they went to Madouc, pulled the bandage from her mouth and led her to the ladder. Dhrun came down from the afterdeck and helped her aboard.

  The men-at-arms climbed back aboard the Flor Velas. Casmir, standing to the side, heavy legs spread apart, watched with out expression.

  No words had been spoken, either from galleass or from ferry. For a moment Aillas stood looking down at Casmir's party. He told Dhrun: "If I were a truly wise king, here and now I would kill Casmir, and perhaps Cassander as well, and put an end to their line. Look at Casmir; he half expects it! He would have not a qualm in the world; indeed he would kill us both and rejoice in the act!" Aillas gave his head a jerk. "I cannot do it. I may live to regret my weakness, but I cannot kill in cold blood."

  He gave a signal. The grappling hooks were jerked loose and brought aboard the galleass, which eased away from the ferry. Wind bellied the sails; wake bubbled astern and the galleass drove down the Cambermouth and toward the open sea. From the Daut shore a pair of longboats, each manned by a dozen oarsmen, put out after the ferry. They took it in tow and with help from the turning tide brought it back to the dock.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Upon returning to Castle Haidion, King Casmir went into virtual seclusion. He attended no court functions, received no visitors, granted no audiences. For the most part he kept to his private chambers, where he paced up and down the length of his parlour, pausing occasionally by the window to look out over the town and the gray-blue Lir beyond. Queen Sollace dined with him each night, but Casmir had little to say, so that more often than not Sollace lapsed into plaintive silence. After four days of brooding, Casmir summoned Sir Baltasar, a trusted counsellor and envoy. Casmir gave Sir Baltasar careful instructions and sent him off on a secret mission to Godelia.

  Upon the departure of Sir Baltasar, Casmir resumed many of his former routines, though his mood had changed. He had become terse, sharp in his commands, bitter in his judgments, and those who ran afoul either of Casmir or his justice now, more than ever, had cause for regret.

  In due course Sir Baltasar returned, dusty and haggard from hard riding. He reported at once to King Casmir: "I arrived at Dun Cruighre without incident. The town lacks all grace; you might well hesitate to stable your horses in the royal palace."

  "King Dartweg would not receive me immediately. At first I thought his motives to be sheer Celtic perversity, but later I learned that he was entertaining certain grandees from Ireland, and all were drunk. Finally he agreed to receive me, but even then he kept me standing to the side of his hall while he settled a dispute dealing with the breeding of a cow. The wrangling went on for an hour and was interrupted twice by dog fights. I tried to follow the litigation but found it beyond my understanding. The cow had been freshened by a prize bull without authorization and free of charge, by reason of a break in the fence; the cow owner not only refused to pay the stud fee, but beseeched a penalty for the illicit advantage taken of his cow by the amorous bull. King Dartweg was now gnawing a bone and drinking mead from a horn. He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.

  "I was at last brought forward and presented to the king, who was quite drunk. He asked me my business; I said that I wished a private audience, that I might deliver the confidential messages entrusted to me by Your Highness. He waved high the bone upon which he was gnawing and declared that he saw no reason for ‘fiddle-faddle'; that I must speak out brave and bold like a good Celt. Stealth and furtive timidity were useless, he claimed; and secrecy was pointless, since everyone knew my business as well as I knew it myself; indeed, he could give me his answer without my so much as hinting of my mission; would that be suitable? He thought so, since it would expedite affairs and enlarge the time for tilting of the horn.

  "I maintained as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances, and stated that protocol compelled me to request a private audience. He handed me a homful of mead and told me to swallow all at a single draught, and this I managed to do, thereby gaining King Dartweg's favor, and allowing me to mutter my message into his ear.

  "In the end I spoke with King Dartweg on three occasions. Each time he sought to fill me full of strong mead, apparently hoping that I should become foolish and dance a jig, or babble my secrets. Needless to say, the attempt was fruitless, and in the end he began to find me a dull fellow, drunk or sober, and became surly. At our last meeting he blurted out his fixed and settled policies. In essence, he wants the fruits of victory with none of the risks. He will join our cause gladly, once we demonstrate that we have gained the upper hand over our enemies."

  "That is certainly a policy of caution," said Casmir. "He has everything to gain and nothing to lose."

  "He acknowledged as much, and said that it was in the best interests of his health, since only a program of this sort allowed him to sleep well of nights.

  "I spoke of the need for a specific undertaking; he only waved his hand and said that you were not to worry on his account. He claimed that he would know the precise instant when the time was ripe and then he would be on hand in full force."

  King Casmir grunted. "We are listening to the voice of an opportunistic braggart! What next?"

  "From Dun Cruighre I journeyed by ship to Skaghane, where I met a dozen frustrations but gained no profit. The Ska are not only inscrutable and opaque in their conversation, but large in their manner. They neither want nor need alliances, and have a positive aversion for all folk but themselves. I broached the matter at hand, but they brushed it aside, giving neither ‘yes' nor ‘no', as if the matter were arrant nonsense. From Skaghane I bring back no news whatever."

  Casmir rose to his feet and began to pace back and forth. He spoke, more to himself than to Sir Baltasar: "We are assured only of ourselves. Dartweg and his Celts in the end will serve us, out of greed. Pomperol and Blaloc will stand rigid, paralyzed by fear. I had hoped for distraction, or even rebellion, among the Ulfs, but they merely crouch like sullen animals in their high glens. Torqual, despite my great expense, has done nothing. He and his witchwoman are fugitives; they maraud along the moors by night, and take cover by day. The peasants consider them ghouls. Sooner or later they will be brought to bay and slaughtered like wild beasts. No one will mourn them."

  II

  Shimrod sat in his garden, somnolent in the shade of a bay tree. His garden was at its best. Pink hollyhocks stood like shy maidens in a row along the front of his manse; elsewhere blue delphinium, daisies, marigolds, alyssum, verbena, wallflowers, and much else grew in casual clumps and clusters.

  Shimrod sat with eyes half closed, letting his mind wander without restraint: through follies and fancies, along unfamiliar landscapes. He came to an engaging notion: if odors could be represented by color, then the scent of grass could be nothing else but fresh green. In the same way, the perfume of a rose must inevitably be rendered by velvet red, and the scent of he liotrope would be a ravishing lavender purple.

  Shimrod conceived a dozen other such equivalences, and was surprised how often and how closely his colors, derived by induction, matched the natural and irrefutable color of the object from which the odor originated. It was a remarkable correspondence! Could it be ascribed to simple coincidence? Even the acrid tang of the daisy seemed perfectly consonant with the white, so prim and stark, of the flower itself!

  Shimrod smiled, wondering whether similar transferences, involving the other senses, might exist. The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations. Shimrod watched a lark flying across the meadow. The scene was tranquil. Perhaps too tranquil, too serene, too quiet. It was easy to become melancholy thinking how quickly the days slipped past. What was lacking at Trilda was the sound of conviviality and happy voices.

  Shimrod sat up in his chair. The work must be done, and sooner was better than later. He rose to his feet a
nd after a last look around Lally Meadow went to his workroom. The tables, once stacked high with a miscellany of articles, were now greatly reduced of their burden. Much of what remained was stubborn stuff, obscure, arcane, or intrinsically complex, or perhaps it had been rendered incomprehensible by Tamurello's eery tricks.

  To one of the articles still under investigation Shimrod had given the name ‘Lucanor', after the Druidic god of Primals.*

  Lucanor-the magical artifice, or toy-consisted of seven transparent disks, a hand's-breadth in diameter. They rolled around the edge of a circular tablet of black onyx, at varying speeds. The disks swam with soft colors, and occasionally showed pulsing black spots of emptiness, coming and going apparently at random.

  A Druidic myth relates how Lucanor, coming upon the other gods as they sat at the banquet table, found them drinking mead in grand style, to the effect that several were drunk, while others remained inexplicably sober; could some be slyly swilling down more than their share?

  The disparity led to bickering, and it seemed that a serious quarrel was brewing. Lucanor bade the group to serenity, stating that the controversy no doubt could be settled without recourse either to blows or to bitterness. Then and there Lucanor formulated the concept of numbers and enumeration, which heretofore had not existed. The gods henceforth could tally with precision the number of horns each had consumed and, by this novel method, assure general equity and, further, explain why some were drunk and others not. "The answer, once the new method is mastered, becomes simple!" explained Lucanor. "It is that the drunken gods have taken a greater number of horns than the sober gods, and the mystery is resolved." For this, the invention of mathematics, Lucanor was given great honour.

  Shimrod found the disks a source of perplexity. They moved independently of each other, or so it seemed, so that in their circuit of the tablet, one might pass another, and in turn be overtaken by still a third. At times two disks rolled in tandem, so that one was superimposed upon the other, as if an attraction held them together for a few instants. Then they would break apart and each would once more roll its own course. At rare intervals, even a third disk might arrive while two disks rolled together, and for a space the third disk also would linger, for a period perceptibly longer than if just two disks were together. Shimrod once or twice had observed what would seem to be a very rare chance, when four disks chanced to roll together around the tablet, and then they clung together for perhaps twenty seconds before parting company.