by Odo Hirsch
‘Well,’ said Bartlett to the Queen, ‘if it’s all the same to you, I’d best be going. It’s a long way back to the Alps.’
He turned to go.
‘No!’
Bartlett stopped. The Queen had jumped off her throne. The courtiers had never seen such a thing.
‘Mr Bartlett, do you understand? I am asking you to go for a melidrop.’
‘That’s very nice of you, Madam, but Jacques and I, we’re not really the right people for the job. You see, we’re explorers. Adventurers, you might say. And going for a melidrop, well, it’s just a matter of getting a fruit, isn’t it? Not really a job for explorers like us.’
‘But no one has ever brought one back. Isn’t that something?’
It was the voice of Lord Ronald of Tull. By now he was convinced that Bartlett was the one for the job. Experience had taught Lord Ronald that a person who at first refuses the flattery of a queen’s request is the one who will finally perform it better than anybody else.
‘Yes, it is something,’ said Bartlett, talking to the old man who had spoken from across the room. ‘But it’s still only a fruit.’
‘Bartlett, I could order you to go,’ said the Queen, clenching her fists.
‘Yes, but you can’t order me to succeed,’ Bartlett pointed out. ‘It will take more than an order to bring back a melidrop, Madam, it will take Inventiveness.’
‘And Desperation and Perseverance,’ shouted Sutton Pufrock.
‘Maybe, Sutt,’ said Bartlett, grinning, although he suspected that Inventiveness alone would be enough to bring back a fruit.
The Queen slumped on her throne. She couldn’t bear to look at Bartlett or Sir Hugh or Lord Ronald, or at anyone, or even to open her eyes, in case she started to see melidrops hanging in the air again. When she discovered that Sutton Pufrock was standing next to her, having left his stretcher and wobbled his way across the floor, she could have reached out and strangled him. After all, it was his idea to wait for Bartlett, and she had never met anyone more frustrating in her whole life.
‘What do you want?’ she hissed.
Sutton Pufrock leaned closer. The Queen stared up in horror as he began to topple towards her. A footman rushed forward and grabbed him just in time. Then he began to speak in a very low tone. No one else could hear what he was saying. The expression on the Queen’s face gradually changed. Finally she looked up at the old explorer and nodded with understanding.
Sutton Pufrock shrugged off the footman’s arm and wobbled back towards Bartlett.
‘Bartlett,’ said the Queen, ‘Sutton Pufrock has just told me something very interesting about explorers. It seems that the one thing that is certain to make them set off on an adventure, is if they know it will lead to another adventure later on.’
Sutton Pufrock cackled, nudging Bartlett in the ribs.
‘So, what is the adventure that you want?’
Bartlett glanced at Jacques le Grand. They both knew, without having to exchange a single word.
‘The Margoulis Caverns.’
‘The Margoulis Caverns!’ cried Sutton Pufrock, whirling his walking-stick and swatting an earring off a lady who was too slow to jump out of the way.
‘Are you sure?’ said the Queen, wincing as the earring flew over her head and cracked one of the crystals on her chandelier.
Bartlett nodded. The Margoulis Caverns consisted of the longest, deepest chain of caves ever found, with bottomless pools and echoing chambers, but only a fraction of them had been explored. To descend into the earth and map the entire group was one of the great challenges of discovery. They would need a whole team of assistants, equipment, provisions, as well as fourteen mules that had been reared underground and never seen the sun.
‘All right,’ said the Queen. ‘Bring me a melidrop to eat, and I will provide everything you need to make your expedition.’
Bartlett smiled. ‘That’s very fair, Madam.’ He glanced at Jacques to see if he agreed. ‘All right, it’s a deal.’
The Queen screwed up her nose. She did not make deals with people. ‘How long will it take you to bring the melidrop?’
Bartlett considered. ‘Five months, or seven. Depends if they’re in season.’
The Queen stifled a gasp. ‘Seven months?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, since we are making deals, Bartlett, if you fail to bring a melidrop, then I will send my gentleman. And if I have to send him, the deal is off, and you will get nothing for your expedition. Does that sound fair?’
Bartlett glanced at Sir Hugh, grinning to show that there were no hard feelings. Sir Hugh’s nostrils flared again. Obviously there were some hard feelings.
Bartlett shrugged. He didn’t have the time to worry about touchy gentlemen who couldn’t take a joke.
‘Very fair,’ he said, turning back to the Queen.
‘Good. As for getting the melidrop,’ said the Queen, motioning to a footman who approached Bartlett with a small leather pouch on a velvet cushion, ‘take this purse. Use whatever you need.’
Bartlett took the pouch. He opened it. Rubies and gold coins glinted in the light.
‘Is it enough?’ asked the Queen.
‘More than enough. There’ll be plenty of change.’
‘Don’t worry about the change, Mr Bartlett. Worry about the melidrop.’
Bartlett put the pouch in his pocket and took one last look at the courtiers around him. They were watching him as if he were some kind of strange, scary cat, who might suddenly leap into the air and land on top of them. He turned and marched straight past them to the door.
Bartlett and Jacques stopped as soon as they had crossed the bridge over the palace moat. There was a market there where people sold snacks to courtiers who got hungry while waiting for the Queen. They bought some marmalade buns. Then they sat down on the bank of the moat. Below, frogs croaked in the reeds. Green lilies floated on the water.
‘I know,’ said Bartlett, ‘it’s not a proper exploration. It’s not even an adventure. But after that—the Margoulis Caverns, Jacques: just imagine! We’ve dreamed of it for years.’
Jacques le Grand didn’t reply. He munched one of the buns. Jacques was one of those people who rarely speak, but for every word that passed his lips he thought ten times as many thoughts as any other person. He and Bartlett had been friends for so long that when Jacques wanted to say something to him, a glance was usually enough. It was Bartlett who did the talking.
‘And she is spoiled. I know, Jacques; just a spoiled Queen who doesn’t deserve our help. Wants to taste a melidrop but can’t be bothered to go and get one. And that gentleman, Jacques. Have you ever seen a more ridiculous fellow?’
Jacques grinned.
‘Just say the word,’ Bartlett said very grandly, raising one hand gallantly in imitation of Sir Hugh Lough. ‘What word, I’d like to know. Well, we showed him, didn’t we?’
Bartlett bit into a bun. Jacques began to eat another.
‘By the way, Jacques,’ said Bartlett, ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get a melidrop back here?’
Jacques shook his head.
‘No,’ said Bartlett, ‘neither have I.’
Neither did the gentleman who had been so ridiculous. But now, as Bartlett and Jacques le Grand walked away from the palace, munching the last of their marmalade buns, Sir Hugh Lough was still fuming with rage. The Queen had left, and all around him in the Throne-room the courtiers were excitedly discussing the two explorers who had bargained with her. But Sir Hugh didn’t say a word to anyone. Over and over he thought about the adventurer who had dared to approach the Queen dressed like a ragamuffin, and of the way he had insulted him. Even the Queen had laughed, he had seen her. The more he thought, the more his anger grew. Well, there was another lesson that he could have taught Bartlett about life at Court: it was a dangerous thing to make an enemy there, especially if you were going on a long journey and there was no one to defend you while you were away.
Chapter 5
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BARTLETT AND JACQUES LE GRAND went to the port. They found a ship that was setting sail for the south with a cargo of crockery and linen, and they paid for a cabin with one of the Queen’s gold pieces. The voyage took seven weeks, and it would have taken ten if not for the winds that blew in their direction, filling the sails and making them snap and billow. But it was a rocky voyage, with sudden squalls of rain and storms that blew up from over the horizon. The ship pitched and heaved on the waves, rose and fell like a cork. The deck was wet and as slippery as ice and the sailors were tossed from one side to the other as the ship rolled, while crockery cracked with a snap in the hold.
Jacques le Grand suffered badly. In any other situation, he was the strongest and most tireless of companions. He could march for days without sleep, climb a rock face with his bare fingers, haul an entire sled piled high with equipment. But on the open sea, his face went green, his hands went clammy and his stomach churned and heaved. He moaned and groaned with seasickness. When a storm blew up he lay in the cabin, thrown to and fro in his swinging hammock, wishing that the ship would just flip up and sink to end his suffering.
Bartlett, on the other hand, loved the sea—the rougher the better. Even in the very worst weather he would be on deck with the sailors, lashing down the hatches, or high in the rigging helping to furl the sails. His stringly muscles were tireless, his knobbly fingers gripped the rigging with a tenacious hold and he scampered along the yardarms with the agility of a boy. In the storms, the salt rain lashed his face. The timbers of the masts creaked as if they would split when the ship fell with a stomach-sucking plunge from the top of a towering wave to the bottom of a yawning trough. He loved every minute of it. When he came back to the cabin his streaming oilskin dripped great puddles on the floor while he told Jacques about every hair-raising second.
Jacques would look at him sourly, holding his stomach. ‘And did you work out how we’re going to bring back a melidrop?’ he would ask between groans, just to stop Bartlett feeling too satisfied with himself.
‘No,’ said Bartlett, ‘I still haven’t worked that out. But something will turn up.’
It hadn’t turned up by the time the voyage ended.
They docked in a busy port. No sooner had the anchor been dropped than men scrambled aboard and began unloading the hold. Other ships stood nearby. There were workers everywhere. They shouted to each other on the quay, swarmed up and down gangplanks, bent double under barrels and crates. Pulleys screeched, wagons rumbled. Out of the ships came cloth, crockery, furniture and metal, and into them went figs, rice, chests of tea, sacks of spices and all the other produce of this rich country.
Bartlett and Jacques le Grand headed straight for the bazaar. There the merchants stood in the shade of brightly coloured awnings, calling to passers-by to sample the excellence of their goods. Mounds of spices, red, yellow, orange and brown, scented the air. Butchers carved, fishmongers filleted, chicken-sellers plucked, crying out and haggling with their customers as they worked. They passed stalls of fabrics, carpets, jewellery, copper; they went past coffee shops and pastry stands and fritter-friers with oil bubbling in seething vats. Then there were rice-sellers, cheese-sellers, sugar-and-honey-sellers, all calling out and beckoning to them. But Bartlett and Jacques didn’t stop to sample the goods. They plunged through the crowded alleyways of the bazaar, further and further into its depths, taking one turning after the next, until they found what they were looking for: the Street of the Fruit-sellers, where there was stall after stall of … melidrops.
The fruit had just come into season and everyone was selling them. They were piled high on the stalls, they were in baskets on the ground, blazing orange and red and yellow. Jacques immediately bought a dozen and ate them one after the other as he followed Bartlett between the stalls.
Each melidrop tasted slightly different. Perhaps that was what made them so special. In the bazaar there was a saying: Once you have tasted one melidrop, you are not content until you have another. But it was the melidrop-sellers themselves who had made up that proverb, so it was difficult to say whether it was true.
Bartlett didn’t touch a single one. He walked up and down the stalls, eyeing the melidrops suspiciously, as if there must be one, somewhere, that could survive, that could cross the sea for six weeks and still be fresh and juicy when it got to the other side. But if there was such a melidrop, there was no way of knowing which it was.
When the bazaar closed Bartlett and Jacques went to an inn for the night. The whole town was melidrop-mad. The cooks were making melidrop soup, and grilled melidrop with chestnut sauce, and roasted melidrop to go with beef, and sliced melidrop to go in salad, and for dessert you could have baked melidrops or poached melidrops or steamed melidrops or just plain old raw melidrops. At the inn there was a big room with row after row of tables, packed with people slurping melidrop stew and mopping it up off their plates with hunks of bread. The stew came out in a huge black cauldron that was left in the middle of the room and people helped themselves with a ladle. Jacques le Grand went back for seconds. Bartlett stuck to roast lamb and a piece of pumpkin.
‘I bet you wish the ship had sunk now, don’t you?’ said Bartlett.
Jacques shook his head energetically, putting a heaped spoonful of stewed melidrop into his mouth.
Bartlett looked around at the people eating furiously. ‘All these melidrops, Jacques. It’s as if they’re mocking us. There must be a way to beat this fruit. But what is it? What is it?’
Suddenly Bartlett put down his knife and fork. He pushed his plate to one side and climbed on the table. He clapped his hands twice. Bartlett knew how to get attention. His claps were as loud as explosions.
The clashing of cutlery and the clink of glasses stopped. The room fell silent. Every face was turned towards Bartlett, who was standing high on his table.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he declared, ‘I have come from the Queen!’ He paused and pulled the leather pouch out of his pocket. He extracted two large rubies and one gold piece and held them up above his head, turning slowly so that everyone could see them glinting in the light. ‘In the Queen’s name, I promise this treasure to the person who can tell me how to take her a melidrop.’
There was a deep silence. No one in the inn seemed to breathe. All eyes were fixed on the rubies and the gold, sparkling in Bartlett’s hands.
Then someone shouted: ‘Where is she? Upstairs?’
The room exploded in laughter. People howled in delight. Some of them, who had drunk too much date syrup, laughed so hard they started to cry. Bartlett climbed down. Jacques le Grand, grinning, scraped the melidrop stew off the bottom of his bowl.
The next morning Bartlett said: ‘There’s no point staying here, Jacques. All they know in town is how to eat melidrops. What we need is someone who knows about transporting them.’
They walked back to the bazaar. The melidrop-sellers were hard at work, calling out to the customers who thronged the street.
Bartlett stopped beside a stall that seemed to have especially fresh melidrops. Beads of moisture glistened invitingly on the skin of the fruit. The owner was an old man who wore a tattered cotton cap. He had skin like a lizard and his brown, leathery hands were nimble and practised, pulling melidrops off the stall so fast they seemed to flash through the air.
‘Excuse me,’ said Bartlett, ‘who brings you your melidrops?’
The stall owner glanced suspiciously at Bartlett with his small brown eyes. His hands continued to fly over the fruit, serving a customer.
‘Who wants to know?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ said Bartlett.
The man passed a handful of melidrops to the customer and turned to look at Bartlett.
‘It’s a secret,’ he said eventually.
‘Why?’ asked Bartlett.
‘Why? Because for all I know you might want to set up a stall next to mine, and if I tell you who brings my melidrops you’ll probably rush off and get them before me. That’s why! And my melidr
ops are the best in the bazaar. Here, taste one.’
The man plucked a bright orange melidrop off the stall and held it out to Bartlett. Bartlett shook his head, but Jacques le Grand accepted it eagerly.
‘Mmmmm,’ said Jacques, after he had taken a bite.
‘See?’ said the old man.
‘I am not here to set up a stall,’ said Bartlett.
‘Good. Then buy some melidrops and leave me alone. I don’t have time to chat.’
‘I’m not here to buy melidrops either.’
‘Then what are you here for, bananas?’
‘The Queen sent me.’
‘The Queen?’ said the old man. He squinted at Bartlett and rubbed his chin. Suddenly he looked interested. A customer shouted at him but the old man waved her away with his hand as if he were swatting a fly. ‘You don’t mean that Queen we’re always hearing about … Where does she live again? … Don’t tell me, I used to know. Let me think …’
‘It doesn’t matter where she lives,’ said Bartlett impatiently. ‘She sent me, that’s all that matters. And she wants to know who delivers your melidrops.’
‘The Queen wants to know who delivers my melidrops? Well, that’s different.’ The old man looked impressed. Then he glanced suspiciously at Bartlett once more. ‘And you’re sure you’re not going to set up a stall?’
Bartlett shook his head.
‘And the Queen isn’t either?’
‘No! The Queen has better things to do than sell melidrops in the bazaar.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with selling melidrops in the bazaar!’ the old man snapped. He glanced craftily at Jacques le Grand, who had finished his first melidrop and was gazing at the pile on the stall. He picked up another melidrop and put it in Jacques’ hand. ‘Did the Queen really ask?’
Jacques nodded.
‘Well,’ said the old man to Bartlett, ‘in that case—you’ve missed him! You can’t sleep in if you work in the bazaar, you know. It’s not like working for the Queen. He’s here by six, gone by eight.’