The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount, Page 5

  "You see just how good the Viscount's got, eh?" said Pamela.

  But the two old people were plotting something. Next day they tied up Pamela and locked her in with the animals, then they went off to the castle to tell the Viscount that if he wanted their daughter he could send down for her as they for their part were ready to hand her over.

  But Pamela knew how to talk to her creatures. The ducks pecked her free from the ropes, and the goats butted down the door. Off Pamela ran, taking her favorite goat and duck. She set up house in the wood, living in a cave known only to her and to a child who brought her food and news.

  That child was myself. Life was fine with Pamela in the woods. I brought her fruit, cheese and fried fish and in exchange she gave me cups of goat's milk and duck's eggs. When she bathed in pools and streams I stood guard so no one should see her.

  Sometimes my uncle passed through the woods, but he kept at a distance, though showing his presence in his usual grim way. Sometimes a shower of stones would graze Pamela and her goat and duck; sometimes the trunk of a pine tree on which she was leaning gave way, undermined at its base by blows of a hatchet? sometimes a spring would be fouled by the remains of slaughtered animals.

  My uncle had now taken to hunting with a crossbow, which he succeeded in maneuvering with his one arm. But he had got even grimmer and thinner, as if new agonies were gnawing at that remnant of a body of his.

  One day Dr. Trelawney was going through the fields with me when the Viscount came towards us on horseback and nearly ran him down. The horse stopped with a hoof on the Englishman's chest My uncle said, "Can you explain, doctor; I have a feeling as if the leg I've not got were tired from a long walk. What can that mean?"

  Trelawney was confused and stuttered as usual, and the Viscount spurred off. But the question must have struck the doctor, who began thinking it over, holding his head in his hands. Never had I seen him take such an interest in a case of human ills.

  7

  AROUND Pratofungo grew bushes of mint and hedges of rosemary, and it was not clear if these were wild or the paths of some herb garden. I used to wander round them breathing in the laden air and trying to find some way of reaching old Sebastiana.

  Since Sebastiana had vanished along the track leading to the leper village, I remembered that I was an orphan more often. I despaired of ever getting news of her; I asked Galateo, calling out to him from the top of a tree I had climbed when he passed, but Galateo was no friend of children, who sometimes used to throw live lizards at him from treetops, and he only gave me jeering and incomprehensible replies in that treacly squeaky voice of his. Now to my curiosity to enter Pratofungo was added a yearning to see the old nurse again, and I was forever meandering around the ordoriferous bushes.

  Once from a tangle of thyme rose a figure in a light-colored robe and straw hat, which walked off towards the village. It was an old leper, and wanting to ask him about the nurse I got close enough for him to hear me without shouting and said, "Hey, there, sir leper!"

  But at that moment, perhaps woken by my words, right by me rose another figure, who sat up and stretched. His face was all scaly like dried bark, and he had a sparse woolly white beard. He took a whistle out of his pocket and blew a jeering blast in my direction. I realized then that the sunny afternoon was full of lepers lying hidden in the bushes; now very slowly they began rising to their feet in their light-colored robes and they walked against the sun towards Pratofungo, holding musical instruments or gardening tools with which they set up a great din. I had drawn away from the bearded man, but nearly bumped right into a noseless leper combing his hair among the laurels, and however much I went jumping off through the undergrowth I kept on running into other lepers and began to realize that the only direction I could move was towards Pratofungo, whose thatched roofs stuck over with eagles' feathers were now quite close, at the foot of the slope.

  Only now and again did the lepers pay me any attention, with winks of the eye and notes of the mouth organ, but I felt that the real center of that march was myself, and that they were accompanying me to Pratofungo as if I were a captured animal. The house walls in the village were painted mauve and at a window a half-dressed woman with mauve marks on face and breasts was calling out, "The gardeners are back!" and was playing on a lyre. Other women now appeared at windows and balconies waving tom-bounties and singing, "Gardeners, welcome back!"

  I was being very careful to keep in the middle of the lane and not touch anyone, but I found myself at a kind of crossroads, with lepers all round me, men and women, sitting out on the thresholds of their houses, dressed in faded rags and showing tumors and intimate parts, their hair stuck with hawthorn and anemone blossoms.

  The lepers were holding a little concert, to all appearances in my honor. Some were bending their violins towards me with exaggerated scrapes of the bow, others made frogs' faces as soon as I looked at them, others held out strange puppets that moved up and down on strings. The concert was made up of these varying and discordant gestures and sounds, but there was a kind of jingle they kept on repeating. "Stainless was he, till he went out to blackberry."

  "I'm looking for my nurse old Sebastiana," I shouted. "Can you tell me where she is?"

  They burst out laughing in a knowing malicious way.

  "Sebastiana!" I called, "Sebastiana! Where are you?"

  "There, child," said a leper, "now be good, child," and he pointed to a door.

  The door opened and out came a woman with an olive skin, maybe a Moor, half naked and tattooed with eagles' wings, who began a licentious dance. I did not quite understand what happened next; men and women flung themselves on each other and began what I afterwards realized was an orgy.

  I was making myself as small as possible when suddenly through the groups appeared old Sebastiana.

  "Foul swine!" she cried. "Have some regard for an innocent soul, at least"

  She took me by a hand and drew me away while they went on chanting, "Stainless was he, till he went out to blackberry!"

  Sebastiana was wearing a light-colored mauve robe like a nun's and already had a few marks blotching her unlined cheeks. I was happy at finding the nurse, but in despair as she had taken me by the hand and must have given me leprosy. I told her so.

  "Don't worry," replied Sebastiana. "My father was a pirate and my grandfather a hermit I know the virtues of every herb against the Moors' diseases. They sting themselves here with marjoram and mallow, but I quietly make my own decoctions from borage and water cress which prevent my getting leprosy as long as I live."

  "What about those marks on your face, nurse?" asked I, much relieved but still not quite convinced.

  "Greek resin. To make them think I have leprosy too. Come here now and I'll give you a drink of my piping hot tisane, for one can't take too many precautions when going about places like these."

  She had taken me off to her home, a shack a little apart, clean, with washing hung out to dry; and there we talked.

  "How's Medardo? How's Medardo?" she kept on asking me, and every time I spoke she interrupted with, "Ah the rascall Ah the scoundrel! In love! Ah poor girl! And here, you can't imagine what it's like here! What they waste! To think of all the things we deprive ourselves to give Galateo, and what they do with them! That Galateo is a good-for-nothing, anyway! A bad lot, and not the only one! What they are up to at night! And by day, tool Those women! Never have I seen such shameless creatures! If they'd only mend their clothes! Filthy and ragged! Oh, I told them so to their faces ... And d'you know their answer?"

  Delighted with this visit to the nurse, off I went the next day to fish for eels. I set my line in a pool of the stream and fell asleep as I waited. I don't know how long my sleep lasted; a sound awoke me. I opened my eyes, saw a hand raised over my head, and in the hand a red hairy spider. I turned and there was my uncle in his black cloak.

  I gave a start of terror, but at that moment the spider bit my uncle's hand and scuttled off. My uncle put his hand to his lips, sucked the
wound a bit and said, "You were asleep and I saw a poisonous spider climbing down onto your neck from that branch. I put my hand out and it stung me."

  Not a word did I believe; at least three times he had made attempts on my life in ways like that. But that spider had certainly bitten his hand, and the hand was swelling.

  "You're my nephew," said Medardo.

  "Yes," I replied in slight surprise, for it was the first time he gave any sign of recognizing me.

  "I recognized you at once," he said, then added, "Ah, spider! I only have one hand and you want to poison that! But better my hand than this child's neck."

  I had never known my uncle to speak like that. The thought went through my mind that he was telling the truth and maybe had gone good all of a sudden, but I at once put it aside; lies and intrigue were a habit with him. Certainly he seemed much changed, with an expression that was no longer tense and cruel but languid and drawn, perhaps from fear and pain at the bite. But his clothes, dusty and oddly cut, were also different, and helped to give that impression. His black cloak was a bit tattered, with dry leaves and chestnut husks sticking to the ends; his suit too was not of the usual black velvet but of threadbare fustian, and the leg was no longer encased in a high leather boot but in a blue and white striped woollen stocking.

  To show I was not curious about him I went to see if any eel had taken a bite at my line. There were no eels, but slipped over the hook was a golden ring with a diamond in it. I pulled it up and saw that the stone bore the Terralba crest.

  The Viscount's eye was following me, and he said, "Don't be surprised. As I passed I saw an eel wriggling on the hook and felt so sorry for it I freed it; then thinking of the loss I'd caused the fisherman by my action, I decided to repay him with my ring, the last thing of value I possess."

  I stood there open-mouthed with amazement. Medardo went on. "I didn't know at the time that the fisherman was you. Then I found you asleep on the grass and my pleasure at seeing you quickly turned to alarm at that spider coming down on you. The rest you already know." And so saying he looked sadly at his swollen purple hand.

  All this might have been just a series of cruel deceptions, but I thought how lovely a sudden conversion of his feelings would be, and the joy it would also bring Sebastiana and Pamela and all the people suffering from his cruelty.

  "Uncle," I said to Medardo, "wait for me here. I'll rush off to nurse Sebastiana who knows all about herbs and get her to give me one to heal spiders' bites."

  "Nurse Sebastiana ..." said the Viscount, as he lay outstretched with his hand on his chest; "How is she nowadays?"

  I did not trust him enough to tell that Sebastiana had not caught leprosy and all I said was, "Oh, so so. I'm off now," and away I ran, longing more than anything else to ask Sebastiana what she thought of these strange developments.

  I found the nurse still in her shack. I was panting with running and impatience, and gave her rather a confused account, but the old woman was more interested in Medardo's bite than in his acts of goodness. "A red spider, d'you say? Yes, yes, I know just the right herb ... Once a woodsman had his arm swell up ... He's gone good, you say? Oh well, he always was, in a way, if one knew how to take him ... Now where did I put that herb? Just make a poultice with it... Yes, Medardo's always been a scatterbrain, ever since he was a child ... Ah here's the herb, I'd put a little bag of it in reserve ... Yes, he always was; when he got hurt he'd come and sob to his nurse ... Is it a deep bite?"

  "His left hand is all swollen up," said I.

  "Oh, oh, you silly boy..." laughed the nurse. "The left hand ... Where's Master Medardo's left hand? He left it behind in Bohemia with those Turks, may the devil take them, he left it there, with the whole left half of his body..."

  "Oh yes, of course," I exclaimed. "And yet ... he was there, I was here, he had his hand turned round like this ... How can that be?"

  "Can't you tell left from right any more?" said the nurse. "And yet you learnt when you were five..."

  I just couldn't make it out. Sebastiana must be right, but I remembered exactly the opposite.

  "Well, take him this herb, like a good boy," said the nurse, and off I ran.

  Panting hard, I reached the brook, but my uncle was no longer there. I looked around; he had vanished with that swollen, poisoned hand of his.

  That evening I was wandering among the olives. And there he was, wrapped in his black mantle, standing on a bank leaning against a tree trunk. His back was turned and he was looking out over the sea. I felt fear coming over me again, and with an effort managed to say in a faint voice, "Uncle, here is the herb for the bite..."

  The half face turned at once and contracted into a ferocious sneer.

  "What herb, what bite?" he cried.

  "The herb to heal..." I said. But the sweet expression of before had vanished, it must have been but a passing moment's; perhaps it was slowly returning now in a tense smile, but that was obviously put on.

  "Ah yes ... fine ... Put it in the hollow of that tree trunk ... I'll take it later then," he said.

  I obeyed and put my hand in the hollow. It was a wasps' nest. They all flew at me. I began to run, followed by the swarm, and flung myself into the stream. By swimming underwater I managed to put the wasps off my track. Raising my head I heard the Viscount's grim laugh in the distance.

  Another time too he managed to deceive me. But there were many things I did not understand, and I went to Dr. Trelawney to talk to him about them. In his sexton's hut, by the light of a lantern, the Englishman was crouched over a book of human anatomy, very rare for him.

  "Doctor," I asked him, "have you ever heard of a man bitten by a red spider coming through unharmed?"

  "A red spider, did you say?" The doctor started. "Who had another bite from a red spider?"

  "My uncle the Viscount," I said. "And I'd brought him a herb from Sebastiana, and from being good, as it seemed before, he became bad again and refused my help."

  "I have just tended the Viscount for a red spider's bite on his hand," said Trelawney.

  "Tell me, doctor, did you find him good or bad?"

  Then the doctor described to me what had happened.

  After I left the Viscount sprawled on the grass with his swollen hand Dr. Trelawney had passed that way. He noticed the Viscount and, seized with fear as always, tried to hide among the trees. But Medardo had heard his footsteps and got up and called, "Who's there?"

  The Englishman thought, "If he finds it's me hiding from him there's no knowing what he won't do," and ran off so as not to be recognized. But he stumbled and fell into a pool in the stream. Although he had spent his life on ships, Dr. Trelawney did not know how to swim, and was threshing about in the middle of the pool shouting for help. Then the Viscount said, "Wait for me," went on to the bank and got into the water, swung by his aching hand on an extended tree root, and stretched out until his foot could be seized by the doctor. Long and thin as he was, he acted as a rope for the doctor to reach the bank.

  There they are, both safe and sound, with the doctor stuttering, "Oh oh, m'lord ... thank you indeed, m'lord ... How can I?..." and he sneezes right in the other's face, as he'd caught a cold.

  "Good luck!" says Medardo. "But cover yourself, please," and he puts his cloak over the doctor's shoulders.

  The doctor protests, more confused than ever. And the Viscount exclaims, "Keep it, it's yours."

  Then Trelawney notices Medardo's swollen hand.

  "What bit you?"

  "A red spider."

  "Let me tend it, m'lord."

  And he takes him to his sexton's hut, where he does up the hand with medicines and bandages. Meanwhile the Viscount chats away with him, all humanity and courtesy. They part with a promise to see each other soon and reinforce their friendship.

  "Doctor!" I said after listening to his tale. "The Viscount whom you tended shortly afterwards went back to his cruel madness and roused a whole nest of wasps against me."

  "Not the one I tended," said the d
octor with a wink.

  "What d'you mean, doctor?"

  "I'll tell you later. Now not a word to anyone. And leave me to my studies, as there are difficult times ahead."

  And Doctor Trelawney took no more notice of me; back he went to that unusual reading of a treatise on human anatomy. He must have had some plan or other in his head, and for all the following days remained reticent and absorbed.

  Now news of Medardo's double nature began coming from various sources. Children lost in the woods were approached to their tenor by the half man with a crutch who led them home by the hand and gave them figs and flowers and sweets; poor widows were helped across brooks by him; dogs bitten by snakes were tended, mysterious gifts were found on thresholds and windowsills of the poor, fruit trees tom up by the wind were straightened and put back into their sockets before their owners had put a nose outside the door.

  At the same time, though, appearances of the Viscount half wrapped in his black cloak were also a signal for dire events; children were kidnapped and later found imprisoned in caves blocked by stones; branches broke off and rocks rolled onto old women; newly ripe pumpkins were slashed to pieces from wanton malice.

  For some time the Viscount's crossbow had been used only against swallows and in such a way as not to kill but only wound and stun them, but now they were seen in the sky with legs bandaged and tied to splints, or with wings stuck together or waxed. A whole swarm of swallows so treated were prudently flying about together, like convalescents from a bird hospital, and there was an incredible rumor that Medardo was their doctor.

  Once a storm caught Pamela, together with her goat and duck, in a wild and distant spot. She knew that nearby was a cave, very small, a kind of hollow in the rock, and she went towards it. Sticking out of it she saw a tattered and patched boot. Inside was huddling the half body wrapped in its black cloak. She was just going to run away, but the Viscount had already seen her, came out under the pouring rain and said to her, "Come, girl, take refuge here."