A Dirge for Prester John

IS IN THE MIDST OF THEM

16. On All the Things I Have Told You

I feel we have become so close. I can almost see you, reading my wonderful words (and I think you must admit they are wonderful) and imagining the places and folk I have told you about, and it is almost like we have seen them together. Almost like you tied your ship next to mine on the icy dock, like you befriended a salamander and an emerald, like you killed a unicorn with me, and a partner in a terrible thing lessens the hurt of it. Almost like you were imprisoned with me, and damn the goddess Philosophy to her cuckolded boys. I’d rather have you, dear reader, I really would.

But you should know we are coming to the end now. You can see it over the hill. The ends of things always look golden to me. Golden and orange and scarlet—fire, and a following wind. I am not overjoyed at my part in what is to come. I am not angry about it either. Yes, I was tricked, a little. But I know enough to have excused myself if I really wanted excusing. I didn’t. I wanted to put my hand on Agneya’s back like a baking stone. I wanted to race Cabochon down the black halls. I still hoped, I think, in the secret recesses of John Mandeville, to seduce the queen for once. To have Ymra settle upon me, her arms enclosing me like a forest of limbs, and the inside of her would be a fire, too, nothing in this country is not a fire, but the ashes I would send into her would catch the light of her heart like snowflakes.

And yes, I say for once. I have never seduced a queen. I feel terrible about it, if you want to know the truth. What is a traveling man, a peddler of splendid tales, ready with a wink and a sly, conspiratorial arm hooked through your arm, if he has never even once managed to get a queen to throw off her ermine? No, no princesses either. I do know a secret about princesses though, and I’ll share it. Many men of my profession say they’re dullards, spiteful and ugly, big inbred noses and feet like ducks. But it’s not true. Princesses are exactly like the stories say. Their lives are hard, they know it from the moment they’re born. But they are radiant, and clever, and brave, and if they love you they will cross the world in iron shoes to bring you home. It’s only that none of them have ever loved me. I consider it my own failing. No blame to them.

I asked a queen once why she didn’t want me. She wasn’t a powerful queen, not a monarch of Spain or of Albania. Just a little kingdom of nowhere, but she married well and she had a crown. The queen of nowhere looked at me with her clear grey eyes and said: “Because I don’t want to be in a story.”

Princesses usually grow up to be queens. The cleverness sticks long after the beauty goes.

I suppose I am always in a story. I tell it; it tells me. I am only a story. I was only ever a story. There was never a John. There was never even a Mandeville. My body is all chapters, my better parts are appendixes. That’s all a heart ever was to a head, after all.

I said before I never saw Death in a field. I lied. I always lie. It’s lies all the way down to the core of me, and at the core is a little daemon made of iron, and he is telling a lie. But they are such kind lies. They have such color. When I was a boy I went to look for my sister in the rye fields. She hadn’t come home and I worried, even though she was older, a big girl, with strong arms from threshing the rye. We’d been so busy we’d hardly noticed, for I grew up on the pilgrim road, and the knights would come through on their way to the holy land, and they could not wait to drink and carouse until they got there. We’d poured out the whole winter’s supply of beer already. I went out into the rye and I found her, with blood on her belly where some cannon-shouldered Christian had not been able to wait, either. She was radiant and clever and brave and I loved her. Death is a girl, with hair of no particular color, and she holds court in a long, golden field.

In a moment I shall be telling you an amusing story about Halicarnassus and all will be light and you will say to yourself: Our John could not have meant that part about his sister. It’s another lie. He didn’t even tell us her name. And of course it is a lie. I have never suffered loss in all my days, and no hero of my stature has the temerity to have siblings. What use is a comic hero who grieves? Don’t think about it. Especially since I don’t think you will be really proud of me in the end, or feel you have been guided through this tale by a good man. That’s all right; as long as we both make it through to the end, does it matter who leads who?

17. On the Bonfire

It began a week before it began. The salamanders draped their silks over the greenwood structure at the base of the tower I had until recently occupied—the branches tore through the fabric and the whole thing glowered copper and mossy and terribly dry, spiky and toothed. Feasts appeared from nowhere on groaning tables—mainly the sorts of things phoenix and salamanders liked to eat, which are organ meats, cinnamon pies, and smaller lizards and songbirds, which is quite disturbing, if you think about it. Tremors of excitement passed through Simurgh and I could not even bear to share a room with Cabochon, for the waves of her pleasure and anticipation boiled through the air and filled my flesh with the strange desires of emeralds—and I am only a man; I was not meant to lust as gems do.

But I thought nothing of it. Whenever I had asked after the Bonfire, the answer had always been: Soon. Soon. Tomorrow. Next week at the outside. When I asked then, the answer was: Soon. Soon. Tomorrow. Next week at the outside.

For a time I lived in Halicarnassus; I knew a queen called Artemisia. Not the queen Artemisia, of course, who fought with the Medes and was Xerxes’ favorite admiral. No, merely her distant great-great-many-times-granddaughter (though by chance they bore an identical countenance). Artemisia was not a cruel queen—Halicarnassus does not, collectively, tolerate that sort terribly well. All a city can bear is one good queen. Then you can’t shut them up on the subject of excellence in government. How many navies have you crushed in our name this week? Your grandmother picked her teeth with Xerxes’ heartstrings and you can’t get a husband? Who could stand it? She was not a cruel queen but she had the kind of pragmatism that can look like cruelty if you stand somewhat to the side. A realism that slices as true as a blade. And so queen Artemisia, who pointedly ignored the question of a husband (I asked, of course. I always ask. If you always ask, eventually a queen will say yes. A princess at least.) made a decree to her city: they would go to war. The Greek states had humiliated them (a thousand years previous) and had sent a number of arrogant missives (requests for ships and oil) and really, when did a Greek ever know how to govern himself? (Unless the Greek was an Ionian, which Artemisia happened to be.) “Unpack all your helmets and your shields and your familial armor,” Artemisia said. “Polish up your swords. Let your wives sew new banners, and the firemasters mix up new flavors of things that boil and burn. Begin breeding better and swifter horses, and if any of you can invent some new and wonderful item of war, you will be rewarded.” A great thrill went through the city, and all bent to their work. Halicarnassus had not had a good war in ages. In addition to siege towers, not a few statues of their new queen were cast—and did she not look remarkably like her famous grandmother?

When

ever anyone asked when the war would commence, the answer was always: Soon. Soon. Next week at the outside. And all the while the city prospered and the soldiers were not too sorry to avoid dying while still getting to agitate against their Greek cousins and call them goat-stickers. It went on for years. In fact, when queen Artemisia lay on her deathbed at quite an advanced age, her advisors asked when they should begin the invasion. She answered them with a smile: Soon. Soon. And then she died.

So you see, I had seen the fox play this trick before. I felt I had a good handle on where the hedgehog goes.

In retrospect, perhaps the mood had gone more frantic, the plans ramped up, the songs at dusk more lustrous and full. But I had little enough basis for comparison.

Ymra, who always favored me, greeted me one morning with a new set of clothes, in a rare audience without her brother. Specially made by Agneya for me, she said—and how special they were. If King Midas had made love to a seamstress, this would have been their sartorial child. Black from toe to cap, but I could not mistake the thing—a jester’s costume. Not a garish one, no bells danced anywhere and the curls of fabric looked more like rags than fat, amusing bouncing protrusions (I have played the jester in truth more often than I care to—it is an excellent way not to die when visiting foreign courts). A subtle implication, stitched with skill, but I could not doubt it, and she did not mean me to—I was their fool, and they would clothe me so. That was all right. A fool is not witless. A fool shows the way—when I was with the mummers’ troupe I always wore the fool’s crown, and when it came time for Our Lord to perish from this earth, my fool always changed into an angel (a swapping of masks is all it takes) and led Him to Heaven. Fools tell the truth, but tell it so sharp the king bleeds.

“The Bonfire draws near,” Ymra said.

“Soon?”

“Soon.”

The queen looked at me slantways. She had a red, smeary beauty, a feeling of looseness about her, and you could never watch all six of her hands at once. “Have you enjoyed your time with us?” she said silkily. “What I mean to say is, we have heard you tell stories of other courts until we could hear no more of Egypt. Will you tell tales of us? Were we exciting enough to make a tale?”

“Without a doubt. I will write a great book, when I return to England.”

“But you cannot leave until after the Bonfire. It will be extraordinary. You will never forget it.”

“You know,” I began, “when I lived in Halicarnassus…”

“I don’t care about Halicarnassus,” Ymra said, but not cruelly. “I care about Pentexore.”

“Tell me something. About the unicorn. About the Bonfire. I know enough to smell magic on the hearth. Are you a witch? Are you doing something wicked?”

Ymra stretched her fingers, one by one. It took some time. She did it like a cat, prolonging the moment. “You use so many words. I don’t even know what they mean. Wicked? Magic? Witch? Just nouns, just letters all in a row like soldiers. Magic is a horrible, unpredictable thing. You do your best, of course. You seek out esoteric ingredients. You perform arcane rites. But who knows if any of it works? You might almost just as well live through whatever’s to come without it. Magic is an experiment where you don’t know what it is you want to prove. God sets the rules, and we guess at them.”

I did not conceal my surprise. “You believe in God then?”