Robert Sheckley - Mindswap

Marvin retired to his chambers in the high east wing, and there shocked his page by insisting upon a basin of water in which to wash his hands. It was considered a strange affectation on his part in that age in which even the greatest court ladies were accustomed to hide smudges of dirt under perfumed gauze bandages. But Marvin had picked up the custom during his stay among the gay and pagan Tescos of the southern Remoueve, whose soapy fountains and spongy sculpture were wonders of wonders to the complacent and grimy northern nobility. And in spite of the laughter of his peers and the frowns of the clergy, Marvin stubbornly insisted that an occasional scrub of the hands did no damage, so long as the water touched no other part.

His ablutions completed, and clad only in black satin half-knickers, white lace shirt, cavalry boots and shoulder-length gloves of Eretzian chamois, and wearing only his sword Coueur de Stabbat, which had been handed down in his family father-to-son for five hundred years, Marvin heard a half-noise behind him and whirled, hand to hilt.

'La, sir, wouldst run me through with thy terrible great sword?' mocked the Lady Catarina – for it was she – standing just inside the panelled doorway to the inner chamber.

'Faith, your ladyship startled me,' Marvin said. 'But as for running thee through, that indeed I wouldst do right merrily, though not with sword but with a trustier weapon which it happens I do possess.'

'Fie, sir,' the Lady Catarina said mockingly. 'Offerest violence to a lady?'

'Merely the violence of pleasure,' Marvin replied gallantly.

'Your words are too glib by half,' said the Lady Catarina. 'I believe it has been noted that the longest and wiliest tongues conceal the shortest and least adequate of Weapons.'

'Your ladyship does me injustice,' Marvin said. 'For I dare say my Weapon is eminently capable of the uses it may encounter, sharp enough to penetrate the best defence in the world, and durable enough for repeated stabbings. And, quite apart from such utilitarian uses, it has learned from me certain infallible tricks, the which it would be my respectful pleasure to show your ladyship.'

'Nay, keep your Weapon in its scabbard,' the lady quoth, indignantly, but with sparkling eyes. 'Me likes not the sound of 't; for braggart's steel is ever pliable tin, shiny to the eye yet damnably malleable to the touch.'

'I beg of thee but to touch the edge and point,' Marvin said, 'and thus submit thy raillery to th' test of Usage.'

She shook her pretty head. 'Know, sir, that such Pragmatics are for greybeard philosophers with rheumy eyes; a lady relies upon her intuition.'

'Lady, I worship thy intuition,' Marvin responded.

'Why, sir, what wouldst Thou, the Prepossessor of a dubious Weapon of indetermined length and uncertain temper, know of a woman's intuition?'

'Lady, my heart tells me that it is exquisite and ineffable, and possessed of a pleasing shape and delicate fragrance, and that-'

'Enough, sir!' the Lady Catarina cried, blushing hotly and fanning herself furiously with a Japanese fan whose corrugated surface portrayed the Investiture of the Iichi.

Both fell silent. They had been conversing in the old Language of Courtly Love, in which symbolic apostrophe played so important a part. In those days it was deemed no breach of the etiquette for even the best-bred and most demure of young ladies to thus converse; theirs was not a frightened age.

But now a shadow of seriousness had fallen over the two participants. Marvin glowered, fingering the grey steel buttons of his white lace shirt. And the Lady Catarina looked troubled. She wore a panelled gown of dove tulip with slashings of chrome red; and, as was the custom, the neckline was cut fashionably low to reveal the firm rosy swelling of her little abdomen. Upon her feet were sandal-pumps of ivory-coloured damask; and her hair, piled high upon a jade ratouelle, was adorned with a garland of spring snippinies. Never in his life had Marvin seen so beautiful a sight.

'Can we not cease this ceaseless play of word-foolery?' Marvin asked quietly. 'May we not say that which is in our hearts, 'stead of fencing thus with heartless ingenuities?'

'I dare not!' the Lady Catarina murmured.

'And yet, you are Cathy, who loved me once in another time and place,' Marvin said inexorably, 'and who now plays me for the unacknowledged gallant.'

'You must not speak of that which once had been,' Cathy said, in a frightened whisper.

'Yet still you loved me once!' Marvin cried hotly. 'Deny me this an you find it false!'

'Yes,' she said in a failing voice. 'I loved thee once.'

'And now?'

'Alas!'

'But speak and tell me reason!'

Nay, I cannot!'

'Will not, rather.'

'As thee wish; the choice is servant to the heart.'

'I would not have you believe that,' she said softly.

'No? Then surely the desire is father to the intent,' Marvin said, his face gone hard and pitiless. 'And standing thus in familial relationship, not even the wisest of men would deny that Love is inbonded to its half-sister Indifference, and Faithfulness is thrall to the cruel stepmother, Pain.'

'Can you so consider me?' she cried weakly.

'Why, Lady, you leave me choiceless,' Marvin responded in a voice of ringing bronze. 'And thus my barque of Passion is Derelict upon a Sea of Memory, blown off its rightful course by the fickle wind of Indifference, and driven towards the rockbound Coast of Agony by the inexorable Tide of Human Events.'

'And yet, I would not have it thus,' Catarina said, and Marvin thrilled to hear even so mild an affirmation of that which he had considered lost beyond recall.

'Cathy-'

'Nay, it cannot be,' she cried, recoiling in evident agony, her colour high and her abdomen rising and falling with the emotion within her. 'You know not of the wretched circumstances of my situation.'

'I demand to know!' Marvin cried, then whirled, his hand darting to his sword. For the great oaken door of his chamber had swung noiselessly open, and there, leaning negligently in the doorway, a man stood with arms folded over his chest and a half-smile playing across his thin, bearded lips.

'In faith! We are undone!' Catarina cried, her hand pressed to her trembling abdomen.

'Sir, what would thou?' Marvin asked hotly. 'I demand to know thy name, and the reason for this most ungentle and unseemly investiture!'

'All shall be speedily revealed thee,' the man in the doorway said, his voice revealing a faint and menacing lisp. 'My name, sir, is Lord Blackamoor, 'gainst whom your puerile plans have been cast; and I have entered this chamber from simple privilege of one who dutifully desires introduction to his wife's young friend.'

'Wife?' Marvin echoed.

'This lady,' Blackamoor declared, 'who has the uncertain habit of not straightaways introducing herself, is indeed the Most Noble Catarina d'Augustin di Blackamoor, the most loving wife to this your humble servant.'

And so saying, Blackamoor swept off his hat and louted low, then resumed his exquisite's pose in the doorway.

Marvin read the truth in Cathy's tear-stained eyes and shuddering abdomen. Cathy, his beloved Cathy, the wife of Blackamoor, the most detested enemy of those who espoused the cause of d'Augustin, who was Cathy's own father!

Yet there was no time to consider these strange propinquities of sensibility; for the foremost consideration was of Blackamoor himself, standing miraculously within a castle held by his enemies, and betraying no hint of nervousness at a position that should have been perilous in the extreme.

And this infallibly meant that the situation was not as Marvin had supposed it, and that the threads of destiny were tangled now past his immediate comprehension.

Blackamoor in Castelgatt? Marvin considered the implications, and a sensation of cold came over him, as though the angel of death had brushed past him with stygian wings.