Sir Bertram (sûr bûr'trum krab trE gôr) is described as a "kindly old sorcerer" who is faced with non-existence from Snodrog. His solution: present the Pedant with a Shuffly and let the two interact [The Pedant and the Shuffly].
As one garners from his surname, the crabapple tree was chief symbol of his coat of arms. The heraldic device originated sometime after the siege of Grisly Grange of 982, when Sir Bertram's ancestor, Crankforth, defended a castle with twelve men and crabapple preserves. The tale, too hilarious to tell in full here, involves a giant toad.
The following text appears on Sir Bertram's family coat of arms [20]:
For arms he wears a
Crabapple Tree displayed
and fructant on a field of Gore
counterfessed with Grume--the
roots of the tree clutchant, grasp a
toad, couchant, vert, who mumbles
an armed leg d'or.
Bowen explains, since this is an inscription on the family crest, that Bellairs is parodying the special language of heraldry.
"It is a jargon petrified at some point back in the Middle Ages when the English nobility were still at least half-French. If there is an object on your coat of arms doing something, the action must be described in the form of a French participle, ending in -ant. For instance, the lion on the arms of Scotland is rampant, that is, standing on his two hind feet, rearing like a horse. A lion that seems to be walking along (like the three on the arms of England) is passant, and if his head is turned to face you as you look at the shield, he is passant, regardant. Or if he is lying down (like the toad) he is couchant, whether or not he is also regardant. Based on that the fructant tree is fruiting, or bearing fruit, though I don't know if that word has ever really been used in heraldry. Clutchant is certainly John's invention. I'm sorry he didn't also say mumblant, but I guess the image might have been hard to interpret if he kept that strictly to the rules."
Heraldic colors are strictly defined, adds Bowen. There are nine, counting gold and silver, and Bellairs makes use of a few here, including vert (green) and or (gold). That said, Bowen notes Bellairs might have used sanguine (reddish purple) if he knew or remembered it: "According to my dictionary grume means 'clotted blood,' and of course gore means something similar. These are the two colors with which Sir Bertram's arms are counterfessed, itself another term meaning the background consists of horizontal stripes of two alternating colors."
Best we can make out, the Latin phrase on the shield (as seen on the illustration), Moors sine calore, translates to death without love.
As an aside, Marilyn Fitschen says she likes to draw toads, hence the two associated with Sir Bertram pictured in the book (on his coat of arms and the full-page mural of the siege of Grisly Grange).
Bellairs, of course, fancied himself as Bertram, watching the pedant and the shuffly play together. The character was slated to make a return to print in the short story, The Paranoid Sunglasses, written in the late 1960s after Bellairs had settled in New England. In it, Sir Bertram wears vomit-colored sunglasses that revealed and ridiculed the character's paranoid peculiarities about leaving mayonnaise out in the sun, getting tetanus from rusty nails and more - in reality, the same fancies Bellairs himself had.
