A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist (18 page)
Read A Company of Heroes Book Two: The Fabulist Online
Authors: Ron Miller
“What do you mean, ‘No, you’re not’?”
“Just what it sounds like. The idea of you leading an army is ludicrous enough, but I simply forbid you to do anything as foolish as looking for this man.”
“You think I’m foolish, do you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Good.”
“You haven’t the slightest idea of the danger you might be in; you treat this whole thing as though it are some big game. I’ll send someone out first thing in the morning. If this Pataskala person’s to be found, we’ll find him. In the meantime, you’re to stay here in the castle. That’s final.”
“Final? It’s not final until I say it is. You’ve no right to order me to do anything.”
“I most certainly do! You agreed to be my wife and that gives me some responsibilities concerning you.”
“You can labor under all the responsibilities you want, but I’m not bound by them.”
“If you want to be my wife, then you should start acting like one!”
“Oh? And exactly how would that be?”
“For one thing, and I’ve been trying to get this through your head for days now, you’ve got to learn to be aware of the image you present. There are certain things you can and should do, and certain things you must not.”
“And this is one of them?”
“Absolutely!”
“And if I do what I want anyway?”
“Then I think we really ought to reconsider our decision concerning marriage.”
“What about your promises to me?”
“Which promises?”
“You promised to find me an army.”
“I gives you my word,” he says, haughtily. “I intend to keep it.”
“Whether I marry you or not?”
“There are no conditions attached to my promise. Musrum help me.”
* * * * *
The next morning, hours before dawn, Bronwyn sets out for Diamandis Antica. She takes Thud with her partly out of habit, partly out of the need for his companionship and partly for the protection he offers. She does not look upon this latter need in the same way she detests Mathias’s protectiveness. In a sense, she regards Thud as a kind of weapon in himself, and taking him with her is not significantly different from taking a loaded revolver, which she has also done. She has no illusions about where she is going and knows perfectly well that she will be confronting some extremely hard-boiled individuals, none of whom, even the most sympathetic or disinterested, will be particularly impressed by her social status. Thud, she knows, in the anticipated circumstances, would be her superior in immediate intimidation. Anyone might easily ignore her requests for information, but only the silliest would refuse Thud’s.
She wears black leather breeches, high boots and jacket. She has pulled her hair back from her face, emphasizing its lean boniness, and slung her pistol openly from her hips. All of this in aid of looking as serious, formidable and unfeminine as possible . . . as much for the effect it would have on herself as it might on anyone she would meet.
Only three or four miles separate Diamandis from its elder namesake, now relegated to a few dozen shabby buildings facing the decaying waterfront. Bronwyn helps herself to a small carriage from Mathias’ stables and even at a carefully discreet pace she finds herself in Diamandis Antica in less than an hour, with the first blush of dawn pinking the sky behind her. The distant sea is as black as slate. The road dips sharply into the village, which is virtually at sea level. The shore must shelve gently because the long piers have to run far out into the water before there is enough depth for a ship to dock. At the moment there are only two steamers; bright lights and noise indicate that cargo is either being unshipped or laden. Further out is the low-slung silhouette of a big steam yacht. Scarcely a generation earlier, Diamandis Antica (or simply Diamandis, as it was then known) had been one of the busiest seaports on the north coast. Now most of its fine buildings are abandoned, dismantled or converted into warehouses, alehouses or whorehouses. Where there had once been an anchorage filled with shipping, there are now only two rusty freighters. And a steam yacht.
Diamandis Antica evidently never sleeps; nearly every window is a bright yellow rectangle beyond which shadows shift, laugh and shout. There appear to be only three sorts of buildings in the village: warehouses (vast, black bulks near the wharfs), rooming houses and taverns . . . of which the latter are the majority.
Thud had slept all the way from Diamandis and Bronwyn now awakens him as she slips down from the vehicle.
“Where are we?” he asks as she ties the horse to a convenient post.
“Diamandis Antica.”
“This is where he is?”
“The man who brought the bomb into the castle?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I hope so.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s still here. All we can do is start looking.”
Deciding to be systematic about the search, she begins with the tavern or inn nearest her. The door is open, spilling a bridge of sallow light across the dark street. She strides in, as she usually does anywhere, as though she were the owner, and plants herself just inside the door, legs apart, arms akimbo. She makes little impression; there may have been a perceptible decline in the noise and perhaps a dozen eyes may have swung reflexively in her direction; perhaps not. This vaguely disappoints her. However, there are more immediately interesting occupations than the probably fruitless ogling of a rather tough-looking woman in mannish clothes. When Thud follows her into the room a moment later, however, the attention he receives would have been perceptible to the stone-cold drunk, of which there are not a few, trying to force their wandering eyes to point in the same direction as everyone else’s.
A grotesquely fat man flows around the end of the bar and approaches, wiping his hands on a filthy towel. She notices that he seems to be constantly oozing a beige scum. He resembles more closely than anything an aspic that has some hours yet to go before completely congealing .
“Is there something I can help the, ah,
lady
with?” he gurgles, his black eyes drifting slightly in the jelly of his face, like a pair of capers.
“I’m looking for a man named Ugler Pataskala.”
“Pataskala? Pataskala . . .” he ruminates, stroking his chin, his fingers leaving shallow ruts in the soft wattles that slowly flow smooth again. “Pataskala . . . that’s a pretty common name, you know.”
“Do you know him or not? Does he come here?”
“Well,” he answers, his beady eyes veiling, “I don’t know if I could correctly answer that question.”
“Could you answer it if my friend here asks?”
“Oh. Well, yes, actually, some recollection does seem to come to me now. I may’ve run across such a man . . . but
everyone
comes in here sooner or later.”
“Short man? With long arms like a monkey?”
“Perhaps. Maybe. All I can tell you is I’ve heard the name. Even if your friend asks.”
Bronwyn raised her voice. “Anyone here know an Ugler Pataskala?”
Her only answer is a vague murmuring. Few faces pay her any attention. She is losing her audience. If some sailor is having difficulties with his woman, it is no concern of theirs; they are far more interested in inciting diverting difficulties of their own.
“I’ll pay!”
“Who wants to know?” comes a voice from the smoke-filled hinterland.
“I do.”
Something like a big rat emerges from the blue haze and goes directly to the bar. It looks over its shoulder at the princess and says, “Buy me a drink.”
Bronwyn takes Thud by the elbow and draws his tiny ear down toward her mouth. “Find someplace to sit and have a beer or something, but sit where you can see the whole room.”
“Sure ,” he replies, seeing nothing wrong with beer for a predawn breakfast.
Bronwyn joins the creature who has beckoned her. Around them the noise and activity began anew; she is no longer of any interest. The creature beside her barely reached the level of the bar. Its body is pear-shaped and is dressed in a costume that is more or less nautical in origin. The legs are short and bowed, the arms thin. The face is dominated by a vast nose that is both wide and long, protruding like a cone from the tiny, spherical head. There is virtually no chin and almost no lower jaw so that the entire semicircle of upper teeth is visible. The incisors are as broad and long as spatulas. The eyes are as brightly intelligent as . . . well, as a rat’s. “Thanks,” it says as it sucked from the vast mug Bronwyn had bought it. It put the half-empty vessel onto the bar and wiped the foam from its mouth. “My name’s Ratski. First Mate Omar Ratski,” he says in a hoarse, squeaky voice, thus probably settling the matter of his sex, if not the question of species. Bronwyn is moderately successful in choking back a snort of derisive laughter while replying.
“I’m looking for a man named Ugler Pataskala.”
“So I understand.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I might. You mentioned a reward?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
Bronwyn looks at Ratski, not an easy proposition, trying to judge what would seem like a sufficient amount of money to him.
“One hundred strelsaus.”
“Two hundred,” he replies instantly.
“One hundred now, another hundred if your information’s any good, and fifteen minutes with my friend if it’s not.”
Ratski peers at her with his glittering little eyes. He pours the remainder of his beer into his throat and says, “All right. I know exactly where Ugler is.”
“Where?”
Ratski’s answer is to hold out his hand. Bronwyn glares at him, but Ratski only glitters back. She reaches into an inside pocket and counts out a hundred bank notes by touch. She has no intention of revealing the contents of her wallet. She hands the little man the money and he stuffs it into his jacket without looking at it.
“Down at the end of the street,” he says. “The last house. Fish-eye Gunther’s. It’s a boardinghouse. It’s where Pataskala sleeps. He’s there now.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s another question. Another hundred.”
“Never mind. Do you see my friend over there?”
“Kinda hard to miss, ain’t he?”
“You’d just
hate
to know what he does to rats.”
Ratski’s eyes narrow at the mention of the word and his breath hisses through the gap between his teeth, but he gets the idea.
Thud follows Bronwyn from the tavern and down the rutted and potholed street that parallels the shoreline. At its nether end are a cluster of four or five dark, two-story houses. The third one she examines has a badly painted sign that reads,
fish-Eye Gunther
rumming Hows
Turists wellkum
No Petts.
Where the paint has peeled away an advertisement for chewing tobacco is revealed. There are no lights but Bronwyn does not hesitate climbing the half-dozen steps to the sagging porch and pounds on the door. There is no immediate response and she pounds again, the door rattling on its hinges and a shower of dirt sifting down from the porch roof. This time there is an inarticulate sound from within. The sound is “Arrrrhh,” of all things.
The princess continues battering the door until it suddenly flies open (she thinks for a second she has knocked it off its hinges) and a tarry voice asks, “What th’ triple-damned rat-infested bloody hell d’
you
want?”
“I want to see Pataskala.”
“Pataskala? Pataskala what?”
“It’s not a what, it’s a he. Pataskala’s the name of someone staying here.”
“Th’ hell it is. Get home to your mama, kid, before I wake up an’ beat th’ bloody hell outta you!”
“I’m not leaving until I see Pataskala!”
“You’re goin’ to be seein’ stars, brat!”
“Thud?” she says, turning toward the big man.
“Huh?”
“What’s
that
?” asks the voice in the doorway.
“That’s my argument.”
“It’s an effective one, I admit. All right, all right. Come on in.”
“Thud . . .”
“Yes, Princess?”
“Wait here. I’ll be right out.”
She turns and enters the dark house. The door closes behind her. There is a scratching sound and a sudden flicker of light as her host lights a candle. It illuminates whom she presumes is Fish-eye Gunther, a brutal-looking man whose blocky face seems a patch-work of ill-matched features held together by scar tissue. The white lines that snake from hairline to chin and from ear to ear seem to writhe like worms in the fluttering candlelight. He glares at her with his one good eye . . . the other is a milky orb that is the obvious inspiration for his nickname.
“Here, take this,” he says, thrusting the candle at her. “He’s at th’ top of the stairs. Now, for Musrum’s sake, lemme get back t’ sleep.’
Fish-eye limps through an open doorway and vanishes. Bronwyn briefly considers calling Thud in to join her, but the stairway looks rickety and squeak-laden. Instead, she draws her revolver and carefully, slowly, begins mounting the uneven steps.
Somewhere in the house, behind and below her, she hears muted sounds that must be Fish-eye Gunther reclaiming his bed. A short corridor meets the head of the stairs at a right angle. Other doors open off the hall but only one faces her. She creeps toward it, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps that she can’t suppress even though each one sounds to her like the wheezing of a locomotive. The overdose of adrenaline with which her suprarenal glands are flooding her produce a bizarre, nonsubjective viewpoint, as though she were looking through the back of her own head. The greasy brass doorknob turns easily and silently, and the door swings open with scarcely a whisper. The room beyond is dark; a dull grey rectangle suspended within the gloom marks the window. She steps across the threshold.
“Pataskala?” she whispers in a kind of sobbing hiccough.
The door slams behind her at the same time that her arms are pinned to her sides, her mouth clamped shut by an enormous, calloused hand and her revolver wrenched from her grasp.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PLANS
The Royal Exhibition of Wax Fruit and Vegetable Art has a gala opening. Hundreds of invited guests arrives at the glazed palace that had been constructed especially for this show. A vast, vaulted greenhouse constructed of tens of thousands of individual panes of glass, it glints like a faceted jewel in the day and glimmers like molten gold at night. There are orchestras and long tables of food and fountains of champagne. It is the most glorious event, socially, since Ferenc’s coronation fête . . . the one interrupted so dramatically by Bronwyn.
However, if Ferenc is too dazzled and self-pleased to notice, and if Payne Roelt too introspective and monomaniacal, General Praxx is certainly aware that the party is not all that it could or should be. The king has quickly become drunk in his own enthusiastically effervescent style, shepherding one befuddled guest after another through the intricacies of the exhibition. Payne holds himself aloof from the company, a decision no one seems inclined to dispute, and contents himself with merely watching the glossy horde with much the same hungry interest a tiger might have in a herd of wild boar.
Praxx, however, is far more observant because he is far less self-interested. He notes a kind of desperation in the festivities, a thinly stretched intensity. He has often noticed the same thing in the eyes of condemned criminals. There is a forced bravado, an hysterical artificiality, to the smiles and laughter. . . which come in rehearsed and insincerely discrete syllables.
Ha. Ha. Ha
.
Though uninterested in fashion himself, he observes the almost unobservable threadbareness of the party-goers’ apparel. The women wear the same gowns he had seen more than a year ago, and many wear little or no jewelry...all long ago pawned or sold. Cosmetics do little to disguise the confusion and despair in the gaunt, stupid faces.
Hogsheads of champagne and wine are consumed with an almost desperate avidity, but little of the food is eaten. This puzzles Praxx because he knows these people have been living on little more than pretention for months. When he realizes why they are barely nibbling in the midst of so many delicacies, he knows with a certainty, at that moment, that Ferenc’s reign is doomed.
They can’t tell the difference between the real food and the wax imitations.
Hungry as they are, they are afraid of committing the social gaffe of eating the exhibits.
The inaugural party ends and its guests disperse. The exhibition is thrown open to the public. No one comes. For a month the king eagerly awaits the daily attendance reports submitted by his caretakers and every day the sheets are blank. To avoid disappointing their ruler, the attendants take to listing even those who stroll into the glass palace accidentally, to ask directions, to use the toilet facilities or to escape the rain. But these meager figures only serve to make the blank sheets look even emptier.
Then, too, the king has not counted upon the exhibition hall living up to its resemblance to a greenhouse in actual fact. Although the weather is still brisk and the nights frigid, the days are brightly sunny. The climate within the glass structure easily becomes balmy and, occasionally, even tropical. Responding one horror-filled day to a messenger sent by a panic-stricken curator, the king arrives to discover some of his greatest treasures already reduced to amorphous abstractions. Only a stray stem or leaf, reinforced by an internal wire, serves to identify what had once been Ferenc’s most precious possessions.
The king declares the exhibition closed, gathers the surviving sculptures and, like some old woman returning from market, retreats to the palace clutching cartons of glistening produce. He returns what remains of his collection to their shelves and grieves at the tragic number of now-empty spaces.
Life has lost much of its meaning.
Payne, meanwhile, turns to the Church for his inspiration.
From the towers on Palace Island the most striking landmark visible in the city proper is the Great Temple of Musrum. More properly, if not popularly, known as the Church of Saint Ashpital of Madsock, the massive block dominates the city like a mailed fist punched through rotten wicker, its stumpy, ill-proportioned towers like fingers raised in victory or contempt. It sits on a plot of land that has belonged to the Church when what is to become the city of Blavek was little more than a collection of huts desperately trying to keep from sinking in the swamp. The Church is at this time a miniature town in its own right, occupying the only solid ground on the island. With the exception that it produces no food of its own (though it possesses a few vegetable and herb gardens and beehives), the Church is independent and self-sufficient. It has its own smithy and mills, as well as artisans who produce everything from fabric to furniture. It is independent because more goods pass into its gates than pass out of them. It is both rich and independent because unlike the farmer or herdsman it relies on something far more certain than the weather: the faith of the people.
The peasant’s life is a constant misery. This is not because the land isn’t rich or productive. The people would have enough even if their primitive agricultural techniques does make them little better than hunter-gatherers. No, working more diligently against them than storms, frost, insects and drought is, foremost of all, the State. In ever-ascending priority and demands are their landlords, the barons, the king and, ultimate, the Church. Each exacts their own toll according to their immediate and foreseeable needs. That the producers of their luxury are left with little of their own is not something that over-concerns them.
Since the peasantry have nothing but mud and toil and an early grave to look forward to on earth, they were very early on quick to grasp to their hollow bosoms the idea that there might be a life
after
death in which, for some reason, they would be glorified by a god or gods who had chosen to spurn them in
this
world. The early Church was equally quick to capitalize upon this forlorn hope by making it clear that it is the sole franchisee of Musrum’s favor. The formula is simple enough for even one of Tamlaght’s inbred peasants to understand: being good to the Church is the only way to be good to Musrum, and being good to Musrum is the only way to escape direct postmortem dispatch to the Kingdom of the Weedking, a place said to be even worse than their present secular abode, an idea that taxes the morbid imagination of a peasant.
What little is left to the people after taxes is effectively usurped by the Church in the form of tithes. In the beginning this was almost never in the form of actual money, but rather was paid in kind: grain, flour, live animals, fresh and preserved meats, leather, oils and fats, milk, cheese and so forth. The granaries and stockrooms of the Church soon filled to capacity and beyond. In times of want, the peasants were given gruel and prayer-cloths and they thanked the Church for its munificent charity. When times were better, the Church reminded its people of Musrum’s recent displeasure and tithes are doubled and tripled to keep Him happier in the future.
Eventually the Church became very rich. Then it became exceedingly rich. It had little need for so much wealth in the form of agricultural products, so it proceeded to turn these into harder currency which in turn was invested in land and property. By the end of its first century the Church owned thousands of manors, estates and thriving businesses.
Although its beginnings were humble and modest enough, the Church of Musrum was not long in ignoring the gentry. Soon enough they had the aristocracy from the shabbiest earl or duke clear up to the royal family enmeshed in its self-serving theology. From both donation and legacy its material wealth increased to where it now rivals and even exceeds that of the royal treasury itself. More than once, in time of war or other hardship, the Church had been able to loan the State the funds it needed to get by. On a smaller scale, it loans money to the king himself, the nobility and to merchants and businessmen. Nor is any loan ever defaulted, including an interest payment that would have been usurious had the Church been subject to any laws other than its own. Failure to pay back a loan from the Church is worse than poor business: it is heresy, impiety, perhaps even blasphemy, and the Church has more effective means of dealing with these crimes than mere litigation.
Eventually State and Church merged, if not formally then for all practical purposes, each for its own self-interest and protection, each from the other.
Payne Roelt looks at the immense wealth of the Church with an equally immense, avaricious jealousy. He had by this time stripped Tamlaght of everything negotiable. Now he looks upon the Church as a thief might look upon a jewelry shop in a slum. He looks at the fat, smug Churchmen in their silken clothes and fur-trimmed coats, their fingers encrusted with gems like sticks of rock candy, their emblems of rank glinting upon their convex chests, their homes rich with food and luxuries. The gold and silver coaches that lumber between the palace and the church awaken him at night and irritate him during the day, taunting him like oil-laden whales flaunting their flukes superciliously at a harpoonless mariner.
Well,
I
certainly have harpoons, all right.
Payne shapes his scheme with almost fanatical thoroughness and ingenuity. To begin, he has the Privy Council declare the Church of Musrum to be the official church of Tamlaght . . . something that has always been taken for granted, and reasonably, since there are no other churches, but never openly declared or legalized. Additionally and consequently, he has the king declared Chief Bishop, which is to say: head of the Church. Immediately upon discovering himself to be redundant, the newly ex-Chief Bishop, elderly Bishop Harspranget, sends an indignant and unwisely recalcitrant response to the declaration. Payne has Ferenc excommunicate the old bishop and at the same time has Praxx arrest him for both heresy and treason.
The law as it stands allows Payne to consequently seize all of Harspranget’s property and records.
The Church is horrified and angry. For the first time in more than three hundred years the great cathedral becomes the massive fortress it had originally been designed to be. Its enormous gates are closed and, so far as the Church is concerned, a state of war exists between it and the Palace. This is fine with Payne Roeldt. He orders the arrest of every Churchman in the country. He had already prepared for this expected action and has companies of Guards ready in every village and town. Upon receipt of Payne’s signal the arrests are made, in most cases before the prisoners have even heard about the events in Blavek. They are all, more than a hundred, marched to the capital and imprisoned as traitors and heretics.
General Praxx has several experts enthusiastically set to work obtaining the confessions necessary to preserving an outward form of legality. Many church officials readily give in when confronted with the signed confession of Bishop Harspranget. Of the one hundred sixteen people arrested, eighty-nine survive to confess.
Fifty are executed publicly in the square that faces the fortified church. The executions are protracted and noisy. Free refreshments are served to attract the public.
The Privy Council accepts the declaration of war by formally seizing the Church’s property and assigning it to the king.
There is of necessity a vast public outcry against this aggression. To assuage this feeling, since a civil war is more than he is prepared to handle, Payne orders old Harspranget to be brought to the square.
In the weeks since his arrest, the old man has suffered terribly. His white hair has yellowed and thinned, exposing his squamous and blotchy scalp. He is thin and his gauntness shows beneath the flimsy robe he is allowed to wear. The cold wind presses it against his body and even his ribs are visible through the fabric. His hands shake with an uncontrollable palsy. His crimes against the Church and his king are read aloud. He is then ordered to repeat his confession for all to hear, all of those in the cathedral and all of those in the streets.
He raises his clasped hands to his chin and the chains rattle like ice as his hands shake. His voice is thin and reedy, but the words carry to the furthest corner of the square.
“Before Musrum and my king, I confess my guilt, which is that to my everlasting dishonor I failed before the pain of torture and the threat of death. I betrayed my Church and the innocent members of my brotherhood. I cannot die by adding another lie to those I have already uttered.” He is quickly taken from the platform and returned to the dungeons beneath the palace. Thin, reedy screams drift along the river in the frigid early morning hours. At the last, the voice pardons and forgives King Ferenc and then is heard no more.
The king, however, hears of this and is both horrified and terrified. He had accepted the holiness of the Church and the piety of its members as a given. That its bishop has just been put to death in his name is horrifyingly unbelievable, but the old man’s dying words of generous, if misplaced, forgiveness are little more than a curse to Ferenc’s way of thinking. Coming as it does almost on top of the bitter disappointments of the exhibition, the bishop’s death rattles the king to his insubstantial core. After brooding for several days, he confronts Payne.
“What’s going on?” he demands, pushing his way into his Chamberlain’s office.
“I’m busy,” answers Payne, not bothering to look up from the papers on his desk. “What’re you talking about?”
“Bishop Harspranget’s dead, that’s what.”
“So?”
“
So
? D’you know what that means?”
“He is a dangerous man, Ferenc.”
“
Dangerous
? The
bishop
? How? I’ve known him most of my life!”
“That’s just the reason he is dangerous. He coveted your throne.”
“
What
?”
“It’s true. He is a dangerous rival. He had more wealth and power than even you, your majesty.”
“Impossible! Besides, the people love me.”
“That may be, sire,” replies Payne, turning to face his king. The fat, petulant andabate is a considerable nuisance, but today Payne is in a good mood and at such times he enjoys spending a few minutes confusing and bullying King Ferenc. “That may be, but the most you can threaten anyone with is imprisonment or death. Harspranget could threaten them with eternal damnation. More than that, however, he could offer the people eternal bliss at the right hand of Musrum Himself. Could you match that?”
