The Smell of Telescopes (28 page)

I followed my verger back up the stairs into the tavern. We fumbled to the market and my resourceful comrade used his swift thumbs to pilfer the ordered ingredients. Gnoles rarely scabbard their savagery, but they remain ignorant of the pickpocket’s art, and thus are relatively easy to distract and rob, unlike imps. When we returned to the ‘Green Dragon’, I was astounded to note it was earning the right to keep its name, glowing and belching. Myfanwy had stoked the oven with so many chairs and tables that considerable heat was being conducted up the walls to the roof. The windows melted and flowed into the gutters, where they cooled into grimy puddles. And the faces of the patrons left behind assumed a most intense brilliancy as raised drinks vaporised.

Back in the basement, we encountered what might have been a serving from Mrs Beeton’s apocryphal inferno, a cake-tartarus, for sweet Myfanwy had immolated every local vestige of the earthly plane (my few remaining possessions) in her preparation. I’m too upset to describe events of the subsequent hour, so I’ll briefly mention that flames surged and expired, the final ember completing the last pie. One hundred examples, not to be slyly chewed on the way to war. Then we waded through the remains of the tavern, which had entirely liquefied and was cascading over the cobbles, with the patrons still inside, but infinitely flat now, like reflections on ripples. Reaching my house, I called: “Come out and meet me, Owain ap Iorwerth! I cast down the oven-glove!”

The curtains twitched and two faces appeared at the glass. “Priests are not welcome here. Same for pests.”

“For the favours of Myfanwy!” I stammered.

The door opened and the hulking mass of Owain emerged. “Show her to me, Gruffydd, for I suspect trickery.”

Verger and woman stepped forward, and I replied: “Behold second and jackpot. Select your finest pies, you rogue, and your longest spoon. The matter shall be resolved by conflict.”

The rolling of his heavy eyes was audible in the gloom. “Very well. Pastries at dawn! I nominate my pet goat as my second. But what will you use for first light? There is no sun, prodigal or otherwise, to time our clash, and the rules of the duello are rigid on this point. Consult, for instance, the thirty-seventh chapter of Hedelin’s
Duelli Lex Scripta, et non; aliterque
, which develops the thesis of illumination at length. All the correct rituals must be observed.”

Myfanwy had anticipated this difficulty, which is why she specified a dark lantern. Now she undid it, cautiously, just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the scene, simulating a dreary dawn, and Owain nodded to himself and shouted to his familiar for a sack of pies. Tangerine Pan passed it to him without crossing the threshold, and it was apparent the creature planned to stay indoors, though how this might help Owain was a mystery whose solution was fated to be an occasion of much pain. I armed myself and took up the recommended position, with surplice unbuttoned to the navel and dashing stubble looping around my sensuous lips. Confident of prevailing, I was nevertheless scared of injury, or rather injury was scared of me, anxious to avoid becoming a guest in my corporeal form and having to lodge in an unrefined wound.

“Ten sniffs, stir and fire!” roared Myfanwy.

I bowled a pie in a perfect arc toward my enemy. The trajectory was precise, the velocity excessive, and I expected it to strike between his eyebrows and terminate the combat immediately. But something happened to the missile as it soared; it grew elongated and unstable, crumbling away before it reached him. I tried again; another failure. In desperation, I threw a dozen at once. Without exception, they changed shape and decayed in flight, raining down on the lawn in specks. Behind Owain, through the open door, I was vaguely aware of Tangerine Pan holding an object in his hairy hand: a pair of compasses or related mathematical instrument. Pies followed each other in quick succession, but I didn’t score a hit. I was suddenly out of ammunition: my panic had caused me to discharge them too rapidly, and I sagged in bewilderment.

“What happened? Each circle became an oval!”

My verger clutched at my sleeve and whispered: “It’s Tangerine Pan! He has recalculated the value of pie!”

Before I could declare Owain a cheat and the duel annulled, Myfanwy said: “Goats can do that. They’re non-Euclidian.”

Now my antagonist spoke up: “Stand still, Gruffydd. You’ve had your turn and I wish to offer a reply.” He ignored my tears and unsheathed an enormous spoon. This he planted in the earth and drew back, like the arm of an onager. Then he loaded a pie in the concavity, sighted the device, released it and giggled. The crust exploded against my sternum, knocking me down. The smell of oranges was abominable; I stood to receive another in the face and my vision dimmed. A third scythed my legs away; a fourth numbed my pelvis. I attempted to slither out of range, but pies burst on my spine, temporarily disabling the vertebrae. Every inch of my body was pounded and pulped, coated with jam, riddled with pips, acid stinging my eyes and washing my ears, my appeals for mercy unpeeled, until I finally called out an unconditional surrender.

It was done. With a sigh, Myfanwy walked over to Owain and took his arm. “Where are you going?” I spluttered. She didn’t look back, and they disappeared together into the house. The door slammed and bolts slid. It was clear she was keeping her promise; I had lost the duel and therefore my sweetheart. This mental agony overwhelmed the pain of my bruises, and unqualified misery bandaged my cuts with lugubrious lagging. I thus felt physically better; my verger hoisted me to my feet and patted my tousled hair. I wailed: “A brute has won her!”

“Not necessarily, Gruffydd. I have my jar.”

He led me to the river and squatted on the bank. Then he held aloft the trousers he had carried from Shropshire, the pair I’d discarded when conducting business among nettles. They weren’t mine; we were certain of that. Pompous in pocket, it was likely they belonged to Owain. My verger stuffed them into his bottle. “You are pickling them?” I queried. With a curt nod, he handed the product to me.

“When balderdash vinegar is added, the fashion in this garment will be preserved. Thus the trousers will never be unfashionable. Such a lure will prove far too powerful for the genuine owner, who will be desperate to be reunited with them. But if I aid you in this matter, you must also support me in my plots. I have my own reasons for turning your home into an oven. Do you agree to these terms?”

“I swear loyalty on the grave of my knees.”

“Add some balderdash now. Place your lips to the neck and call down a measure of absolute humbug or tosh.”

Clearing throat and dredging brain, I mumbled into the bottle:
“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis.”

My verger scowled. “That’s not balderdash!”

I quailed at his tone and tried again:
“There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.”

“No, no! That was grotesque and arabesque!”

My third attempt was a desperate lunge at nonsense:
“Herodotus, the old grey cat with a mouth full of stories, usually comes into my kitchen in the evenings.”
And I was overjoyed to see that this sentence met with my verger’s approval. He replaced the cork and shook the jar. The ripped garment had settled quietly at the bottom, but now it fluffed up angrily as if exposed to an astringent tailor.

“Well done, Gruffydd. That was true bunkum.”

To my further astonishment, he threw the bottle into the river. The current snatched it and hurried it south. Suddenly, the door of my house opened and two figures came running out, brushing us in their eagerness, plunging into the greasy waters after the pickled fashion. The trousers, it seemed, or seamed, belonged to Owain after all! But why had Tangerine Pan accompanied him in his submersion?

“He’s the familiar,” my verger pointed out.

“Have you lost your jar forever?”

“No, our fates are linked. I won the vessel from a coffee-trader in a Chaud-Mellé casino. It must return.”

We skipped into my house and I pawed the carpet. It felt different, more crumbly. Myfanwy had wasted no time. Borrowing Owain’s ingredients, she had already rolled out the base of a monstrous pie. It extended over the whole of the single lower room, wall to wall, and I decided this was the most suitable occasion to press her for more details. Did she really believe she could invite Hyperborea to a feast? It appeared she did, but not quite in the way I’d imagined. She reminded me of the icy conditions to be endured in the region of the far north, and how the local denizens couldn’t rest for a moment without freezing solid to their surroundings. They were trolls, of course, with asymmetrical horns and cloaks stitched from magnetism. A pale, pristine race.

“It’s my thesis that many of them did try to rest and are now fused to glaciers,” she explained. “Sleep is a requirement for all beings. The landscape has become an integral part of them. By summoning them here, I ensure they drag Hyperborea along as well. And when this third corner is folded over Monmouth, the Welsh planet will be round; our global outlook will match that of other countries. The world was once a different shape in every nation: one at a time, each adopted a spherical model. It makes progress less jolting in the trundle.”

“But what sort of pie will attract trolls?”

“Only a Polar Pie! The chilliest pie ever conceived! Yes, Gruffydd, I shall bake one so cold that frost must wrap up warm before settling on it. And what elements will go into such a pudding? Think now: what’s the saddest liquid in the cosmos? Squonk tears! And what are the most frigid organs? Gnole hearts! Combining them, we’ll get frozen squonk grief! The bitterest substance ever synthesised.”

I was mortified. “You plan to fill my house with squonks and gnoles and cook them alive? I’m not insured!”

My verger consulted his memory, a less reliable source of knowledge than his jar. “It’s a fact that squonks dissolve into tears when bundled in a sack. We could easily fill one of the upstairs rooms with sobs. But gnoles are aggressive. I don’t fancy attempting to catch one of those. I trust you’ll deal with them yourself?”

Myfanwy gestured at the clock which graced my mantelpiece, the very gadget with which I’d tried to court half of her (I employed a carrot on her other half), and said: “By winding this device backward, I’ll obtain a strange chord when it strikes the hour. Gruffydd is prone to confusing the meaning of similar words, and as the house is his husband, it should have picked up the habit. Thus when I take the clock to the target room, it will appear to issue an unusual cord. Gnoles adore string, especially stuff that’s new or unique, and they’ll run straight into the trap. I’ll lock the door behind them; when the squonk tears are safely in the other room, we’ll set the building on fire.”

“An extremely dangerous recipe,” I stuttered. “How do you expect us to climb to Pennsylvania to hunt squonks? We don’t have grappling- irons, and I certainly don’t intend shimmying up the poles to Zipangu, and then up the pagodas. My ankles would rasp.”

“I have a ladder, Gruffydd. When I obtained those three harpoons in the market, I also received a hatstand. Lean that against the top level. And take Owain’s empty sack with you.”

“A hatstand? That won’t get us up very high!”

“You’d be surprised. It was designed for a hat the size of a house. The couple who dwelt in it were acquaintances of the Mad Hatter. He even invited them to his wedding ceremony.”

“How utterly contrived! Where is the object?”

“In my own house. Take my keys and look in the cloakroom. But don’t enter my boudoir or run your callused thumbs through my lingerie! Hasten now! Owain may be back at any moment!”

I deemed this unlikely, but I obeyed my love.

We were returning with a full bag of squonks when a clamour went up from the bottom tier: “Pirates! We’re being attacked by pirates!” Gaining the lowest peg, or rung, of the hatstand, and bounding to the ground, we saw the truth of the situation. A schooner had moored against the waterwheel and bronze cannon gleamed in the dusk. My verger squinted and rubbed his chin, as if vaguely familiar with the ruffians who paraded the deck. The vessel itself was curious: it resembled a giant cauldron, with a suit of armour for figurehead and a winding-sheet for sail, to say naught of the rudder, which was a sextant, or the flag, a Jolly Roger with real bones. A stocky man with lustrous curls balanced on the prow, teeth shining, an ornate blunderbuss cradled in one arm. 

“He has the profile of the infamous Henry Morgan!”

I trembled. “The Welsh corsair? He should have died more than three hundred years ago! What does he want?”

“Why not ask him yourself? However, I suggest we first convey these squonks to Myfanwy. The sooner she completes her intrigue, the quicker I can begin on mine!” And with this brusque assertion, my verger continued to my home. I followed his example. The gnoles were already in place; we could hear them jabbering above the chiming of the clock. They had given up trying to break the door down and were now impaling themselves on the minute hand; a gesture of honour. We emptied our sack into the adjoining chamber, and I was appalled to note that the squonks had turned entirely into tears, forming a pool which palpitated rather than spilled over the boards. This door was also secured and we descended to the lawn, Myfanwy encouraging sparks from her flintlock.

“Is it really essential to ignite my abode?”

“It’ll survive, Gruffydd. It’s an oven, remember? Now move back and watch. Confection from conflagration!”

The violence of the blaze forced us to the river, where the pirates were haranguing, in a quaint language, all who neared the waterwheel. We stood on the Monnow bridge and peered down at the captain, who shook his fist, rattled a cutlass and exuded such a thick miasma of rum that hairs sprouted from his tongue and St Elmo’s Fire withered them back again. He was an epitome of the romantic sickness, and I had an instant foreboding that his moustache and Myfanwy’s bosom were converging in both space and time. Nor was there anything I could do to prevent this. I always try to greet my fate; to will what is, instead of what ought to be. But when it comes to fair maidens travelling in a direction opposite my arms, I find that stoicism, like a motor which runs on sauerkraut, or a clotted cream fresco, proves impossible to maintain.