Chapter 6 #4
Once, I remember, Kotkel and Gretti and Kari got mad at me – something I said – and held my head underwater.
I remember almost drowning. They always seemed to know exactly how far they could go, with a degree of precision which you’d have thought only a scientist could gauge, after a lifetime of research.
This time, however, maybe I’d gone a bit too far. That was the thing, back then, in the Mesoge. I really didn’t care how far I goaded them, or what might happen. I only wanted to win.
He looked at me, pure hate. “Fuck you,” he said. Then he kicked a hole in the tower wall and stepped through it.
“Vitimer is going to kill you,” she said. “All that trouble and expense, and you let it get away.”
Valid point, and I wasn’t looking forward to my next interview with him, scheduled for immediately after prime. But I can honestly say that that was the least of my worries. “I’m afraid,” I said, “that I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
We were sitting in the room in the tower, which now had a gaping hole in it.
Outside, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were scouring the basilica grounds for the monster, while over our heads and under our feet, several dozen lay brothers were dismantling the trap before something gave way or caught fire.
I’d told the guard captain that there was no point trying again.
Obviously the monster had twigged, which was why it got out in a hurry before the trap could be sprung.
Never mind, I told him. I’ll just have to think of something else.
“For crying out loud,” she said. “Now what?”
So I told her: the true gospels; Kotkel. By the time I finished, I was completely drained and she just sat there. I’d expected rage, hysteria, violence, quite possibly a knife in my heart. Instead – you can see why I’ve got no use for love. People you love can hurt you so badly.
“Anyway,” I said, after the longest silence ever. “That’s how it stands, more or less. If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d be very grateful.”
She looked at me. First Kotkel, now her. It was my night for being looked at.
“Fine,” I said. “If you want to wash your hands of me, I understand. Go home. I was wrong: this is about me. You don’t have to get caught up in it, whatever the hell it is.
Go home; tell them what happened; say it was all my fault.
Which is true: it is. There’s nothing you can do here, and you don’t deserve this kind of punishment.
Presumably I do, though why, God only knows. ”
Still not a word. I stood up. “Come on,” I said. “It’s freezing in here, you’ll catch your death.”
She stood up and hit me: her signature short right to the solar plexus.
It certainly took my mind off my troubles.
When the mist cleared, I was on my knees, struggling to draw breath past an apparently insurmountable obstacle.
I spared a thought for all the inoffensive guards, jailers, watchmen, goons, innocent bystanders and hired killers I’d seen her drop with that punch over the years. “Get up,” she said.
“Not sure I can.”
“Get up.”
I held out my arm and she hauled me to my feet. I staggered, then sat down on that bloody barrel. “Are you all right?” she said.
“I think so,” I said. “Give me a moment.”
“You’re a complete arsehole,” she said. Odd how the people I care about all tend to use that word about me. “You’re stupid and thoughtless and you don’t give a shit about other people. And really, really stupid.”
I managed a small nod. “Sorry,” I said.
“You’re sorry. Hoo-fucking-ray.” Well, at least she was talking to me again. “You’re right, I ought to go back home right now. Maybe someone there can figure out a way to clear up this mess you’ve made of everything. I can’t.”
“Me neither.”
She hesitated, then sat down on the floor next to me. “How about Vitimer?” she said. “You’ve met him; I haven’t. Is he smart?”
I shook my head. “He’s an idiot,” I said. “No, he’s not; he’s a politician, which is worse. Smart, but only interested in politics. Can’t expect anything from him.”
“There’s got to be someone we can go to,” she said. “For fuck’s sake, we’ve got all the finest minds and purest souls in the world here in this city right now. Somebody’s got to know what to do.”
“You’ve been to the debates. Name one.”
She couldn’t. “It can’t be up to us,” she said. “It just can’t.”
“I’d love an alternative,” I said. “Can you think of one?”
She lifted her head and gave me a look that broke my heart. “I didn’t get your broken rib, did I? Only that could be bad. You can puncture a lung.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“We can’t go home,” she said. “Not till we’ve sorted this. If it is all about you, it’d be like taking the plague home with us. What’s that word? Quarantine. We’ve got to stay here until we’re sure it’s over.”
“It’s about me,” I said. “I only wish I knew what it is about me.” A thought occurred to me. “If it gets really bad—”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “Yes, if it comes to it, I’ll cut your stupid throat with the greatest of pleasure. Right now, though, you’re the key to the mystery, so guzzling you would probably be short-sighted. Let me be the judge of that, all right?”
That made me laugh, which hurt. “You’re going to have to teach me that right hook,” I said.
“Right cross.”
“Whatever.”
“Your problem is,” she said, “you don’t bring your shoulder across till it meets your chin. Which means you aren’t getting the full advantage of using your body weight. Also, you’ve got to remember to step into it, instead of just standing there like a fencepost.”
“Thank you.”
“Another thing you do wrong—”
Ah well. At least we were talking.
Vitimer wasn’t pleased with me. It wasn’t my fault, he assured me several times.
Still, it was a pity, a great pity, an opportunity wasted, and now the monster would be on its guard, suspicious, harder to catch and destroy, and we still knew so little about it, who’d sent it, what it wanted, all useful information that I could have gathered, if only I hadn’t let it get away.
But there. No use crying over spilled milk, even if it did end up costing who knew how many lives?
He asked me if there was anything I hadn’t yet told him that might prove helpful. No, I said. He believed me. Thank you, he said, meaning, Get out of my sight.
People were staring at me as I crossed the cloister garden: that’s him, the one who fought the monster; they’re saying he’s the one it’s after; he brought it here …
All a bit much for someone who likes to be as inconspicuous as possible.
In fairytales there’s a whole range of handy gadgets for making yourself invisible – hats, cloaks, the juice of herbs, rings, bracelets.
I even heard once of a pig’s bladder of invisibility, though the storyteller was a bit vague about how you went about using it.
Me for some of that, I’ve always thought.
Some people can’t live without being seen.
It’s as though, if people aren’t looking at them, they aren’t really there.
I’m there all right, believe me. I guess it dates back to making myself as hard to find as possible when my brothers were looking for me, and now it’s second nature.
People knowing where I am bothers me. I can’t help it.
Nobody seemed to expect anything of me, so I was able to go to the debate.
It was a good one. Friedmund Scholasticus was laying into Trebonian’s doctrine of conditional redemption, slowly tearing it into small, neat shreds, with Simboin and Alpbrand of Stachel desperately trying to do damage control whenever he’d let them get a word in edgeways.
When he’s not attending councils or presiding as judge at heresy hearings, Friedmund lives on a little wooden raft, six feet by six, forty feet up in the branches of a massive oak tree.
His disciples bring him food and books, which he hauls up on a rope, and when it rains he gets very, very wet.
He may be a trifle eccentric, but he’s got the purest classical style of any man living and can do things with the pluperfect subjunctive that you wouldn’t believe were possible –
Forgive me. We’re all boring about something.
With Svangerd it’s different ways of hurting people, with me it’s fancy wordplay.
The point being, for a while there I was enjoying myself, so much so that I almost forgot the depth and plasticity of the shit I was in, and when the debate was over (motion defeated by a whisker; grand exit of Friedmund, stalking out in high dudgeon after placing the whole council under anathema; you really had to be there) I wandered out into the cloister in a sort of happy, rhetoric-fuelled daze and sat perched on a windowsill, relishing the aftertaste.
A man in a grey habit walked past me. He was whistling a tune.
I jumped up so fast that I trod on my own hem and nearly measured my length.
Colliding with a passing archdeacon stopped me from falling; he pushed me away and gave me a filthy look, which changed into fear and loathing when he recognised me.
I stammered an apology, then looked round for a grey habit.
Of course, all the Poor Brothers wear grey, and a quarter of the delegates were Brothers.
But then I heard the tune again, right at the far end of the cloister. I set off like a greyhound.
It’s a commonplace little tune, simple but cheerful, and there are words that go with it. As follows:
Long years ago, when I was young,
I spent my days a-shovelling dung.
I worked all day and half the night
And my young hands were far from white.