The crowd quieted and turned to look at him, listening. There were still pockets of giggling and sighing and moaning, but the simple fact that he could hear them meant people were paying attention. Matt sang on, remembering how many verses Childs had chronicled, and choosing among them carefully. He thought he as having a good effect-but remembering what one professor had told his class, about which feminine profession wore green sleeves in the high Middle Ages, he could only hope. He struck the last chord and bowed, doffing his cap as the crowd broke into applause with cries of “More! More!” But before he could begin gain, several women of all ages crowded in, eyes shining, with such choice comments as, “Can you finger me as well as you do your lute, minstrel?”
“Shall we make music together?”
“Is it true you only sing about things you cannot do?”
“Never run away with a musician,” Matt counseled. At least they had crowded out the matron with the first invitation… A shout of anger, the sound of a blow, and a chorus of cries of alarm and excitement The women swung around, avid for the sight, and Matt’s heart sank. Was that what came of singing about broken hearts in this universe? Apparently not-the wench who was the cause of it all stood to the side, eyes glowing as she watched two stalwart youths face off, each with a knife, one with his shirt open and the love bite already swelling on his chest, the other with a day-old mark on his neck and all his clothes buttoned more tightly than he no doubt wished. “Villain! She is mine!” He shouted, and leaped forward, slashing at his rival.
Chapter 13
The rival jumped back, but not far enough-a streak of crimson appeared across his belly. The girl screamed, though whether with horror, delight, or both, Matt couldn’t tell. The rival blanched and leaped farther back-into a wall of hands that shoved him forward to meet the blade of his foe. He howled with anger and slammed a fist into the other man’s jaw-a fist with a knife sticking up from the top. The jealous lover reeled back, blood welling from a gash on his cheek, then charged back with a roar. The rival lunged, but the jealous lover blocked the blade with a cloth-wrapped fist and struck for the chest. The rival blocked, but he had no wrapping, and the blade nicked his knuckles. Heshoved hard with a shout of rage, though, then sprang back to yank a shawl from a woman in the crowd, who shrieked protest-but he paid no attention, only began whipping his fist in circles to wrap the cloth around his forearm as a shield. The jealous lover struck before he could finish. The rival blocked and stabbed, but the jealous lover blocked, too, and they sprang apart. The crowd booed. They actually booed, incensed that nobody had been slashed. That did it. Matt decided he had to put a stop to this, somehow-especially since he was hearing angry shouts from two other places in the crowd, and quick glances showed a fistfight breaking out off to the left, and a couple of older men going after each other with cudgels, off on the right. Matt swung his lute into firing position, took aim, and struck a chord-not that anybody could hear it. They couldn’t hear his voice, either, amidst all the yelling, but he sang anyway: “Gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside! Down by the riverside, down by the riverside! Gonna lay down my sword and shield, Down by the riverside, Ain’t gonna study war no more!”
Nobody could hear him, of course, but he went on singing doggedly away. It did cross his mind that a religious song might attract some very unwelcome attention in a country like this, but though the particular song on his lips might have been a spiritual, it didn’t actually mention the Deity or the Savior, or any other specifically religious words. Maybe it was those very associations that gave it the power to cut through the magical inertia of Latruria, for it did seem to be working-the duelists in front of him slowed, the anger fading, uncertainty replacing it until, finally, the jealous lover hurled down his knife with a snarl-right between the rival’s toes-then turned on his heel and stalked off. The onlookers crowded back out of his way, wary of his thunderous face. The rival watched him go, frowning, then sheathed his knife and turned away. The girl who had been the cause of it all ran to touch him on the arm, but he shook her off with a snarl and strode away into the crowd. Neither felt proud of himself, that was obvious. The girl glared after the rival in indignation, then pivoted to glare after the jealous lover in fury, then finally tossed her head, a dangerous light in her eyes, and stepped up to a good-looking youth who had been watching. “Would you forsake a damsel so easily as that, handsome lad?‘
The boy answered with a slow grin. “Nay, surely not! Not one so fair as yourself! Come, shall we dance?”
“Pay the piper first,” the girl said-and sure enough, now that the excitement was over, an older man was unlimbering a small set of bagpipes. Matt felt a bit indignant about the competition, but he couldn’t really claim that the man was horning in on a songster’s territory. The young fellow paid him, and the piper coaxed his instrument into a wheeze. Matt winced. No, he certainly didn’t have to worry about competition. The bag inflated, the pipes droned, and the chanter began a merry melody. The boy and girl began to dance. Others joined them, and soon a score of couples were prancing merrily over the turf while the sounds of the other two fights ceased. Matt glanced at the two areas uneasily, but all four men were still on their feet, though glaring blackly at one another, so Matt decided to take a little credit for it. Not aloud, of course-especially with that piper going. He was into full swing now, and if he wasn’t very good, he was certainly loud. Well, as long as the young folk were dancing, they couldn’t very well be fornicating-although, looking at some of their movements, Matt wasn’t all that sure. The postures and undulations became steadily more suggestive, and Matt turned away, suddenly realizing how very much he was missing Alisande. As long as he’d been staying busy, he hadn’t thought of her more than once every couple of hours, and that in a rather platonic way-but work had suddenly begun to remind him that he was male, and therefore to remind him of his chosen. What was it doing to Pascal? There he went, flying by in a stamping, hip-thrusting dance, movements that Matt was quite sure he had never known until now-but he was a fast learner, and the girl who was teaching him was very dedicated. Not very pretty, but dedicated-and with a figure well calculated to cheer a disappointed lover. Then they were gone, faces flushed with the dancing, but also with drinking. Matt looked about him and saw that they weren’t the only ones. Only an hour after sunset, and most of the young folk were staggering-and at least half of their elders, too, the ones who were still standing. Of the forms on the ground, some were madly coupling; the ones who weren’t, were passed out cold, reeking of ale. Most of the bushes were shaking their leaves and rustling, but the ones that weren’t emitted the sounds of abused stomachs rebelling. Come to think of it, the innkeepers may have been giving the ale away for free, but they weren’t exactly shabbily dressed. Matt tried to picture each of the three he’d seen, noticed that they were all wearing unpatched clothes of good cloth and that their wives wore jewelry. That might have come from selling food and renting rooms, but he had a notion a lot of it came from selling beer, too. By local standards, they were wealthy-butif they could afford to give the stuff away to buy off potential troublemakers, it wasn’t because they charged high prices. In fact, the first innkeeper’s prices weren’t bad at all. If he’d been doing well, it was only because his countrymen drank a great deal of beer. Everything considered, Matt decided, it was lucky that medieval Europe hadn’t had access to much in the way of narcotics. Pascal went whirling by in the round of dancing again, laughing too hard and eyeing his partner with desperate purpose. He had definitely thrown himself into it with a certain wildness, with the air of a man who is anxious to forget. “Dance with me, handsome minstrel!”
Matt turned in surprise. The woman was about thirty, still attractive, and her figure was generous. “Why thank you.” Matt forced a smile. “But if the minstrel dances, who will play the music?”
“Why, the piper.” She swayed closer, fluttering her eyelashes. Matt thought he must be a fool or a testosterone deprivation case, to feel only t
he slightest stirring of response. “The piper will tire.”
“But will the pipe?” she asked, and stretched up to plant her lips on his in a firm, demanding kiss. Her tongue teased his lips, and he was shocked to feel them part-by reflex? But her body was pressing against his, he could feel each curve all too warmly, and he realized it had been far too long since he had spent an evening alone with Alisande… The thought of his wife cooled his heating ardor, and he broke the kiss, gasping. “I… thank you, damsel, but-”
She broke into a peal of laughter. “Damsel? Why, thank you, gallant sir, but ‘tis ten years and more since I was wed!”
Matt knew better than to ask if she was a widow. He was dimly aware that the crowd had mostly swirled away, that they were standing at the fringes now. “It has only been a year for me, plus a few months. No, my wife and I are still very new to the business, and still very excited about it.”
“Give it a few years,” the veteran advised. “You will find it boring enough-and find that a kiss and caress on the side will rouse you to greater heights with your wife.” She demonstrated with another kiss. This time Matt was warned, and he kept his lips firmly closed-until he felt a hand smoothing over his buttock and sliding around toward the front. He gasped out of sheer surprise, and that maddening tongue deepened the kiss. She felt his response and moved back with a low, throaty chuckle. “So then, you are not so faithful as all that, are you? Come, sweet chuck!” And she kissed him again. This was definitely too much. Never mind that a healthy body will respond to any touch-Matt didn’t want to respond, damn it! He took the lady by the waist and pushed her firmly away-but she clung, her mouth a veritable suction cup… Pain rocketed through his head, a rocket that must have been heading for the stars, because they were there suddenly, and the world was tilting, more and more, until it jarred up behind him.
Dimly, he could hear the woman chuckle again, feel her hands, though they weren’t searching in any way amorous this time, they were searching for his purse, and there was another pair of hands busy, too, trying to wrench at his belt, his sword… Then his vision cleared just enough for him to see a huge blade sweeping down at him out of the darkness. Panic shot through him and he tried to roll, but his body wouldn’t respond… A roar filled his ears. Something slapped up under his shoulder and sent him spinning. Under the circumstances, he didn’t mind. The roar broke again, and there was a lot of screaming, some of it masculine. There was a pounding that faded. Finally, Matt managed to push himself up off the ground. The world tilted around him, then reversed direction. He caught his breath and swallowed his stomach back down to where it belonged, squeezed his eyes shut, waited for his inner tilting to stop, then tried looking again, and saw… A great tawny wall of fur. It looked vaguely familiar, so he tilted his glance upward, up and up and straight into a grin-two of them, and Manny’s eyes twinkling with amusement up on top. “You said I could not eat them, man,” the manticore said, “but you did not tell them that.”
“Th-Thanks, Manny.” Matt pulled himself up to a sitting position, amazed that he ever could have thought this beast was his enemy. “They… they got a lot closer that time… didn’t they?”
“It is easier to overcome a man,” Manny reflected, “if you do not give him a chance to fight.”
“There is that,” Matt agreed. “Get him busy with a willing wench, then sap him from behind.”
“It somewhat galled the wench,” Manny observed, “that you were not willing.”
Matt smiled ruefully. “Or at least, that she had to keep me rolling for a while before my engine would catch.”
The manticore frowned. “ ‘Engine’? What device did you use?”
“Only a lute,” Matt sighed, “but apparently that qualifies as a lethal weapon in this universe.” He looked around and saw his instrument, miraculously uncrushed. He took it into his lap, checking, but finding no more than a scratch. “Remind me to be very careful who’s around when I sing songs.”
“With all due respect, minstrel-knight,” Manny said, “I doubt that it was either your words or your songs that brought on this… encounter.”
“No.” Matt stared down at the lute, brooding. “It’s the same sorcerer who’s been trying to kill me all along, isn’t it? But why?”
“Why not?” Manny replied. “A manticore needs no more reason for killing than hunger. Perhaps your foe needs not even that.”
“Am I that big a threat? Just me alone?”
“It would seem so-and in the midst of this carnival, who would know you had been slain for any reason more than jealousy over a woman?”
“If anybody even bothered to look that far,” Matt muttered. “Yes. Perfect cover for a murder, wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps not perfect,” the manticore said judiciously. “If it had been I who did it, now-”
“Uh, yes, I’m sure you would have managed it much more efficiently.” For some odd reason, Matt wasn’t in the mood for hearing the gory details of the manticore’s no doubt fabulous plan. He climbed to his feet, trying to ignore the piercing pain in his head. “Let’s say it may not have been perfect, but it was certainly good enough.”
“Nay. Almost.”
“Right. Almost good enough.” Matt took an experimental step. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? Thanks to you, Manny.”
“It was nothing,” the manticore assured him. “Anything for a friend.”
“I’ll try to return the favor some day.” Matt looked around him at the merrymakers, most of whom were no longer standing. “It just makes you wonder why putative Christians are so busy breaking the Commandments.”
The manticore winced. “Please! If you must use strong language-”
“Uh, yes, sorry again,” Matt assured him. He’d forgotten that the creature had been so long a pawn of evil that words associated with virtue might be offensive to it. “And I suppose nobody can be openly a Chr-religious, even under the new regime. In fact, most of them probably aren’t at all.”
“Not so. King Boncorro has let it be known that he will not move against any who worship as they please.”
“And nobody believes him. They think it might be a ruse to bring all the believers out into the open, where he can cut them down. Having been persecuted for a hundred years might tend to make a person paranoid. Besides, there’s no assurance Boncorro won’t be bumped off, and his throne usurped by a sorcerer-and then where would they be, the people who had started going to church again? Still, you should be able to tell them by the way they live-by moral conduct.”
“Not under the old king,” Manny said. “Even if people lived morally in private, they did not necessarily want it known.”
“Morality became a matter of taste, eh? And Boncorro hasn’t seen any reason to change that.”
“Other than to let people who want to be moral, be so, no.”
Matt nodded. “Besides, the moral folk wouldn’t have left spouse and children to go trooping south to Venarra-and the kids might be in rebellion against moral parents as easily as they might be running away because they had no morals.”
“You might say it is unpopular,” Manny said thoughtfully. “Moral living is not considered to be in the best of taste. Your northern prudery never did have all that strong a hold here. The folk of ancient Reme lived lives quite scandalous by your standards. Their descendants have been somewhat tempered by the preachers, but not overly much.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about the Roman orgies,” Matt said, “but I thought they were only for the people who could afford them.”
“Smaller purses yielded smaller vices,” the manticore agreed. “But the city was Reme, mortal, not Rome.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot-the other brother won the fight here.”
“ ‘Other’
brother?“ Manny frowned down at him. ”Why should Remus have been the ‘other’ brother? Surely that would have been Romulus!“
Matt was about to protest that the whole story of Romulus and Remus had just been a myth, but was hit by a s
udden stab of uncertainty. Sure, it had been a myth in his universe, but here it might have been documented fact. “They were orphans who were suckled by a she-wolf, right?”
“Nay. Their nurse was a wildcat.”
Matt let that sink in. If the whole story of the she-wolf were just a symbol to express the inner nature of the Romans, what did that make their analogs here? A lynx was just as much of a hunter as a wolf, but went after smaller prey, and wasn’t anywhere nearly as rapacious-except in self-defense, or defense of its young. What kind of people could have established an empire just because they were good at self-defense? Paranoids, probably. If they defended themselves all the way into North Africa, Spain, Asia Minor, and England just to make sure nobody would attack them… Or diplomats? That had a better sound to it. After all, in the myth of the founding of Rome, Romulus was the one who had started building the wall for a future city, and Remus was the one who had made fun of him and jumped over the wall to show how useless it would be. Then Romulus had killed him… But here, Romulus had lost-and his city had been founded by the descendants of the man who didn’t believe in walls. “So Reme has no wall to guard it.”
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