Fanuilh

by Daniel Hood

  Wandering the town, exploring it without noticing the sights. Daydreaming at his window, staring out at the harbor and ignoring the view. Swimming off Tarquin's breakwater.

  He shuffled the pages of notes around, debating trying to do something with them. His list of suspects no longer lay beneath them, stowed safely now in Coeccias's pouch, but he remembered it clearly. He now had faces to attach to some of the names.

  The druggist, the merchant, the cooing woman, the minstrel. He thought he might as well add the barmaid, Donoé. The last three he had not seen, and he wondered how he could ever possibly find them on Fanuilh's sketchy remembrance. He was getting places, he knew, but if he had to continue running around the town in punctured boots and a perpetually sodden cloak, he thought he might confess to the murder himself.

  With an explosive sigh he pushed the papers away and went to his trunk. Beneath a layer of small clothes and trinkets lay a bulging sack made of sailcloth. He snatched it out and upended it on his blanket.

  Silver and gold coins clinked together with the happy sound of large amounts, and two or three gems winked dully, their vibrant color only a memory in the shadowy garret.

  A fortune by Southwark standards, where a single silver coin was his monthly rent. He had over fifty, and a like number of gold coins, and he knew it little mattered that the faces and inscriptions on them were of kings and in languages that had never been heard of in Southwark. Gold was gold and silver was silver, no matter whose head was on the coin.

  He picked out two of the gold coins, and hesitated before picking out a third and dropping them into his belt pouch. When the sack was back in his trunk with its contents replaced, he left his room and walked briskly out into the street.

  Liam bought himself a new, heavier cloak that was supposed to be weatherproof, and ordered several suits of warm winter clothes from a tailor in the rich quarter. The man bustled and fawned nicely when shown the gold coin, and promised "eminently satisfactory results" in a few days. Liam left feeling slightly better, and warmer already in his new cloak.

  A cobbler repaired his holed boot while he waited, and took an order for two new pairs with gape-mouthed pleasure. A leatherworker yielded up a beautifully tooled belt and a proper scholar's writing case, made to hang from the belt, with pockets for pens, paper and ink, blotter and seals.

  His maps rattling around in the roomy writing case, snug in his waterproof cloak and dry toes wriggling in his. fixed boots, Liam felt good despite the rain and the blank pages in his room. He bought himself a large lunch in the inn Coeccias had led him to the night before and enjoyed it thoroughly.

  When he was done, tolling bells announced that it was time to visit Lady Necquer, and he set out for the merchant's home. The rain still poured steadily down, now gurgling in the overflowing gutters, and the afternoon sky might well have been night, but he whistled, and felt well.

  "Master Rhenford," Lares said with unaffected pleasure when he opened the door. "The lady was not sure you'd come."

  Liam merely smiled and allowed himself to be let in and led up to the second floor.

  Lady Necquer looked pale, but delighted to see him, as though he were a reprieve.

  "Sir Liam! I doubted your coming!"

  "I could not stay away, madam. It is a great pleasure to enjoy your company." He spoke blandly, the statement only a pleasantry, but her breath caught.

  "I ... " She faltered, and a silence yawned in which Liam fidgeted uncomfortably. He wondered what he could possibly have said, and thought of the handsome, angry young man at the door the other day.

  Lady Necquer smiled weakly and fixed her eyes on her lap, spots of color reddening her pale cheeks.

  "I beg your pardon if I am skittish, Sir Liam. I thought you were ... an echo, perhaps." She forced herself to look at him and the smile grew more assured as she gestured him to a seat across from her. "Please, sit, and tell me more of your travels."

  He took the offered seat, peering curiously at her. "I'm sorry to be a mere echo, madam. I don't think your husband asked me to come to bore you with repetition."

  Something in his tone, or perhaps his mention of her husband, relaxed her, and the unnatural blush faded. Glad of it, he went on.

  "If there is anything you need to discuss, madam, or if you'd rather be alone, I would gladly ... " He let the sentence hang, expressing his readiness to help with open hands. She shifted in her seat. allowing the smile to drop. The look of unhappiness that wrinkled her forehead and pursed her lips seemed very pretty to Liam, and the openness with which she shared her feeling made him feel somewhat special. It had been a long while since anyone had taken him into their confidence.

  "Your tendered help is as salve to my troubles, Sir Liam, and I thank you. Yet I am beset by troubles that I may not share with you, much as I'd like. For the time, it is good of you to keep me company. Now," she said briskly, trying to banish the tension with a bright smile, "we'll only have light talk. Tell me such things as you remember made you laugh."

  Having set the subject, she sat back and waited, her brow clear and her eyes bright. His mind was blank for a few moments. Nothing particularly funny had ever happened to him, and he found that all he could remember were the faces of other women, one and all in attitudes of sorrow or depression.

  Liam did not tell her this, but his look of consternation led her to prompt him a little, and presently he recalled a puppet show he had seen in a caravanserai in a desert country.

  Before long, he had a string of stories to tell, halfremembered snatches of the highly stylized comedies popular in his student days in Torquay, the antics of acrobats and clowns from the courts of distant kingdoms, folk tales told by wizened men in a hundred markets, and songs heard in taverns around the world. He even brought out an entire verse of "The Lipless Flutist," a fairly clean one, and half-sang, half-recited it for her in an embarrassed way.

  She laughed and clapped her hands when he was done, and he was struck anew by her youth and prettiness. He wondered again what could have upset her so, and thought angrily of the youth. Her unhappiness was obviously connected with him, and Liam cursed the man mildly.

  A comfortable silence followed her good-natured laughter at his poor rendition of "The Lipless Flutist," and he only spoke after a while because the question popped into his head.

  "When did you say your husband was returning? "

  "Your pardon?"she asked, starting from some daydream. "Oh, he returns tomorrow, I hope. He is so often away."

  He regretted the question, but she went on, sighing sadly. "So often I sit here alone, and feel his absence strongly. I wonder if he is wracked at sea, or taken by pirates, or bandits-they say there are bandits much abroad this year; On land, bandits wait for him; at sea, giant beasts, storms, the Teeth ... oh, the Teeth are far the worst."

  Shuddering, she dropped her eyes to her lap again, and Liam berated himself for upsetting her, though her returning to the Teeth interested him. So many lives in Southwark seemed to revolve around the grim rocks—Lady Necquer with her morbid fear, Marcius with his sunken ship, Tarquin with his spells. The only teeth in Southwark that had harmed him were Fanuilh's, and a cobbler had fixed that. He almost chuckled, but did not.

  "I'm sure he'll return in perfect health."

  She drew a deep breath and caught a smile. "Oh, I'm even surer than you, Sir Liam. But you'll grant me the right to worry, I hope." He offered her a small bow from his seat, and she continued lightly. "Now tell me, have you ever left anyone to wait for you? I'd wager you must have left weeping women in a hundred ports."

  "No," he said seriously, "I don't think so. I am very easy not to miss."

  She scoffed. "I can scarcely credit it, Sir Liam. Surely there is some love who drew you here to Southwark, a beauty who was planted on the docks, awaiting your return with weepy eyes and a kerchief soaked with tears."

  Lady Necquer was not flirting, he decided, but teasing. He shook his head, and noticed how
dark it was outside. Raindrops still trailed gold and silver on the panes. He would have to go soon.

  "Then if it was no woman, what drew you, who've seen the world over, to so remote a comer of it as Southwark?"

  "I had been shipwrecked for some months, madam," he lied, "on a desert isle far east and south of the Freeports. The ship that rescued me was bound here, and I was in no position to argue about its destination." He had indeed been stranded on an uncharted island, but the conditions were somewhat different from a shipwreck, and the things he had seen there would have unduly upset her, he was sure.

  Even the mention of a shipwreck dampened her spirits more than he would have wished.

  "I had no idea, Sir Liam. It must have been horrible." It was clear from her veiled eyes that she was imagining her own husband in such a position, and he frowned.

  "Oh, by no means. Very comfortable, really. It did not rain half so much as it does in Southwark, and was warm as summer the year round. I left it with some regret. Of course, I had none such as you to return to, madam. If I had, I probably would have swum the ocean to return."

  Lady Necquer smiled gratefully, and he rose reluctantly. "I'm afraid I must leave you now."

  She rose as well, and though she protested that he must not leave, she led the way to the stairs. There she made him promise to return the next day.

  "My husband is due to return in the evening. I am sure it'd like him if you waited with me, and dined with us."

  She seemed to mean it, and he assented with pleasure.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Lares waited with his cloak. With a smile he took it, ignoring the man's attempt to put it on his shoulders, knowing either he would have to stoop or the short old man stretch to accomplish the feat.

  "Tell me, goodman," he asked while he tied on the cloak, "who was the young fellow that was here yesterday?"

  The servant grimaced with disgust, and probably would have spat if he were outdoors.

  "That one! A conunon player, from the Golden Orb Company, rabble all! Lons is· his name, sir, and he plagues the lady unmercifully, all because she let him sing a few songs for her once. Most disgraceful, he is. He fits the old list, good sir, you know: 'vagrants and sturdy beggars, rogues, knaves and common players.' A very rogue, he is!"

  Liam smiled at Lares's vehemence, but the old man did not notice.

  "He was lurking about earlier, sir, but I happened to mention in a carrying tone that you were visiting the lady, and he skulked off in high dudgeon, I can tell you! A right rogue, that one!"

  His cloak secured to his satisfaction, Liam shook his head in proper disapproval at Lons's knavery, and left before he laughed.

  Once again he felt good in the rain, daring it to penetrate his snug cloak and patched boots. Even though it was a fair walk from the Point to his garret, he arrived with little more than a few drops on his face and hands, and decided that he had never spent money ·so well.

  Mistress Dorcas was waiting for him in the kitchen, a folded piece of paper clutched in her hands. She handed it to him, apprehension clear on her face.

  "It bears the Aedile's mark," she whispered fearfully, still mispronouncing the word.

  Annoyed, he tore the paper open and read the note quickly. Coeccias's unruly scrawl invited him to the same tavern they had visited the evening before, the White Grape, and suggested a time.

  "Is all well, Master Liam?"

  "No," he said grimly, "I'm to be executed tomorrow at dawn." He went up the stairs without another word.

  The hour Coeccias had set was only a little while off, but he took the time to put away his writing case, talcing out the maps and placing them on the table. When he went downstairs, his landlady was still holding a hand to her chest, breathing heavily.

  "Y'ought not to say suchlike," she scolded. "I thought my heart would leap from its seat, to hear of such, even in jest."

  "Well, why else would the Aedile summon me if not to execute me?"

  "Faith, I know not, Master Liam, but y'are very wicked." He was almost at the door when she regained enough composure to be nosy. "What was his discourse?"

  "He wanted to dine with me," Liam called over his shoulder as he left. "The condemned's last meal, he called it."

  He shut the door on her leaping heart.

  Coeccias was not at the tavern yet, but the White Grape was almost full and Liam was glad to catch the last open table. The girl who brought him the wine he asked for looked at him strangely, recognizing him from the night before and that afternoon.

  Sipping the vinegary wine, he rested his elbows on the table and surveyed the customers of the inn. They were quiet, respectable types, not so rich as to belong in the quarter further up the hill, but not given to the noisy dens lower down by the harbor. They sat close to their tables and talked in low voices that suggested sobriety and mildly serious talk, not secrecy. He thought he and Coeccias had probably looked that way the night before and would look that way tonight, and wondered how many more nights they would look so before they had found Tarquin's murderer.

  Or before we give up, he mused over a particularly sour mouthful. If the dragon will let us give up.

  He did not want to think about Tarquin, or Fanuilh, and cast back to his afternoon with Lady Necquer. She was a pretty, refined young innocent, such as he had forgotten existed. Years at sea and in foreign lands had left him unused to dealing with Taralon's well-bred, though he had once been counted high in their ranks. Her problems interested him. They were different from his own, problems of the living, not the dead, and he turned to considering them.

  This Lons, a mere player, hounded her, undoubtedly out of passion, because of her pale beauty. A part of him did not blame the man, but mostly he disliked Lons's arrogant voice and handsome face, as well as his rude presumption.

  The man was an actor, traditionally one of the lower classes. The list Lares had quoted was from an old law, naming players and the others as undesirables who might be subjected to various fines and punishments just for being what they were. The law no longer stood, but the old prejudices still survived. Though Liam did not share them, he understood them, and knew it must be painful for Lady Necquer to be plagued by one she must consider beneath her.

  She must unwittingly have led the boy on, asking him to sing for her and probably showing the same warm approval as she had shown his stories.

  Of course, she doesn't think I'm likely to pester her like Lons, because I've such an innocent face.

  Liam grinned ruefully into his cup, and looked up to see Coeccias.

  "Now what brings such sunny summer to your visage, Rhenford? Have you flushed our quarry?"

  Shaking his head, Liam gestured the Aedile to a seat, which he took with a wry smile.

  "No, just enjoying a joke at my own expense."

  "Then the day has not gone well for you?"

  "No worse than yesterday."

  Coeccias eyed him curiously and gave his order to the serving girl.

  "You should not drink the wine here, Rhenford. The best they have in the house graces the wooden board over the door."

  "I'd noticed."

  The girl brought Coeccias a mug of beer, and he sipped from it before speaking in a low tone that seemed to fit the quiet tavern.

  "Had you no luck with Marcius?"

  "I have an appointment with him tomorrow. very early. I told him I had served Tarquin, and that seemed to give him a start. He asked me if I knew any magic, and was very disappointed when I did not. I'll try to sound him out a little more tomorrow."

  "You think he killed the wizard for a failure of magic?" The theory clearly attracted the Aedile; he leaned even further forward with· an almost laughably serious expression.

  "Well, it was one of his ships that crashed on the Teeth. If he'd had some contract with Tarquin, then it would seem Tarquin did not live up to it." Coeccias leaned back with a small smile of satisfaction, and Liam qualified his statement. "I would no
t be in too much of a hurry to arrest him, though. He didn't exactly go white and confess when I mentioned Tarquin's name."

  "Shrewd ones never do, Rhenford. But I'll grant your doubts. And as it seems you've done your work, I'll report on mine."

  He had gone to see Viyescu early in the day, and hinted about a girl who was known to have been an acquaintance of the druggist, and who had bragged in her cups of knowing a certain powerful wizard.

  "Though by straight and true I'm not supposed to do such, it was wondrous effective, a great spur to him. There were no bloody confessions, true, but just a few hours later he barred his shop early and found his way to a suite of rented rooms in the lower quarters. A man of mine followed him, and when our druggist left, sore disappointed, he made some discreet inquiries."

  The Aedile paused, it seemed, for effect, and leaned back, waiting smugly to be asked the outcome of the questions. Liam waited too, and looked around the common room with an ostentatiously apathetic air. For a few moments, both were silent, before Coeccias's desire to tell overcame his desire to make Liam ask, and he resumed his report with a sour grunt.

  The rooms, the owner of the house reported, were rented by a young lady who always arrived masked and cloaked, though the rent was brought to him by a common messenger. The lady was only there a few nights out of every month, but had, on occasion in the past, received a robed and hooded visitor, presumably male. Neither had been there recently, but the rent was still brought by the messenger every month.

  "So, what make you of that?"

  "Viyescu keeps a mistress."

  "No," the burly officer said scornfully. "A hooded, robed visitor? Rented rooms and great secrecy? It's clear we've found the wizard's bawd!"

  Liam frowned and shook his head. "Wizards aren't the only people who wear robes, Master Aedile. Priests do too, and some officials, and I've known rich men who affect them to seem sophisticated. What's more, men who value their appearance of virtue have been known to wear disguises when indulging their vices. You think Viyescu went there to warn the girl about your investigation. What I think is far more likely is that Viyescu went there so that his mistress could soothe his fears and worries. You must have startled him a great deal, and he felt the need of her comfort."