The Devil's Workshop

by Donnally Miller

  “Is the gem in this room?” asked Kanbold.

  “Would I tell you if it were?” replied Crazy Dog.

  “It is not here,” said Stampour, who had been ungagged.

  “Where is it?” demanded Kanbold.

  “I do not know,” said Stampour.

  “Keep silent!” said Crazy Dog.

  “You could not have lost it,” said Kanbold.

  “I could,” said Stampour.

  “You insect! You stupid insect! Aaaiee!” said Kanbold, who had allowed the attention he was paying to Crazy Dog’s thrusts to waver.

  At this point a new host of priests surged into the room, and Crazy Dog’s pirates were getting the worst of it. Crazy Dog himself was being pressed against the wall by Kanbold when he saw an open window and leapt for it. Just as his feet hit the sill, he saw Ruby in the street below leading a charge by the rest of his pirates.

  “Halt!” he shouted. His shout was not so effective as Kanbold’s had been earlier, but it did cause Kanbold to pause and look up at him perched in the window. “You are surrounded. If you look down you will see that your retinue of priests is being savagely attacked from the rear. I must ask you to surrender the gem to me.”

  “I do not have the gem!” cried Kanbold in mounting frustration. “Stampour stole it from me and now he declares he has lost it!”

  “So who has it?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Then why are we killing one another?”

  “This also I do not know.”

  “Neither do I. However, since you are now outnumbered, you are the ones who will die!” He waved to Ruby below, and she waved back. “For the Free Brethren!” he shouted and the massacre resumed. The gallants who had come for an afternoon of pleasure were fighting the pirates who had interrupted their assignations. The pirates with Crazy Dog were fighting the priests, and the priests were fighting them, as well as the new pirates from the Seahawk who, tide be damned, had just arrived to rescue Crazy Dog.

  It was then, as the fighting reached a crescendo of savagery, that a sound like thunder was heard, a series of deafening rumbling thumps coming from the hills in the direction of Slothikay. The traveling man, who had just arrived and was seated across the street from the inn, looked up in that direction and saw appearing over the city’s rooftops a dark and hairy face. It was the face of Maddibimbo himself, come to recover his eye. He stood, towering over the town, a huge, hideous and hirsute figure, his face grimacing in rage, his mouth wide, with teeth like boulders, his nostrils distended, and above his nose, where his one monstrous eye should have been, a gaping hole. He turned his head about, as though trying to see, his chin tilted towards the sky. Then, turning down, he seemed to become cognizant of the inn, and recognized it as the destination he sought. He leaned down and grasped the roof in his mighty hands. Contorting his face with the effort, he lifted the roof off the top of the building, held it in his hands for a moment as though in wonderment at what he had found, and then tossed it to the ground, where it crushed several carts and a few unlucky bystanders.

  The embattled denizens of the courtyard broke off their fighting and looked up in amazement at the enraged, blinded face of the huge monkey god that seemed as if regarding them from above. Maddibimbo turned his face about, one way and then another, almost as though he could see. He reached down with his hands and felt about in the courtyard, his great fingers knocking the chairs and tables around, as people scattered out of the way. His hands found the walls and then gradually walked up them on their fingertips, until he’d found the third floor. Feeling the doors, as if counting them, he found the door he sought and pushed it open. Inside, Clovis and Portia cowered on a bed, the bedclothes strewn across the floor. It was evident that while the rest of the inn had been the scene of desperate searches and the clash of arms, these two had been entirely consumed with one another. Their idyll was now brought to an end as the left hand of Maddibimbo violently pushed aside first Clovis and then Portia, and finally overturned their bed to reveal a leather satchel. The left hand was then joined by the right and the two hands together opened the satchel, divulging the enormous emerald it had contained. The fighting, meanwhile, had come to a halt as the combatants watched the monkey god lift the emerald and place it in the gaping hole in his forehead. Having done so, he looked about and located Stampour, still tied to his chair. He picked up the chair and placed it in the courtyard. Then, with a sound like mountains falling in, he put his foot on poor Stampour and ground him into the earth. Bellowing defiantly the holy words, “Oloye! Ufthay! Ufthay! Olo-o-oye!” he withdrew his foot and then turned back to the hills, his stamping feet making thunderous rumbling thumps, as he receded into the distance.

  Crazy Dog and Kanbold regarded the carnage around them, looking at the many bodies of priests cut down in their robes, pirates disemboweled by the sacred blades, and others, gallants and whores, lying where they were slain. There were moans coming from the wounded and the dying. Kanbold went limping among the remaining priests, helping those that were hurt, and saying prayers over those past hurting. Crazy Dog tried to gather his pirates together. Ruby’s right arm had been almost severed, but fortunately the ship’s surgeon was there and he managed to save it, though it was almost useless to her after that night. She could barely move the muscles and there was little feeling along most of its length. Crazy Dog told his men to gather their dead, they would take them to the Seahawk and give them burial at sea. It had been a bitter and a sorrowful exploit altogether, many good men killed, and no gem to show for it. At least he’d taken the Queen of Bel Harbor, that was pure profit, but it would be awhile before the Free Brethren would recover from this dismal episode.

  It was now late in the day. It had been a hot one, and the shadows were lengthening as Crazy Dog and his pirates in a sullen mood went walking away from the inn to meet Barnacle Jack. Crazy Dog thought he saw a figure he recognized, a short man with a broad-brimmed hat, rambling along on the other side of the street. He approached him, but as he did so he felt a crackling under his feet and smelled something burning in the air. It startled him so much he looked about and when he looked up again he’d lost sight of the man.

  “You came three days late and you’re a sorry fool.” It was the stranger now who had him by the shoulder. “What did you expect?”

  “I expected I’d pull a great success out of a murky mess, the way I always do. And how did you sneak up on me?”

  “Had you come when I told you you’d have found just three thieves and a priceless jewel, but you chose to wait till the priests walked in. Well, you’ll not be laying the blame for that at my door.”

  Crazy Dog, however, was not resigned to being found in the wrong. He told the stranger just what he thought of all his crafty schemes, and added that an honest pirate like himself would not be listening to the likes of him again.

  “Now if you want to make up for your losses,” the traveling man went on as though Crazy Dog hadn’t spoken, “perhaps there are some escaped slaves you could round up.”

  “No, no, I’ll none of that business, thank you. I will happily embrace robbery, kidnapping, murder and the blackest blasted treachery and I’ll do it in the name of the King, but I’ll not stoop to being a slave master. I’m the leader of the Free Brethren, and it’s freedom I embrace in all its forms and always have.” Ruby leaned on him just then, she was having trouble walking and the pain in her arm was something fierce. “Ruby, my love, what have we done to you?”

  “I’ll not be the sweetest thing in your bed tonight. That I can promise you.”

  “Many’s the night you’ve not been a sweet morsel, but you’re a good woman still, for all that.” And the two of them looked at each other and laughed, though when she laughed Ruby was squeezing out some tears also, it hurt that bad.

  “So where’s Barnacle Jack then?” asked Crazy Dog. They’d come to where they were to meet, but Jack was nowhere around.

  “He’s likely gone for a pint, don’t you think
?” said Ruby.

  Crazy Dog looked about. No, he’d not gone for a pint. Jack was not the man to go for a pint when business was appointed to be done. It was a black feeling he had inside himself. “Ruby,” he said, “we’ll wait here a bit. But Barnacle Jack’s not the man to miss an appointment, not one he swore he’d make. Not unless he’d a marlinspike up his nostril that killed him dead . . . Now I’ve said it I hope I’ve not made it true.”

  Crazy Dog wiped his brow and looked about himself. The day was turning far worse than he could have imagined. He could almost hear the good fortune he’d always kept in his back pocket skittering away down the Coast. He needed to hurt somebody. Pointing to the man standing next to him he snarled angrily, “You! What good’s your God damn ear?!” Grabbing him Crazy Dog wrestled him down, took out his knife and cut off his ear. There was a howl of pain and great gouts of blood pouring on the man’s face. Crazy Dog himself was covered in it.

  “Ah, that makes a man feel better.” His earless comrade was cursing him steadily with a rant of furious oaths. Crazy Dog put the ear between his teeth and tore it in half. Then he grinned and said, “We’d best find him. I’ll kill someone if I’ve no profit from the Queen of Bel Harbor.”

  Across the street, the short man with a broad-brimmed hat watched as Crazy Dog led his loyal and very tired pirates up the road. The moon, almost full, cast them in silhouette as it rose in the east. It was a fine sight. Almost . . . Almost . . . Almost he howled silently. He turned to Fergus, “Let’s find a place to stay the night.”

  “Alright. I don’t think that inn’s in any shape to –“

  “I seem to remember I lived around here once. Turn left here . . .” and he led him away into a part of town that was just a bit shadier, a bit older it seemed than most of the rest. The street wound down to an old manse that stood alone, apart from the buildings around it. It looked like it hadn’t been lived in in years. The roof was sunk in in places, and there were many shingles missing. The grounds around the house were grown out in weeds, but as they drew near a sickly yellow light came on in a crazy, cracked window high up in a turret in back. “Yes, this is the place. Just like I remember it.”

  But the last image of that night belongs to Kanbold, standing with his dead acolytes laid at his feet, their lifeless hands still clutching the disgraced blades. As he raised his voice in the traditional threnody for the dead there was a glitter of awe in his eye. His was the face of a man who, having endured much, has at last seen the face of his god.

  Chapter Twelve

  ONCE MORE UNDER THE SUN

  “Have you ever noticed that the simpler something is, the more difficult it is to understand?”

  “Under no circumstances can that be true,” answered Tom. He sat holding a portion of Colophus’ memoirs. “Unless you’d be playing games with the meanings of your words, because the word simple has no other meaning than easy to understand.”

  “Not in my dictionary.”

  “You have a dictionary now?”

  “I’m compiling one. A dictionary is indispensable for an author such as myself. After all, author is just short for authority. I should have done this long ago.”

  “You have to make sure of the meanings of your words, is that it?”

  “Oh, no, couldn’t care less about that. But without a dictionary how do I know if my spelling is correct?”

  “It’s spelling that worries you, is it? Well I’d not waste the tiniest trace of thought in that direction. There’s no one ever likely to read your writing, unless it be myself, and in the matter of spelling I am generally clueless.”

  “I don’t care about you. It’s God I care about. After all, He’s the one who put me here to perform this task. And He can be such a niggler. Hate to get it all done and arrive at the pearly gates and He says, ‘Not so quick there. Here on page seven, don’t you know how to spell onomatopoeia? Afraid it‘s back to Purgatory for a few eons till you get it right.’”

  “You really believe God cares about your spelling? With the affairs of the entire universe to attend to, He’s concerned with that?”

  “I would think so. You know what it says in the gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word: And the Word was with God: And the Word was God.’”

  “And what word was that?”

  “Well . . . the word God I suppose.”

  “And you’re needing a dictionary so you’ll know the spelling of the word God?”

  “No, of course not. I need a dictionary to know how to spell onomatopoeia. Anyway, do you want to know the definition of simple in my dictionary?”

  “I’m certain I do not. Perhaps then the gospel should be saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word: And the Word was with God: And the Word was onomatopoeia: And God needed a dictionary.’”

  “Now you’re having fun with me.”

  “Not at all, but it strikes me as presumptuous to assume that all words have a meaning, which is what you do when you make a dictionary.”

  “A word without a meaning wouldn’t be a word. It would be no more than a sound.”

  “So every word has its meaning. Has every meaning its word?”

  “It’s difficult to say. If there were a meaning that didn’t have a word I wouldn’t be able to tell you what it was.”

  “So maybe there are meanings out there just waiting for their words to come into existence.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe my problem is that all my meanings don’t have words, and the words I’m using mean something different from what I mean to say.”

  “In that case maybe we mean to talk about something else.”

  “Yes. To get back to what I was saying, it’s the simplest things that are the most difficult to understand. Take stories, for instance, narratives. There are all kinds of plots, some of extreme complexity, but at their core they’re all the same. There are some where a man overcomes a monster to save a woman, or overcomes some other difficulty, and once again whatever difficulty he overcomes the reward seems to be he wins a woman. Or there are stories of rags to riches, a person of humble origin rises to become someone of some esteem and once again invariably he seems to marry a princess. There are comedies in which the young lovers outsmart their curmudgeonly parents and marry at the end, and tragedies which are tragical precisely because the young lovers are thwarted and end up dead instead of in bed. These are the general sorts of stories we encounter, and perhaps you can see a pattern emerging. In some cases the plots are highly elaborate, involving letters that are lost and then found at precisely the right moment, or twins that are recognized or not recognized as the case may be, shipwrecks and so forth, all the implements in the diligent plotter’s tool chest, but they only serve to disguise a basic template, the fundamental story which is constantly being re-enacted. The hero and the heroine are the archetypal stand-ins for the man and the woman who unite so that a new life can come into the world. This is really the only story we ever tell ourselves. And there, having seen through all the narrative complexities, we come to the very core of story which is shrouded in a fundamental and impenetrable mystery, and that is how do a man and a woman unite to create a new life? Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “Oh, well that’s alright then. That has all been explained to me by a philosophical gentleman of Slothikay. It has something to do with active and passive blood.”

  “Active and passive blood?”

  “Yes. And a sponge comes into it.”

  Colophus pondered this in silence. Then he asked, “Are you sure you got that right?”

  “Oh, absolutely. I couldn’t be mistaken.”

  Colophus reflected on this some more. Eventually he said, “Your friend must be just a staggering intellect. Absolutely among the forefront of the greatest philosophers, because I must say his explanation doesn’t cast the slightest light on anything.”

  “I seem to have a knack for engaging in conversation with gentlemen of great philosophical acumen.”

  “Referring to myself do you mean? Than
k you for the kind word.”

  “Though it’s turning into a bit of a slog getting through your memoirs.”

  “Of course it is. I would not have it any other way. But you know I had to live through it all first. Talk about a slog. All you’re doing is reading it. You have no grounds for complaint. And let me make it clear that I do not welcome criticism, nor do I take suggestions. The writing is punishment enough.”

  “But it just seems to be the most pointless chronicle. There are catalogs of how often you pissed, and how often you shat, and how loudly you belched and various idiotic and trivial thoughts you had. Things like cutting your toenails. You know in most memoirs that sort of thing is omitted; they aren’t really the sorts of events I would expect to see recorded.” Tom took a sip of the sherry, the flavor of which he had grown remarkably fond.

  “But these are precisely the sorts of things that need to be recorded. Otherwise they would be forgotten. That’s the whole reason writing was invented. There was a need to write down all the things that people kept forgetting, the things that weren’t worth remembering. There’s no point in recording memorable events. They would be remembered in any case.”

  “So you record the things that aren’t worth remembering?”

  “Precisely. Like this conversation we’re having now for instance. Who would ever want to remember this later? That’s why I need to write it down.” Colophus looked around himself, searching through the various papers that lay scattered about. “Now where did I put my pen?”

  “I’m certain I haven’t any idea.”

  “This is why I need more pockets. You know apart from writing, pockets are probably mankind’s most useful invention. In fact mankind’s need for pockets predates even his need for pants, as witness the quiver, or the pouches in marsupials, such as the wallaby. Wallabies do have pouches don’t they?”