Flood Tide

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Heh! Smart of them," Farren chuckled. "Did they have the sense to let you go?"

  "No. The third one still wanted to ask me some questions. He asked me if I knew my catechism, and I did, so I recited it. Then he asked me if the teachers at the school ever made fun of the catechism or the List of the Duties, or anything like that. I said: 'No, they're too busy teaching fractions and reading.' Some of the people laughed, and the priests didn't like that."

  "Indeed they wouldn't," Farren muttered. "Sanctimony can't bear ridicule."

  "So then I said: 'My school's a good school. It has to be, or my father wouldn't have got it that barge for a school building.' Then everybody looked at me, and one of the priests asked: 'Who's your father?' I said: 'My father is Farren Delaney, the Prefect of Waterways, and he won't like the way you grab his children and bother his school.' "

  Alexis paused and looked up shyly to see what his father made of that boast.

  Farren raised both eyebrows, smothered a brief explosion of laughter, smiled warmly at his son and asked, "What effect did that have?"

  "Well," Alexis preened a bit, "all the people laughed, and some of them even cheered. The priests didn't say anything, they just looked at each other, and the one with the holy-stick looked as if he'd bitten into a bad piece of fish. Then he gave a sort of phony smile and said: 'Now, now, boy, we haven't done you any harm. You're quite free to go.' And he waved real quick at the other two priests, and they let go of my arms. Soon as they let go, I jumped away and took off running. All the people made way for me, but I looked back and saw that they closed up the crowd afterward so the priests couldn't follow me. I ran as far as the first bridge, and then looked back, and I saw the priests walking away fast and all the people following them and watching to see where they went."

  "In . . . deed ..." Farren murmured, eyes narrowed. Then another idea lifted one of his eyebrows. "But tell me, son, if you just now came in, you left school more than an hour and a half ago. This business with the priests, as you've told it, couldn't have taken more than, hmm, ten or fifteen minutes. Why, then, were you all of an hour late coming home?"

  "Uh, well..." Alexis shrugged, blushing a little. "Once I stopped running, some of the people came up and asked me if I was all right, and did the priests do me any harm, and was I really Farren Delaney's son, and weren't you the one looking for people to work on his fire-stopping boat, and all that sort of thing. I had to stop and answer them, Papa; it was only polite."

  Farren's shoulders shook with hard-held laughter. "Lord and Ancestors," he murmured. "You're practicing for a political career already."

  The boy looked up at his father's face, wondering how that was meant. "Did I do the right thing, Papa?"

  "Oh, yes. Yes indeed!" Farren got up, stepped forward and swept Alexis into his arms. "Yes, yes, absolutely right, my clever lad." He bounced the boy in a bear hug for a few moments, much to Alexis' delight, before regretfully setting him down. "Now go off, my lad, and tell that story to your mother. I think she'll enjoy hearing it as much as I have."

  Alexis gave a whoop of joy and scampered off, eager to recite his tale to another appreciative audience.

  Farren watched the boy go, then waved to the porter who'd been waiting at a discreet distance down the hall. "Send up two runners," he said. "I'll have some letters to dispatch shortly."

  The porter nodded and hurried off. Farren returned to his desk, took out pen and paper and began writing furiously. The first missive was addressed to Governor Kalugin. The second was dispatched to Cardinal Willa Exeter. After that Farren had to stop and think a bit, but then he wrote up a list of names and set off to talk to his wife.

  The soirée at de Niro's didn't break up until midnight, by which time the watchers at the house dock were cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable. When the doors opened and the guests began to depart, the little coterie of watchers scrambled into place clumsily, drawing the unwanted attention of the household guard.

  "You, there!" snapped the lead guard, "Step forward—yey, all four of you. Who are you, and what's yer business here?"

  The embarrassed clerics stepped forward into the light. The squad leader fumbled out his staff of office and waved it like a desperate banner. "We, ser—" he tried to sound imposing, "are a delegation from the College of Cardinals, here on Church business."

  The rest of his cohort peered past him at the emerging party guests, trying to spot their quarry in the growing crowd.

  "Well, ye're too late for the party," growled the guard, shifting his long billy club to passive-shield position. "Everyone's leaving. If you've a message for Master de Niro, hand it over and I'll send it up."

  "The Church's business," the cleric simmered, "is with the entertainers whom your master hired. Are they leaving also?"

  The guard gave him a narrow-eyed look, then shrugged. "Sure. That's them over there." He pointed with his club at a knot of people just coming out of the building. "Y'can't miss 'em. They're right in the middle of that bunch of fans."

  He stepped back with an ill-concealed grin, revealing the sight of two elaborately cosmeticked and costumed women in the center of a slow-moving cluster of admirers. The women, carrying bookbags and instrument cases, were chatting merrily with a good score of fancily-dressed men and women, most of them young, loud, and carrying functional-looking swords. The crowd showed no sign of dissipating as it crept down the walkways.

  The priests looked at each other, dismayed. This would be no quiet, discreet snatching. The squad leader frowned, considered following the singers until their protective crowd thinned out, wondered where and when that would be, considered the lateness of the hour and the distance to the College, and made his decision. With a resigned hand signal to his cohort, he stepped forward.

  "Church business. Let us through, please. Church business ..."

  Surprised, the crowd stopped. There were multiple dark looks and mutters, several hands reaching surreptitiously for sword handles, as the mob slowly and grudgingly gave way.

  The priests hitched their shoulders higher and kept close together as they worked their way toward their targets in the center of the crowd.

  The two singers seemed to share none of their supporters' dismay. If anything, their poses looked somewhat theatrical and amused. The squad leader blinked rapidly as he stopped in front of them. He really hadn't expected, when he'd set out on this assignment, that he'd find himself trying to make a formal announcement to two vacuously smiling women with iridescent-blue eyelids and sequinned, keyhole-cut shirts.

  "You are the singers known as Rattaille and Rafaella?" He had to stop and cough to get the annoying squeak out of his voice.

  "She is Rattaille," said the taller one, slowly blinking eyelids laden with centimeter-long eyelashes. "I am Rafaella."

  "Oo-oo-ooh," drawled the other, turning her head so that her enormous chandelier-earrings clashed and chimed. "Are we so faaamous that the Caaahllege wants to hear us?"

  "You are summoned to the College! Immediately!" the cleric announced, certain that he could hear snickering somewhere in the crowd.

  "It's after midnight," blustered a burly youth with a jeweled sword-sheath jingling at his belt. "Let them come tomorrow."

  "Immediately!" the squad leader repeated, shaking his staff of office again. Behind him he could almost feel the other clerics fumbling for the butts of the pistols hidden under their robes.

  "Oo-ooo-ooh," Rattaille crooned louder. "Maybe some cardinal wants to hiiiire us."

  "They'd pay really good money," Rafaella agreed. "Not to mention the fame."

  The priests relaxed a trifle. Maybe the targets wouldn't give them too much trouble getting away.

  "Careful," snapped a glossily-dressed young woman in the crowd. "It may be a trap."

  The other fans grumbled agreement. The clerics fumbled for their guns again.

  "But whaaaat in the world fooor?" Rattaille drawled. "I don't think they'll haaang us for singing loooove songs."

  The priests s
huffled uncomfortably at that, while the crowd grumbled some more. The recent hanging of that loud-mouthed tavern lout had not quite had the intended effect on the populace, and the College was full of recriminations over it.

  "I really doubt that they'll hang us at all," Rafaella agreed. "After all, we're due to sing at Ttemaine's, on The Rock, tomorrow."

  The squad of clerics hastily looked at each other. Tremaine's was the smallest household on The Rock, but that was still at the very top of hightown. The singers had friends in, literally, very high places. And now the rest of this mob knew about it. There could be none of the usual techniques to encourage proper submission, not with these two.

  "So, we'll go see what the Caaaallege wants," Rattaille decided. "If we don't show up tomorrow, daaahlings, then it'll be time to complaaaain."

  The crowd turned to mutter confusedly to itself. The squad leader grabbed the advantage while he could. "Come this way . . . please," he waved the two singers toward the dock and his waiting boat.

  To his immense relief, the singers followed him— but they followed slowly, pausing to shake hands, chat, give autographs, take compliments and suggestions from their coterie of admirers, all the way into the boat.

  The priests shoved off from the dock as quickly as they dared, taking exquisite care not to shove or splash any of the crowd of well-wishers—also trying to keep their faces hidden from calculating eyes that just might memorize their features. The squad leader, noting the number of watchers who seemed likely to follow the boat along the walkways, decided to dispense with the usual discreet silence and use the engine. The small courier-boat took off with a lively roar, spreading a huge wake behind it, doubtless drawing the attention of all the neighbors—as, no doubt, so did the loud farewells of the crowd on the dock. The chief cleric hunched down in his seat at the prow and tried to rub his chilled hands warm; nothing about this snatch had gone well. And now, if you please, the two targets were yattering about possible jobs at the College and what music high-church employers would want to hear—no more intimidated than the weeds in the water. He sincerely hoped that the cardinal's interest in these two was marginal, that he wouldn't be called in to explain just why this simple operation had gone so badly.

  And it wouldn't do to keep Cardinal Exeter waiting much longer, either.

  Shivering, the squad leader signaled to the boatman to turn the engine up full throttle. The sooner the problem was out of his hands, the better.

  Cardinal Exeter rubbed her eyes and wondered if the lateness of the hour and its attendant fatigue were responsible, or perhaps the quality of the chamber's ancient lighting, or if these two singers really did look that way. The taller one wore her moused, teased, flaming red hair swept up into an unbelievable fountain of countless braids, interwoven with glittering blue and silver cords and silver beads, obviously intended to match the skin-tight blue lame trousers side-laced with flame red cords strung with silver beads—and never mind that impossibly-cut flame red shirt with the silver embroidery on the collar, or the iridescent makeup that almost obscured the shape of the woman's features. As for her partner, how could the woman possibly walk in those unbelievably high-heeled boots? How could she breathe, let alone sing, in that skin-tight gold lame jumpsuit with the alarming holes cut in it at unexpected places? How could she move her arms with all those goldstone-studded bracelets climbing from wrist to elbow and beyond?

  How could she sing or even turn her head with her white-blonde hair pulled up into that ridiculous rooster crest through that array of goldstone beads? How could she play an instrument with all those laughably fake bezel rings on her fingers?

  The two singers glittered and flashed in the lamplight so that it was almost painful to look at them. And they gushed so.

  "My dearest Cardinal Exeter," the taller one was burbling. "It's such an honor to meet someone of your esteemed eminence, let alone to be invited to your very office. Why, I can't tell you how very privileged we are to make your acquaintance."

  "Oo-oo-ooh, yes," the other cut in, obviously not wanting to fall behind in the flattery. "We've sung before high and loooow, but never at the Caaallege of Caaaardinals before."

  "Why, we can't imagine a finer vocation to sing for the College, as often as possible," the red-blue-and-silver dressed woman (which one was she? Rafaella?) nudged. Lamplight flickered off her glossy-painted artfully-batted peacock-blue eyelids.

  Cardinal Exeter decided that, yes, the singers really did look like that. No illusion of hers could ever be so appallingly tasteless. "Enough!" she snapped. "I did not summon you here to offer you employment."

  Both painted faces fell. Then a flicker of hope dawned on one of them (pale hair and goldstone: Rattaille?) and the woman asked: "But you miiight consider the possibility, naooow that you've met us?"

  "If you'd like to hear us sing ..." Rafaella offered, flicking a glance at her instrument case.

  "Not now!" Lord, no, don't let them start caterwauling at this hour of the night! "You were brought here to be examined on the subject of heresy."

  That was a blunt and clumsy opening, but all she could think of to shut up their mercenary chattering. Now, see how they dealt with that.

  Both women looked blank. They blinked—easily seen, with those idiotic false eyelashes—and turned to look at each other.

  "Heresy. . . ?" said one.

  "I don't know anything abaooout it," said the other.

  "Don't we have any songs about heresy?"

  "Well, maaaaybe we can faaake it."

  "I'll try" muttered Rafaella. She turned back to smile hopefully at Exeter. "I think I know one song about it." She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and pealed out: "Heresy, Oh Heresy; Beware the sting of Heresy . . ."

  Cardinal Exeter recognized the tune. It was centuries old; the earliest known title was "O Tannenbaum."

  " 'Oh, strive for virrrtue all thy days,' " Rafaella wailed on. " 'And shun the paaaath of evil ways. Oh Heresy, Oh Heresy—' "

  "Enough!" snapped the cardinal, rubbing her forehead. "No more of that."

  "I'm suuuure we could write a better one, given tiiime," Rattaille promised. "We'd gladly accept pay by the sooong, not by the daaaaay."

  "We can write, or find, songs on any subject," Rafaella agreed.

  Oh, no doubt they could, and would, for the promise of a penny. "I am not concerned with songs about heresy," Exeter pronounced crisply. "I am concerned with songs which contain elements of heresy. Songs such as yours, m'seras."

  Again, the two produced, and traded, that blank look.

  "Just what is heresy, exactly?" Rafaella whispered. "I never was up on that one."

  "Me neeeither," her partner muttered back, "But oooobviously it has sooomething to do with baaad-mouthing caaardinals in public."

  Exeter rubbed her forehead again. Oh, Lord, now Rattaille was squaring her shoulders and taking that telltale deep breath!

  " 'Oh, speak no ill of holy folk,' " she bayed—to the tune of 'O Tannenbaum' again. " "They will not take it for a joke . . .' "

  "Enough!" Exeter roared. "If you sing that tune again in my presence, I'll have you both whipped!" Oh, stupid, stupid! Imagine how she'd look trying to carry out that threat. Imagine the gossip: "publicly whipped for singing 'O Tannenbaum' three times in front of a cardinal ..."

  The singers traded knowing looks this time. "Try 'Greensleeves,' " Rattaille whispered.

  "The lines are too long for quickie rhymes," Rafaella complained.

  Cardinal Exeter took a deep breath herself, and let it out slowly. "To repeat," she said, "I am concerned with heretical elements in your songs, and wish to examine them. Closely. Do you take my meaning?"

  Obviously, the two did not. They exchanged idiot grins of delight, and simultaneously reached for their bookbags. Rafaella got hers open first, and drew out a thin folder full of sheets covered with writing and music script. "These are all the songs we brought with us," she burbled happily, handing them over. "If you find anything heresy—uh,
heretical in there, just tell us and we'll be happy to rewrite them."

  "They'll wooork like neeew on the same aauud-iences," Rattaille added gleefully. "Oh, you wooon't get the full efffect without the muuusic. We could sing them all if you'd liiiike." She turned another hopeful glance to her instrument case.

  "No," said the cardinal quickly. "Leave your instruments in your cases, please." She peered at the first song in the thin folder, sourly wishing that the collection squad had caught the women at a time when they had their complete book with them. The song was a ballad, titled "The Wreck of the Edwin Fitzwilliam," and was at least twenty verses long. Exeter shuddered at the thought of having to listen through it. The next was an almost-equally long ballad called "The Jam on Jerry's Rocks," followed by "The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens." Clearly it had been a night for long, sad shipwreck tales. Of course de Niro had made their fortune on the sea-trade, and perhaps the younger de Niro might take some illicit adolescent thrill in hearing about shipwrecks, but all this was politically useless.

  Then again, the singers might have sung other, memorized songs.

  "Are these all the songs you sang tonight?" Exeter asked, in her best ominous tone. Just let them say yes, and she'd hint they were lying, threaten to haul in the guests from that party.

  "All but the dance tunes," Rafaella shrugged. "They're very easy to memorize, being so short."

  Damn, that threw the line of intimidation off. "Recite the words, please," was all the cardinal could think of for a quick retort.

  A moment later she regretted it.

  The two singers patted their hands on their thighs in timing rhythm, then began to chant—Rafaella taking the chorus and Rattaille on the . . . well, it might possibly be called the verse.

  "Baby, baby . . . whoa-oh. Baby, baby . . . yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.' "

  "Ooh, c'mon baaaby, whoa-oh. Sweetest looovin' you'll everrr seeee."

  "Baby, baby . . . whoa-oh ..."

  "Enough!" yelled the cardinal, shoving the folder of songs back. God, that one was worse than "O Tannenbaum." No, this was getting nowhere. High time for a different tack. "M'seras, what are your opinions regarding the subject of religion." Again, that blank look.