A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong

by K. J. Parker

  I got back to my rooms, fumbled with the keys, dropped them—anybody passing would have thought I was drunk, although of course I scarcely touched a drop in those days; I couldn’t afford to, with the excise tax so high—finally managed to get the door open and fall into the room. It was dark, of course, and I spent quite some time groping for the tinder-box and the candle, and then I dropped the moss out of the box onto the floor and had to grope for that too. Eventually I struck a light, and used the candle to light the oil lamp. It was only then, as the light colonised the room, that I saw I wasn’t alone.

  “Hello, professor,” said Subtilius.

  My first thought—I was surprised at how quickly and practically I reacted—was the shutters. Mercifully, they were closed. In which case, he couldn’t have come in through the window—

  He laughed. “It’s all right,” he said, “nobody saw me. I was extremely careful.”

  Easy to say; easy to believe, but easy to be wrong. “How long have you been here?”

  “I came in just after you left. You left the door unlocked.”

  Quite right; I’d forgotten.

  “I took the precaution of locking it for you,” he went on, “with the spare key you still keep in that ghastly pot on the mantelpiece. Look, why don’t you sit down before you fall over? You look awful.”

  I went straight to the door and locked it. Not that I get many visitors, but I was in no mood to rely on the laws of probability. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He sighed, and stretched out his legs. I imagine it was what his father used to do, after a long day on the farm or following the hounds. “Hiding,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “You can’t hide here.”

  “Overjoyed to see you too.”

  It was an entirely valid rebuke, so I ignored it. “Aimeric, you’re being utterly unreasonable. You can’t expect me to harbour a fugitive from justice—”

  “Aimeric.” He repeated the word as though it had some kind of incantatory power. “You know, professor, you’re the only person who’s called me that since the old man died. Can’t say I ever liked the name, but it’s odd to hear it again after all these years. Listen,” he said, before I could get a word in, “I’m sorry if I scared the life out of you, but I need your help.”

  I always did find him both irresistibly charming and utterly infuriating. His voice, for one thing. I suppose it’s my musician’s ear; I can tell you more about a man, where he’s from and how much money he’s got, from hearing him say two words than any mere visual clues. Subtilius had a perfect voice; consonants clear and sharp as a knife, vowels fully distinguished and immaculately expressed. You can’t learn to talk like that over the age of three. No matter how hard you try, if you start off with a provincial burr, like me, it’ll always bleed through sooner or later. You can only achieve that bell-like clarity and those supremely beautiful dentals and labials if you start learning them before you can walk. That’s where actors go wrong, of course. They can make themselves sound like noblemen after years of study so long as they stick to normal everyday conversational pitches. But if they try and shout, anyone with a trained ear can hear the northern whine or the southern bleat, obvious as a stain on a white sheet. Subtilius had a voice you’d have paid money to listen to, even if all he was doing was giving you directions to the Southgate, or swearing at a porter for letting the sludge get into the wine. That sort of perfection is, of course, profoundly annoying if you don’t happen to be true-born aristocracy. My father was a fuller and soap-boiler in Ap’Escatoy. My first job was riding with him on the cart collecting the contents of chamber pots from the inns in the early hours of the morning. I’ve spent forty years trying to sound like a gentleman, and these days I can fool everybody except myself. Subtilius was born perfect and never had to try.

  “Where the hell,” I asked him, “have you been? The guard’s been turning the city upside down. How did you get out of the barbican? All the gates were watched.”

  He laughed. “Simple,” he said. “I didn’t leave. Been here all the time, camping out in the clock tower.”

  Well, of course. The Studium, as I’m sure you know, is built into the west wall of the barbican. Naturally they searched it, the same day he escaped, after which they concluded that he must’ve got past the gate somehow and made it down to the lower town. It wouldn’t have occurred to them to try the clock tower. Twenty years ago, an escaped prisoner hid up there, and when they found him, he was extremely dead. Nothing can survive in the bell-chamber when the clock strikes; the sheer pressure of sound would pulp your brain. Oh, I imagine a couple of guardsmen put their heads round inside the chamber when they knew it was safe, but they wouldn’t have made a thorough search, because everybody knows the story. But in that case—

  “Why aren’t I dead?” He grinned at me. “Because the story’s a load of old rubbish. I always had my doubts about it, so I took the trouble to look up the actual records. The prisoner who hid out up there died of blood poisoning from a scratch he’d got climbing out of a broken window. The thing about the bells killing him was pure mythology. You know how people like to believe that sort of thing.” He gave me a delightful smile. “So they’ve been looking for me in Lower Town, have they? Bless them.”

  Curiosity, presumably; the true scholar’s instinct, which he always had. But combined, I dare say, with the thought at the back of his mind that one day, a guaranteed safe hiding-place would come in useful. I wondered when he’d made his search in the archives; when he was fifteen, or seventeen, or twenty-one?

  “I’m not saying it was exactly pleasant, mind,” he went on, “not when the bells actually struck. The whole tower shakes, did you know that? It’s a miracle it hasn’t collapsed. But I found that if I crammed spiders’ web into my ears—really squashed it down till no more would go in—it sort of deadened the noise to the point where it was bearable. And one thing there’s no shortage of up there is cobwebs.”

  I’ve always been terrified of spiders. I’m sure he knew that.

  “Fine,” I snapped at him; I was embarrassed with myself, because my first reaction was admiration. “So you killed a man and managed to stay free for three weeks. How very impressive. What have you been living on, for God’s sake? You should be thin as a rake.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t stay in there all the time,” he said. “Generally speaking, I made my excursions around noon and midnight.” When the bell tolls twelve times, there being a limit, presumably, to the defensive capacity of cobweb. “It’s amazing how much perfectly good food gets thrown out in the kitchens. You’re on the catering committee, you really ought to do something about it.”

  Part of his genius, I suppose; to make his desperate escape and three weeks’ torment in the bell-tower sound like a student prank, just as he made writing the Seventh Mass seem effortless, something he churned out in an idle moment between hangovers. Perhaps the secret of sublime achievement really is not to try. But first, you have to check the archives, or learn the twelve major modulations of the Vesani mode, or be born into a family that can trace its pedigree back to Boamond.

  “Well,” I said, standing up, “I’m sorry, but you’ve had all that for nothing. I’m going to have to turn you in. You do realise that.”

  He just laughed at me. He knew me too well. He knew that if I’d really meant it, I’d have done it straight away, yelled for the guard at the top of my voice instead of panicking about the shutters. He knew it; I didn’t, not until I heard him laugh. Until then, I thought I was deadly serious. But he was right, of course. “Sure,” he said. “You go ahead.”

  I sat down again. I hated him so much, at that moment.

  “How’s the concerto coming along?” he asked.

  For a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I remembered; his last concerto, or that’s what it should have been. The manuscript he gave me in the condemned cell. “You said not to finish it,” I told him.

  “Good Lord.” He was amused. �
��I assumed you’d have taken no notice. Well, I’m touched. Thank you.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I need money,” he replied, and somehow his voice contrived to lose a proportion of its honeyed charm. “And clothes, and shoes, things like that. And someone to leave a door open at night. That sort of thing.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  He sighed. “You can, you know. What you mean is, you don’t want to.”

  “I haven’t got any money.”

  He gave me a sad look. “We’re not talking about large sums,” he said. “It’s strictly a matter of context. Enough to get me out of town and on a ship, that’s all. That’s wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.” He paused—I think it was for effect—and added, “I’m not asking for a present. I do have something to sell.”

  There was a moment when my entire covering of skin went cold. I could guess. What else would he have to sell, apart from—?

  “Three weeks in the bloody bell tower,” he went on, and now he sounded exactly like his old self. “Nothing to do all day. Fortunately, on my second trip to the trash cans I passed an open door, some first-year, presumably, who hasn’t learned about keeping his door locked. He’d got ink, pens and half a ream of good paper. Don’t suppose he’ll make that mistake again.”

  I love music. It’s been my life. Music has informed my development, given me more pleasure than I can possibly quantify or qualify; it’s also taken me from the fullers’ yard at Ap’Escatoy to the Studium, and kept me here, so far at least. Everything I am, everything I have, is because of music.

  For which I am properly grateful. The unfortunate part of it is, there’s never been quite enough. Not enough music in me; never enough money. The pleasure, emotional and intellectual, is one thing. The money, however, is another. Almost enough—I’m not a luxurious sort of person, I don’t spend extravagantly, but most of it seems to go on overheads; college bills, servants’ wages, contributions to this and that fund, taxes, of course, all that sort of nonsense—but never quite enough to let me feel comfortable. I live in a constant state of anxiety about money, and inevitably that anxiety has a bad effect on my relationship with music. And the harder I try, the less the inspiration flows. When I don’t need it, when I’m relatively comfortable and the worry subsides for a while, a melody will come to me quite unexpectedly and I’ll write something really quite good. But when I’m facing a deadline, or when the bills are due and my purse is empty; when I need money, the inspiration seems to dry up completely, and all I can do is grind a little paste off the salt-block of what I’ve learned, or try and dress up something old, my own or someone else’s, and hope to God nobody notices. At times like that, I get angry with music. I even imagine—wrongly, of course—that I wish I was back in the fullers’ yard. But that’s long gone, of course. My brother and I sold it when my father died, and the money was spent years ago, so I don’t even have that to fall back on. Just music.

  “You’ve written something,” I said.

  “Oh yes.” From inside his shirt he pulled a sheaf of paper. “A symphony, in three movements and a coda.” I suppose I must have reached out instinctively, because he moved back gently. “Complete, you’ll be relieved to hear. All yours, if you want it.”

  All my life I’ve tried to look civilised and refined, an intellect rather than a physical body. But when I want something and it’s so close I can touch it, I sweat. My hands get clammy, and I can feel the drops lifting my hair where it touches my forehead. “A symphony,” was all I could say.

  He nodded. “My fourth. I think you’re going to like it.”

  “All mine if I want it.”

  “Ah.” He did the mock frown. “All yours if you pay for it. Your chance to be an illustrious patron of the arts, like the Eberharts.”

  I stared at him. All mine. “Don’t be so bloody stupid,” I yelled. “I can’t use it. It’d be useless to me.”

  He pretended to be upset. “You haven’t even looked at it.”

  “Think about it,” I said, low and furious. “You’re on the run from the Watch, with a death sentence against your name. I suddenly present a brand new Subtilius symphony. It’d be obvious. Any bloody fool would know straight away that I’d helped you escape.”

  He nodded. “I see your point,” he said mildly. “But you could say it’s an old piece, something I wrote years ago, and you’ve been hanging on to it.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “I guess not.” He smiled at me, a sunrise-over-the-bay smile, warm and bright and humiliating. “So I guess you’ll just have to pretend you wrote it, won’t you?”

  It was like a slap across the face, insulting and unexpected. “Please,” I said. “Don’t even suggest it. You know perfectly well I could never pass off your work as my own. Everybody would know after the first couple of bars.”

  Then he smiled again, and I knew he was playing me. He’d led me carefully to a certain place where he wanted me to be. “That won’t be a problem,” he said. “You see, I’ve written it in your style.”

  Maybe shock and anger had made me more than usually stupid. It took a moment; and then I realised what he’d just said.

  “Hence,” he went on, “the symphonic form, which I’ve never really cared for, but it’s sort of like your trademark, isn’t it? And I’ve used the tetrachord of Mercury throughout, even quoted a bar or two of the secondary theme from your Third. Here,” he said, and handed me a page—just the one, he was no fool—from the sheaf.

  I didn’t want to take it. I swear, it felt like deliberately taking hold of a nettle and squeezing it into your palm. I looked down.

  I can read music very quickly and easily, as you’d expect. One glance and it’s there in my head. It only took me a couple of heartbeats to know what I was holding. It was, of course, a masterpiece. It was utterly brilliant, magnificent, the sort of music that defines a place and a time for all time. It soared inside me as I looked at it, filling and choking me, as though someone had shoved a bladder down my throat and started blowing it up. It was in every way perfect; and I could have written it.

  “Well?” he said.

  Let me qualify that. No, I couldn’t have written it, not in a million years, not if my life depended on it; not even if, in some moment of absolute peace and happiness, the best inspiration of my entire life had lodged inside my head, and the circumstances had been so perfectly arranged that I was able to take advantage of it straight away, while it was fresh and whole in my mind (which never ever happens, of course). I could never have written it; but it was in my style, so exactly captured that anybody but me would believe it was my work. It wasn’t just the trademark flourishes and periods, the way I use the orchestra, the mathematical way I build through intervals and changes of key. A parody could’ve had all those. The music I was looking at had been written by someone who understood me perfectly—better than I’ve ever understood myself—and who knew exactly what I wanted to say, although I’ve always lacked the skill, and the power.

  “Well,” he said. “Do you like it?”

  As stupid a question as I’ve ever heard in my life, and of course I didn’t reply. I was too angry, heartbroken, ashamed.

  “I was quite pleased with the cadenza,” he went on. “I got the idea from that recurring motif in your Second, but I sort of turned it through ninety degrees and stuck a few feathers in it.”

  I’ve never been married, of course, but I can imagine what it must be like, to come home unexpectedly and find your wife in bed with another man. It’d be the love that’d fill you with hate. Oh, how I hated Subtilius at that moment. And imagine how you’d feel if you and your wife had never been able to have kids, and you found out she was pregnant by another man.

  “It’s got to be worth money,” I heard him say. “Just the sort of thing the duke would like.”

  He always had that knack, did Subtilius. The ability to take the words out of the mouth of the worst part of me, the part I’d cheerfully
cut out with a knife in cold blood if only I knew where in my body it’s located. “Well?” he said.

  When I was nineteen years old, my father and my elder brother and I were in the cart—I was back home for the holidays, helping out on the rounds—and we were driving out to the old barns where my father boiled the soap. The road runs along the top of a ridge, and when it rains, great chunks of it get washed away. It had been raining heavily the day before, and by the time we turned the sharp bend at the top it was nearly dark. I guess my father didn’t see where the road had fallen away. The cart went over. I was sitting in the back and was thrown clear. Father and Segibert managed to scramble clear just as the cart went over; Segibert caught hold of Dad’s ankle, and Dad grabbed onto a rock sticking out of the ground. I managed to get my hand round his wrist, and for a moment we were stuck there. I’ve never been strong, and I didn’t have the strength to pull them up, not so much as an inch. All I could do was hold on, and I knew that if I allowed myself to let his hand slip even the tiniest bit, I’d lose him and both of them, the two people I loved most in the whole world, would fall and die. But in that moment, when all the thoughts that were ever possible were running through my head, I thought; if they do both fall, and they’re both killed, then when we sell the business, it’d be just me, best part of three hundred angels, and what couldn’t I do with that sort of money?

  Then Segibert managed to get a footing, and between them they hauled and scrambled and got up next to me on the road, and soon we were all in floods of tears, and Dad was telling me I’d saved his life, and he’d never forget it. And I felt so painfully guilty, as though I’d pushed them over deliberately.

  Well, I thought. Yes. Worth a great deal of money.

  “More the old duke’s sort of thing,” he was saying, “he’d have loved it, he was a man of taste and discrimination. Compared with him, young Sighvat’s a barbarian. But even he’d like this, I’m sure.”