by Alan Gordon
The square was quiet as I trotted across. The market, normally bustling, was abandoned, its stalls shuttered, its banners furled. The true test of a religion is its effect on commerce.
It was much as I had remembered, with one notable exception. Next to the church was a massive portico, surrounded with scaffolding, with marble columns and an impressive flight of steps that upon closer inspection led nowhere. Behind this imposing facade was a huge pit, lined with stone and dotted with ladders and ramps.
So they got the bishopric at last. It had been the subject of much debate and outright envy when I last lived here. The local merchants, as they grew ever more prosperous, sought validation for their good fortune from Rome. Apparently, the Pope’s blessing had been obtained, although I shuddered to guess at what cost. The cathedral in progress looked decades away from completion.
As Zeus carried me past the old church, which despite its Byzantine dome looked cramped and squat next to its grandiose shell of a neighbor, I saw the Bishop himself emerge and squint into the west, surveying the square for lost sheep. He frowned when he saw me, and I hastened to salute him.
“Greetings, holy Father, on this holiest of days,” I said, dismounting. “Blessings upon a weary traveler.”
“Blessings upon you, my son,” he replied. “You’re a stranger here, I believe.”
“Indeed I am,” I agreed. “May I humbly present myself. I am Octavius, a merchant of Augsburg.”
“Ah, I thought from your speech that you hailed from that part of the Empire.” Score one for the accent, I thought. “What brings you so far?”
“Business,” I replied with a vague wave. “But I won’t bore you with details. I seek lodging for a short period. Does your worship know of an inn where an honest Christian soul may find safe haven?”
“If you were a pilgrim, I would direct you to the monastery. If you were a student, there is a hostel maintained by the town. But if you are like every other honest Christian merchant I have met, I would put such holy endorsements aside and recommend the Elephant. They set a good table and could accommodate both you and this fine steed of yours. You should bring him by the church tomorrow, by the way. It’s Saint Stephen’s Day, and we will be blessing the animals.”
“I would be delighted,” I responded sincerely. “He could use a good blessing.” I patted Zeus on the muzzle, and he nearly took my hand off.
“Indeed,” said the Bishop, moving a safe distance away. “And if that doesn’t work, I also perform exorcisms.”
I got a better grip on Zeus’s reins and pulled his head down. “Thank you,” I gasped. “I regret missing services this morning. May I make a small donation in honor of my safe arrival?”
“Of course,” he replied, and the transaction was completed. He gave me directions to the Elephant, and I led Zeus toward the southeast gate.
As I approached it, I heard hoofbeats behind me. I turned to see a soldier of some kind, modestly armored but with a gaudy red plume decorating his helmet. “Hail, stranger,” he said quietly, his right hand resting near his sword.
“Hail, good soldier,” I replied.
“That would be Captain to you.”
I espied the insignia. “My apologies, Captain. I am unfamiliar with the symbol of your rank in this town. No offense was intended.”
He studied me closely. He seemed to be about forty, and boasted a magnificent mustache that curled up at each end. His bearing was somehow both erect and relaxed, as if it took only a small amount of his strength to maintain that posture even under the weight of his armor.
“Your garments are German,” he commented. “Your speech as well.”
“Correct on both counts, good Captain. I am from Augsburg. My name is Octavius. I am a merchant.”
He continued to stare at me. “You’re a bit late for the fair,” he said. “It was in July. But as you have no goods to sell, perhaps you are here to buy.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, and then decided to match his silence.
“You come by way of Zara, I assume?” he said finally.
“No. I came by sea.”
“I saw no ship in our harbor.”
“I was brought in by small boat. The ship’s destination was farther south. I was let off on the shore west of the town.”
“And where did you board this accommodating vessel?”
“In Venice, some days ago.”
This elicited an arching of the eyebrows but no further comment. This time, I broke the silence.
“I will be staying at the Elephant, Captain. My whereabouts will be evident at all times, and I expect to leave once my business here is concluded.”
“And that business is?”
“That business is business. And as you are no doubt a busy man as well, I will take my leave of you.”
I led Zeus away and felt the Captain’s eyes marking a target on my back the whole way to the gate.
* * *
The town was situated on the north bank of a river that widened as it entered the Adriatic from the northeast. An old Roman wall encircled it, rebuilt many times since the first pensioned soldiers settled here, broken by three gates to the harbor, one to the riverside, and two more for the main roads leading to Zara and the interior. The Elephant was outside the southeast gate, situated equally close to the barge landings that accommodated the river traffic and the wharves for the oceangoing trade.
The old sign still hung from the second story of the inn, badly needing paint. On it was an enormous elephant, purportedly one of Hannibal’s, crossing the Alps while dark-skinned men dotted its back like ants. I remembered, as a boy, reading an illustrated account of the Punic Wars that included a similar drawing, with the men dangling from the side of the beast and a small town perched on its back. The creature haunted my imagination for years. When I was in my early twenties, on a mission in Alexandria, a traveling circus came to town, and their criers proclaimed an actual elephant in captivity. I immediately threw all my responsibilities to the wind and hurried to the outskirts of the city to buy my admission. Upon entering the ratty tent, I saw, rather than the monster of my nightmares, a large but pathetic creature, flies buzzing around the scabrous sores caused by the iron shackles imprisoning it on the platform, its tusks sawed off, its skin hanging in folds. It cast a bleary, yellowed eye in my direction, then managed a feeble bellow after being prodded by a small boy with a stick who then held his hand out to me, expecting to be paid again for the favor. I hurried out of there. That memory replaced the fierce, heroic one in my dreams, and I’ve never been able to recapture the original.
The inn was a two-story log structure, tavern below and a few rooms above. It was hung with laurel wreaths on the outside in honor of the season, and a fire beckoned from within. I tied Zeus to the rail, removed my bags, and entered. A Christmas cake with a cross carved on top was placed on a small table by the door. Three long tables filled the front half of the room, while the rear was taken up by a stove and several casks mounted in a frame against the wall.
I didn’t recognize the tapster, and fortunately he didn’t recognize me. He was a stout man of florid complexion and wore an ancient apron of uncertain fabric and color. He was certainly surprised to have a stranger come in at that time of day. Or year, for that matter.
“Any room at the inn?” I asked.
“Come in, good sir,” he said, recovering quickly. “Welcome to the Elephant. And a joyous Christmas to you. Is it dinner or lodging you want?”
“Both,” I replied. “And stabling for my horse.”
“Newt!” he bellowed suddenly behind him. I looked past him to the curtain separating the tavern from the family’s living quarters, and a small boy of about ten years dashed in, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “Take this gentleman’s horse and put it in the second stall.” The boy looked around the room uncertainly, and the tapster cuffed him gently. “Outside, Newt, outside.” The boy brightened and dashed past me. I heard a yelp of fear, but somehow he got Zeus under control.
“W
ell, sir,” said the tapster, turning his attention back to me. “My name is Alexander. Let me show you to your room, and then you can come back down for dinner. It’s a long ride from Zara, and I’m sure you must be exhausted.”
“I didn’t…” I began, but he had already seized my bags and was tromping up the stairs, humming to himself. I followed him into a short, dark hallway.
“As you can see, sir, we do have room,” he said with an exaggerated sweep of his arm. “No need to send you to the stables. You’ll sleep in better accommodations than Our Lord on His first Christmas Day. It’s lucky you arrived at such a slow time of year. You can have your choice of rooms. A view of the harbor or a view of the town?”
“Harbor, please, as long as the shutters keep out the wind.”
“Oh, they do, sir. And a good thing, too. There’s snow coming tonight. You can see it on the horizon. Fresh from the Marches, and who knows where before that. You may have to stay with us more than the one night.”
“I was planning on it.”
That brought a pleased grunt. He opened a door to the right, revealing a space with a bed and enough room to pace beside it. “Here’s your pot,” he said, gesturing under the bed. “And I’ll send up my daughter Agatha with a washbasin. We have a nice stew cooking if you’re hungry. And there’s wine, ale, cider, perry, and some mead brewed special for the holiday. How about I heat up the cider? That’s best for a winter traveler.”
I agreed to the last, both to stop the torrent of words and because it sounded delicious, and he left me to my unpacking. I immediately cast about for a decent hiding place for my jester’s gear. I didn’t know who might decide to poke through my belongings, but the Captain looked like a thorough man, and who knew what spies Malvolio had? Rejecting the floorboards as obvious, I stood on the bed and pulled myself up onto the rafters. Where they met the roof beams, I wedged the bag in. I dropped back onto the floor and was satisfied that it was not immediately visible.
A girl of twelve knocked on the doorway and carried in a basin of water and a cloth. She had long brown hair plaited untidily behind her and was wearing a brown gown that had been tied in haste. “Father wants to know if you’ll do with just the heel of the bread,” she said nervously. “If not, he’ll send me to the baker, but I don’t know that there’s any left.”
“Tell him that would be fine,” I reassured her. “I had an ample lunch and just want enough warm food to take the chill away. You must be Agatha.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and curtsied prettily. “We saved you some of the good parts in the stew. It’s heated up now.”
I followed her down and sat at a table near the fire. There were squid and mussels and bits of fish mixed together in the bowl, and the cider was flavored with lemon and spices. Apart from my host and his daughter, I was alone in the room.
I was puzzling over in what manner I would approach my former patrons, direct or indirect, when the door swung open and the decision was made for me.
“Barkeep!” bellowed Sir Toby as he lurched in, angling his great bulk in order to get it through the doorway. “It’s Christmas, Alexander, and it would be a sin to pay for a drink on this day. But just in case you have no charity in you, we brought old Isaac along to foot the bill.” He dragged in a Jew, a long-bearded fellow about my age, who forced a smile. Then a gust of wind blew Sir Andrew stumbling in behind them.
They were fat and thin when I knew them, and they were fatter and thinner now. Sir Toby had spent so much of his time drinking the health of others, and eating to keep pace, that he now looked as if he could feed the town for a month, were it permissible to cook and divide him. Sir Andrew, on the other hand, was barely a mouthful now, not even enough meat on him to make a passable soup. Aguecheek, people used to call him, and he had become so gaunt of frame that a medical school could have used him for a lesson on the skeleton, so sharply defined was every bone. A pronounced tremor possessed his body so that it was surprising that he didn’t make a constant rattling noise. The stringy yellow mop of hair was now streaked with gray. Time’s palette had found less inspiration in Sir Toby’s thatch, on the other hand, and had contented itself with lopping it off. The man was stone bald, and the light from the fire reflected merrily off of his pate to cast a second glow in the room.
“Good evening, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Master Isaac,” said Alexander, placing three tankards on the table nearest the stove. Agatha came in with a pitcher and filled it from one of the casks.
“Let’s see them, my pretty one,” cried Sir Toby, pulling her onto his lap and pawing at her blouse. She turned beet red but submitted to his inspection. “Not ripe enough for marriage yet,” he pronounced. “But we’ll start looking for a husband for you. You don’t do your sainted namesake justice, dear Agatha. Her breasts were huge and holy, if the legend is correct.”
“Were they?” asked Sir Andrew. “I thought she was the one who gave the apples to the lawyer.”
“No, that was someone else. Saint Clare or somebody.”
I cleared my throat. It seemed as good an opportunity as any. “Excuse me for interrupting your pious and learned conversation, but the saint you refer to is Saint Dorothy. She promised a lawyer who was a disbeliever that she would send him apples from Paradise upon her arrival. The apples appeared by his bedside at her death, and he converted and became a martyr himself.”
“A holy lawyer!” exclaimed Sir Toby, clapping Isaac on the back. “Then there’s even hope for you, Isaac. Be a saint, man, and repay your debt to Our Savior by buying a drink for this gentleman.”
“I owe your savior no debt,” said Isaac. “I owe you none as well. In fact, you owe me. But I will welcome the gentleman as I would any traveler. Sir, my name is Isaac. I am the assistant to the Duke’s steward. Please join us if you would.”
“Your servant,” I said, bowing. I picked up my cup and moved to their table. “I am Octavius of Augsburg.”
Sir Andrew greeted me haltingly in German, and I replied fluently in the same tongue. He looked at me uncomprehendingly and blushed.
“Marvelous, isn’t he?” commented Sir Toby. “Speaks a dozen languages with as much wit, and can still turn a lady’s head after all these years. Isn’t that right, Agatha? I have it, we’ll marry you off to him. What do you say, dearest?”
Agatha looked as if Sir Andrew turned her stomach rather than her head. “Oh, he is much above me and deserves better,” she said gratefully. She pulled herself up from Sir Toby’s lap to fill my cup with wine.
“I don’t know what I deserve anymore,” mused Sir Andrew. “I didn’t think I deserved bachelorhood for so long, yet here I am.”
“Perhaps if you didn’t waste so much time on your damn fool experiments,” scolded Sir Toby. “Puttering around your cellar making those foul stinks. Meandering through the woods picking up pieces of bark and stones.” He leaned towards me to roar confidentially, “Man thinks he’s a sorcerer.”
“I’m an alchemist,” retorted Sir Andrew. “I’m searching for the eternal verities of the world. What higher calling could there be?”
“Aye, you’re an alchemist now. And before that it was lapidaries, and before that hydromancy, pyromancy, necromancy…”
“Don’t forget the haruspicy,” added Isaac.
“Ugh, I wish I could. All those entrails you made us look at. I tell you, friend Octavius, this slender fellow will follow any mancy that takes his fancy.”
“But alchemy is no fancy,” I protested. “It is a true science.”
“Exactly!” shouted Sir Andrew. “Well spoken, stranger.”
“Well, enough of this,” rumbled Sir Toby. “Brother Octavius, as a visitor and guest, I leave the next toast to you.”
“You are most kind,” I said, lifting my cup and considering. “To our new friendship, to your generous welcome, to the spirit of the season, and finally, to the memory of your late Duke.”
They stared at me as I drained my cup. Sir Andrew’s jaw hung open, completing the fishlike appea
rance begun by his pale skin. Isaac leaned back on his stool and lifted his cup to his lips while observing me thoughtfully through half-closed eyes. Sir Toby cast his eyes downwards.
“Well, sir,” he said, subdued for the first time since he came in. “Those were kind words. He was a friend of mine and kin by marriage. We drank together, we traveled, we fought side by side in the Holy Land against the armies of Saladin. I drink to his memory.” And he drained his cup in one prodigious quaff.
“Did you know the late Duke?” inquired Isaac.
“I cannot say that I knew him,” I replied. “But I met him once years ago. I was passing through the area, and he was kind enough to invite me to sup with him. He asked me about myself, which is the mark of a gracious host. I found him to be a knowledgeable and generous man on short acquaintance.”
“And the Duchess?”
“There was no duchess that I recall, although there was some talk about a countess who lived in the town. Did they marry finally?”
“You mean you don’t know the tale?” exclaimed Sir Toby. “Well, I’ll tell it to you. I was intimately involved.” And he regaled me with a version of the events that did violence to my memory of the role he played.
“Remarkable,” I said when he finished. “The whole town must owe you a debt of happiness, Sir Toby.” Isaac and Sir Andrew rolled their eyes. “But is there an heir?”
“There is,” replied Isaac. “The young Duke Mark inherited his father’s title and lands. A fine boy. He’ll be a fine leader someday.”
“How old is he?”
“Eleven.”
“And is there a regent?”
“Not yet,” said Sir Toby curtly. I guessed that he had volunteered unsuccessfully for the position.
“Unfortunately, the death left a great void in the town,” explained Isaac. “Normally, the Duchess would be considered, but she is foreign-born and not trusted by the wealthier families of the town, the Countess Olivia excepted. Likewise, the Duke’s steward, Claudius, is a newcomer.”
“He is someone I may wish to meet,” I said. “Will he be joining you tonight?”