Triumff: Her Majesty's Hero

by Dan Abnett

  Fortunate Joe was the village shepherd, and he had got his name mainly due to the fact that it was he who enjoyed the regular, complimentary flasks of turkey broth right through until March. Joe, not over-blessed in cognitive faculties, had never really been able to reason out why this made him fortunate, or why he suffered from chronic gastro-enteritis each year from late February until early April.

  Close on his heels came Less, the miller's son. Joe and Less slewed to a halt in Mother Grundy's parlour, and tried to contain themselves.

  "There's a dead man up on Four Acres Paddock," squealed Joe, who was absolutely no good at all at self-containment.

  "Shhh! Shhh!" hissed Less. Joe nodded.

  "There's a dead man up on Four Acres Paddock," Joe whispered.

  There was along pause, broken only by the logs coughing and spitting in the grate. Mother Grundy slowly turned away from Luckin Ambussway's tiny, gaping mouth and stood up.

  "A dead man?" she queried, softly.

  "All cold and dead. With a frost on him," Fortunate Joe gabbled.

  "Shhh!" said Mother Grundy.

  "All cold and dead. With a frost on him," Fortunate Joe repeated, quiet as a dormouse.

  "I'd better see," murmured Mother Grundy. She patted Luckin Ambussway reassuringly on the head, and took down her shawl form the door peg.

  Mother Grundy followed the excited men out into the village yard. Marble-cold, the night closed around them, steaming their breaths. Above, the sky was ludicrously heavy with stars.

  "This had better not be another of your fairy stories, Fortunate Joe Clubbley," warned Mother Grundy.

  "It isn't, ma'am, I swear. A dead man. Dead. In Four Acres Paddock. And dead."

  "Come on," she said.

  Fortunate Joe gathered up his crook and beckoned her on. Less the miller's son slammed the cottage door behind them.

  "Owww!" came a little, muffled voice from within.

  "Well, at least that's done with," said Mother Grundy.

  The moon was up, swinging like a bright inn sign from the leafless branches of the black elms. Its bright glare reflected off the hoar frost around them, making the rime glint like diamond chips. Feckless hares, long-limbed and rangy, skittered around the crest of the hill under the lunatic glow.

  Fortunate Joe led Mother Grundy and Less up the hard earth slope of the paddock. the ground rang hollow and dead as their pounding feet resonated the ancient rabbit warrens of the hill.

  "There!" said Fortunate Joe at length, pointing with his crook. There was a stiff, crumpled shape on the frosty ground beneath the hilltop oak.

  "Hmmph," said Mother Grundy, and instructed them both to stay where they were. She strode forward to the foot of the great, old tree.

  The man was old and dirty, his face white and pinched. It was impossible to tell where his matted beard ended and the ground-frost began. His clothes were rags, black with grime, caked and swaddled around the bag of bones that was his body and limbs.

  Mother Grundy knelt by him and reached out a hand to his cheek.

  Stone cold.

  She cautiously checked the folds of his matted garb. In one pocket, a knife, blunt and rusty, the hopeless designs of the bored and untalented decorating its scrimshaw handle. In another pocket, a pewter tobacco box, worn smooth by years of use, and a chunky, gold-plated signet ring. On one cuff, a last remaining button, clinging by a twist of thread, gave a clue to the garment's original nature. The button was brass, with the anchor mark of the Admiralty cut into it.

  "So you were a mariner" whispered Mother Grundy as she examined the button.

  The corpse's eyes flicked open.

  Mother Grundy didn't start or flinch. She adapted to the situation.

  "Can you speak?" she asked.

  He stared back: wild, bright eyes trapped in a dead face. His jaw moved, but his mouth would not open. It was as if it was frozen shut. Slowly, he shook his head.

  She began to turn, to call to the others. "We'll get you to shelter, good fellow, and-"

  He shook his head again and beckoned her close. He tapped at his sealed mouth for a moment in frustration, and then, after another shake of the head, held up three knotted fingers.

  "Three?" Mother Grundy asked. "Three what? Three words?"

  A nod. One raised finger.

  "First word? Two? Two what? Two two? Double?

  An eager nod.

  "Double then. Second word. Two syllables? First one mouth? Lips?

  He tapped his mouth and then chattered his fingers together stiffly in a biting gesture.

  "Bit? Chew? Teeth? Yes? False teeth? False! I see. Double false"

  The old sailor tugged his collar up around his ears.

  "False what? Collar? Hood? Falsehood! Double falsehood!"

  Another eager nod. Then he sank back again, fading.

  "The third word?" she asked, leaning closer.

  The fingers waved again.

  "Three syllables. Second syllable you're shaking your head. No? Is it "no"? Right, something-no-something. First syllable. Sounds like What's that? Happy? Cheerful?"

  The old man hugged himself and tried to look happy. His mouth, frozen, refused to smile.

  "Contentment? Joy?"

  A nod.

  "Sounds like joy-no-something. What rhymes with joy? Boy? Cloy? Roy? Coy? Toy like toy? Troy?

  The eyes shone back at her.

  "Troyno-something." There was a long pause. She sensed the desperation in him. The third syllable seemed beyond the capacity of mime. But she had enough. "Are you trying," she said, carefully, "to say 'Troynovant'?"

  The eyes closed, relaxed.

  "Troynovant," whispered Mother Grundy, to herself. "Troynovant and double falsehood. Why? What are you telling me?"

  There was no answer, no movement.

  She turned to the waiting men, ten paces behind her across the field.

  "Help me here!" she called, urgently.

  They made a bed of sacking in the corner by Mother Grundy's inglenook, and Less stoked up the hearth as Mother Grundy covered the stranger with a blanket.

  "Will he live?" asked Fortunate Joe.

  "I doubt it. Hunger, exposure and ague have all done their worst. And he is neither young nor strong. It is a miracle he has lived this long."

  "Why has he come here? What was his message about?" Deep confusion screwed up Less's face into such a frown his forehead looked like a giant walnut. "No one comes to Ormsvile Nesbit unless they once left it. And I don't recognise him."

  Mother Grundy arched her eyebrows. "You're not yet two score years, Less. If this ancient mariner ran off to sea, it may have been years before you were born. He may be coming home after a long time."

  "But you're old, Mother Grundy," put in Joe. "Don't you recognise him? Hey now, what d'you kick me for, Less?"

  "Manners," said Less.

  "Right. Right. I didn't mean old as in rude, Mother, begging yours. I just meant-"

  "I know what you meant, Joe Clubbley. Unfortunately, I don't recognise him, either. In the morning, I'll ask the senior members of the village. One of them might know him."

  Mother Grundy dabbed the dirt from the man's haggard face with a cloth soaked in warm water. The frost matting his beard was melting away.

  "Oh God's apples!" she whispered. "That's why he couldn't speak."

  It was nearly midnight.

  Mother Grundy rubbed her rheumy eyes and stabbed the sulky fire with the poker. The old man had not stirred, but he was still breathing. Just.

  "Who are you, ancient mariner?" she asked softly.

  His possessions lay on the kitchen table: the knife, the tobacco tin, the ring. She sat and examined them by the light of the lamp. The tin was full of hard brown leaf, folded into a tight packet, ready to be teased out and thumbed into a pipe. The ring was a milled, Navy-commemoration coin, the type minted and issued to the crews of ships after famous engagements. It had been mounted on a crude finger-loop of brass. She studied the inscription. "Vivat Reg
ina by the grace of God Finnisterre 2003. "So, you're a hero as well as a mystery?"

  The knife was a typical mariner's piece, an old clasp-blade whose wooden handle had been removed and replaced by a shank of scrimshaw. The amateur engravings had nearly been worn off by use and sea-salt. There was a four-master, a raging sea, a leviathan sperm whale spouting a geyser into the sky, and gulls. On the reverse side, a badly-spaced inscription: "HMS BLAYMLES" beneath

  which was the name, "Tobias Frewyr, Marnr."

  "Blaymles. Blameless? Hmpph. And Frewyr's not a village name." The fire spat. Mother Grundy searched out her ink-pot, quill and writing paper. "I would know who you are, Tobias Frewyr. I would understand your double falsehood, and would dearly learn what you know of Troynovant. It's been years since I heard that mentioned. And I will know, Tobias, just as I will know who sewed up your mouth."

  The sun came up at six and found itself blinded by the snow that had fallen in the night. Fortunate Joe yawned and stepped reluctantly out into the frozen landscape, his crook under his arm as he pulled on his mittens.

  There seemed to be no shadows, no features. The snow smoothed everything away into an anonymous white.

  "I'll never find the bloody sheep in this," Joe sighed.

  A robin darted among the elder bushes in his garden, dislodging snow. Joe tore the corner off the loaf in his pocket and crumbed it out on the white ground. "There you go, Master Redbreast," said Joe with a simple smile.

  The grateful robin fluttered down to the feast, and disappeared immediately under an angry, scolding scrum of thrushes, blackbirds and great tits that came out of nowhere.

  Joe shrugged and made off up the lane towards the top pastures.

  Mother Grundy was waiting for him at her gate.

  "Did he die?" Joe asked.

  "Not yet. He's sleeping. I opened his mouth, fed him warm milk."

  Joe shuddered, and it wasn't the cold. "Twas inhuman what was done to him."

  Mother Grundy produced a sealed letter from her apron pocket and held it out. "I have a job for you, Joe Clubbley. I'll make sure Less looks to your flock for the while."

  Joe eyed her doubtfully.

  "I can't read, of course," he stated, pre-emptively.

  "I want you to go to London and deliver this message," she told him.

  Joe sat down hard on the stile. Then he stood up again, opened his mouth, closed it, and finally sat down once more.

  "I've never been to that London," he managed at last. "I've never been to Bottom Shallowham. I've never left Ormsvile Nesbit, save as far as the top pastures, and once to Clitherington Heath after a moody ewe. In short, I've never been anywhere."

  "In short, you're going. Consider it an education. My travelling days are over, and besides, I must tend to the stranger. In this weather, the post coach will be a week coming if it ever does. You must go, Joe Clubbley, and deliver this letter for me."

  Joe looked at the letter.

  "I can't read," he reminded her.

  "Then remember. Number Seventeen, Amen Street, Soho, London. To be delivered into the hand of Sir Rupert Triumff."

  "Triumff," he repeated. He took the letter and handed her his crook. "Right ho. Triumff."

  1 The bloody career of Olaf Waywardson and his navigator, Tor Cackhand, is well documented in other, better annotated books.

  2 Levied by Cardinal Scunge, also called "The Pisstaker".

  3 Livy Coolms had already plucked and stuffed it, once Arthur Knite had despatched it with his patent pending "Humane Fowle Killer" (consisting of a sharp hatchet, a blindfold and a crowd of people shouting "To your left! Ahead! Ahead! Now! Ohh! Nearly! Left again! Right! By your elbow!"). The turkey in question ("Blue Gobbler") was a forty-six pound emu of a bird, and would not only do for the entire population of the village, but would provide stock-broth for the flasks of Ormsville Nesbit's shepherd until March.

  4 Mrs Ambussway was able to read and write well enough, but Father Coptick, who baptised Agfnes, regularly put the "ill" into "illitterreight". At village coffee mornings, and in step with Mother Grundy's stoic philosophy, Mrs Ambussway pretends the unusual spelling is an aristocratic folly ("The F," she says, "is silent, as in hitting your thumb with a gardening hoe").