The Lady of May Tulip (The Lynchman's Owl Adventures)

by B. Y. Yan

Frightfully the baron whipped his head around towards his man.

  “Yamcey! Yamcey, help! What are they doing?”

  His man spared a look towards the square. “It seems, my lord, that your subjects are pleading for your safety in the only way they know how. They are in love with you, and will happily go to their deaths to see you unharmed.”

  “What?” Hungary, his brows furrowed, obviously did not properly understand. Given that for years he has been the bane of their existence, their most hated foe, we will forgive him for his moment of indecision.

  “What do I do, Yamcey? Help me!”

  As always, his cousin provided the best answer.

  “Ah, my lord, it is the simplest thing to disentangle yourself from their affections. It is, however, not for me to say how you should handle the matter. You can either shrink away now and things will go back to the way they were minutes ago, with you occupying your well-worn position of tyrant to the masses, or, if you wish, you can also keep up what you are doing to see where their love—this emotion from your own people more alien than any number of foreign adversaries—will lead you.”

  The baron blinked as if he had not understood, but when his large hand came up to cover Cudgmore’s over the ivory handle of his revolver he did not fail to notice many appreciative nods in his audience. Buoyed by their support he leaned in until the two of them were nose-to-nose, and spitting into the diplomat’s face drew a deafening cheer which rolled over the square.

  “Ah!” cried Cudgmore, who was not so pleased with this turn of events. Flushed with embarrassment and anger the diplomat might have fired, had his hand not been wrenched away by the baron so that the gun was pointing to the tiles at their feet. Tearing away from his adversary the diplomat hobbled backwards out of his reach. Immediately he sought out the woman in his camp, but before he could strike her a bout of boisterous laughter from behind him made him turn his head.

  “So it has come down to this eh, Cudgel?” cried the baron with his hands on his hips, loud enough for all to hear. “A man who is spat on now has only the abuse of his own woman to defend himself. It is an unbecoming, sorry sight if ever there was one.”

  Jeers below them, mingled here and there with laughter, floated up the steps to assail the assemblage until the injured diplomat, brimming with rage, threw a shoe at the gates.

  “Ape!” he cried in the baron’s direction. “Brute! Uncouth cad!”

  “Snake!” returned Hungary at once. “Woman beater and coward!”

  “You would not dare to insult a gentleman without the support of your city of cronies!” Cudgmore raved. “You are an embarrassment to despots everywhere!”

  “I see no gentleman, Cudgel, only a villain and some vermin on my doorstep. Anyway I am right here, right now, anytime you wish to avenge your pride.”

  “Oh I shall have you, you drunken up-jumped peasant!” snarled the foreigner hatefully.

  The baron quite rightfully stared. “Me, Cudgel? But you are the humble man who has risen up from your beginnings in the mud to squeeze your way into high society, as you are always so quick to remind others. I am an aristocrat by birth, by nature royalty.” He clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “Once a serf, always a—well, you of all people should know.”

  It was an insensitive thing to say, especially in front of the masses, but today it drew from them a great rumble of laughter which washed swiftly over the protesters, with several voices raised into what soon became a new uniting slogan.

  Once a serf! Once a serf! Strip off his skin and mud him like the rest of us!

  When the much agitated diplomat sought to turn his fury upon them, it was the baron who stepped in on their behalf.

  “Oh come off it, Cudgel,” he scoffed. “Leave them alone. Taking your anger out on commoners only lowers you further in my eyes. If you really want to do something about it, I am still here.”

  “And what is it you expect me to do?” cried Cudgmore acidly.

  “What a gentleman should, sir,” the baron returned.

  Hobbling forward on his valet’s massive forearm, the diplomat made a grand show of ripping off one of his gloves before throwing it before his rival’s feet.

  “There!” he spat.

  “Very well,” nodded the baron. “I suppose it will be my head you want on a platter for your troubles if you win.”

  “On the contrary,” said his counterpart, “what am I to do with a head as fat as yours? I would mount it on my wall, but for my reluctance to have to look upon your ugly visage for the rest of my days. Your very face turns my stomach. It is him I want!” He pointed then towards Hungary’s man. “He broke my foot, and I can say with every authority it is a deliberate attack. I want this creature of yours who dared strike those above his station, and I shall then teach him some manners for you.”

  “Yamcey?” cried the baron with a laugh. “By all means, if you had only asked me before throwing down your challenge, I would have given him to you as a gift. He is no meek sheep, but a coiled viper in waiting. I daresay only I might endure his great big mind which he flaunts openly at every opportunity. A weaker willed mind—yours—would be driven mad before the end of the week.” He winked back towards his cousin, before turning to Cudgmore once again. “But now that is to be the contents of your demands, what should it say about me if I gave up one of my own so easily? No deal, Cudgel.”

  Now it was the diplomat who pounced.

  “Who is the serf amongst us now, sir, when you neglect to part with even a servant in your brood for your honor?”

  “Oh but he is a Mandalin too, my good fellow,” the baron remarked offhandedly, “though he seldom goes by it. Didn’t you know? His blood is purer than others I can name.”

  “Then by all means let him defend it as only one of your stupid Clan might!” cried the foreigner.

  They might have gone back and forth on the matter, but for Yamcey stepping up just then to whisper into his cousin’s ear. When his master replied in urgent hisses he gave an affirming nod. With a shrug the baron turned back to Cudgmore.

  “So be it. It seems my man is made of sterner stuff than I realized. And far be it for me to come between him and his destiny. Now it only remains for me to tell you what I want out of our agreement, and—”

  “Anything you want but her,” replied the diplomat before he could finish. And against the look which passed over the baron’s crestfallen face, he uttered a braying, superior laugh. “Oh, you would not think me so much a fool that I should not have seen what you are getting at? That woman is mine to do with as I please, and I would not part with her for the world.” Looking all about him he spotted her off to one side, and hobbling over drew her roughly against him. Against the push of an outraged cry from the bottom of the staircase he whistled defiantly.

  The baron, meanwhile, was engaged in a hurried council with his closest lackey. It had indeed been his thinking to barter for the lady’s freedom, but now that he has been headed off a new plan was swiftly put into motion. It was again Yamcey who provided the details, which was swiftly relayed by the baron to his rival.

  “A man should no more shirk his own responsibilities than he should intervene in the domestic affairs of others,” he told Cudgmore plainly. “And I have never harbored much interest in husband-and-wife matters. No, Cudgel. What I want from you is much simpler, considering the stakes.”

  “Oh?” the diplomat snorted disbelievingly. “Pray tell it then.”

  “Your wartime treaty pledges to support our Parliament with twelve-thousand men should we ever head off into conflict. It’s a number which must please your own masters. For mine, however, I am thinking we can do better.”

  “And what number will satisfy you, sir?”

  “Oh,” mused Hungary offhandedly, “let’s say a million.”

  Opposite him the diplomat broke into a great roar of shared guffaws with his underlings.

  “Surely you jest!”

  The baron shook his head stoically.

  �
��I can say with absolute certainty I am all seriousness.”

  “You are offering your valet, who has caused me some injury, in exchange for my putting up a million of my countrymen to do the bidding of your king? You are either insane or simple in the head, sir.”

  “But really, Cudgel,” said Hungary with a shrug, “what is a gentleman’s honor worth to all of us then, if not everything we have to offer?”

  “I will not be made a fool of, coal baron!” he returned angrily.

  “Then it stands to reason I have already won. I shall keep my man then, and you may revel in the shame your reluctance has brought upon your people.”

  With a wave of his arm the crowd in the square below raised a great clamor, culminating in a series of hisses with the last note stretched curiously long to slither into the sky over all of them. It shall speak something of the habits of gentleman in that Age that such a slight was often worth the lives of thousands to repair.

  “So be it, Hunry!” cried Cudgmore with a ring of finality in his harsh, stern voice. “When I have your man in my hands, I shall happily strip him naked and hang him from a wall for all to see.”

  “And I,” replied the baron, “once I have your million, I will cheerfully march them all off the nearest cliff for my own amusement.”

  Again the two parties surged together, and the principle participants of the duel shook on the matter. It was the custom of the land to press thumbs in order to seal the deal, and in this Cudgmore happily bowed to local tradition. The baron, in return, graciously offered him the right to pick the time, place and method by which their differences might be settled.

  “So which is it to be then,” asked Hungary of his rival, “Swords, fisticuffs, or pistols at dawn?”

  The diplomat shook his head, a wicked smile playing its way over his lips.

  “None of the above, sir. I will not wrestle with you in the mud like apes. It is to be a race between us.”

  “Very well then. Horses, dogs, or hares?”

  The appearance of Cudgmore took on a profound change, until his features twisted over into something resembling a smiling fox. He uttered only a single word in reply to the baron’s inquiries.

  “Trains.”

  And so it was decided that three weeks of preparation time was to be afforded to both parties, with at the end the section of tracks coming and going between Westhaben Platform Station deep inside the city premises and the Twin Garrisons some miles north being closed off for the day of the race. The carriages were naturally to be the baron’s la Gallant versus Cudgmore’s Iron Tulip—so named, to hear him tell of it, for his much abused wife, as it had been a gift from her in the early days of her marriage to him. The locomotive heads were to be provided for at each racer’s discretion, and a free hand was also given over to them in the selection of the makeup of the train’s crew.

  “You will be there, won’t you Yamcey?” the baron said to his man. They were once again seated opposite one another in the sitting room at Gildboors with the fireplace between them. “Cudgel is going to bring his, that drooling giant of a man. Probably he has it in his mind what the mutant adds to the weight of the train he makes up by shoveling coal into the engine. But there I have an advantage. He is bringing with him a thing which might be three men gathered into one great big lump of meat and muscles, whereas my own valet is half-man, half-wraith.” He chuckled smugly to himself looking Yamcey up and down. “We are already up one over him simply in terms of raw distributed weight.”

  The butler, for his part, merely replied plainly, “But then again Lord Cudgmore is a thinner, shorter man than you, sir—and at least some stones less heavy—so I would think that advantage is already lost.” He shrugged. “But I’ll go where you tell me, Hungary.”

  Following the great disturbance at Summer Scales’ Place the actual photo opportunity, when it arrived, took place without much fanfare or excitement. Both its principle participants were somewhat distant, if not outright hostile to one another, and it was not long before the entire affair was wound up. Each man retreated to their respective strongholds to plan for their upcoming race—Cudgmore into his hotel, of which the entirety of the topmost floors was cordoned off by the captain of his guard, and the baron as you know into his ancestral home in the country. Speed was nothing if not of the utmost essence here, for in addition to preparing the train so that it was ready to race, careful selection of its conductor-driver, chief-engineer, and chemist in order to synthesize top-grade fuel beforehand were paramount to the outcome of the contest.

  It is for this reason that you will find all of Gildboors up in arms over the matter, with nearly a hundred servants darting in and out of its doors and windows and around the relaxed figures of the baron and his butler as they sat across from each other in deep conversation. Now and then a runner would appear behind Yamcey’s chair as if summoned out of thin air, and a note or two would be stuffed into the chief-servant’s outstretched hand before taking off again with his replies after a stand-to salute towards the master of the household.

  “What about the fireman?” the baron asked. “We will need a strong, tireless hand for that, one which will not mind being mired for some hours blackened and bleeding, feeding the box so that the flames roar throughout the trip.”

  “I was thinking, my lord, that distinguished post might be yours,” his man replied wryly.

  “Me, Yamcey?”

  “But of course. We have no giant to match the one which your rival is bringing aboard, so we must make do with the next best thing. You can put up your big, hairy arms and go shirtless for a day for a good and noble cause. Meanwhile we will need to get a handle on the others before they are snatched from beneath our eyes.”

  “Wiring down the line, then?”

  The baron’s man nodded. “Just so. We will require the best in the city in their respective fields, and to that end I have made every effort to acquire their services before our competitor reaches them first.”

  “But he has his own conductor, hey?” said the baron. “And since he came here on his own train, it stands to reason he will not need our men, even if he trusts them enough to make use of them.”

  Yamcey said somberly, “For him to win back his pride after the severe blow you have dealt him, he will need the best, just as we do. At present these are”—he looked down at the telegrams in his hand— “Gains and Gamble, the best conductor-drivers on the seventh southbound line, Hadley, the head engineer at Boon Train Co., and Garbunks, the teacher’s assistant to Dr. Igossli, the renowned head of the chemistry faculty at Garlton, your own athletics alma mater.”

  “Ah!” cried the baron. “I remember him from my own time there as a student. But why should we not have the good doctor himself instead of his junior disciple? It seems there’s a flaw with your list, Yamcey, for you are settling for less.”

  “Dr. Igossli is eighty-seven this year, my lord. He is no longer the energetic man you remember thirty years ago, and we can hardly expect to drag him along for what would almost certainly be a rough journey such as this one. Better not to mention it to him either, for I’m sure he would, in fact, insist on coming, for he is a great patriot and patron of the Pegging Opera Troupe in his day.” The valet smiled wryly. “In any case his greatest achievements lie more in the theoretical discovery of new elements rather than the practical applications of those already found. So no, Hungary, I have not made any mistakes. Garbunks, his talented synthesizer, is the man we need.”

  “Then by all means get him,” said the baron, “and the others as well for that matter. It should not be so difficult, for, as you have mentioned, we are on a good cause with the adoration of the people behind us.”

  His man only sighed wistfully.

  “For every patriot you will find two more ready to betray their beliefs if the pay is good enough. You will also have to open your pockets, my lord.”

  “Fine,” his master waved his hand dismissively. “You have carte-blanche, Yamcey. I fail to think how we can b
e out-bidden in our own home. Surely my coffers are much deeper than Cudgel’s.”

  “They are,” nodded the valet. “But it was not the purchase of these allegiances which worry me. Lord Cudgmore cannot pay more than you for them, but he can offer enough still that it will be difficult to have them at all. It is sabotage I’m talking about, my dear cousin. You have only to spend a pittance these days for somebody to have his legs broken by a masked ruffian in an alley.”

  In a rush the baron stood up from his chair, his cheeks flushed with sudden agitation.

  “My Gods! You’re right! You must see to it at once that they are not harmed! Wire the captains and have them put under police protection at once! Or better yet, bring them all here where they will be safely defended, for Gildboors is impregnable while I draw breath!”

  “It has been done already, my lord. But even with our speedy mailing system we cannot account for every abbreviation. I suggest that you take a personal hand in matters.”

  “You mean—” the baron took a furtive look all around him at the peoples going in and out of his sitting room. That last word was rolled back from his lips and swiftly swallowed.

  It was just as well, for he never received a proper answer from his man for it. At that moment the doorman entered wearing a perplexed look, and drawing near he whispered a few words into the chief servant’s ear which caused even the normally stoic Yamcey to raise one curious eyebrow.

  “What?” the baron wanted to know over the back of his chair. “What is it now?”

  “A visitor, my lord,” said his man, “from your rival.”

  “Cudgel’s creature?”

  A nod from the butler.

  “Release the hounds!” Hungary commanded at once.

  It was the immovability of the doorman which gave the baron pause, for to the best of his knowledge he has never been disobeyed in his own home. He, the uncomfortable fellow, seemed unable to comprehend his orders or carry them out.

  “Well?” the baron roared, slapping a massive hand down on the back of his chair. “Hop to it then! If the dogs haven’t chased him off when I next look out my window, you’ll be in for a good thrashing.”