Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  “You’re not sore, are you?” he asked her. Below, the boy started to uncurl like a bruised flower, eyes blinking at the twin thoughts that he’d been both saved and abandoned.

  Sophia moved awkwardly. “My, you know. Tusch.”

  “Arse?” suggested Felix.

  “Yes, that. I won’t be sitting down all day.”

  Felix smirked. “You had the fattest, most docile nag left in the stables and it barely broke into a walk.”

  They returned their attention to the courtyard. The slave-boy had finally found his feet, and was looking around at the high walls, sniffing the the cool damp air. He limped first in one direction, then another, not knowing what to do.

  “Someone needs to go and take care of him,” said Sophia.

  “Wait. I want to see what he does.”

  “Isn’t that …” she frowned, “…cruel?”

  “He’s free,” said Felix. “Is freedom cruelty?”

  “The boy’s hurt.”

  Despite his evident discomfort, the boy circled the courtyard. A servant came out of the kitchen, on the way to the well for water. She broke step when she saw this under-dressed child, and kept a wary eye on him as she hauled on the rope.

  Felix studied the woman thoughtfully. “That well,” he said, “might come up from the caves below the fortress that Master Thaler discovered.” He glanced around at Sophia. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Who are you going to send down to find out?”

  “I’ll ask for volunteers.”

  The woman at the well was now speaking to the boy, who clearly didn’t understand a word. She didn’t give up, though, her mouth-movements becoming more and more exaggerated as she attempted to make herself understood.

  “The lad can work in the library. Master Thaler speaks Greek, doesn’t he?”

  “Among a dozen other languages.” Sophia stretched her back, but continued to look out of the window at the courtyard. “I do too.”

  The boy was standing close to the kitchen woman. He was pointing to the rope, and she was laughing, shaking her head. The bucket emerged, and her strong arms lifted it clear. She poured the contents into the pail she’d brought, and left the other on the ground, surrounded by coils of rope.

  She was halfway back to the kitchen when she turned and beckoned the boy to follow her. He tried to hurry, despite his thin legs being stiff with injury. She waited for him all the same, and he trailed beside her skirts as she was lost from view.

  “You were late back from the library. Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” Felix rubbed at his shoulder.

  “You’d better sit down.” Sophia declined to do the same, but instead poured them both a cup of watered wine. “Master Wess had to intervene at the bridge this morning. A farmer had found some Bavarians hiding in his barn.”

  “Not more Bavarians.” Felix pressed his forehead against the table. “We’re going to run out of towers to hold them all at this rate.”

  “It’s not like last time, Felix. It was two families. They were fleeing Simbach.”

  His head came up. “Fleeing? Are things that bad there?”

  “So Master Wess says. Their earl has decided that as well as sending spies against us, he’s going to rob his own people.” Sophia walked back and forth beside the length of the table. There was something distracting about the swish of her skirt as she turned.

  “Can’t we leave the Bavarians to deal with him?” Felix asked her. “Who’s on the throne instead of Leopold?”

  She stopped briefly. “No one knows. This Fuchs seems free to do whatever he wants.”

  Felix pulled a face. “We don’t have enough soldiers to patrol the river bank.”

  “We have to do something, though. If all of Simbach decides they’ve had enough, we’re the first obvious place for them to go. And then Fuchs will follow them.”

  “My father would be choosing what he was going to have for lunch about now,” murmured Felix, looking at the surface of the wine in his cup, and at how it shivered with each of her footsteps. “Then perhaps thinking about an afternoon’s hawking. Ask me again if I want things to go back to the way they were?”

  “They can’t, Felix, and we’re left having to do something about this.” She stood behind him, and rested her hands on his shoulders. Gently, as if she might damage him otherwise. “Fuchs has already sent spies here to find out what we could do to him. He’s testing us.”

  Felix leant back into her touch. “We can’t do anything to him. I’m sorry for the people of Simbach, but what do they expect us to do?”

  “They expect us to help them.”

  “With what? We don’t have an army, Sophia. We don’t have hexmasters and we don’t have men-at-arms and we don’t have horsemen and we don’t have crossbowmen. And even if we had, I wouldn’t want to waste their lives like my father did at Obernberg.” He twisted around in his seat, despite the pain this caused him. “We have to choose which battles to fight. We don’t have to fight this one. Not yet, anyway. We’re not ready.”

  She stepped back, let her fingers slide off him. “We can’t ignore it.”

  “We’re not. We’re arguing about whether we can invade Simbach when we haven’t even repaired the water system.” He slumped back onto the table. “If Fuchs crosses the river, then yes, we’ll have to force him back, somehow.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to think about that now?”

  “Yes,” he groaned. “But I can’t magic up an army I don’t have. And I’m not hiring mercenaries – I know what’ll happen if I do that. We’ll be able to protect ourselves by next spring. We’ll have militias by then, and enough arms and training for them to make anyone worry. We’ll have troops we can move quickly through the palatinate when we have to. It’ll just take time, that’s all.”

  “Simbach doesn’t have a year, Felix. Neither do we.” Hands that moments ago had been gently touching him were now slapped on the tabletop with force. “We’ve been given this information. We haven’t had to work for it, and it’s cost us nothing. Surely we have to do better now than just sitting around waiting for something horrible to happen.”

  Exasperated, Felix got up and kicked his chair away. “What do you suggest then? Are you going to lead your neighbours up to Simbach and rout the earl?”

  “Felix, I don’t have to. How many men does this Fuchs have? A score? Two? How many men – and women – in Simbach are fed up with his pillaging? They don’t need an army. They need hope and a leader. That’s it. That’s all.” She bent down and righted his chair, pushing it back under the table.

  Felix felt she was missing the point. “Simbach is in Bavaria—”

  “There is no Bavaria, Felix! It’s gone. Even Byzantium is coming to you for help: if they can’t kill enough slaves, they’ll go the same way as Rome did. You spend hours staring at that map when you know it’s meaningless.” She reached across and snatched it up, shaking it at him. “Carinthia is only real because the people who live in these inky scratches are happy to call themselves Carinthians.”

  “And not because I’m their prince?”

  She lowered her arms, put the map back down on the table and smoothed out some of the creases she’d caused. “What made us – most of us – turn to you rather than Eckhardt?”

  Felix was prince because his father had been prince, and his father before him, all the way back to Alaric. Yet Sophia was asking why people followed him.

  “I … don’t know.” His high dudgeon was burst like a pig’s bladder. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “which is why you’re going to do something about Simbach. You can offer them something better than they have now. If they want to get rid of Fuchs, you’ll help them. It’s your nature.”

  “What can I offer them? Honestly?”

  She put her back to him for a moment and reached into her bodice. When she turned again, she was holding out a piece of parchment. “I kept the original,” she said. “This. This is enough. You could raise an army
in a valley bottom or on a mountaintop with this.”

  He took it from her – it was warm from the heat of her body – and opened it. The words he’d written almost casually, carelessly, stared out of the page at him. All those who call themselves Carinthians will be subject to the same laws, the same taxes and the same freedoms granted by Carinthia, without favour. At the stroke of his pen, he’d upended a thousand years of the privilege of wealth and land and status. His own included. It hadn’t seemed like that at the time, but it was still the right thing to have done.

  “You really think so?” he asked.

  “Yes. That and a bargeload of weapons. We can take Simbach in a single night, and not lose a man – if you’re prepared to extend that guarantee across the river. Tell them you’ll divide the earl’s lands among them. Appoint a mayor. No more Fuchs, and no more homeless townspeople drifting into Carinthia.” She took the paper back, and turned away once more to stow it inside her clothing.

  “Just tell me it’ll work.” He had no idea. But she was convinced, and that counted for a lot: for everything, in fact.

  “If it doesn’t, we can try something different. Perhaps a more …” Sophia considered her words, “usual response.”

  “Well, I suppose we should call for Master Ullmann,” said Felix. “As for those Bavarian families: let’s see if they have the stomach for a fight.”

  65

  What would have happened if she hadn’t followed Frederik Thaler up Goat Mountain? Would they all be dead by now? Would Eckhardt still be feeding his appetite with Jews, or would he have run out of them and moved on to other game? Had her decision been a whim or had she been guided as part of a greater plan? Was her meeting with the prince, and the fine dresses and unaccustomed authority that had followed, an accident, or had the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had used her to save His people?

  Sophia thought that some sort of sign might have been appropriate: a burning bush; a pillar of smoke; an angel; a still, small voice. A talking ass, even. It wasn’t much to ask. Instead, all she had was the indisputable fact that, when she spoke, people listened, including all the men who’d previously only ever frowned at her for being too intelligent, too well-read, too opinionated, to make a good wife: exactly those qualities that made her useful – necessary even – to Felix.

  She had plenty of time to entertain such thoughts on her walks between the fortress and the town, but at least she no longer had to worry about her father: since falling in with Thaler, and losing some obscure bet with him, he was mostly out of trouble and more or less content.

  She was at the quayside, to talk to the bargemasters, who were taking their sudden unemployment badly. It was still early, but if she could find one of them sober, she’d count herself lucky.

  Most of them were rumoured to be found in the beer cellars at the bottom end of Wheat Alley, and beer cellars weren’t somewhere that Jewish men ever went, let alone good Jewish women.

  And yet, and yet.

  She steeled herself at the top of the cellar’s steps and gathered her coat around her. The windows were brown and streaked. Above the door was a complicated rope knot, bent and spliced and intertwined. She had no idea what she would find inside. Drunk Jews celebrating Purim was one thing: drunk Germans despairing for their livelihoods was another.

  If she was scared, she shouldn’t show it. Like most things in her life at that moment, if she could act the role, she was the role.

  She walked down below street level, and opened the door. The smell was – distinct and unpleasant. Everybody in Carinthia smelt more than they used to – the lack of running water had seen to that – but this was a different level of odour.

  Those men still conscious turned to see who it was who dared disturb their maudlin reflections.

  Most just turned away again. A handful kept on staring, and two stood up – not out of deference, but in a belligerent, resentful manner. The cellar’s host put down the mug he was cleaning and flicked a damp cloth over his shoulder.

  “Mistress Morgenstern? You’re welcome, of course, but this isn’t a place for the ladies.”

  “I’m looking …” she said, surprised at how small her voice sounded, “I’m looking to hire a boat and its crew.”

  “Fuck off back to Jew-land,” said one bargemaster, and he put his back to her, his tattooed face twisted in a sneer.

  Sophia hadn’t come unprepared. To the consternation of the drinkers, she parted her coat up to her waist and drew her sword. The sound was unmistakable, the soft slither of iron against the leather and brass of the scabbard, and the man who’d insulted her stiffened.

  She rested the tip of the blade on his broad shoulder so he could feel the weight of it. “That’s ‘Fuck off back to Jew-land, my lady’ to you.”

  She had their attention.

  The bargemaster reached slowly for his mug and took a long pull. “Do you expect me to apologise?”

  “An apology would go a long way to helping me forget your face and not bother to find out your name. What’s it to be, bargemaster? A day in the lock-up or a grudging admission that I have a point?”

  “Do you have balls under that skirt as well as a sword?”

  “Not yet, but I can always cut yours off and wear them as a trophy.”

  Someone laughed. It gave permission to others to guffaw and snigger, but it wasn’t her they were mocking. This was no harmless sport, though: reputations were being made and lost.

  She held her nerve. The bargemaster finished his drink and brushed the sword-point from his shoulder. She held the weapon level. He got up, slowly, and showed her just how tall and wide he was, how bloodshot his eyes were and how yellow his teeth.

  If he laid so much as a finger on her, Felix would have him pressed. He knew it. She knew it. The sword was superfluous, the law an extravagance. Had she judged the situation wrongly after all?

  No. Apparently not.

  “My lady,” he said, dragging the words out of somewhere deep inside and refusing to look at her. His line to the door was far from straight, but it sufficed. The door closed. He’d gone. There were still two dozen or so bargemasters and bargees, and she rather hoped she wouldn’t have to face down every single one of them.

  She lowered her sword, and looked around the room. Several of them were still smirking, but none gave any indication they might want to talk to her. That was, in her opinion, stupid. She had coin, and it wasn’t like any of them were going anywhere soon. Quite where they found the money for drink escaped her.

  A few grins started to slip. She wasn’t going anywhere either, they realised. They started to glance sideways at each other, to see who would break first.

  Finally, a grey-haired man with a cross-shaped tattoo on one cheek and a spiral on the other ousted the clean-skinned bargee off his seat at the end of a table. He raised his eyebrow at Sophia and nodded towards the empty chair.

  She could poise and swagger as well as the next man, but something told her that this bargemaster wouldn’t be impressed by that. She laid her sword lengthways along the beer-soaked tabletop and, gathering up her skirts, sat down.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’m—”

  “I know who you are, my lady.” The man had the look of a Frank about him, right down to his thin but long moustache. “Vulfar.”

  “And you own a barge, Master Vulfar?”

  “Used to ply it from Ulm all the way to the Black Sea, and, gods willing, I will again. The thing is … you’ll know by these marks” – Vulfar turned his cheeks and pushed up his sleeves – “what I can’t do any more.”

  Sophia felt herself colour up. “I wouldn’t be hiring you if you could.”

  “Very pragmatic of you, Mistress Morgenstern.” He sat back and tweaked the end of his moustache. “I think we might have had dealings with your father in the past. Indirectly, of course.”

  She looked at the rest of his crew, and wondered if these men didn’t feel the loss of magic most keenly of all. One day, the open river and a
thousand miles to navigate; the next, tied up on the quayside of a single town.

  “The trip will be downstream only, Master Vulfar. We’ll try and get your boat back here afterwards, or we’ll buy it outright if that’s what you want. And there’ll be pay for you and your men. I don’t believe in chiselling every last red penny, so I hope we can come to a fair price.”

  “A fair price for what work, exactly?” Vulfar examined the bottom of his empty mug.

  “Something we should discuss in private, perhaps,” said Sophia. She didn’t know how much cellar beer cost, so she guessed, counting three shillings from her purse and placing them on the table in front of her. “I’m sure your crew can drink to the prince’s health while we’re talking.”

  She closed her purse and pulled her sword back along the table. Vulfar’s men watched its steel simplicity withdraw and then pounced on the coins.

  Vulfar led the way back outside and, with a wary look around at the street, waited for Sophia to join him.

  “You don’t think I should have crossed that other bargemaster, do you?”

  “He was your enemy before you entered the cellar, my lady. Why should it be any different now?” He had a club at his belt, far more effective in a bar brawl than her own weapon. “I do think you shouldn’t be walking the streets of Juvavum without a guard, no matter how proficient you are with that pig-sticker.”

  “Pig-sticker?”

  “You know what I mean, my lady. I might not share either your religion or your country, but the prince’s mother shared mine and I’ve more than a passing interest in his well-being.” The bargemaster smoothed his moustache again with a pinch of yellow wax produced from a silver container. “The boy leans on you, and you need to be more careful.”

  She pulled her coat aside to sheath her sword. “I’ve lived here all my life, Master Vulfar. I know the risks.”

  “Do you?” He stopped for a moment. “Do you really? I was on the quayside the day your priests chased you into the Town Hall. They took a pounding from our bottles then, and ever since, whenever I’ve seen them, they’ve been in armour, and always in company. Far be it for me to point out who learnt what that day.”