The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  But Eszterhazy was not concentrating on the sermon. There rang incessantly in his ear, as though being chanted into it by something sitting upon his shoulder, only the words a leopard shall watch over their cities …

  And, when back at home, he examined his scant notes for the dates of Ezekkiel Yahnosh, he found that, really, all that he had written in their place was Jeremiah, V, 6.

  * * *

  Many a set of hoopskirts worn in Bella in their time, many a crinoline worn in Bella in its time, many a bustle worn in Bella (around about then or not a long span later being their time) had been fashioned in the ever-fashionable stablishment of Mademoiselle Sophie, Couturière Parisienne. Mlle. Sophie was a native of a canton perhaps better known for its cuckoo-clocks than its haute couture, but she had nevertheless plied a needle and thread in Paris. She had plied it chiefly in replacing buttons in a basement tailor-shop until her vast commonsense told her to get up and go out of the basement into the light and air. She hadn’t stopped going until she reached Bella, and if her trip and her beginnings in business had indeed been ‘under the protection’ of a local textile merchant who sometimes visited Paris on business, why, whose affair was that? That is, who else’s affair? Nevertheless, most of the women’s garments in Bella owed nothing to the fact that Mlle. Sophie gained her bread by the pricks of her needle; and perhaps a slight majority of the women’s garments in Bella owned nothing at all to what was worn in Paris. Even as Eszterhazy paused to throw down and step upon a segar, several woman—evidently sisters—passed by dressed in the eminently respectable old high burger style: costly cloth stiff with many a winter day’s embroidery, the bodices laced with gold-tipped laces, each stiff petticoat of bright color slightly shorter than the one underneath. No one else even much noticed.

  Still, someone laughed, and it was not a nice laugh. Eszterhazy did not move his head, but his eyes slightly moved. Just across the narrow street was Melanchthon Mudge, clad in fur-coat and fur-hat whose gloss must have represented a fortune in sable and other prime pelts: what was he laughing at? Slowly approaching was a woman by herself. She moved with difficulty. She had been limping with a side-to-side motion which caused her short and heavy body to rock in a manner that allowed little dignity. Nothing about her was rich, and certainly not the rusty black cloth coat which covered the upper part of her dingy black dress: truth to tell it was not even over-clean. Her face was not young and it was not comely and it seemed fuddled with effort. Such things as gallantry and pity aside, if one thought the grotesque laughable, then one would understandably laugh at the sight of her. But such laughter, merely the comcomitant of a country culture which laughed at cripples and stammerers, was more puzzling when it came from Mudge. The woman clearly heard the laugh, was clearly not indifferent to it. She tried to walk on more swiftly, rocked and swayed more heavily; there was another laugh; abruptly Mudge walked off.

  On the poor woman’s head was a bonnet of the sort which had been favored, perhaps a generation ago, by fashion in the North-American provinces. So, on the spur of the moment, Eszterhazy, lifting his own hat, addressed her in English.

  “You don’t have such picturesque native costume,” the slightest inclination of his head towards the wearers of the local picturesque costume, “in your own country, I believe, ma’am.”

  She slowly rocked to a stop and looked at him with, at first, some doubt. “No, sir,” said she, “we don’t, and that’s a fact. We haven’t had the time to develop it. Utility has been our motto. Maybe too much so. You don’t know who I am, do you? No. But I know you, Mr. Esthermazy, if only by sight, for you’ve been pointed out to me. Reverend Ella May Butcher, European Mission, First Spiritualist Church, Buffalo, N.Y.” She extended her hand, he—automatically—had begun to stoop to kiss it—she gave a firm shake—he did not stoop. “My late husband was very well acquainted with President Fillmore. But you don’t know President Fillmore here.” She was in this correct. Neither Eszterhazy personally nor the entire Truine Monarchy had known President Fillmore: there … or anywhere.

  “I’ve come to show those deep in sorrow that their beloved ones have been saved from the power of the shadow of death. It ain’t for me to say why the spirits of those who’ve passed over are sometimes pleased to use me as their medium, Mr. Esthermazy. We have settings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, the Good Lord willing, at eight o’clock P.M. in the room at the head of the stairs in the old Scottish Rite hall. No admission charge is ever made; love offering only.” If Reverend Ella May Butcher was offered much such love, there was nothing to show it. The flat level of her voice did not vary as she asked, “Do you know that man who laughed at me just now?”

  The shouting of the teamsters and the clash of hooves on the stone blocks obliged him to raise his voice. “We have met,” he said.

  Widow Butcher looked at him with her muddy eyes. “There are spirits of light, sir; and there are spirits of darkness. That one’s gifts never came from the light. I have to go on now. I hope to see you at one of our settings. Thank you for your kindness.” He bowed slightly, lifted his hat, she lifted her skirts as high as was proper for a lady to lift them (a bit higher than would have been proper perhaps in London, but surely not too high for Bella and doubtless not too high for Buffalo, New York, where her late husband had been very well acquainted with President Fillmore), and prepared to cross the broader street. At this signal the filthy scarecrow which was the crossing-sweeper leaned both hands on the stick of his horrid broom and plowed her a way through the horse-dung. Eszterhazy watched as she poked in her purse for a coin; then a knot of vans and wagons went toiling by, laden high with barrels of goose-fat and rye meal and white lard and yellow lard. And when they gone, so had she.

  * * *

  He had not expected to meet Mr. Mudge within the week, but he had not expected to be in the South Ward within the week, either. Someone had reported to him that a certain item of horse-furniture was in a certain popular pawnshop there, and someone had said that—not having been redeemed when the loan expired—the item (it was a mere ornament, but then, too, perhaps the horse which first had borne it had also borne the last Byzantine Emperor) was now for sale.

  “Impossible,” said a familiar voice. Outside the pawnshop.

  And another voice, less familiar, but … familiar … said … asked, “‘Impossible’? Impossible for you to do it when two Emperors and one King have already done it?”

  There was D. Cosimo D., looking as though he would be away, and there was Mr. Mudge, looking as though he would not let him go. “I do not know other than nothing of it,” said Cosimo.

  Mudge said he would ‘explain the matter yet again.’ The briefly reigning King Amadeus of Spain had been pleased to give Mr. Mudge a gift of jewels. Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French, had given him some other jewels. And a third such royal gift had come from Alexander, late Czar of all the Russians. “By the merest coincidence,” said Mudge, “they contained elements of the so-called Pasqualine Diamonds. That is to say, I now have them all. I can show you the Deeds of Gifts.”

  “I wish not to see them. Gifts!”

  “That is to say, all but the thumb-ring of Duke Pasquale. Without it, the set is incomplete. You may name a price. Money, lands; lands and money—whatever. I shall execute a will demising the jewels all to your noble house. I—”

  “I, sir. Know nothing. Have nothing to sell. Desire nothing to obtain. Ah, my son”—to Eszterhazy—”You have heard? Am I not right?”

  And Eszterhazy said, “The King of the Single Sicily is right.”

  * * *

  A week later, as Eszterhazy emerged from his club in Upper Hunyadi Street, a tall man seemed to uncoil from a bench, and, in an instant, stood before him. It was Melanchthon Mudge. Melanchthon Mudge was before him, the bench was alongside of him, a stone pillar of the colonnade was behind him. Only one way of passage remained, but he did not seek to take it. The man wished to do it so? well, let him do it so, then.

  “Be quic
k,” he said.

  “Dr. Eszterhazy,” said the tall, thin man, earnestly; “you have twice affronted me.” Eszterhazy looked at him with a face which was absolutely expressionless, and said absolutely nothing. Mudge seemed rather disconcerted at this; and, a moment having passed, he compressed his lips, something like a frown beginning to appear: this vanished almost at once. A smile replaced it; one might easily see how very many had regarded it as a charming smile. Very often. “You have, Doctor, twice affronted me, I say. But I cannot believe that you ever meant to do so. This being the case, you will take no affront when I explain to you what the affronts were”—and still, Eszterhazy did not move. He continued to gaze with motionless eyes.

  Mudge cleared his throat. Then he held up one finger of his left hand and he pressed upon it with one finger of his right. “To begin with, although perfectly aware of my perfect reasons for wishing to purchase the Pasqualine Ring, you urged its present owner not to part with it.” He paused. No reaction. No reply. A second finger came forward on the extended left hand, was pressed upon with the forefinger of the right. “You also, doubtless purely as a jape, counterfeited—by some species of parlor trick which in another and lesser man I should term ‘charlatanry’—counterfeited those great gifts which are mine as donatives of the Spirits. Now, sir, I do urge you, Dr. Eszterhazy, not to presume to affront me a third time. I am in process of taking a most important step in my personal life. It would mean that we would meet so very often that I should desire to be upon no terms with you save the very friendliest. But if you—”

  Eszterhazy’s eyes shifted suddenly, transfixed the other man with such a sort of look that the man winced. A brief cry, as of pain, was torn from his throat. “Wretch, rogue, and scoundrel,” Eszterhazy said; “I well know that you have it in your black mind to propose marriage to my cousin’s cousin, the Highlady Charlotte of Damrosch-Pensk. This, it does not lie within my power to prevent; that is, her mother being in something close to vassalage to you, we both know why, you may propose. I shall tell you what does lie within my power. By the terms of her late father’s will, the Highlady Charlotte is in effect a ward of the Emperor until her thirtieth year—unless she is lawfully married before that day. I have already seen to it that a full statement of your depraved behavior in other countries, your disgusting statements set by your own hand in writing in regard to another lady, and the abhorrent circumstances under which you became, first famous, and then rich—I have with a great and grim pleasure seen to it that the Lord President of the Privy Council now knows it all. The present Emperor will never give his assent without consulting the Lord President. And—”

  But this next sentence was scarcely begun when something unseen struck Eszterhazy a blow and sent him with great force reeling against the pillar from where he had been standing several feet away. It was of course painful, it left him breathless and without power of speech: all his effort went into remaining upright; he clutched the pillar, backwards, with both his hands.

  Even as he felt himself stagger, he saw the medium, face set for one fearful second into a rictus of rage, go striding away and down the steps. His cloak flew almost level with the ground. There was another voice echoing in Eszterhazy’s ears, very faint it was, very faintly echoing. There are spirits of light, sir; and there are spirits of darkness. That one’s gifts never came from the light.…

  * * *

  Eszterhazy, coming up the slum stairs to where the old couple lived, was not at first surprised to hear the sounds of altercation. The place was, after all, a slum, and slum-dwellers tend when angered not merely to speak out but to shout. What surprised him was to hear the old noblewoman’s voice raised, even briefly. What could—Ah. Ahah. The local muckman was trying to collect garbage-fees. So. True, that the work was damnably hard. True that in the South Ward the fees were often damnably hard to collect. True, that it was hard to imagine the old couple’s scanty diet producing enough garbage to be worth feeing. And, true, bullying was a time-established way of collecting the fees. Or trying to.

  A fat, foul smell, filthy and greasy, announced its owner even before the sight of the fat, foul body on the landing by the door—fat, foul, smelly, greasy—voice coarse, loud, hectoring. “—wants me entitles!” the voice shouted. “Wants me ten copperkas!” Fat, smeary shoulders thrusting at partially-closed door. “’r I takes the tea-pot off the cloth and the cloth off the table and—” The third take was never mentioned, the door flew open wider, there stood the dauntless little ‘Queen,’ something glinted, something flashed. The muckman gave a hoarse howl and fell back, struggling for balance. The door closed. The muckman whirled around, flesh quivering; flesh, where a hand fell for a moment away, flesh bleeding. Scratches on the rank, besmeared arm. Made by—made by what? “That she-cat,” grumbled the man, fear giving way to mere astonishment and dull defeated rage—made by small embroidery shears? or—

  “That she-cat has claws,” said the muckman, and stumped away down. The rank smell of him alone remained.

  Inside, a moment later, there was of course no mention of it all. They seemed a bit more haggard, a bit more harried than usual. He asked if there were not, was there not? something wrong. They looked at him with wasted eyes. “The ring. Duke Pasquale’s ring. The ring. He shall never have it. Never.”

  * * *

  “Cosimo, I saw a very curious thing.”

  “And what was that, my dear one?”

  “I saw a leopard, Cosimo, leaping from roof to roof, till it was out of sight. Was that not curious?”

  “Indeed, my dear one, that was curious indeed. Not many people are vouchsafed to see visions. By and by, perhaps, we will understand. The soup is now very warm. Let me feed you, as I already have our spoon.”

  * * *

  If this were a nightmare, thought Eszterhazy, then he would presently shout himself awake, and … “If this were a nightmare”! And suppose this were not? But these thoughts were all peripheral. He felt things he had never felt before, sensed that for which he knew no terms of sensation. Impressions immensely deep, and immensely unfamiliar. And then some sort of barrier was broken, and he felt it break, and things ceased to be immeasurably alien; but he was not comforted by this, not at all, for everything which was now at all familiar was very horribly so: he heard very ugly sounds made by things he could not see and he saw (if only fleetingly or on the periphery of vision) very ugly things doing things he could not hear. In so far as it resembled anything it resembled the grotesque paintings of the Lowlander Jan Bos: but mostly it resembled nothing. Fire bubbled in his brain like lava. To breathe was to be tortured by his own body. Terror was a solid thing sucking marrow from his bones. He caught sight of a certain known face and on the face, its mouth slightly parted and wet yellow teeth exposed, was an expression of lust and glee.

  * * *

  Who was this, suddenly seizing his arm, face now a chalky mask with charcoal smudges under the eyes? “My son, he will not grant it, he will not grant it! I said to his secretary, ‘Father, forget that I am the rightful King of the Single Sicily and consider only that I am a child faithful to Mother Church and with a wife who is sick, Father, sick!’ But he will not grant it! Marón!”

  What Cosimo Damiano was doing in the Mutton Market of the Tartar Section, Eszterhazy did not know; but then he did not know at all what he himself was doing there. And if he himself had, in a state of confusion of mind, wandered far—why then, why not his old tutor? “Sir. Who will not grant what?”—though, already, he had begun to guess.

  “Why, license for an exorcism! Our parish priest reminds me that he himself, though willing, cannot do so without a faculty from the bishop … in this case the archbishop … that is, the Prince-Patriarch of Bella. I begged the secretary, ‘Father,’ I said—But it doesn’t matter what I said. Away he went with his head to one side and back he came with his head to the other side, and he shook his head. His Eminence will not grant it.…”

  Ancient custom, having the force of canon law, decreed t
hat the Archbishop and Prince-Patriarch of Bella be called “His Eminence” just as though he were a cardinal; and His Eminence’s secretary was Monsignor (not merely “Father”) Macgillicuddy. Msgr. Macgillicuddy was descended from those Erse warlords whose departure from their afflicted Island has been compared to the flight of the wild geese: unlike the nonmetaphorical ones, those wild geese never flew back, but drifted slowly from one Catholic kingdom to another. Msgr. Macgillicuddy had been 200 years out of Ireland and no one still in Ireland looked as exquisitely Irish as did Msgr. Macgillicuddy. Perhaps it was a shame that there was no Gaelic monarch at whose court he might be serving instead, and perhaps he did not think so. He belonged to no order, he was attached to no ethnic faction of the Empire or the Church, and if he said that the Prince-Patriarch-Archbishop would allow no exorcism, then that—absolutely—as Eszterhazy well knew—was that.

  To one side a bow-legged Tartar made a sudden dive at a scaping ram, bucked it shoulder to shoulder, slipped arm and hand between the beast’s forelegs, seized a hind leg and pulled forward; the ram went backward, the Tartar swiveled around and, having dropped the leg, from behind seized the animal’s shoulders. The ram sat upright, and could not move. Along came the butcher’s men with their ropes. Escape had been shortlived. A covey of quaint figures, the old Tartar women of the Section, huddled into shawls and veils and skirts and pantaloons, began to gather, each intent on the fresh mutton for the evening’s shashliks. Escape had been very short-lived. For a while the ram had been king of the mountains, defending his meadow of grass and wild thyme and his harem of ewes. But that was over now.