by Robert Adams
"Sir Knight," Sister Fatima, who looked a bit more battered about the face than Rupen recalled her and who now walked with a slight but perceptible limp, told him soon after his arrival from York, "we can not allow you to be alone with her, you or anyone else, male or female, not ever. Her fits of rage are become much more frequent here, and her devil-spawned cunning has increased, as well. She slew one of her ladies—a knight's widow—outright, and just last week she half-blinded and permanently crippled a poor girl of a maidservant. We have had to ask the seneschal, Sir Geoffrey Musgrave, to absent himself from these premises, since she is become wont to attack him on sight, apparently under the mad impression that it is her husband, His Grace of Norfolk, that she is trying to slay. You know well her strength, the strength of her madness, Sir Knight, so you know just how deadly she could be. Therefore, I pray you, as you love God, exercise the utmost caution when anywhere near to her, for you are a very good man and it would much pain me to see her injure or slay you, too."
"Damn, it's good to have you back here," said Krystal in the twentieth-century English to which she and Rupen had both been born, reared, and educated. "It's so good to have somebody I can talk to, somebody who knows the other world, not just this goddam primitive, stinking, uncomfortable excuse for a place to live."
"You know, these yokels all are firmly convinced that this hole we're in is a fucking palace, for Christ's sake, even those damned nuns. No central heating, no air conditioning, no electricity, not even any running water, much less a shower . . . oh, God, God, what I'd give for a nice, hot shower with sweet, mild soap and shampoo and some bath gel and an electric razor to shave my legs and my underarms. You know, one of my ladies used to do it, and do it well, too, before I was taken away and locked up; now under this sack of a dress, I'm just as hairy as a fucking ape. I've asked them to prepare rooms for me elsewhere in the hall, but so far, no dice. These rooms all are small and cramped and drafty, you know. I wouldn't want my son, Joe, to try to live up here. I wrote to Hal, you know, and ordered him to send my son up here from wherever my son-of-a-bitch husband had him sent. Joe is six now, and it's high time I started teaching him his Hebrew. Did Hal send him up with you?"
"No, Mrs. Foster," replied Rupen carefully, "I rode up here with only some guardsmen. We took the cross-country route from York, across the mountains."
"Yes, of course," she said, "and that's no trip for a child, even a strong and active child like Joe. Hal will be sending him up here by the road then, I presume. How soon, do you know?"
Rupen knew—he had been with the Archbishop when he received and read the madwoman's letter.
"I can't say that I do, Mrs. Foster. The Archbishop is such a busy man, and you must know how slowly messages and travelers can move in this world. Also, winter is almost upon us, and I doubt that the Archbishop or you, his mother, would want the boy essaying the so-called roads in a coach. Would you, ma'am?" He was sorry to have to mislead her, but he thought his prevarications better for all concerned than to tell her the truth, that Archbishop Harold thought her son should remain as far from her as possible, that her patent insanity not adversely affect his own developing, immature mind.
Wrinkling up her brows, she said, "No, I suppose it won't hurt to wait a few more months, until the road is passable or at least as passable as that road ever is. But Joe must come up here in the spring, no later, you hear? Hal, of all people, must know just how important is early religious education. Joe was baptized, you know, I let his goddam asshole father talk me into it. But baptized or not, he's still my son and I'm still his mother and that means that he is Jewish, not a goddam goy. I wish to God I could find a rabbi, but none of these fuckers here seem to even know what the frigging word means, and when I tried to explain, they ran in some fucking priest and—would you believe?—not even that pious-mouthed pecker-head knew what a rabbi is."
"Yes, Mrs. Foster," replied Rupen, "I can easily believe that. You see, ma'am, there are no Jews in all of England or Wales, in this world. I am given to understand that there is a small colony of Jews in Edinburgh, and other colonies are scattered about in or near to European cities, with larger numbers in North Africa and the Middle East. But not in England, Mrs. Foster."
"Well," she grated from between clenched teeth, "there are at least two Jews in this world's England, anyway, come hell or high water: me and my son. Poor Joe doesn't look at all like my father, though, he looks just like his goddam WASP father, the schmuck . . . . Do you know what the Yiddish word 'schmuck' means?"
"Yes, Mrs. Foster. I don't speak Yiddish, though I do speak a bit of High German, but I know what that word means, nonetheless."
"You're a German?" she demanded to know. "You don't look at all like a German. You actually look more Jewish than I do."
"No," he replied, "I'm not a German, I'm an American, though I was born in Syria. I was five or so when my folks emigrated to the States."
"Oh, shit!" she said disgustedly. "A fucking Arab, huh?"
He shook his head. "No, ma'am, I'm pure Armenian. My folks were driven out of Armenia in 1915 by the Turks and the Kurds and ended up in Damascus. It took them ten years of damned hard work, but they finally scraped together enough money to make it to the U.S."
"What did you do in that other world, our old world?" she asked. "Peddle oriental rugs and Middle Eastern brassware?"
He grinned. "Not quite, Mrs. Foster . . ."
"Hold it!" she snapped, but then softened the demand with a smile. "If I hear 'Mrs. Foster' one more time, I'm going to throw something solid at you or puke up my guts or both. My name is Krystal."
"All right, Krystal, my name is Rupen, Rupen Ademian," said Rupen.
"Now that we've got that matter straight," she went on, "you were telling me that you didn't peddle rugs and hookahs, right? So what was your line of work, then, Rupen?"
He grinned again. "Varied, Krystal, quite varied. Most recently, for the ten years or so before coming here, I'd been a partner in the Confederate States Armaments Company, Incorporated, of Richmond, Virginia."
She wrinkled up her nose and said dubiously, "Antiques? Funny, you don't look the type, Rupen."
He shook his head. "No, not antiques, not originals. Reproductions of nineteenth-century rifles and pistols, cap-locks, accessories, bayonets, swords, that sort of thing, eventually even some small cannon."
"You mean that people can actually make a living selling copies of old guns and swords and things? It seems to me that any really knowledgeable person, especially one with laboratory facilities, could tell almost immediately that they were modern-made fakes, Rupen." She frowned.
"Oh, they were clearly marked, labeled as repros, Mrs . . . Krystal. No deception was ever intended or practiced. You see, there was and is a large segment of the shooters who wanted to shoot with, even hunt with, the older types of firearms, but all of the originals were, in addition to being too valuable to risk damaging, too old to be at all safe to load and shoot, so the people would buy originals—if they could find them and afford them—to hang on the wall and admire and repros to shoot," he informed her. "Ours were made by firms that faithfully copied originals, but fabricated the repros in our modern, stronger metals and test-fired them with overcharges just to be sure they were safe. We handled quality products, you see, Krystal, and we had earned a damned good reputation in the field of repros."
Her face registered amazement. "You mean that you actually had competition, that other people made and were able to sell these high-class fake guns? God, I didn't know just how many well-heeled nuts there were in that world, I guess. But you said that that was your most recent line of work, Rupen. What did you do before that? Sell fake works of art, maybe? Or ersatz Persian rugs?"
"No," he responded. "I was a buyer for Rappahanock Arms Company, a branch of Ademian Enterprises U.S.A., the firm founded by my late father, Vasil Ademian, and presently chaired by my younger brother, Kogh Ademian."
The mad duchess raised one eyebrow. "Rappahannock Arms I've never heard of
, but I recall hearing about Ademian Enterprises, and none of what I heard was good, as I remember it; one of my boyfriends, Dan Dershkowitz, and his group used to demonstrate against Ademian and all of the other nearby death-merchants, while the war in Vietnam was going full-blast. Wasn't it napalm you made?"
"Not napalm, Krystal, shell cases, just as we did with not a bit of complaint or protest from anybody in the U.S. all during World War Two and the Korean War and so on. But I was serving in the army during both World War Two and Korea, and after Korea, that part of Ademian, the manufacturing and research end, was not the one that employed me."
"I started out just buying up stocks of surplus military rifles and pistols and shipping them back to the States for Rappahannock to sell to smaller dealers or direct to the customers."
She sighed and said, "Rupen, you're going to think me incredibly naive or stupid or both, but I just don't understand any of this. Why would anyone pay good money for old army guns?"
Holding up his spread hand, he ticked off the fingers. "Collectors, first, people who maybe want one of every rifle or pistol used in a particular war or during a particular period of history, or who want one each of all the variants made by a particular factory. Second, the types who, rather than buy a comparatively expensive new hunting rifle, would prefer to buy an old but sound military action and use it as the basis for a virtually handmade hunting piece, a one-of-a-kind item. Third, men who fought in certain wars and, having learned there to love or hate or respect a certain weapon, want one of their own. Fourth, the shoot-'em-trade-'ems people who will buy a weapon, pistols in particular, shoot a hundred rounds or so with it, then sell it or trade it for a different one they've never shot or handled before. Fifth, those who want an inexpensive weapon for personal or home protection. I estimate that ninety percent or more of our mail-order sales were to the last-three-named types of customer, though."
She shook her head. "In your way, though, you were just as bad as the other part of your company, Rupen. Didn't you ever stop to think how many of the rifles and all you shipped into the country would be bought by criminals, to hurt and kill innocent people with?"
"No. To begin with, I don't think that manufacturing war material for your government or for friendly foreign governments is bad. And as for providing criminals with firearms, you really are naive if you think any career criminal is going to try to saw off a forty-odd-inch bolt-action military rifle to use to hold up a bank when any hardware store can provide him with a cheap revolver or a good shotgun, which last is one hell of a lot more intimidating a thing to point at victims than a .30 caliber rifle, anyway. Now, I do admit that it is barely possible that some few nuts here and there used those old, heavy, slow-firing pieces in the commission of a few felonies, sniping attacks, that sort of thing; but a professional hit man—and believe it or not, I knew at least one such—prides himself on a smooth, clean job and therefore tries to utilize only the best, most modern tools for the job. The one that I knew, for instance, preferred Weatherby hunting rifles, a quite expensive domestically manufactured piece, or a silenced .32 caliber pistol; since he used custom-loaded, explosive bullets and invariably shot for the head, a .32 was all he needed."
"But anyway, back to my career in the surplus arms business. I traveled all over the free world tracking down caches of old weapons, and frequently I'd find myself being offered other kinds of military hardware and equipment, mostly, though, things I couldn't legally sell or for which there was no domestic market, but I kept noting these offers down and filing them away. Then one day I ran into a country that was very anxious to buy the identical items that another government had offered to sell me only a couple of weeks earlier. So I hotfooted it back to government A's country, bought up the lot, and arranged for it to be shipped to government B's country at a markup just sufficient to cover shipping charges and my own expenses. Barely a month later, I fell into the identical kind of situation and did it over again."
"I wasn't really aware just what I was getting into, of course, or I'd've just put A in touch with B and gone on my way. Things just snowballed, and before long I was so busy brokering transfers of military material from one point to another that it was damned seldom I could make the time to perform what was my primary job for my firm. At length, I just tossed this new and unbelievably lucrative business into the lap of Ademian Enterprises, worked with them for long enough to be sure they were on the right track, then went into partnership with another of my brothers, Bagrat, in the Confederate Arms deal."
"How about the rest of your group that were projected into this world, Rupen?" the woman asked. "Were they all into the same dirty, inhuman business of making war and killing, too?"
Rupen bit his tongue. After all, the woman was a certifiable lunatic. "Some were connected to one branch or another of Ademian Enterprises, some weren't. We were just an ethnic band, not in any way professional musicians, just doing it as a hobby, sort of. We played almost every weekend at a Greek restaurant for next to zip, money-wise, but it was fun."
"We weren't all Armenians in the band, either, and only one of the belly dancers was. Our bassist was a Greek dentist, our guitarist and second oud was a Lebanese, and Greg Sinclair, our second dumbeg—that's a kind of Middle Eastern drum, Krystal—was only a quarter Armenian. Our lead belly dancer was a third-generation Norwegian-German and was also—believe it or not, but it's true—a resident emergency-room specialist at the one of the hospitals run by the Medical College of Virginia."
"How did she find the time?" queried Krystal, disbelievingly. "I was a psychiatric and neurological resident at Johns Hopkins and I often had to make an appointment to sleep a few hours or use the toilet."
Rupen just shrugged. "Don't ask me, but she did. No, she couldn't hardly ever make practice sessions and she missed a whole lot of the weekly Greek-restaurant appearances, too. But she was such a great damn dancer, so expressive, so good at building up a real rapport with an audience, that we were overjoyed to forgive her absences and gratefully accept her at any gig she could make."
"Rupen," Krystal asked wistfully, "why doesn't Hal ever come to see me? I recall, shortly after we first went to York, how much I enjoyed talking to him, playing chess with him."
"You cannot believe just how busy that poor man is, what with all the endless conferences about setting up a new papacy and a seat for it somewhere to the north of Rome. He does have great regard for you, for your welfare, and I'm certain he'd come up here had he the opportunity," he assured her blandly.
"You lying Armenian cocksucker!" she suddenly snarled, her voice gone hard and icy.
At hearing these words, Sister Fatima, who had been sitting in silence, reading by the firelight, looked up and set aside the slender volume. She could not understand the language, but she was quick to recognize the threat in the mad duchess's voice and tone.
"That goddam old faggot won't come near me because he knows goddam good and well I mean to kill him for what he and that damn no-good goy husband of mine did to me, taking my son and having me hauled off and locked up in a fucking filthy little cell and damned near starved to death and not allowed to bathe and being eaten alive by bugs and roaches and fleas and lice and bitten by fucking rats in my sleep and having to eat what garbage they did give me off the goddam floor like a goddam dog, knowing that I'd had to piss and shit on that same goddam floor because they wouldn't leave me a fucking bucket. And Hal and Bass Foster did all that to me, so you're fucking-A right I mean to kill the both of the two bastards the first goddam chance I get. They tried to have me killed."
"Isn't that really what that mealy-mouthed so-called Archbishop sent you up here for? To kill me? Isn't it! ISN'T IT?" she shrieked, coming suddenly to her feet, grasping a heavy bronze candleholder from off the table, and hurling herself at the still-seated man with mad rage in her eyes and froth partially hiding her bared teeth, the muscles of her face all jerking.
Rupen barely made it onto his feet in time to catch the shaft of the candlehold
er on the palm of his hand and wrench the deadly weapon away from her, but then he had to drop it and use both of his hands to try to protect his face and eyes from her clawing nails.
Resignedly, her lips moving in silent prayer, Sister Fatima took from beneath her apron a leather cudgel over a foot long and, limping to a point just behind the raging duchess, raised it and struck, in just the right spot and just hard enough.
Rupen only saw Krystal suddenly stiffen, then her eyes rolled up and she crumpled bonelessly to the floor.
Mike Sikeena left his carrier to hang a few inches above the ground outside the stone crypt and, after banging on the door and being told to enter, descended the steps quickly, looking very worried. "Arsen, big doings at the fucking Spanish fort and town, downriver there."
Arsen, who was just then helping Lisa to remove a long, jagged wood splinter from the foot of an Indian child, looked up. "What kinda big doings, Mike? The fucking place burn down? I hope, I hope, I hope."
"Aw, naw, Arsen." Mike shook his head. "What it is, it's three ships down there, must of sailed in late yesterday or real early this morning, is what I figger. And it's a whole hell of a lot more men around there now, too, dressed a little diff'rent from the Spanish and the Moors. And, get this, buddy, they're most of them talking French; it's a fucking peculiar-sounding kind of French, lots of words I don't understand, but it's still fucking French."
"How big are the ships, Mike? Are they carrying cannon, or did you see them that close?" asked Arsen.
Mike nodded. "Yeah, Arsen, they all three got guns, both the swivel kinds and the bigger ones on what you call trucks. The two littler ships are both sixty or seventy feet long and they're up on either side of the jetty, you know. But the biggest one must need too much water to get that close, 'cause it's anchored out in the river, and, man, that one's got a whole pisspot full of guns of both kinds, some of those fuckers damn big ones, bores big enough to stick your fucking head into."