The interview was finished. The Pankypersebastos took a step forward, held a hand towards the exit and bowed. Libussa made as if to ask a further question, then sighed, took my arm and turned to move forward with fierce acceleration. She plainly thought her time wasted. We were ahead of Lord Andreas. ‘The man’s a fool,’ she said. ‘The Grail is here.’
‘You cannot be certain,’ I said.
‘My dear little Bek, I’ve researched for years. I married my findings with those of the world’s greatest alchemists, and with Klosterheim’s. A thousand reliable witnesses – seeresses, oracles, demons, men and women raised from the dead, astrologers, necromancers – all agree! The Grail’s here. Everything is to be achieved in Mirenburg. All signs proclaim it; all logic insists upon it.’ Her voice rising, she checked it, slowed us down, waited for a politely frowning Lord Andreas (followed by St Odhran and Klosterheim) and offered him an insincere apology.
Lord Andreas said gently: ‘You must see how my master cannot accept what you claim. You’d do best to seek out Lord Renyard.’
‘Where’s he, Sir?’
‘The Lesser City – chiefly the Moldavia quarter – is the thieves’ city, so-called. ’Tis dangerous. Lord Renyard lacks the desperation of Byzantium’s exiles. Though in a way I suppose he’s also exiled…’
‘I thank you, Sir,’ said she. We were outside the palace and standing beside our carriage. Almost hastily Lord Andreas offered us a ‘good fortune’ and hurried back to his unhappy Prince.
Klosterheim grumbled. ‘Moldavia’s the second most dangerous quarter in the city.’
‘Why so dangerous?’ asked St Odhran, who knew the thieves’ kitchens of half Europe.
‘It’s ruled as a separate kingdom – like several of Mirenburg’s districts. You’ve seen how little that prince cared for his responsibilities. Lord Renyard’s absolute monarch of the Lesser City. He’s descendant of the race the Byzantines crushed when they first came here. He has no love for them or those resembling them.’
‘So he’ll not readily grant us an interview?’ said Libussa. We were back in the carriage. The coachman set us in motion.
‘If we had something worthwhile to offer him, perhaps…’ Klosterheim licked his lips with a white tongue. ‘What have we of value? The Air-ship?’
‘Not yours to dispose of,’ said St Odhran pointedly. ‘I find it strange you came empty-handed on this mission.’ He made no mention of our stolen gold.
‘How many Talers could buy the Grail?’ She was contemptuous. ‘We must go directly to the Moldavia. If Renyard has the Grail he might not value it. A little clay cup, you said?’
Klosterheim nodded. ‘Made by Lilith, for the eventual triumph of humanity over its own nature, over the dictates of God and Satan. A little clay cup. Cure for the World’s Pain. With it we can challenge Lucifer. Or bargain with Him.’
‘We’ve heard all this before, Sir.’
He still believed she aided him in his particular schemes. ‘Lilith she was called. I saw it, long ago, and did not recognise it. Next time, von Bek held the Grail in his hands. Satan took back my soul.’ He turned to stare out at the city. ‘Then banished me again to this body! The Grail could release me.’ He frowned deeply. ‘I did not recognise her.’ At that moment I saw all the cold horror of Purgatory personified. I was at once repelled and sympathetic. Libussa, however, remained merely impatient. She barely restrained herself from slapping Klosterheim. She hissed under her breath. She looked from me to St Odhran, back to the Wanderer.
‘I had expected the Grail to be the city’s greatest treasure,’ she said. ‘Displayed for all to see. Now we must search the haunts of knaves and billy-pickers. Has anyone a notion of their brand of Rotwelsch?’ She had gone abroad in such places often enough to know that each had its own secret language and one survived by being able to speak at least a little of it. In Spain the argot was called Germania. In Naples it was known as Gergo and in London Cant.
‘I speak most dialects,’ said I. ‘And St Odhran, also.’
She was satisfied. ‘Then we’ll go at once. I planned to have the thing by now. Time grows short.’
St Odhran was all mockery. ‘When metaphysics become the chief concern, practicalities are inclined to be forgotten, your grace.’
She darted him a terrible glare. He subsided, unrepentant, smiling to himself as if all his views of the world were at once confirmed. She turned her head away so as not to see him, clearly displeased with herself, for she set great store by her superiority over a fallible and untrustworthy world. I, too, was amused, though I dared not show it. Klosterheim was dogged, far more used to struggle and defeat. Her career had been, in the main, one of implacable success. She felt almost betrayed, yet could find no-one to blame.
‘Diplomacy also is needed with Lord Renyard,’ said Klosterheim.
‘We’ll employ it, Sir,’ said she. She looked at me: ‘I understood you had some sense enabling you to sniff out the Grail. Is there nothing in you telling you where to find it?’
‘Not a murmur, Madam. D’ye take me for some sort of occult bloodhound?’
My lady softened. ‘A unique and superior bloodhound, my dear.’
‘I’ve no special affinity with this cup,’ I insisted again.
Klosterheim unclasped his hands from his lap, leaning forward. ‘You’re simply unaware of your birthright and your powers.’
‘I’m neither compass nor sextant in any Realm. My sense of direction, indeed, was never very good. Believe me!’
‘Klosterheim means you’ll recognise it when we’re in its presence,’ she said placatingly. ‘Does it not change shape? Disguise itself?’
‘A chameleon amongst chalices. A sentient ale-pot!’ I scoffed at this. Though it were proof of my lady’s gullibility it did nothing to cool my ardour for her. But it provided some relief from the weight of it all. ‘Oh, Madam, there’s nothing worse than a faulty chart and useless instruments when one journeys into terra incognita!’
Klosterheim it was who leaned from the window and shouted up to the driver to change direction for the Moldavia. And the driver cried back: ‘I’ve no instructions from Prince Miroslav. I can only take you to the Obelisk, Sir. It marks the edge of the district. But I cannot take my master’s property into the Lesser City!’
‘Very well, the Obelisk.’ Klosterheim flung himself back in his seat. ‘Well, friends, have we a pact? A plan to follow through?’
St Odhran was disgusted. ‘I’ve not volunteered for this. I’ll return with the carriage and inform our host of your decisions. Should help be needed at least he might send it to you.’
‘We need you for the translating,’ she said, as if that was an end to it.
‘You’ve no power over me, Madam.’
‘I can catch the drift of any mumper’s tongue,’ said I.
‘Very well,’ said she. ‘As you please, St Odhran.’ She glared at him in suspicion so that St Odhran laughed aloud. ‘Fear not, my lady. I shan’t fly free while you keep my companion with you. Unless, of course, I hear he’s dead or no longer desires a comrade.’
The carriage moved through dark canyons. Here and there candle-flames flickered and lanterns gleamed in the steep walls. After some while we stopped in a noisy market square packed with hucksters and customers haggling at their loudest. The square was lit with a mixture of flambeaux, oil lamps, bull’s-eyes, candles and braziers. It stank of fried fish and sausages and sauerkraut, was awash with cheap ale and penny gin. Vagabonds in patched frock-coats gathered to bicker over the value of stolen rags. Upright men in tall beaver hats, their shillelaghs under their arms, strode in aristocratic glory, looking with disdain at the mere pudding snammers and pavement screevers who darted about them. I recognised the market for what it was – not merely a place where thieves congregated, but neutral territory, the border where crime met honest capital and arrived at compromise. Such places flourished on the edges of the true thieves’ quarters of all great cities and sometimes were even termed ‘Rendez
vous’ as a fair description of their function. Here were the dolly shops and translation-men, dealing in stolen goods. The gutter bloods in tattered finery, often arm in arm with their rum morts (she as covered in stained ribbon and torn lace as he), brought their goods to market, as did the govey burners, pocket nippers and a generality of rapscallions living off the scraps and leavings of the ruffler’s trade. The base of the Obelisk – a hundred feet of black granite carved with worn, almost indistinguishable bas-reliefs and mysterious alphabets – was surrounded by wicker baskets, horse tackle, handcarts, sacks, panniers and the general paraphernalia of a busy market. We stepped down – Klosterheim carelessly, myself boldly and Libussa with some caution – leaving St Odhran in the carriage. He would present our apologies to Prince Miroslav. He seemed concerned for me and I did my best, by my demeanour, to quell his fears.
With Klosterheim leading we threaded our way through to the backstreets lying close to the Lesser City. Here were the lodgings of the honest poor, and little shops; decent people at their domestic concerns, a few rowdy alehouses on street corners. But it was as we progressed further that we began to draw antagonistic attention from the populace. Increasingly they took on the familiar appearance of harlots, loungers and petty cribbers. Doubtless Klosterheim’s cadaverous features halted more than a few in mid-catcall and the fact we walked side by side, an unusual trio, gave others pause. My plan was to pose as visiting ‘High Pickaroons’ – the cream of roguish society. I trusted that the cant was the same as I’d used during my own time upon the road.
When at last we were approached direct, it was by six or seven vagabonds, all hung with pistols and poignards like an iron-merchant’s window, their wide hats shading already dark faces, their black eyes glittering beneath. The leading jocko, a near chinless youth with a beard clinging from his jowls like thrice-used meatstrings, challenged us with: ‘Cast yer daylights on der kinchin cove and the jack-o-legs, me abrams. Shall us crash der culls and jock der mort?’
To my relief I understood every word (not hard to guess, since he proposed killing us and carrying off Libussa), so I replied: ‘Dowse yer crow, ya cork-brain’d cunny wangler and lift yer golgotha ter the finest high toby mort in any cheese!’
He was impressed enough to put his fingers to his hat’s brim and stand back, grinning. ‘Dimber dambers! We near mulled our rig and filched yer!’ And he asked if he could be of service. I told him we were seeking Lord Renyard, to present our compliments before we began work. We were stiver-cramped, so anxious to start quickly. The pickaroons fell in with us and I invented a tale for them, borrowed more from paper than from memory, but they would always take the brightest bait, those fish. And now they hailed another group of sword-sporting ragged bravos standing outside a tavern and debating if that or The Nun and Turtle sold the best beer. We were introduced as eminent knights of the road, and three of the youths, flattered by our pretence that we were already acquainted with the Lord of Moldavia, promised to escort us. ‘The Fox stalls new rogues this darkmans at Raspazian’s in Oropskaya. Yer in rum purl if yer not dry bobbing.’
So with our swaggering gutter beaux clearing the way for us, we pressed deeper into that tangle of twittens which formed the knotted core of the rookery. At last we reached a railed square upon which, momentarily, a beam of ochre starlight fell, revealing half-ruined walls, thick climbing lichens and ivies, empty windows, fallen roofs. At the centre were the remains of a formal garden, thoroughly overgrown but still following the outlines of its original geometry. A path through this chaos of fading cowslips and rosebay willowherb led us to the far side. Here was a large, ramshackle building, part wood, part brick, apparently derelict in its upper floors and bearing a painted unkempt sign in the Cyrillic fashion (the first we’d seen in Mirenburg) reading RASPAZIAN’S: HIGH CLASS BEVERAGES & LIGHT SUPPERS. There were two rush torches stuck up on the gateposts leading to the basement stairs and these were the only hint of occupation. Our bravos stood hesitantly beneath the sputtering flames, hands on sword hilts, skittishly awkward, eyes everywhere, attempting an insouciance and succeeding only in comicality; evidence they lived in terror of their vagabond king.
‘Odd,’ murmured Libussa to me, ‘that such a prince should hold his noonday Court in a run-down chopshop!’
‘He interviews rogues and passes sentence on transgressors,’ I told her. We stepped forward, but one of the youths, in a greasy billycock hat, put his hand upon my arm. Another ran down the slippery stone steps and rapped a complicated tattoo at the basement door, then ran halfway back to stand, half in defiance, half in apology, waiting. Almost immediately the door was flung open and there stood a barrel-chested buckaroon in the stained and rusted armour of a Selmuk Turk, a half-caste Oriental giant, strutting aggressively to the bottom of the steps and glaring. ‘Frölich. The word’s nix under upright men! The high cull chive yer?’
‘Yan maund off,’ replied the youth, all placation now, and jerked his thumb at me. ‘Yon tawno spells he’s gentry cover. Toby men all. Yond’d varda our Vulpino.’
The giant was cautious, strutting out another yard, while Frölich fell back bit by bit until he was behind me. ‘Here’s the nipperkin nagpad, Erjizh. Clack’um onsel!’ And he had turned, was almost running with his two companions close behind, and was gone.
Erjizh scowled and ascended another step or two. I told him again we were first-rate highwaymen seeking his lord’s permission to work the territory beyond the Lesser City and to use the Quarter as our bolt-hole. He pointed out my sword and pistols. ‘Yon’ll statch yer pricker and yer poppers aft mayne.’
So we handed over our weaponry, whereupon the door was shut firmly in our faces and we waited in some anxiety until it was opened again. Glaring at us from habit rather than any specific animosity, the Turk admitted us. He led us down a short passage and into a large, dark room crowded with tables, many of them empty and dusty save for those at the front. Here, upon a low dais which normally might have presented entertainment to diners, sat a figure in the feathers and lace of a century previous, one of the Sun King’s cavaliers. Yet he was oddly proportioned, his face in darkness.
On either side of their High Cull were rascals in every manner of extravagant costume, lounging in postures of studied boredom and inspecting us with bold, challenging eyes. These were not the streetbloods we had met outside, but the top ranks of the thieves’ castes: the Rufflers and Upright Men, barons to Lord Renyard’s king. Seated in armchairs at the foot of the dais and looking almost as bold as their men were the autem morts and dells, giving off a near-visible cloud of perfume and powder which blended with lace and silks and brought back a memory of the flash nunneries of Stamboul and Barcelona. The tables contained petitioners and prisoners, some bound and under guard. The hall was lit by huge church candles stuck into massive gold holders, so it seemed the place was on fire.
Lord Renyard’s imperious lace summoned us forward. He was still in shadow, knowing its effect. He stood up very tall, with eyes glittering suddenly in the light, and they were penetrating, wise. At first I thought he wore a mask and that he was in some way crippled. But he was neither. When he spoke, his muzzle curled back from sharp, white teeth. He was a fox: a huge, red-haired beast on hind legs, taller than me, and sufficiently manlike to grasp the pommel of his sword and stand in pantaloons and polished, buckled pumps, in long, embroidered waistcoat, fine lace flowing over everything, like foam down a tankard, silk dress-coat near as red as his fur, ribbons here and there and a heavy dandy pole in his other hand, which doubtless he used to help him stand steady. His expression was curious but not a whit friendly. His strange voice was close to a bark and his whiskers twitched. The ostrich plumes of his great hat wobbled fit to fall off but it was impossible for that creature to look ridiculous.
‘Ain’t yer just a pair o’ notch-nuzzlin flashmen and their Mab Laycock playing the noddy? On the pad, yon chive? And where, with no nags?’ said he.
‘Lord Renyard,’ said I at once, ‘though I’ve some claim
to be what I told your men, we’re here from the Seitenmarches to see you and beg a boon.’ I knew it would not be possible for all three of us to pose as highway thieves and it seemed better to announce the truth (if slightly coloured and flattering to himself) before Lord Renyard guessed it.
It seemed I’d sworn foul in church, for the rufflers were close to being outright shocked at my use of conventional German, but Lord Renyard stilled his followers with a gesture of his red hand. He put his long, cunning head to one side, staring at us for a full minute or more. Either, I thought, we would be torn to pieces or we’d be held in the hope of a ransom. There was the faintest chance, however, he would hear us out. I had expected a less clever Prince of Thieves, and a commoner one.
‘Yon’ll be scholards, nek?’ He seemed to muse for a moment.
‘Aye, sire.’ I was exhausted of any wit.
Then he sat down suddenly with a thump in his great chair, crying: ‘Well, let’s hope, damn me, that at least one of you is familiar with the works of Diderot. For if you’re not, there’s little point to your admission here and, being diddycoy nabblers, ye’ll not be allowed back to Swellonia alive. Not unless you prove yourselves somehow.’ He turned his muzzle, grinning. ‘The Fox, as you may appreciate, I hope, is bored.’
I was stunned by all this and found myself babbling. ‘I’ve read the Supplément aux voyages de Bougainville, Sir. And other things.’
‘Rêve de d’Alembert,’ said Libussa, a schoolgirl. ‘Little else.’
‘I do not know the gentleman,’ said Klosterheim in hollow, disapproving tones reminiscent of his Lutheran origins.
Lord Renyard pointed up his snout and laughed, a series of short, high yaps. ‘I shall not quibble with that. Good enough. Who d’ye read, Sir?’
‘I’m not in the habit, Sir.’ Klosterheim spoke like a Quaker invited to the Balum Rancum as Guest of Honour. ‘Nor have I been for the past two hundred years.’
This further amused the fox. ‘A fellow more full of ennui than myself. What a novelty! What a mismatched trio of otherworldly travellers you are! A spider-shanked cadaver, a foppish minikin and a doxy looking like a rome mort who’s just pissed on a nettle!’ This won the laughter of his crew and put us all more at ease. ‘Where are ye from and how did you come here?’
The City in the Autumn Stars Page 26