by Rudy Rucker
Aleid stayed well out of the conversation; Jayjay had the impression she’d heard enough about the John the Baptist panel to last her a lifetime.
CHAPTER 12
PAINTING THE THISTLE
After supper, Jeroen had Jayjay help him prepare a little box with a brush, a small lantern, and six stoppered vials of paint, premixed to shades of yellow, rose, and green. Jeroen drew a floor plan of the Saint John’s Cathedral, and then a detailed diagram of the Brotherhood’s altar, and then two sketches of the targeted panel: one with the small kneeling figure of Vladeracken, the other with a fantastic, snaky, spiky plant in the donor’s place. He wielded a wonderfully nimble pen, quite mesmerizing to watch.
Finally Jeroen was ready to leave for his all-night vigil. Unless Vladeracken were passed-out drunk, he’d be in attendance as well.
“I’m sure your wife will be here by the time you’re back,” Jeroen told Jayjay reassuringly. But then a sly, waggish look crossed his face. “Unless she’s drunk or working as a prostitute.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” said Jayjay, flaring up. “Which deadly sin is it when you’re a selfish, inconsiderate jerk?”
“Pride,” said Bosch, far from abashed. If anything, he was enjoying Jayjay’s reaction. “Kathelijn, run across the square and fetch Goossen’s son Thonis. He’ll be your guide, Jayjay. I’m leaving now. Truly, I’m sure your wife is doing fine.” Was that a mocking flicker of his lizard tongue? He was gone.
Thonis proved to be a lively youth with a ready laugh, which rang out loudly as Jayjay explained his mission.
“My uncle’s been talking about this for months,” said Thonis. “He’s a wonderful painter, but he’s crazy. Nobody really cares about that panel except Jan Vladeracken and Uncle Jeroen. And maybe Victor van der Moelen. Van der Moelen is the duke’s rent collector; he’s the kind of man who looks at a newborn babe and sees a page of numbers.”
“Vladeracken said van der Moelen is a walking piece of shit.”
“Yeah? What does that make Jan? Never mind. The reason you’re perfect for this job is because you’re so small. They lock the church at midnight, you know. It’s best if you go in there now, hide till after closing time, overpaint the panel, then climb out through one of the slits in the tower. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“How high above the ground is the slit?”
“Too high to jump,” said Thonis. “Can you fly?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I heard you’re miraculously strong. From the Garden of Eden.”
“What if we bring a rope with a hook on it?”
“I know where to borrow one of those,” said Thonis. “I have a friend who’s a chimney sweep. Come along; we’ll get the rope on our way.”
“Can we stop by the Muddy Eel?”
“The Muddy Eel, no, that’s in the wrong direction. And we’d have to cross the marketplace to get there. The plan is that we sneak along the canal to the cathedral. Maybe you can visit the Eel after we’re done. They’ll be carousing till dawn.” Thonis pranced slowly through a few steps of a jig. “Oh, before we leave, let me take a look at Uncle Jeroen’s studio. I always like to see what he’s been up to. What a mind he has, what a brush. If he didn’t take so long to finish his paintings, I’d still be his apprentice.”
Upstairs, Thonis studied the big square panel, and Jayjay looked out the window at the marketplace, hoping to spot Thuy. Some people were dancing, some were preparing banners and floats for the procession. Bonfires lit the wonderfully arcane and medieval scene. It saddened Jayjay to not be sharing this moment with Thuy.
Behind him, Thonis was chuckling over the images that Jeroen had painted onto the temple pillar beside Saint Anthony. “See this?” he said. “A monkey god, with a heathen kneeling and offering him a swan! That monkey looks exactly like Victor van der Moelen. And the heathen is my uncle Jeroen. He had to pay for a swan dinner for the Brotherhood last year, it made him mad, he said it wasn’t his turn yet.” Thonis’s laughter redoubled. “Oh my soul, look at the hog-headed man in his silk robe. Alderman Vladeracken.” Now Thonis gave Jayjay a sly grin. “And that gryllos-man with his legs coming right out of his head? That’s you, Jayjay, with the paint still wet! Nobody’s safe from Uncle Jeroen. He’s been working on this triptych for a year. The Antonites are paying him, and he doesn’t want to stop. It doesn’t hurt that Aunt Aleid is rich.”
“Are you a painter, too, Thonis?”
“In a small way. I paint murals on people’s dining room walls. Flowers, God in the clouds, the triangulation of Jude Christ—the usual lot. You’re a painter, too?”
“Today’s my first day.”
Thonis puffed out his lips and blew a stream of air. “Good luck making your plant look like one of Jeroen’s!”
But somehow Jayjay felt confident. And then, just before they left Jeroen’s studio, a faint, sweet song sounded through the ceiling. Thonis didn’t seem to notice it. The harp was calling to Jayjay, only to him. Soon, Lovva, soon.
Thonis led Jayjay through the kitchen and into the garden. He paused for a quick peek into the cellar just to see where he and Thuy were supposed to sleep. A slanting door opened onto a gloomy low-ceilinged chamber with a straw-stuffed sack for a bed. It would do for a few days—provided Thuy shared it with him.
They boarded a small skiff and rowed along the canal’s inky waters, making a brief stop while Thonis ran up through another dim garden to fetch a sooty rope and grappling hook. A bit more rowing, and then they debarked to creep through twisty lanes, emerging into a small square beside the cathedral. A party of legless beggars sat against the basilica wall, but there was no time to look at them.
With a whispered promise that he’d wait outside, Thonis shoved Jayjay in through the big church’s wooden side door.
Although some pious souls were still in the house of worship, these pilgrims were gathered near the main altar, where an iconic black statue of the Virgin was on display. Encumbered by his box of paints and his sooty loop of rope, Jayjay lost no time in seeking out the smallest possible nook that could hide him. He settled in a dark recess beneath the altar of one of the side chapels nestled against the walls of the central nave.
He lay there quite motionless for the better part of three Hibrane hours, drifting in and out of sleep, catching up on his rest, thinking things over. Vladeracken’s talk of a flying devilfish indicated that Jayjay had indeed seen a Hrull down by the river this afternoon. Was that a good thing or a bad? Hard to decide. Everything was so complicated.
The sexton was late in clearing out the pilgrims, and Jayjay wasn’t the only one who was trying to find shelter here. He woke and listened each time another was rousted out and sent packing. But the sexton never thought of looking in Jayjay’s hollow beneath the altar of the Bakers’ Guild.
Finally all was calm. Jayjay crept out, feeling rested and reborn, as limber as an escaped sacrificial cuttlefish. Moonlight slanted in the cathedral windows, a sacristy lamp burnt above the main altar: God’s eye.
Jeroen’s diagrams were clear in his mind. Moving slowly in the gloom, he found his way to the niche that held the altar erected by the Swan Brotherhood of Our Dear Lady—but the entrance was blocked off by a bronze trellis. Without too much trouble, Jayjay slid his rope and his paint kit under the grating, and clambered over the top.
The altar was a hefty cabinet the height of a Hibrane man, with a smaller cabinet on top, and a statue of the Virgin atop that. Paint box in hand, Jayjay scaled the main cabinet and stood upon its upper edge. According to Jeroen, the Saint John the Baptist panel was on the inside of the left door of the upper cabinet.
Groping in the dark, Jayjay managed to open the door. The hinges squeaked unconscionably; he seemed to hear an answering scuff, although his heart was pounding so loud in his ears that he couldn’t be sure. For several minutes he remained motionless, harking into the cathedral’s tenebrous immensity, wondering how soon it would be safe to strike a flint, light his lantern, and get t
o work.
Was that a tapping sound nearby? He held his breath, still unsure if the noises were real. Yes, a definite thud, closer now. Jayjay lay flat on his stomach beside the upper cabinet, trying to prepare an explanation.
A tattoo of beats stitched across the stone floor, followed by final thump before the Brotherhood’s altar. A low hum sounded, and a faint yellow glow illuminated the tines of—the pitchfork.
“Hey, boy,” said the pitchfork softly. “Never fear, Groovy’s here. You vandalizing them graven images?”
“Thank God it’s you,” said Jayjay.
“You’re welcome! Let there be light.” The pitchfork amped up his glow, refining it to a paler shade. No need to mess with flint and lantern.
“Beautiful,” said Jayjay. “I’m about to paint a gnarly thistle onto this picture here.”
Sure enough, there was John the Baptist on the inner panel of the upper cabinet’s left door. The saint lay flopped down in a state of religious ecstasy. At his side was an awkward little kneeling image of Vladeracken. And on the saint’s other side rested a symbolic cuttlefish with his tentacles demurely coiled.
“This is going to be fun,” continued Jayjay, unstoppering his vials of paint.
“After this we go see Lovva, okay?” whined Groovy.
“Fine, but I want to look for my wife, too,” whispered Jayjay. “She went off with Azaroth and never came back to Bosch’s house. Do you know anything about her?”
“I visited with her in the Muddy Eel earlier on,” said the pitchfork. “She was taking a bath with an acrobat, a whore, a magician and a fortune-teller. I expect they’ll pass the evening in the tavern. Your missus is having fun.”
“I guess that’s fine,” murmured Jayjay, not verbalizing his lingering sense of unease. After the scabrous scene with Chu, he felt terribly unsure about what Thuy was capable of doing. Not liking the look of the premixed green, he added a touch of rose to it. “How did you find me here, Groovy?”
“After seeing Thuy, I went by Bosch’s place and heard you two jawin’ about the big-ass paint raid. So I snuck in here, too. Did you hear any news about Lovva?”
“She sang a hello to me from Bosch’s attic. Jeroen’s at a prayer meeting till dawn. All we have to do is get into his attic without waking his wife. She’s pretty handy with a knife.” Jayjay paused, critically studying the paint blotches he’d just dabbed onto the panel.
“Looks like crap,” opined the pitchfork.
“How do you even see, dung-prongs?”
“I’m all about vibes, boy. Sound, light, neutrinos, quantum wazoo, dark energy yinyang—listen up, I can help you paint good. You still remember about being a zedhead, right? What I showed you up on the beanstalk?”
“But I don’t have lazy eight here.”
“Look into yourself,” said the pitchfork. “You wastin’ what I taught you.”
“All I know is that you made me Pekka’s slave, you shit fork.” Talking to Groovy, it was easy to fall into vulgarity.
“I’m sorry about Pekka, okay? I really did think she was gonna pay me off for shoppin’ your world.”
“What could Pekka possibly pay you? You’re a god!”
“Well—” The pitchfork paused, as if embarrassed. “Like I keep tellin’ you, back home I was a regular guy. We have a few Peng on my planet, strictly under control, but Pekka knew to get in touch with me after I got aktualized. She said if I helped Warm Worlds Realty invade your world, she’d set you rubes to a-worshippin’ me, bowin’ down before statues of me and all.”
“You wanted everyone on Earth to worship you? Statues of a pitchfork? Are you fucking nuts?”
“You were supposed to be makin’ statues of me the way I am back home. Ronald ‘Groovy’ Blevins with green skin, three eyes, and sharp clothes. I’d relish the hell outta seein’ big old icons of me. I mean, just take a look around this here church. Who wouldn’t want to get the same ass-kissin’ as that Jude Christ?”
“Where I come from, Christ is a great ethical teacher,” said Jayjay. “Not some ego-tripping sleazebag who’d sell a planet into slavery.”
“It all depends on your point of view, don’t it?” said the pitchfork, his buzz sly and insinuating. “Anyhoo, when I asked that stuffed-shirt Suller in Yolla Bolly about Warm Worlds making good on their end of the deal, he told me I’d misunderstood Pekka’s offer, or some shit like that. At least by then Lovva had called in the Hrull to teach you the reset rune.”
“There’s no end to your meddling!” exclaimed Jayjay, having trouble keeping down his voice.
“We doin’ you favors right and left, Jay. You sure enough should be worshippin’ my ass.” As the pitchfork grew more confident and self-congratulatory, his buzz amplified. “What I wanted to say is that if you stop being a tight-ass and let your mind run top speed, you can let your paint do the thinkin’ and that thistle will come out slick as snot.”
Jayjay only nodded. It would be folly to maintain a steady stream of noisy chatter. Taking into account the pitchfork’s advice, he looked into himself as he worked, picking up sympathetic vibrations from his fingers, the brush, and the paints. In a way it wasn’t all that clear where the boundary of his body really was.
Dialing his attention higher on the size scale, he felt a sense of union with the panel, the cathedral, and the culture of the town, as well. This wasn’t lazy eight telepathy like back home; it was something more internal, more organic. Everything was an aspect of the divine One.
Jayjay painted slowly, making tiny brush strokes, pecking away until the image was quite acceptable: a floppy thistle with arching thorny stalks, translucent seed pods, and pair of ravenously feeding birds. It was eldritch, outlandish, Boschian.
It was still dark outside, although it felt like he’d been working for a full day. By Hibrane measures he’d been painting perhaps four hours.
“Lookin’ good,” said Groovy softly. “Let me bake that for you.” The pitchfork leaned closer and added an infrared component to his glow. In a few minutes the fresh oil paint was dry and hard, as if had been in place for months or years.
Jayjay eased the cabinet door shut, stoppered his vials, wrapped up his palette, and wiped up the stray drops of paint with his sleeves. They were done. The pitchfork doused his tines’ light.
Jayjay’s back and shoulders were stiff and sore. He was seeing his muscle pains as colors—not intellectually imagining this, but viscerally feeling washes of color in his brain. The sore muscle along the left side of his spine oozed a pale malachite green.
“I’m supposed to climb up the tower steps to a window and lower myself from there,” he whispered into the dark as he clambered down off the altar. He slid his kit and his rope under the chapel gate and painfully scaled the gate while the pitchfork clattered his lean form through. The ache in Jayjay’s right shoulder was a triangle of massicot yellow; his stiff legs were veined with ultramarine and ivory black.
Naturally the door to the tower was locked.
“Fuck this shit, Jay,” hummed the pitchfork. “I’ll open up the side door.”
“Okay.”
Groovy bent his handle, crouching low enough to feed one of his tines into the side door’s keyhole. A brisk click and the door swung open.
Thonis was nowhere to be seen, but the beggars were still there.
“Greetings, Jayjay,” said a small, dark-eyed form beside the door.
Thinking fast, Jayjay grabbed Groovy by the handle and rested the aktualized being on his shoulder, trying to minimize the strangeness of what the beggars saw.
“Hugo?” he essayed. “It’s you?”
“We’re shunning the Antonites’ courtyard tonight. Lubbert died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was a good friend,” said Hugo. “Too bad you two didn’t get along. He bled to death after the amputation this morning.” Hugo sighed. “And now I suppose he’s in hell. Or, more likely, nowhere. My alms were good today because I’m sad. That always helps. Do you
want some wine?”
“No, no. Did you happen to see a young guy waiting for me out here?”
“He left as soon as you went inside. Were you robbing the silver off the altars? Did you remember to empty the poor box, too?”
“Uh, no.”
“Hold that door open for me, and I’ll keep quiet about seeing you here.”
“Good-bye,” said Jayjay, as Hugo dragged himself into the cathedral.
“Farewell.”
The full moon had sunk below the horizon. It was nearly dawn. Jayjay sank the paint kit in the canal, but kept the chimneysweep’s rope and grapple. After a brief, intense argument, the pitchfork agreed to guide him to the Muddy Eel before they went to meet the harp.
As it turned out, the tavern wasn’t far out of the way; it lay in a side street across the marketplace from Bosch’s house. A few drab, bleary people were stumbling around the inn’s public room. Jayjay saw no sign of Thuy but—oh shit, here came Jan Vladeracken, just emerging from the bathhouse behind the inn, fastening up his baggy silk pantaloons. Apparently he’d used the Swan Brotherhood’s all-night vigil as a cover for visiting a prostitute while his wife slept.
“Bosch’s devil!” exclaimed big Jan. “And he’s carrying a rope and a pitchfork.” The alderman didn’t seem nearly so befuddled as at suppertime. Perhaps the vigil had done him some good, what little bit of it he’d actually attended.
Jayjay hurried out the door into the street; he wanted nothing to do with the alderman. But now Vladeracken noticed something else.
“Green paint!” roared the bully, running after him.
With his six-to-one speed-up factor, Jayjay should have been able to elude the big man. But he was tired and sore. And the oversized cobbles were so slick with piss and vomit that he had to carefully pick his way. Suddenly Vladeracken was upon him.
“Hands off!” buzzed Groovy. Lively as a magic cudgel, he upended himself onto his prongs and whacked Vladeracken across the shins, making the man bellow in pain.