“You seems to be a gent with enemies,” noted the new-comer.
Jak nodded, still grinning. “It’s getting to be a habit,” he agreed. “The name’s Lydiard, Jak Lydiard. I’m mighty grateful and I owe you a full cup and a warm supper if you’ll join me. Do you often go around rescuing strangers?”
“The name’s Symon,” he said, “and no, not as a rule. But it has bin known, now I comes to think of it.”
“Well, I’m glad I was on your list,” said Jak. “Make yourself comfortable and I’ll order some more food and drink brought in and this lout taken out.”
The landlord delivered the supper platters himself as the groaning body was dragged from the room, boots first. With his own boots back up on the table, Jak was appreciating the first cup since his midday dinner at the previous wayside tavern six hours previously. “It happens there’s been an unusual number of persons asking after your lordship since your arrival, my lord,” said the landlord bowing to Jak, one eye on Symon. “And I can hardly say how sorry I am about this business. It’s most embarrassing. I can’t imagine how such a villain got past my nose and into a private parlour, but there was a distraction you see, and a nasty fight in the taproom so I was looking elsewhere. This isn’t the sort of thing we’re used to here.”
“Or you wouldn’t do much business, I imagine. Seems it’s my groom who’s been opening his mouth about who I am and where I’m going. There’s too many people interested in me by half.”
“And,” Symon murmured, “knowing about such fings, as it happens, I’ll reckon that distraction were proper organised an all.”
“My boy is having your bed warmed with a hot brick now, sir,” shivered the landlord, “and order whatever you wish,” he scowled briefly at Symon, “and for your companion too of course. I’ll not be making out a bill, under the circumstances.”
“Just see to it I’m not stabbed in my bed,” smiled Jak, “or the complaint might go beyond a free supper.”
“If you’d have your groom sleep in your chamber for extra protection sir?” suggested the landlord, backing from the room. “I can order a pallet set up at once.”
Jak shook his head. “Man snores,” he said. “And I’m more likely to send the idiot back home for yapping to strangers in taverns. Not that I see why anyone’s after my blood. I always thought I was a fairly inoffensive sort of person myself.”
The landlord was transferring platters from tray to table, a hock of cold bacon, pickles in spiced mustard, a large veal and rosemary pie, lamb’s hearts and entrails with smoked lampreys, a slab of cold beef from the midday spit-roast and a dish of curds. There were two jugs of wine and two rolls of good manchet. The landlord managed a reluctant smile. “If there’s anything else you require, my lord?”
“Yes, there is,” said Jak. “Find out who that fellow was, and the others who started the intentional distraction. Are they local?”
The landlord shook his head. “I’ve sent for the deputy law-giver, my lord. But the wretches that started the skirmish, they’ve had it away. ‘Tis the other we’ll get the name of – the one who attacked you, my lord, I swear, they’ll beat it out of him.”
It was halfway through supper and after three cups each that Jak finally said, “For a man that came looking for me and then saved my life, Symon somebody, you’ve remarkably few questions to ask of me.”
Symon finished cutting the slab of cold beef, put down his knife and said, “I weren’t what you might rightly call looking for you, my lord. I were on my own travels, with no idea you was here, as it happens. But overhearing your groom telling someone as how he were accompanying the new young Lord Lydiard back home to inquire into some family business, happen I remembered your name, my lord, having bin told it from somewhere else some time back. Reckoned I’d see what you looked like, as it were. I’d have apologised for butting in, and then backed off quick and as polite as I’s capable, but I found you with your steel into someone’s prick and his ready to garrotte, so reckoned to take more of an interest than what were previous intended.”
“And thank you again,” Jak said, eyes narrowing. “But although being threatened by one stranger and saved by another makes for a more colourful evening than usual, I’d appreciate more of an explanation than that. Where exactly, for a start, have you heard my name before? I’m not a man of either fame or notoriety.”
“Well now,” said Symon slowly, taking up his cup and drinking deep, “Happens my usual home’s the heart o’ the city, Lower -end that is, and being knowed as a man what gets things done.” Jak nodded. He didn’t doubt it. He watched the huge man opposite him, the great squashed face partly shadowed by the sinking sun through the window behind him. “I were asked,” continued Symon, “last year in the summer it were, to get rid of a titled gent, name o’ Lydiard. An older gent, first name Godfrey.” He put out a quick arm as Jak sat bolt upright. “No, no, my lord. Not me. I never done it, so no need to go leaping up. Tis the truth, or I reckon I’d have not saved your skin tonight.”
“You’d best go on,” said Jak softly.
Symon leaned back, eyes steady and unblinking. The story was a distortion of the facts, but it was the story he chose to tell. “It were proper clear at the time,” he said. “But I’s a god-fearing, honest man as I reckon you can see, my lord, and I’d have none of it. So beaten black and bloody I were then, as a warning not to repeat what I knowed. Now happens I doesn’t take kindly to violence done agin me, so I sets out to fix it. The cowards went running to the Justice, had me throwed into the Island Lock-Up and only ‘scaped the swing by me wits. I ain’t gonna forget it, neither. So when I heard your name in passing, my lord, I reckoned to see who you was, being the cause o’ the troubles at first, and to see if mayhap you’d been involved.”
“Involved?” demanded Jak, incensed. “In getting my own father murdered? But the old man’s dead and buried, so someone else took the job you say you refused.”
“I knowed that, as it happens,” said Symon. “And I did refuse it, unlikely as that may sound to you, my lord. I had reasons. But I reckons you gonna be interested to know just who was it what ordered the killing in the first place.”
“Tell me,” said Jak, bright-eyed and sitting suddenly forwards, cup forgotten in his hand. The little parlour was diminishing into shadow as the two candle stubs began to spit and gutter. Neither man seemed to notice.
“A thin pale-haired bugger, it were,” said Symon, watching Jak intently as he spoke. “Skin o’ bleached sawdust, and a nose proper pinched, like there be a stink innit won’t never go away. Name of Sir Kallivan, it were. Was with a lady, didn’t give no name. A duck-faced female, elderly but not so much, not mighty memorable, though would surely recognise both if seen again.”
Jak sighed and leaned back. He drank very slowly before looking up again. “I know the woman,” he said at last. “She has a large mole on the left side of her face, just under the eye?” Symon nodded. “You’ve met my step-mother,” said Jak. “The Dowager. And her lover Kallivan, related to our new shining monarch.”
Symon shook the bouncing black curls around his head and ears, the thatch of his nostrils, and that on the backs of his hands. “I doesn’t know nothing more as yet, my lord,” he said with a careful sigh of intense sincerity. “But I reckon on finding out.”
“And that,” smiled Jak, “is just what I’d say myself.” Distinctly remembering having once been happy to deny friendships or even communication with louts from the back alleys, Jak now, most definitely, was pleased to change his mind.
With a comfortable night following the interesting evening, there was shimmering dawn the next morning, and the inn was once again in a scramble, checking out their overnight visitors and adding up the correct payments with a jangle of coins and the inevitable arguments. Jak, meanwhile, was telling his groom that he was an idiotic country bumpkin and to keep his mouth shut for evermore.
“A good morning to you, my lord, as it is too, I reckon,” Symon said, looking up as Ja
k swung his leg into the stirrup, mounting swiftly. “I were thinking that we just happen to be going in the same direction, as it were, my lord.”
Jak paused, looking down on his new and unusual acquaintance. “If you were thinking of keeping me company,” he said, “you’d be very welcome.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The light was bright enough, artificially bright since the palace had started to use the new presses.
He said, “Your majesty?”
“Piss off, piss-skull,” the sharp, high voice answered him. “or do you want my shit in your face?”
The King, his Royal Majesty Frink, was not known for the friendly politeness of his attitude to the servants. This time he had some excuse since he was sitting, half-asleep, on the privy. The cubicle, which was doorless, but half hidden by an elaborate screen, sat squashed between the throne room and the palace’s grand dining chamber, had been recently illuminated with the newly invented gas presses which lit a pair of sparkling glass framed bulbs. The stink of gas was less invasive than the stink of shit, but there were those, although not the king himself, who refused to admit such things into their homes.
The servant sat down on the tiled floor in the corridor outside and waited. It was quite some time before the king emerged from behind his screen. He eyed his irritating servant. “You still here, fool?”
“Your majesty.” The page bounced back onto his feet. “I was told to deliver a message, and so I had to stay. Now I can deliver.”
Frink sighed. “So, deliver on, boy.”
“It’s your majesty’s grandson,” delivered the page. “He’s here, your majesty. He wants to see you.”
The page bowed and left. Frink adjusted his britches and swore loudly. He then stumbled into the adjacent throne room and regarded Sir Kallivan. “Damned pain in the fucking arse,” Frink told him, not inclined to subtlety. “You know damn well I don’t like you. So what the fuck do you want?”
Carefully adjusting his own speech, Kallivan bent one long leg at the knee and addressed the king. “Your majesty, I sadly must inform your majesty that I, your own royal grandson, am being threatened by those much more lowly in the land.” His nose seemed to twitch. Both the drifting perfume of the gaslighting and that of his majesty’s facies were invading the throne room. Frink had crossed to the throne itself, mounted the four wide steps and plonked himself down on the throne’s deep scarlet cushions. ‘
“As if I care,” he said, scowling at his grandson.
Kallivan abandoned civility and honourable deference and sat on the top step beside the royal slippers. “Grandfather, I know perfectly well that we’ve never got on. But you can’t have your own family threatened. It doesn’t look good, and you’d be humiliated, you know you would. It took you long enough to get the bloody crown on your head, so now you can’t just chuck it down the privy.”
“But I’d guess,” guessed Frink, “any threats have a lot to do with your own actions. You threaten others, they’ll do it back. So come on – what have you done?”
Ignoring this insight, Kallivan looked up, smiling. “I believe it’s the young Lord Lydiard who wants my blood.”
“Don’t know the boy.” The king shook his remaining scraps of hair. “Didn’t come to the coronation, did he? Only met him once. But I never trust good looking bastards.
“Well, you don’t trust me.” Kallivan smiled faintly.
“With damned good reason,” said the king between his teeth, “but not because of how you look since you ain’t a handsome bugger and you know it. No doubt it was you arranged Lydiard’s father’s death?”
“Absurd. For what gain?”
“So his old lady gets the family property,” sniggered his majesty. “And her being your mistress, you get it under your control. But Lydiard isn’t the biggest or best you might be wanting. So who dies next, mmm?”
“Not you,” Kallivan said abruptly. “So do you know who it was who planned your poisoning at the coronation? And don’t go thinking that was me. I benefit from my grandfather demanding taxes from every lord from here to the eastern coast and south to the estuary.”
Now hissing in fury, Frink leaned back, stretching his thin legs. “Some slimy bastard in the council wanted me dead before even being anointed. But it failed, and I was warned in time, though not by you. Of course, council members stay unknown, damn their pricks, so I’ve no way of retaliating until I know more. And it’s of little consequence since I intend living another hundred years.”
“You look as though you might last until tomorrow.”
“And you until tonight. Listen, fool,” and the king leaned forwards, gazing directly into his grandson’s frigid pale eyes, “I’ll give you a ship. Sail that young devil off to Shamm and get rid of him. But don’t go claiming the Lydiard property yet. Leave the dowager to take it after a month or so and take it from her after another month. I’ll not have suspicion falling on the royal family simply because you’re a damned idiot. Keep your own house in order before claiming someone else’s.”
The palace was alight, but the stink of gas swept the lower floor with its long winding corridors into the public rooms and the great kitchens, where condensation and copper clatter outshone the sparking gasses. But as yet, Kallivan wasn’t moving. “How about some of the royal guard too? And a few extra horses? I have no coin left for this sort of expense.”
“I gave you twenty Kamps two days back,” spat the king.
“Spent.” Kallivan glared. Finally, he stood. The king also stood and hobbled down the steps.
He was bent with age, wizened, and angry. “I’ll give you the guard. Five mounted. And a ship. A fishing trawler, so as not to look suspicious. Sort the rest yourself, and you’ll get no more coin from me. Go whine to your mistress. If you arrange things properly, you’ll have money in a couple of months.”
Already more than halfway from the city to the northern coast and the hill-towns of Lydiard, the small group outside the inn’s stables, waited, already mounted.
“Reckon you folks will think me proper daft,” shrugged Symon, mounting slowly and carefully, as if not quite sure which leg to raise first. “But these hired bastards, they does what theys paid to do. Who they is exactly, makes fer a blind alley. Being what I knows about more than most things, as you might say. But the jobs I takes on, gets done proper, not half baked, my lord.” Symon, finally settling himself in the saddle, grasped his reins with two determined fists. “Now, if your lordship wouldn’t mind keeping to a nice steady pace as it were, since I has to warn you, I’s not exactly a master o’ horse. In fact, this be the first bugger I’s owned. Where I lives, tis two steps to everywhere, and as easy to shout as to foot it.”
The sun was in quick descent as they rode across the courtyard to the wide road beyond, which continued endlessly north and into the next small town, buzzing and busy, a flutter of banners and the guild arms creaking on their posts outside the shops. The road led onwards through the township and a small sleepy village beyond.
Pulling on the reigns, Jak stopped outside a small tavern and called back, “We’ll stop here for food and a stretch of the legs. But I’ll give it no more than an hour, and then we continue. I want to be back in Lydiard by tomorrow evening at the latest.”
Symon still held tightly to his horse. “Reckon tis time I left, my lord,” he said, smiling wide. “Tis a different road I wants now, and will move east after the grub, if you doesn’t mind, my lord.” With the help of a sympathetic ostler, he managed to dismount, and, holding his back, he staggered into the tavern behind Jak, and found a table in the taproom. “Thing is,” he told his host through a mouthful of bread and cheese, “I’s yourn friend now, I reckon. So if you ever wants me, just go to Eden Market and ask fer Symon. But first of all, you gotta give yer own name. If you doesn’t say who you is at first, then folks’ll be swearing they ain’t never heard o’ me.”
Laughing, Jak nodded. “I’ll remember that, friend Symon.
It was a brief lunc
h and quickly finished. As Jak and Symon wandered out to the small stables, the two armed guards were already in the saddle, and his two other men, his own groom, and his personal assistant, were waiting beside their horses, reigns in hand. Symon and Jak stopped before mounting, having something more to say. But they were interrupted. Shouts and running feet were very loud behind him. The first sudden and unexpected blow to the back of his head swung him around. He fell but rolled and came back up again. The second blow missed as Jak, now prepared, swung his sword across, then up and then down, knocking his adversary to the cobbles.
Symon, ready for any attack at all times, killed a man, slashing him through shoulder, neck, and up into the jaw. But the two armed guards stood motionless, confused. One screamed, “My lord, stop. You can’t kill them. These are royal paraders. Look at the livery.”
Without interest in colours or clothes, faces or badges, Symon grabbed another guard who had run, sword upraised, shouting for surrender. But Jak raised his hand and faced the remaining crimson cloaks, with the men in scarlet britches and shirts, golden badges and golden hats.” What the devil?” he demanded. “Are you on royal business? And if so, why? The king has no quarrel with me.”
Symon stepped back at Jak’s word, but still stood ready. The two guards Jak had hired in the city, now backed away entirely, while his groom and assistant stood helpless. Jak, waiting for an explanation, kept a grip on his upraised sword.
“My Lord of Lydiard,” the royal-parador announced, repeating his orders. “You are now under arrest in the name of his royal majesty. The accusations and all further details will be supplied on arrival at the High-Eden-Palace. You and your colleague will now immediately surrender yourselves to my men.”
Although both Symon and Jak paused, they did not yet drop their weapons. Symon’s sword was machete type, two-handed, double-bladed, and heavy both in itself and in its crushing blow. Jak’s sword was the common weapon of defence and lighter than that used on the battlefield. As if reluctant and unsure, both men remained standing, weapons in hand, but quiet.
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