Fool Me Twice (Filidor Vesh)

by Matthew Hughes

  “I think that is what they look like,” said Valderoyn, “though I have never let my eyes linger on any that have crossed my bows.” He reflected for a moment, then said, “Hunch your shoulders and hook your fingers, as if you craved nothing more than my blood dribbling from your clenched teeth. Ah, yes, there’s the image of a consecrate, all right. It ought to keep the falicks off you.” He used the sailor’s ancient term for officers of the law.

  Filidor tried his new guise on the others, and even the unflappable Byr Lak appeared nonplused. The young man wrapped the flagon of purple Pwyfus he had brought with him in a scrap of coarse cloth, since hermits of the Piacular Tumult indulged only in fungal euphoriants, and prepared to go ashore.

  The crossing from the island of the Obblob had taken most of the day, and the tired orange sun was now sliding behind clouds in the offing over distant Mornedy Sound. Byr Lak brought the jollyboat through the mouth of Scullaway Point’s semi-circular small craft harbor, carved into the coastline next to the big basin which served grand ships like Empyreal. The lesser haven was moderately crowded with skimmers and flingabouts, and three or four private vessels of a good size. Filidor briefly thought about investigating those; if he found one to be empty, he could go to cover there, but all the larger craft were lit from within, and the wharves against which they nestled were dotted with pedestrians and seaside gawkers.

  In the gathering dusk, Byr Lak eased the jollyboat up to a decrepit floating dock, below a single lumen dangling from a suspended cable. In its faint yellow light, the four who would be staying ashore bid farewell to the old man, the sailors taking their leave of him with words and embraces that Filidor found surprisingly sentimental. Then Valderoyn, Volpenge and Aury wished the Archon’s apprentice good fortune and a safe end to his strivings. They all swore that they would keep to themselves their knowledge of the young man’s whereabouts.

  A set of stone steps connected the worn boards to the seawall. The four went up them and separated at the top. The three sailors, each with his bag of loot from Henwaye’s storehouse, jaunted off toward the gaudy strip of emporia that sold the kinds of goods and services that had separated seafarers from their pay since time immemorial. Filidor angled away from the harbor toward a dark stretch of trees and parkland that bordered the shore. There he would perhaps climb a tall deodar and survey the town before choosing a point of entry.

  There were few folk wandering the space between the harbor and the woods, and those that came close enough to ascertain the nature of Filidor’s seeming spiritual affiliation quickly spun on their heels and angled sharply off their previous paths, putting their eyes anywhere but on him. Thus he reached the thickening shadows under the trees with a wide space for maneuver, but as he moved deeper into their cover he found that the woods were not extensive; they were only a thin margin of loblols and other evergreens planted around an open air theater.

  A crowd numbering perhaps three hundred people stood at the other end of the open space to watch a performance being staged on some sort of large hustings. Carefully, Filidor scanned the assemblage for the black and green of Archonate livery and saw none. Nor did he see anything that might have been a uniform of the local constabulary. He determined to make his way around the gathering, staying within the obscurity of the surrounding trees and drawing no attention to himself, to see if there were deeper woods behind the stage where he might hole up as planned.

  He had halfway circumnavigated the open space when he noted three items of interest. The first was that the performance at the far end was not on a hustings, as he had first thought, but on a stage that levered down from the side of an immense vehicle. The second was that the name of the performing company emblazoned above the proscenium arch was familiar: Flastovic’s Incomparable Mummery Troupe and Raree Exposition. The third was that two members of that troupe, the twins Ches and Isbister Florrey, were not on the stage but were weaving their way through the outer edges of the audience. Filidor watched Ches bump into a spectator, as if by accident, while Isbister moved smoothly and unnoticed behind the man. As the first twin made gestures and issued words of polite apology, the second stepped away, his hand slipping something small but substantial between his skin and the fabric of his blouse.

  Why, they are nothing but a pair of rip-and-dips, he thought, remembering the shout from across Indentors Square the night before all his troubles had started. They pull a crowd so that they can rifle its pockets.

  Without thinking, he opened his mouth to call the alert, but fortunately at that moment reason reasserted itself and he closed his lips. It might well be to his advantage to know something of Flastovic’s troupe that they would prefer not be known. Staying within the shadows of the trees, he followed the twins as they moved along the rim of the crowd, and saw them twice more pluck the fruit from unsuspecting spectators before they also headed for the cover of the treeline.

  Filidor stayed with them, always keeping a tree or two between him and the Florreys, but after a few paces he trod upon something dry and brittle, that crackled and rustled under his foot. The two pickpockets stopped and peered about in the gloom, but Filidor’s dark clothing and the fortuitous placement of an intervening tree shielded him from discovery. After a long wait, the mummers resumed their progress, but Filidor paused to draw the bobblobblobl from its pouch, shake it out and let it descend upon him. Thus completely hidden, he again trailed the twins to a small clearing in the woods behind Flastovic’s groundeater, where they squatted to divide the valuables they had stolen from any accompanying items that might identify their recent owners. The latter they buried in a shallow hole hastily scraped between some roots.

  “A tidy haul,” said one of the Florreys, when they were finished.

  “Very,” said the other, then sniffed and said, “I think something has died nearby.”

  Filidor moved back a little.

  “It is always a comfort when we have struck a small blow against the pernicious cult of private property,” said one of them, holding up a glittering item of some kind. “Instead of hiding in some selfish own-it-all’s pocket, this piece will soon be circulating again through the world, bringing delight to all who see it.”

  “As ever,” returned his brother, “you erect thin and reedy concepts whose only foundation is the thickness of your brain. The effect of our work is to take those things which were widely held, that is, by several attendees at tonight’s performance, and happily concentrate them in our pockets. The gain is ours, and it is private.”

  “Nonsense,” said the one Filidor now knew to be Isbister, from his philosophical liking for communality. “You might as well say the wind is yours because it happens to cool your face in passing. These things will be only briefly in our possession, since we will move them on their way as quickly as we can. Any of these goods will pass through half a dozen hands in the next few days. The money almost certainly will.”

  “As ever, you vainly grasp at diaphanous vastness while the tangible turns to mist in your hands. The goods per se are not the gain; they are merely the vehicle that brings me an increment of wealth. The goods will pass on, but the gain will remain,” said Ches, the exponent of private coffer-keeping, “and mine will be mine.”

  Isbister turned away in scorn, saying, “Once again, you miss the obvious. Did not the eminent Thodeus Tamarac, in his brilliant treatise On the Addition of Value, lay this question once and for all to its much defined rest? I quote...”

  But Ches was not disposed to hear the citation. “Tamarac? Eminent? His eminence is no more than that of a boil above the surrounding buttock.”

  Filidor heard Isbister’s sharp intake of breath, followed by his, “You will take that back.”

  “I cannot,” said his twin.

  “Then I will surely thrash you.”

  “Another of your fancies unrooted in reality,” said Ches, “for it comes down to beating, I know who will play the stick and who the dr
um.”

  “We shall see,” said Isbister, raising his fists.

  “As we always have,” said his brother, assuming a fighting pose.

  But the bout had to be postponed. A surge of applause from the crowd recalled both brothers to their business. “They have finished The Ant, The Flea and The Behemoth,” said Isbister. “Flastovic will wonder what we are up to. Let us get into costume for The Hierophant and the Heretics.”

  The brothers raced through the woods to the giant vehicle which was the troupe’s transportation, shelter and performing venue. Filidor followed, and saw them scuttle through a small door in the back. He did not pursue them farther; the bobblobblobl offered no hope of concealment indoors, and he knew where they would be for the next little while. Besides, he wanted to think about what he had learned, and how it might serve his needs.

  Had he witnessed the Florreys’ depredations against their unwitting audience when they had been performing in Olkney’s Indentors Square, he would at once have summoned the provosts and had the thieves immured in a magistrate’s cells. But now he was in need of allies, willing or not, and the twins looked to be the enterprising sort, despite their conflicting notions as to how property ought to be apportioned in the world. He decided to wait until Flastovic’s troupe was done with its performance, then he would see what use they might be to him.

  He pulled back into the trees and spoke to the integrator in his ear, giving a quick precis of what he had seen and heard, then asking, “What do you recommend?”

  I have no idea. My Filidor does not consort with pickpockets.

  “Then conjecture,” Filidor insisted.

  I cannot. In this instance, your judgment is probably better than mine. Now leave me. I fade.

  Filidor could not recall ever hearing anyone tell him that his judgment was superior. He had heard “Suit yourself” and “It’s your funeral,” but never had he been declared the pre-eminent authority in sight on any subject. It produced in him a curious mingling of warm security and chill apprehension. He decided that, since he was in no immediate danger, the sensible thing to do was to watch and learn more. Feeling thus at least the temporary master of his fate, he removed the bobblobblobl and restored it to its pouch, then edged around the clearing until he could see the stage. He leaned against a tree in shadow and watched as Ovile Germolian, masked and robed, stepped through the closed curtains and took up his position to the side of the proscenium arch. The disclamator raised head and voice, and declared that the next performance would be the aforementioned playlet: The Hierophant and The Heretics, by The Bard Obscure.

  The curtains opened and Germolian intoned the text. From the founding of Far Forbish, all of its inhabitants subscribed to the Church of the Exemplified Catechism, finding its tenets well laid out and none too onerous. But as time went by, the colony grew, and among those drawn to the new world there came inevitably some persons of a fractious nature who employed their leisure time in picking at the knitted threads of ritual and process that underpinned the authority of the Church.

  As Germolian spoke the text, Erslan Flastovic, recognizable by his size and bearing, appeared on stage wearing the robes and headpiece of a hierarch of the Church of the Exemplified Catechism. The other members of the troupe portrayed a multitudinous congregation by milling about while wearing poles harnessed to their shoulders from which depended lightweight mannequins. Strings connected the dummies’ limbs to the troupers’ corresponding parts, so that arms and legs moved in unison. Given the right lighting and a willing audience, the effect was strangely convincing.

  In time, Germolian continued, one of the newcomers differed to the point of extremity with the High Hierophant over the nature of the most central ritual of the faith: was the god imminent in the sacramental legume, or did the deity enter the sacred vegetable only after it had been plucked, cleaned, boiled and seasoned? A strident debate ensued, during which woundful words were uttered, so that no common ground remained. So the newcomer and his adherents departed the congregation and constituted themselves as the Reformed Church of the Exemplified Catechism.

  One of the mummers flounced off to stage left, his shoulder borne mannequins following suit.

  But it was not long, said the disclamator, before another discontented member within the body of the faithful found himself at odds with the High Hierophant about certain pertinent details -- specifically, whether the boiled sacrament must be swallowed whole or whether it might, without giving offense to the god, be chewed. Soon, a second schismatic sect, the Justified Masticators, had been formed.

  A second set of mannequins stamped over to stage right.

  Then there arose a third persuasion, comprising some persons who were staunchly faithful to the original rite but who differed radically with their priest over whether the heretics should receive their just punishment from the deity in the next life, or from his agents in this one. These doughty adherents removed themselves from the High Hierophant’s authority, armed themselves with sticks and cobblestones, and set out to do the god’s work.

  A third set of mannequins moved to the front of the stage, gesticulating angrily. Then both crowds of schismatics came storming in from the wings, and the curtains closed on the donnybrook that was beginning. Rumbles, muffled shouts and clashes erupted from behind the barrier, then faded into silence. After a moment, Flastovic, in his hierarch’s robes but with his miter askew, stepped out from between the curtains, and stood as if in a pensive mood.

  The High Hierophant took thought, said Germolian, and found that the constant blooding of the congregations was causing great personal and social distress to the citizens of Far Forbish. He called together the leaders of the three sects and said to them, “Behold, we have turned our flocks into blood-beasts that live only to feud with each other. Can we not agree to disagree, and all just get along?”

  The three schismatic leaders came through the curtain to the front of the stage and, by shrugs and hand gestures, signaled their willingness to reconcile.

  The High Hierophant proposed that, as a sign of ecumenical fraternity, the leaders of the three congregations should attend each others’ services. “I will be the first to receive the three of you,” he said. “Come to the next sacramental meal and quietly take seats at the rear of the temple. When the rites are over, I will introduce you and we will hold a ritual of mutual absolution.”

  The three heretics nodded their heads in agreement, and all four mummers ducked through the curtain.

  Now the cloth pulled back to reveal the set of Far Forbish’s main cathedral, with a vast congregation indicated by row upon row of figures cut from sturdy paper with painted backdrops on all three sides showing more ranks of believers dwindling by perspective into the far distance.

  Flastovic, in even more ornate garb, was presiding at an altar at the front of the stage, assisted by a small masked acolyte whom Filidor took to be Chloe. The High Hierophant flourished his hands over the glistening pots and salvers on the altar, then raised his masked eyes to the heaven in silent supplication.

  On the appointed day, said the disclamator, the three schismatic leaders came to the temple and entered at the rear of the congregation.

  The three masked figures -- Filidor knew them now to be Gavne and the Florrey twins -- crept onto the stage at the rear.

  But it was a high holy day, Germolian went on, and the temple was filled with fervent celebrants, who had left no room for the three visitors. Only the High Hierophant, from his elevated position, saw them enter. He turned to the child who assisted him and whispered, “Get three chairs for the heretics.”

  At this, Chloe cupped a hand to an ear to show that she had not understood the instruction.

  “Get three chairs for the heretics,” Germolian repeated.

  At this, Chloe’s masked head moved from side to side in a mime of consternation, then she cupped he hand to her ear once more.

 
“I want three chairs for the heretics!” the disclamator hissed.

  Now the acolyte stepped away from the hierarch, and made the gestures with which underlings have long communicated a willingness to do a boss’s bidding, though it makes no sense at all. Turning to face the ranks of true believers, Chloe raised her small fist into the air as Germolian shouted, Three cheers for the heretics! Hip, hip!

  Chapter 6

  Filidor waited until the final curtain had rung down on the mummers’ performance, then went around to watch the back of the great vehicle again. He had been mulling over his situation, and had decided that knowing the Florreys to be thieves might not be enough leverage to coerce their cooperation. If he confronted them, it would be easy enough for them to seize him, then call the local Archonate bureau and turn him in, no doubt for a substantial reward. If the authorities believed his protestations that the Florreys were reivers, they might arrest the twins as well, but that wouldn’t leave Filidor free to go.

  He was wondering if he ought to hide himself somewhere in the troupe’s segmented groundeater -- there must be compartments for scenery and illuminative apparatus -- and hope that time and a change of location might bring him advantages, when the rear door opened quietly and Chloe stole out into the night. Filidor drew himself deeper into the shadows under the trees and watched as the girl looked about for observing eyes, and seeing none, crept to the concealment of the woods. She carried a folded blanket under one arm.

  This is interesting, Filidor told himself, and prepared to follow her. But before he could get the bobblobblobl out and deployed, the door opened again, and the angular figure of Ovile Germolian stepped into view. Even more interesting, mused Filidor, as he watched the disclamator disappear in the same direction the girl had gone.