The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers coaaod-6

by Hugh Cook

  Chegory knew then:

  I love this place.

  He had an intense sensation of being here, now, located, focused, balanced, present.

  Then the bat bells thunderclapped, their shatter-song bursting from the belfries, and Uckermark laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and steered him inside.

  The banquet was about to begin.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Justina’s palace was large but not infinite. While it did contain treasury, dungeons, torture chambers (unused since the time of Wazir Sin), kitchens, bedrooms, a rooftop swimming pool and so on and so forth, it had only two large halls. One of these was the Star Chamber, site of legal hearings of all descriptions. The other was the Grand Hall where the petitions session had been held during the afternoon. It was the Grand Hall which was the site of the night’s banquet.

  When Chegory and Uckermark entered the Grand Hall no people had yet seated themselves. The long tables, which formed three sides of a square, awaited yet. Justina’s ebony throne had been removed to make way for the Table of Honour, which was that from which the two Tables Lesser depended. But nobody had removed the starvation cage. Likewise, the shields of Wen Endex still adorned the walls. The revellers would disport themselves with those images of death and destruction ever within glance.

  ‘Where do we sit?’ said Chegory. ‘Anywhere? Or special places?’

  While the Empress had personally invited him to the banquet he did not imagine for a moment that he would be sitting close to her. After all, Ivan Pokrov and Artemis Ingalawa had both banqueted at the pink palace on occasions past, and from what little they had said of it Chegory knew neither of them had been anywhere near the imperial person.

  ‘Nobody sits till the Empress enters,’ said Uckermark. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be told. Look around, look around.’

  With that vague command, Uckermark disengaged himself from his young companion, abandoning Chegory in favour of conversation with one of the potent contacts he had made inside the palace since his first acquaintance with Justina.

  Chegory wandered round the table, unaware that everyone in the room was studying him discretely. Justina’s latest! How long would he last? A night? A week? If more than a week, he would be a very miracle worker, for Justina was persistent in her quest for novelty. So had she been since she attained the age of sixteen. Then, while growing up in Galsh Ebrek, she had demonstrated the strength of her appetites [A long and weary catalogue has here been deleted on the grounds that this catalogue, together with its attendant gynaecological details, is intrinsically boring. By Order, Ostik Vo, Master of Philosophy.]

  Chegory did not think of the bedtime ordeal that awaited him, of the moment when Justina would clutch him to her flesh, when he would have to prove his manhood truly or suffer imperial displeasure extreme. No. He did not think of it because, like all humans, he had a tremendous capacity for denying reality. Despite Uckermark’s hints and outright declarations, and despite the implications of everything which had happened to him since his arrival in the palace, young Chegory still thought he would escape from the palace with his virginity intact.

  Thus our Ebrell Islander thought not of bed, but worried instead about the banquet. How would he cope with the intricacies of the grandiose protocol such an occasion would surely demand? The table itself intimidated him. Crystal glittering and stabs likewise ashine. Linen as white as the snow which lies on the ground here in the Mountains of the Moon — not that the comparison to snow would have occurred to Chegory, who had never seen such a substance.

  ‘If you would excuse me for a moment, sir.’

  This from a waiter busy distributing sheets of parchment. One for every place, to join the small dishes of pineapple chunks and coconut squares and the fragrant mosquito coils softly smoking. Chegory stepped back from the table.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the waiter, putting down another parchment.

  This was Chegory’s first encounter with a proper waiter, and the young Ebrell Islander was so disconcerted by the man’s lordly manner that he took him for a high-ranking civil servant at the very least. Nevertheless, he plucked up courage sufficient to ask:

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Those, sir, are mosquito coils.’

  ‘I mean the — the document things, what you’re giving out.’

  Chegory asked because he could not read the Toxteth scriptwork which adorned the parchments. As he could only read and write Ashmarlan he was virtually illiterate for the purposes of practical life on Untunchilamon.

  ‘These, sir, are prescriptions,’ said the waiter. ‘Prescriptions?’ said Chegory.

  ‘Indeed. For how can we have wine without prescriptions? Further, how can we have a banquet without wine?’ ‘Prescriptions,’ said Chegory, still puzzling it out. ‘You mean — you mean all these people are sick?’

  ‘They are indeed,’ said the waiter. ‘A tragedy, young sir! There is, you see, a staggering degree of ill health in Untunchilamon’s ruling class. Why, here is Lord Idaho’s script. Two beers for his poor digestion, five glasses of wine for the pain of his war wounds and a double brandy to help with his flat feet.’

  ‘Flat feet?’ said Chegory. ‘You can cure flat feet with brandy?’

  ‘I, young sir?’ said the waiter, whisking further prescriptions into place. ‘I am but a waiter, hence nothing I can heal. But doctors, young sir — ah, their skills would grace a very miracle worker!’

  ‘You mean,’ said Chegory, following the swift-moving waiter, ‘they can really cure flat feet with alcohol?’

  ‘Cure?’ said the waiter. ‘A strong word, surely! For it implies a degree of certain resolution which your bravest philosophers will tell you is quite impossible in a world so chancy. Nay, young sir. Your best physician can often work his miracles, yet cannot attempt such feats impossible. Speak not of cures. Speak rather of treatment.’

  ‘Treatment?’ persisted Chegory.

  ‘Certainly! Balm, soothing, comfort. For such is alcohol the world’s best medicine. Hence here we have in plenty treatments for ague and palsy, for goitre and hernia, the multiplication of chins and the distension of the belly, the loss of potency or an excess of the same, for snakebite, old wounds and varicose veins, for fits of elation and for dooms of despair.’

  By now the waiter’s progress had taken him almost to the centre of the Table of Honour.

  ‘Here sits Uckermark,’ said the waiter, putting down a parchment. ‘The corpse master. I know him well. He stuffed my grandmother three years ago. Still she looks as good as new.’

  The waiter moved a single place closer to the centre. He stood with the starvation cage just behind him and scanned the parchment in his hand.

  ‘Young sir,’ said he, ‘are you by chance a victim of anaemia?’

  ‘So I’m told,’ said Chegory doubtfully.

  ‘If a doctor told you, it must be true. An Ebrell Islander, thus it says here. Chegory Guy by name. The name is your own?’

  ‘It is,’ said Chegory.

  ‘Then here you sit,’ said the waiter, and with a flourish he deposited Chegory’s prescription in the place to the left of Uckermark’s.

  ‘Then whose place is that?’ said Chegory, as the waiter deposited the next parchment.

  ‘This?’ said the waiter. ‘This place belongs to a lady fair who suffers from… let us say insomnia. That is the polite way of putting it, is it not?’

  Then he winked, which was quite unprofessional of him, then went on his way.

  Chegory wandered off to find Uckermark, but had not yet located the corpse master when trumpets flared and silenced all chatter in the Grand Hall. In came guards bearing naked scimitars. Then the Empress Justina entered upon the banqueting chamber. She waved gaily to her subjects as she made her way to her place.

  Which was…

  Which was the central seat at the Table of Honour.

  Right by that assigned to Chegory Guy.

  But surely, surely…

  ‘A mistake,’
said Chegory, as someone grabbed his arm. ‘There’s been a mistake.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ said Juliet Idaho. ‘Come on! Don’t keep the Empress waiting!’

  So saying, the Yudonic Knight steered Chegory toward the Table of Honour. He drove his fingers deep into the young man’s bicep.

  ‘Remember what I told you!’

  ‘Stabs,’ said Chegory. ‘Yes, yes, stabs, I remember, not to touch, no steel, no touching. Eat with my fingers, everything, fish, soup, the lot.’

  ‘Eat soup with your spoon, fool!’ said Idaho. ‘But the rest with your fingers, certainly. One hand on a stab, and that’s it! Wwwhst! Off with your head! See the muscle?’

  ‘I see it,’ said Chegory.

  He saw the scimitarists standing to either side of the starvation cage and knew they were the muscle to which Idaho referred. They could be upon him in a moment. Slicing off his head!

  ‘So watch yourself,’ said Idaho, his threat pitched low, meant for Chegory’s ears alone.

  Then he gave the Ebrell Islander a push which sent him staggering forward. The Empress Justina smiled on him. At all three tables the guests were standing by their chairs. Waiting to be seated. Chegory felt dizzy. Panic-stricken. He longed to run, flee, sprint from the pink palace and bury himself forever in the deepest part of the underworld.

  Chegory reached the table.

  A servant pulled out his chair.

  What now? Presumably the Empress would seat herself, then her guests would take their places.

  Chegory waited.

  Beaded sweat rolled down his forehead.

  ‘Sit!’ hissed Uckermark, his mouth but a fingerlength from Chegory’s ear.

  What was right? To sit, or not to sit? Surely he couldn’t ‘You’re guest of honour,’ whispered Uckermark frantically. ‘You! Sit sit sit!’

  Chegory sat.

  The rest of the guests followed suit with a great scraping of chairs, soon followed by a swelling murmur of remark, expostulation and outright gossip. Still the Empress was standing. Was something wrong? Chegory risked a quick glance over his shoulder. The muscle to either side of the starvation cage had not moved. But it was there. Ready. Waiting. The muscle was in the form of two huge men with bullock-breaking thews, their faces impassive as they stood leaning on the hilts of bare-bladed scimitars, the points of which rested on blocks of cork to preserve their sharpness.

  Still, still the Empress stood. The chair to her left was empty. Was she waiting for another guest?

  Round the table there was a regular tinkling clatter. What? People were pulling off rings, brooches and other baubles. Tossing them so they fell amidst crystal glasses, polished silver, white porcelain. Chegory, who was ignorant of the customs Justina’s father had brought with him from Galsh Ebrek, was totally incapable of fathoming the import of this simple ceremony.

  The last ring was, temporarily, discarded.

  Then, and only then, did Justina sit, exhaling a happy sigh as she ensconced herself in the chair next to Chegory Guy. He stood instandy, as a sign of respect.

  ‘Sit!’ said the Empress in a peremptory tone. Then, as he complied, she went on (more mildly): ‘Silly boy! You didn’t think you could run away, did you?’

  To Chegory’s surprise, even at banquet she spoke in Toxteth. Now all acknowledge that the language of Wen Endex is good enough for war, at which the Yudonic Knights are expert. Yet it is entirely unfit for social intercourse at the highest levels, for it lacks the subtle honorifics and diminutives by which the ever-hinting Jan-juladoola allows lessers in their every utterance to honour betters and betters to impress upon lessers the inferiority of the latter.

  ‘My lady,’ said Chegory, ‘I exist only to serve.’

  This he had hastily rehearsed but a few moments before, and — better still! — he had rehearsed it in Janjuladoola. For ‘my lady’ he used Janjuladoola’s ‘thayalamantalajora’, which translates literally as ‘goddess surpassing’. From the nine forms of‘I’ which were available to him he had chosen (correctly) the word ‘varacasondundra’, literally ‘myself a worm’. It came out perfectly.

  Still, even though the Ebrell Islander surprised the universe by choosing language proper and words correct for this pretty little offering, it must be observed that what he came out with was cliched and unoriginal in the extreme. But then, Chegory Guy had no prior experience in dealing with imperial power, and must perforce fall back on stereotyped dialogue stolen straight from the legends of hero-princes and such.

  While young Chegory was still complimenting himself on his successful survival of the first of his many trials in the halls of grace, Justina’s albinotic ape Vazzy was brought to the table and installed in the previously empty chair to the left of the Empress. On this occasion the installation included the attachment of the creature to its specially weighted throne by means of leather ankle cuffs. At the last banquet, Vazzy had indulged his passion for staging tournaments at table once too often, and Justina had at last come to the conclusion that a rampaging ape is not an ornament to an evening’s entertainment.

  Once installed, the imperial favourite regarded Chegory quizzically, then extended its paw.

  ‘Well, Chegory,’ said the Empress. ‘Where are your manners?’

  Chegory sought for words but found none, therefore did but stare at Empress and ape, acting for all the world as if his tongue had been tied after the manner of the torturers of Lower Sladvonia. Given his lack of social sophistication, his attack of verbal constipation is understandable. After all, the hero-prince legends which had supplied his dialogue till then make no mention of the niceties of protocol which arise when a common rock gardener has social intercourse with an ape imperial.

  ‘Go on!’ said Justina. ‘Give him your hand.’

  Chegory was to — to what? Cut off his hand and present it to the ape as a token of fealty? He looked around wildly. Guards in their frowning menace stood but a footfall away from him, their scimitars at the ready. Vazzy rescued Chegory from his indecision. The pink-eyed ape lunged, grabbed Chegory’s hand and hauled on it. Chegory hauled back. Sweating. Panting. Biting his lip. His thick Ebrell Island fingers were now directly above Justina’s lap. They were but a finger length from — from Gods!

  ‘You silly boy!’ said Justina, with a windchime laugh. ‘Shake his hand and he’ll let yours go!’

  Shake his hand? Why? Chegory had no idea, but nevertheless jerked the ape’s paw several times. To his relief, Vazzy then released him. Chegory snatched his hand away as if it had been scalded. He slumped back in his seat. A solicitous attendant mopped away the sweat now streaming from his brow. Chegory endured these ministrations without protest, then realised a waiter was questioning him.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  Chegory was startled by his own over-loud voice, by the note of shark-flavoured brutality in the single vocable. A moment later he realised (to his horror!) that he had asked his question in his native Dub, instead of phrasing his query in fragrant Janjuladoola or (second-best, surely — but the Empress used it) good honest Toxteth.

  The waiter repeated his question using the politest forms of Janjuladoola imaginable, yet still managing to convey a weary sense of infinite superiority:

  ‘Mead, sir? Or wine?’

  ‘A — a physician has prescribed mead for my anaemia,’ said Chegory, stumbling slightly as he rendered this simplicity in Janjuladoola. He had conceived an immediate fear of the waiter, which was quite natural given the waiter’s massive sense of superiority and Chegory’s increasing nervousness.

  ‘Those doctors will over-prescribe!’ said Justina. ‘Give him the wine, it’s much safer.’

  ‘My lady has a degree from the College of Medicine,’ murmured the wine waiter, ‘therefore one trusts her judgement implicitly.’

  The qualification in question was an honorary degree, but the waiter made no mention of this as he poured wine for Chegory (the guest of honour), then for the Empress, and then (since the ape was in possession of a med
ical certificate signed by the Veterinarian Imperial) for Vazzy.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Chegory, truly grateful that the Empress had descended (as it were) from her seat amidst the stars to deal so expediently with the waiter.

  He congratulated himself for saying his thanks in Janjuladoola. Then was horrorstruck. He had used the familiar form! He had said efkarindorenskomiti, the word by which a friend thanks a friend, or (for this is a very familiar form indeed!) which a lover uses to supplement a kiss just a few moments after orgasm. The word he should have used to express his thanks was (of course) dundaynarbardina-dorsklo, for thus and only thus should a slave or similar address a power imperial.

  Such lapses of etiquette are not to be taken lightly. In the court of Aldarch the Third (who, for all that can be said against him, is ever at pains to improve the manners of his people) many have been instantly executed for lapses in protocol far less extreme. But the Empress Justina merely laughed. She was delighted!

  ‘I’m so glad we’re getting to know each other better,’ she said.

  Though she spoke in Toxteth, her words implied that she had caught every nuance of Chegory’s Janjuladoola. So what could he say? That he didn’t mean it like that at all? ‘Thank you,’ he said, helplessly.

  Only this time he said it in Toxteth, a language which offered him far fewer opportunities to make those social gaffes which are almost inevitable when an inept linguist endeavours to grapple with the delicious intricacies of Janjuladoola.

  Before Chegory had a chance to embarrass himself further, Justina’s white ape hooted in pleasurable anticipation. A white-faced figure gorgeously adorned in robes embroidered with moray eels and scorpion fish was approaching the Empress. However, the ape was to be disappointed, for Aquitaine Varazchavardan remembered what had happened at the last banquet, and halted well out of ape-grabbing distance.