Peter & Max

by Bill Willingham

  HALFWAY ALONG FISH DOOR STREET, just before it jogged north towards the city wall, which was called The Wall of Chestnut Trees in this section, was the public house identified by the sign of the red mare, rearing over a coiled green serpent. Most people simply called it The Horse and Snake. Like most public houses, several sections of its front wall, that part directly facing the street, could be removed during the warmest part of a sunny day, so as to keep the interior cool and to be more inviting to potential customers. Also like most such establishments, The Horse and Snake always had a big cauldron of stew simmering near the street. Such stews were commonly called Belly Vengeance, because it was a cheap and horrible concoction, made up of rotting wastes and leftovers. It was constantly added to throughout the day, replenished with anything that could possibly go into the pot, including the dirty scrub water and the sweepings from the floor. A public house’s vat of Belly Vengeance was sold for a halfpenny a bowl. Often the ‘bowl’ was actually a hollowed crust of stale bread, so that no one had to worry about recovering and cleaning the dishes. Only the town’s most wretched souls would buy it, as the single daily meal they could afford. This was why the stewpot was commonly kept out close to the street, since no decent pub owner wanted such disreputable scum entering the actual establishment, where the more respectable (meaning wealthier) customers dined.

  Peter examined the exterior of The Horse and Snake from his vantage point, a dark and narrow alleyway across the street and not three doors down from it. He watched several customers come and go, paying their halfpenny to an old man stationed out on a stool, near the pot, which simmered over a wide, flat, iron pan of hot coals. Most of them would take their time, selecting the biggest, most bowl-like crust available, to dip as deeply as they could into the Belly Vengeance. Then they’d continue on their way, walking as they ate. If they dared try to linger too near the pub to eat, the red-faced manager would quickly rush outside to shoo them on their way. When too long a time passed between customers, the old man guarding the pot would often begin to doze on his stool, his back pressed against that part of the pub’s street-side façade still in place.

  Now that Peter had the old man’s pattern down, he got ready to move. As soon as the fellow began to doze again, he sprang into action, dashing as fast as he could, out of the alleyway and across the street. Almost without pausing, he grabbed a crust from out of the big half-barrel, shoved it deep into the stew — almost scalding his hand in the process — and ran off with his stolen treasure.

  Peter immediately began eating as he ran, pouring the hot stew into his open mouth as fast as it would go. It was glorious! It might have been the finest meal he’d ever enjoyed. Most of it was brown, greasy broth, but the broth was thick, almost as thick as a proper gravy, and he was almost certain he’d gotten a chunk of potato (or perhaps it was a rutabaga) and there was most definitely some bit of meat.

  Peter heard a yawp of surprise behind him, as the old man snorted and sputtered back to wakefulness, but there was no chance he could catch Peter, who’d carefully chosen just this pub, on just this street, because of how winding the serpentine street was, with many a dim and narrow alleyway leading off from it. Peter chose an alley more or less at random and disappeared into it, giggling with delight as he sucked the last dregs of stew out of the bread. Then he paused to scrape every bit of cooling broth off his face and then lick his fingers clean, before turning to the bread itself. It had been dry and several days’ stale, but the hot gravy softened it just fine. Peter ate it in three huge bites and it was better than the stew itself.

  He walked deeper into the alley, grinning with pride at his accomplishment. Great Jorg himself, heroic warrior-bard of old, would have been proud of his mighty deed! He was tempted to pull Frost out of its case that very moment and compose a song in praise of his daring exploit on the spot. He almost did it.

  Almost.

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Peter struck time and again, swooping down on a badly guarded stewpot, two and sometimes three times a day. It was easy. He never got caught, because he was always careful to scout the area thoroughly before he struck. If there were goblin patrols anywhere within two city blocks, he’d wait. If one of the public house’s legitimate customers looked too fit or, in some other way, able to give pursuit, he’d move on and select a different location. There were perhaps four hundred cauldrons of Belly Vengeance brewing on any given day, and Peter was determined to sample each and every one of them in time.

  Now that he ate several times each day, his health was coming back. And as his strength returned, he grew bolder. With the winter rapidly approaching, there was more than food on his mind. One afternoon he stole a warm, woolen shirt off a clothesline. The next day he returned to take an even warmer cloak from the next yard over. What a luxury it was to sleep warm at night, for the first time in months, and on a full stomach to boot.

  Eventually his taste for variety resurfaced with his restored health. He began to recognize just how grotesque the flavor of Belly Vengeance could be. That’s when Peter began stealing fruits and whole vegetables from the open stands on Market Day. He enjoyed whole apples and pears, and once even an actual orange, which had to have been shipped in, at great cost, across the seas and down the Weser, from some distant shore. And he also cursed himself for not thinking of this sooner, for, with the first winter snowfall, Market Day would be discontinued until the following spring. It wouldn’t be long at all before the remaining fruit and vegetable supply was stored away in deep cellars and stout, wooden lockers, where he couldn’t get at them.

  For the first time he began to think of some way to steal a larger supply of food all at once, more than what he needed for just a single day’s repast. Surviving the winter would largely depend on whatever he did now, to store enough supplies to last him through the cold months to come. There were two problems to overcome: how to steal a large provision all at once, and where in the city to hide his food cache, where it would be safe, both from city authorities and others like him.

  He considered his dilemma as he surreptitiously stalked an onion-seller, who’d lost half of one leg in some previous misadventure. Stealing a few of his onions would be easy enough, but his stand was deep inside the market grounds that some of the other vendors might try to intercept him in his getaway. There was one idea he’d been holding in reserve for some time, because it was likely to work only once.

  Pausing at still a dozen paces distant from his intended target, Peter suddenly pointed due south, towards the Cathedral Wall, and shouted in panic.

  “Soldiers! Goblin troops, coming up the Street of Bakers in great numbers! They’re killing all they catch!”

  It worked marvelously. Some vendors and shoppers surged towards the southern boundary of the market square, crowding each other to see if the warning were true. The remaining vendors tried to flee in every possible direction. In the first surge of panic, no one seemed to be watching Peter or the produce stalls immediately around him. Almost leisurely he filled his pockets with sweet onions. Then, perceiving that he had more time, he stepped over to another stall and filched three fat potatoes, and (wonder of wonders) an entire slab of uncut bacon.

  Hiding all of his loot inside his jacket, which in turn was concealed under his cloak, Peter made his way slowly through the crowd, which was still entirely focused on locating where the danger was.

  Ten minutes later, he was outside of the market square, free of the crowds. He walked west, towards the waterfront, along the Street of Boats, changed direction as soon as he could, north along Theatre Street, and then doubled back on himself, turning east along the short and narrow Barrel Maker’s Street. He began to relax just a little, certain that he hadn’t been followed.

  He was wrong of course.

  ON THE LAST SUNNY DAY OF THE YEAR, Carl the Arrow watched Peter from a distance, not knowing who he was, and not much caring. It was enough that Carl had seen him before, and on that past occasion, as in this one, Peter had been engaged in the act
of bold and open thievery.

  He observed from a distance, and noticed, not without admiration, as Peter threw the entire market crowd into a panic, with only a few well-chosen words. When Peter had completed his theft and had worked his way free of the market area, Carl followed, always at a discreet distance, and always so slyly that Peter never suspected he was being followed.

  When Peter entered the narrow Barrel Maker’s Street, Carl let a short but heavily weighted wooden truncheon fall into his palm. When Peter turned a sharp corner into an even darker and narrower side avenue, Carl rushed forward, silent as a monk’s prayer, raising his truncheon on high.

  Peter had only begun to sense his danger and turn around when Carl the Arrow struck hard.

  AFTER AN INDETERMINATE TIME, Peter began to awaken, slowly and with great effort. He was dizzy and nauseated, and there was a vicious pain thundering in his head, pounding over and again like the unstoppable beat of an ironsmith’s hammer. He was lying on a stone floor, covered with old, damp straw. He could feel the scratchy, prickly straw ends sticking into his face. He reached for his head and felt dried blood in matted hair. His face and neck also seemed to be crusted with dried blood.

  How long have I been here, he silently asked himself. And where exactly is the “here” that I’ve landed myself in?

  He raised himself up a bit on unsteady arms and looked around. He was in a small, dark room, but not so dark that he couldn’t make out any details. The floor and walls were made of dressed stone. There was partially dried vomit and the smell of urine mixed in with the straw directly beneath him.

  Both from me, he thought, recognizing that there was an acid taste in his mouth and a dampness in his clothes to match the smell in the straw.

  There were no windows, but there was a single stout wooden door set within one of the walls. The little light that was in the room entered through a small window cut high into the door. It was only a short narrow slit, not nearly enough to escape through. He thought of escape, because it was all too clear that he was trapped in a prison cell.

  “The gobs finally got me,” he said, aloud this time, in a voice that cracked and strained to summon barely a whisper.

  Taking an infinite amount of time, Peter struggled to sit up and place his back against the far stone wall, where he could sit and regard the single locked door. He knew it would be locked with the same certainty that he knew day followed night. He didn’t need to further pain himself making the useless effort to test it.

  After sitting for a long while, listening to the pounding behind his forehead and letting his vision drift into and out of focus — but gradually more into focus than out — he thought to examine himself. He knew he’d been whacked solidly in the head, but there might be other injuries. He felt here and there over his aching body and in so doing made a surprising discovery. Everything he owned was still there, including Frost in its case — he opened it to make sure — and even the six onions, three potatoes and large slab of bacon he’d pilfered. Everything.

  Why would the gobs let me keep my stolen goods, or anything at all for that matter?

  In one corner there was a small wooden pail he hadn’t noticed at first. Crawling over to it he found it full of pure, sweet water. Realizing only then how thirsty he was, Peter drank deeply.

  Later he slept.

  When he woke again, he first noticed that the small shaft of light coming through the door’s slit window had moved considerably. Its angle was much higher in the tiny room, indicating that the sun outside was much lower in the sky. Even later he woke again to find the room was completely dark, not recalling that he’d slept again. Sometime during the night, someone had come in to refill his water pail.

  Much later still, when the diffused shaft of light was once again present in his cell, they came for him.

  “So, what do you think?” Someone said from the open doorway. There were two of them, just vaguely man-shaped silhouettes, backlit by the grey daylight. “Are you going to live?” He could hear the soft sound of rainfall behind the two men.

  “I think so,” Peter answered, “though my head doesn’t agree.”

  “My fault for that,” the same man said. “I didn’t want to have to hit you more than once, but still make sure you dropped without a sound. Perhaps I overdid it. Can you stand?”

  Peter didn’t try to answer, since speaking audibly was still difficult. Instead he simply tried to stand, using the wall behind him to brace himself. It took some time and there were a few false starts, but eventually he succeeded. Somewhere along the way the realization sank in that he wasn’t a prisoner of the goblins, and probably not of any other civil authorities either. Who then?, he wondered.

  “I see you’ve drunk your fill a time or two, but have you eaten anything yet?” Once again it was the same fellow speaking. “I noticed you were fully provisioned when we first met. Of course we couldn’t allow you a fire in here to cook some of that delicious-smelling bacon, but some of the other things stashed all about you looked tasty enough.”

  “You didn’t take any of it,” Peter said. His voice was less of a discordant croak by then, but only just so.

  “No, of course not. Why would we? It’s one of the cardinal rules of the Brotherhood. Thieves don’t steal from each other.”

  “He’s no brother of mine,” the other one spoke for the first time.

  “Not yet, Josef. And maybe not ever. We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see,” Josef echoed.

  Taking Peter by each arm, Josef and Carl, as the other fellow introduced himself, took Peter out of the cell, supporting him when he needed it, but not dragging him or treating him roughly. They stepped outside into a yard that had been used during the year as a vegetable garden, judging by the patches of open dirt, dressed into a series of long, narrow furrows. It was raining, but only lightly. A glance up at the grey sky, full of darkening clouds, promised harder rain to come. The yard was enclosed by a high wall, built out of the same stone as the small outbuilding that Peter had been kept in. Across the yard was a larger limestone building, with an outwardly curving wall and a high, domed roof that supported a spired crossing tower in the center of it.

  “A church?”

  “That’s right,” Josef chuckled. “You’re going to church. To give your confession and then be judged,” he added, which seemed to further amuse him.

  “It’s not a church any longer,” Carl said. “The Empire’s soldiers closed them all down when they took over. Well, most of them anyway. They couldn’t completely close the two major cathedrals, could they? Not without riots. But these smaller churches now sit empty, until the big powers back in wherever they came from decide whether or not to allow our religion and our gods on their list of approved deities.”

  They stopped under the sheltered entryway into the main building. Now that Peter’s eyes had adjusted to the daylight, he could see that Carl and Josef were hardly the grown men that he’d first thought them to be. Though both boys were clearly older than he, it was clear that they were still boys, fifteen or sixteen years at the most. But both of them looked prematurely hardened by the lives they’d led. Both were dressed in rude, unremarkable clothes like his, but theirs were better mended. Carl had reddish hair and blue eyes. Josef’s hair might have been dark blond, or maybe light brown. It was hard to determine while it was wet with the rainfall.

  “With all these fine buildings lying empty,” Carl continued, “it seemed a shame to let them go unused, so the Brotherhood moved into this one.”

  “And a few others,” Josef added.

  “But here’s the important thing,” Carl said. “We’re gathered today in this place to hold a trial. Your trial. You’re going before the king, and he’s going to decide if you can continue to live among us, or if we have to kill you. Those are the only two options.”

  “Trial for what?” Peter said. “What crime?”

  “Thievery,” Josef said.

  “But you said you were thieves too.”

/>   “Correct,” Carl said. “But we’re sworn members of the Brotherhood, aren’t we? We pay our tributes upwards and properly split our takes into the prescribed shares, don’t we? You didn’t do any of that.”

  “Unauthorized thieving is your crime,” Josef said.

  Carl kept talking before Peter could ask more questions. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Well, you should,” Carl said. “If I’m going to speak for you, I’d better be able to act as if I know you well enough to trust you. And I’ll have to call you something, won’t I? So tell me your name, or I’ll consider standing silent.”

  “I’m Peter.”

  “It’s fine to meet you then, Peter,” Carl said. “So listen close. We can’t keep you out here all day answering your questions and giving you advice. The king won’t abide waiting, nor should he, right? Otherwise, what’s the advantage of being king? Here’s what you need to know. The moment we walk in there, the trial has started. Don’t speak to anyone but the king, and then only to answer his questions. Don’t try to lie to him. He always catches the lie and never forgives it. If there’s something you simply refuse to answer, then just say so and pray for clemency. It’s rare that he grants any, but not unheard-of. Now, are you ready?”

  “It doesn’t matter if he is or not,” Josef said. “It’s time.”

  They opened the door and ushered Peter in to see the king.

  In which Peter closes in.

  THE LUFTHANSA JET TOUCHED DOWN AT Frankfurt am Main airport just after ten a.m., in the pouring rain. The time in flight was just right for Peter to finish his mystery story, a real page-turner featuring a spunky young female detective operating out of Las Vegas. By the time they started their final approach into Germany’s busiest airport, the detective had identified the killer. While they taxied towards the gate, she’d smartly listed all of the clues that led her to the thrilling denouement. In hindsight Peter realized he should’ve seen it all along. This being a fair-play mystery, all of the clues had been there for him to recognize. Peter was vaguely disturbed that he hadn’t been able to solve the murder. He silently hoped it wasn’t an ill omen for the success of his mission.