by Dan Abnett
"The voyage to the South was arduous," said Rupert Triumff. "I would that others knew of its perils, but it was necessary to burn my logs and claim they were washed over-rail in a squall. Months we sailed, not knowing to where, out of sight of land or friends or even other ships. There was a time when I would have welcomed the sight of a pirate sail. Forty men sailed with me on the Blameless, forty good men. Piers Packenhamme, Morris Roughly, Tom Tibbert and Swainey Gould. Old Roger Frizer remember him? South of the Tropics, we were becalmed for weeks. Illness wracked the ship, and twelve men died, Piers among them. Two others went so sun-mad they mutinied, and were taken by sharks as they tried to swim for home. All the while, I buckled under my responsibilities, knowing what the Crown expected of me, new lands, yes, but more than that: new Magick, new wonders for the Church to employ. Before I left, I had an audience, in camera, with a senior prelate of the Guild. He implied that the Arte was burning out, and only a new lease of Magicks would save it. He urged me to bring back miracles. I needed that sort of burden as much as I needed a brimming privy."
Triumff sat back on the bench and sighed.
"So it was, we found the new land," he continued, "this Australia. It was paradise. A bright, big country of multiple delights, a New World with its own proud people."
Drew nodded. "These autochthons. I have read the reports of your endeavour in all the journals. You have made a fine discovery."
"It is a rod for my own back," Triumff replied, sadly. "Beach, for that is the name of the land in its people's tongue, is a worthier world than ours by far. It's noble and clean, and civilised beyond compare. And the things they can do"
"Their Magick?" asked Drew.
Triumff shook his head, and said, "No Magick, Drew, no Arte. The folk of Beach renounced the Magick way centuries ago, seeing it for the curse it was. No, they have based their beautiful world on industry on machines. They have advanced the rude skills we left to languish when Leonardo and his kind re-midwifed the Arte. While the Unity buried itself in centuries of misbegotten sorcery, Beach grew up healthy and strong, and able, by the power of their own minds and hard-working hands. Their entire continent is pure and uncorrupted by the stink of Magick."
Triumff realised that his glass was empty. He took the bottle from the bench-seat and refilled it with slightly shaking hands.
"So now, on my return," he continued, "I was faced with a dilemma. I had no Arte to bring back, no new Cantrips, no new jinx. But what I had Ahh, what a thing! News of a noble world, secrets of technologie that would baffle and illuminate the Unity. And I realised my duty."
"Duty?" asked Bluett.
"To keep it from the Church and Court," answered Triumff. "Once they knew of it, an armada of reavers and wreckers would put out from Plymouth and Southampton, and all points east, off to despoil and break and invade and steal. They would want it for themselves. At worst, my friends, those folk of Beach who had treated me with kindness and generosity, would be enslaved and murdered, and driven from their cities, like the noble kind in the Indies and wherever else the Unity stains the map. At halfway best, they would fight back, and war would wreck the globe. We would have no shield against their machines, and they no shield against our Arte. I held a million lives in my own two hands."
Triumff was silent for a moment.
"So it was, I devised my Ploy," he said.
"Ploy?" asked Bluett.
"To return, victorious, yet not so," said Triumff. "To bring back trinkets and stories to please the Court, yet not so much they would itch to learn more. I thought of simply staying there, but that, I knew, would only draw down the inquisitive to finish my work. I had to make my passage back and discourage further missions. I took with me certain marvels of Beach that might amuse, and also Uptil, a prince of his people, who wished to learn of our wretched world. He was sworn to act the ignorant savage, so that our story might be given weight. We were to say that Australia was but a little place, devoid of civil life or enviable riches, a place not worth the further efforts of discovery."
"But your crew? Could you trust them to-" Bluett began.
"My crew?" interrupted Triumff. "Nine fellows stayed in Beach, reported dead on my return. Those few that made the trip back fell prey to the rigours of our hideous passage home before I could even begin to wonder at their trust. Only myself, Uptil and two others were alive by the halfway mark of our journey. Roger Frizer was one, and a boy called Lot Passioner. We were half-mad, half-dead, tempest-tossed and out of vittals. The cussed ship made north only through the seamanship of wind and flood. We were all but corpses in the shivering cabin. I sometimes wish that we had perished there and been spared this intrigue of homecoming. But off the Azores, leagues wide of our way, we were sighted by a Spanish brig, the Clemente, and taken under line. Their captain was a bold, honest man, who knew our name and our business. They cared for us and offered a skeleton crew to steer the Blameless back homeward, in companionship. The boy Lot lasted another week, but his scurvy could not be repaired, and we cast him into the deep with all honour. Old Roger saw the Scillies pass and even saw the rock of Plymouth Ho, but the voyage had tried him to the bloody limit, and he died in sight of land, choking on the medicinal alcohol that had become his only comfort. So, the Blameless was brought to the quayside with only two crew. I believe God was spitefully assisting in my damnable Ploy."
"But your return was triumphant!" said Bluett. "I read it so! You were feted, paraded" Drew's brow furrowed.
"It was seemly so to do. We rested in Trinity House for a month, secretly put up and nursed. Then Admiral Poley presented me with a new crew, and we sailed out and back into harbour, spruced up and fighting fit, to the cheers of a crowd harried out for the occasion. It was Poley's notion, assented to by the Court. It was an exercise in propaganda, to increase the splendour of my success and celebrate the balls of the British Mariner.
"Then began the gossip, and the questions, and meetings with this press agent and that fop from the Admiralty," continued Triumff. "So, Uptil and I wove the Ploy to perfection, and our story was caulked against the storm of interest, despite the public fantasies in the press. I was a hero, I'd done my bit. A new land was added to the Unity map, and new titles strung upon the Queen's style. Never once was mention made of further voyages. All agreed Australia was a delicious trinket, but not worth the sailing to. I honestly thought we'd got away with it."
"But?" asked Drew.
"But I reckoned without the inveigled ambitions of the Court. Slee, I think, is foremost in this, but that so-called seaman de la Vega rat-arse is burning with it too, I'm sure. Each passing day since my return, the Court has pressed me to make my report and sign over the Letters of Passage. I feel it is only because de la Vega wishes to make a victorious voyage of his own, and bathe in such glory, but I've almost run out of tactics to delay them. The Ploy is about to fail, and then Beach will become another sad victim of the Unity's lust."
The garden had grown suitably cold and shadowed.
"And this is why you've sought me out?" asked Drew Bluett.
"No," said Triumff, "well, not entirely, anyway. This madness that afflicts the City, the business at the Powerdrome, at first, I thought it was a skilful attempt to discredit me through treason, so that the Letters might be taken off me by legal sleight of hand while I languished in the Marshalsea. Other things are afoot, however. Woolly himself detained me and disguised me in this wise. From him, I know there is more to it than Australia. Some black conspiracy is abroad in London, and I'm just a scapegoat. I'm on the run, friendless, and I know my life will only be safe if the hidden enemy is put to rout. That's why I've come."
There was a long silence, broken only by the clatter of pots from the Go-Betweene's wash-house.
"Let me see what I can do," said Drew Bluett finally. "Some of the old Circus Performers are still at large, like me. They keep their ears to the ground, if only to watch out for themselves. If there is some conspiracy, they may have heard. Where can I find you?"
>
"As Louis Cedarn, lutenist, at the Swan," said Triumff.
"Then I'll come to you soon, with what intelligence I can rake up," said Bluett.
Triumff took Drew's hand and shook it.
"It's a lot to ask, I know," he said.
"Think of it as payment for an artillery linstock, well used, and a pile of Prussian embers," replied Bluett. There was a look of boundless, epic friendship in his eye that seemed to need a sweeping orchestral score to accompany it.
However, accompanied only by the sounds of a hooting goose, in the madder plots over the wall, Cedarn turned and walked away.
The street lamps were lit by the time Cedarn tried to slip into the back way of the Swan. There was a bustle of activity from the direction of the stage boards, and voices were raised, rehearsing lines. Behind the cyclorama, the readthrough of a stichomythia was going particularly badly, and brutal threats were being made.
Spying down from a turn in the gallery, Cedarn saw me, your servant Wllm Beaver, in the back row of the lower circle, watching the players go through their paces on the brightly lit stage. From that distance, he couldn't be sure if it was the rehearsal for the multiple-killing sequence of a revenge tragedy or an escalating creative difference. He made his way down to the circle.
"Can I have my lute back?" he asked quietly, slipping into the seat beside me. I turned to him with a look that would have been withering were not both of my eyes blackened and swollen.
"You tricked me, Louis," I snarled painfully.
"Get in a fight, did you?"
"That's not funny," I said. "The man who chased me was most upset. And he was built like a flying buttress. Worse still, Gaumont says I can't go on until my bruises are gone. He says the audience will laugh."
"I thought that was the idea," said Cedarn.
"With me, not at me," I said, handing the lute back.
"I won't forget this, you know," said Cedarn, trying to sound sincere.
"Neither will I," said I, Wllm Beaver, gruffly.
"Where have you been?" asked Gaumont, as Cedarn ran into him as he tried to slip through the backstage darkness.
"Business, Wisley," said Cedarn, with all the serious "Iknow-what-l'm-doing" brusqueness he could muster.
"Brief me later, then. The powers that be want a report," answered Wisley.
Cedarn nodded and edged past the hem of Gaumont's gown. He met de Tongfort, on the back stairs, coming down.
"Where the hell have you been?" snapped the stage manager. He had the advantage of height on the stairs, and Cedarn thought for a moment that the stringy man was going to swing for him.
"Dentist. I had a tooth-ague."
De Tongfort watched him closely as he slid past, and continued to watch him as he disappeared up the stairs.
In the flag-store of the cupola, Cedarn threw himself down onto the sacking and sighed. A few hours' sleep in this pleasant darkness and he could-
Something very cold and hard pressed against his cheek.
"You played me for a fool, punk," said an asphalt voice.
"Sorry," said Cedarn, his words muffled by the sacking he was face-down in.
"Got a reason?"
"Tell Woolly I'm on to something, but I need more time. And I don't need a Fulke and Seddon dowhatsit man-lamer poked in my ear, thank you very much," said Triumff, still chewing on the sacking.
There was a grunt, and the chilly threat withdrew. When Cedarn looked up, he was alone in the cupola.
"I wish he wouldn't do that," he murmured.
An hour passed, and hunger got the better of him. Luteless, he crept down the rickety stairs. There was a noise of carousing coming from the tiring room. Rehearsals were over for the night, it seemed. As he made his way towards the rear door, he saw the property and costume crates that had arrived during the day, stacked up in the underway. "WOODEN OH COMP" read the stencil on the sides.
"Shit," he breathed, and his pulse quickened.
Someone embraced him from behind, and he went over into a pile of folded drop-curtains, under what seemed like a ton of giggling blubber. It felt like he had been flying-tackled by a sperm whale.
"Oh! Oh! Mais oui, oui! You naughty little Gallic charmer, you! You shan't escape this time, oh no! Oh non non!"
Crushed, Cedarn smelled beery breath, sweat and powder. Mistress Mercer bore down on him, pinning him to the curtaining, writhing and pinching, and groping and goosing.
"Get off!" he gagged, "Please Mary madame Get offay moi, s'il vous plait!"
"Oh, speakez la Frenchie to moi, do, you exotic elf, it fires my blood. Oh! My loins are quite a-quiver with your Romance tongue!" announced Mary.
"That's just your imagination, mistress. Please" Cedarn said, managing to prise himself around, but Mary Mercer flopped over at the same time so that they were nose to nose, with Cedarn beneath.
He looked up into blood-shot eyes, well-gone with musket, and choked on the brewery fumes that billowed from her rouged mouth.
"Be gentle with me now!" she squeaked, and kissed his mouth. She kissed. He didn't. Sometimes these things can be a one-way matter.
Just as he was hoping to come up for air and wondering if her tongue was going to puncture one of his lungs, a lamp shone across them both.
"What is- Oh! Sorry!" said a voice from behind the lamp. Cedarn and Mercer looked up, and blinked into the light. Now he wore as much lipstick as her, though not all of it was on his lips. Some of it was on his oesophagus.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," began the voice.
The light shone down into Cedarn's face.
"It's you!" said the voice.
"Oh no" Cedarn breathed.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" asked Doll Taresheet.
"I can explain," said the man in the dripping cloak.
Robert Slee looked up from his writing stand, and took off his reading glasses. Rain tap-danced on the window behind him.
"I don't want you to, sir," he replied coldly. In the lamplight, he looked even more anaemic and reptilian than usual. "I disapprove of our meeting in person. You know that. There are channels for communicative purposes. Confidential ones. Go through Blindingham, if you must. Windsor has ears and eyes everywhere. This is dangerous."
"And important," said the rain-soaked man, brushing droplets of water from his hair and wishing there was a fire in the study grate. "If I sent a cipher down the usual route, you wouldn't get it until Monday. Things are moving too quickly for that."
Slee blotted his ledger carefully and stood up.
"Talk, then," he said. "Quickly. And then begone."
"Woolly has placed an espial at the Swan."
"Yes that fool Gaumont. Old news."
"No, another. A lutenist from France, though if he's truly French than I'm a harlot."
Slee raised an eyebrow and said, "Someone in your line of work should be more careful about the way he describes himself."
"Very funny, my lord. This new man may be a danger. Gaumont is soft and stupid, and no threat, but this one Cedarn he is called. He seems sharp and quick. Whatever else, he is an unknown quantity. Woolly would not have sent him in if he wasn't good. I fear they are on to the Play. He may be there to break it."
"Unless you've been talking rashly, no one but you and I know of the Play," said Slee, his voice rising in anger.
"No one but you, me and your circle of allies, you mean," replied the visitor, veiled sarcasm in his words. "Can you trust them all?"
Slee thought of a fat, farting, uncouth Wiltshireman, and let the notion simmer in his brain.
