by Dan Abnett
Then the cardinal got down to business.
"I trust," he said, in a voice that suddenly hinted at tumbrels and gibbets and keen axes, "that everything is in order?"
"Oh yes!" said the quintet, one body with five mouths.
"Good. We will commence at ten. We will only commence later if the dinner runs over-long, and only then if I signal you in person. Understood?" asked Woolly.
"Yes, indeed." said the five-mouthed creature.
Woolly turned from them, strolled to his desk, and slowly, pointedly, re-stoppered his decanter. There was a thick silence, broken only by the susurrating din from outside the windows.
"Gentlemen, I very much appreciate the work you have put in complying with my request," said the cardinal. "I know it is against your natures to work together to please the public."
There was a pause, and then Woolly smiled to show them it was a joke. They exploded into raucous hilarity to compliment the cardinal's fine wit. All except Huntingdon, who managed only a snigger, due to the fact that he was half-dead with relief.
Woolly smiled his false smile again. They smiled back. You ought to sign me up, thought Woolly, I'm acting better than you ever have.
"However," said Woolly, "for the purpose of this evening, I must perforce appoint one of you in overall charge. This will rankle with the others, I know, but it is necessary. For the sake of efficiency, in what will doubtless be a thoroughly hectic night, I must deal with one spokesman, one that the others will obey at all costs. It can be no other way, and I will come down most firmly on any that disaffect this request of mine. Is that clear?" The creature nodded its heads.
"I intend to be as fair about this as possible. Deacon Spench? Your biretta?" The deacon stepped up, and handed his hat to Woolly. The cardinal produced five twists of paper from the pocket of his robes. He dropped them in the cap and agitated it gently. "Spench?"
With a breezy smile, Spench reached gingerly into the cap, and pulled out one of the scraps. He untwisted it with slow, clumsy hands, shooting cheery "nearly there" grins at the uncomfortable players.
Spench opened the paper twist at last, squinted at it, turned it up the right way, and read out, "Basil Gaumont."
Gaumont smiled with genuine pleasure, and found himself on the receiving end of four nasty looks.
"Mister Gaumont it is. My thanks, gentlemen. That will be all. I will go over the last details with Gaumont now, and he can inform you momentarily."
Huntingdon, Trobridge, Baskerville and Flitch took turns to shake the cardinal's paw, and then shuffled out.
Woolly led Gaumont over to the comparative privacy of the desk, and set down the biretta.
"My apologies for that palaver," he said. "I had to be seen to be fair. I didn't want you troubled by bickering in the wings."
"Understood. Many thanks, your Reverence."
Woolly's voice dropped to a murmur. "How goes it, Agent Wisley?"
"As well as can be expected, chief," said Gaumont. "The whole affair's looking most vulnerable, but if Lord Gull's boys do the stuff security-wise, we shouldn't be open to compromise."
"Anything I should know about?"
"Nothing springs to mind."
"What news of Agent Borde Hill?" asked the cardinal.
Gaumont frowned, toying idly with the paper scraps left in the biretta, and said, "I'd say he was a dead-end. He seemed to come up with nothing. I've reported back the sum of his espial thus far, and none of it amounted to much. I don't know where you got him from."
"Neither shall you, Wisley," said Woolly. "His origins are particularly sensitive, and higher than even your clearance allows, I'm afraid."
"Say no more," said Gaumont.
"Where is he?"
"That's the thing. I haven't clapped eyes on the fellow for hours," replied Agent Wisley. "Not since last night, in fact. Must be here somewhere, doing his thing. Damn fine lutenist, I'll give him that."
Woolly scratched his chin thoughtfully, and said, "If you see him, send him to me at once. Invent some story to cover it. It is important I speak with him."
Gaumont nodded. He looked down at the twists of paper. "Well heavens! These all say Basil Gaumont!"
"Of course they do," said the cardinal.
Woolly dismissed Gaumont, and moved to consult with the kitchen staff. The ice-sculptor was looking morose, and his shoes were sopping wet. A bad sign, Woolly noted.
Eastwoodho entered the suite, and stood waiting by the window drapes like an off-duty Rhodesian Colossus.
"A moment, gentlemen," Woolly told the kitchen staff, and crossed to the massive CIA agent. "Report?"
Eastwoodho shook his anvil of a head.
"Borde Hill gave me the slip again just before dawn," he said, "after I'd located him following that litter business. He's a tricksy gent. There was some altercation in the theatre. I went in to investigate, and he must've slipped out the back door. Sorry, sir."
"Did you find no clues at all, officer?"
"Nothing, sir," said Eastwoodho, "except a broken lute."
Down by the massive pavilion on the Palace lawn, three huscarls were chasing a popping, sparking Catherine wheel, which was fizzling explosively across the grass. The various stewards and musicians around about applauded and cheered them on.
"Catch it! Stamp on the bloody thing! Keep it away from the main cache!" the officer of the watch was bellowing.
One of the huscarls managed to reach it with a flying tackle, and clamped his barbute over it just as the main charge went off. The helmet lofted twelve feet into the air, excreting blue sparks in a trail behind it. Then it dropped and bounced off the sprawled huscarl's head with a dull thump.
"Ooooohhhh!" said the onlookers, and applauded again.
The officer of the watch thundered over to the huscarls, and embarked on a fierce diatribe about smoking on duty. De Tongfort turned from the brief spectacle, and glowered at Cedarn.
"You're late," he snarled.
"Sorry," said Cedarn, adjusting the ruff of his musician's uniform.
"Where's your lute?"
"I was coming to that." said Cedarn. "It's warped. The wet weather. Can't play it."
De Tongfort looked him up and down, an expression of contempt flickering across his face.
"There are two spare in the trunk behind the front stage," he said. "Get one. Tune it. Get to your place. Or I'll have your head on a stick."
Cedarn nodded and moved off. De Tongfort watched him go. No one saw the ugly puzzlement in his eyes.
Once armed with a lute, Cedarn climbed around behind the stage area, and entered the makeshift tiring room, formed by the rear folds of the long pavilion. A chaos of jabbering, half-naked bodies met him. The air was dense with drifting face-powder. He found Doll, sewing up a torn gauze attifet.
"Anything, love?" he asked.
She grimaced and shrugged.
"Nothing," she replied. "I don't even know what I'm meant to be looking for."
"We'll know it when we see it," said Cedarn. "You know the signal. I'll be watching you. Keep watching me."
He kissed her.
"And break a leg," he added, with the most encouraging grin he could manage in the circumstances.
He turned away, and then turned back and kissed her again. He hoped it wouldn't be for the last time. On the Green outside the walls, the Bracket family - John Senior, John Junior and little John, wife Martha, sister Delia, Grandma Sweeney and tiny Nell - were in the middle of their damp nantwiches, their third flask of tepid musket and another round of "What a good spot we picked, right by the wall, thanks to me getting us off so early" self-congratulations, when John Junior, a six-foot-four blacksmith and head of the family, suddenly said, "Oy!" and got to his feet.
He marched away from his bemused family, and approached the man who was in the middle of climbing the outside of the Palace wall, hand-over-hand, on the trailing ivy.
"You can't do that!" John Junior protested. "We was here first! You ain't allowed to go in. Now
be off! Get yourself another spot, and stop jumping the queue."
The man halfway up the wall turned his head and glowered down at John Junior.
"Shove off or I'll kill you without conjunction," he said simply.
It may have been the cold blue eyes, or the vivid scar tissue. Whatever, John Junior suddenly felt smaller and punier than a six-foot-four blacksmith should, and went back to his nantwiches meekly, though he didn't eat many. O'Bow disappeared over the high wall.
Your servant, me, Wllm Beaver, settled into my pew seat with relish, and consulted my gold-embossed programme. I found myself sitting next to the Countess of Hardwick's party. They were all looking across at me as if I was something they had almost stepped in.
"Afternoon!" I called, convivially. I looked back at my programme. Sire Clarence was due to be seated to my left. I sighed.
The traffic on the road into the Shene was interminable, and stuck solid. Militia stewards were flagging carts off the road, and indicating overspill fields along the edge of the Richmond Wood, a good three miles short of the Palace.
"We've got business at the Palace!" yelled Drew Bluett from the duckboard of his cart. The steward on the track beneath smiled, oblivious, and continued to wave them off the jammed road. Behind them, the traffic was urging them to get a bloody move on.
"We'll have to park here and go ahead on foot," said Drew, steering them off into the field. Agnew nodded, and turned to rouse the slumbering Uptil in the back of the cart.
"Are we there?" asked Uptil, rubbing his eyes.
"Not even close," muttered Agnew.
The Private Guild Chapel of the Palace was as quiet as graves ought to be (but probably weren't in these dire times). The incense and the smell of candle-smoke almost, but not quite, hid the syrupy smell rising from behind the vocational screen at the side of the pulpit.
Jaspers sat back from his kneeling position in front of the small brazier, his hands almost translucent with Goetic shine. Slowly, with reverence, he took up the three small, grotesque icons that he had just blessed, and placed each one in a drawstring pouch. He hung the pouches around his neck, beneath his doublet.
"What in the name of mercy-"
Jaspers turned sharply, teeth bared in anger. He was still weak from the effort of his just-finished observances, and the intruder had taken him unawares.
Cardinal Gaddi stood in the screen's doorway, eyes wide, lips dry and quivering.
"What are you doing in here, divine?" Gaddi asked, stepping forward. "I came down for preparatory prayer and smelled I couldn't say what!"
"Don't you know, it's rude to interrupt a man's private devotions, cardinal?" Jaspers asked, getting to his feet.
"Don't give me that!" said Gaddi. He was a slight, nervous man normally, but some sense of utter wrong made him fluff with courage. "I know that smell that damned smell. You little bastard What have you done? What are you doing here?"
Jaspers stood ready, but knew that his legs were weak and trembling. He'd hated having to conduct the final rite in the Palace, but there had been no other choice.
"Get out of here. Leave me. Forget what you have seen." Jaspers said, trying to use the Summarian Voice Of Command that had served him so well, so often. He was too hoarse, however, too drained, and he couldn't fix the pitch or the timbre.
"You dare to try novice Goetic tricks on a cardinal? You pathetic little traitor!" said Gaddi, in disgust. "I could do the Voice when I was nine, and I soon learned why I shouldn't do it at all!" The cardinal stepped forward again, bunching his little hands into mean, resolute fists. "I'll have the guards on you!" he exclaimed. "I'll have you hanged and drawn! They'll watch your twitching corpse roast in the banquet fires tonight! They'll rejoice when they know that the source of the treasonous blight has been revealed!"
"Leave me," said Jaspers again. The cardinal's outburst had given him just enough time to focus his waning energies.
Gaddi trembled and took a hurried step back. He felt his guts tighten. He had never heard the Voice used with such power and authority before, not even when his old collegiate masters had used it to demonstrate the curse of Goety to frightened novices in Elementary Arte Science classes. He suddenly realised that he wasn't dealing with a misguided dabbler at all.
"Guards! Guards!" he began, and then choked, because no sound was coming from his throat, except for a hollow gurgling. De la Vega slid his rapier out of the back of Gaddi's neck, and the little man pitched forward onto the chapel flagstones. Blood splattered up from the impact.
"Thank you," said Jaspers, relaxing.
De la Vega stepped into the gloomy side chapel, and closed the screen door.
"Such business is regrettable so close to the appointed time," he remarked, wiping his sword and sheathing it. "I take it he caught you unawares?"
"I had just finished the rite. I was weakened, unprepared," replied Jaspers.
"It is a good thing Slee asked me to check on you," said de la Vega. "He and Salisbury are in position. Slee requires your presence."
Jaspers stepped over to Gaddi's corpse.
"I must dispose of this," he said. "A dead cardinal is hardly the thing to be found in the middle of tonight's affairs."
De la Vega nodded, and looked away, as Jaspers uncorked a phial of alchemical liquid he had concealed in his pocket. There was a sharp hissing and a foul, saprogenic odour filled the room.
It hung there, staining the air, long after the two men had slipped silently away.
* * *
There were big rats in the Palace attic spaces, big juicy rats the size of cats. But not this cat. Eight feet from nose to tailend, it padded along the darkened rafters like a ghost. Big as they were, the rats scurried out of its way. They may have been rats, but they weren't stupid.
St Cunegund's struck five o'clock. The strokes rang across the Sward, but went unnoticed by the townsfolk of Smardescliffe, who were in the middle of the biggest and best coronation revelry they had ever staged. The Verger was holding audience by the village pump, retelling, for the upteenth time, how he alone had alerted the militia to the demon on the cart.
The Butcher was explaining, to anyone prepared to listen, the finer points of running a demon through with anything from a meat-hook to a sharpened thistle. In his opinion, those who lived by the Sward, died by the Sward. People were taking notes and fetching him drinks.
The Baker, a confirmed bachelor for all of his thirty-nine years, was busily copping off with the youngest daughter of the village weaver, in the hayrick behind the bakery. She had never, it turned out, done it with a "real hero" before.
The Mayor was showing off his bruises to the members of the Women's Institute. For all the "oooohhhing" and "aaaaahhhing" going on, he might as well have been letting off fireworks.
"How's the prisoner faring?" asked the Mayor of the Butcher as the latter stumbled past, looking for somewhere to throw up.
