And the stranger, in a deep, murmurous voice, said No, indeed.
Poor Cosimo! Had he had to choose between Anointing without Crowning, and Crowning without Anointing, he would have chosen the Holy Oil over the Sacred Crown. But he was allowed no choice. Hierarch after hierarch had declined to perform such services, or even service, for him. There was one exception. Someone, himself perhaps a pretender and certainly an exile, someone calling himself perhaps Reverend and Venerable Archimandrite of Petra and Simbirsk had offered to perform . . . but for a price . . . a high one . . . it would demean his sacred office to do it on the cheap, said he. And, placing his forefinger alongside his nose, had winked.
Much that had helped.
“Well, if you won’t, you won’t,” grumbled Old Mother Whiskers. “But I do my best for y’, anyway. Gotchyou a stoodent, here. See?”
Taking a rather closer look than he had taken before, Cosimo saw someone rather tall and rather richly dressed . . . not alone for the South Ward, richly . . . for anywhere, richly. There was something in this one’s appearance for which the word sleek seemed appropriate, from his hat and his moustache down to his highly polished shoes; the man murmured the words, “Melanchthon Mudge,” and held out his hand. He did not take his glove off (it was a sleek glove), and Cosimo, as he shook hands and murmured his own name, felt several rings . . . and felt that they were rings with rather large stones, and . . .
“Mr. Mudge,” said Mother Whiskers; “Mr. Mudge is a real classy gent.” And D. Cosimo D. felt, also that—though Mr. Mudge may have been a gent—Mr. Mudge was not really a gentleman. But as to that, in this matter: no matter.
“Does Mr. Mudge desire to be instructed,” he asked, “in Italian? In calligraphy? Or in advanced geometry? Or in all three?”
Mr. Mudge touched a glossy-leather-encased-finger to a glossy moustache. Said he thought, “For the present, sir. For the present,” that they would skip calligraphy. “Madame here has already told me of your terms, I find them reasonable, and I would only wish to ask if you might care to mention . . . by the way of, as it were, general reference . . . the names of some of your past pupils. If you would not mind.”
Mind? The poor old King of the Single Sicily would not have minded standing on his head if it would have helped bring him a pencil. He mentioned the names of a surveyor now middling-high in the Royal and Imperial Highways and to whom he had taught advanced geometry, of several ladies of quality to whom he had taught Italian, and of a private docent whom he had instructed in calligraphy: still Mr. Mudge waited, as one who would hear more; D. Cosimo D. went on to say, “And, of course, that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is—”
“Ah,” said Mr. Melanchthon Mudge, stroking his moustache and his side-whiskers; “that young Eszterhazy, Doctor as he now is.” His voice seemed to grow very drawn-out and deep.
###
Plaster and paint, turpentine and linseed oil had all alike long since dried, inside and outside the house at Number 33 Turkling Street, where lived Dr. Engelbert Eszterhazy; though sometimes he had the notion that he could still smell it. At the moment, though, what he chiefly smelled came from his well-fitted chemical laboratory, as well as from the more distant kitchen where—in some matters Eszterhazy was old-fashioned—Mrash, his man-cook, reigned. Old Mrash would probably and eventually be replaced by a woman. In the meanwhile he had his stable repertory of ten or twelve French dishes as passed down through generations of army officers’ cooks since the days of (at least) Bonaparte; and when he had run through it and them and before running through them and it again, Mrash usually gave his master a few days of peasant cooking which boxed the culinary compass of the fourth-largest empire in Europe. Ox-cheek and eggs. Beef palate, pigs’ ears, and buckwheat. Potatoes boiled yellow in chicken broth with unborn eggs and dill. Cowfoot stew, with mushrooms and mashed turnips. And after that it was back to boeuf à la mode Bayonne [sic], and all the rest of it as taught long ago to his captors by some long ago prisoner-of-war.
Today, along with the harmless game of “consulting the menu-book,” Mrash had a question, “if it pleased his lordship.” Eszterhazy knew that it pleased Mrash to think that he cooked for a lordship, and had ceased trying to convince him of it not really pertaining. So, “Yes, Mrashko, certainly. What is the question?” There might or might not be a direct answer.
“What do they call that there place, my lordship, a boo?”
Philologists have much informed the world that the human mouth is capable of producing only a certain limited number of sounds, therefore it was perhaps no great feat for Eszterhazy at once to counter-ask, “Do you perhaps mean a zoo?”
“Ah,” said Mrash the man-cook, noncommittally. He might, his tone indicated, though then again he might not.
Eszterhazy pressed on. “That’s the short name for the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoological Gardens and Park, where the plants and creatures mostly from foreign parts are.” Mrashko’s mouth moved and seemed to relish the longer form of the name. “It’s the second turning of the New Stonepaved Road after Big Ludo’s Beer Garden,” added ‘his lordship.’
Mrash nodded. “I expect that’s where it come from, then,” he said.
“ ‘Come from’? Where what came from, Cooky?”
Cooky said, simply, “The tiger.”
Eszterhazy recalled the comment of Old Captain Slotz, someone who had achieved much success in obtaining both civil and military intelligence. Captain Slotz had stated, “I don’t ask them did they done it or I don’t ask them did they not done it. Just, I look at them, and I say, Tell me about it.”
“Tell me about it, Mrashko-Cooky.”
The man-cook gestured. “See, my lordship, it come up the lane there,” gesture indicated the alley. “And it hop onto yon wood-shed, or as it might be, coal-shed. Then it lep up onto the short brick bake-building. Then it gave a big jump and gits onto the roof of what was old Baron Johan’s townhouse what his widow live in now all alone saving old Helen, old Hugo, and old Hercules what they call him, who look after her ladyship what she seldom go out at all anymore.” Eszterhazy listened with great patience: “and then it climb up the roof and until it reach the roof-peak. It look all around. It put its front-limbs down,” Mrash imitated this, “and it sort of just stretch . . . streeettch . . .”
Silence.
“And then?”
“Then I get back to me work, me lordship.”
“Oh.”
“Nother thing. I knew that there beast have another name to ‘t. Leopard. That be its other name. I suppose it come from the book. I suppose it trained to go back. Three nights I’ve seen it, nor I haven’t heard no alarm.” He began making the quasi-military movements which indicated he was about to begin the beginning of his leaving.
“Does it have stripes? Or spots?”
Mrash, jerking his arms, moving stiff-legged, murmured something about there being but the one gaslamp in the whole alley, there having been not much of a bright moon of recent, hoped the creature wouldn’t hurt no one nor even skeer the old Baroness nor old Helen; and—finally—“Beg permission to return to duty, your lordship. Hup!”
“Granted—And—Mrash! [Me lord!] The next time you see it, let me know, directly.”
The parade-ground manner of the man-cook’s departure gave more than a hint that the next meal would consist largely of boiled bully-beef in the mode of the Royal and Imperial Infantry, plus the broth thereof, plus fresh-grated horseradish which would remove the roof of your mouth, plus potatoes prepared purple in a manner known chiefly to army cooks present and past all around the world. Eszterhazy looked out the window and across the alley. At ground level, the stones of the house opposite were immense, seemingly set without mortar. Cyclopean, the word came to him. Above these massive courses began others, of smaller pieces of masonry. The last storey and a half were of brick, with here and there a tuft of moss instead of mortar. The steep-pitched roof was of dull grey slate. And though he could see this all quite clearly, he cou
ld see no explanation for the story which his old cook, never before given to riotous fancy, had just recounted to him. Long he stared. Long he stared. Long he considered. Then he rang the bell and asked for his horse to be saddled.
###
The old Chair of Natural Philosophy had finally been subdivided, and the new Chair of Natural History been created. Natural Philosophy included Chemistry, Physics, Meteorology, Astronomy. Natural History included Zoology, Ichthyology, Botany, Biology. Dr. Eszterhazy, having bethought him of the knot of loafers always waiting on hand near the Zoo to see whose horse shied at the strange odor when the wind blew so, decided to stop off first at the office of the Royal-Imperial Professor of Natural History, who was ex cathedra the Director of the Royal and Imperial Botanical and Zoological Gardens and Park. Said, “Your tigers and leopards. Tell me about them.” The Professor—it was Cornelius Crumholtss, with whom Dr. E.E. had once taken private lessons—said, crisply, “None.”
“What’s that?”
“The tiger died last year. The Gaekwar of Oont, or is it his heir, the Oontie Ghook? has agreed to trade us a tiger for three dancing bears and two gluttons—or wolverines as some call them—but he’s not done it yet. Leopards? We’ve never had one. We do have the lion. But he is very old. Shall I have spots painted on him for you? No? Oh.”
Eszterhazy had gone to the Benedictine Library. There were things there which were nowhere else . . . and, not seldom, that meant nowhere else . . . once, indeed, he had found the Papal Legate there, waiting for a chance to see something not even in the Vatican Library. It was stark and chill in the whitewashed chamber which served as waiting-room. Who was waiting for what? Eszterhazy was waiting for Brother Claudius, for even Eszterhazy might not go up into the vaulted hall where the oldest books were unless Brother Claudius showed him up; not even the Papal Legate might do so, and it was almost certain that not even the King-Emperor might . . . in the unlikely instance of the King-Emperor’s going to the Benedictine Library to look for a book . . . or anywhere else, for that matter. E. assumed that the tall, thin man slumped in the corner was also waiting for Brother Claudius. By and by, in came the lay-brother who acted as porter, and wordlessly set down a brazier of glowing coals before withdrawing.
The man in the corner moved. “Ah, good,” he murmured. “One’s hands have grown too cold.” He got up, and, moving to the fire-cauldron, thrust his hands into it and drew them out filled with hot coals glowing red. His manner seemed abstracted. An odor of singeing hair was very slightly perceptible. Eszterhazy felt his own flesh crawl. Slowly, quite slowly, the man poured the red hot coals back upon the fire. “You are Doctor Eszterhazy,” next he said.
The statement required no confirmation. “And you, sir? Who?”
Very slowly the tall body turned. A long finger stroked a long moustache. “I? Oh. I am the brother of the shadow of the slain. The vanguard of the shadows of the living. I—”
Light. “Ah yes. You are the medium, Mr. Mudge.”
“I am the medium, Mr. Mudge. As well. Oh yes.
“I am really very pleased to have this occasion to meet the eminent Dr. Eszterhazy,” said Mr. Mudge.
“Indeed,” murmured the eminent, very faintly questioning. He himself was certainly very interested at meeting the eminent Mr. Mudge. But, somehow, he rather doubted that he was really very pleased.
“Yes, indeed. Ah. You are not here . . . or perhaps you are here . . . to consult the Second Recension of the Malleus Maleficarum?”
The doctor said that he was not, not adding that both witchcraft and the fury it had once aroused alike tended to be productive of a definite dull pain between and in back of his eyes. “I am here to consult the Baconian Fragment. If it is by Friar Roger. Which is doubtless subject to doubt. If it is a fragment; the end of the parchment is rather fragmented, but the text itself seems complete.”
Mr. Mudge nodded. He seemed, certainly, to follow the comments. But his manner seemed also to be rather faintly abstracted. “Now, I wish to ask you about your former tutor,” he said, and touched his full red tongue to his full red lips, and smiled. In fact the smile was not without a certain appeal, an effect, however, spoiled by . . . by what? . . . by the man’s having rather yellow teeth?
“Which former tutor? I have had really a great many, as I began my formal education comparatively late, and was obliged to make up for lost time. So . . .”
“He calls himself sometimes Cosimo Damiano, though I understand that this is not precisely his legal name.”
Well. Someone learned enough to read old books in Latin, and he wished to enquire about old—“Yes. And what did you wish to enquire?”
Could Dr. Eszterhazy recommend him? Certainly. The old man’s Italian knowledge was encyclopedic, his calligraphy was exquisite, and his knowledge of advanced geometry was . . . well . . . advanced. It was at this point that the door opened and Brother Claudius came in, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his habit. “Come with me,” he directed in a hollow voice; and, as he did not say to whom he was saying this, and as he immediately turned and left again, they both followed him. Through many an icy corridor. Up many a worn, yet steep, flight of stairs. Into the vast vaulted hall lined to twice a man’s height with books whose ancient odors still had, as far as Eszterhazy was concerned, the power to thrill. The monk gestured him to a table on which a book-box reposed. The monk next gestured Mr. Mudge further on and further on, eventually waving him to another table. On which, or so it seemed at a glance, another book-box reposed. Eszterhazy sat at the bench and opened the box.
Immediately he saw that a mistake had been made, but automatically he turned a few pages. Instead of the rather cramped and fuddled Italian hand which he had expected, massive and heavy ‘black letter’ met his eye. One line seemed to unfold itself in particular; had it at one time been underlined and the underlining eradicated? For the parchment was scraped under the line. The mind of a demon is not the same as the mind of a man. Indeed, no. And the Malleus Maleficarum was not the same as the Baconian Fragment.
“Pray excuse me, most reverend Brother,” he heard the voice of Mr. Mudge, “but have you perhaps inadvertently given my item of choice to the learned doctor, and his to me?”
The hollow tone of Brother Claudius said, “Each has that which is proper for him now to read.” And he removed a small box from his sleeve, and took snuff. The learned doctor, what was it they called Roger Bacon? Ah yes: Doctor Mirabilis. Well—Suddenly he looked up; there was Melanchthon Mudge; had he floated! Usually the old floor sounded. What? The old floor always sounded.
Always but now.
“Brother Claudius has gone now. Shall we change books?”
They changed books.
By and by, he having principally noted what he had come to note, and the day having grown chiller yet, Eszterhazy rose to leave. Without especial thought, he blew upon his hands. With an almost painful suddenness his hand spun round towards the other man; he had not blown upon his hands to warm them! But the other man was gone.
###
It had been intimated to Eszterhazy that his name had been ‘temporarily subtracted’ from the military Active List for quite some years now, “for the purpose of continuing his education”—that meanwhile he had already obtained the baccalaureate, the licentiate, and two doctorates—and that unless he wished his name moved over to the Inactive List, very well, Engli, better Do Something about this. What he had done was to obtain transfer to the new Militia Reserve (as distinct from the not so new Reserve Militia), and as a result of having done so, found himself the very next weekend serving the twenty-five hours and twenty-five minutes which constituted his monthly service time with the Militia Reserve. (The Reserve Militia, as is well-known, had no monthly service time and instead required an annual service time of three weeks, three days, and three hours.) On reporting to the Armory he learned that although his having obtained a degree in mathematics had automatically shifted him from the Infantry to the Engineers, what was required of him th
is time had to do with another degree altogether.
“Surgeon-Commander Blauew’s got the galloping gout again, Major Eszterhazy, and as you are, it seems, also a Doctor of Medicine, we need you for Medical Officer right now, and you can build us a fortress next month; haw haw!” was the adjutant’s greeting.
“Very well, Adjutant. Very well. My that’s a nasty-looking spot on your neck, there, well, well, I’ll have a look at it after I’ve taken care of everything else”; and Temporary-Acting-Medical Officer Eszterhazy, E., moved on away, leaving the adjutant prey to dismal thoughts; and perhaps it would teach him not to play the oaf with his betters. The T.A.M.O. examined a number of candidates for the Militia Reserve, passed some, rejected some; made inspections which resulted in the Sanitary Facilities being very hastily and yet very thoroughly doused down with caustic soda and hot water; and delivered a brief and dispassionate lecture on social diseases to officers and men alike: to the great disease of an elderly paymaster who said he doubted it was right to expose the younger men to such scientific language: perhaps not exactly what he meant. Sounds of drill command rang through the large hall with a surprising minimum of echo, in great measure because Eszterhazy (who had not read Vitruvius’s Ten Books for nothing) was instrumental in obtaining a theater-architect as consultant during the hall’s construction.
Eventually it was time for commissioned officers to withdraw for wine and rusks, a snack traditionally taken standing up even where there might be facilities for sitting down. “Seen you in the Bosnian Campaign,” someone said; and, the Temporary-Acting-Medical Officer turning his head, recognized a face once more familiar than lately. The face was not only now older, it was much, much redder. “Just dropped in to pay my respects,” said the old soldier. “I am just here on my biennial leave. I am just a retired major in my own country, but I am a full colonel in the service of H.H. the Khedive of Egypt. Can I recruit you? Guarantee you higher rank, higher pay, higher respect, several servants, and heaps and heaps of fascinating adventure.”
MAGICATS II Page 19
