Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories

by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei

  “Shouldn’t there be an incantation or something?” asked Thomasus the Syrian.

  “No,” said Padway. “As I’ve already said three times, this isn’t magic.” Looking around though, he could see how some mumbo-jumbo might have been appropriate: running his first large batch off at night in a creaky old house, illuminated by flickering oil lamps, in the presence of only Thomasus, Hannibal Scipio, and Ajax. All three looked apprehensive, and the Negro seemed all teeth and eyeballs. He stared at the still as if he expected it to start producing demons in carload lots any minute.

  “It takes a long time, doesn’t it?” said Thomasus, rubbing his pudgy hands together nervously. His good eye glittered at the nozzle from which drop after yellow drop slowly dripped.

  “I think that’s enough,” said Padway. “We’ll get mostly water if we continue the run.” He directed Hannibal to remove the kettle and poured the contents of the receiving flask into a bottle. “I’d better try it first,” he said. He poured out a little into a cup, sniffed, and took a swallow. It was definitely not good brandy. But it would do.

  “Have some?” he said to the banker.

  “Give some to Ajax first.”

  Ajax backed away, holding his hands in front of him, yellow palms out. “No, please, master—”

  He seemed so alarmed that Thomasus did not insist. “Hannibal, how about you?”

  “Oh, no,” said Hannibal. “Meaning no disrespect, but I’ve got a delicate stomach. The least little thing upsets it. And if you’re all through, I’d like to go home. I didn’t sleep well last night.” He yawned theatrically. Padway let him go, and took another swallow.

  “Well,” said Thomasus, “if you’re sure it won’t hurt me, I might take just a little.” He took just a little, then coughed violently, spilling a few drops from the cup. “Good God, man, what are your insides made of? That’s volcano juice!” As his coughing subsided, a saintlike expression appeared. “It does warm you up nicely inside, though, doesn’t it?” He screwed up his face and his courage, and finished the cup in one gulp.

  “Hey,” said Padway. “Go easy. That isn’t wine.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me. Nothing makes me drunk.”

  Padway got out another cup and sat down. “Maybe you can tell me one thing that I haven’t got straight yet. In my country we reckon years from the birth of Christ. When I asked a man, the day I arrived, what year it was, he said 1288 after the founding of the city. Now, can you tell me how many years before Christ Rome was founded? I’ve forgotten.”

  Thomasus took another slug of brandy and thought. “Seven hundred and fifty-four—no, 753. That means that this is the year of our Lord 535. That’s the system the church uses. The Goths say the second year of Thiudahad’s reign, and the Byzantines the first year of the consulship of Flavius Belisarius. Or the somethingth year of Justinian imperium. I can see how it might confuse you.” He drank some more. “This is a wonderful invention, isn’t it?” He held his cup up and turned it this way and that. “Let’s have some more. I think you’ll make a success, Martinus.”

  “Thanks. I hope so.”

  “Wonderful invention. Course it’ll be a success. Couldn’t help being a success. A big success. Are You listening, God? Well, make sure my friend Martinus has a big success.

  “I know a successful man when I see him, Martinus. Been picking them for years. That’s how I’m such a success in the banking business. Success—success—let’s drink to success. Beautiful success. Gorgeous success.

  “I know what, Martinus. Let’s go some place. Don’t like drinking to success in this old ruin. You know, atmosphere. Some place where there’s music. How much brandy have you got left? Good, bring the bottle along.”

  The joint was in the theater district on the north side of the Capitoline. The “music” was furnished by a young woman who twanged a harp and sang songs in Calabrian dialect, which the cash customers seemed to find very funny.

  “Let’s drink to—” Thomasus started to say “success” for the thirtieth time, but changed his mind. “Say, Martinus, we’d better buy some of this lousy wine, or he’ll have us thrown out. How does this stuff mix with wine?” At Padway’s expression, he said: “Don’t worry, Martinus, old friend, this is on me. Haven’t made a night of it in years. You know, family man.” He winked and snapped his fingers for the waiter. When he had finally gotten through his little ceremony, he said: “Just a minute, Martinus, old friend, I see a man who owes me money. I’ll be right back.” He waddled unsteadily across the room.

  A man at the next table asked Padway suddenly: “What’s that stuff you and old one-eye have been drinking, friend?”

  “Oh, just a foreign drink called brandy,” said Padway uneasily.

  “That’s right, you’re a foreigner, aren’t you? I can tell by your accent.” He screwed up his face, and then said: “I know; you’re a Persian. I know a Persian accent.”

  “Not exactly,” said Padway. “Farther away than that.”

  “That so? How do you like Rome?” The man had very large and very black eyebrows.

  “Fine, so far,” said Padway.

  “Well, you haven’t seen anything,” said the man. “It hasn’t been the same since the Goths came.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially: “Mark my words, it won’t be like this always, either!”

  “You don’t like the Goths?”

  “No! Not with the persecution we have to put up with!”

  “Persecution?” Padway raised his eyebrows.

  “Religious persecution. We won’t stand for it forever.”

  “I thought the Goths let everybody worship as they pleased.”

  “That’s just it! We Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the country. If that isn’t persecution, I’d like to know what is!”

  “You mean that you’re persecuted because the heretics and such are not?”

  “Certainly, isn’t that obvious? We won’t stand—What’s your religion, by the way?”

  “Well,” said Padway, “I’m what in my country is called a Congregationalist That’s the nearest thing to Orthodoxy that we have.”

  “Hm-m-m. We’ll make a good Catholic out of you, perhaps. So long as you’re not one of these Maronites or Nestorians—”

  “What’s that about Nestorians?” said Thomasus, who had returned unobserved. “We who have the only logical view of the nature of the Son—that He was a man in whom the Father indwelt—”

  “Nonsense!” snapped Eyebrows. “That’s what you expect of half-baked amateur theologians. Our view—that of the dual nature of the Son—has been irrefutably shown—”

  “Hear that, God? As if one person could have more than one nature—”

  “You’re all crazy!” rumbled a tall, sad-looking man with thin yellow hair, watery blue eyes, and a heavy accent. “We Arians abhor theological controversy, being sensible men. But if you want a sensible view of the nature of the Son—”

  “You’re a Goth?” barked Eyebrows tensely.

  “No, I’m a Vandal, exiled from Africa. But as I was saying”—he began counting on his fingers—“either the Son was a man, or He was a god, or He was something in between. Well, now, we admit He wasn’t a man. And there’s only one God, so He wasn’t a god. So He must have been—”

  About that time things began to happen too fast for Padway to follow them all at once. Eyebrows jumped up and began yelling like one possessed. Padway couldn’t follow him, except to note that the term “infamous heretics” occurred about once per sentence. Yellow Hair roared back at him, and other men began shouting from various parts of the room: “Eat him up, barbarian!” “This is an Orthodox country, and those who don’t like it can go back where they—” “Damned nonsense about dual natures! We Monophysites—” “I’m a Jacobite, and I can lick any man in the place!” “Let’s throw all the heretics out!” “I’m a Eunomian, and I can lick any two men in th
e place!”

  Padway saw something coming and ducked, the mug missed his head by an inch and a half. When he looked up the room was a blur of action. Eyebrows was holding the self-styled Jacobite by the hair and punching his face; Yellow Hair was swinging four feet of bench around his head and howling a Vandal battle song. Padway hit one champion of Orthodoxy in the middle; his place was immediately taken by another who hit Padway in the middle. Then they were overborne by a rush of men.

  As Padway struggled up through the pile of kicking, yelling humanity, like a swimmer striking for the surface, somebody got hold of his foot and tried to bite it off. As Padway was still wearing a pair of massive and practically indestructible English walking shoes, the biter got nowhere. So he shifted his attack to Padway’s ankle. Padway yelped with pain, yanked his foot free, and kicked the biter in the face. The face yielded a little, and Padway wondered whether he’d broken a nose or a few teeth. He hoped he had.

  The heretics seemed to be in a minority, that shrank as its members were beaten down and cast forth into darkness. Padway’s eye caught the gleam of a knife blade and he thought it was well past his bedtime. Not being a religious man, he had no desire to be whittled up in the cause of the single, dual, or any other nature of Christ. He located Thomasus the Syrian under a table. When he tried to drag him out, the banker shrieked with terror and hugged the table leg as if it were a woman and he a sailor who had been six months at sea. Padway finally got him untangled.

  The yellow-haired Vandal was still swinging his bench. Padway shouted at him. The man couldn’t have understood in the uproar, but his attention was attracted, and when Padway pointed at the door he got the idea. In a few seconds he had cleared a path. The three stumbled out, pushed through the crowd that was beginning to gather outside, and ran. A yell behind them made them run faster, until they realized that it was Ajax, and slowed down to let him catch up.

  They finally sat down on a park bench on the edge of the Field of Mars, only a few blocks from the Pantheon, where Padway had his first sight of post-Imperial Rome. Thomasus, when he got his breath, said: “Martinus, why did you let me drink so much of that heathen drink? Oh, my head! If I hadn’t been drunk, I’d have had more sense than to start a theological argument.”

  “I tried to slow you down,” said Padway mildly, “but you—”

  “I know, I know. But you should have prevented me from drinking so much, forcibly if necessary. My head! What will my wife say? I never want to see that lousy barbarian drink again! What did you do with the bottle, by the way?”

  “It got lost in the scuffle. But there wasn’t much left in it anyway.” Padway turned to the Vandal. “I guess I owe you some thanks for getting us out of there so quickly.”

  The man pulled his drooping mustache. “I was glad to do it, friend. Religious argument is no occupation for decent people. Permit me; my name is Fritharik Staifan’s son.” He spoke slowly, fumbling for words occasionally. “Once I was counted a man of noble family. Now I am merely a poor wanderer. Life holds nothing for me any more.” Padway saw a tear glistening in the moonlight.

  “You said you were a Vandal?”

  Fritharik sighed like a vacuum cleaner. “Yes, mine was one of the finest estates in Carthage, before the Greeks came. When King Gelimer ran away, and our army scattered, I escaped to Spain, and thence I came hither last year.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Alas, I am not doing anything now. I had a job as bodyguard to a Roman patrician until last week. Think of it—a noble Vandal serving as bodyguard! But my employer got set on the idea of converting me to Orthodoxy. That,” said Fritharik with dignity, “I would not allow. So here I am. When my money is gone, I don’t know what will become of me. Perhaps I will kill myself. Nobody would care.” He sighed some more, then said: “You aren’t looking for a good, reliable bodyguard, are you?”

  “Not just now,” said Padway, “but I may be in a few weeks. Do you think you can postpone your suicide until then?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on how my money holds out. I have no sense about money. Being of noble birth, I never needed any. I don’t know whether you’ll ever see me alive again.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Thomasus, “there are plenty of things you could do.”

  “No,” said Fritharik tragically. “You wouldn’t understand, friend. There are considerations of honor. And anyway, what has life to offer me? Did you say you might be able to take me on later?” he asked Padway. Padway said yes, and gave him his address. “Very well, friend, I shall probably be in a nameless lonely grave before two weeks have passed. But if not, I’ll be around.”

  CHAPTER III

  At the end of the week, Padway was gratified not only by the fact that he had not vanished into thin air, and by the appearance of the row of bottles on the shelf, but by the state of his finances. Counting the five solidi for the first month’s rent on the house, the six more that had gone into his apparatus, and Hannibal’s wages and his own living expenses, he still had over thirty of his fifty borrowed solidi left. The first two items wouldn’t recur for a couple of weeks, anyway.

  “How much are you going to charge for that stuff?” asked Thomasus.

  Padway thought. “It’s a luxury article, obviously. If we can get some of the better-class restaurants to stock it, I don’t see why we shouldn’t get two solidi per bottle. At least until somebody discovers our secret and begins competing with us.”

  Thomasus rubbed his hands together. “At that rate, you could practically pay back your loan with the proceeds of the first week’s sales. But I’m in no hurry; it might be better to reinvest them in the business. We’ll see how things turn out. I think I know the restaurant we should start with.”

  Padway experienced a twinge of dread at the idea of trying to sell the restaurateur the idea. He was not a born salesman, and he knew it.

  He asked: “How should I go about getting him to buy some of the stuff? I’m not very familiar with your Roman business methods.”

  “That’s all right. He won’t refuse, because he owes me money, and he’s behind in his interest payments. I’ll introduce you.”

  It came about as the banker had said. The restaurant owner, a puffy man named Gaius Attalus, glowered a bit at first. The entrepreneur fed him a little brandy by way of a sample, and he warmed up. Thomasus had to ask God whether He was listening only twice before Attalus agreed to Padway’s price for half a dozen bottles.

  Padway, who had been suffering from one of his periodic fits of depression all morning, glowed visibly as they emerged from the restaurant, his pockets pleasantly heavy with gold.

  “I think,” said Thomasus, “you had better hire that Vandal chap, if you’re going to have money around the house. And I’d spend some of it on a good strong box.”

  So when Hannibal Scipio told Padway “There’s a tall, gloomy-looking bird outside who says you said to come see you,” he had the Vandal sent in and hired him almost at once.

  When Padway asked Fritharik what he proposed to do his bodyguarding with, Fritharik looked embarrassed, chewed his mustache, and finally said: “I had a fine sword, but I hocked it to keep alive. It was all that stood between me and a nameless grave. Perhaps I shall end in one yet,” he sighed.

  “Stop thinking about graves for a while,” snapped Padway, “and tell me how much you need to get your sword back.”

  “Forty solidi.”

  “Whew! Is it made of solid gold, or what?”

  “No. But it’s good Damascus steel, and has gems in the handle. It was all that I saved from my beautiful estate in Africa. You have no idea what a fine place I had—”

  “Now, now!” said Padway. “For heaven’s sake don’t start crying! Here’s five solidi; go buy yourself the best sword you can with that. I’m taking it out of your salary. If you want to save up to get this bejeweled cheese knife of yours back, that’s your business.” So Fritharik departed, and shortly thereafter
reappeared with a secondhand sword clanking at his side.

  “It’s the best I could do for the money,” he explained. “The dealer claimed it was Damascus work, but you can tell that the Damascus marks on the blade are fakes. This local steel is soft, but I suppose it will have to do. When I had my beautiful estate in Africa, the finest steel was none too good.” He sighed gustily.

  Padway examined the sword, which was a typical sixth-century spatha with a broad single-edged thirty-inch blade. It was, in fact, much like a Scotch broadsword without the fancy knuckle-guard. He also noticed that Fritharik Staifan’s son, though as mournful as ever, stood straighter and walked with a more determined stride when wearing the sword. He must, Padway thought, feel practically naked without it.

  “Can you cook?” Padway asked Fritharik.

  “You hired me as a bodyguard, not as a housemaid, my lord Martinus. I have my dignity.”

  “Oh, nonsense, old man. I’ve been doing my own cooking, but it takes too much of my time. If I don’t mind, you shouldn’t. Now, can you cook?”

  Fritharik pulled his mustache. “Well—yes.”

  “What, for instance?”

  “I can do a steak. I can fry bacon.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else. That is all I ever had occasion to do. Good red meat is the food for a warrior. I can’t stomach these greens the Italians eat.”

  Padway sighed. He resigned himself to living on an unbalanced diet until—well, why not? He could at least inquire into the costs of domestic help.

  Thomasus found a serving-wench for him who would cook, clean house, and make beds for an absurdly low wage. The wench was named Julia. She came from Apulia and talked dialect. She was about twenty, dark, stocky, and gave promise of developing tremendous heft in later years. She wore a single shapeless garment and padded about the house on large bare feet. Now and then she cracked a joke too rapidly for Padway to follow and shook with peals of laughter. She worked hard, but Padway had to teach her his ideas from the ground up. The first time he fumigated his house he almost frightened her out of her wits. The smell of sulphur dioxide sent her racing out the door shrieking that Satanas had come.