The Year's Best SF 11 # 1993

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “Overwhelmed and charmed, Miss Clairmont. Mr. Perseus Omnibus Kselleius, tí kánete?”

  Bysshe blinked for a second or two, then grinned. “Thanmásia eùxaristô,” returning politeness, “kaí eseîs?”

  For a moment Mary gloried in Bysshe, in his big frame in his shabby clothes, his fair, disordered hair, his freckles, his large hands—and his absolute disinclination to be impressed by one of the most famous men on Earth.

  George searched his mind for a moment. “Polú kalá, eùxaristô. Thá éthela ná—” He groped for words, then gave a laugh. “Hang the Greek!” he said. “It’s been far too many years since Trinity. May I present my friend Somerset?”

  Somerset gave the atheist a cold Christian eye. “How d’ye do?”

  George finished his introductions. There was the snapping of coach whips outside, and the sound of more stamping horses. The dogs began barking again. At least two more coaches had arrived. George led the party into the dining room. Mary found herself sitting next to George, with Claire and Bysshe across the table.

  “Damme, I quite forgot to register,” Somerset said, rising from his bench. “What bed will you settle for, George?”

  “Nothing less than Bonaparte’s.”

  Somerset sighed. “I thought not,” he said.

  “Did Bonaparte sleep here in Le Caillou?” Claire asked.

  “The night before Waterloo.”

  “How exciting! Is Waterloo nearby?” She looked at Bysshe. “Had we known, we could have asked for his room.”

  “Which we then would have had to surrender to my lord Newstead,” Bysshe said tolerantly. “He has greater claim, after all, than we.”

  George gave Mary his intent look again. His voice was pitched low. “I would not deprive two lovely ladies of their bed for all the Bonapartes in Europe.”

  But rather join us in it, Mary thought. That look was clear enough.

  The rest of George’s party—servants, aides-de-camp, clerks, one black man in full Mameluke fig, turned-up slippers, ostrich plumes, scarlet turban and all—carried George’s equipage from his carriages. In addition to an endless series of trunks and a large miscellany of weaponry there were more animals. Not only the promised ape—actually a large monkey, which seated itself on George’s shoulder—but brightly-colored parrots in cages, a pair of greyhounds, some hooded hunting hawks, songbirds, two forlorn-looking kit foxes in cages, which set all the dogs howling and jumping in eagerness to get at them, and a half-grown panther in a jewelled collar, which the dogs knew better than to bark at. The innkeeper was loud in his complaint as he attempted to sort them all out and stay outside of the range of beaks, claws, and fangs.

  Bysshe watched with bright eyes, enjoying the spectacle. George’s friends looked as if they were weary of it.

  “I hope we will sleep tonight,” Mary said.

  “If you sleep not,” said George, playing with the monkey, “we shall contrive to keep you entertained.”

  How gracious to include your friends in the orgy, Mary thought. But once again kept silent.

  Bysshe was still enjoying the parade of frolicking animals. He glanced at Mary. “Don’t you think, Maie, this is the very image of philosophical anarchism?”

  “You are welcome to it, sir,” said Somerset, returning from the register. “George, your mastiff has injured the ostler’s dog. He is loud in his complaint.”

  “I’ll have Ferrante pay him off.”

  “See that you do. And have him pistol the brains out of that mastiff while he’s at it.”

  “Injure poor Picton?” George was offended. “I’ll have none of it.”

  “Poor Picton will have his fangs in the ostler next.”

  “He must have been teasing the poor beast.”

  “Picton will kill us all one day.” Grudgingly.

  “Forgive us, Somerset-laddie.” Mary watched as George reached over to Somerset and tweaked his ear. Somerset reddened but seemed pleased.

  “Mr. Shelley,” said Captain Austen. “I wonder if you know what surprises the kitchen has in store for us.”

  Austen was a well-built man in a plain black coat, older than the others, with a lined and weathered naval face and a reserved manner unique in this company.

  “Board ’em in the smoke! That’s the Navy for you!” George said. “Straight to the business of eating, never mind the other nonsense.”

  “If you ate wormy biscuit for twenty years of war,” said Harry Smith, “you’d care about the food as well.”

  Bysshe gave Austen a smile. “The provisions seem adequate enough for a country inn,” he said. “And the rooms are clean, unlike most in this country. Claire and the Maie and I do not eat meat, so I had to tell the cook how to prepare our dinner. But if your taste runs to fowl or something in the cutlet line I daresay the cook can set you up.”

  “No meat!” George seemed enthralled by the concept. “Disciples of J.F. Newton, as I take it?”

  “Among others,” said Mary.

  “But are you well? Do you not feel an enervation? Are you not feverish with lack of a proper diet?” George leaned very close and touched Mary’s forehead with the back of one cool hand while he reached to find her pulse with the other. The monkey grimaced at her from his shoulder. Mary disengaged and placed her hands on the table.

  “I’m quite well, I assure you,” she said.

  “The Maie’s health is far better than when I met her,” Bysshe said.

  “Mine too,” said Claire.

  “I believe most diseases can be conquered by proper diet,” said Bysshe. And then he added,

  “He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,

  And horribly devours his mangled flesh.”

  “Let’s have some mangled flesh tonight, George,” said Somerset gaily.

  “Do let’s,” added Smith.

  George’s hand remained on Mary’s forehead. His voice was very soft. “If eating flesh offend thee,” he said, “I will eat but only greens.”

  Mary could feel her hackles rise. “Order what you please,” she said. “I don’t care one way or another.”

  “Brava, Miss Godwin!” said Smith thankfully. “Let it be mangled flesh for us all, and to perdition with all those little Low Country cabbages!”

  “I don’t like them, either,” said Claire.

  George removed his hand from Mary’s forehead and tried to signal the innkeeper, who was still struggling to corral the dogs. George failed, frowned, and lowered his hand.

  “I’m cheered to know you’re familiar with the works of Newton,” Bysshe said.

  “I wouldn’t say familiar,” said George. He was still trying to signal the innkeeper. “I haven’t read his books. But I know he wants me not to eat meat, and that’s all I need to know.”

  Bysshe folded his big hands on the table. “Oh, there’s much more than that. Abstaining from meat implies an entire new moral order, in which mankind is placed on an equal level with the animals.”

  “George in particular should appreciate that,” said Harry Smith, and made a face at the monkey.

  “I think I prefer being ranked above the animals,” George said. “And above most people, too.” He looked up at Bysshe. “Shall we avoid talk of food matters before we eat? My stomach’s rumbling louder than a battery of Napoleon’s daughters.” He looked down at the monkey and assumed a high-pitched Scots dowager’s voice. “An’ sae is Jerome Bonaparte’s, annit nae, Jerome?”

  George finally succeeded in attracting the innkeeper’s attention and the company ordered food and wine. Bread, cheese, and pickles were brought to tide them over in the meantime. Jerome Bonaparte was permitted off his master’s lap to roam free along the table and eat what he wished.

  George watched as Bysshe carved a piece of cheese for himself. “In addition to Newton, you would also be a follower of William Godwin?”

  Bysshe gave Mary a glance, then nodded. “Ay. Godwin also.”

  “I thought I recognized that ‘philosophical anarchism’ of
yours. Godwin was the rage when I was at Harrow. But not so much thought of now, eh? Excepting of course his lovely namesake.” Turning his gaze to Mary.

  Mary gave him a cold look. “Truth is ever in fashion, my lord,” she said.

  “Did you say ever or never?” Playfully. Mary said nothing, and George gave a shrug. “Truthful Master Godwin, then. And who else?”

  “Ovid,” Mary said. The officers looked a little serious at this. She smiled. “Come now—he’s not as scandalous as he’s been made out. Merely playful.”

  This did not reassure her audience. Bysshe offered Mary a private smile. “We’ve also been reading Mary Wollstonecraft.”

  “Ah!” George cried. “Heaven save us from intellectual women!”

  “Mary Wollstonecraft,” said Somerset thoughtfully. “She was a harlot in France, was she not?”

  “I prefer to think of my mother,” said Mary carefully, “as a political thinker and authoress.”

  There was sudden silence as Somerset turned white with mortification. Then George threw back his head and laughed.

  “Sunburn me!” he said. “That answers as you deserve!”

  Somerset visibly made an effort to collect his wits. “I am most sorry, Miss—” he began.

  George laughed again. “By heaven, we’ll watch our words hereafter!”

  Claire tittered. “I was in suspense, wondering if there would be a mishap. And there was, there was!”

  George turned to Mary and managed to compose his face into an attitude of solemnity, though the amusement that danced in his eyes denied it.

  “I sincerely apologize on behalf of us all, Miss Godwin. We are soldiers and are accustomed to speaking rough among ourselves, and have been abroad and are doubtless ignorant of the true worth of any individual—” He searched his mind for a moment, trying to work out a graceful way to conclude. “—outside of our own little circle,” he finished.

  “Well said,” said Mary, “and accepted.” She had chosen more interesting ground on which to make her stand.

  “Oh yes!” said Claire. “Well said indeed!”

  “My mother is not much understood by the public,” Mary continued. “But intellectual women, it would seem, are not much understood by you.”

  George leaned away from Mary and scanned her with cold eyes. “On the contrary,” he said. “I am married to an intellectual woman.”

  “And she, I imagine…” Mary let the pause hang in the air for a moment, like a rapier before it strikes home. “… resides in England?”

  George scowled. “She does.”

  “I’m sure she has her books to keep her company.”

  “And Francis Bacon,” George said, his voice sour. “Annabella is an authority on Francis Bacon. And she is welcome to reform him, if she likes.”

  Mary smiled at him. “Who keeps you company, my lord?”

  There was a stir among his friends. He gave her that insolent, under-eyed look again.

  “I am not often lonely,” he said.

  “Tonight you will rest with the ghost of Napoleon,” she said. “Which of you has better claim to that bed?”

  George gave a cold little laugh. “I believe that was decided at Waterloo.”

  “The Duke’s victory, or so I’ve heard.”

  George’s friends were giving each other alarmed looks. Mary decided she had drawn enough Byron blood. She took a piece of cheese.

  “Tell us about Waterloo!” Claire insisted. “Is it far from here?”

  “The field is a mile or so north,” said Somerset. He seemed relieved to turn to the subject of battles. “I had thought perhaps you were English tourists come to visit the site.”

  “Our arrival is coincidence,” Bysshe said. He was looking at Mary narrow-eyed, as if he was trying to work something out. “I’m somewhat embarrassed for funds, and I’m in hope of finding a letter at Brussels from my—” He began to say “wife,” but changed the word to “family.”

  “We’re on our way to Vienna,” Smith said.

  “The long way ‘round,” said Somerset. “It’s grown unsafe in Paris—too many old Bonapartists lurking with guns and bombs, and of course George is the laddie they hate most. So we’re off to join the Duke as diplomats, but we plan to meet with his highness of Orange along the way. In Brussels, in two days’ time.”

  “Good old Slender Billy!” said Smith. “I haven’t seen him since the battle.”

  “The battle!” said Claire. “You said you would tell us!”

  George gave her an irritated look. “Please, Miss Clairmont, I beg you. No battles before dinner.” His stomach rumbled audibly.

  “Bysshe,” said Mary, “didn’t you say the cook had told you a ghost story?”

  “A good one, too,” said Bysshe. “It happened in the house across the road, the one with the tile roof. A pair of old witches used to live there. Sisters.” He looked up at George. “We may have ghosts before dinner, may we not?”

  “For all of me, you may.”

  “They dealt in charms and curses and so on, and made a living supplying the, ah, the supernatural needs of the district. It so happened that two different men had fallen in love with the same girl, and each man applied to one of the weird sisters for a love charm—each to a different sister, you see. One of them used his spell first and won the heart of the maiden, and this drove the other suitor into a rage. So he went to the witch who had sold him his charm, and demanded she change the young lady’s mind. When the witch insisted it was impossible, he drew his pistol and shot her dead.”

  “How very un-Belgian of him,” drawled Smith.

  Bysshe continued unperturbed. “So quick as a wink,” he said, “the dead witch’s sister seized a heavy kitchen cleaver and cut off the young man’s head with a single stroke. The head fell to the floor and bounced out the porch steps. And ever since that night—” He leaned across the table toward Mary, his voice dropping dramatically. “—people in the house have sometimes heard a thumping noise, and seen the suitor’s head, dripping gore, bouncing down the steps!”

  Mary and Bysshe shared a delicious shiver. George gave Bysshe a thoughtful look.

  “D’ye credit this sort of thing, Mr. Omnibus?”

  Bysshe looked up. “Oh yes. I have a great belief in things supernatural.”

  George gave an insolent smile, and Mary’s heart quickened as she recognized a trap.

  “Then how can you be an atheist?” George asked.

  Bysshe was startled. No one had ever asked him this question before. He gave a nervous laugh. “I am not so much opposed to God,” he said, “as I am a worshipper of Galileo and Newton. And of course an enemy of the established Church.”

  “I see.”

  A little smile drifted across Bysshe’s lips.

  “Yes!” he said, “I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe

  The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,

  Confirming all unnatural impulses,

  To satisfy their desolating deeds;

  And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross

  O’er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun

  On showers of gore from the upflashing steel

  Of safe assassin—”

  “And have you seen such?” George’s look was piercing.

  Bysshe blinked at him. “Beg pardon?”

  “I asked if you had seen showers of gore, upflashing steel, all that sort of thing.”

  “Ah. No.” He offered George a half-apologetic smile. “I do not hold warfare consonant with my principles.”

  “Yes.” George’s stomach rumbled once more. “It’s rather more in my line than yours. So I think I am probably better qualified to judge it…” His lip twisted. “… and your principles.”

  Mary felt her hackles rise. “Surely you don’t dispute that warfare is a great evil,” she said. “And that the church blesses war and its outcome.”

  “The church—” He waved a hand. “The chaplains we had with us in Spain were fine men and did goo
d work, from what I could see. Though we had damn few of them, as for the most part they preferred to judge war from their comfortable beds at home. And as for war—ay, it’s evil. Yes. Among other things.”

  “Among other things!” Mary was outraged. “What other things?”

  George looked at each of the officers in turn, then at Mary. “War is an abomination, I think we can all agree. But it is also an occasion for all that is great in mankind. Courage, comradeship, sacrifice. Heroism and nobility beyond the scope of imagination.”

  “Glory,” said one-armed Somerset helpfully.

  “Death!” snapped Mary. “Hideous, lingering death! Disease. Mutilation!” She realized she had stepped a little far, and bobbed her head toward Somerset, silently begging his pardon for bringing up his disfigurement. “Endless suffering among the starving widows and orphans,” she went on. “Early this year Bysshe and Jane and I walked across the part of France that the armies had marched over. It was a desert, my lord. Whole villages without a single soul. Women, children, and cripples in rags. Many without a roof over their head.”

  “Ay,” said Harry Smith. “We saw it in Spain, all of us.”

  “Miss Godwin,” said George, “those poor French people have my sympathy as well as yours. But if a nation is going to murder its rightful king, elect a tyrant, and attack every other nation in the world, then it can but expect to receive that which it giveth. I reserve far greater sympathy for the poor orphans and widows of Spain, Portugal, and the Low Countries.”

  “And England,” said Captain Austen.

  “Ay,” said George, “and England.”

  “I did not say that England has not suffered,” said Mary. “Anyone with eyes can see the victims of the war. And the victims of the Corn Bill as well.”

  “Enough.” George threw up his hands. “I heard enough debate on the Corn Bill in the House of Lords—I beg you, not here.”

  “People are starving, my lord,” Mary said quietly.

  “But thanks to Waterloo,” George said, “they at least starve in peace.”

  “Here’s our flesh!” said a relieved Harry Smith. Napkins flourished, silverware rattled, the dinner was laid down. Bysshe took a bite of his cheese pie, then sampled one of the little Brabant cabbages and gave a freckled smile—he had not, as had Mary, grown tired of them. Smith, Somerset, and George chatted about various Army acquaintances, and the others ate in silence. Somerset, Mary noticed, had come equipped with a combination knife-and-fork and managed his cutlet efficiently.