Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories

by Stephen Brennan

  Now I know, my reader, that the foregoing seems all a farrago. I agree with you. It is farrago. It was experience, however. It was just as real to me as is the snake beheld by a man in delirium tremens.

  Possibly, by the most liberal estimate, it may have taken Ed Morrell two minutes to tap his question. Yet, to me, æons elapsed between the first tap of his knuckle and the last. No longer could I tread my starry path with that ineffable pristine joy, for my way was beset with dread of the inevitable summons that would rip and tear me as it jerked me back to my strait-jacket hell. Thus my æons of star-wandering were æons of dread.

  And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruelly held me earth-bound. I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease. But so thoroughly had I eliminated my body from my consciousness that I was unable to resurrect it. My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still inhabited the skull. In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message to Morrell. I reasoned I had a foot. And yet, so thoroughly had I carried out the experiment, I had no foot.

  Next—and I know now that it was because Morrell had spelled his message quite out—I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back. After that, and in the course of it, I was aware, drowsily, that I was falling asleep, and that it was delicious sleep. From time to time, drowsily, I stirred—please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—I STIRRED. I moved my legs, my arms. I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin. I was aware of bodily well-being. Oh, it was delicious! As thirsting men on the desert dream of splashing fountains and flowing wells, so dreamed I of easement from the constriction of the jacket, of cleanliness in the place of filth, of smooth velvety skin of health in place of my poor parchment-crinkled hide. But I dreamed with a difference, as you shall see.

  I awoke. Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not open my eyes. And please know that in all that follows I knew no surprise whatever. Everything was the natural and the expected. I was I, be sure of that. But I was not Darrell Standing. Darrell Standing had no more to do with the being I was than did Darrell Standing’s parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do with the cool, soft skin that was mine. Nor was I aware of any Darrell Standing—as I could not well be, considering that Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not be born for centuries. But you shall see.

  I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening. From without came the clacking of many hoofs moving orderly on stone flags. From the accompanying jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-harness I knew some cavalcade was passing by on the street beneath my windows. Also, I wondered idly who it was. From somewhere—and I knew where, for I knew it was from the inn yard—came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an impatient neigh that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.

  Came steps and movements—steps openly advertised as suppressed with the intent of silence and that yet were deliberately noisy with the secret intent of rousing me if I still slept. I smiled inwardly at the rascal’s trick.

  “Pons,” I ordered, without opening my eyes, “water, cold water, quick, a deluge. I drank over long last night, and now my gullet scorches.”

  “And slept over long to-day,” he scolded, as he passed me the water, ready in his hand.

  I sat up, opened my eyes, and carried the tankard to my lips with both my hands. And as I drank I looked at Pons.

  Now note two things. I spoke in French; I was not conscious that I spoke in French. Not until afterward, back in solitary, when I remembered what I am narrating, did I know that I had spoken in French—ay, and spoken well. As for me, Darrell Standing, at present writing these lines in Murderers’ Row of Folsom Prison, why, I know only high school French sufficient to enable me to read the language. As for my speaking it—impossible. I can scarcely intelligibly pronounce my way through a menu.

  But to return. Pons was a little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father’s servant before I could toddle, and after my father’s death (Pons and I talked of it this day) he became my servant. The limp he had acquired on a stricken field in Italy, when the horsemen charged across. He had just dragged my father clear of the hoofs when he was lanced through the thigh, overthrown, and trampled. My father, conscious but helpless from his own wounds, witnessed it all. And so, as I say, Pons had earned such a right to impudent familiarity that at least there was no gainsaying him by my father’s son.

  Pons shook his head as I drained the huge draught.

  “Did you hear it boil?” I laughed, as I handed back the empty tankard.

  “Like your father,” he said hopelessly. “But your father lived to learn better, which I doubt you will do.”

  “He got a stomach affliction,” I devilled, “so that one mouthful of spirits turned it outside in. It were wisdom not to drink when one’s tank will not hold the drink.”

  While we talked Pons was gathering to my bedside my clothes for the day.

  “Drink on, my master,” he answered. “It won’t hurt you. You’ll die with a sound stomach.”

  “You mean mine is an iron-lined stomach?” I wilfully misunderstood him.

  “I mean—” he began with a quick peevishness, then broke off as he realized my teasing and with a pout of his withered lips draped my new sable cloak upon a chair-back. “Eight hundred ducats,” he sneered. “A thousand goats and a hundred fat oxen in a coat to keep you warm. A score of farms on my gentleman’s fine back.”

  “And in that a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace,” I said, reaching out my hand and touching the rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on the chair.

  “So your father won with his good right arm,” Pons retorted. “But what your father won he held.”

  Here Pons paused to hold up to scorn my new scarlet satin doublet—a wondrous thing of which I had been extravagant.

  “Sixty ducats for that,” Pons indicted. “Your father’d have seen all the tailors and Jews of Christendom roasting in hell before he’d a-paid such a price.”

  And while we dressed—that is, while Pons helped me to dress—I continued to quip with him.

  “It is quite clear, Pons, that you have not heard the news,” I said slyly.

  Whereat up pricked his ears like the old gossip he was.

  “Late news?” he queried. “Mayhap from the English Court?”

  “Nay,” I shook my head. “But news perhaps to you, but old news for all of that. Have you not heard? The philosophers of Greece were whispering it nigh two thousand years ago. It is because of that news that I put twenty fat farms on my back, live at Court, and am become a dandy. You see, Pons, the world is a most evil place, life is most sad, all men die, and, being dead … well, are dead. Wherefore, to escape the evil and the sadness, men in these days, like me, seek amazement, insensibility, and the madnesses of dalliance.”

  “But the news, master? What did the philosophers whisper about so long ago?”

  “That God was dead, Pons,” I replied solemnly. “Didn’t you know that? God is dead, and I soon shall be, and I wear twenty fat farms on my back.”

  “God lives,” Pons asserted fervently. “God lives, and his kingdom is at hand. I tell you, master, it is at hand. It may be no later than tomorrow that the earth shall pass away.”

  “So said they in old Rome, Pons, when Nero made torches of them to light his sports.”

  Pons regarded me pityingly.

  “Too much learning is a sickness,” he complained. “I was always opposed to it. But you must have your will and drag my old body about with you—a-studying astronomy and numbers in Venice, poetry and all the Italian fol-de-rols in Florence, and astrology in Pisa, and God knows what in that madman
country of Germany. Pish for the philosophers! I tell you, master, I, Pons, your servant, a poor old man who knows not a letter from a pike-staff—I tell you God lives, and the time you shall appear before him is short.” He paused with sudden recollection, and added: “He is here, the priest you spoke of.”

  On the instant I remembered my engagement.

  “Why did you not tell me before?” I demanded angrily.

  “What did it matter?” Pons shrugged his shoulders. “Has he not been waiting two hours as it is?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  He regarded me with a thoughtful, censorious eye.

  “And you rolling to bed and shouting like chanticleer, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, cucu nu nu cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

  He mocked me with the senseless refrain in an ear-jangling falsetto. Without doubt I had bawled the nonsense out on my way to bed.

  “You have a good memory,” I commented drily, as I essayed a moment to drape my shoulders with the new sable cloak ere I tossed it to Pons to put aside. He shook his head sourly.

  “No need of memory when you roared it over and over for the thousandth time till half the inn was a-knock at the door to spit you for the sleep-killer you were. And when I had you decently in the bed, did you not call me to you and command, if the devil called, to tell him my lady slept? And did you not call me back again, and, with a grip on my arm that leaves it bruised and black this day, command me, as I loved life, fat meat, and the warm fire, to call you not of the morning save for one thing?”

  “Which was?” I prompted, unable for the life of me to guess what I could have said.

  “Which was the heart of one, a black buzzard, you said, by name Martinelli—whoever he may be—for the heart of Martinelli smoking on a gold platter. The platter must be gold, you said; and you said I must call you by singing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’ Whereat you began to teach me how to sing, ‘Sing cucu, sing cucu, sing cucu.’”

  And when Pons had said the name, I knew it at once for the priest, Martinelli, who had been knocking his heels two mortal hours in the room without.

  When Martinelli was permitted to enter and as he saluted me by title and name, I knew at once my name and all of it. I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure (You see, only could I know then, and remember afterward, what was in my conscious mind.).

  The priest was Italian, dark and small, lean as with fasting or with a wasting hunger not of this world, and his hands were as small and slender as a woman’s. But his eyes! They were cunning and trustless, narrow-slitted and heavy-lidded, at one and the same time as sharp as a ferret’s and as indolent as a basking lizard’s.

  “There has been much delay, Count de Sainte-Maure,” he began promptly, when Pons had left the room at a glance from me. “He whom I serve grows impatient.”

  “Change your tune, priest,” I broke in angrily. “Remember, you are not now in Rome.”

  “My august master—” he began.

  “Rules augustly in Rome, mayhap,” I again interrupted. “This is France.”

  Martinelli shrugged his shoulders meekly and patiently, but his eyes, gleaming like a basilisk’s, gave his shoulders the lie.

  “My august master has some concern with the doings of France,” he said quietly. “The lady is not for you. My master has other plans …” He moistened his thin lips with his tongue. “Other plans for the lady … and for you.”

  Of course, by the lady I knew he referred to the great Duchess Philippa, widow of Geoffrey, last Duke of Aquitaine. But great duchess, widow, and all, Philippa was a woman, and young, and gay, and beautiful, and, by my faith, fashioned for me.

  “What are his plans?” I demanded bluntly.

  “They are deep and wide, Count Sainte-Maure—too deep and wide for me to presume to imagine, much less know or discuss with you or any man.”

  “Oh, I know big things are afoot and slimy worms squirming underground,” I said.

  “They told me you were stubborn-necked, but I have obeyed commands.”

  Martinelli arose to leave, and I arose with him.

  “I said it was useless,” he went on. “But the last chance to change your mind was accorded you. My august master deals more fairly than fair.”

  “Oh, well, I’ll think the matter over,” I said airily, as I bowed the priest to the door.

  He stopped abruptly at the threshold.

  “The time for thinking is past,” he said. “It is decision I came for.”

  “I will think the matter over,” I repeated, then added, as afterthought: “If the lady’s plans do not accord with mine, then mayhap the plans of your master may fruit as he desires. For remember, priest, he is no master of mine.”

  “You do not know my master,” he said solemnly.

  “Nor do I wish to know him,” I retorted.

  And I listened to the lithe, light step of the little intriguing priest go down the creaking stairs.

  Did I go into the minutiæ of detail of all that I saw this half a day and half a night that I was Count Guillaume de Sainte-Maure, not ten books the size of this I am writing could contain the totality of the matter. Much I shall skip; in fact, I shall skip almost all; for never yet have I heard of a condemned man being reprieved in order that he might complete his memoirs—at least, not in California.

  When I rode out in Paris that day it was the Paris of centuries agone. The narrow streets were an unsanitary scandal of filth and slime. But I must skip. And skip I shall, all of the afternoon’s events, all of the ride outside the walls, of the grand fête given by Hugh de Meung, of the feasting and the drinking in which I took little part. Only of the end of the adventure will I write, which begins with where I stood jesting with Philippa herself—ah, dear God, she was wondrous beautiful. A great lady—ay, but before that, and after that, and always, a woman.

  We laughed and jested lightly enough, as about us jostled the merry throng; but under our jesting was the deep earnestness of man and woman well advanced across the threshold of love and yet not too sure each of the other. I shall not describe her. She was small, exquisitely slender—but there, I am describing her. In brief, she was the one woman in the world for me, and little I recked the long arm of that gray old man in Rome could reach out half across Europe between my woman and me.

  And the Italian, Fortini, leaned to my shoulder and whispered:

  “One who desires to speak.”

  “One who must wait my pleasure,” I answered shortly.

  “I wait no man’s pleasure,” was his equally short reply.

  And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and the gray old man at Rome. The thing was clear. It was deliberate. It was the long arm. Fortini smiled lazily at me while I thus paused for the moment to debate, but in his smile was the essence of all insolence.

  This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool. But the old red anger began to kindle in me. This was the work of the priest. This was the Fortini, poverished of all save lineage, reckoned the best sword come up out of Italy in half a score of years. Tonight it was Fortini. If he failed the gray old man’s command tomorrow it would be another sword, the next day another. And, perchance still failing, then might I expect the common bravo’s steel in my back or the common poisoner’s philter in my wine, my meat, or bread.

  “I am busy,” I said. “Begone.”

  “My business with you presses,” was his reply.

  Insensibly our voices had slightly risen, so that Philippa heard.

  “Begone, you Italian hound,” I said. “Take your howling from my door. I shall attend to you presently.”

  “The moon is up,” he said. “The grass is dry and excellent. There is no dew. Beyond the fish-pond, an arrow’s flight to the left, is an open space, quiet and private.”

  “Presently you shall have your desire,” I muttered impatiently.

  But still he persisted in waiting at my shoulder.

  “Presently,” I said. “Present
ly I shall attend to you.”

  Then spoke Philippa, in all the daring spirit and the iron of her.

  “Satisfy the gentleman’s desire, Sainte-Maure. Attend to him now. And good fortune go with you.” She paused to beckon to her uncle, Jean de Joinville, who was passing—uncle on her mother’s side, of the de Joinvilles of Anjou. “Good fortune go with you,” she repeated, and then leaned to me so that she could whisper: “And my heart goes with you, Sainte-Maure. Do not be long. I shall await you in the big hall.”

  I was in the seventh heaven. I trod on air. It was the first frank admittance of her love. And with such benediction I was made so strong that I knew I could kill a score of Fortinis and snap my fingers at a score of gray old men in Rome.

  Jean de Joinville bore Philippa away in the press, and Fortini and I settled our arrangements in a trice. We separated—he to find a friend or so, and I to find a friend or so, and all to meet at the appointed place beyond the fish-pond.

  First I found Robert Lanfranc, and, next, Henry Bohemond. But before I found them I encountered a windlestraw which showed which way blew the wind and gave promise of a very gale. I knew the windlestraw, Guy de Villehardouin, a raw young provincial, come up the first time to Court, but a fiery little cockerel for all of that. He was red-haired. His blue eyes, small and pinched close to ether, were likewise red, at least in the whites of them; and his skin, of the sort that goes with such types, was red and freckled. He had quite a parboiled appearance.

  As I passed him by a sudden movement he jostled me. Oh, of course, the thing was deliberate. And he flamed at me while his hand dropped to his rapier.

  “Faith,” thought I, “the gray old man has many and strange tools,” while to the cockerel I bowed and murmured, “Your pardon for my clumsiness. The fault was mine. Your pardon, Villehardouin.”