"Five ducats if you're right," Azzie said. The sound of the boots stopped just outside the door. There was a knock. "Come in," said the redheaded demon.
The door opened and a man entered slowly, looking both ways as if unsure of his reception. He 'was a tall yellow-headed fellow wearing a ragged shirt of homespun and boots of cowhide that looked as if they had been annealed to his legs.
"I'll pay you later," Azzie said to Aretino. To the stranger he said, "I do not know you, sir. Are you part of our pilgrimage, or did you come upon us in the dark?"
"In a corporeal sense, I'm one of the group," the stranger replied, "yet in a spiritual sense I am not one of the party."
"The fellow hath a pretty wit," Azzie said. "What is your name, fellow, and your station in life?"
"They call me Morton Kornglow," the man said. "My regular occupation is grooming horses, but I was impressed into the job of valet to Sir Oliver, since I live in his ancestral village and have always been handy with a currycomb. Thus I may fairly claim that I am one of you as far as the physical body is concerned, but a company is generally thought of as composed of like-minded members, and one does not include the dogs and cats who may stray along with them, nor the servants, who are no more than the animals, though perhaps a little more valuable. I must ask you at once, sir, does my lowly station in life bar me from participating in this event? Is your contest open only to nobles, or may a common man with dirt under his fingernails volunteer?"
"In the Spiritual World," Azzie said, "the distinctions men make between each other are meaningless. We think of you all as souls for the taking, wearing a temporary body and soon to give it up. But enough of that. Would you be one of our seekers of the candlesticks, Kornglow?"
"I would indeed, sir demon," Kornglow said. "For though I am but a commoner, there is that which I desire. I would go to a bit of trouble to procure it."
"Name your desire," Azzie said.
"That'll be enough," Azzie said. "Spare us the rest of your rustic pleasantries and tell me what you want of the lady."
"Why, that she should marry me, of course," Kornglow said.
Aretino gave a great laugh and muffled it forthwith as a cough. Even Azzie had to smile, so ill-matched was the loutish and out-at-elbow Kornglow with any pretty noblewoman.
"Well, sir," Azzie said, "you are not afraid to shoot high in your courting!"
"A poor man can aspire to Helen of Troy if he so desires," said Kornglow. "And in his fancy she may well respond to him above all men, and find him more desirable than delectable Paris himself. In a dream, whatever you want can happen. And is this not a sort of a dream, Your Excellency?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," Azzie said. "Well, sir, if we were to grant your wish, we'd have to have you ennobled in order that there be no impediment of station to the marriage ceremony."
"I'd be willing," Kornglow said.
"We'd also have to get Lady Cressilda's consent," Aretino pointed out.
"Leave that to me when the time comes," Azzie said. "Well, it's a challenge, Kornglow, but I think we can swing it."
Aretino frowned and said, "There's the fact that the lady is already married, my lord, that might stand as some impediment."
"We have clerks in Rome to take care of details like that," Azzie said. He turned to Kornglow. "There are a few things you will have to do. Are you ready to go to a little trouble?"
"Why, yes, sir, so long as it be not too strenuous. A man should not be taken out of his native temper even by the most outrageous of good fortune, and my own native temper is of a laziness so extreme that did the world but know about it they'd declare me a prodigy."
"There's nothing too difficult ahead of you," Azzie promised. "I think we can dispense with the usual sword fighting, since you were not educated to it."
Azzie fished in his waistcoat pocket and found one of his magical keys. He handed it to Kornglow, who turned it over and over in his fingers.
"You will go from here," Azzie said, "and the key will take you to a doorway. You will pass through it, and find a magic horse with a magic candlestick in his saddlebag. Mounting him, you will find your adventure, and, at the end of it, your Cressilda of the cornsilk hair."
"Great!" Kornglow said. "It is wonderful when good fortune comes easy like this!"
"Yes," Azzie said, "ease of acquisition is one of the great things of this world, and a moral I hope to preach to men: namely, good fortune comes easy, so why sweat it?"
Azzie smiled benignly. "Another happy customer."
"There's someone new at the door," said Aretino.
Chapter 2
Mother Joanna sat in her room at the inn. She was more than a little afraid.
Outside, in the hallways, she could hear occasional scuffling sounds. They might have come from anything, natural or supernatural, but Joanna suspected they emanated from pilgrims who had decided to take Sir Antonio up on his offer and were on their way to his chambers.
Despite her holy office, Joanna was not unacquainted with human desire. There were things she wanted for herself, and, not being a moderate person, these desires burned in her immoderately. She was a political mother superior, not a religious one, and had looked upon her job much as the taking on of any other great enterprise. Her nunnery at Gravelines, with its seventy-two nuns and a host of servants and people to look after the animals, was an enterprise similar to that of a small town. Joanna had reveled in it from the very beginning. She might have been made for this. She had never been like other little girls, playing with dolls and dreaming of marriage. Even as a child she had been fond of giving orders to her birds and spaniels—You sit there, and you there — scolding them while she gave them tea.
This practice of giving orders had not left her when she grew to womanhood. Matters might have been different had she been beautiful, but she had taken after the Mortimer side of the family. She had the great white face of the Mortimers, the short, dry, lifeless hair, the stocky body more suited to laboring with spade and plough than to the languors of the pursuits of love. She wanted to be rich, and feared by all, and service in the Church had seemed the way to get it. She was conventionally pious, but her piety ran afoul of her practicality, which told her that here was an opportunity to get what she wanted rather than waiting forever until the Pope was induced to advance her to some larger nunnery.
She thought and thought, and she paced up and down her little room, taking note of her desires and asking herself which of them was paramount. Each time she heard a sound outside, she started; it seemed that all of the others were taking advantage of Sir Antonio's offer to give them their hearts' desires. Soon the required seven would be made up, and she would have no further chance. Finally she decided to act.
Mother Joanna crept out of her chamber and made her way silently down the inn's dark passageways.
She climbed the stairs to the second level and winced when they creaked. Coming at last to the door to Sir Antonio's room, she took her courage into her hands, reached up, and tapped lightly upon it.
Azzie's voice from the other side said, "Come in, my dear. I've been expecting you."
She had many questions. Azzie found her tiresome, but he managed to reassure her. When he came to inquire as to her heart's desire, however, he found her less than forthcoming. A look of sad embarrassment came across her broad white face.
"What I want," she said, "is something I do not even care to speak about. It is too shameful, too demeaning."
"Come on," Azzie said. "If you can't tell your demon, who can you tell?"
"Of course. He is our poet," Azzie said. "How else can he record our adventures save he be present? To make no record of these notable adventures were crime indeed, one that would condemn us to the vast unconsciousness of unrecorded life in which most people live out their lives. But Aretino will immortalize us, my dear! Our poet will take our exploits, no matter how slight they might seem, and weave them into deathless verse."